Poker Novice Again Looking for Advice

TangledUpinBlue

First a bit of context. I have been playing NLH for 4 months on PPP, mostly STTs and have now moved to $20-$25 range and, although, over too small a sample to come to any conclusion, have a decent double digit ROI at that level. I am also playing in the Irish Poker Open qualifiers on PPP to get more experience of playing against a better quality player and also a wider range of styles and have been qualifying more often than not for the GF. On the latter point, it seems to me that the early part of the qualifier is now a coinflip contest to grab the biggest stack as soon as possible and I am beginning to think it is a waste of time from the point of view of improving my play.
Anyway here is the query. I think the biggest potential area for improvement in my game is my judgement post flop ie how to maximise the pot when I am ahead, how to determine how good my reads are on other players etc etc etc. Are there any stats I could use to properly quantify how I am performing, whether I am improving and so on?

FrankGrimes

I'm in a not too disimilar position to you - except I'm now playing cash games and have been looking how to maximise profit post flop when I'm marginally ahead. You'll find you'll get more replies to more specific queries as theyre easier for the experienced folk to figure out what you're looking for.

Checkout the thread I posted below. Got some decent tips from it, and the main one is to use Poker Tracker and Poker Ace HUD - soon enough I'll post my stats to get some feedback here on them, and I can defo see how monitoring all those stats will help my game. Should do similar for you.

dvdfan

TangledUpinBlue wrote:

On the latter point, it seems to me that the early part of the qualifier is now a coinflip contest to grab the biggest stack as soon as possible and I am beginning to think it is a waste of time from the point of view of improving my play.

In a novice too but i quickly found out that the MTT's on PPP are muck. If you dont get alot of luck in the early stages then your forced to go all in before your blinded out and the fish and chancers seem to be taking all the chips in the early stages going all in with marginal hands. And dont even get me started on tournaments with re-buys, absolute bingo nite.

Anyway, im sure there are other places but i signed up to Titan poker to get the free license for Poker Office 2 and although cash games arent great (not enough players) and tournaments arent overly plentiful (every 15-45 mins), they have a very good setup.

Blinds are something on the lines of this:

10/20
20/40
30/60
40/80
50/100
60/120

All with 10 minute intervals, so you can hold on for almost an hour without seeing a flop and your stack wont be too dimished. Im sure there are other good sites because Titan poker isnt the best but it seems with this setup that more skillful players make it to the latter stages and less fish which cant be said of the PPP tournament setups.

Tinytony

In the same boat as ye lads, pretty new to the whole scene. Did most my playin on PPP but eventually tired of it and have moved to full-tilt. Playin the low-limit cash games there, and the palyers are much better quality so I find myself improving alot more than when I played on PPP. It's kinda of a paradox but I'm making more (not much in the grand scheme of things) playing against good players than I can playin against calling stations on the lower limits of the PPP games.

Been trying to set-up poker tracker but having difficulty importing hands, but thats for another thread!!

Ste05

Lads, in general it's very difficult to comment on wide areas such as mentioned in this thread. To try and learn how to improve your post-flop play in a medium such as an internet forum. The best thing for you to do is to post some hands involving some post flop decision that you either:
(a) think you played well -
(b) think you played badly -

But don't post the results to begin with. i.e. Leave out the major decision you made and just leaving it as a so what do I do next?? Then you'll see other people's thought processes and how correct or not you were.

But the most important thing is to try and listen to and obsorb any criticism that may arise. (WARNING: A Thick skin may be needed for this)

Don't worry if the stakes seem small, or if it seems like a simple decision, usually a decent discussion will follow about some discreet point that you might not have thought about.

Although In general if you're having trouble against weak players, it's probably just that you are bluffing too much.

Folding is one of the most important things to be able to do in Poker, (obviously after learning how to raise/bet PROPERLY), and there's nothing wrong with checking every now and again.