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!

Thoughts going forward........

First of all, I'll save all the merry xmas etc for an upcoming leggo blog. This blog's about beeswax after all.

May as well start with my year results. Not very impressive at all sadly, around 1/3 of the year before, and I'm sure many 10s of ks of absolutely horrificly played hands and spew.

So, despite my best efforts then, a proven 1.5ptbb winner at midstakes (wtf, lost 22k at 3-6!!!)

How to find consolation there without kidding myself? Well, my game has been in a state of almost constant flux the whole time. Just looking at the red line swings gives an indication of how wild my changes in style have been.

I feel at the moment that I'm almost there with a settled game and gameplan. Throughout this year, I've switched daily between 16 tabling and 4 tabling, playing 28/24 and 19/17, between 3 betting everything and check raising everything. All these approaches are fine, but clearly require totally different skillsets and it's important to concentrate on one gameplan at a time (not the check raising/3betting thing, Im talking the number of tables and looseness).

Closely related to the above, is the simple fact that my A game just wasn't present nearly enough this year. Given that I rate my B game as being a probably 2ptbb loser, and I played my B game a ton of the time, I think this reflects well on my A game.

So keeping my A game going is verrrry important. I've successfully implemented some things this year with regards that:

• Playing a maximum of 55 minutes per session is definitely vital.
• 'Reverse Tilt'. I've only remembered this fleetingly, but what it basically means is that when I lose a pot or get sucked out on or play bad, to shut down for 5 minutes. Ie, after getting set over set VS the megafish, the very next hand I might be close to 100% certain that 3betting 97s otb vs co is the correct play. What 'reverse tilt' does is override that and force me to fold it.
• Diet, exercise, drinking water. Have gotten better, but need to get even better.
• Daily 'training', this in the form of HH reviews with people like Dodgy and Pawel and Ian. Much like a shark (so I'm told) standing still means you drown. Just the act of being forced into critically analysing hands gets you in the right frame of mind to play as well.

So back to my settled gameplan, this goes something like this:

I play 6 tables. Despite only playing 6 tables I'm never bored as I'm constantly looking at every hand on every other table, making notes of their imbalances and coming up with strategies to exploit them.

I play much more aggressive PF right at the start of the session and look to slow down as the session reaches it's 55 minute point. This works purely from a gameflow pov, and thus I prefer to 'randomise' (not very random but WE) my 3betting and 4betting ranges by recent history and gameflow than I do by things like playability and blockers (although they still come into it, I'm virtually never 3betting T3o for example).

I really concentrate on balancing. I won't harp on, but this isn't for the usual reasons of 'in future we can do x y z' (although that will matter eventually as I move up and the player pool shrinks). It's basically about ensuring that I can't be handread easily. For example, just getting into the habit of ensuring you always have some % of alternative hands in your range before making a play means villain can never legitimately say 'this is NEVER a bluff', 'this is NEVER for value' etc.

PF wars, don't really get into them at 200nl.That doesn't mean don't 3bet 13% on the button, it just means that when they eventually 4bet don't 5bet jam JTs....... instead wait for them to prove they actually are fighting back with speculative holdings. If there's one major difference between 200nl and 400nl on FTP, it's the fact that 200nl regs just lie down and take their punishment.

Position position position! Gotta be 16% in UTG and UTG+1. Mix up 3betting the blinds and flatting/CR depending on the opponent. If he opens and folds the BTN a ton, 3betting ATo has to be better than flatting it.

Finally, I'm starting the year off with a solid 200nl base rather than the other way around. As in, too often this year I've started a month at 400nl-600nl, dropped $10k and then spent the next 21 days making it back at 200nl. So now before I go anywhere near 400nl again I have to make 25 BIs at 200nl. Could be a hard slog and depending on rungood take me a month or 2 months, we'll see..........

Is all!

dan

Sigh 200nl Forever

Time then for a prolonged 200nl stretch. I just played an extremely concentrated 55 minute session of 400nl. I lost 6 BIs (but how many did you win?, none).

Here's the 6 I lost.

http://weaktight.com/3022520 - pretty polarised, nice to flat

http://weaktight.com/3022524 - WE

http://weaktight.com/3022526 - controversial-ish, but pretty standard actually

http://weaktight.com/3022528 - probably the most controversial, but this guy is a folder and nitty and folds KQ to me on the river while raising everything really decent beforehand. While I *could* wait for a GS, in this spot gameflow dictated it was a decent spot and went for it. He overcalled AK pf so fair play to him.

http://weaktight.com/3022530 - I by no means feel entitled to win this, it's reciprocally neutral EV......... I. just. lose. them. all.

http://weaktight.com/3022532 - UTG + 1, a flat may be optimal. Certainly not -EV to 4bet but anyway reciprocally neutral at worse.......

A few facts........ I ran $12k below EV last month on FTP. This month I've already ran $6.5k below. This isn't a whine...... poker is what it is and owes you nothing, but this 2 month stretch; while not the worst ever financially, is easily the worst in terms of poker kicking me in the teeth time and time again both in the EV stakes and without doubt situationally.

Let's work on the things I can control though........ I've made a lot of strategy mistakes, and a lot of mistakes both in preparation and implementation. I heard it said of Sheets the tourney player the other day "he's a really good teacher, good at analysing spots, but seems to fail at actually implementing the stuff in gametime".

I immediately felt like he could be talking about me......... clicking buttons, without those choice of buttons being fully informed by strategy, and strategy only, is a form of poker tourettes that those who don't suffer it take for granted.

I think I'm on the right track now in terms of my approach. We'll see what happens...........................

dan

More 400nl........

I've been pretty good at studying players these last few days. Applying the knowledge in realtime is the tricky bit but something I'm getting better at. One thing that I think is important is to play as ABC as humanely possible VS players on whom we have no reads beyond basic stats. I made a pretty light call down in a 3bet pot today on k97r SB vs BTN, and was pretty angry at myself for doing it when my specific reads on that player were exactly nill.

http://weaktight.com/3022470 - this hand I'm happy until the turn. I hadn't done anything in the session 3bet wise, and so gameflow-wise I felt I had a decent enough read on his play in 3bet pots to warrant this move PF. Villain had previously raised huge/ called 2nd pair on flop in a 3bet pot to commit himself, folded a decent amount and called the one time he had top pair.

On the flop then to this raise size I think I'm good a decent amount, and the mistake was in flatting the raise OOP. Something Sauce said that reached me via like 3rd hand was that OOP, for the most part, if he feels he has an equity edge then he's not just flatting raises OOP and allowing the positional advantage to assert itself over 2 more streets. Especially in non-WAWB spots, (but not specifically), and on this board if I'm going with the hand I need to just shovel money in to his raise and not flat and get owned. Lesson learned...........

dan

400nl Session Review # 2

A couple of bet check spots:

http://weaktight.com/3021631 - I'm pretty balanced in these spots on the turn, 100% of my range gets checked basically. On the river I'm deciding whether to bet or protect my check twice range....... I'm really undecided actually...... I should probably bet this one

http://weaktight.com/3021662 - so this river...... the thing is, he has a lot of Qs in his range so I don't think I'd bluff this. I was really undecided as to raise river or not, punishing unbalances such as this river betsize makes me really happy. What's most interesting from a range pov is his turn check. He folds to cbets only 40% of the time so he's floating a ton, but not betting top pair IP on this turn card. His turn bets are weak in other words.........

http://weaktight.com/3021650 - this ones a lot more meh. I think on an 8 turn a check is fine, but on a 6 I should just go ahead and pretend I have a flush draw.

http://weaktight.com/3021655 - horrendous flop spot (maybe a bit strong), but he's not betting this flop only once, I don't get value with a straight on a 4 straight board, I'm capped when I only cc this flop and turn, etc.

http://weaktight.com/3021682 - leading OOP in 3bet pots, was discussing this today..... basically that to play 3bet pots OOP we need more weapons than just 'make a pair', 'cr', 'cc/cs' etc. We decided that we can lead a ton as our range is so inherently strong, and theirs IP so weak in comparison.

dan