I recorded a session with a screen recorder and microphone, enjoy.

https://www.bitchute.com/video/ht2K2gXXTc2s/

I took notes on this video as I was going even though you are obv screwing around for fun quite a bit. My biggest piece of advice is to be very careful against these non-US players since they are usually survivors of post-apocalypse Stars. They are almost all going to be ultra-tough players who make very few mistakes. We can get away with screwing around live or in very soft games, but I feel like these non-US pros are just way too strong for experimentation and goofing around. Btw, you would have duped me if I didn't know it was you lol. I actually kind of like your limping huhu since it takes these guys out of their memorized Cepheus/solver lines. I actually hate it when good players use a decent limping strategy against me huhu. Fwiw, I think you might have actually ended up outperforming me EV-wise in this session since you took a couple lines in big pots that I would have butchered. I tried to mostly comment on this stuff as it was happening.

3:00 – I would usually 3bet any suited king here. I would also fold the turn.

5:00 – I can’t imagine any button limping strategy that involves 65o.

5:25 – I would def c/r the flop.

10:07 – I would just consider this hand an airball.. almost anything makes a better flop c/r.

18:15 – I think you may be underestimating the extent of this spew with 85o.

23:24 – It looks like we have decent enough odds to call the 3bet, but these calls are actually really bad. If you run some rough pen and paper calculations, you will see that raise-folding is always higher EV than raise-calling in these situations.

25:20 – When you forget the action, you can just look at the pot size and it will usually become obvious. Like here, the pot is $88 which is obv the 90 minus the rake. So it has to have been 4bet pre, and the only logical 4bettor is the CO.

25:45 – I def wouldn’t c/r the flop here. Villains who do this have AQ+ pretty much always and are never folding, so we are always at a significant equity disadvantage against a player who never folds.

28:18 – On the left table, I feel like this is an extremely important protection raise. Getting 3bet really sucks, but we are in ezmode when it goes fold-call.

31:30 – It’s bottom of the range, but I feel like 3betting K9o vs a button open is almost always correct.

33:45 – I think you can actually fold the river vs. the overcall here. I feel like we win less than 5% of the time, so the juicy pot odds aren’t juicy enough.

34:59 – I think folding k7o on an a83 mono board is def the play. We can “overfold” weak kings since we have so much extra flush draw trash in our continuing range.

36:21 – Gross peel.

36:50 – I think you likely missed the action… SB donked the flop after taking 3 to the face pre. I would generally expect this to be 80+% air or weak pairs that will fold later on. I would likely peel the flop and raise either the turn or the river unimproved. Online rec players love to triple donk bluff paired, raggy boards.

38:30 – I prefer to open K7s UTG.

39:15 – This river bluff raise is interesting. It would not have occurred to me since we are strong enough to call a donk-triple barrel. I pretty much never do this since I expect such a splashy player to call any pair, but I often wonder if this is a leak. Rec players fold enough in this spot that they pretty much have to be folding some weak pairs.

40:50 – Super close, but probably a good fold. Rec players love to bet trash at scare cards, but the fact that he checked back a 4 straight turn usually means that he has at least ace hi.

46:30 – I liked the flop check back as an exploit, but I feel like we can exploitatively fold the river. The idea is that our opponent usually assumed we have showdown value which is reinforced when we call the turn. I feel like villains who bet both the turn and river with Q9 or KQ air are pretty rare… especially after being taken “out of book” like this.

48:50 – I default to opening Q7o on the button and feel like there is no reason to tighten up here.

50:40 – I would have donked into the rec player’s 4bet since I feel like he is exceptionally likely to 1) be 4betting just for fun and 2) check back a lot more than a reg

51:10 – It’s really gross, but I think we have a safe fold once the reasonable CO who has been showing massive strength 3bets. I would honestly even consider folding to the turn c/r. As you mentioned in the video, his donk on the flop was essentially a “5bet” and showed lots of strength. The message was “I have such a strong hand that this rec player checking back would make me cry.” And I would expect BB to pick up on this tell.

53:30 – I think this cold-call is really gross since we have 2 players who are going to happily “squeeze” us so often. We are getting 4bet unusually often. A 3bet makes more sense, but I would just fold. I do not agree with the trend towards cold-calling more often in LHE that I have been witnessing.

56:20 – I would def not mess around with the rec player here, but it is tempting since they love to bet at paired boards so much. I feel like a weakness of mine is playing these limped pots vs. rec players. I tend to default towards being foldy since it can’t be a major mistake in tiny pots.

56:40 – I would bet the flop since it is wet enough for all sorts of stuff to call us down. The rec player might even call 9x twice on the flop and turn.

58:30 – I was immediately thinking “bet the river” lol, but I cannot explain why.

59:40 – I feel like villain’s range is sets+ when he 3bets the turn . We can make an easy fold even though it is just one bet back to us. Note: I was very wrong here lol

Thanks for taking the time to watch and give your feedback. I'm sure you're right about screwing around, I justify it by telling myself people will overcompensate against me, plus I figured it would be good for the video. But yeah, these are tough games, you generally shouldn't give anything away.

I like keeping quite a few aces and kings in my calling range to call down on dry boards. Turn call was pretty loose for sure but he also has a ton of air that may barrel off.

Yeah this was pretty silly.

He acted first on the flop, this was the weird 3 handed to heads up transition hand where you think you're playing normal sb vs bb but then discover you are in position postflop.

bdfd+bdsd+courage! I know I don't always have the courage to check raise the hands I'm supposed to (or I miss the spots because I'm not paying attention) so I compensate by occasionally check raising hands outside that range.

It's so weird that I have this leak of open limping trash hands on the button haha. It's such a strange leak to have.

Let's assume I win an additional 1.5 big bets when I hit the 6 and when I hit the 9, I call and am good 50% of the time. We'll assume I fold anything else.

I am getting 9-1 immediately on the turn plus an assumed 1.5 so the 8% of the time that I hit a 6, I will get back 10.5 big bets. 10.5 times 8% is 0.84 big bets for my cost of 1 big bet to call. I also hit a 9 about 6% of the time where we're saying I'm good 50% of the time. We can ignore the river bet since it wins even money 50% of the time. So 6% of the time, we will win 50% of the pot we are calling before the river (6% * 50% * 9) = 0.27. If we add the 0.84 expectation for hitting a 6 to the 0.27 expectation for hitting the 9, that is 1.11 big bets, better than the 1 big bet it costs to call the turn.

But maybe it's too optimistic to think a 9 would be good 50% of the time. And maybe I can't get away from a river 7, although theoretically that should only be true if I think a call with a 7 would be +EV, so that possibility should only have the chance to increase my EV on the turn call.

Yeah, I should have slowed down and done that math, the preflop cap got me all confused.

I agree, this was a bad c/r, I was confused about the preflop action but don't know what preflop action would have justified a flop c/r.

couldn't we protect our hand better by raising favorable turns?

I agree and was surprised to see me fold this on the replay, I don't even remember doing it.

It's a slimy spot, I just felt like folding JJ might be a little too exploitable.

Yeah, we do have a lot of hearts but I kind of feel like the fact we have so many draws with no showdown value makes me want to call with showdown-value hands more.

True haha

Yes, I did miss the action. I felt like I had so many hands that could continue that folding the turn would be ok, but interesting to think about what bluff I would have there? QJ almost seems like it has too much showdown value to bluff. Diamond combos for sure but would want to add something else, I'm not going to have wheel draws when I 3 bet preflop.

I will start doing this, thanks

Yeah, probably too strong a hand to bluff with. I think I'm going to make some adjustments as to the hands I bluff rivers with generally, due to the concerns I have about the standard game theory approach I mentioned in the commentary.

check-raise as a bluff maybe?

I felt like even if he assumed I have showdown value, he might still feel like he could get me to fold some of that showdown value on the river 4 flush.

Yeah this is ridiculously nitty I don't know what happened.

I felt less concerned about the possibility of him having a random fun hand that checks back and more concerned about minimizing the bets I put into the pot the times I was behind. Once the pot is this bloated, you generally need the best hand to win, and I wasn't confident I had it, plus you sometimes get to induce 3 streets from hands you beat that will stop putting bets into the pot if you show aggression.

Yeah, it was a pretty gross spot on the turn, it might be correct to fold to the 3 bet but I wasn't confident enough to make it in that big a pot.

I don't always have a cold calling range in that spot but my read is that he opens a super wide range in every spot and I feel like I can adequately balance having calls and 3 bets. I do cold call with some quite strong hands there sometimes, it can be a great way to build a massive multiway pot with a massive multiway hand like AQs.

I tend to show down quite a bit early on to help develop a read.

My intention was to check-raise. I feel like rec players tend to bet a lot when checked to on the flop when they are the only limper. I figured this could get an extra bet out of trash that would otherwise fold to my lead out and would still allow me to get value from the things that would call down if I led out the flop.

Yes, tough to call random fish who limped in on this river with ace high haha

It's a strong range but whatever, it's a big pot and it's online.

"I actually kind of like your limping huhu since it takes these guys out of their memorized Cepheus/solver lines. I actually hate it when good players use a decent limping strategy against me huhu."

I am a winning FLH player(esp. 6-max) but I have never felt confident heads-up. If you open limp, you pay more rake, right? With no flop no drop, you would save on rake if the opponent folds preflop. Also, are there any published sources on an open limping range?


I checked out the FLH games several months ago. I visited the site for weeks to look at the games. I was not very encouraged because the few games seemed to be dominated by multi-tabling regs. One of these regs was your opponent: Tompero.
At present I play on Ignition. And I dislike its enforced seating policy.

Tompero is one of the toughest players I've encountered on the site and he crushed me in a huhu match a few weeks ago. I have lost 0.55 BB/100 over 2k hands of huhu overall since I got pokertracker soon after recording this video. This is actually better than my overall 2-6 handed results where I've lost about 1 BB/100 over 17k hands. Fortunately, bonuses, promotions and rakeback have been enough to cover that loss - I'm still on my first deposit and actually slightly ahead of where I started, despite my loss rate.

On the plus side, I've been doing a lot of things that have hurt my win/loss rate. I have been doing zero game selection (e.g. playing Tompero huhu), have been super high most of my sessions, and have been experimenting with a lot of alternative lines. If I can plug those leaks, perhaps I can eek out some kind of win rate.

For example, I have experimented with open limping and cold calling first in. I find it really interesting that a lot of the regs stick to binary choices for their initial action preflop but have no issues adding capping ranges to break that binary choice later on the same street. I do think it's important to have binary choices in many spots to disguise your range and you will see me delay a lot to the turn/river for this reason. But one place where I've been experimenting with non-binary choices is the initial preflop action. The wider the ranges our opponents have, the easier it is to implement this strategy, because the wider the vpip range we can have to break into multiple parts. It's not Cepheus but it's limited me to a small loss in the huhu matches. I'm also breaking even over 4 hours versus the Bellagio hulhe machine. And as UG mentioned, it can throw people off their basic memorized strategy. Some of the regs seem to be lacking some game theory fundamentals and some of the adjustments they make against me seem quite terrible.

It's a good point about rake and one I hadn't considered...maybe that's why I've done better against the Bellagio machine than the WPN regs. Maybe I'll go back to a raise-or-fold strategy for a bit, or maybe I'll just stop sitting heads up vs. the best players in the world.

I have pretty much thrown out the open limp except huhu and in other rare spots but I do think the open cold call has some merit against wide openers, and in the sb vs. an utg opener. The one place where I'm convinced an open limp does have merit is utg in many live 9 handed games but now we don't have to worry about that because live games are now 6 or 7 handed.

I played a sober session for the first time in a long time yesterday and I was amazed how much stood out to me, even noticing information on the HUD I set up that I hadn't really extrapolated into an exploitative strategy. I was taking tons of notes and feel like I've been giving up a lot by playing stoned. To be honest, weed has pretty much taken over my entire life over the past three years and I intend not to use it any more. I know it works for a lot of people, I've just never been good with moderation and I feel like it's held me back.

I am considering putting some funds on ignition as I've heard the games are better but I might just ride out this WPN thing to see where it goes. I have a live 20-40 game not that far from me and after battling the WPN regs, that game will seem like a walk in the park. Let's just call the stoner months on WPN research and development.

You have a live 20/40 near you? Lucky you! Still going on during the pandemic?
Ignition is not great and you cannot really game select there. Also, their bonuses are not good because they take too long to clear. There are very few choices for Americans—especially for FLH.
I really miss the Bovada from a decade ago.

I have tinkered with the 1/2 and 2/4 games on ACR just for shits and giggles lately. I am really confused/intrigued by the pool. They have stats that are wildly different than any style of play I have ever seen advocated on these forums. Maybe it's some serious next-level, out-of-the-box, highly exploitative thinking. But the fact that these folks aren't playing anything bigger than 3/6 makes me think it's just some corona-unemployed folks clicking buttons.

A lot of hitting and running HU. Sad!

Still, it's been a challenge to beat the game over a lolsmall sample size, so these guys are doing something right.

After surveying those games on ACR a few months ago, I decided not to deposit. I concluded that there were too few FLH games and too many competent multi-tabling regulars!
But good luck to you, and keep us posted.

Caballo666, there used to be a website based around this exploitative bot called Sonia. Sonia was so strong that she was actually beating Polaris (first bot to beat top humans huhu) over millions of hands. Against Polaris, she open limped 40ish % of the time if I remember right. But against humans, she would often exploit us by choosing to open limp even more often. I don't think this was because she thought open limping was so objectively strong. I think she simply noticed that humans tend to play like crap against a well-played open limp strategy.

As far as the rake argument, that is of course true. But a lot of humans only fold 10% of the time, so it isn't going to be a huge deal imo. If CrazyLond feels comfortable with an open limp strategy huhu and his opponent gets lost, it should more than compensate for the extra rake imo. But if his opponent adjusts well and doesn't get weirded out, it becomes an issue.

CrazyLond is my new LHE hero.

Here's another heroic effort. Video is still processing but I'm posting the link now because I'm going to bed:

https://www.bitchute.com/video/6iJ0ubADSxeE/

I remember Sonia. If memory serves, that bot played HU, three-handed, and six-handed limit hold'em. I miss it! Other good bots usually just play heads up.

Awesome to find some LHE videos in current times. Thanks Lond!


I'm trying to remember Tompero's Stars screen name but it's escaping me at the moment. In any case, it's not hard to match these guys up across sites based on what they are sitting and where they are from. Only really helps if you have notes or data from the other sites anyway. B#heeeto maybe?


Sonia was a cool specimen to study way back in the day. She did a lot of weird stuff. Some of it is easy to explain away as the NN built models of the players she played against so she had a good read on exploitable tendencies and her opponents weren't adjusting so some of the stuff she did worked more than it would have against an adjusting human player.

HUHU vs Polaris she may have limped a bunch. I don't recall that specifically. She did CAP a ton though. Like every Q high or better. This is one of the things you can get away with when you find a small edge against a bot.

I collected a bunch of her hand histories, both for 6max and her HUHU matches. They are probably still an old database somewhere. She did cool stuff like check raising the river a ton OOP when she had the betting lead. It allowed her to get a lot more middling stuff to showdown while staying protected (villains could not value bet easily against her out of tempo checks, that's for sure!)

I have noticed that while open limping HUHU, IME, is often indicative of a fish (though clearly given this discussion, not necessarily. Especially in a 2/3 structure), it’s not something I played as well as I’d have liked against. It’s really easy to lead too many flops, check fold too much, etc, as the bb player.


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