lickwidice's Poker Blog

Hi LP,

I have been a lurker on the teamliquid forums for the last 2 years and recently discovered the LP website. I think it is an awesome community.

I have managed to do well in most of the things that I've put my mind to (Chess, Soccer, Quake Live and Quake 3). However, SC2 and Poker have been to two things that I have never been able to be "Good" (not the best) at. I suck at SC2 because I feel that I don't have the natural talent and I don't have the will to put in enough effort to be the brilliant at it. I have played about 50-80 games in total and I am still bronze. I know if I put in enough time into it, I will eventually reach diamond but that is as far as I will go. The reward (sense of achievement) is not worth the time I will have to put in to be good at SC2. I do however, want to beat poker.

So let me give you some background. During the last 4 years I have been playing Poker casually (I mean as a gambler, no BRM etc). I have lost alot of money playing Cash games that are out of my league. My tournament game is above average and I have placed in quite a few tournaments. I've managed to cover up half of my cash game losses via tournament wins.

I am looking to get into Poker properly (not hardcore like full time, but when I do play I must take it seriously). I do not need the money and I am not playing for the money. I want to play poker because I feel that over the last couple of years it has gotten the best of me. I need to BEAT it. My goal is to eventually beat 200NL at a minimum of 2BB/100 over 50k hands.

I have a few questions if you guys could maybe help me out with some of them It would be great:

1) I played for a month in 2009 and managed to beat 25NL at a rate of 2BB/100 over 10k Hands. I recently (last month) tried to play 2NL on a random poker site and dropped 2 BI's over 5k Hands. Has poker gotten alot more tougher over the last 2-3 years?

2) I am planning on starting out with 200 dollars. How important is HEM? Has anybody here beaten the game up to 100NL without using HEM/PT? What I'm asking is, should I buy HEM and play 5NL or not buy HEM and play 10NL. Also which is Better HEM or PT?

3) I do not have time to put in the amount of volume like most of you guys. I am planning on playing poker as a hobby not for a living. So maximum 10K Hands a month. Will my poker improve with this kind of volume? Should I just leave grinding 10 25 50 NL out and just play MTT's during weekends and play 100NL once i'm rolled for it (I think I might donk my roll away if I do this)?

4) I have this bad mindset where I make rules around my game because I keep looking at poker as an "Absolute". Like i'll say okay in order to be good at poker I need to make a rule to only 3bet 5% of the time. I know that this is exploitable, how do I get around this kind of thinking pattern? I guess I'm used to the way MTT is being played because of the blind structures etc. I know that at that given point in time what the optimal strategy is (Blinds are Big, M is small, Shove Kx or Better etc etc) please tell me if I'm making sense here or I'm just talking bullshit.

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