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Keeping Warm in Winter

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AAroddersAA:
Responding to Brendan :-)

"Would need a really good read / reason to fold here, there are lots of bluffs and weaker made hands in his raising range"

It"s possible that he has an overpair here and is raising the flop with the overpair. The fact that all indications were that he was a capable player also supports your view. However at the most basic level the way he has played the hand says I am beaten. I would say it is more correct to say that there SHOULD be lots of bluffs in his range. I honestly don"t think many players are capable of exploiting this spot. Not many players do this often. To be honest I am not even convinced bluffing here is actually good, although it does look like a good spot to do so, well in all honesty it"s a great spot.

From his point of view, even if he is able to put me on a hand like AA, and been able to figure out I can"t have a set, he can"t know that I am going to fold it, a lot of people would call anyway. He could be making a play thinking I have something like AK. AK sometimes plays like I have and gives up when it misses the turn. We are giving the player a lot of credit here though, more than I believe we should give most $25nl players unless we have something that tells us they are able to do this. I am not saying most of them are bad but we are talking quite high level here for most $25nl players. You would not go into this level of thinking in a live 50p/£1 game these games are not of a standard that is THAT much higher than those games. It is also FR which makes a bluff less likely. The best approach to take here is that most spots are what they look like, treat them as such. By doing otherwise we are inventing a dynamic which is probably not there.

"Shoving the flop would be bad in as much as you don"t want to discourage his bluffs from firing the turn"

I think this is 100% correct in this spot, if you are sticking it in anyway then may as well give him the chance to put more in. Calling also gives you the chance to reassess on the turn which I think is important.

On 66 and 77

"Much prefer to keep these in my raising range, actually I don"t think its good to open limp ever. Would be curious as to what hands are in your open limp range and would suspect it to be very small and thus very transparent"

It"s is very transparent. Again it does depend on the other players being observant but it is easier to do that the above, much easier. In later position small pairs should be rasied like they would be in 6-max games. You can limp call small pairs in early position profitably if you are just set mining. It might be easier to just fold them though but at the moment I am finding the EP limp in to be OK. Again, at the end of the day, it will make you money in these games - especially in FR. You are (as usual) right that player"s SHOULD be able to tell when I make a set. It"s esay enough I check fold when I miss the set and come out betting and raising when I hit, it usually works fine though and big pairs still pay me off. Again it"s what players actually do that matters not what they should do.

BUT.. Looking at this, you are right, it is getting towards being to easy to exploit. small and mid pairs are the only hands I would do this with. I don"t play SC 100BB deep as they don"t play well and I am always raising big pairs and big aces. If I limp from EP I can only have some kind of small pair and if I call a raise and still want to play after the flop I can only have a set. It works fine and I do wonder how easy it is to spot this at the table. Saying that, one reason I did not like doing it was that I found that I was raising 4xbb and then a big pair would repop to between 10-12BB and 100BB deep I am not really abot to call that profitably. I have recently altered my opening raise to 3xBB so this might make it easier to call as reraises are generally smaller. Next month I will move them to the raising range, it will be interesting to compare the result"s.

Overall I would say that limp calling with small pairs in fine in these games but why not try the alternative as it may be better.


--- Quote from: TheSnapper on December 29, 2011, 16:17:56 PM ---

--- Quote from: AAroddersAA on December 29, 2011, 10:51:27 AM ---

Where do you get these hourly figures from, it"s a very interesting point if the numbers are reliable. But you might also consider that Stars charge about 8% more rake per 100 hands.


--- End quote ---

Meant to also answer this. The stats did not come from anywhere reliable just by adding up the average on Genting compared to Stars at the time of the post. I would expect them to be pretty accurate though might try it later though (one table on each for an hour). I had no idea about the 8% difference though which is pretty massive tbh.
--- End quote ---

TheSnapper:

--- Quote from: AAroddersAA on January 04, 2012, 15:29:46 PM ---
You mean lost the minimum right? I find this a difficult one to answer.

I would say the hand where I make the straight against the flush I lost the minimum, or did I just lose value by not raising the river as long term it is profitable to do so? Not sure so, did I really lose the minimum or was just calling bad?

Didn"t really get any other spots like that one today, although the AA hand we were discussing yesterday I do believe I lose less than I am meant to long term in that spot. I am in the middle of responding to you previous post regarding as it takes some doing.

--- End quote ---


Take as an example the K9s hand when the board runs out....

Kh 8c 2s Jh 8s

Let"s assume we hold a better hand and we illicit a call from our opponent of our decent sized river value bet. We would be correctly and suitably elated at having owned our opponent.

Let"s now assume villain holds a better hand and we correctly fold to his river value bet. We should also recognise this correct fold as having equally owned our opponent and on the bottom line, the $4.30 saved will have the same value as the $4.30 gained in the previous example but we tend not to value the two scenarios equally.

AAroddersAA:
Decided to have a small session this evening on the cash tables to help the hand count. Wanted to play about 500 hands as this should not take too long. It was going quite well, then I made probably my worst mistake I have made for a while. This is so bad because I know it is wrong and I have gone through hand histories several time to prove to myself that this exact spot is -EV.

http://www.pokerhandreplays.com/view.php/id/3941599

Yuck that"s awful play :-( The guy who 4 bet had only been at the table for two orbits and had three bet twice so I convinced myself it was a good spot, it never ever is. One poor play turns what could have been a decent day into a basically break even day !!!!

Session was fairly standard apart from that won a couple of small pots. I think this might be an example of what Brendan was talking about earlier when he said about folding in the right spot, I would not normally post this as there is not much to discuss about it but as it has been mentioned.

http://www.pokerhandreplays.com/view.php/id/3941604

I wonder if I can save more money by just check calling the turn in this kind of spot? I can"t give it up on the turn for sure. What Brendan was pointing out above was that money saved is as good as money won. This spot sort of demonstrates that quite nicely and is something all cash players should be aware of. I will try and include more of these types of hands when I review sessions.

This might also be an example, but could also just be too nitty, the reason for this one is that the 3-better has not 3 bet in any of over 250 hands I have on him, a quick check in PT (after the hand) showed that he had flat called with AK before and also 77. I therefore made a very tight fold here that I think stands a good chance of being right.

http://www.pokerhandreplays.com/view.php/id/3941608

I think both of these plus, the AA hand from yesterday and maybe the hand where I make the straight against the flush are examples of saving money where I could lose more. It"s sometimes hard to say of these examples are good examples of this or just hands where I have failed to maximise long term value though although the QQ vs AA one above is a good one.

Something I find more difficult is doing the oppposite and maxing the value in marginal spots. I sometimes think I miss bets when I should be extracting more value. Maybe like this one from earlier, although tbh this one is probably fine. Not much is likely to call OTR that I beat.

http://www.pokerhandreplays.com/view.php/id/3940081

Evening session went like this:-

Hands = 598
Profit = $2.50 (due to the poor play with AK)

Overall Month To Date

Hands = 5879
VP$IP = 11.26%
PFR = 7.93%
3-Bet = 3.53%
BB/100 = 7.43
Total Profit = $96.07
VPP = 360

I think I have spent enough time on the nlhe tables for now and I am ahead of the required hand rate. So tomorrow and maybe Friday will be spent on the MTT sit n go"s. I should have no issue hitting the 15K hands this month so can afford to leave the cash tables for a couple of days. I also need to do one some PLO sessions. I can"t multi table as well at PLO therefore the volume target is quite low.

Bigfella42:
Great reading and some interesting hands there - the QQ fold in hand 2 is one that most players at those stakes could not make IMO.

Apologies if this is covered earlier in this blog but what poker software do you use, what stats do you focus on from that software, and how important is it to your online game? Do you keep other notes on players or is the tracker all you need? I"m interested as I don"t use any software myself, as my online volume is quite low, but am looking to up that this year so may need to prepare properly.

Final question. At what stage would you move up stakes?

AAroddersAA:

--- Quote from: Bigfella42 on January 04, 2012, 21:32:52 PM ---
Great reading and some interesting hands there - the QQ fold in hand 2 is one that most players at those stakes could not make IMO.

Apologies if this is covered earlier in this blog but what poker software do you use, what stats do you focus on from that software, and how important is it to your online game? Do you keep other notes on players or is the tracker all you need? I"m interested as I don"t use any software myself, as my online volume is quite low, but am looking to up that this year so may need to prepare properly.

Final question. At what stage would you move up stakes?

--- End quote ---

No intention to move up stakes atm. It would come down to feeling much more confident in my game than I do over a long period of time, I have never been able to consistently beat $50nl on Pokerstars although I have not really given it much of a go as I have always been more profitable at $25. Could be a mindset thing.

I use Poker Tracker as I always have although generally Hold "em Manager is considered better

My HUD is set as:-

VP$IP / PFR / 3-bet / fold to 3-bet
Flop c-bet / fold to flop c-bet
Turn c-bet / fold to turn c-bet

I likt to keep notes of any bet sizing tells, if a player will limp/fold pre and what min bets and donk bets mean, my player note are quite simple.

The HUD will win you and save you some bets and win you some pots by helping you to double barrell it also help you put a player on a range of hands. A player who has a VP$IP of between 12% and 15% is probably just playing prem hands and pairs for example. So if you get one of these who folds to lots of c-bets you know you can c-bet any flop and expect to make a profit.

One of the players from Blonde sort of taught me to use them but I am nowhere near as good as some people over there. I could function quite well without a HUD, you should not need one to make a profit but they do help quite a bit.

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