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.





Thursday 2 September 2010

Crossroads

I have reached a point in poker now where I'm coming across ideas that seem to contradict things that I've learned before. In the past I learned about pot odds. If we are not getting odds from the pot that our equity requires then we should fold. But recently the Janda video along with some more equity work I've undertaken has shown me that to be unexploitable, we need to defend with a range that often contains hands that do not conform to the pot odds axiom. In other words despite the pot odds we need to be playing a certain amount of our range regardless, even when the equity is insufficient for certain hands. This is causing me a lot of problems currently and may eventually stall my poker development. In particular I studied a couple of hands where each player's ranges were so weak on average by the turn that in order to defend against exploitation each opponent had to include some combinations of ace high in their calling ranges over two streets to showdown. I've seen videos of the great players and there's a recent Jungleman vid that has possibly the best hand I've ever seen played at poker. But during play I find it almost impossible to bring myself to make such thin calls. A lingering habit of my fit or fold days? Or a poker ceiling that I may never cross? Who knows, but the next few weeks may make or break me as a poker player. Just as I'm beginning to realise the true depth and beauty of poker I have also just realised that my eyes may never be good enough to truly appreciate it.

By the way, that link is seriously worth watching. My jaw never fails to hit the floor. Good luck Durrrr, because Jungleman can play. No shit!

2 comments:

  1. You're right that you have to mix it up. Otherwise, your opponents are going to figure your game out. However, pot odds or not - bad hands are bad hands. Sometimes you just have to get away from it. I think hand odds are more important than pot odds. A lost hand gets you zero percent every time. Nice post again.

    Chris Helms
    http://floppedtheboat.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hey thanks, you're probably right. I'm just really into range defence at the moment (even though it's unnecessary at these limits). I just hate that my opponents can make easy money from me by c-betting every flop. I know that I can do the same to them, but I'm not happy to just move the money back and forth every c-bet. I want to exploit my opponent while fighting back when he c-bets. Just my nature I suppose he he. Thanks for the comment :)

    ReplyDelete