so here is a few
of
that I have picked up over the years.
1. I dont know about you guys, but i play no limit holdem, not 2+2 standard betsize holdem. Betsizing is a topic the greatest minds could probably fill a book with, but since im not writing a book and small stakes grinder, lets just scratch the surface.
Vs. regs betsizing can create awesome metagame and leveling, but here lets speak about adjusting our betsizing vs donks. First off, balancing is not important with donks and betsizing, it is so easy to level donks into making mistakes and i still see tagfish making standard betsizes in terrible places.
Ex. you open AA in the co and 37/12 aggro fish 3bets to 10bbs in the sb with a 70bb stack what is your action? Obv you wanna get all the monies in so hopefully you 4bet lol small to 22bbs or so to let him call with his whole range. (of course with reads calling or 4betting big could be better, but readless trying to "trap" the donk is useless here). Ok so he flats like a champ so we have a ~45bb pot with ~50bbs effective. Now the flop comes down dry (like 239r) and the tagfish in you decides to bet a standard amount of 27bbs or so. (note that my point here isnt to necessarily say this is bad all the time but that you need to really consider what the purpose of your betsizing is). In this spot i gaybet ~13bbs almost always. This will induce two actions, 1) he will spazz shove like a champ, or 2) he will call with K high or whatever with no real plan of action. If he decides to flat and the turn is a brick (something like 2392 board), I will check behind like always. Anytime you take away the chance for an idiot to do something stupid you are just burning $$, I mean if the republicans didnt pick Palin we wouldnt have the awesome Tina Fey impression amirite?
This is just a starting point, and what I want you to see is that if you remove the word "standard" from your vocabulary you will realize that you have so many options in so many hands every day to make much more $$.
2. Learn a different game! For most of you this will be silly propbetting or plo, but before I found the 6 max hold thems I played solely donkaments, lol i know. So I will give you guys some basic but necessary strat for these things.
Disclaimer: these things are called donkaments for a reason, nobody wants to play 7 hours to just flip against AK, but I believe if you have the patience, the profit margins in mtts are much higher than they are for us average 6max grinders. What i mean is that someone who consistenly fails to move up to 400nl might be able to score some 15k months if they really grinded these things. Also note that bankrolls, sample sizes, and variance are all considerably sicker at these things than cash games, but if you haven't ever won one or ft'ed a big one its pretty **** fun.
OK then, I am going to assume that because all of you guys play real poker, you have no problem with the early stages of mtts except for the obv full ring adjustments. That 3barrel bluff is not going to work, 3betting light is pointless, these players are 3-19x as retarded as the 6max drooler. Just play a solid ABC game in the first few levels.
So, the most useful advice I can give here is how to adjust based on stacksizes in the middle/end of mtts. (all these refer to when the antes have kicked in btw)
40+bbs= This is where you can really play like a maniac. People will generally play too tight because they cannot really just push preflop so you can put a ton of pressure with 3betting pre and calling/floating etc. (stuff we do in the 6 maximum games) Most people are not at all comfortable postflop so really go after these weak tight tendencies.
30-40bbs= You still have a very good resteal stack because you can put a ton of pressure on people, (most players arent calling off 30+ bbs late in the game without premiums) but you have to be aware that 3bet/folding with under 35bbs is generally pretty bad and something you want to avoid. If ppl are raising small you can still flat in position a decent amount but be aware you do not have room for anything too fancy, and its better if you just leave the multistreet cash game thought process out of it. Instead you want to be thinking actual preflop hand equity more and more as the stacks get smaller.
21-30bbs= you generally want to be stealing a lot of blinds in late position, but pretty tight against openers. Reason being is that you cannot 3bet without getting allin, and your stack is too big to be getting it that light in almost all situations.
14-20bbs= this is a resteal stack. What i mean is that you generally want to be tight in opening hands because you basically do not want to be opening without planning on going with your hand, because the pot will usually be big enough to justify getting it in. You do have an excellent stack for shoving over openers (either kinda wide or lol wide given image/reads)*
1-14bbs= lets get the monies in! Most people are considerably too tight with stacks these sizes given that with antes the pot justifies getting the money in in situations that sometimes seem silly. You can exploit people that do not want to bust by basically pushing anything playable from late position. Even if you do get called with the antes in the pot most of the time you will be +ev against hands decently better than yours, and enormously +ev against overall ranges.
*image/reads are super important when dealing with resteal situations. I will give a couple examples.
ex. 1= some rando 50$ tourney i was playing: I open AJo from the co decently close to the $$ bubble. A boring 14/3 nitfish tourney player (very std opponent) pushes for 18 or so bbs in the sb, and i fold.
ex. 2= 50 or so runners left in a nightly 100r on stars (I am an unknown): It folds to me on the button with A8o and 18bb's, i open for 2.5x. SB who is a well known online mtt pro shoves and covers me, i fistpump call.
Ok so we have a couple interesting dynamics here, in hand 1 the nit wants to make the money at any cost and will probably only shove 1010+,AQo+ (with 1010 and AQ being a big if) so it becomes a trivial fold. In the 2nd hand the tourney pro seeing that I am an unknown will be pushing seriously about 50% of hands at least in this spot, because he will assume I am scared of busting and will call with a really tight range, thus being +ev for him. (villain had Q8o in the hand, and would be considered a standard play against an unknown in the same sense that we dont fold AK for 100bbs)
3. Work Ethic:
Not only in the world of commerce but also in the world of ideas our age has arranged a regular clearance-sale. Everything may be had at such absurdedly low prices that very soon the question will arise whether any one cares to bid. Every waiter with a speculative turn who carefully marks the significant progress of modern philosophy, every lecturer in philosophy, every tutor, student, every sticker-and‑quitter of philosophy—they are not content with doubting everything, but "go right on." It might, possibly, be ill‑timed and inopportune to ask them whither they are bound; but it is no doubt polite and modest to take it for granted that they have doubted everything
~Soren Kierkegaard
Ok so ignore the fact that this is an intro to a book about the conflicts between rationale thought and religion, and humor me a bit. This is the 1800's and he already realizes that knowledge comes to easy to us, wtf would he think of contemporary America? How are we supposed to really ever understand the meaning of life or better ourselves if everything comes so **** easy these days?
This is obv a very large idea, but how can it be applied to poker? First let me give you a little background info on myself.
Starting in high school, I did basically the bare minimum to get by. School was lol easy so i knew i could get away with smoking a lot of bud and partying during the week, whatever though I got into a decent state college with some scholarships so I must have done something right? College starts, and while at first I kidded myself that I really wanted to learn and better myself I was really here to sleep till 2, get ****ed up all the time, meet tons of womenz, and just generally not give a **** about anything. Honestly poker and philosophy were the only things I put anytime into learning but I really wouldnt call what i did effort or sacrifice.
Within about a two month period at the start of my second senior year lol, i got about as serious as I could possibly get about a girl/decided to really take poker seriously/wanted to really destroy the LSATs. I realized i was 22 and **** it was time to grow up. Fast forward one year and i broke up with the girl/quit law school the day before orientation/decided to officially go pro. See what happened here was I took on these serious goals to feel like I was actually being grown up and successful, when i realized i would rather slit my wrists with a cheese grater than be a lawyer or get married at this point in my life.
This life rant really did have a point though which is it's really awesome to be super devoted to something but don't do it for bull**** reasons like society/what other ppl think. Just do what you want to do and you don't have to justify nothing to anyone.
So you are actually really dedicated to being a better poker player now? Now that awesome, but kierkegaard would tell you that you are FOS. With training videos/forums/the ability to play more poker in a week than some ppl could ever play means that this knowledge comes easy and is not enough. You have to do all these things and also figure out what it means to play your A game at all times. What it is like to take notes on every single tendency of each player and not to lump ppl into aggro tag, or loose passive type categories. Even the best players in this forum are burning $$ in plenty of ways and you have to go above and beyond to be successful these days.
Also note that you will have snags on the way. Earlier this year I had ~25k roll and was preparing to play higher stakes donkaments and mid stakes nl, until this little gem happened
[IMG]
[URL=http://g.imageshack.us/img75/asdfasdfsdfglf6.jpg/1/]
after several months of losing and cashing out most of my roll for real life things, I am back grinding 100nl. **** happens though, and I will grind through it with a positive attitude because at least im not like the rest of my loser friends working a 9-5 in some cubicle, kierkegaard would be proud imo.
I have learned more from ssnl than any source with regards to poker, and while i recognize that I am only a mediocre small stakes reg hope you guys found something useful in this rant
Two Plus Two
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