OK ..this YF poster is a imposter ... what have you done with the real YF ?

Will all know YF is a quantity over quality type ... he has no time for the tedious stuff like theory !!

haha... maybe i finally get it.

i just think the only way to take the focus off of variance is 1) learning to not check results and 2) schedule a routine of study.

Training Curriculum For SSNLH


1. Understanding Ranges
Filter 300 hands where you know all cards and try to assign ranges beginning at pre-flop
Count combinations and group possible holdings to categories(Air-Medium-Monsters)
Discuss insights with a poker buddy.
Determine Optimal Strategy(Bluff, Bet for value, Pot control etc....)

2. Stealing Ranges And Blind Play
Filter last 300 possible steal opportunities and calculate profitability and correct range to steal with
Write down common steal percentages and ranges at different levels
Filter all your hands for most successful regulars how they steal and how they defend their blinds
Discuss insights with poker buddy

3. Using Stats To Profile
Build a HUD according to your needs
Profile the stats of the most successful regulars at your limit
Write down possible counter strategies

4. Barrelling
Understanding generic optimal strategy for barrelling
Filter 300 hands where the hero Is pre-flop aggressor and IP and determine optimal barrelling strategy
Filter 300 hands where the hero Is pre-flop aggressor and OOP and determine optimal barrelling strategy
For the same hands write down how to proceed on the Turn and River
Filter 300 hands where you could have 3 barrelled and analyse them
Filter 300 hands where you lost showdown as PFR and think if 3 barrelling would have been successful
Search for 50 hands where over-betting would have been optimal
post most interesting hands on a forum and discuss with poker buddy

5. Going For Value
Understand stack-pot-ratio and the commitment threshold and know how to calculate it quickly
Filter 300 hands where you flopped monsters and build a commitment plan around it
Filter 300 hands where you flopped a medium strength hand and plan how you would pot control
Filter the last 50 hands where you were all in post-flop and determine whether this was warranted

6. 3 Betting Light and the 3bet, 4bet, and 5bet Game
Filter 300 hands where you were in the blinds and could have 3bet against a steal attempt and determine whether it would have been profitable
Filter 300 hands where you were on the button and could have 3bet light and determine whether it would have been profitable
Filter 300 hands where you got 3bet and write down the optimal counter strategy(also consider post flop lines)
Filter and analyse 30 hands where you have 4bet
Filter and analyse 30 hands where somebody 4 bet you
Pick the 3 most successful regulars and analyse how they play the 3bet, 4bet, and 5bet game.

Thats the plan up to about section 6. Obviously things will need to be adapted slightly, like most 300 hands will become 100 give or take due to time constrictions and the fact that I would like to play Poker again before I am 50.

It is still going to be more hours put in off the table than ever before and as long as I do things correctly I really cant fail to see improvement. I will basically go from playing blind to acting out situations correctly over and over and building good habits as I go along.

Youfaiil is right. In january I knew I ran bad, but I didn't check results until end of the day. I then realized how bad it was, get angry/annoyed/whatever, rub one out and go to bed. But it didn't affect how I played, I continued playing A-game 95% of the time. Now I ****ing refresh my graph when I fold my BB and I just feel my game gets worse and worse. But somehow the length of this horrific runbad has got me slip back to bad habbits.

Seriously, don't check results.

martl,

did you create that curriculum yourself? It seems very heavy but i assume you're going to break it down to smaller parts?

mzbourg, perhaps a short break? fwiw i hate when people suggest taking a break (even though it's correct) because, maybe like myself, you just want to grind.

Yeah good thing is exams are starting next Tuesday, but I've taken 2 1 week breaks so far this year. Problem is I really just want to play because even though I run super bad, my EV line goes up at a very good/steady pace. 7bb/100 at 25nl, and 50nl is close to the same all though a much smaller sample.

Its out of the last book that I read with me just changing little bits up. It was quite handy because Its a book Ive never read proprly and thought about reading trying to learn 6max so works out quite well. Theres a ton more to do after that but I really should be playing a little bit as I try to implement stuff.

Im in to the stealing part now and have done a ton of the BTN stuff which if Im honest is showing a lot of mistakes where I could have opened hands but folded. People just fold their blinds too much not to be opening a stupidly wide range especially if we are competent post flop when called.

Next up is the CO and then the SB, once I get through them I might start playing a bit of NL5 or NL10 to try and sharpen up.

How come you're trying to learn 6max?

I've recently done some work on my BTN play and came to the same conclusions as yourself fwiw.

Do you mind posting your CO analysis or just some thoughts on it once you're done? I think i'll do something similar and would like something to compare to.

Just decided I wanted a change and theres just so many games running and I do tend to get frustrated playing FR Zoom as I simply lack patience and have to force things which is always bad against narrow ranges.

Not sure how i can post it but Ive been doing it as a spreadsheet that has the positions CO/BTN/SB/BB along with my hand at the top. Under those I am using the villains Fold BB to Steal stats if known and then working out whether I should raise or Fold and to what sizing depending on the villains in the blinds.

The CO should be a bit harder to do as theres more variables so I think the findings for that will be interesting. I must say though If I were to play now, after going back and forth over stuff and repeatedly checking my HUD to see how often someone is folding the BB along with how often they 3bet and call from the blinds, I would be checking those stats every time it were folded to me in a steal position. I guess with even more work on this it would become second nature and its something I hardly ever checked to be honest even though I were opening so wide.

you put in a lot of hard work keep it up man (Y)

Thanks.

Heres a hand from the CO:-

Can I steal with my hand and whats the widest we can look to steal?

BTN is 12/7 over 69. FBBTS 67%
SB is 67/33 over 3 hands.
BB is 20/16 over 93. FTS 67%. Villain is meh NL25 reg either shot taking or just moved up. He is calling rather than 3betting from the blinds so far.



I think I should have opened 3x in this spot. Jx low suited falls in to about a 60% steal range that I came up with which I think may be too wide in this spot.

That range includes stuff like K4o/Q6o which I wouldnt think of opening here. We have a tight looking player we should get through a lot, an unknown who looks a bit fishy that I can play fine IP against and a reg who if anything will call the open and play pretty straight forward post flop.

So good spot to open a pretty wide range or are we worried about the BB who when he calls should have a pretty tight range with lots of broadways?

This is the reason in question why Im unsure about the last hand.

I looked at this one and my instinct on first look says I should fold but it seems to be right on the cusp of been able to open even if it does seem really wide.

BTN is 11/7 Over 71. FBBTS 67%
SB is 10/10 over 31.
BB is same villain from the last hand.



Now reading SSNLH it advises from the CO to make a pretty normal opening size barring any big reasons not to but I just wonder if this is a spot where I could think about making it 2.5x rather than 3x and still expect to get the same result there by risking less in a situation that I think is pretty close.

How about this one?

Does the BTN stop me opening this hand?

BTN is 35/7 over 55. BBFTS 67%
SB is 12/9 over 478. BBFTS 86%
BB is 12/9 over 2.5K. BBFTS 83%

We get through the SB/BB a lot but it does seem we can expect to get called by the BTN a lot with a hand that isnt going to play too well OOP.




Whats my widest range in this spot?
Maybe about 30% something like this:- AA-22,AKo-A2o,KQo-KTo,QJo-QTo,JTo,AKs-A2s,KQs-K9s,QJs-Q9s,JTs-J9s,T9s-T8s,98s-97s,87s,76s

Mainly high cards that play pretty well against a loose calling range and get rid of some of the Kx/Qx/Jx suited and lower trashy cards?

gl martl, you've always been a quality poster in uNL. your theory work looks good, but don't forget that the best way to improve is (and always has been) playing. for me the best learning tool is the pain i feel when a pot ships the other way because of a mistake i made. that alone is motivation enough for me to look over that hand (and similar ones) to make sure that mistake never happens again.

gl with 6max too - i made the switch this year also, and pretty much haven't looked back. drop me a pm if you wanna skype or if you're keen for a sweat or w/e.

Probably shouldn't tell you this but it tilts me to imagine you spending hours on this. All of the above sections can probably be achieved in less than two hours with a bit of maths work without looking at a single hand. I don't know what whoever wrote this book was smoking but he obviously wanted people to waste a lot of time.

Of those three hands you could open the first two, the last is a fold though. With a nit on the button the co should be treated as the button, till you're given a reason otherwise. That said, you don't need to open or fold any of those hands, I'd say 20% of hands in the BTN/CO are judgement calls based on your players and the game, they're not static situations where you open x range every time. When it comes to sizing, I tend to do it based on the table not the position. I rock a 3x from everywhere, and if someone is very 3 betty, I 2x and do my best to make him regret that decision. But often when people giving you trouble are on your left the best option is to find a new table, despite your pride.

All 3 hands are fold, fold and fold. If the SB and BB were switched in Hand #2 its a 2x open. Anymore than a 30% opening range in the cutoff as a default and your going to get crushed hard by competant villains but obviously some situations will warrant a wider range.

And yes this is coming from someone who used to steal about 45% in the cutoff not to long ago

i think first 2 are definite opens, 3rd is a fold.

wrt plastic elephants comments, i do think the work is too extensive and you could do 1/5 of it and achieve the same results.

This !

Wait, wat ?

Thanks.

I think my biggest problem when it comes to the mistakes is that I dont learn well and make the same mistakes over and over which builds frustration at myself.

As someone who has played both 6max and FR at the micros how do you rate the games? Biggest differences, biggest misconceptions etc?

Will send you a pm with my skype thanks.

Its good to see you doing so well after I remember you struggling for a while. Hard work pays off.

So you suggest just learning the math behind decisions? A bit like the blind stealing stuff, I already know a lot of the math behind it but that dosnt actually help me too much at the tables because I get lazy where as I know now that if I opened a bunch of tables up and started playing the moment I get my cards I would be checking to my left and checking what reads I had on a player thinking if I can open my hand profitably.

The math behind the decision dosnt have me doing that, what has me doing that is the repitition that I have been doing going over the hands. Checking my HUD in the replayer, going in to flopzilla, write stuff on the spreadsheet and repeat while going through the same hand and then repeating over and over until it is drilled in to my head so I have a very good idea what and where I should be looking while in my head trying to picture a range that could be suitable for the villain.

I agree the math work has to be done and is obviously very useful but I can actually see how these things that I am doing work. Also people have studied and studied this stuff working out the best ways for people to learn so it isnt like the author just plucked things out of mid air and put it together.

Time will tell though and due to my time constraints I wont be following it exact and will do less examples but I just cant see how it can fail to help me.

@NL_Fool I get about adjusting sizings for whales and stuff but do you often open for 2x from the CO? In those hands do you still prefer folding given as of yet I dont see any of the villains giving us much trouble or do you still think its too thin.

@Malefiicus Yeah I guess playing on regular tables image is going to play more of a part when deciding how wide we can open. Im not sure but I think maybe this is less of a problem in the large player pool of micro Zoom.

I think im going to disagree with this.

I think if you take 2 identical people and one of them did a diluted version of this what I am doing and the other did the full version then the person doing the longer version would show a lot better results.

The repetition over and over, especially if done correctly, just has to pay dividends. I cant see how it could possibly be otherwise. Its basically how I studied just for a little bit before my exams. But obviously if I had gone the whole hog then I would have done a lot better than I did.

thanks for the words - i wouldn't call it "doing so well" (not yet anyway), but it feels good to be able to finally get out of the micros. 2012 was a horrible year for me poker-wise after a very profitable 2011 .

in terms of 6max vs. FR - tbh they don't play a ton differently. i was preparing myself for a huge shock when i jumped into the 50nl 6max zoom games in january, but it really wasn't bad. for obvious reasons 3betting is far more rampant, but regs still suck in 3bet pots and they will still 3bet incorrect ranges. postflop ranges are wider in 6max, but the cool thing is that most regs don't actually exploit this fact very well - they still end up bluffing incorrectly in bad spots and failing to pick the good ones. on the flip side, thin vbetting is really profitable, and is probably one of the first things you want to get comfortable with, because against alot of regs you can vbet a decent amount wider.

all in all, if you are an above average hand reader 6max plays pretty "easily" against the majority of the playing field imo. differences are really only skin-deep in reality tho. anyone who claims there are huge adjustments to make are probably the ones who are overadjusting because they think they need to be that much more aggro. the one big difference is while fr is a dying form, 6max seems to thriving. because >50nl the 6max fields are generally larger than their fr counterparts, 6max seems to attract more fish. i have played a decent amount of 100nl zoom fr and 6max, and have found 6max to be far fishier. not to mention 100nl fr zoom hardly run up until recently, and even now only has ~120 at it's peak, where as 6m hits 300+. that's the main reason i wanted to change games - keep things fresh, but give myself the opportunity to move up into games that aren't just about regs trading blinds.

as for working towards your problems, just concentrate on discipline. i have a post-it note stuck directly above my monitor that reads "STOP. THINK. RANGE". every time i think about spewing, i just lift my head up, read that, think about the hand, and make sure i'm making the right decision. not ever having had a tilt issue i don't know what it's like to have that majorly affect your game, but this game has dealt me alot of crap. i had a -$3.5k downswing at 100nl this time last year which went over about ~80k hands, and i was shattered. but it only made me more determined to keep at it, and despite it taking me close to 6mth to breakeven from it, i concentrated and eventually stuck it out, coz deep down i know i can beat the limits i play, and if you hold onto that thought you should succeed.

gl

Yeah I'm just saying if you are looking for the optimal 3bet/5bet etc, or defend % then the results are going to be exactly the same on more or less every hand. Unless you look at it exploitavely in which case you are going to get somewhat quasi non quantitive results anyway a lot of the time.
GL anyway, it mostly seems like a decent way to be studying just think that some of it might be better spent on other things.