Thanks and welcome





Today was a nice fun day of poker. Games were once again quite good. And even when I quit I had some pretty great tables going (and a good looking 400 and 600 game queued up) but after playing for ~6 hours today I decided to call it. I feel a little guilty for quitting, as these are the dream sessions one should never quit. I want to get some rest and ideally make it into NYC to trade stawks tomorrow (I failed to make it in today).


4.25 HEAAAAAATTERRRRR




Hand 1) Sigh spot v agrofish
With 2 fun players in the pot decided to lead turn. River is an insanely hard spot as the guy is fairly agro. Against a loose/passive I snap fold here. Think even against an agro fish this is near the bottom of the range I'll call a river raise.




Hand 2) Tough river spot v agrofish
Had a note from yesterday that the guy x/minraised a 4-flush river with air. So, given the note decided to not fold a set. Also, sick fade. Running good is good.






Hand 3) Non-standard lines to keep agrofish in pre/Isolate agrofish post
Raise/folding flop vrs regular
Given stack depth with reg, think he's often turbo folding AA (well, maybe not this guy).

Once again it's important to note card distribution, the fact that I had the best hand (agrofish can def have sets/straights/2pr), the fact the reg had nothing, and even more that the fish bet/3b a hand that didn't even have gutter equity to go along with his pair. While my play is good, it's also incredibly lucky to get it in with 75% equity as opposed to 66% - being that we're deeper.




Hand 4) Donation accepted




Hand 5) Getting stubborn with FD vrs reg, good to run good
This guy is a pia reg. He's really tight pf, but quite aggressive postflop. Definitely a solid winner, but on the nittier side. Decided I did not want to raise/fold the FD this time. He's not 3betting flops all that often but I decide he's polar and I have *some* FE here.




Hand 6) Question for readers, What is the best turn/river play
Villain is an insanely agrofish who I had squeezing 30%!.

Wasn't sure how thinly this guy was v-betting turns and whether I have any FE against any decent pair.

The lowest variance play is calling turn and folding all rivers unimproved. It's definitely +EV as my hand is getting such juicy direct+implied odds on the turn. The question is, do other plays have higher EV? ie Jamming turn or calling turn/calling river UI.

Kinda wish I had yolo jammed the turn here, reasonable players should/are folding everything less than a set





A certain company that makes iPhones is scheduled to report earnings after the close tomorrow. I intend to make it to work to trade that so perhaps poker volume will be slightly worse tomorrow. I'm pretty ampted up on coffee and the heater so I think it will unfortunately be difficult to get to bed reasonably soon.

I think that they will most likely miss, but it will be interesting to listen to the call to see how they spin it and what guidance they provide. Good luck trading tomorrow, I hope that you run good

Huge day wpwp

Ty ty. Any thoughts on the A7hh spot vrs agro fish?

What was the fishes wwsf/wasd/agg freq by street? Definitely not jamming turn, the question is whether or not to call the river

On hand 5, when you jam are you trying to fold out overpairs? Just from my experience, 3 bets on the flop are usually very nutted, so not sure if you have much FE.

Pokerarb wanted to get your opinion on something. Right now I'm playing micros to improve with the goal of being able to beat 5/10 live. Do you think that being able to beat 50NL is sufficient to be able to beat most 5/10 love games?

Excellent question. I'm sure I checked these in-game and now looking back my play makes a lot more sense.

WWSF only 39%, wasd 42%, street by street 36/28/33 agg freq.

I don't think we can immediately discount the semi-bluff value of jamming turn. I think in fish-logic they'll valuebet qx OTT and when I jam over a buy-in they'll question the strength of their hand. Whereas once a fish pots the river, I doubt he's ever bet/folding because he's "pot-committed" once he puts in > 60% of his stack.

In this case bluff-catching river seems ambitious given his low WWSF.

Given this second look at his low WWSF I'm fine with river fold to a 150 into 180 bet.



Reg is good enough and I respect him enough to know that IF he's 3betting the flop with an overpair it's never to 3bet/fold. That being said, I expect this guy to often bet/call overpairs not to bet/3bet.

As I stated in my OP, I expect his flop 3betting range to be POLAR ie sets/nfds (which he's bet/3b/gii) and air (which is bet/3bet/folding).

My jam is to fold out air. I don't have a c/r/call range on the flop 100bb deep.

All that being said. I think he's a nit. He thinks I'm a nit. His sizing doesn't look like he's bluffing. Maybe a c/r fold with a J hi fd is better than a c/r gii. That wouldn't be GTO but who gives a ****.

I also get a lot of street cred by c/r/gii a J hi FD here. He knows he can't get me to c/r fold a flush draw ie he can't mess with my c/rs too light.

I don't really want to get into a detailed strat discussion of what I'm c/r'ing, what he thinks I'm c/r'ing, what I think he's bet/3betting and what snowie says you should do. Soooo going to leave it at that.



Awesome you're playing online to improve. No quicker way to get volume in and learn the game. Without getting to into it, I'll give you a very basic answer. I have 0 experience in live 5/T so I cannot comment on how those games play, but I imagine there's a few soft spots in every line-up. If you have the skills to hold your own in an online NL50 player pool, ie you recognize how different regulars play, how to exploit weak regs, how loose/agro wannabe's are trying to exploit you (and how to combat it), then I would imagine you can hold your own in most live 5/T lineups.

That being said, 5/T is a lot higher stakes. I know everyone on 2+2 is a GTO robot and stakes don't matter and only big blinds matter, but that's nonsense. In order to play live 5/T you need a physical bankroll (ie 30k+) and an emotional bankroll (you can handle large real $thousand swings). BRM and risk/variance tolerance are real and important, if not more important, than technical skill for the game.






Long day of trading behind me. Scarfing down some pizza and hoping to get a few thousand hands in before bed. Update with session results in a few hours! Hope to run and play good

Congrats on a 3k payday, bruh!

Hand 1: So you're folding everything but the nut flush to a river raise?

Hand 2: Would you play this hand any differently in V's shoes if you had raised it pre? Asking because I kinda like his line except preflop ofcourse. He almost got you to fold if you didn't have that note on him, eh?

Hand 3: I'm confused here. Isn't a raise for information (gauging your hand strength against the reg) typically bad? If he's a thinking player, why would he believe you when you make that kind of a raise on such a sh***y flop? Plus, if he has fds/sds, you're giving him an excellent price to continue.

1) Yes or 2nd nut flush, I have 3rd

2) Snap fold pre, his postflop line is clever/good if he knows what he's targeting without note I may have folded. It's bad to lead flushes if against agro players as you disallow bluffs and thin value bets

3) It's MW. I'm bluffing V reg, while simultaneously isolating/value raising against the whale. Very non-std stuff. In a HU pot against a reg, yes raising for information is bad. This is different

Thanks for the advice. I definitely appreciate it. I think that me being able to grind up the micros without a HUD should help me crush live.

A HUD is an exceptional learning tool. Would highly recommend you invest in learning how to use one even if your plan is to primarily play live.





Decided to give myself a light night given how hard I've been grinding poker and trading of late. Games were okay, just not so plentiful. Found myself 4-6 tabling most of the session. Ran pretty well at my highest stakes so that was a big plus.

Tomorrow should be a fairly busy trading day, so a good night's sleep is very needed. I also agreed to wake up early Thursday to help a friend move things into storage before he moves (can't you pay people to do that?) so I'll likely be tired heading into the weekend (and weekend grind).

4.26 Short'n'sweet



Hand 1) Going for good thin value against reg
Sometimes chicken out big-time in this spot. VWP. His play is fine. Think the turn without a spade is somewhat optimistic but alright depending on how he sees me.




Hand 2) Stubborn v agro fish




Hand 3) God-mode vrs fish (only peeled with backdoor outs, good2rungood)
"Bro, online poker is rigged" - villain describing this hand to friend




Hand 4) Excellent river sizing
Getting villain to fold NFDS, better fds, and potentially 4th or 5th pair is huge here. Went with sizing to accomplish that. Think he never folds 3rd pair or better.




Hand 5) Good bluff hand/line choice bad villain bad spot
V is a tight/passive fishy. Think when he dcbets and then barrels river he has str8 or flush a ton. Bad to try to fold out those things. Whoops




Hand 6) Stationed by decent station reg
Think I'm printing with my turn range V his hand (2pr, sets, straights, oesd+pair, FDs). His range for calling 2 here looks really strong. So I think he thinks he can get away with calling 2 with a lot of things then folding a lot of things OTR. That being said, I'm not sure how necessary it is to bluff river given that he actually does have a ton of really strong things. Catching a few more medium SDV hands like this (which he should probably dump on flop/turn) means I'll probably have to jam more rivers (boo high variance).




Hand 7) Nit controlling then inducing vrs decent reg

Hand is super interesting. I think most will auto-bomb the turn here as they want to balance for semi-bluffing with fds (or air). 4-way to the flop though, my range should be pretty strong to cbet (even though the blinds have pretty wide ranges), so I think he should also be peeling quite narrowly. I think with a sicko lag image the turn is an auto-bet, then bomb non-diamond rivers. My image is pretty straight-forward, tight, and he can definitely have QJo, KQo sometimes, and some QXss sometimes. Think he's the type to c/r a set so I discounted that really heavily. Anyways, I decided to x/back the turn to strengthen my x/back range (so it's not literally KK, AA, give-ups) and induce some light river stabs. When he checks river, it would be criminal to not go for value, and when he c/r's I shrug call since he reps narrowly/my hand looks weak/"top of my range". I think he's trying to get me off KK/AA that's going for thin value against the weaker parts of his range.

Anywho, turn x/back earned me an extra 30bb (this time). Crafty crafty

Given results, I think both his pf/flop peel are too loose. Although I suppose he's getting a decent flop price and his hand looks like QX, FD and he can maneuver from there. LAGs gonna LAG.





Another busy day on the trading desk tomorrow with a certain large social media company set to report after the bell. Meeting a friend to catch up and check out an MLS game after work. Potentially, no poker tomorrow, but maybe a quick session if I get home before 10:30pm. Thursday some more social things, so similar sort of prospects for playing.

Thanks for the advice about the HUD, I have to see if I can find one that's compatible with the site I play on. Hold Em manager doesn't work on the site I use .

In regard to hand 2, how did you know that you were good?

I didn't. But it's hard to make a pair. He's very l00z very agresif. I had a pair was hoping he didn't. Ofc he shows up with a2o there sometimes but that's poker

Nice play. Higher stakes play a lot differently than micros from what I can see. Great read.

So you think his PSB is polarized to 2p or air? Never just TP?

Infact, does the PSB make you more inclined to call and would you have been c/f if he bet standard like 1/2 pot, maybe not on flop but on the turn?

All stakes play the same, holdem is holdem. It's a matter of how different villains play. And generally but not all always better players play higher stakes.


Villain is an aggressive whale. He plays too many hands pf doesn't fold to 3b and bets too often when checked to.

There's very little thought process involved other than "has qq not folding" (to this guy). With the ace on the flop I can't valuebet my queens. But that doesn't mean they're not the best hand really often still.

Against a reg, even a laggy one, this is a much harder calldown


See above. V uses psb only so there's no analysis of his betsize




As an exercise to improve you two can think about what my 3b range is/should be against a guy opening too wide then never folding.

Then think about my range for checking the flop to induce a pot sized bet (given that he almost always pots when checked to). I'll give you a little hint to get started. It would be absolutely CRIMINAL to cbet AA here.

yep, definitely well played in that case

So do you ever have a cbetting range against this spazmonkey?

What if the flop was AK2?

Nice work I'll award you a B+/A- for that amswer. Our 3b range is only strong hands so something like TT+/AJ+/KQ+. Going thinner is still +EV but you have to tolerate more variance.

Postflop on Axx were going to have a lot of tpgk+ and then some way ahead or way behind one pairs stuff like tt-kk. If we know V is likely to bet then our exploitative adjustment is to check anything we want to showdown (whether it's to showdown cheaply or showdown with stacks in). So while we want to stack off with AK it's best to just let him do the betting so he can bluff no equity. If we bet we fold out air, we don't want that.

You asked if we should have any cbetting range and concluded no. From a value perspective you're right, but WE can still bluff. Assuming villain folds his air to cbets we can still cbet bluff. On AXX the part of our range that we can decide to bluff with is something like kq. If we want to be a total hero though kq has some sdv and we can c/c k hi but going to feel like an idiot when he pot pots pocket 4s.


On AKx our tt-qq has a lot less showdown value and can safely c/f. But now our kq is stronger (and can bluff catch)



Of course as soon as we notice villain adjust to not pot bluffing when we check we can change our strategy.


I think a lot of mediocre or not thinking regs or people who blindly use solvers forget that you can make adjustments like this and do far better than GTO suggests against villains who are playing really poorly.

Quick end of the month update. Unfortunately, I picked up a nasty cold over so I felt pretty awful today. I nevertheless played a lot of poker (8 hrs+) but given that I feel kind of crappy I don't want to go through and find hand histories to post.




Results for April were phenomenal. As I've discussed, I ran really well most of this month. That allowed me to maintain good mindset and execute my game plan well.



Including RB/Reload Bonus, it's close to 16k. Add in my MTT results and it's close to 19k. That edges out my previous best poker month by a few hundred bucks. This was also my best ever $/hand over a one month sample.


I also toyed around with some PLO today. I've played about ~300k hands of micro PLO in my lifetime so I'm not a total fish. Not very many games of PLO run in NJ, but from what I can tell they look soft so it might be worth adding to the mix. The only issue is it might be hard on the brain to multi-table NL and PLO simultaneously.


I may or may not play a night session tomorrow but for all intents and purposes putting an enjoyable April behind me. Hope the run good continues into May!

Really nice month, GJ!

Played a session this evening mixing NL and PLO. PLO is one sick sick game. I'm still very much in the learning phase so I only played really soft tables. Fortunately, it seems there's only a few PLO regs in the entire state.

Playing both games simultaneously is really exhausting. I'm not sure what I'll do going forward as I really am enjoying PLO. The games play fairly differently and I get mad that I have to keep folding in NL while I can battle much wider in PLO. Suppose it might make some sense to play NL only sessions and PLO only sessions to make things easier on the brain. It's definitely going to require discipline to not sit juicy PLO tables while most NL tables are pretty reg filled.

It's also quite possible that the only reason I booked a win in PLO is luck. I still have little clue what I'm doing. That being said, I'm sure the fun players have even less an idea.

4.30 NL/PLO Mix



Hand 1) Break-even reg displaying why he's break-even
(Yes I'm bitter)




Hand 2) Tough vrs lag
River can go either way tbh, a lot of stuff bricked and I blocked some stuff so cawled




Hand 3) Semibluff getting thru in big spot




Hand 4) Spew reg falling into it





Hand 5) Ye old 3b and db




Hand 6) Shouldn't post that I fold this but tough spot vrs reg
Probably can call here, just thought this nit was trying to trick me by checking flop




Hand 7) Weak reg taking remarkably bad line
"Standard cooler"




Hand 8) Can't fold 2 pairs before the flop
Pretty prime example of me having to ****ing clue what I'm doing. (it's pretty clear he has AAxx or a dbls00ted rundown but probably just AAxx). If the flop is going to always go 3-ways I guess my pot odds/IO are fine.





Hand 9) Bruffing super LAG reg
He 3bet some rundowns a few times, figure he never has AAxx here//I'm always taking this line with AAxx. He tanked so I'm guessing he had some ace high broadway rundown but decided to fold to the nit.




Hand 10) Stacking off with set in limped pot against WHALE
Thought V was bad enough to stack worse, pretty grimmmm result

(not sure why converter is bugging, but he had topset)




Hand 11) Standard
Not sure how bottom 2 is realistically doing against my range here. But fish gonna fish




Hand 12) TILT








Hope you guys enjoyed the PLO content. I'm not sure how much volume I'll put into the game, I still feel like a fish. The variance is pretty insane, but I'm sure against fun player filled line-ups there's a lot of value even for me.


Bigggg Sunday of poker set for tomorrow. Going to play 1-2 Sunday major MTTs and hopefully a ridiculous amount of cash.

What AKxx combo did villain have in hand 10?

He didn't just QQxx something