Srs, why do you fold a set of 66s?

I'm more curious why he didn't 4bet aces and then donk-called the turn when the flush completes when he has no diamond and already got raised on the flop.

+1

Not saying that you should never fold middle set even in 2NL, sometimes you have to. But in that hand, it was really bad to fold a set of 66s. He will show up with 33s, 88s, some draws or even 2p hands. I don´t think villain can have QQs here, unless he is really bad, and if I knew he was really bad, I would expect a lot of one pair hands also.

Thanks for all the replies,

Kelvis: I assume you're talking about the earlier sessions? In the last update, I mentioned I'm throwing out the GTO stuff for now. Listening to the advice and just trying to play in an exploitative way to maximize my winrate for the micros. I think it's too tiring working on GTO when I know more money can be made playing differently. More rewarding to work on it when it will actually matter at higher stakes.

But to answer your questions, the solver is a way for me to crunch the calculations that would be too time-consuming to do by hand. To determine the RFI range, for example, I would check to see if a (value) hand could be profitable if going all-in no matter how my opponents played their ranges. Then I'd figure out how many bluffs I could add to my range. That's the basic idea.

I did acknowledge I made some mistakes in some of my assumptions, and a lot of those hands are butchered because I hadn't gone far enough in my GTO strategy. I had only done some preflop ranges, and because of my mistakes, even those aren't great. When I get back to GTO later, it won't be nearly that bad lol.

The AA hand was horrible, you're right there. Not 4betting aces was based on my earlier assumption about the definition of GTO. Which, I've thrown out. Do you see those fundamental flaws in any of the hands in the last post? That is where I started to try and play in a more exploitive manner, so would love to know if I butchered any of those.

BigBananas, EPTchips: I folded the set of 66s because I felt I was beat. He was 3bet shoving the turn after initially potting it, 160bb deep. The flop was 4-way. I just felt he's not doing it with worse.

Afterward, I started wondering if I made a mistake folding there. That fold might have been too tight, maybe should just be getting it in there.

SorryGotAces: That is what I'm doing now. I'm putting aside GTO for now and just trying to exploit. That's the reason for some of those large bet sizes (and donk bets) in the last few hands.

FazendeiroBH: See a couple points above. If he has 88 though, I'm beat. What 2pair hands would call an UTG raise preflop? Maybe 86s after a few callers already. There's only one combo of that though. Possibly Q8s? Only 2 combos of that. And would they go crazy on the turn? Maybe. I think 33 is probably more likely out of all of those.

Again, that's just my thought process. I very well could have played that terribly. There are no straights or flushes on board, so maybe I should have just gone with it and hope they're playing top pair like that.

Shouldn't flat AKs button vs MP unless some read
4bet KK vs MP, if he has aces then so be it. Being out of position means you 4bet or fold most of your hands anyways so no need to balance with kings.
Don't love the flat with A8s SB vs BTN but depends
If you're not going to use AKs as 4bet bluff UTG vs MP, what hands do you use?
Don't overcall ATo in a multiway pot out of position
Don't flat AKo SB vs MP

If he has 88s it´s just a cooler. Happens. Yes, they call with 86s, Q8s, Q3s (I´m assuming you were readless vs this villain). And 33 and 88. All of those hands were more reasonable than QQ for example, given pf action. So the only hand that have you beaten there is 88. Then do the calculations of all the possible combos and you´ll see that you had the right odds to call.

Do not miss these opportunities at the nanostakes.

Thanks Kelvis, appreciate you taking the time to help.

Thanks, I'll make an effort to 3bet/4bet more with more of the stronger hands and generally up the aggression in those spots.

May I ask why? Is it because you don't like flatting SB vs BTN in general? Or is it because A8s is too problematic? Currently, I'm calling with quite a few moderately strong-ish hands in that spot. I don't think I'll get squeezed too much by the BB at these stakes. Is this still a mistake though? Appreciate any further thoughts about these spots.

I'm not trying to balance those spots at the micros right now. Maybe I should 4bet bluff more? I just think there aren't enough light 3bets, at least at NL2. Could be wrong. Should I be adding 4bet bluffs right now?


Agree with ATo. I assume for AKo, you would advocate 3betting? And again, is it because you don't like calling from the SB in general? Thanks again for your thoughts.

Yeah, I believe I might have only had a couple hands on the villain. Thanks, yeah, guess I should be calling off there. Just a spot where I went with my gut, and then questioned it afterwards

Yeah generally calling in the SB is to be avoided. With A8s the reason why it depends is because it kind of flops meh and if villain is sticky that sucks.

AKs is the highest equity bluff you can pick with the most blockers to KK/AA and also it's only 4 combinations. You can basically always 4bet-call AKs together with (QQ)/KK+ for 100bb without thinking about it. Yes they might 3bet light a bit less than they should but you put people in a really gross spot if they have TT/99 and made the mistake of 3betting those hands against UTG. I'm not advocating adding 89s/A5s etc but AKs has so much equity they barely need to fold at all to make it profitable and it would be a shame to flat the 3bet and have 60% equity against their bluffs instead of taking down the pot.

Appreciate it Kelvis. So in the SB, do you usually 3bet quite a bit wider, or just tighten up? I will add AKs to the 4bet range, as you make a great point there. Will stop calling from the SB for now and add more 3bets (unless I hear an opinion otherwise )

That would be a poor choice as that "opinion" would be objectively wrong.

Just to make sure I'm understanding you, you're saying that anyone that says 3betting less is wrong? And I should be 3betting quite wider from the SB?

I'm saying flatting from the sb is usually wrong in most cases. Sometimes you may have a decent hand and want to keep a bb whale in or something though. But in general you want to 3bet or fold from the sb with a tight merged range when the pot's already been opened.

Thanks WorldzMine, duly noted.

About to head off to work now, but will try and incorporate all of this into my strategy when I play afterwards.

Had to cut my session short today, as wasn't feeling well. Focused on not calling hands from the SB, and upping the preflop aggression. Was 3betting more, and even trying to find spots to throw in some light 4bets. Feel free to comment on any of the hands. I'm pretty sure I messed up some of them.

86s is very thin value but should get called by KdQx and stuff like that

QThh is a bit loose as a float, JThh would be much better. What turns do you plan on betting?

J9s nothing wrong. An even stronger argument for 3betting here is that you don't even get 4bet by AK so you don't get blown off your equity.

77 could call but it's very draw heavy so you can get called pretty often. Kind of unlucky to only have 60% when he can have K9/K7/97.

J6o you are probably very often behind on this flop so folding would be fine as an exploit. Don't really like the turn raise without a spade especially when you can just call with that price.

42s was an absolute throw, got very lucky there.

AA raise bigger SB vs BB for the same reason that being out position sucks.

GTO is not exactly what you think it is
GTO means you play in such a manner that no matter what opponent does it is impossible for him to exploit your play.
GTO doesn't mean in any shape or form that the villain know your cards in any instance...
GTO is incredibly hard to apply in poker, because GTO is a hell to understand properly
usually this is applied when effective stack get shorter between you and villain, because the play is less complicated

like someone said earlier, playing 9/2 , your good opponents know exactly your range, and simply that go GTO out the window IMHO

IMO, 99% of the population apply GTO (when and if they do it) in one particular instance: HU nash push fold ranges, not to look at them , but play according to them each hand until he or villain has all chips

Thanks Kelvis, QT hand I would bet a turn 8, T, J, Q, K, or heart. If turn was an A, I might delay and bet the river when checked to twice. Anything you would do differently? I can see JTs being better because it gives better straight draw outs, but you wouldn't float both?

J6, yeah, I was getting a good price to call. My thought in-hand was he seemed scared of the flush/straight/both, so I figured it was a good spot to bluff. When you say I shouldn't be raising without a spade, is that so that I have some more equity if called? Or as a blocker to him having a flush?

42, I usually don't bluff against signs of strength like that. I've been (for the most part I think) careful to find spots where my opponent is weaker. For some reason, I must have felt like it was a good semi-bluffing opportunity. But yeah, probably a bad play in the long run. Would you call preflop, or would you just let it go there?

AA, I assume you mean raise my range bigger SB vs BB? I will incorporate that into my next session. Thanks for all the responses!

beatmydeuces: Thanks, I was kind of realizing I had looked at GTO the wrong way earlier. I've put that aside for now, and just focusing on exploitive play at these stakes and trying to increase winrate.

Didn't have the greatest session yesterday. The AQs hand below is probably big spew. Should have folded to the 4bet I think.

Good session, back to the heater. Probably a bit of spew with the AK hands. The QQ hand, not sure if I should be getting it in there or not.

Been out pretty much all day today. Just wanted to get in a little quickie session to keep the momentum going. Didn't get very lucky at all lol.

Never 4! fold QQ for 100bb effective. Make a decision before you 4 bet instead of blindly doing it. Nothing wrong with 4! calling or calling the 3! as you are opening from UTG.

Classic case of this was a hand I played yesterday where my opponent raised from UTG+1, I 3! from the button with QQ, he 4! and I proceeded to 5! shove. He folded and showed KK and typed in the chat 'Always aces, just my luck when I have KK'.

He was probably tilted but 4 betting for information with a hand as strong as QQ is a very bad play. If he is jamming AK/AKs you have to call with pot odds and all that.

Thanks CC96, maybe calling the 3bet would have been better. At any rate, played a lot of hours today, got to the 10k hands mark. So will just have a quick update with the graph for the first 10k hands (since starting to play exploitatively). Playing 4 tables of zoom now, so should speed things up a little.



EDIT: Just took a look at my stats by position. Sample size is still very small obviously, but SB winrate is positive so far (+3bb/100). Probably won't be able to stay positive, but a huge improvement. So props to Kelvis for helping me make the biggest improvement there by adopting a 3bet or fold strategy (except a few times when I overcall multiway).

EDIT2:Just one last thing. My winrate with AA is actually negative (-2.5bb/hand). Wow, I've never seen that before. AA has always been my most profitable hand. By far. Once that turns around, should be even better (hopefully).

Just thought I'd post a graph to date for all the hands played at NL2z. This includes all the hands at the start where I was trying to play a pseudo-GTO strat (which wasn't all that GTO). It's obvious where I started to play more exploitatively lol.



Redefining my end-goal for this thread:

I had originally stated I will move up to NL5 when the BR is at $200, at which point this goals thread would be complete (and the next one started). I'm going back to a previous BRM plan I created. The reason being, that I need to treat this as a second job. I'm not making enough at my current job to make ends meet. I used to work 6 days a week there, but they didn't want to give me overtime anymore several months ago. I've been getting by so far, but won't be able to much longer.

The original plan was to find a second job, but I'll hold off a bit on that and see if I can make poker work. I don't need to make much. If I can make $350 (CAD) a month, that would probably cover the rest of the expenses, give or take. Even making less, I could still buy enough time to keep playing poker until I'm able to move up one or two stakes, where I can make more money.

So, I need a plan where I can withdraw money every 2 weeks (like a real job). I've divided this goals thread into 3 stages:

Stage 1:
40 hours/week: Play NL2
After every two weeks, I will do the following:
*** I will withdraw everything over $120 (my "paycheck"), and keep $120 in the BR
*** If I have an 80k hand sample at NL2 showing a profit, and I have at least $120 (60 NL2 BIs) in my BR, I will move to stage 2

Stage 2:
35 hours/week: Play NL2
5 hours/week: Study
After every two weeks, I will do the following:
*** Withdraw 75% of anything over $120
*** Put the other 25% of the extra into a "separate" NL5 BR (Note that on the poker site, both BRs will be combined into one total. But I'll keep track of the "separate" BRs on paper.) This NL5 BR will be used for NL5 shots in the next stage.
*** If I have at least $50 in that NL5 BR, then withdraw anything over that $50 and move to stage 3

Stage 3:
30 hours/week: Play NL2
5 hours/week: Play NL5 (if NL5 BR reaches $0, then just play NL2)
5 hours/week: Study
After every two weeks, I will do the following:
*** Withdraw anything over $120 in NL2 BR
*** Withdraw anything over $400 in NL5 BR
*** If NL5 BR is $0, then move back to stage 2
*** If I have 100k hands at NL5 with profit, and my NL2 BR & NL5 BR combined is at least $400, then withdraw anything above the $400 and start the next challenge! I will have officially moved out of NL2 (permanently), and NL5 will be my "official" grinding stake. And this challenge will be complete.

This BRM strategy was developed to allow me to use most of my time to make money at stakes that I know I can beat, and to give me enough BIs to be comfortable. This in turn will give me the best chance for success, and the best chance to make a steady side-income while allowing a little time each week to study and take shots at the next level. The downside is it will take a lot longer to move up. But I'm not in a rush.

Future Updates:

As you've noticed, I will be trying to spend 40 hours/week on poker, outside of my 35-37 hours/week at my job. That's been something that I've struggled with in the past, and so treating this as a second job should help a bit (hopefully!). Knowing that the more I play, the bigger paycheck I will receive, will hopefully act as a good motivator.

Daily updates might suffer though. Not sure how often I will update going forward. I was thinking of doing something like updating after every 10k hands, or after every 20k hands. Or maybe every week. But, considering my BRM plan is designed around 2 week intervals, I may just stick to that and update at the end of every 2 week period. Updating what I've cashed out (i.e., my paycheck), graphs of my progress, what my BRs are at, and some notable hands from that 2 weeks.

What's the point of taking chunks out of your bankroll when you're playing 2NL? Just grow the bankroll until you're at stakes where you can actually make a decent hourly.