I just insta-iced any thoughts I had of moving up to 50nl for the time being!

you would be surprised how common of a downswing that is even for a solid winner at those stakes.

Tons of bad play involved though ... going to look at that now and def make some adjustments. More importantly, gotta figure out why I made the plays I made.

I believe you!!!!!! But it's a cautionary tale none the less? Most advice seems to centre around not making any significant changes when moving up a limit, yet verneer feels a review is in order, so it will be interesting to see if it is anything fundamental that needs to be changed or just variance exaggerated by the increase in stakes?

nl50 has always been a trouble limit for me. Im currently trying to beat it once again. I just run bad at that limit for some reason. The games have definently gotten tougher over the years and more aggression. Many nl50 players just exhibit a reckless aggression and that creates quite a bit of variance for me a standard TAG. I am really working on my positional thought process when in a hand and how it will play out in later streets. I feel that positional advantage is the best tool against heavy aggression.

Also, it seems there are quite a few short stacks just gambling with all ins, more so than nl25. Added to that many regs call way too much oop and call too much in general. I definently find it difficult to cbet as much and I am having to analyze the flop tectures so I cut down from 9tbls at nl25 to 6tbls. Im running at about 4ptb atm over 10k hands so hopefully it continues. Great post btw veneer, really sharpening my game.

This brings up a point which I wanted to address. For example, here is a table that I ended up leaving pretty soon after taking this snapshot:



As you can see, all but one of the players are loose and aggressive. It seems like a VIP of > 25 with a PFR close to that has been super-standard on at least 2-3 players at my tables recently. What's up with everyone and their mother wanting to LAG it up?

Unfortunately, players like this lead to much higher variance than you would like. For example, here is one of the hands I played earlier today vs. a 32/28 villain (over 249 hands) who folds to 3-bets only 36% of the time.

Full Tilt Poker $0.25/$0.50 No Limit Hold'em - 6 players
The Official 2+2 Hand Converter Powered By DeucesCracked.com

UTG: $18.20
MP: $24.95
CO: $57.20
BTN: $65.80
SB: $119.70
Hero (BB): $58.05

Pre Flop: ($0.75) Hero is BB with Q A
3 folds, BTN raises to $1.50, SB calls $1.25, Hero raises to $6, BTN raises to $13.50, 1 fold, Hero raises to $58.05 all in, BTN calls $44.55

Flop: ($117.60) Q 5 6

Turn: ($117.60) J

River: ($117.60) 8

Basically, AQo is the nuts in this situation, but still - consistently being forced to get it in with AQo is just not going to be great.

Thank you FTP for increasing the min buy-in at the normal tables to 35 BB's. It's making a HUGE difference in the games IMO.

I believe that when you properly adjust and start beatting 50NL for a good sample (and I have absolutelly no doubt you will), it´s gonna be very interesting if you could do a CR video/series (or a 2+2 thread) about what went wrong in this beginning and what were the adjustments you had to make to overcome these difficulties.

Hey, I'm at that table
Also left pretty quickly.

Which one were you? You can list yourself by position if you want ... for example - in this hand I would be UTG.

What samplesize would we need to make a reliable estimation of someones fold-to-3bet stat? If we open 30% of all hands, and we're against tight 3bettors (say average 3 villains behind us with 5% 3bet. total we get 3bet 15%. 0,15*0,3= 0,045) so 4,5% of hands we are the PFR and get 3bet, thats only some 12 instances over your sample size of 250 total hands

Hard to say ... I would have to look at how many times they've faced a 3-bet. So hand sample doesn't necessarily correlate.

In this case, the villain faced a 3-bet 14 times. He folded 36% of them and 4-bet 21% of the time. He called the remaining. So ... once he opens, he doesn't seem to like folding.

Oh ... and welcome to page 100! You've made it this far ... I am going to assume you've gained something by reading this far. If you haven't, wtf are you still doing reading? The next 100 pages will probably be more of the same.

So verneer since you won't sweat me, can I sweat you?

PS. I'm on page 30, and I think most people are on page 15

Sure - you can sweat at some point. My game is going to go through some re-tooling to adjust to all the LAGs I see at the tables. This was not the case at 10NL and 25NL.

Also, it's nice to finally have an index. I think I'll ask Ice-w0lf to update it again since tons of new posts have come out since he originally did it.

As Ksight3 said, it's only page 30.

About the samplesize issue, PT3 shows the absolute count of your stats if you hover your mouse over them. 14 times was about what I expected, and isn't that way to small a sample size to be basing your play on? You've seen him 4bet only 3 times. I agree that it's indicative of the fact that he doesn't like to fold, but I don't know if this is strong enough a read to be getting it in pre with AQo. Furthermore, I think it's primarily indicative of the fact that he calls 3bets too light, not that's he's really out of line on his 4bets. I wouldn't get my AQo in against anyone but a tilting fish 100bb deep. (but I guess 50nl would be more aggressive than 25nl is LDO).

Yeah, I'm learning a lot, and I'm inspired by your progress. Been messing about at 10nl for a long time before now, and since basically the start of this topic I've decided I needed to take it seriously again, so now I'm back at 25nl, going approximately half your speed

I feel like I've missed some valuable post though, wasn't someone working on an index for this thread?
Edit: NVM

I won this hand versus you:

SB: $58.60
Hero (BB): $50
UTG: $39.10
CO: $51.25
BTN: $62.55

Pre-Flop: 8 7 dealt to Hero (BB)
3 folds, SB raises to $1.50, Hero calls $1

Flop: ($3) 2 9 4 (2 Players)
SB checks, Hero bets $2.50, SB folds

Results: $3 Pot
Hero showed 8 7 and WON $5.35 (+$4.35 NET)

But I did some ******ed spewish stuff earlier, so the hands that you have on me probably indicate that I'm an aggrodonk (that's actually pretty accurate ).

Looking forward to hearing about 50NL some....

Can you please provide a detailed post to your thought process and analysis of this topic. I too have been beating 25NL for 5ptBB/100 over 43K hands however every shot at 50NL has looked identical to yours.

It would be easy for "us" to copy your changes to beat 50NL (and i know this is a good idea since im not beating 50NL otherwise) but if you could provide further insight into the "HOW" / "WHY" this would be greatly appreciated as well.

*******I too would like to see a "MAKING THE JUMP" video on CR for 25NL to 50NL*******

I can probably have this done within the next week

Bluffing and Equity
Before we can address playing the blinds, it's important that we begin to discuss the topic of bluffing. So ... let's start.

I was talking to a friend about the idea of playing out of position and he brought up a very important point about uNL players with regards to bluffing. He mentioned that most uNL players don't pure bluff - they bluff with hands that have equity (or semi-bluff). I'll give some examples to guide us as we move forward.

Example 1: Pure Bluff

MP TAG player opens and you call with 22 in the Small Blind. The Big Blind folds and you see a 4 8 9 flop. You check, the TAG c-bets and you check raise him.

Equity: If villain has a top pair or over-pair here, you have around 8% equity.

Key Point: If villain continues, you are going to be done with the hand.

Example 2: Non-made Hand with Great Equity

MP TAG player opens and you call with A Q in the BB. The flop comes T 2 4. MP bets and you c/r.

Equity: You are favored against a one-pair type hand (non-ace kicker). Against AsTs you have 46% equity on that flop. Even against KdKs you have 44% equity. Worst case scenario is that you're up against a set, but even there you have 26% equity.

If he comes over the top, you are unlikely to fold your hand. So ... if you are not folding your hand, you are not really bluffing - you're just playing your equity in this spot.

Example 3: Bluffing Marginal Equity

Then there is some more gray area. For example, you pick up Q J and call a raise from a MP TAG in the Big Blind (I'm not saying this is a winning play, but for the sake of this example, let's assume you do it).

The flop comes 8 9 5. You c/r his c-bet. Here you have a gutter to the nuts, backdoor diamonds, and overcards that are potentially going to be outs.

Equity: Vs. a hand like A 9 you have 41% equity. Vs. a hand like Kings, you only have 23% equity.

If villain calls your c/r, you can still continue on a variety of turns, but your hand is not nearly as strong as the last example - if villain 3-bets this flop you are mucking.

So What?

Basically, unless your game includes a lot of pure bluffing (like in example 1) and bluffing your marginal equity (like in example 3), you should play very tight out of position.

The main reason for this is that most of the time you and your opponent will both miss the flop (or will both have weak holdings), and the person in position will end up taking the pot. So - if you are calling with hands like AT and only playing past the flop if you hit, you will start slowly bleeding money and will be in tons of really tough spots. Thus, as we begin talking about playing from the blinds we'll emphasize either hand that are really easy to play if you hit (and villains that are very likely to pay you off), or playing with initiative.

So ... with that said, my next longer post will deal with playing from the SB vs. a UTG or UTG + 1 raiser.

Awesome.

I guess it's jumping ahead but I've got a thought. Usually the first(and only ) thing that I typically look at when deciding to call from the blinds is their c-betting tendencies. If they do it too much, then I don't think they are using their position as well as they could and if they do it too little then I think they are just dead money post-flop.

I think this is a good practice. What do you think some similar things to think about are when deciding to play a hand OOP?

I think that's a really good rule of thumb. Def a mixture of preflop range and postflop tendencies will give you a pretty good idea of how light/tight to call preflop.

Ooh, this I am looking forward to - reading verneer's post, I think this is probably a big leak for me. I've noticed recently that I'm losing a lot from the blinds, and even though I've cut down my tendency to call in the blinds I'm still seeing too many flops with broadway and pairs, missing and giving up because I'm OOP and too chickenpoop to bluff.

Could you sprinkle in some commentary about whether your blind play approach is different for different stakes? Eg, do you do much bluffing (opponent dependent ofc) at 5NL, or is this more geared toward 25NL/50NL where there are a greater number of TAG regs?

Setback

Dropped 7.5 BI's at 50NL. Was stuck more than 10 at one point. Sigh.



Bankroll is at $1361. I think it's still good enough to play 50NL. Can't take another day like this though.

6max or HU?