Quote:
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.
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.