My impression of judi online has been that it is primarily a game of starting hand strategy and maths. Online, the ability to read opponents is important, but definitely secondary to your own strategic decisions. I believe you can make money at this game simply by playing your cards and the board, and making no attempt to work out what others might have.
Returning to NL as more experienced player than when I last played it, I believe that it is a game of mistakes not maths. Most of my sessions are being dominated by a small number of “mistakes”. These are influencing my results more than the bad beats which plagued me in limit. Yes I have bad beats but there are far far fewer.
What I mean by a misake, is a large bet or call where I am behind and don’t have decent odds to improve. For example, calling with a set when there is a possible rag wheel straight on the board. I tell myself, they can’t have played 74 to a raise, when actually I know they can and I’m just being stubborn with the set I’ve waited 2 hours for. I’m sure you can all come up with your own examples.
The bottom line is that most players don’t regularly bluff with big bets. There are a few, but not many. Nine times out of 10, if someone comes over the top of your raise with a huge bet, then they have you beat, unless you have the nuts.
I’ve been really working at minimising the mistakes I’ve made and my results have shot through the roof in terms of BB/hour. Yes I am being bluffed more. Yes I am folding more winning hands. But in straight forward cash terms, I’m winning more.
At higher levels of NLHE I’m sure such a “weak” approach would be torn apart. But at the low stakes tables people aren’t that observant and where they are, most don’t know how to deal with it anyway. I quite like people thinking a large raise will push me off a pot – I can slow play and get a nice pay-off.
Best of luck to all (unless you’re at my table!)
End of April Update
The short version would be – not a lot has changed since my last entry.
After the last post mid month, I was on holiday for 10 days so I only played a couple more sessions before the end of April.
I finished the month up $750. Admittedly a big chunk of that profit was bonus and rake rebate but I’m really pleased with it for a couple of reasons. Firstly it was my first month back at NL for almost a year and a half, so I was pleased to make a profit at all. And secondly, the figures were depressed by a big loss playing limit at the beginning of the month.
I’ve been playing the lowest NL tables available at most of the sites I play on, just to get back into the swing of things. The regular winning sessions have restored my confidence a little and I can feel my aggression factor started to rise back to an acceptable level. I still play a fairly passive game, but I think that will always be the case, its just a question of mixing it up from time to time.
One thing about low stakes NL is that its bad for clearing bonuses and generating rake rebate. Any profit I make in May will be mainly through play!! But thats a good thing. So far I’m up around $100 and I haven’t had too much time to play. Setting my targets at trying to get up to $1k for the month – fingers crossed.
