Hi folks,

A quick questions, does the latetst version of Pokerhands work with Ongame?
Been playing 5CD for only 2 weeks or so and it would help I think.

I miss Pokerstars

Banned?

I would guess American.

Yes, Bjornar is right...American for 43 years, shut out of Pokerstars for 19 months and counting.

The traffic on Merge is pathetic.

mighty fine stratchat. I have a basic theory question. how does one construct an exploitve strategy against a static strategy using opponent? For example, as sometmes seen at lowest stacks, player open limps any raise worthy hand by position , excluding only pat hands which obviously must be raised, and including quads and strong semi-bluff type hands ie. 12 and 15 card draws and some ace high flush draws.

Pat hands and hands like quads are not always raising hands, especially in early position against aggressive opponents. Take and update notes on your opponents to determine their raising/calling ranges from various positions. You can exploit your more aggressive opponents tendencies by "sandbagging" your huge hands and re-raising once the action returns to you. You can also exploit your straightforward opponents by pegging their exact call/raise threshold, and simply raise a weak caller when you have his range beat.

Semi-bluff raise flush draws occasionally (Ace-high) when everyone is in the pot (the best value if you hit), or as a random steal play from the button, making sure to check your notes for big blind fold percentage.

to conplete the example fixed strategy we are seeking to counter , so as to lose the minimum when behind and make the most when ahead , and abstracting from or ignoring the other players in a full 6max limit 5card draw game : player calls raise if his hand is as good as or better than the median hand in the optimal range for the position of the opener , and never raises ; player calls three bet with the a hand as good as or better than the median hand in his own range, and never caps ; post draw the player plays optimally.

Today I played draw poker for the first time since grade school. It happened because I accidentally signed up for it thinking it was a holdem tournament. Was really upset with myself but ended up finishing second. Really intrigued by this, really liked all the micro meta decisions at play whereas in holdem for instance it's a lot more automatic.

However, I was really surprised by how seemingly easy the competition was, I mean it seemed much easier than a holdem mtt at the same stakes. Now before people bitch about sample size and variance can we explore whether or not these games have weaker fields? I always assumed these games would have stronger fields because it's more prone to specialists instead of the lay person. Thoughts?

Also, only once at the final table did I stand pat and it was with a full house. It was heads up by then and the chip leader thought I was bluffing and shoved all in with just a pair. That brought up the chip stacks pretty evenly. We then agreed to a deal and then later (when it no longer mattered) just to mess around with him as a joke I stood pat but this time with junk and he again shoved all in.

Is this a normal thing? Do people often time out and it shows as standing pat or are the frequency at which people use that as a scare tactic significantly greater than when you actually have a made hand.

It also got me thinking a bit about standing pat with something that will usually win a showdown anyway like three of a kind just so it expands your range a bit more and would then let you use it more frequently as that stated semi bluff and again as just pure garbage.

No it is not a normal play to shove all in against a pat hand. Well not at the micro cash games where I play anyway

I haven't played enough draw tournaments to tell you if they are weaker than nl tournaments. My guess is that they might be a bit weaker when people who don't normally play find a reason to play. During different tournament series and so on.

Draw is a lot more complex than most people think so it is a shame that it isn't more popular

qft

I thought about this and tried it and found basically you lose all the action you would normally get postdraw. You still get some hero calls but not as much as if you had played the hand normally and drew the appropriate number of cards (3 for a pair, 1 for anything else in almost every situation)

A guy with a low two pair for example may not ever call a guy who is pat, whereas if the pat guy drew 1 instead, 2 pair guy might call with a significant frequency thinking pat/draw1 guy was on a draw pre.