Play poker, think poker, write poker

I feel I will either go busto playing PLO or finally learn not to tilt.

I played 250 hands today, I played 37/24/4, there were 3 super weak players and I succeded not to be ahead against any of them.

Here are the top 5 losing pots:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2618152 - naked set on str8 board with two flush draws = check/raise

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2618158 - cooler against the same guy

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2618167 - Of course KKxx is good in 5 bet pot

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2618168

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2618174 - Come ON!!!

Popularity: 6% [?]

The last two months I have been experimenting with very agressive preflop PLO game. I am running like 35/25/2.

I am trying to play exclusively in position. One major strategy consideration is that on the levels up to PLO100 it still is the case that most of the flops are 3,4 or 5 way and in these flops the basic strategy is very simple. I cbet with air when HU or sometimes in 3way, I make small bluffs on flop and sometimes on turn and I almost always have the correct odds to draw to high str8 or flush in multiway as there is always someone who chases something lower.

However, since I miss many of the flops and have to give them up recently I notice that most of the winnings I make them from tilted plays of my opponents. People get frustrated by my constant rasing and reraising and start playing awkward. I am not really sure to what extent will this be transferable to the higher levels. Even though, most probably there I won’t have to play 5 way pots so often …

WTF?

Here there are a few monster hands I don’t want so see agaisnt me, but I never expected to be called by bottom two with no redraw in 5way!!!

Popularity: 5% [?]

I have been reviewing my hands from the last month and I can only say:

-OMG, I am sooo passive and pay off donks sooo much!

It is great that I started running well, though

Popularity: 5% [?]

Today for a first time I decided to seriously try playing on Party.

Shipped some money and played ~700 hands on 100NL and 200NL.

General impression: very soft.

I don’t know whether because it is Friday night or whatever, but for these hands I got 3bet four times and 4bet once. No crazy check raising, no thin betting. I didn’t even see players with stats like regulars, mostly nits, calling stations and maniacs. My biggest lost pots were bluffing calling stations and thin value betting nits (before I noted that he is a nit). I will keep playing, there is no rakeback and the rake is higher but the games seem good. I’ll write more when I have at least 10k hands there.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Today I come across a very interesting situation that made me seriously think.

100BB effective stacks, 6max table

BTN raises 3.5 BB
SB calls 3.5 BB
Flop (8bb)

SB checks

BTN checks
Turn (8bb)

SB checks

BTN bets 6bb

SB goes All in for 96.5bb

BTN ?

Now why is this such an interesting spot, because every time here we are against another ace. Our problem is that some of these aces will have a flush redraw. And whenever we call in this spot against a flush redraw our EV is -10bb against all other aces our expectation here is +9.5 bb

Hence if he makes this move more than 50% with ace with redraw we lose money by calling.

Now an intelligent opponent will understand this concept and often will push directly with his free rolling nuts. Hence we should actually fold the nuts in some of these situations. This sounds like a good line to exploit people that do not want to call huge overbets only to split.

This move is obviously great if he have the suit ace, no matter whether we have flush draw or now. Hence if we are against thinking players and we don’t have the suit ace we still can try this huge overbet push line just to get our opponent to fold his nut hands sometimes.

Lets state the problem in a different way, assume we are the small blind from the above example and we don’t have the suit ace. We know we are against thinking opponent and we have reason to believe he will fold some of his non suited aces. With how deep effective stacks is it profitable to try this move?
The decision whether this is a good push or not is based on what is the pot/stack ratio and how often do we need him to fold the nuts. During this computation we take into account only the situation where our opponent also has the nuts.

Suppose x is the current pot, y is the size of the effective stack and z is the frequency with which our opponent will fold.

Our opponent will hold the suit ace, 1/3 time and this ace will be suited approximately 1/10 times (I try to take into account the people’s general preference for suited aces).

ev = z*x - 0.1*0.2*y +(1-z-0.1)*x/2

z = 0.036*(y/x)

which for our example from above translates to the opponent can safely push in this situation if he believes we can fold an ace 16% of the time. And against a thinking opponent this is very reasonable. Suppose an even more extreme example, on the turn SB direcly open pushes, then his push should actually make you fold? 46% of your aces hands, which is kinda infeasible. Lets say that against thinking opponents 20% is reasonable number . Then the maximum pot/stack ratio with which you should try this play is 5.5.

I guess this is the main result from this computation if the effective stacks are not more than 5.5 times the current pot, then an overbet AI move against thinking opponent will be profitable.

Popularity: 7% [?]