Hi all,

I play both online (6-max 10NL) and during the summer live 1/2. The player pool in both venues is very different, which is probably obvious to everyone. This year, however, I've been taking some of the aggression I've learned online to the live table. What I'm finding (and this is the gist of the post) is that styles of play which avoid getting into close spots (read: low but still positive EV) yield less money but avoid large swings in my bankroll.

On the one hand, I suppose giving up my equity in those spots isn't so bad since by definition (because the EV is low) they yield far less money than the high EV spots we constantly find at low stakes. On the other hand, my intention is to keep improving my game and move up, and I don't think I can return to my previous, nitty incarnation. Plus, handling the larger swings is part of the mental game.

So last night I had my shortest live session ever. I got stacked 3 times in 40 minutes. My limit has always been 3 stacks so I left. Anyway, I'll quickly run through the hands. I'm curious what people think.

I got seated at a 9-handed table. There were really only two important villains. One was a maniac two seats to my left who had clearly been bullying the table. He was sitting on $900 when I got there. He was very loud and opened every pot between $20 and $30. This is great, I thought to myself. Usually I only find these guys online.

It took me a while to realize he had build up a dynamic with the guy two seats to his left, who was a calling station. In one hand, maniac put him all-in on the turn (more than a pot-sized bet) with bottom pair and still won the pot. Both are in all three hands.

Maniac always covered us and calling station got stacked a few times while I was there and he kept reloading so he was at or had a little more than $200, which is what I always had. (I don't buy in for $300 for bankroll reasons.)

Hand 1: I'm UTG with AJcc. I open to $17. Maniac raises to $50. Station calls. I shove. Maniac and station call. I don't recall the runout but maniac shows KK to take the pot and station does not show.

Hand 2: I'm UTG with JxJs and I limp. Maniac opens to $20. Station calls. Folds around to me who pops it to $85. Maniac calls and station folds. Flop: KxTs5s. I check, he jams and I call. He wins the pot with KJo.

Hand 3: Maniac is UTG and opens to $50 without looking at his cards. Station calls. Folds to me who looks down at TdTx and I shove. Maniac folds and station calls. Runout is 9d8dKx6d7x and station takes the pot with QdJd.

I have to admit, I keep running over the hands in my mind and I ran some numbers. But the interesting thing is I don't feel bad about my play. In other words, when my old poker self lost 3 buy-ins he always walked away with a vague pissed-off feeling. But not this time. I'm not saying I played perfectly or even well. I just know that my game lacks the aggression necessary to move up, and I feel like I'm making progress. Even if the swings will be bigger.

You were in a high variance game and got coolered a few times. Feels more like you're playing 2/5 but with 40 bigs, so this is fairly standard if you look at it that way. I think your 3BI stop-loss cost you some money cause sitting at that table seems like the best thing anyone playing poker can do. When you're in wild games like this where you open 9-10x and get called/reraised a bunch you need to treat it like playing short-stacked in a bigger game. If you're not rolled for that, then exit. Otherwise, sit and play as long as possible. Dumping $600 in a game where people are opening $20 or even $50 blind is nothing. Think of it as about a 100bb swing, maybe even less.

Re Hand 1: Vs an actual maniac, the jam's fine and I probably would have done the same. I would keep in mind, that some people play really loose with calls and 2b, but their 3b range remains really condensed. Usually takes a while to pick up on, but I know dudes that'll play like 70/40 but their 3b stat is still like 2%.

Hand 2: I think we can just open ourselves, but given that you're expecting a raise, I guess we could l/rr for value. Not sure if I'd have JJ in that range because we're likely getting called and are going to see some bad flops frequently. I think if you're going to l/rr and don't want it to be just AK/QQ+, you can start adding in hands like AQ, maybe KQs or AJs. I'd probably put those into the l/rr pile before JJ simply because of their blocker properties.

Hand 3: Well played.

Overall, your moves were fine. You were just playing a shortstack in wild game that played way bigger than 1/2 and got a bit of bad variance. If your BR can't handle it, don't play. Otherwise, increase your stop-loss so you can stay in a game with these donks longer.

Thanks for the feedback. Yeah, in the car driving back I was bummed I could not stay for the reason you stated. I knew from my online experience that the variance of this game was high and if I had stayed in I could have still done well. But as you said, my bankroll can't handle that. (Two reasons: I learned the hard way not to lend money to people I meet in the poker room... to the tune of $1200 - doh!, and second I stepped up in stakes before I was ready a few years ago and lost half my bankroll in about 30 hours. Another hard but important lesson learned.)

I like how you suggest to think of it as playing short-stacked in a higher stakes game.

About balancing a l/rr range: many people will say it doesn't matter at low stakes but I think it's important to try, even if I do it poorly So online, I was experimenting with using low suited gappers - hands that if called hit the other side of the board (I do this with my 3bet ranges). No blocking effects, true, but my postflop play isn't yet as strong as I want it to be so using hands like KQo or AQo (which in 6max I'd normally open with) risk getting me in trouble showing up on the river with second-best. I'll use those hands to 4-bet bluff, though, but that's 100bb deep and hoping to jam on the flop. I'm even less confident of my deepstacked play, since it doesn't happen nearly as often, and therefore how to adjust (but I guess that's a different topic).

Edit: I do want to clarify that I l/rr'ed JJ for value (at least, that was my intention). Hence the "close spot". Also, in this particular situation I'm not balancing anything; all my plays were intended to be for value.

I think online is the last place you want to experiment with l/rr. It works in live line-ups because everyone sucks so you can get away with doing it, especially in an unbalanced way. Overall, the reason the line isn't popular is because it's really hard to do create proper ranges for it. Like, if you have any premiums in it, every time you open raise, you've capped yourself, even if just a bit. If you do nothing but l/rr, there's the times you don't get raised and are playing bingo. As far as poker strategy goes, PF is the branch that's been the closest to solved for longer than any other branch. There's all sorts of charts online. I'd really recommend sticking to those instead of trying to reinvent the wheel and replace it with something more complex and intricate. Avoid open limps, overlimping, overcalling in general unless you're BTN or BB. When it comes to preflop, the best way to boost your EV and cut leaks is to follow the charts & make small adjustments tailored to your opponents. Invest that energy into your post-flop play.

Thanks for this tip. I use a solver but not for preflop. I didn't realize l/rr was discouraged. But your reasoning makes sense: any strong hands take away from the value portion of your open range. I've read posts here where players use it to exploit a LAG, so I used it here. (FWIW, in 1/2 so many pots will just limp around that I normally never use it; just online).

There are lots of charts... but which are the quality ones? Upswing is a paid site and I'm sure I could find their charts somewhere but Doug Polk's videos and free articles have helped me a lot so I don't want to steal them. Or should I just use PioSolver?

I use GTO+ for postflop stuff and have simplepreflop for pre (though that's a difficult program to work with) so I don't know how Pio's preflop solves work. I've had access to Upswings complete ranges, and those align mostly with what simple-preflop tells me. I think it's $50/month, you could always just make an account, copy the charts, and just gain the most from their other material before canceling. Personally, I think it's worth it. CLP used to have this in their training, but since it's a bit outdated, they made it free on YT.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6S8JbC3KWg

Thanks, Quantum!

Your game becomes pretty simple when you're short-stacked (as was the case here, given the size of every pot with maniac in it): it's all preflop play. You played those hands just fine, though some may debate certain aspects of them.

When you realized what kind of game you were in, perhaps you should have increased your loss limit. Every hand you play against a maniac like this is extremely +EV, and being down three buyins doesn't change that one bit. So I would be thrilled to empty my pockets to gamboool with this clown, and if I go broke, so be it. Even if that's six or nine buyins or whatever.

I realize the frustration. In my former hometown, there was a Friday night PLO game that was completely insane and all the players stank (I often railed the game). I kept having to resist the urge to play, because the buyin was $500 and my bankroll at the time was only $5000. I knew that I could play better than these folks and still get wiped out due to short-term variance.

I do have a regular job so also disposable income, so in a way you're right, I easily could have stayed. But it seems to me the key to bankroll management is discipline. Because it's where you can end up down the line once the barriers start falling that's the scary thing.

The dynamic here was not just maniac but maniac + station. If the station wasn't involved, I'd probably want to see a flop more often. I would have flatted the first hand and the third hand would have been tough but I probably would also have flatted. But having the station involved to fatten the pot made it a preflop game in my mind.

No no whale dynamics are legit reasons for adjustments to be made to a degree. It v but about relative position. That's a live dynamic you might not be used to --- As for your hands. Just make it 10 w AJcc. TT is the stone nuts line. JJ is close.

Not necessarily. Poker is a perishable skill. Just like a boxer wouldnt practice 1 day and then take the next month off neither should you. You need to have some staying power so you can play night after night, with at least 1-2 weeks of stamina before you can really say you're on a downswing. You can still have a tight stoploss, but if you only have 300BB's to your name you'll never gain the momentum necessary to build up a roll.

Also curious why you labeled one guy a maniac when he turned over the goods every single hand. He may have been super aggressive but he may also have simply upped to stakes by playing bigger pots just so he could make easy decisions like jamming for close to pot to any aggression with TP+.

Good point. My bankroll is more robust than that though ;-) It's doing better now after tonight's session, where I got back half my loss. Still, it's not large enough that I wanted to subject it to more of that kind of variance. Maybe that was a mistake. Or I could have just padded my bankroll from savings to take advantage of the unique situation.

He was a maniac in my view because he opened every pot to between $20 and $50 and he barrelled and raised with high frequency until his opponents gave up. I think this is why the station was content to just keep calling. Those were the only hands I saw go to showdown and at least once he had junk and made a pair on the river and that was enough to beat the station.

You might say that's just playing aggressively, but good players give up a portion of their bluffs on each successive street, and he did not. Plus they try to bluff with hands that have blocking effects and some equity, not plain junk (there are exceptions, of course, especially in the BB). I wish I could give specific examples, but I can't, so you're only getting this through my perspective and you could very well be right.

Correction about the hand where alleged maniac made a pair on the river: I think I conflated that hand with the one where he put station all-in on the turn. I remember now that maniac barrelled flop and turn, and the river went check-check, and maniac didn't think he had won but his air ended up beating station's busted draw.

I was only at the table 40 minutes or so, so that's what, 20 hands? I've described 3 in detail and alluded to 2 others.

^ yeah 20 hands sounds about right, could have just been running hot. Or he's been at the table long enough to know that $20+ gets called easily so he's just decided to make that adjustment as would you. Honestly you want to be raising as big as you think anyone would be willing to call. I know sometimes it might seem patently obvious if someone is playing crazy, but unless they are showing down trash or shipping blind it's probably best to be disciplined and hold back any reservations for at least a little while longer. Personally I usually wait at least 2 hours before making any judgements and preferably 4.

That's a great tip and I know I've been burned before making judgements too quickly.

Funny you brought it up and it's a deviation from the main topic here, but the large preflop sizing required to reliably prevent going 4+way to the flop means SPRs run low at a live 1/2 game. Online (10NL 6-max) at 100bb a 3x open MP vs BTN would yield an SPR of 13, but live opening for $15 (which is a sizing I often use early to mid position and sometimes I still end up 3 or 4 way) yields an SPR of 7, or a little more than half! It's worth noting that being $300 effective yields an SPR of 10.5. I take this to mean postflop play is severely limited/handicapped, as a solid strategy has us all-in far more often on the turn. I don't actually play nearly this aggressive but am trying to get there.

I think there is some value to buying in shorter, if we expect to be in a 'wild' game and might have to reload a couple times until we're on the right side and get a good stack built up. It does require different strategies as you move from 100BB to 200BB++

Hand 1: With the dynamic, I'm fine with the play. I don't know if there is any change to the dynamic if you are in position, but shoving pre makes that irrelevant. With 2 very wide callers, I'll take my chances with AJs, assuming a rebuy is available.

Hand 2: I think I'm opening to $17 again and hoping to jam again preflop. Of course that doesn't change the outcome. I do think that once you 3! preflop, if you are going to call the jam, you should jam yourself. As played, maybe I can find a fold.

Hand 3: Another preflop shove ahead, can be disappointed by the result, but getting the money in good ain't bad.

Overall I respect the discipline to stick to the plan. It should serve you well.
However, if I'm only bringing 3 bullets, I might avoid firing at close spots.
I'd much rather employ something along the lines of the Kelly criterion.
Pick spots with a better chance of success if you are betting 1/3 of your bankroll.
There are some poker thoughts along those lines, but I can't recall where I've read/seen them to quote/cite.

Hey, thanks for the suggestion of buying in shorter to increase the number of bullets. I didn't think of that and it might have helped me survive longer. Also avoiding the close spots given bankroll constraints lol.

I specifically checked to him on the assumption he was a maniac and wanted to keep all his bluffs in. I figured there were more bluffs if I checked than worse hands that might call a shove and also check behind.

Your suggestion to fold jives with the notion that this guy might not be a maniac after all. You guys mostly if not all play higher stakes, which I believe play much more aggressively than what I'm used to. Is that the message here? Is that the style of play I can expect at higher stakes and it's not really bad play as I assumed?

Consider that if I knew the station was a station, so did the alleged maniac. So why would you try and bluff a station? An overbet turn shove with bottom pair (sorry, I can't give you the specifics) or double barrelling with air when you know you're likely to be called (with better)? That implies to me someone with no or little control who just wants to bet and raise people off hands. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

It's not my business to know your finances. I have varied my buy-in amounts over the years. You do you.

The decision to keep playing should ideally be based on how well you are playing, and not necessarily a predetermined stop loss.

Are you playing well and getting it in good? Keep playing.
Are you so upset at having to rebuy you are tilting? Walk away.




Hand 2: On hand 1, you went full speed ahead and got it all-in 3 ways preflo. I'd like to do the same on hand 2.




LAG - Loose Aggressive.
Maniacs are even looser and even more aggressive.
They should be somewhat thinking players and they've seen more players like you than you've seen players like them.

Do not consider me en expert or high stakes player. I'm just a guy who's been playing (and posting) a long time. I try to have fun. I try to win a couple bucks. Sometimes it works out.



Re: Station
One of the ways people successfully combat the LAG is by simply calling in position. It denies the LAG some information. To you it looks like he is a station, but he may only be calling wide when the LAG is leading the action.

I really disagree with people that you played these hands well and this was only about variance. I would like more information on your reads. You said you played for 40 minutes. How many hands were played before you opened UTG with AJcc? You didn't get a lot of information. I think you erred in calling the guy a maniac. His play doesn't seem unreasonable: 1) called a shove with KK. 2) Called your limp-raise with his KJo and shoved with TPGK on the flop when you had JJ. 3) maniac folds pre to your shove. What you did: 1) opened at the bottom of a reasonable range with AJs UTG and called a 3 bet - Perhaps I'm a nit that I do not open with AJs UTG, but if I did, I certainly would not call a 3b OOP after just sitting down at the table. 2) Why are you calling a shove with an underpair on a wet flop? This seems like a sigh-fold to me. 3) Shoving with TT against one player who made a huge bet and another who called that bet? You are behind if the calling station has JJ+ and it's flip if he has JQ+, QK+, KJ+, AJ+ - that seems like negative equity, and that's not counting that the alleged maniac could have gotten lucky and gotten a similar hand. There aren't a lot of hands where you are way ahead, meriting a shove. I think you erred in all these hands. You're playing for big pots with small hands.

Phil Gordon wrote that if there is a poker hell, it's playing JJ UTG with an aggressive player to your left. I would use a bit more caution with these hands. Wait a bit to get some better reads.

I would estimate the first hand was about 5 or 6 hands in. Also, I did not call a 3bet preflop in any of these hands. And I believe both players were extremely loose. The station wouldn't be a station if he had such a tight range, and in the third hand the LAG/maniac didn't even look at his cards. Anyone calling behind is weak unless they are trying to trap me.

Really, I was playing a preflop game, and in that respect I now agree that I should have played the second hand like the first.

Also, I don't think calling a 3bet with KJo - even in position - is a good play here. He makes the pot just shy of $200 with the station still to act and only $115 or so behind. This is arguably a fold or shove situation. Maybe for some KJo is a good bluff candidate, but I'd probably prefer KJs, hoping the player in my shoes would fold AQo or KQ I suppose. Again, I think he does this to try and get me to fold a better hand when I whiff the flop, which I'll do most of the time.

H1: AJs is of course a standard open UTG. It’s a top 7%. Very happy to open it. With reads that Villain is 3betting too light, it’s okay to 4bet shove. Dunno if we have those reads. Without reads it’s probably just a preflop call and evaluate flop.

H2: Yeah this guy is clearly out of line, calling your 3bet with KJo. Well played on that hand getting him to commit half his stack preflop drawing so slim. On the flop at 0.7 SPR or whatever calling the shove is 100% standard. He could even be protecting with AT or whatever. Or he could have a flush draw. Never folding.

H3: with the 50 blind raise you have effectively only 4 blinds if you’re sitting on 200. Never folding any pocket pair 77+ with 4 blinds and all the dead money in the middle. Jamming with TT isn’t particularly close. You have the 5th best hand in poker. Lol.

[QUOTE=Jamming with TT isnÂ’t particularly close. You have the 5th best hand in poker. Lol.[/QUOTE]

I wouldn't use the reasoning, "I have the fifth-best hand in poker, so I'm going to jam." I would instead think of my hand vs. the range I think my opponent will call my jam.

Equity of TT against a wide jam-calling range like 66+, JQ+, QK+, AK is in your favor 53% vs. 47%. So if that is your opponent's range, then call is the GTO correct call. But as OP learned, it's a very high variance jam. You're going to need a bankroll of at least 40 BIs. You also need nerves of still to stay at the table and burn through cash until the variance turns your way.

If you call with TT instead of jamming, you give the Villain a chance to make a larger mistake by outplaying him by jamming on a flop with straight and flush draws and maybe one face card. You can get away from wet flops where you are way behind like JQA.

Because you've watched him for less than two orbits, you can't assume he'll call you on such a wide range. If you put him on a somewhat smaller jam-calling range like 99+,ATs+,KJs+,QJs,ATo+,KQo, it's a flip, 50-50.

Narrow the range even more, and you are a dog.

I am also always leery of confirmation-bias fallacies on any forum as well as in our play. I would always be leery of someone who writes I made the right decision without giving good reasons and addressing the opinions of others who think I made the wrong decision. Committing confirmation bias is perhaps my biggest leak in poker of all because, without being humble and self-critical, I look only at the reasons why I made the correct decisions and not considering the reasons why I made the incorrect decisions. It hurts a lot to say I screwed-up in a major way. It's also the only way to get better.

On hand 3, here I would say you made the right decision if you had good information that the player was indeed a maniac, but it's a high-variance move, and you have to steel yourself for that. I do not think you had enough information that they player was a maniac. There is more evidence that he was a LAG who played KK aggressively and folded to your jam with TT. As it played out, the hand against the calling station was in the flipping range, and you did not give him a chance to make a larger error on the flop.

Dissenting and critical opinions are always welcome on any thread started by myself. Also, I don't presume I'm right or I would not have started the thread. I try and take away lessons, and I'm going to add one from this thread.

In the end, you (plural) only have the specifics of the three hands I laid out, whereas at the time I was privy to all 20 or so hands. That experience was distilled into the judgement about the two villains as stated. Unfortunately, since I can't reproduce the remainder of the hands played, we'll never know if my judgement was correct. However, you have a good point that it would serve me well to take more time coming to a conclusion about what type of player a person is. I know I've fallen into this trap in the past, and thinking, tricky players will sometimes make a point of playing one way and showing their hands only to adjust. So that's a second lesson to take away from this.

However, I'm sticking by my original assessment of the villains, if only because I don't have a reason not to and I'm still confident it was accurate.

In that vein, I still prefer making this a preflop game. Remember, villain can make a mistake on the flop but so can I, and I'm not as experienced as the rest of you. I do not relish playing OOP 3-way with TT in pot with an SPR of less than 1. Maybe I'm wrong here, but the lowest SPR pot I want to play is a 4bet pot at 100bb which is about 1.5 and then I'm looking to jam on the flop. Instead of spending time trying to figure out what's optimal on the flop at extremely low stack depths, I'd rather spend it exploring how to play deepstacked. Please correct me if that sounds stupid.