Bloggety blog blog

Hello........

I've been somewhat resistant to writing a technical blog for a while now. I basically felt like doing so, and trying to 'force' myself into certain ways of thinking is bad for my overall concentration, and I was instead better off just getting into as relaxed as state as possible, and then seeing what happens.

Unfortunately, what is happening at the moment is that I'm making too many bad calls, too many rando bluffs, and not seeing things purely in terms of my range. So I just need a reminder of a few basic things.

1) Getting bluffed: lately I've been calling far wider than is GTO, mainly on the strength of extremely tenuous ideas and reads that evidently don't warrant the credit I'm giving them. The odd call like this is fine, but it has become a bad habit, and this is leading to mental problems whereby I cannot justify the call to myself in any sort of fashion......... also, if I'm slightly on tilt, it means I can find any old reason to make a call.

Whereas, if I'm just applying pure game theory then there is always solid reasoning behind it and I can at least be confident that the call is 'good' and makes money. So, this will be a key goal (though I hate calling it that, I'm just going to do it) in upcoming sessions. Plenty of close river decisions just have to get filed under 'getting bluffed sometimes, but not enough to call', instead of 'he has bluffs = must call'.

2) Our range, balance, defending enough, thinking ahead: There's not been enough of all this stuff, and it feels as though I've been playing way too vacuumy in general. Bluff spots, I've been going for 100% instead of only bottom of my range, again leading to tilt issues when they don't come off. By balance, I don't mean 'do the same thing all the time' or whatever, because virtually every situation is different from any other. That's why it's so important to be considering your balanced range in each and every hand, basically developing a strategy such that we can't be beaten. That's all that matters, not being beaten! Once you can't be beaten, winning takes care of itself. So, I need to stop 'trying' to win.

3) Getting 3bet: My 'raise, face 3bet and fold OOP' is now at 38%. I think this was fine for several months when my strategy wasn't so well known, but I feel at present a couple of things are happening. One is that I'm getting 3bet a whole lot more by players IP, which is a very standard adjustment to a player flatting 3bets a lot OOP. Secondly, I'm no longer getting the credit postflop that was once due to me, so people are barrelling lighter, bluffing more, and not folding to my bluff lines. As well they shouldn't, I usually don't have anything :-)

So a gear change is needed there. I'm going to shift to a very 4bet heavy strategy. At present, my 4bet success rate is certainly higher than optimal, but I've been loathe to exploit it with extra bluffs as I've been so balance obsessed pre. At this point a current trend makes its way into my thoughts, which is that more 4bets are getting flatted. People are just aware of the good odds they get and know they don't have to realise a ton of equity post-flop.

So I'm going to start 4betting a very depolarised range. Suited broadways, some pairs, AQ and the like. Some of these will have the benefit of being decent 6bet bluff jam candidates if we're a bit deeper, but I shouldn't be doing too much of that at present as my stats are just going to look like 'lol never 4bets' for a good while. It just means I'm going to print money in the short term VS all the folds I'll be getting, and when flatted I'm going to have decent playability.

4) Checking OOP. As I've said above, I don't like to overgeneralise, but I will be checking OOP as the PFR a lot more. Again, this is somewhat of a gear change, but also has benefits of making me extremely hard to 'beat' when we're OOP. The adjustment would basically be to check back a lot and realise more equity, as well as flat more VS me as they're going to see more turns. Both these adjustments are probably lost on most regs though, and it opens up many possibilities regarding delay bomb bomb lines, and flop and turn check raises.

So man, that's a lot of stuff, and this is usually where the problem comes in- remembering it all and being unable to apply everything. It's all fairly standard stuff though, and I'll play a couple of short sessions first to bed in the new approach.

Is all, say hello on skype if you haven't for a while. Byeeee