Looking for feedback on the strategy chart; and ways to improve it.

I'm thinking there is a large section in SB/BB/late position that I can remove to tighten up. Specifically the face cards with low kickers (2,3,4,5,6,7).

Low stakes is what I'll be playing this in; Cash Games; Local Indian Casino. Unsure if I'll be doing 1/3 or 2/5. (1/3 buy in is $100-$300; 2/5 buy in is $300-$1000.)

Green = Call
Red = Raise
Blue = fold





I still have to learn positions better and C-Betting more and properly before I begin.

At this point I've concluded that playing against others online for free isn't going to help me much more than it has; and now I need to learn about bet sizing more, pot size, and I'm staying away from implied odds.

You really need to do some research and learning before trying to play for real money. These strategies are not even close to good. There are many sites with good preflop charts; I strongly suggest looking at some of these. (upswingpoker.cim is one example with pretty good charts).

Just to give an example of how bad these are - you have some fairly wide limping ranges in your charts. You really should not have ANY open limping range. If it is folded to you, you should basically always fold or raise. Open limping is just bad. If you have a strong hand, you want to start building a pot. You also might pick up blinds/limps without a showdown, and most importantly you cap your range when you limp. If you’re raising premium hands and limping marginal ones, your opponents will know which you have and play accordingly. It’s much better to raise both your marginal (but far tighter than your charts) and premium hands. This will disguise your hand strength better and make you harder to beat.

I dare you to pull up both and compare. VERY similar, and it's what I based it on. I mean; you're talking a handful of hands difference in each position.






"You really need to do some research and learning before trying to play for real money"

That's also bullshit my friend. I'm doing research... I mean what do you think I'm doing? Posting here, looking at GTO charts but not researching? GTFO.

https://www.888poker.com/magazine/st...uide-gto-poker

Here's an all in one GTO preflop. It's very similar. You have a point that there is a wider range; but you're just a liar if you're saying "These strategies are not even close to good." - Literally based on and very similar to the GTO charts you reference....

I'm not sure what you're even looking at in your rebuttal to Stremba's post. The two charts (yours and the one from Upswing,) aren't even remotely similar. Upswing's charts suggest raising all of those hands in red , you seem to only be raising QQ+ and calling all those hands in green?

Your charts are bad, not just because the ranges are way off, but they also show a bunch of misunderstanding around strategy in general. Lumping SB, BB and Late Position together in nonsense.

All of that assumes you're goal is to play poker seriously, if you're just playing as a hobby and have fun coming up with your own strategies then yeah more power to you, but this isn't going to make money.

It's for low stakes; and based on my understanding there is less of a straddle in low stakes, more limping.

We'll see if it makes money; because now you've pissed me off enough to try it live.

Also; none of these are proper based solely on color code. You fold/raise/call a % of the time. Red just means I'll raise it more often; green doesn't mean I can't raise; it means I'll call more often; blue doesn't mean I'll fold if I'm bb with nothing and no raises pre-flop. It means most of the time; I'm leaning towards those.

If it was higher stakes; I'd raise more, but even still I want a wider range specifically because others aren't opening that wide.

Best of luck

Ok. I actually thought that when you asked for advice on your strategy, it meant you actually wanted advice. It’s ok; we get posters like this from time to time. I will now amend my response to your OP to make it more in line with the response you are looking for:

Your strategies are GREAT. You will make Butt tons of money playing like this. Anyone who claims to be an experienced player and says otherwise just doesn’t understand the genius of your strategy. Please just do me one favor. When you go play live, let me know where you are playing so I can avoid that room. I stand no chance against the greatness of your strategy.

I think you should limp AA UTG as raising looks too strong. Other than that great job!

OP - I wonder if you could clarify something for me. On one of your charts you say "2/5 table, preflop up to $50, UTG". The other charts have similar notation. I have absolutely no idea what this means, and have never seen something like this on a preflop chart. If you are UTG, then in a 2/5 game, it is $5 to you. Where does the $50 come in? Are you talking about if you raise and someone 3-bets to $50?

Most preflop charts show what to do if you are first in - these might be followed by how to react to 3bets and 4bets. I'm not sure what yours are showing.

Aye. Raising with AA or KK basically tells your opponents that you have a strong hand. Calling instead will allow you to hide it better.

I almost agree with you. My issue isn't with criticism; it's baseless criticism that doesn't make sense. I'll provide benefit of the doubt that they're discussing something above my head; but when they claim any GTO chart is 1;1 with call/raising; they're already wrong based on my understanding of those charts. Usually it's 'mostly this; but also fold/raise/call %'s that can't be graphed in excel (at least not by me; I'm not skilled enough).

50/50 TBH is how I play it. Depends on what others at the table are doing and position when it's my turn to bet.

Yes; it's roughly what I'm willing to bet.

I have an All In Leak; and I'm trying to temper my bet sizing by including it. It's rough estimate to keep ME in line and help close the leak.

It's absolutely stupid; but it keeps me in line, and it's proven to be useful for me personally. It's reduced my loss and in turn increased my gain.

I still need to go play live; because online doesn't tell me what I can do live. I'll be going this weekend, I think Saturday, but it's a 5 hour round trip drive. Probably play an hour or two, then I'll leave. If I win; I'll analyze why I won. If I lose; I'll analyze why I lost.

My range is going to be based on these charts; but keep in mind, It's not 1:1. The color pattern is which way I lean, but I also fold a lot of those call hands when out of position or the raise doesn't make sense for me.

I have a few comments about this.

1) The absolute dollar amount shouldn't really figure into your decision. The action and the stack sizes are much more important. Calling a raise to $20 and a 3-bet to $50, not closing the action, with an effective stack of $200 is much different from raising, and calling a 3-bet to $50, closing the action, with a stack of $1000.

2) These charts are way too loose. You have way too many completely junk hands (J2 off, weak offsuit aces, marginal suited cards) that you are willing to limp with, or call raises with - that can only get you in trouble if you happen to connect.

3) I can't even imagine what you will get out of your live trip. You will drive 5 hours to play maybe 50 hands. If you VPIP in 25% of them, that means you are really only involved in a dozen hands. Most likely, if you win it is because you got lucky, and if you lose it is because you didn't. This is a big reason why a lot of people play online - in the time it takes you to drive there and back, they can play 400 hands - and a lot more if they are multitabling.

If you do this, have fun, and enjoy the experience. I personally wouldn't drive that far to play poker, but if I did, I would certainly plan on playing longer.

What stakes have you played online? The only other post I've seen from you was about play money games - so I don't know what real stakes you have played, and how they compare to $2/$5. Good luck to you.

So let me get this right, if I lose; it's because I'm not lucky.

If I win, it's because I got lucky?

Good thing I visited a psychic. She said I'd win many moneys if I paid her 500 to do a luck potion.

I'm saying that in a sample of about 50 hands that is about all you can tell. There isn't a lot of analysis that can be done over a 2 hour sample of live poker.

You know what? You're right. I should play no poker because you don't like me adding only 50 hands or so at a time.

Give me a break. I get it; you want to spend 10 hours in a casino; I like poker, I'm going to play for what I'm comfortable with, then I'm dipping.

That all or nothing mindset is disgusting; and you act like the 50 hands or so I will play aren't valuable because it's only 50 at this time....

Get your head out of that dark smelly place; because it's making you talk a lot of sh** that doesn't make sense.

Yes, 5 hour round trip is a lot of time, but I'm way more comfortable spending 5 hours on the road than I am spending 5 hours in the actual casino. If and when I decide I want to play longer; I'll buy an overnight hotel and bring a few thousand.

Not everything has to be all or nothing. You've never tried a new flavor of ice cream? You have? Why didn't you eat the whole gallon of ice cream if you liked it and were good at eating it? Just saying. (to be fair; I routinely do eat the whole gallon, and it gives me a tummy ache every time)

Let’s say you have a coin you think might be unfair. You think it’s more likely to come up heads for whatever reason. You want to do a test to see if that really is true. You flip the coin 50 times. You get 27 heads - lo and behold, you were right; the coin really was unfair!

Do you see the fallacy in the scenario above? You did not flip the coin enough times to tell if it was fair or not. You expect 25 heads, but random events simply don’t work that way. With a perfectly fair coin you might get 22 heads or 28 heads just by chance.

In similar fashion, 50 hands of poker simply is not a large enough sample to determine if you are a winning player or a losing player. You might play 50 hands, get lucky and stack someone 3 or 4 times, giving yourself a nice tidy profit. You might also get AA twice, get beat by a straight or flush twice, get stacked twice and lose several hundred dollars. Neither of these would have anything to do with whether or not you are a winning player.

Nobody is telling you not to play. Do whatever the hell you want. If you want to play for an hour and quit, then do so. Just don’t think that your result for that hour is in any way due to anything more than luck. Luck is a big factor in poker over the short term. One hour of live play most certainly is short term.

I understand; it's ridiculous to not flip it 50 times just because you want a larger than 50 flip data set.

You have to start somewhere. We don't just come out of the womb running; we crawl; stand; walk; jog; run. There is no shortcut. Not crawling because you want to be running is stupid.

Not flipping a coin 50 times because you need 100,000 times to determine EV is stupid.

Not learning from those 50 flips is EQUALLY stupid. You're attributing something that hasn't happened yet to luck, saying nothing can be gleamed, and that's ridiculous.

You are straw manning this into - "You'll only know if you got lucky" and completely removing the learning aspect. That's so stupid that I have to assume you're a losing player. I just have to. There is no way a winning player goes in thinking "I'll learn nothing from this."

Smartest people in the room learn from wins and losses, and other peoples mistakes.

Of course you will learn something. I never said you wonÂ’t. I said that you wonÂ’t learn whether or not you are a winning player. You cannot possibly learn that because it isnÂ’t a large enough sample to overcome variance. If you win, it most likely means you got lucky; if you lose, you most likely got unlucky. Whatever else you learn is up to you. You probably will learn more about the rules and mechanics of live poker and about the strategies live players use. What I and other posters are trying to tell you, though, is simply to not read too much into your results

You're forgetting rule number 1.

That's because low stakes live players are very bad at poker. Best to not play like they play. It sounds like the chart doesn't actually mean much and at the end of the day you're just gonna do what you feel like doing

It means something; just not what people think it does because they are all or nothing thinkers.

5 hour round trip to play an hour or 2 is nuts.

I don't think there's anything wrong with limping some hands in low live stakes games. Suited aces, low pockets etc. Is it entirely balanced no, but if you are playing in a game with good enough players to abuse this it's not even close to worth your time between the rake, travel and getting 30 hands per hour