I came across this thread searching wtsd for mtts. I loved the first post with all the titles of your PG&C threads haha gotta love the persistence.
You have heart! Keep going. It doesn't matter how old you are or what commitments you have. Watch Pursuit of Happiness. There is time for everything just not procrastination or hours of daily adult training and forearm strengthening videos.
I browsed through the threads and I was suprised by all the negative comments people had. It must feel like arguments with parents. Say something nice or helpful or keep it yourself imo. These people posting must not be Canadian.
I saw a lot of random plays and button clicking as I browsed the posts. I do that as a well a bit but maybe I can explain some things in this post and change the way you think in game.
Study GTO just to get a reference point to how far population/individual recreational players deviate so that you can understand with confidence how hard you can exploit them.
If you want a list of GTO ranges/%s to study I’d say first figure out average raise sizes then the GTO % of each of these stats for that size:
-BB fold to SB steal
-BB,SB fold to BU steal
-BB, SB, BU fold to CO steal
-BU CC% vs CO/LJ
-BB CC% vs LJ
-BB fold to cbet vs BU
-Skip cbet/check fold SB vs BB
-Skip cbet/check fold 3b pot BB vs BU
-Skip cbet check/fold IP
-Cbet % on a few different flops
-Barrel % on a few different turn cards
Study ranges of everyone and play around with them all. Check equities vs equities of different ranges and check which turn and river cards improve each players ranges. IP will always have a slight extra edge in spots so keep that in mind.
Study similar players in your game and combine them into an alias.
See what they do that might deviate too much from GTO.
Do they cbet too much OOP? Maybe that’s hard to exploit but maybe they don’t protect their checking range enough and you can stab and win lots when they check.
Maybe some random fish is donkbetting a ton into you and it’s annoying you but you saw him lead KT on K84 and you know that he has a super exploitable checking range so you can just safely overfold vs the donkbets if he donkbets 25-30% of the time since you'll exploit him when he checks.
Quote:
Originally Posted by PokerPhilosopher
EP - 19.3%
MP - 23.8%
CO - 31.0%
BU - 44.4%
SB - 93.6%
These ranges seem okay but you can probably raise 100% vs most players in SB and 70-80% from BU at microstakes but it depends on population SB/BB fold to BU steal as well as the BB fold to SB steal. It might feel dirty and some players will 3bet you more but you know even if there 3bet goes from 10-20% or something they are just taking those hands from their cold calling range so their overall defend range is still too tight so you’re still exploiting them.
If you don't already have that in your HUD I would add those stats to improve your SB and BU steals.
You should create default RFI ranges for the button that maximally exploit population. I would 2x on the button and 2.5x everywhere else.
The size you make it should depend on who is in the big blind and how often the players left to act CC/3bet. You can adjust it vs a whale in BB to 3x or whatever.
You realize more equity IP but super rough GTO for how often blinds should defend for you to not autoprofit raising ATC is from the BU that formula would be:
2/2+1.5=0.57 which means they have to fold a combined 57% but they also probably fold to cbets too much so if give yourself 1.1x or 1.2x equity realization IP they only need to fold a cimbined (0.57/1.1=0.518 call it 52% or 0.57/1.2=0.475=47.5%
You can play around with the numbers but 80% SB fold to steal and BB 60% fold to steal would get 48% combined fold to steal which would mean you autoprofit stealing with any two.
As you move up stakes you have to adjust more and realize that people understand you're a reg so you have to only look at fold to steal stats vs regs. Hand2note can do that. You can specify the type of vpip/prf a reg is so you can study how population does vs players who play similarly. These stats will be more relevant than overall stats and eventually use vs hero stats.
Start with preflop spots and a basic understanding of the GTO of each betsize and situation. Betsizes change strategy a lot but since players are human we have very static calling ranges. I don’t know cash game ranges but random numbers to explain what I mean:
BB defend vs 2x is 40% instead of 60% that it should be lets say and BB defend vs 3x is 30% instead of 20%. Both ranges stay close to 30-40%.
It takes more skill to know how to defend the BB vs 2x, 2.5x and 3x but it's hard to adjust in game fast enough and players and humans end up not adjusting enough. Bet sizes are the biggest factor when thinking about continuing ranges. It's good to study what the most common bet sizes are and work with that. You don't have to play perfectly. Look at your database and see the most common betsizes. Don’t trust your intuition because it might be wrong and you don’t have to with data.
What this means is you can bluff smaller and value bet bigger in spots and have 0 bluffs or balance in some spots to exploit players who station. Exploit sounds aggressive or something but some of your exploits will be underbluffing like that or overfolding in spots that players don't bluff enough.
I would play pretty loose and adjust betsizes based on the player stats if you have a sample or the population stats. Studying GTO without studying population so you understand the adjustments isn’t super useful.
I wonder though if someone has a high fold to steal say BB vs BU I at first think we should just minraise with a wider range but what if they have also have a high fold to cbet? Should we size up and get more money in before they fold?
If they fold to much postflop it means they probably have an inelastic calling range. Should we just cbet 1/4 pot to 1/3 with range to exploit them for folding too much or is it better to be super exploitatible and just bluff 1/4-1/3 pot but cbet value 2/3 to full pot?
Things I wonder but the EV and differences between different players isn’t a huge deal and certainly not enough of a deal to worry. Think confidently about your game at every spot knowing that you probably exploited the player at some point in the hand so you cna be more comfortable folding. We get insecure sometimes when we’re not sure what to do in poker and it tilts us more. Study hard enough that you are confident with your ranges and strategy.
Think more about spots when you review and just think of things yourself. This is the beauty of poker many different things work and true GTO is to do some things randomly anyway so if you feel like overbetting some spot because maybe the timing tell or tilt of a player told you he’s snap calling you down then just do it completely unbalanced to value.
Check out Napoleon Hills book Think and Grow Rich to help get motivated and set goals.
Read Josh Waitkinz The Art of Learning.
Here is a summary of it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inBA0g0LeCE&t=2203s
Become the next Zoom prodigy and then teach me cash games!
Oh and for bankroll it's just whatever. If you have a job and can replenish it then it's probably best to study a ton and save up or deposit a bit off each paycheque untill you have $1000 to grind nl50 comfortably. You should just be able to crush nl2-25 though and build it up. If you want to practice being exploitative then keep playing lower and understand that games get tougher because you might have default or static range in some spots that just happen to be more profitable in lower stakes but you weren't sure why. I imagine that for nl50-100 you'll have to defend bb wider, float more vs cbets, raise slightly tighter but iuno.
This is real life and just remember you can't pick and choose which parts of poker you love and hope that you'll succeed. You have to love the good and the bad like love the studying, the variance and downswings, the mental work, the session preparation, the avoidance of alcohol while playing, the grinding on some weekend nights, the hours spent on the computer. I'd say love poker enough that you'd want to do all these things for play money.
Last edited by rickyt88; 04-15-2019 at 05:01 AM.