One thing to keep in mind is that Ferguson's background is almost exclusively tournaments. All of his advice is going to be geared towards a smallish stack. His point is that you're going to have a fairly narrow range early. You can't afford really to make a raise, then fold too often pf. So you're going to have a lot of big pairs or big broadway hands looking to have TP on the flop. You want to encourage people to come in with dominated hands or even try to 3bet you. In addition, in a 30BB game, even a 2BB raise doesn't give odds to IO hands to call.

In LP, winning the blinds becomes critical. Those blinds and antes can increase your stack by 10%. You have to play a lot of marginal hands because the M is getting low, so you want to discourage a call.

Many top tournament players have gravitated towards smaller raises pf, so I doubt they are all idiots. That said, cash plays differently. I think Ferguson is smart enough to know that he'd need to change things up in a 200BB game and that the people watching his video aren't going to get in those games.

That's fine for tournament play, but this challenge is a cash game challenge.

nice point sir. for some odd reason i overlooked the correlation between table texture and hands/hr. +3 points for you for helping me table select better =)

But how many hands to you hafta have on someone before you consider them a "reg"?

I've vastly expanded my reg-range, esp. with the new colored notes system Stars introduced last month. Players who are really bad or especially tight I'll usually have a circle on by the time I've played 4 orbits with them. I can usually take a guess as to into which pigeon hole a player's stats are heading after 8 or 9 orbits (~80+ hands). I'm pretty much giving everyone a circle by the time I've seen 100 hands, and just double checking the coloration periodically after that. (I've even got 3 different colors I use for WTF-types that I always expect to settle down to normal over a larger sample.)

If I waited until I had 1000 hands on someone before considering them a reg, you're numbers are right, but when I scroll through the lobby it looks like there are more nits since VP$IP is the quickest stat to merge, you know?

Much appreciated.

alright, not a huge sample, but I played 25NL for 3K hands at a double digit WR, and value betting is still where the majority of the profits are coming from. Passive play in that people call a lot and then fold later. Showdown is still the normal mixed bag, but overall people calling off their stacks was the #1 leak I saw.

I have now played 12K hands at NL25 this year, and the game is still about value betting.

I think the problem you and maybe waking up have (and other people struggling in the micros), is that your range construction skills are still poor, and hand reading is poor. You need to work on that, and then work on the math on how to exploit those ranges.

One of the biggest changes over the last year is FTP's and Stars' drive to segregate short stackers out of the 100BB game. For every short stacker that had a clue, there were tons others that we just playing around with a small stack and having fun. Folding isn't fun. Removing them from the game has left the players who have read a book and probably are following a tight pf strategy. I am confident that is the big reason for the change in stats this year. The player pool may not be better globally, but baby pool has been split away from the kiddie pool. We're wearing the floaties, wonder where all the toddlers are that we used to beat up.

I slightly disagree with the card strength statement. I think it is more accurate to say that at the low micros, the players are unable to leverage the advantage of position adequately, therefore leaving it a card advantage game.

POTY IMO

I'd add that your understanding of a value bet situation is different than the average micro player. What people are complaining about is that the value isn't sitting there, waving a red flag and saying, "Hey sailor, come get me," any more. To get it, you need to have good range reading skills. Most importantly, one has to start thinking about what the maximum a second best hand can give us instead of the maximum one would like to win with the hand.

He's got twenty now.

another one of my Aha moments came from a sweat with Rapid...where I was betting and he asked me "what is your range target". He is probably the only regular player I heard us that exact term, but the idea is universal for winning players....what is your range target for your action. When you just think about it for hours and hours things tend to clear up.

wtf is range target?

This is how you beat 25nl, play euro tables, hit TPGK+ and stack some rando spanish donk.

I loled

It means targeting a range you can exploit.

fyp

Bacon has been tried a few times already.

I think that we need terts.

What do I get for winning Post of the Year? A statue of David Sklansky?

A copy of Super System, Harrington on Tournaments Vol.1, and a DVD set of every FT Academy video.

Is there a voting process? Where do you vote? Apparently I have 20 votes already.. I"m getting excited about this!

two things:

1.

and

2.

I guess we're even on advice, then. :-P

Even better. You get elected as the player of the year in the micro levels by "Poker Table Ratings", a highly prestigious award in which poker articles will be written about you. This forum has the power to do it.

All we need is your SN for the sites you play on and this forum will make it happen. MartinK1979 was a poster on this forum last year (now changed his SN) and we got him elected.

My screen name on Full Tilt is: Donkey007BornYesterday

Please get me elected!!! This would be so cool!!!

Just played a session with the nits at 50nl . Filtered for number of players MORE than 7 to remove the short-handed hands. Couldn't win anything at showdown but forced a few folds VPIP was 23.2% so need to find an extra couple of %.



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