Help - is it just me?

Hi guys,

I am new to this forum but have been checking out some of the videos on the site and they are awesome.

Particularly i have been watching and learning quite a lot from bigspenda's micro stakes vids.

I have found them to be really educational and have brought up heaps of points that i have never thought about the game and my own game.

I am also taking BRM alot more seriously now since i lost my last deposit from playing too higher stakes.

I think of myself as a tight player who is working on the aggressive part of my game and learning when and when not to use it.

I am playing at $0.02/$0.05 NL.

However, all these things I have been learning and trying to put into practice and i seem to be getting nowhere, even going backwards..

I logged in tonight i an awesome frame of mind, ready to put these new learned skills and discipline into practice and i find my self a buyin and a half after 1/2 hour?

I was pretty card dead preflop but then when i got half a hand in the right position and raised preflop, i got called and then if i hit the flop or half hit it i would meet a re raise etc to my top pair or major resistance. I'd tried to take down a pot when it had been checked around and all i got was calling on the flop and turn and then i felt that there was no point of a bet on the river with air as they would call anyway.

Am i doing something wrong? In fact you probably won't be able to answer that yet, but i will try and post some hand histories in the near future for advice.

Hey and welcome to FTR As taipan would say: it's good to have you here.

As you already realized yourself it's pretty much impossible to give you an answer on what went wrong there so I'll try to be pretty general.

First of all, about watching videos. I noticed, that you can very easily sit back and say like "yeah, I understand the reason why he did that." without actively trying to really get in the hand yourself. Maybe puzzle together the hand history for the hand, replay it with popopop universal replayer thingy step by step and trying to understand why the author made a decision that way. Additionally you should keep in mind, that all of the teaching videos you'll see are played by players FAR more experienced for those stakes. So always keep that in mind. Especially their reads on the opponents will be very accurate most of the time which makes for easier decisions. So it's basically automatic for them. Don't get me wrong I don't want to discourage you or anything, I'm just trying to point out the advantages those players have over a beginner/mediocre player.

If you try new things that don't fit your personal style be prepared to drop a bit. Don't try to imitate, try to incorporate it in your own style. Also don't try to learn everything at once, focus on one thing. I'll give you an example of how I usually approach something like this:

I'm usually playing very TAGG (tight/aggressive) PF (pre flop) but had aggression problems post flop if I missed my hand. So what I tried after reading/watching and understanding, was playing LAGG (loose/aggressive) for a bit. It didn't go too well overall (dropped about 1 buy-in) but I got a pretty good feeling on how people react to aggression in general and I also realized how powerful continuation bets can be. So I tried to focus on that, incorporate that into my own style and it has worked great since. I've picked up loads of pots just by cbetting (continuation betting) even if I missed the flop (of course I was still on a draw/overcards/pocket pairs, etc). So basically I just tried out a style to learn a bit about response to aggression of certain player types and then focussed on just one small aspect, cbetting.

Pretty long post, I know, but maybe it'll help you

Hey, yea thats awesome advice, thanks.

I guess maybe i am trying to focus on too many things at once.

I had a look back through the hand history of my session and even though i lost 2 buyings, it seems that when i had a solid hand i ran into something bigger..

Im not sure whether that was just bad luck or whether i need to be able to recognise this and put players on hands more. I find this part very hard.

eg, just quickly...

I had K K. early position raised 6 x bb. I was on the button and re popped it 3 x his bet. Ended up shoving my last $2 on the flop which had J 10 4.

He showed down J 10.

Now should i have recognised this? Again i know its a bit thin on the ground with the details but generally?

Thanks heaps and any advice is welcome.

You'll get a feeling for it, don't worry. I think that's a matter of experience. Additionally it always helps mentally putting yourself into the position of your opponents. Like a thought experiment, you know? If I bet, what can I get him to fold ... so if he stays in, that limits his range and so on. By the way, you can look up the mucked hands on showdown from your instant hand history. That's a gold mine of information about your opponent!

About your hand:

I think you played it fine, I maybe would not have shoved directly on the flop, especially if checked to but in the end you were sucked out on anyway, that happens. One thing maybe: if he is a loose player you should definitely consider TJ in his PF raising range.