If you don't know what you can have in a scenario, that definitely means your opponent can take advantage of it. Might this matter right this very day? No, but it's a bad habit that will creep up on you and you might as well fix it now.

Don't bother trying to do it on the spot. The fact that you don't know what you have in certain situations means you can't really figure it out on the spot.

Eat healthy before you play, exercise, don't play when tired, set a timer if you don't have self-control, review your play for poor plays and map out time-wise into your sessions when they occur and the frequency. Also wrote a bunch about this so make sure you review that as well.

You're welcome!

It would be great to see you dissect some of the more discussed hands in the micro section. Id love to hear your views on some of the more debated hands. Maybe you could link some of those hands in this thread and give your thought processes on them from time to time. If that's not to cheeky to ask .

What I'm struggling with is 3bet pots OOP. I don't even want to start making a list of questions about them because it would take you so much time to answer all of them. So why don't you give any < 50nl reg some general advice and tips about 3bet pots when seeing a flop?

i really enjoyed the vid in this thread on 3bet pots.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/32...-pots-1325243/

To what extent should we be looking to be balanced rather than exploitative in the 3b/4b/5b game? FWIW I'm talking about 50NL Zoom.

Repost the hands in this thread and outline the opposing viewpoints and I'd be happy to give my input.

Asking me to go look for hands, search for the different views, post them here, and provide analysis is, yes, cheeky to ask

Pick the top five questions that you have and let's start there. Truthfully I prefer "answer these specific questions" compared to "talk about this topic"

Getting a page not found error.

I'm not sure what the specific dynamic and skill level of players at NL50 these days so I can't comment specifically on that. However, generally speaking we only need to balance against players that will exploit us if we are not balanced.

At most limits, even regulars have subtle preferences (eg some people subconsciously like the look of 56ss, some people think that 3betting multiple times in a row should be a liberally used strategy, etc etc.). So there really aren't many players who we are truly balancing against.

However, the primary reason for balancing is to protect ourselves against skilled opponents until we figure out what we need to exploit in their games. Similarly to flatting a BTN open in the BB vs 3betting, c/c vs donk vs c/r flop, we want to enter hands a variety of ways to protect our perceived range but also put our opponents in different situations so we can see how they react.

When we see them play a scenario more poorly than others, we increase the frequency of which we utilize that specific strategy. But keep in mind that we don't eliminate the other strategies altogether. We want to still be able to confuse our opponent and also want to make sure that we don't make our strategy so obvious that our opponent adjusts.

Id like to hear your thoughts on this hand. It was pretty much split between calling the 3bet to keep in dominated hands and 4bet calling off to pick up the dead money while with the unexpected 5bet there were a few that wanted to fold. Myself i guess like most in the micros tend to play AK a little to timid a'lot of the time.



http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/69...eflop-1325668/

youtube link for the semina on 3bet pot's by beluga whale.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36BqZPnztNM

Do you think mixed games are gonna catch on online?

I'm reading over and over again things like "this hand doesn't play well oop.", "...****ty hand to play oop" but these people just mention it at the sidelines and I never understood which hands are bad to play oop and what hands play well and why they don't play well or play well. Maybe you can enlighten me?

Topics I'm having problems with:

Cbetting vs kinda loose players on what flops and with which hands?
Especially when I don't hit anything after an Isoraise pre and I'm facing a kinda drawheavy board.

Okay, this is kind of linked to my last question (to which your answer was very informative, thanks); to what extent should we be trying to maximise the EV of our range when playing a hand rather than our hand?

Hey Guys,

Apologies for being out the past couple of days. I was pretty sick but feel better now so I'll be answering all outstanding questions shortly. Keep new ones coming!

Greg

I'm have ing trouble with AK. Maybe playing to passive. Against fish I know I should be 3betting for value. But Instead I call bc if I miss its gonna be impossible to get them to fold pre. So what's our line vs a aggro fish that we 3bet and a T74 flop comes?

I find these guys will call down with 7x. This has made me start playing my AK so passively. How can I fix this? Also your thoughts on getting AK in preflop? Thanks

I'd get it in here 100bb. The fact that the villain in this hand 4bet/folded previously is good enough for me.

When you run a tight range against AK, we come out tolerably enough: 40/60 against JJ+/AK (still 35/65 against just JJ+). So that's out downside, which is pretty quantifiable and limited. Our upside, on the other hand, is both unknown and potentially high. We don't know how often he can be bluffing, but we do know that he 4bet/folded previously so he is either capable of 4bet bluffing or 4bet folding a made hand (which one it is actually makes no difference to us because the result is still put in a raise and then fold).

Combined with the potential of really starting to craft an aggressive image, I get it in here preflop.

I actually don't. There's an incredibly overlooked aspect of mixed games -- the in-person contact.

Live games are a ton of fun when played as limit. There is never that stressful 100bb single-street decision to be made, it's never worse than 1BB if you don't want it to be. Therefore, people don't get freaked out about each pot as much and the environment is very social in nature.

This won't ever transfer to a chat box. Laughter and a smile are so natural and mean so much to humans that without it we really lose an element.

I would say that players who gravitate towards mixed games do so for the social atmosphere -- including being able to play a bunch of different games it keep it fun and light.

It's almost counter-intuitive to have a cutthroat mixed game, and it's not going to really ever translate to the internet. At NL you tend to pay attention to everything because one small detail could result in a difference of a few hundred BBs. In limit, and mixed-games, that is not the case. Which fits better for players who don't want to pay complete attention to the poker game, and would rather just be in the environment.

You have to give me context here. List a specific example where someone says this and you are confused, otherwise I have no idea what you're asking.

I've also talked extensively about preflop decisions in this thread, so I would ask that you read all my responses before asking a question I may have addressed already.

It's directly tied to how much we are going to be balancing in that situation vs that player.

If we aren't concerned with balancing, then we try to maximize the EV of our specific hand.

If we want to be completely balanced, then it pretty much doesn't matter what we happen to have because we proceed how we want to play our range in that spot.

In reality, the answer is based off our general strategy vs our opponent, and with further consideration to the short-term game changes (eg. if we think a skilled opponent may be tilting or playing poorly this session, maybe we play more exploitably to take advantage of his temporary weaknesses. When he recovers, then we revert our play to a more balanced strategy).

It's not impossible to get a fish to fold postflop.

I see people say that they get called down all the time with middle pair, or with bottom pair, and that makes them want to stop bluffing.

This is flawed thinking.

Number one, I don't believe it. 3bet preflop, bomb three streets T742Jr and get called 100% by 7x? I doubt the hand is always playing out like that, but even if it was:

1) Increase your value range. That means that we need to be value betting 99 for three streets here if your assertion is true (we'll always get called by 7x).
2) 3bet a non-polarized range. Being able to flop pairs with KQ is now awesome since the guy never folds postflop whenever he flops a pair, and now we can win his stack every time we flop a pair.
3) Semi-bluff still. So I might actually barrel away with AK on T74r because it's one of the stronger no-pair hands we have in our range (equity-wise).


Now, I'm leaning in to you pretty hard here, but the reason is because I see this thought process from players all the time (even high stakes guys). "He won't fold even middle pair, he's a fish!" Yeah, once you get to that point. But an average fish just doesn't start by saying, "hmm, my 33 is good no matter what the flop, turn, or river is, and no matter how big the pot is." They first start by putting too much money in preflop. Then they see you betting the flop often and start following along by calling often. Then the same happens on the turn and eventually the river too. So it ends there, but you're missing lots of opportunities to get fish to fold weak hands and build up the "omg he's always betting everything so I'm never folding again" mentality.

Thanks for your response and correcting my thinking. U are right. I get upset wen getting called on bluffs instead of realizing I just picked up a **** ton of value. Thanks again

Hey,

how do you determine the EV of postflop play? Because I was analyzing a hand today where I had JJ and a tight player (6-max) 16/14 raised from the CU and a fish 60/40 (Foldto3bet: 0 (8) ) called it. And I was wondering if I should squeeze or not, SQ for isolating the fish and flatting to avoid a 4bet by the tight player and keep is worse hands in. I just called it from the BB and after the hand I tried to calculate which action is more +EV, flatting or squeezing? I could calculate the EV of squeezing but I couldnt calculate the EV of just flatting because I don't know how much money I can get postflop.

Hi Greg, thanks for your answers. I find this thread very helful and informative. I have a question:
How do we profitably adjust against aggressive player who often 2 and 3 barrel. Do we call him down lighter or do we playback at him? If he does not aware of the balance of our range ( just continue his aggression), what should we do? And in case,if he does aware it ?