Improving My Understanding

Having a great month so far, it's great to wipe out a downswing and make a few buy-ins on top in just a few days of play. A while ago I wondered about the profitability of Zoom poker but I think that I'd just encountered some rough variance because at the moment it just seems like fish want to play pots with me.

I believe that I've managed to increase my winning margin by increasing my 3-betting frequency. Back when I played Rush poker on Full Tilt I had a small frequency, somewhere around 3%. The reason that it converged to such a small number is because I was actually using a specific range of bluff hands that balanced the value hands quite nicely. The problem with this approach though is that you ignore too many profitable spots. The opposite approach would be to 3-bet with a random hand any time you find yourself in a profitable spot. But I don't think this is optimal either because you'd end up re-raising too much in my opinion. The compromise that I've come to is to have a bluffing range of hands that include blockers and equity when called but it's much wider than the old set of hands that I used. The last few sessions on average I've 3-bet more like 5.5 - 6.0% of the time which has allowed me to win more dead money than before, perhaps as much as a bb/100 extra. Hopefully this will continue.

I've also corrected what I believe was an error in my thinking. When calculating hands that I can reasonably 3-bet for value I've always used absolute equity versus a calling range. What I hadn't been accounting for is future equity or skill equity. In other words say I've got ATs and a really loose fish has raised before me. My default play would have been to always call in the past, simply because even against the looser calling ranges AT is not usually an absolute favourite. But it doesn't need to be if I'm making that equity back on average by playing better post flop! So I could perhaps be re-raising hands with 45% equity for value in this spot. The recent change in thinking has had me 3-betting much thinner for value in the games as well as my extra bluffing so it has balanced itself nicely.

This month I've also faced a load of implied odds decisions and I've made a couple of mistakes so this has allowed me to refresh my knowledge of that side of things nicely. So many players at these limits don't size their bets large enough. They want to 'suck you in' and then when you are sucked in and suck out, they pay you off anyway. It's great!

Right, that post was quite technical and probably a little boring but I haven't put anything up for ages so I thought I would. Next post will be better, I promise. GL

New job, plus working on my game.

Have been offered a new job in an accounts office so looking forward to getting stuck in. The hours and pay is better than I've ever had before, so as long as I don't mess up during probation my life should settle down again. I'm also working on an accounting qualification (AAT) and will probably go on and attempt to do a chartered accounting qualification too, which will be very very +EV if I manage to pull it off. Even if I don't I'll get tons of cool things to put on my CV.

As for poker, I've been working hard on my OOP play without the initiative. There are quite a few very good strategy posts up on twoplustwo that have been helping me a ton. Look here if you're interested.

A lot of my strategy playing in the blinds involves flatting pre-flop with the hands that are not good enough to 3-bet but are too good to fold (66-TT, AJ-AQ, KQo, ATs). Then I usually check-call pretty often on good boards, I very occasionally check raise bluff or for value and fold the rest of the time. It's a very passive mediocre way of playing. But I'll explain briefly why my strategy has evolved this way.

The check raise is a very strong move (from villain's perspective). In optimal play our strategy should be such that our opponent has equal expected value from calling down with his bluff catchers and folding. I'll not do the maths here but watch Matthew Janda videos at cardrunners.com if you'd like to know more. When we check raise and then bet turn and bet river it turns out that our opponent only needs to bluff catch optimally with a very small range. So as a result of this our actual value check-raise range is going to be very small too. So if we check-raise with any sort of high frequency (more than 30%, say) then our range is either vastly weighted towards bluffs or we're value cutting the bottom of our check-raise value range because there aren't enough weaker hands calling down to showdown. We obviously want some sort of check raise range but I'd imagine an optimal figure to be somewhere between 10 and 20%.

That leaves check - calling and donk betting. Donk betting or leading is something that I want to work into my game. Grabbing back initiative when our range is likely ahead of villains is going to be super profitable. The trouble is, on so many boards our line makes very little sense. Say we have JJ on A92r. If we ever have Ax or 99 or 22 here then I'll never ever be leading because it's far superior to let villain bluff with his entire range after we check to him. So if I'm never value bet leading here, then I can't realistically bluff (although I know that there are villains who will fold too much in these spots). If I'm the preflop raiser and someone donks on a board like this then I'm raising back 100% of the time for this reason. The ideal situation to donk bet is where we're facing someone who doesn't c-bet very often and we can then reasonably begin to think about value betting three streets with a fairly wide range. Like JJ on a T72 with a flush draw (against a button range, I'd be check-calling an UTG nit). This is something that I do not do enough but I'm working on it.

Lastly I come to my main move, the check-call. It's such a passive way of playing and it's the main reason that I have performed so badly in the past when cold calling in the blinds. The trouble is it's the move that makes the most sense the most often after the check-fold.

A practical solution? A line that I've begun to take regularly is the check-call-lead line. Going back to the example with JJ on the A92r. I'll never be donk betting that flop for the reasons I discussed, but I'll often want to bet the turn with a hand like AQ because I don't want villain to check back weaker hands that might call. So with a pretty wide check-call-lead value range I can now take this line as a bluff too. Whether JJ is the best hand to do this with is open to debate but we should certainly have a check-call-lead bluffing range. A little maths. Assume our hand has no equity at all, and we check call a 0.7PSB on the flop and lead the turn for 0.7*turn pot. Then our bluff must work more than 58% of the time to be profitable. But we'll nearly always have some equity when we make this play. It's my opinion that this is a very underused line but also a line that's very credible. A further benefit is that villains play very honestly against it. A turn raise is almost always the nuts. A turn call is almost always a capped range containing good pairs and draws.

So my OOP strategy is evolving. If I call pre-flop in the blinds in future I'll be looking to do one of four things. Against most regs who c-bet too much I'll immediately be planning a check-call-lead line or a check-raise depending on board texture and hand strength. I'll hardly ever check-call-check against these villains because with marginal hands it's probably at least as good to just check-fold. Slow playing absolute monsters in this way would be a good exploit though. Against a more passive opponent who doesn't c-bet very often I'll be donk-betting pretty wide both for value and as a bluff. I'm going to reserve the check-call-check line for monster hands or when I'm facing villains who play very one and done poker.

In the future I may return to this topic with some results from my database. It could turn out that the adjustment doesn't make a big difference to my OOP strategy, but I suspect that it will do nice things for my win rate. GL

Zoom poker results so far

Hello, here is the results post that I've been promising. I haven't quite got to 50k hands yet but I feel like I've played enough at 10NL now and I want to test myself at 25NL as that used to be my limit at Full Tilt. I believe that I have sufficient bankroll for that limit with 50 buy-ins. Even if I'm close to breaking even in those games, that should be enough to cope with normal standard deviation and I can always move back down if it goes badly.

The first graph below is my results from all ring game hands (including Zoom hands and a mix of both 10NL and 25NL) since I moved to Poker Stars last June displayed in terms of big blinds won. Volume is poor unfortunately; I had a tough winter in my old job and didn't play a great deal. The second graph is just Zoom hands played in the last 6 weeks or so.

I have included both images because I feel that it is useful to see the bigger picture when dealing with sample sizes as small as 50k hands.

It looks like I'm beating micro full ring in general for a small win rate, and Zoom poker in particular with a smaller win rate than the normal games. This is logical as I practiced table selection principles when playing normal full ring games.

The following picture shows a break down in my positional win rates playing Zoom and the EV adjusted numbers as well. 

I'm happy with many of those numbers, but I'd really like to be performing better, particularly in the blinds. I'm currently improving my strategy in the small blind when I see a flop and I believe that I will eventually bring this number down to around 15-16 bb/100 losses which I would be very happy with. The big blind losses are where I'm going to have to work hard to improve. I think that 45 bb/100 losses should be my target, but the question is how I'm going to get there.

I didn't want to give away too much about my strategy, but know this: I'm voluntarily putting money in the pot when in the big blind about 13% of the time and I'm raising about 6% of the time that I do so. I think that I can profitably play more hands. When I filter the graph for VPIP from the big blind, it shows a steep upwards trend. This leads me to believe that I'm perhaps playing too tightly and that I can afford to loosen up a little. At the end of the day, all we need to do in the big blind with a given hand is to lose less than we would if we just folded. It's a delicate balancing act. Expect me to do a lot of work on playing the big blind over the next 50k hands or so.

2.9 bb/100 is not a great win rate, but to be beating the games at all is some achievement in itself. I must continue to try and fix my leaks because I'd bet that there are players doing much better in micro Zoom than I am.

Hopefully this post has been insightful and shows where I'm at currently with my game. Much room for improvement is the typical verdict with me, and it's the same when it comes to poker. GL

Edit:
After reading this post on two plus two by the uNL legend mpethybridge, I think that I should be thinking in terms of improving the way that I'm playing the group of hands that I am currently rather than loosening up even more. I'll give it time. Perhaps in the future I'll think about playing more loosely, but right now I'm going to try and play better and perhaps get my losses down under 50 bb/100. I think it would help if I did some work on blocker betting theory. Leading the turn can function as a useful tool in many different ways including as a blocker bet.

Exploitation

Exploitation is at the core of winning poker. A pretty obvious statement, but in recent weeks I've begun to find a lot more vulnerabilities in opponent play. A vulnerability is the name I give to an exploitable imbalance in villain's strategy. For example a calling station that will call down with too much of his range. Or the opposite, a weak player who will fold all but the top of his range. In both of these instances we can exploit by polarizing our decisions in each situation. We value bet, or we bluff. These are the classic things that every player should know by now. But I've just recently begun spotting the more subtle weaknesses. A great trick in the micro stakes HUSNGs is to 3-bet shove circa 20BB deep with a wide range. Often opponents will raise to 3x with maybe 50% of hands and then fold all but the good hands. This is an old trick - and I hope you are using it - but I've not seen any player adapt well to it yet. They typically tighten up giving us tons of blind money, or don't adjust at all. They just wait for a hand and then go schizo when they finally call with 60% equity and we drill a trey to win at showdown. A less common leak is a player who will reraise (3-bet) you with a wide range but fold everything but the very best hands to a 4-bet shove. We could probably four bet our entire range against someone who is doing this. I think I finally understand how I should be making chips at poker. Of course doing it during play is trickier. Having a good database and HUD helps alot; to anyone out there that does not use poker tracker or hold 'em manager I think you're missing out on a crucial learning tool. Not only can you use it to help to find vulnerability in villain strategy, but also to fix weaknesses in your own game. Having poker tracker (and recently Hold 'em manager too due to the great apps developed to run with it) has easily improved my game by probably 100-200% and it paid for itself long ago. GL