Hi,

The more I read these forums the more I see thoughtful and capable players make some truly insightful comments. But, what I cannot see is how they handle situations when the action is on them and they have to make fast decisions. When anyone is asked to do that they utilize lessons learned in preparation and go to methods that helps them to think on the fly.

So that is my question. What are the go to methods and most used items in the tool belt. How fast are they used and how frequently. Give examples if possible.

Thanks in advance for sharing
Mrphud

the more work you do away from the tables, the more ready your tools are to be picked out and applied in the moment.

Eg. If you analyse a tricky hand you played in one session, think it through deeply, get others opinions and to some degree "solve" that situation, that is a tool you can use quickly when similar situations occur in the future. Of course it always depends on the individual variables, but the work you have done will give you a solid foundation to start from.

Construct your range. What are you opening from each position? What are you calling with? 3betting? Then, move to the flop. What parts of your range are continuing on different types of flop textures? how are they continuing? how will position and different numbers and types of opponents affect that? Why? Then turns and rivers.

you can do a lot of this at home with a notepad, and propoker tools or something similar. Having thought through common situations in advance you have a variety of plans ready to apply to situations you face on the felt.

Nb: It's a lot of work and I'm still getting through it

First I'll say, don't try to take decisions fast.

I'm of the opinion that you can reasonably tank for 0.5s per bb that the spot affects. So if you have to decide whether to call the 100bb shove, take your time, up to about 60s. Any longer then that and you are merely suffering from decision paralysis. There is no need for snap judgment. Just don't slow the game down unnecessarily.

Always track the action, updating your range estimates for each V in stride. Do this in pots you are not involved in -- very important.

Track the pot size in real time. Practice this so that you know what your bets sizes will be. E.g. you want to bet 2/3 pot... Well, how much is the pot? If you were tallying it in stride, the decision takes no time.

Make sure you continually evaluate your villains. Did the MAWG just make a super fishy move that is out of character? Did the rock old lady just limp-call from UTG? These little things are the key to live pokerz.

Trust your reads. I cannot stress this enough. Don't shrivel up when the bad LAG shoves his stack in when you know he loves to slow-play. If your reads are good, trust them and act accordingly. If they are bad, then be honest with yourself and figure out what you are missing.

Definitely my most used and lowest stress item in 200nl is to look for loose passive preflop tables, wait for position and a few limps w a decent hand, make it 8x or so and cbet most dry flops. I can expand beyond that, but that's probably the most profitable play that I make on a consistent basis

If I may distill down what was posted: do my homework, take my time, know what and how I play, make and trust my observations and intuition. All good advice.

May I ask, while you are tracking pot size are you then comparing pot odds, implied odds, SPR, etc. every time you are in a hand? Every hand? These are specific metrics beyond observational skills that I am wondering if I should incorporate and to what extent.

sungar that looks like a well practiced play. I take it you are looking for callers to fold on you C-bet and chip up with the flop pot. How often do you employ that? Do people pick up on it?

Thanks again
Mrphud

Until you develop an inherent (maybe subconscious or reflexive) ability to tally the pot, compute odds (vs ranges), and bet sizing, yes, do it verbosely for each hand.

Or at the least, all hands you're involved in and every other hand that you're not involved in.

If you do a bit of searching in this forum, you'll find a thread (or a couple threads) that talk about checklists (or perhaps steps to take) during a hand. I think that thread (those threads, or like them) would be helpful for you.

Is there a way to like posts?

I keep a rough (rounded to $5 increment tally of the pot) throughout the hand.

As for equity calcs, for drawing situations where I'm assuming I'm good when I hit I use the 2 and 4 rule and discount unclean outs.

For more complex spots I do a very rough count of likely combos I beat and combos that beat me and compare that ratio to the pot odds then factor estimated redraw equity .

One thing I do a lot more lately is pay attention to the suits of cards on the flop and blockers in my hand. Often we can elongate combos from villain ranges esp when considering middle connector combos where they will tend to be playing suited hands and NFD combos.

I still have the problem of flying by the seat of my pants when the pot is small and putting my thinking cap on when the pot gets bigger and the action heavier. Not that I'm not thinking at all about ranges and all but I definitely could think things through a little better in what seem to be simple spots.

Memory, use memory instead of trying to do raw calculation.

Well dratz! Have had little luck searching a hand checklist. I agree that once I get better my plays should be more reactive or from memory and sizing up, but I am not comfortable doing that on the fly yet. As you can probably tell I am well acquainted to a classroom and structured learning environment. Solving exercises to drive points home is very useful, though few poker books give assignments. Harrington's exercises are crap IMO.

I do like to think about hands after the fact, but if I solve it, or think I do, and I was wrong in the moment...argh! This is where structure can aid decision making in the moment.

TBH, if such structure exist and following it would be as easy as school, there would be a lot more crushers.

Check out equilab. It's a stoving / flopzilla type software but has a best feature for equity quizzing. Kinda cool for practicing at estimating equities.

Using the 2+2 search didn't find it, so I tried google and found the post I made most recently talking about it (it was in the "Not Quite Threadworthy..." thread):

Obviously, rudimentary, and I'm guessing you are already beyond this.

Yes, a bit. I have gone so far as to look for ticks, facial expressions, breathing, carotid artery, etc... All are live tells. I feel OK on my observational skills, just not on my on the fly calculations or ranging.

You definitely get what I am trying to convey and request. Just more on the ABC poker than behavioral patterns, i.e. the "consider your action" and "range each player" checklist.

Thanks
Mrphud

Yeah, most of the time on say a K 8 4 or Q 6 2 board or something of the like people kind of get handcuffed into either flopping a strong top pair, set or slow played overpair, or just having to fold. It does take a little thinking on boards like that when you get callers; because it's also common for people to call one street and fold on another. You just kind of have to get a feel for just how skeptical people are and back down sometimes; but mostly just put the cbet in and expect folds on boards like that because people missed and don't have the capacity to float often.

If I raised IP with a 56s I'm cbetting both of those boards all day and then probably checking a turn when I have equity and maybe firing a river if I've been checked to 3 times in the hand.

I would say I use this play roughly as low as 0.5 times and maybe as high as 2 times per orbit in an overall session it really just depends on how much I'm able to get away with. So pretty high likelihood that between my button, the cutoff, and the hijack (in the games that I look for) I'll usually find at least one hand where my hand is strong/connected enough (57s+,JTo+,A2-5s,all normal playables) to attack limpers.

As I have less credibility (or as there's more call stations at the table) I might chop off the bottom of that range especially hands w worse RIO.

To answer your question, yes, people pick up on it; but no, they don't commonly do much about it except fold more preflop. Someone who's routinely floating and playing back against this type of play postflop at this stake kind of sticks out like a sore thumb and I'll adjust pretty quickly when I see them start doing it.