Awesome post - I am just transferring to the world of cash after getting sick of sngs. Posts like this are gold for me.

Some good stuff here. Very nice to see you giving the "why" most of the time instead of just giving instructions on what to do.

I'd also like to add that playing a nittier game makes your decisions easier and allows you to play many more hands before burning out.

Also reduces your exposure to the rake.

Thanks for the replies.
Points of clarification.
- The hand ranges suggested in OP are a starting point and should not be viewed as fixed.
- The target audience for the thread - are players who are either losing or breakeven at stakes 50NL and lower.
- The designation of 'nit' is not meant as a constraint or to restrict readers poker mindset. Merely as a broad descriptor which facilitates an understanding that we might be unnneccessarily 'tight' from an optimal playing style but that whilst we are constructing or reconstructing our game we might sacrifice some +EV positions to get a more solid hand range PF and flop betting tendencies before we then expand out our game as our skills improve.

There are many paths through the forrest and I am no woodsmaster. Keep an open mind.

However, you are a water master.

While I disagree with some aspects, the main point here is that someone who wants to move from the micros must move from how to why. As long as you understand why you are doing something, you will do well. Because if you are wrong, you'll correct it. If you only know how, you'll never be able to fix it.

Before we continue to discuss EP play and our Starting hand range - I would first like to show you basic Holding combinations.

If you pull out PokerStove.
Click the Player 1. Button
Click the Preflop Tab.
We will have the Hand Grid - seen in Screen Captures in OP.

Now it is very important when considering villians Hand range and your possible equity vs that range that we consider How much each 'type of hand' is likely to be represented in that range.

Pairs - Have Six combinations
Suited Cards - Have four combinations
Unsuited Cards - Have 12 combinations

So when thinking about that proportionally 6/16 is 37.5% and the remainder is 62.5%.
Which is to say when ascribing hand ranges with pokerstove.
Each time you add an Unsuited, unpaired holding - you will be diluting the hand range strength much more than if you add in a lower pair.
Each time you add in a suited unpair holding - the effect of this extra holding will be smallest whether the ranking increases the strength or weakens.
Adding in pairs will have the least effect on your overall range strength and playability but the lower your pair the less likely your pair will strengthen your range because not all holdings are played with equal frequency.

EP Hand Range (cont'd)
TT+,AQs+,AKo

The overarching reason we will start with a very tight range is to firmly establish positional awareness within your game.

Goal: To play less hands Out Of Position

In session review.
Strategic planning.
Hand History Review.
If the prism you use is - to play less hands Out of Position. This will always be valuable and if you make a mistake by peeling off a holding when OOP or folding more than a 'theoretical vanilla substitute' your mistake with be 0EV(ascribing no value to opportunity lost) in every position barring the blinds.

With this range.
- You will receive compensation for your informational disadvantage - Having half a Street less information as your opponent + the lack of the capacity to choose your opponent - by having a likely Hand range strength advantage.
- You will almost be exclusively be dealing with 'fat' value betting propositions on the flop.
- If you do get outflopped or you make a mistake - you will almost always have ways of catching up. Put another way you will always have some equity when behind.
- You will almost always be on the winning side of coolers. Your flushes, and flush draws will be nut or 2nd nut holdings - your sets will likely be middle or top set.
- The range of unfavourable flops will be smaller than most. Plus when they are unfavourable they will clearly be unfavourable i.e. highly connected or combinatorically coordinated.

The practical effect is that when our information is lowest we will be less likely to be making catastrophic mistakes.
When combined with folding mostly when villian raises + not bluffing - our EP range or our guaranteed Out of Position play will be less likely to contain spew.

I agree at uNL but I can't agree with you on that point at limits higher

TT+,AQs+,AKo

Combinatorical representation of our range.

6* 5 combination of pairs = 30 combinations
4* 2 Combinations of suited cards = 8 combinations
1*12 Combinations of unsuited cards = 12 combinations

So of the 50 combination of cards 60% of times we have a pair to begin with.

If villian holding is unpaired.

Only one in 3 times will he pair one of his hole cards. It will not always be top pair given the width of his range.
When he flops top pair Ace 40% of the time he will be playing against our Ace.
It is ~ 48 - 1 that he will flop two pair.
It is ~70 -1 he will flop trips.

If he holds a pair.

It is 7.5 - 1 he flops a set. 60% of the time he will get at least one bet out of us....some of those times we will flop a set too most of those times we will have top set.

The danger is of course we flop a pair of Ace or King 2-1 with 40% of the range & he flops a set. As you can see with the combined probabilities of each - these are literally monsters under the bed + we will be getting betting indications from villian in any case.


This is just to give you an outline of how hard it is for villian to overtake this range of ours as well as how rare it actually is to be coolered. If we remember these three things our EP play should be relatively straightfoward.

Betting and Bet sizes are the most reliable indication of Hand strength.
Villians rarely bluff strong face-up hand ranges
Don't be the guy paying off the fish. - credit to a personal favourite of mine Baluga Whale (DC Coach - mid-high stakes crusher)

Even though I would like to continue with EP Hand equity - the size of posts is getting a bit out of control.

My next step is to look and outline mid-position Hand ranges.

Very nice post! Thanks for this!

A few questions:

1. Do we raise all hands mentioned (in pre-flop EP, MP & LP charts), if unraised in front?

2. With which hands do we call raises in MP/LP (or even re-raise)?

Before we move into our mid position range. Let us make a couple of further points on EP.
1. For our purposes we shall consider UTG, UTG+1 and MP1 as all being EP.
2. We can widen our range within these three seats by gradually adding on hands from seat to seat as we are later to act. So adding PP 99 in UTG+1 and 99 and 88 in MP1 is quite reasonable. We could consider AQo in either UTG+1 and certainly MP1 - but also consider AJs for MP1.
3. This will prevent us from unduly and arbitarily exapnding out our range too lumpily. Whilst adequately retaining the concept of being less inclined to be playing pots OOP and be adding hands which will have equity advantages when we don't get to manipulate how many players will be in the pot and who those players are.

Mid position.
For the purposes of our discussion - we shall consider MP2 and Hijack (HJ) as the two seats of mid position. We have differentiated our mid position seats from the standard MP1 MP2 Somtimes HJ of traditional understanding to ephasise in our thinking and ranges a disinclination to playing OOP.

Before discussing some of the issues surrounding mid-position PF hand ranges - We shall look at what is different about our EP and MP ranges. How does the equity of our mid-position range do vs Regular and Fish both separately and combined?

Our UTG range
TT+,AQs+,AKo
Our Mid position range
55+,ATs+,KJs+,QJs,JTs,T9s,98s,AJo+,KQo

The hands that are in mid position range that are absent from our UTG range.

99-55,AJs-ATs,KJs+,QJs,JTs,T9s,98s,AQo-AJo,KQo


Within the totality of our mid-position range:

There are 148 total combination of hands (10*6 PP+10*SCs + 4* Unpaired Broadway).
50 of the 148 combinations - will be our strong part of our range(UTG holdings)
98 of the combinations will be the low end of our range - ~ evenly distributed between PP, Suited Cards and Unsuited Broadway.

So roughly speaking we have increased our range 3 times. 2/3 of which is the relatively weak end of our range.
22% of our total range with be the most difficult part of our range to play - the unsuited non AK broadway cards.

So it is fair to assume that when we are OOP most of the time we will either have a playable holding which we can either bet our draw effectively or value bet.

With the assumption that all players have folded to us in MP2.
If we also assume that we will be HU.
There are 5 positions left to act - 3 seats in position on us(HJ,CO,BTN) 2 seats where we have position (SB,BB).
So of the times we open - we can expect that 60% of the time when we are HU we will be OOP and 40% IP.
When we are called by a player with position on us - we should expect to be more often Multi-way and to be squeezed between two players Post-flop - i.e. because of the price offered to the blinds or BTN we are more likely to be OOP and MW than just OOP and HU.
When we do get position we should expect to be HU most of the time because the only MW possibility is when both SB and BB both call.

When we are in HJ - We have two seats who have position on us and two who dont.
So 50% of the time we should expect to be OOP and IP.
We reduce the amount of times we go MW slightly but not by much.
The counter weight of the wider range from the button will be offset by the willingness of the blinds to call to defend 'too'? often.

I think for the purposes our discussion - an assumption that when a flop is seen 2/3 we will be OOP and most of the times OOP and Multiway. And when in position we are likely to be HU.

Over the next couple of posts we will consider the following.
Hero HJ Regular BTN Fish BB
Hero HJ Fish BTN Regular BB

We shall look at our total range vs both scenarios AND

We shall look at our non-UTG range vs both scenarios.

We shall avoid looking at squeeze spots but we will talk abit about what the Regulars range will compose when we take out his 3 betting range both on the BTN and his possibly 3-betting/squeeze range from the blinds.

Workng just fine at 200NL and 400NL, though I'm much much more selective and probably end up being a few % lower for sure.

Looks fine as a default for most people, I'd throw in 77+ UTG but thats no big deal.

Digger whats your flat calling ranges in the co and otb and what do you 3bet and squeeze with in the same posys from
cheers

good comprehensive, easy guide to beating micro games. Wish I had this when I started not only would my winrate have been better but I wouldn't be unlearning some of the bad habits I have now.

I really disagree that 50% steal is good at the levels which I play: micro and small, in fact I think that probably the biggest leak I see is that people steal far too much.

Since this is Digger's thread, I think his advice on this should be used.

Treat every steal attempt as a singular event. Let the ATS % be where it will be.

That said, a common leak in the micros is not stealing enough.

I have been playing my life time worst consistently this month, and its been really getting me down, a refresher on th e basics and some motivation to stop my spew and POW tendencies is just what the poker Dr ordered for me so thanks a ton.

Question...

Why do u propose opening KQs, I would guess its for balance, but this being uNL there most be a more appropriate reason why u suggest opening it, especially in favour of AQo.

You could argue it has lots of straight and flush potential, but your opponents will be worried when you bomb the flop anywhere, and flopping 2pr is no guarantee with more and more players opting to just flat EP raises with JJ-QQ, and further more your FD should you hit one is to the 2nd nuts, which seems to go against the philosophy of backing up your disadvantage by playing less dominated holdings. I would much rather swap out KQs for A5s in this spot, although your straight draw potential is reduced, you can catch people off guard when they flat with AQ-AK, and you get to stack the guy who played KQs to your EP open.

Really curious on this point. Once again thanks a lot for writing this, it is v.much appreciated.

I don't want to hijack diggers thread but this needs serious clarification.
Of course there are situations where people steal to much, it's super situation dependant.
There are button situations where you should steal 100% and situations where you should steal 20%, this does not always relate to how often they play back but that's the big factor.

Raise the paint off the button, if they adjust then work out some counter strategy.

However, I think diggers approach to the problems is generally correct so I actually look forward to the conclusions he makes for CO and button.

I was actually referring to SS's statement that in any FR game you should have a 50% ATS. I agree with Digger's theory on it for this strategy, although I don't remember reading what you just said here, I'll have to read again.

+1 for 77-99. I think 77+, AQs+,AKo is the minimum in UTG.

Digger, do you suggest 4BB for EP raise?

I end up getting 3bet way to much to make a profit (anyone decent should be doing that)... so yeah probably just my bad tables. might be ok if you are min raising the btn ect? What site do you play on

It's pretty much impossible for someone to 3-bet you enough to significantly alter your button raising range without opening themselves to counter exploitation.

I play ongame at the moment but I coach a lot of FT/Stars, I might goof around a little on those sites to see if you all speak the truth about these uFR 3-Bet wars.