HELP!!

[Sal Pontillo]

I am looking for one tip that best changed your poker career. I have been playing poker for about 5 years now and have been playing 1/2 or 2/5 but I can never seem to constantly win the games I play. I get to a certain bankroll and just plateau. I have been reading books and trying to incorporate odds. Does anyone have any suggestions on books to use or any personal tips to give someone in my spot. Have a great day all.

[Robert L]

Hi Sal,

I’d recommend utilizing some of the more popular training sites as well as using different software available to evaluate hands, ranges, etc. Spending more time away from the felt to study is important and you might just need to take a deeper dive there.

GL
Rob

[Brad Howard]

Best thing i ever did was spend all my time focusing on pre-flop. By and large the best way to ensure you can grab a skill advantage is to be starting with a good strategy so post flop decisions are much more profitable. It worked really well for me.

[John S]

Without knowing anything about your game, it’s hard to say.

One leak a lot of players have is a poorly disciplined pre-flop range, everywhere from your raising range, 3-bet range, and calling range. Eliminating suited double-gappers from my pre-flop range raised my win-rate (i.e. playing T8 suited, folding T7 suited). Pre-flop mistakes can cost you a lot more than you think.

I’m also a big fan of Crush Live Poker. He’s got a lot of free videos on youtube you can check out. It’s helped me a lot.

[David Wibel]

Sal,

As everyone has said, pre-flop strategy. Having a good strategy and sticking with it will put you well above the average player. Once you have that down, go over it with someone whose opinion you trust and will be brutally honest with you. It is only through truly honest review that you can learn anything. Even reviewing your ranges based on positions and number of limps, calls, raises etc can be useful.

Once you have that, think about how much you bluff post flop. I have feeling that a lot of low stake players overvalue hands and/or over bluff. Try to keep your bluffs to hands that have good equity if called and are against people that will fold. Don’t bluff the calling station, there is a reason we give them that moniker.

If you are extremely confident in your strategy then start reviewing some of the math of flop play. It is going to be really boring but things like knowing the exact odds on drawing to an open ended straight can help determine if you should call or not. I think this is more important than figuring out a betting strategy because at those lower stakes it is going to be very player dependent.

[Sal Pontillo]

Thank you everyone for the great tips. When you are talking about pre flop strategy are you saying have a set of hands and raise with a certain range and call with a certain range and only play those hands or are you saying play the player and react according to what they are doing. I understand you want to mix up your play to be unpredicable but I think at the lower stakes and even the mid stakes that most people will not pay attention to bet sizing pre flop and if you raise to 10 or 20 with a premium hand and 8 to 16 when you have a less premium they will not pick up on that. Any suggestions????

[David Wibel]

I am talking about having a set of hands you call, raise and 3 bet with. If you have a balance range it will still be hard to be predictable. For instance if I am on the button in a 1/. game and it folds to me, I will raise all pairs, a myriad of suited gappers, suited kings, queens, aces, and premium hands like AK and KK all to $10 or whatever the table standard raise has been (sometimes it’s 12 or 15). If I am UTG in the same game I will narrow my range considerably, I will fold small pocket pairs, and keep my range to AK, KJ+, QJs, and sometimes hands like 89s or 78s.

Also, keep your raise size the same regardless of hand strength. That is one of the most obvious tells I can find from people. If you raise to 8x or 10x with hands like JJ-KK and are normally raising to 3x, I can fold hands like QJ, or T9s because I am in really bad shape and know it. People notice patterns and things out of the ordinary are easily noticeable.

[Han]

Hi Sal. I think this is a good start. Posting hands and getting feedback on your decisions would be valuable. There are a lot of mistakes/leaks you could be making, that you think you are not doing but someone else would be able to spot it. Post a few hands and give it a shot, you might be surprised.

[Author]

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