Hello,

This is my first loet since 2014. I've recently decided to go pro. I'm hoping to get some input on a hand from my very first "pro" session.

Hero 1600eff: 10s10d in sb
Villain: 600eff: 44 in mp

Pre: villain opens to 15, call, folds to me I 3b to 55, villain calls, other player folds

Flop: 234 2 diamonds 1 heart, I lead 65, villain call

Turn: 6h, i lead 110, villain jams around 390 total (my math isnt exact but it's pretty much the sitch


I end up calling (i had been active, stealing pots with air, raising in position due to be card deck. Picking spots. 1010 was the first hand i had seen in 4 hours. Is this a fold? I lost. The villain was a young rec, not bad not good but for the table he was one of the better players. Thanks!

Thanks!

First I’ll ask when you get had you initially planned on calling a jam? I ask because you shouldn’t bet without a plan

Do you think this is a bluff 1/3 of the time? River jams are usually weighted pretty heavily live unless I’m the one jamming

On a clean turn against this player yes i did initially plan on calling a jam. In retrospect the 6 wasn't the cleanest turn because of the one liner, pocket 5s. I went with it because of the flush draws and thus particular player

I don't like how you played this at all. Pre is good but flop I'd go ~pot to make shoving good turns easy. You don't want to vbet many weaker hands than overpairs and those are well worth pot. You have tons of high equity bluffs and villain has way more bluffcatchers than comfortable calldowns. Makes sense to go very polar.

It's the worst turn in the deck for your range, I don't think that overpairs want to aggressively stack off anymore. 66, 55, 54s are ahead now and I would expect the average villain to lay down 77-99 at some point. Also, all the two over+wheel draw type bluffs, which you have many of, are now devalued. They no longer draw to a straight and the pair outs aren't that clean either. So I'd check a bunch here (maybe even range), or at the very least go smaller and give up most Ax bluffs.

AP I lean towards laying it down vs jam. You are drawing near dead vs value hands and villain's story checks out. Td is a pretty bad blocker too. It is close though, grim spot, but the big mistake was the turn cbet imo.

Pls don't include results, it might affect the responses you get.

I think you played it fine. Even if you check flop and turn you are probably going to end up calling an all in at some point from him on a lot of runouts. At this stack depth with an overpair it's just rough. Without reads, he could definitely have a draw when he jams.

I don't think a check is really better than a bet on flop and turn, both are going to be close. There are so many flush completing cards and overcards that can come. He can have a FD with broadway cards. Also, you can get value from a lot of A high hands on the flop, BDFDs, etc.

Turn is a pretty clear check.

I just want to point out that the effective stack means the shortest stack involved in that hand. The effective stack in this case is 600 since that’s the most either player has at risk.

Don’t post results

First and foremost, I'm not trying to be a douche or anything but you're no where near ready to turn "pro". With that being said, you should raise more pre with 2 callers and being OOP to around 75.

After he jams, you're hand is no good (not because you posted results but because you have to put him on a range, he was first to raise in MP and flatted a 3bet pre so he should have at least jacks +, which is all you need to know to fold). Players don't usually do this with 99 or below which is all you beat, except for bluffs but without specific reads we shouldn't just guess and hope he's bluffing.

Preflop. OOP, 3bet more, something like 4.5x raise.

On the flop. Board favors villain's range I disagree with the pot sized bet and prefer a one third pot bet.

Turn is a clear check.

Rule#62f
Don't stack off as SB 3b on 2346.

Rule#62g
Without A5/55

Thanks for the input. I appreciate it, however just because I make a big mistake one time does not mean I'm not ready to turn pro. No one is perfect. I'm a winning player, and I've been playing cards since I was 15. I'm 36 now. There's some rust that needs to be worked out and I know this hand was probably bad, hence my post. Are people always rude on here?

Just like you made a mistake "one time," people are not always rude here. I think people are direct and to the point. It's strategy talk. Not much sugarcoating going on. Take the advice based on the one hand sample.

Pre: Raise bigger from SB, 4.5x+, depending how often V defends against 3bet. With no history I would default to 4.5x.
Flop: Fine, even though you don't have any of the sets, you have all the overpairs and V can still have lower overpairs.
Turn: Clear check as you beat two less overpairs.

AP, b/f turn. You only beat 77-99 and those would not raise your turn bet.

Probably rude yea, but these days there is a very significant gap between 'winning player' and being able to make a living at poker. Edges remain and that edge varies by location, but overall ramming in BIs with TT on low boards like this against players who likely have no bluffs and you just dont have the nuts ever... not good.

Put another way, there isn't much room for a learning curve these days outside of some serious run-good for a while., so, limiting mistakes and losses is legit everything.

The reason people are being "rude" is because the vast majority of people who try to go pro fail. As for the ones that succeed, I pity most of them.

I don't think there is a brief way to say what Paybig is saying without sounding rude. To be fair, he did claim he wasn't trying to be a d-bag.

This has been covered at great length ITF, (I suggest you take a hard look at everything pertaining to "going pro" in the "best of LLSNL" stickie) but there is a big difference between a winning player who quits his job to play full time, and a truly successful long term pro who can beat the game for a living wage over years of full time play.

Who knows, maybe that's not what you want. Maybe you just had a wild desire to support yourself playing poker for a while, just to see if you could. If it rocks, killer. If not, you go back to work. That's totally fine, and I wish you the best of luck. Just consider that in order to have a realistic shot at being a successful pro, you need to ask yourself some hard questions and be absolutely brutally honest with your answers.
Some examples might be (but not limited to):

Do you have, at the very least, 2000 hours logged over the steaks you plan on playing that shows you are a proven winner? What is you hourly in bb/hr over that sample?

Do you have a bankroll of at least 1500bb (realistically WAY more) dedicated strictly to poker, as well as money set aside for bills for the next 3 months?

Do you ever tilt?

Can the above win rate net you the $ you need to pay your bills month to month? If that doesn't happen, will it affect your play?

Can you, with great precision, describe where your edge comes from in the games you play? Can you explain in great detail what your opponents are doing wrong and how you are taking advantage of it?

Are you prepared to drive to the casino day after day for weeks or months at a time only to get your teeth kicked in over and over again by moderately wealthy action junkies, degenerate gamblers, drug dealers, scumbags, desperate losers who are bound to go broke and total fish?

Now do you ever tilt?

Are you prepared to spend at least 30% of the time you put in at the table AWAY from the table working on your game?

Are you prepared to drop down steaks if your bankroll dictates you should?

Just admit it.....you tilt. Now can you figure out why and in what way you tilt so you can work on fixing it?

The list goes on but you get the idea. Based on the very limited information in this one HH, most of the posters here will assume the answers to at least a few of those question are not up to snuff to take a shot at being a full time pro. For what it's worth, I would suggest keeping some kind of steady income and just play as much as possible until you feel confident you are making consistently +EV decisions and you're a proven winner over a significant sample. Without a doubt, the best thing you can do is continue posting hand here, or the CLP discord or wherever and be open to constructive (albeit sometimes blunt) criticism.

Best of luck brother.

Thank you for this reply. To sum up your post, I've only tracked online winnings through sharkscope, opr when it was up for NA. Was low stakes and I'm a winner there, ROI over 40%. I've played tons of cash live and I've never legit tracked everything, but I feel like I'm ready to give it an honest shot. I've only logged 50 hours so far, in one week (officially tracking). It means nothing until I get around 500, I am aware. The whole reason I'm doing this is to see if I can. I set aside a poker roll, 20k separate from life expenses to do this. I'll never know if I don't try. I'll post my results feb 13th, it'll be my first full month (started jan 12th).

My comments were meant to help you, not offend you. I don't think there's anything rude about suggesting someone's not ready to turn pro. If you were learning how to fly an airplane, would you want your instructor to solo you before you're ready, just because you want to? A good instructor wouldn't let you take the airplane up by yourself unless you were ready. Would that be rude of the flight instructor? Same goes for poker. A good coach/adviser would also let you know if you were ready or not to play for a living and risk money you need to live on.

I once saw an every day pro get up one day and start punching the wall uncontrollably before getting banned, and another one out right punched a guy in the face over getting sucked out of a hand. Poker isn't a profession that should be taken lightly by any means, especially when money's involved.