You will get crushed on 25 zone. Its a nitfest with high rake.

12bb rake is scary, but I already pay 10bb on nl50 and I'm beating it by 7bb. Tbh if it feels unbeatable I'm thinking about moving to stars. But it's hard to lose, people play so face up at these stakes lol, so many bad regs.

Some thoughts on explo poker vs theoretical poker

I believe it was good that I had to drop down to nl25, learned a lot about explo poker in there, specially when I compare how that player pool plays compared to nl50. I've never imagined that two player pools that are that close could play so different from one another. It seems that nl50 regs crush nl25 by a lot, but to beat nl50 you need to play a complete different strat, and if that strat is applied on nl25, then it will lose a lot of money.

From a theoretical perspective I think regs from nl25 and nl50 are both garbage, but they are bad for different reasons, and as crazy as it sounds, people on nl25 are closer to theory (still very very very far from it) than nl50 on bodog (on stars I believe it's different because of sn dynamics, people can't get away with much stuff).

In poker there are 3 ways you can progress through the stakes: focusing on explo, focusing on theory and studying both.

Focusing on explo

From a beginner perspective, I believe this approach is worse than focusing on theory, it requires ton of work, a lot of talent and it complicates things so much, it's so hard for a beginner reg at nl10 to start thinking about timing tells, sizing tells, every stake is different from each other and you have to learn so much stuff and you end up being wrong a lot because of lack of experience and tilt. Explo poker is very volatile and can be super +ev or super -ev. I don't like that type of dynamic (even though I play very explo myself).

Focusing on theory

If you're starting at nl2, then you will have a long way to go if you're using theory as your guide through the stakes, winrates are low because of the insane amount of rake in the micros and maybe it could be even impossible to beat some stakes at some sites if playing a strong theoretical strat, you just need to be owning people so much to overcome the rake. But I believe that this approach is the best for a beginner, theory is always good, fun to learn and if you know how to study it well it can be very strong, specially when you start making some assumptions comparing it to reality. It's way better to exploit people's weaknesses with a good theoretical background than doing it with "feel", you also protect yourself from counter-exploits and can even develop strats against those. Also there's a limit on how an explo logic can work, as an example, timing tells (and fake timing tells) can work only vs someone playing that game, if you're playing vs charlie carrel and believe he is better than you in this metagame stuff, you can just decide to not give away anything and focus on strategy, with weaker opposition it's strong though, if you know the exact level of a certain villain (and if it's lower than yours), then it's your job to know exactly how to completely crush that player. Vs better regs I believe the best approach is to be humble and play as close to theory as possible with few tricks, more solid plays, so there's a lot of skill in knowing someone is better than you are, it's very important in every stake and it has cost me a lot of EV through my time playing poker when I've thought I was better than someone and I wasn't.

Studying both

This is the best of both worlds, as a matter of fact, if you think deeply, there's no exploit without theory behind it, it always has to be some sort of a theoretical reason to explain an exploit, even if it means that "villains overfold", or "overcall", or "overbluff", or "underbluff". You could even run a sim on how to play vs villain with a timing tell. But to study both at the same time, one need to be already decent in the game, I believe this approach is the worst for beginners, because you can't focus and it can be quite overwhelming to learn 2 complete different things, you can easily fall down into bad habits, misapplying of theory and explo strats, it can be very confusing. But for an experienced player, you have to learn explo poker, even vs the best in the world, what if linus decides to overbluff the flop? You need to punish that range in that spot, otherwise he will get away with it by checking stronger and you will lose EV on other parts of the game tree.

Explo and theory always go together, steffan is a good example of how sick an explo player can be, guy is going crazy on HS playing a very aggro strat, he is probably owning so many strong regs (although losing vs the very best), I believe he could do better by respecting more linus and going explo vs other people. But maybe he knows linus theoretical game is stronger, so maybe his only hope of beating him is to try to play his explo strats and see how linus adapts vs those.

Subbed, good luck! Hope to see you climbing soon

In, best of luck OP. Nice to see you back, hope you can climb back up soon

If you can’t beat 25 zone then you’re just bad at poker lol. The regs are terrible and there are plenty of fish

graph in the last 6 months?

vaamoooooooooooo, gl

Cool to see you here, I remember you from last blog, vamo

Yeah, nl25 is a joke lol, I see so many plays that hurt my eyes and I have to do some of those too, quite crazy how bad people play in there. Btw, I said here that I don't create new plays anymore, I've created a specific play for nl25 lol. Quite crazy how it is, works so well, going to wait till I'm taking shots at nl100 so I post here just to mess the nl25 meta haha vamooooooooo

Here it is my graph since october:



Running badly on higher stakes (breakeven on nl100) on that sample, volume was garbage too, but it was 4-tabling reg tables too


So far I've started to spew quite a bit, playing 2-3k hands/day is reducing the quality of my game, it's expected to happen tbh, but quite annoying to see that I won't have a 10bb+ winrate at these games. If I can put my A game all the time, I believe it's possible to make even more than that in there.

Thought a bit and decided that I will regrind at nl25 until I hit a $2k roll, I can't take shots so often because of how different both player pools play, it changes the optimal strat by a lot, so will grind more BIs so I can take longer shots and play a more consistent strat. So basically will grind a lot of nl25 next month. I believe that if I run decent I will take shots at 50 zone on june. So far I've spewed quite a bit at nl50 and ran badly, lost a 5 bi shot so far.

Also thought a bit about stuff, I will grind a lot at 50 zone when I have the roll to do it, after I have a very big roll for nl100 (probably 80 bi), I will take shots at nl100 on stars, it's hard to make the jump from nl50 to nl200, also I believe it will be very good for my game to come back to having a sn, having dynamics with other regs, balancing my ranges, it will be a better approach to not get crushed at 200 zone, because with these explo lines you either own people by a lot, or lose by a lot. I expect to make many mistakes in this new 200 zone meta when I join the pool, I have 0 clue on what happens in there in these days, so my old 200 zone strat might be very outdated, so playing more balanced will be a good idea to get some hands in so I can study the pool and focus on max exploits in there later.

seeing some crazy plays does not mean the pool is easy to beat. I was asking for whitemares recent 25nl graph.

Apart from a 35k hand heater you are break even over 130k hands. I thought you said the pool is easy to beat?

You literally said that 25 zone is a nitfest... Nits are easy to beat. They are the worst type of a reg. I also assume that there are plenty of fish at 25nl - at least one per table on average, which would make it very beatable.

You can beat them for small bb over the long run if you are patient if you have discipline, and avoid getting coolered by the nuts constantly while paying massive rake. that is not easy. Again show graphs or don't talk, its worthless.

You don't get it, the nit is losing more than the fish vs a strong player. I defend wider vs a nit tight range than I do vs a fish, because nits are predictable and fish are very random.

After a bit of study you can see when the nit has top pair, 2p+, a bluff or midpair going for sdv, you can even trick them into hero calling overbets in some spots.

The graph is at 6bbev, it's not close to breakeven, the beginning of the graph was me at nl100 running good then running bad and breaking even in that stake for 40k hands, then the rest is me regrinding at nl50 at a sick winrate.

I will enjoy watching your progress on 25z lol

You seem to think nits = bad players. They are solid regs just tight which means its like getting blood out of a stone.

Pretty much sums up your posting history perfectly.

All this talk about nits gave me some motivation to study a bit about how to exploit them with pio, here it is:

It's very common for nits to go tighter than monker pre-flop, so BB adjusts to going tighter than usual, that idea looks right, but vs a tighter pre-flop range, what changes it's that BB has to defend different hands, maybe even more hands overall if you think for a bit.

Hands that underrealize vs tight ranges: KQo, A9o, ATo, JTo
Hands that overrealize vs tight ranges: 56s, 53s, 23s, 74s, A4s, 96s

The idea here is all about board coverage: whenever IP opens tighter than usual, it means he will be dropping those weaker SCs pre-flop, so his range will be stronger on higher cards, but weaker on medium cards and also on small boards too. So our strat vs that is to give up on high boards and punish them very hard on medium/low boards. Remember that polarization pushes EV more than overall equity, it's more important to have at least some nutted hands in our range than having stronger hands on average, also this effect is increased when IP plays its value very aggressively and treats 246 boards like bricks (which it should be somewhat true in some spots), but when OOP is playing less KTo and more 24s type of hands, things can get out of control for IP very fast if he doesn't realize he has to play more passively because of the lack of nutted hands in his range.

This is how IP should play the flop with monker ranges (MP vs BB):



EVs are very close, as you can see, IP has to play very cautiously in there, having a lot of big overpairs isn't very useful on a board like this when OOP has a lot of straights, 2p and pair+draw.

Now I've changed both players' ranges to look something closer to reality: IP going tigher(but adding 22-55, because nobody folds those pre) and OOP overfolding broadways and overcalling SCs and low hands. As you can see, IP has a range that is almost 50% smaller than monker, with more sets on that texture and the EVs are almost the same. Look at how crazy it is, IP has almost 2x more overpairs in that spot and this is what is happening. Sure, OOP has less KQ which plays badly on these textures, which makes up for more EV. One could say: yeah, it's obvious that overfolding higher cards will give OOP higher EV on lower boards, but his range becomes ****ed up on higher boards, OOP will get crushed in there and will overfold.



The thing is:




I believe there are some good nits, I've heard about some nits doing well at 500z on 2019, but they are strong regulars that decide to play tight because they think it's higher EV, they believe people don't overfold pre and might even capitalize by overbluffing turning hands into bluffs into some tricky spots postflop with hands they shouldn't, but since they're tight few people could realize they're bluffing enough in some spots.

But overall the majority of nits play insanely bad, just look at the example above, it's so easy to play well vs someone playing tight pre. Sure, rake is high, but when you know theory and your opponent doesn't, then he will make compound mistakes throughout the hand, which can easily compensate the rake.

How can a nit lose more vs a strong player, than a fish? Maybe we do have different definitions for who is a nit and who is a fish (to me, big gap, 20+ between vpip and pfr, and vpip above 40). Nit is pfr below 10 and vpip below 20 (6-max).

A strong player, by definition, knows how to exploit any profile. If he can´t get the maximum vs the fish, he isn´t a strong player to begin with

Both profiles should lose I believe, but if you go to any tracking site, assuming they track whatever game/site these guys play, the fish loses more. Good players surely get more from the pie than crappy players.

If you will excuse my beginner self, this is some great information. I dont play 25nl but most zoom pools at even lower limits (2/5nl) are filled with big nits and tight passive fish. So what this means is that against a stain with 10 pfr in a 6max game we should defend the bb with more suited low cards than normal? or just keep the same ranges but remove some broadways with worse kickers?

thanks and gl

I haven't studied ranges for 10 vpip pre, I would go very tight vs those and call only good hands pre.



You need a good hand to beat a fish, vs a nit you can open so wide, overfolds are a bigger weakness in theory than overcalls. It's hard to beat an opponent who plays really crazy lines and call you light when you're bluffing, it all depends on the type of the fish, I'm comparing a 40 vpip fish with a 23/18 average reg from nl25/nl50.

H1: the exactly type of hand that a nl25 reg will play it better than me, called here because he is supposed to be shipping 6x for value

PokerStars - $0.25 NL FAST (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

MP: 98.92 BB
Hero (CO): 165.64 BB
BTN: 97.28 BB
SB: 107.56 BB
BB: 262.84 BB
UTG: 119.96 BB

SB posts SB 0.4 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.4 BB) Hero has 2 2

fold, fold, Hero raises to 2 BB, BTN raises to 7.64 BB, fold, fold, Hero calls 5.64 BB

Flop: (16.68 BB, 2 players) 8 6 A
Hero checks, BTN checks

Turn: (16.68 BB, 2 players) 2
Hero bets 11.92 BB, BTN calls 11.92 BB

River: (40.52 BB, 2 players) 6
Hero bets 28.88 BB, BTN raises to 77.72 BB and is all-in, Hero calls 48.84 BB



H2: lol

PokerStars - $0.25 NL FAST (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

BTN: 137.12 BB
SB: 161.36 BB
BB: 99.6 BB
UTG: 99.6 BB
MP: 163.64 BB
Hero (CO): 266.4 BB

SB posts SB 0.4 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.4 BB) Hero has A Q

fold, fold, Hero raises to 3 BB, fold, fold, BB calls 2 BB

Flop: (6.4 BB, 2 players) 8 6 T
BB checks, Hero bets 3.04 BB, BB raises to 12.08 BB, Hero calls 9.04 BB

Turn: (30.56 BB, 2 players) 7
BB bets 21.8 BB, Hero calls 21.8 BB

River: (74.16 BB, 2 players) 4
BB bets 62.72 BB and is all-in, Hero calls 62.72 BB




H3: I believe I've never seen a bigger blunder than this one lol

PokerStars - $0.25 NL FAST (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

Hero (UTG): 191.24 BB
MP: 109.4 BB
CO: 30.04 BB
BTN: 243.92 BB
SB: 195.36 BB
BB: 114.16 BB

SB posts SB 0.4 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.4 BB) Hero has K K

Hero raises to 3 BB, fold, fold, BTN calls 3 BB, SB calls 2.6 BB, fold

Flop: (10 BB, 3 players) A T 4
SB checks, Hero checks, BTN checks

Turn: (10 BB, 3 players) Q
SB bets 1 BB, Hero calls 1 BB, BTN calls 1 BB

River: (13 BB, 3 players) J
SB bets 191.36 BB and is all-in, Hero calls 187.24 BB and is all-in, fold




Vamooooo

You are flatting 3bets oop with 22, but trying to educate? lol

22-33 are 100% frequency calls UTG vs MP, they unblock the bluffing range, also exploitatively those pocket pairs are printing like crazy vs a pool that can't fold overpairs postflop or don't have the aggression to take the EV out of those PPs, also they overbluff on some textures with AK/AQ, in my database I'm printing while calling 22-55 OOP when I open from CO-UTG

Roll is at $2k, back to 50z, vaaaaaamooooooooo

Still mixing some 25z, 50z don't run all day and it's annoying to wait for a hand to happen, will play a lot of nl25 until I hit the roll to play 100z on stars.

One question: how is 200z on stars compared to 200 zone on bodog? Anyone playing those stakes? I believe that the EV on 200 zone is higher, but it's worse for my game


H1: First time that I've folded kings pre and it turned out to be wrong, I was pretty sure about this one tbh, insane to see the guy going for the min 5-bet 200bb deep with AK lol, pretty sure it was a whale overplaying his hand

PokerStars - $0.25 NL FAST (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

MP: 100 BB
CO: 260.72 BB
Hero (BTN): 171.52 BB
SB: 126.08 BB
BB: 121.56 BB
UTG: 208 BB

SB posts SB 0.4 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.4 BB) Hero has K K

UTG raises to 3 BB, fold, fold, Hero raises to 9 BB, SB raises to 25 BB, fold, UTG raises to 41 BB, fold, fold

You’ve literally never used a solver in your life huh, no wonder you can’t beat 25 zone lol

There’s literally no position where you don’t call with at least some frequency of 22 when facing a 3b oop, even with 25nl rake. And you should arguably call even more often if you’re facing a 3bet from a nit

If you spent more time studying instead of being perpetually miserable and taking it out on 2p2 posters, then you might be able to beat extremely soft micro stakes games. Just saying

it's funny with poker a lot of people always assume if someone deviates what you think is "correct" they're a fish.

Poor mirage, guy is trolling this forum for so many years, yet there are so many good hands and strat getting posted here and he is still bad at the game, sad

It depends, correct and wrong might be divided by a very thin line, I see a lot of plays being beyond terrible at some stakes and one stake above being a good one, it all depends on how it's the metagame of where you play and also some universal tendencies people have in poker, specially fish and nit regs, they're easier to predict than more aggro regs (but those are capable of donating insane amounts too when they're wrong and you're right).

still waiting for your 2023 graph. no?

Looking at some of your posts, looks like you play on Global the softest site in the world, and squeeze with K9s. lmao. That study is really playing off. lmao.

You have so many years here of dribbling strategy and you still grinding 25nl. lol.