Cash Game Strategy From the Pros at PokerZion.com

John A

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Hi everyone!

My name is John Anhalt. I'm one of the cash game pros at PokerZion.com. We're going to use this thread for strategy discussion with cardschat members. Hand histories, general strategy questions, theory, database, poker lifestyle discussion. Anything that you feel is relevant we want to discuss.

We'll have several of our long time winning pros in here to answer questions so you'll know you'll always be getting solid advice and feedback. You can read some bio info about our pros HERE.

We look forward to talking with everyone!

About PokerZion
What does PokerZion offer over other training sites?

Personalized attention. Structured 6 month lesson courses that are e-mailed to you each week. You won't be guessing as to what you should or shouldn't watch or read. Feedback and videos ONLY from long term winning poker players. Small community feedback and lots of responses to your questions.
 
John A

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Missed Opportunities at micro/small stakes no-limit Series

Going to start by posting up a new article mini-series called: Missed Opportunities at micro/small stakes no-limit

I'll post up a new article in the series about once a week for discussion. Hopefully we'll get some good talks going.


Gut shot pick-up
How do you increase your poker winrate from good to great? It's all about picking up the small pots, and of course, playing the big pots well. It's the small pots that a lot of players over look far too often though. All of these pots (and we'll define small as 10 big blinds or less), add up over the course of a session, and turn already winning players, into players that crush their stakes.

I can't over emphasize how important it is to think of creative ways to scoop more than your share of the small pots. I'm going to focus on one specific hand situation that occurs quite often. Something that I see students miss over and over again in my 6 years as a poker coach.

Someone raises the minimum in middle position in a 6-max cash game. Player on the button calls, and you call in the big blind with Ah2h. The flop comes: 3c 5s Qh. I'll often watch a student check/fold here. Some of the more aggressive students will go ahead and lead at this pot, at least figuring no one hit it often enough, which of course they'd be correct. There's an even better play though.

Check the flop, with the intention of making a smallish check-raise. With a gut-shot, back door nut flush and an over card that is likely good, we have a lot of nice semi-bluff outs, and the gut shot and nut flush carry nice implied odds if we hit. The most ideal situation being that the middle position open raiser checks, and the person last to act is somewhat aggressive, and bets the flop. You're going to have a lot of players at micro/small stakes that have "bet when passed to disease", so take advantage of it.

Check raising is going to net more on average in this spot, even though you risk more, simply because you're going to get a lot of air to bet, and a lot of mid pairs as well that will very likely fold a good percentage of the time. It's quite reasonable that if someone has 66-JJ, 3x or 5x on this board that they're going to bet the flop. Most of those same hands are going to fold to a check raise, and a lot of them are going to call a lead on the flop. So we make the most money on average by adhering to the basic theorem of poker, which is allow your opponent to make the biggest mistake possible.

There are some of your better opponents who will understand that this is a pretty dry board, and there's not much of a reason to check-raise, but they will be in the minority at these stake levels. Most opponents will fold and move on to the next hand. If you are called, then give up unless you hit a card to improve your hand, such as another heart, an Ace, or a King as an additional scare card.

Now, let's take almost the exact same situation as above, but look at a slightly different flop texture that's not suitable to execute this play. Flop comes: 4c 5h 8c. We still have a gut shot and back door nut flush, but we don't want to look to check-raise this board multi-way. Heads up, we might look to lead. Against some more passive opponents, we might also lead 3 handed. On average though, it's better to check/fold. Why? Out of position multi-way on a board that is more coordinated towards the middle, which will hit more small sized open raises, you're going to get a lot more calls, and a lot less folds. Especially in micro stake games where you're going to have a lot of opponents call with all sorts of gut shots, Ax and even Kx hands.

So board texture is key in making plays when you have gutshots. The most ideal situation is always that you have a really strong back door flush, and at least one high over card that is likely good. In spots like these, because they happen quite often, make sure you're attacking and looking to scoop these small pots.
 
Debi

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Just so you all know - we have a partnership with the coaches at Poker Zion and they will be posting in this thread on a regular basis.
 
OMGITSOVER9K

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umm subbed, anyone used this yet to confirm if its any good?

could do with a coach or whatever.
 
dj11

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Purely Holdem, or do you guys delve into Omaha?
 
John A

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Purely Holdem, or do you guys delve into Omaha?

The courses on Pokerzion are only Holdem right now, but most of the coaches play other games. Omaha isn't my strongest game personally, but Derric plays almost all games really well. Derric is a former cardrunners instructor so you may have heard of him from there. He plays live and online HORSE and just about anything with cards.

Russ plays a lot of holdem and Omaha, but his strongest game is NL tournies (since he's done well in high stakes tourneys including a wsop bracelet). Similar with Andrew Boccia, but he's grinding a lot of online cash still.

I'm also the creator of Leak Buster, and it does have a PLO version. That's actually being released for Holdem manager 2 next week. I didn't do the content for the PLO, just advised.
 
dmorris68

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I've owned Leak Buster for years and purchased Ace Poker Drills a few months back on impulse, since I wasn't playing much and thought it might help keep my skills sharp. Honestly haven't had time to delve into Drills yet but have liked what I've seen so far. LB is obviously great for beginner/intermediate cash players that use a tracker and have a decent sample for it to analyze, but once you establish your game and learn to play I find it a bit too rigid. And of course I've not played any decent cash volume in probably two years or more.
 
John A

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I've owned Leak Buster for years and purchased Ace Poker Drills a few months back on impulse, since I wasn't playing much and thought it might help keep my skills sharp. Honestly haven't had time to delve into Drills yet but have liked what I've seen so far. LB is obviously great for beginner/intermediate cash players that use a tracker and have a decent sample for it to analyze, but once you establish your game and learn to play I find it a bit too rigid. And of course I've not played any decent cash volume in probably two years or more.

Interesting. I guess you're talking about NL version? It's interesting because all of the contributors went to great lengths to provide flexible advice, and we built the PLO and NL versions to give users ideas on going below or above particular stat ranges that are the most profitable to sustain. If you have something specific you're referring to let me know. Always looking to improve it because our goal was not to be too rigid.

I believe, and I don't have the exact numbers in front of me, but 85+% of Leak Buster users are 100nl+, and surprisingly we have a lot of high stakes players that use it. Winning high stakes players don't use it for the advice, I think it's more for the quick filters, it's easier to see areas where they are losing money so it saves them time (time = money).

Always open to hearing feedback on it.
 
Jagsti

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Deffo subscribed. Welcome to CC op.
 
dmorris68

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Interesting. I guess you're talking about NL version? It's interesting because all of the contributors went to great lengths to provide flexible advice, and we built the PLO and NL versions to give users ideas on going below or above particular stat ranges that are the most profitable to sustain. If you have something specific you're referring to let me know. Always looking to improve it because our goal was not to be too rigid.

I believe, and I don't have the exact numbers in front of me, but 85+% of Leak Buster users are 100nl+, and surprisingly we have a lot of high stakes players that use it. Winning high stakes players don't use it for the advice, I think it's more for the quick filters, it's easier to see areas where they are losing money so it saves them time (time = money).
Yes, the NLHE version as integrated with HM1 (and now HM2).

My comment probably came off sounding more critical than intended. I was referring to what I recalled of the advice part and that it seemed more tailored to players with consistent leaks that were easy to fix by keeping them within profitable stat ranges. That's what I meant by "rigid." Which is great for leak busting (its primary purpose) or for developing a fairly static multi-table grinding strategy where you're not trying to get creative. I used to play 12-16 tables and it was great for that. Later I found I actually enjoyed the game more when I was able to play fewer tables and get creative, playing more to villain's stats than my own, and thus could skew the numbers in ways that indicated leaks that may not really be leaks.

I didn't mean to imply that it wasn't a profitable approach -- I certainly think it is for the vast majority of us amateurs, if not even some pros. And like I said I've not played enough cash in the last couple years to speak of (and my poker playing time of any sort has suffered lately). Plus I expect LB has evolved quite a bit since then. When/if I start playing cash again I'll certainly revisit it because I know I'll have more leaks to bust. :)
 
bullishwwd

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Looking forward to this ... may well be exactly what need to improve my CASH game.
 
bullishwwd

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Is there a particular poker site that we need to play on. I have more that I can lose on BlackChipPoker if that's ok?
 
John A

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Yes, the NLHE version as integrated with HM1 (and now HM2).

My comment probably came off sounding more critical than intended. I was referring to what I recalled of the advice part and that it seemed more tailored to players with consistent leaks that were easy to fix by keeping them within profitable stat ranges. That's what I meant by "rigid." Which is great for leak busting (its primary purpose) or for developing a fairly static multi-table grinding strategy where you're not trying to get creative. I used to play 12-16 tables and it was great for that. Later I found I actually enjoyed the game more when I was able to play fewer tables and get creative, playing more to villain's stats than my own, and thus could skew the numbers in ways that indicated leaks that may not really be leaks.

I didn't mean to imply that it wasn't a profitable approach -- I certainly think it is for the vast majority of us amateurs, if not even some pros. And like I said I've not played enough cash in the last couple years to speak of (and my poker playing time of any sort has suffered lately). Plus I expect LB has evolved quite a bit since then. When/if I start playing cash again I'll certainly revisit it because I know I'll have more leaks to bust. :)

Gotcha. Thanks for the feedback. I think that if you are really properly applying reads and taking a ton of non-standard lines to exploit specific opponents you'll still find leaks and be smart enough to know the border line leaks that you really don't need to focus on here. I hear what you're saying.

I personally take a lot of non-standard lines though and still find lots of legit leaks from leak buster. Nothing is going to be perfect, but we've had some funny push back on the product initially from a very popular poker forum that won't be named, but has recently been hacked ;). Poker coaches and other winning players had difficulty believing leaks could really be located using this method. Then we had a couple of coaches on there list out leaks they had while coaching students, then run leak buster on their databases. Amazingly, leak buster nailed them all and more, so they both made several apologies later. Kind of funny...

Want to try and keep the thread focused on poker strategy and PZ. But I do appreciate the feedback.
 
sixpeppers

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Heyo, I have already started cruising the cash game threads for both NLHE and PLO but feel free to post any PZ related questions to me here. Look forward to helping out and I will post an article on this thread soon.
 
WVHillbilly

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What made you guys go with lesson by lesson programs instead of just a monthly watch-what-you want video site? What specific advantages do you see to the PZ way?
 
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John A

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What made you guys go with lesson by lesson programs instead of just a monthly watch-what-you want video site? What specific advantages do you see to the PZ way?

Clearly when you're learning something you need direction. Throwing a bunch of videos out to people trying to learn and having them hunt and peck for what they want doesn't work for most people (and this is the feedback we get from ex-members of other training sites). You may learn something here or there, but overall having a structure and some guidance is extremely important.

So we do all the lessons in a structured format, and then there are other "loose" videos in the library that you can view at any time. Also having things like video trainers where they are interactive scoring lessons are helpful. People tend to love those.
 
sixpeppers

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What made you guys go with lesson by lesson programs instead of just a monthly watch-what-you want video site? What specific advantages do you see to the PZ way?

Yeah, poker is no longer some bland unknown game. You can take learning this trade as seriously as you would a college degree and we in fact think its the best approach to the game. Instead of overwhelming people with lots of awesome videos from high stakes pros that teach you nothing about how you can actually play in your game, we have a more average group of guys; we are all proven winners and occassionally kick it at the high stakes, but aren't nosebleeders; and we don't want people to think that watching our videos will help them reach the nosebleeds because the truth is you have to be extremely intelligent, hardworking, and lucky just to reach it there. We want to show people how to make a living from poker, a 100-300k a year job if you work hard and take it seriously. We give a reasonable workload in a weekly lesson plan and let players use what we teach them throughout the week in their own experience. Experience is actually the most important part to learning and no matter how much we teach, it means nothing if you can't apply it on the spot, experience builds the bridge between understanding what you should do, and doing it in a "learned subconscious" manner.

The first generation of online pros created great instructional videos, and helped people like me and probably most of the PZ team learn to play poker. But looking back there were many things that were misleading confusing and slow going. We want to redesign the learning process to power level people to crushing the low to midstakes ASAP, because the games are tougher and information out there is plentiful.

This is just one of my semi drunken rants, I could go on forever... look forward to more in the future :D
 
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Heyo, I have already started cruising the cash game threads for both NLHE and PLO but feel free to post any PZ related questions to me here. Look forward to helping out and I will post an article on this thread soon.

You are on fire in the hand analysis threads!
 
Jagsti

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Are you catering strictly for 6max or do you have FR material as well?
 
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