The Leveling Wars, Episode III: The Revenge of the Fish
Do you sometimes overthink your game? I often overestimatee my opponents and play like they are on a much higher level than they really are and i dont adapt to their level. Its a huge flaw that i need to work on.
Hello there Mikeloti13, how you doing today? Very nice question, and hard to answer.
I use to overthink my game when I am analysing one session that I've played.
When I am at the tables, I try to use the valuable information that I have:
1) Colors to identify players types
2) HUD/Statistics to help my decision making postflop easier
3) I try to adapt to the level of the players.
The last one is the hardest to do: it requires some kind of phycologial reading about the player, plus range and hand reading. Also it requires a good postflop gameplan and decision making (Extreme Hard). Example:
You are playing a MTT and has 12.82 blinds of effective stack and you are in the Big Blind. It comes in gap to the Button, with 10.23 blinds who goes all-in. Folds to SB and it's your time to decide.
You in the Big Blind have AcJs. Should we call? (100% of times?)
Before thinking about
odds, about survival in the tournament, about ICM, we must consider who we are playing with: is this BTN player more aggressive? More passive? How many
hands do I have played with it?
Let's assume we have 245 hands played with the BTN and it has stats of 8/3/1/3-bet 1.5/fold to 3-bet 0/C-bet flop 25/Fold to c-bet flop 45/ etc
Are we happy to call versus this guy? Probably not
Now let's picture BTN has only 25 hands played with you, and it has stats of 70/48/8 etc
are you inclined to call?
It seems that this type of player the answer is insta-call, but remember, the times you lose your tournament will be at stake. Although it seems a pretty easy call, we don't have a decent sample of hands for decision making.
Cash Games
You are in the BTN, 100 bb stack, and you have AKo, and you raise 3x because you see a recreational player in the blinds who loves to call preflop, VPIP higher than 25 for example. The player in the SB has 97 bb stack, and calls you, BB folds.
The flop comes TK2 the player in the SB checks, what's your action?
The leveling way of thinking is very sophisticated and elegant: many professional players will say that we should C-bet this flop almost 100% of times versus a calling station.
Nonetheless, we must consider that BTN has a pretty wide stealing range, varying from 28% to 50%, depending how good the player is postflop. (also SB calling range is wide)
So, when we open from the BTN and the SB calls, we don't have too much AK, AQ, AA, KK on our range. We have weaker aces, draws, medium and low pairs, etc. If we bet here, we can scary a passive fish and enter a difficult situation versus an aggressive fish.
By cheking back we are giving the SB the chance of hitting something of its huge nonsense calling range vs BTN.
Because we believe that the calling frequency is so high that this player will miss most of flops, and because there's a king in the flop, it could be scary and fold to a C-bet flop.
So we check, and the turn comes a seven (7x) , and the player in the SB donks for pot size.
Well, we have a very strong value hand, considering the calling range, there are no flushes, straights, the better case scenario for SB is if it has two pair or sets, and we don't believe it will have many of these hands.
By checking the flop, a recreational player will think we got scared of the king and gave up of the pot. So it will feel more comfortable to
bluff if it hits any part of its huge range.
If we raise the fish in the turn, SB can easily fold worse aces, any Tx, any 7x, etc and we want this player to keep bluffing its Tx, worst Kx and 7x, we want it to build the pot for us!
The river comes a 3 and the player again, bets pot. Should we raise here and get called only by better hands and folds of marginal ones? Nope, we call and the SB shows 87o!
It hits a 7x in the turn and believed it was a good spot for bluffing, since we have checked-back the flop.
I am not saying that we must check a 100% of times our TPTK versus fish out of position, but many times we have a strong value hand versus a calling station, we will be wildly ahead, and we must give it a chance to try to bluff us out of the pot: most of recreational players don't know how to use exploitave game, at least in a profitable manner: any sign of weakness they will explore you to the bones! (by betting and raising a huge nonsense range).
By weakness I mean checking and calling, even some very good players will fall into this trap, for example when we bet flop and check turn with a strong value hand, when we check-flop and check-call or check-raise turn (depending on the board texture), when we c-bet flop, check-call turn and donk river, etc.
It is very complicated, I'm afraid I didn't say anything I wanted but this text is far too long and I don't intend to be boring out of proportion and make our CardsChat's friends to go to sleep.
Regards;
Carlos 'Aballinamion' Barbosa