Agree it's a tough spot to know what to do. I find this one interesting. If we call with QQ, then even that has many of the difficulties you listed above about realising equity.

Did you discuss the 4betting option?

What is your range for that? What would you do with AK?

Maybe 4bet bluffs will work here also.

I think that if the 3bettor has a reasonable range (vs a fish) that includes AQ/AK and 10's+ then a 4bet might be profitable as a bluff. As I think a large proportion of that range would fold assuming you have a tight image.

JJ isn't a great hand for that though as it blocks combos of JJ which blocks part of the hands we wish to fold. I guess?

Just found out about Janda's book, didnt know about it before. What are your thoughts about it so far? Theres not much reviews about it.

It's def close, I don't think I could call say TT there and do well. JJ just seems too strong to fold, but you could well be right.

Well seeing as I think JJ is probably the bottom of my calling range, then maybe JJ-AA/AK, maybe AQs? Not sure whether AA should be a 4bet or a call, maybe a 4bet just because the 3bet is so small, but probably works just as well as a call.

The problem I had with working out a calling range is a problem I've had a lot of trouble with recently, which is working out the actual strength of a hand. For example JJ might be doing better equity wise than say 89s, but 89s will be much easier to play because it's equity is polarised (you can make very strong hands, draws to very strong hands, or mainly weak/very weak hands and all are fairly easy to play). So JJ has more equity than 89s but 89s realises more of it's equity. I'm not saying 89s is a call, but how do you rank the hands and decide whether it's a call or not?

I'd say that the 3-bettor should be 3-betting fairly wide, like ATs+,AJo+,KJs+,TT+ or so, but part of the problem is that I don't know whether that's the case or not. I'd have to do the maths on how often a cold-4bet would need to work as a bluff, but I'm pretty sure JJ isn't the hand to do it with. Maybe a hand like AQs/AJs/ATs could be ok because we have a blocker to AA/AK and the fish can conceivably call with worse.

Weird spot in general, although whatever I do I have a feeling it's going to be fairly close all round as long as I'm not calling or bluffing with garbage hands and have a solid plan for postflop.

Not sure yet but it looks good. He approaches most spots from a theoretical/mathematical point of view which gives me a new way of looking at things. Even if a lot of it isn't actually applicable in real life, the process of thinking about things in a different way will transfer over into a more solid understanding of the fundamentals, of why certain things work and others don't etc.

Thanks Ben. Get in touch to get some more sweats done!

Nice thread Ron. Smash 2014..!!

Thanks mate, gl to you too.

11th January - How I got a little bit better today:

Spent a while this morning analysing a pretty tricky hand in crEV, just working on ranges through the hand really. Later on I re-worked the spreadsheet I made the other day with defence frequencies etc because I realised some of the maths was off. Discussed a bit of the theory behind the numbers, plus a bit about blind play too.

13th-14th January - How I got a little bit better today:

Carried on working through Janda's book. I think I've been spending a bit too much time trying to fully understand every miniscule detail and making detailed notes because I've not got very far with it. Instead now I'm going to just read through it for a few chapters and try to get my head around all the general concepts before going back and trying to apply anything in detail. Also did quite a bit of review today, talking over plenty of hands from my sessions.

15th January - How I got a little bit better today

Finished up with the chapter I was reading in Janda's book, and had a really long discussion about it and all the concepts he brings up with some friends. I think what he's attempting to do is very interesting, but in a different way to how I first thought it would be. I was originally under the impression that he was going to use theory to tell us how to make the correct decisions, how to construct the best ranges etc. Instead what I'm coming to realise is that the theory available at the moment is not able to do that. What it can do however is tell us when our strategy is fundamentally flawed. It can tell us if we're doing something wrong, and while it can't tell us exactly what to do to make it right, it can point us in the right direction.

Also reviewed several hands quite in depth, including one HU hand that I played where I was interested in the implications of whole-range thinking for the hand, as in, what should my whole range be doing on the river and how should his whole range respond? He's a fr reg that was just starting a table with me and we'd only played about 10 hands before this, with both of us opening 100% OTB, him folding to my one 3-bet and no interesting action....

Re the Janda book, one of the things I'm going to be using it for is to point out areas where other regs' strategies are fundamentally flawed in a way I can exploit.

Yes, this is a perfect example of how to use the information in the book, as well as running those same tests on ourselves.

16th January - How I got a little bit better today:

Spent a bit of time working on some preflop maths in the morning, then had a lot of discussion with friends about some hands and some general concepts.

I've been pretty much trying to ignore results over the last few months and concentrate on performance instead. I've had a general idea of how well I've been doing but not looked at it in detail, so I decided to check my long-term results. Turns out I've been winning at 5bb/100 over my last 300k hands. That's easily the highest sustained winrate I've ever had since I started playing poker seriously. Just goes to show that hard work pays off imo.

Damn mate, I thought by now you'd surely be back at least at SSNL :/ GL in '14 tho!


Pretty sure you can exploitatively (chances are it might be even correct in theory) ship just about your entire range. Any avg FR reg is going to be fairly straight forward here so meaning that 1. he wont bluff often once checked to 2. wont call super light.
Overall fr regs will be folding way too much vs 3bets HU (people at 6max MSNL are folding way way way way way too much at HU fwiw) so his 7x range is pretty narrow as well as the board reducing it significantly. Same goes for 3x hands.
Sizing question is a bit more interesting I guess. I suppose we could get away with super small sizing (esp exploitative) like 1/3rd or even quarter of the pot.
Regardless, focusing your energy on such hands (esp such river) is just a waste imo.

Seems like you're working here really hard. If you're touching some interesting theoretical topics/doing lots of crEV work and whatnot (basically out of the box non hand reviewing stuff) feel free to pm me. Id gladly join you in these discussions cause it seems that I lack anyone hard working in my skype

Hey man gl first of all
Just wanted to say i really enjoy thread keep up with the hard work
The results are already showing big improvement!!!

i hate you when playing with you, but your effort work off table inspiring me gl

Main reason I'm not playing 100nl yet is that last year's massive downswing crushed my bankroll and real life finances so it's taking a long road to recover from that. I feel my game is more than ready for 100nl again now, but I've turned into a huge bankroll nit so just want to take a bit more time and make sure I've got a good safety net behind me when I finally do move back up. Shouldn't be long though.

Will PM you and get you on Skype as I'm always looking for people who are willing to work on poker with me.

Thanks! I think it's no coincidence that the past few months where I've worked harder than ever in my poker career have also turned out the best 300k hands that I've ever played (in terms of BB won).

Hey, always good to hear I can cause people problems on the tables! I recognise your name from the tables but don't think we've played much together recently.

17th January - How I got a little bit better today:

Watched the first vid in a Leggo series where Zaza mentors a student over a series of nine videos. I haven't done very well in watching whole series previously, so purposefully chose to start a series that I know can't get too complicated or advanced as it's just a coach following his student. Hopefully they'll keep revisiting certain topics and talking about things more in depth as the series goes on. Also did quite a lot of hand review, and did a bit of work in crEV on a possible donking spot. I didn't actually come up with a final answer for that one other than "it's close" but I did learn some more about the kind of things you have to think about when planning a hand out.

18th January/20th January - How I got a little bit better today:

I'm using crEV a lot to analyse hands I've played and was getting a bit fed up with inputting ranges every time so started creating set ranges that I can just select one when I start a hand analysis. I started it on Saturday and carried on this morning. It's mainly just grunt work, inputting data, but there is a bit of analysis of it's own in that you have to decide how people structure the bottom of their ranges - eg do people include offsuit broadways, lower pairs, or suited connectors when they start to widen their range? I used weights in all the ranges to make it more realistic and think I've got a decent bunch of ranges so far, but there are still plenty to go. I've got through raise first in and cold-call, but need to do 3-bet and call-3-bet ranges still.

Sounds interesting.

Are you doing this as a general population/specific opponent type analysis to give you a better knowledge in game of group tendencies?
Or targetting some villains you regularly play against?

I'm doing it vs a general opponent. So for example if I see a guy with 15% cold call and I've opened in MP, I can see a general idea of what his range will look like. If I'm using that range to analyse a hand, I can make some quick adjustments if I have particular reads on a player, such as if he's got a high 3bet and I think he 3bets AK/QQ more often than usual then I'll alter the frequencies of those hands.

My plan is to have preset ranges for virtually any situation preflop - firstly it'll do me good to go through the process of setting them up, because it'll get me really thinking about what ranges look like, and secondly it'll make analysing hands much quicker and more efficient.

Just saw you had a PGC !

Concept is great ! Wish you the best of luck !

Thanks

21-22nd January - How I got a little bit better today:

I've not been updating this log as much as I should do really, but I'm still working hard every day. Over the last few days I've been discussing a lot of interesting spots over Skype with friends. I've also been reading more of Janda's book, getting into the flop play chapters now. I got a few more of my crEV ranges done too, so now I have nearly all the opening and cold-calling ranges done, leaving me with 3bet and 3-bet defence ranges to do.

23rd January - How I got a little bit better today:

Didn't do a huge amount of study today, but did spend some time picking apart a friend's hand this morning, working out different lines and analysing play on different turn cards with crEV.

Something else I've been doing recently is trying to read stuff that indirectly relates to poker, mainly the mental game. I've been reading stuff from books about how our brain works (egotistically, protectively, vainly and deceptively) to Cartesian ethics (Descartes is a huge proponent of non-results orientated thinking). All of which has given me a little bit more of an understanding of what goes on in our heads when we are playing poker, and how to think the right way about things (or notice when we're not thinking the right way). Some very interesting stuff which I might expand upon a bit in the future.

24th January - How I got a little bit better today:

I've been a bit undisciplined over the last few days and spent a lot of time not really doing much. I did finish off Part 4 of Janda's book though, although I'm getting a little frustrated with it. It seems to promise a lot of stuff that doesn't deliver. For instance he'll go over the math of a certain spot, but then say something like "but once we allow for calls, we can't solve for the perfect range but this is what I think we should do". A friend said something similar in that "I keep looking for objective truths, but I haven't found any so far". It's quite easy to do the maths for toy games but as soon as you introduce all the complexities of real poker, things get far too intricate to apply the maths fully to get an actual solution, and most situations come down to general poker knowledge and logic, with a bit of the maths thrown in.

I've started to mix some 100nl in with my 50nl tables as well since last night. I'm focusing a lot on the mental side of this and trying to think of everything in terms of BB and EV, not the actual money won or lost. I seem to be getting on ok there so far. It's not a huge shot I'm taking so I'm going to move down if I lose more than say 6-8bi, but I think despite getting stacked twice with a flopped set today I'm still probably around even.

My general focus on the tables has been a bit off the last few days also so I need to redouble my efforts there over the next week.

There's a program called Starshelper that could help you out in this regard mate no doubt you have heard of it, it's similar to tableninja but also has a feature that converts stacks/bets on the table to BB's, great if you're mixing stakes.

Only just stumbled across this thread, keep up the good work mate hope you crush 2014.

Thanks. I had considered that as I'd seen it before, but I think it's much more important to work on the underlying issue, meaning that once I've decided to play in higher stake games, the money value shouldn't be of any concern. I am actually getting there now, I think it was just a bit of a shock to the system after playing 50 for so long. I guess having everything in BBs has another advantage though that you don't make mistakes like where you think you're on a 100nl table facing a preflop raise, but you're actually on a 50nl table facing a 3bet.

28th January - How I got a little bit better today:

I didn't play during the day at all yesterday, I just spent the whole day catching up on tasks I had been putting off or not getting round to. I finished off my goals chart for 2014, so now I have a comprehensive depiction of all my goals, what they mean for me and how I'm going to achieve them. I think having it set down like that is really important because now I can look at that chart every day and remind myself why I'm doing this.

I had to do a bunch of computer related stuff, which led to me doing a full clean and tidy of my desk. This might not sound like much (although I do have a pretty huge corner desk), but I think it's really important to have a clean and tidy working area that's free of clutter.

I then worked on my to-do list, signing off a bunch of the things I'd finished, re-ordering the things still to do, getting rid of redundant tasks and creating a few more. Again, the to-do list is a really important thing to actually make rather than to just store in your head. I have a set list of all the tasks I want to get on with over the next few weeks, how I'm going to prioritise them and specifically how I'm going to do them. More than that, every time I complete a task I put it at the bottom of the list with a complete-date. Looking down at that list of completed tasks gives you a good perspective and allows you to see all the hard work that you've got through. That's a really important thing to be able to do because some days you just feel like you're getting nowhere and you're not getting anything done, but then you can look at that list and see all the things you have actually achieved.

After that I ran some stats analysis with some friends on a few different spots and chatted about a few different concepts, mainly checking as the preflop raiser and how our checking/cbetting strategy affects our winrate overall after a preflop raise.

I spent the rest of my time making this chart that I think depicts all the components of being a successful online grinder. I ripped the majority of it from an existing chart (apologies to the original creator but couldn't find the original online), but I wanted to add a few things move some things around.



Oh, and in terms of actual money won (not just BBs) I finally made it out of my downswing.....

Awesome graph man

What a graph.
I hope you have printed it out, framed it and put it on the wall !!!

You should be proud of the work you have done.