Another thing about HUDs and stats, is that even if you had let's say 5000 hands on a player that doesn't neccesarily mean they are playing what the HUD says they are. I mean we are all changing, growing, and learning as poker players right? We all strive to be better, and we all try and adjust the way we play poker to be more profitable. So perhaps they played a loose aggressive style for awhile, decided they didn't like it, and switched it up to more of a TAG style, or even some other strategy they came up with. I'm not saying HUD's are bad, but they aren't the bible on how a player is playing.

Very nice thread, keep up the good work Verneer.

Poker Copilot is a HUD for MACs. Never used it so not sure how good it is, but that's one that I know of.

Verneer, We're all glad you're running well and crushing nl25 so far (btw I'm surprised I haven't seen you at the 6max tables yet), but I'm interested in how you deal with tilt/downswings. Obviously I'm not hoping for you to have a downswing...but the journey from 200 to 10k is bound to have at least a few 10+ BI downswings, right? I'm interested to see how you will deal with it when it eventually comes.

I currently have a goal thread to make 1500 at nl25 not including RB, two days ago, just shy of 100k hands, I was 180 bucks away from the goal, then Boom. Doom switch. 14 BI downswing. I looked at all my losing hands that day and there was maybe one BI of (arguable) spew. The rest was standard coolers.

Today when I hit the tables it was like I had lingering nausea. Seriously. I moved to nl10 to take it easy but found myself getting impatient and just moved back to nl25. Fortunately I ran good, but I still feel emotionally crippled from this variance fiasco. Can you give us all some tips on how to move through a downswing in the current state of the games?

Set a stop loss of 4-5 bi's, even if ur just getting coolered you shouldn't be losing that many buyins at 25nl in a single day.

Verneer:

Could you post your winrates stats by position? What is a good standard " winrate" from the blinds?

Could you also post tab holecards for positions SB and BB for this range of hands: A2o+A2s+ and all broadways except TT+AKs,AKo with added stats CC% and 3bet% with VPIP=True.

I am doing a bit analysing and would like to see how this stats look from a winning player.

Appreciated

So here it is, my first post on a 2+2 tread. I'v been reading the tread from the beginning, I like it so far.

I have a question for you guys (verneer included), please refer me to another tread if it's apply.

From this tread and from other material we got that a "perfect" table is having agg.players on our right and passive players on our left, right?

Since we can't wait all day table selecting the "nut" table, would you prefer a passive/passive table to a agg/agg one?

In my (little) experience I struggle so much having agg. on my left that it nullify the greatness of having a agg on my right. Having passive/passive players is much more easy to play but result in less action, 3betpots and value in a way...

What are you table selection rules beside looking for agg on right and passive on left?

Really looking foward for your toughs on this matter. I play 25nl 6max on tilt. I hope i made myself clear, if not feel free to ask me to clarify my concerns. Thx alot.

We'd rather have aggressive players on our right for sure, but we like having passive players on both sides of us.

Where do we want loose players?
Where do we want tight players?
What type of player is worst to have on our left?

Depends on the aggr type. If it's maniacs, I'll take that table all day. Maniacs can be the most profitable players to player against. Otherwise I'd prefer a passive table. If it's all TAGs, I'm not playing.

I'm not happy having aggressive players on either side of me unless they're maniacs. But if they're going to be at my table, I'd rather have them on my right.

High VPIP. Large pots. Few short-stackers. Known exploitable players. Unknowns.

thx for the quick reply great stuff.

I want loose players on my right since I can 3bet them all day.
I want tight players on my left since I can open wide from late pos.
having a loose player on my right can be hell on earth but not even close as hard as a Agg one.

It is off topic but I'm mix up speaking of loose/tight and Agg/passive since their is loose/passive players , lag ones, tight/passive and TAGs. We should talk about these specificities in our further post since I was talking about Agg vs Passive and you did bring up tight vs loose... I should have been more specific.

Great table selection ideas, i will surely look at it in my next session.

Again thx alot!

Verneer, I'm going to contribute an interesting hand I encountered today playing 25NL FR Rush hope its okay.

Only have 18 hands on villain, he's at 28/21

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

BB: $36.74
UTG: $13.64
UTG+1: $11.89
UTG+2: $31.78
MP1: $51.11
MP2: $30.06
CO: $25.00
Hero (BTN): $28.49
SB: $34.08

Pre Flop: ($0.35) Hero is BTN with K K
2 folds, UTG+2 raises to $0.75, 3 folds, Hero calls $0.75, 2 folds

Played him like he had a standard tight MP range, so just went for a call cause I didn't want to get 4bet bluffed and wasn't too comfortable having a pre flop war with an unknown (who appears to have decent stats) from MP 100bb deep.

Flop: ($1.85) 3 9 6 (2 players)
UTG+2 bets $1.25, Hero calls $1.25

Turn: ($4.35) A (2 players)
UTG+2 bets $2.75, Hero calls $2.75

River: ($9.85) K (2 players)
UTG+2 checks, Hero requests TIME, Hero bets $3, UTG+2 raises to $9.50,
Hero: sick
Hero has 15 seconds left to act
Hero: I have KK,
Hero requests TIME, Hero ??

Decided to include the chat just for the lols

well.... i'm positive that it depends on how many hands you're playing per hour. there's a rush strat video on DC and the author shows a graph where he had a 20BI downswing in half a day, and he's a huge winner at those stakes.

As played pre-flop, why not raise the flop? Aren't you afraid of how draw-heavy the flop is? I'd want to charge him for diamonds, 45, and 78. And I'd want value from TT-QQ. There's maybe 21 turn cards I'm not thrilled to see.

Basic Table Selection Criteria:

1) First there is the table dynamic, what kind of table is this? There are basic 4 types
a) loose/passive tables - lots of limpers, rarely any raises pre-flop
b) tight/passive - not alot of play pre-flop, not alot of raises either
c) loose/aggressive - lots of players raising lots of hands, 3-bets, squeezes it's all here
d) tight/aggressive - not alot of play by players pre-flop, but when there is action it's usually a raise

1a) Now one table isn't neccessarily more/less profitable then the others, you will just have to adapt a different strategy for each one. For instance:
a) Loose/Passive - Look to limp alot of your speculative hands (suited connectors, off suited connectors, small pocket pairs) from early position that will play well in multi-way pots.
b) tight/passive - Avoid raising/limping from EP with off-suited broadways (JT+, QT+, kT+) and mid-range aces because when called you could be up against a dominating A, K, Q type hand and will be hard to play OOP. In late position, look to raise a lot to steal the blinds from the tight players, and you shouldn't be getting a lot of action back from your raises at all.
c) loose/aggressive - tighten up considerably, and play lowball poker, you want to be trappy, limp with killer hands, always give your villians rope to hang themselves with. Don't limp with speculative hands here, you will more then likely get raised and get put in a bad spot.
d) tight/aggressive - tighten up in EP, loosen up late position (normal), look for spots to 3-bet bluff in position, stealing the blinds. (Out of all the tables the TAG table is probably the least profitable table to be at, but you can squeeze out a profit here.

3) Some other things to consider:
a) Short stacks - you don't want short stacks anywhere on the table, either to your left or your right. If they are to your left, expect to get shoved on a lot and every hand you play that goes past pre-flop they are committed all the way if they hit. On your right, your just not going to make enough money off them, you will clean them out and they will leave table, and then you probably have to leave the table as well if they were your mark on the table. You don't want more then 1 short stack on the table and the ideal position for the short stack is directly across from you so you play minimal hands with him if at all.

4) Players on your left
a) tight/passive > tight/aggressive > loose/passive > loose/aggressive

5) Players on your right
a) loose/passive > loose/aggressive > tight/passive > tight/aggressive

There's more I could go in to here but I'm tired and have a head ache.

Cheers !!!!

After promptly spewing away 20BIs Rush 50NL during early January can I please have more ~two hour session like today...



I mistakenly thought Verneer and Citizenwind = the same person up until today. Damn I feel stooopid. I posted a hand earlier this month in this thread playing Rush FR 50nl vs Citizenwind but I posted as vs Verneer--oops. Damn you guys sound the same from your CR videos.

I'm "trying" to play based on Verneer's recommendation of fit-or-fold post-flop and I would also like to avoid huge leaks vs the regular nits. Of course I go on tilt from time to time when my QQ loses to KK or my KK vs AA. I can't for the life of me fold KK pre in a two way pot and have paid off AA plenty of times.

Your two videos this year so far are solid. Keep it up... and I look forward to more..

Dude, I think you've got a bit of MUBS going on - afraid of getting 4-bet bluffed? You have pocket kings! Raise that sh*t up. Assuming he's raising 11% (half of his 21% PFR from middle position), you're a 3:1 favorite vs. this range.

--

I'm also paying off this river - your river bet was so weak you may have induced a bluff raise, or an AJ "value" raise that thinks you have nothing.

ThePest you'r the best hehe

You surely help me understand your criterias, I'll put them in good use for sure.
The main point is that adaptation is the key to succesfully play at a table.

To adapt to players at my table, in addition to the tracker, I find players and color note them in 4-5(place for more) distinct categories: 1or2 tables open(blue), 3 to 5(orange) and, 6+(red). I mark as yellow players that play both tourneys/sng AND cashgame tables since they are rarely good in any of these discipline and have some leaks in their games.
I often recheck any of them later in the session or even in others sessions to confirm my notes( a reg is, at some point in his session, playing 1to5 tables and is adding other tables at the moment that I check him).
Finally purple is maniac, total spewer, the -OMG I wanna play with this player- type. I don't have a lot of these purple notes but when I note one I write it down on a notepad on my computer and I always start a session by looking for these avatar names.

Now understand that is in no way my only note taking system. It is just a quick way to understand who is who when I sat down on a table. Who is the reg at the table? Who is the fish? (if it's me I quit) And who is the potential out of liner.

Would you suggest a TAG, LAG, NIT, Loose/passive etc system type? my tracker is already indicating that to me once I have a couple hundreds hands on them.

I realise that I should (and will) check on the notetaking video on CR.

Nice to have your insight on these concerns and once again thx to all the 2+2 community

I think thats good because you will know their style without having to seat at the table and see on you HUD.

you will know their style without having to seat ya ! right, nice thing to know without having to seat at the table. So is knowing the number of table they are playing is wortless?

Hate to say it but you deserved to be put in a tough situation like this on the river. I might be afraid of a 4-bet bluff if I had KQs, TT, etc, but wouldn't you welcome a 4-bet bluff with KK? Are you scared of AA? For 100bb's I'll get it in with KK almost every time against anyone. Now if you are 400bb's deep and you did get 4-bet shoved on, perhaps you can find a fold.

As played, I'd probably fold.

His check-raise is super strong here, and your min value bet there seems really strong to me as well, like you have a huge hand here and your just trying to make it enticing enough for me to call here with my ace and no kicker, or my pocket TT-QQ.

If you raised the river for value then you should be happy to get your money in because you think your good, but honestly I don't think your ahead of his reraise on the river here. I think he hit a great hand on the turn, in fact it wouldn't surprise me if he had pocket rockets and hit a boat on the river or if he did hit the flush with some kind of suited broadway like KQ of diamonds, or KJ of diamonds which are definately in his range. I'd put him on a hand like that based on his play, and he may totally have bluffed the crap out of you, but you didn't really set yourself up for a good situation here because you never really knew where you were with the hand once a scary card came on the turn. I'd rather have folded to his 4-bet pre-flop (Though i'd probably jam against an unknown in 25NL anyway with KK), then get to the river to have to fold trip KKK because the situation warrants it and the way I played the hand.

If you weren't 100% sure your hand is good, then you should have checked behind and got to showdown.

I don't agree with this, we should bet for value if we think they will call with a worse hand in their range 50% of the time or more. We can't take showdown every time we don't have the immortal nuts, we will lose value like crazy.

We can argue whether or not we think we're ahead of his range 50% of the time on this hand or not, with the flush out there and all, but a set of kings is a bit better than showdown-worthy.

After looking at it again, I honestly don't see any reason in calling the turn bet. Maybe if you had the Kd, but it looks to me like you are compounding one mistake (pre-flop) with several other mistakes. As previous response noted, you have no idea where you are at since you flatted preflop.

Absolutely, you can exploit a lot of players by knowing how many tables they are playing, for example if I know the guy sitting to my left is multi-tabling like 6+ tables then I know I can probably steal his blinds from him pretty liberally because he probably won't notice it as easily as if someone was only playing 1-4 tables etc...

Assigning players into certain categories is a great way to help you with your table selection and I highly recommend it. You can name them whatever you want, I know Verneer likes to use nits, tourists, cardrunners type players, bullys, and drunks.

if I know the guy sitting to my left is multi-tabling like 6+ tables then I know I can probably steal his blinds from him pretty liberally because he probably won't notice it as easily as if someone was only playing 1-4 tables etc...

Yeah that's is how I use it but I'll probably be even more specific in assesing color like blue-nit, red-TAG something like that. I would still wan't to have a color system for number of table. I could use both Full Tilt software note system and Tracker note system, that would be pretty precise.

Verneer, I have a cpl suggestions for your charity donation...

I have an old friend that I went to school with, and his dad won the "$10k a week for life" on a $20 scratch off ticket, and he donated $5k right away. He put $2.5k up for the local SPCA and $2.5k more to local food drives.

Anyway, if you're worried about the money being spent correctly you should spend it yourself like he did. He bought tons of dog food for the SPCA, and gave each person working there a $25 gift card for Apple Bee's, and for the Food drive he did the same thing.

Have you finished w/ the contest already?

btw, they don't actually send you $10k a week, you get a cpl $60k checks each year.