There's part of me that feels it's a bad idea to have a 'general strategy', and that if we're truly present in each and every hand then the correct decision will come to us. Nevertheless, some decisions within poker are almost preprogrammed. I mean, it's certainly a good thing that these pre-programs exist, so as to free up mental space for other and bigger decisions, but sometimes this programming needs freshening up.
I feel at the moment as if I'm 'worked out' and not really surprising anybody. In addition, I've become very conscious of how poor my late position game has been, particularly BTN-BB where ranges are exceedingly wide. This situation is basically a HU situation and feels very unique from almost every other situation at 6max, but compared to HU we're at the disadvantage of not getting into a rhythm of playing the same guy, seeing how often he folds/ CRs/ calls one street to fold the next, etc. Occasionally I feel I have some strong ideas on the subject, but overall I don't think I'm doing as amazing there as I perhaps could be.
So I'm going to go over some areas of my game and get some thoughts down.
Late position, BTN-BB
What my instincts really want in this spot is a unique strategy, probably one considered quintessentially 'bad' in a game theory sense but which nevertheless has people confused a lot. At the moment, I sorta make it up as I go along. I'll cbet air sometimes, check it others, cbet top pair sometimes, check it others, cbet 2nd pair on a wet board sometimes, check it others yada yada. This leads to a rather split range whereby I'm not wholly confident in whichever option I choose because my range in that spot is not as strong as it could be.
To elaborate on what I'm talking about, I always feel like I want to choose a general strategy and load my whole range into it. For example, say I want to raise flops, then I feel it's best to be raising tons of stuff; sets on dry boards, top pairs, gutshots, overpairs, overcards etc. In BTN-BB, my heart wants me to be doing something like checking back 100%, or cbetting small a lot then 2xing turn, etc.
I can't really see anything that works as an 'all in one' strategy other than planning to check back the flop a lot, including top pairs and nutted hands. I think this probably has the most merit...... it means I can happily post oak bluff certain runouts, delay cbet, call turn and river leads, etc. Yeah. I like this.
STOP PRESS
After speaking to a very good player, I've decided to instead go the other way. This was in fact the way I was preaching to Stefan earlier, and that is just to be very aggressive but also super thin with value bets. I think the main reason swinging me the other way is the fact that in villain's shoes in the BB, I'd much rather face a passive btn than a fucking mental one. As the dude I was speaking to said, the trick is not to wuss out of value bets........ people generally want their value bets to be good a huge proportion of the time (same with bluffs) but some value bets should be made even if you feel you're only good say like 40-45% when called. Example might be A6 on 652 QK etc, it's just gotta be trebled.
So yeah, give up total airballs a lot, then 2 and 3 barrel a lot of stuff. I feel I've gotten much better at certain types of bluffs lately......... the kind of higher level bluff that doesn't work 100% but is more credible with a certain level of player.
Calls OOP/ Reverse Equity Spots
Caught myself playing this hand earlier today:
$2.50/$5 Zoom No Limit Holdem • 6 Players • PokerStars
Generated by weaktight.com.
| UTG | hamanof | $901.16 | |
| UTG+1 | visjeatwater | $769.24 | |
| CO | mustanggino | $447.50 | |
| BTN | TeamLeader29 | $508.99 | |
| SB | RUNITSRANN | $599.61 | |
| BB | hero | $601.39 | |
- Pre-Flop ($7.50, 6 players)Hero is BB
1 fold, visjeatwater raises to $12.50, 3 folds, hero calls $7.50
- Flop ($27.50, 2 players)
-
hero checks, visjeatwater bets $18.64, hero calls $18.64
- Turn ($64.78, 2 players)
hero checks, visjeatwater bets $45.87, hero folds
- Final Pot: $64.78
- visjeatwater wins $107.85 (net +$30.84)
- hero lost $31.14
and as soon as I called flop I had a sudden realisation that I'd be doing far too much of this, calling OOP in horrendously bad positions. Often it's decent to CC more playable stuff when you know exactly what cards are getting barrelled, when you can pick up on betsizes etc, but in a spot like this we should be talking about either a preflop fold, flop CR, or flop fold. Really used to pride myself in not getting myself into such spots, but it's definitely crept back in. So I'm going to be really big on that from now on...... flop CR in the above spot doesn't rep a ton, but it's still going to get a lot of raw folds from most, or a float with Ax that then checks down. CC flop just makes everything so easy for our opponent, and overall I'm probably going to look to getting my flop CR back to around 20%.
Flatting 3bets and raising flop
A while ago, I started to minraise a ton in 3bet pots and it just raped the fuck out of all the meh regs. People just play very ABC to it, flat AKhi oop, 3bet small with overpairs and tptks, cap their range in obv spots and leave themselves open to a PSR bluff, etc. I think I stopped doing it as I felt I repped less, but basically I feel we need an aggro strategy in 3bet pots, as call call call might protect a bluffcatcher and value range, but doesn't leave a ton of room open for bluffs. When we go call call shove we get looked up a decent amount, etc. So yeah, I'm not going to 4bet anything so have all strong hands in my range, and look to do very well postflop.
Other Stuff
I'm going to stick with my general strategy of being very very solid preflop at 100bbs, and then 3bet like a 20% range or something IP when deeper. People play extremely straightforwardly deep at Zoom, and if anyone doubts this they should go play the regular Stars deep ante tables for a bit where the dynamic is somewhere near the moon and cold 4bets 5bets 7bets, postflop moves and light stackoffs happen seemingly every other hand. Checked out my results by stack depth the other day, over a very decent sample my winrate at stacks of 100-125bbs was only 1.3bb/100, while my winrate at deeper stackdepths (though about 1/3 as many hands) was much better. I have the pic actually:
So basically I do a lot better when deep, where the PF lagness is exponentially more effective. At 100bbs, the change to a more solid style is a recent one and one I'm happy with when there's so much less room to maneovere and really apply pressure postflop.
So yeah that's it for now. Hopefully this gets me back on track. Just need to not lose sight of the mental side, but I'll leave that for another blog.
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