Merge is much softer than Stars. I think I could at best average 2BB/100 maybe 2.5BB/100 on PS 2/4 and probably less than 2BB/100 on PS 5/10. I averaged about double that on Merge.

I don't know what peak time is because I don't really pay attention to it that often, I just play when I feel like and I play against whoever is at the tables, I don't table select.

It's generally correct to leave the table when you have a bad image because it becomes very obvious to your opponents when you have it and when you don't. A bad image implies that you've been losing a bunch of pots by calling down too light against your opponents value bets or by bluffing too frequently into spots where your opponents continue to call you down. So if most players at the table are only going to fold to you when you have it, call you when you don't, and value bet you very thinly, you are in a lot of trouble.

The only remedy in this type of case is to make a hand, which is actually pretty tough to do.

If nothing you seem to be doing is working, the correct decision is always to just get up and get on another table, or just quit the session altogether.

What you said about building experience to deal with downswings is the best advice I could give to anyone. I don't think there is any one magic formula, but one thing I think I do well in real life that allows me to deal with these downswings better is I don't really sweat small stuff. When I was younger, if I was driving and somebody cut me off, I used to lose it and get really upset. Today even if I get in accident and it's not my fault, I'd probably be very subdued and matter of fact. Accidents happen, I was probably due, no big deal. I get upset at very few things nowadays, so when I get 200bb sucked out on the river by a 2 outer, it just doesn't effect me that much.

I suppose you are right.

Hmmmm, interesting. I'm one of those guys who 3 bets pretty wide against steals and CO opens. My basic rationale behind this is that I hate playing out of position, and I rather not flat. Instead, I like to attack a weak range with my strong range right out of the gate, with the initiative. I tried flatting hands like AQ, KQ, KJ, AJ, 99, 10,10 etc from the blinds for a while (polarizing my 3 bet range), in order to keep hands that I out kick in the hand, but i just basically got owned because the regs in my games we good at attacking my narrow flatting range.

So, I assume your "fold to 3bet%" is low from the btn and CO, and that people aren't really 3 betting you light, yeah? This is definitely in line with my positional based style, which I like.

Maybe you could elaborate on how you deal with the weaker parts of your range on the CO and BTN too?

I'm not saying that you should stop 3betting out of the blinds. I'm rather saying that most people who 3bet too much out of the blinds don't adjust their 3betting frequencies after I adjust my button opening frequencies.

It will never appear on your HUD that I'm not opening the button light though because if there are weaker players in the blinds I'm likely to open >70% of my buttons. The only way to pick up on this and make the adjustment is to pay close attention to how often I do raise my button on each table. This is an adjustment I think will never be made by 90% of players even up through 2/4, and I actually think the majority will never make that adjustment because they aren't versed well enough in tracking the game flow and changing their play accordingly.

One piece of advice I give to people often is not to attack a strong player's range when both of you perceive it to be weak. A strong player knows his range is weak and expects this. My advice is attack a strong player's range when it is perceived by both you and him to be STRONG. He won't expect this from someone he deems a weaker player which is why on average it's good advice.

When you say you flat 85% of your range to their 3bets, do you mean 85% of your BTN opening range (which is 25%, so about 22% of hands total that you would flat a 3b with),

OR

When you are not folding to their 3bets, you would be flatting 85% of the time, and 4betting 15% of the time.

I find it very hard to play profitable in 3b pots when defending stuff like KJo, QJs, JTs, and other offsuit broadways or suited connectors and stuff (except for stuff like AQ/AK).

Thanks

2nd question :

I noticed you said you pay a lot of attention to game flow. Is this more like in 3betting/4b dynamics or stuff like you just caught him triple barrel bluff you so now you think he's more likely to do it for value next time ?
I find it that I level myself easily when considering game flow dynamics too much and I rather rely on "basic solid" poker instead (By which I mean stats and previous solid reads, and the play which I think is most correct in a vacuum), Do you think my approach is still good at 200NL ?

Thank you

Maybe 85% was a little high. I was implying that I was 4betting the other 15% of the time. On second thought it's likely that of that 25% I'm opening, I'm 4betting probably about 10% and folding maybe 20% and flatting the rest.

The more strong hands you have in your flatting range, the easier it is to play your weaker holdings.

It's everything. I'm paying attention to all of it (if I'm playing well).

Earlier in the thread someone asked me what was the biggest problem most people struggle with when moving from 200nl up to 400nl and I said it was basically exactly what you are saying you do about "basic solid poker". I suggest going back and reading what I had to say about that.

Pretty interesting that you came to this conclusion. Greenstein mentions this as a trait of good poker players in Ace on the River (lol books?)

hmmm, very good stuff. Thanks for taking the time. It's funny, I feel like I think the same way about the game sometimes, but without the results to back it up and feel confident about it. Now that I read through your thought process, it gives me more confidence in those kind of thought processes.

what percent would you sell merge money for right now?

How many hands have you played lifetime? This year? Roughly even.

I only have a couple thousand on there now so I don't really care to sell it.

Lifetime I don't know, I'd guess close to 2.5 million. This year, about 200k? I ran pretty good at 10/20 this year over a small sample and won like 40k so I haven't needed to put in that many hands at other stakes to maintain the same earn I've had over the last few years.

Hey man, good to see you back, been a surprisingly good thread. If you have time/motivation to watch Girahs vid would you care to give an opinion on it?
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29...-time-1072236/

Thnx very much for answering my questions and continuing to answer others

I understand if you feel iv asked too many allready, but If u are in a generous mood:

If you where trying to set up an aggressive dynamic(so you get payed off with your AQ) and 3bet SB vs BTN reg who was opening 40-50% of hands and had around 70% fold to 3bet and flop came something low like 472r. We kind of have around 30-36 combos value and 100 unpaired combos if we are 3betting a bunch say(AK AQ AJ KQ KJ 65s 54s T8s 97s Q9s Q8s J9s J8s) and gto allows us to bluff like 15 combos? What do you do with such a wide range?
Wow, im begining to see why you flat 18% of hands vs 12%-14% 3bettors..

I haven't read through the whole thread, but I want to drop a question in before you stop answering them . Hopefully no one's asked this yet.

In your transition up the ranks, did you receive coaching? From who? What specific things did you focus on? What piece of advice did you receive that was most helpful in moving up (broad, I know)?

I want to ask again about the hand I posted:
You call AQo vs a 3bet of an unknown bvb - flop comes Q9x, turn and river brick and he 3barrels you. You said you would call it off.

Why? Are you ahead of any of his value range? Do you think it likely people will 3barrel bluff bricks?

I kind of get the feeling this is a spot you're going to be beat wwwaaayyy more often than not. Does this change at higher stakes? What is the reason AQ is a call here and not just a pure bluffcatcher in a situation where we have no indication opp is bluffing?

Obviously it's an excellent video. I can tell he put a lot of time into it because I've done powerpoint videos before and the ones that come out good take me 5-10 hours to make usually.

I didn't necessarily agree with the way he was categorizing particular opponents, but what do I know? He's up a lot more money than I am.

There are two things I'll take from that video. From the first hand, it appears that I probably don't shove over river bets often enough with hands I'm using to bluff catch the turn. I've kind of always known that it's often a good play, but just one of those things I probably don't place enough emphasis on during actual gameplay.

When I was looking over the second hand at first glance it appeared to me to be a call though I thought it was somewhat close. Personally I would have assumed villain had way more straights in his range than girah did because it's super difficult for girah to have a strong hand on that river unless he has specifically 67dd/78dd/A7dd as those are hands that would make sense to play that way, but I really had no idea it was such a no brainer straightforward obvious call. In future situations I think I'll be likely to bet larger as villain (yet bluff less frequently), and I will be way more likely to happily click call on that river even though most semi bluffs got there.

Lastly, the video helped to reinforce my belief about the necessity and importance of putting more time and effort into studying fish' tendencies.

I don't really count combos or do much work trying to figure out how many combos I should bluff with and what not because I believe (it's possible I'm mistaken) I can make better decisions against specific opponents by considering my preflop reads and barreling accordingly.

What I mean to say is, based on the game flow, I think I'm generally able to make good reads regarding my opponents plan when calling pre. More specifically, is he flatting pre to trap me or is he trying to make a hand and get to showdown or is he about ready to snap and try to run a big bluff?

If I can answer these questions, it becomes a lot easier for me to play a very exploitative game with lots of 3 barreling and the occasional times I check and give up on the flop. So I don't do much of this in between stuff of betting once and giving up or betting twice then giving up the river. I more often will either check the flop and give up there (or sometimes I'll bet just one and give up if the board is a good one for my range), or I just fire 3 and am all in by the river.

I didn't actually come to this conclusion of playing this way based on doing any mathematical analysis. I arrived at the conclusion of playing this way based purely on logic and a set of general and broad assumptions.

I guess it's sort of an interesting explanation for how I can be bad at math but still play well.

Wow, I almost missed this thread. Some really interesting stuff in here, thanks Marshall

Are AJ and KQ a standard 3-bet for you from the SB, even against CO and BTN openers with a very high fold-to-3 bet? How about the BB? Is the 'don't 3-bet because you'll fold out dominated hands' argument overstated?

Oh.. that is surprising.
ATM Im almost allways one and done with bluffs in 3bet pots, especially on brick turns(anything but broadway cards). I just figured there isn't much FE in 3bet pots and the most FE i have is on the flop. I think people are just gonna call it off with their overpair after that..

Thank you for the insight.

Hey Marshall,

How do you adjust your betsizing against semifishes (for example like 28/12 or 24/8 stats over 100 hands with no further reads)? Maybe this question is a bit too vague, but what i mean, is that how much do you change your sizing considering your hand strength? Against like 50/5 guys theres obviously no need to balance whatsoever, but yeah i've been struggling with this against fishy regs etc.
Example:
Villain is running 25/9 over 70 hands, you opened 3bb from CO and he flatted from BB (HU pot and every time he checked to you), how does your cbet sizing changes on those boards with these hands?
1) AKo on K82r/Q93ss/775r/AKQr, 2) 99 on A92r/977r/K87ss and 3) 98s on AKTss/JTAr/9KQr/67Jr.


Excellent thread btw, thanks in advance if you find time to answer

Ok another question: (still waiting for answer on last one too if you can :-))
4betting in position - in what situations do you like to have a 4betting range - i read that you like to flat a lot? That's something I do too.
4betting out of position - is this situation the same or do you just 4bet your entire flatting range and never call (except rare circumstances where for example u can play perfectly vs the guy)