What? Why would you 4bet a hand like KTs

god dam..

Some people actually fold KQ and KJ to 4bets on stars

AJfenix is a boss.

i have no idea about bovada. by 'euro' sites i meant the small-medium sites where europeans can play, e.g. 888. maybe bovada is way softer than those, i don't know. i should add that i havne't played on 888 in about 3 years, and that maybe 888 has become relatively softer (compared to other euro sites) recently with increased rake/worse rakeback or something, i don't know.
also, i didn't mention a comparison between stars midstakes and other sites. 100z isn't midstakes.

i know how playing lower stakes often ties one's hands and forces one to dumb-down decisions/thinking, and i realise you had had a couple of beers. taking those 2 factors into account, i still think your commentary and lines showed a surprisingly low level of NLSH ability/understanding. that's just my opinion as an NLSH player. i said that not to be negative to you, but to counter-weight the other opinions in this thread. and i don't want to discuss poker strategy or specific spots, but fwiw i can't remember any big laydowns that i disagreed with. i'm not a coach and not trying to prove anything about my own ability. but the fact that you baselessly assume you would be ''likely right much more often than [me]'' shows that you have an irrational/biased picture of your own skill compared to others'.

bringing up the recent worst day of my career seems mean to me. it was an especially painful day for me, and i wouldn't have posted about it in the official unibet thread if i'd thought anyone might publisize it elsewhere.
and yeah, losing 12 stacks at nl1k in a day clearly means i'm rubbish at NLSH, ok...

p.s. i just remember that you wrote something about having some of the highest winrates in the games you play. that claim just seems way off and dishonest to me. that's part of the reason why i posted critically.

Solid enough.

Becks... beer fish.

Watched it last night. Kudos to the guy for giving free advice and trying to attract people to the game. And for giving up time to be a carer. How many of us do that? Will sign up to support him.

[QUOTE=Keruli;4608474





bringing up the recent worst day of my career seems mean to me. it was an especially painful day for me, and i wouldn't have posted about it in the official unibet thread if i'd thought anyone might publisize it elsewhere.
and yeah, losing 12 stacks at nl1k in a day clearly means i'm rubbish at NLSH, ok..



Anything posted on the interwebs is public record and fair game to quote.
I am curious, though, how much actual money is "12 stacks at nl1k"?

maybe it's fair game, but that doens't mean it's not kind of nasty to dig through my post history, find a post i made in a far corner of the forum about a big losing day, and post it in NVG. matter of taste/opinion though.

are you asking that because you don't know that, without further info on format/strategy, 12 stacks of nl1k equals 12 000?

or are you trying to cleverly insinuate that i likely buy-in for less than 100bb? (the vast majority of players who do so are recreational, longterm losing players)

So you basically know nothing about Bovada and very little about current 888, yet you quoted "100NL Zoom is tougher than 400NL on Bovada 888 or whatever" and made an arrogant awful joke/disparaging comment, when this claim is pretty reasonable.

For what it's worth, Bovada is a VERY unique site with Americans and anonymous tables. People were comparing people beating much smaller stakes elsewhere as being capable of beating much bigger stakes on Bovada, that was the whole discussion going on that you chimed in on. Maybe actually knowing something about it would have been helpful, but its NVG, the f am I talking about. "If you aren't trolling, you're doing it wrong", as one expert told me.

Mannn. I'm not sure you realize, but I'm streaming on twitch. In the same vein as not knowing anything about Bovada, I assume you don't know much about twitch. The poker level of audience is mostly (completely new) or people that play ~1c 2c. At times, I try to cater to them. Other times I don't. It's annoying because if you caught other sessions, you would likely think much differently, but for me, realizing that at any point someone like you can pop in for X amount of time and make this assessment makes it much less fun for me, as it makes me inclined to "always be on", dance less, nike clap less, ignore the bulk of my audience, keep things on the highest level, focus and make sure that when I finally get an Ike, Jungleman, or Keruli to pop in, they know damn well my thought process is like a god damn ginsu blade no matter which 15-minute segment of the 8 hour stream is running.

I feel the need to prove my worth to good regs (who have mostly given good feedback), because lord forbid one makes a post in NVG with an opinion that doesn't boost my prom queen ego... all of a sudden the horror hits me, my night takes a wild turn and I have to write another essay. These things can be avoided by speaking 100 words per minute and making sure they are all godlike. That likely takes removing singing, and possibly even bobbing my head. Its a tough life, man.

I'd like to know which thought processes/lines, or at least get an example, because I think we've gone pretty deep on stream many times before.

Not that this is indicative of it, but it was a fan favorite:

$0.50/$1 Zoom No Limit Holdem
PokerStars
6 Players
Hand Conversion Powered by weaktight.com

Stacks:
UTG nrgdarki ($456.99) 457bb
UTG+1 RediCsDaWaY ($140.53) 141bb
CO allinochocin ($64.29) 64bb
BTN botaniq37 ($216.85) 217bb
SB epazeli ($125.61) 126bb
BB Hero ($186.07) 186bb

Pre-Flop: ($1.50, 6 players) Hero is BB 10 J
3 folds, botaniq37 raises to $2.20, 1 fold, Hero calls $1.20

Flop: 4 9 7 ($4.90, 2 players)
Hero checks, botaniq37 bets $3.14, Hero raises to $10.50, botaniq37 calls $7.36

Turn: A ($25.90, 2 players)
Hero bets $18, botaniq37 calls $18

River: 2 ($61.90, 2 players)
Hero checks, botaniq37 bets $33, Hero calls $33

Final Pot: $127.90
botaniq37 shows high card Ace
8 10
Hero shows high card Ace - Jack kicker
10 J

Hero wins $125.10 (net +$61.40)

botaniq37 lost $63.70

(we are right here 2x as often as we need to be combinatorically)

Here I go, using a sample of one to display absolutely nothing of value as proof of "something" to counter someone using a sample of (unknown) from a drinking stream to make a full assessment of my poker skill

Not baseless, just like you went off of whatever sample, I'm going off of your posts here to assess level of cluelessness. Seeing as you made other comments about things you knew nothing about, I feel that your ranges still include plenty of cluelessness. Of course, I could be wrong, I'm going off of a limited sample...

As does your post in this thread : ) Gotta keep it balanced, right? Assuming that whatever random sample you caught is a full representation of anything, then using that to "counterbalance" people giving support in a thread, thanks for your balance m8



Highest winrates (or close) in the 6max NL games I've played over the years, including recent times of ~a year ago. Yes. This is what I've claimed, those claims are true. I just hopped into the 100Z game. I don't think it's the case for that game yet, but I feel pretty good about my chances of making it so vs the people that actually stay in that game. What was dishonest?

I don't know you and would never try to insult you. I play mainly live in the US and am not familiar with newer online lingo. I refer to games as 2 5 NL with a minimum buy in of 300 and max 1000 or half of the big stack.
Or 1-3 PLO with 200 minimum buy in. Those are some of the local games.
Anyway, Ajfenix has a entertaining program and I am sure some viewers can learn some useful poker tactics. And you can learn how to pick up "big girls"...

ajfenix opening up [trolls'] eyes and [their] game[s] itt.

watched the stream for a few minutes last night and it was hilarious. aj

At least AJ doesn't end his streams with a 20 minutes sales pitch for coaching like some of the other streamers do. He's very funny and entertaining; having streamers like him on twitch is very good for the game as it keeps new players interested. I doubt fun players would enjoy watching a Russian GTO nit who never says a word. I also don't get the point of debating over his bb/100 winrate unless you plan to get coaching from him.

Maybe the discussion prior was about bovada, but the statement I quoted and made fun of was about 'bovada 888 or whatever', which is very vague, and which I interpreted to include 888 and other medium to large euro-sites. I have no direct experience to disprove that 888 has somehow become much softer relative to the field in the last 2 years and now has nl400 games that are softer than 100z, but, given the way 888 was developing when I left and given the way I think overal poker economy/ecology works, I find this highly unlikely. But even if this were true, I can still adress the sites that fall under 'whatever'. I've spent the last 4 years grinding various euro-sites and occasionally a bit on stars. Given my experience, the statement that nl400 or 'whatever'[of course this is very vague and could even have intended meaning that renders this part pointless] sites is softer than 100z is unreasonable and debatably more arrogant than me making fun of this statement. I don't think my comment was particularly awful or arrogant. towards whom? I'm not insulting 100z grinders, I'm just saying they wouldn't crush euro-site nl400. (I think they would do worse than at 100z)


reading this, your approach to making a fun poker stream sounds great to me, and I honestly don't want to have a negative impact on a fun twitch stream. if you're confident that some viewers (e.g. myself) having a low opinion of your play is simply due to them tuning in at the wrong time, then maybe you can force yourself to just ignore me/them and not let it get to you.

i don't want to talk seriously discuss lines etc.

you have zero sample on my poker ability. my sample on yours is something like 20 comments/brief explications of thought processes/decisions, of which about about 10-15 seemed way off to me/irreconcilable with high-winrate play. this is actually the%

Hey man, I enjoy the coliseum that is NVG. Don't take offense to my replies, I have fun making them.

Isn't that convenient. I assume "this is actually the% " means 10-15% of the 20 spots. Either way, you won't give a single example as you don't want to talk "strat", so this discussion is pointless.

Maybe you don't want your own thought process challenged and this is a safe approach, maybe you feel you'd be giving something mind-blowing away. I'd be willing to debate here or elsewhere, I AIN'T SCARED. You do realize your own analysis/assumptions about those spots may not be accurate/correct pertaining to the players we are playing against, right? That exploitatively, certain things that you deem "irreconcilable" can actually be quite better than what you consider to be the necessary standard? That maybe YOUR approach to certain spots would not be in-tune with how THESE games play?

I feel I'm pretty well versed in both exploitative and non-exploitative analysis/range construction, the latter being heavily ingrained from years of discussion with top PLO players. From certain perspectives, parts of my range "shouldn't" be doing X, or I'm too far up in my range, or X part of my range should/shouldn't/has to Y, or X are my optimal combinations for bluffing due to Y so I should use them since I clearly need Z bluffs, and yet in many of these situations vs these players it would be absolutely awful to follow said "proper" guidelines with the clear-cut information we are given. In reverse, some of the approaches taken would indeed be irreconcilable with high winrate play against various subsets of players in many player pools on different sites.

I doubt you'd surprise me with anything you could say, but without giving examples, you are able to take the safe route, paint an illusion that you 100% know what near-optimal play in these games looks like and give a review from that pedestal, and not back it up.

Let me sum it up:



As for your other comments, I believe higher winrates are attainable at 2/4 @ at least some of the other sites in comparison to 100z. As for Bovada, which pretty much the whole discussion was about:




Whats up tannenj! Good to see a RESPECTABLE name from the old school. Hope all has been good, thanks for the kind words : )

New fav thread

edit: that youtube clip is brilliant.

firstly, i have no idea what the last sentence of my last post means, so please ignore it . i meant roughly 10-15 of 20, dunno what i was going to say using some %.

regarding my critisism of your play without backing it up with specifics:
seems like you're assuming i was talking about strictly GTO/unexploitable play, but i wasn't. i have a fairly good idea of how 100z plays and generally what approaches work at various micro-mid stakes (except midstakes on stars, i don't claim to have experience there). but again, I'm not a coach and I'm not going to try to prove any of this. (maybe i should add at this point, in case people are getting the wrong idea, that I don't see myself as some kind of elite pro. I would assume that any solid stars midstakes(400-1k) grinder is significantly better than me.)

Anyway, this has lead me to ponder a general problem with public poker discussion:
how can one make meaningful, well-founded contributions to discussions like these if one is a player who is trying to maximise one's edge and is aware of the broader, subtle, longer-term negative effects (on one's edge) of public strategy discussion and acts accordingly?
i'm often tempted to make a brief critical comment, be it positive or negative, but then i realise that even this brief comment would go against my poker interests. for example, whilst consciously avoiding specific strategy talk in the first part of this post, i was writing something about how(imo) one should distribute/balance exploitative and unexploitable approaches. But then I realised that even this goes against my interests, as it would be meta-strategy, and meta-strategy is in fact just another part of one's overal strategic approach to making money in poker.
However, I don't think backing up a specific opinion with edivence is necessary. i don't think that online forums actually work in such a strict way. Posters can post opinions without backing them up directly. Instead, among other things, you have the indirect information provided by the coherence and/or validity of the set of all other posts by the poster, and you have any possible private direct or indirect knowledge of the poster, and you have the way the post is written.


regarding me being off-topic:
what determines the topic of a thread?
is it determined 100% by the OP?
is the topic of a thread constant, or can it (gradually) change over the course of the thread?
or is there no topic of a whole thread, but instead a (slightly) different topic with every new post, so a different topic relative to each post? in which case, is the current topic determined by the sum of all posts up until that point? how? are more recent posts weighted more heavily in current topic determination? these are questions one can may want to ponder if one is extremely bored and has nothing else to do.

i think there can be more than one topic in a thread, and that various relations can hold between posts and topics, and that each new post in a thread at least slightly changes the topic(s) of a thread, and that the topicality of a thread and of various points in and segments of a thread are interpreted (at least slightly) differently by every reader.
you may think the topic was bovada, but i may intepret things differently and/or be adressing a different topic, and you can't just dictate that my posts should be adressing bovada or else are irrelevant.


''I doubt you'd surprise me with anything you could say''
i'm glad that a lot of somewhat serious poker players think this way, as it makes poker much easier.

Keruli vs AJ prop bet! Lets settle it.

We could argue whether Adrian is good or not until the cows come home, but one thing I think we can all agree on is that he is a giant raging douche bag.

(insert needless animal picture here)

Yep, every single post in this thread clearly agrees with exactly this. Thanks for popping in for the fourth time in this thread. That's a pretty solid amount of your 132 posts. I think you might have a crush on me

It takes an even bigger giant raging douchebag and an overall miserable person to stop by for the fourth time to write what you wrote, or to not enjoy the Spirit of Truth/animal pictures. I hope you realize this. Cheer up / loosen up a bit, it's not that serious : )

You did also say which earns you this healing dance:

Your stream is the GOAT. F the haters.

dude has such an amazing self preserving ego that he is entirely convinced the only way someone could be critical of him is if they: recently lost a pot to him, are a hater/troll, are a miserable person. this amazing self preserving ego is also what allows him to be a 2bb-3bb/100 $.50/$1 rake back grinder and still call himself the "biggest bb/100 winner" and inventor of the light 3bet. you couldn't write comedy this good. that's what keeps me coming back, oh and also my apparently miserable life does as well lol

(desperate attempt at a funny meme goes here)

You, and people like you, are responsible for the decline of 2Plus2.

I came to this site because i heard about the good old days when people like Harrington, Raymer, Sklansky, Dwan used to come on here and talk about strategies and stuff and help each other (and everyone else) improve.

Now the entire site is filled with dickheads like you who come here to take everything they can from the site while contributing nothing.

I have no interest in anything you have to say about someone who is contributing something to poker. Unless you are going to talk specifics then just do us all a favour and **** off.

Was just scanning this thread for fun reading but then I saw someone call Mike McCarthy a good coach

i joined 2+2 pretty late and have been mostly an NVG reader, not often looking at other sections, e.g. NLHE forums.
before that in 2008-9, when i started playing online poker, i was active in very lively strategy discussions on a different forum, discussing hands and strat. that forum, just like 2+2, gradually declined in this regard. games were getting tougher, pros started to realise that poker wasn't some magical money print that would go on forever, but rather that it was a finite economy. more people were becoming grinders, more grinders were becoming aware of forums like 2+2 and reading the discussions/watching the videos, this was gradually impacting the games, and people gradually realised this. people stopped having the unrealistic notion of poker as a game they would be the best at regardless of how much of their knowledge/strategy they were making public in forums.

this development, among other things, has led to the status quo. within this status quo, i don't want to talk strat with anyone but good real-life friends who also play poker. i try to improve my game using my own means, and keep mainly to myself, as i'm trying to win, not trying to help my opponents win. i don't think that makes me a dickhead.

one thing i'd like to point out is that successful players giving out free strategy advice/insight into their games is actually often not done because they're trying to help the community or weaker players, but rather because it's an ego boost and feels great: giving impressive advice to lesser players and having them look up to you or gaining respect in the eyes of your peers.