Played good, ran good. Comes at a good time as I need almost every penny to do my new house up. Just got to make sure I do it again now, no resting on laurels!
Friday 31 August 2012
Good Month!
Played good, ran good. Comes at a good time as I need almost every penny to do my new house up. Just got to make sure I do it again now, no resting on laurels!
Friday 3 August 2012
500nl Session 1 Review
Hand 1: http://weaktight.com/4892334 - squeezing is the absolute nuts at zoom in general, way better than a simple 3bet. Probably something about the sizing making it worse for 4bet bluffing, or the perception that with a depolarised squeezing range we'd have more hands to 5bet re-jam, I don't know. All I know is it gets a ton of folds. Here flop has to be a bet for reasons of not capping our range and getting outplayed, turn is probably more non-standard though. I've almost taken checking the turn IP out of my game completely, instead preferring to bet 1/3 with everything. This has a lot of advantages.......... you get way thinner value than you thought possible, caps ranges for river bluffs, induce spazzes, stops us getting outplayed on the river by villain leading strong and probably turning stuff into bluffs, and occasionally we get super cheap folds.
Villain above is Soda4l, not got many hands on him but potentially he's capable of big leverage folds, or liable to make bad flop peels..........
Hand 2: http://weaktight.com/4892346 - it's strange to me how it's become pervasive that we shouldn't raise flops in position very much. Seems like a lot of the cool mid-high stakes guys say that 'for our range' we're better off calling in spots like these so as to 'rep more'. For me, I think it goes against the principle of being aggressive wherever possible, particularly when people play so bad to it OOP (I'm not excluding myself from that, it's just a fact that facing a raise OOP with say 77 on Q82r you're ahead very often but nothing you can do). On dryer boards, yes we initially only represent sets, but then it just seems like if people are thinking that then the answer is not to become more passive but rather raise more depolarised, tpt2k etc.
In this spot, at 200nl, they just fold. It seems at 500nl they know you rep nothing, rebluff, and then fold. Small turn bet in this instance to keep range wide and stop us losing on the river.
Villain above is komorolo22, so clearly the type to recognise lines that rep little, but who then makes very level 1 adjustments himself to it such as 3betting a dry board. Probably the type to call down 3 streets flopped middle pair on a turn overcard, etc.
Hand 3: http://weaktight.com/4892352 - similar sort of read on villain rutenij1 then to hand 2, namely that he sees we rep very little and it's an obvious CR spot, but then takes a terrible level 1 line to combat it by 3betting and repping nothing himself when a flat would easily win him the pot. I had to bluff river for the times he picked up 9x which seemed quite likely.
Hand 4: http://weaktight.com/4892356 - another reps very little one, he's made the kind of bluff that I've been making at 200nl that usually just gets snap folds,so I can see me dimadu are on a similar level here. He's seen a board that I miss but that I'll be cbetting often, raised 1n done to get a ton of raw folds, but then had the discipline to give up.
Hand 5: http://weaktight.com/4892363 - hand VS kid_canada6 , not sure I can find a fold after I underbet turn on a board with 2 flushdraws.......... don't know enough about this guy though, from reputation he's an extreme bumhunter and maybe not the type to ever be bluffing here on the river or turning pairs into bluffs. I'll have to pay more attention....... interesting he just flatted the flop though, he'd be much better checkraising this and all broadways GSs in my opinion.
Hand 6: http://weaktight.com/4892370 - initially in retrospect thought this was ambitious after he cbets into 2 people, but he's going to be cbetting any pair, I block 64, and his flop flat shows weakness. I imagine I got bluffed sometimes on the turn by a flushdraw. Villain is tomsOn and again I'll have to keep an eye on him.
Villain above is Soda4l, not got many hands on him but potentially he's capable of big leverage folds, or liable to make bad flop peels..........
Hand 2: http://weaktight.com/4892346 - it's strange to me how it's become pervasive that we shouldn't raise flops in position very much. Seems like a lot of the cool mid-high stakes guys say that 'for our range' we're better off calling in spots like these so as to 'rep more'. For me, I think it goes against the principle of being aggressive wherever possible, particularly when people play so bad to it OOP (I'm not excluding myself from that, it's just a fact that facing a raise OOP with say 77 on Q82r you're ahead very often but nothing you can do). On dryer boards, yes we initially only represent sets, but then it just seems like if people are thinking that then the answer is not to become more passive but rather raise more depolarised, tpt2k etc.
In this spot, at 200nl, they just fold. It seems at 500nl they know you rep nothing, rebluff, and then fold. Small turn bet in this instance to keep range wide and stop us losing on the river.
Villain above is komorolo22, so clearly the type to recognise lines that rep little, but who then makes very level 1 adjustments himself to it such as 3betting a dry board. Probably the type to call down 3 streets flopped middle pair on a turn overcard, etc.
Hand 3: http://weaktight.com/4892352 - similar sort of read on villain rutenij1 then to hand 2, namely that he sees we rep very little and it's an obvious CR spot, but then takes a terrible level 1 line to combat it by 3betting and repping nothing himself when a flat would easily win him the pot. I had to bluff river for the times he picked up 9x which seemed quite likely.
Hand 4: http://weaktight.com/4892356 - another reps very little one, he's made the kind of bluff that I've been making at 200nl that usually just gets snap folds,so I can see me dimadu are on a similar level here. He's seen a board that I miss but that I'll be cbetting often, raised 1n done to get a ton of raw folds, but then had the discipline to give up.
Hand 5: http://weaktight.com/4892363 - hand VS kid_canada6 , not sure I can find a fold after I underbet turn on a board with 2 flushdraws.......... don't know enough about this guy though, from reputation he's an extreme bumhunter and maybe not the type to ever be bluffing here on the river or turning pairs into bluffs. I'll have to pay more attention....... interesting he just flatted the flop though, he'd be much better checkraising this and all broadways GSs in my opinion.
Hand 6: http://weaktight.com/4892370 - initially in retrospect thought this was ambitious after he cbets into 2 people, but he's going to be cbetting any pair, I block 64, and his flop flat shows weakness. I imagine I got bluffed sometimes on the turn by a flushdraw. Villain is tomsOn and again I'll have to keep an eye on him.
Thursday 2 August 2012
500nl
I was feeling a bit fed up with 200nl today. Stange, as it's not like I have a stellar winrate there and can say I've solved it, but I just feel sorta 'not stretched' there if you know what I mean. The player pool is so big it's hard to get real insight into how individuals play, and I'm almost just left with a set of rules that the average 200nl player adheres to. Something like; never rebluffs, always fires 2 and not 3, river bets are polarised, yada yada. I dunno, I just didn't feel inspired to grind another month where a really good effort might net me $8k + bonuses.
So I decided to play 500nl with some caveats. Actually before I continue the big reason for moving to 500nl is that the rake in bb/100 is 80% higher at 200nl than 500nl, so even with a much worse winrate I'd be doing better.
I was speaking to Adam001 and Jude today, and they were discussing 500nl opponents. What struck me is how they described players in terms of 'He's the type of player to do xyz' and 'He's got good psychology and thinks about poker in terms of this and that'. Because neither use HUDs, they're much more able to holistically consider a player's tendencies and approach to poker, as opposed to '3bets wide from CO, folds a lot to 4bets', ie the raw numbers stuff. I think the difference between the two modes of thinking is the difference between grinding out a small winrate while making no big 'numbers' mistakes, and owning people's souls.
That last sentence might need backing up a little. Well, when I was successful I used very little HUD, and my analysis on opponents was exactly along the same lines as theirs. Example paragraphs from my 2009 blog:
'Don't Reward The Nit: 3/10 - A new one this, it's something I used to concentrate on and need to get back. Essentially, I make money off nits by a) stealing pots and their blinds, and b) not ever paying them off. They don't have to be pf nits, some nits play like 24/21.... but essentially postflop they're just weak weak scared types. Yellodawg on Cereus is the High Priest of these types of player, and I need to stop things like this...'
'Hero wins $832.50 ( won +$417.50 )
GOGATORS86 lost -$415
Maybe a standard call dunno, but seemed really tough at the time as he'd been losing several pots, and I thought he'd be on the level where he 'knew' that I'd think he'd start bluffing. I give too much or too little credit obviously...'
So I decided to play 500nl with some caveats. Actually before I continue the big reason for moving to 500nl is that the rake in bb/100 is 80% higher at 200nl than 500nl, so even with a much worse winrate I'd be doing better.
I was speaking to Adam001 and Jude today, and they were discussing 500nl opponents. What struck me is how they described players in terms of 'He's the type of player to do xyz' and 'He's got good psychology and thinks about poker in terms of this and that'. Because neither use HUDs, they're much more able to holistically consider a player's tendencies and approach to poker, as opposed to '3bets wide from CO, folds a lot to 4bets', ie the raw numbers stuff. I think the difference between the two modes of thinking is the difference between grinding out a small winrate while making no big 'numbers' mistakes, and owning people's souls.
That last sentence might need backing up a little. Well, when I was successful I used very little HUD, and my analysis on opponents was exactly along the same lines as theirs. Example paragraphs from my 2009 blog:
'Don't Reward The Nit: 3/10 - A new one this, it's something I used to concentrate on and need to get back. Essentially, I make money off nits by a) stealing pots and their blinds, and b) not ever paying them off. They don't have to be pf nits, some nits play like 24/21.... but essentially postflop they're just weak weak scared types. Yellodawg on Cereus is the High Priest of these types of player, and I need to stop things like this...'
'Hero wins $832.50 ( won +$417.50 )
GOGATORS86 lost -$415
Maybe a standard call dunno, but seemed really tough at the time as he'd been losing several pots, and I thought he'd be on the level where he 'knew' that I'd think he'd start bluffing. I give too much or too little credit obviously...'
So nothing major here obviously, I could trawl through and find better examples but it shows my thinking was geared towards a lot more towards more intangible things than raw vacuum-ous numbers. So with a smaller player pool, I feel I can start reviewing hands every session with the express intention of getting to know the regs there very well and get inside their heads more.
First session was interesting anyway, will review all the hands shortly, and am considering setting up a separate 'regs' blog that I can start working on right away................
Wednesday 1 August 2012
July, Going Forward, Flopzilla Hand
July is the in the bag. As you can see I suffered some all in pain....... but 23 BIs is not a story remotely worth telling, these things happen. The graph is interesting, lost my head for first 10k hands and was stuck $6k, and that was before I started running bad in all-in pots. So the turnaround has been a $12k one and I'm feeling quite confident.
Playing with flopzilla has just opened my eyes to how little people hit boards in certain spots, and the vacuum-ish nature of Zoom has helped in that I've just been attacking every spot where, for example, someone has less than top pair very often. My non-showdown winnings are $3k in the past 17k hands and I feel this means I'm doing something right.
Where some leaks have crept in is pure overconfidence. Extremely light peels preflop, OOP to a 4bet with j8s for example that are just unnecessary and going to be punished without playing perfectly. And although I rate my postflop game the highest it's been for a while at the moment, I obviously play far from perfectly when I flop top pair in such scenarios.
So goal last few days has been to really concentrate on being super solid PF, but then still being a monkey post. I have a list of 8 goals on my desktop which I can't be bothered to copy and paste. Oh ok then I will.........
Success in August!
1) Play 1 hour max.
2) Solid PF, yes you are good postflop, but small PF mistakes lead to huge post mistakes.
3) Board texture/ Non SD approach to poker
4) Expectations- Expect there to be variance including sometimes from bad play! If we go down a few BIs, take a small break.
5) Hugely important that there's no blowouts, quit early if not feeling it.
6) Avoid big reverse equity spots.
7) PF VS Postflop edge!
8) Water, vitamins, no caffeine
I'm trying to Flopzilla analyse a hand after every session as well, even a small pathetic one like this:
$1/$2 No Limit Holdem • 6 Players • PokerStars
Generated by weaktight.com.
| UTG | hero | $224.74 | |
| UTG+1 | madhatterrrr | $204 | |
| CO | HoldemKy5 | $278.80 | |
| BTN | Starw!nd | $173.39 | |
| SB | Golfdish | $571.91 | |
| BB | NCSU2012 | $324.86 | |
- Pre-Flop ($3, 6 players)Hero is UTG
hero raises to $4.50, 2 folds, Starw!nd calls $4.50, 2 folds
- Flop ($12, 2 players)
-
hero bets $8.59
- Final Pot: $12
I basically am not certain whether villain continues enough on this board to make this a bad 1n done cbet. The board looks scary at first glance, but then people tend to play suited cards and it's >> 3/4 likely that those are not going to be spades. Villain flats 8% on the button, but extrapolating that it'll be tighter VS UTG I've decided to give him ~ 6%, excluding obvious nutted hands.
Hmm, pretty emphatic! He's not folding 78% of the time, meaning I'm burning money.
Weakening the flatting range though makes it ok.........
So VS a more standard/ loose/ bad flatting range including all PPs then we show a profit in a vacuum cbetting here. Should've put KQo in actually so more like 48%, so not great but ok. Moral of the story, give up a lot on boards with high cards to tight cold callers.
dan
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