I seriously doubt you can be THAT card dead on that sample size. Q9s on button unopened pot. What you do? Based on your stats I wager you'll fold. How often you steal? If you want to open up your game stealing is good spot to do so as you'll be playing mostly in position then(when your button you'll always play in position). Playing in steal positions is pretty profitable. I run at about 23.53bb/100 in those situations. Even limpers ahead don't hurt all that much since they are simply adding more dead money to pot I can take most often :P

(unsurprisingly SB is least profitable spot though been running into some coolers there too).

As a rule of thumb I would avoid calling 3bets though atleast you had position. But how would you generally play if you DON'T hit your set?

Why call pf and then donkbet turn? You certainly don't look that strong when you donkbet.

Single raised pot, there's check raise against 2 and flat call to check raise. While board isn't that dry it's also not THAT wet. Alarm bells should be going off here. Maybe check raisor is doing this with 89 but that's pretty wishing thinking on that flop. But that cold call to check raise should be pretty damn scary(as it is I'm surprised he had "mere" top 2 pair).

Bet-fold should be most used line at micro's. Bet for value, fold when facing resistance. These aren't all that bluff happy players post-flop.

some hands that i open from the button

Continuation bet


Position



thanks for all advices much appriciate

Okay never limp. You are limping at UTG now.

UTG isn't too bad. It's worst spot to start with so makes sense you should be tightest there.

MP you could open up bit more to like 15% or so vpip.

CO and button you definetely need to open up more. You are in position which is great for post flop(well CO you might not always be) so you can open wide there. 20% steal fron button is LITTLE.

hmm im almost never limp :/,
the hand i had AJ and i call a raise you suggest i should 3bet right?

Sort of random thought I felt like adding. Earlier in this thread, someone said at a poker table there are three advantages you can use: hand selection, position and skill. IMO those go in the following order: 1)position, 2)skill & 3)hand selection. In my experience, letting your card edge do the trick is just not good enough. For one thing what matters really is what you do with those cards, which implies figuring how to play them vs different villains and board textures and how to bet size to target certain villain hand ranges and reactions.

Stealing pots in late position and using that positional advantage to also steal them postflop isn't going to overshadow how much money you win with big hands, but considering how rare big hands actually are I really believe it's the bread and butter of the game. Stealing the blinds two more orbits per 100 hands = 1.5BB/100 improvement to your overall winrate. That's so huge you can't pass it up.

Also, this is just some general advice, but really try not to get hung up on big hands, bad beats and fancy spots too much. The common situations that happen tons of times per session when you don't have much if anything, all the really not exciting hands are REALLY key. Try to look for every day mistakes you make a lot, common leaks etc. Basicly, big decisions and big mistakes in big pots are important when they come up, but every single seemingly small one in these pots you don't have so much stake in adds up to ridiculous amounts. The board doesn't appeal to you and the pot is small? Well, does anyone else seem to be more excited over it? How about you be the guy who takes that free money!

Edit: over a sample of 27k hands at NL10 when I was rebuilding something like a bankroll, I ran 31.6/27.9 OTB with a winrate of amost 20BB/100. A lot of that is raising limpers pretty loose, so you don't need to run that high, but just mentioning it to show you can turn a very sizeable profit playing a number of hands that currently seems like mostly garbage to you.

ty for time and effort

There's 1.1% gap between vpip and pfr on UTG position so yes you do limp atleast some time.

with AJ I would either check call or check raise flop. Not donkbet. You aren't getting many better hands to fold by donking there.

Agreed in order. Skill & position will overcome card advantage nicely and even Ivey is in heaadaches if he is OOP to some competent player.

+1. Big hands are good to have and they give you the sudden spikes on your graph but medium sized ones allow you to keep even or even climb steadily upward for the big hands then to give solid boost.

Wrote about similar thing few weeks ago on my blog and wholeheartedly agree. When losing don't just look at the big pots. Look at medium sized ones too. Did you pay too much somewhere compared to hand, opponent and action? Did you chicken and not do valuebet when you should have with non-monster hand? Are you folding too much when there's limpers(who are basically putting dead money for others to take into the pot)? Compared to my basic steals adding limpers adds like 50% boost to winrate...when you see fish limp(and almost certainly all limpers ARE fishesh) you can attack them with wide range due to skill+positional advantages + the fact they are basically admitting they have mediocre holdings so even your card advantage can still be alive!

@ tneva: cool that you agree on all that. None of those are really my ideas, probably need to go back a few decades to find someone who actually had an original thought on the matter but definitely everyone sees from experience that they are 100% true when applied. As is obvious I just recently started posting here, although I've been reading quite a few strat posts here and there. Really nice community with constructive thought I'm still in the process of rebuilding, think I'll post some stats when I book about 40k hands at NL25 and move back up to NL50 (if lady luck will have me) so I can get some advice here and maybe discuss somewhat.

Addition to the whole stealing pots postflop idea:

situations that are good for stealing:

-you are IP
-the less players, the better
-board is dry (no more than one flush draw, paired, not very connected etc.)
-villain(s) are not unbelievable stations
-you have some showdown value, say 4th pair, but you might fold out a decent range that beats you
-last but CERTAINLY not least: you have some equity (gutshot, an overcard that might not win at showdown, backdoor draws on flop etc)

Just some food for thought to help newer players develop a feeling for when taking a stab, or even a couple of stabs, can be worthwhile.

True this is hardly new concept :P Just adding my own experience on this one. CO and button are the most profitable spots and for a reason...

Just as an example of why position is so useful. Heads up sit&go. I raise button with Ax. Not that stellar kicker but not worst one. Flop Axx with fd, I go for 2 streets of value. On river there's now 4 undercards to my river, whole bunch of straight possibilities and of course flush draw completed. He checks.

I check.

He shows his flush.

That's how hard it's to play OOP. He check called twice with crappy draw and on river how he's supposed to get value? Unless by coolering my 2 pair or set...Not betting with weak aces there as any bet and I'm pot stuck, his hand looks like draw and every draw and then some filled up by then. And half the worse Ax hands had 2 pair by now(not to mention bunch of 2 pair hands by SC's and suited one gappers).

Me on the other hand had complete control over the hand. He checks, I can valuebet and if he raises I can make decision. On river I could easily calculate how many worse hands there are that can call me and how many better hands there are that will call/shove? I could play it right. He had option of donking out(likely folding quite a lot of hands that he beats but not folding better hands obviously. And not many worse flushesh I could have...) or check and risk me checking it back.

Position=your hand value goes up instantly.

OOP you are just in ugly spots. Flop a set. Check to the raisor? Donkbet? If you check how much value you lose when he checks back? He bets? Raise? That will get him fold marginal hands fast he might barrel. Call? He could check back turn instead...In position you can float seeing his action on turn before you do. You could allow him to barrel himself to poor house. You could raise repping draw. You have all the choices.

The more hands you play in CO and button the more your winrate says "thank you". (well okay there's limit. Even button doesn't compensate if you play 100% of your hands there in 6max game :P)

Depending on how fast you get hands might consider posting sooner like after 10k or 20k hands :P

I have like 25k hands right now but it's been pretty ******edly swingy and I'm also working on changing up some things in my play so current stats might not really reflect what I'm doing. Otherwise I'd post right now.

Namely working on opening up my 3-betting range IP and amping up the turn aggression. Anyway I play anywhere between 1k and 2k hands per day so it won't be long

NL25 is a limit I've played a lot so I'm pretty much comfortable with my play there. I'm just gonna post a decent enough sample size so I can get some advice on which adjustments to be looking to make at NL50 as I haven't played it in like a year and of course some advice to be more crushing in general would be cool

Wanted some thoughts on my opening UTG range, whether I could profitably add more hands to it.

edit - 22 should be selected there also.

Hi man,
If you want to loosen up I'd suggest that you open more from CO/BTN instead. Anyways, I think you should open from UTG based on who's behind you. For example, if there are 5 regs behind me, I'd much rather open A2-A5s than A9s/A8s/K9s, I'd also open suited connectors and open fold hands like ATo, KJo,QJo...
But if there are some bad players behind me, I'd open ATo/KJo/QJo and fold SC's.

If players to your left are not overly aggressive vs your UTG opens and if juicy juicy fish in the blinds (those 40/20 guys and their best friend ever, Mr 30/8) I'd suggest opening suited connectors as low as 65s. You need to get a feel for this at the table though, but I think it can be very profitable in some scenarios.

Definitely agree on the other thing though. Why bother opening up UTG if you can just open up in LP Aside from fish in blinds, I'd say the only reason to really open some suited connectors from UTG is to avoid getting outplayed by regs with position and metagame on boards that "shouldn't hit your range". You could maybe just randomly open one, once in awhile, if you're at a table of smart players who have like 1,5k+ hands on you. (in that case not getting to showdown might critically ruin the purpose of that play, so you might consider risking a check behind on river by villain when you hit your whatever draw just so you actually get to be all "oh gosh, look how loose I am UTG")

OH and I just noticed a couple of things. This is just my opinion but I'm not sure what your rationale for crappy suited kings that flop badly is, and I really agree about choosing the wheel suited aces rather than the crappy A8s family. I'm curious to read your thoughts on that though.

got put the info on looking for help sendinance g up the flare looking for real guidance here it goes!
Yesterdays session

Todays session

overall hands below

Graph of all hands below

you need to tighten up oop

Hey guys.

Just a general question; does everyone lose a lot of money when 'Just Calling' on the river?

Dunno about rest but as for me yeah losing there. About half the bb/100 you are losing.

Not surprising really. Calling is passive and passive play is the least profitable.

Though now that I looked found couple of bad calls. Need to work on this one myself too. Interested to hear how others perform.

I just checked over a 40k hand sample at NL10/25/50 and I get a weighted winrate of 84.4BB/100 for river calls (by using the filter by river actions in HEM).

FYI: I only had a 220 hand sample or so to go with

PS: this is for a 48.8% W$SD

PPS: then again, I'm losing money with check calls and winning with calls .... the issue is obvious! 325 hands total to go by of these occurences over 40k hands means approximately nothing. Guess I'll have to see what things look like when I'll have some decent sample to go by. Maybe I'm not filtering properly?

Does anyone in here play 6 max 10NL? If so, I was wondering what your flop c-bet percentage is running at. I'm c-betting only about half the time because these guys seem to play back so often and this may be a major leak in my game. Would like to hear from someone who wins what their percentage is like.

Quite a many play at NL10 6max here :

At NL10 my flop cbet is 74%. Quite high. Still lower than at NL2 and NL5

Yes they call a lot but that's not that big of a deal as they will often call you with worse...And you should then work on figuring good spots to 2nd barrel. And of course it makes valuetowning them easy.

60-70% should be good target number. The more you see flops IP, the more you can cbet.

Agree with tneva. Actually I think anything under 60% is sort of losing value. Sheer math: suppose you c-bet 60% pot, you only need to succeed about 37% of the time to show a direct profit from that. Believe it or not, my overall flop cbet success is at 47% over 27k hands I had at NL10. Moneeeeeys!!!! (btw I cbet more in the 70-74% range).

Your impression that people call a ton is often a bit askew, 40% can easily seem like a ton yet it's not high enough to justify not c-betting a bunch. If you add in some profitable 2nd barrels, some lucky equity on the turn etc you'll find it works out quite fine. With most opponents who aren't completely brain dead fish, if they notice you c-bet and SPECIALLY that you're not just a showdown happy nit, but barrel the turn a fair bit, they will probably play you less, and call your c-bets less oop.

Still, don't go all crazy and miss excellent opportunities to check multiway, or pot control your hand and even simply give up the pot on ugly boards (obviously by ugly board I don't mean you missed, I mean it's way too likely your opponent's range just utterly smashes the flop - say QJ9 with a flush draw is NOT a good board to c-bet vs a limper usually).

Edit: another important reason for c-betting a healthy amount of the time is that at your tables, you will find some people who understand poker somewhat, maybe even have a HUD. I've come to make ridiculous profit from simply exploiting players who simply don't c-bet enough, and some of your opponents will do that to you. Giving free cards can hurt, and also playing the guessing game by giving up initiative can hurt. Sure you might think "I'll just mix it up by checking some of my top pairs etc", but this gets you into a calling game to induce bluffs which gives free cards a bit too often and might lead you to level yourself and get value towned "I've shown weakness hence I call down to exploit his bluffs" .... except as it turns out, the guy doesn't fire more than once as a bluff or something. Also a decent player will pick up on some timing tells and board textures, and you won't get enough value back from these traps to justify the times you simply get outplayed, imo. Once in awhile you can use the fake value raise though, vs guys who have a very high bet vs missed c-bet. Say you have an A-high board vs some loose station who will bet a lot, you can check to them once in awhile and throw in a bluff c/r instead of c-bet, see donk call and wonder what the hell you do now. Most players at micros see the c/r as much more value oriented than simple bets (often rightfully so). This line is even good against some steal-happy regs ... I've probably fallen pray to it myself a few times, I'm sure

Alright. Thanks guys. I just wanted to make sure that I should be c-betting more often. I was just getting the illusion that people were calling down my c-bets because I checked my stats at that level and my c-bets have been 48% effective. Clearly, at the 10nl level hardly anybody takes notice of how often you c-bet since your overall success of c-bets is at 47%.

So more c-betting it is.

47% I can believe for one. I have 44.9% and I'm still working on finding right spots to cbet(and I do have pretty high cbet...). It was bit higher at NL2 and 47.1% at NL5(and they say NL2'ers are callstations who always call...).

Agreed. Get better on reading board texture and your cbets will work lot better. QJ9 with fd is just horrendous flop to cbet with air(even with AQ it's not best of flops...). T97 with fd is pretty ugly too for AK. Check/folding there isn't sin.