Great thread so far Jack, just a general question for ya if you don't mind..


I take it by this that you were predominantly a tourney player before 50NL? If so, what was the transition like? I'm asking since I'm a SNG player who's planning on diving head-first into 6-max cash

yea i played 6max sng up to the $72+8's on stars (i think thats what the buy-in was) to build my roll initially then switched over when i realised that sng takes crazy long time to fill up once u get past the $30 buyins and so therefore i was pretty limited in terms of what i could play/ money i could make.

i really sucked when i 1st switched over, but for me, i couldnt play lower because at the time i couldnt accept the relative factors of cash chips and thought in absolute terms "omg its only 50 cents"

i cant even explain how i started to get remotely good at cash games because it was like 2 years ago. i think it was probably through reading the stickies in the micro/ small-stakes forum, and being able to pick up what they were saying pretty quickly

Sorry to be a bit offtopic Jack but can i ask what you are studying in swansea? I'm going there this coming year (fingers crossed) to do maths & economics, this anything to do with your course?

Also, whats that new casino like up there, i'm yet to venture that far just to go to casino.

Nice thread though, i've read it all up till now!
keep up the good work

i study business management. just finished my 2nd year. have a couple of re-sits during august. i dont really have anything to do with maths, though i did some economics modules.

theres 2 casino's; grosvenor and aspers. both have a lot of poker going on through the week. i ran the poker society last year that was pretty cool if u dont fancy like £50 events, because we ran like £3 and £5 re-buys etc

just so the link to vid doesnt get lost in amongst other comments.

dont hesistate to give feedback on it so i can prepare to make the next one. i think i might go over some similar points a bit too much, but hopefully its not too long winded/ boring

I'm actually getting my graduate degree in business right now; it's veru reassuring to know that some poker players out there are actually going to school and not just getting pot committed to poker and giving up other endeavors.


I'm going to resurrect this thread with more questions from your new video. I know what I'm doing but I have a lot to learn.

Are you still playing SNG's at all? Why/why not? how does the play level related to 25NL? you've been at 25NL a long time, and I think generally speaking it's where a lot of players grind their teeth at.

i havent been at 25nl a long time, i just havent put in as many hands as i should have for this thread. lol its only through my laziness really.

no, i dont play sng at all any more, i havent played for ages so i dont have a very good idea of the push/ fold situations any more and i think if i sat in a sng i would just make a ton of endgame mistakes.

play at sng is much softer than 25nl cash, purely because players make so many mistakes on or around the bubble. the only problem with sng is variance can kill, and also the games take ages to fill up.

jack, just started watching the video, and just noticed u have changed ur tracker to holdem manager like all the DC videos. In your opinon is holdem manager better than poker tracker? if so, is there any big differences?

jack, hope umake it up to 200nl on pokerstars

less 600nl on ftp imo more 25nl onstars

hold'em manager is a lot better than poker tracker in my opinion. i like to be able to view opponents stats by position. until i got hold'em manager, i didnt realise that players ranges varied so much (some players who r same overall stats, vary a lot by position - raising more often on but button but less under the gun).

hold'em manger allowed to see where each player opens from and therefore i can make more accurate adjustments to their ranges.

haha yea... so true. wish i didnt suck so much at 600nl ldo!

WFT!!!!!!!!

good video jack look forward to part 2.
id like to see in yr second vid a bit about playing out of posistion i know u should nt but u will play out of posistion here and their , it would be good to see how you play and what ranges u put them on. i think that will help alot of people as playing out of posistion is hard to do well and its most peoples big leaks.

fwiw -- when i first read the hand i said to myself "oh, he's repping 56s
and he hit the straight on the river..."

Then, of course, the pre-flop action made no sense.

So, in this case - - - maybe the dude was multi-tabling and forgot the
pre-flop action ( as i did... )

the above hand i dont know wtf , the all in on the river seems stupid what on earth are you representing with a pre flop raise if he has anything more than one pair hes going to call and own you .

That's an absolute clusterfudge of a hand...

Thanks for the video Jack it was very useful again.

When I originally started 3-betting more I used to do it at the wrong times / wrong players etc but that video had a lot of very good / clear examples in it.

Personally, I am a visual learner so find it much easier to learn from watching videos like yours than from reading books on poker which dont always set the whole scene.

A question on moving up levels (20 BI aside) what would you consider a good win rate based on sample size to progress up the levels? I was crushing 5nl at 13bb/100 and I and currently running at 3bb/100 at 10nl (sample size only 3k hands at mo as only moved up a week ago). I have had a lot of variance thusfar at 10nl so I need 10k+ to see the bigger picture really?

What is the next video on?

Thanks

part 2 is just that session continued really. im not sure if its all that interesting though, i may just make some 50nl vids instead.

its hard to tell from 3k hands you can have insane variance over that sample... i can play 3k hands in an evening and i know that i can have really good/ really bad sessions so i wouldnt take too much from your sample if i were you.

20k hands probably gives you an idea whether you are doing something write/ wrong

If you have already made part two just upload it anyway as I'm sure it will be useful to many players ( myself included).

jack, after watching ur video ive been looking out for ppl to 3bet the **** out of and tonight i found one, at first i did it with junk and he kept folding then came a run of good hands and i eventually took his stack twice within 10hands, hehehe! excellant! must admit tho, not over confident 3betting light, and wont always be doing it!!

i think if i didnt 3bet the junk before the 'good' hands he wont have called/4bet shoved his hands!

Jack, have really enjoyed the thread so far and it's really helping me. Have recently switched from playing SNGs after variance bit me in the ass and I couldn't cope with the boredom any more. I still play tournaments for fun, but I'm loving my first proper forays into cash.

Here's a question for you though. In some of the hand analysis, both in this thread and in the video you made, you talk about checking a lot of flops in a heads-up pot with AK/AQ when you raise pre, get one caller, and miss on a board like 5d-6h-Tc / 2-8-2 / J-5-3. Your argument is that you fold out worse hands and only get called by better.

But my point is this. Why wouldn't you want your opponent to fold and take the pot there and then when you've missed and they might hit on the turn or river? Surely if both of you have missed it's nice to pick up the pot that you created preflop and move onto the next hand - after all, aren't we always taught that aggressive poker is the way to play? So betting on a dryish flop should reap its rewards. I understand that at higher stakes you are going to get floated and c/raised a lot more but at 10NL, 25NL and 50NL surely the c-bet is one of your best weapons, as most players are fit or fold?

It just seems a bit negative to me to simply check AK/AQ whenever you miss and the board looks like it might have connected with a villain's calling range. Also, don't you also become a bit easy to read if you check and give up if you miss the flop with these preflop premium hands? Observant players will just start betting once checked to with worse hands and force us to fold...

Would love to hear some comments from you on this to help myself and others to understand your way of thinking.

Thanks

just watched the video jack...good stuff. especially the 3betting light thing.
in the video, u said u are playing pretty tight in the blinds, which i do in general, too. but there are a few situations where i am unsure if my play is profitable. i will give u 2 examples of admittingly very theoretical situations, but just to show u what i am talking about...

so lets assume a really nitty player without history between u two except that u know his stats (i.e. 12/8) opens utg/mp and u are sitting in the blinds with 22-JJ.
i don't think there is value in 3betting the hands. with the bigger pair 99-JJ i would flat and play some postflop poker. i have at least some showdown value. with 22-88 i would general call to setmine. i mean in position this is a clear call but is it ok to setmine oop vs. a nitty utg/mp opener?

ok. player 2 is a solid reg running at 22/18 and he knows that u are a reg...so he opens utg/mp and ure in the blinds with sth. like 99-JJ, AQ, T9s-QJs. i would usually don't flat pairs smaller than 99 because they haven't enough showdown value and calling for set value vs. a good player oop is obviously -ev. AQ is close imo, bceause it could be a value 3b but i am unsure about this hand. i prefer flatting vs utg/mp opens without futher history. in another video i saw a guy suggesting to flat high sc's vs. tag utg/mp opens to merge your range. (99-JJ, AQ, maybe AJs) he argued that high sc's have a lot more post flop potential than the lower ones and that u should c/r a lot of flops w your draws, TP, obv. 2pair+...i should mention that this video was a small stakes video showing some 1/2 or 2/4 action. don't remember exactly...i really like to c/r a lot of flops, also it is high variance...what's your opinion to this spot?

in response to the idea of checking back the flop when i miss with a hand like AQ/AK....

1) you should be playing in games where the majority of your opponents are fishy players, more often than not, what you would call 'calling stations'. therefore i dont expect them to fold out even bottom pair.
furthermore, these players arent trying to read my play because, as was already said, they are poorer players who are just trying to make any type of hand. you dont need to try and buy every pot, playing simple value town type poker will pay dividends. you will also be surprised at the amount of times you can just check down A high vs a 65/4 type and actually be good.

2) those times you are at tables that arent full of fish and are actually full of regs, you can expect those players to have HUD's. if they see you are cbetting 80% of flops, then you become really check-raiseable because no one can hit a flop that often, and you will find yourself potentially becoming prone to getting check-raise bluffed on some boards.

3) A high is actually quite a strong hand to be checking back the flop with. if someone doesnt have a pair then you have them beat, and usually they will only have 6 outs to make a pair to beat you. if they have a hand dominated by yours, then they will only have 3 outs.

4) most people wont try to take the pot away from you just because you check back the flop, so you dont need to worry about getting bluffed. people can adjust if you start cbetting every flop, but its hard to exploit someone who is checking back a lot of flops, since it means their cbetting range is weighted towards more 1pair+ type hands (even though it will also contain some bluffs which dont have showdown value).

so yeah, in conclusion i guess im just trying to say that A high has a lot of showdown value on boards like T62 because you beat anyone who doesnt have a pair and they only have 6 outs (or maybe even 3 outs) to beat you. so you will win at showdown a lot more than you expect just by checking down. and anything that does beat you probably wouldnt have folded anyway

so you are saying that, at 25nl for instance, utg opens to 75c. it is 50c more to us in the big blind, we have 22-88, do we call to set mine?

people are usually tighter utg, so if he is 12/8 overall, then he is probably only raising something like 6% of hands from utg.
according to pokerstove, that would be equal to AQ+ and 77+.
JJ+ = 1.8% of hands, so big pairs make up almost a 3rd of his range.

we are 8 to 1 against to flop a set. so to break even we have to make 8 times out investment, or about $4.

if a guy is such a nit, then i am expecting him to stack off with any overpair for 100 big blinds because otherwise he literally isnt going to make any money. so therefore, i think that since 'stack odds' are around 6 times what we need purely through implied odds, that we can profitably call with any pair to try and flop a set.

then just check/ fold when we miss. check/raise when we hit. EZ game

well it obviously depends on villains post flop tendancies, because standard tag regs who are 22/18 can vary a hell of a lot with what they do after the flop.

you want to try and flat call with hands that can dominate some of the ones he is opening. AJs is probably the worst hand i would call an EP/ MP open with and that is pretty close against most players.
even if they open a lot of hands such as A9s etc, it doesnt mean they are going to be going crazy on an A high flop, most will play pot control and try for 2 streets of value, but they certainly wont be calling any check/raises.

you want to try and note whether you see a reg stack off with an overpair in a single raised pot for 100bb. they are really good signs of what you can flat from the blinds, because if a reg literally cant fold AA on a 459r flop despite getting check/raised on the flop, led into on the turn and shoved into on the river, then you want to be trying to set-mine vs him as the opportunity to win his stack is there.

you wont go wrong at all playing really tight out of the blinds. despite thinking people are 'always' stealing, they wont be. most wont even notice that you fold you big blind say 90% of the time, because they will just have certain ranges they raise from certain positions.

i wouldnt be 3betting EP or MP openers light from the blinds either, i will be sticking to QQ+ and AK for the most part.

i think call flop with set oop and chk raising turn is better line. when i'm deciding if i want to chk raise flop or turn i look at villians cbet turn percentage. If they cbet flop and double barrel turn alot I usually go for the call on flop and check raise turn. If they never bet the turn i guess u gotta check raise flop or do the call flop lead turn(meh).