no problem anyone can have is own vision. Gl on the tables

That redline on 10nl?
some spew hands there or not making hands?

I don't know about that red line lol. I think spew would affect the blue-line more, so I don't think spew was the reason.

[Spins Profit: $0.00 (2x $0.25 spins)]
Hands: 762
Profit: -$8.66
Bankroll: $97.12
Currently Playing: NL5 (move to nl10 at $120)

Just a quick update today. Not a great session last night, but I think most of it just due to not running well.

yes, i mean:
- Cbet give up to much
- Cold calling to much
- Calling 3bets to much etc.

i can be wrong i know

Trying to help here without nipping you in your own thread, which would be impolite.

Look at these comments...

Now ask yourself a question:

If you are playing unconventionally, how is an "adjusting" reg going to exploit you back.



So what looks to you like bad play, may?? be reg villain adjusting.

the real problem is you are seriously underestimating your opponents and thinking they are all robo nits/tags who can't read you and play back you. As you go further up, you will find that is less and less true.

FWIW, good regs will pick up your donk bet strat pretty quick and will be able to range you and play you IP, which is never going to end well for you. So your challenge is, how many good regs will you meet...and also is your strat the best available to stack the fishes you play.

Peace, I like your blogging style and it's great to be open minded, so GL and I'll just comment on the hands now.

Thanks guys for the comments. And Fatboy, feel free to comment on whatever you feel the urge to comment on lol, you don't need to stick to just the hands. I know you have good intentions, so I'm not going to think you're impolite or anything.

I played one session after the last one. Didn't go so well results-wise. I did think a bit about what you were saying, and I took a few days off to think more deeply about restructuring my game. I will attempt a new approach to rebuild my game with a more GTO-style approach. So it's back to the drawing board.

I'm going through the process right now of building new preflop ranges, and building postflop lines for the most common situations (in a less unconventional way lol). So will be off the tables for a couple more days probably, but will come back with a vengeance when I return!

But I haven't disappeared, I just haven't played more than one session since the last update. Here are the results for that last session.

[Spins Profit: -$1.25 (7x $0.25 spins)]
Hands: 1508
Profit: -$18.16
Bankroll: $77.16
Currently Playing: NL5 (move to nl10 at $120)

Will move back to nl2 when I return just because I will be using new ranges/lines, and want to give myself a chance to try them out and get used to them where the money doesn't matter as much. Will probably move to nl5 at $100, and then go back to my regular BRM.

Keep up the hard work and succes with improving.

Thank you mike. I didn't finish my off-the-table work yet. I started doing it, but I wanted to get a feel for one of my ideas in practice. So I took that concept and played a couple hours, 2-tabling. The idea? Having an open-limping range preflop.

This may seem just as unconventional as all my earlier over/min-betting and donking, but I feel open-limping is very likely to be part of a GTO-strat. I can't prove it, but I can provide mathematical support in favor of it (however, I'm not going to do so). I've got to carefully design my ranges though, because splitting my range like this preflop makes things more complex..

I've actually had this thought before in the past, but I'm trying to flesh the idea out more now and put it into practice. Any thoughts on this? Anyone feel strongly either for or against having an open-limping range?

As for my session, I obviously didn't get many hands in 2-tabling. But here are the results regardless.

[Spins Profit: +$1.50 (2x $0.25 spins)]
Hands: 366
Profit: +$4.92
Bankroll: $83.58
Currently Playing: NL2 (move to nl5 at $100)

------------------

Would anyone play this differently?

Well i hate open limping because your range is capped, so you need to take some strong hands in your limping range to balance this range.

Taking this hands in your limping range lowers the value of these hands.

In my opinion you need to start with a solid pre flop game with correct ranges.
Containing:
- opening ranges
- 3betting ranges vs every position
- flatting ranges
- calling ranges vs 3bets

Then you need to work on your post flop game
- Cbetting & barreling further Streets
- Raising cbets
- designing C/r ranges for different board textures etc.

Then add hand to your preflop game and become looser.

Those fancy plays you want to design aren't gonna make you a big winner in the future.

But thats my opinion.

Being creative isn't wrong but just start with getting decent. And i know that you can add your creativity to the game with a solid understanding.

Gl

@ op...flop bet is a bit meh, but no big deal. Villains line is a little weird unless he spikes something on the river. As played I'm never folding river.

@ mikeajax15, hero doesn't open limp (but the rest of your post is sound )

@Fatboy: Thanks. Yeah, I think the flop bet is marginal. Not terrible, not great. I'm thinking the more GTO line might be just to check back the flop and check-call turn and/or river on this run-out (assuming it's a call preflop).

As for mike's open-limp thoughts, I haven't been open-limping so far, but I had asked a question about it. That's what he was responding to.

@mike: I wasn't contemplating open-limping to be fancy. I was doing so to try to figure out what's most likely to be GTO-ish. My thoughts were that open-raising your whole range leaves you with a much weaker range compared to the range your opponent will need to defend with. This is because your opponent only needs to defend a certain percentage against your open-raise, and this percentage is much lower than the size of your range.

If you choose your open-raise range to be the size of your opponent's defending range, then ranges will be more or less similar. Plus, limp-calling will put your more marginal bluff-catching hands against a weaker range. And I will still have strong hands in that range, as my open-raising range will consist of a lot of weaker bluff-type hands. Preflop is where you can bluff the most (as opposed to the river, where you have the least amount of bluffs).

I'm just trying to see if anyone can point out any mistakes in my thinking. Saying we shouldn't open-limp cause our range is capped doesn't seem to be a great reason. After all, doesn't that mean we should never call an open-raise? Or never call a cbet?

By the way, I hope I wasn't too mean lol. I appreciate you trying to help, and you write a lot of good stuff. I do feel I have a solid understanding compared to the other players at these stakes.

Just posting again because I ran into some good quotes from the guys at Red Chip Poker. The first one is in regards to limping (don't know who wrote this article).

"Always limping is not a profitable strategy. Never limping isn't advised either. But until you understand the strategic implications of limping with a plan, you'd be better off never limping. [...] Later in your poker career you can start to limp more and exploit other players who have learned not to limp."

Seems like some people believe that limping has a place in poker. This next quote (from James "SplitSuit" Sweeney), totally separate from the above quote by the way, is just something that puts everything into perspective. For me anyway.

"You are playing poker. It doesn't matter what limit you're at. The dollars don't mean anything. All we're doing is we're playing poker, with big blinds, against people. We're implementing a strategy that we think is better than their strategy. And at the end of the day, that amounts to real dollars."

Ok, I'm off to continue building my strategy that is better than the other nl2/nl5 players' strategies. In all seriousness, I think having an open-limping range (and thus having a stronger open-raising range) will result in a strategy that is better than these players. I have not encountered any reason why this might not be the case, although I'm still open to change. For now, will continue to do work on this and try it out. You only live once.

Re: Limping and GTO.

In my opinion, GTO strategy is unlikely to feature much (if any) limping in the positions UTG-BTN, because those are positions where much of your EV comes from stealing the blinds or securing the best position post-flop (by making players with position on you fold). You can't steal the blinds by limping, and you're also unlikely to get HU in position if you limp UTG-CO.
In the small blind, however, it may be optimal to have an open-limping range for a few connected reasons.
1. Since you've already paid half a blind, and only have one opponent to beat, you have an incentive to play a wide range of hands. If your range is wide (and not polarized), you want to bet small. A limp is obviously a small bet.
2. Pre-flop raises BvB are unlikely to succeed instantly (because the BB is more likely to defend when he has position vs the SB, than when he's OOP vs UTG, for example). If you don't have much fold equity, raising with a wide/weak range isn't logical.
3. You will always be OOP post-flop, making it harder for you to crush the minimax game. When you're OOP, you typically want to keep the pot smaller, since the player that is IP tends to realize more equity and have more control over the size of the pot. You don't keep a pot small by raising right at the start.

In short, it might be GTO to limp the SB, because it allows you to play a wider range more profitably than the standard "raise or fold" strategy does.

Note: This does not mean you should limp ALL your playable hands in the SB. Since some hands definitely gain more value by raising, an optimal strat would involve raising some hands, limping some hands (with mixed frequencies), and the limps would also be broken up into limp-calls, limp-folds, and limp-reraises. When building such a strategy, it quickly gets very complicated and virtually impossible to remember (although you could make a chart to remind you what to do with each hand). At the lowest stakes, you're probably better off just raising 40% or whatever, and folding everything else.
That said, I've been using a limping strat in the micros (based largely on what Snowie does) for almost 2 years, and I've had good results and found myself enjoying the challenge of negotiating some weird spots that only arise in limped pots. (e.g. limp-reraising 87s OOP and getting flatted, or playing a 2bb pot with QQ on AKx when villain checks pre.)

Thanks for the well-thought out reply Arty. The one thing I'm having trouble wrapping my mind around is this.. Let's just look at UTG as an example (for simplicity). If we're only raising or folding preflop (and not limping), then we're raising roughly a 15% range, right? (Give or take). If we're opening to 3bb, then each player only needs to defend about 8% against us.

Doesn't this seem really strange to you? That's why I was thinking about having a limping range, to lessen my raising range to be more in line with their defending range. Because that seems like the best way to fix that. What are your thoughts?

I wish it was simple. A 15% opening range UTG is about right (could be wider in games with lower rake). It might work out that each player "defends" about 8% on average, but GTO isn't strictly speaking about preventing someone else from making money. It's about maximising your own EV. i.e. UTG opens because he thinks his hand can pick up at least part of the 1.5bb sitting out there, despite there being 5 players still to act. Let's suppose MP, CO, BTN and SB get out of the way. BB doesn't flat with X% of hands because he's trying to stop UTG from opening more than 15%. BB flats because it's profitable for BB to do so, because he (the BB) has a hand that can win the part of the pot that UTG doesn't win.
e.g. UTG opens 3bb, 4 players fold, BB calls 2bb, pot is 6.5bb. UTG might grab (on average) 4bb of that pot for a 1bb profit on his 3bb investment, and BB gets the other 2.5bb for a profit of 0.5bb. No one gets exploited. Both players make money.
But the main reason to open is to steal the blinds. When you open 3x UTG, you're saying to the players in MP-BTN "My hand is strong enough to win a share of the 1.5bb pot. I'm risking 3bb to win 1.5bb, so I'm not messing around". The raise creates fold equity, because the player on the BTN has to call 3bb just to enter the fight, when UTG has already shown he expects to make money. The BTN is not getting good pot odds, and has no fold equity if he calls, so he needs an even stronger range than UTG opened with if he wants to play. If UTG limps, he can't steal the blinds, so all his EV will have to come from post-flop play. How can you get a positive EV against optimal players if you are OOP with no fold equity? :/
We all know from experience that players who limp UTG just get destroyed by the players that have position on them, whether those players iso-raise or overlimp.

It might be just about +EV to limp on the button with some weak hands (balanced with some strong ones), because the positional advantage vs the blinds might be worth as much as the EV generated from the fold equity of raising, but in UTG/MP/CO, I can't see how a limp could be +EV. When you open UTG, you usually are hoping that MP, CO and BTN will fold, since that increases your EV. They aren't all folding to a limp.

hey,
you weren't to mean haha, you are putting a lot of work and thinking in the game and i have respect for that


nice post arty

Thanks mike, I love the game lol.

Thanks as well Arty for another well-thought out reply. I'm still not convinced though. Is it possible we're trying to steal the blinds too wide (such as 15% UTG)?

Yes, by limping, we forfeit our fold equity. We can't just outright win the 1.5bb pot. But I believe we can get close to that, and we can also win a portion of the blinds more often since we can enter more hands when we limp. And I think we can get our opponents to make more (and bigger) mistakes. Both from trying to isolate our limps with too wide a range, and from playing against our much tighter raising range.

Another way to look at it is, with our marginally good preflop hands, why turn them into a bluff? Why not bluff-catch with them instead? (That doesn't necessarily mean doing nothing but check-calling postflop). These hands still have good value. Maybe we can gain more EV from bluff-catching than we could from getting them to fold.

Not trying to attack you Arty, although it might seem like it lol. Just trying to further my understanding. I could be completely wrong. I will continue to develop my strategy based on the ideas I feel have the most potential, right or wrong. I still feel that having a limping range might be a better idea, so for now will keep going on that.

I don't mind challenging conventions if I believe they are flawed. Maybe this is just something I need to keep working on until I have some closure. Either I realize it's a horrible idea, or I find it works well. One thing I know for certain is, all I need is a strategy that is better than the players I'm playing against. Even if it isn't GTO to have a limping range, if it results in a strategy that is better than my opponents', then maybe it is still worth pursuing.

Will develop all my preflop ranges first, and then play at nl2 to learn and try to memorize them. Will then work on my ranges for the most common postflop lines, and play a bit more. Will do this one step at a time and see how it progresses. And will obviously continue to update here.

Me to so i will keep repleying and follow your progress,

I understand your bluff catching strategy and thinking, The problem with this strategy is in my opinion.
- Villain don't bluff enough at this stakes to make this profitable imo.
- You're almost anytime OOP and lose pot control.
- Villain end up with a wider range maybe this is good.
- But with the wider range bluff catching oop becomes more like a guessing game and you wil never put villain on a concrete and correct range.

On these stakes i stopped bluff catching wide because villains just don't bluff enough.(i know this is exploitable).

About your check calling/ bluff catching range.
I note al the people who is see turning hands into a bluf or getting out of line, bluffing rivers etc.

Against this type off people it is very profitable to check call some decent holding.

Like you holding AK

Flop comes A66,

Villain can't have a lot of holdings that pay you off. If you have a note on a guy that he turn hands into bluffs. you can to decide to check call this kind of hand( only vs this type of players). Vs all the other player value bet the hell out of them.

I appreciate that mike.

I'm working on this strategy for higher stakes as well. I don't plan to be at these stakes for long. But I've found these players still bluff quite often when you show weakness. But I'm designing this to try and approximate GTO (whether it does or not is another matter lol), so the strategy as a whole should still be profitable.

Well, we'd be OOP if we raised and got called also. But yeah, we don't have initiative. However, I don't think that initiative is as important, theoretically speaking. Ranges are more important. Might be a bit harder in practice though.

Yeah, and there is the added benefit of them thinking that you're a fish. This might cause them to make further mistakes against you.

This is somewhat true. But this is where off-the-table work is beneficial. You design your ranges for your lines to be as close to GTO as you can. And then you bluff-catch with pre-defined ranges, so that you're not guessing in-game. You base it on frequencies. Easier said than done obviously.

This is going more into exploitative lines, where as I'm trying to come up with something more GTO-ish (which doesn't care how the other players play). Not saying I can't play exploitatively, but that's not what I'm developing at the moment. But yeah, if they choose not to bluff, then I become the aggressor and start betting with an appropriate range.

I understand your thinking.

I find it very interesting and looking forward to the results and how its working for you.

GL.

Open-limping in EP would be an exploitative play. It can work in very soft games (e.g. live 1/2 or some 2NL games online), because the opponents don't punish limps, and raising doesn't generate much fold equity. It doesn't make sense in a GTO sense, however, for the reasons I've already gone into. (GTO poker is basically just a fight for the dead money, so you raise to protect your equity and steal the blinds. Exploitative poker means you often want to see a flop, as you get more EV from post-flop errors than from steals).
I generally play a pseudo-GTO strategy even at low stakes, but I've done some unconventional things to exploit very weak villains when the table dynamic allows it. e.g. I fold 44 UTG by default, but on a super-passive table, I'll consider limping, as I don't expect to get raised.


^ 4-way limped pot at 25NL for lolz.

On tables like that, it's a purely exploitative play. I wouldn't "balance" by limping any strong hands. I just go for the cheapest possible setmine.

FWIW, I think it's great that you are experimenting. I think a lot of the stuff taught in microstakes books and articles is actually quite wrong (most players still have no clue about how to c-bet optimally for example), so getting away from "standard" lines could serve you well.

Hahaha if only I could flop quads.. in any pot.

I've had a busy work schedule last couple days, and sleep schedule was all messed up lol. Next few days should be just the opposite though, so will get a lot more done. Still working on preflop ranges, but mostly did more thinking.

Always love to hear from you Arty. Whether limping or not is part of a GTO strategy, I'm not sure. I'm not sure that poker is all about 'stealing' the blinds rather than 'winning' the blinds. Maybe what I'm envisioning gets away from GTO and is more exploitative instead.

I'm just thinking that limping and playing these marginal hands more passively might gain more EV. By betting, you're only getting called by better, and folding worse. By being passive with these hands, you can gain more value from worse hands when they bluff, but still win most of the time when they don't. And there's a chance you can lose less when you're behind.

The biggest upside I can see right now is when they 3bet your raising range. Opponent's 3betting/5betting ranges are probably designed around wider opening ranges. So there is a big potential for mistakes to be made in big pots. I think that alone is a big positive.

As you said Arty, I'm just experimenting, and hopefully it works out. There's one small change in my philosophy now, based upon one of my quotes in a post above. I'm not worried anymore about creating the best GTO strategy. I'm just trying to create a strategy that is better than my opponents strategies (or closer to GTO than theirs).

I hit a roadbump when trying to design my preflop ranges, so I just spent some time playing using a previous strategy (results below).

But basically, when I was trying to design limping ranges, I wasn't sure what frequency I wanted to limp with in each position. I know if I only raised (no limps), I'd open with about 16% UTG, for example. With a split range, I now raise 5.5% from UTG. And the question was how much should I limp (and then limp-call or limp-fold). It took a lot of thinking, but I finally figured out my limping strategy. So now that I know what size range I wish to limp with, I have to design both my limping and raising ranges. Will do some work on these preflop ranges now, and then start playing some more.

Oh, and by the way, I skipped a weekly update (if anyone was paying attention lol). Just due to lack of playing. Will do the monthly summary at the end of the month. Hopefully I will get more consistent playing time in next month.

[Spins Profit: -$1.25 (7x $0.25 spins)]
Hands: 2484
Profit: +$4.12
Bankroll: $86.37
Currently Playing: NL2 (move to nl5 at $100)

Forgot to post hands above, and can't see how to use hand history converter when editing posts.

--------------------------

Villain was 48/11 over 76 hands. Wasn't sure what to think about his overbet donk on the river. Is anyone ever folding here?



------------------------------

I think I probably butchered this hand. I don't think I should be calling three streets here. But where would you fold? Would you call preflop and flop, and fold on the turn? I think I should probably call the turn and fold to the river bet. Any thoughts?

Hand 1: Villain is a passive fish, raising his stronger hands and limping the other stuff.

Preflop: i would do the same
OTF: oke
Turn: I usually check for pot control
River: His line is super weird, but i fold because when this type of players show such aggression they alsmost everytime have it.

if you checked the turn i tend to bluffcatch wider on the river to catch some ace highs.

Hand 2:
If villain 3bets wide i like to turn my hand into a bluff and go for a 4bet fold.
If villain is a normal or nitty 3better i fold to a standard 3bet and would call small 3bets.

as played:
Flop: I would call the flop your are blocking nothing of his FD's in his range, hands like 98h,KJh, KTh, ATh, AJh, JTh.

Turn: the six of clubs doesn't change the board. Some of his combo's catch a backdoor FD so i expect almost strong ace, FD and broadway draw to second barrel.

River: all of his FD's in his range gets there, Some other strong holdings i expect him to tripple barrel AA,QQ,AQ,AKh
I expect him to check back AK most of the time,

So i think your hands only beats a complete bluff. So i would fold in this spot.

With the 55, I would overlimp and go set-mining for the cheapest price possible. As played, I fold river I think, but I wouldn't have played the first three streets like that, so I'm not sure what the ranges look like. River donkshoves are usually the nuts, but there are some rare players that use that line with bluffs.

With the AJ, call flop and turn, fold river (and fold it even if the flush doesn't get there). When you call the turn, you're kind of hoping for villain to give up on the river, because you're crushed by his triple-barrel range. Against some (nitty) opponents, you can make an exploitative fold pre to the 3-bet, as AJo doesn't play well vs their value-heavy 3-bet ranges.