randomization

The river bet depends on how much the guy calls the river when he's beat. Even if you're ahead, there's still the possibility that you'll only get called when you're beat. So the bet's ok only if half the time the fish calls, he's got a pair of tens or worse. Most fish will do that, so you bet, but it would depend on whether you had any information about how he plays the river. The side pot doesn't really matter.

Hey, razz players..where, if anywhere, did you find good strategy information on razz? Also, do any of you know what bankroll requirements are like? I'm thinking of playing some of the .25/.50 on FTP.

From curiousity, what school, and what did they require? Heh, analysis is fun. I'm one of the few weirdos who actually like the subject. Even most math geeks dislike it.

You're right that that's not what you said..especially since the original poster was SmokeyMcPot, not wrto4556. You two the same person?

As a math major, I'll sign up for the "economics doesn't require much math" bandwagon. Even hahvahd has an econ track for people who don't "liek numb3r$!" At my school, econ only requires one stat course and basic calculus. There isn't a single class that has more than multivariable calculus as a prereq. Of course, my school is exceptionally lax when it comes to Econ.

It's just not true that TT deserves a raise everywhere. If you know you're getting exactly three or four callers, you don't want to raise. You're not getting the right odds to draw to a set, if an overcard hits, the odds are pretty good that someone has it, and even if no overcard hits, thanks to your raise, AK or KQ have the odds necessary to draw to their overcards, hurting your chances further. In that situation you'd be better off not raising, betting when the flop comes without overs (so that people don't get odds to draw) or when you flop a set. Of course, most of the time you don't k

I wasn't really targeting you. In general, when Sklansky comes up, there's a lot of people who act derisively as if there's just a list of 20 hands and you play them completely robotically. Also, believe me..the note about limit poker is necessary, even if you were on target, a lot of people are talking about one or the other. You'll get a guy giving NL advice in response to a question about limit, or sometimes it's not clear what a question is. What really did it was the fact that your list of hands is so restricted. You sometimes get recommendations to play super-tight in early-mid posi

In my experience, there isn't a lot of difference between the whole limits. What matters is the particular table you're at. You should be looking for tables with a specific percentage of players seeing the flop, and two tables with the same number are likely to be fairly much the same between the two limits. One big difference is that games start getting raked at .25/.50 and the effective rake increases at .50/.100, so that ends up reducing your win rate in BB/hr. The rakes are small enough and the tables are loose enough that I don't think that's likely to affect which hands you should pl

Time to get on the soapbox: Usually when people talk about "just playing according to Sklansky" it's a bit ridiculous because they're acting as if there's just a list of 20 hands you play and the rest you dump, and any monkey could instantly start playing the Sklansky hands. That's just not true..the monkey would need several thousand hands to get used to Sklansky' system. Without further ado, this site has a list of Sklansky's hand groupings: http://www.learn-texas-holdem.com/texas-ho...d-groupings.htmHowever, that doesn't include the following 35 pages explaining how different hands fare f

One of my biggest problem is playing out of the blinds, especially the SB. I just have no idea which hands are worth playing. I noticed that you completed with J4s from the SB in one of those hands with three limpers, Smash. Do you think that's a good play to make in general? How do you play it post-flop?

I assume you mean limit. Tens are very similar to Jacks, in that you either want a lot of players so that you can get odds to hit a set, or very few players so that you have a decent chance of holding up. What that means in practice is that you should raise if it looks like you'll be able to keep the field to three or four players (including yourself) and just call if that's not possible. Make your decision based on your position, how many players are in and what usually happens when you raise a hand. I tend to raise with tens anytime I'm first in, (even UTG) never when there's already two

I think you probably should have ditched the hand when he reraised you on the flop, since it looks like he's trying to reel you in with a weak lead. 10 is a really stupid amount for him to bet here, but it looks like a case of poorly executing a trap. I find it hard to picture someone playing like this with AQ. Two pair or a set feel like the more likely options. Also, the bet pot button is both nice and really horrible. It's nice because it makes life easier - a lot of the time you'll just want to bet the pot, but the problem is that it encourages people to play reasonably. There's so m

Quick, from memory, what was the 27th hand you played last session?You were right to hate to brag -- that claim just says "I have no idea what is going on." Unless you have the memory of an autistic savant, I doubt you have any idea whether 57s is profitable from early position. You'd need to distinctly remember something like the last 20 times you played medium sized gap connectors in early position, with the action and cards post-flop to be able to claim any detailed results from memory.

Here's a checklist for playing poker. 1) Is it ethical? 2) Is it profitable? If you answer yes to both, do it. There's really not much question about that. That said, I somehow doubt that you're actually making a profit playing these hands. Is your claim that these hands are profitable for you based on using something like pokertracker that actually computes the results for playing a given hand, or is it just sort of your feeling that you're making money off of these hands. I think you'd have to have a near perfect table to make a habit of playing 57s suited UTG profitable (maybe in a tou

Play money and the smallest micro-limit tables are pretty continuous. I played play money tables at pokerstars before buying in for $50 and playing the .01/.02 and .05/.1 type games (nl and limit). People are definitely more reasonable once real money is involved, but if you're crushing play money, you'll probably be able to beat those tiny games with minimal adjustments. If you're worried about real money, definitely choose a site that has super-micro limits (.01/.02 or .05/.1) because they definitely are softer and will make your transition easier.