Welcome

Hello all, welcome to my online poker blog.

I've been playing on and off for a decade after being introduced by a friend.

I played regularly for a few years during the poker boom and had a decent record at the micros, particularly Rush and Zoom No Limit Hold'em games (here's one of my graphs).

Around 2012 I began a new career which involved immersing myself completely in study in my spare time, so I had little to no time for poker. However recently this burden has eased and so I have been gradually dipping back in.

I'm an amateur player who still hopes to some day beat the rake.





Tuesday, 11 May 2010

Examining my Leaky FR game

I've not been doing particularly well in the FR Rush games. It's only 5K hands so far which is a very small sample, but I clearly have a number of leaks in my game that I need to address.
Showdown Results
I don't think I've been extracting enough value from made hands or giving up on single pair hands as often as I should. I've lost a fair bit of money to turn raises which I've often called and then felt compelled to call a smallish river bet with overpair/top pair type hands. Every single time I've been facing two pair/sets or better. So I need to understand that against a random player, turn bluff raises are very rare and that a single pair type hand is likely doing very badly against this line. I've also typically taken passive lines with these hands in order to allow opponents to bluff. But they don't seem to do so very often. There seems to be a showdown sort of culture in these FR games. So I need to try and extract more value on turns by betting more often with hands. Draws also benefit the most (equity wise) if the money goes in on the flop (providing we're the aggressor). I think I've been playing them too passively.
Non Showdown Results
While I've been keen to loosen a little and steal a little more, I think I've been continuation betting alot in unprofitable spots. I'll raise UTG and on a 862 board fire out a mandatory c-bet against two IP callers. I don't think this is profitable. Their ranges are heavily weighted towards low pocket pairs and maybe some suited connectors and weak broadways. This range likes that board a lot of the time so check folding something like AQo is probably the best play in that situation. I remember learning to c-bet being a watershed moment for me in poker, but I think I now need to learn to reign it in. 70% or more in these games is def not going to be optimal. I think we should generally (given these opponents don't know our games and will presumably never see our c-bet %) just bet those flops we can generally rep something (your classic A93 type of board) or those times we have equity (gutshot+). I've also been barrelling pretty often. This is something I've worked on doing more often but I'm not sure it's optimal in games like these once our flop c-bet is called. Often we'll actually be called by a hand that will also call a second barrel so bluffing in these spots is not going to be very profitable. I think that against the random villains we should use a turn barrel range of entirely value hands or where we have good equity (8 outs or more).
Conclusion
In conclusion, I believe that I am bluffing too much in bad spots; and not value betting enough in good spots. The difference is where my losses are coming from. Wish me luck over the next 5000 hands and I'll look to do another leak spotting post at the end to see if I've improved or if I just fall back into old (bad) habits. GL

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