I'm on life tilt, so I'm going to try to kill some time by making a post.

Watching a ton of videos, and playing a ****-ton lately, I've being thinking about something a lot: Decent Regs, and Good Regs.

Decent Regs (DR) are those guys at the table who have a positive win-rate. However, their winnings come from fish, entirely. They play a SF game, almost never bluff, and collect money from CS fish. These regs have a win-rate of ~1-3bb/100 depending on the number of fish they play with.

Then there are the Good Regs (GR). The GR have win-rates of 4-8bb/100. They do not play SF. They have a bluffing range. They win money from the fish, and the decent regs, and they move up in limits.

Let's talk about a typical $2-5 game. These games will usually have a few fish, and a bunch of decent regs. Sometimes (rarely) there is a good reg.

How do the decent regs play? Well, they just play passive, and they don't put a lot of money into the pot without close to the nuts. This is enough to beat LLSNL.

Typical decent reg play:

Preflop ($7) (10-players)
UTG+1 raises to $15, EP calls, DR calls with JJ, HJ calls, CO calls, BU calls, SB calls, BB calls.

Flop ($120) QT2 (8-players)

DR thinks, "Ah, I played this perfectly. Now I can just fold. With so many players, someone out flopped me, probably someone has the queen. I can just check/fold."

UTG+1 bets $30, EP folds, DR folds...

Other examples include DR losing value by going in a check/calling mindset trying to get to showdown cheap on "scary" boards.

Essentially, the DR's generate a +WR thought SF, passive play against SC fish.

Is there a more optimal style? Yes. Why? Because of general game theory type of rules: If you do the same thing that most regs do, then you don't have an edge on them any more than they have an edge on you. Why? Because you both have the same strategy.

In many games (not just poker) there isn't one supreme optimal strategy. There are only counter strategies.

Consider ATS from CO %s. Player A ATS from CO a lot, like 60%. That can be exploited in obvious ways. Play B doesn't ATS from CO, like 10%. That can be exploited is obvious ways. Okay, so what's the best ATS from CO %s. Well there really isn't one for a ton of reasons.

First off, even DR's don't have a range of hands they ATS with from CO. Even DR's ATS according to who is in the blinds. So it's not like, "Oh I'm in the SB and CO ATS is 40%, so I will exploit by...". Even the DR in the CO is likely adjusting his/her ATS based on SB's/BB's/ fold to steal percent, ect..

I mean all of this is obvious. But I just want to put it down to make the point. There isn't an absolute optimal play that works every time. Optimal play is different for different cases, depending on villain tendencies. Every tendency has a counter tendency.

Okay, so back to the DR versus the GR. How do you exploit the DR's at your games? By identifying their tendency, and finding the counter tendency.

There are tons of great video out there. One I was watching recently brought this up. When you're at a table, or doing a post session analysis, most likely a bunch of DR's at the table, and some fish. So, a bunch of those DR's are doing like 1-2BB/100. Now give yourself this exercise...

1. Select a DR;
2. Attempt to define his/her edge and win-rate;
3. Attempt to define the general plan DR has;
4. Recognize that every strategy has a counter strategy;
5. Find a counter strategy.

I'll start.

(1-3) There is a DR I play $2-5 with a lot, his name is Maurice. He plays a very passive SF game. He makes his money from SC fish. When he is strong he will bet, when he has a good hand, he goes into check/call mode, generally playing SF w/o a bluffing range, trying to get stacks in with the nuts, and to showdown cheap with decent hands. When he sees another reg put ~100BB into the pot, he assumes it's a monster, unless the reg has been seen bluffing. He folds big hands when deep on scary boards. His post hand comments are usually like, "Well be probably had the flush, you can't call that, or, well he bet even though the ace came, so you must have been beat, wow, he wasn't afraid of the diamond, must have had a boat, ect."

(4) This guy can not be beat by having a better blue-line. His W$SD is huge, maybe like 75%. The only way to beat him is to punish his red-line. He can only be exploited by getting him to fold the best hand, which he is often willing to do.

(5) Look for a spot to get him to fold the best hand. For this to work, a bunch of things will need to come together:

I'm going to seat change to his left. I'm not worried about being on the left of the SC fish, since they are so easy to play against.

I'm going to wait till DR is in late position, ideally ~HJ, where it folds to DR and he raises to $25. I will call with a hand that has some value, like 79.

I'm selecting LP because I don't want a family pot. Ideally I'd like HU play. I'm also going to wait until DR has more money than he is comfortable playing ~$800. Being this deep will make DR play scared, and leave me enough to bluff on late streets.

After DR raises as described, DR has a very strong range: {AK, TT+, ect}. I will win this hand by bad beating DR some small percent of the time. But hopefully out playing DR a ton of the time.

Now, the action comes, it folds to DR in HJ, he raises to $25, I call, everyone folds. There should be a ton of boards that I can steal from this guy. Most times the flop is paired, I should be able to steal. Most times, the turn/river completes a FD, I should be able to steal. On most 4-card str8 boards, I should be able to steal. Ect. And, most importantly this should be facilitated by his SF play.

I just want to make the point. This isn't some random DR. This is Maurice. I've played a ****-ton with this guy, so my reads should work. I hope they do. Will they? I have no ****ing clue. But one thing I know for ****ing sure is, I should be doing something different than the DR's.

Now, your turn. Any DR that you play with enough to have sick reads on? What are his/her tendencies? How can you exploit?

What are you doing, or trying to do, to elevate yourself above the DR's, and become a GR?

i must have ADD or something cause i started this twice and was daydreaming midstream both times. Its all me not you.

I will attempt at another time to give a reply to this.

Without reading it even though, i can tell you that there is a TON of reciprocity to be had in the avg 2.5 casino game. Just a buffet of items. I will throw out just one right off for the heck of it. CRAI bluffing rivers for significant bets. Nobody does it. You do it successfully in the right spots and A. you literally never get called and B. Its a "pure" reciprocal play in your favor.


and the reason the games are FILLED with just the decent regs is cause they will not venture into the area of deliberate practice to get better, or in lesser terms "put themselves in tough spots in order to better their skillz". heck, most players dont even hardly do any off table study other than a loittle jibber jabber here and there on forums like this and/or read Harrington while taking a dump. (ok, show of hands of who is guilty of that last one.)

this is interesting. this might be a good exercise as i put in more and more time at the same room.

i will struggle to make adjustments such as those you mention in the games i play though, since they are so loose-passive it's difficult to be in pots with any given DR without 6 other players also being there. ISO'ing can be problematic in these games, as you know. and i expect that being heads up or 3-way with DR post flop will end up being part of a lot of counter strategies for a lot of villains that we might pick as our target DR.

it would still be a good exercise though. there are things you can do in multi-way pots to exploit these types of players too.

interesting idea. i'll write one up in the future maybe when i think of a DR i have really good reads on.

i enjoy your use of the f-word, princess.

I see regs all the time. The way to combat them is float them in position. They always give up when in a hand multiway. Unless they have an overpair or flopped a made hand.

If your last to act you get to see what everyone else does to.

Right off the bat i would say that you might flat out shut the villain down by sitting behind and 3 betting him a ton UNLESS he is just an opening nit. I find that most regs at 2/5 and 5/10 just cannot handle this. And why should they? They have zero experience at it. So that alone i would think would keep a person busy for quite some time, and them adjusting to it? Nah, take an awful long time IF EVER.

I mean, this goes for about all DR that we speak of. I dont have to single out one guy for it, gosh the whole lot ofthe DR couldnt handle this.

Another might be one of my favorite where i open early, and a very creative aggro guy flats behind. I have AK and flop is As 9d 8d.
I chk call 2 streets after tanking and then rap my open hand on the table after all draws miss andhe pots it, i insta-call and he shows QT.

To me, deciding how a villain will put more money in the pot behind is an art. A DR would play the hand and cbet, get floated once, then bet turn and win small pot. he figures he played the hand well. This is why many players look back even at their play and figure they played well.

(i hope this is what u are talking about, maybe im off track)

All the regs I know, there opening range is very nity so 3betting them could be a disaster if your only sitting on a 100bbs.

Well, we didnt mention positions, however how nitty? Only JJ+ ? If he opens KQss, AQo AJss etc then he usually never has to deal with 3 bets ordinarily. Put him in that spot and he doesnt know whether to rack up and leave or go allin.

i make a habbit of c-betting A-high flops when i have A good kicker and i'm facing a creative/thinking aggro player. i find they are more convinced if we c-bet flop then check turn. their frequency of betting turn in that situation is very high, while they can sometimes get spooked if we don't c-bet the A-high flop, since they would expect us to do so if we didn't have an ace to rep the ace.

unless we have like a scared money image or something.

so we can lead flop then c/c turn and river. otherwise i find sometimes we don't get any additional value OTR if villain suspects Ax.

in your hand, villain had a draw. if we bet flop then c/c turn we can often get him to pot river with a wider range, including lots of air.

/derail

Actually, this is the difference between a DR and GR. The DR has come up with a style that wins. They don't necessarily play SF, but they never change their game. They don't adjust to what others are doing. They have one speed.

Isnt it hard for him to have air if we cbet flop? Dont get me wrong, i do it different ways, but that was one example.

Well I like to play from lp. So I'm talking bout utg and mp opening ranges.

AQo+,AKs, JJ+. They might change gears and add 88-1010 and AJo or AJs but rarely.

My problem is knowing when they don't have AA,KK or Ak. Its very hard for me. I be wanting to pull the trigger. But I don't want them to flat with AA or KK then it puts me in a terrible spot on the flop. Because a big bet is coming.

The regs never 4bet, they like to trap by calling a 3bet. They also l/c AA or KK.

Inmy experience almost nobody (DR) (GR) whatever plays these spots well, or adjusts well. They may spew alright, but not adjust.

Say dr or gr opens for 25 what's a good size to 3bet. As soon as you 3bet to 75 or 60, they only continue with AA,KK,QQ and AK. Should I make it wierd like 55? Or if they open for 20 should I make 50 to go?

I want to start 3betting more, but really don't know where to start with the perfect sizing. Post flop I'm ok as long as I have position and he does not donk into me. I rarely raise donks. Just something about trapping someone when I'm very strong in position. I usually make my moves on the turn.

3betting regs is a post I seen before. Which I used to do, but I had more money then. Its hard for me to be real aggressive 3betting pre. But since I became a reg and just wait to flop gin. I rarely go for the regs money. Just call a good implied hand. If I hit I almost always take there money.

But 3betting is way better online or in tournaments. They have good size amounts that other people actually notice. Live these dudes are donkey's. Knowone ever 3bets.

U have to make ur plan, and do it if you think the villain tendencies and frequencies will work for you.

example: If i think villain will open 25 and call 60 total OOP about always with nearly all his broadway suited, medium pairs, AQ KQ etc, then taht is what i want. I want to have a reasonable thinking player to call more money pre, OOP, and play basically fit fold post. This is golden spot. They may even know what u are doing, but are helpless to do anything about it other than spew,.

Underbetting postflop in some of these spots is hardly talked about, and is awesome in the hands of someone who knows how to use it. Especially vs villains who dont know how to defend vs them.

Yeah its called manipulating the board texture. I will underbet a lot in LLSNL because you get a lot of callers. Ex I raise limpers on the button, I totally miss but I got 4 callers pre the flop is ace high. If they all check to me I bet like 1/3 of the pot, but the bet will be big to them. So they fold,

Now I'm starting to view how I can do this also in 3bet pots. Since the pot will be $120+ even a $45 bet will take the pot down.

Thanks for reminding man about these regs. I forgot a lot of my aggressive tactics over the years.

I can't remember the last time I 3betted, I have not got a big pair in position in about 2 weeks. Oh ok last time I 3betted from the small blind against a known reg I see everyday. He calls I bet full pot on a Q 10 6 $120 because I know he is strong. He snap shoves I tank I can see it in his soul he wanted a fold. After my solid live tell, I call $700, he turns over kings.

ya. true, we might fold out their air OTF too often. this is where it would probly be villain/situation dependent, how floaty they are.

definitely lots of ways to play it.

if villain has very aggro tendencies i like checking flop more, like you suggested.

Bad ****ing day. I lost $1100 trying this **** at $2-5.

But then I went to the bar for some food, and I went on my phone as usual, and started reading the forums for this training site I belong to.

There was this post about 3-betting: The history of 3-betting, and how/why/when it should/shouldn't be used now, in the past, and in the future. And how/when/why hero might want/need a polarized or merged 3-betting or 4-betting range, and how that type of range might be constructed.

It was one of the best posts I've every read.

It was one of those posts that when I first read it depresses the ****ing **** outta me because reading it makes me realize that the OP of the post, and the work s/he cites was far above my own original thinking (although not above my level of understanding).

So it depressed the **** outta me in that respect the first time I read it, which didn't help my mind set after losing +$1K trying to rob Maurice.

However, to fully understand the points in the post, I knew I had to read it a few more times. So I did. Then after that, I felt much better because I was just happy to have this new logic to use. Even though I'll probably never be as good as the OP of that post, at least now I have that logic, and begin to think of ways to use it and expand it.

I would post it here, but I think it is against the rules to do that. Anyway, a lot of it was about the logic of that guy Beluga Whale.

Anyway, back on topic, I'll say this **** about trying to rob Maurice should be done with extreme caution. ****ing up in that respect can cause a DR to become a huge fish.

But the exercise is the most important thing. Before I take my next huge bluffing line, I will make sure it fits neatly in a pre-determined +EV set of circumstances.

/end tilt

Edit: Anyway it's kind of on topic regarding the replies so far. I will say this:

The SC fish and most DR's at LLSNL do not have any kind of merged 3-bettting range, or polarized range.

I mean, by and large, that 3-bet to 20BB is extremely weighted towards KK+. Similar statements can be made about those 8BB openings. And those 4-bets are almost always KK+.

Love the OP and this is a very valid topic worth discussion. I have been in such spots and adjusted to barreling DRs off of hands. This works especially well with 200BB stacks. I'll post more on this later, but for now I just want to note that even DRs will adjust and try to trap you once they view you as the table bully or constantly bluffing them.

But there adjustments are meh at best they start l/c AA, KK or AK.

"Most of my bluffs are spew" - Digger the Dog

That's true for most of us. The reason is that no matter how much we know at LLSNL winning is a matter of value betting, there's the tiny portion of our original fish selves remaining that says, "Poker is about making sick bluffs."

Bluffs work when the pot is small and/or the bet is beyond the villain's ability to call. Cbets work because the pot is small and you have the hammer of future bets. It isn't a matter of just calling the first bet, it having to call a turn and river bet as well. River bluffs don't work nearly as well because the pot is big and in a 100BB game, there isn't enough behind to discourage someone.

In order to 3bet light effectively, the villain has to be raising light. In a limpfest, most people aren't raising light.

I have only one speed, one gear ....




oh and btw, great post. It makes me realize that there is still a lot that I need to learn to "become better". So far a super straight forward and VERY PATIENT style is enough to win the money at 1/2 against people who call too much. But as I move to 2/5 there are smarter players and people think about what they are doing so I definitely need to find strategies to adjust.

I like it, but I have one question. What does the SC stand for in "SC fish?" I have a feeling I'm gonna slap myself in the forehead and say d'oh when someone clues me in, but all I can come up with is "suited connector," and that doesn't make much sense in context.

Isn't Baluga Whale broke??

wasn't the vid you watched about online??
put it out of your mind.
it's not the same game, at all.
sadly, a lot of advanced plays/thinking are just worthless in live games.
it's 'play dumbed-down poker to get the $.' at the live tables.
doesnt leave a lot of room to manueveur for those seeking to impress themselves.
I've thrown off SOOOO much $ in LLS learning this the hard way.

also, I think it's a uberbad mindset to go to the casino with a specific gameplan in mind that u r going to execute regardless of the table/ opponents, and how they are playing right NOW.
sure, it's nice to try some different plays, but be prepared to be paying 'tuition' if you're looking for FE where it doesnt exist.

good players chose their style/ gameplan based on what they observe going on at the table right NOW.

Maurice plays the same every day. This was about Maurice, but point taken.

I have this complex lately that is causing me to go on life tilt.

Back in like 2006 when I was living in LV, when I first learned about NLHE, and looking for a +EV approach to the game, through various resources, and experiences, I came to the conclusion that the best way to play the game was to set-mine.

So, I happily sat at the table, and waited for pocket-pairs, knowing that when I hit my set, I would double-up on some fish with TP.

Because it was that simple, I happly folded AQ OOP to a PRF, even though in the back of my mind I knew I was giving up value. My thought process was, "I am losing value by folding this hand, but I am decreasing my variance. At the end of the day by edge is huge just set-mining. I will take by +WR and be happy."

But now, five years later, I see a lot of people with this approach to the game. A lot of them are guys in their late 60s, and just guys like 18 years old. They happily fold big hands in spots that are probably +EV to call, but they do so because they are correctly confident that they can just sit around for six hours, folding, when eventually a fish will sit down, and pay off their hands, not noticing they are only playing the top 7% of hands.

I don't know why, but I'm currently very unhappy thinking that I'm still one of these fish-mining set-miners playing only 7% of hands, and giving up on +EV spots by playing too tight. But I am.

I just don't want to be one of these "nits". When I play $1-2, and $2-5, I find it VERY hard to play the fish-mine, set-mine, 7% of hands game. But when I play $5-10, I feel happier being a fish-miner. I'm certain it's due to the stakes. I'm not going to ship $1200 on some bluff line. But I will ship $200-500 on a bluff line if I feel like it.

So I stress out about this, and try to force myself to find ways of playing that separates me from oldmanpoker, folding AQ PF, and stuff.

But it's hard. It is hard to correctly find those spots that are +EV to bluff, or 2/3 barrel.

I think we all have to admit though, that playing the oldmannitpoker 7% of hand, is not the best way to play, even though it is +EV. The people that make it to the top have all seemed to approach the game with a far more "aggressive" mindset.

What's tough, I guess, is that to find those +EV bluff lines, we have to learn though experience. Which necessarily means failing at bluff lines, and learning how/why they are not +EV.

Anyway, I am losing my mind because I know that poker has been one of the best sources of income for me, and I want to excel in the game. But sometimes, I get so crazy thinking about the game that I think I might be a happier person if I just quit poker, and found another way to make the money to replace my poker income.

But then I think, to get to the top, heros have to go though the toughest times to learn the most, and maybe that's just what I'm going through now.

And, it's not even on a downswing. I'm not on a downswing! I'm just all ****ed up in my head because I know the type of player I want to be, but don't know if that's the type of player I should be, or if I have the ability to be that player.