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发帖数: 520 | 1 TEN TIPS TO BEAT LIVE CASH GAMES
LIVE AID
BY ROSS JARVISNOVEMBER 2009
Training sites like CardRunners and PokerXFactor have a lot to answer for. A
few years ago, online poker rooms were swarming with fish readily handing
over their money on a daily basis. Unfortunately those days are over. While
you still might come across a dream table from time to time, it’s clear
that there’s been a gradual improvement online to the point that even at
lower limits such as $0.25/$0.50 you’ll find regular career players
grinding out a living.
However, there is another way. More and more players are finding that the
easy money nowadays is found in the world of live poker. It may be a pain to
leave your comfy sofa and travel to your local poker club or casino, but
the rewards are worth it as live cash games have never been more profitable.
You’ll find drunken idiots, sick gamblers fresh off the craps table and
innocent novices ready and willing to hand their chips to you. To make sure
you don’t become one of them, follow these ten tips and walk out of the
casino with a bulging wallet...
1 Don’t Drink
Just because Scotty Nguyen looks cool downing cocktails at the table (well,
he did in 1998 at least) doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. Despite the
argument that you play better after a couple of beers (when it’s taken the
edge off your nerves and you show more aggression), alcohol WILL cloud your
judgement and result in you making more bad decisions and losing money.
However, if you happen to find yourself at a table with a few sozzled
punters it’s a great opportunity to cash in. Your well-oiled opponents will
most likely be playing too many hands (too aggressively) and calling too
much. To combat their loose play you must be patient, wait for a good hand,
and get as much money in as you can against them expecting a call. Remember,
if you want to get drunk you go to the pub and if you want to make money
you play poker.
2 Don’t Limp
If you’re going to play a hand you should virtually always come in for a
raise. This is the case whether you have pocket Aces, suited connectors or
utter junk.
Making a raise, instead of limping, achieves a few important things. First,
if you have a strong hand, raising preflop helps to narrow the field and
reduce the chance of your big pairs being cracked by speculative holdings.
It also means you get more money in the pot so that you can get value with a
premium hand.
Most importantly, raising helps cultivate an aggressive image, and that’s
something you need to win big in live poker. Constantly raising (and
reraising) will enable you to pick up pots preflop that you never would have
won and steal heads-up pots on the flop with continuation bets.
3 Isolate Limpers
Live games tend to play very passively, with large multi-way limped pots and
everybody trying to hit the flop. Don’t allow this to happen. Most of your
profit in poker, live or online, will come from isolating bad players and
taking their money after the flop. If you’ve targeted a player as weak and
they are consistently limping into the pot, you should raise with a very
wide range of hands in position to play solely against that opponent. Much
of the time you will take it down preflop or with a continuation bet. Also,
if you actually have a hand you will be able to play flops against the
calling station where you often have them dominated.
The only time you should depart from this tactic is if players start to limp
with big hands from early position in an effort to trap you. If you notice
this happening, you’ll have to tighten up and target players who aren’t
skilled enough to mix it up like this.
4 Forget Big Bluffs
Getting away with a huge bluff and showing it is one of the most satisfying
feelings in poker. It can set up your image as a maniac and easily put
opponents on tilt, which you can then take advantage of later when you have
a real hand.
However, in loose live games getting away with a bluff is actually very
difficult, and one of the major leaks in many players’ games is bluffing
far too often against calling stations. Raising and three-betting preflop
with marginal hands and worse is fine, but if someone calls your
continuation bet in a live game, they’ll call you all the way to the river.
Unless their hand is very easily defined, such as a missed flush draw,
firing a third bullet with air on the river is often a case of style over
substance.
5 Bet For Value
When playing live you need to remember that players call a lot. They don’t
want to fold or be bluffed, and they want to see your hand at showdown. So
when you have a big hand you need to squeeze every last drop out of your
opponents by value betting them to death. While loose fish not folding can
be a problem if you aren’t hitting cards, it’s great news when you’re
running hot.
Let’s take a look at an example.
You’re playing in a ￡100 game (blinds ￡1/￡1), and raise to ￡4 with A-T
in late position. The big blind – a very predictable loose-passive player
– calls, and you go heads-up to the flop. It comes Tc-9s-2d rainbow. Your
opponent checks and you bet ￡7 into the pot of ￡9. He calls and then
checks the 5d turn. You now bet ￡18 and he calls again. The river is the 6d
and he checks a final time. At this point with one or two straights
possible and a backdoor flush having arrived, some players would check and
miss out on value. It’s a standard play to avoid being put to a difficult
decision. The only thing is, he virtually never check-raises with a flush or
straight – he would want to get paid. It’s also very unlikely he would
have two pair or a set, as even the most passive players would surely have
raised at some point in the hand with a holding this strong. His most likely
hand is one pair that he’s calling all the way with. So you bet ￡45 –
about three-quarters of the pot – for value, he calls with J-T and you win
a ￡149 pot with top pair, top kicker.
6 Practise Restraint With Small Pairs
Small pairs can mean big profits when you flop a set in a cash game, but it
’s important you don’t get into the routine of set-mining in the instances
when it’s clearly not profitable. The main leak that most people have with
small pairs is calling raises and reraises, with the sole intention of
flopping a set and folding when they miss. With effective stacks of 100 big
blinds it’s very rare you have the implied odds to call raises and reraises
. To make a profit from set-mining you need to make eight times your
investment (the one in eight times that you hit it) – every time!
The problem with this is that your opponent must have a monster hand that
they’re willing to go to the felt with. And it simply won’t happen enough
to make it profitable to keep calling preflop. If you can see a cheap flop
with a small pair in a multi-way pot, that’s great. If not, get out.
7 Be Aware Of Your Surroundings
It’s crucial to pay attention to a whole host of miscellaneous factors that
can help win you money. When you play online the only relevant data are the
numbers and virtual cards you can see on the screen (plus maybe the odd
timing tell). Live, there are countless sights and sounds and other
distractions that can draw your focus away from the game. Check out Nick
Wealthall's great article on live tells here.
One common mistake players make is not noticing that there’s been a raise
in front of them, resulting in an accidental minimum reraise that could cost
them a big pot. I once cost myself ￡300 by shipping a huge pile of ￡25
chips into the middle, thinking I was merely putting the short-stack all-in.
My lack of concentration at the table meant I hadn’t noticed that another
big stack had flat-called the original raise and was only too happy to call
my inadvertent overbet with his Aces. Every careless mistake like this,
whether it costs a single big blind or a few buy-ins, is something that can
be easily avoided.
8 Approach Cash Games Like Tournaments
After watching the likes of durrrr and Ziigmund getting frisky with hands
like 5-7, J-8 and K-9 on High Stakes Poker, it’s very easy to find yourself
trying to play the same exciting style. Yet a far better tactic for us mere
mortals is to treat cash games more like a tournament and adopt a tight-is-
right policy.
Of course, the stacks are deeper in cash games and there is more of an
emphasis on postflop play, but that doesn’t excuse fundamental errors such
as calling reraises out of position with suited connectors and easily
dominated hands. If you wouldn’t do it when your tournament life is on the
line then don’t do it in a ring game. Stick with the fundamentals, such as
continuation betting and value-raising, and only play the showbiz hands when
you’re getting correct odds to call and have position.
9 Don’t Straddle
One distinctive aspect of live poker is the straddle bet. A straddle is an
optional third blind placed to the left of the big blind and double it in
size. It allows the straddler to have the last option preflop and is usually
employed by gamblers in an effort to loosen up a tight cash game. It’s
inherently unprofitable but is common in many live cash games.
Even if you’re getting abuse from the rest of the table you shouldn’t
straddle, as it is a -EV move. The amount of time you end up playing in a
bloated pot out of position will far outweigh the occasional time you pick
up Aces and have a disguised monster. If you’re playing against a straddle
make sure to exploit it. Your raise size should be slightly higher and you
should be prepared to play a flop as players on the straddle defend more
than they should. Crucially, though (as long as you’re not in the blinds),
you will have the advantage of being in position throughout the rest of the
hand.
10 Be Patient
If you’re from an online background then live play can be very boring. You
’ll only see about 30 hands per hour and obviously can’t multi-table. It’
s easy to have sessions where you’re card dead for two hours or more and
the temptation is always there to play hands you shouldn’t, purely from
frustration. This is where being patient and having discipline is vital.
You can’t win every pot in poker. In fact, your goal should really be to
win one big pot per hour. The majority of your time at the table should be
spent folding. It’s not fashionable, but it’s ultimately how you become a
winner. If you find yourself getting restless at the poker table don’t
start playing more hands. Talk to the other players, listen to your iPod or
simply pay attention to the players and their betting patterns. If you’re
patient, the cards and the pots will eventually come your way. And if they
don’t, call it a night – there’s always another hand and another day.
Conclusion
If there’s one common theme through these ten tips it’s to keep it simple.
Beating soft live cash games is not rocket science. It requires you to pick
on the weak players, get a solid grasp of the fundamentals, and play a
tight-aggressive strategy. It might be slow and you may bump into a few
cretins along the way, but many live games are so soft that, for a good
player, it’s like collecting a pay cheque every time you turn up. | p******a
发帖数: 975 | 2 第十点很有道理啊。
我第一次去赌场的时候还不能beat online NL20。但是因为当时既不用hud也不multi-
table，所以很坐的住。打了一个下午觉得其乐无穷还赢了钱。
最近一次去赌场的时候已经觉得live game完全不会打了。坐了一个小时，觉得实在没
意思就走了……
一直不太理解像mm老师，D神这样online NL100～200同时打6桌的牛人，怎么还能坐下
来打NL200的live。 | p****0
发帖数: 611 | 3 If you find yourself getting restless at the poker table don’t
start playing more hands. Talk to the other players, listen to your iPod or
simply pay attention to the players and their betting patterns. If you’re
patient, the cards and the pots will eventually come your way. And if they
don’t, call it a night – there’s always another hand and another day.
very true, but very hard to excute too. |
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