My Game

 

I started playing Texas Hold ‘em two years ago, when a few buddies of mine had a home-game. I didn’t know that they have been playing this game a lot so they totally emptied my wallet and laughed at me…. I of course have been playing terrible hands because I didn’t understand the game yet. Because I didn’t want to get sucker-punched again the next time I joined an online pokerroom to learn the game. The deposit I made was gone in two days, because I still didn’t get what hands to play and in which position.  In the home-games my buddies kept on killing me, I was always the loser of the evening, something had to change. So I started reading up on Hold ‘em and started watching it on the internet. I watched the “stacked” lessons of Negreanu and any other lesson I could find, and slowly my game impoved.  I won a live-tournament with 75 players and made it to the final table most of the times I played this tournament.  I’m also not the loser of the home-games anymore, they don’t invite me for my easy chips anymore.

Online I didn’t do well though, I often built a nice bankroll but then lost it “tilting” almost every time in a period of bad luck and bad beats. So this also had to change, started playing by bankroll management, never play with more then 5% of your bankroll and that helped a lot, no more tlts that way. So now on TonyG I’ve built a nice roll in a few weeks with the free money from getfreepokercash.com .

 

How I play

 

Sit and Go’s and tournaments are my favorite games, more my style then cash-games. I always start out playing ultra-tight, and usually hit a nice hand in the begin of the game so I can enlarge my stack. I keep playing tight in the beginning, but the hands I dó play I play aggressive. In the middle part of the game I play a bit loser, pick up the blinds more often which mostly works because of the tight image I have on the table. I try to engage as little as possible with the big and short stack on the table, or I must have really good cards. When reaching the heads-up I bet on every face-card I get, and if my high-card’s not that high I instantly fold to a re-raise…. If I get pockets I mix it up, but mostly  limping in hoping for a large bet of my opponent and then re-raise him. So heads-up I usually play my real good cards as trash-hands, which works out very often.

The most important thing I’ve learned is folding, I always found it very hard to throw away good hands, even though I knew I was beat and lose a lot of chips that way.  Once in a live-tournament I got QQ in late position, everyone in front of me limped in so I made a large bet, and everyone folded except for the button who instantly re-reraised me all-in. I knew he had the aces, I told him that and he started laughing….  Folding QQ is not easy, but I folded them and showed them to my opponents and he indeed have the Rockets. So a very good fold, I got respect from everybody in the tournament who said that they’d never fold QQ….. but why not, if you know you are beat? Folding that QQ felt just as good as winning that hand….. I got terminated in that tournament while I had the Rockets and went all-in pre-flop after I raised, got re-raised and again re-raised a person who had 66. On the flop my opponent hit is quads sixes haha.   But even though I was bummed out by a call with 66 and lost to it, folding my QQ was the highlight of that evening.

 

Kind Regards, Mario Poels (tatjariodi3)