Just downloaded all my hands from pokerstars and wow it was eye opening. It really put things into perspective that I'm a lot worse than I think, and the attitude of "I just need to put in volume I'm better than these players", is a terrible one. Yes, I might be better in some areas than most of the micro field, but that doesn't guarantee I'll crush them.
Time to get better. So I've decided to start fresh and rebuild everything I think is correct or incorrect. I've dropped down to two tables and I'm in the process of trying to improve how I allocate my hands and manage my ranges. I'm stilling going to press pot with top pair against fish, but at 16z you play a lot of hands against regulars compared to the other stakes (probably because the player pool is quite low). What I'm weakest at is bluffing. There seems to be so many variables you have to take into consideration when bluffing as opposed to allocating hands into value bets and check calls. Such variables such as:
- What are their tendencies (do they fold or call a lot)?
- What are the best hands I should be bluffing here?
- How many of the top bluffing hands should I be bluffing to balance my value bets, if I have any at all.
- Am I blocking any of his calling or folding range?
- What am I folding by barreling turn and am I getting enough folds?
For example, do you guys think if I'm cbetting this hand I will be over betting the flop?
These will be my valuebets on the flop:
And being balanced would mean I need to bluff around 25% here roughly as I bet around 1/2 pot. And as a default strategy without any exploitative adjustments, I should be bluffing these hands I think? AT might play better as a check back, being that it does beat a decent amount of hands. But then again, can we call the turn with AT?
I'm just trying to get a closer idea of what a balanced range would appear like and try and stay a bit closer to that as a default.
Looking back I believe my flop cbets have been a huge leak. My cbet % is quite low at 45%ish; however, I believe the hands and situations I chose to cbet were suboptimal. I know so because looking back at my previous sessions my flop cbets are pretty much subconscious autopilot driven. And I'm sure my strategy that has made its way into my subconscious is not good!
Another area I'm very weak in, is turning low SDV hands into bluffs. I'll often just snap check hands down knowing very well I'll win basically none of the time. And these hands are often great bluffs because they are often the weakest hands you'll have in some spots. Even knowing this, in the back of my mind I'm like meh check back or snap fold "it's only a small pot". But in reality, I reckon these spots are critical that you consider bluffing at times for a healthy win rate.
A question for the elite out there: how do many bluffs do you need to balance your value bets. I've read that it's related to your bet sizing but I don't want to get too deep into the theory. Just some guidelines would be good.
Playing 16z now and it's going decent.
Last edited by gobbymcgee; 01-23-2017 at 05:08 AM.