Probably about 2/3 pot.
Then I'd check or call a small be on river.

Remember that the pot was 3-way on the flop - we raise an amount which seems strong yet still lets us get away from the hand if the Button 3-bets this flop.

Basically - we force the BTN to define his hand.

I do this!

A good session ... bankroll over $700

First of all, I didn't really feel like playing tonight so when my bankroll topped $700 I decided to just call it a day. I also feel like I played almost flawless poker and picked up around 5.5 BI's. This represents my biggest winning day this year.



My biggest lost came after getting K6 vs. AA on a KQ6 flop with 74% equity in a limped pot.

My biggest winner, keeping the fish in on the flop:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?5125358

Overall, I just felt like I made the right plays given my reads on the table. For example, here I fold the uber nut straight:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?5125369

After discussing some hands with Wishie and doing a sweat with Matt, I made some subtle adjustments to my game and it definitely paid off.

Moving away from Rush ...

That said, I won't be playing Rush anytime soon. Right now, it's still too big of an unknown for me and too many players from higher limits come down and play 25NL rush. As Wishie said in one of our conversations: A big part of your edge comes from the difference in the reads that you and your opponents are able to establish of one anther. This is where I feel that my edge is much higher playing vs. the player pool at 25NL. The edge in my reads on Rush is much smaller.

On the other hand, the 25NL regular games have been very good and one thing that no one seems to be talking about ATM is that the last update didn't just include Rush poker - it also included increasing the min buy-in from regular tables to 35 BB's and for the deep tables to 75 BB's.

This means that fewer deep games are running but it also means that the traditional short-stackers are gone from the regular games. This is great for overall playability. Massive props to FTP for this - it's amazing how much better the games are running right now.

verneer.. great stuff. learned a lot about button play.

you gonna do a post on blind play?

great stuff + 1.
to be continued.

verneer just wanted to thank you for your advice to stick it out in 10NL. below you can see my results at 10NL. as you can see from my gaph i was never down 40 buyins playing 10NL and it was a typo







please let me know your thoughts compared to my 5NL because it's almost time to move up a level to 25NL.

nice heater milbs

I'm not the expert , so feel free to ignore my advice I recently started a fresh playing $10 NL 6 max on Full Tilt. My intention was to play 20,000 hands to evaluate roughly where I was at. I know it isn't a massive sample size, but I felt it would give me a rough Idea. I was in no rush to move up, I really wanted to work hard on my game to improve.

I had a graph looking similar to yours after around 10k hands, beating it for around 12BB per/100. After the 20k hands it was down to around 10BB/100, which I felt was a decent winrate. My bankroll was around $900 which I felt was comfortable for $25 NL. So I moved up, and got absolutely smashed. There were a fair few coolers early on, and it really knocked my confidence, but I definitely spewed tons. $25 NL is much tougher than I expected, I used to beat $50 NL a few years back for a small amount so I thought I would breeze it.

$25 stack seems so much more expensive when you get stacked. It shouldn't because it is still 100 bb, but it did. I lost a fair bit of the roll I had built. I cashed out a little in the end, and left myself $350 to start at $10 NL again.

My advice is, if you aren't in a rush to move up, finish 20k hands at $10 NL, see where you are then, more than likely how much you are beating the games, you will have a little more padding for $25 NL, because it is tougher than $10 NL for sure.

Excellent thread, I have read it all several times. I hope to contribute a lot more now, as it fits perfectly what I am hoping to achieve.

Playing Rush Poker the last week seems to have helped my game quite a bit, something I didn't expect due to the nature of Rush. It has helped me make better reads based on betsizing and timing tells, as well as being able to read boards a load better, because that was all the information that was given to me now. I used to rely on my HUD and not really pay that much attention that those kind of reads. I feel like if I would go back to normal 25NL, i would be able to get a much higher winrate than I used to, just because of this.

Verneer, do you think being too HUD-reliant and not paying enough attention to betsizing, timing and board texture is a common leak for uNL regs? Do you think playing HUD-less can improve our game greatly and we should try it sometimes?

Anyone else noticed this in their own game?

can someone write down the range for opening against loose/passive players, beacause that image dissapered from the original post before I got the chance to print it out.

Lenny-T - I agree with everything you said. I do think that the Rush experience has made me a better player overall.

What Would You Do? (Conclusion)
A 25NL hand played on Full Tilt on January 26, 2010.

88 on the 429 5 board:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btfcfZs1aSg

I discuss the bet sizing on the turn - I think it's the key to the hand.

I agree and like what you did on the turn(except the raise you actually made obv). I think anywhere between $3,25 and $4 is ok.

I do think we should get value on the river for 1/4 PSB. I don't really like checking behind when his calling range is SO weak and basically any pair. He could even show up with A high. I don't think his range includes a lot of 9's here because his betsizing is just way off to be top pair here. Betting another 1/4 isn't going to make him fold his worse pairs and basically only folds out complete air(missed draws). I don't think he is capable of picking up on our betsize tell and c/shove as a bluff here ever. I think checking behind on the river misses out on a ton of value(well, maybe not a ton, but 1/4 PSB is still better than no 1/4 PSB).

Any specific reason why you didn't continue with your read on the river?

Do you go 1/2 pot here rather than 2/3 specifically to keep the draws in? At half pot are you not giving the draws legitimate odds to continue?