Isildur1 has been tearing it up lately destroying all comers at NLH at the highest possible stakes and utilizing the “NO LIMIT” aspect of the game to the fullest degree with loads of river overbets so I thought I’d do a little bit of math on them as I think it’s a poorly understood concept for a lot of people.

When someone overbets the pot I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard, “Oh shoot, I better be right A LOT of the time here for calling to be good.” Well how much is “A LOT”. Turns out it’s not that much more than normal.

Intuitively think about it this way. If someone bets you $20 into a $5 pot that he can accurately predict the flip of a coin, would you take his bet? If you said no you fail. Hard. Yet I think a lot of poker players think they have to be right >50% of the time when someone overbets. The fact of the matter is it is impossible for you to have to be good >50% of the time facing a bet on the river into a pot that is already >$0. The reason being of course is that if you bet with someone at even odds then you only have to be good >50% of the time for it to be a good bet. When calling a bet on the river, you are basically taking someone’s bet at even odds, except you have the overlay of what’s already in the pot so even if they bet 100 times the pot you only have to be good <50% of the time for calling to be profitable.

Let's start by looking at a hand I observed between Isildur1 and Patrik Antonius. Effective stacks are 127k. Patrik is dealt 8c7c in the small blind.

Patrik (sb) 500
Isildur1 (bb) 1000

Patrik (sb) opens to 3000
Isildur1 (bb) 3 bets to 9000
Patrik (sb) calls
Pot is 18k

Flop
Ks Qh 7s

Isildur1 cbets 14k and Patrik Calls
Pot is 50k

Turn 6d
Isildur checks, Patrik checks behind

River 4d so final board is
Ks Qh 7s 6d 4d

Isildur overbet jams 102k into the 50k pot. Patrik...calls/folds with his 3rd pair 8 kicker?

Before I go through the math, intuitively answer these questions for yourself.

From Patrik's perspective:
How often does Isildur have to be bluffing for calling to be profitable?

From Isildur's perspective:
If he's bluffing, how often does Patrik have to fold for it to be profitable?
If he instead bluffed 3/4 pot how often does Patrik have to fold for it to be profitable?
If he's value betting, what % of the time does he miss value by overbetting? (ie if you think Patrik calls a "normal 3/4 pot bet" 40% of the time, but an overbet only 25% of the time your answer would be 15% (40-25=15)

Okay now that you quickly skimmed over my questions and neglected to answer any of them time for me to hand feed you the answers.

From Patrik's perspective he has to call 102k into a pot that will be 254k so he has to be good 102/254=40% of the time for calling to be correct. Compare this to the "normal" 3/4 pot bet of 37k into a 50k pot, he's calling 37k into a pot that will be 124k, so 37/124=30% so he only has to be good 30% of the time for calling to be correct.

So yes when calling a two times pot bet on the river he has to be correct 33% more of the time (40/30=1.33), but this isn't exactly A LOT or nearly as much as some people think when contemplating a call in this spot.

From Isildur's perspective if he's bluffing he either wins 50k or loses 102k. So
50x-102(1-x)=0 where x is the breakeven % of the time Patrik must fold for it to be a profitable shove. Solving for x we get
50x-102+102x=0
152x=102
x=102/152=67%

So Patrik must fold at least 67% of the time for shoving to be profitable. Compare this to if Isildur bet 3/4 pot on the river we get
50x-37(1-x)=0
50x-37+37x=0
87x=37
x=37/87=43%

Patrik must fold only 43% of the time when betting 3/4 pot for bluffing to be profitable. So if Isildur thinks he gains 24% in fold equity by overbet jamming two times the pot then this is clearly the better play.

Let's compare the two scenarios for when Isildur is value betting. He can either win an additional 37k or 102k. Patrik will have to call the 37k nearly 3 times (102/37=2.76) as many times as the 102k bet so suppose Patrik calls a 3/4 pot bet on the river 30% of the time, he only has to call the two times overbet >11% (.3/2.76) of the time for overbetting for value to be better than 3/4 pot betting.

I imagine this is where a lot of Isildur’s edge is coming from. He is just very good at knowing when people are going to fold or call on the river and when they do call he gets three times the value that a normal person in his spot would have gotten. Of course it goes both ways. When he’s bluffing he loses 3 times as much, but like I said he’s probably very very good at gauging when someone’s ready to call or fold on the river and if you always know the answer to that question, there’s really no reason NOT to overbet every river (well if you could, you’d bet less when bluffing and more when value betting but you can’t obviously for balance reasons).

For those wondering about results in the hand, Patrik called and caught Isildur bluffing with AcJh to scoop the 254k pot.

I’m not saying you should do things differently just for the sake of doing them differently, especially if it loses you EV in the hand, but I am saying it’s important not to play like EVERYONE else. Just look at Phil Ivey, in headsup no limit hold’em, he defends his big blind at least 70% of the time and has success doing it. These other online pros are simply not used to having to play so many marginal hands, even in position and Ivey just owns them because it’s something he’s very used to and comfortable with. Look at Isildur1, have you ever seen someone overbet the river so frequently?

Some people may view some of these hands as just fancy play syndrome, but I tend to disagree and think they are pretty good “standard” lines, they require more thought than your standard cbet 90% of the time 2/3 pot strategy so most people will not adopt them however. One more caveat and this is VERY IMPORTANT, I am not suggesting every hand you play you need to be making a move, or making a nonstandard bet size or something. It’s fine to play standard like everyone else in most hands, because for the most part it’s the optimal line. It is important to have some wrinkles in your game from time to time that makes you different and difficult to play against however. These were maybe 8 hands out of 1800 hands or so that I played that were nonstandard.

If you haven’t watched Phil Galfond’s “Philosophy” videos on bluefirepoker.com, do it. Those videos along with Nutedawg’s first concept video on cardrunners.com have taught me more about poker than all other poker videos combined. The reason I bring this up is because I recently watched “Philosophy 3″ which talks about floats and the triple deke which inspired some of these lines.

9Ts float
Any time you flop a backdoor straight flush draw, and you know your opponent is cbetting close to 100% on this board texture, it’s not a bad time to float. You have 9 flush cards, 6 pair cards, and between 4 and 8 open ended straight draw cards that can improve you on the turn for a total of 19-23 “outs”. On the turn once he bets again, you may be thinking it’s an easy fold since you don’t have odds to hit your flush (you need 52/172=30% equity), but you have to consider implied odds, as well as bluff equity. On a blank river, I think 90% of people will be betting trip aces or better again to get called by worse, instead of checking to induce a bluff, which means when he checks a blank river to you, you will have a bluff that will work 90% of the time since he almost never has a hand as strong as trip aces that he can call with.
http://weaktight.com/2179916

KQs float
This hand is very similar to the above 9Ts hand where I have 10 outs to improve my hand on the turn, which may or may not make me the best hand, but the river bricks off and I get a chance to realize my bluff equity that I talked about above.
http://weaktight.com/2179933

Q high call
Most people would not defend their BB here, and it’s certainly marginal, but the button was stealing very light and as a result I’m going to be defending my BB light. The flop is all bricks and I think my Q high is the best hand a lot of the time here.

Board: 4s 4c 2s
Dead:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 45.317% 42.49% 02.83% 331875 22104.00 { QsTc }
Hand 1: 54.683% 51.85% 02.83% 405027 22104.00 { 22+, A2s+, K2s+, Q2s+, J2s+, T2s+, 93s+, 84s+, 74s+, 63s+, 53s+, 43s, A2o+, K2o+, Q3o+, J5o+, T6o+, 96o+, 86o+, 76o }

I have 45% equity vs 70% of hands on the flop which is certainly worth a call considering I only need (18/62=29% equity).

I also have some implied odds of hitting my Q or T and a backdoor Q high flushdraw so I call. As you can see he barrels the turn, and on the river I thought I had the best hand, but wasn’t 100% sure about it, or whether he would call a checkraise with a pair of nines so I just called, but it’s certainly something to consider. This is also good for your range here, because most of the time you will have something like 66 which you will have to fold either the turn or river and this will prevent people from being able to mercilessly barrel you in the future.
http://weaktight.com/2179929

Kings checkback
This flop check back is pretty standard, though I imagine a lot of 2/4 regs probably cbet this anyways, it leaves you open to being bluff check raised on the flop and hating life. Anyways, the interesting part is the turn check back. I believe he would lead most aces into me on the turn so once he checks it to me, I think most of his range is a weak pair like 99-JJ. These hands only have 2-6 outs against me and I don’t think I can get two streets of value vs them. It’s much easier for villain to call my single river bet, knowing he gets to see my hand, as opposed to calling the turn bet when he has to be worried I will be betting the river too, making him much more likely to fold the turn now. This is definitely one of those spots where just because you have a good hand doesn’t mean betting is the best play IMO.
http://weaktight.com/2179930

T8s triple deke
This play is from “Philosophy 3″ Basically by betting the turn small I get value from really weak hands and find out if my hand is good. Since I think he would raise this small bet with a King, I am free to bet big on the river knowing I have the best hand. Most people check or bet 2/3 pot on this turn, when 1/5 pot may be optimal here.
http://weaktight.com/2179931

KTs check back
It’s okay to not cbet in 3 bet pots. Here I have some equity and check it back, once he checks the turn to me, like I said in the Kings hand, I think he almost never has a pair of aces and I have a much more profitable turn bet than a flop cbet.
http://weaktight.com/2179940

T8s check raise as pfr
This play is fairly standard in plo, where you checkraise as the preflop raiser with a draw, hoping the villain incorrectly bet/folds some marginal made hand. A cbet never folds out a jack or nine but a checkraise can get these hands to fold, plus get value from bluffs or low pairs that decide to bet/fold. If he takes a free card on the flop, great, we just got to realize some free equity with our draw.
http://weaktight.com/2179948

Q9o turn overbet
Villains range is capped here with something like AT or AJ which he chops with all aces. My range here is can be anything. I may make this same play with any ace, any five or a bluff like I did.
http://weaktight.com/2180091

I hope you enjoyed and learned something! Leave a comment if there’s something you’d like me discuss in more depth or have a question about. For more poker tips check out tips4poker.com or if you’ve never deposited on pokerstars before, check out pokerstars.net for a 20% deposit bonus.

A whole lot has happened in the past month I’m not sure where to start. Pokerwise I ended up having a good month, I’ll post detailed results next post, but it started off really poorly with me digging an $8k hole or so and busting my stars account. Big thanks to Btimm for loaning me some stars money for a bit so I could grind out a $4k bonus there 8 tabling $1/$2 which coincidentally took quite a bit of the month. I started off 8 tabling NLH, but switched to PLO after a couple days after I realized how bad the NLH games have gotten even at the $1/$2 level. Here are my thoughts on both the games at the $1/$2 level.

$1/$2 NLH
The typical regular plays like the following: Relatively tight opening standards (but once they open they are not folding to a raise) and on a lot of tables. I’d say 22/18 or something and has a completely unpolarized 3 betting range. So instead of 3 betting JJ+,AQs and trash suited hands, they 3 bet 77+, KJo+. They love to flat 3 bets with pairs and set mine or peel a cbet on the flop. They love to flat 4 bets with 88 or KQ or even JTs from time to time. They also cbet too much.

To combat this I eventually adjusted by:

4-betting larger and for value – If they want to call my 4 bet with JTs or 99, fine, but it’s going to cost them 1/3 of their stack. No more 25-27bb 4 bets like I’d make at 5/10 or 10/20 where people usually shove or fold. Gotta get that extra 8bb where you can.

Betting bigger for value on the flop and turn – This is sort of an extension of the first adjustment because the $1/$2 regs love to call and peel on the early streets to try and hit their hand, but when the big bets come out on the river they are pretty passive and actually folded quite bit. So you need to punish them early in the hand for the maximum.

3-betting a wider range for value and less polarized – If they want to call my 3 bets with 33 100% of the time to try to spike a set, fine but that just means I don’t really want to be in there with the J7s as much as I’d like to have 88.

What this all adds up to is me putting in a lot money in the early streets of a hand. This does not play to my strengths as a poker player in my opinion. I used to say and think playing postflop and especially turns and rivers was where my edge came from but before I started playing a lot of PLO I’m not sure that was the case. Now I know for a fact I play better on those streets than the vast majority of players, but playing 100bb deep against $1/$2 regs I just don’t get a chance to use this skill very much and my edge diminishes drastically.

Another area where I believe I have a big edge is adjusting to my opponents. 90% of regs don’t adjust their game at all to who their playing and just play “their game” the vast majority of the time. Well I found that when I was 8 tabling I had a hard enough time keeping with all the action let alone adjusting to my opponents, so I found myself very much auto piloting and there goes another one of what I believe to be my edges out the window.

The reason I think PLO is such a great game is there isn’t much edge to be had preflop so it’s much harder to play a cookie cutter game given to you on a preflop hand chart by cbetting 90% and win. I think a great game would be ante hold’em where everyone antes, is dealt two cards, a flop is dealt and THEN the betting action begins. But such a game doesn’t exist so to PLO I go.

$1/$2 PLO
The typical $1/$2 PLO reg is extremely loose passive. He plays 40% of hands or more preflop and never folds anything postflop. I would strongly advise against bluffing, like ever. I can’t tell you how many times I would fire 3 barrels with nut blockers only to be called down by the 12th nuts. If you follow this advice you will do well. I could go into more specifics, but it really does just boil down to bet your good hands and check/fold or check down your weak hands.

Okay well enough poker strategy what else did I do this month? I made it out to Tulalip Casino about 30 mins outside of Seattle for the first time. I went with a couple of my non poker friends so we just gambled it up with some low stakes $10 Blackjack, Pai Gow and craps but I checked out their poker room and I’m not really interested in playing there anyways. Washington state law forbids you from betting more than $500 per hand link, so the highest NL stakes they had was $5/$10 which is basically cap NL with 50bb which I’m not really interested in playing and the highest limit game they had was $4/$8 which I’m definitely not playing unless there’s plenty of booze involved. Overall I ended up breaking even, but got a good two hours of gambling entertainment in. I was a bit disappointed that the drinks were still $5 a pop even when you’re gambling but I guess this is standard everywhere but Vegas from my experience.

I bought the New Super Mario Bros for wii this month. I’ve been playing a lot of it lately with my gf and I definitely think it’s the best mario since the SNES version. Imagine that version, but four people can play at the same time.

I discovered a new, ultrasecret, completely natural way of increasing my stamina and attention span: yawning

This video got me thinking of all the different ways you could unlock a lock (voice activated, whistling, fingerprint, your iphone, possibilties are endless). Are keys sooo 20th century?

Completely mindblowing. We are in store for a bizarre 21st century IMO.

1. Have a stop loss. This is by far the most important thing to come up with before you jump into a new game. When playing my normal game and limits I’m pretty good at not tilting. I know when I make mistakes and how to correct them. I know how much I’m likely to win or lose from session to session and when to quit when things aren’t going my way that day. However, when I play a new game I’m not used to the way hands play out or the bad beats or seeing myself make a lot of mistakes as a result of not knowing what the right play is. When I play a new, higher limit I am not used to the big swings and it’s only a matter of time of playing at that limit before I lose a larger amount of money than I am used to in a session. Both of these feelings are uncomfortable and at times can become very tilting. Over time as you gain more experience, your comfort level will increase and you will become much less prone to tilt as a result of these things.

In the mean time, playing tilted at a higher limit than you are used to is a sure fire way to lose a third (or more) of your bankroll in a single day and have to spend the next couple of months grinding it back. At a certain point you are going to tell yourself, “Oh what’s the difference I’m already down $x, what’s another $y, but if I get back to even I’ll be much happier!” This should set off alarm bells in your head that you are on tilt and you should quit immediately. Unfortunately, saying you are going to do something and actually doing it are two very different things. What I recommend is that you practice having losing sessions. Sound weird? No, I don’t mean purposely losing money obviously, I mean next time you sit down to play a session at your normal limits, set some sort of stoploss and make it your goal to quit when you reach it even if you are not on tilt. For example, set a stoploss of 1.5 or 2 buyins next time you play a session and quit immediately if you reach that mark. Do this a couple of times, and even if you only play a 10 minute session I think it will really help you next time you take a shot at a higher game from going off the deep end for a steep loss.

One quick thing to add is that in my normal games I don’t use a stoploss at all and don’t really see a need for one. I know myself well enough to know when I need a break and am not playing well and it’s quite obvious to me and easy for me to quit. However, when taking a shot at a bigger game I REALLY recommend using and implementing one as you will be out of your comfort zone and not know yourself as well and be much less able to gauge whether you are playing or A game or not.

2. Take a shot when there’s a fish in the game, not when you have $x bankroll. I’ve heard a number of very good players say this before, so I definitely don’t take credit for this but it’s definitely true. When people ask, “How many buyins should I have before moving up?” It’s really a bad question. You shouldn’t move up when you have $x amount of money, you should move up when you are going to make more money playing the bigger game than you would your normal game and aren’t at risk of going broke by doing so.

Take a look at the games you are trying to move up to. Are the people sitting at the table the exact same players at your normal slightly lower stakes? There’s a good chance they are. Do you have an edge on these players? Is there a big 90/10 fish in the game? I think if you spend a lot of time game selecting and only play when you have a big edge when shot taking you will actually find that the games are softer than your usual game. For example, if you usually just load up 6 random $1/$2 tables and play them without much regard for table selection, but when you play $2/$4 you always make sure there’s one big fish at the table that you have position on, you will find that the $2/$4 games are MUCH easier even if the 4 other regs at the table are twice as good.

3. Just because your shot went well does not mean you should never move back down. I read in an irockhoes post a couple weeks ago in response to the following:

Originally Posted by wtfbbqs
what do you guys do when shots go bad? not super bad, but i should have been up about 5k last night after about a 3hour session at 5/10. lost aa vs aq aipf for full stacks, qq vs ak aipf for full stacks, i only finished down 1.5k but its disheartening that if it wasn’t for run bads i would be on top of the world right now, i think im not going to play poker for a few days.

irockhoess Posted
You seem to be confused about the reason to take shots. Its not to make 5k and feel super. Its to slowly desensitize you to the higher stake while maintaining a cushion at your stake below so that in the long run you can get better by playing better competition and constantly be moving up.

It’s pretty good advice and I can’t really word it any better than him. I’ll just say that there should never be a moment where you say, okay I’m done with that level, never playing that again. I advise more of a fluid movement where you are playing a range of stakes. There are some days I’m just not feeling like playing my A game so I might play a stake or two lower than usual, or I just don’t feel like gambling and losing a huge sum of money to me that day. Then again, there are days I’m really feeling on and want to give myself a challenge, those days I play bigger. There’s also times where I spot a big fish and just load up whatever tables he’s on. Doesn’t matter what stakes. It’s all about finding the right stakes for you for that particular session to maximize your win and minimize your losses.

4. Most importantly, RUN GOOD!

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Alright time for some more Ivey vids! Seriously how can you not be a fanboy? He’s not only widely accepted as the best poker player in pretty much all the games, the dude just knows how to live. I hear a lot of online players say, “Oh I’m just going to play for a couple more years. Then I’m done and I can really start to enjoy life with all the money I’ve made.” Well Ivey doesn’t have or need to play anymore but he does anyways for the love of the game(and money of course). But he genuinely enjoys what he’s doing in life and I don’t think he’d trade it for anything.

Life of Ivey in Cabo

ESPN: 360 Preview

I bet you can’t stop watching this vid halfway through! It’s like trying to only eat one potato chip!

I’ll start by posting my graph vs this particular villain. I usually don’t like looking at the EV, but I thought it would look kind of silly using these hands as examples and then saying “look, I’m up 25 big blinds on this player!” So as you can see EV wise I’m up 4 buyins on this winning regular (I tablerated him) over about 850 hands.

Graph vs Villain

Next I’ll post villains stats. The important ones are that he’s 29/23 with a very high cbet % (it was even higher before I started playing with him like 90%, but I think he lowered it a bit after playing with me) as well as a very high steal % like 60%+. Now before I go into how I went about exploiting him, take 5 mins and think about how you would take advantage of these leaks, and what seat at the table you would try and get vs this opponent.

Villain’s stats

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PREFLOP
Okay well clearly we want position on this opponent as he is playing too loosely preflop and we will punish him for this by either

a) 3 bet bluffing him more or
b) 3 betting him lighter for value than we would most “normal 21/18 regs” (think 77+ and AJo+)

We would do a) if we think he will fold too often to our 3 bets and b) if we thought he would call too often or try to rebluff us preflop too often. Since I don’t know which category he falls into yet trial and error is going to be the only way to find out.

I start off by 3 bet bluffing him lightly to see how he reacts. http://www.pokerhand.org/?4724513 He immediately 4 bets me and I probably just ran into the top of his range here, but I can’t be too sure as it’s still early. Also realize that 4 bets from loose villains with a very wide steal % range should be given much less credit than tamer more tight opponents because he will have premium holdings much less frequently. For example, a typical going all in range of the top 3% of hands is JJ+, AKo, AKs. A 60% stealer will have this range 3/60=5% of the time after opening whereas a 40% stealer will have this range 3/40=7.5% of the time. So the tighter stealer is 50% more likely to hold a premium hand than the looser stealer.

Later I 3 bet him lightly for value with pocket sevens and see he is calling 3bets out of position with 34s. http://www.pokerhand.org/?4724519

I defend my BB lightly and see that he is opening his sb into me extremely lightly and capable of barreling with air. http://www.pokerhand.org/?4724524

As a result of the previous hand, villain’s aggressive image gets him paid by a light call down by me. http://www.pokerhand.org/?4724530

POSTFLOP
Now at this point we’ve discussed his preflop leaks and how to take advantage of those however we haven’t yet discussed his high cbet % and how to exploit that. In a spot where it’s folded to him in the sb and he opens I know he has 60% of hands. Now, if he’s cbetting 90% of hands, that means that if I choose to just call and see a flop, he bets and action is to me I now know his range is .9*.6=54% of hands. That’s a HUGE range. It also means that in a spot where I flat in position preflop there’s going to be 10-12 big blinds in a pot (3bb pf from each of us plus his 4-5bb cbet, plus the blinds) where action is to me headsup vs a hand range of the top 54% of hands. This is a good spot for me and I can take advantage of it a couple different ways:

a)call down lightly
b)raise the flop lightly for value
c)call the flop as a bluff and float
d)raise the flop as a bluff

I would do a) and b) a lot if I thought he would barrel a lot of with air (bluff me too much and call down too much) and I would do c) and d) if I thought he would fold too much. Again, the only way to find out is through trial and error.

I know that villain is opening my BB from his SB extremely lightly (remember 8To?) and I attempt to bluff him. Turns out he flopped top pair weak kicker and doesn’t seem to like folding. http://www.pokerhand.org/?4724537

Next round of blinds and the exact same situation. http://www.pokerhand.org/?4724547 All is not lost though, the 50BB I lose in these two hands alone will pay massive dividends later because I’m sure he views me as pretty crazy at this point, will be unwilling to fold to me in the future, and by spending this 50BB early on I gain this info and can now adjust by completely stopping bluffing him at all and raising him more lightly for value.

The first hand I try this on I really do run into the very top of his range. http://www.pokerhand.org/?4724552 Note that this is definitely not the standard way to play AJo here but with our history, his high steal %, his high cbet% and his low postflop fold % it will become standard in the future.

I continue to widen my 3 bet value range vs him by 3 betting him with AQo, most likely not folding to a 4 bet vs him at this point. http://www.pokerhand.org/?4724563

Finally I flop good and get paid. http://www.pokerhand.org/?4724566 This is what it’s all been building toward. I get him to put in 125BB with a gushot and overcard with me having greater than 85% equity on the flop and turn. Unfortunately, the river is not kind to me, but results are irrelevant.

I continue to 3 bet him lightly for value and my image and our history gets me paid. http://www.pokerhand.org/?4724573

At this point a really interesting dynamic has come into play where I’m willing to put all my money in with top pair good kicker and he’s willing to put it in with even less. I get value from his midpair on the flop and am 75% but I catch a bad turn card and end up putting all my money in with only 20% equity. http://www.pokerhand.org/?4724579

This hand is really standard, but since I’m including all the big hands in chronological order vs this villain I’ll include it. http://www.pokerhand.org/?4724593

I flop a set vs him and get paid. For most people playing my cards this would be the first time they’d be willing to put all their money in and chances are good they would not have cultivated an aggressive enough image to get paid off here. http://www.pokerhand.org/?4724604

I’m going to skip a number of hands here, but realize that you don’t have to play a raise or fold game on the flop. We were playing deep at this point and we play a few 3 and 4 bet pots where I call lightly, brick the flop and fold or call a few streets with a draw and miss or something. The final big hand we played was the following http://www.pokerhand.org/?4724629 where our villain finally starts adjusting by check/calling the flop with a mid pair type hand to control the pot size. You can see how this dynamic will develop where in the future his cbetting range may be more polarized to hands he wants to get in with, or air. You will have to readjust accordingly, I will let you figure that one out yourself however. When he is check calling only midpair type hands and never strong hands however, its going to put him in really tough spots where he is stuck completely check/guessing and we can valuebet or bluff him at our mercy because of position.

Again, I’d just like to add that a lot of the above hands would be VERY spewy vs a lot of villains, but vs this particular regular I believe it’s optimal to be raising the flop extremely lightly for value and getting it in. It’s all about making adjustments while you play to maximize your earn. I hope you learned something.

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Bonus hand of the month: Observed hand of

kingsofcards vs omgclayaiken

37k eff stacks at 200/400nl

omg opens btn to 1200 koc flats
flop A95r koc checks, omg cbets 1600 into 2400, koc calls
turn is a rainbow ace, koc checks omg bets 3x pot (14.8k into 5.6k leaving 22k behind)

Pretty sick spot where omg knows the top of koc range here is usually going to be ATo and koc is kind of damned if he does call and damned if he doesn’t. It also leaves omg in a spot where he never has a tough river decision, if koc calls the turn it’s unlikely he’s folding the river imo so he could only value bet better (though I guess in a big leveling game if koc knew this he could call A7 on the turn and fold the river but that just seems kind of silly). Def an interesting hand nonetheless IMO.

Good luck at the tables.

Calling too many 3 bets, especially with hands that play poorly vs AAxx
This is by far the biggest leak I see in “good” regulars’ game. They pretty much instacall all 3 bets without even thinking about how well their hand plays vs their opponents 3 betting range. An Ace with three babies (ALLL) is about the worst hand you can be calling 3 bets with, even in position. Let me give you some hand examples of me vs a reg who opens very wide, and loves to call just about all 3 bets regardless of his hand.

Here I 3 bet a decent double suited hand with an Ace and villain calls (incorrectly imo) with A345 rainbow. I’m 70% preflop and 82% on the flop. I know he has position, but there’s just no way he can overcome his equity disadvantage by bluffing me off the best hand often enough and it’s a clear leak for him.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?4643779

Same villain as the above hand. In this case it’s not as bad of a preflop call as his hand is slightly better (though he snap called he should at least be thinking about folding preflop). I’m 62% preflop, and have his hand dominated (AJQ8ds vs AJ45ss) but the straight preflop equity doesn’t tell the full story. When the flop comes AJx he’s going to be stacking off and I’m going to be freerolling him to a Q or a flushdraw a lot of the time. Also, I’m going to have AAxx in my range here so he’s going to get it in drawing dead when the flop comes A high and I flop top set and he flops top 2 pair. His flushdraw is also only Jack high and I’m going to have his flushdraw dominated a good bit of the time when be both catch flushdraws. What is he going to do on an AQ5 flop where I flop top 2 and he flop top and bottom 2? On this flop he catches about the best flop he can dream of, the board’s top 2 pair and his hole cards’ middle 2 pair, and he’s still and underdog, I’m 55% to win here.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?4643807

Here I exercise good discipline by folding a similar type hand from the btn vs a tight 3 bettor in the BB.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?4643850

Here is one more hand example where I fold a very good double suited AK92 hand vs a 4 bet from an 18/14 villain. A lot of people will call here with my hand or even a KKxx hand, but the fact of the matter is this type of villain has AAxx 100% of the time and I’m in really bad shape.

Hand Pot equity Wins Ties
Ac9cKh2h 31.11% 183,288 6,700
AA** 68.89% 410,012 6,700
http://www.pokerhand.org/?4643871

Not correctly counting your outs
I see people get all in with “overpairs” plus flushdraws all the time when it’s obvious they are drawing so thin vs a made straight, trips or a boat and they have either 0-30% equity but put all their money in anyways. Below is a hand that demonstrates this. I apologize in advance to this particular player, as I did not intend to call them out or anything, but pokerhand was having trouble hiding the identities in the hand history for some reason. Anyways, I was not involved in the hand I merely observed it. This player flops an “overpair” plus nut flushdraw on 225 twotone board and checks, the pfr cbets and is raised in position by a 1/2 stack. At this point one of them has trips or better 90%+ of the time, yet this player still elects to put his stack at risk and goes all in. He has 30% equity on the flop and is lucky neither of them have a boat or quads, otherwise he’d be drawing to a jack with 8% equity.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?4643948

Not attacking weakness enough and taking advantage of good bluffing opportunities
There’s plenty of opportunities for bluffing in PLO but a lot of people either don’t see them or don’t care to take the “risk” of trying to exploit them. Here’s an example of a four way hand that gets checked around on the flop of 994 rainbow, and then the sb checks to me on the turn. It’s unlikely anyone has a 9 and my turn bet has to work less than half the time to be profitable. I fire my one barrel and pick up the pot uncontested, but I think a lot of people would just try to check it down and spike an A or K on the river to make the best hand instead of taking advantage of this great steal opportunity.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?4643988

Not playing your good draws aggressively
A lot of people don’t realize how dominating a lot of their draws are. Below is a hand where I flop what might appear to be a great hand to a lot of people, a wrap on a flushdraw board and the villain flops a pair and the 2nd nut flushdraw. Villain is 79% on the flop and a lot of people facing a raise in my spot are going to peel to at least the turn. Vs a raising range of only made hands (two pair and sets) it’s not such a bad peel either. But if villain is capable of raising some of his strong draws here the peel is pure spew so it widens your raising range as well and makes you harder to play against in addition to extracting value when you flop a dominating draw like this. On an ace high board it makes more sense to just flat in position here, but most people will just call here even if the ace is a deuce and they are missing out on a lot of value.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?4643904

Overvaluing, and calling with sets too much
This is kind of a corollary to “Not correctly counting your outs” and somewhat of a bonus section, but I think it really shows that people fail to think about RELATIVE hand strength, and usually only in terms of ABSOLUTE hand strength. A set is 23% on the turn vs a made hand. Put another way, when you hold a set on the turn the river will pair the board 23% of the time. Remember this fact. When someone check calls a As9s8c board and then donks out pot on a 7s turn, you can fold your AAxx. What!? Fold top set? Yes. Now at the higher stakes people are going to be more tricky and be capable of doing this as a bluff and in that situation you can call, but in general people play very straightforwardly and you can safely fold here. When calling a pot sized bet you need at least 33% equity to call and you are lighting money on fire every time you make this call. I know what you are going to say, oh implied odds, duh! I can definitely call here. I think you are vastly overestimating your implied odds here and in order for this call to be correct you need to:

1) Make your hand and
2) Get hero called by your opponent on the river

We already know the probability of 1) is 23%. Look it up on propokertools.com if you don’t believe me. The probability of 2) is not known and it’s something you will have to guesstimate. But how often do you really think villain will call on an Ace or 9 river when the board reads AA789 with three spades when he holds a flush? Turns out it has to be an awful lot. What follows is the math, if you just want to take my word for it you can skip this section, otherwise, prepare to be bored with lot’s of maths!

—————————————————–
These are the equations for figuring out what bet size someone needs to bet for you to have direct odds at drawing with a particular equity amount. We’ll assume we have 23% equity, with a potsize of $100, and solve for their betsize.

1) pot+2*bet=total pot
2) bet/total pot=needed equity

total pot=bet/needed equity (rearranging 2)
pot+2*bet=bet/needed equity (subsituting into 1)
pot/bet+2=1/needed equity (simplifying)
pot/bet=1/needed equity-2

Final equation: bet=pot/(1/needed equity-2)

pot=100
needed equity=23%
bet=100/(1/.23-2)
bet=100/2.3478=42

So to have the direct pot odds to be drawing, villain has to be betting 42% or less of the pot on the turn for you to profitably call assuming no implied odds. Now suppose villain pots it and you call (implied odds duh! ez call, right?). This means the pot is 300 and you need to make up for the $58 you lost on the turn (100+2*42=184, 300-184=116, 116/2=58). So when you hit you need villain to call an extra $58 100% of the time to break even, or suppose you bet 3 times this amount you need them to call $174 into a $300 pot 33% of the time to breakeven. In other words, when you hit they need to be calling your 2/3 size pot bet more than 1/3 of the time for you to even show a profit on the turn call.
—————————————————–

Now I’m by no means saying to go folding sets left and right I’m just saying really take some time to think about what your opponent has and what your equity is in the hand before you go clicking the call or raise button in some situations with your all powerful set.

I hope you learned something. This post took me quite awhile to put together. Please leave a comment if you find any errors, have anything to add and if you liked this learning style of hand examples. I’ll leave you with a cool robot vid and a mind hack vid.

World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale from World Science Festival on Vimeo.

Take good notes. My system of taking notes is to have three sections, which I stole from dodgyken which he may have stolen from someone else I’m not sure. But anyways the sections are PREFLOP, POSTFLOP, 3-BET POTS so I can easily and quickly locate the information I need when making a tough decision. In today’s games and perhaps with no limit hold’em in general preflop is by far the most important section that you should be paying attention to.

How many tables are they playing? Before I go into specific preflop tendencies I’d like to quickly add that you should at all times know how many tables each of your opponents are playing. On pokerstars this is more difficult because you can block yourself from the search field so you have to guesstimate, but on fulltilt you can easily search each opponent at your table and find this information out. You can make a lot of broad assumptions once you know how many tables people are playing like usually someone one tabling is a fish or weaker player, while someone 12 tabling is a nitty regular playing roboticly and is unlikely to run a huge bluff on you because they know they can just wait another 2 minutes until they get dealt aces on one of their other tables.

Once you know how many tables someone is usually playing, note it. It’s the first section of my notes above the other three main sections so my notes might look something like this.

8 tables
PREFLOP – 3 bets 67s sb/btn
POSTFLOP – floats in position on dry boards
3-BET POTS – hates giving up

Facing an opponents open. After an opponent opens and the action comes to you, you will have the options of folding, calling or 3 betting. It’s your job to select the option that will yield you highest expected value. This depends on a lot of things but the main ones are:

1. What is your opponents vpip/pfr? If a villain is playing extremely tightly like 18/14 you’re really better off just folding the vast majority of your range. There’s really no reason to call with or 3 bet any speculative hands such as 67s or K5s. Even a hand like JTs you may want to fold depending on relative positions. Let the blinds do their work and bleed them down. Don’t give them any action when they have hands. That’s how they make their money.

Conversely if someone is playing extremely loose, say 27/20 you need to be playing more hands and punishing them for this by 3 betting and flatting them more to take advantage of all the times they have a weak hand and can’t continue with the hand.

2. What is your and their position at the table? You want to play as many hands in position as possible. That does not mean that you should play 100% of your buttons when utg opens however. You need to combine your opponents vpip/pfr numbers with what position they are in to guesstimate what their range is and how they will play it post and preflop which brings me to my last question you should ask yourself before acting.

3. What is your image like? Don’t place too much emphasis on this because most people are just playing their cards and their game, not thinking too much about what other people are doing but it’s worth mentioning. For example, some people 5 bet jam 88+, AQo+ from the blinds vs a button 4 bet regardless of who it is or how tightly they are playing but thinking opponents will realize that a 4 bet from one reg means a lot different than a 4 bet from another reg and will adjust their range accordingly.

4. How will your opponent react to a 3 bet by you? Suppose someone is one tabling, playing 30/20 and opens from the cutoff. You are on the button and not sure whether you should 3 bet or not. Well if someone is one tabling and playing this loose they are going to want to see flops. They did not logon to fold for hours so I would argue that you should be 3 betting the vast majority of your value range here. If they rarely fold preflop you can often infer that they will rarely fold postflop (though you will have to confirm this through play). If this is the case you want hands that can win at showdown. 3 betting in this spot with a hand like 57s is just plain terrible which is a mistake I see regs make all the time. You want to 3 bet hands like 88+ and ATo+ here. Here’s some pokerstove numbers vs the top 30% of hands.

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 64.007% 63.51% 00.50% 1652930160 12972789.50 { 30% }
Hand 1: 35.993% 35.49% 00.50% 923826341 12972789.50 { 75s }

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 39.373% 37.73% 01.64% 28712827290 1251814399.50 {30%}
Hand 1: 60.627% 58.98% 01.64% 44888607495 1251814399.50 {10% or 88+, A9s+, KTs+, QTs+, AJo+, KQo }

Now suppose someone is 12 tabling, playing 21/17 and opens from the cutoff. You are on the button and not sure whether you should 3 bet or not. This is what people usually describe as your typical “solid regular”. Well in this spot most regulars are going to be 4 betting or folding because they’ve learned that playing 3 bet pots out of position is usually unprofitable so in anticipation of this you should be polarizing your 3 bet range to air or hands you are willing to 5 bet jam all in. The tricky part is figuring out how loose your 5 bet jam range should be. How do you determine this? You need to pay attention. Regulars adjust to 3 bets by you in different ways. Some don’t adjust.

Some will fold too much to your 3 bets. Vs these players you should be 3 betting all your trash and flatting all your playable hands. This includes all your big hands. If you 3 bet your big hands like aces here you are really just hoping to cooler them with QQ or AK. This is not going to happen very often and you are better off flatting strong hands to get value postflop from their air when they cbet or stack them anyways when the board comes out low vs TT or whatever. You should be 3 betting trash and only trash because they are going to fold vs you loads pf and it’s immediately profitable. Forget everything you ever learned about balance vs these types.

Some will start to 4 bet bluff you more. By this I mean they will 4 bet fold a lot. Vs these players it’s easiest if you polarize your 3 bet range, but if they bluff a lot then their 4 bets are going to be really profitable. You are going to have to throw in a couple light 5 bet jams which are super expensive and risky. This is not fun, I suggest cutting out your 3 bet bluffs almost entirely vs these guys and only 3 betting your strong value hands you are prepared to go all in with. Again, forget everything you ever learned about balance vs these types.

Some will start to 4 bet you lighter for value. By this I mean they will 4 bet/call a 5 bet with hands like 88 and AJo if you really start getting out of line with the 3 bets. Vs these types you are best off widening your 5 bet jamming range to include a slightly wider range that still beats their light stack off range like 99+ and AQo. That is to say completely unpolarize your 3 bet range vs these types and just 3 bet wider for value which you plan on 5 bet jamming with. Again, forget everything you ever learned about balance vs these types.

Some will start to both 4 bet you bluff you more and 4 bet you lighter for value. These are the really solid regs. I suggest just polarizing your 3 bets vs them and not messing with them too much. These players will adjust with a near optimal range and it will be virtually impossible to gain a preflop edge vs them. I suggest flatting a lot of your range and playing postflop poker where you hopefully can get some kind of edge there where they have postflop leaks like peeling cbets too much, cbetting too much, barreling too often, calling down too light etc.

I won’t go into postflop leaks at this time as this article is getting rather long. Ideally you want to be in the last category which means you have no preflop leaks and you are correctly adjusting your preflop range to everyone at the table. Remember, there’s no such thing as “standard” play, a “standard” table or a “standard” reg. Everyone is different and its your job to pay attention and figure out how and how to exploit it. Take good notes and figure out how different people adjust or if they adjust at all.

-3bet wide (If someone is only 3 betting AAxx this is 2.5% of all PLO hands, they will be extremely predictable and easy to play postflop when you know exactly what someone has. In addition, they are missing out on a ton of value by not pushing other preflop equity to set their opponents up to make big mistakes in 3 bet pots later)

-don’t call off their chips drawing dead (This might seem obvious and most people think plo is all flips but you would be surprised how often this happens. Consider underflushes and underfulls. You would be surprised how often villains check/call three streets with a flopped 6high flush on a AKJ monotone board, or check/call or check/raise a 669 board with a hand like 4567 and you stack them with 69xx or 99xx and they were drawing dead the whole time. Incidentally, if villains are half decent and capable of folding these types of hands they create great spots to triple barrel bluff on because people are check/raising the nuts on the flop usually and check/calling weaker hands that can’t stand three barrels.)

-don’t always pot it with the nuts (From most players the river pot bet is going to be the nuts like 90% of the time. There’s no reason to bet this large, you might as well bet smaller and give your opponent better odds to call and give yourself better odds to bluff in the future.)

-raise less than pot on flop to get called by worse (I remember a hand I played against a 5/10 reg where I bet a T72 board with A2KQ or something like that and he raised me less than 3x my bet. It’s a spot where I would have just folded if he potted it, and it’s still the correct play even with his bet sizing, but because it was smaller raise I thought, oh he’s just doing this with a weak overpair, weak ten, weak two pair,draw or whatever I can call and improve and stack him. Well I ended up calling, hitting my two pair with a King on the turn and getting it in vs his set. The important point is he induced my bad flop peel with bottom pair and overs with his small raise sizing and if he would have potted it like most bad players do, I would have folded and he wouldn’t have won my stack.)

-raise the flop with less than the nuts (You would be surprised how often some players are literally only checkraising the nuts and nothing else. I mean on a K94r board their check/raising range is literally KKxx and on a T67 board its 89xx and that’s it. Well, its very easy to read and play against and you need to be mixing in some check/raise bluffs from time to time or some thinish check/raises vs people who cbet too much)
-are capable of bluffing (Again this might seem obvious, but there are players who literally snap check back the river when they miss their draw and don’t even consider bluffing. It’s very easy to make a note on these players and adjust accordingly. While plo is a game of drawing to the nuts, you need to be bluffing from time to time)

-don’t always raise with the nuts, call with it sometimes (Consider a KT9 two spade board where I lead out with AQ of spades and get raised pot. It’s a spot I can peel and then lead any spade, K,J,T, or 9 turn. This is like 20 cards, I dunno the exact # you count them yourself, but suffice it to say that it’s definitely profitable spot for me to be calling your raise even though you have the nuts. You need to be calling here some % of the time so you don’t turn your hand completely face up.)

-don’t cbet 90% of the time (I can just bluffraise you a ton and you never get any free cards when you have the worst hand and get check/raised.)

-valuebet thinly (Checkraising the K high flush on the river for example where most people are afraid to do it without the Ace high flush definitely makes you way harder to play against. Most just bet or check/call here.)

-barrel in position (How often does someone check/call an 886 board with 8xxx vs a hand like QQxx. How often is he folding the turn or river with QQxx? Good players take advantage of this.)

Well that’s about all I have for strategy for today. Hopefully you learned something and if you did hopefully you don’t play in my games. In case you haven’t noticed by now I’ve also entered into a very, very, very small partnership with pacific poker. If you haven’t checked them out before you can play some 888 poker tournaments. Unfortunately they don’t accept US customers as real money players, but they do have some cool features like sports betting and backgammon which may be worth checking out. Be good, and good luck!

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/mary_roach_10_things_you_didn_t_know_about_orgasm.html

Formula used for calculating odds on any poker bet
x% of time we win A
1-x% of time we lose B
0=xA-B(1-x)
B-Bx=xA
B=(A+B)x
x=B/(A+B)

Now for some preflop math. All percentages assume villain either folds or raises to our bet. I used standard 5/10 betting amounts because that’s what I’m used to.

Pure Steal Preflop
win 15 x%
lose 30 1-x%
30-30x=15x
x=30/45=66%
x=35/50=70%(We have to win slightly less % of the time by raising 3x instead of 3.5x, of course this has the disadvantage of juicing the pot less when we take it down with a cbet. 5/10 is often a raise or fold game though which is why I prefer 3x as opposed to 3.5x preflop)

3-Bet Preflop
win 35+15=50 x%
lose 110 1-x%
50x=110-110x
160x=110
x=110/160=69%
x=90/140=64%(If we only 3 bet to 9 big blinds we only have to win 64% of the time instead of 69% when I raise to my standard 11 big blinds. I experimented with this last month and ended up not liking it. I found that I actually got 4-bet more and called less, you’d think people would do the opposite because of pot odds but this was not the case. It becomes cheaper for people to 4bet bluff you and obviously the way to counter this is to 5 bet jam lighter or be calling 4bets jamming over lots of cbets but I just didn’t like it and prefer 11 big blinds but you’re welcome to experiment with it if you like.)

4-bet
win 110+15+30=155 x%
lose 270 1-x%
270-270x=155x
270=425x
x=270/425=64%(Needs to work 64% of the time to be profitable)

Cold 4Bet
win 110+35+15=160 x%
lose 290 1-x%
290-290x=160x
290=450x
x=290/450
x=64%(Needs to work 64% of the time to be profitable)

Squeeze
win 85 x%
lose 145 1-x%
145-145x=85x
145=230x
x=145/230
x=63%(Needs to work 63% of the time to be profitable)

Re-Squeeze
win 35+5+145=185 x% (not sure if you add your original 3.5 blinds in here or not, but I did not include it)
lose 300 1-x%
185x=300-300x
485x=300
x=300/485=62%(Needs to work 62% of the time to be profitable)

Basically I found that pretty much any preflop play that villain is going to raise or fold to preflop needs to be working about 2/3 of time.

Cool durrr hand I observed that allows him to get value where most people would just call on flop.
http://weaktight.com/362956

Hand I played that got me to really think how I play a lot of hands out of position on the turn(cross posted on CR Forums).
http://weaktight.com/362957

The AJo hand I’m curious what most people are doing because it’s going to determine how to optimally play certain hands as villain and I think people misplay this spot alot. Most people auto 2 barrel most flushdraws and AK+ here but I actually think checking a big % of the time is optimal here. AJ is pretty much the top of our range here 90% of the time I would say since most people raise their good made hands on this flop.

If hero is always bet/folding here then villain should be CR bluffing all his flushdraws and occasional gutshots like KJo and JTo IMO.

If hero is always bet/calling here then villain should be CR AJ+ even though people would usually check/call or just barrel AJ and AK.

If hero is always checking back and betting river then villain should be checking all draws and only betting AJ+.

Comments welcome.

I’m not a big baseball fan, but I do like the Durham Bulls!