Technical Musings

I'm still self banned at max of 200nl for the month. 31k hands in I'm winning at EV 6.29bb, and actual 4.68. I'm happy enough, 2/3 of the month left I'll just keep plugging away on being 100% at the mental game, making technical adjustments, and see what happens.

A couple of technical things........

First of all I'm still wedded to flatting hardly anything, and 3betting almost 100% of my 'facing a raise' range, and then flatting any 4bet with probably 70% of it. I make the 3bets really small too, like $6 to $15 or sometimes $14, occasionally $16 depending on stacksize. Getting squeezed is a huge killer, as is playing without the initiative with a capped range without playing super sick IP and probably making a ton of moves. My BTN 3bet for the month is 14%, my CO 10%, and I'm winning handsomely on each. I'll wait for a decent sample and then post some results.

Facing 3bets when we're OOP.......... there's a lot more 3betting on stars.fr than stars.com, I think. A lot of 2009 FTP style regs. Without doubt the first adjustment to make here is to open much tighter, just no argument IMO. However, hands like QJs, KJs, JTs, KQo etc have been bugging me to death. When we make it $6 and they make it $18, then I've felt like they just had to be defended. Smallish sample, but it hasn't gone too well. Possibly need more discipline in not making postflop moves, but the fact that on a zillion flops we have to fold the best hand is pretty annoying, and indeed the whole reason I 3bet so much IP myself.

So, one thing I was doing for a while with a lot of success, (and weirdly, just plain forgot about) was making tiny 4bets OOP with a depolarised range. So we raise to $6, they make it $18, I make it $34-$36 with nuts and suited broadway type hands. It means we get a cheaper 4bet the times they jam, and means they flat the 4bet relatively often. Now playing a large pot, VS a player whose range is weak, with suited broadways and the iniative, is not a nightmare scenario for me. Other players have told me it's not a situation they love, but for me you can make a pair a lot, make a really small cbet other times, and have room to jam turns when we turn equity.

This seems kinda counter intuitive, because don't we 3bet depolarised ourselves because we love to flat 4bets IP? So, shouldn't we despise being flatted ourself? I think there's key differences in each scenario that make each situation good for us.

The most obvious is that we are actually planning to 3bet/flat and actually planning for our 4bet to be flatted in the reverse situation. We tailor our hand range, choose our betsize, and select the appropriate player in the appropriate spot to actually induce it. We expect it, it's fine. From villain's point of view though they're playing a default style VS us and are forced to adjust with the hand already in progress.

A lot of them are 3betting a polarised range for example, and suddenly they face a tiny 4bet. 'Hmm, they say. I have 86s and little to no experience in playing 4bet pots IP, and no idea of my opponent's range, but he made it soooo small that I'll flat this one time.' We're at a postflop advantage.

And in the reverse example, again we're 3bet/flatting because we planned to do it. We have a range of suited broadways and slowplayed AA. We've picked on a guy who 4bets decently often, who has a wide initial opening range, and preferably someone who is clealy an inferior player to us. He doesn't have experience in playing 4bet pots OOP as the 4bettor. Again, I think the postflop advantage is clear.

And of course in both scenario we just get a ton of raw folds to our 3bet or 4bet. nom nom nom $$$$

I was going to write about backdoor aggression, but this is long enough so I'll save it. Any comments on the above very welcome from all..........