Play poker, think poker, write poker

Recenly, I played almost exclusisvely PLO. I moved to FTP, since in party poker there are maximum 3-4 games running at 2-4. At the moment when I moved, I felt again that the rakeback, the decent number of players and the decent number of good players make the games at the corresponding levels much tougher than the party games. I started with a downswing on 1-2 that forced me to move back to 0.5-1. I recovered the needed buyins and moved back to 1-2. It is a swingly game and is very fun to play.

Which reminds me: I haven’t played NL since the last tournament. It feels strange, maybe some of the trill is back. I gotta try it.

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Yesterday I wanted to call it a tournament day and I played a ton of satellites to qualify for 3 of the big tournaments that start at normal European hours and have a lot of satellites: PS Sunday Warm-up, FTP Sunday Brawl, PP 300k Gtd . My bankroll does not allow me to play the big buyin tourneys directly and I am also unsure if If I have any edge in those.

Anyhow, after 4 hours of satellites I qualified only for the Party Poker 300k (spending more money on the 10 satellites than the actual buyin) and since It is not refundable I fired up a few PLO tables and started the 300k. I made a bad call early but then played standard and build a good stack until near a money bubble I got involved into a weird hand with one of the active guys on my table. I posted it on 2+2 and would like to hear your comments about it.

I busted 101st with AK vs 88 with 8BB.One of those days…

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Recently, I found this piece of gold. Reading through some of his hand analysis I can understand why he is one of the best players now.

http://cts687.livejournal.com/

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Yesterday I played a session of NL, followed by a short PLO session.

Here I want to discuss some of the hands from the session.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2939265 This guy sat on the table like 5hands ago, played every hand and did the same 3bet minraise IP already once. So I decided to see the flop. He bets pot which he might be doing with bluffs and also with strong hand, so I continue with the hand, turn is a safe card and he bets very,very small. At this point I am either way behind or slightly ahead. On the river he pushed and even though I don’t beat any of his value pushing range I was seriously considering calling. At the end I decided to muck since I am trying to get rid of this habit of mine whenever I don’t have reads to call down lightly. However, later in the session, this hand happened http://www.pokerhand.org/?2939275

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2939278 I have been experimenting with donkleading recently and it seems to work, against very aggro players and against weak players. It also seems to slow down reasonably aggressive players who otherwise would be double barreling often. My current approach is to use it with various range dependent on the opponent.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2939261 The opponent in this hand is very aggressive and tries steals a lot. However, he likes to call 3bets IP. Given the last part maybe a call preflop here is also ok. On the flop I was seriously puzzled what my line should be, I tried to figure out my range and how would I play this with high aces and also with KK,QQ. However while I was considering my time expired and the stupid policy of party is to fold your hand if you run out of time.Sucks! However I am pretty sure I will bet here with aces going for flop and river value,maybe also with KK. I think my line with TT should be the same. There are very few hands ahead of me and he might fold JJ to a river bet.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2939266 I messed up this hand completely. Opponent is loose and has floated me light previously, so I figure he will float this flop often and then bet turn if checked to. However I didn’t have the discipline to raise his turn bet. Also on the river when he insta bet this fishy value size I should have just folded. Bad play, me.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2939268 This guy was playing very loose. The minraise on a monotone board will be a bluff more often than not. However I want to keep in his drawing hands with high spade and that is why I 4bet small. Here I am very unsure how I feel about his play. Mainly because I will play my flushes and high aces with high spade hands exectly the same way. I will also play bluffs like this, that his play is folding. I will also probably fold good showdown hands like AJ without a spade and KQ with a spade, but with those I am more apt to call his minraise. In general I believe he is usually crushed by my min4betting range.

And to finish with my biggest PLO hand

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2939282 Villain is probably a good player since I saw he was also playing some of the 400PLO tables. I have a monster on the flop and I am willing to stack against every raise. On the turn I still have my outs however, he keeps calling. The river bricks, he checkss to me and I have a tought decision. He doesn’t have a set, since he would raise me earlier. He doesn’t have two pair since he would check/raise me on the turn.So either he has a strong combo draw that is not strong enought to raise the flop or he had some mixed hand that picked up a draw on the turn.If he had 78, he would probably push the river, expecting me to call him with a set, I cannot see a hand with 32 or 37 often after flop and turn call, so I was left with the idea that he must have a combo draw. One of AKTx,KKTxKJTx,KQTx,KT9x,T98x probably with a club draw. Some of those have one pair, that currently beats me but cannot call a push for half pot, since I am representing minimum QJ, so I bet and he folds.

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I played a little NL session yesterday. The games are becoming more and more aggressive. At some point I had the PFR numbers on the table summing up to around 150. This basically means every second hand was 3bet. I looked up my stats since the beginning of the month and around 30% of my steal raises have been 3bet. 3betting is so popular and so many people seem to do it with any possible trash just because they figure your range to be sooo wide. Especially, in button vs blind situations, I start doubting if raising the button is even profitable any more. Note to self, I must watch again this movie.

I have been experimenting with different approaches to cope with light 3bettors from the blinds.

One option is to call more liberally 3bets. And to counterfeit the fact that people cbet 3bet pots virtually every time you need to loosen your standards for when to stack postflop. I think that in some of those situations you should be prepared to push in with as little as overcard and gutshot, because the light 3bettors have general advantage once they put in the cbet that there is only one more bet to go in and you never have enough information unless you have a monster.

Another possibility is to 4bet lighter. My experience show that somehow 4betting small IP makes people push over you more often than fold. The reasoning behind it is that usually you would not do it with QQ+ and often you would do it as bluff when there is a history of light 3betting. Usually, the stack sizes do not allow 4bet push.

You could also decrease the size of the open raise from steal positions. This gives you more room postflop to use position, when you have playable hand. This will also make people less inclined to play big pots OOP against you. I haven’t experimented with that much though. I am thinking to start opening to 2.5BB like in tournaments, then a 3bet goes around 8BB.Thus the pot on the flop is 16bb and if cbet is 10bb, then we have more options. We might call for a pot of 36bb with 82bb effective stacks of we might raise the cbet to 28bb and still have room to fold with 36bb invested and putting a lot of pressure on the 3bettor.Hmm, I need to experiment with this one.

And of course, the ultimate solution is to tighten up significantly your ranges, but then you need to find other spots to open so that you don’t appear too nitty.

Not an easy one, but I intend to try a mix of smaller size open raise and calling more 3bets IP, I will report maybe in a month how does it work.

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