Quick Update

Experiencing a good little heater at the moment. It appears that my showdown winnings are correcting a little towards numbers that I'd expect to be more realistic for this limit. If this good stretch continues then I'll soon reach my 50NL threshold for moving up which is pretty cool. I'm not going to rest on my laurels though as I still have tons of room for improvement.

I'm not quite ready to post my results so far since moving to Stars, I'll do so once I get to 50k hands or so.

Hand versus Regular

http://www.holdemmanager.net
NL Holdem $0.25(BB) Replayer Game#65614413988

getnavi ($39.66)
Hero ($25)
Big_Jayyy10 ($29.01)
NomaNesca ($33.46)
loslokosP ($9.65)
reyjeff ($49.40)
jayc24062406 ($25)
iDdQd88 ($11.25)
GoldAngel77 ($23.72)

getnavi posts (SB) $0.10
Hero posts (BB) $0.25

Dealt to Hero Qs Kc
fold, fold, fold, fold, fold,
fold, fold,
getnavi raises to $0.75
Hero calls $0.50
FLOP ($1.50) 2h 3h 8c
getnavi bets $1.07
Hero calls $1.07

This might seem like a pretty thin call, but getnavi steals half of the time in the small blind so there's likely to be plenty of junk in his range that I beat. If he's betting his entire range on the flop (not an unreasonable assumption to assign an aggressive player in a heads-up pot) then my equity according to pokerstove is 40%.

TURN ($3.64) 2h 3h 8c Qd
getnavi checks
Hero bets $2.50
getnavi raises to $8.01

Ouch. The turn card is obviously awesome for my hand so it's a clear value bet. When he check raises I'm not liking my hand so much. But there were a couple of things on my side. First, he's played very aggressively over the small sample of hands that I have so I certainly believe he can bluff this spot. Secondly this seems like a very strange way to play any value hand. Taking a turn check raise line on a dry board where I'm often checking back hands with good showdown value (99-JJ, 98, T8, A8 etc) looks designed to push out my random floats. I'm pretty sure he'd just keep betting if he had the top of his range. Lastly was the bet timing. Everything was super fast; he didn't seem to be considering his options but was following a premeditated plan. All of these things combined made this a snap call.

Hero calls $5.51
RIVER ($19.66) 2h 3h 8c Qd Ts
getnavi bets $29.83 (AI)
Hero calls $15.17 (AI)

I actually tanked and took a little longer with this decision than I should have really. I just wanted to make sure my reasoning was sound. On the river he bet all-in very quickly, following my earlier read about premeditation. At this point I think he's got the nuts or nothing. Let's assume first that he really is doing this with his value hands too so a range like {QQ+, 88, 33-22}; he needs at least 12 combos of bluffs for me to be able to call profitably and I think this is 100% true. Plus I don't actually believe he'd play all (if any) of his value hands this way either. I made a meal of an easy decision really didn't I?

getnavi shows 5c As
(Pre 58%, Flop 79.1%, Turn 15.9%)

Hero shows Qs Kc
(Pre 42%, Flop 20.9%, Turn 84.1%)

Hero wins $48

Confirming my earlier assertion that I felt there were enough combinations of bluffs in villain's range to call, there are exactly 12 combos of A5o. Against getnavi I will be stacking off super light from now on.

Four Betting Parameters

The Rush games were super nitty for getting all-in preflop. I think over 200k hands or so the vast majority of the time I saw the money going in was with {KK+}. These Stars' games are a different story completely. I'm now totally happy stacking with AK and QQ facing a 3-bet which is great because it means that I don't have to create bluff heavy 4-bet ranges. I can just get the money in with the top 20% of my range, no problem and this makes things much easier. One villain 5-bet bluffed me with KJo yesterday. I don't have a problem with him using that hand as a bluff but it means I can felt {99+, AQ} all day and all week long.

Right, I will probably play some cash later and maybe some tournaments too. Perhaps I can bink a couple hundred $ or something. Mind you, I've won the last 5 sessions so I'm expecting to drop a buy-in or two pretty soon. GL