Kosh's Total Greenhorn Blog

First of all, I'm totally new to poker. I've probably played less than 100 hands total. I've been interested in playing for a long time, but never got around to it. I kind of made it a new year's resolution for myself this time, I know, a weird resolution. I've started a blog over at blogspot, but I'll just copy them over here as I'm sure I'll get (hopefully) more feedback.

I was going to start playing poker about a year and a half ago, but got side tracked with moving and other things. Now that things have settled down, I think I'll get back into playing poker. I thought I'd start out by reading a couple of books during the month of December to get a decent starting strategy. That way, I can get a fresh start playing when the new year begins. I'm going to start out playing Sit 'n Go tournaments, then move on to cash games and multi-table tournaments later on.

I picked up a couple of books on online poker and sit 'n go tournaments in particular. I began with Online Ace by Scott Fischman. It was a decent book, but seemed very basic. The main thing I got out of it was what he called Factors. These are questions you should ask yourself during each hand before you make a decision, such as:

How many chips do I have?
What position am I in?
What is my table image?
What do I think of my opponents?
What is the texture of the board?
What are the structural situations (blind and antes)?
What are the odds?

I printed these factors out and put them up on a cork board near the desk I normally play on. I'll try to look at these once in a while to remind myself to think about these questions during each hand I play.

The next book I read was Sit 'n Go Strategy by Collin Moshman. This book blew away Online Ace. S'nG Strategy is filled with great content. It covers sit 'n gos from start to finish, the business of sit 'n gos, and lots and lots of sample hands to study. If you're going to play sit 'n gos this is a must read.

Now it's time to get started. I deposited $275 on Pokerstars, which gives me 50 buy ins for the $5.50 sit 'n gos. My plan is to start there and build my bankroll up, if I can reach $550 then I'll move up the $11 tourneys. You can find me on Pokerstars as xKingKoshx. See you at the table.

First Tourney and how I screwed it up.

I played my first $5.50 sit 'n go tournament today. Yesterday I went over the areas I highlighted in the book Sit 'n Go Strategy and I specifically remember one part I had highlighted. From page 19 under premium hands, it's talking about having pocket kings or queens. "If you do get callers to a raise or reraise, and an ace or king comes to your queens or an ace to your kings, tend to give up against multiple opponents or a lot of action."

If only I had remembered this during the tournament.

Can't post URL's/Links yet, so I'll have to post an uglier hand conversion for now.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $5.00+$0.50 Tournament, 25/50 Blinds (7 handed) - Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver

MP2 (t1240)
CO (t3075)
Button (t1520)
SB (t2388)
Hero (BB) (t1505)
UTG (t1160)
MP1 (t2612)

Hero's M: 20.07

Preflop: Hero is BB with Kd, Ks
2 folds, MP2 raises to t150, 2 folds, SB calls t125, Hero raises to t250, MP2 calls t100, SB calls t100

Flop: (t750) Ah, Qd, 9d (3 players)
SB checks, Hero bets t300, MP2 raises to t600, 1 fold, Hero calls t300

Turn: (t1950) 6c (2 players)
Hero checks, MP2 bets t390 (All-In), Hero calls t390

River: (t2730) 8s (2 players, 1 all-in)

Total pot: t2730


I even remember thinking in the back of my head as I made the flop reraise call, does he have Aces or Ace-King. Afterwards I wrote on the bottom of my starting hands sheet, "If you have KK and an Ace comes, fucking fold to a reraise!!!" Live and learn, I guess.

Read Harrington on Holdem and it's not even close.

Since you have zero experience, you might want to try starting at the $2 SnGs, just so you know you can beat something. You need to be really good with push/fold to crush the $5, and if you don't crush it will be very swingy.

Welcome to FTR

Thanks for the welcome.

Harrington on Hold Em is definitely on my list to read. I haven't purchased the first book yet, because I was going to read Kill Everyone. I actually already own KE and was going to buy HoHE Vol. 1 once I finished KE.

I may very well need to move down to $2, but I had gotten earlier advice not to start lower than the $5 tourneys. I believe they said due to variance and the rake, that the $5 was a better deal and a better learning experience. Now I'm not so sure. I actually played my second $5 sng earlier today and was going to post about it later.

oh yeah, rake kind of sucks, but if you feel you catch yourself making LOL stupid decisions then moving down would help you get comfortable. You have 50 buy-ins so you should be ok for awhile, but if a downswing starts getting in your head it would be better to move down sooner rather than later.

Your preflop raise sucks. Min-raising generally sucks. No one is ever folding to a min-raise, and you don't want to take KK to a flop 3-4 way. Since there is already a caller I'd make it like 500.

Use the SnG forum too, Taipan is a great resource.

Tourney #2, What Was I Thinking?

I was doing pretty well in this one up to this point. I was the chip leader with 5 people left and had a good chance of making it into the money. That is, until my brain decided to turn off. QJo? Under the Gun? Wow! I'm embarrassed to even post this hand after looking at it. I'm not even sure what I was doing. Trying to make a move? No idea. I guess I might have been trying to steal the blinds, even so, I think I should have only tried that if my cards had been suited. However, with that said, I still should have folded to the reraise after the flop. On the bright side, I made it into mid blind play this time and busted out 4th as the bubble boy.


PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $5.00+$0.50 Tournament, 50/100 Blinds (5 handed) - Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver

SB (t1980)
BB (t3320)
Hero (UTG) (t3910)
MP (t3635)
Button (t655)

Hero's M: 26.07

Preflop: Hero is UTG with Jd, Qc
Hero raises to t300, 3 folds, BB calls t200

Flop: (t650) Kh, 8c, Qs (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets t325, BB raises to t1300, Hero calls t975

Turn: (t3250) 8h (2 players)
BB bets t1720 (All-In), Hero calls t1720

River: (t6690) 10h (2 players, 1 all-in)

Total pot: t6690

Third Time is Not the Charm.

Played in tournament number 3 today. Ended up busting out in 6th place. It was a very tight table. I busted out with KQs and the end results were very similar to the hand in tournament number 2. I think I need to stay away from Queens. lol

I did have a hand that was questionable for me. I posted it over in the Sit-n-Go Tourney Tactics. Check it out over there and let me know what you think. I'd post the link, but I don't have 10 posts yet. Meh!

Pump Up the Volume.

I played in five tournaments on Tuesday. The first one was a $5.50 sit n go. I was card dead for the entire tournament, by the time the blinds got to 75/150 I was down to about 8BB and I went all in with Ks Ts. I ended up losing to pocket Aces when I failed to connect with anything on the board.

I wanted to play some more, so I decided to go down in stakes to the $1.20 and see what I could do there. I played three of these busting out at 6th, 4th, and 4th respectively. I went back and looked at these tournaments. I was playing pretty well, but I guess at some point I got impatient or undisciplined and tried to pull off some cute move or a bluff with trash. At that point it hit me, I don't think you can get away with bluffing at this level. I decided to try one more $1.20 tournament and I was going to keep my discipline and play very tight and aggressive. It worked, I ended up winning the tournament. I learned my lesson, no more cute stuff for me, I'll stick to tight and right.

Looking for Discipline in the Big Blind.

I got in seven more sit 'n go tournaments on Friday and Saturday. I decided to stay down at the $1.20 level and see if I can make a profit of $20 there, then move up to the $3.40 tourneys. My results were one 1st, two 2nd, a 3rd, a 4th, 5th, and 7th. Four out of seven in the money means my discipline is paying off.

I'm still finding one place where I'm having problems, the discipline to lay down a hand that I know is beat. This usually happens when I'm in the big blind and everyone limps in and allows me to check in with any two cards. I'll usually hit middle or bottom pair and find it hard to let it go. Here's an example, I didn't actually check in on this one, so it's not normal, but still illustrates the problem.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $1.00+$0.20 Tournament, 10/20 Blinds (9 handed) - Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver

UTG+1 (t1490)
MP1 (t1590)
MP2 (t1210)
MP3 (t2170)
CO (t1740)
Button (t1300)
SB (t1100)
Hero (BB) (t1480)
UTG (t1420)

Hero's M: 49.33

Preflop: Hero is BB with 9d, Qd
2 folds, MP1 calls t20, MP2 raises to t100, 4 folds, Hero calls t80, 1 fold

Flop: (t230) Qh, 6s, Ks (2 players)
Hero checks, MP2 bets t160, Hero calls t160

Turn: (t550) Ad (2 players)
Hero bets t275, MP2 raises to t550, Hero calls t275

River: (t1650) 3d (2 players)
Hero checks, MP2 bets t400 (All-In), Hero calls t400

Total pot: t2450

I knew in my head I was probably beat with the Ace and King on board, but my hand kept clicking the call button. This hand caught my eye on Friday and I worked on it Saturday. I think it paid off with good results in Saturday's tournaments.