The low Axs/SC, small PP, and maybe QTs/KTs are a bit iffy from EP, while AJo and KQo are a no-brainer from the HJ and sometimes MP2 in most games, but playing more hands correctly as PFR translates to profit in most games (assuming you are starting as a rock or a split range nut peddler), and these are the hands to add.

I used to dump a lot of these, but once you know the spots and get comfortable you can play a profitable game without it being a soul suck.

Something else I do is play really tight from EP till someone notices and starts gobbling off about how tight I am. That gives me more fold equity and then I start opening wider earlier till I show down a "weak" starting hand or everyone forgets I'm super tight in EP.

I mean in HJ you have 4 players left to act with 2 in position and UTG you have 8 players left with 6 of them in position. Might as well call CO and BTN the same thing too.

CO and BTN are the same unless BTN is vaguely competent and aware of position. If so opening wide in CO can be suicidal.

Except that most players profitably open twice as many hands on BTN vs CO. So no, they're not the same.

IME if you post "SSHE" she will pretty rapidly find your post and come into the thread to make sure everyone knows Ed was the primary driver behind the book.

(Excellent book for anyone who wants to learn LHE, by the way.)

There's only so much baggage you can load onto the train. If you bluff too much, people have a pretty easy and obviously correct decision to call. So to put them in a tough spot, you have to have some places where you just give up.

But it's not, and the reason is related to the paragraphs above. With each positional notch, the number of people behind you and in front of you change. When you raise from the HJ, there's only 4 people who could show up with a better hand, from UTG, 8. Which means the "train" from HJ Station is a lot wider and can accomodate more baggage.

Yes btn and Co aren't same in reality unless btn is a nit.

His mom complains because you mods refuse to call him Edward.

Mamma cAmmAndo ever finds this place it'll be hell for all of us.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Sometimes. I don't have a lot of live poker experience but where I was playing this kind of action was not at all unusual. Most players at Winstar are two passive to squeeze. And yeah, it's not the best example, but that's probably why I don't write poker books. The point was just to illustrate we don't need to stack our opponents for AXs to have equity. Even if the flop had been K46 vs. A45, we have plenty of equity to semibluff flop, turn, and river.

Like I said, not the best example, I just quickly thought up something to illustrate a point without analyzing the probabilities. Still, fourways to the turn does not seem unusual on this board. I guess it depends where you play, but most players will call at least a flop bet if the flop hit them at all. On A45 I'd expect most players to continue with any A, any 2, any 3, 32, 54, 76, 87, 86, 73s, all spades, any 4 + a spade, any 5 + a spade, 44-KK, and the calling station types to peel at least to the turn with all this as well as any 4, any 5, and any hand consisting of two broadway cards. We may face a raise from some of the TP+ hands, but if we bet many players are happy to just call with their big hands.

It's a semibluff. We have tons of outs and passive players will give up on the river if their draws don't hit or if a really scary card hits.

It doesn't hurt.

GG clueless NL noob? Don't know if that's directed at me or some weird signature, but the example was just a small part of my post, meant to illustrate the type of hand where we can build a pot even if nobody calls when the flush hits. OP seemed to imply flushes are overvalued because we rarely get paid off when it hits. I was trying to point out (maybe poorly) that there are other situations we can extract a lot of value, and the result of building a big multiway pot where everyone folds on the river may not be super common, but it's about as common as hitting the flush and stacking our opponent IMO.

I never said or meant to imply "This example is a typical hand when you play AXs; rather, this example shows one way of building a pot without stacking anyone."

We also win lots of small pots when one or two opponents peel and give up on the turn, sometimes we make TP which is often good enough against weak opponents who play in a straightforward manner, occasionally we make top and middle/bottom pair, and we have excellent barreling opportunities.

------------------------------------

As far as Ed treating the first four positions as basically the same, I have seen other respected authors doing this. Just off the top of my head, Jonathan Little does this in "Strategies for Beating Small Stakes Poker Cash Games;" specifically, he provides charts for EP, MP, CO, and BTN. And in "Bluffs" he does the same. But he's not suggesting play the same hands in the first four positions; rather, the charts are a general starting point, add more hands in later positions and remove more hands UTG. I haven't read The Course (ordered it, arriving in a couple days), but I bet Ed does not say "play these exact hands in first four positions." I have read most of his books and he is very big on adjusting to your opponents rather than playing from a chart or list. In EP, start with those hands, and adjust based on exact position and the tendencies of your opponents.

It's also worth noting compared to the differences between what you should open on the button and cutoff, 1 seat apart, or between the cutoff and hijack, the differences between what you play UTG and MP when it's folded to you are minor.

It's an oversimplification. Better would be to say the difference between BTN and CO is greater than the difference between HJ and UTG.

Like "It's also worth noting compared to the differences between what you should open on the button and cutoff, 1 seat apart, or between the cutoff and hijack, the differences between what you play UTG and MP when it's folded to you are minor."

Look up

Shai,

That's just GG's default sig. Sometimes he puts other funy stuff in there.

GexplainingthejokeruinsitimoG

I don't know what this Edward fella says but the main value of suitedness comes from your ability to continue on turns. It's not as much about actually making flushes or anything (which I mean yea is cool) its about maintaining/improving your turn equity and therefore increasing your ability to continue barreling or at least not folding.

This is very apparent in plo where AA67 on 348 is a monster compared to bare AA67 which is likely a fold (in large live multiway pots) This is because half of turn cards give us the nfd, which means we can continue/commit. We don't have to hit our flush otr, it's likely we have the best hand, but our nfd allows is the equity to continue vs. villains whole range.

Two NL examples:

1

2/5 100bb eff

Hero $20 with AK or AK
Villain calls otb

Flop T25

Hero $30
Villain calls

Turn is any , J, Q, we can bet/bluff again with AK and get tons of folds from villains floats/2nd pairs/pocket pairs etc, and when we don't get folds we've built a big pot that can backdoor the nuts.

With bare AK we can't bet all spade turns bc we'd be bluffing too much with not enough equity

Remember the more real equity your hand has the less fold equity you actually need.

2

2/5 100bb eff

Villain $20 ep
Hero calls otb with AJ or AJ

Flop: 4JK

Villain bets $30
Hero calls

We can call a second barrel on all turns which is really valuable to us. Rememer we don't actually always have to hit our flush (because villain could still be bluffing), but our increased equity on the turn allows us to call a second barrel.

If we always call a second barrel with AJ we will certainly be calling too much, even though villain is going to be bluffing some of the times (AQ/QT/AT)

This times a million. Ed Miller's got this one right. AJo is a terrible hand from UTG. 76s is way better. I feel like tight players have a hard time throwing away these hands that have strong absolute strength even if they don't play that well in certain spots.

Preach.

If you're just open-folding AJo in a typical 9-handed live game, seems a bit too tight to me. Not to say you don't run into tough/close spots with it, but there's still value to be had on most J high and A high flops, and if you're playing your 67s type hands, you just might have an aggressive enough image to get the value that AJo deserves. And regardless of what you have, when you open UTG, there will always be fine spots to cbet/barrel so long as it doesn't go like 5way or more, but if that's often happening then AJo is sure to be a range-crusher.

AJo and KQo won't be good opens in EP if opponents are tight, aggressive and competent and stacks are deep.

However, in games where they are loose, passive and incompetent they telegraph their TPTK+ hands so obviously that you can get out of the way even OOP. The trick is not to not be over aggressive with your 1pair hands, particularly the weaker top pairs. A little deception on our part also goes a long way to confusing bad players into thinking their K4s or 2nd pair is good. Just don't hit TPGK and go for getting 100bb+ stacks into the pot!

The underlying reason AJo/KQo have value vs bad players is these bad players' ranges are so wide they include way more second best AX KX QX JX than competent players so you are dominated proportionally less than you would be vs competent TAGS. At the same time the bad players can't get away from all their weak top pairs or even second pairs because they can't hand read and lack discipline.

In my 1/2 game there are times I can open to £15 UTG and get 4 callers half of whom will happily flat A2+ K9+ K2s+ Q9+ Q2s+ J8+ J2s+. There are also times even AQo is pretty marginal from EP. Got to stay aware of game conditions and adjust accordingly.

Hitting TPGK against these ranges combined with these players' transparent play is easily +EV.

I can see why she doesn't like me, but mpethybridge was another matter.

Wow this post of mine got a lot of responses so I'll try answer them all at once.

The book doesn't specify but seems to be talking about typical 1/2 and 2/5 spots so probably 100 to 200 bb deep. And yes I agree as you get deeper being able to make nuttish hands (like suited hands) becomes more valuable and high percentage mediocre hands become less valuable. And yes suitedness is useful just was saying I wouldn't put as much emphasis on it. Was only disagreeing that typical games are deep enough for this to be super important.

Also wasn't trying to attack the book. Most of his advice seems good and I'd actually say I play a fairly similar style and similar preflop percentage (although I'm slightly tighter pre) and Ed did say the percentage is more important than the exact hands although I still don't like the default hands he lists. My reason for reading his book and posting about this was to see if there's improvements I could make to my game and this was one area in the book that was really different from how I play. For the record I've broken even at 2/5 over a smallish sample size (although I've run god awefull over that stretch) and been a significant winning player over a large sample at both 1/2 and 1/3. I'm pretty sure I'll be a decent winning player at 2/5 when the cards even out but not sure my win rate will be as high as I want which is why I'm analyzing my play.

Have thought about being a little more deceptive about how I play my hands although I'm not sure that every player pays that close attention. I've noticed at 1/2 most players don't pay attention at all, you can fold for 3 hours strait and when you raise you'll still get called by 6 people. At 1/3 and from what I've seen at 2/5 people people seem to pay attention to how loose/tight you are but don't necisarily pay attention to other things. I know this because I've heard many of them say things like "this guy never bluffs" which I find hilarious since I'm usually one of the biggest bluffers at the table. But they assume that cause I only play value hands pre (cause everyone is a call station pre). But I use my image to bluff a lot post where people play more balanced.

Anyways thanks all for all the replies.

If I'm folding AJo and KQo but am playing non value hands that someone else is folding..ie JTs, T9s, 98s, 87s, and 65s then we are actually playing an identical number of hands, it's just that I am playing hands that are going to play better on a variety of different boards and runouts. If there is one position that it's ok to play "too tight" from (and I think most play too loose from) it's UTG. I assure you that when I'm in late position my range opens up significantly wider than this.

Not sure if you're serious or not but don't you find it incredibly boring to play super tight?? Not to mention that you get better faster by playing more hands. Plus, the best players in the world play a lot of hands (particularly in late position, but also defending out of the blinds), even when they are playing other elite players. In low stakes live games, playing more hands gives bad players an opportunity to make massive mistakes, so i think its ok to play hands that are slightly -ev (small mistake) if opponents play well, because they often enough wont play well. Playing super tight preflop is basically like using training wheels, and its a pretty limiting strategy. Slightly off topic here, sorry.

Probably not appropriate to criticize GG for his tight playing style. If you feel the need to criticize him it would be more appropriate to join the rest of us that pile it on him in the winrates thread and chat thread.

Gbeenplayingtightsince1935G

+1

The "clueless NL noob" I'm referring to is myself.

GcluelessNLnoobG

Almost everyone at the table is there to have fun. And almost everyone at the table loses long term. If the strat is to have fun, then sure, play every hand (hey, perhaps raise blind, that's fun plus I'm sure it will put us in a lot of learning experience spots postflop). Winning poker is boring poker, imo.

There's a recent strat thread regarding boring shortstacking where at least one person in that thread has posted a really impressive results giraffe, which I'm sure most of us would be extremely jealous of.

Playing loosely depends a lot on table conditions. If all your opponents are ******ed and will hand you money postflop, then by all means, get into a pot for as cheap as possible with them and get that money. This used to be the general makeup of my 1/3 NL table. And even though my table is still as loose as it ever was preflop, most opponents at my table are a *lot* better at postflop than their counterparts were years ago. So, I'm trying to adapt to this. I've decided to go the tighter-is-right route, which I believe is best in these conditions. There will be those who disagree.

You have a delusional view of where your money comes from if you're suggesting that other elite players would play other elite players, especially OOP to blind "defends", in a low stakes game where the rake is crippling. Here's a simple example of that: You raise to $15, you get a call HU; you bet $20 into $30, they call; you bet $40 into $70, they fold. The pot is $70, where my room now collects its maximum 10% rake up to $7, plus the BBJ drop of $1, plus I throw them a $1 tip, so I actually only get $61 back. Of the $35 I won off my opponent, I actually only got to keep $26 of it. So taxed 26%. Do we really think we're that much better than our other "good" opponents to outrun that tax? I don't.

GimoG