Hey guys,

I've never posted here. Used to post at FTR. Back in 2005-2007 I was a 4-tabling 6-max break even player online. At the time I was 18-20 and probably thought I was a much better player than I really was. Anyway, fast forward to now, online is dead in USA (to my knowledge) and I've only played friendly games the last couple years but have always beat my friends handily.

I'm 26 now, just finished grad school and started a new job where I could afford to set aside some of my paycheck each week towards my bankroll and start building up my bankroll playing $1/2 NL live. I only play recreationally a few hours every weekend. I mostly play fairly TAG style, I don't bluff much, I usually let other people make mistakes and try to value bet them or get them to commit their stack. Here were my stats up until tonight:



Then I played tonight and ran into some trouble.

UTG I raised $15 with QQ. Folded to button who reraised to $30. I reraised to $60. He pushed AI and I called for $200 more. He flipped over KK. Is this standard at live-tables? Should I have been less of an idiot and realized I was behind after putting my $60 in? I'm thinking I should have thought "at best I am a coin flip."

Later in the night, I am UTG again with KK. I raise $15 PF and get two callers. Flop comes 4-4-J. I bet $30, next to act calls $30, villain raises to $60, I push AI for $200 more. 2nd to act folds, villain calls AI for $200 more. Villain flips over Q4 and the trips hold up.

Now my stats look like this:



I know my sample size is incredibly small but I just went from thinking I was a solid player to questioning myself and whether I can hack it. I think the QQ, maybe I should have laid that down, but would anyone in their right mind put the villain on a 4 in the 2nd hand? I don't really tilt. I just told myself him calling $15 PF with Q4 is a losing play and I'll get it back in the longrun.

Sorry for the rant I just had an inflated ego after having 6 winning sessions and now I see how 1 big losing session can really **** with my $ win rate, etc. Ahhhhhhh!

This is surprising..... I haven't heard of there being variance at 1-2NL.

Totally standard. The QQ hand u should have folded, at best u were up against AK suited.

Yeah, you had an inflated ego. Welcome to reality. And yes, I wouldn't know exactly what they had, but if you have a pair and get raised on the turn, you're mostly beat. Shoving just guaranteed only a better hand would call.

I'll leave this open a bit, but if it starts being a troll magnet, I'll shut it down.

$32/hr is still high for $1/2. You're sample size is close enough to zero that they don't really matter yet.

The QQ hand is a fold when he ships. Most Villains aren't doing this without AA/KK. You need history to call him here.

The KK hand is 'meh'. He called a PFR with nothing, hit gin, and you paid him off. It happens and he's never folding on that flop there. But I think your shove is a mistake. There aren't very many hands that call the shove that we beat. Some will call with AJ, or any J, same with QQ or maybe TT, but not too many. Flatting the $60 and taking a longer line to get the money in should make us more against the hands we beat.

Thanks guys. I'll probably start posting over here since FTR seems kinda dead for Brick and Mortar. Anyway yah I'm kind of kicking myself at those hands, moreso the QQ one because I could have learned a $60 lesson instead of $260. BR is about 9 buy-ins at $1/2 for 100BB so I'm still trying to play a decently tight game, avoiding coin flips and bigger variance plays where I can until I build up to 25 buy-ins then I think I can really start playing 'poker.' I don't think I'm a donk but I know I certainly have a lot to learn, as fishy as $1/2 seems to be.

Hand 1, where he 5-bets all in for $260 in 1/2 NL, you are generally in horrible shape with QQ. Players in these spots never show up with JJ or worse, and only occasionally have AK. You are going to have AA/KK shown to you in excess of 90% of the time in this spot, ergo, your hand is foldable.

As far as your hourly rate, it's great so far, but only 7 sessions, and just like anyone else, you're going to experience variance in the form of hands like the Q4 debacle.

This sure is low-hanging fruit, no doubt about that.

You played the first hand wrong at several moments. You should not be min-raising a 3bet and then calling all-in with QQ against all but the most maniac players.

You should have at least tried to represent aces(which is incredibly unlikely to give you fold equity, but possibly does in some games, and would stand a better chance at giving you fold equity against AK suited, which is the only hand you can honestly hope to beat and one you really don't even want to race with that bad, so you should still DO it) the entire way, you did not. You basically straight up told Kings that he has without a doubt the best hand at the table, that you have a pocket pair and that you are crushed. I would be very surprised if he felt a second of anxiety after your minraise. And once your donkraise got shoved into you should have known queens were crushed.

You should have also definitely expected trips to show up in a 3-way pot with that board. People are not going to try to represent trips with a min-raise when they only have a jack on that board, especially when second to act obviously had a big jack if he is going to call you. People are only going to minraise for value in that spot. If it was heads-up I would say shoving with kings is a strong play on that board, but it's not. Furthermore, you are absolutely never extracting more value here by shoving with kings. The only hands that will call you are hands that have you crushed. Every hand you beat, folds, and if for some reason you have a tell that is screaming "nobody has trips" then the only hand that can beat you is aces, or if the board pairs the jack so why would you prefer to shove on that board instead of watching what comes next and extracting more value from it in the situations where you are good? Ace-jack is probably calling you to the river if you don't make ridiculously huge bets or shove on the flop.

You're going to go through a lot of questioning yourself, especially early on. Part of it you're right to do so, since you did in fact play both hands incorrectly (in my opinion, and probably most winning player's).

You really, really need to get rid of this attitude that "calling a raise with Q4 is a donk play so I'm still a better player for shipping it to him when he had the nuts". That's Phil Helmuth, Jr. style thinking. You realize you just got exploited hard right? You're basically saying its standard play for you to never, ever give credit for trip fours so hello what do you think people are going to play against you when you're basically announcing "I'm only going to play hands that are strongest pre-flop and post-flop if you need to be playing trash to have hit the nuts then I am going to give you 100% implied odds and ship you my entire stack". Something tells me the villain could have caught a full boat on the flop and you would still think you're a better player for shipping your stack to him because you're playing a hand with more strength pre-flop.

The reason you play big hands pre-flop is so that you can minimize your losses post-flop by recognizing when you've gotten "sucked out" on so to speak while maximizing the value you can extract on every hand you play to the river. If you're just going to ship it when you're crushed by a weak pre-flop hand because "omg i can't put him on calling that raise with a 4 that's such a bad play" then you're basically going to end up slowly extracting value over hands when you're good and then shipping it all when you're crushed, which is 100% losing player.

The other part of questioning yourself is sort of a natural, bio-chemical response to losing sessions. Hormones, neurotransmitter levels and the like. This literally just takes experience to get over, but for a long time it's going to stick around and nag at you even when it doesn't make sense. I just had a session where I took 4 bad beats in a row to the same luckbox maniac sitting to my right. I shoved all-in with AK on an AA6 board, get called by A5, turn comes a 5, river comes a 5. Few hands later he raises it to $50, I have a tell on him and KNOW he has a big king, I shove all-in to get the weak-tight ring to fold, he turns over K10 offsuit, I turn over A10, board comes AA7, river Q, turn J. A few hands after that I shoved with 6s on a 334 board, he calls, turns over 2-5o, says "oh you have two blockers i'm ****ing crushed", ace immediately comes on the turn. About an hour later I'm all in with AK on an AK9 board, he calls with QJ, tells me he put me on air, 10 comes on the river. I was so ****ing sick. Every time I got felted I would rebuy and quickly double up and then some against the rest of the ring and then ship it all to the maniac in the first hand I'd play against him, only to watch him immediately just donate it to the rest of the ring. I spent a lot of the next few hours debating whether poker was a game I really wanted to play, or if I should just put my full roll back into daytrading. Of course, once you give yourself time, you're able to really process the worst of the bad beats and once the intensity of the moment fades you're able to look at from a rational point of view besides "omg ****ing luckbox bad beats me every time why do i even bother with playing obviously i'm cursed" or "omg what a donk calls 5x raise with q4 and then hits it and lets me shove into him when he's holding the nuts."

What is that saying people like to throw around here? "Lol sample size," right? Yeah, that. Don't get obsessed about your stats after 7 sessions. Focus on your game.

On that note, these hands are worth looking at. You clearly know you made some bad plays here, or you wouldn't be talking about them.

Hindsight is 20/20, ain't it? Yes, at best you were a coin flip. The one thing I love about pocket queens is that they're so foldable preflop (especially in a cash game). Button min-reraises you; he may have a pretty wide range there, but it's hard to say without knowing him. I do like your reraise here, as flat-calling puts you in a **** spot post-flop if it comes all undercards, and raising a lot commits you too much.

What's good about that $60 raise is that it gives you the opportunity to get away from QQ for $60. You're kinda testing your opponent. You're letting him know you clearly have something good, but still setting him up to feel like he maybe should call with something like TT or JJ. Then he's the one in **** on an undercard flop. But if he comes over the top of you, like he did, you're up against AA or KK almost every time, with the very odd chance of AK or maybe JJ if the guy's a nut.

Yes, calling $15 preflop with Q4 is a losing play, but putting in $260 on a two-outer is even more of a losing play. Strong hole cards in hold'em can be very important, but they can also be a trap in NLHE, especially in hands that go multi-way. In a deep enough game, it becomes reasonable to play a wide variety of starting hands to try to do exactly what was done to you. Don't get busted with one pair in a multi-way pot.

I second Angrist's remarks here, basically that if you were going to play the KK through, you should've slowed down. That way, you milk AJ and QQ in addition to losing against AA, JJ, or 4x. The way you did it, you're getting felted by 4x and JJ and maybe AA, and making all hands worse than yours fold. Shoving was the worst of all of your options.

Honestly, you should've stopped at the $60 raise to think about the situation you were in. You bet and got called before the raise. It may have "only" been a min-raise, but (a) villain raised two players and expected to get called in at least one place, (b) you still had action behind you, which easily could've been someone slowplaying trips or a boat, and (c) there were still two more betting rounds. KK is the second-best possible hand preflop, but after that, it's just a pair of kings. That's a lot of heat to walk into with a pair of kings.

Of course one big losing session can really **** with your win rate, when that one session is about 14.3% of all of your sessions so far. Don't sweat it. Keep analyzing your play, and stop getting bothered about your game log.

I appreciate the replies so far guys. Really making me re-evaluate the way I played those hands and after hearing you guys break it down to each individual action, it is pretty easy to see how poorly I misplayed both of those hands.

I went back tonight to get my confidence back a little. I normally only play 3-4 hour sessions but ended up playing for 6 hours tonight. I was down $100 early after missing on a couple good draws. I rebought back to $215, was up to $400 at one point and finished the night with $300 for a -$15 loss for the night. In terms of my play though, I was incredibly satisfied. I couldn't hit a draw to save my life tonight and was lucky enough to get AA, AA, KK and QQ all 4 of which were folded to my PF raises of $10-12. I also chopped a $200 pot where I hit the straight on the turn, bet and was called for $50 and then the river completed the straight on the board and we checked it. So all in all if things went just a little bit differently I could be looking at a pretty decent winning session but I'm really not disappointed with my play tonight. I also thought I was sitting at a slightly higher quality table today than most sessions. There wasn't anyone spewing chips or making horrendous plays that I could see. Mostly people just shuffling chips around the table.

I listened to what you guys were saying and really though about what I was doing when getting involved in potentially large pots. I'm also reading the 2+2 Professional No-Limit Hold-Em book, I'm about 70 pages in and so far it has given me some things to really think about, specifically the chapters about being "committed."

Anyway gotta hit the hay. I appreciate the feedback and I'll check in again after next weekends session.

Raise more often. Like, a LOT at these tables. Either the table is really nitty, in which case you should be stealing like a madman OR you're playing way too tight and everyone knows that you've got a monster when you raise. Either way, raise more often preflop in these situations.

+1

A TAG strategy is a winner when you're up against loose players who will pay you off with everything. When you're up against tight players, you often have to mix it up a little. Personally, I'd choose a small number of medium suited connectors to raise with preflop in late position.

It's live 1/2 NL, the ability to "steal like a madman" doesn't exist. Occasionally you can pickup preflop limps, but that's it, and even that generally leads to getting called in multiple spots.

OP is describing a table where his $10-12 pre flop raises are repeatedly taking down pots. While I agree that this is very very rare at $1/2, it seems to be what's happening here. If OP had opened up and started getting called down more, he might have gotten more action with his big pocket pairs.

Sorry let me clarify. Normally the poker room I play at (Parx) is very loose preflop. Standard PF raises are $10-15 and they usually always get at least one caller and more often 2-3. I was trying to say it was more of an anomaly than normal that nobody called my raises with those hands. So when I opened up a little raising with suited connectors I got played at a little more and had some tougher decisions. I wasn't even playing incredibly tight, not tight enough that my raises should be folded around. I'd say I look to steal a limped pot once every two orbits in position by raising $10 + $2 per limper. Is that a leak or sound? Obviously I prefer to have good cards when I do it because I know how loose the tables generally are but I certainly don't do it with rags.

I haven't really incorporated 3-betting into my game yet. I wanted to wait until I had a BR of $5000 before I started making more complex or questionable plays. I don't mind semi bluffing to build a draw or firing a c-bet, especially when I do 3-bet in position and can represent an A or K if I don't have it but I don't feel comfortable yet outright bluffing with air. It just seems too -EV to me probably because I don't know when or how to do it.

Btw, I know everyone says "if its good enough to play its good enough to raise with" and I used to play online like that, but at this poker room especially, if its not raised hard preflop, every hand will have 4-5 limpers. I try to get involved in any limped hand I can in MP-LP with any low PP, low suited connectors, A-5s looking for sets, 2 pairs or straights/flush draws. I don't get married to TPWK. Is this what everybody does and is this +EV or -EV? With effective stacks of $200-300 it seems like a no brainer to play these hands when you are getting 4 or 5 to 1 on your money and they are rarely raised big enough to knock out limpers. Sometimes they are raised to $10 and if 2-3 call I will usually call as well if in later position.

Now I never limp with hands I want to win outright with on the flop. If its limped to me and I am in MP+ I am usually raising with 99+.

As many people have said before, it depends.

In NLHE and other big-bet games—much more so than in limit games—you should typically identify your opponents' weakest points and absolutely crush the **** out of them. It's not that you don't do this at all in limit games, but that it's paramount in big-bet games. There are of course the basics of not making loose calls and not getting trapped with dominated hands, but the real money is made by mercilessly exploiting people's mistakes.

In that light, whether you should be raising preflop or seeing cheap flops somewhat depends on what your opponents' mistakes are and how much you can gain from them. Taken in broad strokes, people tend to either make their big mistakes preflop or post-flop. When your opponent tends to make a lot of mistakes preflop, you'll want to raise to punish him preflop. Get him to put a lot of money in there with his weak preflop holdings, and he'll be stuck playing big pots with marginal hands, or missing a lot of flops and having to fold. On the other hand, if his preflop selection is solid, but he often gets married to stuff like big one-pair hands, you'll want to see cheap flops whenever you can so you can trap him in his post-flop mistakes.

Of course, a lot of pots are going to include people of both types, as well as people who make very few mistakes and people who make mistakes both pre- and post-flop. The situations you can get into are too numerous to cover in a forum post, but generally, you'll want to see cheap flops when your implied odds are high, make flops expensive when you want to avoid giving your opponents good implied odds against your better hands, and GTFO otherwise. Preflop pot odds barely even factor in until there have been at least two raises. Big-bet poker is a game of the action to come much more than the action that has already happened.

Mmmm, good healthy discussion ITT.

Preflop $10-15 raises are pretty standard in *every* $1/2 game I've ever sat in. Getting 1-3 callers > 90% of the time is pretty normal too. but you do occasionally find tables where 15 people will call your $12 bet. So if these were true, and you just ran all your big hands into the 10% of times where everyone folds that just sucks. Since you're making other raises and getting called you might want to take a look at the way you're physically playing and try to see if you're giving off some kind of tell that you have a big hand. Or just wait and see if you start getting paid off when you have AA.

You need to be careful that you're raising with SCs in good situations, not just "once every other orbit". You'll probably find opportunities about that often, just pick the right ones based on who's in the pot and your position. I also like to have some equity based on my hand when I decide to steal/bluff too. Anything that can flop a concealed monster is a good candidate.

One of the biggest ways we make money at $1/2 is by getting called by hands that are WAY behind, in situations where Villains should have known they were no good. Sometimes they'll even tell us that they 'know' they're beat, and still call anyway. If you *never* bluffed at $1/2, ever, you could still win a lot of money. (You'll win more with well timed bluffs of course.) So yea, hold off bluffing with air until you gain more experience live, and more experience against specific regs.


Totally false. Makes a good movie quote, but bad poker advice. Depends on the situation. There are a lot of times where raising only gets you called by hands that beat you and chases out all of the hands you beat and would pay you off. Read the forum, post some hands, you'll find examples of these.

Limped pots with small PP's are good when they go multi-way. They're OK for those stupid $5 bets people make too. Sets are sneaky and no-one ever sees them coming so you're more likely to get paid off. Theses are great hands to go to a 5-way $10/each flop with $200 behind.

Small suited Aces are less valuable since either you have to draw to an obvious hand, or you flop the nuts on a terrifying board for other hands and it's hard to get paid off. Don't play these in EP, not even too often in MP. I don't play them to a raise, might limp LP behind others.

Not a fan of small SCs in EP or MP, or even LP. Limped or otherwise. The problem is that you end up getting coolered too often when you do manage to get all of the money in. What good is a 6 high flush when V bets 100bb?



Excellent post.

OP, once you finish Professional NLHE, read Small Stakes NLHE from the same authors, Reading Hands by Ed Miller, and Playing the Player also by Ed Miller. The first two give you a really solid understanding of the game, 3rd teaches you to figure out what V's ranges look like, then "Playing the Player" details some of the ways you can exploit Villains just like Jimulacrum describes.

Thanks for all the replies so far, lot of good stuff in here. I guess I should have searched the forums a little better and would have seen that "Live Low-stakes NL" is going to be my new home.

Regarding your guys' other points, what made Monday a little more difficult I think was that 5 or 6 of the 9 at the table were there for the entire 6 hour session so we all saw each other play many many hands. I actually knocked out 3 short stacks over the course of the session but most hands were with these guys, many of whom seemed like regulars.

I think one guy at the table I respected picked up on a tell of mine when I was weak and after exploiting it once or twice I picked up on the fact that he must have spotted something so I started doing what I think he assumed was a tell when I was strong and it really seemed to mess with his head a little bit, I was able to win some small pots off him after that and never ran into weird reraises from him after that. I try to make all decisions with the same relative lack of emotion so it must have been something subtle.

Next week I am going to play on the weekend again and see how much easier the table is. Can't imagine I'll be with 6-7 regs again. Thanks for the advice on the books and SCs and AXs.

PS: I also take notes of the memorable hands I play which I think will be good once I accumulate enough sessions. For example, I remember two hands in my last couple of sessions, one time I had JJ in the BB and the other time AA in the BB. Both were raised around the table for small raises with a few callers creating pots of $20-30 by the time it got back to me. With both of those hands I raised to the total pot amount and both were folded back to me for nice small wins. Should I be happy I won a small pot? Mad that I overbet and didn't get a single caller? Or now using this information to my future advantage realizing there are more opportunities to employ this play with less-than-premium hands and they don't have to be folded back to me every time to be profitable and with a decent range that creates chances for people to call when I actually do have a premium hand?

^ That thought just came to me. That seems to be what poker is about moreso, not just playing your cards but being able to read the table and its tendencies and extracting value even when you don't have the nuts. Can't wait to get back and play again.

Should I be happy I won a small pot? Mad that I overbet and didn't get a single caller?

neither...just unlucky that with a pot sized bet you didn't find that one guy with a callable hand. Assuming your goal in potting was one caller- you still need the perfect storm of someone with Ace/face or set-mining to even get a call, even at a wild place like Parx. Perhaps 2/3 of the pot would work, but ......then again/...it depends.
nice thread btw.

Thanks Dave. Bit of an update here and one that I am begrudgingly providing. Played for 5 hours on Sunday and I am pretty sure I have spotted a large leak in addition to a skeptical leak.

Bought in for $200. I played my usual fairly tight game. I was seated next to a guy sitting on $2500 at $1/2. I immediately befriended him and we had a good relationship going, stayed out of eachothers' way for the most part. After 2 hours I was up $180 with nothing very spectacular to report. Couple of $12-15 PF raises with a few callers that I either took down with TPTK or C-Bet if isolated.

Now hands to talk about.

Hand 1) AJ from SB. A couple of limpers including villain on the button. I raise to $15 and get one caller plus the villain. Flop comes 2-J-6 rainbow. TPTK for me I lead out for $30 in a ~$45 pot. MP thinks about it and folds and villain calls. Turn comes a 9 putting 2 to the flush on board. MY LEAK? Leading turn after being smooth called on flop? I lead the turn for $75 into a $105 pot. Villain reraises to $220 which would commit my stack. Shove or fold is the play. I think about it for a good 3-4 minutes and fold showing my AJ. Villain gladly flips over QQ and says "Nice fold. I'm impressed. I put you on AJ and thought you were calling."

This has happened before many times when you are OOP and have TPTK. How do you know when to lead the turn for value and when to check? A lesser player could have just as easily been calling with KJ in villain's position. Is a better play to check/call the turn and check the river if unimproved?

That set me back to $230 which I meandered around for the next hour and a half or two hours. I went real card dead and was content folding my garbage 1-2 orbits at a time waiting for the tides to turn.

At the start of the 5th hour things started picking up for me. I won a $75 pot with a better 2 pair than opponent and made a great (in my opinion) call with middle-pair on a short-stack that went all-in after my bet in a multi-way pot that got folded back to me. I had pair of 8s J kicker he has 8s with a 10 and wasn't happy that I called or that I won.

Hand 2) Table was down to 4-way at this point and button made it $10 to go. I was SB with Q9s and called. Flopped the flush with a J high board. I check and villain checks. Turn is a rag so I lead out for $10. Villain reraises to $30. I think for 1-2 minutes wondering whether he may have the higher flush and decide call. River is another rag and me being unsure where I stand in the hand bet $25 into a $75 pot which the villain calls. He flips over middle-set and says "I thought I was good. Didn't think you had the flush. I would have called a lot more." My reasoning was since I didn't know where I stood I would try a 1/3 blocking bet and be committed to calling any reraise up to the pot total. Did I play this poorly or outright wrong?

DUN DUN DUN - the hand that ruined it all

Hand 3) I'm up to $425 at this point and ready to leave any minute content I am over a buyin. I get AQs UTG and make it $15 to go. Villain who I previously beat with a better 2 pair calls and so does the button. Flop comes 4-4-Q. Perfect flop for me. I lead out for $30. Villain calls. Button turns to his buddy and says "can you believe this ****?" shows him his cards and folds. Turn is a 9 putting 2 to the flush on the board. I lead out again for $75. Villain reraises AI to $240 I think about it for 1-2 minutes and decide to call. Villain flips over T4o and it holds up. Knocks me down to $140. I rebuy for $100 more and next hand my QQ gets cracked by an AJo shortstack who went AI after my raise which I called for another $60 more or so.

So +$225 night turns into -$130 in two hands. I thank everyone for the play get up calmly and leave because I knew I would tilt and wanted to watch Breaking Bad anyway.

So moral of the story is I get raped second time in 3 sessions by Trip-4s for my stack because I just really don't believe he would have it. At least last time the guy called with Q4s but this guy calling with T4o? I don't know. I'm disappointed because my reads were spot on all night. I honestly felt like I played one of my best sessions ever until this hand and I just don't know what was going through my head on that particular hand. Like I was on point for 4 hours and 58 minutes and had one lapse of judgement thinking "no way this guy has a 4" and I pay the price.

And I already knew the story. When people at $1/2 reraise you hard on the turn you are most likely beat. I was able to lay my TPTK down to an overpair 3 hours earlier why couldn't I do it again and call it another $115 learning lesson for leading the turn when I should have checked.

I really need to fix this leak guys I think it is my most obvious and -EV one and without it I think I would have a very healthy $/hour rate. Any thoughts/tips?

Updated my spreadsheet and total winnings have fallen to $490 and $/hour is something like $14/hr, down sharply from my peak of $56.

This is why I hate playing hands out of the SB. Position position position.

It's hard to say if this is a leak without knowing more about the way this other guy is playing. Against many opponents we want to value bet every chance we get. Occasionally we're going to value own ourselves, but in the end it's profitable to keep firing often.

Most opponents at $1/2 are very passive and just keep calling you down. When they raise, especially on the turn, it's a pretty good indication that you're beat and can safely fold.

If this guy is actually pretty competent a check on the turn might be acceptable if it can get you calls from lesser hands on the river. Same if he's very aggressive and likely to bluff or value bet a worse hand. But each of these traits is far less common than the typical weak-passive calldown. Know your opponent.

This call with the 8 is probably wrong. In a multiway pot middle pair is very rarely good.


Yes. This should be a lead on the flop. You want to charge a nut flush to draw, try to stack a lower flush, and get as much value as possible from other hands that you beat like sets. These types of boards are very polarized. Either villains are willing to play the hand or they aren't. So get as much money into the middle as quickly as possible the times they are interested, and get them folded out and move on to the next hand the times they aren't.

You don't want a blocking bet on this river. There's a bad argument for a really small 'inducing' bet to try to GET a raise out of the villain, but not blocking. Blocking is attempting to bet the smallest amount that he'll just call, which is pretty much the exact opposite of what we want here. We want to bet the MOST that he'll call.

This is why you should just get up and leave when you're ready to go, **** seeing 'one more hand'.

It's hard to put a guy on a 4 in a raised pot. It may be a leak on my part but I'm very tempted to fold this turn and just go home. Again, it comes down to getting raised on the turn. This is so incredibly often a hand that has us *crushed*. I'd expect to see Q9 or 99 more often just about anything else. QJ isn't making this move.

The QQ vs AJ hand is fairly standard. Don't worry about it.

That's the deal with poker. It's just like war. Hours and hours of waiting punctuated by brief moments of intense action. One mistake and you're screwed.

I don't think the problem is so much that you lead when you should have checked, it's that you're calling when you should be folding. You might also be able to get away with slightly smaller bets on the turn when you're OOP like this. You don't want to go too small since it'll cut into your value when you're getting called by worse, but it saves you when you're bet/folding.

$56/hr is totally and completely unsustainable at $1/2, and it's an unrealistic expectation to have. That's a single session result. Read the bankroll and winrates thread and you'll see that $20/hr over a large (for live) sample is a really good rate. $10/hr is more common.

Keep reading the LLSNL forum and you'll see a lot of hand examples and discussions that'll help your game.

Great stuff again Angrist, thank you. As a general rule, do you think if I am going to lead the turn OOP maybe cutting it down to 50-60% of the pot would have the same desired effect while still being +EV? $50-60 bets instead of $75 in a $100 pot.

Probably.

Many live players think about bets in relation to the last bet instead of the pot size. So if you bet $25 on the flop, $50 on the turn is a 'logical' turn size. It doesn't matter that you just got called 4 ways and the pot is now $150.

In your specific AJ hand I'd actually lean a little cheaper on all streets. $12 preflop instead of $15, $25-27 into $45 on your flop, $20-25 into $36 on mine. Then probably exactly what you mention, $50-60 on the turn in your case, but with my line we're looking at a pot of $75-85 so you could get away with a $45 bet if you wanted, or $65+ depending on the opponents.

In general I try to keep pots smaller when OOP, especially with good but tricky hands like AJ. I'd be more inclined to make larger bets IP.

There's something to be said for the idea that your range from OOP should be tighter, so since it's stronger it also warrants larger bet sizing ... but I think that in most $1/2 situations the disadvantage of being OOP against what usually rates to be a large field far outweighs the absolute strength of your hand, so it calls for smaller bets.

I've never really worked out the math on the pros and cons of small vs large bets OOP. Partly because the change in sizing also affects your opponents ranges (smaller bets = wider ranges). It might be an interesting topic for a stand alone thread ...