Advice Needed: Best Path to Consistently Beat $1/$3 and Move Up to $2/$5

If this was 2008 then I would say yes hiring a coach is best but there's a lot of free info on youtube like crush live poker, Jonathan little, and CLP has a paid subscription site for more videos.

However, one of the most important ways you can help yourself get better is to write down and document as many hands as you can so you can review them later, or even post them in llsnl ( https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/170/l... ). As soon as you finish the hand where you have questions regarding how you played it (whether you win or lose), write the hand down in your phone as soon as the hand is over so you get everything accurate. It's something that no one likes doing but it will pay off later. It's IMHO the most crucial thing to do as a beginning or intermediate player.

mod: I moved this thread from CCP to LNLHC, but I'm not positive it's the right location, it seems like it might straddle a few of our forums. Feel free to move it, or even to move it back if needed.

Yeah, this doesn't really fit here either. The question is to broad to answer. As we say in our stickies about thread concepts that don't work:

I could move it to CCP, if you think a general "how to get better at poker" thread would work there. Generally, we lock these threads and encourage posters to ask more specific questions. If OP wants a "my poker journey" thread that solicits advice, it would probably work best in Poker Blogs and Goals.

OP, welcome to the forums. Can you give us an idea of what it is you're looking to work on, so that we can put this thread in the proper place and/or offer some advice on starting a new one that is more specific? Are you winning right now (with records to show it)? What is your bankroll? What do you have trouble with?

Generally, of course, this forum will recommend working on analyzing hands, your own and others, by participating in strategy discussion in this forum.

My general advice:

1. Be patient with yourself, and realistic with your goals. Two years isn't that long to be playing, and you may yet have a lot to learn before moving up.

2. Don't necessarily be in a rush to move up in stakes, if you're not planning to earn a living playing poker. The lower stakes games are generally easier to beat, and more fun.

3. Search YT for Hold'em training video channels, like Crush Live Poker, The Poker Bank, Jonathan Little, Alvin Teaches Poker, Carrot Corner, Live Poker Guide, Black Rain Poker, Hungry Horse, etc. Watch and re-watch a video until the lesson is committed to memory, then put it to use in your game, and see if it helps your win rate.

Posting hands for analysis here is going to be of limited benefit, inasmuch as it's unusual for there to be a consensus opinion, and there's no way to tell who knows what they're talking about, versus who's here to stroke their ego by trying to sound smart on the innerwebz.

I think the number one thing to learn is preflop ranges, including 3b and 4b ranges for different positions. I think GTO Wizard preflop might be free? Learn these ranges and learn how to adjust. If players are playing tighter with their 3bets and 4bets, then you afjust by playing much tighter. If the limp some hands and raise some hands, then play very tight vs their raises. But understanding the baseline is important.

The second thing I would recommend is watching all the Hungry Horse Poker YouTube videos. That is the best free content available for beating live cash games.

The third thing which I think is the lowest priority would be studying postflop GTO using an app like postflop+ or GTO Wizard just to get an understanding of how to play postflop in theory. Using both trainers and solvers can take your game to the next level. But then you have to understand how to adjust to how your opponents are playing. Understand where players are extremely unbalanced because of sizing and other things. Don't bluff catch really big bets vs players that underbluff - ie the majority of players.

I think the biggest leaks are calling too much postflop when people shovel the money in and continuing too wide preflop against strong ranges where we should be continuing less than GTO. But I think what's also important is learning what bet sizings to use to maximize value and using the right size with our bluffs to give ourselves a good price and maximize fold equity.

I think it is also useful to participate in discussion here. Ask about your hands, and talk through hands of others posted here. But it is important you find the opinions of posters that have sound advice. Frankly some of the advice here is really bad. And some advice overemphasized relatively small things.

This is probably not the advice you want...

Almost all of the time I see people with a giant stack it's because they are playing horrifically bad and running great.
Randomness is extremely difficult to understand.

Why do you want to move up? If it's just a hobby and you enjoy it and think you'll enjoy being slightly better at it ... do whatever you've been doing. It will continue to be fun, and you'll continue to have fun while playing.

If you've convinced yourself you're good and you want to "perfect your craft" or whatever, so you can keep moving up, then it's mostly bad news. You're almost certainly bad and getting better will require huge changes to your game, and you'll get a lot worse before you get better ... and it probably won't be as fun, at least for a long time. You'll also have to do a lot of things that don't bring anyone much happiness, esp. so because you are playing so few hands.

In hindsight I would have moved up to $2/$5 after the very first time I won at $1/$3 which was the first time I ever played live poker. I spent too much time thinking there was a noticeable skill gap and there wasn't. Even today I don't think there is. Play only gets noticeably stronger at the $5/$10 and above levels depending on where you're at in the country and how that compares to the bigger games available.

The psychological aspect of the game — the disciplined decision-making required, the necessity to be able to look past the variance and recognize which of your plays were good, bad, or could be improved on — all this makes it impossible to offer any really significant advice. I can't imagine a reliable method to predict who will suceed in becoming a strong player and who won't. Working hard, devoting time to study and practice is obviously a very relevant factor, but some people (probably most people) won't be able to correctly implement what they've learned, especially since it can and likely will take a long time to do so.

That said:

1. Track your wins and losses, get an idea of your winrate, try to be honest with yourself about your skill level and the number/magnitude of mistakes your'e making. If you have problems with tilt of any kind, you need to fix that
2. Read all the books, though these days with solvers and good online content the books will really be for the fundamentals
3. Run It Once has good content and you can use it learn how to study (and how not to study) with solvers, as well as improving other parts of your game in general
4. Study with solvers, start with GTOwizard for a bit, and if you find it expensive switch to PIO once you've gotten comfortable with it

I would advise that you read as many books as you can, and study very hard. I recommend Modern Poker Theory above all other books. There are many other great ones out there, but that is an excellent starting point. It's recommended by many pros and recognized as one of the best books ever written on poker. I've read it several times and it's my poker bible; it helped my game immeasurably. I'd also recommend you get some software like Poker Tracker and play at least a couple of thousand hands a week online at microstakes. This will help you put in a lot of volume and get the fundamentals down pat, and Poker Tracker has a "leak tracker" that you can use to identify and plug leaks in your game. Obviously you should be able to beat NL10 quite easily if you are planning on beating $1/$3 live. If you find you aren't winning online after 50,000 hands, then you may need to study and improve more before giving serious time and financial investment to $1/$3 live.

It's also important to be realistic about what you can expect to win grinding live low stakes poker. 10bb/hour is often banded around as a realistic goal - in my experience less than 5% of players can maintain that kind of winrate in a big sample. Let's say at $1/$3 you can maintain a winrate of half that amount, which is still perfectly fine and respectable - you'd then be making around $15/hour. Not exactly Beverly Hills or something you can retire on, especially when you factor in costs etc. You should keep a spreadsheet (or use one of many available apps) to track your results after every session, so you can get an accurate picture of your winrate and how it might be moving up/down over time.

You should look at your reasons for wanting to move up to $2/$5 too. My bb/100 winrate is double what it is at $1/$3 compared to $2/$5, which means that it has a higher hourly value. So, if I had the choice, I would just play $1/$3 all the time, because that would make me the most money. Right now my options are limited, but that could change in the future. It's fun to play $2/$5 and that's my main game at the moment, but at the end of the day, poker is about making money.

What worked for me was playing online for a couple of years and studying winning players and their statistics/style of play in the games I played in, and then imitating them. In all likelihood this probably included many bots, but that's neither here nor there. They were programmed to play in a game-theory oriented manner, and that's what I came to understand as the way to become a winning player. During that same time period I read literally dozens of books, watched lots of players on Youtube like Doug Polk (which was a great introduction to theory), and started using Poker Tracker as I mentioned above. I also purchased a solver (Piosolver) that has been very useful for looking at individual hands and understanding how to balance ranges and 101 other things. I also created a group of poker players to look at hands with and study together. I made friends with some great players whilst playing at casinos (some of the best players in the city) and we would regularly talk about hands etc in depth. Learning about ranges, betting and all the other fundamentals is of course crucial to success (and you can get all of that and more from Modern Poker Theory).

Good luck!

I've noticed that the OP has logged on at least 2 times since Garick asked for further clarification on his question. Therefore, I'm locking this thread.