Sorry you back down from a positive challenge to your thought process. Just trying to help you man. I'll condense it down:

1. Nothing is perfect
2. Your thought processes are your own but...
3. Your thought processes are not unique to the poker world
4. You're narcissistic and self important.

Peace, love, dope man

You've never challenged it with anything but nonsense.

I'm the one who challenged you to better my exploitative thought process and you simply spout bull for months and months on end.

Write out a better one!? No???
Show me how u could better mine! No??

Then go try look smart on some fools thread!

Aintnodaisy... That was great. The way you broke down the hand, the guestimations in place of unknown facts, very well done.

Let's imagine I was a boxer and my right arm was famed for being the greatest, many even said I had the 'Right Hand of God'... Now let's imagine somebody offered us to fight in a less popular competition, a competition where you could only use your left. We just wouldn't bother... This is what playing zoom is like for somebody who has a strong exploitative game.

In the excellent situation you provide, we can see the extent of our disadvantage in these types of game... The play the villain makes is more than a little bit terrible. First the call preflop was too weak. Then the overbet on the turn was too strong, (he should have aimed to keep some bluff raises in our range). If we were able to write notes on this villain, then we would certainly have an 'overbets nuts' in there by now. This would allow us to escape from this losing hand early. If we had just 20 hands on this guy we'd see he was a fish, we could put some more 4x in his range and so we might be able to get away from this one. I think that given the information we had, the play you made was fine. This villain could have been an adventurous, skilled level 2 reg, bluffing us away from a raise with those big cards. As you say, he might be a weak fish, wanting to protect and is scared of overcards on the river. He might just be a complete psycho who never gives up on low missy boards... Any and all of these notes, or player reads, would help us to decipher our best play. All notes, all information helps us when making an exploitative play. I have over 100 stats on my HUD and I write plenty of notes. If I am playing live then I watch as carefully as I can, trying to learn all about my villains. Even if I have air, sometimes I might call a cheap one, just so as to get a valuable note... To play in a game without notes, without a HUD, is needlessly removing our advantage.

Funnily enough that is actually what zoom is designed to do. Remove the exploitative players advantage. That's where the appeal to weak exploitative players lies, and this in turn brings some better exploitative players. Really though, these tables are ideal if you want to play a GTO style and just collect rakeback. If you want to abuse your villains, to outsmart and obliterate them all, if you want to take more than 2bbs. Youl want a normal table.

These Zoom tables will die soon enough I guess. As soon as the weak exploitative players (fish mostly) realise they actually lose any edge they might have. The tables will also be full of tight dull GTO players, it's almost the perfect environment for their style. The only way it could be better for them is if they were short stacked or HU tables.

Table selection, even seat selection, is very valuable when it comes to exploitative poker. We want to sit to the left of fish and avoid GTO players. Unfortunately, GTO has this amazing, terrible power. It's contagious... If an exploitative player were playing a GTO player, the exploitative players plays would look just like the GTO players standard plays. The GTO player would just play the same as always but the exploitative player will be forced to makes plays similar to the GTO guy. If the entire table is playing GTO, then there isn't much point in being an exploitative master. You might as well just memorise yourself a GTO strategy. So yeah, there are a handful of sites which havnt been swarmed by GTO heavy players. Private or live games are great for us, GTO heavy players don't have a good enough winrate to be able to make much of a living in live games. MTTs are rarely overly GTO, an exploitative players higher win rate gives him a much bigger chance of winning these big tourneys. In deep games we have an advantage as GTO players find it harder to memorise situations or calculate plays when they become more complicated as the hand progresses. I'd avoid the cash games at high profile sites like stars, Zoom, and I'd avoid sit n go's... These are all way to GTO heavy. The games are boring and there is very little profit available. If I were you I would get on a smaller site, one where there are only 15-20 regs per level and only 4 tables. This way you can learn everything there is to know about your villains, and even if they are playing GTO, they won't be playing it perfectly. When we find a GTO players mistake, itl probably only be worth a little, but it's often an age before they realise it's there.

One last nice note on GTO heavy players. These guys are usually very unsure about the standard game 'poker'. They usually have only ever made up for themselves a handful of plays. (I've never met another player, let alone a GTO player, who can recognise level 4+ plays). This means that they usually learn all their plays from others. They will not often work out their own GTO play. Instead they use computer programmes or books, threads etc to find their plays. Now, what we can do is look at the books or threads ourselves and see where these guys are making mistakes en mass. This is something GTO guys can't do to us, if they want to know how good a player is at exploitative poker, if they want to recognise our tendencies, then they have to look directly at us. We can just read one of their books and learn all about their plays and their mistakes. For example.. Through understanding exploitative poker, we can see what the perfectly balanced preflop ranges would look like. Then, when we look to Janda's book, we actually see level 3 balanced ranges. There are going to be literally thousands of regs using these imperfect balanced ranges. We can see all their cards and the mistakes they are all making. We could just apply a level 5 balanced range and defeat thousands of them at their own game.

I do think I spotted one level 3 imperfection in your post.. If we check call a normal size bet on the turn, I think we actually look stronger than if we bet, or check raise it. We'd look like we have showdown when we call, and about the only showdown we have is overpairs. So we'd be repping almost exactly TT and we always want to avoid our perceived range where possible. Id often opt for a check raise as to get an extra bet off a bluff, I'd be trying to rep the AK type hands just as to leave some bluffs in my own range. Usually though, I think I would probably bet the turn and bet, or check call most rivers. Very close though on all accounts so no biggy on the play front, but do see that your level 3 could most probably do with some work... The villain overbets anyway, so our hand is somewhat screwed.

Btw, sorry justgrinding.. I keep on replying to your messages just after waking up when I'm not in the greatest mood. My fault... Please though, id appreciate it if you avoid this thread unless you have something to add.

is there really a room for level 3 with a sdv hand? i think the hand plays itself , the best you can do is to check and make it seem like you will give up to force bluffs... of course you can bet or raise but then you hope the other guy has worse sdv than you do which is rare and very thin value anyway. I think playing sdv is simply level 2 you just need to know what the other guy have.


Level 3 i believe is mostly about bluffing and a bit less for value betting but not so much about bluffcatching , bluffcatch hand turning into a bluff is still bluffing , i dont think its worth to avoid your range with a sdv hand.


I try a different mindset these days which use some level 3 , if i think the other guy has a weak range full of sdv or air or draws , i try to imagine that i have a hit the board and play the hand the same way , if for example the board is Q-x-x and i have air , i will tell to myself that i have AQ or KQ and play the hand like this (of course it ends with a bluff) , i use some plays i didnt before like probe betting also repping flushes on turn , im also firing more triple barrels on A-x-x boards to rep top pair if i have position , seems to work well so far but i think these level 3 plays are dangerous against full ring tight ranges , you need to make sure the other guy is weak and wide , they work better against steals or when you open from stealing position yourself.

No worries. I can handle it.





That is clearly your opinion. I'll list here the legitimate issues I've brought up:

1. Unecessarily convoluted and difficult to follow.

1a. Levels are arbitrary and unnecessary after a certain point as they become cyclical (i.e. 3 maybe 4+).

1b. You're only working with 2 ranges and shifting compositions of those ranges but keep referring to multiple ranges that exist at different levels.

2. Just trying to avoid your perceived range can cost you money and is not the best way to play poker

2a. There are betting lines with certain hands that you should take 100% of the time because no other strategic option yields higher EV.

2b. Your range construction can become fundementally unsound.

3. Your ideas are new to the poker world

3a. Your thought process is: assess ranges, assess your hand, maximize EV. People have literally been doing this for years in the poker world. See 1 for why your thought process just convolutes this much simpler explanation.

I think we've covered I'm not spouting bull. I've conceded that once I understood your thought process it seems that it's a thought process most good poker players already use. That doesn't mean it's perfect, just that it seems fundamentally sound. It definitely has some flaws over other options I've seen and use in that it seems overly complicated and confusing to follow.

Being good also doesn't mean it's publication worthy or worth crashing a bunch of threads to talk about levels and direct people here.

I'll write a review here using my thought process. Feel free to critique as you will.

Example of a level 5 balanced pre-flop range defeating a level 3 balanced pre-flop range please? I don't even know what such a sentence means.

How amusing.

Thanks for the comments.

I'm not 100% sold on Yadoula8's process or levels. However, I find the hand comments constructive-thank you, Yadoula8.

Just grinding, a review following another process will be amazing...

I do think this thought process might be able to be built upon effectively. GTO is evidence of this... Although to take anything from it, or change the order, would not be possible. In order to keep it perfect of course. Please do prove me wrong! By the time you get to level 4+ you realise there's a good chance you don't know everything yet. Especially as it all appears somewhat circular after level 5! I keep expecting level 6 will jump out at me one day...

... I'm not sure how you would like me to prove that a 'mixed' strategy will beat Janda's preflop ranges. To me, it is as siple as spotting a spelling mistake. Perhaps this new super bot can just print out the starting ranges it uses??

Colour me intrigued.

I think you've clarified the notion of levels in my mind. And the idea that you should give people credit for level 2 (even bad players) makes sense but wasn't something I typically did.

That being said there is so much cermony and promises in this thread I have the uneasy feeling I'm stepping into a cult.

We are all simply striving for the truth, child. I congratulate you on receiving the truth. Now go, speak with your brothers and sisters and spread the word as I did!

... Don't forget we're holding a mass suicide this Thursday evening! There will be a buffet and dancers. Your welcome to bring your own swords.

... This threads being going on a long time n I've never read it back properly btw. Hope I havnt used the same jokes too many times lol...

There is something I'm working on which is an improvement on this thought process. Making a full strategy vs one player should be considered an advancement of this thought process. It's also something we should all do to some degree. It's something GTO players do all the time and I never really recognised the true benefits of doing it. That's not to say I didn't do it, every piece of information I receive helps me develop my complete strategy vs an individual. I just didn't really realise clearly what it was that I was doing, as usual.

This thread just is what it is. It's a very strange topic. It's simple stuff, yet the more experienced the player, the harder it is to accept. A simply informative thread would not have effectively served the purpose I don't think. I had to be very precise first of all, and I then I just needed to explain all the different mental blocks, emotions, how to get past them n that... I didn't want to bore people while reading either, tried to make it easy reading n that. Which I fear I am starting to do.

So yeah, this thought process is perfect, but it could be better. It's very useful for people to clarify the levels in there mind. I'm really glad you learnt it mate. Means the thread works! Spot on!