Maximizing Enjoyment

Replay Poker Poker Strategy
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You may have seen my post claiming that it’s not possible for everyone to have an enjoyable experience on Replay. After all, poker is a zero sum game; for every winner there has to be a loser, and nobody enjoys losing. From one perspective, this is true, but there are other perspectives. One way to maximize your enjoyment is to simply change your point of view.

The idea that you will either win or lose looks at the game from what I call a “results” perspective. This way of looking at things will maximize frustration and almost guarantees disappointment. This is bad, m’kay?

You will enjoy the game far more if you take a “process” oriented approach to the game. There are things you can control, like your starting hand selection, bet sizing, and so on, and parts of the game you can’t control, such as the fall of the cards. This was summed up beautifully in what’s known as The Serenity Prayer…

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,: Courage to change the things I can,: And wisdom to know the difference.

To get yourself into the process mindset, first realize that you are in every hand. Those hands you fold preflop are opportunities to get inside the heads of your opponents. How many hands do they play? What can you learn about their range? How do they bet? When do they call? When do they fold? When do they bluff? This is fun to do, and is like the game within the game.

The process of poker is all about analyzing these tendencies and developing effective strategies to exploit any weaknesses you find.

Nobody likes it when someone sucks out on them. You have to realize, however, that suckouts are part of the game, and are a result. As long as you play correctly, you want people to call when they are far behind, and you just have to accept that this can sometimes lead to a bad result. If your process was sound, you won’t let this bother you.

When I lose a tournament, the 10 seconds of frustration on that final hand pales in comparison to the many minutes of enjoyment I got from playing well during the rest of the tournament.

Moreover, concentrating on your process will make you a better player and eventually you will see better results too! If you make it more about the journey and less about the destination, you will find far less frustration and far more enjoyment.

So yes, it really is possible for everyone to have a fun and enjoyable time here on Replay… it’s just a matter of perspective.

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Very True, SPG… and there are other perspectives as well…

I come for the game… and for the folks.

FOR THE GAME: The game reminds me of simpler times, of beginnings. My Dad introduced me to poker when I was 4 to teach me numbers in preparaton for Kindegarden. I can even hear his voice sometimes when I play, and have occasinally recalled some long-ago conversaton, allowing me to reconnect with him.

FOR THE FOLKS: It also speaks of endings. My 91 yo Mum who has dementia lives with me. By caring for her, my outside world has narrowed considerabley… So when she goes to bed around 8:00 pm, I head to my computer for a couple quick games. Here I can connect with folks who have more that a 3 minute functioning memory, generally speaking, and enjoy a laugh or two! Replay provides a much-needed daily respite from care-giving while I stay at home and keep Mum safe.

I thank you in advance keeping this thread going, and for your comments and replies!!

Be Well & Be Blessed,
Fin

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MickiFin, yes!

I’m an engineer by training, so for me, the technical side is a big part of my “process.”

But as I said in another post, The chips I have accumulated are only a part of what I got from the time spent here, love of the game, friends I met, and other intangibles are also a big part of the rewards of the game. These too are part of the process.

The chips may be fake, but the people are very real. I don’t play like it’s the other way around.

NOTE to Scratch: Yes, “fake” chips can still have value, but my friends here are way more valuable to me.

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( and Scratch… it might be nice to have a global chat with rooms possible, so we all can expand on these ohh so real friendships )

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Personality is consciousness in essence and character is created by the experience of suffering so the greater character suffers more and of course this is the archetypical Tao. So my note back to SunPowerOn is are fake chips attractive to personality or to character and where oh where do we value friends? And, do real chips actually exist?

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It is foul enough to have one varmint taking up chat space at a nine player table putting folks on edge. With over a hundred tables running, with usually 2 or 3 observers, the interactive chat would be impossible. How do you say **** ?

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I totally agree and disagree with comments on this page,I am an avid poker player for real and fun, I find that there are a lot of HITLER type rules here. Like dictating to an extreme as to what people put on their profile, That should be personal and come under freedom of speech. If you do not like it then do not read it SIMPLE :slight_smile: I go to a table to play with friends and it works very well, untill some ----------- comes in and starts ALL IN every hand and totally messes up a good table of friends, but nada is said to them at all :slight_smile: But let a regular player say something and it is like they are terrorists of something and hundreds of Rules and regulations pending to ban them from playing and chatting with their friends>>> If some one came into my home and sat down to a nickel dime card came and started throwing 10 dollars bills on the table I would litterally throw them thru the door :slight_smile:

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“If you do not like it then do not read it SIMPLE”…

It doesn’t work that way. You need to read it in order to become offended. We don’t want to see somebody accidentally offended.

“ALL IN every hand…”

The solution is not to change the rules but to attend a different game. We have created pot limit games, which frustrates the chronic all-in player. The other way to frustrate them is to beat them by trapping them when you are dealt AA or KK.

Scratch

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I don’t want to offend the original poster by straying off topic, but it would be nice to have the ability to create private tables where the rules of chat are relaxed or “moderated” by those at the table.

I understand that Replay wants to keep the site family friendly, but there are times when adults want to get away from the kids and let their hair down a little. Walking on eggshells for fear of getting muted or banned doesn’t lead to an enjoyable experience for many. Poker isn’t usually played in church.

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SunPowerGuru I and a lot of others totally agree with you, it seems like a brit site always have to many rules and regulations… I had a Brit Site owner Ban my site because of a model there who was totally clothed and just in a sexy pose go figure, I think all brit sites are a product of the Southern Babtist lol

And by the way! ! !What about us players who get offended also and banned because we say something to one of the ----- who comes and ruins our games ???

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claps with one hand for Scratch

Nothing exists beyond our perception of it, and this includes perception.

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Geometrically formed over time as the Tao wills… Ni Ha Ma Amigo

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Free yourself from the illusion of time and embrace the essential oneness of being.

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I pretty much agree with the OP’s post. I had a run of luck a couple of months back where I won back-to-back high dollar tournaments by playing pretty tight for the most part with splashes of exuberance here and there. Took those millions of funds and tried my hand at the high dollar ring tables. My A10 got busted by an A4 straight, and I lost it all. If I had to do it all over again, I definitely would have just dabbled, found it interesting, and scrammed.

I didn’t though. But you know what? Still enjoy the site, learned my lesson, tipped my hat and moved on.

In essence, an enjoyable experience.

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I have no problem with a person going all in all the time. Sooner or later you will be able to get their chips. What I do have a problem with is 50 hands in a row in a tournament that are bad hands while you watch 1 or 2 people get the good hands. How do I know this? When they show their cards and you haven’t been close to getting a hand like this. It just doesn’t happen this way that often in real cards. I know some of the idiosyncrasies of how this particular site works. It does run on a pattern which sucks when you are not in that cycle. So don’t say it’s all about how you play the cards. At least not on this site!

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Yeah I feel you. On various occasions I’ve felt patterns. Like heads up on a 1k/2k ring game I win 12 hands in a row (likely supposed to win them all) and then I lose 10 in a row. Similar things were happening full ring at Indy, same guy was just killing it and I couldn’t wake up with anything. But suddenly a few days later I get on an incredible streak and run hotter than the sun… and then back to being card dead.

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Scratch,
What I meant was a global chat , not included from the tables… then rooms both fixed and created as sub chats… trust me it can be done even in just a browser based environment. It not as rediculious an idea as you think it might be.

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Sassy, so as to be clear, technically, I think a “global chat” could be done on the main lobby page, which would be a general chat and read by all who want to read it. My guess is at any given time 10% to 20% of attendees would use it. This means there may be 75 different conversations going on at once. This assumes gracious well spoken people talking away. That is the up side. It could be grand.

But the down side is inglorious chaos. Aside from the four or five languages spoken, one of which will be Hindi, we will have the oddest people who ever came through the hallowed halls of Replay Poker. The standards, “lol…”, “ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha,” will be used all the time, and then the occasional “Jimmy, you in here?,” followed by “Dave, you see Monster Joe?.” And George Clooney will show up, “hi, I am George Clooney. I really am.” There will be three or four Elvis impersonators, and two of them will lip sync ‘Love Me Tender’ two or three times a day."

Then there will be the bad guys, you know, the folks who want to make life miserable for everybody.

Sassy, I think your ideas are always good and even this idea likely has some kind of wheels for a chat greater than the table chat. If it were six months ago I would be all for it. But the last few months of seeing some really ugly stuff as a moderator has me a little skittish. My suggestion is to think in terms of regional rather than global. In other words, I agree the chat experience can be expanded, but I think going from local to global in one grand motion could be problematic. Love me tender, lobe me true, never let me go… ))

Scratch

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Back in the day, I owned an antiques and collectibles site, where I hosted a weekly Q&A chat. It wasn’t uncommon to have 600 people in the room at any one time.

What I found was that 90% or more would just lurk, and that, if too many people tried to talk at once, the chat went by so fast nobody could read it. The chat usually regulated itself to avoid this.

Apart from the occasional troll, it wasn’t as unmanageable as you might think.

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The beauty of this game is that these is no no.1 winner clear cut.in the free chips game or in the WSOP.the 3 players who won the WSOP twice over where good players but also got lucky.Luck is a huge factor here and as much as one wants to say its all skill its not true.Strategy works in the real money games and frankly ive seen such donkey play on this site and others and coming from high ranked players its rather shocking…nevertheless if you wish to encounter poker at some level taking the luck factor out of the equation for a moment the 50k/100k/250k buy in tounies are the most enjoyable ones.
If you have to ask most of the avid poker players who play here on a daily basis they play for the pure pleasure as you rightly said the 10 seconds of frustration on the final hand pales in comparison to the many monutes of enjoyment.The fact remains that we still get that thrill of being on the final table and to be in the money…at that moment life freezes and all you are thinking of making the cut for the money.it appears to be like a virtual live cash game.
In agreement with you ,you will enjoy the game if you win more than you lose which is any sport
or table game…you have days wherenin you cant even hit a pair for an hour.There are weeks you cant make the final table and the money.,ive gone thru 20 tournies consecutively missing the money by one player.There was a learing there…just to make the grade I don’t even play my
or any premium hand- I evaluate few factors-ive been playing for two hours with 150 players and now anything I do here on reaching the final 25 I have to do be in the money,there is no guarantee of winning as low stack is pushing the all ins and every chance a premium hand goes abegging…So there is strategy involved at some point especially when the payout is to the top 4 or 5 its a higly stressed game-yesterday I played a 21 player Omaha tourney it last 2.30 hrs.the last 5 simply hanging in there for dear life to make the money cut of 4 players.
As much I believe to play by the book it simply never applies in a non cash game…even as you mention hand selection,bet size you cant control idiioticity of a player…
I take the case of today in the 250k game where you expect to really play super tight I ran into a wild player very early in the tourney.the preflop bet was a mere 80 chips and my opponent was holding A6 offsuit and I had pocket J’s.Never found J’s to be great cards preflop all in or even in a playout.flop is 862 rainbow.three players call 80 I raise to 800 and my opponent holding A6 goes all in…for a fraction of a second I said maybe hes hit a set but nevertheless I call the all in.
turn card is Ace.
Now to me based on the bet pattern and taken the size of the game into considerartion I thought this was a stupid call on his part especially being a 250k buy in…but at the same time I saw two earlier hands of his and he was all in and was saved by the river on both hands.
I have seen such lousy calls by players just totally unimaginative calling and defies every logic the poker book mark its understandable in the 1k to 10k table as those tables relish these kind of suck outs.
without being prejudice make this your fun place,your playground,think outside of the box,try different styles of play with the same players…enjoy yourself…that’s the key…