Oh boy, Mirage is gonna have a field day with some of those.

To be honest I think i'm losing enthusiasm, I think I'm being overwhelmed by the stupidity. its like a tidal wave, but I won't give up yet. Can't let my fans down.


H1. The good old bluffing oop into an uncapped range on a board that smashes his range. you prob had the best hand there.

H2. JJ, 3 way vs fish, on a wet flop and you still use the same old garbage 1/3 cbet then fold when they can be both spazzing with worse hands on that board. Pathetic as usual. I'm potting flop and taking them both to the dog pound.


H3. fold pre. blasting off into bu's calling range is suicide. Awful.


H4. Why the hell are checking back the turn? should bomb it. As played deservedly bluffed.


H5. bluffing into a board that smacks villains range, garbage 1/3 turn bet sizing. Awful.


H6. Vs that lol sizing I don't mind the fold. I folded KK pre today so can't talk.


H7. Pathetic.


H8. Villain obviously knows you blast off like a spastic on that board when your bluffing, so turn x was obviously a trap. Bad as usual.


H9. How can you even be asking if river is a fold? lulz


Your most well played hand was when you folded QQ pre.


Verdict 2/9

Two main criticisms of Rapi's game imo are using the 1/4 - 1/3 sizing in totally inappropiate situtations and making bizarre exploitable plays over laughable sample sizes, especially of certain specific stats which would require a large sample and then ten fold.

Rapi,

I'm definitely rooting for you, you look like you have a really great enthusiastic energy for the game and looks like you work hard but still lots of mistakes being made.

I could go over the hands but I'm sure other posters will point criticisms.

My advice, get another coaching session with Broken, and start talking poker with other good players (strong 200z regs and up) your general strategy needs a lot of work as well as your explo game imo.

You can get good advice here for sure but you can also get trash criticism from Mirage (his criticisms show he's behind the 8 ball as it is)

In the nicest way possible, bbissick is absolutely right. Esp about the general strat/explo work. H8 is a prime example to respect both points:

Explo: You are vs the biggest station in 6max zoom, so just bet the QQ ott, it's as black and white as that. Stop leveling yourself with BS about him targeting weak ranges, only begin to think about that when the equilibrium is A LOT closer, atm it's so far from that that your check burns stupid and unnecessary amounts of EV.

General strat: you think his xb ott is "quite weird" and "maybe a soul read". It's a standard xb.

best of luck to you

Yeah, you're right, after that hand I've decided I went too far vs him, if I'm checking QxQc, then I'm checking all my overpairs in there, meh.
Should I check with AA only?

I know he is quite a station, but at the time I thought he was calling flop and turn at a very high frequency to take it down OTR a lot, so thought he was call-call-folding a lot, so thought he would call a x/j way lighter than a bet-bet-bet, also thought he was more likely to stab a lot OTT with close to all his marginal hands.

The other strat I thought vs him would be to give up a lot OTT and barrel a lot OTR after betting turn(with value and bluffs), which is what you're advocating here, and yeah, it looks better than the line I took.

thanks for the feedback, man! Yeah, gotta stop leveling myself in those spots

Thanks, man! got another session with brokenstars in the future, waiting for him to prepare the study material.

The hands I post here are usually the most abysmal and the biggest deviations I make, so I probably look a way worse player from the sample I choose to post here. Not saying I play super well, I still have a lot to improve in close to all areas of my game. But I like posting the hands I most likely misplayed/went too far.

Btw, clanty, do you think its a good idea to size up OTT/OTF vs that guy? With my range that wants to barrel ofc. I thought about bluffing with my good barreling hands, like OESDs/gutshots that unblock his draws that make better river bluffs and x/j flush draws, because theyre not that good triple barrels.

But if Im betting 50% OTF/75% OTT, I will have a 50% bet otr vs him, so dont know how should I choose my bluffs in that spot. I feel like bet-bet-x/f isnt that good vs him, but maybe with my bigger sizings he will end up paying way more to get to the the river, making his floats way less profitable, so I dont need to care so much about getting super aggro OTR?.

In which hands do you think I misused the small cbet sizing? Tbh Im very clueless about my cbet sizing on most spots, I usually make a small sizing with range on some boards, on boards I have a checking range I use a bigger one, also on some specific boards I use 2 sizings, but theyre specific boards and rare ones.

And yeah, youre right about my huge explo plays without decent samples, its one of my leaks, sometimes I overdo it. Gotta quit that habit.

Do you plan to play FT at any point? Your passion for the game is infectious, I’ve all but quit atm and it’s making me want to deposit on stars and start grinding again.

H2 from the recent lot of hands, but maybe you have an argument for it and you do play higher than me so I am interested in hearing about your thought process & from others. Against two weaker players I just bet big flop jam most turns there.

Not in the near future, I would need at least 1m hands of winning above 100z to make my mind about going full time. Even with that Im not sure if I could be a poker pro, Im a mental game fish, I think I wouldnt be capable of dealing with the swings without a solid plan B. Also if I decide to play poker full time its 100% chance I will get kicked off my parents' house, the pressure of paying rent/living costs is insane. My overall life plan(even nefore coming back to poker) was to save a lot of money with very low expenses by taking advantage of the 0 costs I would have by living with my parents. Rent is insane here in brazil. I think a decent apartment is around $500/month, with eating/maid/other stuff it could easily get to $1k-1.5k just to survive, which I think its suboptimal use of money, it would be pretty hard to save a lot with those expenses even with agood job.
A normal engineer earns around $1.5k-2k/montj here in Brazil, the job Im aiming for pays $5k-6k. But I still have a long way to go until I get that job, at least 1 more year if I get lucky, maybe 2 years with the studying routine Im putting.

Just go for it, poker is a fun game, enjoying it way more than playing dota.

In mw pots we should bet smaller. Just to be clear, Im not betting range there, probably 30-40% of my range max. I think that since there are multiple players running equities vs us,we should look more for thin value/equity denial in those spots rather than go for super big value/polarization, because theres a decent chance that people will overfold vs a big sizing. Also if I get called by both players I get somewhat the same value as a bigbet sizing gets.

On top of that we get more free info for a cheaper price: if one guy calls and the other minraises,we have put only a small bet and can easily fold for cheap. Also we know the best turns to jam and take close to all their sets out of their range with that small sizing, increasing our confidence that we will get called by worse OTT.

One of the biggest mistakes I think one could make in mw pots is to overplay some hands and put yourself into a position to never get called by worse. Vs whales its fine, but those 2 guys didnt look that bad, they were like 25/20 over 100/400 hands. Couldnt believe they were playing that ******ed for me to bet big OTF/ call a jam or jam many turns. Also OTT it was a snap jam and snap call lol

just wow, google some european prices if you really think that's insane.

Dollar went up 50% in the last months compared to brazilian real, since 2013 it doubled. So it looks super cheap in dollars, but people are making the same amount of money. Here are some examples to make it easier to compare the prices :

-a session with a decent doctor is $25-100
-a decent apartment is $75k-100k
-a good doctor makes $60k/year
-minimum wage is $375/month
-a vacation to the beach for 2 people for 7 days is $1k-2k

Google says expenses in Brazil are only like 30% cheaper than northern europe despite average income being about one fourth. So I guess they have it pretty expensive relatively speaking.

invest more time in poker then if the min wage is 375.

Yeah, food is pretty cheap though, at least that. I remember that I used to cook back in the university, my meals were insanely cheap, like $2-$3 dollars to cook rice with shrimp. 6$/kg for the picanha(a very good cut, a brazilian steak). Restaurants are more expensive, but very cheap compared to other countries. Everything else is probably more expensive.

I wont work for minimum wage, with my degree I probably could find a job that pays around $1k. But not really worth it, engineers work a lot and dont have such a big chance to move up in the company without some serious social skills(which I dont have). Im studying to pass in the tests to work for the IRS as a taxman.

So the avarage salary is like 800$, but an IRS taxman, aka the most hated job in the world, pays 5-6k$? Cool country bro :/

Played a bit yesterday, made a lot of bad decisions and decided to quit early. But I've played some unfold hold'em and thought a little about that game, made some theorycrafting since then, I'm seriously thinking about grinding that game. Here are my thoughts so far:

The game

It's basically 8-max hold'em, but there's some weird dynamics going on: everyone antes for 25% the big blind, if players see the flop, those who have folded can decide to go on a mini-all-in to win that pot(let's just consider everyone plays GTO in that side pot and that chips will get redistributed evenly among the players). So as an example: in a 8-max game, if everyone folds, SB opens, BB calls, then everyone who have folded will fight for the unfolded pot(2bb), they were paying 0.25bbs and if the dead money is evenly distributed, they will get an extra ev of 0.083bbs in that hand(+8.3bb/100).

If SB RFI, then he wins the big blind, but the antes come back to everyone else, it looks like the side pot isn't raked. It looks it's a variation with minor changes, but that dynamic changes the game a lot. I anticipate that there will be way less incentive to call pre-flop, most pre-flop decisions should be raise or fold, because the EV of calling is automatically reduced to -25bb/100 because of the antes, also who folded can fight for the dead money, so they're losing the opportunity to win even more, so possibly it could be even around -33bb/100.

Strategy implications

In this game, the EV of folding isn't 0 as in normal hold'em, it's actually positive, so it looks like people should play very very tight. It's very easy to get into lose/lose situations in that game: if people start fighting a lot for pots in steal dynamics, both players will lose, while the rest of the table will gain EV from these guys fighting each other. Limping is abysmal in that game, as well as cold calling. Just think about reducing 33bb/100 over your hand when you play it, it's insane.

But since the game forces you to play tighter, then another very interesting dynamic is created: if people have less incentive to call in the BB, then people can get away with way lighter steals. Since it's very hard to defend the BB without a calling range(even vs wide opens), light steals seem to be a good strat vs an opponent that knows how the game works. I first thought the best RFI sizing would have been 4-5bbs, because of how tight the game is, but it seems that if people should defend mostly with 3-bet or fold, then min-raise seems to be the optimal sizing.

Things could get crazy though: if you start min-raising any2, BB could go nuts and force a -EV scenario for both players, it looks a lot like the prisoner's dilemma. So sometimes, if the other guy is a thinking player and is stealing any2, it could make sense to defend wider to make his RFI -EV and then force him to play tighter and leave your BB alone.

This game changes a lot those breakeven spots, basically every spot where you had a decision that was breakeven, it's now -25bb/100 minimum. So any pre-flop breakeven decision should have more weight towards folding. Even though it looks like a nitty game without many options, I think the winrates possible in there are insanely higher than normal hold'em. As an example, I expect rake to be way lower in that game, also there will be some extra EV gained from players not adapting well in this game, like 2 fish limping and fighting each other: they will bleed a lot of blinds.

Population playstyle in normal hold'em vs unfold hold'em

Now this is probably the biggest reason why I think it should be problematic to grind that game. Since people should defend less in this game and play tighter overall, I think nit regs/nitfish will be playing way closer to GTO in that game. In normal hold'em, most of the money made vs those guys would come from them overfolding pre-flop(like folding K9o in the BB vs a min-raise from BTN). Now that decision is GTO. A good reg that was winning a lot in those steal scenarios will end up losing EV in that spot, because he will make way less bbs when called(If you RFI and get called, you lose 25bb/100 on the spot, really hard for a light steal to recover that post-flop).

Also a lot of those nits already play a 3-bet or fold strat from the BB, mostly because it's easier to play, they end up overfolding by not having a calling range in that spot, and people have way more incentive to play that strat in this game.

So it looks like in this game, the skill gap between a good reg and a nit reg is heavily reduced, but the amounts of BBs a fish/whale is donating to the table is heavily increased too. The thing is that those extra BBs will be distributed evenly and won't have much skill involved in there. So I think that game rewards heavily weak/breakeven regs while restricting the gameplay of a good reg.

But another point here is that by itself, the game has a higher EV for a normal regular, simply because of the huge rake decrease we usually face in normal hold'em(like BTN RFI 84s and BB defending 89o).

Hand selection

I'm not sure of what should people RFI from each positions in that game, but here it's what makes more sense to me: SB should be very very tight, BB should 3-bet a lot and it will be very hard for SB to put himself on a +EV scenario in there if he RFI and get called. But the same goes for the BB, it's very weird, there are a lot of different forces in this game making you play tighter, but then if people do that, then playing looser becomes very strong.

So I think SB should play with something like 20% of hands, maybe RFI for 3x-4x? But if BB is overfolding and is aware of the dynamics, it could be possible to go with a super explo approach which is min-raising every hand(LOL). If SB min-raises, BB will have to call 1.25bb to win 4(he needs to win it back 31.25% to breakeven, on a normal game, only 25%).

On other positions, like UTG/MP, some hands gain a lot of EV as folds, as an example: KQo, J9s, 9Ts, ATo. Those are somewhat breakeven opens(besides KQo), but when they're folded, they are very strong to fight for the unfolded pot: KQo/ATo will flop a lot of TPs, which are very strong in those, 9Ts will flop some TPs, as well as midpairs and draws and will often dominate weaker draws like 36s(which people always fold but would get in the unfold pot if they hit a draw). Axs/Axo also look very strong folds, if they spike a TP they will be huge favorites to win the pot. So I expect UTG/MP to fold more those hands and play more with hands like 54s, 56s, 67s as their bluffing range.

The only thing I'm not really sure is how small PPs will play in that game: they're bad folds, they usually will only do well in the unfolded pots if they hit a set/OESD+ pair/ or board is 555(or paired in a scenario where you're fighting 1-2 people for the unfold pot).

Usually PPs play poorly in 3-bet pots too, and if we have less incentive to call, we must be really sure we have the odds to setmine. I still think setmining will be very strong overall, because it's way stronger vs tighter ranges, as well as vs whales/fish, and the increase in bbs is whatever, most of the money you make with PPs is when you stack someone anyways.

But then it creates another dynamic: if people won't have that much incentive to call with SCs/Axs, then what hands are people using for bluffing? People will most likely 3-bet SCs and call PPs, because SCs can't fight well vs a very tight range(it's hard to get folds by x/r bet jam vs a range that has a lot of overpairs to defend itself). It's again one of those other sick dynamics, where one guy has an incentive to setmine and will end up underbluffing post-flop(because wtf is he bluffing with after calling pre-flop if the only +EV calls are probably PPs), but if he is underbluffing, then people can overfold and out of a sudden, bluffing/calling SCs becomes good! LOL!

Maybe people shouldn't have a calling range at all and just 3-bet or fold vs that, and explo call PPs vs big stations to stack them? Or people could go nuts and start bluffing with PPs, which is usually a bad idea, since they perform poorly in those scenarios.

Weird game, any thoughts? I think it's interesting and has potential, but I don't know if it will be +EV for me. I like making those strats/thinking about poker, really fun stuff!

So it's a great game for you then.

I personally don't see the gamble in it and why it would attract losing players from similar games or bring new people in.

To buy? Why the **** am I living in the UK that's cheap in the UK if we were talking about £ nevermind the fact you get 4.5 for every £.

So basically I save up 50k buy a house have plenty left over and then teach in some international school in Brazil and I'm ballin?

pretty sure you just need to play normal ranges and also make decisions in hands that you folded pre

yeah, but you will earn like $500-750/month as a teacher here, not 100% sure, it could be less


what about breakeven RFIs? they gain EV by folding