guys this is awesome. helps keep the motivation up. please keep posting.

I just read the post that was highlighted earlier in this thread. In that post made by Fimbulwinter, he makes two points that really intrigued me about 1kNL:

- your lines don't define your hand

- your oop opponent must hold a strong hand to win a pot from you

I have a question or two for you about these statements.

1. How do you play a hand in such a way that your line doesn't define your hand and do this often enough (how often is enough?)?

2. How do you play a hand and think about a hand in such a way that an OOP villain needs a strong hand to win a pot off of you?

This last question seems to flow over with potential for poker dominance if I could master the necessary principles and just understand what it takes to play that way. And the first question's answer would seem very useful when you are playing competent regulars.

Close enough IMO

I don't know it by heart but I think you got it like 90% right

You can't get the quote right because there are different translations, guys!

**** Moths. I started off with these tiny little **** Larva, Randy, and then they grew into ****apillers. A pendemic with ****apillers. Everywhere you look Randy, ****apillers. They almost drove me off the god danm edge boy. I tried to exterminate them I tried to put and end to this ****apillers life cycle... but I failed... and now **** Moths Randy. Every ****in one of them, **** Moths.

......Are you ok Mr Lahey?

I'm glad to get some questions.

1. The more experience you get playing, the clearer your hand reading is. For instance, a very common spot, and I think players at all stakes will agree, is when you 3bet someone PF, and they 4bet-shove their stack in. What hand are they most likely to have?? AK. This line clearly defines your hand. What if they put in a very small 4bet? Their range veers heavily towards AA, sometimes KK, and AK-QQ-bluff more rarely (I seldom encounter 4bet bluffs at my tables). So these are the lines that define your hand. Let me tell you my lines when my big hands get 3bet, so that my opponents get the wrong idea about my hand and make big mistakes:

AA IP: If we aren't too deep (cannot give the opponent set-odds), and my opponent will Cbet a lot and get it in on a lot of flops, I will flat the 3bet (repping a mid-pair most of the time), and get it in post-flop in a variety of ways, depending on if they Cbet and on the board texture.

AA OOP: Again if we aren't too deep, I'll sometimes flat, if I feel my opponent will Cbet flop and get it in lightly, or if we have history where I've bluffed or semi-bluffed for stacks with them on the flop. Also depending on history, I might 4bet shove, REPPING AK, so that they will call with a bigger range of PP's for the coinflip. If I've been standard 4betting at this table, I might 4bet and rep a wide range.

KK: I 4bet shove for 100bb stacks VERY often with KK. Same reasoning as above - I rep AK, and get called by underpairs. I get called as light as TT-JJ sometimes when I do this. I hate flatting 3bets with KK, because when that Ace hits the flop, we're in a ugly spot. I rarely 4bet small, as this line clearly defines our hand as AA-KK, and allows our opponent to play correctly.

AK: This hand depends very greatly on my opponent, so I'll give just a couple examples.

Against a tight 3bettor, I'll flat a lot in order to rep a PP... to allow my opponent to fire barrels with their whole range at an Ace or King-high flop (then I can stack off), as I don't want to get it AI PF against a range of big PP's + AK, since we're either flipping or behind all the time.

Against a standard or loose 3bettor, I'll 4bet small, in order to rep AA-KK, and hopefully fold out QQ-TT. The downside is once I 4bet small, I'm probably stuck calling a shove, and since I don't get into too many 4bet/call a 5bet situations, my read on their 5shove is not so strong, and I might be looking at a neutral EV situation. I think it's worth it though, for the times we 4bet AK and push off any pocket pair, and pick up a nice pot uncontested.

These PF lines work so ridiculously well in my 5/10 games that I'm shocked no one else really seems to use them. I do see players overbet shoving KK from time-to-time, but I really do feel I'm a bit ahead of the pack concerning big hands PF.


2. The principle behind this is using your position to maximum advantage. A big roadblock I had around the 600NL level was being floated. There are some guys out there who will NOT give up on a hand in position. Now, this is good when we actually make a hand in which we have enough confidence to 3-barrel for value, but most of the time where we do not flop TPTK+, what happens is: we Cbet flop and get called, and then we check/fold turn, or check/call turn and check/fold river, or bet/fold the turn or river... because our opponent takes advantage of his position, and puts in a well-placed bet or raise to force us to fold.

A very common spot is in a 6max game, where a 28/21/1 guy will cold-call my MP raise, and then the flop comes 6-5-2. OK, this guy knows that I will miss that flop like 75% of the time. Also, he knows that I KNOW he cold-calls with a pretty wide range. So if I were to Cbet this flop, he would go to town on me. He can flat and bet me off later, or he can raise me out immediately. This is the way it goes in MSNL playing against strong loose players. So what can I do? Either:

I gotta tighten up my opening range immensely when these guys are behind me (sucks hard when I have fish in the blinds that I want to target), or

I gotta start countering with flop 3bet bluffs, or turn bet/3bet shove bluffs, which gets very expensive, or

I frequently don't bother Cbet bluffing these flops. This is probably the most +EV and least frustrating counter in this spot. Also, when I'm holding JT on that 6-5-2 flop, there's very little chance I have the best hand anyways, right? So I can easily c/f without making a mistake.

ty, props to raze, u da man

How would you play KK, which you 3bet pf and the villain just called, and the flop came AQ9, with 2 diamonds? You're in the SB, villain is UTG and you're both 100BB deep.

Nice post again, Raze.

have fun with that and gl

So it sounds like you need to have an idea of what your hand range looks like to villain and then take an action that narrows it down in their minds to an incorrect holding. And the key is that having them think you have the incorrect holding is beneficial to you. Like flatting AA to narrow your range down to a 99 type hand or 4bet shoving KK to look like AK.

So I guess you have to ask your self :

1. What does my hand range look like to them in this spot?
2. How would I play hand x in my hand range(x being a hand which you believe they will respond to with an action that is beneficial to your actual hand relative to their hand range)?

Then you must play your hand as you would play hand x so that they will respond in the desired manner thus giving you +EV.


So it sounds to me like the way to win in position when your opponent is most likely weak is to float him and bluffraise his turn bets on scare cards or just a blank if you want to look like you hit the flop hard. Is this right?

Question raze: What are good boards to float and bluffraise on against a TAG or LAG villain who is OOP? I'm guessing boards that they missed right? Like 652ssx like you said above. So low boards. Maybe Kxx, Qxx, Jxx. JJ2. 22J. Anything I'm missing?

Raze - you rock and so does this thread. I'll try to get my story up (which is a success net, but I've made a bazillion mistakes en route) today.

I'd check the flop almost every time. Everything after that is very situation and player dependent. I'd probably call a flop bet unless I was very convinced they had an Ace.

Yeah, this is really really good and well-written. Actually your two question points there... I don't think I've ever seen it explained so well. "What does my hand range look like to them in this spot" this is level 3 thinking in a nutshell. I think in these terms pretty much all the time while I play. It becomes essential once your opponents can match or beat your level 2 thinking - ie. they KNOW what you're putting them on, so they are manipulating us. Ask yourself those questions all the time and you open up a new world of ways to beat your opponents. When you get really good at this, which you will if you focus hard enough, you add some creativity to your lines to extract the max EV, and that's where very freaky winrates become possible. I'll probably touch on this a bit more later on in the thread.

Yeah that's simplified but correct. The simple -call flop, raise turn- line becomes profitable against thinking, SSNL players. In MSNL, it becomes a standard, cliche play, so we have to be a bit more thoughtful about it. Players will expect you to float them, so it becomes harder to do. One very big pattern I've picked up on that happens ALL the time at my 600 games: players will cold-call, and make a very small raise (like 2.5 times my Cbet). I find they fold to a 3bet here 100% of the time. At first, it seemed strong, so I would fold without a hand. Then, I would have a hand once in a while, and I'd 3bet, and they would fold every time. Then I realized - if they have a monster, they can't profitably raise that small, because it gives me good odds to chase any primary draw (and people would make this stupid little raise on all kinds of boards, wet or dry). Makes sense? So, I started 3bet semi-bluffing a lot in these spots, and got folds. So I started straight-up 3bet bluffing in this spot. Fold fold fold every time. NOW - I have a bulletproof countermove to this semi-common spot, but I also have to stay aware that if my mini-raising villains catch on that I know... THEY will start baby-raising with monsters to induce my 3bets. Gotta keep up with the times. The day I get sucked in, I'll have to re-evaluate this particular line, but until then I'm going to town.

So to your question. Yep, for beginner floating, consider your opponent's hand range and pick the boards where they've most likely to have missed. T-7-2 rainbow, 9-5-3, try 7-6-5 monotone... etc. As for paired boards: if you really had A5s on a 9-5-5 flop, how would you actually play it? How could you play it that would make it obvious to villain that you really did have trip 5's? When you want to make a float or bluff-raise, imagine you really do have the hand you're trying to rep, and then decide what line to take. Try em all out and see how it goes. Factor in your own image, and his perception of your cold-calling range, and of your flop/turn raising frequency. Experience in multi-level thinking is what makes these moves possible and inevitably necessary as you go up in stakes.

Thanks for all this info Raze. This stuff is awesome.

I might have some questions on the floating/bluff-raising thing tomorrow but for now I gotta get to bed and all I want to say is thanks.

Do you think you could give some examples of creative post flop lines we could use against more thinking villains to get max value on a hand?

I want to be able to exploit the tags as much as I do the fish with creative lines so that my winrate is huge and this kind of level 3 thinking/line manipulation seems like the key.

very well thought out raze and explained well. keep it up very good reading thanks!

I've been beating NL100 at 20bb/100 for a few months now. I'm a meganit and table select a ton to maximise winrate.

However I'm too scared to move up to NL200. It's just completely out of my comfort zone. Any suggestions? ( "grow some balls" doesn't count)

Spring 2007 - SSNL

The no-limit bankroll was growing faster every week, and I was draining my limit bankroll to my savings account at about the same rate. I was approaching a solid bankroll for $200NL, and I was still reading strat and learning as fast as ever. I started to recognize a paradigm shift in the way I approached my poker education. I felt I was reaching the point of having very strong, sound basic strategy down. I was comfortable with my opening range, my hand-reading was decent, I was finding spots to overbet when I sensed my opponent had a strong but lesser hand. Since I had digested by this point the entire SSNL Sticky and a dozen NLHE books, I started watching my opponents more closely and looking for ways to directly exploit THEIR mistakes, rather than play defensively by just trying not to mess any hand up too badly. Some adjustments I came up with included 3betting wider against LAG opponents, isolating limpy fish more often, and coming up with more creative lines in general, in order to disguise my hand and induce big mistakes from my opponents.

I stepped up to 200NL in February after two solid months of NL cash games. I had waited just long enough to assure myself I was a big winner at 100NL before I moved up. I was still playing a mix of Tiger and Party, often checking one site for action, and then settling for the other if there was no good games. I still to this day keep a main site (Pacific) and a secondary (True) just to make sure I can always find a game. I think it's important to have cash on multiple sites as you move up in stakes and it becomes harder to find good tables, assuming you like to table-select and play a few tables, and not auto-pilot 8+ tables (and then bitch about 'running bad' when you go on those long break-even runs). It was also in 2007 when I first got into heads-up poker. I heard from a few trusted players that giant winrates were possible playing HU NL, and that learning to play heads-up was very difficult and complex, but that it would be by far the best thing for my game. I was committed to working to improve as fast as possible, so it became imperative that I started working on my HU game. Nowadays, I'll be the first to tell you learning to play NL HU is the key to big money, whether you keep HU as your main game, or learn and bring those skills to your regular game.


This might not be the best example of what you asked, but here's a hand my buddy played, and I begged him for the HH to break down as a lesson.

Hero and Villain are both strong, TAG players.


$1/$2 No Limit Holdem
6 players
Converted at weaktight.com

Stacks:
Hero (UTG) ($208.90)
UTG+1 ($398.65)
CO ($627.31)
BTN ($232.95)
SB ($198.00)
BB ($208.20)

Pre-flop: ($3, 6 players) Hero is UTG A A
Hero raises to $7, UTG+1 calls $7, 1 fold, BTN calls $7, 1 fold, BB raises to $32, Hero


Pre-flop: Hero is in an interesting spot right off the bat. He can either 4bet over the squeeze, or flat and take his chances on having a multi-way pot, with good relative position on the PF raiser.

I'd like to hear some opinions on flatting here vs. 4betting (include your bet size) with reasoning, and maybe some pros & cons for either side.

My standard play here would be to try and get the pot HU with a 4bet to increase my chances of winning it and winning someone's stack. I would normally 4bet to around 78 dollars because I'm in the habit of making 2.5x 4bets since it makes it appear as if villain has fold equity and it balances well with my 4bet bluffs which I want to be relatively cheap bluffs (however I would prob never bluff in the above spot without an excellent read). I suppose however that a more deceptive 4 bet might be to just shove and rep AK like we talked about earlier. Then villain won't be as likely to fold JJ/QQ if he thinks we have AK.

I think flatting is an option if a couple of conditions are met.

1. Villain has a wide 3betting/squeezing range (in spots like the one above) so he will likely fold to a 4bet and villain doesn't stack off too light.
2. The other two villain's in the pot already who flatted your 7 dollar open are tight and will most likely fold to the squeeze (ie they don't call 3bets light).


The more these conditions were met then the more flatting becomes increasingly optimal for the following reasons.

If villain has a wide 3betting range and does not stack off too light (which is often the case with strong TAGs), then a 4bet may only win the current pot and no more. But if you just flat the 3bet, then villain could hit some kind of top pair and you could get the money in on the flop and at the very least you would be able to win a continuation bet from villain which you would jam over to blow anyone else out of the pot or just get the money in if they were drawing to something decent. Or you could smooth call a cbet on a non scary board to bait villain into jamming the turn on a bluff if you think he is the kind of player who would do this.

If the other two villain's in the pot are tight, then they will likely fold to the squeeze which is +EV for you since by them not being in the pot your winning chances go from about 64% up to about 80% in a HU pot.

Flatting the squeeze becomes less attractive if the other two villain's in the pot are more loose (esp loose passive calling station types) since they will likely flat the 3bet as well and then your winning chances go down about 10% for each additional villain in the pot.

And if you know the villain who squeezed wants to stack off because he has a tight squeezing range then it would be best to just get the money in right there.

Well First I'll look at the ranges of the villains.

The BB is squeezing, but probably has a decent hand. He's not squeezing something like CO/BTN or BTN/SB but UTG/UTG+1 (and BTN). He has to respect that UTG is tight and has shown strenght by raising. He could obv. have a good hand like KK or AK, and I dont' know if he'll squeeze something like 99.
I would think he would like to play a speculative hand i a multiway pot so I doubt he has hands like JTs, but I could be wrong. So hes squeezing range here is prob. tighter than a normal squeezing range and most likely contain less air.

UTG+1 is cold-calling an UTG raise and most likely has a hand with good potential like 77 or 98s. He prob. doesn't hold hands like AT or KJ much.

BTN has a very wide range with a lot of speculative hands but most likely no good hands like QQ+, AQs+.

Then I'll look at the actions if we call, raise or shove.

If we call, UTG+1 might come along with his PP, which in turn might draw BTN along with a speculative hand. This scenario would be very bad if we held a hand like AK, so if we had AK we couldn't play it like this. It might be decent with AA, as the pot is so big that we can overshove the flop, but we'll loose when UTG/BTN hits big. With QQ/KK I wouldn't like this scenario either as we would fear overcards on the flop to much. I don't know how we would play a hand like 99, but we might like this scenario and thus call. So if we call we look like AA or a mid PP.

If we raise I would expect both UTG+1 and BTN to fold. We also fold out all the air in BBs range. If we're raising I would prob raise it to something like 68-74. This would allow me to shove the flop as a pot sized bet. This looks very much like QQ+. Again this is not a scenario I like with AK.

Shoving is most likely folding out UTG and BTN and most of BBs range. It does however look a lot like AK trying to end the hand right now as no other alternative is good for AK. So if we shove we are very much repping AK and might get a call from a 99 if he believes our range is AA,AK.

So I'll guess that if we estimate BBs range to contain a lot of PPs we might shove. I really don't like calling since we won't get much postflop unless we're beat. We are repping AA, mid PP so if we show strenght we have either AA or hit our set.

If BB's range is more weighted towards hands like AQ I'll put in the small reraise and hopefully stack him on the flop (or turn, we don't have to autoshove the flop).

I might of course be way off, as I have never played 200NL and I don't think this would apply much below (I don't think our opponents is so concerned about our range below).

I like all of the analysis above and agree with a lot of the points mentioned so far. I am really interested in Raze's response as this seems to be a really tough spot to take a "creative line".

I don't think that a flat call here would be the worst thing in the world as it is pretty nice sized reraise and you may not have to worry too much about UTG+1/Button over calling (depends on their tendencies). Although, as the previous poster noted flatting here definitely looks like I could be holding aces.

I have never played as high as 1/2 online so I am not sure how competent the majority of the players are or how this might be perceived by them but I would think that a raise to about 80-85 would accomplish three things.

1) Deny odds to both UTG+1 and Button to set mine or over call with sc's etc...

2) It would give BB "decent odds" to call OR enough room where he might think that a shove will take it down if you hold QQ/KK/AK

3) If he does call, you can then shove the flop and he will be very tempted to call if he hits a top pair/over pair type hand because he will be getting fairly good odds unless he is up against AA (which he is).

Drawbacks to playing the hand this way would be that 1) you might fold everyone out and miss out on value. 2) you are repping a very strong hand by reraising and putting over 1/3 of your stack in which obviously helps your opponent in his decision making.

Seems like a tough spot to know what exactly to do in order to get maximum value out of your hand.

Looking forward to some more responses...

Thanks for starting this thread Raze, you have officially inspired me to really work on my game and move up with the big boys ASAP

We're never 4bet/folding these hands. If we 4-bet and he shoves we have to call.

I would think the reason we're 4-betting small, is that allows us to cheaply bluff 4-bet once in a while

Opinion from a 50nl player so take with a pinch of salt .

I would be tempted to flat call the 4bet as it looks so much like a squeeze with a semi-decent hand (ie. TT + AK,AQ). Of course we take the risk of someone flopping a bomb in a multiway pot, but the pot is so big at that point that it doesn't matter. Getting it in on the flop vs worse hands will probably be quite easy.

If everyone else folds, we are heads up vs a player who thinks he is probably ahead and should at least put in one more bet with most of his range. If he has the top of his range JJ-KK, AK he will prob be obliged to stack off on most flops in this large 3bet pot. Milking this guy is made even easier post flop as we have position.


If we were to 4 bet here I prefer a shove rather than a small 4bet. This should balance the times we shove with AK (Definately the preferred line with AK).

Looking forward to razes actual proposed line.

Yea a hand reading exercise.

Mmmmm this hand is relies alot on other 2 villians. Whether their passive or aggro. mmm ill give it a shot.

Flatting.

Advantages:

Disgises hand <alot.
If other villians are aggro they may re-raise.
If it gets to showdown against a reg/good thinker, it may be used as meta later??

Disadvantages:

If you flat and next 2 villians flat your aces arent as good on a 4 way flop. Really how happy are you to get it in on a 4way flop with AA.


Raising:

Advantages:

Isolate the callers/narrow the field.
Lessen the SPR for a flop shove
A min raise/ghey raise mat induce a shove
Villian could have KK and be willing to ship anyway

Disadvantages:

Fold out worse hands


I think im going to go with your option earlier in the thread and im going to ship over on this especially as its 4way. My plan is to make my hand look like AK, or QQ.

I dont like a flat 4 way. Maybe heads up in position i will flat sometimes but i dont think this is one of those times. Villian could be squeezing, we will probably take this down PF but id rather take this down now PF than lose it on the flop in a multiway pot.

Pot is $53. We have $200 behind. I think a ship is good. Taking this down PF is 25.5bb which i dont mind and we can get called by worse here.

I agree completely, BUT I noted that he might think that we will fold to his shove... I just dont know how these players think/perceive things at the NL200 level.

This thread is great... I am anxious to hear Raze's response.