yeah ik that a 25nl players isnt going to see that we're having too little bluffs there if we x'd back 76cc or something but I'm still trying to figure out a spot optimally. at 25nl thats not needed obviously bc we just exploit the playerpool which still calls too much and doesnt vbet thinly enough but just saying i had a hard time figuring out a balanced tb'ing range

Schedule and Goals Update - 05.02.2014

Schedule 5th February 2014

09.00 - 12.00 = Update schedule, write conclusions to yesterday's hands, post marked hands.
12.00 - 14.00 = Catch up with group, comment on 2 forum hands.
14.00 - 17.00 = Janda study (at work).
20.15 - 20.45 = Janda study.
20.45 - 22.30 = At the tables.
10.45 - 04.00 = Powernap
04.00 - 04.30 = Train TKD.
04.40 - 06.40 = At the tables.


Goal 1 - Play 60 hours in February - Played 10.5 hours which is 17.5% of target, month is 14.3% old. Going well!

Goal 2 - Post all marked hands to blog and/or Skype group and send link to staker - Did 4 yesterday just got to type up conclusions...

Goal 3 - Comment on all of friends' hands in Skype Group (unless day off) - Only me posted iirc.

Goal 4 - Comment on two HH's other than on Skype - Done but nothing exciting found.

Goal 5 - Study Janda - I had a puncture last night and lost 30 mins. I was waiting to meet staker online so instead of getting deep into Janda I watched 20 mins of Alan Jackson video instead. That's good enough for me!

Goal 6 - Post weekly review to group - Lol. It is mine this week so nothing to do. Will see if any replies in yet...

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6 x
0 x

Feels good! And keeps up some confidence after losing session too!!

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Session



Couple of big pots to check please....

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

Hero (CO): $25.00
BTN: $70.46 (VPIP: 26.79, PFR: 23.92, 3Bet Preflop: 7.25, Hands: 213)
SB: $25.56 (VPIP: 20.00, PFR: 16.25, 3Bet Preflop: 4.03, Hands: 990)
BB: $16.23 (VPIP: 43.75, PFR: 31.25, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 18)
UTG: $8.25 (VPIP: 29.41, PFR: 17.65, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 17)
MP: $24.67 (VPIP: 26.62, PFR: 15.11, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 143)

SB posts SB $0.10, BB posts BB $0.25

Pre Flop: (pot: $0.35) Hero has 8 8

fold, MP raises to $0.75, Hero calls $0.75, fold, fold, BB calls $0.50

Flop: ($2.35, 3 players) 3 8 5
BB checks, MP bets $1.75, Hero calls $1.75, fold

Turn: ($5.85, 2 players) Q
MP bets $4.25, Hero calls $4.25

River: ($14.35, 2 players) 6
MP bets $17.92 and is all-in

Villain seems quite passive so I don't think he double barrels flush draws (fair assumption?). That makes me think he has 33, 55, some spaz, maybe some flushes. His overbet polarizes him? Call or fold?

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

Hero (CO): $26.81
BTN: $25.08 (VPIP: 20.63, PFR: 17.72, 3Bet Preflop: 8.43, Hands: 888)
SB: $43.53 (VPIP: 20.51, PFR: 15.68, 3Bet Preflop: 4.39, Hands: 1,174)
BB: $35.03 (VPIP: 21.28, PFR: 14.89, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 47)
UTG: $7.08 (VPIP: 20.98, PFR: 10.49, 3Bet Preflop: 1.67, Hands: 145)
MP: $45.52 (VPIP: 21.57, PFR: 12.94, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 260)

SB posts SB $0.10, BB posts BB $0.25

Pre Flop: (pot: $0.35) Hero has J Q

UTG calls $0.25, fold, Hero raises to $1.00, BTN calls $1.00, SB calls $0.90, BB calls $0.75, UTG calls $0.75

Flop: ($5.00, 5 players) 6 J 4
SB checks, BB bets $2.75, fold, Hero calls $2.75, fold, fold

Turn: ($10.50, 2 players) Q
BB bets $6.00, Hero calls $6.00

River: ($22.50, 2 players) 2
BB bets $25.28 and is all-in, Hero calls $17.06 and is all-in

Played ok? When he donks the flop I think he has hit a set but with top pair and the FD I think I can call. Think the rest is standard???

HH Work - 05.02.2014

Mine #264 - QQ on AJ4r SB v BB, X flop and XC turn and river blanks?

[QUOTE=sifiasco;42051310]#259 - Your sizing is a bit off here. I know it's a monotone board and we hate life if the fourth diamond comes, but we should still size our bets the same as we always do if we're planning three streets. You can go with a smaller 3bet size (10bbs is fine) which will also help this.
QUOTE]

Yup yup yup

Once you get in the habit of always doing this you stop fretting about the 4th diamond/whatever suit. I'm completely indifferent to it now. Always value bet with having in mind you'll value bet all 3 streets. Just build the pot.

[QUOTE=

[URL="http://weaktight.com/6456148"]Hand #261 - 88 BTN v BB on Q33tt, cbet decision and get check raised... (WT)[/URL]

QUOTE]


Check raising that flop is something a moron does.

If he has a 3, LOL City. If he has a Queen he should be thinking you wouldn't raise with a 3 unless you were stealing on the BTN every time, so he is in the lead with a Queen, and then again check raising that with a small pot is LOL City. Ditto for an over pair. Really only makes sense as a bluff, but with the pot that small bluffing is a joke.

I'd stay at that table with him ALAP.

At those stakes though, and I shudder at anything less than .5/1 because of the style of play, he could have anything for the PF price.

With 88 there most definitely 3 bet; make his check raise look as dumb as possible. If he shoves back he losses value because he could have goaded you in for more later on. If he folds, great, that was all you'd get anyway. If he calls he's misplaying the pair of Queens/set of 3s with the c/r.

If he has 9s wired or higher, that's how it goes. But I would think I'm ahead after that c/r with 88s every time.


Edit: yeah your CBet after his check is perfectly fine.

BTW how long do you plan to grind .25/.50 for 3 hours a day? If you do well financially with your job and rentals, I'd think there's more utility in hanging with kids/wife or napping, haha. I think these small levels are awful for learning poker if you're 16 or older. You're doing a great job with the reading though, and esp using the HUD.

I LoLed at your 1 hr 43 min "session" . . . anything under 6 hrs for me is not a "session" -- best of luck with everything, you seem like one motivated dude.

Studying Janda - Day 3

Comparing equity to expected value.
Expected value (EV) tells us how much we expect to win on average and considers money already in the pot as dead money which in turn means the expected value of folding is zero. Also EV is not measured by taking the size of the pot and multiplying it by our equity unless all players are already all in. For example if we flop a set (and are not already all-in) we expect to make more money on later streets thereby increasing the EV of the hand.
Summary: Although equity and EV are connected we cannot directly convert equity to EV. We look at equity to try to decide which hands to use to call, value bet, bluff or fold because we cannot solve the current EV without knowing the action for future streets.

Hands Cannot Simply Be Ranked From Strongest To Weakest
We cannot rank hands just using equity (see the example before about A9o versus 98s). Different hands do better in different situations. The deeper we are the more this varies too.
Example... BB v BTN KTo works better as a call than 75s. Calling with KTo keeps BTN range wider (leaves him with worse Kx and Tx in his range) but if we 3 bet KTo we end up dominated by his Kx Tx. Also because the BTN opening range is so wide we do not need such a strong hand to win the pot (usually). 75s does not make a good call as we are usually dominated by villain's 5x and 7x AND we only flop second pair type hands.
Conversely 75s will play better in a 3b pot than KTo. In 3b pots stronger hands are need to win at SD (ranges are tighter) and 75s has the capability to make strong hands. Also we get opportunities to bluff and barrel with equity with 75s. If we 3b KTo we will be dominated often.

Polarized v Condensed Ranges
This is interesting. MJ talks about a polarized range being made up of strong hands and weak hands. And then a condensed range being made up of medium strength hands (this sounds to me a lot like what I thought was called a "capped range"?). We often see these ranges in 3 betting ranges preflop, flop raising ranges but more often in river betting ranges (I did not even think of this one).
Example was.... We open cut off, button calls, flop is Kc 4s 2h, turn 7h, river Jd. We bet flop and turn. We would (maybe) only bet the river with strong hands like AK and better and maybe with weaker hands like missed draws as a bluff. We would be unlikely to bet QhJh because there is no reason to bet (we get called by better and worse folds).
A condensed range often happens when we call or check several times on a board where it is risky to allow free cards if we had strong hands.
MJ states that it is often profitable and easy to play a polarized range but he also states that there is a problem when playing like this as when we do check we are left with a condensed range. This telegraphs to our opponents that they can make large bets since their value hands cannot be beaten. To combat that we would have to sometimes slow play strong hands against them to prevent them from exploiting us (remember this only applies if they are decent enough to do this).
There are situations where ranges are neither polarized or condensed an example being on a flop of T84tt, a bet in position can be strong, marginal, a draw or a bluff.

Liked the last part about capped ranges. Exactly what I was thinking about couple of weeks ago, came to the same conclusion

Schedule and Goals Update - 06.02.2014

Schedule 6th February 2014

09.00 - 12.00 = Update schedule, write conclusions to yesterday's hands, post marked hands.
12.00 - 14.00 = Catch up with group, comment on 2 forum hands.
14.00 - 17.00 = Janda study (at work).
19.40 - 20.15 = Janda study.
20.45 - 22.30 = At the tables.
10.45 - 04.00 = Powernap
04.00 - 04.30 = Train TKD.
04.40 - 06.40 = At the tables.


Goal 1 - Play 60 hours in February - Played 12.8 hours which is 21.3% of target, month is 17.9% old. Got 2 hour buffer (which I often need at weekends).

Goal 2 - Post all marked hands to blog and/or Skype group and send link to staker - Was only one yesterday as most hands my staker looked at. I typed up conclusions in document too.

Goal 3 - Comment on all of friends' hands in Skype Group (unless day off) - Was good, more activity again.

Goal 4 - Comment on two HH's other than on Skype - Done.

Goal 5 - Study Janda - Done! Read a lot and made notes and posted on bits I now understand.

Goal 6 - Post weekly review to group - Lol. It is mine this week so nothing to do.

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6 x
0 x

Feel like I am back on top of things after tough week last week. Bring it on baby!

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Session



This winning session was all due to skillful play, soul reading opponents, excellent self control and absolutely nothing to do with getting good cards and flopping straights versus fish.

HH Work - 06.02.2014

Mine #265 - TT 3b BB v SB, XB K82r, call turn and river? (WT)

Mine #266 - A8o SB v BB on A87r, I went XC XC XC versus reg 150bb deep but maybe should just cbet? (WT)

264: I think we should call river. If we have not planning to call this river, then we should CBet flop instead.

265: I think it's close. If we believe that villain is capable to call 3b with 55,AQo OOP then we can call turn, call river. I guess EV wise it's close decision (call or fold)

BUT if you think so (villain call 3 bet wide) then why not CB flop?

266: Flop and Turn, I agree with your line.....I dont know about river

(every other day, your hands get harder and harder to analysis....If you keep the trend, I guess next month I'll just read and not capable to analysis)

Dont like xc w/ A8

Where else is he going to learn?

+1

Yeah I wouldn't listen to much that guy says. I came across another post of his where he advocates folding AA pre in a cash game.

Haha I just looked at some of his posts and he also told a losing player to either quit his job or quit poker.

Studying Janda - Day 4

Making Our Opponent Indifferent To Calling Or Folding On The River

Firstly, the EV of both calling and folding on the river with a bluffcatcher versus a balanced range is zero (EV0). A balanced range is one which contains the correct ratio of value bets to bluffs.

To work out our ratios we have to consider the pot odds our opponent is getting. So, if we make a pot sized bet on the river our opponent is getting pot odds of 2psb to 1psb = 1/(1+2) = 0.333 = 33.3%. So he needs to win 33.3% of the time to break even so we need to have 2 value bets for every one bluff.

Other examples for practice....
We bet 2/3 pot on the river so let's say $66 into $100. Our villain is getting pot odds of $166 to $66 so needs to win 66/(166+66) = 0.284 = 28.4% of the time to break even. This means we should value bet around 72 value bets to 28 bluffs. This is roughly 2.5 to 1 or 5 to 2.
We bet 1/3 pot on the river so let's say 26bb into 80bb pot. Villain is getting pot odds of 106 to 26 so needs to win 26/(106+26) = 0.197 = 19.7% of the time to break even. This means we should value bet 80 times to 20 bluffs or 4 to 1.

Just to get this correct in my mind... For a psb we can put in 1 bluff for every two value bets and remain balanced (when our opponent holds a bluff catcher) and when we bet 0.33x we can have one bluff for every four value bets.

I found this in my treasure chest....


So what is the point!? Well when we come up against really good players they will know how to react with bluff catchers if we are not balanced. They either throw them away if we don't bluff enough or call with them all if we bluff too often.

When we do bet the river with a balanced range our opponent should call with enough hands to make us indifferent to bluffing. It makes sense for him to call with the the hands in his bluff catching range that have the best removal effects to our value range. For example top pair medium kicker is a better hand to call with (on a dry board) because it blocks some of our top pairs and hence our value range.

The Grey Area Between Value Betting And Bluffing
I have been looking forward to this bit. However, in reality, having read it around four times now, I think MJ is just telling us that there is a "grey area" and not a whole lot more. Hopefully that will come.

There is a temptation to talk about situations in binary terms (this means to oversimplify in to A or B). This happens a lot on the flop when we talk about whether we are value betting or bluffing. A lot of the time when we bet the best line available has both bluffing and value betting properties.

The example given.... We open Ts9s CO v BTN and flop is 9d 4h 2s. When we bet are we value betting or bluffing? Now our villain might call with AK, AQ, 98s, 88, 77 and we will usually win at showdown if it goes XX XX - that would all suggest that we are value betting. Also though, we make hands like AJ and KQ fold (because they do poorly against our range) which have over 24% equity against us. This is also quite favourable when we are OOP, deep and with two streets still to play. MJ states that in fact it is the fact we make villain fold two overcards that makes betting here so desirable. The temptation is to think that we are value betting and protecting our hand by not letting villain see a free card and to think this does not make our bet any less of a value bet. In actual fact this is a huge simplification - apparently!!!

MJ says that when we bet this flop there are several important things that happen....
1. We make villains turn range stronger.
2. We make the pot bigger.
3. We risk getting raised and there are still two more streets to play.
Things to consider:
1. Even if we are ahead on the flop, how can we keep getting value on almost any turn or river cards.
2. Was betting the flop really a "value bet" if we now have to check the turn and play a big pot, out of position and against a strong range?

So, because the hand does not actually end here (if called) and furthermore, once we are called we will struggle to realise our equity, we can see that just calling our bet a value bet is an over simplification.

So what we are basically saying is that "value bet" and "bluff" are almost always imperfect terms (unless we are talking specifically about the river) and this is because there are additional cards to come and weaker hands can outdraw stronger ones. Also its worth noting that not all value bets or bluffs have the same equity so some are more likely to win at showdown than others. For example we 3bet AA and AK and term them as value bets but looking at the massive contrast in equity they can have shows there is a difference. Also, comparing some bluffs - we could bluff a gutshot with backdoor flush draw or we can bluff a backdoor flush draw with a draw to second pair - although they are both bluffs one has 4 cards to a very strong hand and the other relies on its backdoor equity to make a very strong hand, so although they are both bluff raised on occasion they are of quite different equity.

Also there are "draws". Often times we call a hand a draw when it has little showdown value but it does have significant equity. Whether to call it a draw or a bluff is arbitrary as a draw is usually just a very good bluff.
Summary... Remember that the terms we use discussing hands are imperfect. We have to have these terms to make discussion easier. It is good to know the specifics and have good understanding of poker theory.

Interesting reading the last couple of pages, just curious are u finding that this stuff is actually helping your results or affecting your play?

I have written answers to this twice and realise I don't actually know what you are talking about by "this stuff"!!! Janda? Writing goals every day? Doing schedule? Working my nuts off? I think Janda but not sure. Just say and I'll answer.

thats a pretty stupid question

Schedule and Goals Update - 07.02.2014

Schedule 7th February 2014

09.00 - 12.00 = Update schedule, write conclusions to yesterday's hands, post marked hands.
12.00 - 14.00 = Catch up with group, comment on 2 forum hands.
14.00 - 16.00 = Janda study (at work).
Cannot plan this evening as will spend some time with wife hopefully, might get half an hour Janda study in.
10.45 - 04.00 = Powernap
04.00 - 04.30 = Train TKD.
04.40 - 06.40 = At the tables.


Goal 1 - Play 60 hours in February - Played 14.5 hours which is 24.2% of target, month is 21.4% old. Got 1 hour 40 mins buffer (which I often need at weekends).

Goal 2 - Post all marked hands to blog and/or Skype group and send link to staker - Done.

Goal 3 - Comment on all of friends' hands in Skype Group (unless day off) - Done. Good 3bet defence chat too.

Goal 4 - Comment on two HH's other than on Skype - Done.

Goal 5 - Study Janda - Done! Read a lot and made notes and posted.

Goal 6 - Post weekly review to group - Lol. It is mine this week so nothing to do.

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6 x
0 x

Success!

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Session

I am just donking there.. I would hate it to be checked around.
Let's just build the pot.

As played.. I can't see him call with much vs that big bet.. but the fish is prob going to fold.or.call no matter the size..

Sent from my HTC One mini using 2+2 Forums

HH Work - 07.02.2014

Mine #267 - 99 on K64tt utg v btn, cbet or not and why? (WT)

No not the goals stuff, goals are important. The Janda stuff mainly.

Ok, why?

Ok, I thought so!

Well its too small sample to say anything about results (I play low volume really) but what it is affecting is my ability to reason my decisions. Just having some better knowledge of some theory (and I am only on "basics" atm) really helps me a lot. Like some people can just be told "cbet 90% you will print money" and go ahead and do it but my brain works better with some solid reasoning.

Overall I just think this is going to help me over the long term and I should pick up some basic stuff along the way.