FYP

= Almost ideal table. Why would you ever leave

If the nits on the left were more aggressive tags then it would suck and I would leave asap but as is I think it's ok though it's not ideal. Depends on how we do when these guys flat our iso behind us and we have to play oop. That's much better than having some tag 3b all of our iso's though.

Are you talking about joining a new table or leaving a table once you have some info? Because I rarely sit at a new table at the micros where I'll have stats on even 2 of the players.

I don't quite follow the question ... are you asking whether we are going to replace a potentially bad table with a new one, or whether we simple reduce the number of tables all together by leaving?

My question is are you talking about table selection initially (like at the start of a session) or are you talking about when to decide if a table you've been playing at for a few orbits might not be worth your time once you have some info.

The latter. My initial table selection is pretty much looking for tables with full stacks (no more than 1 player with less that 60 BBs, no player under 40 BBs) and mostly unknowns (no more than 3 "non-fishy" player per table).

Hey verneer Love the thread btw....
I believe there is a lot of value in sitting at the tables with like 3 players with buyins like $5.8,$7,$10 rather than looking for a full table on which there are 5 regs with full buy ins ... I dont have enough hands with this table selection but i would sincerely advise anyone who plays 10NL /25NL on FTP to play short handed tables like these ...The amazing thing is that the guys who join after u are also similar stacks who are quite horrible...
I dont think im better than ftp regs but do like money so i guess for players who are just starting out and can play a little loose should try this out
Not really sure if i improve playing only the donks though

The Cutoff, Part 1

The cutoff is an exponentially tougher position to navigate preflop than both UTG and MP. The ranges become much more dynamic due to the potential preflop action as well as our reads on the button and blinds. Ideally, we want a tight player directly to our left whose button we can steal liberally and thus play ~1/3 of our hands in position.

As a general rule, you don't want to be at a table with an aggressive player on your left. It really shrinks your CO opening range. Refer to my article on Common uNL Mistakes, Part 1 for more on this.

In fact, even a player two seats to your left, if aggressive, can make your life tough by 3-betting your CO opens and squeezing if the BTN calls. If you have one of those at your table, as with the case above, evaluate the totality of the situation and see if it's still +EV.

Opening Readless from the CO:

It's important to get a sense of how much the button is going to let us raise. For the first 3-4 orbits, open most playable hands and see how he reacts:



Once you get a sense for how loose/tight the button is when you are in the CO, you'll have to adjust your range to target the blinds. I'll discuss what type of ranges will be +EV for opening vs. different type of players in the blinds.

Range vs. Loose/Passives

If one or more players in the blinds is loose/passive and the BTN is tight (VPIP < 15, 3-bet less than 3%), you'll want to open a range which is very TPGK heavy. Vs. these guys you will get paid by making a pair and having them out-kicked.



So it's possible and profitable to open a hand like Q7o in the CO if the BTN is a nit and folds a lot, but the blinds are calling with hands like T7, J7, 78, 57, 67, etc. This is also why we don't open hands like 57 vs. these guys ourselves - they are calling with hands like J7.

The thing to keep in mind is that pretty hands like 56s can win big pots, but in reality their power comes from potential fold equity. A lot of loose/passive players like to go to showdown, and a hand like Q7o is much more likely to be good at showdown than 56s. This is also why we want to isolate these players with a range similar to the one shown above when they limp instead of popping up hands like 68s (something I used to be guilty of doing).

On the other hand, if the BTN is loose/passive himself, we'll need to remove a big part of our range since we are likely to be OOP. We'll need to be much stronger:



In The Cutoff, Part 2, I'll address some modifications to this range when the blinds are nits.

this thread is awesome thanks verneer. I learn something with every post. ^^ I never thought about opening as low as Q7o and limiting low SCs vs fishy blinds, and also tightening up so much when a passive calling station is OTB.

Why do we have to tighten up against a passive player out of position? He will not use his position all that often and we will be able to see a lot of rivers anyway after we c-bet and give up, just like we do when we are in position.

He won't?

Hew will abuse us by calling all the time. That's enough.

How is that different when we are in position, then?

How is being in position different than being out of position in general?

Hey Verneer haven't had time to digest everything in this thread yet but looks great so far, thanks for doing this.

I like that you've touched on the concept of adjusting the distribution of hands in you opening range depending the players at the table. The fact that K7o type hands play better than 67s type hands vs passive fish is an important concept that I think tends to go over the heads of a lot of beginning players...

looking forward to your future posts =D

Obviously that we can see what villain does before we have to act. We can make up for this by checking a lot of flops out of position and taking it away on the turn and river if he checks behind.

Not so sure why we can't agree on this part. Maybe because there are different gradations of passive players? Some players will be passive with draws and don't valuebet often enough, but will take a stab once when checked to on the flop.

so verneer, say UTG limps in and hes loose passive, ur in cutoff with 78s or sumthing of that nature, 56s maybe, are you just open mucking or will you flat with hands like this in order to bring the blinds into the mix and win a big 4 handed pot?

Most of the time, you are better of folding and I'll talk about why later. The gist of it is that if you play a big pot with a hand like 56s, it's usually going to be a cooler one way or another (trips vs. trips, flush vs. flush, etc). With 56s you are often going to be on the low end of that cooler though, or just not get paid.

=)

why so happy WW?

oh okay.

well fees talked about a table with 4 20/18ish players (who will fight for a fair share of the fish' money) and 1 fish, not the 3 nits we have here

I'm sory verneer but there is way too much good stuff in this one post.

Let's discuss this further in a new thread I just made:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/69...sition-681207/

This will make it easier to keep things organized.

Hi.

I've been around at nl25 for a while and I'm still there.
Just went through this very interesting thread, thx Verneer, and checked my performance with Axs UTG and it seems I have to give contra.

- which seems very profitable for me (i.e. A5s-A9s) like some other borderline hands as well



__________________

QJs, which I raise nearly 100% of the time, and JTs are also doing fine UTG and in MP.



So everyone who is confident in his game, raise it up I guess!!