Questioning the types of hands being posted lately..

I'm questioning a lot of the SHNL hands lately in general. I think people are really focusing on all the wrong hands. Before you post a hand ask yourself "is this mega standard? is anyone on FTR ever folding this?"... if the answer is "no".. then its probably not a good hand to post.

There are a lot more interesting spots than just "I need to stack off here right?" type spots. Think about all the spots you might be losing thin value by not betting. Think about all the spots you might be value towning yourself by betting instead of c/f'ing. All the spots where a c/r might be better than just betting out, or an overbet bluff might be way more effective than just betting pot.

I think it miiight have been from elements of poker (though I'm not sure), that said that hands like AA or 27o aren't the hands that determine the big winners/losers. That's because mostly everyone will fold 27o, and mostly everyone will play/get it in with AA in a similar fashion.

But instead that the biggest difference between winners/losers comes down to the in-between hands. Comes down to how well they play 57ss, or QTo or anything else in between. Because those are the hands with the biggest variability in how they are played, and so those are inherently the most 'interesting' hands.

Yes it sucks that your set lost to a turned straight. Yes it sucks that your overpair lost to a flopped two pair/set. It sucks that your KK ran into AA. and that your 8 high flush lost to a nut flush. Yes these stack-offs suck. But if these are the hands you're looking to for improvement, then you're looking in the wrong places.

I approve of this post.

BRAVO! this needs to be a sticky in the BC imo. lord knows i'm guilty of this over there

Good post. I'm sure I am guilty of it. Definitely makes me realize what to study/post more in the future. Thanks, Griff!

this post will still level millions of viewers

So epic.

I have a suggestion then, we should have two forums, one for "this is an interesting super tricky spot where I don't know what the best line is because we're creative and we like to make plays and we're awesome at poker to begin with and know everything about standard hands...."

AND we should have a forum for people like myself and many others where we just want to look at "seemingly standard" spots because we feel we are making ERRORS and once we improve these "easy" spots we can move on to getting better and focusing on more truly "interesting" spots like you describe.

sorry for seeming a bit annoyed here but I thought people wanted to help others here improve poker in any which way.
i don't know the last time one of you has run over 20 buyins behind ev in a two week period, but it's fairly natural to question most spots where you are losing money, maybe you're making mistakes maybe not but isn't it worth an outside opinion?

perhaps it's worthwhile to make a new forum focusing on 50nl-200nl which can mainly focus on any spot a player has questions on, even if it doesnt seem interesting to you guys who crush 2/4 and above and find it boring to comment on hands that are standard to YOU

totally agree.

bspahn, he's not directly attacking you. Also, honestly, this forum isn't for the people who are on a 20 buyin downswing and are questioning their play. IMO its not even for the OP's of the threads. There's not a lot of point to a thread unless everyone benefits from it. Like you add the parts of the OP's hand and the noob responses that are totally wrong and the more experienced players that are correct, and the dialoguing thereof and the result is greater than the sum.

This is why I emphasized "rich discussion" when I made the thread about your hands being too frequent. That wasn't occurring when you were flooding the forum with hands. The threads with only 2 replies are almost worthless to all but the OP, and not terribly useful to the OP because he just learned how to play a spot that happens 1:1000000 hands but didn't learn why.

i understand the forum wants in general hands that will have about 30 posts and varying opinions and really disecting cool hands. perhaps you could suggest a different website where I can get more help regarding the hands I have questions about and I'll leave this forum as I'm made to feel like I have little to bring to this forum and I'm wasting peoples time.

also, the hands that were mentioned in griffeys post were all posted by me, seemed like it was direct at me solely

Can someone go through and find some old threads about tricky spots in which noob thinking is rebuked and people learned something that can be applied to more than 1 out of every 20000 hands?

The more the merrier, I think.

Maybe these threads could be always at the top to prevent redundancies?

I know there is a search feature, but damned if I don't keep finding threads that waste my time (and I suck, so it must be really frustrating to those that don't)

Originally Posted by bspahn

i understand the forum wants in general hands that will have about 30 posts and varying opinions and really disecting cool hands. perhaps you could suggest a different website where I can get more help regarding the hands I have questions about and I'll leave this forum as I'm made to feel like I have little to bring to this forum and I'm wasting peoples time.

also, the hands that were mentioned in griffeys post were all posted by me, seemed like it was direct at me solely

You never posted a KK into AA hand... nor did you post a flush over flush hand. If you posted an overpair vs set hand, then you're maybe the 10 millionth person on FTR to do so, and you're certainly not the first to have a set get outdrawn.

The thread wasn't directed at you at all, but instead the fact that lately there have been lots of hands of this variety.

You're missing the point of the thread. If anything the point of the thread is NOT that you or any other poster is wasting other people's time... but rather that the poster themselves is wasting their own time trying to dissect spots that are 'coolers' or 'unlucky' rather than looking at spots that could more greatly improve their game.

You'll bring plenty to the forum as long as you tone it down with the threads and actively involve yourself in discussion. With regard to the "can you suggest a different forum?", no dude I really can't. There's not gonna be a forum that just wants to coach you for free at the benefit of almost no one else. The only way you'll be able to receive that sort of attn is if you pay for the time of a coach. I also hear that on the pay video sites like leggopoker the coaches are obliged financially to answer any threads.

My suggestion would be to read more and post less, at least for a little while. Go to the twoplustwo MSNL forum and sort the threads by number of posts, skip all of the chat threads that have 1k replies and then you'll see the sort of threads I wish we had here. 80-90 replies of deep rich range-v-range discussion about poker. Read a ton of those threads (it will take days) and you'll gain so much more than you will from getting one word replies on your botched hands from us.

gl

The Tommy Angelo article griffey refered to was called reciprocality and it applies a ton. Here it is
http://www.tommyangelo.com/articles/reciprocality.htm

It comes down to getting better requires people to find the spots that are costing them money. Your general winrate will come from not the 4 or 5 hands you play for stacks every session but the 20 or 30 hands that are in the 30-60BB range. The coolers and AA vs sets are hands that will always wash in the long run, are we really doing a ton better in these hands compared to villains to make our winrate that much more acceptable? Winning and losing long term in poker doesn't come from sets or JJ+(although learning to fold at the right times could help). Believe it or not, it will come from how you play a ton of hands below them.

How about we make one megathread in SHNL where everyone can post their 'did I play this overpair vs set hand ok' and make a rule for the thread that if you want to post a hand you have to reply to the two hands posted above yours?

i'm looking at all hands that others are posting every day now and trying to post replies whenver I feel I can say something that hasn't been said.

perhaps a blog would be useful and people can choose to look at it and the hands i post in there, how do i set that up here?

Originally Posted by Irisheyes

How about we make one megathread in SHNL where everyone can post their 'did I play this overpair vs set hand ok' and make a rule for the thread that if you want to post a hand you have to reply to the two hands posted above yours?

Yeah I think a random **** thread for shnl couldn't hurt. A spot to post quick questions that don't require a thread.

I agree overall, but I think occassionally its good to post a hand you think is probably standard, just to confirm it really is. A few times I've done that and been told that no it isnt standard and theres better ways to play.

Originally Posted by bspahn

perhaps a blog would be useful and people can choose to look at it and the hands i post in there, how do i set that up here?

http://www.flopturnriver.com/phpBB2/...tions-f54.html

I will say for anyone struggling, I found the biggest help in my game was looking at my small - med pots. Turning small winning pots into medium ones, and medium losing pots into small ones makes a huge difference to your winrate. Big hands often just play themselves. There may be different lines to take, but at the end of the day all the money was going in at some point anyway.

I like the idea of a "lost" thread for random hands like griff is talking about.

Would clear up some of the clutter and still will prolly be read by most peeps regular anyway.

Seperate note:
Griff. I think I may be spending a few days at the GM plant in Oshawa the end of august. Lunch on my company (LDO, love a per diem) if it happens?

I feel like I'm playing a different game than everyone else posting in this thread.

Originally Posted by Irisheyes

How about we make one megathread in SHNL where everyone can post their 'did I play this overpair vs set hand ok' and make a rule for the thread that if you want to post a hand you have to reply to the two hands posted above yours?

we should do this

2p2 have like July threads for that purpose

Originally Posted by bspahn

i don't know the last time one of you has run over 20 buyins behind ev in a two week period, but it's fairly natural to question most spots where you are losing money, maybe you're making mistakes maybe not but isn't it worth an outside opinion?

re the running like shit, i did. A couple of weeks ago. See the last couple of posts in my op threads if you want advice. And read points 30, 31, 38, 46, 47, 50, 52, 54 in soupie's MTT guide (MTT digest).

Just read this thread and wanted to add my two cents re: Tommy Angelo. I think to conclude from Elements of Poker that we should a) focus more on medium-strength pre-flop hands, or b) medium-sized pots, is missing the point. His point is that we should focus on situations where our decisions make a big difference to our EV. He says that the hands that generate the most discussion involve marginal decisions. I don't love the word marginal but I'll assume everyone knows what he means... decisions that are really close. Then he says that these are the hands that matter the least. They might be fun to discuss, but in the end, the EV difference is going to be minimal between the different options. Find the spots you get in that cost you the most money long-term, it's pretty easy using HEM filters, and focus on those.

is there a forum post within FTR or some other community that discusses in length how to use HEM to filter situations where we can analyze leaks and learn from them to improve our game? thanks a lot

Originally Posted by bspahn

is there a forum post within FTR or some other community that discusses in length how to use HEM to filter situations where we can analyze leaks and learn from them to improve our game? thanks a lot

There are multiple articles in HEM if you click on "Articles" next to where it says help that show you how to do everything you would ever need.