Hi guys. Wanted to chime in here and give some more input. terp has done a nice job on some thoughts on hand reading and valuetowning your opponents in different situations. Thought I would give a hand I had the other day (and a very standard one for that matter).

terp showed a hand example where many uNL players might bet the flop. Their reasoning would be to win the pot outright and win immediately. While betting can't ever be necessarily TERRIBLE, there are generally other more +EV ways to play such a hand, even if it means not being the easiest route.

When evaluating hand ranges, first think about how your opponent might play the hand. This often goes with player types, ie. a loose passive player, an aggro player, etc. While the labels 'TAG' and 'LAG' are so generic and sometimes misleading, these player types DO share many characteristics when playing.

So, I'll explain some thoughts here on this hand and why I chose to play it the way I did.

Absolute Poker $1/$2 No Limit Hold'em - 6 players
2+2 Hand Converter Powered By DeucesCracked

BB: $104.00
UTG: $619.05
Hero (MP): $417.85
CO: $249.40
BTN: $200.60
SB: $271.05

Pre Flop: Hero is MP with J J
1 fold, Hero raises to $8, 1 fold, BTN raises to $22, 2 folds, Hero calls $14

I opened Preflop, fairly standard. BTN reraised me fairly quickly. At this point, I had beaten BTN in two back to back hands on another table. He seems to have traces of tagfishness, where he enjoyed open limping bvb into me and I'd punish him. He seemed to be fairly tilted and I felt that his range was 77+, AJ+. While 4-betting is an option, I didn't want to give him the chance of folding 77 or what have you and allow him to compound his mistake.

Flop: ($47.00) 8 4 T (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN checks
Okay, so I check and he checks behind. My initial plan was to c/r all in, or perhaps make a small check raise. If I had something stronger like KK/AA or so, I may check call the flop and allow him to put me on a much weaker range such as 99 or so (a very common line with such a hand). But with JJ, I felt there were a few too many scare cards on the turn to kill both of our action. I wanted him to feel comfortable with his 77 and put me on AK (lol).

After he checks behind the flop, I think his hand range is almost always narrowed to some big unpaired hands like AK or some medium hand that wants to get to showdown such as JT/99/etc.

Turn: ($47.00) T (2 players)
Hero bets $32, BTN calls $32

The cool thing about having a good idea of villan's range is that you can formulate very good strategies to exploit that range. Think of an example where TAGs cold call CO raises from the blinds with pocket pairs and check call Txx boards. Their range is very heavily weighted towards pocket pairs or medium showdown hands (with the occassional monster). An easy counter strategy is to double and triple barrel that range. Simple examples as these can help tremendously when assigning the correct play against a certain range. In this hand, I felt that villan had some medium hand.

At 1/2, you rarely see villans tricky enough to check back AA on that flop. With the history between us, I felt he would bet nearly all strong hands. While the T was not the best card for me (KT/JT/etc now beat me obv), I still felt that I had the best hand and could extract. The plan is pretty solidly to bet/fold.

River: ($111.00) Q (2 players)
Hero bets $60, BTN calls $60

I could have made a larger bet. But again, think about the range I am hoping to exploit against. A medium showdown hand. Alot of micro players would check this river and not know what to do if facing a bet (sometimes check calling or what have you). A very key play that should be HEAVILY emphasised (especially at SSNL and micros) is that BET FOLDING the river is VERY often superior to check calling. Sure, its nice to pick off bluffs sometimes but it's very opponent and board specific. I bet about 1/2 pot here hoping to get calls from 99 and other such hands.


And Villan had AKo.

I'll have a hand or two more later on to explain.

orange - nice hand and nice explanation of your bet sizing. as you noted it's not about winning pots but winning the most money. that's the point of all this. take a step back and reconsider all your standard lines. THINK about people's ranges and how to play your hand the most optimally against their RANGE. this is not directed at you, of course - i'm just using your hand as a springboard!

brian - i actually was not playing with a hud. this was during a weekly four-tabling session i do with my dad. i've been teaching him poker for a few months and he's becoming a winner at 25nl on full tilt! no, i will not reveal his screen name

this does raise a good point though. too many of you guys rely way too much on stats. i am probably going to write a whole separate piece on this, but the gist is: stats are one-dimensional. your analytical processes are complex and powerful. don't reduce your approach to hands to a one-dimensional number when you have a vastly superior option. without even getting into sample sizes, fluctuations due to position, tilt, table conditions, etc, let me just tell you that stats pretty much suck. i use a hud to table select and for nothing more. i can play nine tables this way because i've trained myself to read board textures and recognize patterns. your minds are incredibly adept at recognizing patterns and developing optimal responses. let them do this!

thac - ty for the compliment. quite a lot of great players and posters in these ranks!

kgore - with the info i have, it's hard to calculate an accurate bluffing frequency. BUT i do know that of his range i lose to only three combos. in addition, i am getting 2:1 calling ~PSB on the river. so he need only be bluffing 1/2 as often as he is valuebetting for a call to be breakeven. thus if he only bluffs with TWO combos of hands he calls preflop in this manner, the call will be profitable (three combos of pockets threes v two combos of bluffs)! facing such a small range of hands that beat me, i can call somewhat mindlessly, but for the sake of this discussion i explained all this. also note that deducing that i only lose to three combos made me quite happy about the call as i expected to win very very often.

crovax - you're looking at this wrong. this is exactly the kind of spot and opponent where you can easily manipulate actions. you have the attitude of too many frustrated micro grinders: "these guys play anything and their play is so spastic; how the **** can i figure out what they have?" i've given you something of a decent blueprint here. start from there. think about their ranges at every point in the hand. pay attention. use your notes. they're not that erratic; you're just not paying enough attention and thinking enough.

daycareinferno - do NOT do this. you have described a game theory approach to being unexploitable. this is not OPTIMAL. when your opponents play their hands obviously and can be manipulated, you need to focus on manipulating them rather than avoiding manipulation yourself.

bump

I really appreciate you ballers doing this. Good read

thank you for the two analysis`s in this thread, they are both very illustrative. keep it up, we love em!

bump - sticky please??

terp,

first of all thank you for doing this! i do have a quick question tho.

with the range you put him on, im curious as to why you did not raise the river? is it that you think only 33 calls and he will fold hands like T9 and busted draws?

Answered the question yourself imo.

And you don't want to reopen the betting again.

Great stuff this.

+1

looking to see more in the future.

at least good to know im thinking on the right track

this

and this

thx alot, this really helps

Missed this earlier, thanks for all the insight!

That river card was pretty much the best card in the deck. What do you do on a 6, 7, 8, Q, K or a spade?

Very good stuff.

Terp: How does your line change if you are against villian with Ax in his range?

I'm super excited that you are putting this series together. Hand reading is currently my main focus (I'm even meeting with a group of live players where we work on it together as a group) since it is SO critical to NLHE success.

Thanks a lot.

This really needs to be stickied. Good stuff guys.

Good stuff so far keep it up!

pretty easy to misapply. The better your opponents are the worse some of these moves are (cause they simply understand that calling in certain spots is awful, or bluffing, etc.).

For example, the first hand shown with JJ. If that hand is against me your going to be toast when I bet that river really often (even tho I never limp preflop). So you gain at most one more bet, rather than two. Which is a big difference. And what if I check raise....what if....scared yet? ;-)

I really like the idea, however I do think it is better to be using microstakes hand histories instead of ssnl/msnl HH's. 400nl just plays alot different than 25nl. For example at 25nl you can get away with cbetting 90-100%, while at 400nl anything above 85% will get you into trouble. Also at 400nl regs tend to bluff more often, so their ranges are not the same as microstakes regs.

Great post terp hope you keep em coming

I liked both your hand analysis very much. Thank you.

I agree that this isn't to be used against every opponent, but then I am pretty sure that you don't fit the description of the opponent that terp gives. Your too aggressive and are also thinking about your opponents hand rangee here.

Also it is much harder to narrow your range of hands. As you said your not open limping, so your range in that position is much wider and also includes your stronger hands.

The take away from this post is to work on being able to narrow your opponents range of hands and then look for way to exploit that range for added value.

On a side don't this against opponents who will not fire the turn with there small pocket pair. If the only way your opponent is going to fire at the pot is if they improve, you are just losing money.

dude, step back from the hand for a second. this isn't a "how to play JJ against a guy who never has Ax in his range on an Axxxx board when we have position." the whole point is that it's not.

i could teach a bot to play every specific situation in NLHE - i'm trying to teach you how to THINK here. i CHOSE these actions at each point based on his range and his tendencies and my equity. change anything and we have a whole different approach. i've noticed there have been a few responses asking how i would play it if he had Ax or if his bluffing frequencies were different or if the river were a bad card and so on - this is where i leave it to you guys. speculate on how you would play differently given different variables and what would be an optimal line. i certainly could explain to you an optimal line given specific circumstances, but that would negate the point of this.

regarding the stakes at which these hands are played: i recognize that different limits play dramatically differently, but again, that's somewhat the point. put yourself in unfamiliar situations and challenge your thinking. i'm not trying to teach you how to beat 25nl here - i'm trying to improve your approach to every hand you play at any limit. i wanted to demonstrate to you how i think about the game and give you guys a better model. step back from the standard lines and the hud stats that litter your displays and critically analyze each situation.