Half a year is not all that much time, in terms of online poker playing, especially if
you are only🎉 playing two hours per day. A better metric is hands played. The old rule I
always hear is to not🎉 make any judgments about the skill of a player until he or she
has played at least 100k hands.
Going on🎉 tilt is not always that obvious. You can be on
tilt and not even really know it. That is soft🎉 tilt. Hard tilt is what most people
consider "tilt." That is when you just really get mad and upset and🎉 you just can't play
any hand with good decision making. It just takes time and experience to be able to
🎉 approach the game in the exact mental and emotional state you'd like to play in.
Meditation can help you control🎉 those things, but it also takes time to practice.
There
is bluffing, and there is c-betting. They are related, but not🎉 necessarily the same. A
c-bet with no made hand is a lot like a bluff. But when you do things🎉 like float to 4th
and 5th street with no made hand and no real draws, with plans to represent whatever
🎉 better made hand might appear on the board as its texture changes from street to street
to showdown, you are🎉 bluffing for sure. The post flop c-bet is similar, but different
in the sense that if you are called, you🎉 can still back out and avoid more disastrous
results that usually occur on 5th street/showdown bluffs gone wrong. You also🎉 have the
opportunity to turn the c-bet/semi bluff type betting into a made hand with draws or
just plain lucky🎉 turns and rivers. So, making a c-bet with only a backdoor flush draw
might seem like a bluff/semi bluff, but🎉 if you runner runner the backdoor flush, you
are about as far from a bluff as you can get. But🎉 if your backdoor flush does not come,
you might get a card on the river that still allows you to🎉 make a good bluff attempt,
while holding no made hand at all.
The players at higher stakes with more skill and
🎉 experience are just going to be far more unpredictable than most players at lower
stakes. They have so much experience🎉 taking in all of the information being conveyed,
inadvertently or otherwise, that this whole game starts to become like second🎉 nature to
them, and so they can sit and play for 8 to 10 hours a day and stay sharp🎉 the entire
time because they are able to almost effortlessly accomplish a lot of the things that
less skilled and🎉 less experienced players require considerably more effort and
concentration to do. They have seen way more hands and have played🎉 with way more
players, and they can use this to their advantage by having far more knowledge about
all of🎉 the potential moves their opponents might try to make on them.
The only thing
that will turn you into a robotic🎉 player is yourself. Whether you are sticking to low
and micro stakes, or you are dabbling in mid and high🎉 stakes to try to get a feel for
where you are trying to go, it is up to you how🎉 you play and what habits and patterns
you exhibit, and how you play around with them in order to try🎉 to make yourself harder
to pin down and predict
You mentioned a lot about how it was confusing and hard to
🎉 predict what the players might be doing and what cards they might be playing with. You
don't really want to🎉 be trying to pin down the exact two cards that your opponents
have, but instead to narrow down a potential🎉 "range" of card combinations that a
particular player might be playing. If you see the player folding UTG for a🎉 relatively
prolonged period of time, only to see them limp or open with a raise UTG, you might be
able🎉 to predict what their potential range for UTG opens is, just by noticing that the
player rarely ever plays from🎉 that position, and by noting what they do play with
whenever you get to see their cards at showdown. Because🎉 that is the most vulnerable
position, most players commit to only playing it with their premium range of card
combos,🎉 like AJ-AK suit/off, or pairs from 8s to aces for example. But if you notice
the player is playing almost🎉 any two UTG, just to try to mix it up and seem more
unpredictable, you can exploit that too and🎉 use that info to your advantage. This
doesn't always work, as this game of ours has such a strong component🎉 of luck involved,
but it is sort of like getting AA: most of the time it should work out well🎉 for you,
but we all know that it cannot work out every single time. And the more advanced the
player🎉 pool, the more difficult time you will have using the information conveyed at
the table to your advantage, as the🎉 higher the skill level, the more effort and work is
being put into trying to remain unpredictable to opponents.
I'm not🎉 really a big cash
game player, but I think what one might tell you to do is to slowly enter🎉 the next
stake level you are eyeing. Don't just fully commit to the higher stake games, instead
decide on a🎉 percentage of the overall time you plan on playing that day or that week
and only play, for example, 10%🎉 of your time in the higher stake level. After that time
is up, go back to playing at the lower🎉 level. Then just slowly increase that % to
whatever you feel comfortable with, while slowly acclimating to the differences between
🎉 the stake levels, like a slow taper upward. That is a pretty smart way to do it, I
think; it🎉 helps you keep roll management rules in tact while also helping you get used
to the higher stakes.