Subscribed, GL

How much time have you spent on population studies? Could be even more useful if the HUDs are limited as you say.

Regarding the redline. Mine is positive, but was usually breakeven to slightly losing. Some of the changes I made that helped were

1. Barreling turns way more often on favorable boards. Including going for occasional thin value with a merged range. Say betting 99 on K528

2. Practically auto betting the turn if the flop goes XX and they X the turn as well. I find 2/3 gets a lot of folds when we're bluffing.

3. Recognizing when I am at the bottom of my range on the river, and not being afraid to bet. You don't even have to risk that much assuming it's a SRP. 2/3 to pot is usually good enough.

4. This one not as much as the others, but still works. Floating turn probes with a wide range, and then bombing the river if they check. You can even throw in a raise occasionally depending on their sizing. Typically when someone probes the turn, and bets like 1/2 on the river, it's going to be a lot of one pair type hands.

tyty


Yeah this one probably resonates the most with me. People just aren't checking enough with strong hands when they don't "have" to. Especially rivers I find, where they should do a lot of check raising vs. Bet check bet to punish us from betting too wide OTR, but doesn't happen.

Thanks!

wp, def don't continue on river. CO has BB absolutely dominated with this runout.

Missed a friday apparently. I'll try to post again next Friday.

Demotivated out of my mind right now, honestly. Thinking of just taking a 2-3 day break to refresh. Won like 10bi in the first 2 days then dumped 15 right back in the matter of maybe 12 hours. Went on a complete tiltfest session, exceeded my first two hours down 3 buy ins, decided to play another hour, then another, then another etc. Till I was down more than I could count. I don't even think I was playing bad the first 2-3 hours but my play slowly deteroriated the last hours.

I also happen to be staked atm and am ~1300$ in makeup, which is tough to deal with (I can always pay out but I do not want to have to)

Week ... 4?



I reduced my table count to 4, which is the reason for the decrease in hands. I also missed out on playing the past 2 days due to some life events, will try to put in double time today and the day after. As you can see lost ~1k the past 5-6k hands. Getting lots of rakeback at least

Goals

28 hours of poker X

7 hours of study ✓

~13 miles run ✓


Intentions

I think my goal right now is just to play more focused and in the zone. I started meditating of sorts, just sitting in my chair listening to calming music for ~10 minutes letting all the random thoughts flow through my head. This has helped me stay more calm and in control during sessions.

Less tables also helps for sure

Random stuff

Have had lots of work/school stuff to do so not much luck on the woman front.

Hand review



Really unsure about this hand. I think flop I will just simplify to range bet on most K high boards. Turn is interesting, it's definitely a better card for his range, I wonder if we can continue blocking for 1/3 with our specific combo? Seems like it could work well vs. flush draws 87 67 etc. and not let him bet too much with his Kx. AP not sure if check call is ok here as it will be quite hard to play various runouts. If anyone has thoughts on the turn play, please leave them.

Thanks for reading!

JJ is mid-of range, it's always difficult to play. If you blockbet he can also raise with King.

So maybe at this stakes they don't raise enough so we should bet more? Or less.

not sure if talking about range or w JJs here but the less V raises the more you get to bet overall in optimal.

v important heuristic to be aware of in your sims

It impacts the sizing as well I think (which reduces freq. as bigger size = lower freq. normally), IE if he doesn't raise with Kx we want to use a 2/3 size with AK for example, because AK isn't getting stacks enough. But 3 bet pots have lot's of intricacies with them so I mainly going off my brain solver ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

could be way off

I don't think IP raising is necessarily the biggest problem of the blockbet play.

Both players have a chunk of hands that are very strong, in the middle, and at the bottom. There is never anything much you can do about it.

Also, I feel like population (at least at these stakes) tend to play this spot pretty honest IP and don’t tend to raise many hands outside of Kx/sets/the biggest possible combo draws.
I tend to block and check/call this type of spot pretty equally as there’s benefits/drawbacks to both, but in general I think it’s a safe assumption that IP won’t be raising very many worse hands OTT imo (when we do decide to block).
You will however have to make some x/hero calls OTR when draws brick off, but you have a pretty sweet combo for that.
This river in specific sucks tho of course.

Yeah the river isn't part of the discussion, my hand is straight mucking every time. Maybe on the deuce of napkins we can through in a hero but not this one, pretty clearly.

I do agree that blocking is quite good, and in general betting small, since people don't protect their range enough to have the adequate strong hands to raise.

Like in the uri peleg course (I think you know I love it) he's saying that in the bet check bet game, when the Big Blind doesn't check enough strong hands on the river, IP can bet very thin for value and for a small size. That's why check raising wiht nutted hands is such an integral part of the strategy. The only problem is I'm not sure what bluffs really want to block

Top range wants to bet big on turn that's clear. Middle of range in my sim is close to indifferent but prefers the check in my sim of this scenario. If taking it to the block then this would be balanced by betting weakest Kx to same size and some draws.

So far so good. River as played you are in bad spot with middle of range and it's never going to change. If thinking it's great catcher as Xtrasctatch did we would have been adding complexity to the game tree since turn and executed that strategy poorly on river and therefore made a mistake with the turn blockbet already bcz its unlikely you would commit same amount of bb to the pot if taking the standard line you are way more familiar with.

If you would have been not sure which draws to put to the blockbet, how to balance it with stronger value and how to play all various rivers it's likely a polar betting strategy would have had higher EV at least from a defensive perspective of assuming you are playing against a solver. (probably good stand point for this kind of discussion, or otherwise nearly anything can be excused by saying opponents make certain mistakes too, which is certainly also true).

^^^ that all makes sense and it’s probably true that I do over complicate spots like this with middle of range at times.
I would balance with weak Kx and draws like you said.
I wasn’t meaning this is a great bluff catch on this river though, I think it would be good on board pairing cards and bricky rivers though.
But I think you’re right to suggest it’s unnecessary.

Wanted to give comment as got started but won't be commenting on strategy this deeply anymore for obvious reasons.

Thanks a lot for the response Kilju + Axo.

It makes a lot of sense that constructing two ranges, a check and a polar range, is going to be a lot easier to execute than a middling range, a check + a polar bet, and could possibly be misplayed greatly.