Nice that u elaborate your play. But i still think XR this spot is bad for our hand becouse we will get fold from other player most of times. I think we can get more value if we go bet turn and bet river becouse btn will call us with his pocket pairs or maybe with some FD... Also as played like this imo your river bet size should be at least pot .. What u think ?

Ok, I respect your opinion and I'm happy for people to point out where they think I am playing bad.

But, if you know villain folds to the turn donk here 82%. Then he only goes to the river 18%. If I lead turn and river I dont see him calling too often either.

I think he still calls my XR with his FD and PP too.

I think better villains watch out for bet sizing tells. From what I see someone who bets pot on the river is a huge red flag with "Value" written on it. Its not often I bet pot anymore and I dont recall betting pot as a bluff all too often. So for me personally to bet pot here is just a huge bet sizing tell imo.

Anyway, I have a few hands to post from tonight so Im going to move on to that now..

Right tonight at the tables seemed to be themed by: Facing an overbet

vs Reg from Russia, now have him marked as a weak reg but didnt know too much about this 6max villain when hand was played out. Recall him Turn XR me in a recent previous hand, think it was 3bet pot.

Soon as I looked at the flop I felt he might raise it.
Turn pretty sure we are ahead now, although he still could have a straight. Hesitated between flatting and raising here. Raising charges his draws and coolers his weakers sets, his straights cooler me. Flatting keeps his bluffs in. Opted to flat.

River he 2x overbets the pot. Dont think we can fold here.



After that hand this gentleman was pretty darn mad. He immediately joined one of my empty tables where I was looking to table start and he sat and played me HU for the rest of the night until I logged off. Took another 2 BI off him HU. His strategy was to 3bet 40% then XF the flop in 3bet pots.


Next, what you prepared to stack off with pre for almost 250bb?

Haha wasent as difficult a decision against this absolute psychopath maniac. Had observed him 3 or 4 times move his 250bb stack into a 12bb pot on the flop. Was sitting thinking does this guy not realise that sooner or later someone will have a hand? When I 3bet I was expecting to get 4bet, but when he moves his stack in... paused and decided ok

Watched the board and then just looked at his cards and hoped he didnt have a Q.




Next hand. Interestingly at the time I believed this guy to be a fish, I now think he is actually a good reg who plays a bit looser.

Decided to X the turn as the flop was paired and I was getting killed in these spots by fish so decided to slow down. We then see the Turn overbet. We then see a River overbet.

Not sure I like his River overbet as he only gets called by hands that beat him, can see why I thought he was a fish at this point. He prob has no hands on me either and thought I was a fish ready to stack off with AA.




Dont go broke in a limped pot.

vs Fish, flop bottom 2 pair in a limped pot 5 way and decide to lead the flop with the fish present. Fish 4.5x raises us. I think he has J8 or 68 and we have the 7 and 9 blockers to those sets and it was a limped pot so doubt he has TT either.

Dude is a fish so he can also have complete air, but felt he did have the straight so decided to peel a card and try to boat up and then take it from there.

Turn he 4x's the Pot..




And we are up to 95k VPPs almost there..

haha those hands were just soooo juicy. Nice session mate!

Thanks mate, needed a juicy session as the month didnt start too well.

I always seem to start off badly when I move up stakes or try a new format. Dont know if that is a mental game issue, variance, extra pressure or a lack of knowledge of the villains in the new games. Perhaps a mixture of everything.

Given time to work and study I always feel I can improve at anything.

ChicagoJoey posted this in his podcast thread and I liked the infographic so thought I would share here.

Originally Posted by poison_arrow_frog View Post
Hey Joey, can you / anyone who has it, post or link the positive person vs negative person picture you had up during your stream a day or two ago.

I've tried to find it, but can't find the one you had.

Well done mate ... really chuffed for you.

Probably a good time for my favourite quote.

Spoiler:

There is a big misunderstanding between the concept of talent and skill, talent you have naturally but skill is only developed by hours and hours of beating on your craft... nobody got to where they were without hard work.

Thanks mate, looking forward to your comeback in 2016.

I fully expected your spoiler to say:



took me by surprise there

Defo a lot of hard work gone into this but I am happy to double that effort next year if I am gonna progress further.

gl

Quite an eventful session again so gonna post some hands.

I am not fully aware of who the 6max regs are normally but there defo seems to be an influx of some SNE joining in the 100NL games lately. Was sandwiched inbetween a 5x SNE and a SNE earlier. Was happy to play HU but not sure about my 3 handed game yet. Will need to look at my ranges for that on a rainy day.

Anyway hands..

Dont lie, you are not folding KK here either. Big Fish in the blinds squeezes. Reg calls the fish squeeze then starts getting creative.

C'mon mate if you had AA here you are not gonna flat the fish squeeze so I dont get his play at all. Surely when I 4bet the squeeze he must be realising that I slowplayed pre to keep the fish in the pot.




Next we can revisit last nights theme of Facing an overbet.. cant win em all I guess.

vs a Massive Whale Drooler who was full of the chat. I was being nice to him but he liked to berate me after sucking out every hand.




Stay tuned cos this story continues. After doing me on that hand the whale announces that he is fed up beating this table and is off to find his next victims. Was pretty dissapointed to see him go.

Then low and behold he marches across the Stars lobby and sits at one of my empty tables to play me HU He must have realised I was easy money after he stacked me in the hand above.

We played 13 hands HU before the bloodbath was over. Ill just post the 3 main hands so you can see his postflop skills:









Feel like I have run well since Fri. Tempted to look at HEM to see but really shouldnt be focusing on any short term variance and getting carried away.

Session review, I'll go over what I marked down last night.

vs Fish.

Check the river then wait for it.. wait for it...




vs a Suspected Fish,

was wondering what a donk triple barrel from a fish represents. Usually pot size bets can be strength but maybe had some other reads on this guy at the time.



vs Fish,

Reckon I knew his hand on the Turn so figured the flush would be a payday. Whilst the regs will fold the spade river this guy isnt.

After the hand the Fish exclaimed that he needs to switch from playing Poker on a Tuesday night to drinking instead. Then another fish at the table gives him the advice that sometimes it is best to do both, lol.




vs a Platinum Star, but seems fishy.

We were playing HU before the other guy made it 3 handed.




vs Reg.

Somebody opens limps and HEM performs that magic trick where the HUD dissapears. Didnt want to raise the limp for fearing it was a reg limping AA. So thats why I just called the open limp which maybe confuses the reg who raises, as he prob doesnt think I have AJo.

I was more fearing he has AQ. When the river completes the flush, I figured that card is more likely to have hit me than villain and expected he would check behind. When he bets I felt he was trying to steal the pot, if he had gone way bigger I would have had a decision but dont think I am folding 2pair here.



vs Reg.

Dont know what to say about this. My 4bet should have been a little larger I think. Kind of felt I did something wrong here but not sure what.

On the river, I felt I would put him under pressure instead of checking and leaving me the difficult decision of having to call for possibly just a chop pot.

But I dunno if he ever calls this with anything that isnt chopping or beating me. At the same time, can I really XF the river?

It is maybe played a bit over aggressive for my hand strength but when the Turn has two flush draws I am wanting to charge him to draw out plus hoping he maybe has AQ.






vs Fish.

I felt he Turned 2 pair and he was supposed to get it in with his 2 pair to stop me drawing out to a flush.

I have been playing sets better recently but whenever I try anything aggressive with bottom set it costs me money. Here I thought I could get away with it cos I felt he as AQ, but if I also consider he jams bigger sets here then it isnt so clever really is it. Then again he surely would have raised AA or QQ pre so the only overset I am worried about is 44.

Because the board has 2 flush draws I am also concerned he binks a flush on the river OR the 3rd card to the flush makes it look like I have rivered a flush and it kills the action.

Just an awkward one I suppose.

AKs need to be bigger pre imo, we are OOP and deep so I expect the avg 100 reg to 3b/c a very high percent of his range vs that sizing given he gets the greatest odds in the world to do so. Postflop looks a bit too ambitious, think it's a river we have to check and end up folding if he bets, but u have to remember that he can check back many hands (that's not calling a river jam either way), don't think it's like ur gonna get bluffed off ur hand a ton here but it obv depends on villains tendencies, readless vs a reg it's just gonna be a x/f.

Thanks for the input mate, think thats what I needed to hear.

I often look at my winrates for AK in HEM with disappointment which would point to some fundamental bad play and not knowing what to do with this hand in certain spots. Might have to concentrate a bit harder when playing big pots with AK.

Games seemed pretty poor last night, wasent much action or fish at the tables.

Speaking of fish at the tables, it seems to be the general consensus that in fact I am the fish at the 6max tables.

One of my first sessions at 6max some dude informed me, after he lost a decent size pot, that I am a fish. I never said nothing in chat and he then ranted on that everyone was in fact at this table to take my money and I was the "mark". Dude clearly labelled me a fish cos I was only playing a couple of 6max tables and he has never seen me before.

Anyway he isnt the only guy to have called me out as a fish at the 6max tables. This other guy from the Ukraine was talking smack in the chat and also informed me that I am a fish funnily enough was right after he lost a big pot to me, anyway I have marked in my notes what guys think I am a fish.

Last night the Ukraine dude who thinks I am a fish spots me sitting alone at a 6max table and he comes rushing in to take my money. We played 36 hands HU, was a proper grudge match and you could feel the tension. A lot of fast betting and calling from him. Could see him already tilting after losing a few pots HU to the big fish (me). He is now 3betting me 40% so started flatting and taking more flops and decided to float to see if he gives up on the Turn with that wide 3bet range.

He kinda lucks out here on the river but I wasent overly concerned, was already up like 80bb prior to this.



After that I was still getting the better of him and he seemed angrier and was snap calling my bets at lightening speed.

I had a flush draw on the flop and decided I would triple this for decent size bets if the flush come in. Turned the flush and bet rapid, and he called in a milli-second, same again on River. Villain called down with top pair K and lost a good size pot.



He was now steaming mad and 3betting an absolute ton. Waited til I got some hands that could flop some decent equity with draws and be able to sustain a few bets postflop if I catch the right flop. Felt J9s was more than decent to flat with considering his rampant 3betting.



And that was the last hand he played. He was down 200bb in 36 hands at this point and decided to call it a day. He will no doubt tell himself that the fish got lucky against him and he may come back for round 2. Always feels good to put someone in their place and feels even better when you do it with Poker rather than some cheap back chat.


Hundo 6max hand where I thought the villain played quite terrible. Dont these reg know that you dont bluff a fish? With my holecards the villains story just doesnt make any sense.



Never bluff a fish.

How many hands have you played at 6max so far?

I'm not wanting to see any results until the end of the month so I dont want to check the exact number right now, but I literally just played my first hand at 6max at the start of this month. So maybe have around 15k hands now.

I remember reading your thread when you were giving 6max a go. I thought I would see how things went for you before I sampled it. You seemed to do pretty well there from what I can remember.

I started off at 6max the way I always start new stakes or games, by getting absolute destroyed. Set over set, loss after loss and the other usual coolers. Plus the heckling from Regs with somebody calling me a fish every 5 mins lol.

I'll post a 6max graph at the end of the month. Had some run good last wk end so hoping that patched things up a bit.

I really dont know much about opening ranges for 6max so I am just gonna need to trial and error for a bit until I get some numbers to work with.

You still playing 6max?

Yeah 6max will make up more than half of my volume this month. It's strange as I think I'm still winning there (like yourself I will find out at the end of the month) but I still feel a bit lost when I'm at a table with regs who are all 3betting 8%+. Thankfully at 25nl there are enough fish around to compensate. With regards to ranges I just pretty much open what I would open in a FR table and consider utg the same as I'd consider MP2. I really need to work on my 3, 4 and 5 betting ranges though as I feel as though I'm kinda winging it at the moment when I should be sitting down and working out a base strategy.

I actually think I am now playing more 6max than FR, more games running and juicier.

There is a lot of 3betting at 6max and even more of a problem is the amount of squeezing. I sometimes feel that if I flat I just expect to be squeezed, it happens so often. This leads to 3 betting rather than face the squeeze. Which then leads to Regs having a larger cold 4bet as well. One villain has a squeeze of around 12% with 20% from the BB. I am pretty much flatting him every hand and laughing at what he shows up with Q3s and stuff.

At FR I seemed to do better on the Deep tables, so I figured I would start my 6max journey at Deep tables too. This helps with the aggressive 3betting because stacks are large I can flat 3bets a bit wider with speculative stuff that can flop well.

Yeah likewise, for opening I am "kinda" using my adjusted FR ranges. However, like I said I am playing the Deep tables and I have different opening ranges for Deep than normal due to the antes.

Then convert that to 6max, but wait at 6max there are 3 less seats so 3 less antes go into the pot so there is less to steal, therefore my 6max ranges may need to be a bit tighter than the FR equivalent.

Yeah 3,4,5 betting ranges is something I have been mapping out recently too. Think previously I have left myself to judge when it is good to 4bet, but this led to me getting too aggressive and 4betting too often and having to fold to the 5bet too often as a result. So now I am looking to memorize more solid ranges and I can adapt them slightly at the tables to suit game dynamics but should make sure I get exploited less.

gl with the month, I'll take a look at your results when they are in, although anytime I see your results its just a green line going diagonally up to the right. Whenever I have sustained period of winning I figure that its time to move up stakes so I can get back to breaking even again.

My plan was to move back up to 50nl at FR but it doesn't run anymore on FTP or you just get one table at most. If it was running that would've been my regular game by now but I think it's maybe fortunate it isn't as it's forced me to start learning 6 max.

Also, it's an old article but it's maths based so the age of it shouldn't matter but I always find this good for 3/4/5 betting:

http://en.donkr.com/Articles/optimal...x---part-1-329


Anyway, enough about me. G/l for the month and looking forward to seeing how things are working out for you.

Thanks mate, nice one.

I'll check this out now.

KK - am I doing it wrong?

vs Reg, 5Bet Range 2.2





KK - am I doing it wrong?

vs Reg, 1.3k hands, 5Bet Range 4.9, lots of aggressive looking stats Agg% 51, cbet 78%, Agg Factor 4.1

edit: this one was facing a 4bet actually, not a 5bet. Villain 4bet Range 3.9




Maybe an argument for folding this on the flop, vs 29/16 dont know much about him, 700 hands.

Well in case you didnt work out from the KK hands above I kind of took a battering at the tables at the wk end and dropped quite a few BI's. Dont think there was any major bad play so nothing too much to worry about.

Here is a story from last night.

I spots a 6max table just starting with 1 Reg and 1 Unknown (fish). Swoops in and grabs the Jesus seat, which is nice since its usually me who table starts and I dont get to pick a seat in relation to the fish.

The table seems to pause for a few seconds..

The reg leaves and I am left HU with the fish Well the reg re-appears about ten seconds later and takes the seat to my left, so he was clearly unhappy about the fish sitting on his left and he decided to leave me HU with the fish while he relocates.

I got around 4 hands HU with the fish and took 110bb off him. The table then fills up with regs and 1 more unknown. The first fish decides to shove in his last 35bb, I figure he has Ax or trash so I call with 33 and hope everyone else folds. Except some other unknown has joined the table and decides to see a flop for 35bb..




Haha enjoyed that, hope the Reg got a nice view from his new seat.

Nothing more tilting than starting tables and somehow having worst spot like 90% of the time. I was on life-tilt for well over a month when Ladymace got team online thing. She used to script the living **** out of the tables I started and literally always had jesus. Always.

Gl btw, really cool thread.

Thanks mate.

I hadn't played with LadyMace prior to her being online team Pro, but obv after moving to 50NL I played with her quite a bit. Looks as if scripting will be outlawed soon going by some of the Dnegs comments. And also wouldnt be surprised if the lobby goes the way of the Full Tilt changes.

Anyway, with regards to table starting what really pi$$es me off is the table campers. These guys that when they dont know who you are, they like to sit and play you HU for some easy money. Then after they lose HU they still like to come to your empty table and then insta-sit out.

What is more annoying is when they sit out and block the Jesus seat by sitting out on your right. That is some disgusting table ethics.

For a while I would then leave these tables and open a fresh one - and then look what happens.. same guy joins, sits on my right and sits out.

I leave the table. Start a fresh one..

Same guy joins and insta sits out.

Then wash rinse repeat and they literally follow you round the lobby, blocking you from getting HU with a fish and also blocking the Jesus seat.

Was tilting me for a while, so just tried to forget about it.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Anyway off to the Celtic v Ajax game now. Fully expect another crappy performance in Europe from the Hoops and anticipate we prob get put out tonight. Just so I dont come home disappointed and then open some tables up in a mood and blow a hole in my BR.

Weather is looking atrocious outside for this one. My wee bro is in Austria "visiting" some American chic, dunno why you can fill in the blanks yourself. So my mate is taking his ticket, who is an Everton fan and we need to go pick him up. My dad is already sounding stressed on the phone about the traffic so I better get going.

Got a Bday dinner to attend on Sat night so not really that many playing days left in the month now.

Last nights action, some russian dude on a few of my 6max tables and his favourite move was to either 3bet or squeeze constantly and it was getting annoying.

In 3bet pots he liked to employ a XC line it seemed.

3bet 11%
3bet vs Steal 17%

The next 3 hands took place over the course of about 3 or 4 mins. His actions were seeming pretty snappy vs me. When it gets to the 3bet pots where I am betting half pot we were honestly betting and calling in rhythm like a drum beat.




So I kept the rhythm going for hand 2 as I thought it would tilt him. Different table but was right after the hand above and same villain.





So I am trying to see a few flops at this table cos of the fish on my right but Mr Russian I love to 3bet or squeeze every hand is employing his tactics yet again. Bit of a loose call pre but I was having so much fun with this guy I couldn't turn down the invitation.




Actually laughed out loud at the end of that hand. He managed not to give any verbal in the chat afterwards but pretty sure I heard some Russian swearing outside my window coming from overseas.

He calmed down his 3betting vs me after that. I emptied the fish and moved my stack up to around 900bb then we all went home happy.