Another practically breakeven session

Put in a 4.5 hour session today on stake and ultimately left $57 down. It was a very loose table and there was a lot of money to be made, but I just couldn't capitalise on it. I kept running good hands into better hands and occasionally got sucked out on.

Some hand histories:

Hand 1: Too thin?

$300 effective
2 limpers
Hero raises KJo $21 BTN
SB cold calls $21
Both limpers call $21

Flop ($79, 4ways) is J43r

3 checks
Hero bets $40
SB calls $40
2 folds

Turn ($152, HU) is J432

SB checks
Hero bets $90
SB calls $90

River ($332) is J4328

SB checks
Hero jams $150
SB tank calls $150

We flip over our KJ and villain flips over 33 (set)?! I feel like I just got nit rolled there...

Hand 2: Monsters under the bed syndrome

$300 effective
1 limper
Hero raises $18 UTG+2 with Qs Qd
Loose-passive guy 3bets $36 CO
BTN calls $36
Limper calls $36
Hero calls $36

Flop ($133, 4ways) is Jd 8d 7h

BB checks
Hero checks
Loose-passive guy Cbets $100
BTN calls $100
Limper folds
Hero folds

Turn ($333, HU) is Jd 8d 7h 2c

Loose-passive guy checks
BTN jams $160 effective
Loose-passive guy tank calls $160 (the moment he starts tanking, I'm thinking to myself "are you f**king kidding me?")

River ($653) is Jd 8d 7h 2c Jh

"Good fold" I think to myself. Surely one of them must have me beat here...

BTN flips over 99
CO mucks

Hand 3: It would be nice to hit something

$600 effective, 6-handed
CO posts $3
UTG limps $3
HJ (loose guy) raises to $23
CO calls $23
Hero 3bets $100 SB with As Qh
BB cold calls $100 (he only started with $250)
HJ calls $100
CO folds

Flop ($311, 3ways) is Kd Jc 8d

Hero bets $100 (I want to commit myself against the BB who only has $150 behind)
BB folds
HJ jams $500 effective
Hero folds

thread finally delivering again

Don’t really get too involved in this kinda stuff but I can’t see how QQ isn’t a jam vs the 3b and two cold calls 100bb eff, yeah guy is loose passive but the jam will be absolutely printing infinitely more ev than calling.

Well I'm glad we've added extra verifiers to the list now. I prefer to play on stake. It all just comes down to how much volume I can put in on stake though. Even on the apps, the games don't run 24/7.

How do you know I'm not a winning player online? I'm breakeven after roughly 10k hands at 25nl, and I was 14 buyins up at one stage. That's not enough evidence to conclude that I'm not a winning player. Plus I'm constantly learning and improving. It's inevitable that I will beat 25nl over a large sample size eventually. The question is not whether I will beat those stakes; the question is when.

Yeah I can get a plate of food from Margo's for $10. Comes with steamed vegetables, potatoes, roast ham, fried fish and gravy. And with my rewards card, I can get free soft drink and free coffee too. Pretty good value imo.

You think jamming QQ into a range of KK+ is "printing money"?

At the time, I had no reason to believe that the villain was 3betting me with anything lighter than KK, hence my decision to set mine and then x/fold the flop when I missed my set.

Yeah that's an absolutely absurd flat with almost 45 bb of dead money in the middle, and you're ~never beat pre by anyone other than the loose passive guy.

Even if players are loose passive, you've gotta assume that they've occasionally witnessed you isolating huge super thin and with raise light against you. When you've got the goods and only 100bb with so much in the middle, sometimes it's your time to go broke

You need roughly 40% equity if you get called every time just by passive guy, and you have ~that against AK, KK+. If he ever has JJ+ you print a lot, and if any of the other guys call, you print.

OP reserves that play in this spot for KQo and AJo.

Unlucky with the JJ v A2 hand, calling was definitely reasonable.

H1: it depends. I’ll go for value or check back depending on the V. In what started out as a 4 way pot checking river becomes more appealing than in say a heads up pot. Our range will be perceived differently when we bet flop into the field and then don’t slow down plus the pot will be more bloated and any river bet will look more scary. This is a texture where people might slow play as well.

Having said that, betting is definitely ok, very much a feel spot for me. I’m definitely betting overpairs here.

H2: frustrating hand, this happens to me too. Someone will overplay AK and I’ll throw away an overpair. Yea it’s a bad fold against their exact hands but could be a profitable fold range vs range.

H3: would love to see some other people’s responses and I haven’t broken down this hand yet on pokercruncher but this is almost the nut low flop to cbet given the action.

You've posted your thought process in hands. It's easy for any winning $25nl+ online player to see that you're not a winning $25nl player.

The stuff that's stricken out doesn't matter. It's also such a ridiculous sample size that you could've easily been down 14bis as well and come back to even.

The real question is, will you put any effort into getting better so that you can win?

So you're telling me that we need all 16 combos of AK to be in villain's range just for us to breakeven?

Now consider the fact that loose-passive players love to flat raises, particularly early position raises, with hands like AK and JJ, as opposed to 3betting these hands.

Hell, there are players on 2p2 who are constantly posting hand histories of how UTG opens and they decided to flat with JJ/AK because 3betting looks too strong. And they're meant to be TAGs. If a TAG won't 3bet these hands, why would a loose-passive?

See how it's losing to 4bet QQ now?

Flatting JJ vs a single open and no other dead money == not piling it in with QQ with $130 of money in the pot and $282 behind being out of position to the 3better?

Also good players often don't 3bet those hands because they know what happens when they get 4bet. Bad players don't think ahead and just do something. Also is he happens to have any clue about how you play TT becomes a value 3bet.

Yeah I've posted quality hands showing quality thought processes. I know I didn't play every spot perfectly, but I think I did a pretty good job overall.

I guess the only way to convince you is through a 50k+ hand sample size. Don't worry, I'll get that eventually.

You need to be very very sure with a huge sample that he wouldn't raise 18-36 with less than KK+ to not jam, bc if you're wrong it's a massive mistake. Given that he lost to 99 on J78xJ it's clear you were very wrong with that assessment

I’ve followed this thread as an entertained observer, not planning to contribute...but this line tilted the **** out of me.

So many things wrong with this statement I quoted:

1 - the game is structured for the good players to take the money of the bad players. The HANDFUL of good players take the money from the MASS AMOUNT of bad players, resulting in most players being “losing players”.

2 - rake lowers EVERYONE’s winrate, no matter if you are a “winning” player or a “losing” player. This of course lowers the % of players that are allowed to make the exclusive claim that they are a “winning player”.

—————

It’s not “inevitable” that you beat anything. Poker owes you nothing.

I don’t understand how:

A.) you can believe it’s *inevitable* you will beat 25nl without having a solid bbEV/100

And

B.) why your reasons are any different from any other players in the 25nl pool that have the same bbEV/100 than you.

Regardless, glgl

A loose player is min-raising with KK or AA with all those people left to act?

No, it's not inevitable that you beat it, this where you're going wrong. That's completely the wrong mindset to have. It will set you up for failure from the beginning, thinking you are just "destined" or "entitled" to beat a certain stake because you say so.

Yeah, I'll take an easy 5bb win-rate at 25z and beyond with a side of 50$/hr 1/3 live. Next week ill take a 100$/hr at 2/5 live and 5bb at 50z, thanks. Diet starts tomorrow.

P.S : Rake at ssnl doesn't have an impact on me, they are all WHALES. Hehe these silly 2p2'ers think they KNOW me. I'll show them my true power soon. Muahahaha. Also, ALL whales are fully aware they are whales and never claim to be good at poker. Fact.

My 2 Beaverland cents (which may not be applicable to Kangarooland)...

H1:

Not super thrilled with a 3bet preflop against an EP super passive player large open. Think I'd rather have some dominated hands come along behind me with a call plus our hand plays fine multiway (although admittedly we could get into some awkward spots if this goes too multiway).

Against a super passive player checking this flop (to obviously give up or tarping with a monster) I'm checking back and risking scare cards to attempt to squeeze some more out of him. If all we're doing is getting in our money hugely badly preflop and none at all postflop when ahead, it's going to be a tough road.


H2:

I probably dump KQo more often than not from anything other position than LP. Actually think open limping is likely better than opening it this early.

I'm fine with postflop although I would have folded the river against most opponents. Bottom line for me is this hand rarely wants to play a big pot and yet raising preflop to end up OOP will often create this difficult spot.


H1:

I just overlimp. Raising just builds a monster pot with an incredibly mediocre hand.

I probably bet smaller on such a dry board (again, mostly leaning to not want to blow up the pot with such a mediocre hand).

I probably check back the turn as one of the main draws got there, we may have been behind on the flop, and this pot is fricken huge while our hand isn't.

As played, we left ourselves with lol << 1/2 PSB for the river with an incredibly small hand, which I don't think is ever a good thing. Play big pots with big hands, not small ones, imo.


H2:

At a table this loose I mostly limp/reraise from EP.

I'm fine with the hand otherwise. Sometimes we run into lol results, but mostly we run into exactly what we expected.


H3:

I would mostly just fold AQo to a raise. You'll get arguments either way for whether this is good or not. But one thing it definitely does is lower your variance, and that should be a key consideration on a limited BR.

I just give up on the flop against 2 guys who are cool playing a 3bet pot on this board and hope I can magically get my free bink card.


Admittedly this is just based on the problem hands you've posted (which could easily be outlier hands for you), but I think you're overplaying / overbuilding overall. I would lean to more nitting it up, especially on a limited BR.

GimoG

You’re right, probably too small of a sample to say I’m a big winning reg. However, I’m definitely at least a winning reg in those games, based off my results to date and just observing how many mistakes the field makes. Based off the assumption, I think that’s enough for me to put 6bme into those games. Maybe I’m wrong and I torch some money, we can drop back to 1/3. Wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.

6bet trying to play like gg does would make him go insane.

GG and 6betme agree on how to play a hand. Must be the right way to play.

Anyone trying to play like GG would go insane. I honestly wish he would just stop posting his same old two cents about every goddamn hand on this forum. Everyone already knows what you would do, GG, there's absolutely no need to repeat that for the umpteenth time. You're just wasting everyone's time, especially your own.

I really don't appreciate this comment at all. It's completely uncalled for.

I, for one, appreciate GG taking the time out of his day to give me feedback on some hand histories. And whilst I might not necessarily take the same tight-passive lines that he would take, it is useful for me to be able to see things from another perspective.

I firmly believe that GG is a winning player at the LLSNL and one of his biggest strengths is that he has arguably the lowest variance (and thus smallest downswings) of any reg I know.

Who cares about variance in a 1/3 game? If you LAG it up you might swing like 5k max, assuming you know what you're doing.

Citing a low variance over a large sample size is not an accomplishment unless it's accompanied by a very high winrate. You want low variance just fold every hand. Zero variance. Ta-dah.

HomeyDClown's post comes across a little hostile but he does have a point. Every regular poster knows exactly what GG would do in almost any given situation.

Still waiting for an explanation from you on how losing 440 dollars is just a day of free labor by the way.

I don't always know what GG would do. Sometimes his responses surprise me. For example, the JJ on a 622 board facing a $330 jam into a $150 pot, I was somewhat surprised to see GG comment that he would snap call, when other players, who were typically far looser than GG, said that they would fold. I ultimately called there and I'm still not sure whether it was a complete cooler spot or whether my call was bad. I'll categorise it as a semi-cooler for now.

The explanation is simple: I would never have had that $440 if I didn't do labour for my friend. All of the events that led me to getting $440 in a day started from me doing 2.5 hours of labour, and would never otherwise have happened. So if I lose the $440, then I'll be in exactly the same position as if I'd never done those 2.5 hours of labour. I'll effectively have just done some labour and gained nothing out of it (ie. free labour).