Hey Raze I got a few questions I wanna ask you. More about life then about poker. I didnt really read any of this thread so sorry if you answer some/any of these in the OP

How old were you when you first started the game?
Were your parents behind you? Neutral? Hardcore opposed?
If the latter did they eventually come around to it?
What ethnicity are you? Probably white but just curious.
Im climbing the poker ranks really quickly but my parents are just so against it. I think they just kicked me out today but we'll see in a bit when it cools down. They just dont want to see their kid (asian) going down this road. I was one of those breeze through school guys (were you the same?) and I never had to put any effort into my studies to get A's or whatever. So they think Im wasting my brain/talents/whatever when I could easily be crushing university.

What are your goals? Do you want to play full time? Are you doing this now? Do you want to do college?

I would suggest that you still go to uni since earning a degree is not only good for jobs down the road but its good to learn stuff that enriches you. And college is fun too (parties, clubs, sports, etc.). If you want your parents to be more accepting towards poker, tell them you want to use your winnings to help fund your college journey (if you are planning on going to college). Tell them that winning poker players are smart and are good money managers, not degenerate losers who end up going broke. There are plenty of high stakes poker players who are also college students FYI. You would have enough time for both poker and college.

Im already in university. 2nd year engineering but Im putting no effort into it. My parents want me to get the 4.0 that I am fairly capable of but I just want to get by and ship the degree.

i just ran hot to 200K
[x] easy IMO

Those responses look good guys, tons of insight.

I was 20 when I started playing for money online (24 now). I was fascinated with the game much younger though - I remember in grade six I brought some cheap plastic poker chips to school so we could play in class for fun, lol. The teacher wasn't impressed - not because we intended to play cards DURING class instead of working, but because poker chips obviously = gambling for money and we were eleven years old lol. Poker got big at my high school for a year when I was 16, and dozens of us played NON table-stakes NLHE on verbal credit. Hardcore, except almost no one actually paid up in the end.

My parents were totally opposed. I still don't get support, but at least they don't hate it anymore since I've made some good moves with the winnings (house, investments, savings acct.) and since I've been in school for a good part of my poker run. A little support might have helped me go farther or move faster in my game, but my parents are blue-collar and unapproving of gambling, which is very smart as far as I'm concerned. My friends are cool as **** and have supported me from day one. I'm white with a streak of Leb, also part-French (no hate).

On another note - when I turned 18 I became fascinated with casinos. I was warned never to bring more than I was prepared to lose, but I still smugly thought I would turn a little profit on my $20 every time I went. I went a dozen times before I started playing poker, never losing more than $10 or $20. Since I've made my way in poker, I haven't played so much as a quarter on any table game or slot, and I've never in my life gambled on a hand of blackjack. When I have kids, I'm going to be very careful to make sure they keep their money in their pockets as well, as I think casino games are the stupidest concept in the world.

This is a great thread. Really inspiring.

Thanks to raze and everyone else.

IMO...I think everyone should "follow their dream", and if poker is it, than keep pursuing it. However, with that said...staying in school would be a good thing. You sound like a smart guy, so putting in 5% more effort into your school would probably bring your grades up to the level where your parents would get off your back. That would definitely be a +EV play I know they seem a pain, but they are just looking out for you.

Well said. Vegas was built on the concept that people fundamentally don't understand mathematics. If they did, Casinos would be ghost towns...

raze, a few quick questions:

1. What are your thoughts on HUDs? To a new player starting out, would you recommend them to use one? What about a current winning SSNL player who uses a HUD and is about to move up to MSNL? Does your answer change?

2. How much what Fees says in this post here do you agree with?
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/32...obusto-243141/

3. Similar to question 2, what do you think is the best way for a new player at NL10 to move up to SSNL and above? Be as specific as possible if you can

Thanks for the help

AA hand PF: I think it's close decision between flatting and 3betting. Certain traits of our oppponents could sway the decision one way or the other (this is where focus pays off - the more we know about our opponents, the easier it is to make decisions), but I think the main question is of the implied odds we offer our opponents. If we 4-bet, the hand becomes easy. We take the $54 pot most of the time without a fight, or we get into a great situation where we get our stack in with AA pre-flop. If we flat... we're playing a 2-4 way pot (probably at least 3-way) with bad positioning (I'll explain why our position is disadvantageous). If we flat, I think it's reasonable to assume we aren't folding post-flop.

Given our position, which is right after the squeezer who will Cbet flop a lot, but before 2 other players with heavy-PP ranges, we are either betting the flop when it's checked to us, or calling/shoving over the squeezer's Cbet. We probably can't check behind a squeezer check, with those two other guys behind us. So, we must conclude we're stacking on any flop.

I hate the fact that the other two guy's ranges are full of pocket pairs (because they cold-called, and then must flat-call another $25 raise), because since we are putting the rest of our stack in on the flop, without knowing if these guys hit their sets, THEY will only contribute post-flop when they've terribly out-flopped us with sets, or if we're lucky and they get brave with overcalls, with their middle overpairs, on the rare low flop. This consideration greatly devalues the prospect of flatting. We will find ourselves in a way-ahead or way-behind spot, and we're going to put our stack in BEFORE we know if our opponents flopped the nuts or not.

Now to the implied odds consideration. These guys will pay $25 to try and hit a set, and they are guaranteed to get our stack if they hit. Let's assume just one of these guys calls PF, hits his set, and the squeezer will Cbet half the time. The guy calls $25 in a $79 pot. Add to the pot our remaining $177 (both potential callers have us covered), plus half an $80 Cbet for $40. $79 + $177 + $40 = his $25 call will net him about $296 when he hits his set. Even if the squeezer NEVER Cbets, we subtract that $40 added money and he still makes $256 on his $25 shot. He'll hit a set about 1 in 8, so he only needs to make $200 per set to break even. We're clearly giving him a profitable set-mining situation. Where does his profit come from? Partly from the dead money already in the pot, but mostly from the fact that we're stacking off on any flop.

When my buddy showed me this hand, I was all for flatting PF in order to maximize my chances of winning a huge pot with some post-flop play, but given the reasoning above, we paint ourselves into a corner, given our poor position and the nature of the potential cold-callers hand ranges. I believe flatting is not only worse than 4betting, but may be an -EV play here given the huge edge we allow our opponent in set-mining against us. 4betting gets us somewhere between $54, and playing for stacks PF holding AA. If all my assumptions are sound, then 4betting is the clear play here.

What do you think of this reasoning? And now, as played, what lines are possible/profitable on this flop once we flat and get checked to in a 4-way pot?

Flop: (both players called the $25) K 6 2 ($129, 4 players)
BB checks, Hero _____

Just found a rare chunk of gold. This guy thinks on a very high level. Notice how in his writing, he basically squeezes the dollar value out of every nook of every subject he touches on? That how we have to approach the game - get value from everything you possibly can.

Never be afraid to browse strat forums that might be above or even below your level. If I were to pay someone better than me $300 an hour for some solid poker advice, I would expect something like that post in return.

1. I think HUDs are good in general, and worth WAY more than they cost once a player reaches a certain level. However, I would not recommend them to a brand new player. I think the world of specific stats and numbers are a distraction to a player who is learning the basics. To a serious beginning player, I would say use PT/HEM to track your progress, replay hands, filter for fish, but not for real-time stats. For the player approaching MSNL, I say keep doing what you're doing, but again, don't let the numbers run your game. You're going to encounter a lot of TAGs and fish alike with similar basic stats, but who are exploitable in very different ways. Understand that the HUD stats should be used as hints to your opponent's weaknesses. Use stats primarily as a way to gauge a players exploitability (ie. seat and table selection), and then focus all your attention on hand-reading and leveling them.

2. This is one of the best posts I've ever read. Every point is golden. I've come to a lot of the same conclusions as he through my own trial and error, notably finding my optimal table range (1-2 for HU, maximum 4 of anything), and cutting out the big bluffs... which was a HUGE winrate killer for me and probably my biggest improvement as a SSNL player. EV-graphs are definitely garbage. 95% of people all the way up to HSNL don't understand them, and use them as excuses when they lose. Ask yourself, how does a EV graph help your game improve? .....

Reviewing sessions is very very useful and something I admit to slack on. Won $ @ showdown is definitely a useless stat, but went-to-showdown% is probably the most underrated, especially when hunting for fish.

3. By reading and re-reading the Fees post and every other good thread / article they can find, while playing constantly with all their focus and patience. Read everything and try everything to see for yourself if it works. Keep a small bankroll and move up/down quickly as is necessary. Keep an open mind and allow your game to adapt and grow without bounds. There is no secret path or shortcuts. Just give it all you have and know that there's no limit to the heights you can reach.

My older Beginner's Guide was bumped so I'll go ahead and cross-link it to this post Have a look back if you haven't read it before.

Thanks for the link, lots of good reading later in the thread too. I especially liked this and think it's appropriate here.

I watch very closely and try to come up w/ an individual plan for how im going to break every player at the table. The plan includes a lot of factors but im really keen on whether the player is a “fit or fold” type, what the players weakest holding they’ll go broke with are, what the player is capable of in regards to running bluffs and how many bets the player needs to see before he considers a bet “significant”

It seems pretty basic because it's kind of obvious that paying attention is critical to doing well, but I think we'd be surprised at how many players don't even think about these questions. I'll sometimes make a mental game of trying to predict the actions of other players, rather than waiting for them to act before I decide to put them on a hand. It helps me to pay attention to their line and evaluate my reads, whether they are spot on or way off.

I also appreciate your hand break-down posts, they are very informative. I try to post more in strat, but find they usually provide little to no reads, which is critical, and so many end up with "fist-pump shove" as a common response. They also don't typically take into account villians read on hero, and even donkeys will make decisions based on recent history.

Why would you say W$SD is useless? To be honest, I don't use it too much, but I find it needs to be used in context with other stats, like WTSD.

I may have overstated with 'useless'. What I meant is that I haven't found much use for it personally. I absolutely love WTSD, because in combination with VPIP, you can get a good picture of how often a player takes a hand from flop to showdown. If this number is abnormally high, it's highly probable you can beat this guy down with a bigger range of good hands compared to most people, since this guy clearly hates to fold post-flop. I think the VPIP/WtSD combination is way more applicable than W$SD, which I think would be somewhat inversely proportional to some formula of VPIP and WtSD. Maybe it's time to dig deeper.

Can anyone offer a breakdown or application of W$SD?

My first instinct was to make a decent sized bet. But after thinking about it, can we really be called by worse? We know that the 3bettor doesn't have a decent hand that could call a bet because wouldn't he have cbet himself if he did? That leaves the two cold callers. We know that they will only put more money into the pot with a hand that beats us so we are basically in a WA/WB situation unless the 3bettor has a FD.

After thinking about it like this, I figure a game of pot control isn't bad and you might try to get value from 88-QQ by betting small on the flop (like 35), and small again on the turn (like 50) and then put the rest in on the river. Or you could try to get to showdown as cheaply as possible by checking the flop and calling small bets on the turn and river as a bluff catcher.

I could link a couple posts about it, but I don't want to derail what is already a good thread and turn it into a nit-fest about this specific stat. I guess a good summarization would be Pokey's comment. "It helps me sort good LAGs from bad LAGs, nits from TAGs, and maniacs from smart but aggressive opponents." Also, "A rough measure of an opponents post-flop skills." But like I said, I really don't use it much and I think one would have to have a pretty good sample size for it to be accurate.

I do like your assessment of using VP$P along with WtSD though. If the VP$P is high along with a high WtSD, it's a lovely thing.

I think it is useless unless you data mine, or play against these same players for 50k plus hands in which it is useless anyways.

How long before you accept someone as a winner via their graphs, stats etc? 50k hands? 100k hands? 500k hands?

So why would you say "oh hes a good LAG" based on 2.5k hands worth of info...at which point you should already have notes anyways figuring if he is smart or not...I just think it is very misleading as if you have, say, 500 hands vs a LAG opponent but they have been running hot their W$@SD may be artificially inflated bc of sample size.

First, let me just say I'm not making an argument for or against the W$SD stat, I can only trust the opinions of respected and winning players like Raze, Pokey, etc. until I make my own determinations as to what works for me.

I would say someone's a winner as long as they are positive, whether it's 0.5bb/100 or 40bb/100. Whether that winrate is acceptable to yourself or not, is up to you.

The problem is, we may have stats on someone who may legitimately be on the downside or upside of variance, even if their long term winrate is different, and we may also make incorrect assumptions based on our small window of their long-term ability. We do have to make assumptions though, and we can only do that with the information we've gathered through software and/or note-taking.

I agree, players go on tilt and evolve as well. We may have a 50k hand sample but they may be completely different now, than they were at the beginning of that sample. That's why I think we have to use stats as guides and to identify players, not as the end-all of our decisions. There is no replacement for careful observation during the current session.

Terremoto if you would go ahead and link something, me and others would be happy to have a look without necessarily debating. I'd love to get my hands on some new material (to me).

First of all, I don't see the point in designating my opponents as clear winners or losers. I play people to find out their weaknesses, and then to exploit them to the max, winners and losers alike. If I were helping someone with their game, it's still not necessary to label them because it doesn't help our goal of improving their game. Losers become small winners, and small winners become big winners. Big winners become killers at their stakes or move up. There's always a margin for improvement for any player.

If you want to estimate if someone is a long-term winner/loser, you have to look not only at their # of hands but at their winrate. If someone shows me a 20k hand graph at 8ptbb/100, I'm impressed. They are almost certainly a winner, and probably a significant winner. If I see a 250k SSNL graph at 0.5ptbb/100, I'm depressed. That's not variance - that's a lack of concentration and focus. They might be a slight winner long-term, but so what? Maybe they've achieved their goal of being a winning poker player, but there's worlds to conquer beyond simply beating the rake.

I get a decent assessment of my opponents after very intently watching them play a few rounds, especially if they get into some big pots. Even so, it's less important to know your opponent's +/- winrate than it is to know their specific, exploitable weaknesses.

Okay, but neither of the links are new , and they're pretty short descriptions within longer posts about HUD use. Honestly, I haven't heard much discussion about the topic, and I was just wondering why you didn't care for it since it's the first time I've seen that opinion.

RedJoker's post on another forum

Pokey's post from the archives.


I'd also like to jump in on the hand discussion, but I'm at work so I have to fit it in when I can.

Yes, and I totally agree with both of your guys points. My point is not about win rate or #of hands, that was more rhetorical, I am just saying that by the time you have a reliable % of W$@SD you should know how that player plays anyways, so judging players based on a small sample of how often they win at showdown can be misleading.

Sorry to sidetrack this on a nitty point! back to the goods raze

Good stuff guys, no worries this thread is wide open. I have a big weekend coming up so I won't be doing anything poker-related... I'll probably save a good MSNL post for next week!

I hope you don't think I'm criticising your post, because I'm not. Just using it to jump in on the discussion. You're probably a better player than I am anyway.

IMO any decent sized bet commits us when we look at the size of our stack vs. the size of the pot, so we might as well shove rather than make a ¾ pot bet.

BB has been described as a good TAG, so what hands would he 3-bet OOP like that, against an UTG raise from a presumably respected player? I'm not the best at putting people on ranges, but he has to have JJ+ or AK, right? If he hit that flop he would certainly c'bet, unless he has exactly KK and he's looking to CRAI. Hero holds the A so I don't think he's on a FD since I wouldn't expect a 3-bet w/KQs from bb.

This is pretty much the situation against anyone calling with a pp who calls your pfr, you just have to bet and see how they react.

I would agree with this except I don't like the idea of letting anyone catch up with us when we are ahead unless we've got a monster. Too many turn cards could improve any of their hands. I don't know, I think I'm more inclined to just shove now and be happy if everyone folds. A small bet could get too many callers or cause someone to sense weakness and shove over the top, and a big bet commits us anyway.

PS Raze...where in Canada are you from and do you play any live?

If we shove we will lose value from middle PPs that would have called a weak looking bet but folded to a big one. Those hands only have two outs to improve anyway so they would need a very very small bet for them to meet the 22 to 1 pot odds requirements to draw to their two outter. So by betting smaller we can induce a mistake on their part by letting them put more money into the pot with only two outs. If they don't have a pair or better then they are folding. And if someone shoved over my small bet I would probably call it off because it could be some FD (maybe a stubborn JTs or QJs from one of the PF overcallers) or AK and its a 3bet pot that is huge already so stacking off with AA is pretty acceptable.

I stand by making smaller bets to get value from weaker pairs since the villain's hands are mostly way behind.

In case you weren't aware...betting smaller in big 3bet pots is pretty standard. Its a method of extracting max value (also known as "the installment plan"). So say the pot on the flop is 120. Everyone (4 players) has 170 left in their stacks. How do we get the money in? If we bet 50 and get two callers, then the pot will be 270 and we will have 120 left. Now we can bet 60 on the turn and they will feel committed with their JJ or whatever and rationalize that we don't have a K because we bet so small on the flop and call the turn. Then the pot is 450 (if both call) and there is only a mere 60 left so it will easily go in on the river.