Hi all,

I'm unfortunately nowhere near as good at poker as I'd like to be. Therefore I plan to post some hand histories and get you guys to show me the error of my ways. Be warned, I am ******* terrible, but I have a real desire to improve my game. Here goes...


PokerStars - $0.05 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

CO: $8.75 (VPIP: 13.54, PFR: 10.42, 3Bet Preflop: 6.25, Hands: 100)
BTN: $9.97 (VPIP: 29.17, PFR: 25.00, 3Bet Preflop: 20.00, Hands: 50)
SB: $5.00 (VPIP: 21.74, PFR: 15.22, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 48)
Hero (BB): $5.07
UTG: $4.53 (VPIP: 20.31, PFR: 14.06, 3Bet Preflop: 4.00, Hands: 68)
MP: $8.13 (VPIP: 16.13, PFR: 13.98, 3Bet Preflop: 8.82, Hands: 99)

SB posts SB $0.02, Hero posts BB $0.05

Pre Flop: (pot: $0.07) Hero has A 8

UTG raises to $0.15, fold, fold, fold, fold, Hero calls $0.10

Flop: ($0.32, 2 players) A J 4
Hero checks, UTG bets $0.30, Hero calls $0.30

Turn: ($0.92, 2 players) A
Hero checks, UTG bets $0.75, Hero calls $0.75

River: ($2.42, 2 players) Q
Hero checks, UTG bets $1.16, Hero raises to $3.87 and is all-in, UTG calls $2.17 and is all-in



Any tips or pointers for this line would be much appreciated. My initial thoughts are that with flush on river I should have probably folded river. Maybe even a small raise on turn? I really don't know.

Should probably just have folded preflop as I'm struggling against most of UTG range?

Also, can any of the guys who have made their way up through the ranks give me some tips on improving my game? I'm sort of reading anything and everything at the moment - I suppose I'm aiming for the 20% of stuff that will give 80% of the improvement, fix MASSIVE leaks etc.

Thanks in advance!

Melon

fold pre, call river

+1

Thanks

fold pre my friend, its not close either hope this will save you some $$$$

Normally I'd stop at pre, but I think river is a significant enough mistake it's worth mentioning.

Your hand is: AAAQJ. That means you split the pot with AT or lower. You lose to: straights, flushes, AK, full houses.

That means you need to get called by a worse hand MORE often than all of those hands combined. So here it should be fairly clear that that won't happen and that raising river is a huge mistake.

Really appreciate the help, it’s amazing how stupid the bets look in the cold light of day. At the time my brain was just excitedly calculating where best to shove

It's a common error. You want to think in terms of relative hand strength not absolute strength. For example, the board is AAAA3 and you have quads, but your hole cards are 22. You're folding quads to a bet every time. You're definitely not raising them. Absolute strength of your hand is huge, but relative to the board and the odds an opponent holds better than a 3 kicker, it's nothing.

Same thing here. You have trip aces, but relative to an UTG raiser and the board, it's not a very strong hand.

Yeah, fold PF (reverse implied odds suck, being OOP sucks, debating whether we have to call down on boards where we hit an ace but villain has range advantage sucks). Not really close IMO.

c/c river as played. I don't think there's any point to bluffing when we block the weak Ax's we want villain to fold -- I would prefer using KJs / QJs instead.