User:PhilipR/B

B is for boilerplate

Anyone feel free to add stock responses. If anyone else joins in perhaps we can move it to someplace more general.

FAQ
This question is answered on the LEFT_BRACKET url=http://poker.wikia.com/wiki/FAQ]Beginners FAQ[/url]. The FAQ allows us to answer several common questions that come up again and again. Please check the FAQ and feel free to ask about anything that's unclear there.

Welcome to the 2+2 forum! We hope your time here is productive.

Short version (example)
LEFT_BRACKET url=http://poker.wikia.com/wiki/Borgata]In the future you can save a post by looking here.[/url]

Search
Did search not help you answer this question? [some of these questions?]

Misguided
If anyone wants to understand why this sentence is misguided, go search the archives.

Sticky version
This question is answered on the LEFT_BRACKET url=http://poker.wikia.com/wiki/FAQ]Beginners FAQ[/url]. In fact, this question is featured prominently on the sticky thread at the top of this forum. The FAQ allows us to answer several common questions that come up again and again. Please check the FAQ and feel free to ask about anything that's unclear there.

Welcome to the 2+2 forum! We hope your time here is productive.

No NLHE or LHE
I don't know what betting structure you're referring to (fixed-limit? no-limit?) so I can't hope to answer your question.

Game too good?
I'm just coming back after a hiatus so forgive me if this turns out grouchier and less supportive than intended.

This is such a common genre of FAQ that we really need to improve our resources to answer it.

For now I'd direct you to Ed Miller, [i]Getting Started in Hold 'em[/i], toward the end: "Can a game be too good?"

In short, you're experiencing either [list] [*]variance where the long run is longer than you may think at first (I'm battling this too, and it's destroying my confidence!) [*]not playing as well as you think -- and online games are certainly getting tougher [*]some combination of both [/list]

If you wish, feel free post questions of the sort, "My sample is N hands and my winrate is X" but I can almost guarantee you N is too small to tell much unless it has at least five digits. (If you don't know N, then you don't have the tools to effectively measure whether you're winning or not.)  Focus on playing well and eventually you'll win if you don't give up first. Eventually is a long time.

Slashes
LEFT_BRACKET url=http://poker.wikia.com/wiki/Beginners_FAQ#What_do_the_numbers_with_the_slashes_from_PokerTracker_mean.3F]What do the numbers with the slashes from PokerTracker mean? [/url] Also check out the rest of the FAQ.

I was at my desk at work a few weeks ago, focused toltlay on what I was doing; when, out of nowhere, this song went through my head. I scared everybody in the office, when I busted out laughing. It always used to crack me up when the ladybugs would tell their﻿ knock-knock  jokes. It also used to give me a headache!! Ah, precious memories of childhood! I was always crazy about the adorable little ladybugs, and their hectic picnic. To this day, I still think they are so cute!!

Big pairs never hold up
No, you're wrong. Big pairs still have a huge equity advantage. Big pairs can make big hands and drag huge pots: big sets and full houses, even two pair where a blank pairs on board. And no matter what your selective memory tells you, overpairs win their fair share even in multiway pots; you just don't remember those days that aces held up to beat top pair of kings ten kicker.

Any time you can get people to put in money as an underdog you should do so. And a [b]LOT[/b] of people in a $3/6 game will be happy to put in money as an underdog.

See SSHE, the part about AK as a drawing hand or why you should raise AJs or something like that, toward the back.

Used here:

Bankroll attempt to be helpful
url=http://poker.wikia.com/wiki/Bankroll]Bankroll size[/url] is much discussed and the conventional wisdom well-established, but that doesn't have much to do with the OP. If you know what you're supposed to do but don't do it, that's a totally different problem than not knowing what to do.

Horse / cart
Sufficient bankroll will NOT prevent you from going broke.

[b]ALL THE BANKROLL IN THE WORLD WILL NOT AVOID RUIN IN A GAME YOU CAN'T BEAT.[/b]

I'm so vehement about this because I see everyone put the cart before the horse again and again. They debate whether the proper bankroll for a NLHE game is 20, 25, or 30 buy-ins. That's a fine debate among established winners, but it's horrid to throw out any of those numbers to a new player or one without an established ability to beat the game in which they play.

Your proper bankroll for a game you're playing for the first time is NOT 20 buy-ins, nor 25, nor 30. Your proper expectation for a game that you haven't established you can beat is that you will be investing money while learning to beat it.

Again, I'm being a curmudgeon here, but 20 times a day on this site you'll see people emphasize the less important part of the prescription (20 buy-ins) while totally ignoring the more important part (in a game you can beat soundly). If I can bring that down to 19 through being a pain in the arse, I'm happy.

FE
url=http://poker.wikia.com/wiki/Fold_equity]FE[/url].

Reraise?
No, [b]RAISED[/b]. A [i]reraise[/i] is a term for the second or subsequent raise in the same betting round.

Many feel that there are alternatives  other sites and sllmaer distributed towers. And some Verizon users perceive no gap in their service in the vicinity of the tower. However, the issue is not only service for present phones, but enhanced data service. It is hard for anyone without technical knowledge and access to Verizon expansion plans and service quality details to evaluate.The principal problem with the tower proposal is the lack of public process in choosing the site. The 2006 hearings prior to the initial leasing were not noticed to abutters.

Blinds vs. buy-in in NLHE
Blinds are still the primary determinant of "how big" a NLHE game plays. $1-2 with unlimited stacks is still more akin to $1-2 with $100 max than akin to $5-10 with unlimited stacks, although it shares some attributes of the latter.

Tunica
Now, to really hijack, Tunica is still a bit of a mystery to me. For the biggest concentration of casinos between AC and Vegas, I'd expect more poker overall. I'm sure the poker table to slot machine ratio in the whole place must be much smaller than at AC or Foxwoods. Not counting all those fallow tournament tables at the Grand, there's what, 80 tables overall?

(short)
As Sklansky and Miller argue in NLHE:TAP, mixing up your bet sizes with a non-deterministic tendency toward the "optimal" amount in any given situation is far better than just betting the same amount every time. You just have to be sufficiently unpredictable to dissuade your opponents from thinking they can read you.

KC anecdote
People will believe all kinds of things if it prevents them from the conclusion that they suck at poker.

Once while passing through Kansas City I sat down at a $2-5 NL game with a short stack of $175 or so. I picked up kings in EP, raised to $20, got three callers. The flop came something like J:heart: 8:diamond: 2:heart:. I bet out $75, got raised all in, and made an easy call.

Now, here's the great part. As the dealer runs out the board, my opponent flips over T:heart: 7:heart:. The turn is the K :heart:, making my opponent's flush and giving me an unlikely top set. You can probably guess where this is headed -- the river was one of my ten outs, the 2 :spade:, for kings full.

For the rest of the session, that fish was crowing about how i put all the money in with the worst of it, etc. First of all, he was confused -- a FD + gutshot doesn't make him a favorite, just a slight underdog. With all the dead money in the pot and fold equity against a better hand like AK or pocket tens, he played the flop fine. His preflop play, otoh, was abysmal. Calling a tight player's [b]short-stacked[/b] EP raise with a hugely speculative hand like a suited two-gapper is a quick road to the poor house. Even the best postflop player in the world couldn't make up for putting in 11% of the effective stack on such a dubious hand.

OK, thanks for indulging me -- I just love the story. But the point is, in that guy's mind he suffered a horrible beat. I mean, he got me to put in money with a hand he believed to be an underdog, then I spike one of two outs to a set on the turn and ruin his flush on the river. What a luckbox!

And it's wonderful he thinks he suffered a bad beat, because he will call other people's short-stacked raises with T7s and keep that game profitable for years to come.