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03-09-2014 , 08:04 PM
Hey guys!
Let's start with a short introduction.
My name is Lukas, i'm from Austria and i'm playing under the nickname Forfail on Stars. I actually hope my nickname won't be too much of a hinderness to achieve my goals.
I'm pretty new to twoplustwo even though i read a lot of awesome threads here since the beginning of my donking around poker phase. I'm pretty much a huge fan of all goofyballer and pokey threads! (For example: „Where the **** is valuetown“ and „Suited connectos – Implied Odds and you“)
I not consider myself as a hardcore grinder, or event decent grinder. I don't really play the game because of the money factor which pretty much leads to the point that i rather spend my freetime watching poker videos and reading awesome books than grinding by myself. You could pretty much say i just enjoy the whole complex theory behind poker and want to understand the different aspects of the game. As far as poker books go i'll just give a small list of my fav. Reads so far.

Easy Game by Andrew Seidman
Treat poker like your business by Leatherass
Winning Poker Tournaments one hand at a time volume 1 and 2 by Turner, Lynch and Fleet
Don't listen to Phil Hellmuth by Leatherass (really funny to read )
and my favourite
Secrets of professional tournament poker by Little

When i started grinding the 180s for the first time i wrote some articles where i pretty much just made a summary of what Little is saying and added some personal thoughts.
If you are interessted in one of those you can click on the spoiler here.


Spoiler:
Calling Pushes
Compilation of different authors and personal thoughts


I and i guess a lot of other players struggle with callingranges. Callingspots and Pushingspots are the basics and also the most important elements to win a SnG or MTT.
While pushingspots are easy to learn from any position and any stacksize (beside the few adjustments against some regs and also fishes where you can make -EV pushes very profitable) callingranges differ from that.
There are some approaches in poker and i guess it always depends on your style of playing which you prefer. Which leads to the first argument Jonathan Little made:


"From time to time you will find +EV situations you should pass up. Late in tournaments you have many chances to go all-in if you are shortstacked, but you should pass on some of these, because if you lose on one +EV marginal play, you will lose the opportunity to make more +EV decisions later. Suppose you think that pushing in a situation will show an expected profit of +0.25BB. This isn't much! So you should probably wait for a spot where you can profit 1BB or more."


Here he is referring to pushingspots, which are profitable based on nash, but very marginal overall.
On most tables, you usually have an edge, if you work on your game on regular bases. You just can't realize this edge, if you make such marginal moves. This is a general statement and it is useful for pushing and callingspots. Let's see what else he wrote about callingspots!


"If someone pushes ahead of you, you need to figure out his range and your hands equity against this range. The most common situation is when everyone folds to the button, who goes all-in for 10BBs. Assume the small blind folds and the action is on you, with 50BBs in your stack. There are 2.5BBs deadmoney from small blind and antes and you have to call one big blind less because you already have 1BB in the pot. So there are 13.5BBs in the pot and you have to call 9BBs more. To figure out how often you need to win simply compute (9/(9+13.5)) = 0.4
You must win 40 percent of the time against your opponent's range to break even.
Notice that the pushers position only matters in helping define his pushing range. Your position is important because if there are a lot of players left to act, you should be much tighter than if you are in the big blind with no players left to act. If you are not closing the action, you need a much stronger hand to call.

From here simply plug in the numbers to determine the hands with which you should call. For example, if your opoonent is pushing 50 percent of hands, you should call with something like 22+, A2+, K2+, Q8+, Q6s+, J8+, J7s+, T9 and T8s+. I would call with all these hands if my tournament life isn't at risk. Notice that you actually need to be slightly better than 40 percent to call, because you want to do better than break even. Consider tightening up a bit more if losing the hand will put you out of the tournament. If I were short, i would probably call with something like 44+, A5+, K8+, QT+, Q9s+ and JT+. This gives up a tiny bit of equity because you are folding a lot of the worst hands that you could call with, but you will gain the equity back, plus more, when you have the opportunity to push in the future!"



In this part is one of the most important statements for myself! Give up a tiny bit of equity in really close spots and just fold hands which are +EV when your tournament life is at risk! But what hands should you call? How much equity or expected value do we need for a call? In the previous statement Little claimed, that he like to win 1BB with each move. I think this number is a bit too high in sng formats in most spots. In multiway spots, when my tournamentlife is at risk, it's really the least amount of expected value i want to get. In 1 vs 1 spots i'm happy to get it in with an expected value of about +0.75BB (sometimes less) or higher.

Let's look at an example hand by Jonathan Little.

Example:
"Suppose the action folds to the player in the small blind who has 8BBs and you know he will push any two cards. For thos example i will use chipgs, although leaving numbers in terms of big blinds works fine as well. Assume you are playing 200/400-50. There are 500 in ante chips, plus your 400 in the big blind, plus your opponent's 3200. So there are 4100 chips in the pot. You have to call 2800 more, so you need 40 percent equity to call. You want to be better than break-even. So you need around 43 percent equity to profit. So you simply use 100 percent for your opponents range and determine that you should call with 22+, A2+, K2+, Q2+, J2+, T3+, 95+, 86+, 76+ and slightly worse suited hands. When players play poorly on your table you can call a bit tighter. I would actually call with something like 22+, A2+, K2+, Q6+, J7+, T8+ and suited connectors."

Here you can see what the exact callingranges look like in HRC, when you illustrate this situation:



He pretty much always aims for at least +1BB value.

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

In the book: Sit n Go Strategy by Collin Moshman you find a bit different approach.
He advices everyone to pick up every +EV callingspot. He don't really make general statements about it, but in the given examples in his book he just calls whenever it's +EV.
The main problem in his examples is, that his tournament life never is at risk in close spots. And when his tournament life is at risk, he always have hands with more than +1BB of expected value.
The only real statement he made is following:

"If you are getting better than 2 to 1 on a preflop all-in and your call closes the action calling is nearly always correct"

Overall i think he has actually quite similar preferences to Little when he have to decide if he should take a +EV situation, if his tournament life is at risk.

Here is a short summary about the usual questions people ask:

When do we call with hands which have worse than +0.75 to +1BB outcome?
-When your tournament life isn't at risk
-When you don't have an edge over other players on the table

How do we set up ranges on unknown opponents

I think it's bad to give them the range that you will push as a bit more experienced player, even if you tight it up. You should always consider, that they push really tight and make calls based on that nitrange!

How do we learn calling ranges?
Reviewing a lot helps a lot! But usually just make following:
Make standard ranges, which you give either regs or unknowns. Look up how certain hands perform against this standard ranges.
Ingame you should just use following numbers, to estimate your winchance of your hand.
If you get 1:1 odds you need 50% equity.
If you get 1,5:1 odds you need 40% equity.
If you get 2:1 odds you need 33% equity.
If you get 3:1 odds you need 25% equity and so on.
So if you are getting 1,8:1 ingame you are somewhere between 33% and 40% which means you should usually call, when you know that you have about 36% against his range when your tournamentlife isn't at risk. Mark close spots, look them up after your session and you will get a beast in callingspots!



Okay so far so good.
Now to my previous poker „career".
In 2011 i started with 6max cashgames and spewed away about 300$ before i became a winningplayer on NL5. I just donked around there and didn't make any content at all or grinded on regular bases. In 2012 i switched to MTT's and could final table three in 2 months by really really low volume or understanding of the game. (One of the final tables was the Hot 0.55 – i'm still proud of that. Donk tournament where a donk made it deep ;-)). At that point i started to make content for mtts, read a lot of books and all that good stuff. In the mid of 2013 i started with the 180s and grindind like insane 3000 of them in 8 months so far . (Volumefish deluxe).
Thats pretty much it.

Why do i want to blog now?
I want to start this thread to finally motivate me to grind my lazy ass up through the limits. I believe some of the nice sideeffects of blogging is to get in touch with a lot of other people who maybe have the same goals or are bored and nice enough to help out players to achieve their goals.
My main goal is to become a coach in SnG's & MTT's by myself to help out a lot of players, see them improve, help them to get structured thought processes and much more!
So if you are interessted in some articles to 180s or just want to look over some hands i'm probably going to post tune in!
On a sidenote – i'm always interessted in poker book recommendations!

Here is a list of the poker books i already read:
Spoiler:
Kill everyone
The mental game of poker
The theory of poker
The math of holdem
The raisers edge
Sit n Go strategy
And the books which are mentioned above


If your fav. book isn't on the list feel free to recommend it!

Threadsaver:
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03-13-2014 , 05:04 AM
I like it. Study ICM programs a ton. Good luck.
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03-13-2014 , 05:28 AM
GL!
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03-13-2014 , 05:45 PM
will follow, good luck!
Quote
03-16-2014 , 06:57 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by FieryJustice
I like it. Study ICM programs a ton. Good luck.
Thanks Jonathan! I feel really honored right now!
I really like your book series that much, because you try to teach people how to think about spots, rather than just follow some rules. Even though your guideline of comon postflop spots was pretty helpful.
If you tune in again - i have one question about shortstack play.
Do you still think that you should jam anything unexploitable you could based on nash with 15 or less BB from MP or later? I'm pretty unsure in such spots :-/.


For example:
You are MP1 with 14BB's (Ante are in play) and you have KJs. You can consider to just push it which we would call an „unexploitable jam“.
If you openpush it, you don't give your opponents room to make mistakes. And you increase variance a lot. Basically they will snap you with a stronger range, or a range you would flip against.
But you also will collect the dead money without worrying too much. (Because of the Foldequity argument)
Let's consider you just openraise this hand.
What are the advantages of this?
1. If two players behind you move all in, you have an easy fold. So it decrease your variance a lot in the longrun.
2. If someone rejamms you, you can consider if he is a fairly tight player or a fairly loose player. If he plays something like 8/6/2.3 (VPIP/PFR/3Bet) you also have an easy fold.
3. If a good or loose player rejamms you you have an +EV call. It wouldn't be a fistpump call, because people play back at you more frequently because of your position like you mentioned, but we play our Nuts also that way and i think we get more advantages than disadvantages that way.

I know it's just a general statement, because we have to take account of the players on our table, stacksizes and so on.
Thats just some random thoughts about that topic, because this situations occur way too often in 180s.


Also thanks to the other guys for tuning in!

First week of blogging:
Well i plan to update this blog weekly.
This week was ok. Volume still is a huge problem, but i think my results are ok.
Here is the graph of this week:



Didn't win a single one of those but final tabled quite a few.

Here are two Hands:

In this one the CO openraiser plays 24/22 with 25% openraise from this position. I guess this one is a pretty standard rejam. Also he can't call too much based on ICM, so i could probably rejam ATC, but i still want to have some equity against a range he probably would call.

    Poker Stars, $2.28 Buy-in (1,250/2,500 blinds, 250 ante) No Limit Hold'em Tournament, 7 Players
    Poker Tools Powered By Holdem Manager - The Ultimate Poker Software Suite.

    CO: 43,902 (17.6 bb)
    BTN: 2,676 (1.1 bb)
    Hero (SB): 51,099 (20.4 bb)
    BB: 64,763 (25.9 bb)
    MP1: 49,070 (19.6 bb)
    MP2: 8,033 (3.2 bb)
    MP3: 50,457 (20.2 bb)

    Preflop: Hero is SB with A 8
    3 folds, CO raises to 5,075, BTN calls 2,426 and is all-in, Hero raises to 50,849 and is all-in, BB folds, CO calls 38,577 and is all-in

    Flop: (93,980) 9 6 8 (3 players, 3 are all-in)
    Turn: (93,980) Q (3 players, 3 are all-in)
    River: (93,980) Q (3 players, 3 are all-in)

    Spoiler:
    Results: 93,980 pot
    Final Board: 9 6 8 Q Q
    CO showed A A and won 82,526 (38,624 net)
    BTN showed Q A and won 11,454 (8,778 net)
    Hero showed A 8 and lost (-43,902 net)


    Hand 2:
    I messed up here like really hard.

      Poker Stars, $2.28 Buy-in (25/50 blinds) No Limit Hold'em Tournament, 8 Players
      Poker Tools Powered By Holdem Manager - The Ultimate Poker Software Suite.

      MP3: 1,605 (32.1 bb)
      CO: 1,035 (20.7 bb)
      BTN: 1,500 (30 bb)
      Hero (SB): 4,950 (99 bb)
      BB: 3,780 (75.6 bb)
      UTG+2: 1,270 (25.4 bb)
      MP1: 1,710 (34.2 bb)
      MP2: 2,490 (49.8 bb)

      Preflop: Hero is SB with A Q
      4 folds, CO raises to 100, BTN folds, Hero calls 75, BB folds

      Flop: (250) T 9 J (2 players)
      Hero checks, CO bets 92, Hero calls 92

      Turn: (434) A (2 players)
      Hero checks, CO bets 208, Hero calls 208

      River: (850) 6 (2 players)
      Hero checks, CO bets 635 and is all-in, Hero folds

      Spoiler:
      Results: 850 pot
      Final Board: T 9 J A 6
      CO mucked and won 850 (450 net)
      Hero mucked A Q and lost (-400 net)


      I'm still not sure how to play it.
      I think we can't isojam because we are too deep. (Because of the person behind us, not because of the openraiser)
      I guess 3betting Pre would be the best option and then decide if we continue based on the flop.
      As played: Should i 3bet the Flop as a semibluff or is calling fine?
      Even though we only have to be good like 33% of the time, i think i am crushed on the river and just fold it. - is that also a mistake?

      Thanks for tuning in!
      Quote
      03-16-2014 , 07:08 PM
      In hand #1 CO should be opening a lot tighter than his standard 25% given that the BTN is so short and can pretty much profitably call ATC. And also the fact that there are big stacks that have him covered in SB and BB. So you probably need to take that into consideration when coming up with your re-jam range.

      glgl
      Quote
      03-18-2014 , 06:36 PM
      I tend to open push unexploitable hands when I expect my opponents to play well. If I expect them to push rarely, I will minraise fold and if I expect them to push too much, I will minraise call off. This situation comes up much more frequently in live poker as you have much better reads on your opponents. Online against random opponents, it is a bit tougher to develop solid reads.
      Quote
      03-24-2014 , 09:26 AM


      Here is my last week's graph. Pretty standard 180s graph on that sample i guess :-).

      15 FT's in that sample.
      Distribution:
      2x 2nd
      2x 3rd
      3x 4th
      2x 5th
      1x 6th
      3x 8th
      2x 9th

      HU Finishing Hands:

        Poker Stars, $2.28 Buy-in (3,000/6,000 blinds, 600 ante) No Limit Hold'em Tournament, 2 Players
        Poker Tools Powered By Holdem Manager - The Ultimate Poker Software Suite.

        BB: 160,044 (26.7 bb)
        Hero (SB): 109,956 (18.3 bb)

        Preflop: Hero is SB with 4 4
        Hero raises to 12,540, BB raises to 159,444 and is all-in, Hero calls 96,816 and is all-in

        Flop: (219,912) K J 6 (2 players, 2 are all-in)
        Turn: (219,912) J (2 players, 2 are all-in)
        River: (219,912) 7 (2 players, 2 are all-in)

        Spoiler:
        Results: 219,912 pot
        Final Board: K J 6 J 7
        BB showed Q Q and won 219,912 (109,956 net)
        Hero showed 4 4 and lost (-109,956 net)



          Poker Stars, $2.28 Buy-in (3,000/6,000 blinds, 600 ante) No Limit Hold'em Tournament, 2 Players
          Poker Tools Powered By Holdem Manager - The Ultimate Poker Software Suite.

          SB: 190,084 (31.7 bb)
          Hero (BB): 79,916 (13.3 bb)

          Preflop: Hero is BB with 6 6
          SB raises to 189,484 and is all-in, Hero calls 73,316 and is all-in

          Flop: (159,832) Q 9 7 (2 players, 2 are all-in)
          Turn: (159,832) K (2 players, 2 are all-in)
          River: (159,832) 5 (2 players, 2 are all-in)

          Spoiler:
          Results: 159,832 pot
          Final Board: Q 9 7 K 5
          SB showed K J and won 159,832 (79,916 net)
          Hero showed 6 6 and lost (-79,916 net)



          Not too lucky with my PP :-)

          Have a nice week guys!
          GL at the tables
          Quote

                
          m