I always think it's weird they way we (or me anyway) start the month with a new mindset. Telling myself I'm going to concentrate more and not auto-pilot, going to hunt out spots I could be missing value or bluffs etc. It's such an arbitary line in the sand really. In saying all that though, the graph for yesterday was just due to a bitof decent variance, getting all in with AK v AQ or getting value from fish.

3bet pre

I've just got around to 3betting TT in that spot. Small steps...

As pokerplayers, we have new years resolutions every month

Sometimes it's even more often than that

It's never to early to book the win.
I hope you can build on the good start to the month. Last month's ups and downs must have been very frustrating.

I think I've figured out the problem. Every month I post the same thing in the 'Goals' thread in the micro/small stakes forum.



This month I've made an adjustment

Lol

Inviato dal mio SM-A310F utilizzando Tapatalk

Hmmm, I'm not liking this trend here

Having a look at HEM and it seems something has badly gone wrong with my Button play when it's folded round to me (unopened pot)

This was my results from January till the end of July:



And here's my results from the 30th July onwards. They're atrocious




Had a quick look at my stats for both periods and there hasn't been any great change in my play although I seem to have tightened up slightly in the later sample, which makes it even more baffling. I'll need to dig deeper into this one.

/variance most likely.

Looks a bit weird, what's the overall BTN bb/100 in the same periods?

It's possible, especially given my lack of winnings at SD but I'll need to dig around.

28.33bb previously (which still wasn't high enough) and since 31/7/17 it's dropped to 15.92bb.
When I filter for unopened pots it's dropped from 27.26bb to 8.54bb

Had a look at the button again and I think variance may be playing a part given the big drops in W@SD in comparison to earlier periods.

Here's my stats for saw the flop HU and a cbet was possible
Before 31/7/17


After 31/7/17


Faced a 3bet
Before 31/7/17


After 31/7/17



I'd posted earlier about feeling as though I wasn't running great and it looks as though that's the case in this spot. Of course I may be running better in other spots but I'll focus on my button play for now and see if I can improve my game there and hopefully the poker goods do their bit as well.

It's time for a long overdue update. There wasn't much to write about last month to be honest. It was fairly low volume for me and nothing much happened except I ended up with my usual marginal winrate.



I should've stopped playing after the 2nd day of the month and booked the win

Anyway there will more updates this month as I've decided to get around to fixing a pretty big leak that I have, which is not 3betting enough. I've always had a pretty low 3bet as I've never felt particularly confident in 3bet pots (I guess it's my inner Full Ring nit coming to the fore). So I'm doing some off table stuff with Snowie, reading a few different things etc and will hopefully put some sort of postflop strategy together that gives me the confidence to start 3betting more. I'm not sure how this will impact things results wise but I'm willing to accept short term pain as I experiment for the, hopefully, long term gain. I'll probably post some hands for comments criticism as well, especially if/ when I butcher them.

In other news I'm pretty impulsive when it comes to buying things for myself. If I see something I like I have to have it and it preys on my mind till I get it. Recently at the football I've seen quite a few folk with smart looking jackets/ parkas that I've learned are from 'Canada Goose'. Hadn't heard of them before and when I looked them up they're really really expensive and I couldn't justify buying one. I'm heading to Glasgow shopping today so pray for me to be strong and not do anything silly

Ha, just thought I'd quote this prophetic remark from the 1st November

Good luck in December Husker.

Ive just started playing 6 max again and got through the first 10k hands in November .. it was very frustrating and mega swingy in terms of results and ended up basically break even.

Even after 10k hands i realise my 3 bet stats need upping ... like you say the inner full ring nit does not let go easily.

Im going to crack on this month and really work on a few things that i seem to suck at quite badly.

Onwards and upwards and all that.

Please don't buy those £750 jackets mate

+ 1

!!!Be strong!!!

Inviato dal mio SM-A310F utilizzando Tapatalk

Something you probably share with loads of us (I know my 3bet play was poor for ages). It's not helped by the amount of pure crap study material doing the rounds - including in some pretty "well-respected" books.

What got me to improving my 3bet game was some key concepts (much if which I picked up from following pgc of decent regs)

In the order I learnt them

Continuation Ranges. Be aware of the effect of your 3bet on villains range. eg If you 3bet an EP tight opener with hands like QQ/JJ you risk him folding all the hands you beat and continuing with all the hands that beat you. My 3bet stat is currently around 12%, but I rarely 3bet EP openers with anything less than the AA/KK (plus ofc some bluffs for balance).

Polar/Linear 3betting. Know (and I mean really know) the difference between polar 3betting and linear 3 betting and when to employ each range...this is huuuuugggeee.

Understand that you can flop cbet small (typically 1/3 pot) in many 3bet pots. This increase your cbet profitability, which in turn means you will gain confidence in cbetting many flops knowing even a low fold percentage is still profitable.

Work on your defence to 3bets (when to call, when to 4bet). the more you understand your own defence, the more you will gain confidence in attacking other players.

Back up your HUD with notes. If you are not taking a manual note in EVERY SINGLE 3bet pot give yourself a slap. My notes are absolutely chock full of comments like these

coftmybtn3b
sbcallmybb3b/x/f cbet 1/3 Jxx tt
btn 4b my bb3b
co s/o pre JJ

and so on

GL in December

Think one of the big things when you make the switch is learning how to play against 3bets given how much more it happens compared to FR, otherwise you can easily get frustrated and end up spewing.

They only had a couple in my size and I didn't like they styles (thankfully)

Cheers for the post. Any particular pg&c's you'd recommend?

With regards to what I've done so far, I've been reading up more on the 1/3 sizing and specifically on playing the turn after it so I'm getting a strategy in place based around that. I've also done a bit of a population analysis around villains' calling ranges as well as creating a few ranges so I can visualise them a bit better in game. At the moment I'm looking at cbet success rates on various streets on various different board types

I've been studying my 3bet game as well and this spot in particular is troubling me. I feel like EVERY time I ep cold call I get squeezed. So UTG open I cc JJ in MP alot but get squeezed a ton.

My question is, are we more comfortable cold calling the better position we have?

For example vs. a tight utg open i flat JJ otb as a standard, but JJ in mp I do not like cc bc of the squeezes induced.

I started 3betting all continuation range and while I burn a bit of money vs tight ep opens I make up a lot of ev from dissuading ip 3bets to my cc. I know this is highly exploitative but im on zone bovada so exploit is bread and butter.

Curious your (and OP's) thoughts on ep cold calls in general.

If they are indeed squeezing wide you have a trivial backraise with JJ.

Its an okay strat to never cold call in mp but you'll have to be okay with 3b folding hands like JJ, QQ etc bc people don't 4b light utg especially live. There are a lot of good reasons (isoing a wide opener with a 3b, excellent players behind you, etc). But in general you're going to want some cold calls against most player types at most tables (especially live where table 3b is lower)

Heh, i was speaking to $10NL and $25NL zone on bovada. I cc like its my job live bc as you know people do not 3bet near enough and utg opens are very snug most of the time.

For 6 max, its possible likely I just handle these spots really bad (utg open, hero mp cc, btn 3bet), but when i went to a "yolo 3bet anything i wana play" strat my wr had a noticeable benefit.

3betting and squeezing is obviously rampant at 50nlz (where I play) but not nearly so much when EP is opening. By default (in other words readless) I would give a lot of respect to a blinds Sqz of EP and MP, because there is already a strong range in the pot, so the squeeze is gonna be for value a lot of the time. (again I stress - readless!).

tbh, its not a spot that gives me much trouble anyway. I would always flat the EP raise then following the squeeze...

toss it if EP 4bets, (coz u is crushed)
call it if EP folds, or flats, and play some poker.

If I'm gonna 3bet/4bet/stack off pre with JJ then I want much wider (and polar) ranges involved.

Balanced, readless, 100bb eff stack only. Change any one those, it all changes.

To give you my whole JJ preflop strat would be one huge wall of text

latest JJ graph in sp (warning - blatant brag of worthless heater) sry Husker