The big blind has been better the last couple of sessions. I'm just being very very careful when I'm voluntarily calling out of position in pots. In multi-way pots I'm pretty much sticking to pocket pairs (which can obv flop nut type hands). The very best broad-ways also make my calling range in these spots since they will get value from dominated hands, but that's it. When I get a meaningful sample I'll say more about this. Another thing I'm doing is 3-betting loose sb openers a ton more. I'd often call IP and see flops in the past but I think 3-betting is just as good. Give them this much hell and they'll start giving you the walk - which is a beautiful situation. Much more on big blind play to come.
A hand I played (and messed up IMO):
http://www.holdemmanager.net
NL Holdem $0.25(BB) Replayer Game#30550196940
AGOULOU ($46.63)
JohnDoe42 ($25.70)
63Viktor ($8.79)
thazar ($34.72)
pagezoso ($46.81)
Hero ($25.22)
zyclop ($61.94)
SPBbob ($20.55)
faxe93 ($23.32)
AGOULOU posts (SB) $0.10
JohnDoe42 posts (BB) $0.25
Dealt to Hero Jd Qd
fold, fold, fold,
Hero raises to $0.75
zyclop calls $0.75
fold, fold, fold, fold,
FLOP ($1.85) Tc Kc 9d
Hero bets $1.25
zyclop raises to $3.25
Hero raises to $7.50
zyclop calls $4.25
TURN ($16.85) Tc Kc 9d 3c
Hero bets $7.75
zyclop raises to $53.69 (AI)
Hero calls $9.22 (AI)
RIVER ($50.79) Tc Kc 9d 3c 5d
Hero shows Jd Qd
(Pre 63%, Flop 63.4%, Turn 0.0%)
zyclop shows 6c 7c
(Pre 37%, Flop 36.6%, Turn 100.0%)
zyclop wins $48.26
Not much to talk about until the turn when the flush comes in. At the time I felt that I should bet for value since I thought that there were more combos of sets in his range than flushes (and I was calling an all-in since I'd put so much money in and I have seen people just do that with hands they'd call with i.e sets). Seeing what hand he has though makes me wonder about this hand. Thoughts anyone?
Basically I'm in a situation where if he's got a flush I have zero equity and if he has a set I'm a favourite but not a certainty. So should I play it more passively? Give him a chance to bluff? I have to pop out right now but I'm going to run this through pokerazor EV software when I get a free hour and try and find out the best line in this situation as I think it will be very instructional.
EDIT: OK I just loaded the information into pokerazor and quickly ran a couple of scenarios. If my initial assumption was that his range includes sets then bet calling (an equivalent action to shoving since I have a pot sized bet left) is slightly +EV. It is only slightly positive expectation due to the nature of the hands I'm up against, as I discussed earlier. If he has more combinations of flush draws in his range then it becomes close to indifferent. How many combos? Well with six combos of TT and 99 we actually need him to have ten combos of flush draw in his range for the effective all-in bet to become a loser - and this is a stretch. However, what if my feeling at the time was wrong and he always shoves 99 and TT on the flop? Well - obv now shoving is very -EV and check folding is the best line unless he will bluff random garbage with a decent frequency (unlikely after calling a flop 3-bet IMO). In my experience in these nitty games while players don't generally fold sets they can play the weaker ones quite passively versus aggression (the fear of the over-set). Without further experience with this opponent I'm only speculating but I think that my shove is OK. At least most of the money went in with the nuts.
GL
Wednesday, 18 May 2011
Sunday, 15 May 2011
Shitty Session. Fixing Leaks.
Just finished a pretty poor session and dropped a few buy-ins. One pot I got stacked when someone hit a back door flush after I'd got the money in with a set vs overpair. I stacked off with KK versus AA against an unknown (standard). Finally I stuck in a large portion of my stack with the nut flush and folded when the board paired on the river. Villain had telegraphed his hand as a set with his HUD range and bet timing and sizing. So I had raised large for value on the turn when my nut hand came in - and he called which is predictable for this type of player when they are holding a set. Then he pot donks the paired river, so I saved myself the rest of my stack.
I began to tilt a little tonight which surprised me since I'd treated the recent large down-swing so calmly. Maybe I'm tired?
I've been looking through my database and have identified a pretty large leak - my big blind play. My win rate from every position is pretty sound over a decent sample now, but my big blind loss is about 30BB/100 or 60bb/100. This is - IMO - way way too high. I need to spend a lot of time learning how to improve my play in this position. Ideally I'd like it to come down under 50bb/100 and I definitely think that this is realistic, I just need to do some work.
What can I do better?
Well, I filtered my DB earlier and realised that I've been cold calling in the bb after a raise and callers with hands that do poorly out of position in multi way pots. The truth is that suited broadways only flop strong hands and draws a fraction of the time and any time they flop pairs in multi-way pots out of position they are hard to play. I have also been calling with weak pocket pairs in the same scenario. Of course with enough players in the pot and getting good odds set mining in this spot is going to be OK. But I think I was often calling in spots where there were not enough players in the pot (or when the villains' ranges were loose) thus rendering inadequate implied odds. So the first thing I'm going to do is to tighten up with the hands that I cold call with.
I have also noticed that 3-bets are being called a ton of the time. I'm sure this is a result of black Friday taking some of the better players (who can fold) away from the games. So I have begun cutting out most of my light 3-bets from the blinds. Hopefully this will lead to me spewing less in 3-bet pots out of position.
OK so I think it's critical that I fix this problem in my game so I'm going to suspend my post flop work until I've at least got a manageable loss from the bb. This will likely take time but hopefully I'll get there. GL
I began to tilt a little tonight which surprised me since I'd treated the recent large down-swing so calmly. Maybe I'm tired?
I've been looking through my database and have identified a pretty large leak - my big blind play. My win rate from every position is pretty sound over a decent sample now, but my big blind loss is about 30BB/100 or 60bb/100. This is - IMO - way way too high. I need to spend a lot of time learning how to improve my play in this position. Ideally I'd like it to come down under 50bb/100 and I definitely think that this is realistic, I just need to do some work.
What can I do better?
Well, I filtered my DB earlier and realised that I've been cold calling in the bb after a raise and callers with hands that do poorly out of position in multi way pots. The truth is that suited broadways only flop strong hands and draws a fraction of the time and any time they flop pairs in multi-way pots out of position they are hard to play. I have also been calling with weak pocket pairs in the same scenario. Of course with enough players in the pot and getting good odds set mining in this spot is going to be OK. But I think I was often calling in spots where there were not enough players in the pot (or when the villains' ranges were loose) thus rendering inadequate implied odds. So the first thing I'm going to do is to tighten up with the hands that I cold call with.
I have also noticed that 3-bets are being called a ton of the time. I'm sure this is a result of black Friday taking some of the better players (who can fold) away from the games. So I have begun cutting out most of my light 3-bets from the blinds. Hopefully this will lead to me spewing less in 3-bet pots out of position.
OK so I think it's critical that I fix this problem in my game so I'm going to suspend my post flop work until I've at least got a manageable loss from the bb. This will likely take time but hopefully I'll get there. GL
Friday, 13 May 2011
Hmmmmm. I'm a Nit again.
OK I swear I posted something last night and it's not here... I think I'll call the Ghostbusters. (as a side note, that was my favourite film growing up. Awesome. So glad they're making no 3 with original cast members!!)
Just played a good session, 3k hands or so. But just looking at my database I only played around 12% of hands. This is very tight, close to what I used to play at 10NL after I first started out. Whether this is a consequence of variance or whether my hand ranges will converge on this number over a large sample I'm not sure. If I do find that I'm this tight after a few more thousand hands then I'll have to revise my late position ranges somewhat because - while I'm convinced that this is loose enough to make money - I think a more ideal number is 14%. However one thing I have noticed by playing this tight is how much stronger my ranges are on average.
Rush poker is a battle between trying to get your strong hands as much as possible versus not allowing the blinds to eat up your win rate. I have heard the argument again and again that nits will not win at Rush. But I have to disagree. The format of Rush means that folding has positive expected value - whereas normally it would have zero EV. What I mean is that because you instantly see another hand, there is little incentive to play the most marginal hands in your range - unlike normal ring games where it's great to play loose for deception.
Never the less, I think playing just 12% of hands is a little too tight. So I'll be keeping a close eye to see what I'm playing after another 20-30k hands and then I may have to adjust a couple of my ranges. This would be a shame - they are pretty easy to play at the moment.
I'm really enjoying the volume right now, I just got a rakeback payment of $50 which is easily my biggest ever - and all a consequence of the 8k hand session from Sunday. So expect a LOT of hands in the next few weeks. I'm loving the game at the moment. GL
Just played a good session, 3k hands or so. But just looking at my database I only played around 12% of hands. This is very tight, close to what I used to play at 10NL after I first started out. Whether this is a consequence of variance or whether my hand ranges will converge on this number over a large sample I'm not sure. If I do find that I'm this tight after a few more thousand hands then I'll have to revise my late position ranges somewhat because - while I'm convinced that this is loose enough to make money - I think a more ideal number is 14%. However one thing I have noticed by playing this tight is how much stronger my ranges are on average.
Rush poker is a battle between trying to get your strong hands as much as possible versus not allowing the blinds to eat up your win rate. I have heard the argument again and again that nits will not win at Rush. But I have to disagree. The format of Rush means that folding has positive expected value - whereas normally it would have zero EV. What I mean is that because you instantly see another hand, there is little incentive to play the most marginal hands in your range - unlike normal ring games where it's great to play loose for deception.
Never the less, I think playing just 12% of hands is a little too tight. So I'll be keeping a close eye to see what I'm playing after another 20-30k hands and then I may have to adjust a couple of my ranges. This would be a shame - they are pretty easy to play at the moment.
I'm really enjoying the volume right now, I just got a rakeback payment of $50 which is easily my biggest ever - and all a consequence of the 8k hand session from Sunday. So expect a LOT of hands in the next few weeks. I'm loving the game at the moment. GL
Thursday, 12 May 2011
The Long Road Begins... (again, kind of)
Well I didn't smash through another 8k hands as I intended, what I did instead though was begin to study ranges and equity on the flop by generating some random flops using the excellent iPhone app PkrCruncher. I then used some typical ranges and started working out which hands were best to c-bet, which hands were best to call/raise in response to a c-bet range etc.
At the moment I guess it will not help my game at all. But as I generate more and more of these situations I'll begin to get an intuitive feel about how certain hands do on certain flop textures and I think my play will get more accurate. I'm going to treat it like a drill (like doing scales on the piano) and set aside 30 minutes a day. Eventually I'm hoping that I will be confident and knowledgeable enough that I can then begin to study turns in the same manner. The long term goal being - obviously - to become a bloody tough player to be in pots with. The benefit of this is that my opponents will have to felt bluff catching hands and thus enable me to get full value from my made hands.
It's going to be a long and hard road IMO until this stuff becomes second nature but the result will be very very definitely worth it, as I'll be thinking like a mid stakes player then.
I just realised I've let my free ring game tickets expire (that I earned as part of the last bonus) and I'm pretty pissed off with myself. That's half a buy-in I've just chucked away. Not a lot I suppose but if I'd made that sort of mistake in a hand I'd have been rather annoyed and that's what it equates to. I'll not make this mistake again! Right, I do want to play some hands today so back to the grind. GL
At the moment I guess it will not help my game at all. But as I generate more and more of these situations I'll begin to get an intuitive feel about how certain hands do on certain flop textures and I think my play will get more accurate. I'm going to treat it like a drill (like doing scales on the piano) and set aside 30 minutes a day. Eventually I'm hoping that I will be confident and knowledgeable enough that I can then begin to study turns in the same manner. The long term goal being - obviously - to become a bloody tough player to be in pots with. The benefit of this is that my opponents will have to felt bluff catching hands and thus enable me to get full value from my made hands.
It's going to be a long and hard road IMO until this stuff becomes second nature but the result will be very very definitely worth it, as I'll be thinking like a mid stakes player then.
I just realised I've let my free ring game tickets expire (that I earned as part of the last bonus) and I'm pretty pissed off with myself. That's half a buy-in I've just chucked away. Not a lot I suppose but if I'd made that sort of mistake in a hand I'd have been rather annoyed and that's what it equates to. I'll not make this mistake again! Right, I do want to play some hands today so back to the grind. GL
Sunday, 8 May 2011
Didn't quite make it, but 8800 hands in a day is quite a lot for me!
So I FAILED in my challenge. In truth I could probably get there playing another hour but I'm mentally tired out and think it would def be -EV. Mind you, it seems that most things I do these days are -EV anyway (or at least even if they're not, the result I don't want to see is coming in). It's hard to be positive about my game at the moment.
IF I had won the money that I should have this year, I'd prob have earned around $1000 including rake back. As it is, I've won $500 - and I shouldn't complain of course. But over the sample of hands that I have it's a pretty low win rate. But I guess that even though I've been absolutely destroyed in all-in pots for 200k hands or so I've still come out a winner so that bodes well for the future.
I've nearly internalised most of the new ranges now, so pretty soon I'll be able to start putting in a lot of time and work on what to do post flop. But this is another story and I'll write a lot more about this in the coming weeks.
One last thing I thought I'd write about was the state of the games after I've played nearly 30k hands since black Friday. Well, it seems that nearly all of the good regs have gone. I've labelled a few players as regs but they seem to have tons of leaks. One thing I've noticed is that preflop aggression gets very little respect. So while I've been using bluff heavy 3-bet ranges lately I think I need to be very careful that I only bluff players who know how to fold. It's a great situation when someone raises 30% of hands on the button and never folds to 3-bets and I have a pure value 3-bet range. So I think that I should be concentrating on value more and more. All of that work I've put in lately in learning to play in a more aggressive way has probably harmed my win rate because the simultaneous weakening of the games has made a value strategy even more profitable than before. So in order to return to winning ways I'm going to be even more selective with my aggression.
Overall despite the run bad continuing I really enjoyed the grind today. There were tons of interesting spots, I made a few mistakes but that's the game. I'll probably try and do another 8k hand day on Thursday when I have a day off. Well I hope that you are running better than I am. GL
IF I had won the money that I should have this year, I'd prob have earned around $1000 including rake back. As it is, I've won $500 - and I shouldn't complain of course. But over the sample of hands that I have it's a pretty low win rate. But I guess that even though I've been absolutely destroyed in all-in pots for 200k hands or so I've still come out a winner so that bodes well for the future.
I've nearly internalised most of the new ranges now, so pretty soon I'll be able to start putting in a lot of time and work on what to do post flop. But this is another story and I'll write a lot more about this in the coming weeks.
One last thing I thought I'd write about was the state of the games after I've played nearly 30k hands since black Friday. Well, it seems that nearly all of the good regs have gone. I've labelled a few players as regs but they seem to have tons of leaks. One thing I've noticed is that preflop aggression gets very little respect. So while I've been using bluff heavy 3-bet ranges lately I think I need to be very careful that I only bluff players who know how to fold. It's a great situation when someone raises 30% of hands on the button and never folds to 3-bets and I have a pure value 3-bet range. So I think that I should be concentrating on value more and more. All of that work I've put in lately in learning to play in a more aggressive way has probably harmed my win rate because the simultaneous weakening of the games has made a value strategy even more profitable than before. So in order to return to winning ways I'm going to be even more selective with my aggression.
Overall despite the run bad continuing I really enjoyed the grind today. There were tons of interesting spots, I made a few mistakes but that's the game. I'll probably try and do another 8k hand day on Thursday when I have a day off. Well I hope that you are running better than I am. GL
Have now reached 21 buy-ins below EV for the year.
I guess this is a useful learning experience, when nothing, absolutely nothing goes right for 200k hands. I'm sure there are players who have had worse down swings before, but being there myself makes me realise how frustrating it really is. Last 30k hands won at showdown 45%, pah. I have certainly made mistakes, and I must continue to work to eradicate these from my game so that the damage is limited. I have no fear for my bankroll, as I will move back down to 10NL if I lose another 20 buy-ins or so and then work my way up from the bottom again. Truly the only thing I can keep doing is playing on. A kind of sadistic pastime where the endless beats just make me laugh because I want to endure some MORE filfth. Oh come on, surely your underset can turn quads can it not - again? MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA! OK I need to take a break and I'll play my second session later on once the pain has subsided a little.
Saturday, 7 May 2011
10K hands? I must be drunk.
Yeah well I've had a few beers and I was just wondering if I could do 10k hands in a day. Tomorrow being a perfect trial date. LOL. I will very very probably think better of this in the morning but it seems like a good idea at the moment. I think I could prob do it in about 8.5 hours. I guess it would be a good test of my ability to grind. Who knows, if it went well maybe I could do it regularly. I'd soon clock up the hands then...
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