Hacking my way as a live pro in 2014

[LD1977]

Yes long term but he is talking about a 100 hand sample... long term we get better info and this particular situation is too problematic. It is unlikely villain is actually exploiting him here. We are OOP with a shitty TP hand in BvB situation vs. unknown. Well done if he bluffed us, there will be better spots to take him on (although OOP it is gonna be hard to defeat him).

We can also change our line here if he is aggro, concretely check calling seems fine as default - we allow him to bluff wide and we pot control at the same time.

 

[hackmeplz]

ch/c isn't really pot controlling since I super cap myself plus let him pot control when I have the best hand sooooo often (and he can overbet so it's not like I actually keep the pot small all the time). I chose to 3b flop and shove a blank turn but it felt kinda bad just given that I highly doubt he calls anything worse but since I think I have the best hand really often (idk how often he's raising AT but other than that it's 7 combos of sets and a billion strong/weak draws) just getting him to fold out his equity I think is a good enough reason to take this line? I'm just really not sure.

 

[LD1977]

You cap yourself if you never check sets there vs an aggro player. "Bets vs missed cbet" is kinda helpful.

 

[hackmeplz]

You cap yourself if you never check sets there vs an aggro player. "Bets vs missed cbet" is kinda helpful.

ok the thing is think about how wide ranges are at this point. So far all I've done is raise the small blind, which I think I do with the top ~30-35% of hands against someone good/aggro. All he's done so far is flat preflop. He's 3-betting the top of his range but we're still looking at a range of probably 50-60% of hands. Sets are 9 combos. I don't know offhand how many combos 30% or 50% or 60% of hands are, but I know it's a ****ton more than 9, and if I'm checking those 9 combos to balance for TP combos, just no matter what else I do I'm going to be losing the hand soooooo often. Plus with both my TP and set hands, I want to be betting. I want to put money in the pot when I'm ahead of his range. When he folds hands with one over, it's a good thing. When he calls with 2nd pair or a draw it's a good thing. I just think in general compared to ranges my hand is way too good to want to pot control, and the fact that pot controlling would make me need to check sets as well just makes me want to do it even less.

 

[LD1977]

Aggro player's betting range vs missed cbet > calling range > raising range so you can check raise if you really want to fold out his overcards/draws/whatever. He is betting ALL those hands here as a semi bluff so you get more value, no? If he 3bets your check raise then you start evaluating what to do and how aggro he is. If he is a reg that means he is not an aggrodonk.

If he is passive then calling range > betting vs missed cbet range > raising range and you cbet and get called by overcards, underpairs, draws etc. a lot.

Edit: Just to add, with your line you allow him to put a hard question to you and with my line it is vice versa. BTW you can also check raise here with gutshots etc. for balance so not a real issue as far as predictability goes.

 

[WVHillbilly]

ch/c isn't really pot controlling since I super cap myself plus let him pot control when I have the best hand sooooo often (and he can overbet so it's not like I actually keep the pot small all the time). I chose to 3b flop and shove a blank turn but it felt kinda bad just given that I highly doubt he calls anything worse but since I think I have the best hand really often (idk how often he's raising AT but other than that it's 7 combos of sets and a billion strong/weak draws) just getting him to fold out his equity I think is a good enough reason to take this line? I'm just really not sure.

What's your plan on the flop if he shoves over your 3bet?

 

[hackmeplz]

What's your plan on the flop if he shoves over your 3bet?

Shoving, although like I said it just seems bad I really don't know. But in game I was shoving.

 

[WVHillbilly]

You mean calling?

 

[LD1977]

hackmeplz - In case it came across like that, I mean no disrespect by disagreeing, just wanted to discuss the situation goes without saying that I am a relative newbie and obviously playing on lower level.

 

[hackmeplz]

hackmeplz - In case it came across like that, I mean no disrespect by disagreeing, just wanted to discuss the situation goes without saying that I am a relative newbie and obviously playing on lower level.

No I appreciate all input and hopefully I didn't come across as if I didn't want to discuss it. I'm just grinding now and had a quick (although still managed to get it wrong lol) answer to WV's question.

 

[WVHillbilly]

No I appreciate all input and hopefully I didn't come across as if I didn't want to discuss it. I'm just grinding now and had a quick (although still managed to get it wrong lol) answer to WV's question.

I think it's close between folding and 3betting honestly (kind of hate flatting). I do think that if we are 3betting we have to be willing to call a shove so I think your line is fine since that was your intention. If we do end up all-in on the flop we're likely flipping against his range.

 

[BenjiHustle]

I think it's close between folding and 3betting honestly (kind of hate flatting). I do think that if we are 3betting we have to be willing to call a shove so I think your line is fine since that was your intention. If we do end up all-in on the flop we're likely flipping against his range.

That's another good point. I'm not exactly sure how comfortable you are with a flip. I still say fold, but given your intention to get it in the middle if he comes aggressive, clearly a raise back is the play. I don't know if you want to be left calling a push or if you'd rather push yourself on the raise; this really depends on where you think you stand and whether or not you want to try to push draws out. So, if you're going to call an all-in anyway, why not make the move yourself?

 

[WVHillbilly]

That's another good point. I'm not exactly sure how comfortable you are with a flip. I still say fold, but given your intention to get it in the middle if he comes aggressive, clearly a raise back is the play. I don't know if you want to be left calling a push or if you'd rather push yourself on the raise; this really depends on where you think you stand and whether or not you want to try to push draws out. So, if you're going to call an all-in anyway, why not make the move yourself?

Because if we just shove over his flop raise we're not going to get called by his weaker hands (draws, overs, etc) that we get to play against if he shoves.

 

[OMGITSOVER9K]

is it standard to just start getting it in here? had a bunch of spots like these were I end up calling and calling down hoping:

a) draws bust

b) he's bluffing river w/ them

but honestly it seems kinda meh/awful, 3b/gii better in those spots? obv not with super meh shit like QJo Q86ss and stuff but with the stronger end of our range?

 

[DunningKruger]

ok the thing is think about how wide ranges are at this point. So far all I've done is raise the small blind, which I think I do with the top ~30-35% of hands against someone good/aggro. All he's done so far is flat preflop. He's 3-betting the top of his range but we're still looking at a range of probably 50-60% of hands. Sets are 9 combos. I don't know offhand how many combos 30% or 50% or 60% of hands are, but I know it's a ****ton more than 9, and if I'm checking those 9 combos to balance for TP combos, just no matter what else I do I'm going to be losing the hand soooooo often. Plus with both my TP and set hands, I want to be betting. I want to put money in the pot when I'm ahead of his range. When he folds hands with one over, it's a good thing. When he calls with 2nd pair or a draw it's a good thing. I just think in general compared to ranges my hand is way too good to want to pot control, and the fact that pot controlling would make me need to check sets as well just makes me want to do it even less.

You're correct not to start checking sets by default to a good aggressive player. The priority goes to balancing our betting range, not our checking range. Flopping monsters isn't easy to do with any regularity so even by checking them we're still going to be relatively weak the vast majority of the time where we decide to check. Besides, if we're any good we're likely to be rather aggressive ourselves and it doesn't really fit that type of game to suddenly get passive with nutted hands. It's just transparent and bad. Btw with 1326 total hand combinations, 50% is 663 combos.

Regarding the hand (bvb is fun ain't it) I doubt I'm going anywhere once he raises flop. I can see calling the raise and playing some pokerz by reevaluating future streets (in other words check/shove the turn heh) or just trying to get it in otf, depending. The thing about playing out of position against good, aggressive players from 400 to 1KNL is well just to do it as little as possible lol. It really sucks. At least we're only one buy in deep here.

 

[hackmeplz]

Btw with 1326 total hand combinations, 50% is 663 combos.

It's less than 1326 once there's a flop.

 

[baudib1]

44 hand feels like a fold. QQ, 88, Q8, even Q4 may be discounted a ton but that still leaves enough combos to make me unhappy about stacking off. It's true we never really have a hand here and we're underrepped but even spewtards should respect river check-raises. I don't think we're exploited by folding this hand to 3-bet and if he's spewing often enough to bluff in 800 bb pots I feel like we'll actually have better spots than this.

JTo seems like standard bet/call on flop.

 

[DunningKruger]

It's less than 1326 once there's a flop.

When talking about preflop hand ranges all 1326 combinations need to be accounted for, and then blockers / known cards can be used to modify the likelihood of certain hands afterward - reason being that a lot of hands with tens, fives, eights like 52o or 83o weren't in that 50% or so of preflop hands to begin with. So yeah you can look at it that way but then you'd account for not just the flop but your own hand as well, and you can't simply half the remaining 1081 combos possible from unknown cards. It'll end up being closer to the original figure.

Mind you we're digressing from the actual hand and these are things you might already know. With a 9% overall 3bet he's repopping your JTo preflop at least 20% of the time small vs big so there aren't many hands that fail to do so and have you immediately beat there although a lot of them do have pretty good equity.

 

[deestee]

I cannot imagine the work and the hours you are having to put in, I have a lot of respect for anyone that can play this game for a living, I don't have the patience for it

 

[baudib1]

That said in game I probably have to call off with 444QQ

 

[hackmeplz]

When talking about preflop hand ranges all 1326 combinations need to be accounted for, and then blockers / known cards can be used to modify the likelihood of certain hands afterward - reason being that a lot of hands with tens, fives, eights like 52o or 83o weren't in that 50% or so of preflop hands to begin with. So yeah you can look at it that way but then you'd account for not just the flop but your own hand as well, and you can't simply half the remaining 1081 combos possible from unknown cards. It'll end up being closer to the original figure.

Mind you we're digressing from the actual hand and these are things you might already know. With a 9% overall 3bet he's repopping your JTo preflop at least 20% of the time small vs big so there aren't many hands that fail to do so and have you immediately beat there although a lot of them do have pretty good equity.

Yeah I mean that's sort of what I was saying initially, that I think he has hands around the 40-85th percentile but idk exactly how many combos it is and I don't think it's super important, just that we know it's a lot more than 9 lol.

 

[hackmeplz]

Live I been crushing, online been kinda meh, here's online since I deposited. I had an mtt score for like +500ish and then rb so I'm like +500 total now online:

 

[LD1977]

Ouch, almost 5k below EV for a while.

Also, I only look at EV line so from that perspective you are up around 1600$ + rakeback (if your BR can take the variance long enough for EV to converge).

 

[CrushingSouls]

Hey hack great thread. Whats you bb/100 like over your last 100k hands and how does this compare to your bb in the past?

 

[hackmeplz]

Hey hack great thread. Whats you bb/100 like over your last 100k hands and how does this compare to your bb in the past?

Playing mostly live so don't know my bb/100 and if I did it would be super influenced by short-term variance. I've sort of thought about how I'm gonna treat results and I think I decided I'm not going to really be posting long-term results. I just think in general there's no upside to posting in a public forum how I'm doing financially. I'll continue to post short-term beat and brag posts I think but I don't think I'm going to be posting winrate stuff in general.

I will say that I had an awesome May though. Just wrapped up a 300-hand +3k online session tonight and am probably done for the month. I have a frisbee tryout tomorrow and am checking out a new house that a friend of a friend just bought and I might be renting for the next year.

Essentially for the school year I got a really shitty place in a really shitty area (not like crazy bad area I've never actually felt unsafe but for example pizza places don't even deliver here because it's considered "too dangerous"). Now you couldn't beat the price at $330/month, but for example one morning I awoke to a squirrel on the railing ~5 feet away from my face. Another one is I had a friend over and we were just talking I went to the bathroom and he's like yo you should probably throw out that pizza box I had just finished it up that day and was gonna throw it away I pick it up and a mouse scurries out it was chewing on the paper+grease left over. Also especially recently with the start of the spring I was getting some stink bugs, moths, one wasp was flying around the room for a bit when I woke up one morning, and just in general the house isn't structurally sound enough to keep anything that wants to come in out. Oh and there was one bathroom for 5 people.

I was initially looking at getting a 1-bedroom apartment near the casino I was playing and there's a really nice complex walking distance from the casino but it was gonna be somewhere in the 1600-2000/month range if I picked worse areas I could get it down to 1400ish but that's still pretty steep imo. So anyway friend who I'm actually living with now said his friend is in the process of buying a house. Him and his girlfriend are getting married in a little over a year and they're not going to be living together until they get married, so it's a 3-bedroom place (3.5 bathrooms too so own bathroom that'll be ****ing awesome) and we'll each be paying 500/month or so and it's in a pretty nice area (median income according to google for the city it's in is 94k) as opposed to living in basically the bad part of Baltimore City. So yeah I'm really excited about that gonna be checking that out tomorrow.

Also final grades for the semester are in I passed all my classes so now I 100% have graduated with a computer science major and a math minor and will be getting a diploma. I've talked to a few people and sent my resume a few places I'm looking for what's out there in terms of jobs in this area but for now if I don't find anything awesome I think I'm going to stick with poker. I'm just running like god lately and the more I think about it the more getting money in the bank in the short term will help me out more than getting a job I don't particularly enjoy with a starting salary. Like I said I'm still looking and I know I eventually do want to find something, I'm just in the fortunate position of being able to be extremely selective in this process since I have a solid amount saved and a pretty solid income source in poker.

I'm also really happy that I was able to finish my degree. I know certain people were telling me dropping out was a mistake and looking back it honestly might have been at the time, but even ignoring the money aspect (not like I'm super rich or anything but having a decent cushion compared to being 5 figures in debt is pretty awesome) I've grown as a person so much over the last 5.5 years, met some really awesome people and had some life experiences that not many people my age have had. And even though I knew the whole time that I'd be able to finish up school even after taking time off, I had a bunch of people tell me I wouldn't be able to. And it's not that I'm happy I "proved them wrong" or anything, it's just I'm really happy that I was justified in believing in myself and doing what most people aren't able to do.

Anyway sorry for rambling, actually scratch that **** you it's my thread and I'll ramble if I want .

Sleep time.