Just want to say that I read the thread from the beginning and enjoyed your comments and analysis. And hope that you still would post.

Good luck in the future.

Just ignore the comments that you don't like.

Thx

The thing that doesn't make sense to me is that you admitted that you never read a poker book and never really studied the game from a mathematical perspective, and yet you claim to know what "ABC" poker is.

How can you say your method is "unorthodox" when you don't know what "orthodox" actually is?

Take for example of the hand:

"I open to $20 in MP with AsKd. Cutoff, button and BB call.
Flop ($80) Ad 7d 4s. BB checks. Just about everyone will bet here. I have a strong hand and I need to make FDs and hands like 76 pay to draw. That is obvious. Anyone who has played poker longer than a few minutes knows that. I know.

Betting something like $55-$60 is totally standard. I would do that most of the time. But heres something to think about. These are all pretty good players in the hand. They all know that if I bet I have an ace. Im not going to bet this flop into 3 players without an ace or a set. I wont get called by much of anything other than a flush draw or an ace.

I think there is merit in checking here occasionally to let someone else bet a worse hand or catch a 2nd best hand on the turn. So I checked and it checked thru. Most people will say this is a disaster. No, its not a disaster. Another diamond on the turn will suck, but its not a disaster especially when I have the Kd."

The main reason why you bet isn't just to charge draws, it is also to collect equity, and avoid reverse implied odds.

Do you think a hand such as 22/33/55/66/88/99 is calling another dime even if you check the flop? So if you are not making another dollar by checking, why would you give them a chance to actually win the pot for free?

What about hands like 89ss, JTss, and some other backdoor draws? Do you think they will call a bet if turn is a 2h? Same concept applies for small PP as it does here.

Not to mention that you are OOP against 2 players and that if they are indeed good players, there are a ton of cards on the turn that they can apply pressure. It won't be as simple as bet and collect money just because you think your hand is "disguised" by checking.

You were talking smack about players complaining about running into top of people's range and dismissing them as running bad, and yet on the flip side, you are arguing that your line is profitable because you're projecting people playing at the bottom of their range. You don't see the hypocrisy because you cannot identify fallacies in your own thinking.

ABC poker isn't just "bet when you're ahead" and "check or fold when you are behind." Only reason why you think you're special is because just as you are projecting players playing at the bottom of their range, you are pigeonholing complex poker math as some sort of simplified model of bet and fold. Therefore by you "thinking" more than just "math tells me to bet here," you think you are unorthodox, even though you have very little clue of what math actually tells you to do.

You don't have to read a poker book to know what abc poker is. Bet when you have it, check or fold when you don't.

Mike gets a lot of ****, his e-personality doesn't help, but I still think the majority of it is unwarranted. Yes he recognizes his play style is different yet it seems the common goal is still to berate it and him.

I think he is trying to open / expand the group's thinking but instead it is met with backlash. Nobody likes change and everyone thinks their way is best. That recipe results in this thread which has been awful for a while now.


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"Honestly, I dont try to dismiss other people except when they tell me my lines suck with no explanation of what they think is wrong. There are plenty of different lines that will work in the same spot against different people and against different ranges. Some people don't seem to understand that. "

Correct, hence one should not make decisions using absolutes or a specific hand. However, that's exactly what you do.

"I dont tout my win rate as a defense to any specific hand."

Just scroll back and see for yourself how often your win rate and how often your claim that you win in poker are mentioned is thread. If there is a phrase cloud for this thread, those two phrases would probably take up 80% of the cloud.

For what its worth, I consider everyone's advice, even if they're the biggest loser at the poker table. I would not follow any of them, but I would most certainly evaluate their methods and figure out why they lead them to be the biggest losers.

Your overall game seems to be built around some really bad players, but I am almost certain that your response to that would be how you traveled the country and played in other rooms and crushed.

"I think he is trying to open / expand the group's thinking but instead it is met with backlash."

In my opinion, and this is purely just my own, he's just doing something different for the sake of being different.

And when people ask him why he is standing there by himself, he responds by saying "you guys are all single minded ABC thinker, my way is better and here is my chart of result proving why I am better."

Then he expects everyone to flock toward him after seeing his chart, and all the "traditional" thinkers become the group that looks stupid.

Believe me, I have seen such tactic and those charts. I have been to few pyramid schemes seminars.

Lol this guy

You come off kind of condescending to be honest, checking flop is fine especially multiway and with Kd, and he did get paid by 99. You'd be amazed how much people spaz against checks/ small cbets in live poker.

Especially since you berated a hand that was actually played well tbh. I actually think Mike's line is a standard 'online' play and maybe a non-standard live play

The even bigger losers are the ones who feel the need to show everyone how great a player they are and how much better they are than everyone else. It's actually a sign of a horrible player, maybe even a personality disorder or two. They also get high off trolling people, and will make gimmick accounts to do it. Shows a lot about a person.

"Honestly, I dont try to dismiss other people except when they tell me my lines suck with no explanation of what they think is wrong. There are plenty of different lines that will work in the same spot against different people and against different ranges. Some people don't seem to understand that. "

Case in point.

I never said what is right or wrong, just the rationale behind why betting is a +EV play without more information.

You guys seem to like pigeonholing all the complex thinking and decision making processes into something as simple as precisely what the guy had and pat on your own back when it works out.

Mike's idea of unorthodox approach is basically just him projecting a losing approach to a scenario by labeling it as ABC, and present something different.

Mike's approach may very well be +EV, but the issues many posters have raised aren't necessarily that his decision makings aren't +EV, but rather there are higher EV lines. However, whenever confronted with the ideas that there are higher EV lines, Mike automatically assumes that it's an attack to whether his lines are +EV.

"The even bigger losers are the ones who feel the need to show everyone how great a player they are and how much better they are than everyone else."

Isn't that the whole idea behind this thread?

That Mike is better than just about everyone that disagrees with him in the strategy forum?

Lol.

Ghopeyourreadsatthepokertablearebetter,imoG

Im not going to respond any longer to people who clearly have nothing constructive to say.

I can guarantee you 100% that this is because of the multitude of **** that Ive gotten at 2+2 ever since I joined. My real life personality is totally and completely different.

Just ignore the trolls, Mike. If you don't feed them they'll go away.

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I got a PM encouraging me to keep this going. Ive also gotten some positive feedback from a few others so maybe Ill keep the thread open. Im really not sure if its of any use to anyone or not.

Maybe I could stick to one or 2 interesting spots instead of just posting a ton of HHs.

So here's something from today. 2/5 game. There's not much action at the table. People are commenting on the lack of action. There are 2 guys at the table who are almost so tight that they will only play AA/KK. So one guy says "Im getting a table change. There are 3 people here who wont play a damned hand". Then he points to them and counts 1...2...and 3. The third person he points to is me. Are you friggin serious? Any one who has read anything Ive written knows the kinds of hands I raise preflop. How someone could think I only play AA/KK is beyond me.

So that's the vibe at this table. I also have a pretty good amount of playing time with this particular guy. He's above avg and pretty tricky.

This hand comes up. Limped pot. Im in the BB with J3.

Flop ($25) KJ9. Check around
Turn ($25) J. I check. EP checks. MP bets $10. The guy complaining about no action raises to $60 in LP. It folds to me. I think and fold. Hes repping a J (although its very possible he doesnt have one). The guy who bet could have a J. The board is wet....I just dont want to get involved so I folded. Mr Complainer shows 77.

Short time later....

2) 2 EP limps. I raise to $25 KdQc in MP. MP2 calls and both limpers call.

Flop ($100) Qh 7s 3s. Checked to me. I bet $55. It folds back to the 2nd limper who calls.
Turn ($210) 8h. He checks. I bet $100. He calls with $100 behind.
River ($410) 7h. X/X. He shows As4s and mucks when I table.

Pretty ABC hand. I posted it to show I do play plenty of hands pretty normally.

3) This one is slightly more interesting. I open to $20 AsKh in MP. LP calls and Mr Complainer calls in the SB
Flop ($65) 8d 5h 3s. SB checks. I bet $15. LP folds. Mr Complainer calls.

Ive been experimenting and having very good luck with strangely tiny flop bets. It adds a whole different dynamic to calling ranges and my options are more wide open on the turn since the pot isnt bloated. A double barrel bluff doesnt cost as much and they work a higher percentage of the time because the villain is more likely to have a weak hand when he called a tiny flop bet than if he called a bigger flop bet.

Turn ($95) 8c. SB quickly leads out for $40. Its a different situation but this looks similar to the hand where he bluffed the second J on the turn in the earlier hand. He also thinks I only play big hands....so I fairly quickly raised to $100. He said "OK, that's what I thought, I was just checking and now I know". My AK may have been the best hand anyway, who knows, but having a good read really helps in spots like this. Against a random unknown player I probably fold there.

The poker room director in my poker room got fired yesterday. Its been long overdue. Players have left in droves for other nearby rooms and Im hopeful that a lot of the players will return and sometime soon the 2/5 games will be as good as they were last year.

The games have been better the last 2 weeks or so. Its very seasonal here in S. Florida and I think the snowbirds are flying south for the winter later than normal as the cold weather up north came later than normal this year.

h2 if you are gonna size turn like that river is a must-jam when he checks to you. we have the best hand ~100%

Hand #1 I would have bet and lost some. So you did better than I would have
Hand #2 I would have bet tiny and be prepared to call a spazz shove raise all in Like $15
hand #3 Just like I would have played it.

Yeah I dont have any problem with a river shove. I wouldve looked pretty stupid if he had QJ. I was pretty sure he missed the FD, but a shove is still probably better.

Yeah what dizzy said. Pot is 400 and he has 100 behind, if you are ever ahead, have to jam because he will simply have worse Qx that is never ever folding.

I think whether or not people want to admit it, we're all on here (atleast to some extent) for validation of our play, which isn't very useful at all. CONSTRUCTIVE criticism is the whole point of this site. So people who have more experience can maybe point out the leaks in our game that we can improve upon or even people with the same or less experience can maybe point out a different point of view that we haven't thought about.

I think the issue is that a lot of the time the people giving the criticism are also insecure about themselves (usually subconsciously) and they berate play that they deem poor instead of giving constructive criticism. It's just another way for people to feel better about themselves and their play, by telling everyone (and mostly themselves) how much smarter they are than the original poster. And this causes people to get defensive, because that's a natural human response when you feel like you're being attacked.

I'm not really sure what the point of this post is at this point. Maybe just asking people who are giving advice/criticism to be less condescending, and people who are posting hands to be more open to the idea that they're not playing optimally (if you think you can't improve your game then you're delusional no matter who you are).

fyp