0.10c/0.25c FR Rush Update

Hey all. I have not put in as much volume as I would have liked lately, but as evidenced by my last post I have done a little work on my game. The first few thousand hands at this limit have not gone terribly well, I'm about six buy-ins down. But I'm not going to return to the lower limit unless something unforeseen happens with regards to my financial situation. Basically, I feel that I'm playing as well as I have ever done; whether this makes me good enough to beat this limit however - only time will tell. My style has changed a little, I have begun to include more hands that I call with so that I don't unnecessarily turn hands into bluffs; but this requires me to play as well post flop as I can, and I think that these hands can easily become spews. Maybe they are removing my edge, but this is why I'm trying to learn at the moment - so that I can play better. I also toyed with the idea of removing 22-55 from my preflop (out of position) range as their profitability is dubious in nitty Rush. However, I don't think that playing these hands strays far from break-even and for this reason Id prefer to keep them so that sets are always definitely part of my range. I think that it is better for meta game if your range is as wide as is still profitably possible as this gives you the most opportunity for value with your best hands as well as fold equity from your worst. Anyway, short update over. After I've played a significant sample of hands I'll post a graph. GL!

It's all in the Continuing Range!

A HUGE subject that I've come across in research over and over again is continuing ranges (I think I've heard them called continuance ranges too). Especially recently, this concept has been aired time and time again, and I've only just come to realise it's importance.
For those among you who may be unaware, I'll try and explain the concepts' significance in the next paragraph.
A continuing range is the range of hands that your opponent will continue with after you bet or raise. Hands that we raise for value in any situation should have good equity against an opponents' continuing range. If we bluff, we should pick hands that are too weak to call (given pot odds) but whose equity isn't terrible. It is currently considered optimal to raise gutshots, overcards, back door draws and combinations of these and other weak draws when we bluff on the flop. This is because they typically have around 25% equity with two cards to come.
When one bets or raises, according to the standard risk reward equation a bet can often (in NLHE) be profitable no matter what the cards are if villain folds too much. In this situation we should often be bluffing. When we do bluff however, we can improve our expected value on the play by picking the best hands to do it with. What we need is for our hands to have decent equity when we are called. Here's a common example: MP (solid reg) opens and we have AJo on the button. 3-betting here is usually going to show a positive expected value, so why not? Because when villain continues there are not many hands that we beat up on and our equity is generally poor. AJo is good enough to play, so call and 3-bet something that is a more marginal call but will play decently post flop - T9s?
Anyway the purpose of this post is not to cover tons of situations, but just to make anyone who isn't already aware of the concept that it exists and that it is worth further research. GL!

Some Stars Stuff (fail the first attempt at this post)

played a little on stars tonight as some friends were playing tourneys there. I joined a few 25NL cash games, and really enjoyed the battle with familiar players and building table dynams etc. It's been a long time since I've played that sort of environment and it was fun! Might drop in again if the Rush games get tiresome. GL!

My Biggest Leak

Hey, well tonight I got frustrated and I made a play against a player who looked like a drooler (over the 50 or so hand sample). I had JJ in the sb and this player who was playing a lot of hands raised from middle position. I 3-bet and he called and the flop ran Kxx. I c-bet and the fishy player raised quite large. Now, against a reg I know that this would be a committing raise and as a result Id have instantly mucked. But given the stats I had on this villain, I honestly thought that this could mean absolutely anything, and that a lot of weaker hands than good second pair would call given his previous tendencies, and some of his hands would even fold. So I shipped and he calls with QQ. Now, its quite possible that this player was not as loose as I had pegged him and maybe I should have given more credit on the flop. But as I said I was frustrated and tired of being pushed around and this brings me to the topic of this post.
The thing that makes me tilt the most is when I feel that I am playing well but things are not going my way in the short term; the c-bets do not work, I get 3-bet a ton; No value bets seem to be getting called, we keep getting coolered etc. I seem to adopt the psychology that the players are somehow conspiring against me but this is never ever true! I let it build up and eventually start tilting and end up stacking off light in a situation where it may have been unnecessary - like the example above.
In the short term if it ever appears that we are getting our way less than usual; if things are not working, then it is most likely just a case of a number of specific independent events occurring together and not a drastic change in game conditions.
Until I completely distance myself from the individual results and thus cure this leak I dont think Ill ever reach the level that I want. This is my biggest leak and my biggest challenge so far. I have at least managed to identify the leak; the first step in finding a cure. GL!

Two New Concepts Learned

They are kind of obvious now that I've heard them explained but thought I'd post them here.

1/ Balance where necessary, no more
Recently I've learned so much about the theory of the game and balancing lines but I have been making the mistake of trying to balance in spots where it is not necessary because villain's ranges are either value heavy or bluff heavy. In these cases we must also play a polar range and not worry about balance. For example, when playing against c-bets (which are almost always very bluff heavy) we should not be folding too often.

2/ Don't telegraph your strength unless it's entirely necessary
If we're in a spot where we are unlikely to be bluff raising very often we should tend to flat our entire range as we will get extra value from playing later streets rather than have our opponent fold knowing that we must be very strong. For example, we open in middle position with KK and the small blind - a pretty tight regular - 3-bets us. We are pretty much never bluff 4-bet raising in that situation so it is better to call with our hand (and the rest of the range we intend to play).

Yikes. God, sometimes I horrify myself. Tired and a little tilted after losing two stacks to set over set I was in a four way pot and the board ran out 999KK. Everything had limped around all the way down so I overbet shoved with 44 deciding that everyone was splitting but that if anyone folded Id be getting free money. Betting as much as I did was totally unnecessary and when I was snap called by a slow played king I just cried. I dont mind my thinking, and a 1.5 or 2x overbet would probably have been profitable in most situations like this. Betting what I did is just a massive spew. It will take me a lot of hands to claw that back now. Sigh, I really cant believe I could have made such a ridiculous and fundamental mistake. My understanding of the game is prob better than 95% of 25NL players and yet I still behave like one of the 95%. Anyone else ever just spazzed out randomly as if you totally lost your mind? No more play today, I need a breather after that calamity.

First Blood

Hey, well I have begun the 25NL grind. I could and should have played more this weekend but Friday I was mucking about in my other hobby as a musician and on Saturday I was hungover and had no wish to face 3-bets from an aggressive lag. Today I felt better (despite the bingey second night out) but chose to destroy a few empires at Civ V instead. This is obviously terrible considering my ambitions to improve at this game but sometimes you just need time off from it, you know? Anyway for the first 30k hands or so I'm just going to 2 table and try and play as well as I can. This should insulate me in case the poker Gods decide to throw some run bad my way, and Ill likely lose less than I would otherwise. The other thing Im going to do is a lot more hand analysis. I have reached a level of understanding where with a little bit of work after sessions I could begin to play extremely solidly post flop. This will obv lead to a ton of small stakes profit and I think it will be necessary (if not for this limit then definitely for 50NL).
The rake-back changes on Full Tilt have cut back my Rush earnings. I can understand that the new method is fairer on all of the players, but its hard not to be cynical and see that this is just a way for them to get out of paying so much. In truth I think that it will hurt them in the long run judging by the criticism received on 2+2 but time will tell. Anyway, GL!

Moving Up!!

After my first 200k hands of Rush (there's a graph in a previous post) I decided to start a new database. 50k hands in, this is how things are going. I played nearly 50k hands - as you can see - and was slightly less than break even. At the time I was pretty down on myself about the game and how I was playing. But it just goes to show that if you are patient and keep playing solidly that the results will come around. In only 5000 hands I've gone from being a marginal loser to a 1 ptbb/100 winner over this sample - a huge turn around.
I really feel that the time has come to give 25NL a sustained assault. I've proved to myself that I can beat 10NL (rush fr) and while I was toying with staying for a while longer, I think that I'm being overly cautious now and need to bite the bullet. Here goes, wish me luck :)