Well, yes. I'm gonna get all kinds of hate here but I also want to know where I am. If he shoves I know. Also, I don't mind taking it down there in this spot.

The alternative is what everyone here tells me to stop doing - be a passive calling station.

make up your mind dammit!

you raise as a bluff or for value, you're getting neither in this spot.

So, the only time I raise is if I'm behind or bluffing?

lol xpost

no you raise if he can call with worse. in this case, he can't.

it's pretty clear in this spot that old man has almost no continuing range on Axx so you need to be bluffing him a ton and try to somehow get another street of value with AK+ on this board.

Honestly, a month ago I would have called in that spot. It made sense to me (and still does) logically to do so. I guess I'm getting confused on all the feedback here about not being aggressive. I should probably go back to using my instinct.

no, your instincts suck.

My reads are really good. What to do with those reads is where I suck.

So bigger the problem here is that you haven't examined his range and figure out how many worse combos he has, all of which have near zero equity.

Without even knowing what his turn/river tendencies are, you should know at least that his preflop range and flop tendencies allow you to profitably call or raise with ATC on this texture and choosing to make it easy for him to fold with the top of your range when he has 0 worse hands that he's likely to continue with is probably a horrible mistake.

The question is, do we need to have any semblance of balance or are we just mega-polarized to like 8-1 ratios of bluffs-sets? If the answer is that we probably need some value hands to call the flop with then we need at least some combos of AK in that range, and our flop raising range can probably be reduced to semi-bluffs (depends on how many FDS we have) and maybe some Axs.

5 minutes of my session I can already tell it's not gonna be my day.






^^^ that guy had nitty stats

This surprises most people the first time they hear it but its not true at all.

What you're talking about is the naive 1-alpha defending range discussed in mathematics of poker. It doesn't actually hold up at all in real poker.

The driving factor is that it is using the indifference principle to say that at equilibrium we want our opponent to be indifferent between bluffing and not. So indeed on the river if we are merged and he is polar and he bets pot, we need to defend 50% to stop him from bluffing 100% (a few other assumptions must hold, but mostly true). However, on the flop he doesn't have zero equity when he checks back, so if we want to make him indifferent we need to give him a better payout on his cbets. Consider this, if we defend 1-alpha and he doesn't autoprofit from cbets, it would be correct for him to never ever cbet bluff and only value bet us, since every weak hand he can check back for the off chance he turns a pair! That can't be right. We are comparing cbetting to checking back, so we only need to defend enough to incentivize him to check back, not to make his cbets -ev.

(The offsetting factor is that when he cbets he stops us from realizing additional equity with weak hands on the turn, but it turns out that factor is not enough to make him want to cbet significantly more. The main point is, the naive 1-alpha approach is not a sound poker concept)

damn donk, that's rough. sorry.

the other night i saw a guy muck a winning hand for a pretty big pot. it was a 4way all in preflop with a main pot and 2 side pots. the guy with the big stack mucked. the guy with the second biggest stack showed 92s, then the big stack was very upset.

earlier the guy with 92 called my 6x preflop raise and so did 3 other people. so 5 way pot. the 92 guy is first to act and he bets in the dark lol! flop is like 973r and i have AKo. he bet 1/4 pot so i call with 3 people behind me. everyone calls lol. he bets dark again for like 1/8 pot. turn is 7. i call and everyone else folds lol. river is a K and shoves all in for like 1/4 pot. i call and he has K7

OK, I'll digest this. I mean on some level I completely get it but putting it in practice is sort of out of my comfort range. Which is why I'm here asking.

Thanks

So, did this come natural to you or did you have to go through a lot of trial and error before you really got it?

Also, is this process instant when you see a hand or do you take your time processing before acting?

Hey donk,

I played that same cash level and really didn't do well. (hard to believe but I was infinitely worse than I am now). But I absolutely crushed the lower level (2.20) sngs. Have you tried those?

No, what I've been telling you is to stop chasing and then raising once you hit something when you're up against players who always fold to raises.

Man I hate live poker. Possibly played several hands bad and also got crushed.

Think I play better after a couple drinks

nlh is long periods of boredom punctuated by brief moments of terror. drinking helps with both sides of that. i don't know if i actually play better, though.

Are we sure ibavly isn't a robot?

kid gets poker what can we say

I remember a long time ago playing in low stakes tourney with ibavly.

back when he was a young robot

You should improve your ranges here by raising more stuff, not by flatting hands near the top of your range. I know your argument is that you can exploit him by flatting your good hands and raising your less good ones. The problem with this, as Anarchist indicated, is that while he may well have no outs, there are an enormous number of rivers that kill your action.

ibavly won the 2010 Pog Series of Poker and hasn't looked back.

I'm on an 18k down swing