A bout of the 'Crazies', and PF range stuff

Had a horrible day yesterday, I think only because I'm going away today and went mental, no other way to explain it really. But no matter, I'm $5k in winnings + bonuses etc and it's only the 19th and I learned a lot going forward, and I tilt cashed out $6k to book Vegas so that makes me happy.

I just want to kind of think aloud re PF range stuff, and specifically the concept of 'spreading ranges too thin'. If that even is a concept.......

Specifically, I'm talking about reacting to 3bets. If we fight back, there's only two ways we can do so: 4betting and flatting the 3bet.

Ok situation is: we open BTN, 8% BB 3bettor 3bets us.........

Standard flatting range of 7.8%: 99-66,AQs-ATs,KTs+,QTs+,JTs,T9s,98s,AQo-AJo,KQo

Value 4betting range of 3.0%: JJ+,AKs,AKo

Bluff 4betting range 3.0%: ATs-A8s,A5s-A2s,ATo

This means that when we open 50% of hands OTB, we're folding 72.4% of the time. Slightly more than necessary to stop a 3bet being auto profitable but whatever, we don't expect it to be exploited and if it is then we can do something about it by opening less or whatever.

Now, I've come to hate 4betting with a passion. I never really liked it, and feel that as time has gone on it's become even more of a zero sum game at best. Basically in a vacuum without reads on a player it's really difficult to 4bet bluff, as it only needs a tiny % of a pure bluff range on their part to make a 4bet unprofitable, and is in any case super high variance. (ie, 4betting ATo and getting T9s shoved on you really really sucks).

4betting must've been really useful back when 3betting was just getting a little old. Now, everyone knows that everyone 4bet bluffs etc etc, and I guess my argument mainly is that countering light 4bets is largely solved through appropriate 3bet/5betting, and is thus either reciprocally neutral EV or slightly on the side of the original 3bettor.

Just to ramble some more, I think that we basically all 4bet because everyone else does it, but we all know in our hearts there's no edge there. There's just, no.......... strategy to it, or tricks, or anything deep and meaningful that allows you to have better frequencies or adjust better to than anyone else. We do it just to at least keep pace with everyone else.

So I'm getting out of this game. In fact, I already have. I'm flatting 3bets with all of my continuing range.................

Disadvantages: I can no longer fight back with, say A9o. I don't care though, because as I've already said I think the actual 4bet is bang in the middle of neutral EV, sometimes slightly + EV and sometimes - EV.

Advantages: Really outweight the disadvantages a mon avis. Firstly, I'm playing really big pots, sometimes Ip, with a much stronger range than my opponent. I've won so many 200bb pots this month flatting AA-JJ, even AK VS junky hands like J9 that flop 977 and can't fold.

So that's the advantage in a vacuum. Over the slightly longer term, it should mean I'm able to flat a ton more stuff and be able to bluff more. So, the hands that I lose in fighting back like A9o, I gain in being able to flat 75s and bluff raise with a ton more credibility.

And it's much lower variance (which has other benefits including tilting less, less self doubt etc). And there's a discernable postflop edge. And I don't really see how people are going to exploit it. Answers on a postcard or in this blog, but honestly I'm utterly convinced anyway and I think that more of us just do it because everyone else does, than would care to admit.

Some of these hands might've had the same result to a clean 4bet, but you can clearly see that most of them would've resulted in a PF fold.

http://weaktight.com/3133257

http://weaktight.com/3133262

http://weaktight.com/3133263

http://weaktight.com/3133267

http://weaktight.com/3133269

http://weaktight.com/3133271

http://weaktight.com/3133278

Is all, Dan

Pokerstars

So.........

After a good start, I've ~ broken even over 15k hands on 200nl on Stars. Let's look at some reasons why and what I can do about them.

Getting used to 12 tabling and the software - a bit of a crap excuse this one. I got used to it pretty quickly, and I feel I can 12 table pretty comfortably and actually feel more like 16 tabling if only my monitor was bigger.

Early spew - as I'm starting the session and trying to test the waters of the regs I'm playing, I really need to not start off on a note like this: http://weaktight.com/3119395 (kudos though to him resisting the doubtless urge to shove the turn). Basically, regardless of the perceived EV of the above move and moves like it, they're probably not necessary to grind out a 3ptbb winrate and the external factors they involve (minor tilt etc) surely cancel them out.

Not trusting my gut enough - hard to find specific examples. They usually involve things like pot size bets on the flush river 3way with my particular flush being the 6hi variety and I override my instincts on the flimsy basis that calling wouldn't make me look stupid. I should basically be taking pride in doing what I think is right, not what I could justify to Chris if showed him the hand. Good example here, everything came together (betsize, timing, player type, board texture, tendencies) that I knew I was crushed on the turn http://weaktight.com/3119415 . Seems ridiculous espec with the redraw, but honestly when I get a really strong feeling both with big folds and big calls I just think it's not often wrong.

Not cbetting! - this has somehow crept in again. I think if anything it's more of a mistake on Stars where everyone seems so much more foldy, possibly due to the mass tabling thing. I spotted this a month or so ago, my cbet had dropped to like 52% when more like 75% at these levels is much more optimal. I looked at my month on Stars and it'd hit 54% again! While I'm on this subject, the villain above WCGRider plays 24 tables, 32/27, cbets everything and triple barrels and is the biggest winner......... impressive, and instructive.

Over-reliance on HUD? - Me and Dodgeball have a sort of verbal tic going on, where every other sentence we say 'back when I did really well and won all the money I used to do X Y Z blah blah blah ' (nice to reminisce). Well here's another one, back when I won all the money I used to scoff at over reliance on HUD stats and was utterly convinced that over-reliance on them led to laziness in making actual notes, deriving things from these notes, and being aware of gameflow.

Reading Samo's blog has reminded me of this, and it's annoying me that my default action when facing a cbet is not to think in a poker fashion, but instead to check his cbet stat. Similarly when facing 3bets etc I think a lot of mistakes are made.

For example, I might play with a guy for 60 minutes, not a peep out of him, then get 3bet and decide on the basis of his 10% BTN 3bet to 4bet call 99 or whatever. Well, maybe it is 10% OTB overall, but TODAY, perhaps VS specifically ME because of how he's reacting to my tendencies, or perhaps because TODAY he's mixing it up, or TODAY he's playing a bunch more tables, I should be able to infer his actual % as something more like 4%.

This brings me onto something I should really try with the all the 20 tablers going around. Namely, extreme gear changes ala super system (btw, this is something I'm utterly convinced GuiGui has done, I can remember the nights involved!). How this would work is something like 50% of sessions have a 16% BTN 3betting range, and 50% of sessions have a 4% range. I'm new enough on there that my stats would converge at 8%, and you can imagine how my opponent's perceiving this 8% VS an actual 16% or an actual 4% would be brilliant in both regards.

Hmm, so anyway, I've ditched all stats except vpip/pfr/3bet/donk bet (good for fish mostly) / CR flop. Although this might not be going quite far enough, I'm just going to make sure I'm basing decisions not exclusively on the stats but also the situation, players to act behind, recent history, suspected tilt, timing...... all those things that put together build a thoroughly better picture of his range than 'hmmm 6% BTN 3bet'.

Is all, hope everyone is well.

Dan

Blog when I'm losing, I only blog when I'm losing

Funny how things change. You can virtually disregard the last blog for my current poker thinking.

My current gameplan sounds crazy, but it comes down to 'do I what I think is right'. In a nutshell, I'm trusting my instincts (*blink*) each and every hand, forgetting balancing (though I'm clearly naturally balanced in a lot of spots). Bluffing when I think it'll work, folding strong hands when I think I'm beat, overshoving when I know he can't call, etc.

It's hard to give concrete examples, but I think that I'll look back on this as a massive revelation on moving away from 'mehanical' thought process to an 'instinctive' one. I can picture the moment my poker all went wrong, and I described this to someone the other day as this:

When I joined Leggo, I'd had 12 months of very decent success. Suddenly I was making videos. Suddenly, not only did I have to record my play, I also had to describe it. I really struggled making the first few, because I found I couldn't really explain why I was doing stuff. So, all the overbet rivers I was doing probably couldn't stand any real critical analysis, but I just felt like they worked.

Saying 'it works' wasn't adequate for Leggo. They wanted talk of balance, and range, and frequencies. Maybe omitting those would be fine if I was able to describe how I just 'knew' a certain player would call bottom pair in a certain spot, while another player was certainly folding top pair to an overbet, but I found I couldn't explain these.

So getting into this mechanical and technical world meant I started critiquing everything I did. I started overthinking spots, thinking 'how could I verbally justify this' and trying to overrule my subconscious with a set of inflexible rules and plays.

Right the way through the year, there's been a thousand spots where timing, gameflow, player type, a ton of intangible things have combined to give a feeling of certainty about the right play in a given spot. In the search for mechanical perfection though, I overrule it for the far inferior technically justifiable play.

An example might be.... say I 3bet TT BB vs CO 110bbs deep. Co 4bets in such a way and size that I feel certain I'm crushed, but rather than listen to the voices screaming now fold, I get like "well I shouldn't have 3bet it if I wasnt planning to 5bet jam it". I'd 5bet jam and lose to AA and chalk it up to a cooler........ and then wonder why my hourly was at $37.

A corrective example might be this hand: http://weaktight.com/3097323

Now mechanically, I'm never folding tptk in a 4bet pot. On the river, my brain screams 'CRUSHED', but I'd overrule it on that basis. Here on my A game, there was no doubt it was getting folded to a proper bet. Just listening to what I think villain has in every spot means I'm making huge calls and huge folds, and a mon avis being right a ton of the time.

Here's the caveat though. Playing like this requires superb mental concentration. It also means being really tuned in, and really happy and relaxed when playing. If my thoughts are clouded, then my mind simply returns no answer in any spot! My massive flaw at the moment is playing on in these conditions.

Blog when I'm losing. Well I'm not quite losing, I've won 2000 United States Dollar bills, but oh my god it could be so much more if only I got more consistent at having my mind at ease. Ultimately, the A game is not going to matter without doing it day in day out.

It's a bit like the recent cricket match between Australia and England. Australia have a bowler, Mitchell Johnson, former world cricketer of the year and thus on his day brilliant. England have a similar guy, James Anderson. Now you don't judge their abilities by the very best ball they're capable of bowling. Johnson produced the occasional magic, but was wildly inconsistent, leaking a ton of runs on his way to being Australia's top wicket taker. Anderson's deliveries though were just constantly excellent without respite, and at the end of the day this makes him 10x the cricketer as the ability to have this consistency is part and parcel of the skill of cricket.

Probably just another way of saying what I've said before, but it's so true with regard to poker. If your A game is the best in the world, but you only produce it 3/4 sessions, then you are simply NOT good at poker. Consistency is as much of a poker skill as handreading, and so given this, at this moment in time until I improve, I am NOT good at poker. Not remotely good. I'm Mitchell fucking Johnson good at best.

I'm having some good poker chats at the minute with a couple of decent players and will keep on doing that to improve technically, but the immediate goal here on out is to be 100% every single session, or else resign myself to sucking at poker and indeed life, like this guy has (only at bowling). Updates to follow!