Calling too much or too little is not necessarily the only factor. In my own game I had noticed that I was being slightly to aggressive with marginal hands OTT against aggressive players which would serve better as a check back IP and call any river bet.

So sometimes its your strategy not creating enough good bluff catching opportunities for you to profit off rather than you calling an incorrect frequency(so like you said its dependent on your game, taking one stat out of context is not far off useless).

GTO breaks even against GTO by definition (in a zero-sum game), surely?

And yes, I wasn't taking rake into account.

My RCE over last 50k hands is 2.03. What am I doing wrong ?

Yeah you're right there. Was wrong of me to simplify it myself so much in my conclusion.

Overall I'd say yes, but can you prove to me that maybe your calling on the river should be > 1 because in other spots we are losing money? If we are losing money from the blinds, which I'm sure we still do in a complete GTO strategy at least for HU shove/fold, then surely we make up our money to break even in other places like calling IP on the river for example.

Now obviously I'm not saying that is true or not I'm just saying that you're making a pretty huge assumption without any real evidence to back up your argument.

I saw it in a training video once (can't remember which one).

Proof by vague assertion innit.

My September goals:

1. Go over The Mental Game of Poker again and complete more of the work in it (not met)
2. Read The Mental Game of Poker 2 and work on the questions in it (met)
3. 20k hands not met, about 15k)
4. Break even without any FPP T$ wins or VPP bonuses (not met, ended up down $25 or so)
5. Get rid of at least 2 of my C-game characteristics (met)

I've found the amount of time that I have to devote to poker really reduced lately and it won't get better any time soon. As such, my goals for October:

1. 10k hands
2. At least 4 hours per week working on my game, not necessarily only on 2+2
3. Refine A-to-C Game Analysis, refer to it frequently
4. Break even without any FPP T$ wins or VPP bonuses

Good luck everyone, and as always, thank you for all of your help.

Dude, this "playing too tight on turn/river" thing is blowing my tiny little mind. I'm not sure how to handle this because its just hard for me to believe that people at 25nl are bluffing enough to exploit me

I'm not sure what do.I guess I'm just going to have to review my play

Apparently the jump from 10NL (or 16NL now) to 25NL is the equivalent of what 25NL to 50NL used to be back a few years ago. If true, it's pretty massive.

As I believe I read earlier, 25NL is the first place when a fair amount of people will be playing for a living, so you can expect there to be a larger amount of good solid regulars.

Its a little more agro preflop, and guys value bet thinner on the river, and hand read a little better... also even fish seem a LITTLE more hesitant to stick 25 dollars in there with bs... but I don't think its a MASSIVE jump from 10nl to 25nl( I've only played like 40 k hands of 25nl so far so obv take that with a grain of salt).....

My main problem is I mostly play on my crappy laptop, which makes it hard for to me to look at 6 tables tiled..... and also, because I've fallen in love with stacking, 24 tabling FR( 18 tabling reg, and 2 tabling zoom atm, becuase I find that it allows me to play more hands per hour, and starz won't let me play more)

SOOOOOOOO

I don't think I can force myself to play less tables to be honest. I might switch my time between 24 tabling FR( or 18 reg + 2 zoom) and playing like 9-14 tables of 6mx on my desktop when I fix my PT4 on my desktop

Hit a serious bout of variance, it would seem.
8k hands into October and I'm down $100, or 10 buy ins at NL10. It's pretty sick. I can continue grinding NL10 because my bankroll allows for it, but I'm not sure if I should.
Every time I seem to get the nut straight the board pairs and I lose to a boat. Every time I get TPGK, the board runs out so that the lesser kicker either ties with me or wins. Got it in on A77/K with 75s vs. 76s. Easy chop yeah? Until they hit a 6 on the river.

So to complain guys, but it's all VERY frustrating, especially when trying new things. Ran at 21/18 last session since tightening up should help, but apparently that's not good enough.

Oh well.
No more grinding for October.

10BI swings are incredibly common and happens all the time. Just keep on moving. Taking a break is fine if you feel like you aren't playing good anymore, but really you should just learn to shrug it off.

Your BRM should account for these things. If you don't feel comfortable playing 10NL after a downswing or during a downswing (and 10BI isn't much) then you should have move down limits in place.

The trick to getting through variance is volume. Not taking time off, you only take time off if you are suffering from tilt.

Everytime, everytime, everytime. Seems to me like that's not the correct word. I also wonder how much of this is you over valuing your absolute hand strength. I remember a big point in poker for me was speaking to someone about a hand and realising that just because I have like the third nuts on a board isn't a reason to want to auto GII on the river.

Ul dude, that's poker. That **** happens, you know this and you know that we combat it with working on our mental game and having good BRM. Both of which you should maybe dedicate a little time to.

Making changes to your game when running bad isn't a particularly good idea in most cases. You don't want to be playing scared you want to be trying to play your A game, so always making +EV decision. If you don't feel comfortable playing the stake you are at after a downswing then I suggest moving down for a bit, not altering your game to try and decrease variance.

See point about volume > variance

Also seems a bit extreme to want to give up on a potential 28days of poker because you ran bad over a very short sample. By all means take a day or two off if you really are frustrated but not a month.

Keep working on it though mate, like everything it's just practise and you will start to deal with it better.

MMSS - it's just me having a bit of a sook. Thankfully my BRM can account for the 10BI swing (still have 34 BI's for 10NL), but it's just demoralizing to lose with hands that you're a 90.9% favourite. I'm not overvaluing the third nuts as well, I'm talking about flopping the absolute nuts and getting 6 outted or so. I think I'm going to drop back down to 5NL until I start consistently doing well there so that any money I do donk away is worth half of that that I'd donk away at 10NL.

But as I said, it's just me having a sook.

I don't think it's the variance that makes me want to have a break from October. I just seem to be playing poorly more frequently than I'm being sucked out on. I don't want to risk playing at this stage until I've really gone through my database and made some notes on myself as a player. I've really noticed myself playing very fit/fold postflop as well. I think this is mostly due to playing more ZOOM (something I'm going to stop doing) and playing mostly readless against a lot of players.

I'll be back at the tables, just don't know when.

From yesterday. It still happens:



@oly

It happens. When I was playing 10nl, I had pretty huge swings.

Here's June (10nl zoom):



and here's the first week of July (still 10nl zoom):



gl with the downswing

@birday I was actually thinking of raising flop, because flop texture seems to be wet and many people can call your raise with draws and overs. anyway you still got paid off so wp.

@olybrah about variance, I'm not too sure whether it is completely variance causing your downswing, but rather check that you have the fundamental concepts right first (eg. limping and etc.). Hope to see you back soon

He essentially explains it on his site.

http://mpethypoker.com/poker-article...ency-explained

imo, you would want your rce to be high, but not too high, because as mpethy has explained, you're not maximizing your value by raising when you are the clear favourite and passing on marginal situations etc. that's my 2c though.

Interesting discussion about river call efficiency! I'd just like to add that while the above might be true for GTO vs GTO, at the other end of the spectrum we have the opponent with no bluffing frequency playing his hand face up. Versus a player who literally has his hand turned face up we should never make a bad call (in fact we shouldn't even ever call at all unless it's an all-in call) and our river call efficiency should be sky-high. In reality all players fall somewhere in between and more or less play their hands face up when it comes to river bets. The lower the stakes, the more likely they are to play face up and the higher our RCE can be. At nanostakes it can and should be way higher than 1 imo.

Over 50k hands at 2nl my RCE was as high as 2.28, while my WTSD also was quite high at 26.5, so I don't think I was that nitty. Though I guess I could ask myself if I should have raised river more often...

Here's an example from LP.The CO is a complete nit... but I think the fish limping in EP MAY open his range a bit to POSSIBLY include AJs/AJo(But that's very generous IMO) on the turn and river. He already has a relatively low cb of 45 and a high turn CB of 75. So I think that means he almost always has it on the flop/turn when he bets.

Also, over the course of 185 hands he has bet the river 4/4 times

This is a VERY marginal spot IMO, and if I give him a range of TT+, then I get 2-1 on the flop( not great odds, but breakevenish) and we're even money on the river because I just coolored JJ. BUT him betting TT on the river is kind of a generous range..also I'm still not sure about AJ

THIS IS A SPOT THAT I USUALLY FOLD ON THE TURN BECAUSE OF HOW MARGINAL IT IS

PokerStars - $0.25 NL - Holdem - 8 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

SB: $8.80 (VPIP: 13.73, PFR: 12.03, 3Bet Preflop: 6.80, Hands: 780)
BB: $38.11 (VPIP: 19.69, PFR: 15.03, 3Bet Preflop: 10.53, Hands: 200)
UTG: $21.15 (VPIP: 17.52, PFR: 14.10, 3Bet Preflop: 5.88, Hands: 234)
UTG+1: $11.90 (VPIP: 100.00, PFR: 0.00, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 10)
MP: $25.00
MP+1: $20.79 (VPIP: 17.16, PFR: 15.67, 3Bet Preflop: 5.04, Hands: 405)
CO: $23.44 (VPIP: 9.78, PFR: 8.70, 3Bet Preflop: 5.19, Hands: 185)
Hero (BTN): $25.00

SB posts SB $0.10, BB posts BB $0.25

Pre Flop: (pot: $0.35) Hero has Q Q

fold, UTG+1 calls $0.25, fold, fold, CO raises to $1.00, Hero calls $1.00, fold, fold, fold

Flop: ($2.60, 2 players) 3 3 5
CO bets $1.75, Hero calls $1.75

Turn: ($6.10, 2 players) J
CO bets $3.25, Hero calls $3.25

River: ($12.60, 2 players) 3
CO bets $8.50, Hero ??

You have to make your decision on the turn here. Calling turn and folding river is the worst option. So its either fold turn or call turn and river. Even though he is a nit box I wouldn't be very surprised to see him barrel AK or something silly because he doesn't know how to play it and your getting 2.5/1 and he is in LP(even some nits will losen up somewhat in LP) so I think call call is fine.

He's a nit but he's iso'ing a fish, so he doesn't always have JJ+ here.
There are only three hands that beat you - AA/KK & JJ (he doesn't have a 3).
On the other hand he can easily have AK/AJ or say 88 - TT.
I'm calling all day.
But I would 3 bet pre though.

See, that's the thing. I know the odds I'm getting are pretty good.... but I don't think I'm making much money in this spot at all. That's why I usually fold in spots like this( and the earlier AQ) example.

Plus, even though I'm likely doing better than breaking even in the long run, I still have to deal with the -emotional ev of losing money to a complete nit that is just looking to cooler me

I still don't understand what the big deal is about playing too tight on the turn/river at 25nl.. I still think guys just don't bluff enough/ exploit you enough to make marginal calls.

I would rather fold turn, take the 0EV play and move on to a playing a more profitable spot

On a side note, 2 things

1. Crushing the Micros is NOT a huge book. AND, there's plenty of it you can skip if your playing 5nl, like the 24 tabling section and the 3b/4b/5b section IMO

2. I can't believe you playing 17.9 of your hands UTG. For 6mx, that's too loose and from FR that's absurdly loose.

What in the world is your UTG range(static obv)?

Dillchips ftw

nicely done.

Also, another reason to fold in marginal spot is rake, which was mentioned by mpethy.. I have no clue who he is btw

Crushing the micros is a huge book if you print it out. It's a pretty high stack of paper.

My UTG range varies. I can open up to as loose as 20% UTG if the circumstances suit it. One thing that I've learnt over the years is that you don't need to have a fish limp in front of you to be able to isolate them, thus I can open super wide in UTG/MP if they're in the blinds so I can isolate them and play a pot against them with hands that still beat their 60% static range. No "regs" at the micros really employ this strategy, nor employ a strategy against it (3betting light against a UTG open when a fish is inside the blinds) so it's not a bad idea.

Hence why my UTG range is rather large. Position is important, but position to the fish is even more important.

Last months graph:

10nl all time:

I will go back to 5nl with the intention to crush it! Then another shot/continue in 10nl. Burned a huge chunk of my roll 10nl, things didn't work, nothing was easy, but that's poker.

Fish, how is your HUD set up and what kind of stats do you have. If you want i can take a look at it.