You pretty much have the nuts right now. If he has K9 or 77 chalk it up to variance. He's pretty unlikely to have anything else that beats you. However I'm not keen to felt at this point because a large chunk of his range is strong draws. I think the best line is to call and then bet a non heart turn. I would stack off if the bet gets raised on a really blank turn like 3 or 5 or even K. I would probably fold to a raise on a turn like J or 8. If the heart does fall then you'll have to check fold.

I think he will have a very wide reraising range here: at least,89 to Q9, 67s, 87s, A7, A9, T8, JT, KJ/KT, 22-77ish and obv Axh. So you are huge against this range, and almost always he's on a drawing hand against you. Surely you need to make him pay the wrong price for his draws, and not try to get greedy slowplaying this, because there are so many turn cards that make at least one of the draws, that will allow him to push you off your hand, given he has position on you too.

I think the right line is to reraise him to c$42 and call a push if necessary.

Edit, lol thought I'd get there first. Obv ChrisV says something different!

I figured him for a smaller reraising range given that sence said he's quite tight. I think K9 will usually be in his calling range and maybe 77 too. I think the problem with the idea of charging him for his draw is that his draw will usually be very strong. Mostly it will be AXhh, JThh, QJhh, QThh or T8hh. It's impossible to protect against these hands because they have such huge equity. The only time his draw will be weak enough that he can't stack off is if he has JT or T8, non heart, and in this instance he may choose not to raise the flop. He may also have made essentially a bluff raise with something like QJo, but giving a card to this isn't much of a concern.

Rather than trying to avoid the free card on the flop, I'm more concerned about not allowing the very strong draws to see a river cheaply. Rather than protecting the small pot on the flop against what (if he folds) is only an 8 out draw at best, by calling and potting the turn I can protect the large turn pot against a draw that may have as many as 15 outs.

Edit: I just realised I'm an idiot and that the pot is the same size on both streets. The stuff about the number of outs stands though.

Thanks Chris.

When I first read this I immediately starting thinking of hands that would call a $70 bet on riv. I think it really depends on your image at the time, especially with a multitabling reg. If you've been playing snug, I think he can show up with jacks a bunch. Your hand doesn't look like much obv, so I def think you can get looked up by 44-77 a bunch.

If you bet small enough that he can call with those hands I think it's transparent enough that he will checkraise them often enough to make the bet unprofitable.

I wouldn't expect it from a mass multitabling 2/4 grinder. Timing should give a clue if it's a planned cr or a "wait wat...70?" spaz out cr

our hand isn't strong enough to induce a bet from his bluff range with a flop check.

That isn't the only reason to check. Another reason is that you can avoid a CRAI versus hands like TT.

Having said that, I would bet to protect and because it clarifies the hand immensely.

xPeru I just finally got HEM running and my hands imported and one of the first cool things I found was some articles and canned reports for data analysis.

Look in the menu bar for "articles" and you will find several called "fixing leaks" or something like that. In the "reports" tabs there are canned queries that go along with the articles. Very very cool you should check them out.

Madsci hand.

Gosh his 1/2 pot on the turn is weird. KQ or something taking a cheap shot at getting you to dump AK? Maybe 33 thinking it's a cheap shot at protection? Small turn bet like that seems pretty strange for an overpair.

When no made hand makes sense for him, it seems like being passive is correct.

River is probably a check. He could be getting tricky if he rivered you, since you don't look to have a good hand and might bluff the river. He could have checked a few winning hands that he thinks can only get called by better. But, given the board and your flop check he could look you up with an underpair. Since he's playing a lot of tables, he might not remember the flop, so I think a check is good.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/54...w-ahud-338578/

read this thread - go down to boywonder's long post

nice post micro - thanks for the heads up.

+1 excellent. Just what I needed to read at the moment.

Won at showdown v won without showdown - what deductions can I draw from graphs like this: it's a sample of 25NL, chosen not for being representative of my overall graphs, but because it is fairly extreme. So during this session, what was I doing that caused such a large gap between the red and blue lines, and how do I reverse them (and should I?)

lol wut?

It could be a number of things. Not defending your blinds enough, not stealing enough blinds, running bad, raise + cbet then shutdown syndrome, not following through on bluffs, etc.

Most likely though given the stakes, you're raising pf and cbetting and just shutting down when you get called and have air, draws, or weak pairs, causing you to miss profitable bluffs and fold winners.

Yeah back when i had a pretty big showdown/nonshowdown gap, it certainly wasn't lack of aggression or anything like that. I also think stealing the blinds can't possibly be a very big contributor. It's usually one of two things (or a combination):

- Not thin value betting enough on the river. If you check behind, the hand will be showdown where it would be nonshowdown if you bet and take it down.

- cbetting too much or not bluffing enough on later streets. If you cbet a lot and then surrender pots, it will be costing you money. You either need to stop cbetting so much (so the pots you lose are smaller) or bluff on later streets, or a combination of the two.

Yea rememeber that if your bluffs are getting looked up they show up as showdown pots.

6-8 tabling 25nl, this is so true!

"session" was the last 5 months of 25nl play. During this time, I've only played this level when I was not happy with playing 50 or 100nl for whatever reason. Because it's "easy" I add some more tables and autopilot. Eg if I have one pair (not an overpair) and villain raises my river bet, I instafold, ditto 2pr to a river shove on a coordinated board. I know this isn't the most profitable way to play, but it's mindless at a low level, and produces income I would otherwise forgo. What interests me is what I do when I'm on autopilot, because I think analysing this will reveal leaks which I'm not otherwise aware of when I'm concentrating properly. Here are my stats for the graph above:



Tight, aggressive flop, but then passive to the river, just as Blackize and Chris suggest. Steals are a little bit lower than my normal play, but not much, and I seem to defend my blinds adequately.

Anyone spot anything significant?

xPeru, I would not draw too many conclusions from losing so much in non-showdown pots at nl25. Most of your opponent's leaks at nl25 involve calling too much, so the bulk of your winnings are going to come from showdowns, and bluffing is generally going to be unprofitable.

I would be quite surprised if anybody was winning money in non-showdown pots at nl25 over a significant sample.

And I also don't believe thin value and merging ranges is important at the micro stakes. Just play solid ABC and value town them with your good hands imo.

Someone has to be winning the non-showdown pots. It's possible that trying to lose less in the non-showdown pots will cost as much or more in the showdown pots (getting caught bluffing), but it's worthing thinking about who is winning this non-showdown money, how they are doing it and whether you can get some of it.

Just for the experience ... and to finish a story, I've just played a quick session of 25nl, trying to focus on taking more non-showdown pots and value betting. I ramped up the turn aggression, and toned down the flop aggression a bet, and increased my steals, both from late, and reraising from the blinds v Bn/SB. Nice graph results, and red and blue lines are somewhat more aligned ...



At this hourly, I am totally prepared to move back down!

The only problem with the value bets and turn aggression is that it's v difficult to get the buggers to fold!

Fair enough - it never hurts to get better at all aspects of the game.

My main point stands though. When the majority of your opponents leak like a sieve from calling too much and can't recogonize what you're repping, barreling your bluffs and really thin value/merging isn't generally a good idea. At least in my opinion. (disclaimer: I still suck so tifwiw.)

I do believe something to focus on is picking up the little pots and the multiway limped pots when nobody shows much interest in them.

Peru,

Those river AFs don't look out of the ordinary. I just had a look at mine over my last 85K or so and it's 1.91. I don't think you'll find the problem by looking at stats.

If I look at my graph for this year, or for all time, it looks more like yours, but this is my last 85K where I think I have the problem licked:



I did the following things:

- Stopped cbetting so much versus loose-passive players when I have a hand that is bad but may win at showdown. Ace high is the usual candidate. One of two things will happen. Either they will check the turn, which from a bad player is a green light to go ahead and steal the pot, or they'll bet. If they bet and they're really passive, it means you were beaten on the flop and saved a cbet. If they bet and they're a bit more aggro and your ace high is a good one, you might be able to profitably call, getting value in a situation where a cbet would have pushed your opponent off a worse hand on the flop. (That's one way of getting to showdown, the other way is to simply keep checking if you don't think you can credibly rep anything on the turn, for instance if the board paired).

- Started looking for more turn and river bluff opportunities, which is easier when you're not always running cbet flop - check turn lines. Here's one made-up example:

2/4 NL holdem

Dealt to ChrisV [ A 3 ]

Preflop: 3 folds, ChrisV raises to $14, SB folds, RandomDonk calls $10

Flop: J T 5 ($30)

RandomDonk checks, ChrisV checks

Turn: 3 ($30)

RandomDonk bets $15, ChrisV calls $15.

OK so the call here looks kind of strange since my equity versus him is probably pretty bad. The thing that makes it profitable is that I know he's going to misplay certain rivers that will allow me to bluff. For instance:

River: 7 ($60)

RandomDonk bets $30, ChrisV raises to $120, RandomDonk folds.

Versus a good player, I probably can't do this because he will bluffcatch on the river with marginal hands rather than betting. What bad players do though is simply bet half pot whenever they think they might be winning, so he will certainly bet with any jack or ten here and maybe with worse pairs. I also expect him to continue bluffing if that's what he was doing on the turn. You can also generally tell when they've made a good hand because they bet pot.

Obviously don't do this versus total calling stations, and even if he's not a huge calling station he's going to snap me off sometimes with AJ or whatever, but overall these lines are pretty profitable.

Note that it was easier for me to bluff the river given the flop/turn line I ran. I was able to tell a consistent story - that I flopped nothing, that my hand improved on the turn, and that I hit on the river. If the turn and river had been spades, my play would probably look the same. If I had run a bet flop, check turn line, then for one thing my opponent is more likely to check to me on the river since I have announced that my hand was bad on the turn. My opponent would also be suspicious of me not two-barrelling a flush draw on the turn. Not that I think that's a good play, just that bad opponents are less likely to believe you had anything when you didn't bet or call a bet.

I was doing some more thinking about non-showdown pots and starting playing around a bit in HEM and discovered that from all positions except for the blinds I'm a winner in both non-showdown pots as well as showdown pots. I win more in non-showdowns from the BTN than UTG (as I would expect) but if I look at UTG --> BTN my winnings come almost equally from non-showdowns and showdowns.

However, when I look at the blinds I'm getting killed in non-showdown pots. I lose so much in non-showdown pots from the blinds that it completely wipes out my winnings from non-showdown pots played from all the other positions combined.

I'm not sure yet if I'm defending too much or not enough, or maybe defending poorly... Or even if this is to be expected and in order to win overall in non-showdown pots I just need to win even more of these pots from positions other than the blinds.

Anybody have ideas for how to analyze my play from the blinds to see if I can work this out?