I like Poker but man I suck... lets change that?
Hello 2+2, I'm codehdn and I suck at poker, hopefully we can change that.
Background:
I first learned to play poker when I was about 7, my mom and family taught me how to play NL and we played a STT style of poker, where when you went bust you were out. Sometimes blinds would go up, othertimes not.. It was all for fun. We'd play at family events and everyone would have a good time and that all stopped around 13 or 14 and I stopped playing casually and just let poker kinda leave my mind. Well this past year I started going to the casino quite a bit because, gambling is fun when you win. This started planting the idea that I should look back into poker. I stayed pretty focused on Baccarat and Craps then at some point in early October 2024 I ran across Corey Eyring and binge watched all of his videos and got the poker bug planted in my mind. Look I get it, he's not the best player in the world or whatever, but man the story he was telling had me invested and my interest in poker rose along side as I was invested in finding out what came next for this kid thats putting everything on the line. I played poker for the first time at Winstar in Oklahoma in late October with some money I'd won from playing craps earlier in the evening. I sat down at a 1/2 game with $200 and within an hour I bled it all away. Thats ok, I was up like 2k on craps, lets buy back in and its gone. That first session in october lasted 2 hours, cost me $400 but implanted a tickle in my mind. The casino comped me a hotel that night and I slept there and the next day Winstar had a little $100 daily poker tournament I entered into. Well I didn't do well, I lasted about 2 hours and ended up running JJ into QQ. It happens. I started consuming tons of poker content from content creators and downloaded ACR to try and see if I was **** or if maybe I was getting it bad. Well stupid me. We played a 5NL normal table and after just 375 hands were up $13.19 so I guess I'm a poker GOD. Yeah no... I moved to 25NL Zoom because, I was "crushing" 5NL and wanted to try zoom and on ACR its either 25 or 200NL. I proceeded to lose the $100 I deposited in I **** you not less than 30 minutes. Yeah I didn't know people played so much tighter in Zoom or whatever they call it. Ran QQ into KK. AK cracked by QJs. KK into AA. Anyways learning moment but I stopped playing online poker at the start of November and decided online was **** I'd just play live instead. I played live 6 more times through the end of 2024. All pretty short sessions, mostly losing but 2 sessions I won (+$345 and +$306) and felt like God. These winning session cemented that I do enjoy poker. Hell even the losing sessions I still enjoyed it, I get to think about the hands, what I should have done, what could I change, etc. In 2024 I played 18 hours live (don't have a car so bumming rides to poker rooms is tough) and lost $1042 that's both cash and tournaments of which I played 2x $100 dailies (3 buyins total for $300). Alright now we're caught up to current day kinda for poker experience.. Summary/TLDR: Played live, got the poker itch, lost online, played live more, itch confirmed, consumed tons of poker vlogs but not so much learning material and now I'm here.
Now:
Okay so current day... I have access to the GG Network via Natural8 now and that's where I play. I loaded up $110 in bitcoin and shipped it on over for it to turn into an initial poker rolll of: $104.01 that was on January 6th.
As of today my current Poker roll at this moment sits at $105.39
Now you might be thinking, HEY YOU'RE UP AWESOME! Yeah no. Uhhh lets dive in shall we? I've done $41.18 worth of tournament / sit-n-go buyins with 93 total entries for an average price of: $.046 this makes sense, the heavy majority of this are $.25c sit-n-gos. My net on tournaments/SNG is $-17.26 so we're down there. Now lets talk cash which is what I think I want to focus on. Ok, I've played 800 hands of normal 2NL and have won $2.61 where I seem to be struggling is... I've played 3500 hands of 2NL FAST and have a net of -$21.36 also known as -30.82BB/100. Okay, well hey the math aint mathing... how do we have $105.39 but this stuff has us down $36? I got tilted and tried out 2NL PLO and in 50 hands won $1.87 and now for the real tilt... I went to AoF and did $20 and $10 AoF flips and somehow ended up ~$35 so all together it rounds out... This isn't good.. I shouldn't ever be reacting to a beat, even a 1 outer by going to AoF with 1/4 of my poker roll. It's just bad mental.
Problem with my game:
So now you're caught up. So whats the problem? Why are we a losing player? My honest guess? I'm too aggressive and don't like to fold. I pay people off when they make hands and don't get paid too much when I make a hand. This can kinda be seen in my top 3 winning hands and top 3 losers: +$2, +$1.92, +$1.64 and then -$4.29, -$4.10, -$2.94.. Anyways.. ramble ramble. But ultimately I don't fold because I like my hand. Also tilt, I don't like to lose and it seems tilt is driving some bad decisions at times.
Starting Point:
Lets look at some things?
Grabbed a photo from GG of my profile stats for review, this is for the fast fold mode (I don't know what most of this means, but maybe it can help others gain insight into my play)
Here's my PT4 Graph of 2NL with the ~4300 hands of it I've played. I'm not 100% sure how to read this, but blue I'm pretty sure is river and you can see I really don't like to fold if I make it to river.
Anyways I think this is about where people put goals or something right?
Goals of this thread:
- Beat 2NL and move up to 5NL
- Post hands for review and comments to learn and improve and force myself to look at my play
- Have a place to track progress that's more than just a graph
What else could go in this thread?
Well I live close to a really nice poker room so maybe some live poker 1/2 while I work on building up that live poker roll that sits at $1136. I plan to keep this thread pretty poker focused while I'm learning the game and hopefully moving up. If life things popup that feel share worthy I'll share but all you need to know about me is I'm comfortably employed and make enough to not care about what I'm using to play poker with.
Alright y'all lets get it! Excited to get involved with 2+2
Ok so the last comment got me wondering how well I "knew" the preflop charts and the answer is I guess I dont.
GTOWizard has 6max GG R&C 3x opens (about the open I'm seeing online)
Looking at the RFI charts I tend to be opening tighter than suggested, for example in UTG it suggests opening 54s-87s in some frequency and I don't at all.. It also suggests KTo, K8s, K5s all suited aces and opening 33-66 with some frequency. All things I'm not doing. So we may be too tight in some places and too loose in others, for example facing a 3bet, we're way too loose. CO opens, SB 3bets, BB? turns out its JJ+, KJs+, AQs+, AKo, and A5s which I'm assuming is there to help prevent exploitability. I'm defintely not that tight facing 3bets, so I think thats a leak that needs to be plugged. For example I'd call with AJs or TT.
The other thing I'm seeing is the button can play loose, but its aggressive, the btn facing an open from HJ is 3betting 3:1 the amount its calling. Think I'm calling too much.
Attaching W/L by position
Looking at this W/L it seems I need to super focus up on HJ & BB play as those are where my biggest leaks are at the moment. So I'm going to I guess look at charts? Not sure what next steps are here, I've identified a problem, I've identified the information is available, I guess now I just memorize? Is that what's next?
Ok Next Steps!
I found this free course for 6max cash from RaiseYourEdge (
) and I'm going to run through it today. I expect alot of what has been echoed in this thread on issues I'm doing will be echoed through the course.
I also found that pokercoaching.com has a sale for a year subscription at like $650/yr, maybe getting a year of that could help me? I feel like some guided study would be best for me, being told, "theres infinite resources, start" is tough for me, being told, "looking into x" simplifies things while I build my base.
RYE Cash Game Starter course focus today!
Playing a $100 live tournament on Monday not because it's going to make me money but because my mom wants to go to the the pokerroom and play the tournament so ofcourse I said I was in for it.
So I'm going to I guess look at charts? Not sure what next steps are here, I've identified a problem, I've identified the information is available, I guess now I just memorize? Is that what's next?
Yes, you'll want to learn what hands to play, from what positions, to what sizes. What hands to 3b, from what positions, vs what positions, to what sizes. What to do with those hands postflop (cbet/double barrels, sizes, how to react with various parts of your range to aggression).
Ok Next Steps!
I found this free course for 6max cash from RaiseYourEdge (
) and I'm going to run through it today. I expect alot of what has been echoed in this thread on issues I'm doing will be echoed through the course.I also found that pokercoaching.com has a sale for a year subscription at like $650/yr, maybe getting a year of that could help me? I feel like some guided study would be best for me, being told, "theres infinite resources
I don't think that a $650 course is going to be much help when you are losing 2bb every single hand you're dealt. Starting with the fundamentals will build you a knowledge base that will help you start winning money and will give you the tools to build from.
Loaded $50 up onto ClubWPTGold to try it out with the CLP early access for testing. Only had 1 table running that was .10/.20/.40 with .10c ante. Sat down with 200BB so $40 and didn't run great, really wasn't connecting to the flops at all but felt very comfortable. The play kinda reminded me of live play, alot less tight that GG seems to be. Played about 200ish hands and ended up to $98 on the table with $10 in the account. Ended up deciding the platforms not for me, can't seem to be in both a cash game and a tournament, can't check other tables while playing a table, can't have the website open in another tab. It needs work.
Cashing out $108 let's see if the cashout goes through, I'll probably throw this over to GG/N8 bankroll.
I've also started the RYE free cashcourse, about halfway through, it's mostly the same things that have been echoed in this thread as expected. Hoping to wrap this up tonight, off to a dinner thing.
Starting with the fundamentals
Also just to comment on this, I've been told like 5 times this thread, "just focus on the fundamentals" thats not helpful to someone that doesn't know what the fundamentals are..
This is the equivalent of someone wanting to learn programming and me responding to them, "learn javascript" or some other language. Like... really? No!
