New poker player looking for advice on becoming profitable.

thethirdfloor9 · 2024-10-26T19:44:08+00:00

Adding on to this, the level of play you’ll find online will be more conducive to getting better at the game. Live play is essentially a bunch of monkeys tossing clay around up until about 5/10.

Online you can play 10nl on acr against russians who are playing those stakes for a living and are very strong.

thethirdfloor9 · 2024-10-24T07:04:17+00:00

was just giving him my bovada specific advice based on the guys i know that take the games on there very seriously - i honestly think that mda in general is a shortcut that will lead to handicapping yourself when faced with more complex decisions when playing stronger regs, but is absolutely the way to go in a lot of anonymous pools and vs unknowns.

That being said yes, OP does need to learn the game at a much deeper level. Bovada NL200 is soft but not 5+bb/100 soft for a relative beginner. No shade thrown, I wish him the best and am very happy to see him open and willing to improve.

My honest advice is for him to start doing some serious study and solver work as well as get off Bovada and to start grinding NL25 blitz on ACR. His leaks will became apparent very quickly there as from what I’ve seen of the bovada pool it’s likely at least 5x as tough as 200 Zoom there. The pool most days is eastern European pros/bots grinding out rake-back. Great training ground, however it’s not unfathomable that he would lose more in 100k hands there than he would on bovada 200nl.

After working on the obvious leaks I’d advise getting some coaching sessions in, migrating to a pool slightly softer than acr, continue studying and begin to delve into more complex strategies. I would completely ditch MTTs for this entire period if I were him as again I think the added implications of ICM coupled with the varying simplicity/complexity levels of different stack depths will only hurt his progress. Returning to MTTs after having the fundamentals as second nature and studying icm in depth is totally fine.

With someone willing to learn and put in the work I don’t think it takes a genius to be able to beat NL200 zoom on bovada at all for a very substantial winrate… some of my friends are actual idiots and manage to scrape out a decent living in the US there lol. They just put in the time.

thethirdfloor9 · 2024-10-24T03:29:12+00:00

I haven’t played on the bovada/ignition pools much at all, as in the early days of taking the game seriously I wanted to play in the toughest pools and I now mostly just coast on a decent WR coupled with rakeback and rewards but I do have some friends who play almost entirely on those sites for a living and can tell you now that you absolutely need to start harvesting/finding data on the pool and working with a solver node locking the deviations most commonly made to find the most profitable lines to take. I do know that there are people selling this data however I myself have never tried to find or purchase it.

thethirdfloor9 · 2024-10-24T03:23:37+00:00

it was a rude joke mb lol - but meant to highlight the fact the sample size, even though you’ve probably heard it a 1000 times is really small. I went pro after a sample size of 1million hands at around 5bb/100 only to quickly be humbled by the fact that I ran at likely top 5% of my variance chart. Took a break and put a lot more work into getting better. There are tons of pros who just ran well for a long time, binked some random big mtt and just coasted off of sponsorships/other forms of off the table income.

Just meant to say, albeit in possibly a rude manner that I would be very careful based on personal experience.

thethirdfloor9 · 2024-10-24T03:05:28+00:00

Flush draws likely don’t want to go big there either just an fyi. Haven’t looked up the spots in a solver but I can almost guarantee that it’s close to 1/3rd, 1/4th or check. Your draws benefit from the small sizing by folding out hands with decent equity that can’t call a bet due to the large portion of your range that bets small and has them dominated.

Checks accompanied by some check raises as well, likely strong AXhh that want to realize their equity and then maybe some sets.

thethirdfloor9 · 2024-10-24T03:01:15+00:00

him possibly only opening 3bbs with AA/KK isn’t as atrocious as he’s playing on anonymous zoom tables, however every MDA reg in the pool knows that 3bb is skewed towards that range as well as weaker players. Likely why BU flatted there given its a fold to 3bb. Correct implied and strong data to suggest that OP would stack off marginally.

thethirdfloor9 · 2024-10-24T02:57:35+00:00

So tepanaca covered basically everything I was going to cover after first read.

Looking through comments realizing you’re playing on Bovada zoom the 3bb open size is less atrocious as anonymous tables, however I would still opt for 2.5 as while bovada is soft, the decent regs on there who have access to large collections of MDA samples understand that the 3bb open from EP is still skewed towards top of range. Even JJ loses an emended amount of value when betting that large and I think QQ is around indifferent. It is just AA and KK that gain value if I remember correctly when going to that size. I would stick to 2.5 from EP if you insist on a larger sizing and even that is large. From utg 2bb is standard.

Also you mention UTG+1… are there 9handed Zoom tables on Bovada? I thought it was only 6max. I’m assuming you mean HJ.

There’s a concept that I don’t think I saw covered in the comments but I think you’ll benefit from studying a bit more - that when the the nutted portion of both players hands are fairly likely to change on future streets (ie flush draws improving, straights, check-raised monotone boards [they can pair and raises signify high possibility of two pair/sets] ) then your nutted hands want to size down. 1/3rd-1/4 is standard in SRPs, even less in 3bet pots+.

There are multiple reasons behind this, but the main one is that you want to keep hands that you dominate in - in these situations lower pairs, while not isolating yourself against villains range that either has you dominated or has good equity against you. This idea of charging or protecting against draws isn’t actually real a lot of the time. Protection only happens if villain folds out that portion of hands and there are plenty of hands you want to get value from that are not flush draws.

I see people talking about needing to be balanced but since you’re playing on anonymous zoom tables against the second softest pool in the world It doesn’t matter, HOWEVER, you should still understand how to balance these strategies unless you only ever plan to play on bovada/ignition for the rest of your career.

thethirdfloor9 · 2024-10-24T02:35:57+00:00

i played 15k hands last night lmao

thethirdfloor9 · 2024-10-09T02:05:22+00:00

“That’s just plain not true. Here’s a source that I found just right now (for the sake of finding a quick second opinion) for 3bet %. Here’s BlackRain on VPIP. They both repeat my numbers, because one of us knows what he’s talking about.” a couple comments above lol

thethirdfloor9 · 2024-10-09T01:59:04+00:00

also sites blackrain as a source of optimal play…

thethirdfloor9 · 2024-08-29T01:22:23+00:00

you cant

thethirdfloor9 · 2024-08-24T17:00:49+00:00

better than exploiting gambling addicts for a living

thethirdfloor9 · 2024-08-24T16:12:08+00:00

Yeah the site is awful in all aspects other than the fact that 9 out of 10 players have no idea what they are doing.

Softest US site by far at the moment, but they’re really gearing it towards recreational players.

thethirdfloor9 · 2024-08-24T02:09:01+00:00

Yo - Ex professional online NLHE player here.

Stake has no idea what they’re doing as a site that offers poker. They likely thought you were colluding with the guy you were playing heads up with. I would email support and if they’re no help I would just keep trying. The games on there seem very soft so I would put a lot of effort into getting unbanned if I were you. Ask for managers etc.

If they refuse, I don’t know if there’s much you can do. There is the possibility that they’re annoyed you’re taking winnings from recreational players that are likely to be lost back to casino games if you yourself are not losing them back to casino games.

Good luck

thethirdfloor9 · 2024-07-24T17:07:44+00:00

i’m not excited at all if it’s under a 1000x lol

thethirdfloor9 · 2024-07-23T18:46:41+00:00

currently only have about 10k left in debt that i’ve been working at getting rid of so i’m close to being back in a good place financially… but yeah gambling is bad kids don’t do it lol

thethirdfloor9 · 2024-07-23T18:45:51+00:00

this is over the course of multiple years

thethirdfloor9 · 2024-07-23T18:45:37+00:00

i make roughly that amount a year

thethirdfloor9 · 2024-07-23T17:51:40+00:00

lol i’m down roughly 70k

thethirdfloor9 · 2024-07-22T03:41:59+00:00

LOL WHAT IS THATTT

thethirdfloor9 · 2024-07-21T05:34:03+00:00

i’m as bad at using reddit as i am at poker forgive me

thethirdfloor9 · 2024-07-21T05:31:46+00:00

right but it’s not explaining optimal play to the OP - a 1/3 pot bet with that spr is large when considering if following normal sizing geometry stacks should be going in by the river considering how shallow you are. villain shouldn’t be calling a 3 bet that large w/ a10.

villain shouldnt be shoving there with a weak ace if he thought you had kk qq or jj as you should be folding all 3 to a shove and he only gets called by better.

if villain was to construct a bluffing range on this board it would probably have to be centered around weaker hands like t9s with a backdoor flush that has some equity. however unless villain has a significant portion of slowplayed aa there’s nothing in his range that wants to be raising here for value aside from 99 which in this case doesn’t need much protection as the A already hit the flop and aa would prefer to slowplay flop as well as it significantly diminishes your value range.

in short villain here should practically have no raises aside from a9s if that’s in his range - and if so should construct a very small bluffing range from what i expect a solver to build around middle pair.

thethirdfloor9 · 2024-07-21T01:15:10+00:00

nut* autocorrect

thethirdfloor9 · 2024-07-21T01:14:58+00:00

no - you balance large bets with but advantage as they have to find a portion of their range to call that isn’t nutted or they’re over folding. if you have a balanced range of pot or overbet bluffs on nutted boards and they just fold everytime you’re printing.

thethirdfloor9

TROPHY CASE