General ramblings of a poker newbie

[Denman]

I'm not exactly a poker newbie, but a newbie to the concept of poker online. I always thought it would just be full of pro's and very difficult to win any money on. Went around my mates this new year and we where having a few games of texas hold'em and I won easily every time. My mate tells me he plays online and makes roughly £500 a year from doing so playing roughly for a couple of nights each week. He reckoned I could make a lot more if I went online as he assured me I've not played many players as good as you online. Decided to start off on paddypowerpoker, it's the bookie which I had the most money with so decided to transfer £10 to my poker acocunt and give it a go. Since new year I've been on almost every day for at least a game or two, the first week was a bit up and down and I was still around the same £10 (although the balance is shown in $ for some reason). But since the beginning of this week I've just suddenley had a few biggish wins, won a tournament of 30 with a $1 buy-in and came third in a tournament of 100. Moved upto the $5 sit and go tournament now and I think I've been in the money each time. I'm upto over £60 now, which even suprised myself. But I was mostly suprised at, how can I but this in a nice way, how shocking some of the players are. Some very, very loose players who seem to want to play ever hand and call every bet. I've moved up the tournament tables and even at higher stakes I find the general level of play isn't too great and a lot of players are very predicatable and easy to read once you've been at a table for a while. One thing I haven't quite cracked is the cash tables, don't like the big swings in it you can be doing great one minute and the next it's all gone. Much prefer tournaments were you know your potential liability beforehand and can just play your normal game. Any advice on cash tables would be greatly appreciated. Likewise I know there's a great benefit to be had from being able to calculate odds in various situations. I'm okay with numbers so I can workout generally when I would be getting value on a call in a certain position but I don't know the excact percentages. I don't know what everyone else uses, do you use some special software that runs alongside your table or do you have be a quick method to calculate it in your head? Finally could anyone suggest a good poker book I could read?

[GaF]

Re: General ramblings of a poker newbie :welcome to the world of online poker :ok For tournaments, I would recommend the Harrington on Holdem Trilogy (definitely the first 2 volumes) - not so new any more, but you need to be aware of a lot of the concepts discussed in the books. For Cash games - I'd say Poker Software is pretty essential for most players - Holdem Manager would be the first choice - you can trial it free for 15 days (i think). Also might be worth checking out some coaching sites - deucescracked give a free weeks trial (you have to pay, but cancel within a week and its a no quibble refund) - all their videos are free of DRM, so you can download their entire catologue in that week if you were so inclined. If you play on Full Tilt, then the poker points you earn will count towards (but not be consumed) on full or partial monthly subscriptions to cardrunners and/or stoxpoker - http://www.trulyfreepokertraining.com/. Also through Full Tilt, there is the Full Tilt Poker Academy, which at a glance looks pretty good to me - it's free once you've played a pretty small number of hands. Good luck :ok