About me

I'm Rama, a 28y/o low/midstakes MTTer from Uruguay currently living in Chiang Mai, Thailand. I play for Three Amigos stable since june 2016. Besides playing poker I like to play football, lift weights, read and watch TV shows.

Background

I live in a two story house, and my office is located on the top floor, in the front of the house. The hot thai sun hits directly the zinc roof everyday and by midday when Im normally wrapping up my session, the room becomes hotter than hell.

When Im done playing, I leave the room to not come back until next morning for the next grind session.

This situation made me decide to buy an air conditioner.

I was reluctant at first as Im not sure how much time I have left in Chiang Mai, but after thinking about it for a while, decided it was a good investment if it helps me to study more.

As I said during hot days, Im done in my office by midday when my session is over and I spend the whole afternoon downstairs as its cooler than the top floor, but I dont have good furniture/comfort to study as I do in my office with the extra screen, chair, etc.

Also, I might be able to fire some more stuff at the end of the session if Im feeling ok, normally I would stop regging as I felt the sun striking in the roof, now I may be able to push through those late night US tourneys.

The Challenge

As I said, a determinant factor to buy the A.C. was to be able to study more and better. So that's basically the plan.

Starting from tomorrow sunday 26th of April until Tuesday 26th of May (30 days) I want to put in 25 study sessions.

Is not an amazing number and is probably around the amount of sessions I am now at, but this challenge is mostly to hold myself accountable so that will do.

Im going to make an entry everyday on this blog with a brief summary, an interesting spot I solved, or some insight I gained that day.

Normally I study like this:

- Review marked hands: Standard for everyone I guess: I tag some hands during session and solve them afterwards with HRC or Pio. Obviously will share interesting hands and solutions in the thread.
- Watch a past coaching/RIO video: Im not sure about how cool would it be for me to share a couple takeaways from a RIO vid I watched, and feel free to chime in if you know what's correct. I know for sure that sharing a summary or some ranges/spots from a coaching from my stable wouldnt feel right, so I guess the same logic applies for RIO vids. Maybe the days I do this, Ill just notify what I watched here without getting into much detail.
- Catch up with the Stable's discord server: Luckily, the stable's strategy section always has new spots and is very hard to keep up with all, so a couple times per week I'll do that, and also sometimes share hands played by me I had marked and want another opinion. With regards to sharing the takeaways here, is kinda the same as the above item, although I might try to get permission from some of the guys to share hands that struck debate on here.
- Group Study: Besides the monthly catch up with one of the backers/coaches of my stable when we mostly look at my PT4 database to see how my stats look and check a couple spots where I might be leaking, I dont do this much at all, and Id love to study more with other friends/regs. Last month my stable launched a campaign where they'll give us 10 buckz for studying with a fellow stable member and sharing a summary of our session. I only did one review last month and feel like I should've done more. I recently joined Swann97's Discord group and there seems to be a good crew forming there so that might bring more opportunity to link up.
- Using some kind of trainer: I have a server with SimpleGTO and ICMIzer push/fold trainer. Recently I got Simple 3 Way was havent tried it yet. I hardly ever use any of these tools tbh. Im also not sure of how good or better said, how much I like SimpleGTO. Still I guess is a tool I could use from time to time, specially on days when there's no hands to review.

The A.C.

(Guess this is a good moment to apologize to those of you that were thinking when reading the title this had something to do with Atlantic City )

The A.C. is a "Central Air" R32 Series 12500 BTU. It costed 12k baht ($370) including installation and delivery, and it was purchased directly with the guy that do maintenance of all the houses my landlord owns in this soi.

The Future

The future of the challenge is unknown. It's gonna be finished ofc but after that I dont know. If I enjoy it and dont find the write ups and summaries of the sessions too hard to do, it might go on for another 25 days or X amount of time. If not, it could continue as a normal blog, or -most likely-, get locked and move down the pages of twoplustwo to eventually be forgotten .

I had a short lived blog from january this year until last month in House of Blogs. I had something like 2k views and I think two replies from two different people. One of the main reasons I opened it was to link up with fellow 2+2ers and other MTT regulars and the lack of feedback or interest made me decide to close it. After I did, I had like 3 or 4 people hmu on different social media asking me what happened with the blog, and that they were reading although they didnt reply. So this time, if you're around, at least come say hi

For the future of the A.C., once I leave Chiang Mai, it'll belong to my girlfriend as carrying an A.C. around the world is not very comfortable.

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I guess this will be all for the introductory post. See you tomorrow for the first day of the challenge

Your ROI is 44%? Is that even possible

nice man, great to see you being proactive on this.

lotsa lurkers in the forums, I wouldn't sweat it. if you have like 50 posts without a reply maybe time to reconsider if anyone cares. I don't go very hard on 2p2 anymore but have met so many roommates, travel buddies, partners, friends, etc... lol we technically met via 2p2 on the 2p2 skype chat


it wasn't always Rama's made a shitload of progress on his game in the last couple years. could be a bit of heat in there but don't think he's ever had a 5k+ score, so its not just some lucky bink skewing his results. Dude has put in the work on and off the tables and earned every bit

Hey Boli, thanks a lot for your kind words, really appreciate it. Def me meeting you took my game to a whole new level. Who would've said that that joint in Plaza de los Bomberos years ago would lead to a successful business relationship and a international friendship for years to come!

You'd be amazed at what's possible when not playing 2k people fields on Stars

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Day 1 - 26 April 2020

Luckily I had a couple FT today and ran some hands I had marked from them. Im having issues when running FGS sims on HRC, not only cuz my PC can only handle depth 2 iirc but because when playing with ranges afterwards it gets funny and spits out stupid ranges that made me believe Im doing something wrong .

So I just run this spots at ICM with the payout structures and go from there.

Both tournies were on the same site so I used same payouts for the sake of simplicity.

This one I folded and it was a call, even when tightening BU shoving range as I expect pop to shove nowhere close to what HRC suggests:


This is what I have him shoving, and below, what we should be calling vs that:


This is BU shoving range untouched. Dont think any reg I know is shoving this wide here, but I may be wrong:


The other interesting spot was this one:


ATo is a get in everytime vs this stack size but wanted to know how our calling range looks like and at what stack depth ATo stops being a get in.

Have villain shoving this, and it could even be too wide for pop, as I expect most to be very scared of busting specially with another shortie about to be hit by the blinds in a couple hands:


versus this, we should be reshoving this (WTF KQs ):


We drop ATo from our calling range if he has 3bb more (9.5) as his shoving range becomes tighter. This is what we would call then:


See you tomorrow for more FT ICM spots sims hopefully

Day 2 - 27 April 2020

To stay on topic, today I ran some ICM spots from a tourney I shipped at the end of my session. Sunday savers are always nice

As I expected to happen, as soon as I bought the A.C., rains started and the weather is so much more bearable now lol. Im sure if I had decided not to buy it we would be entering now the hottest month in the history of Chiang Mai


Hand 1


First hand of the FT. OR is a solid russian reg. Even tho this or cant be too wide given ICM and the fact that he's committed to call BB reshove, I felt this was a good spot to put pressure, specially with this hand as it blocks nicely his calling range.

This is what I think MP3 might be opening (blockers > playability):


And this is what we can reshove vs that range and with him calling 3,8% (TT+, AQs+, AKo):


If we think he's calling 99+ and we add ONLY that to his calling range, look how our rejam range goes from 15.4% to... 9.6% :


In this case, KQo would barely make it in. Nevertheless, I really like this shove as he's quite heavily cuffed due to ICM.

Hand 2

This one is a more simple spot but still interesting and quite frequent. I was almost sure K8o was a fold, but wanted to make sure what I can call here (villain is a eastern european solid reg too):


I cut the range HRC had him shoving by a tiny bit (46,9% to 43%) as I think that population is not shoving some of the lower suited stuff they should have (75s, 64s, etc) nor the marginal offsuited stuff such as T8o or 98o:


Versus this, we can call this:


Not sure if im finding all this calls tbh (folded the K8o fwiw).

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That'd be all for today. Just to dont break the pattern, if I make a FT tomorrow, Ill share some more ICM stuff, if not I wanna run some PIO sims I have pending. Also have a bunch of chip ev spots but Ill probably go through them on my free day on wednesday. Glgl all and until tomorrow!

Well, yesterday I took one of the five days off I can take during the challenge, just finished playing super late, took a nap and when I woke up my gf was already back from work and since I was not playing today decided to spend time with her, watch some Netflix, cook, etc.

But today as I said was my free day, so I woke up at 9am instead of the regular 4:45am and once I was about to start going over some marked hands, saw some activity in the Group Study channel of the stable and we had a very nice and long session (3h + ) with some of the other horses where we reviewed a 2nd place made by MontyC100 on the $22 Bounty Builder at PS this past sunday.

Day 3 - 29 April 2020

As I said, the session was very long and at some point there was 4 of us in the call, so we had a lot of debate and back and forth on many spots.

I was quite focused and in the zone so was not thinking much about taking out a spot to share here, but there was one that made it to the strat channel that still there's no clear consensus.

The hand in question takes place at the FT bubble.

https://pokeit.co/public/824zGHJtp/r


Many questions arose from the spot, such as:

• How wide can we OR the BU knowing that BB is always getting it in?
• Does SB have a reshoving range?
• Is there any merit on 4b (either NAI or AI) vs SB 3b?
• Once it goes to postflop, should we cbet? If so, which street?

How wide can we OR the BU knowing that BB is always getting it in?
Table dynamics had Monty opening a lot, mostly for 3x, and engaging in a lot of talk (not the nice kind ) with the other players, so he had a maniac type image which could lead to SB playing back at him by calling or even 3betting NAI more often, making him tighten up his opening range a bit.

Nevertheless, SB cant get too out of line as is very hard to get Monty to fold here with as he'll be in position with BB all-in and his bounty on the line.

In my opinion, BU can be close to ATC here.

Does SB have a reshoving range?

In order to answer this, I ran the spot in HRC after the call was over, with MTTICM and bounty values in place. The answer is YES, there's a SB shoving range.

Lets say that Monty is opening close to 80% as he thinks he was when this happened:


In that case, SB not only has a reshove range, but a wide one:


This doesnt seem to be the case in reality tho. But now knowing what he could profitably shove here, we can design a more realistic range for him. I think that something like this could be a realistic 3b shove range (AA, KK and QQ at some frequency would 3b nai imo):


versus this shoving range, we would be calling this:


Calling that tight makes a lot of sense as we would be playing for our tournament life almost, and folding and staying alive will still left us with a top3 stack that will have a lot of playability in a soft FT.

Is there any merit on 4b (either NAI or AI) vs SB 3b?

Another unsolved issue . I personally think that reshoving here with our hand is an interesting play because:

1. We should be ORing a lot as BB is (or at least should) be all in every time
2. SB identifying this can be 3betting wide to ISO himself with BB
3. We cover SB so his tournament life will be at risk and he'll have a hard time calling stuff like the exact hand he has (AQo) giving us extra fold equity

Despite all this arguments, most people seem to believe that risking this many BBs (even tho if we get called and lose we still would have ~4bbs) is not ideal and preserving our stack with a lower variance play such as peeling the 3b or 4bnai, avoids a confrontation and leaves us in a great position facing the imminent final table.

Once it goes to postflop, should we cbet? If so, which street?

During the review, we were not entirely sure if there was any merit on trying to take it down postflop as:

- Betting flop seems dicey, as SB can x/r and blow us off our equity.
- Betting turn (and following up on river) is not very believable, as we would bet our Tx on the flop most of the time
- Betting river would be interpreted as weak for the same reason as betting turn does, and would be easy for Ax or pocketpairs to find a hero call.

After the hand was posted on the strategy channel, some arguments were made about how betting flop and getting x/r was not that bad as we basically have K high and a bdfd, which is not that much equity.

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Is amazing how much you can analyze a spot and still not have definitive answers for any part of it, that's why I love poker so much

If you read this and have any extra opinions on any part of the hand, please chime in!

My plan was to do a morning study session and another one after lunch but was not counting with a 3h HH review so Ill call it a day and review some marked hands tomorrow as I'll probably wont play either.

It'll be until then, glgl all

Day 4 - 30 April 2020

Didn't play today either, woke up 9am instead and after the coffee run to my go-to cafe, finished with the 15-20 chipEV spots I had marked from this month.

Nothing too interesting, just getting in the reps and making sure my push/call game is on point. A spot I see myself struggle with is calling an ai in the BB.

Hand 1

I feel im always a tad too loose or too tight in this kind of spots like in this case, where I -spoiler- end up calling and losing some EV...


Shover is one of the best regs that I come up on a daily basis on that site so I expect him to shove quite close to nash. This is his range minus some marginal shoves I took out:


In this case, T9s is slightly losing:


Hand 2


Villain seems to be on the tighter side even though we only have 42 hands on him, so I don’t expect this range suggested by HRC to be close to what he’s really shoving:


From a villain on the tighter side, I think something like this is more accurate:


Versus this range, we’re calling this:


Our hand is calling although barely making any chips. Fwiw I folded, making it 0/2 for this post

After lunch I watched Pwindidi's new video on RIO and spammed some poker friends with the spot I posted yesterday as I still want more answers to the questions that came up.

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They announced the extension of the emergency decree for another month, meaning no football nor gym for this upcoming 30 days . To make matters worse (for me), markets are allowed to open, so my gf will resume working 3rd of May from 11am onwards, which means I'll be alone all day at the house with not much to do. Stay sane is the name of the game in this upcoming May...

Been slacking with some PIO work to share in here but im not sure I'll be able to do it tomorrow either, let's see at what time I finish grinding.

QTs looks like a snap. BTN should be fairly close to cEV, as the chances of sb going bust vs you anytime soon on 33bb is fairly small, so he doesn't have as much of a need to respect ICM all that much, and is getting jammed on like ATC when he's in BB on that microstack.

OTOH, You also have quite a large incentive to keep the bubble going, as its heaps of additional value for you every hand being CL with a shorty there. Player to your right is going to fold more vs you and play passively overall, allowing you to overrealize equity. I wouldn't be calling absolute bottom of range due to that, but QTs is just too good to pass up. I'm sure you know, but keep in mind those numbers are $EV, not cEV, its gonna be rare that we pass up much more than 0.05 or so there.

ATo - its great that you have a healthy adherence to ICM, spots look good. There's many faults with the icm model, most significant imo is the fact that its assuming the tourney ends the next hand. Always keep in mind what happens when you win or lose by GII. 21bb puts you 3rd in chips with a good shot of making a run to ship this thing. Losing sucks, but we're also OTB and its very likely we'll get a payjump before the blinds even hit us again. I see this as encouraging the risk taking rather than avoiding it, and I might GII with the KQs you mention as well due to this.

KQo is such a shitty spot, especially vs a russian, haha. I don't think he's gonna be r/f 99 or even 88 there, and am tempted to fold the spot myself. I'd put him on a slightly wider range though as well with Axs+ and any suited broadway, but would also assume that he jams at least some smaller pairs and possibly a consolidated range of things like KJs, ATo type hands as well. Players are scared to play postflop or make a mistake, so he may just take the EV of the jam with a lot of the middling stuff that would have to raise/decide. Plus weighted effective stacks aren't a full 16.5bb, since he's got some shorties behind. I fold unless I know opener is getting OOL. Wish we could flat but don't like that option with reshove stacks behind either.

The K8o spot is a better illustration of folding to keep the bubble alive and capture that future value, although villain 1 doesn't seem like much of a nitbox who is gonna let you run them over.

I'm glad you guys got to study monty's FT, I was railing that and there were def some decent spots for debate where he played super exploitative with his sizings. I think bounties were being slightly overvalued there, as $100 in bounty represented just 1bb worth of chips at one point when I was railing, but people go super hard for them anyways. Always a tricky subject for me, the PKO ICM spots.

I wouldn't use a hand that plays so well postflop IP and dominates at least some portion of SBs loose 3betting range. It's ICM suicide and just handing money to everyone else at the table to GII too light here, especially considering the alternative that we have a great hand to just call.
I like your postflop analysis and what was gone over in chat.

T9s we can call vs BTN or if CO is a bit shorter, but we don't quite have the equity needed there at a glance. 42%, that's gonna be tough to beat all that many of his hands. We dominate very little and are crushed by quite a bit, If he had 7bb that's where it becomes a tougher spot for me. If a spot looks super marginal, go the route with least variance and mark it to study. I'd rather punt with fold equity than punt/be guessing by calling off T high.

KTo is close, I fold vs player type you described and only really calling there if I have notes that player gets too wide on shortstacks (a common note I make), although reading too much into stats on shortstacks can lead you astray a bit as well. At active tables, shorties are often forced to just fold a ton vs opens, and also not able to open nearly as much in LP on 15-20bb as they would be able to on 40bb+ or whatnot. I'm a sluut for stats/huds/charts/and anything pertaining to the more mathematical side of poker as you know, but we do need to be careful in overapplying that stuff in the wrong spots. I also know that its a spot where calling will be at best very marginal in terms of cEV, so don't mind passing as much. I feel like I'm being contradictory in these responses, lol. Such is poker, lots of discretion involved in these close decisions where equities run close.

Hey Boli, thanks a lot for your replies, awesome stuff as always

This is an interesting spot for sure, not sure I like any option really . The point you make about where winning this ai position us is fair, but given this stack distribution we can easily be out after two flips. Nevertheless, folding trying to ladder up is not ideal either (and not my style ) so I guess gl us.

Would love to know why my HRC goes nuts when I run it with FGS and I play with the ranges a little bit, hopefully this new update fixes that or if Im ****ing up somehow I learn how to do it properly soon as I feel -like you and many more have told me many times- ICM is flawed and following up exactly can be misleading.

Fair point. The vamooooo part of me -inevitable being born so close to Brazil - still wants to pile it right in his f*cking face because... what is he calling with? does he have the balls to roll with AQo for example? and if he does, we still have outs and can take down two bounties, etc. But those are the kind of lines that leave me sleepless for a couple nights so I guess erring on the side of caution and taking a smaller variance -and probably even higher EV- route and flatting is the way to go.

Excellent point, worth to be added to the post it notes I have on my desktop so I see it everyday.

As I said, great stuff, keep it coming

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Day 5 - 1 May 2020

For today's study session I count reading and replying to the above stuff as part of it . Also have some replies about that KJs hand from other fellow regs on Discord (yea, Im obsessed, I know ) and some spots to catch up with on the strat chat.

Depending on how long does that take, I have the last part of Sam Greenwood's HH review on RIO to finish, so all that should make for a decent study session.

Had two 3rd places today and marked some FT spots so I'll probably run them tomorrow and share the best of them here.

Day 6 - 2 May 2020

Finally ran a hand in PIO I played a while back (actually, the HH says it was played on April 22nd).

Pretty silly spot tbh but wanted to know if we can x/jam flop or turn. Felt that playing it the way I did is too passive but didnt see much value in jamming in game. Glad to see that I was correct I guess.

https://pokeit.co/public/5eJb7fl/r

This is how IP strat looks like otf:


and this is how we wanna continue:


on the turn vs his 3/4 we have virtually a pure fold with our hand:


So yea, not the most insightful PIO sim you'll see, but Im glad I got that one out of the way. Have a couple more marked that plan to run this upcoming days.

Gonna hurry to do a quick football workout outside my house before rain starts, this transition from smokey season to rainy season was very unexpected but I guess anything is better than breathing the worst air in the world so wont complain too much.

lol, running thru the hand and based on your description I thought you were gonna do something funky on the turn. I know I've done entire coaching sessions on this exact spot before - people chasing draws way too hard OTT and couldn't imagine you'd get out of line there. nice fold.

I'd also turn down his cbet frequency OTF there. I don't think population cbets 85% on these stacks on anything but the most obv 'cbet range' spots. They are finding way more checks with MP and AT/AJ, even worse Axs they just turn into showdown or delays

Nice avatar, nice thread.
Been contemplating to go to Chiang Mi, playing Mixed and Stud8 cash 5 years ago.
GL, mate!

Interesting take on pop not cbetting that much here. I think they can x/back some flops but this one seems like a std cbet (at least if I was ip ). Gotta do more node locking, hopefully now with my friend Voltron we'll be able to go very ****ing hard with PIO at full capability

Thanks bro! Glad you noticed the avatar, guess you like bicycle trips too . Let me know if you have any doubts about Chiang Mai, is a great city and I would recommend to almost anyone spending a few months here. Glgl

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Day 7 - 3 May 2020

Had a small FT today that I ended up shipping to make up for a pretty terrible saturday. Woke up and sat in the kitchen table waiting for water to heat for a coffee seriously contemplating to go back to bed. My eyes were closing as I couldnt get a decent sleep last night. Nevertheless decided to go for it and got ****ing crushed variance wise. As sometimes happens when you start with the wrong foot, it was hard to play my A game and punted a stack for not paying attention after a break on my highest buy in of the day
After that decided to stick with the tables I had going and finish for the day and obviously binked this one after 2h or so of one tabling.

Had this spot come up on one of the first hands of the FT. I knew what HRC was going to say but decided to roll with it anyway as I was last in chips and I guess the whole session was taking a toll on me and a part of me was saying: "**** it". Not recommended anyway, but glad it worked out this time.


This is what I originally gave CO for shoving here. Doubt he has AA or KK at any frequency as those are r/c for almost any thinking player. At first I thought this shove was terrible but then when I ran it with FGS got surprised to see his hand makes it at some frequency (results at the bottom of the post):


Dont think BU is reshipping any wider than this, and even TT is debatable. Fwiw, AKo was not in the original HRC response but I think most people shove it anyway (or I could be projecting as Im unable to fold AKo pre most of the time ):


Obviously, HRC wants us to call KK+ and we're losing something like $40 every time we roll with our hand. But as Boli said on a former post and as its been reminded to me countless times, ICM is a flawed model and adjustments can be made. I really doubt that given my stack and tournament situation calling here is thaaat bad.

Results, cuz we all know that is all that matters in poker:


I ran the spot with FGS depth 2 afterwards and was surprised by how fast my PC do it now with the newest version of HRC. Probably an improvement on the new software ?

Anyways, this is what CO can shove in this spot (A3o goes in at a 35% frequency):


Guess this ranges makes sense relying on the remaining players to call very tight but still doubt Id be shoving this even at a table full of regs. Ah, even with FGS we gotta call KK+

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Gonna go to the convention center for a run and to play with the ball on an open space and not against the wall at the end of my street for a change, taking advantage of Thailand slowly opening up after COVID measures. Looking forward to a good sunday, surely this late saturday bink changed my mood glgl ev1

the biggest problem I see in this spot is projecting your own nitty ass towards the ranges of others . If everyone played like you there would be no money in poker. Population is too tight with jam/fold in cEV, and too 'loose' in ICM. You say CO probably doesn't even have TT, he shows up with 99, and who's to say thats bottom? its tough for people to fold 88, AQ, AJs there even.

You put original jammer on AJo+ and he has A3o. Results in this case do matter because they should help to form what ranges to put others on. Don't level yourself into thinking everyone is a nit or playing close to properly. None of us would have a career if that was the case!

haa, good point. I think you still have the image of 2016 nit Rama, the other day watched a twitch stream of a FT I was at and the streamer had me tagged as "aggro" .

Also this is a bad example, I find that most times than not people have it in this sequence. But lets just say that Im a nit cuz that could be a good excuse to look at my PT4 database one of these days and plug some leaks what you say?

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Day 8 - 4 May 2020

Poker was ok but not great, played quite well but on a juicy final table with almost 6k up top where I was cl, clashed for virtually all my chips with 2nd biggest stack BU vs SB for ~45bbs eff KK > AA. I always prefer to go out with a cooler than with a mistake so I was not sad but, inevitably, a little bit annoyed. To wrap up a bittersweet sunday at the tables, ended up 2nd on a PKO which is always annoying as 1st and 2nd is so unbalanced, specially at this site.

But the **** storm hit hard irl as I broke the power button of my phone and is currently being fixed for 500 THB, and my football fell in a gap between two houses when playing with it yesterday. I thought it was too hard to get so I decided to drive all the way across town to get a new ball, and obviously, the shop was close due to COVID. I was sooo tilted that felt that the only way to change my day a little bit was to rescue the ball myself, despite how risky it was. Im not gonna go into details but it was a hard mission including a 2.5 m jump, a wall full of nails sticking out of it (no joke), a pile of logs full of spiderwebs and a broken wood thingy in a window that crumbled under my weight when I was getting out with the ball. But coming out of there full of dust and sweat and spiderwebs all over my face but with the ball intact was worth it, as I felt a sense of accomplishment that turned my day around for good.

I then came inside my room to enjoy the A.C. (thai heat is striking hard again!) and review some chipEV spots from today. Nothing too interesting nor much energy to do a proper write up, that rescue mission drained me, but here are some screenshots anyway.

Hand 1


CO's range:


BU's reshove range:


Our range:


After reviewing many of these 3way aipf spots, can conclude that pp > broadway. Folded the A9s btw.

Hand 2


Have a bunch of problems when designing a shove range for BU here, maybe something like this? Could possibly be more condensed and Ax-pair heavy.


Versus that we get to call this:


Called the A3s and chopped with A4s.

Day 9 - 5 May 2020

Had a FT today on a deepstack tourney that started at the beginning of my session (and I late reg it) and ended up like 1.5h after my other tables were done with me going out in 7th place for ~$500. Was good fun tho and left a couple spots to analyze.

Hand 1

This one took place during f2t. Was not sure if there was any chance of doing something different ott and to my surprise this is not even a flop float. I thought we would be dropping all Qx otf without any relevant blocker/extra out but thought that we could not fold a K on the flop.

https://pokeit.co/public/3e5e9PJt/r

oop response vs ip range bet at 1/2 pot (only sizing I gave him):


Hand 2


CO was a decent player abusing his stack and opening very wide and shoving accordingly when he had ATC spots. I dont think that opening ATC here is terrible in his shoes, specially with stacks behind him as he's not commited to call BU nor SB and can justify folding a portion of his opens vs my shove, but to play it safe, let's give him something like this:


And versus this range we should be ai with our deuces:


If we tighten his range by ~10% we can start folding 22 now and go with 33+ (first IP tighter OR range and then our response in BB):


As most of this spots, everything depends on how you range people, and as Boli pointed out in one of his posts in here, I might project too much what I'd do in other people actions. I'd be opening extremely wide if I was villain and for what I saw he was quite wide too, but hard to pin point how wide exactly.

I guess that if we think CO has some folds in his range (he shouldn't have too many tbh) we can reship 22 as we have some fold equity, but if he's calling everything he opens then our hand is in a shitty spot.

Stack distribution matters too as there are two sub 10bb stacks that are gonna get hit by the blinds giving us a higher chance of a pay jump if we fold (wasn't the case, but it could've happened and it would happen many times ).

Hand 3

Simple spot from the same FT. This is a spot I'd be taking for chips every single time, but wanted to check how things change when ICM is involved.


This is what HRC wants villain to be shoving:


And versus that K2o is a fold by almost nothing:


Nevertheless, I think we can widen MP shoving range by a little bit, as population wont play as tight as nash suggests, specially being last in chips:


Against this range we're calling more than 3/4 of the deck, including our hand:


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This was all for today. Tomorrow is my free day and I plan to do as I always do when I dont play: wake up around 9am, get a coffee at my fav cafe nearby my house and get in a couple of hours of study before lunch (normally I try to watch a heavy theory video or past coaching as I feel I digest this better if I'm just awaken with my batteries and attention at 100%) and then after lunch go on for another couple hours (normally reviewing some hands I had marked from previous days). Glgl to all of you playing SCOOP events and all that, see you tomorrow.

Day 10 - 6 May 2020

As planned, woke up 9am with a Mocha and a past coaching session about oop cbetting which was very insightful. Then had lunch (thai spicy salads and rice) and now im winding down after reviewing some marked hands.

Ran a pio sim on a hand but nothing too interesting, just a line check. Most interesting spots I can share are the following, a ft spot and a chipEV one.

Hand 1


FT spot. Payouts probably not this but they were already in HRC and this was most likely from the same site so prize distribution shouldnt change much.

Ran it with FGS depth 3 and Im still surprised how fast it goes, this has to be an improvement on the new HRC, I just dont understand how they could speed it up so much from the previous version where running it at depth 2 would lag my computer (if I was listening to music while running it music would slow down and cursor would move slower in the screen).

HRC has CO shoving the following range which I think is fairly reasonable (maybe a tad too wide). You could argue that he has some OR with top of range to have some steals to but not sure everyone constructs their range like that so this will work for now:


Versus this range, ATs is barely making money, and if as we supposed, CO is shoving a little bit less hands, then we can fold it:


Hand 2


This is chipEV. Most interesting part of this hand was drawing my OR range in HRC as it made me think a lot about how I was playing this spot. I think I might be or'ing too much and not shoving everything I could/should. I checked on my go-to range solutions (Petrangelo charts) and I saw that he does a lot of limping with this stack size on the button which is something Im not sure how Id like to implement in the games im playing in the near future as I think we could safely assume that population does not defend/play correctly from their BB, nor reshove enough either.

This is the range I came up for me in the BU:


Stuff missing towards middle of the matrix are hands id be shoving, same as lower pp's and Ax.

And this is what I gave SB for reshoving here:


Not sure if population is finding all this Axo rejams but can't be too far away from this.

With this scenario, we get to call this:


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Gonna watch new Pwindi's video on RIO and call it a day. Free day from workout too so I'll just watch a movie or something and get ready for tomorrow's session. Gl everyone

Your K8o hand at F2T to fold flop - Pio also assumes here that villain has all the nuts and you don't, so will be blasting off turn and river, bluffing any and all Tx, Jx, Qx, smaller pps... all 3 streets... does this really happen 2nd CL vs CL. I doubt it. Call 1 and shut down seems fine, wp. Properly using PIO or lots of these calcs gets overwhelming if we were to do it correctly because there would be soo much nodelocking for population tendencies. I don't like folding flop there as a general habit in most games, because it leads to people check/folding middle pair in other situations where the lesson is misapplied, and I think that helps more than it hurts your overall game.

Great input as always, think this challenge is benefiting a lot from having a second perspective on most sims/cals I've shared and is a good reminder that even everything can come down to a number or a yes/no answer when using this software, is important not to take it at face value and look beyond the calc result. So yea, keep it up

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Day 11 - May 8 2020

After busting 7th on a $55 15k GTD FT yday where I was the only reg, I was so moody that I took a nap that lasted 3h+ just to reset my body lol. This made me miss my study session and my workout which was not cool. At least woke up to a msg from a friend on Messenger letting me know a bunch of latino guys were getting together for a post-quarantine dinner so that changed the face of the day a little bit.


Today didnt grind and decided to put two study sessions, one in the morning and one in the afternoon but for the challenge we'll count it as one as when I wrote up the first post in my mind it was always one day=one session.

Hand 1


FT previously mentioned. Gross spot imo. Despite the fact UTG is last in chips and blinds will hit him next hand, given his stats and previous play by him (or lack of play actually) in the f2t made me think he could not be too loose here. Also I think that given stack distribution being last in chips with 8-9bbs after blinds pass through him is not that bad as there are still plenty of jam/rejam spots for other stacks so he can wait it out as he was basically doing for the past two tables or so.

Also there is our stack and table position. We're 2nd in chips with two very tight guys to our left that we'll be able to potentially abuse if we get the chance in future hands by shoving/ORing on them a bunch. Taking a marginal spot and losing will leave us in the middle of the pack without being able to use our edge on the table so that's a good reason to not take this spot. Also, if we're gonna roll with TT we gotta shove and we still have all the other players left to act, including BB which cover us, so we're not guaranteed to run it HU with original shover.

But lets get to the calc. I ran it on HRC with FGS depth 3. This are Nash ranges untouched.

Shover range:


Our rejam range vs that:


In this scenario, TT is making 0,10% of the prizepool which is $9,58 buckz.

But let's tweak UTG range a little bit (and yea, he's not UTG ik, but is just the first guy to act and that'll be utg for me ):


That's tighter and more in line with how I perceive him. This was talked with Boliver in a previous post and he says I project my nitiness into other people making their ranges narrower than they actually are which could be true. But I honestly think he's gonna be tight here for the reasons above mentioned and the fact that he's on a $55 15K GTD FT so he wont risk his tournament life with some marginal shove. My experience and read on population are that when fishes are playing for big money (for them) they'll cling to their stack and try to ladder up as much as they can, and this stack distribution is good for that.

Against the above range, our calling range changes to this:


TT is losing cents.

I feel this is a great spot to pass. Yea, best case scenario we're winning 0,10% of the prizepool, but for all the non-calculation analysis previously made about our position in the tourney, stack distribution, future playability, etc, I think we gotta fold.

Guess a part of me knew this was the way to go so when I called and lost to KK, that's when the 3h spite nap began to set

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That was a long analysis and have no more hands as interesting as this one to share, just line checks and silly chipEV spots. Gonna catch up with stable's start chat and after lunch watch a couple RIO vids for my second session of the day. Glgl ev1.

Day 12 - May 9 2020

Pretty bland study session today. Had only two chipEV hands marked and a couple pio spots to run from days back. Started running one of the pio spots in the server and is gonna take a while. While it was running I watched like half an hour of one of the latest coachings from the stable that I missed due to time zone issues and ran the two chipEV spots.

This is the only interesting one I guess:

Hand 1


If we take HRC ranges at face value this is a call (K3o is the bottom for Kx) but that's not what I expect to see by population (specially by someone playing 15/10/4 in 74 hands. This seems more accurate to me:


Versus this we get to call this:


But let's say that Boliver is right and I "project my nitiness" into other people actions and BU is actually shoving more stuff:


Then we can call this. K7o is barely making it in:


Anyway, I called and beat A8o. A few minutes later on a different tourney on that site I see a chat bubble pop up: "Hey ***** wtf was that call with K7o on the bubble?" I had to reply with total honesty: "I had no idea it was the bubble"

In that case, I think the first scenario is more likely and could even be too wide for what people will shove there (notice there is a 2.3bb stack MP and that is just in this table, in this tournament normally 60-80 people cash so folding will put you virtually itm).

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Hopefully tomorrow I can bring some better stuff. Glgl ev1

Day 13 - May 10 2020

This challenge is slowly turning into a "HRC sim collection" but hey, Im sure some of you can take something out of it and Im surely doing so, I feel that sharing and writing up about the spots I run helps me internalize them better.

So for the hands of today, let's look at two, a FT spot, and a FT bubble spot.

Hand 1


FT bubble of this smaller tourney. Im quite sure villain will be very tight here, but with us being last in chips and having a pp not sure how much we can fold here.

HRC has CO shoving this:


Although from a 14/12/9 in 200+ hands, shoving in the FT bubble with two guys shorter than him I expect something way tighter:


I even think this could be too much. Yes, he has to double up to have a chance to take it down, but in my experience at these stakes/sites, people will be much more scared in sensitive ICM spots, specially a guy with those stats.

Against that range, we have to fold 44 and start calling 77+:


Hand 2


Very interesting spot from that same tourney FT. Both OR and flatter are fishes so Im not terribly concerned about their ranges. I still think flatter can have some traps and some good hands that he's not willing to 3b for value as his 3b stat is only 3 (albeit small sample) and because I think in general population is not 3betting enough linearly for value.

Of course both blinds small stacks make it even more dicey as OR is opening with no FE. Nevertheless, I think AKs is too strong to fold, specially vs this line taken by weaker players.

I know ICM is the same on any buy in and stake, but this was a smaller tournament so I care more about going for 1st than laddering up as the pay jump dont represent that many buy ins for me. Having a big stack (~30bbs if I double up) will give me a lot of playability and put me in a nice position to take down the tourney against recreational players.

But lets take a look at what HRC says. This is the range I give to OR:


Maybe is too wide, but it'll do for now as I remember him as being a rec on the more aggro side. Then this is what I think the flatter will have:


Not an easy range to construct. The 100% weights are the ones Im pretty sure most people (including myself for most hands) will have, the rest of the weighted hands are just myself saying: "Well, but he's a fish so he MIGHT have a few of this, and a few of those, and... ".

This is what we can shove according to HRC:


Only problem I have with this model, is that has the flatter calling our shove (after OR fold) with 99+, AQ+ which I think is too tight. This seems more in line with what I expect people to call here in his shoes (the 15% weights are just to add a small fish factor into the equation, we never know how they're feeling today about that sexy KJs at the FT ):


Against this we have to narrow a little bit as we'll be going to showdown more often:


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Hope this was insightful to you. And I hope I can bring a couple more FT spots to enlarge this HRC sim collection tomorrow after the big sunday grind! glgl ev1

Day 14 - May 11 2020

Sunday session was alright but not many spots to go over, so I ran this hand I had from a couple days ago in PIO to cut with so much HRC.

Hand 1



This was the first hand of the day I think, so I had no PT4 running. Once it was over I had to take a couple screenshots and write the action manually to be able to run it later. So that's why I had to recreate it on that 1997 replayer, sorry

I have done very little PIO work at this depth (60bb+) as for MTTs I feel is way more useful to study 50bb or less. My PC is not that powerful either so when running sims for deep stack play I have to sacrifice some bet sizes post flop making it not that appealing.

I have not looked at results yet, so I will first post my thoughts and things I want to check on the sim and I'll answer to my questions below:

• General flop strategy: I guess our hand is cbetting at some frequency but not sure how much cbetting we'll be doing in general. As I said, 100bb deep is unknown territory for me
• Do we have to bet turn when checked to?: if so what kind of hands we'll use for bluffing? Do we wanna keep on barelling with our heart draws or x back to realize equity?
• Are we using any other sizing on the river besides ai?
• Does villain line make any sense?: Back in the moment (and now too) I thought that checking that turn was not a good decision by him as Jx is a big part of my continuing range otf along with draws that can put more money in the pot when facing a bet but wont bet themselves when checked too. Also, checking a boat this deep can't be too good because when he checks there's no way for him to get all the money in the pot if I dont bet again (unless he donk overshoves river). Only reason why Im asking all this is because I have him tagged as a reg, so I give him a sliver of credit

Flop strategy


First point, and first mistake by me. As you can see, this is (virtually) a range bet. Unexpected and counterintuitive, but that's how we learn


OOP response vs our range bet is quite intuitive: pure x/ring sets and heavy x/r with 2p. OESD prefer to x/r when having a heart or a spade or just a heart when off suited.

Do we have to bet turn when checked to?:


Yes, we do bet our best Jx when checked to on the turn along with fd's, OESD, gutshots and our best A9. We check back all of our overpairs along with weaker 9x, 5x, middle and under pairs.

It's worth pointing out that PIO prefers 50% pot over 75% (the sizing I used in game)

OOP response vs our action in game:


Are we using any other sizing on the river besides ai?

Here is when PIO starts to get tricky and I regret even formulating that question in the first place lol. Simple answer is yes: it's betting 17.52% of the time half pot and 10.12% of the time ai, with AJ being almost a even mix. Nevertheless, I feel that looking at rivers in PIO is not the best use of our time so we'll leave it at that. Also, PIO prefers one sizing ott that is not the one I used in game and bla bla bla...

Does villain line make any sense?:

I guess the answer to this is that is not as bad as I thought it was . His exact hand wants to bet turn most of the time and follow through otr (when not getting raised otf by AJ, which happens almost every time).


Nevertheless, I think that PIO aside, for what I previously mentioned, If I was villain I think I would keep putting money into the pot at pure frequency unless I have a read that IP (in this case, me) will do the betting himself, which is a possibility as despite what Boliver thinks I feel I have some kind of aggro image for many other regs, but I think it wont happen that often given this was a 3b pot. Is true that, as mentioned before, Jx is a card that will give me trips a great percentage of the time, I'll also have draws that will check back and I think the best value line is to bet turn in his shoes to set an easy river shove.

I liked running this and sharing it here, but I feel Im better at HRC spots no doubt . Having to write up my thoughts about the sim is a great study tool, otherwise I might make the mistake of just peeling through the tree and nodding to myself not internalizing all the info.

Nevertheless, most of the pio work I do is generic spots with random textures and not specific hands like the one I just ran, but for the sake of having something to share in here decided to give it a go. The big problem I find when running specific hands is what happened here ott where PIO wanted to use one sizing but in game I used another one and after that is not clear what's the best branch of the tree we want to pursue.

It's been an interesting hand nonetheless and hope you learned something at least, I surely did.

More HRC work to come tomorrow most likely. Glgl ev1

Day 15 - May 12 2020

As promised yesterday, let's dig into a couple of HRC sims...

Hand 1

This one was a huuuuge surprise to me and showed a big leak that I apparently had. OR is most likely a recreational and SB is a good reg. I never thought we could call so wide here.

Given my read that OR is a rec, I expect him to open less than what he should, specially with a reshove stack on SB. My read is that population dont open enough in LP so I dont expect to see much more than this:


And then is our flatting range. I'll have AA and KK at some frequency but not always as only real rejam stack is SB. Also if my read is correct and CO is opening a tighter stronger range than he should, 3betting those more often is gonna be better value:


For SB reshoving range, this is what HRC suggests:


Being a good reg, I think he'll even go a tiny bit wider (22, KTo, etc). At least I would, but let's roll with this range just to play it safe.

The surprise is that we have to call everything that we flat on the button after CO folds :


This is a surprise to me but it makes a lot of sense, and is a spot that if you think through a couple seconds you can come up with the result quite easily, as with all the dead money in the pot and our investment in the hand we're getting great odds to call (almost 2:1) and we need only 34% equity.

Hand 2


Pretty straightforward spot, basically a line check. BU is a good reg, how wide we can go here?

Taking HRC range and dropping some of the marginal EV shoves, we get this:


Against this, we have a fist pump call with our K3s. Even cropping his range a tiny bit more, we still get to call with our hand:

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Tomorrow im not playing, sticking to my routine of waking up early for coffee and double study grind. Dont have any marked hands so Im not sure what will I share in the thread, but for the studying was planning on watching a couple of RIO vids and check out DTO poker which I added to the server recently, or maybe Simple3Way that havent got the chance to try yet.

Wanted to share my new wallpaper. Is a Caravaggio painting called "The Cardsharps" (although it's been suggested on the stable's discord that a more fitting title would be "the first ghosting" ). I discovered it when I heard the term "sharp" when watching Boardwalk Empire and googled since I was not sure what it meant. That show is great btw, havent binged a series like this one since Twin Peaks S3 probably, would totally recommend it.


This will be all for today glgl

KTs and K3s made me laugh that you wanted to fold. admittedly multiway stuff I discovered was a very big leak of mine years ago during hyper days, so spend a huge chunk studying that. Shortstack LP jam calling ranges as well I've had an unfair advantage of practicing for years.

Is the AJ PIO sim stuff correct, range is a BB range, but replayer shows villain being sb