So I has been away a while, but now I'm back and grinding the uNL stakes for a while (very shortly moving up again )

I thought I'd share the two biggest lessons I learned that turned me from an awful barely breakeven bad poker player, into a several ptbb/100 winning slightly better poker player, that enabled me to finally move up in the first place.

i) Claytons awesome "FGators" post complete with MSPaint art.

It's in the archives somewhere, very probably in a sticky, no I'm not linking it do you own homework. Essentially tho it said this:

Imagine we are taking a 60,000ft high view of poker. On some hands we bet a lot, on some hands we bet a little, onmost hands there is no SD, sometimes the cards fall in such a way that it doesn't matter who has exactly what hand, all the monies are going in regardless, e.g. AAvKK preflop, set over set etc.

In the long term those hands are irrelevant. We cooler the villains just as often as they will cooler us. So they will all even out and we end up even on those types of hands (minue the rake obv)

Where we makes the monies, where our edge is in beating these games comes from laying well postflop. If we play better than the villains we are up against over time we will win. Yes downswings and stuff happen, so do upswings! but eventually the better postflop players win and the bad postflop players go broke.

Better postflop players hand read well, they recognise when they ought to make the pot BIG (relative to the stacks) and when to keep it smaller. Better postflop players do a whole bunch of things well, but when you really boil it down those two things - hand reading, and controling/manipulating the pot to the size thats appropriate for your hand are probably the two most important.

ii)Position, position, position, position, position, position, position ...

The single most important aspect to consider of any hand is What is my position? In position is profitable, oop is not.

Say we have a small pp OTB and MP opens the pot, we flat call and play a pot in position - our position enables us to win the pot many ways.

We also need to recognise spots where we are in postion, but not in position. e.g. MP opens we flat call and the BB calls as well. Now because the BB will often check his strong hands and his weak hands to the preflop raiser we will have to act (Assuming that the pfr bets) before the BB does, and if we flat call and the BB raises we often have to throw the hand away, even though we were OTB.

Note that once you know what you are doing postflop we can use that to our advantage and call a wider range from the BB when a villain opens and a LP villain flat calls and put lots of pressure on those LP players as our effective position is so good, or we might perhaps forsee a loose BB calling before it happens and 3bet a wider range in position to either steal the pot outright preflop - or get the pot HU in position vs the opener...

Cliffnotes:

I think the two biggest steps a uNL grinder can take along the road to learning how to play the pokers well is to understand that coolers are irrelevant and that our money is made from outplaying people postflop. Also to understand the awesome power of position, and to learn to use it well.

great post; I love the part about being in position but not really being in position. Makes a lot of sense.

"our money is made from outplaying people postflop"

I totally agree, but I have to add that this does not mean that you need to bluff everyone. You just have to find their weak spots and exploit them. By default, since most of our opponents at about NL100 and below are loose and passive, this means we must valuebet them thinly.

good post. FWIW: I think the term you're looking for is called "relative position" as opposed to "absolute position." If you're in the BB and UTG raises and OTB calls, while you are not in absolute position, you are in relative position (to the preflop raiser).

I would define "outplaying postflop" as playing our hands in such a way as to exploit each players specific tendancies.

So Value bet calling stations, bluff weak tights, draw to lots of good hands vs rocks who will overplay OP's *everytime* and pay off our goofy 2pair... etc.

I absolutely loved that post Clayton made about FGators. Probably my favorite single post on NL strategy.

Good tips. Especially position when considering the BB, something crucial to keep in mind.

matrix, you briefly mention pot control, especially in relation to relative stack size, as an important element of your game. Would you mind just going into a little bit more detail about your views on it, or certain lines to take in standard types of hands that represent good pot control in your opinion.

You're one poster who I never agree with any of your thought process on hands. I just assume we have totally different ways of thinking about hands and decisions. Good post all the same.

Is this the link to the post the OP was talking about?

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/39...ry-post-32391/

Yes.

Brilliant 1st post.

ye what NapTime said brilliant 1st post

I totally agree with this but I want to add:

Its not all about bluffs and valuebets. We don't necessarily need to be making super thin value bets all the time. Getting value from our hands is important, but whats also important is not giving our opponents value for their hands. I mean loose passives think about hands in terms of their absolute value and are like never folding twopair. If we got only the same amount of value as they do on our better hands, we would still beat them significantly in the long run just by being able to laydown a twopair when they have a straight.

From what I see for a lot of uNL players; not being able to make a correct fold in certain spots is as big an issue as not getting enough value when they have the best hand.

It all comes down to thinking well in terms of hand ranges imo.

This is exactly my biggest problem I have really hard time folding TPTK+. AKo is my biggest loosing hand. Even if I realise I'm behind it's usually so much money in the pot already that it seems I have correct odds to call. Just love to call to much I guess. I think biggest thing to beat uNL is discipline and pation. Hope it will come with practice.

Yea, I think at uNL there are too many hands that players chalk up to coolers, and they just arent.

It's not all that complicated really.

You look at what hand you have- and you look at who you are up against. You make a decision about the villains range and the types of hands he will likely take this line with.

You ask yourself how good is my exact hand vs the range of likely hands this villain has, what will this villain do with a hand in that range that you beat and a hand in that range that beat you.

The classic example is when you have TPTK and the board is wet vs a TAG with 10obb stacks, it's often called a WA/WB situation.

You opened preflop in position and got 1 caller, who plays TAG. He called your flop CB and checked it to you onthe turn. What to do?

Most of the time in my experience it is best to check behind, even on drawy boards the illain won't have "the" draw thats out all that often, and when he does that draw will still miss most of the time, our check looks weak to a TAG so in this case he will often makea bet on the river .

Because we didn't bet the turn we kept the pot small (relative to how big the effective stacks are) so the villains river bet is only going to be around the size of the pot or less on the river. Notice that if we open to 4bb preflop and bet near the size of the pot on the flop the turn and the river, then we have put in most of our 100bb by the time the hand is done.

If instead we bet the turn and get called and then the villain bets the river we have a much more difficult choice, did that river card help him? Was he already ahead? Now the pot is much bigger relative to the stck sizes and it is a bigger mistake to fold the best hand in a bigger pot. We are offered the same odds (the villains bet is the same size relative to the potsize on the river) , but there was betting on 3 streets postflop and we need to weigh up then whether we can get 3 streets of value from a worse hand, we need to consider whether villain is bluffing or value betting and as we haven't shown weakness by checking the turn the chances are he is bluffing less often.

Against some villains TPTK is the stone nuts. When we face these villains we want to bet all three streets for value. Against others not so, we want to keep the pot small aganst these guys to protect our stack and hopefully win a smallish pot at SD. If the vilain we face is tough and often bluffs the river about the right amount we want to keep the pot smaller and make our decisions easier, if the villain is spewy then make the pot big. Work out what this particular villain tends to do badly and plan the hand around making the most monies from his biggest mistakes. If the villain is very ABC and straightforward and easy to read we can bet the turn for value and not risk being bluffed on the river.

Some villains will call with draws and fold when they miss, some villains will fold all but the biggest draws to a biggish turn bet but will bluff the river when they miss if we "show weakness" on the turn.

If we are playing a TAG style TPTK is less valuable, if you are playing crazy LAG you dream about making TPTK and your own image generates action from lesser hands, a LAG trying to control the pot looks mighty suspicious as it's the opposite of how he normally plays.

There are a ton of variables to consider, some of them like recent history are very hard to convey in a forum post, the correct or standad play in a vacuum might be very different to the correct play in that particular situation. The best way to learn is to play lots of hands and develop good reading abilities, both hand reading and situation reading.

As a reasonable rule of thumb though, when you have weakish one pair hands, like TPTK vs a TAG that are either WA or WB it's better to keepthe pot smaller and look to get 2 streets of value and not 3. Particularly if that opponent is likely to make a river bet thats sometimes but not often a bluff. The pot will be the same size whether we bet flop and turn or flop and river.

Another good spot is when you have a MP hand thats beating draws or smaller pp's - lke 99 on a K 7 6 2 kind of board. You definitely want to see a SD with it, but the hand is weaker and more vulnerable, so vs the same TAG we'd likely bet the turn for value and plan to check back the river, to charge draws and protect our MP as there are a lot more river cards that can improve villains range to a hand that beats our own, so the need to make him pay to see them is greater than the need to keep the pot smaller.

Also note that we cannot control the size of the pot unless we are in position.

AK used to be one of my biggest losing hands as well. I used to think it "was a drawing hand" and played it slow preflop and donated stacks with it postflop when I hit. I switched that around and played it faster preflop and pot controlled more with it postflop and now it's one of the biggest winning hands in my db.

You can spend monies you don't lose, just as well as you can monies that you win

HAHA very well put matrix. I guess my point is that I don't think players at the micros struggle all that much to win money... they struggle not ot lose it afterwards.

good post!