DooDoo, do you have any guess as to what the winrate differential might be for a good player at 500nl who uses RNG, and a good player who does not?

Yeah I just think that will naturally come with being familiar enough with ranges to understand how to rng correctly but I do agree with you.

I don't have any good guesses. I just learned all this stuff yesterday

I do remember being in a session probably about 6 months ago and the coach said that you could increase your winrate by up to 4bb/100 by getting really good at BvB. No clue where that number came from though

Thanks guys, I’ll also apologize for playing moderator who isn’t a mod.

Really good =/= trying to play gto tho, imo

u know...back in the day when disagreements like this happened....

HU4rollz occurred.

This is the other option.
Blood bath.

I don’t have a ton to comment on the actual substance of what doodoo posted, except that I find it interesting and I’m glad he is posting it. I also don’t pretend to know what 1knl on ignition plays like, though I kind of doubt it’s as tough as we think.

However, I do really agree with the sentiment aner0 had (something about how you build the house first, then add on). I think the big problem with spending a lot of time building incredible strategies for all sorts of different flops, with the idea that you’ll be completely prepared for whenever you eventually get to high stakes, is that it trades off with taking a longer time to get to higher stakes, as I think it’s relatively clear you don’t need to be a complete sicko to beat 500nl ignition. It’s not clear that ignition games will continue to be good forever: maybe they’ll get shut down by the government, maybe cultural interest will decline in poker, maybe RTA really will kill the games, so I think the supposed trade off between making money now and making even more money later is highly uncertain.

I also think that, ya know, you’ll learn those things when you have to. If you find you can pull in 7bb/100 or whatever at 200nl/500nl, that can motivate you more to study, not only because the application is more immediate, but also because you can feel more comfortable shifting the balance of your IRL time from working your job to playing/studying. Why do it on nights/weekends, when you could possibly eat/sleep/breathe poker for a couple months while you grind out a living.

My 2 cents

RNG is not suppose to add any EV to your strategy, you use it to prevent being exploited and you can use it in spots where you are unsure how your opponent/pool is playing.
On ingnition they can't exploit you directly because tables are anonymous and you can get pretty good idea how pool plays most of the spots because you can see their cards after 24h. Right?

Only increase in EV by starting to use RNG you'll see with hand that you misplayed (now you'll misplay them less oftent).

I sometimes use RNG on flops where I have a good idea of what my range wants to do, AND I don't have enough information on villain to know the best exploitative decision.

Say the flop is one that will be bet 60% of the time.

If I have a hand that wants to bet, then I'll bet it at 60% frequency. This goes for any hand in my range that isn't a pure check.

Using RNG on iggy imo is just silly and a misunderstanding of what RNGing is and what the reason for doing it is.
The only thing RNG improves your winrate on in anon pools is by having you take the anti-exploit line less often than 100%. But obviously, taking the exploit line 100% of the time is even better.
In sn pools it does make sense, as some opponents will try to find frequency mistakes in your strat based on HUD and showdowns.

That's for the technical/strategical argument for not using RNG. But there's a much more important reason imo.
I've seen it so many times where a "not very strong player" starts learning GTO and trying to apply it as best as they can. The only thing they end up doing is create really bad patterns of thought like "What is my hand supposed to do here?" "How much does this hand mix X action?" which is going to harm your learning process and your understanding of the mechanics of the game. You will get used to thinking about the "What" instead of the "Why".
Plus, these players have insane leaks because mixing actions with each hand individually doesn't magically make your entire range have the correct frequencies.

Once you have a very good understanding of both Exploits and GTO, you will be able to understand when and how to use an RNG with purpose

That's the crutch of your argument though, that we aren't exploiting. But we are exploiting- just on the river. The whole paradigm of the strategy is to play balanced OTF/OTT and then deviate on a street where it is most beneficial.

You are assuming that your exploit's OTF (which will leave you very vulnerable on later streets) will out gain in EV a balanced OTF/OTT but exploit river strategy. But decision's OTF mean much less than decision's OTR. We are forgoing small EV gain's OTF to get larger EV gain's OTR.

We also have the added benefit of not getting wrecked by playing a completely imbalanced strategy. If you start trying to push flop exploit's and an opponent figures out what you are doing - you will more than likely play 3 street's incorrectly.

If an opponent figures out what I'm doing - I play 1 street incorrectly.

The goal is to have a good strategy going up to the river. Not a throwing spaghetti on the wall type strategy and see what sticks.

The benefit of having good flop/turn fundamentals is we get to manipulate rivers much more than players who exploit on earlier streets.

This is how I interpret the strategy. It seems pretty smart to me but I'm open to criticisms of it.

I think it is really just a subjective outlook either way. I can see your point of wanting to make money now etc (I'd just play live only if I wanted to do that) but poker isn't just about financial incentives to me.

Obviously I want to make money off it but if all I cared about was money I'd go learn how to trade crypto - it is much more lucrative than playing poker.

I enjoy the process of learning and the different levels to the game. I don't think I'll ever be one of those guys who just grinds and doesn't study because I'm "good enough."

I think a lot of coaches go through burn out stages because they keep repeating the same things to newer students and it becomes boring. I don't ever want to be in that situation.

I'd rather make 75k doing something that is exciting than 500k doing something I dread.

To each their own though.

I think you misunderstand what an imbalance is to some extent
In anon, since there are not reg vs reg dynamics, adjustments and counteradjustments, imbalances can only lose to pool if you take the "anti-exploit" line, which is the line with the frequencies that your opponents would naturally be playing well against. If you play a fully imbalanced range that exploits your pools tendencies, there is no physical way for them to make that money back since they don't know who you are and how you play.

What you advocate is pretty good for sn sites, where reg vs reg dynamics can last months, and there is value on keeping your strategy concealed. In this situation though, what matters most is not that you RNG everything, although RNG will definitely help. What matters if that you are paying attention to your overall range percieved frequencies and actual frequencies.

For example, if turn is very drawy and our opponent realises we have a lot of draws we can choose from for bluffing, what matters is not necessarily that we RNG every draw, but that we recognise the fact that we are going to get stationed because of how our percieved range looks like and compensate for it in some way. RNG is a good way of doing this.

For flop, RNG is alright whenever you don't have any other read, but keep in mind, pure strategies on the flop are actually very hard to exploit.
I've tried to manually construct cbetting ranges on the flop without mixing, so pure betting or checking hands, and the EV loss is actually very small, comparable or smaller than things like simplifying to range bet.

Yeah I think you just have a different perspective than like 98% of people. That’s your prerogative.

And not to derail the whole thread too much, but winning 7bb/100 4-tabling 200nl is probably more money than you’d make at 2/5. And, I don’t think it’s at all clear that crypto trading is this get rich quick scheme with boatloads of money to be made (unless you’re a scammer). I think most “crypto traders” were in the right place at the right time by coincidence, and it’s far from clear IMO that the crypto market will retain current valuations, and I think the vast majority of “traders” will go busto soonish

I heard you don't need RNGs. what matters most is the ratios that you are checking/betting based on your range, solver likes 2:1 ratio of premiums to draws for the most part in SRP and about 60:40 premium to draws in lower SPR pots and a 70:30 marginal made to junk across the board in all spots in general . turns out if you get your ratios near the same your playing implementable enough. the range analyzer at poker-coaching is a great tool for this. we also see if we have a ton of premiums and we can't balance our range because of this usually means we have a big range advantage and can bet everything. After enough practice and studying using the range analyzer I think it will help tremendously in envisioning what you should do with your exact hand in many spots at the table. I'm studying JL's new Cash-Game Masterclass and he was just talking about the idea that many people use what your talking about but he thinks knowing the ratios is enough.

Also, if your beating decent stakes online if you went to a live 5/10 game you might crush it. maybe even 10/20 if your strategy is sound and you play well, easier to pick up reads in real life aswell.

I don't even accept this frame that RNGing is what takes you from a mediocre midstakes grinder to a highstakes crusher.
The best regs in the world do RNG, but it's mostly as a last resort and would not be RNGing much at midstakes.
And I'm 100% with you on the crypto take

almost every single good mid-high stakes reg i know uses an rng.

i never did and it's part of the reason why someone like doodoo would surely fare better than me vs a table of 5 linuses. obviously there are other skills that impact (arguably more importantly) your immediate profitability but if you're considering the work you can put in during the earlyish stages of your poker career to affect your chances down the line, then solver study (and rng use) is the best practice, imo. explo, fish dynamics and w/e else, you mostly passively pick up along the way.

I guess I was more talking about this idea that it’s important to have an absolutely perfect and coherent flop strategy. I agree the RNG thing seems a bit silly to me on iggy

The main advantage of playing on an anonymous site like Ignition is that you can analyse pool frequencies in every line and exploit the population for the maximum without ever having to worry about getting counter-exploited. Which is not to say that I wouldn't ever use an RNG, but I would definitely reserve it for lines where I have insufficient data, or where population is playing roughly balanced.

It's also pointless to RNG if you don't understand why you're doing it. The whole point of randomising different combos is to manipulate the composition of hands in our betting/checking range. That's what makes us exploitable, not the frequency at which we mix with a certain hand class, and definitely not the frequency of a specific combo.

You have a lot of basics to learn before you jump stakes. You make a lot of fishy errors often.

For an hourly okay but not for length of time. It takes decent brain power to play 6 hours of 4 tabling 200nl at a 7bb/100 winrate.

You could do that at a live table while falling asleep. It's much easier to put in huge hours at a live table and your hourly will be similar.

I don't think anyone said that. It's just another layer to your game that will help you against better players. If you ask 30 winning coaches that play 500nl+ and all of them use an RNG. There is a very high probability that you are better off using an RNG.

And RNG isn't some last resort - it's just the last step in a process.

1) Look at the board
2) Look at the player
3) RNG

My assumption was that we didn't have MDA for every spot. If you have MDA then go ahead and exploit any street you want but this isn't readily available knowledge. It takes 10's of millions of hands to get reliable data.

The strategy I'm supporting is a lot more tenable in a vacuum.