Playerpool is pretty fishy on Microgaming, so not sure if we should have a triple barrel bluffing range here vs an unknown, so is it a good plan to take more passive lines here on a flop, that smacks a calling range and go for check-call with all our good draws, instead of 2-3 barrel bluffing some A Q, K Q?

Microgaming - 360/720 NL (8 max) - Holdem - 8 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

Hero (MP): 20,907
MP+1: 50,899 (VPIP: 75.00, PFR: 25.00, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 4)
CO: 52,396 (VPIP: 21.74, PFR: 8.70, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 23)
BTN: 22,652 (VPIP: 34.78, PFR: 30.43, 3Bet Preflop: 12.50, Hands: 23)
SB: 64,010 (VPIP: 26.09, PFR: 14.29, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 23)
BB: 14,820 (VPIP: 14.69, PFR: 8.28, 3Bet Preflop: 4.35, Hands: 178)
UTG: 16,224 (VPIP: 34.48, PFR: 25.93, 3Bet Preflop: 25.00, Hands: 29)
UTG+1: 21,620 (VPIP: 33.02, PFR: 20.59, 3Bet Preflop: 7.69, Hands: 106)

8 players post ante of 180, SB posts SB 360, BB posts BB 720

Pre Flop: (pot: 2,520) Hero has Q K

fold, fold, Hero raises to 1,440, MP+1 calls 1,440, fold, fold, fold, fold

Flop: (5,400, 2 players) 8 T J
Hero checks, MP+1 bets 2,520, Hero calls 2,520

Turn: (10,440, 2 players) 2
Hero checks, MP+1 checks

River: (10,440, 2 players) 4
Hero

Being oop I think I'd rather CB to fold out marginal pairs and even some A-high hands. Don't really want to be x/calling with an OESD.

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Yes, cbet for sure. As played, I'd probably just check back. You're really not repping too much OTR by betting the way the hand has played out.

Plans for turn/river on blanks?

Fire again on the turn. People give so little respect to flop CBs these days that you can often take down a pot like this with a second bullet.

def like the x/c. its just a flop that absolutely smashes vils range so we should be doing very little betting. all stuff that we fold out by betting has very little equity against KQ here anyway so equity denial isnt a huge issue. its not the end of the world if vil gets to the turn with 55 or whatever, we can still put in bets on turns and/or rivers.

as played it rly comes down to what you do with overpairs otf. if you cbet every single overpair otf (which is a mistake) your x/c flop lead river range becomes way too bluffheavy. if you have a reasonably "strong" (strong as in having some pretty good hands in it) range when taking that line otf you have a somewhat mandatory bluff otr because its actually the stone bottom of your range and has ok blockers to vils value range too (a little less significant on this texture i think though).

+1 to everything said here.

Help me understand this. I'm not trying to be an arse, I genuinely want to understand this perspective. It seems that the concept of balance dominates hand analysis these days. Virtually every hand posted generates responses along the lines of, "It depends what you do with x hands bc if you do w with x hands, then you have to do z with y hands, because otherwise you'll be doing z too often with x hands in this spot, and that means on the river you won't be doing enough q with x..."

Now I totally get why balance is important if you're playing in tourneys with the same general player pool of thinking opponents. In that case opponents will learn how you play certain hands so you need to ensure you balance your ranges to avoid being predictable. Makes total sense.

But explain to me why balance is important for micro/small stakes players who rarely encounter the same players over a series of tourneys. And even if they do, their opponents won't have a large enough sample of hands to work with and likely aren't advanced enough thinkers to even use the information effectively. Isn't it more profitable in this context to focus on the most exploitable play in this specific situation and not worry about balance?


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I can completely understand what you're saying here. It's not a simple game, but I find it more and more that people are trying to overcomplicate pretty simple spots.

happy to get back to this with a more detailed response but to make it short, we shouldn't rly play too much on assumptions such as "player pool does x, y or z never/always/too often etc" but rather have a sound strategy for every single spot, because playing a guessing game is very dangerous. it gets you to play leveling wars (he knows that i know that he knows etc) which simply have too many variables to be solved whereas if you put an emphasis on your own strategy its a lot more logical. poker is a pretty simple game, it's literally just solving a math problem with every single decision that you make.

If poker was a simple game we would all be rich.

But here's the point, which I've made in a previous post: you always have to make some assumptions about the way your opponents play. If you focus on balancing your range with every decision, you are assuming your opponents are observant enough to make balance important. Even if you sit at a table with the same players for 8 hours, balance is pointless if they don't pay attention to how you play your hands. By focusing on balance you are actually thinking too deep relative to your opponents. Same reason why bluffing doesn't work as effectively in the micro stakes: most micro stakes players aren't good enough to recognize threats and fold decent hands.

But the other problem is the sample size issue. Think about it this way: if you say down with a group of strangers to play one single hand, would you make your decision based on range balance? You shouldn't. Balance is only relevant within the context of a large enough series of hands against specific opponents. You can't balance in a single hand because there is nothing to balance.

This is why balance is important at the higher stakes, where you play against a much smaller pool of players who tend to be more advanced in their poker thinking. But in the micro/small stakes, where you play against a massive player pool of less advanced players, balance isn't nearly as important. You're better off focusing on how to exploit each situation as effectively as possible.

(Obviously the distinction between micro/small and high stakes is somewhat arbitrary, but I think we can all agree that $11 and lower are clearly small stakes.)



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alright i shouldve probably ignored this in the first place but i can probably still make up for it.

im not even going to bother commenting because we had this argument a million times and nothing good came out of it. you are entitled to your opinion and i am entitled to completely disagree with almost every single one of your post. in my humble opinion you are as clueless about poker as it gets but thats not even the problem. the problem is that you actually think you have it all figured out.

this will be my last post on small stakes mtt. if you or anyone else ever sees another post from me on this subforum from now on feel free to pm me and i will snap send you 100$ on stars/skrill.

This is why I left 2+2 years ago, because it's full of arrogant pricks who don't have the ability to engage in a discussion with anyone who doesn't share their opinion.

Unlike you, who just spouts your opinion, I provided valid reasons in support of my view that balance isn't important at these stakes. But you haven't made any effort to refute my argument; all you've done is grabbed your ball and walked away like a child.

I'm actually a very open-minded individual and would happily revise my opinion if someone can provide me with a convincing argument.

By the way, not once did I ever resort to name calling or insults the way you did. Nicely done.

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I'll try instead by keeping it short and sweet..

You acknowledge that balance is more important at higher stakes, which i agree with.

I would assume most small stakes players have aspirations to move up to higher stakes.

Therefore, is it not good practice to apply balance theories to your game whilst playing the small stakes so you are in the habit of doing so when your skill level and bank roll allows you to move up? Even if you dont completely move away from small stakes there will be times when we take a shot at a higher buyin (SCOOP, TCOOP, WCOOP etc).

That's a totally legit reason, provided you view your time in micro stakes as practice for higher stakes. But if your goal is to profit in the micro stakes, using strategies more appropriate for higher stakes won't work.

Perhaps the solution is for people to provide two answers to every hand analysis question:

1) Here's the most profitable way to play the hand;

2) Here's what would be the most profitable way to play the hand at higher stakes against better players.

Part of the reason in making an issue out of this is because there are lots of beginner players in this forum who are starting in the micros and are genuinely looking for advice on how to beat these stakes. Sending them the message that the best way to play a hand is one that utilizes advanced strategies more appropriate against different opposition doesn't help them.

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But you don't know the most profitable way to play the hand. Trying to figure out what the most profitable play is in a hand without using balancing would be playing a guessing game based on very incomplete information you might be interpreting wrong.

I believe you are thinking the other way around. When you have enough information on your opponents you can start deviating from the mathematically and game theory proven optimal approach. This amount of information would usually be reached earlier in a smaller player pool such as the high stakes than the micros.

Of course there are many exceptions as a lot of players give away a lot of information very fast, but interpreting and adjusting on this adequately and fast enough is what makes a great poker player. I believe we can safely discard ourselves from this category for now.

And I do believe that the 'if poker would be simple we'd all be rich' part is what ticked daviid off. Something I can very well imagine.

First of all, in response to this:
daviid was the one who said poker is a simple game, which is a silly thing to say. And he was ticked off long before I commented in response.

Second of all, I'll just let some people who are far more knowledgeable about poker speak on this issue.

Nathan "BlackRain79" Williams from his blog:

"Since most of your opponents at the lower stakes will have massive glaring weaknesses like this in their game, an exploitative approach is absolutely the best way to beat them for the highest winrate.

Other approaches like GTO (game theory optimal) poker for instance, which has become popular in recent years, are far less effective against players like this. Because this style of play fails to attack the actual weaknesses of micro stakes poker players.

So that is why some of the HUD stats that I advocate above will be either too weak or too strong for some people. In fact some people will complain that these stats are too "unbalanced."

But that is the entire point!

You don't crush players who have large fundamental leaks in their game by trying to balance all of your ranges in every situation and become totally unexploitable (i.e. what GTO poker tries to do).

That stuff is great to know once you get to mid stakes and it is definitely necessary for high stakes games. However, I am talking about how to beat the beginner level regs and recreational players that you will find at the micros here, NOT solid well balanced professionals."

Or how about Doug Polk:

"By definition, a GTO approach does not factor in your opponent’s tendencies, including the exploitable ones.

In other words, a truly GTO-based strategy will often times pass up on the most +EV decision for the sake of balance.

This hurts the EV of some individual hands, but makes your range more profitable as a whole. Most of the time, especially at lower stakes, there’s no need to make this EV sacrifice when there are gaping holes in your opponents’ games to exploit."

And I agree 100% that balancing against someone you know is unbalanced is stupid. My point is that you have no idea in which way I am unbalanced before we start playing together, so without that information you're playing a guessing game if you are making assumptions about when and where to not balance.

Therefore in my opinion we should aim to learn the way to play balanced poker and deviate from it when we see opportunities to maximize our expectancy and exploit our opponents.

I agree 100%. The crux of our disagreement is that you guys seem willing to give unknown micro stakes players much more credit that I am. The fact is the vast majority of micro stakes players have major leaks in their game and are exploitable, so they aren't totally unknown. And if I do run into a thinking player like yourself or daviid, we're not going to play many hands together in the grand scheme of things so it will take a long, long time for you to detect that my play is unbalanced.

Listen, this isn't a new issue in the world of poker. People have been debating GTO vs exploitable strategies for years. And there are very successful players on both sides of the debate.

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