I'm not really happy with the state of my strategy, so I'm gonna spend as much time as needed on it until I get it to the point where I'm satisfied with it. No point in spending only an hour a day on it, while spending the rest of the day playing with an inferior strategy.

It's not like what I figured out so far was that bad. Rather, it's that I haven't figured out enough spots yet. I haven't done any work on the new ~5bb open-sizes yet. Haven't done any work on 3betting ranges or calling open raises. Actually, it's the latter that I'm the most unhappy with.

As far as RFI pots go, I'm doing ok. Could be a lot better, but it's not terrible. When I 3bet, I'm doing alright as well. But could be better. But my main issue after looking a bit closer is that I'm not defending enough against open raises. That goes for all positions. In order for me not to leak from losing my big blind vs people aggressively open-raising too much, I need to call/3bet more, from all positions. I need to make sure that vs an EP open-raise (for example), I'm defending enough from MP, all the way to the BB. That means that my combined defense from all of the 5 other positions needs to prevent the EP player from open-raising any two cards. The same applies to when they RFI from any position. I think vs steal positions, I'm letting them walk all over me too much lol.

Currently, I think I'm way under-defending. Especially since I've changed to a 3bet or fold approach from all positions other than the BB. I need to make sure I'm calling enough from the BB. I think I'm bleeding a lot of money by not doing so, especially since with the smaller opening sizes that most people use, there are a lot of hands that have good odds to call. So I'm gonna do a lot of work on that, and a few other areas, and get my strategy beefed up a bit before heading back to the tables.

Pm´d you a few ideas on RFI ranges by position. You don´t have to use it 100%, or even anything, but hopefully it will save you a few hours/days in the lab

Btw, if I understood correctly, you´re using a 3bet or fold from all positions (except for the BB), but I´d recommend you change that back to having a cold call range IP (based obv on the opening sizes by villain). I can send you a few ideas on this also if you want.

GL!

Thanks, sent you a PM about that. Interested to hear your ideas.

Pm´d

Virtually every post you make is about preflop strat, yet it is absolutely crystal, that you massive, massive post flop leaks.

That KK call is utter, utter spew, yet you totally gloss over it, with some complete b/s justification.

I know I'm being brusque here dude, but mate you really, really need to hear this.

You can mess with BRM and pre flop ranges all the live long day, but until you learn to play poker, post flop you are screwed.


sorry, but its the truth.

I'm not just messing with preflop ranges; I'm currently designing preflop ranges in conjunction with postflop lines. So, I'm coming up with a "complete" plan for each range, from preflop to river. And I'm simplifying them somewhat, for now, to make it a little easier. But preflop is the most important street. Mistakes you make preflop will have grown exponentially by the river.

And, I think my biggest leak was preflop. I was looking through the database, trying to see where I was losing the most money. I looked at RFI situations; I wasn't doing exceptionally well, but wasn't terrible. I looked when I 3bet; I wasn't doing as well as I had in the past (since I widened my 3bet ranges), but again, it was still decent. So if I'm doing ok when I RFI or 3bet, what's the problem? I'm probably losing my BB too much. So I checked, and yeah, I wasn't defending nearly enough against open-raises. So that comes down to preflop. I'm not saying I don't have postflop leaks to fix also, but I think this preflop leak is probably the most important to fix first.

Pre-flop is probably the most unimportant street to worry about exact ways of playing. You can literally google starting hand charts, have a small think about hands you want to 3b/4b/stack off with and that's as solved as it needs to be for you.

It's funny that your results are better when you just click buttons and when you go back to trying to solve poker your results get worse.

This...exactly.

Your biggest leak is your mental game. Despite years of posts to the contrary by genuine regs who want to help you, you persist in believing that there is some magic preflop strategy that will turn you into a winning player. The fact that you have all the evidence you will ever need that this is pure fantasy, suggests you are lacking in IQ (no offence, we all got what we got) or are too closed-minded, or both.

I'm just calling it as it is mate...I have no desire to rain on your parade, so here is a little hand analysis to sweeten the pill.

The KK hand from #198

Preflop is fine, villain looks reggish, stats pretty standard.

flop is standard (I don't use small bets like this, but it is fine), but his call should put you on your guard and you should be ranging him.

turn is standard, but you MUST recognise you just capped your range, and pretty much faced up your hand.

River, you check, villain jams.

What are you ever beating to let you call here?

A spazzed middle pair...that's never happening with this villain, its gonna be pretty rare across the whole population.

A missed draw bluff...still rare with regs at these stakes, but possible as you are capped. (I'd bluff here all day, if you checked turn and river to me, unless I had you pegged as a station).

First thing to note is that your hand is pure bluff-catcher on the river...so this...

I'm never folding KK in a 4bet pot where an ace doesn't flop. If they have an ace, so be it. They paid too big a price to get there.

...is utter mental game spraff. You should be thinking like a poker player...logic + math, not this outcome orientated b/s.

Second thing to note is that the A clobbers villains range every which way and he knows he has you beat, so this is a simple value bet a LOT of the time.

Your required equity on the river is:

Call / Pot + Call = % of time you must be correct to justify the call

$10.55/$11.86+$10.55 = 47%

TBH, a simple eyeball should tell you that you should be right here about half the time. which should lead to a *sigh* snap fold, because this is never a bluff/spazz at anything like this frequency and its not even remotely close.

Being a calling station and then justifying it with fish spraff are two simply huge mental game leaks that will destroy any preflop strategy you ever come up with it.

Peace.

...and I've just done another chunk of math for you, to bring this point home again..this time in my own pgc, in response to another of your throwaway spraffs. I suggest you pop of there and study it.

That's a lot of free coaching you've gotten this morning, so you might want to say thank you and keep me onside.

vs an infinitely large bet on the river you need 50% equity, vs a pot size bet you need 33% equity

^^ My bad, and thanks for the catch. After driving myself nuts for 30 minutes wondering why my cheat sheet and formula produced different results, I realised I simply did the calc wrong. note to self, write **** down, don't hop backwards and forwards between web pages.

It should have been (22.41 + 10.55)/10.55 = 32%

Even with my crap math, its still a snap fold though.

Sorry for the bork.

Read The Grinder's Manual by Peter Clarke. Sounds like you are trying to construct your own ranges when you can just get ones second hand that will work just fine at the micros. He offers all sorts of ranges including how/when to implement them. This seems to be the area you are having the most difficulty with which is lucky as it's the easiest fix. Preflop is important but it really is the most simple. Decide on your value/bluffing range and then widen/constrict these ranges depending on villain. It really is that simple. You can go as simple as this, if someone is raising too much and folding to 3 bets then add a few more bluffs in. If they don't fold then 3bet bluff less and look to go for a more linear range. You don't want to have a 3bet strategy that you use against every player. To be honest a lot of preflop should be extremely standard and become somewhat second nature if you put in decent volume. If you sort this out and actually stick with some ranges you may start seeing come consistency. It should also make post-flop a bit simpler. I am fairly sure that some micro regs who suck post-flop are still making money purely based on solid preflop strat that is easy to follow/implement. Your biggest leak should not be preflop unless you are stacking off light against very tight ranges.

You obviously have a lot of passion for the game and a deep commitment to improve so I', sure at some point things will click for you and the pieces of the puzzle will begin to fall into place. Just stick with it, alot of the responses you have gotten are really solid so it can't hurt to try and change it up a bit and see what occurs. I would also advise you to stick to one limit that you are at least breakeven at and focus on improving in one place. The hopping around is not really going to help you improve as a player.

Good luck and keep updating!

The KK hand, my point was that in order for villain to get to that profitable river bet, he had to make even bigger mistakes earlier in the hand. So even if calling the river is a mistake, because villain made bigger mistakes, the hand as a whole is still profitable for me. Could I just fold the river? Sure, I guess so. But if he's being sticky with A3s, he's probably doing so with quite a few hands. And if he's playing the same way with those, I'm making so much money in those spots that calling when he hits his ace on the turn isn't a huge mistake in comparison. I'm still making lots of profit.

And I don't know why you guys keep harping on preflop play. I already told you, I'm working on my strategy as a whole, from preflop to river. I'm not just revising preflop ranges. I still think preflop is the most important street to get right first, but that's not my sole focus. My focus is on a coherent strategy for the whole hand.

And you guys act like I'm losing. I'm still winning. I'm having more success than I've had in a long, long time. But I know I'm probably just a small winner right now, and I'm trying to work on my strategy now so I can crush more, before trying to move up too high.

291, I agree with you somewhat. I'll probably just take it stake-by-stake, grinding enough hands at one limit before taking a shot at the next. I feel more at ease when the swings don't affect such a large percentage of my BR. I don't know how exactly I'll go about it, but once I have my strategy worked out, I'll go back to nl2 for a bit. BR is about $120 at the moment, so probably won't spend a lot of time at nl2 before heading to nl5. But will probably just try to be more on the conservative side for now.

The problem with the KK hand is yes, while the villain made more mistakes than you (flatting pre, calling flop), in the end your potential mistake of calling river is possibly more -EV than both of his mistakes. I think a reasonable range for him here considering the preflop action is something like 1010+ and some AKo/AQs/QJs with the occasional trapped AA. Given this range...what bluffs does he get to the river with? Maybe a few combos of QJ/KQS but he actually has quite a few hands he can have for value. Just on the basis of this it becomes tricky to find the call. I would only really call here if I thought the villain was a really smart reg who pretty much knows what you have after you cap your range on the turn. A reg like this can potentially turn some JJ into a bluff but to be honest I feel like this is somewhat unlikely.

Another thing to consider, if he is bluffing I would think he is much more likely to start bluffing the turn than the river. I feel like tendencies of all ins on river spots like this when the turn is checked through are often a strong A which knows it's now good against a face up range (this is why you want to do some checking with your AK in this spot). That being said, it is actually a decent bluff spot but I would want to be sure that I know the villain is capable of bluffing this at some frequency before calling. Another thing to be wary of is if he is showing up with a range as wide as A3s it actually becomes way less of a call because now we can widen his preflop/flop call range to every suited ace and we can assign him way more value hands on the river. All in all it's a frustrating spot and I understand the call it's just not a call I would want to make at a high frequency. Hope this helps a bit.

$120 is deffo enough to play at 5nl, you should be fine, if you go on a heater you can actually have some pretty big bankroll boosts.

My mistake is not more -EV than his, because you have to consider all the turn & rivers where he doesn't bink his ace. All the times I win in those situations more than makes up for the amount I lose when call him. I'm not arguing that I should call him. I'm just arguing that it's still very profitable overall, even if I do. Anyway, with my new strat, this situation won't come up at all since I'll be using bigger bet/raise sizes.

And thanks, I could possibly return to nl5. I'll have to see how I feel lol. Might want to just get comfortable with the new strat at nl2 first though.

I mean the -EV of your call is greater than the combined -EV of his calls. The main point here is that he has an extremely low bluffing frequency on this river when you really consider his range - this is basically the key, forget the mistakes he makes in this hand, this is actually what matters the most. Yes he is losing money preflop and on the flop and most of the time you print against this player as most of the time the A doesn't come and you win. But think about it from a pure maths standpoint, if he calls pre/flop 100% and then folds every non A turn how much you win? X amount, and in the long run yes this is of course making money, completely agree with you. But if every-time the turn is an A and you call down 100% of the time your call becomes more losing than his mistakes if we give him a very low bluffing frequency. I am probably butchering the reasoning for the fold..

Basically his mistakes in this hand become irrelevant on the river. Any EV you had is dramatically decreased given his range. You want to let him make his mistakes and then when you get in this river spot you say okay I probably got unlucky what can you do.

The real point is forget EV and all that stuff, when you called what did perceive his range to be, what bluffs/value did you give him? This matters more than everything else, especially when ranges are narrower on the river.

Hey PokerPhilosopher, I was avoiding coming back to the KK subject since I gave my opinion already after you posted, but since the subject is here, I´ll do it again:

When tools like snowie or whatever gives us EV values on each street, including preflop, it assumes we will take the most optimal lines on each street. The thing is, it might be very profitable to call you with -EV hands (slightly -EV hopefully ) if I know you can´t hand read and play postflop well, bc I will stack you everytime I hit, but can get away losing the bare minimum if not. No offense, you seem very easy to setmine against for example.

It doesn´t matter the few ev points I lose making -EV moves preflop, if I know you´ll make way bigger mistakes later when decisions cost way more money.

So, I hope you can understand that, even if you develop the perfect preflop game, you will not win big without improving a lot of your hand reading skills, and what to do postflop on different boards.

Hope it helps clarify my point of view, and what I think is the pov of everyone here.

GL!

Faze is right ^^^

If your calling down with hands like this then I am going to really widen my range against you preflop in position because I feel like I have more implied odds against you than against a player who will often make this fold. Sure I'll be doing a lot of folding postflop and giving up some EV but if I make two pair/set versus your overpair I then start making a lot of EV if I can stack you more than other players.

Was curious and checked back in on this thread. Sure enough OP is still refining strategy and over complicating everything whilst still at 2NL.

Dude, just get in these streets and beat fools up and learn along the way. You are never going to have perfect strategy, nobody does.

Try to get one percent better everyday don't try to solve this game.

river call is definately bigger mistake, than villains preflop call and flop float combined, not even close.

The size of the river mistake (if it is one) may be bigger. But the other mistakes by villain are more frequent. Which means in the long run, his mistakes are worse.

I can't believe the ridiculousness right now. I'm sorry, I don't mean to offend all of you cause I know some of you are just trying to be helpful. But if you guys think you can setmine in a 4bet pot (or even worse, trying to hit 2pair+ with a non pocket pair) against me by putting in 22bb preflop like that.... I'm truly at a loss for words.

If someone says to me that they will call my 4bet and call a flop bet (without flopping an ace) with A3s as long as I stack off everytime when an ace hits the turn or river, I will gladly take that every day of the week. I'll be the one printing money.

As for me wanting to work on and improve my game.. what's wrong with that? I recognize that I'm probably not a crusher right now, and want to work on my strategy further so that I can improve my game and experience bigger winrates. I'd rather spend more time now, and play with a superior strategy, then to just keep playing with a smaller winrate and hold off improving until later.

Btw, the setmine thing wasn´t meant to be in a 4bet pot 100bb deep . Anyway, my intentions were not to sound disrespectful, but to point to you that making big mistakes will destroy your winrate no matter how much work you put on the cheaper parts of the game (pf). I won´t post anything about that particular hand anymore, as I know how annoying I am when I get into an argument, esp theory stuff

The villain made a mistake, a big one, and got lucky. I don´t think anyone here is commending him for that. We´re just saying that making bigger mistakes is worse for your wr, even if villain will probably be a big loser in the long run.

My 2 last suggestions to you and I promise I will shut up about study. If you are convinced about this path, stop playing for a few weeks/months and work in your entire game, from preflop to river. Follow your own ideas, but try to understand/put yourself in our shoes and think why most ppl think this way. Everyone saying you´re wrong doesn´t mean you´re wrong, but you should consider the possibility without any prejudice.

And be sure to fix all your leaks. Do not develop a simplified strategy bc you don´t want to face your postflop shortcomings.

So, that´s it. I will keep following you, and may post if any new subject appears here, but won´t comment on old stuff anymore as I don´t think I have anything to add. And last but not least, GL!!!!!!!!!!

Yeah I mean the main problem is you've stated as an absolute you won't fold KK postflop if an Ace doesn't flop in a 4 bet pot. That's not really a winning strategy, you always have to adjust to board textures. Your whole argument is that you would 100% call him every time just because an Ace didn't flop. It comes across as if you could see his hole cards you would play the hand the same anyway purely based on the fact that he made more mistakes in the hand than you. A villain's mistakes never justifies our own and they are completely irrelevant to your river call in the end.

You see very set in your ways about this so I would advise you to check your DB and see all the premium pairs with you went broke with postflop in 3/4 bet pots. Given your current strategy I have a feeling a pattern may emerge that might have some statistical weight over listening to us.

I don't think it's correct for you say your printing money if the Ace comes you stack off every time. It's just mathematically incorrect. It's not even an arguable point.

I get what your saying about how over time you make money against this villain, but this is only correct if you don't make you own mistakes. Imagine how much more money you would make if every time an Ace didn't come you win a decent pot and then every-time an Ace did come on the turn you don't lose your whole stack? Imagine how that would affect your winrate...

FazendeiroBH, I never said anywhere I would stack off with an overpair in anything other than a 4bet pot.. At any rate, you've been one of the nicer helpful guys lol, so don't worry about it. No hard feelings

Yes, it is a winning strategy. May not be the most "winningest" strategy, but it is a winning strategy. If the have the ace that outdrew us, they had a bad price up to that point, and we are still winning money.

Do the math and then get back to me. If you did the math, then why not provide it here? They are putting in something close to 40bb probably to hope to hit an ace on the turn (and only the turn). You think those are profitable odds for villain?

I mean it's not some complicated formula...

40bb for Villain with Ace high
100bb for you with KK on Ace high board

Villain loses 40bb every time an Ace doesn't come.
You lose 100bb every time an Ace does. Any profit you were making through villain's mistakes is severely reduced by your own stubbornness/refusal to fold. Done with this now, everybody has tried to help and is saying the same thing, might be worth considering they know something.

Let's say an ace comes what 33% of the time roughly....so 2/3 of the time you make a combined 80bb with villain's mistakes and 1/3 of the time you lose 100bb. Whose losing money?