The truth to play online poker for a living part 2

So now that we have gone over the basics of picking a good place to play online poker and avoiding all the situations where we throw away bankroll to try to improve( coaching, training) we will now move on to spending some of our bankroll on tools we will need, and free content. Also learning to balance, but not to the degree a lot of coaches say we should. So we can get a nice profitable graph over the long run.

So the one thing I have found as a useful tool is a poker hud. Just make sure the poker site we are playing on allows a hud before we purchase it. We can get poker tracker or holdem manager hud to get stats on players, but the important thing is it records hands during our sessions so that we can go over them and see where we made mistakes. What people don't enough of is to record their daily mistakes in a calendar or journal. That is the only way we notice our biggest leaks that is costing us a lot of our bankroll. If we just look at mistakes and then forget about them on a daily basis we don't see the repetitive mistakes over a monthly time frame. Now think about if we do find our biggest leak and remove it from our game, how much money we save or make through a full year. Some leaks might seem small but if done daily, it compounds over the year into a lot of money.

We don't want to just look at losing hands, but also winning hands. I have gone over players hands and to their surprise I go straight to the winning hands first. And I show them all the money they have lost not getting full value for the situation. Maybe they could of bet more or should of bet less based on the situation to get extra value. So we always want to look at losing and winning hands through the session.

As for the hud stats, don't take them to seriously. People that follow hud stats to a exact science will make a lot of mistakes from the stats. A lot of top players don't even use a hud Tom Dwan, Phil Ivey, and Patrick Antonius to name some of the few famous players. The players that use hud as a exact science can make a bad call or fold because the hud stats says the player bluffs a lot or to little. Instead of playing good poker based on the situation and board texture they tend to follow a hud and make poor decisions. We should just generalize how a player plays based on hud stats. Does he have reg stats ( tight aggressive or tight nitty) or does he have recreational player type stats(loose maniac, loose passive)?.

If we think we only improve on our play and other players never improve(change game) based on their hud stats staying static we are making a big mistake. They will also adjust if we play back at them to much knowing we are attacking their hud stats. Over time almost every player who plays daily improves on some level. The players that play daily and never improve is a very small percentage. Also the way a player might play might change if he has a weak player on his right or a more aggressive player on his left so the stats are not always accurate. Also how they feel psychologically might change whether they are winning, losing or just having a good or bad day. So remember the hud is good to have a record of your hand history and to have general idea of how other players play.

Now if we still are struggling and even though we fixed a lot of our leaks and not showing a profit then I would recommend a tool called leak buster. I believe its around 50.00. It is for only holdem manager software I believe. But It will go through all of our hands on holdem manager for Texas Holdem and find where we are leaking money. I believe its for only 6 and 9 max. It is not for heads up. Its just a tool to give us a general idea where we are leaking the most money. I don't think it will be needed, but if we can't figure out why we continue to lose, this tool can find the spots we don't realize we are losing money and its a 1 time fee.

What if we can't use a hud and the poker site we play on doesn't allow it? That is fine we can find free poker content. We can still go back into the hand history on the poker site and find hand where we made mistakes. We can find free content online with You Tube, Twitch and also poker forums. We will find content that helps and avoid content that charges fees for training and players that have no proof of profit.

When we look around online You Tube is a good place to start. We see all kinds of poker sessions, lessons, and even poker from TV. What we want to look for is content at the stakes( smaller stakes to higher stakes) that we play at. Make sure the player teaching is actually a good player. Research that player to find proof they actually make a living at poker. If we can't find any proof move on to another player (especially if they have coaching or training site fees). If we learn from a bad player it can completely derail us from making a living at poker. I have seen the fake graphs and the nice marketing material to sucker in the new players. Just about every session video made by coaches is only recorded when they run hot. If they don't provide proof of profiting or well known players to vouch for their play move on to someone else.

I recommend learning from player like Nanonoko( Randy Lew) who explains things in a way that is easy to understand. This is a player who has grinded for many years and has played a high volume of hands making millions of dollars. He has quite a bit of free content online without a sales pitch following the video to buy something. He also streams on Twitch for free. He is just one example off the top of my head that is a proven winner. Another player if your interested in heads up play on Twitch is EvanerTV. He makes an actual living at poker doesn't need to coach for a living. I will never recommend any player that wants to sell something or get people to join some training site. Reality is they are not beating the games anymore( I play vs a lot of them) and are trying to find ways to make money with their name or some marketing tool. Some just can't get action in the only games they specialize in, but can't beat the other formats. We can also go on a forum like 2+2 and post hands and see how people would play them. That is a little risky because we don't know the quality of the players giving us advice. So we take whatever the majority says as the advice. Our main goal is to work on our game and find our leaks and search through the free content to find some answers that we can't solve ourselves.

So as our game gets better and we fixed a lot of the big mistakes we have made we move into balancing out the way we play poker(mixing up value hands with bluffs) vs the right kind of players. I know it can be scary to run a big bluff. But its part of poker sometimes we have to do it. We don't want to blindly bluff and at the same time not ever bluff. This doesn't mean we have to be perfectly balanced with bluffs and made hands like coaches teach. They rarely go in detail on the type of players to target for balancing. We only want to bluff certain players that are capable of folding a made hand (regulars who play daily who show tendancy to fold post flop). And not to bluff players who are sticky and will call down very light( recreational players/ bad regs who tend to not fold post flop). If we get caught bluffing don't get angry about it. We need to ask ourselves was it a good spot to bluff, did we do it vs the right player, and find out why he called ( put ourselves in his shoes) to figure out if he is good player or just made a bad call.

So what hands should we use as bluffs to balance out our made hands? Let start off with something called blockers. Blockers are cards we hold that block the opponent from having the nuts(unbeatable hand). Say we have the A of spades and 3 spades are out. He can't have the best hand because we now have the A of spades the nut blocker. We can run a big bluff and represent the nut hand. And this is a great spot to run a big bluff. Say we have A9 on 6784J board. The opponent leads out on the flop and turn( first 4 cards laid out post flop) but on the river( last card laid out) he checks. This is a great spot to bluff. We have the 9 one less 9 card in the deck, blocking him from having 9T the nut straight. Since we do have one of the 9s we can easily represent 9T.

Other great spots to bluff if its 4 suited cards(4 spades out post flop) out and they check or 4 cards to a straight(6789) and they check. That is a good spot to bluff. Even AA has hard time calling. Make sure its against a player that is capable of folding. And another spot I like to bluff is when I believe the pot will chop. It checks down on 6677T board and we believe opponent is checking down A high and we have A high. I like to over bet this spot( bet over the pot amount 25/20) to take the pot away. But I also like to do this when I have the nuts to balance so they are not sure if I have the nuts or trying to win the chop on a bluff. So this is just a few examples of how to balance out our bluffs with made hands, but not get to carried with our bluffing. If we are going to bluff, lets pick good spots to do it with blockers, or it seems the opponent didn't like how the board ran out. Don't blindly bluff, or rarely bluff or players will figure out how to combat what we are doing. We want to keep them guessing. Doesn't mean we have to be perfectly balanced they just need to know we are capable of anything.

So in this lesson we looked at tools we could use to improve our game. We also are looking at good spots bluff to balance out our value range. Looking for quality players who aren't selling products or training to improve our game. And basically what we are doing is spending a minimal amount of money and at the same time avoiding the scams and coaches just trying to sell things to put money in their pocket. The next and final lesson will be the most important of all 3 of these lessons. It will teach about the different kind of players we will face. Who to target for profit and what kind of situations to avoid. Also when to keep playing or quitting, and different ways to keep our mind fresh for each poker session. This last article I will write is the most important to keep your online poker career going a life time.

Pictures:
poker graph nanonoko- poker table ratings
hud- Poker Tracker
smart poker study- Sky Matsuhashi
Randy Lew- Team Pokerstars
Victor Blom- pocketfives.com