Downswing... enough said?
Some tilt there, calling too many rivers. Bet sizing problems, too many tables. If i played ABC only my graph wouldn't be nearly that bad. So it was mostly psychological problems. Always found a way to make session a losing one (Fish 3x pot shoves river, i call TPTK).
Also was kind of terrible month, hardly got paid with big hands. If i got paid more often it might not have been that bad.

August goals:

1. 20K hands - Just barely met
2. Stay at 10NL due to my play meriting it rather than a reload - I suppose this goal is contradictory with #6 but since I accomplished #6, I'll call this one met.
3. Go over The Mental Game of Poker again and complete more of the work in it
4. Read The Mental Game of Poker 2 and work on the questions in it
5. Break even without any FPP T$ wins or VPP bonuses - Met
6. Extreme long-shot, take a shot at 25NL - Met

I'm disappointed in myself and a little embarassed to say that I was unable to meet goals #3 and 4 which I think are the most important of the entire set. Don't even know what led to that, the month just seemed to fly by and here I an 2/3 of the way through #4 and 0% of the way through #3. Will have to do better in September.

Goals:

1. Go over The Mental Game of Poker again and complete more of the work in it
2. Read The Mental Game of Poker 2 and work on the questions in it
3. 20k hands
4. Break even without any FPP T$ wins or VPP bonuses
5. Get rid of at least 2 of my C-game characteristics

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

And now a couple of hands that I'd like to discuss:

PokerStars - $0.25 NL - Holdem - 9 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

CO: $9.14 (VPIP: 6.25, PFR: 6.25, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 16)
BTN: $32.16 (VPIP: 6.25, PFR: 6.25, 3Bet Preflop: 16.67, Hands: 18)
SB: $10.52 (VPIP: 8.70, PFR: 8.70, 3Bet Preflop: 14.29, Hands: 23)
BB: $23.55 (VPIP: 12.74, PFR: 8.63, 3Bet Preflop: 5.63, Hands: 627)
Hero (UTG): $25.00
UTG+1: $21.66 (VPIP: 51.85, PFR: 22.22, 3Bet Preflop: 4.00, Hands: 54)
UTG+2: $37.20 (VPIP: 25.56, PFR: 20.00, 3Bet Preflop: 3.13, Hands: 92)
MP: $25.00 (VPIP: 13.11, PFR: 4.92, 3Bet Preflop: 4.17, Hands: 62)
MP+1: $25.00 (VPIP: 15.13, PFR: 11.76, 3Bet Preflop: 6.35, Hands: 360)

SB posts SB $0.10, BB posts BB $0.25

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

Hero raises to $0.75, fold, fold, fold, MP+1 calls $0.75, fold, fold, fold, fold

Flop: ($1.85, 2 players) 4 3 7
Hero bets $1.00, MP+1 raises to $3.10, Hero calls $2.10

Turn: ($8.05, 2 players) 7
Hero checks, MP+1 checks

River: ($8.05, 2 players) 6
Hero bets $4.00, fold

The flop raise seemed to me to be one of three things: a TPTK situation, someone trying to bluff this draw-heavy board, or a holding that has me beat (most likely a set as I don't see 56 calling an UTG raise). Is that accurate-ish? As such, is my call OK here?

With the turn, my thought was on pot control and to see what villain will do if I 'pass the reins' off to them. Is this move to passive? I think I'd fold to any bet that was >50% of pot.

After villain checked turn I figured it was safe to make a small bet as I'd see sets/7x putting some money into the pot here, and again, figured I'd fold to any raise. What do you all think?

PokerStars - $0.25 NL - Holdem - 7 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

Hero (SB): $27.81
BB: $25.00 (VPIP: 32.00, PFR: 32.00, 3Bet Preflop: 25.00, Hands: 26)
UTG: $10.06 (VPIP: 16.02, PFR: 13.26, 3Bet Preflop: 3.17, Hands: 183)
UTG+1: $25.46 (VPIP: 9.99, PFR: 6.04, 3Bet Preflop: 4.63, Hands: 768)
MP: $10.00 (VPIP: 13.10, PFR: 12.45, 3Bet Preflop: 3.28, Hands: 1,073)
CO: $25.00 (VPIP: 33.33, PFR: 33.33, 3Bet Preflop: 50.00, Hands: 6)
BTN: $11.69 (VPIP: 11.36, PFR: 11.36, 3Bet Preflop: 5.00, Hands: 44)

Hero posts SB $0.10, BB posts BB $0.25

Pre Flop: (pot: $0.35) Hero has K A

fold, fold, fold, fold, fold, Hero raises to $0.75, BB raises to $2.20, Hero raises to $4.00, BB calls $1.80

Flop: ($8.00, 2 players) 4 3 3
Hero ???

I have one note on the villain that says they 3bet from the blinds with QQ against a steal. I went with the 4bet due to being OOP, and think that I would have folded to a 5bet. What do I do in a 4bet pot that misses me like this one did? Please keep in mind I am just beginning to expand my 4bet range so this is pretty new to me.

Thanks in advance!

Dunna asked me a few days back to describe the biggest leaks people have from the blinds. I have been doing a lot of work on it for the last week so here is a little synopsis for the SB of what I have so far.

My standard in the SB used to be 3bet QQ+, AK and get it in(sometimes JJ too). 3bet bluff people with a fold to 3bet above 55% with Axs and Kxs. Then I would cold call anything I felt I could make a profit with.

Against a competent reg it is extremely hard to make any money cold calling from the SB for a few reasons.
-The four things we use to our advantage to win playing poker is skill, position, initiative and card strength. When we cold all from the blinds we are OOP, don’t have the initiative and have a capped range. Against a competent reg we will never be able to make up from all of these 3 disadvantages just with skill.
- We can’t cold call OOP with a wide range so when we do cold call our range is pretty transparent and a good player can use this to their advantage quite easily. For example if the board comes down 234 we rarely have any sets/straight draws 2p while the opener can have them all.
-We will get squeezed a lot and denied our equity when in the SB.

So as a standard I think 3betting a linear range in the SB is best. By 3betting we take the initiative back and don’t split our range into transparent sub ranges. Obviously we deviate from 3betting a linear range a lot of the time since people have a lot of leaks we want to exploit.

For example say we are facing a 2.5x open from the CO and we in the SB 3bet a linear 12% range as a standard. Villain is a 22/20 with 85% FT3B over 500 hands. Here there is no value in 3betting anything so I’d flat the top 7% or so of hands and 3bet him a lot with blockers. By 3betting a linear range here we are actually letting him exploit us somewhat because we are wasting equity.
So I was thinking, how much should we be 3betting as a standard vs an opponent who opens on the button when we are in the SB. When you min raise the button, to break even you need your opponents to fold 2bb/(2bb+0.5bb+1bb) = 57% of the time (bet/bet+pot). So that means each the SB and the BB should fold the sqrt(57%) = 75% of the time which implies we must defend 25% of the time each. Now in the SB we don’t need to defend quite that much because the BB is still left to act and the BB is getting better pot odds. So vs a min raise on the button we should be defending roughly around 20% of the time when in the SB. That means I’m 3betting the top 20% vs a standard Tag which will look something like <AA-77,AKo-A9o,KQo-KTo,QJo,AKs-A2s,KQs-K5s,QJs-Q9s,JTs-J9s,T9s,98s,87s>

Using the same method we can work out that we need to defend 21% of the time vs a 2.5x raise and 19% of the time vs a 3x raise which we should reduce to ~17% for 2.5x raise and ~14% vs a 3x raise.
Now we can do this for all positions. When we are facing a CO 2.5x he needs everyone to fold 62% of the time. That mean we in the SB should fold the cubed root of 62% which 85% of the time .ie we need to defend 15% of the time. Due to the button being IP on the CO he is going to defend slightly more than us so we need to defend roughly around ~12% of the time. Vs a CO 3x open we need to defend ~10% of the time.

Do this calculation for every position and here is what you get.
Vs BU 2x – defend 25% ==> 20%
Vs BU 2.5x – defend 21% ==> 17%
Vs BU 3x – defend 19% ==> 14%
Vs CO 2.5x – defend 15% ==>12%
Vs CO 3x – defend 13%==>10%
Vs MP 3x – defend 10% ==>8%
Vs UTG 3x – defend 8% ==>5%

3betting 20% of the time vs a button minraise is quite a lot. Your will seriously get owned if you do not widen your 5bet range(assuming we don't have a call 4bet OOP range) to something a lot wider than QQ+AK. Still thinking about how wide we should go so il get back to you on that. I'm probably not going to be 3betting quite as wide as 20%. Il start about 16% and work my way up when i'm confident it will be more profitable. These numbers are just starting points. No need to stick to them wholeheartedly. If you don't feel comfortable 3betting 20%, don't. I don't so I won't.

Now this assumes that there is a standard TAGs all around your table. If the BB is a nit and Button min raises you will have to defend more than 20%. The opposite also applied. If BB is a manic you should defend less. This is only of course if the opener is a receptive reg who understands opening ranges and adjusting to tables.

It also assumes that you’re facing a standard Tag. If you’re playing vs a nits open tighten up the range. If against a Lag, loosen up.

So il leave actually choosing the standard 3betting ranges up to you. It’s pretty simple. Basically choose the top X% of hands with preference towards big cards, Axs and Kxs.

So examples of when I wouldn't 3bet a linear range.
-Villain has a high FT3B. I explained this earlier.
-Villain has an exploitable postflop tendency. Ie folding too much to check raises, cbetting too little/ too much, barrelling too little too much ect ect. Here we should cold call OOP to exploit his postflop mistake. How much should we flat? That depends how big of a mistake he makes. Someone who only cbets with TP otherwise checks behind and folds to a bet we can play something like 70%+ of our range. Someone who doesn’t barrel often enough we can probably flat like ~10%-15% of hands(pulling numbers out of my arse here).
-Someone left to act is a spew monkey with a high squeeze%. Here I’d flat the premiums and back raise with the intention of getting it in and 3bet the rest of the range.

What I did was work out all the ranges and saved them into flopzilla so I can reference them in game.

Going to work a bit on my BB game some more and if I find anything interesting il also post it. Pretty sure my logic is sound here and there are no errors. Anyone spots any let me know. Cheers.

@outatime
h1: I would have XF river most of the time. Villain can be raising here with 55/66 sometimes(I wouldn't do it since we have SDV, position as well as equity but have seen it happen). He can also have flush draws that check behind the turn because they don't think they have fold equity and their draw has just been degraded. So the riv hits his range somewhat. I disagree with him raising 7x unless he is a fish

h2: I don't say this often but your 4bet is too small haha, I'd go 2.2x IP and about 2.5x OOP. So ya would want to make it around $5. On this flop I'd probably XC one bet and fold once to a barrel once its not A/K/heart. People are pretty weary in 4bet pots. They always thinking your slow playing so you get to realise your equity a lot.

@Gamma - something I think you need to think about is trying to play a bit more tricky rather than straight forward. You shouldn't be 3betting QQ/AK all the time, you need to play about with your ranges and start balancing them better and splitting some of them % wise and learning to do this whilst you are adjusting to players, not just from the off.

As as a standard I 3bet QQ+, AK. Its my starting point that I adjust from. I understand what your saying though and its something I have been working on the last month or so.

Goals for September:
20k Hands [] (Starting new job, long hours and v stressful)
1 Training vid a week []
Move back up in stakes, preferably twice []

August graph: (Only from last 10 days as moved sites to tiny site with very little traffic)

Lad's got heart.

^^I'm no SNG player but I'd strongly consider either 3b/decide or 3b jamming pre.

Ye, you're wrong. Calling IP w/ a range that crushes his when he will spew post is much better than folding out the majority of his range and having to fold to a shove.

It isn't as if his SB opening range is by any means tight.

What are we 3betting in that spot though?

Some weak ****, some strong ****.

There's really no reason for me to worry about capping my range. He isn't going to be applying loads of pressure post flop unless he hits a huge hand in which case it makes my life easy.

I think you are making several mistakes here.

Firstly, we aren't playing hands in SB to make a profit, we are playing hands to do better than -50bb/100. This may seem like semantics but I really don't think it is.

Secondly, you should always have card advantage when you are playing from SB vs BTN. So while we are OOP and without initiative we will have the better hand.

Now, if you play like you do (3-bet or fold) 3-betting linearly makes sense. I wouldn't play like that though. I think we can call from the blinds, although less so from SB than BB.

Thinking that we have to defend equally from SB as BB (or close to) is flawed. BB has invested twice as much as we have. Also, if BB is folding too much the onus isn't on us to make sure BTN is profiting.

Generally speaking I think the approach of denying or preventing auto-profit from btn is flawed. BTN will be profiting he has position, has nothing invested etc. We can't prevent him from making money, just as nobody can prevent us from making money from BTN vs blinds. But our focus shouldn't be on BTN, it should be on our winrate. We don't care if BB is hemorrhaging money to BTN and we certainly aren't going to play sub optimally to prevent it.

What I would do is to look at BB to estimate how often we can get away with flatting (ie, how often will he squeeze if we flat). Then I will look at BTNs range and only play hands that dominates his. So I will play broadways because they will make better top pair than his. Basically I will be playing vs a very wide range so the hands that get to showdown will mostly be weak so playing hands that make top pair is good, considering we aren't looking to play big pots. Similarly hands like 89s aren't all that attractive since they don't make good pairs all that often, and when we hit a monster BTN most likely has nothing. So I tend to use my SCs as my 3-bet bluffs.

I also 3-bets kinda wide for value (AJ+,KQ,TT+) and balance with SCs, A2-A5s and perhaps hands like JTo or Suited one-gappers. Obv. I tailor my ranges to his fold vs 3-bet stats. Not too much he can do about it when he is opening wide.

Also, if you are 3-betting 16% and folding rest, not only are BTN autoprofitting, he is also faced with an extremely easy and profitable 4b/get it in spot where he can just play GTO vs you. I haven't done it, but it should be easy enough to figure out 4-bet fold and 4-bet/call ranges I would assume, when your range is face up (I'm sure you can figure out how to that if you are watching the Homework series on DC )

Basically I think your assumption that you can't cold call and play postflop is erroneously. Not sure how concise I've been I feel this post has been kinda rambling. Hopefully you'll get what I mean

Cheers for the post A.Ertbjerg. A lot of what you said makes sense.

I guess I should just clarify that I was looking to 3bet a linear range when I didn't have a postflop plan for exploiting a good reg. Someone whos stats are pretty solid is going to be pretty hard to make money off(or break even against) by cold calling OOP IMO. My blind game needs a lot of work and I was just looking for a starting point for defending against each position, which would I would adjust from in game.

Yep 100% agree. If we can play a hand that makes -49bb/100 its better than folding.

Yea our hand may have greater equity than the buttons range but the problem I have found is the fact that our range is going to be quite transparent and can't hit a lot of the boards the BTN can(even though his range is really wide). Say our flatting range is something like TT-77, suited broad ways, KJo,QJo. We basically hit none of the low flops besides our medium pairs and not very many of the middling flops.

I'd tend to disagree. If you were on a table with 4 nits wouldn't you adjust your range to a decent reg who is opening an extremely wide range because of who is left to act? The more nittier the nits are the more the table will tend towards playing like HU which is going to be really wide.
I can see your point that if villain always opens 40% OTB despite who is in the blinds then we shouldn't adjust. But in this poker age most semi-decent players adjust to a nit in the blinds somewhat.

Good points. BTN is the power seat, he is always going to profit.

What method should you use to find a rough estimate of your defending range vs each position? Right now it just feels like I don't have a proper game plan. The ones I have found seem quite logical to me(even if its just a defending range not a 3bet/fold scenario). Using a DB seems problematic from a sample size point of view.

Heh true but hopefully all regs aren't watching it ha.

Cheers man for the rest of the advice posted WRT 3betting range and CCing range.

I'm not so much looking at what position I'm playing against but rather what ranges I'm playing against. So someone with 35% RFI in CO is treated the same as someone with 35% RFI on BTN.

So I just look at what a hand range of x% looks like and add hands that dominate that range. So if he raises 35% I will make a rough estimate of what that range is (like 22+, 54s+64s+,Axs, K5s+, T8-Q8s, A7o+, K8o+,Q8o+,J8o+,T9o). It's not too important to be entirely precise as long as you have a rough estimate.

I'll 3-bet roughly the range described earlier (while obv looking at his fold vs 3-bet stats for adjustments if needed), which will be about 12%.

I'll call any PP, and something like A8-ATs (maybe adding in A2-A5s and 3-betting A6s-A7s, Axs is just such a nice hand ), KJs-K9s, QJ-QTs, JTs, off-suit broadways except JTo. Obv I'll adjust as needed vs the specific opponent and BB but I think you get the idea.

Postflop, I'm an aggro spewtard maniac. Basically he is raising 35% so he never has anything and I'll attack any flop and c/r small like a maniac. Ans sometimes he will just "outflop" me when I can't rep anything and he will win a pot. I don't think there is a problem in that either, some flops will simply be better for him than me.

Of course sometimes I'm just dodging bullets

^Ur on Party? I thought they just kicked all their poker customers in the face with the cashout charges or something?

Edit: Oh, and I should say thanks for all the strat guys. Great to read and think about

I thought so as well, but I don't pay anything. Maybe it's a Danish regulation thing, don't know.

ugthemc; what yr winrate at 5NL & 10NL?

i'm not particularly struggling @10NL but am not crushing it either and am definitely looking for people to talk strat with.

^^ I appreciate the discussion on blindplay....why would anyone play on party btw?



thats 10nl

Hit me pm up with your skype name then

5nl

Day 1 of my hitting Silver in a week challenge


Got table ninja for a month so that should help, will probably 6 table for the most part but will play more if I need the volume before the day is up. 130 a day is the goal.

omg 20BI downswing, going to quit poker life is so hard (/sarcasm)

@ugthemc; cheers; PM sent.

Interesting blind strat discussion fellas. Given me some food for thought.

Also, this thread is about the third time this week I've seen a mention of the There Will Be Homework DC series. Been thinking of renewing my subscription to get some new vids. Would it be worth doing so for this series?

Also, are there any other DC series anyone can recommend for a micro FR player?

thx

'Hero folds' is appropriate.