What is it betting ott?

Spade combos good bluffs
A has some equity vs kx
Not sure about exact combo, but probably depends on what we are betting ott. Wouldnt be surprosed if snowie is betting some 3x as blockers and btn doesn't have any on this runout so riv increases our value decreases bluffs too

Assuming we're using a half pot sizing it bets again with the following (I've excluded the hands it bets at less than 40% frequency)

my eyes!

My head

It would be nice if Snowie displayed these ranges the same way Pio does.

The lack of AK being in BTN's pre-flop flatting range is definitely something to do with it. That flop is the ultimate "dry" board, so since BB has the nut/range advantage while BTN's range is very weak (88 and 33 are its only strong hands on the flop), BB can bluff at a very high frequency, because BTN will fold (either immediately, or by the river) at higher than min-defence frequencies.
I often find that Snowie's strategy (in 3-bet pots especially) seems to have more to do with perceived folding frequencies than with actual equity (as with semi-bluffing), so it quite often triple barrels on ragged boards where it doesn't rep a high number of value combos itself, but it "knows" that villain won't be able to call down often enough to prevent the airballs being profitable.
I can't explain exactly why it would use random Ax hands as triples, but it seems (from a similar scenario I built) that once it's barreled the turn, it shoves that super-blank river with about 90% of its range. It checks some Kx and the best Ax as they have some showdown value, but hands like A5s should be triple-barreled to get villain off the better Axcc (and any pair worse than Kx) that call the turn. Maybe Pio would suggest clinging on with JJ-99 and A8s on such a dry runout, but Snowie seems to think that BTN should give credit to the BB, even though when Snowie plays the BB role, it has total air about 50% of the time on the river. It's clear Snowie hasn't found a Nash equilibrium for that spot, because it folds loads of hands that would be profitable calls against its own strategy!
FWIW, one of the most common ways for me to stack Snowie when I play the challenges is to make a pair in a 3-bet pot and then call down. I feel like an idiot when it sometimes rolls over aces or top boat, but it shows up with "no equity hands" pretty often. When I'm tilted, I sometimes take similarly "spewy" lines when I perceive my opponent just can't call down. It's surprising how often the spews actually work!

Think the bolded probably explains the part I was wondering most about

Yah snowie is not good on rivers, add in some deeper play, weird sizing or 3bp to make it an even less common spot and it doesn't play well.

You will see it continues with more spade combos as those unblock bdfd hands (more folds ott). This is especially true if we cbet otf small, less so if we just went big otf (which I assume snowie did here?)

Just went for a half pot on the flop and turn. Can't remember if Snowie recommended a different sizing on the flop or if I just went with that myself.

Some hands from today

1) First time I've seen this villain

Full Tilt No-Limit Hold'em, $0.25 BB (6 handed) - Full Tilt Converter Tool from http://flopturnriver.com/

Hero (SB) ($25)
BB ($28.82)
UTG ($18.42)
MP ($32.86)
CO ($27.78)
Button ($24.13)

Preflop: Hero is SB with J, K
2 folds, CO raises to $0.75, 1 fold, Hero calls $0.65, 1 fold

Flop: ($1.75) 10, K, J (2 players)
Hero checks, CO bets $1, Hero raises to $3, CO raises to $27.03 (All-In), Hero calls $21.25 (All-In)

Turn: ($50.25) 3 (2 players, 2 all-in)

River: ($50.25) 5 (2 players, 2 all-in)

Total pot: $50.25 | Rake: $2


Hero had J, K (two pair, Kings and Jacks).
CO had K, 6 (one pair, Kings).
Outcome: Hero won $48.25


2) Same villain as above

Full Tilt No-Limit Hold'em, $0.25 BB (6 handed) - Full Tilt Converter Tool from http://flopturnriver.com

Button ($29.67)
SB ($39.67)
BB ($17.72)
UTG ($24.04)
Hero (MP) ($27.03)
CO ($53.60)

Preflop: Hero is MP with A, A
UTG raises to $0.75, Hero raises to $2.50, 3 folds, BB calls $2.25, UTG calls $1.75

Flop: ($7.60) 8, 6, K (3 players)
BB checks, UTG checks, Hero bets $3.63, BB calls $3.63, 1 fold

Turn: ($14.86) Q (2 players)
BB bets $0.25, Hero raises to $12, BB calls $11.34 (All-In)

River: ($38.04) K (2 players, 1 all-in)

Total pot: $38.04 | Rake: $1.71


BB had Q, K (full house, Kings over Queens).
Hero had A, A (two pair, Aces and Kings).
Outcome: BB won $36.33


3) Xmas games....with a nice hold.

Full Tilt No-Limit Hold'em, $0.25 BB (6 handed) - Full Tilt Converter Tool from http://flopturnriver.com/

Button ($25)
Hero (SB) ($25.35)
BB ($16.81)
UTG ($107.76)
MP ($43.88)
CO ($24.54)

Preflop: Hero is SB with A, A
UTG raises to $0.75, 1 fold, CO calls $0.75, 1 fold, Hero raises to $4, BB calls $3.75, 1 fold, CO calls $3.25

Flop: ($12.75) 9, Q, 6 (3 players)
Hero bets $6.09, BB raises to $12.81 (All-In), CO calls $12.81, Hero raises to $21.35 (All-In), CO calls $7.73 (All-In)

Turn: ($66.64) 6 (3 players, 3 all-in)

River: ($66.64) 6 (3 players, 3 all-in)

Total pot: $66.64 | Rake: $2


Hero had A, A (full house, sixes over Aces).
BB had 10, 7 (three of a kind, sixes).
CO had J, 10 (three of a kind, sixes).
Outcome: Hero won $64.64


4) Helluva nasty runout but villain seemed to be a big fish so there was still hope

Full Tilt No-Limit Hold'em, $0.25 BB (5 handed) - Full Tilt Converter Tool from http://www.flopturnriver.com/

SB ($28.07)
BB ($10.33)
UTG ($26.37)
Hero (MP) ($27.08)
Button ($21.33)

Preflop: Hero is MP with 5, 5
1 fold, Hero raises to $0.63, Button calls $0.63, 1 fold, BB calls $0.38

Flop: ($1.99) 5, 9, 3 (3 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $1.50, Button calls $1.50, 1 fold

Turn: ($4.99) 9 (2 players)
Hero bets $3.50, Button calls $3.50

River: ($11.99) 9 (2 players)
Hero checks, Button bets $5.75, Hero calls $5.75

Total pot: $23.49 | Rake: $1.06


Button had A, 2 (three of a kind, nines).
Hero had 5, 5 (full house, nines over fives).
Outcome: Hero won $22.43



Also, just bought one of these for some HIT work in the house now that the gym membership has lapsed

KJo
Fold or 3b pre
Don't raise flop
Fold to 3b otf

Would definitely be folding it against a reg but from the little I'd seen of villain he was shaping up to be a whale and BB was passive so I couldn't see a squeeze happening.

What was current info when you flatted?

Just had a look at the stats and all I had at that point was 39/33 over 18 hands (nothing really) but he was also single tabling and I think he was from Mongolia! There was definitely someone from Mongolia at the table, pretty certain it was him

I'd still fold

Agreed with all of that. I wouldn't flat any offsuit hands in the SB except maybe AQ occasionally if the opener is perceived to have tight/strong opening range. Without flush draws or BDFDs to fall back on, you can end up getting into horrible flop/turn spots with offsuit Broadways when you make stuff like TPGK, bottom two pairs, or 2nd pr + SD, even against LAGfish. It's just so hard to make money OOP with offsuit Broadways, since typical stack off ranges have you crushed if you don't make the actual nuts. You were fortunate that villain turned out to be an idiot this time (and there are a lot around at the moment), but I think the call pre is a losing call in general.

Time for an update.

Had the man flu over the past week so I haven't had any alcohol since boxing day. On Hogmanay I actually ended up just going to the cinema with my gf to see the latest Star Wars film rather than going out (a bit disappointing and the Leia thing was definitely jumping the shark!).

I don't really do New Year resolutions but I think it's time to take stock of things in terms of poker:

I ended up with a 1.24bb winrate, pretty poor really.

I think I've posted elsewhere that poker is a hobby for me, similar to chess for some people and I enjoy it as long as I'm not losing money, although I would enjoy it even more if I was winning more. As things get more complex in terms of what's needed to, at the very least, keep up to speed with the games I don't know if I can justify continuing too long. I'll definitely keep playing this year but this time next year I may have a decision to make. In saying that though here's my plans for the year ahead:

1) Move from my beloved FTP skin to Stars so that I can use TablescanTurbo for some table selection. I've already tried this out and all my hud stats etc show fine on Stars so I'm not losing anything.

2) I'm going to use Snowie's preflop ranges.... up to a point. I'll be stealing more than Snowie recommends and using exploitable plays where I can but I'll use Snowie's ranges as a sort of baseline. This is mainly to get me 3betting more etc as I too easily talk myself out of moves preflop that I find take me out of my comfort zone postflop.

3) I'll do a bit more postflop study (but not too much ). I've downloaded GTO+ for a look at. It's pretty daunting right now but I'll go through it and see what I can do with those spots I feel uncomfortable in but also spots where my winrate is lower than I'd like (BTN v blinds)

4) I'm going to limit myself to 4 tables. I only normally play 6 so it's not a big difference but it's more about taking more time over things, looking at spots and getting away from just auto-clicking buttons at times. It's more about trying to improve every session rather than just grinding and kidding myself on I'm actually working on something.

5) Actually I think that might be all.

Anyway, good luck at the tables in 2018 folks.

gl in 2018 Husker

Your plans for the year seem solid. It's so hard to have "fun" when winrates in general are so low these days (the frequent downswings certainly make me question my choice of hobby!), so I want to pay tribute to you for sticking with it and for updating the thread consistently, even when you've had some tough weeks and months. All the best for 2018!

Thanks. Same to yourself. Hopefully I'll catch one of your streams at some point this year.

Oh yeah it's definitely frustrating at times but my other (neglected) past time of playing guitar can be rather frustrating at times as well. Poker does have it's own particularly unique way of being able to kick you in the nuts even when you are making the right decisions etc though.

So I started work on my preflop ranges again and I've worked out my EP and MP ranges (opening and 3betting for MP). I've added some suited connectors into my RFI ranges that Snowie doesn't use as these are profitable for me in both positions. Something I've noticed yet again is that I do badly with small and mid suited aces in both positions. Rather than drop them, which would be pretty ridiculous, I'll take a note to look deeper into my play with them at a later date.

I posted above about playing only 4 tables and taking longer over decisions and I had a clear demonstration last night of the difference this could make. I'd nipped upstairs for a quick pee while my g/f kept an eye on the tables for me and when I came back down I let her play for a couple of minutes while I was telling her what to do and my hand reading was ****ing spot on (lol sample size unfortunately and I took over again before the inevitable mistakes came along to kill my impressive display ). I kept telling her what villain had but still made stupid calls (He has QQ+ here and my 2 pair with 98s has just been forfeited on the river. Meh call anyway). If I just stopped for 5 or 10 seconds I'd know I shouldn't be making the call. So hopefully this is something I can improve, no one likes folding though

GL 2018

Interesting that we have very similar goals, but very different plans to achieve them.

I always believed mental game >>>> technical game, so when I'm looking for improvement, I always run my mental game through the ringer first. That doesn't mean I don't strive to improve technical-wise as well; it just means most of my (big) leaks are mental.

I also play zoom and it does not look like you do?? As a rec I found the constant table selecting/management just got in the way of having fun...so I switched to Zoom after saying I never would.

Now I could never imagine going back. My challenge is to find my level, where I can keep afloat w/o getting into studying solvers and the like, playing at peak rec hours.

The journey continues...

PS...your last sentence above is kinda spooky...you might want to check out my new blog idea for 2018.

Yeah I always just play regular tables but I've never done too much in the way of table selection.

My technical game is definitely weaker than my mental game and working on my technical game will also help address one of my mental weaknesses (a general nittiness). Hopefully enyway.

A reasonable start to 2018



Full Tilt No-Limit Hold'em, $0.25 BB (3 handed) - Full Tilt Converter Tool from http://www.flopturnriver.com/

BB ($25)
Button ($25)
Hero (SB) ($25.10)

Preflop: Hero is SB with 9, 9
1 fold, Hero raises to $0.75, BB raises to $2.25, Hero calls $1.50

Flop: ($4.50) 3, J, 5 (2 players)
Hero checks, BB bets $2.25, Hero calls $2.25

Turn: ($9) 3 (2 players)
Hero checks, BB bets $5, Hero calls $5

River: ($19) 4 (2 players)
Hero checks, BB bets $15.50 (All-In), Hero calls $15.50

Total pot: $50 | Rake: $1

Nice sunrun wp

I'll take it while it's going