Couple of HH history questions sir. Just interested in your thinking behind these: (sorry, my questions are embedded in the quote - I'm a forum donk)

EDIT: similar qu.s to above post

Thanks Verneer. Great stuff as always and keep killing it!

Wow. I'm not sure I could lay down KK preflop. Gutsy move

Full Tilt Poker $0.10/$0.25 No Limit Hold'em - 9 players
The Official 2+2 Hand Converter By DeucesCracked Poker Videos

CO: $28.63
BTN: $25.00
Hero (SB): $34.20
BB: $10.00
UTG: $16.38
UTG+1: $35.52
UTG+2: $56.21
MP1: $24.36
MP2: $8.43

Pre Flop: ($0.35) Hero is SB with K K
1 fold, UTG+1 calls $0.25, 1 fold, MP1 raises to $1, 3 folds, Hero raises to $3.75, 1 fold, UTG+1 raises to $12.50, 2 folds




Was he a nit ?

sick. so sick.

questions:

1. as you've reviewed your play and made adjustments through the start of the year what do you think has been the biggest impact adjustment you've made (obviously you're probably not making any wholesale changes to your game, but i imagine some changes are more influential on your bottom line than others)?

2. after 80000 hands in the rush zone are there any aspects of the games on the whole that you've found to be more profitable than you expected (i.e. play in 3b pots)? probably really asking what you think the most common weaknesses are you see in the rush player pool...

1) I'm pretty sure he checked the turn for both value and pot control

3) Villian overbets check on turn is spazzy makes me suspicous, plus you have 15 outs to make either your flush/straight why not call?

Oh on the KK hand, when somebody limps from UTG and gets isolation raised and then someone squeezes behind the isolation raise, and then the UTG goes all-in. What hands (I should say hand) do you REALLY expect them to have there? And when you call and find out don't you think to yourself, "Yah I really knew he had it"? Good fold Verneer, way to not get "coolered" right? haha

I'm glad to see that you're crushing Verneer - keep up the good work! I have a few questions:

Do you take any notes on players either in-session or during your post-session HEM reviews?

Are you buying in for 100bb now? If so, how much of this is due to having a healthier bankroll and how much is due to reads on regs and/or the player pool that you now have?

Regarding the JJ hand, what was your reasoning for taking the check/call line of the turn? What was your plan on various river cards?

Good morning! I'm gonna answer some questions now (and any others that you guys can get in in the next two hours).

I've done it a few times. This seemed like an easy fold. I didn't have too many hands on him, but he seemed on the tight side. The question you have to ask in this situation is:

"Would villain play JJ or QQ this way"?

If you think that it's unlikely, then fold.

James pretty much nailed it again. Yes - hand #1 I mostly checked back for deception and as one of my uNL maxims is:

"x, let them play badly"

This is true for MOST of the players I face. It also applies to the JJ hand. Villain seemed bad, and I felt there was limited value in betting the turn.

Pretty much.

First of all, let me post my SD/NSD graph for this month:



I will say that over the last 20 days, my game has undergone quite a few fundamental transformations. First of all, I had a really swingy beginning to the challenge.

After that, I felt like my NSD winnings and W$WSF (which are correlated) were just eating away from my profit. So ... I made another round of adjustments around 43K hands.

After that, I made one more round after doing sweat sessions with my friends B3lly (who has had very good success at this limit and rush in general) and citizenwind.

I will say that when it comes to poker, I don't have too much of an ego and I'm always looking to learn from anyone who I feel is also successful and potentially doing things differently from myself. So - on to the actual changes:

1. Play even tighter in EP and MP.
2. Tighter from the SB and BB.
3. Limit squeezing light to almost zero.
4. C-bet less.
5. Slowplay made hands (flushes, sets, etc) more.

People have a hard time folding hands so you can get good value out of your made hands. In addition to that, people in general play really poorly if you don't c-bet as the PFR and can often get much more value by checking than by betting.

Finally, it's important to have a strong 3-bet calling range (including aces, kings, etc). It's amazing what kind of LOL hands regs show up with in 3-bet pots.

hey veneer. big fan of the challenge started my own last week on ft and currently got 350 so moving along nicely.

should i take a shot at 25nl with 450 dollars cause i feel the rake at 10nl is killing me. is taking a 2 buy in shot too little. should i wait till 500 and take a 4 buy in shot.

thanks for doing this by the way

I would buy in for $12.50 and take see how long I can stay afloat @ 25NL with that $50. Limit your marginal situations and just try to get some hands in at that level.

Hey verneer,

I think citizenwind posted in a recent blog that a high percentage of players are losers in rush. Of this, TAGs are often small, medium losers. Can u explain why this may be the case? After a 25k sample of 6 max 10NL rush, I find my 20/16 style is breaking even. Is there anywhere that TAGs are getting it particularly wrong I.e. a fundamental mistake that is not a major leak in regular games?

Thanks!

Preflop stats tell you very little about a player. The difference between 20/16 players can be night and day.

Thanks. I appreciate that but is there anywhere that u think a regular SS winning TAG is going wrong with rush that is not a problem with regular game?

Would you not recommend playing these games without a HUD? None exist for mac right now, but I love the format of rush

HUD helps definitely, but the problem is it takes forever to get enough stats to get a good read on anyone. You're playing 8 random people from a pool of 4-500. Sometimes you'll see the same player 2 or 3 hands in a row and then never again for several days.

A HUD makes all the difference in the world for me. Didn't PT3 have a Mac option? Also, if you love the games then play them

Verneer u say You made adjustments are around 43k hands that effected your non showdown winnings,.Can you share some or is that asking to much.I find im burning money in non showdown by

Calling too much pre flop
Raising out of position then check folding after missing
Calling from the blinds with medium strength hands to a lp raiser then check folding or trying to get crafty by trying to outplay them,then giving up on later streets.
Overplaying marginal situations where i have overpair and put in a chunk of my stack only to fold the turn or river because i feel they are stronger.

Anything else you can add to that.I know alot of them are basic and i think maybe alot of them are expected at the micros.I said i would throw this in just for your to have a look ,half way through you see my non showdown straighten up.This is due to me concentrating more and actually being disciplined and following the above things.Also its only 5k hands so maybe i just ran into alot of situations where the villains just gave me pots

There's PT3 for mac, but apparently the Mac OS prevents them from working the same way as they do on windows and there's no rush HUD. Ah well, I miss the HUD, but maybe it would be worth it just to use PT3 and just turn the stats on the regs that it gives into notes on FTP

Hey verneer, I've been making some adjustments also at rush and have been fairly successful so far so I thought I'd comment.

Agreed

Especially the SB for me. I get played back wayyyy more often than in a ring game. The BB is very situation dependent for me.

This is something I've noticed too. Now I'm only 3betting light when there's a specific reason to. In other words, it's not my default play in rush poker. My red-line is positive at the moment after 20K hands, but I'm also on a nice heater.

Yep, mine is 52%.

This is interesting. I'll give this a try.

My experience at 25NL was that I could min raise ATC on the BTN and show a profit. At 50NL this isn't the case. I get played back at more, so I tightened my BTN at 50NL, but still open ATC when the blinds are super nits. Also, there are far more 3bet pots at 50NL.

That's a very good list. Just focus on these things and I imagine your performance will improve.

@verneer

I sometimes find myself in situations where I think that history w/ villain will dictate how I follow through w/ the hand. I have HM HUD but dont really use it because I play .05/.10 and the most hands I have on someone is 600 hands. About how many hands would you say I should have before I start to tailor my game towards them using the HUD?

Or should I just use HM to review the top ten people I have played against and do an in depth review of how they played certain big hands/spots since that wouldn't require a whole bunch of history to be accurate?

600 Hands is a good estimate of a villians tendencies cardplayer89, but yes it's true that HUD stats can lie, they aren't a golden rule to follow.

What works well in coordination with your HUD is good note-taking. If he shows-down with a crazy hand in a crazy pot that's something you might want to take note of. Like villian showed 89s when he opened UTG, it could have been once, but everytime you see him open suited connectors UTG you can start to include those in his range etc...

What's important though is that you have a plan with your hand before you make your plays. And I think from what you say by playing against your villians tendencies is great, as long as you can go back to a hand and say this was my plan and this is why I did it then your on the right track to being a winning poker player.