^ Thanks a lot for the kind words. You must have a pretty interesting background as well! Always great to see other poker players successfully reintegrating to "normal life" (whatever that is)



As soon as I get complimented on work ethic I totally laze out tonight. Got mashed in a few spots and decided I couldn't endure tonight. Played a ton this weekend (when I usually take it light) so it makes sense that I'm feeling a bit burnt out. Not going to push myself too hard today for that reason. Hopefully, I can play a normal ~4hrs tmrw instead of the 2.5 I barely managed tonight since I have some plans Wednesday evening and will likely take the whole day off.


5.13 lazy/tilted/dontwanna



Hand 1) Hand that ruined my mental game for the night

Vrs known whale who always god runs me. When he donkshoves river... tbh I think it's a fold. But he's repping slow-played flop flush (very hard) and rivered 2 outers (JJs and AJo). I think he probably has those hands near 90% so it's simply a fold. If he checks, it's quite an easy jam. Should have taken my lol 1.1x pot flop/shove turn line to fade 8% equity (joke. my line is fold but gotta fold to donkshove as tilting as it is).

I've always found hands that I put in 50% of my stack when my hand is the eff. nuts on the flop/turn, but then on the river my hand strength changes to a bluff catcher (due to run-out or action) to be incredibly frustrating and difficult.




Hand 2) Vrs another known whale who has 12% 3b according to my hud but tonight was playing extra saucy 25% over small sample. Obviously, it's probably more narrow vrs EP but his button 3b was quite wide. Not not going with QQ of course. And justttt kings. Le sigh




It's a shame to be such a mental game fish this evening with things going my way overall (although very swingy). Games were not so good/plentiful and given that I'm playing bigger stakes playing A game is super important. Poker is hard.

Difficult night in the office. Played really well, but found myself in only difficult spots and had very few clean value betting opportunities. My showdown line (which is the one I actually win from) was break-even over 3k hands which is kind of disastrous for me.

That makes 2 losing sessions in a row which is always a bummer. Thankfully, I get to break up my play with a much needed day off tomorrow.

6.14 losing day on good play



Hand 1) My biggest win of the day +86bb. And my "above EV" hand of the day.
Plan was to jam any turn. Of course bink 3 outer.




Hand 2) Mediocre bluff getting thru vrs meh reg

For some reason in game, I thought I turned a double guttershot. Looking back I merely had, a crappy 2nd nut gutter. But at least I don't block clubs (his folding range) and I block the nuts 8x. Guy has a history of very betting turns extremely (too?) thinly. I ought to (but don't) be c/r'ing the turn quite widely against this guy. Plan was to jam brick rivers.




Hand 3) Annoying reg puts me in tough/annoying spot

I can fold flop. But I actually think nut gutter+bdfd+potential of winning vrs a give up makes this hand a good candidate to continue. I don't think it's particularly great for him to have a flop c/r as pfr range, but whatever he's more than allowed to do whatever he wants and if he's balancing it's a perfectly sound strategy.

I don't *have* to stab here with AK high, but I wanted to put some pressure on 99-66 type stuff on the flop. Also with the bdfd, I can barrel tons of turns.

Not running well enough to hit the river. But running poor enough to hit the turn . Then again I probably had RIO on K/A (which I'm probably not finding a call with anyways).




Hand 4) Running into loose/passive reg's top of range
Think my line is really good. Put any KX/fd in tough spot. Trap fun player's money in the pot. Also weak reg might raise set on flop some % of time (although with fish behind maybe not).




Hand 5) Playmaster reg taking "interesting" line

Think my hand is too face-up to bluff river.




Hand 6) Bravery vrs reg who only folds on the river
Guy doesn't fold to 3bs cbs or dbs all that often. So when I decided to cbet here, the plan was to follow thru very often. Kinda the best river card to bluff on too.

Woulda been tears if he just snaps river with 77 :/. But we've played enough together and I think he's reasonable enough to perceive (correctly) that I'm not bluffing river here all that often.

Unfortunately, on fullblown break-even/slightly losing mode at the moment - not a full blown downswing but still frustrating. Feel like I'm playing okay just keep running into nut-value when I'm bluff catching and bluffing into the nuts when I (rarely) run a bluff.

Last night was break-even and this afternoon's session was pretty grim. In total a 10-15bi slide (depending on stake)

6.16-Early 6.17



Hand 1) Extremely grim turn vrs over-agro but decent reg
Guy 3bets btn/co an insane amount like 20%+. I can probably 4b/c, but call3b is fine too.

Semi-bluffing the turn. I do think he has a bunch of diamond flushes and some FHs, but he's the kind of guy I think bets the turn with KK no diamond and snap checks back rivers (or goes for 3 streets). And when he gets jammed on OTT a lot of the JJ-KK (with and without diamonds) is in a ton of pain




Hand 2) Calling down good reg

Wanted to see diamonds... le sigh. This is probably my best bluff catcher. Although I'll occasionally x/call flop with nuts




Hand 3) Going thin vrs overagro fun player
(flop was a gii)




Hand 4) Vrs 65/35/12% 3bet... sigh




Hand 5) Balancing x/back range. Lucky he mashed turn




Hand 6) Typical runout for the last few days, vrs nitty/meh reg

Balancing flop xback. Really bad board for me. Plan is to jam bricks of course... He's not betting river with JJ/QQ. So it's like FHs and occasional bluff. Can't really fold this hand, but I don't love it.




Hand 7) Bluffing turn vrs overagro, giving up river, then deciding to bluff catch (spades)

I think the turn bluff is pretty bad and probably a mistake vrs this guy. Goes into the camp of "maybe I should still occasionally bluff everyone". Then the river pairs QX and I think his value range is insanely narrow. Looking for spades. These days, never. It's probably not the best call but getting 4:1 and trips being hard to make + his btn 3b% is insane over a big sample + he might fold some pairs on the turn = had to look him up...

Against an insanely agro button, maybe it's better to lead flop as a semibluff to fold out overs (and we can gii comfortable against overpairs) but I hate taking unbalanced lines like that...




Hoping this run ends soon. Losing sux

Played a very swingy night of poker. Despite winning another disappointing result. Losing so many all-ins with great equity and hitting some nasty runouts.

Seems like everyone has decided to open up their games all at once. Tons of guys a few months ago I had marked super nit are now 3-betting like 2-3x as much as they used to. And actually barreling postflop with decent frequencies. Really ups the variance. At 2-4 all the regs seem like boarder-line spewbots. Still trying to decide which ones I think are doing this in a +EV clever/agro/good way and which of them are bad agro. Still tough to play against in "discovery mode".


6.17 (night) the swings r real



Hand 1) Call down vrs agro reg, hand kinda face-up but too strong to fold




Hand 2) Same deal same guy




Hand 3) Vrs nit who has recently opened it up a bunch, too strong to fold, hate calling this guy down "light". Figure he has to be jamming some AK/bluffs here...




Hand 4) Vrs very good reg. Always seems to get there

On flop plan was to go for 2 very thin streets (to get val from 66-TT). On the turn it was to get 3 streets. On the river I lose to too much/hard to hero when bdfd gets there.




Hand 5) Awful spot vrs fish. Decide fish rarely semi-bluff so cawl




Hand 6) First hero call in days gone right. Vrs loose/frustrated fish short handed




Hand 7) Awful spot vrs 2/4 reg

Still unsure what I think of the guy overall. He 3bets overall a ton. The button a ton. The button vrs mp a ton. KQo seems like a very good hand to 4b light. Flop meh. I have at least bdfd (crappy one) equity and 2 overs. Seems okay to cbet/doesn't have to work often. My range should look insane-o strong. Turn one of the best cards but I think value betting is a bit thin. I'm kind of scared he's called a 4b ip with some suited connector (seems awful) or suited ace (only one or 2 that make sense though rest would be awful). But I have a top pair and a flush blocker in a 4bet pot. Think check/folding is pretty bad, so I c/c. Don't really see how he has any bluffs tbh. Felt a tiny bit owned here. Still unsure of what I think of his pf line. If he thinks I'm sometimes light, wouldn't jamming AK be preferable to just take the FE preflop? I understand the 4bcall since AK dominates a lot of bluffs, but it's going to be hard to showdown the winner against reasonable cbet/dbs/barrels with equity.




Hand 8) Overagro bad reg displayed why he's overagro bad

One of the worst bet/3bais I've seen in a while from a 1-2 reg




Hand 9) Rare gin river deep vrs good reg

Really bad river c/c by the reg tbh. I think he's one of those guys that's very good/robotic/solid 100bb deep. But get him a lil deeper and he's not great (not saying that I am either...). But he beats nothing otr. I'm not bluffing MW with a fish in the SB. River does complete many combos draws. He has the bottomest set deep (massive rio). I think he needs to employ pot control on an early street or at least do something to try to iso fish, not just pump money in pot post. You learn this from PLO (hurray 1week foray), but you can't act like hand x is the nuts on a board where the nuts are going to change really often and you're going to be oop on the river. When he nit-pots the turn it's obvious he has a set.




Hand 10) Another 2-4 play master puts me in a difficult 4b pot spot

I block KQ/AK so decide to go 1/3 pot cbet. I probably mix cbetting my KX here with checking my KX here. Perhaps a flop c/c looks stronger than a flop bet. Annoying.




I'm very close to month "EV highs" so I must be playing okay. Frustrating to see the actual dollar earnings materially lower but that's out of my hands. Just gotta keep grinding and hope for the best. Saving my rungood for Vegas

Hand 10: Do you ever consider a triple here? You block AK/KQ considerably, and 88+ will continue on the flop.

Think you will have lot of success with the Vegas cash games regardless, GL closing out the rest of the month.

How often are you getting 3bet in the games you play?

I dislike double/triple here. My range looks insanely strong and he's still in the hand. If he's floating/bluffing here good on him. I'm never folding JJ+. I also don't expect him to fold JJ+ often here.

I would rather bluff if turn checks thru since a lot of guys cap themselves but they still might not fold pocket pair otr.

At 200 - 16%, at 400+ - 21%

18% in my games. Wasn't sure how much more aggro it got preflop at higher stakes.

Finishing up an extremely long day of poker. I heatered in cash super hard and ran deep in both MTTs I played (suppose that's heat too). Even though I made a bunch of money today I'm a bit disappointed with the MTT finishes. I really wanted to win which is so frickan impossible to do.

Ran so terrible down the stretch when it really counted finishing 7th in the first and 14th in second... le sigh. On the plus side, I think I played really well around the bubble finding some good spots to apply pressure and really chip up.

Will post hands tmrw too lazy/tilted to go back through

6.19 heat

Nice day man.

What tourneys were those?

glgl

I played the wsop $30k and the party $50k sunday gtds. Both are $200 buy-ins.




Same hands from yesterday.

Tourney bust-out 1) Final table with 8 left. Don't see what else I can do. Obviously the guy over-calling the 3b ai in the big blind is super fishy. But I have AKss...




Tourney hand 2) Absolutely grim runout
I was second or third in chips with like 14 remaining here.

Decided the guy seemed splashy agro. Thought checking to induce was better than c-betting here. In hindsight, he had 5% flop equity. I think I played this hand superb. Just can't fade. Think x/r flop is too strong. If I knew he turned a flush draw obviously turn donk for protection would be good. But I wanted value from his spew/air/my hand looks weak.



Tourney bust-out 2 didn't save but I reshoved button against hijack with KTss with 10bb. He tanked and called with QTo.

Flop came 9J2ss but then the turn was an offs00t k, river brick sending me to the showers.

2nd in chips to out so fast with 15 left


Some cash hands


Hand 1) Vrs agro fish, great flop, great hold
Standardish, but when you're running awful you don't get spots this good




Hand 2) Taking a good line with a set in 3bet pot vrs decent reg

Getting spewed into by good reg. And then he takes a questionable river line with a bluff catcher. Think the 3bet is pretty terrible sb/btn with this hand. Quite surprised to see a guy who doesn't often get that out of line show up with a hand this bad.

Obviously, not my fave run-out. But I have some bluffs and lol checking back set. While I have a few bluffs I don't think it's enough for him to go c/c here with this




Hand 3) Phew




Hand 5) Vrs weak/loose/stationy reg
My range isn't in love with texture on the turn. Figure check is good with this hand. With spr/texture, in hindsight, I kind of wish I went 2/3 pot otf and shove any turn. I can do that with a lot of my range.




Hand 6) Prescient give up otr
Vrs nitty guy




Hand 7) Bluffing @ paired board
Wanted folds more than to make the flush. Not sure if I'm jamming flush completing rivers tbh... game time decision




Hand 8) Rare triple with no blockers
Thought the run-out was really good for my range




Have a few errands to take care of then I'm going to play an afternoon session then a big night session. Hope my heater continues. Winning is much more fun than losing

Amen to that

Nice hands and thread!

I'm very curious about the turn overbet/river giveup in H6, as it seems like bit of a weird line/sizing to take. Care to elaborate on thought process in that one?

Sure I can give some color.

It's something I'll mostly do IP, but might do oop in wide range spots.

But basically, I'm polarizing my range OTT repping nuts/air/semi-bluff. I'm applying insane pressure to any 1pair+draw in his range (eg JT-KT or something like AJ, K9 etc). Even something like 2pr becomes a bluff catcher. He's ahead of air/draw part of my range with 2pr, but wayyyy behind the nut part (4 outs).

When the river pairs the board, it's extremely bad for the range I was representing OTT and potentially improves a lot of his set/2pr bluff catchers OTT to boats otr. A clever villain can crai this river realizing I shouldn't have full houses in my range since a turn overbet with a set is kind of an over-rep. That's not to say I can't sometimes occasionally overbet the turn with a set, but I'm not in love with that play as straights are really strong hands here and sets are strong but not nuts strong.

Anyways, had the river not paired the board, I mayyyy have shoved river here. Props to villain for c/c'ing the turn overbet with the nuts (the hand I was repping). He would have gotten paid OTR. He also demonstrated that he protects his turn c/c range (for when I overbet) so in the future I have to think twice about bluffing the river.

Most players will snap c/r the turn here to an overbet with the nuts thinking "omg I have the nuts and he's betting huge, I can get paid!!! And what if the board pairs or the flush comes in then I'm going to be lost or lose action". But it's actually not the best play imo to c/r the turn with the nuts when I'm repping a polar range. Better to weaken your perceived range by c/c'ing the turn, and then potentially inducing bluffs otr and being able to snap. Again as I mentioned before, showing down that your ranges are protected by the nuts in a different spots makes you tougher to play against.

Hope that makes sense and helps

Another day another absolute heater/bink-fest. Running hot and mashing shouldn't be too celebrated as it come and goes, and actually I feel like I play not my best when I'm running my best.

Some "embarrassing" hands to post of me just god-running other people. It really is nice to mash the turn/river and get there as opposed to constantly have that happen against you.

6.20 return of EV



Hand 1) Interesting spot vrs reg

Differed to "this is basically the top of my range" and made the call. Think he expected me to bet straights/flushes here otr and thus that my checking range was capped to pair. I also expect him to bet his sets otf so this felt more bluffy to me. Didn't expect what he had, don't entirely hate it.




Hand 2) FINALLY able to punish overagro reg

It's clear his 5b jam is a bluff here. Think TT not the best hand to gii here in narrow range spots as a bluff




Hand 3) Me doing what overagro reg did in previous hand :P

AQss much better choice to bluff with imo (probably performs similarly to JJ) but muchhhh better than gii with TT (suited blockers ftw)




Hand 4) 3b db vrs rec




Hand 5) Mash

Think when the reg bet/calls the rec player's minraise he's almost always folding to my jam. I'm almost never raising the flop here with the fun player behind




Hand 6) Embarrassing mash

Villain was an agrofish with a low fold to 3b and a massive wwsf. Probably not the greatest call in the world =/




Hand 7) Mash

SB was a whale who didn't fold to cbets. Guy IP with a nitfish who folds a lot to cbets. Figured I could bet flop for value/isolation against the stationfish.




Hand 8) Awful by me... just fkn cbet jfc
Whale IP with big stab, wanted to c/r... stuipd. River was my only clear mistake yesterday. Probably had some winner's tilt inducing the call




Hand 9) Interesting spot vrs decent regular
Think the best play is c/r turn here or fold. Guy is on the underbarrely side, figured he was pretty loaded here and just decided to concede this one. Another option is to generate a c/c turn, lead river range but idk seems kinda spastic/unbalanced to me. C/r turn, barrel river (on brick) is intended to fold out sets/2pr and I've learned the hard way even against good (but not great) players trying to fold these hands out is bad news




Hand 10) Catching lucky part of unknown fish's range




Hand 11) Making a loose call vrs agro reg




Hand 12) Bluff catching vrs loose fish (but not on the most agro side). Then vbetting river

Hate this flop spot generally. The c/r 3 ways is often so nutted. Then I have to worry about the reg behind. I often snap check behind river but decided to try going to for "thin" value. What's really weird about this spot is if the rec jams the river it's a super gross spot and might (probably is) be a fold




Hand 13) Mash
"cooler"




Enjoying this run while it lasts!

I really like the play in hand 5. I do the same thing at 10NL online but I'm too scared to do it in a 2/5 game live...lol.

2 questions about Hand 5:

Firstly, do you really think your call/backraise all-in line looks believable when a good player would/should never really flat the cbet with 2p+ on that kind of a wet board? Maybe people slowplay this online, but live, almost never.

Secondly, why do you prefer to flat (vs raise) the cbet on such a great flop for your hand in the first place? You're likely not getting more action on a spade turn, and probably not on an 8 either. J or T are probably not even outs. I know you said there's a "fun player" behind, but let's say he wasn't, won't you always be raising/gii 100bbs on these flops?

I'm lucky to have great viewership. You guys ask some awesome/hard hitting questions.

I have a tonnnn of history with the opener/cbettor in this hand. I think he's smart enough/perceptive enough/paying enough attention/seen it before that I keep my ranges wide and compressed (by compressed I mean not splitting into calling/raising) in a lot of spots - meaning on this type of texture I can call the cbet with something as weak as 2 overs and a bdfd but I might also have top set.

Now that doesn't mean I never fast-play a set, air, or a flush draw. My raising ranges are also balanced and wide. It's just a matter of %-ages. A lot of the time in NL, you want to be applying a mixed strategy with a lot of your hands so you can show up with lots of different types of hands in different spots.

Anyways, what I was alluding to in my first post, is that with the recreational weak player in the big blind I almost never want to fast-play the nuts here. Fish are known to call a flop cbet 3 ways as weak as 2 overs and then to stick all the chips in with turned top pair. Fast-playing the nuts and denying them this chance is criminal.

So, if I'm almost never value raising the flop, I shouldn't bluff raise or semi-bluff raise either. That doesn't mean I can't, but someone good will realize this.

Anyways, to answer your first question I think my hand looks exclusively like sets and good flush draws when I back-raise jam the flop.


To answer your second question is a bit more complicated. You have to consider many factors before a flop raise. I'll list a few below

• opener's position/range
• your position/perceived range
• how many players are in the pot
• if you're splitting your range into raising/calling, are you leaving your calling range capped/weak?
• are the nuts likely to change on a later street
• what types of hands they'll continue with and your equity against that range
• your line on various turns/rivers against the specific player type
• and much more

Generally, you're going to want to use mixed strategies in a lot of spots. Sometimes raising the actual nuts, air, draws and sometimes slow-playing those hands.

Another consideration is every time you raise and the opponent chooses to continue, generally you're narrowing their range to stronger hands. A lot of the time you want to keep them wider, weaker, and bluffing (especially the agro types who will ASSUME that you capped yourself by not raising). Generally, against passive players, you'll want to fast-play strong hands before scare-cards hit.

You also mention "action killing" cards. A point you're largely missing is an action killing card for your actual nut holdings (when you're going to generate folds) is a bluffing opportunity for another part of your range. They can't both over-fold when you have it, but then over-defend when you're bluffing.


One final thought, you talk about difference between online and live. I think without a maniacal image online, if I raise the flop here (even without the fish in the big blind) I'm not getting 3 big streets out of JJ+ with sets especially b/c my image is fairly clean. The difference against a lot of (bad) live regs and against the vast majority of live recs is that they seem to be much more sticky even against perceived big nits. So if you expect overpairs to not fold you want to pump in the money with your sets asap before the board changes.



Hope that wall of text explains a little. If you need clarifications please lmk

Man, what a response. Some great insight.

So I'm guessing it all comes down to playing online, player histories, balancing ranges, etc. etc. which mainly lacks in live games, so applying my reasoning to your game dynamics is obviously flawed.

I honestly don't even think of a great point you mentioned - those same scare cards which you're afraid to lose action on when you're nutted are good bluff cards for other parts of your range. Precisely, I don't get into such a spot that often where I would bluff those perceived scare cards because of having a tight calling range to begin with in that scenario.

For example: The board is 974ss... you might call flop with T8cc with an intention to bluff spades, but I usually don't call raises (<100bb eff stacks) in my live games with such hands, so most of my holdings would be 99/77/44/overpairs in these spots, so I don't really get into spots where I need to bluff scare cards. The play is much more straight-forward.

Do you really think it's that much of a concern in live poker though where you're playing different players often?

Your example was good. T8cc would be a fine hand to stab a flush completing turn. I wouldn't go crazy though since you don't block any flushes.

A better hand is obviously AsXx which you might cold call IP. When the flush completes and you have the As you should be fighting for that pot a lot (unless you think they have a strong hand and won't fold it).

As I mentioned before, I'm going to be fastplaying the nuts often live since I think they don't fold absolute value hands strong enough (eg overpairs, 2pairs, sets on bad boards, etc). Think that's a fine adjustment against players who don't fold enough who you won't play often with.

Thanks, great posts lately. Hope you continue to do well in the games!

Where do the NL500 hands come from? afaik Pacific/888 as the HH says, doesn't have those games? No worries if you don't want to tell.

Fair enough.

I can understand career > poker, but how can you just quit altogether when you are this beastly >:c

No problem saying. WSOP NJ. The games aren't THAT soft...

Thanks brotha. I don't know how cold turkey I'm really capable of going. And obviously I gotta a lot of <3 for this silly game. Time will tell





Last night's session was fairly uneventful. The benefit of playing on small market sites is that the games are probably softer than ROW. The downside is mostly nothing runs during the sunlight hours and with things a bit slower last night I found myself 2-4 tabling a lot. Things picked up for a couple of hours around midnightish, but didn't really get a lot going on the winning side.

I played one VERY interesting hand against a top regular who I play with quite often. I'll post some analysis below.

6.21 zzz what a difference a day makes




Hand 1) 3bet pot vrs beast reg

As mentioned above, I have tons of history with V and he's one of the best (hate to admit it :P). Preflop he's airtight, on the LAG side, but very good. Hates to fold to 3/4 bets, but also doesn't GII that light pre, capable of calling 4bets and making it work.

Postflop as the pfr, he's balancing/showdowny/but capable of bluffing with good combos/value betting thinly.

Postflop as the caller, he's also more on the showdown side of things, non-bluffy. I played a hand a few wks ago where I 3b sb/btn with KTss and he defended KQo and he got stacks on KxxssXxXx.

My plan was to x/fold ANY river. But then I gin trips and the stationy mind takes over. "I only lose to XX combos and if he's bluffing YY combos I have to call!" The guys knows I x/call flops with weak top pair in this spot a lot. I actually think in hindsight he's bluffing LESS often on this exact river, so it's even more a fold. TBH, I haven't really seen this guy in this spot get too out of line after calling a 3bet. I probably should be folding TURNS super often to him. Especially given he's CO not BTN which makes ranges even stronger.

I don't want to say I played this hand terribly and it's hard to not call good trips < FH a "cooler" in a 3bet pot. But I do think I'm making a poor call down TO this particular guy and it's definitely not a cooler in the traditional sense of the term.

Now what adjustments can I make? If I know he's going bet/bet/bet with his nuts, I can take some x/call flop lines and if turn goes x/x I should be able to win many of those pots.




Hand 2) Same V

Bluffing




Hand 3) Same V

Had to post 2 where I bluffed him to balance my range :P




Hand 4) Explo line vrs station fish




Hope games are better tonight and the heat returns

Hand 2 from a few days ago when u had KK an BB villain had 1010, can you confirm villian was betterthanu? An if so, how could you be so sure he's bluffing, could be more like, fk it have 1010 all in? I'm only slightly joking, I don't understand your absolute assumption of high level thinking going on in these some of these regs heads.