Patience; Addressing an imbalance

I think that during my Rush play so far I have always been too impatient; I wanted to win more than my fair share of pots - to win more money than I was due. But I came to a realisation yesterday; to win at 2ptbb/100 we only need to be winning, on average, 40c per table during those 100 hands. During play I find that I very often work up this sort of profit very easily. Where I'm losing it most often is running elaborate bluffs (which are not necessary at micro stakes because players are so stubborn with their hands) and making hero calls. Again, hero calling is only necessary against players who bluff too much. The vast majority of full ring Rush opponents fall on the other end of the spectrum. In essence I'm making the game much more complicated than it needs to be. I could make more money by just bluffing occasionally with equity and value betting exclusively the rest of the time. Of course Ill need to win my share of the blind money from the steal positions but at all other times, NO FANCY PLAY SYNDROME! - time to listen to Miss Obrestad methinks.

There are a couple of villains that I regularly play against that float me an awful lot. I have spoken before about check raising on the turn as a defence against this but I think the big problem that I have is that I barrel out of position on the turn with a decent range but every time I check I always have crap. I think that it is necessary that I include some very strong hands in my checking range to defend against floating, maybe any time I have a set with a heart in it or a flush or well hidden straight. Ill just begin to look for more hands to include in that checking range. Its certainly true that there is no finesse in villain betting, if I check the turn after a c-bet and call villains seem to bet their entire range there. So it may actually be profitable to check my entire range on the turn rather than double barrel oop... Ill do some work tomorrow and let you know the conclusion.

pros and cons of 6 tables...

for a while Im going to use the six table set up but have two 5NL tables as the extra because its taking me a while to get used to it as I have had to change the tableninja settings somewhat. Briefly, I had been using the mouse hover feature while four tabling which allowed me to just move around at will and play what I felt were the most important hands first. I could do this because I could see exactly what each situation was. I might still be able to do this by utilizing my second monitor but Ill need to experiment to find out if I can make it work. Playing six tables meant that two of them were always blocked from view and this led to me timing out once or twice. The last session I just had the tables pop to the front when required. This meant that I could no longer quick fold using the space key - a useful shortcut - because FT is liable to pop up another table so Id end up sending the fold instruction to a screen that didnt warrant it. On the flip side though, because I had to be careful not to fold good hands I was having to make quick decisions so ended up taking the more cautious line which is probably a good thing at micro stakes, as a raise is usually what it says it is. Anyway, Ill continue to experiment to find the best set up. I didnt struggle to keep up with the six tables which is the most important thing, I just need to tweak until Ive found a set up Im comfortable with. GL

More Volume Desired...

Hey, haven't played much the last week or so as I was away and then haven't really felt like playing. What I want to begin to do is to increase volume by playing more tables of Rush. My bankroll currently stands at $1300 so I'm going to begin to play two extra tables of 25NL Rush on top of my four 10NL ones. This should enable me to increase volume and I don't think it should affect my win rate too much now that I'm using tableNinjaFT. Eventually I may move to 8 tables but I'll see how the initial experiment goes, I'm certainly comfortable with four now and don't ever really feel rushed (no pun). I'd like to set myself a goal every month of playing 100000 hands. This is a significant amount, and if I improve to a level where I'm beating the micro game for 2ptbb/100 or more - certainly possible IMO - then I should win money the vast majority of months that I play. Add to this all of the experience I will gather along the way, it sounds like a good plan for the future. 1m hands in a year is nothing to be sniggered at, even at micro stakes.

Deep Analysis of a Hand (tl;dr)

Going to try something different and do a combination analysis of a hand. Hand reviews like this are something that I intend to start doing regularly so I may as well post them on here so that anyone who reads can pick apart my play. This will be fairly deep and maths intensive so sorry about that, tl;dr

Initial notes: I don't believe my preflop 3-bet was big enough, and allowed villain to profitably set mine against my very tight UTG+1 3-bet range. Villain is an unknown but over ten hands had only played one, so I'm assuming a fairly tight player. So now I'm going to put his range for calling the 3-bet as a pretty loose {99-KK, AQs+, AKo} which is 50 combinations (since I have two aces). Given this range, it should be pretty easy to work out the correct play in this hand, which was my intention in this first analysis.

I think that the vast majority of villains would just call with their entire continuing range on this board; to slow play their strong hands and to play it safe with the marginal AK. So when he does call, I need to refine my view of his range. Villain could certainly flat a single street with TT-QQ but given how strong my range is it's probably safer to fold the flop with the king out there so I'll rule those hands out. That leaves {99, KK, AK} for a total of 12 combinations. The value bet on the turn is actually indifferent. Since we're way ahead (six AK combs) half of the time or way behind (six set combs) half of the time we don't get any value by betting against this specific continuing range. So I think it would have been better to check back. As played, when he raises it's a case of which hands he'd do this with and the pot odds we're getting:
If I assume his raise is all-in (with only $3 behind this is pretty safe) then to call I risk $5.55 to win $(3.95+2.55+8.1)= $14.6 and must be good 28% of the time to justify the call. So he needs to be doing this with at least 3 combinations of AK for calling to be better than folding. I don't think that your average micro player would be turning AK into a bluff here, although some might. This player had given some evidence of tight tendencies so I think that the fold was a good one. An expert player could exploit me in this spot by shoving his entire range, fwiw.

Sorry for this long and heavy blog post, I'll try and tidy the next one up and structure it a little better as that was messy to say the least!

If Only...

... poker was this easy all of the time. After a 48k hand break even stretch, finally a little heater. But it was worth the wait!

Finding an excellent post

blind defence
This just reminded me of the need to continue to play tightly from the blinds. I guess just getting better at poker will improve my win rates there. One other thing I need to do is win more from the button. I think I'm a bit of a push over when the blinds re-steal so I must begin to make their lives hell. On with the next few thousand hands, then.

Update

Hi, I've been away this week on a short break which was awesome - except for the screen on my iphone breaking which made me cry. The first time I have ever thanked the Lord for fucking insurance. Anyway now I'm back I thought I should out my shocking play during the last 50k hands. This is probably around a months play and I have not played very well. I have highlighted what I believe to be my biggest leak currently which is my blind play. My goal for these positions is -0.15 and -0.1 for the big blind and small blind respectively and I'm falling way short of my target. I think there may be some variance affecting these numbers somewhat but also some bad play. Work to do!

While away I spent some time thinking about poker and what I may be doing wrong currently. I think that I have a leak where I'm blindly betting in situations where villains have a stronger range than me. The key example is where I raise in the small blind as a steal and the nitty big blind calls. My range here is very wide whereas his is generally pretty damn strong. Add to this his positional advantage and the fact that he will generally be equal to me in skill then this is not a very good situation. So while the preflop raise will be profitable on its own, once we are called putting in any more money - given the above factors - should be bad unless we have a hand on the flop. So c-betting should be fit or fold pretty much in this situation. Certainly c-betting 75% of the time will be a clear leak. This got me thinking more about range vs range situations. I think that it is probably true that if we have a situation where our range is strong compared to our opponent's then we should be bluffing a very large percentage of the time. Conversely, if our range is very weak compared to villain's range we should very rarely bluff. On the back of this light bulb I just had a good session where I was very careful to taylor my value/bluff ratios to the strength of my range versus my opponents and it seemed to work pretty well. I'll let you know how it continues! GL