Wish you would describe some of these -EV adjustments or deviations from theory you seem to be referring to instead of laying out this vague blanket statement. Also, spirit was obviously talking about "selling chips back to the casino on a regular basis" or in other words, a +EV strategy. Not wins associated with positive variance..

I like the rest of what you wrote, but the #1 factor in one's variance is one's winrate (as determined by summing EV calculations for all hands). Passing up +EV spots will rarely help one's variance because it harms one's winrate, and variance is dependent on winrate exponentially.

I think these gutsy moves you reference are probably not significantly +EV if they affect one's variance that much.

The bolded sums up my approach beautifully.

wut? thread is a level.

nh gg

I keep telling GG this, but he says "no".

Easy enough.

• Folding flips with dead money in the middle
• Trying to lock a win after series of losses
• Folding on river to big bets to preserve win
• Raising big with AA UTG because you don't want it to be cracked
• Folding draws simply because they are non-nutted draws

There are books dedicated to various psychological tilts in poker, so I would recommend you reading those if you want specific details.

At the end of the day, if you walk out the casino with money, you've won the most important game, regardless of how it fits in with the theory of poker.

Pretty sure he said that regardless whether you made +EV decisions, you won if you walked away with money.

I agree with most of what you wrote. I will say that there is some sort of false illusion of "online" players, almost some sort of parallel to perception of nerds. There are many anti-social people that gravitate toward poker and most people seem to assume anti-social players as math-based good online players. After all, if they aren't playing poker to socialize and they don't vocalize their rationale for bad preflop card selection, then they must be online players. Also, I am sure it doesn't help that there are a lot of posts in this forum in which players claim to be "online" players that struggle with live games.

Good players are going to be good in most environments because part of being good is ability to adapt. Boredom on the other hand is a different story, but good online players usually adapt to boredom by playing the same way you are describing crushers.

But it is math. You can assign confidence level of your read with percentage. If you are absolutely certain that player behind you is folding in HU situation because of body language, then you know your FE is 100%.

If body language tells you that V is scared, you can calculate FE needed through pot size and multiply it by x% to improve your bet sizing. It can be as simple as creating labels and assigning % based off those labels.

Yes, reading body language and understanding psychology is an art, but application of the read can easily be calculated using variables and some simple algebra. A good online player can have strong fundamental of pot odds, range analysis, and calculate equity on the fly, and then apply "live" variables as they see fit, almost like icing on the cake.

I agree that math isn't enough to crush live poker game. I think where we differ is how much each of us weighs the importance of math.

There is more than one way to skin a cat and I wish the best for you.

FWIW, I played at a 1-3 table last night. I get QQ UTG, raise to $15 and literally the whole table calls. 9 handed flop. LOL

I had been fairly card dead up until then, not playing many hands. So I was the nit at the table.

I mean, what do you do in games like that where you are virtually set-mining with QQ?

Raise bigger pre. Maybe go for some l/rr if there are some aggressive players behind. Be willing to fold one-pair hands fairly quickly. Play more speculative hands in position. These tables can be great if you are able to fold medium-strong hands when faced with aggression. Also, sometimes, I'm taking more passive/defensive lines w/ medium strength hands in these spots. Controlling the size of the pot. Betting smallish to get information of the strength of V's hands. Just gotta know your opponents and try to play as many hands in position as possible.

Thanks. Good advice. Probably going to have to raise bigger in these situations, with premiums anyway.

Up your sizing. Figure out the sweet spot where you get 1 - 2 callers. If $15 gets the whole table to call it sounds like a sick table. Maybe open to $25 with your premiums. Try to set up low SPR situations so your RIO are low and you can stack off with an OP.

And even 9-handed your OP is good often enough to be profitable. It's just hard to play OOP. The thing a lot of people seem to be missing in this thread is if villains are playing 70% of hands they have mostly complete trash but also many many combos of TPNK when you flop an OP. So just because you get called on a J94tt flop don't assume you're beat by e.g. J9. You might be but they also have AJ KJ QJ JT J8 J7 J6 J5s J4s J3s J2s. And you beat all that except J4s. On this board you're basically losing to 44, J9, J4s, 99, and maybe 94s with QQ. That's max 25 combos and you have outs against all these hands. Meanwhile you're likely to get called by almost 100 Jx combos, up to 45 FDs, up to 78 combos A9 K9 Q9 T9 98 97 96, up to 82 combos KQ QT Q8 T8 T7 87, and even more hands calling one bet like up to 30 combos TT 88 77 66 55.

The point is if the SPR is fairly low I'm happily stacking off an OP at a table this sticky because we beat far more hands than beat us. I'm assuming we're the ones betting and just getting passively called. If we get raised by passive players it's a different story, especially 6-handed+. LPs will let you know when you're beat.

I wouldn't recommend limp/reraising premiums unless you throw in some semi-bluff hands like A5s 76s. I still don't like it, but most fish know a limp/reraise is a big pair, so if you do limp/reraise it's good to have some non-premiums in your range.

You print money ldo

It might be hard to imagine that you can still be making massive profit despite check/folding post the majority of the time.

But that's a way better spot than raising $25 and getting 2 callers.

When I start reading posters saying that people aren't playing as tight as they did in 2005 and someone claims to be a crusher over 10 year who's living at home with his mom,

TTHRIC.

Locked.