Arty, what do you think of Snowie's play in 3bet pots?

It's been quite a while since I used Snowie (although coincidentally I was considering re-subscribing today as there is a discount offer this weekend) but I don't remember anything particularly striking about the way it handled 3-bet pots. As Galfond said in a training video years ago, "A 3-bet pot is just a pot". (The principles of value/protection/bluff apply in more or less the same way as they do in single-raised pots).
Snowie only got truly weird in 5-bet/6-bet pots, where it would sometimes flat-call to create an SPR of 0.3, putting itself into a situation where it had no folding range on any flop.
I've played a bit of Zoom this week and 3-bet pots are something I need to study again as playing stoopid tournaments where I usually have <20bb (so most 3-bets are jams) has meant I've kind of forgotten how to play 100bb deep. Have you got Janda's new book? I think I might have to get it if I'm gonna have another crack at cashgames.

I'll probably post a proper update and another downswing giraffe tomorrow. #TournamentsAreWorseThanHitler

Yeah I bought Janda's new book and I'm enjoying it. I've gone through it once and now I'm working my way back through it, taking notes, looking at what I can apply etc. He refers to Snowie a lot in the book so that had me considering buying it. I think I may pull the trigger on it today given it's on sale.

Week 25 update.

I only played 4 satties on Unibet this week, and bricked them all. The UO10s are still fish-fests (idiots opening for 6x from a 15bb stack with A7o) but I've been running so badly in flips that I'm hating the game. The UK25 turbos, which used to be redonkulous, now seem to be reg-infested. It's not uncommon for me to know half the players as we reach the bubble (Hi Mark and Tim!) and I don't have an appreciable edge playing against them when I'm 3bb deep.
The timbey graph for the year looks atrocious, but I have to keep reminding myself that the whole year has been a freeroll, as I haven't lost any real money, and I still have 860 euros of tickets to burn (plus some 'rakeback' bonus points I can convert for even more visits to tournament hell).



[ ] Skill Game.

For the last couple of weeks I've been dabbling in cashgames on Stars again. I'm very rusty at playing 100bb deep, so I started at 5NL zoom and immediately dropped 4 buy-ins, but I've been on a heater since then, with most of my big bluffs working, and some of the value-jams getting called. The sample size is still too small to discern anything, so I'll prob do another couple of thousand hands (hopefully winning) before going to 10NL. The last 2000 hands were at 25bb/100, despite losing money with aces. I've run well with CardMatch too. I think I might have been on about 120% rakeback with that. #FunPlayer





[x] Skill Game.

I'm still making ridiculous 4x pot overbets on the river (often with air), but sometimes I get the dream runout and make the nuts vs second nuts.

https://www.boomplayer.com/24353187_870DB1AC58

I'm devoting less and less time to poker, as I bought a bunch of courses on Udemy, so I'm having a stab at learning piano (I used to make music with synths/sequencers 20 years ago, but never learned how to use more than 2 fingers on the keyboard), a bit of mindfulness, intermediate chess, and I'm relearning beginner's German.

The plan for this week is to play a couple of donkaments and try to get in 2000 hands of cash, if migraines don't wipe me out for a couple of days like they usually do.

I hope everyone's doing well. #PingItUp

Heh, thats actually a very nice looking graph.

What factors in particular are you looking for in your 4x overbet rivers? This is something i want to try badly in live poker bc people are very elastic to sizing but overall huge calling stations. Also, their continuing ranges are so wide on flops/turns that its not like you get to rivers vs. very tight value heavy ranges. But they still call alot of rivers will lol holdings.

My natural adaption to this of course is to play face up value oriented game and to vbet thin in certain spots ....(as an example / humble brag, I bet/bet/bet a K6789 flop with 78 and got called by worse this weekend)...but Ive often thought about a river overbetting game where i just make them fold everything but the nuts.

Sorry to hear about your migraines, my mom suffered from them really badly. Im sure you know all the normal stuff (water only, stay away from screens / unnatural light as much as possible (lol at this i know), cardio, diet, etc). They recommend keeping a journal and that way you can identify triggers. Oddly enough they got better when she got older, perhaps bc she wasnt working such a stressful career / in front of the computer 24/7.

Whilst you are playing 5nlz, if you see a villain opening 3x in all spots except 2x on btn and pretty much betting post flop in numbers divisible by 5, that would be me, playing on my Android in the gym on the treader or bike.

I like to knock card match off quickly so my RFI all positions is any hand with a T or higher in it.

Wouldn't you get the same result bluffing 2x pot on the river that you would when bluffing 4x pot?

Getting more money with nuts is good

I mentioned bluffing, not the nuts.

if you want 4x with nuts you better bluff 4x as well. Also lets you bluff more often and hence win the pot more often (assuming you're betting balanced).

I love the overbetting #fancyPenguin

Good luck with the cash games again Arty! And with your other endeavers lol. I bought a bunch of courses on Udemy as well a couple months ago. Haven't had any real time to go through them yet though.

I sometimes do it just because it's getting close to midnight and I haven't yet used my #DailyOverbet hashtag on twitter and I'm in the mood to get ******ed. Mostly, I'm just looking for spots where villain is capped at one pair, and I just want to make extra-sure that he folds to the bluff. Especially at 5NLz, villains aren't going to fold top pair to a 2/3p bet, but I think they usually assume that a jam is the eff nuts.
Here's a spewy example that arose mainly because of tilt. (A failed 100bb x-raise bluff on the river a few hands prior). I think villain (4-tabling reg) has Ax a lot when he calls flop, so I'm just going all out to make him fold it. When he didn't fold to my 35% of pot c-bet, I bet 2x pot on the turn, and then swore a lot and jammed 2.3x pot on the riv:


Another example where villain appears very capped is when he donks twice and then checks on a "scary" river. I hate donkbets with a passion, and they often trigger me into going crazy. I probably would have made the same 4.3x pot play if I had something like JTdd or ATo with the Ah.


FWIW, I'm back on the Snowie bandwagon. So far, I've only analysed my first 2000 hands with it, but most of my blunders were overbets with air. I'm gonna have to be a bit more careful with combo selection if I'm to get my error rate back to what it was 18 months ago. At the moment I'm just clicking random buttons and getting lucky.
Being in front of the computer certainly doesn't help. Variance in my sleeping patterns seems to affect me badly too. And donkbets. Donkbets are the cause of at least 38% of the world's problems imo.

To be clear, snowie is saying you are choosing the wrong overbet bluff combos? (pure air vs. something like mid pair that turned into a flush draw that bricked)

Or is it saying to overbet less in general?

I also totally agree with what you say about villains not folding tp to 2/3x psb but becoming super elastic after >3x. Which is why im so interested in this.

Truer words have never been spoken

Both, but I've mainly only looked at my blunders, and those tend to be random spews where I wasn't really thinking about blockers much. There might have been many spots where Snowie preferred an overbet but I chose a smaller size that was "correct", but sub-optimal. Sometimes I've been raising with pairs that supposedly have enough SDV to call (so jamming was spew), and sometimes I'm raising with king high that should never have got to the river in the first place.
This example might not be the best (it's also not regarded as a blunder, I just happened to see it just now), as it's one where Snowie said my river shove is actually OK at a low frequency, but my range does best if I use a sizing of pot (so that my boats get called by worse). If I jam, the blocking effects of 4th pair are apparently slightly significant, as Snowie would turn 7x into a bluff quite often vs villain's triple donk.



Perhaps the biggest problem with using Snowie to analyse microstakes hands is that villains start with sub-optimal ranges, and then take stupid lines with them. (Even stupider lines than the ones I take, heheh). When I'm trying to work out why my calls or raises are "wrong", I frequently get shown this slightly amusing error message:



The hand above is a fairly good example of that. WTF calls in the SB, then donks 3 times on that board? Villain's line looked ******ed to me, so it seemed like a good spot to shove some ******edness back in his face.

I see, very interesting. So snowie can still tell you its recommended line even vs a line it would never take (this bit confused me about the whole snowie program bc of it playing iterations of itself)

That error message is funny, im pretty sure snowie would have a meltdown trying to analyze 90% of live hands i see each session.

Also i really like this quote

Why is it good to block the spades when bluffing? Don't you want him to be bluffing with a missed FD?

Specifically those spade combos are blocking trip Qs and the A7 combo that could hero.

I think the whole unblocking thing is often a catch 22 bc we GET to rivers with those spade combos first but then they dont have the sdv we need to call so we turn them into a bluff.

I see alot of people want to triple here with like 89 because they "unblock spades" or whatever and im just like:

Quick update after Week 26.

I had pretty terrible card distribution at 5NLz (a shortage of QQ+, and only flopping sets 5% of the time). I lost 3 buy-ins in 2200 hands, so I'm back in rebuild mode. I'm not quite ready for 10NLz yet, as Snowie is telling me I'm playing much worse than I was a year ago, both in the real money games and in the challenges. Something's not quite clicking with me in cashgames yet, as I keep making stupid calls or shoves without really thinking about villain's range.

I cashed in half of my handful of satties on Unibet, so it was a relief to get the timbey graph going back up a bit. (Ticket roll now on 935 euros). My quarterly reward points on Uni was the lowest its ever been, due to my pathetic amount of play. I'm not in the mood to grind though, as it's summer and I'd rather watch the Tour de France. #FunPlayer

I'm trying to go a month without posting on Twitter, so there are no graphs or bad beat hand histories this week. I'll prob play even less going forward, but we'll see how it goes. It would be nice to get out of the house a bit more as the temperature is pinging up again. See ya later, crocodiles!

Week 27

I did OK in the 5 satties I played, cashing in a couple of the UK25s to get my tourney graph for the year back above zero. My ROI over 219 timbeys is a rather pathetic 1.55%. Ticket roll is currently on 1041 euros. The (hyper-)turbo UK25s continue to be one of the stupidest games on the internet.



The bubble in that game finally burst when QT and QQ were beaten by 72o.
[ ] Skill game.

I tried out Banzai (push-fold) Omaha on Uni, as there was a ticket giveaway in the 2+2 thread. That was a stupid game as well. My 3 euros lasted exactly 100 hands, but I only swore about 15 times, so I must have had at least 10 minutes of rungood.

I didn't play much on Stars as I was a bit dumbfounded by the confusing new rewards scheme. I haven't put in enough volume yet to get a good idea of my rakeback rate (it seems to vary massively but randomly) but it seems like it's only worth me playing there when the "boost" (double points) is on, so I'll probably only play about 200 hands a day in future, just doing Card Match and then quitting.
FWIW, I lost a BI and a half in 1000 hands at 5NLz, but tilt-moved up to 10NLz on Sunday night and quickly got $4 back in redline winnings. I'm not very happy with my play, and neither is Snowie. Over about 5k hands, my error rate was around 10, which is pretty ****ing bad. I should probably put in some more study time, but my biggest problem is discipline at the tables. The unbalanced nitregs really piss me off, especially when they slowplay their monsters. I can't wait to leave the 5NLz nitregs behind, but I don't have a lot of cash on Stars, so can't really afford to move up yet.

I'm about halfway through Matt Janda's new book. I don't think I've learned much from it, but it's truly excellent, and much more readable than his first effort.

It will be very low volume this week, as I have various appointments to attend to and I'm probably visiting family later in the week. I should settle back into the grind later in the month. #PingItUp

s u b b e d

I've just finished his first, and actually found it very readable indeed.

By any chance have you read Will Tipton's books? They're on my bookshelf, but I also have Janda's second book ordered. Do you have an opinion on which order they ought to be read in?

Congrats on becoming a full fledged green modulator.

Congrats