Study Group: Polished Poker Vol. II Workbook

[John A]

Because I usually end up getting overly aggressive and get stacked.
I find I will fire on the flop and then can't get away from the hand usually just bluff shoving the turn. I always seem to get called. It only takes a few to go wrong to put me off using the play. (which of course I know is wrong)

Yeah, that's tough. I think we've all been there at certain moments before. Like we've talked about before, getting a handle on this part of your psyche is just as important, or in my opinion, more important, than knowing a perfect GTO solution to a turn situation. The reason should be obvious as well. You already know what you should be doing, but you're letting your emotions block you from executing.

If you find it's happening a decent amount of the time, then work just on this as if you were trying to learn odds for the first time. It's really important, and I know you've been doing some tilt work as well. Do you have something like Tilt breaker too? It might not be a bad investment if you don't. We have it off our site as well now:
http://www.acepokersolutions.com/Tilt-Breaker/

That's good though that you recognize the issue. That's the super important first step as they say.

 

[John A]

So Chapter 4 -

There's a lot of important subtle things here. If you're not using the abbreviations in the book and workbook for player typing, definitely come up with your own system. Your goal should be to nail down what kind of player you're against before the stats start coming in to prove you're correct.

What are the three types of players you'll see the most at micro/small stakes?

 

[Figaroo2]

That is an interesting question actually. It varies between games quite a bit. There seems to me to be a very big jump in standard from 10nl to 25nl.
Outside of pokerstars 10nl is full of all sorts with plenty of fish. 10NL on 888 (pacific) is a total fish tank.
Once you step up to 25nl fish are much harder to locate.
At 25nl full ring on pokerstars I would say there will be 5-6 decent regs, 2 rocks, 1 semi lag and one fish (there is usually a fish at my tables because I've table selected to find one!)
I've been grinding this level for months now and have most of the pool colour coded. Why don't you shout me up on skype and have a look. This new screenshare function on skype negates the need to use team viewer if you are just looking at the screen.
Obviously there are variations amongst the regs there are plenty who only 3 bet for value and there are plenty of 'one and done' types. There are plenty that simply never fold to a 3bet. Generally there seems to be fewer out and out 3betting monkeys than there used to be. Most of the 25nl regs on stars have a handle on 4bet bluffing.
Personally I now need to be making better individual notes on my regs and want to start reviewing and noting each session. It's easy to get lazy and just play. This comes back to having money targets being poor goals. You spend too much time chasing profit by playing and not spending enough time reviewing my play which is clearly where improvement is going to come from.

 

[mottotom27]

haven't really paid much attention to the frequencies of each player type at the 10nl zoom tables on stars. but at a guess i'd say on every table there's an average of about 3 regs, 1-2 nits, and 1-2 fish. next time i play a session i might look at the frequencies a little closer to see how reasonable these estimates are.

 

[Figaroo2]

I'm having a break from playing getting some early nights and doing a review of the last few months. I haven't been reviewing my play properly and I am adding detailed notes on my regs into the note section of the HM2 hud in any hand which wtsd or a large amount of big blinds changed hands.
By the way does anyone use notecaddy?

 

[rhombus]

So Chapter 4 -

There's a lot of important subtle things here. If you're not using the abbreviations in the book and workbook for player typing, definitely come up with your own system. Your goal should be to nail down what kind of player you're against before the stats start coming in to prove you're correct.

What are the three types of players you'll see the most at micro/small stakes?

ATC, Flush Chasers and Any Ace maybe
Find it difficut to label them if multitabling unless you see them do it several times

With Regard to HUD stats which stats should match the list

i.e. if you had two lists, the list in the Book and a list of common HUD stats maybe an interesting exercise to match the list of abbreviations to HUD stats

 

[John A]

ATC, Flush Chasers and Any Ace maybe
Find it difficut to label them if multitabling unless you see them do it several times

With Regard to HUD stats which stats should match the list

i.e. if you had two lists, the list in the Book and a list of common HUD stats maybe an interesting exercise to match the list of abbreviations to HUD stats

Yes...

ATC
SOOT / Flush Chaser
LA (look up artists)

So when you're in pots when you have a hand against these 3, your best sizes should be very large, especially on the flop. So if you're going to work on any one thing this next week or so, I'd recommend identifying these players, and adjusting your bet sizing with made hands, and conversely, remove them down with missed hands.

 

[Figaroo2]

What does free play aggression represent?

What is this leak, what is it measuring? The one at the bottom....
What am I doing wrong if i have very few leaks but am not winning??
This is all my full ring hands for this year about 80K worth at 25nl and 10nl

 

[mottotom27]

figaroo are you not winning over all those 80k hands? cos when we had our sweat i got the impression that you were just not winning over the past 20k hands or so, and i think that's too small a sample to be concerned about. my standard deviation is about 65bb/100 so over 20k hands a 95% confidence interval shows my winrate could be anywhere between +/- 9bb/100 from what it currently is. So if i'm losing at -3bb/100 (which i have been for the past 20k hands, then my actual winrate could conceivably be as high as 6bb/100. which just goes to show that you shouldn't be results oriented over small samples

as for your actual stats, i mean leakbuster gives a good guide for when you're out of line but it doesn't teach you how to play or what to do with your ranges, so having stats in the optimal ranges doesn't guarantee success it only increases the likelihood. personally i think you can be stealing more from late position, it works really well for me in zoom cos people just don't defend enough. i'm opening like 50% OTB for a minraise and it seems to get through quite a lot. SB i think you can open around 45% overall but it varies widely depending on the player in the bb, but if they're folding 60%+ to a SB steal then you can open pretty much anything imo

 

[or3o1990]

I realize I'm a bit late to this party but I will do my best to get up to speed.

Here are my short term goals for online cash games.

1. Play 5k cash game hands per week along with five hours of hand history review and studying of the game.

2. Move up in stakes as high as my bankroll will allow and conceive an adaptive, winning strategy at those stakes over a respectable sample.


My long term goals

1. Be as prepared as possible for the next poker boom in the U.S. (When stars fully returns).

2. Become a winning high stakes online cash game player(5+BB/100).

 

[John A]

What is this leak, what is it measuring? The one at the bottom....
What am I doing wrong if i have very few leaks but am not winning??
This is all my full ring hands for this year about 80K worth at 25nl and 10nl

Free play aggresion is how aggressive you are when it's not a raised pot. Meaning in the blinds, or it's a limped pot.

Basically you're at the bottom of the stat range for all important aggression stats. This means you can win playing this style, but you have to play extremely well, and not tilt off stacks. It's much easier to just improve into the middle and top of the ranges for the aggression stats.

 

[John A]

I realize I'm a bit late to this party but I will do my best to get up to speed.

Here are my short term goals for online cash games.

1. Play 5k cash game hands per week along with five hours of hand history review and studying of the game.

2. Move up in stakes as high as my bankroll will allow and conceive an adaptive, winning strategy at those stakes over a respectable sample.


My long term goals

1. Be as prepared as possible for the next poker boom in the U.S. (When stars fully returns).

2. Become a winning high stakes online cash game player(5+BB/100).

Great. Thanks for putting those out there. I'm going to check up on you now that you've stated these.

We'll all keep our fingers crossed for #1.

 

[or3o1990]

I'm going to check up on you now that you've stated these.

You're a daisy if you do!

 

[rhombus]

What is this leak, what is it measuring? The one at the bottom....
What am I doing wrong if i have very few leaks but am not winning??
This is all my full ring hands for this year about 80K worth at 25nl and 10nl

alot more A's than me only about 30K for 6MAX

 

[Figaroo2]

Just a few comments
Really good vpip and pfr and their ratio (I've always noticed that was good in your stats)
3bet% is a little high but I'd be really happy with that and squeezing is great.. we are very different players, you are strong in the areas I'm looking to improve in..
Immediately can see you calling too many 3 bets and not 4 betting enough...., it doesn't look like you have any 4 bets outside of QQ KK AA AK... easily solved you just need to experiment with a 4 bet bluff range. Once you start 4 betting more your regs won't be looking to 3bet you so much either.

Your went to show down looks just a little high and that is likely impacting your won $ at SD. A few more folds look needed earlier in the hands.
Although your 3 betting is nice and high your post flop aggression is really quite low at under 2. Probably check calling too much with 2nd/3rd pair and getting a tad too sticky with those sort of hands on the river.
The lack of post flop agg is also evidenced by your lack of turn overbet. You look like you 3bet a lot from the bb when you could call instead and then try calling the flop and leading out on the turn against the stealers. Talked about this in one of the threads, that play does work as long as you dont over do it.
Preflop looks a little ropey with C's for EP MP and SB. looks like you just need to tighten it up from those positions to me.
John said he was going to give us some preflop material which looks like it will help you.

 

[mottotom27]

i agree with everything figaroo is saying. no idea how you can be comfortable calling so many 3bets lol. you're also opening pretty wide from UTG i noticed. and your fold to flop cbet is quite lower than mine (mine is around 50), so perhaps you're doing a bit too much floating or something. and yea, your 3bet % is high. mine's the opposite, a bit too low lol.

 

[rhombus]

Just a few comments
Really good vpip and pfr and their ratio (I've always noticed that was good in your stats)
3bet% is a little high but I'd be really happy with that and squeezing is great.. we are very different players, you are strong in the areas I'm looking to improve in..
Immediately can see you calling too many 3 bets and not 4 betting enough...., it doesn't look like you have any 4 bets outside of QQ KK AA AK... easily solved you just need to experiment with a 4 bet bluff range. Once you start 4 betting more your regs won't be looking to 3bet you so much either.

Your went to show down looks just a little high and that is likely impacting your won $ at SD. A few more folds look needed earlier in the hands.
Although your 3 betting is nice and high your post flop aggression is really quite low at under 2. Probably check calling too much with 2nd/3rd pair and getting a tad too sticky with those sort of hands on the river.
The lack of post flop agg is also evidenced by your lack of turn overbet. You look like you 3bet a lot from the bb when you could call instead and then try calling the flop and leading out on the turn against the stealers. Talked about this in one of the threads, that play does work as long as you dont over do it.
Preflop looks a little ropey with C's for EP MP and SB. looks like you just need to tighten it up from those positions to me.
John said he was going to give us some preflop material which looks like it will help you.

i agree with everything figaroo is saying. no idea how you can be comfortable calling so many 3bets lol. you're also opening pretty wide from UTG i noticed. and your fold to flop cbet is quite lower than mine (mine is around 50), so perhaps you're doing a bit too much floating or something. and yea, your 3bet % is high. mine's the opposite, a bit too low lol.

thanks for the comments.

Mine will probably be more agressive as your stats were based on FR and mine 6Max.

My 3Bet used to be quite low was the typical 3% AA, KK, QQ, AK etc then kind of overdid it especially from SB and BB against late position openers.

Calling 3Bets is definitley a massive leak of mine I know I should fold and be more disciplined. Just wondering when I do call 3Bet what are the ideal hands.

i.e. small pockets pairs and middel suited connectors when getting correct odds and maybe small suited Aces when deep stacked.

Definitely should drop Hands like A9, AT KJ etc

 

[mottotom27]

yea i'm kinda the opposite, i used to fold like 90% of the time to a 3bet (or something ridiculous like that) but over time i've slowly opened up once i gained understanding about how people's ranges are constructed as it allowed me to increase my confidence to the point where i feel i'm defending now with a reasonable range.

i think flopzilla (or even pokerstove) are really useful for deciding what % of your range you want to defend based on how often you are opening. you of course want to be positionally aware with your defense frequencies, but i think optimal play would suggest you defend about 40% of the hands you open from a certain position. so if your RFI is 20 from UTG you'd wanna defend about 8%, but if it's 40 on the button then you probably should defend 16%. and then you must adjust these frequencies based on player reads, how often they 3bet, whether you can outplay postflop etc.

but then which hands you select to defend is pretty tricky to figure out and took me a long time to understand (and even now i have a lot to learn). there are so many variables to take into account, and figuring this all out in game takes time to achieve successfully. i would suggest looking up some range charts of what to 3bet and what to defend to a 3bet as a starting point, but these are hard to find and not all of them are good, you have to look around for them

 

[Figaroo2]

thanks for the comments.
Calling 3Bets is definitley a massive leak of mine I know I should fold and be more disciplined. Just wondering when I do call 3Bet what are the ideal hands.
i.e. small pockets pairs and middel suited connectors when getting correct odds and maybe small suited Aces when deep stacked.
Definitely should drop Hands like A9, AT KJ etc

I actually think page 212 of Modern Small Stakes is good on the topic of reacting to 3 bets.
Personally I 4 bet most the 3 bet monkeys, (It depends how often they 5bet shove and any history generally I will 4 bet bluff with appropriate hands anyone who is 3 betting more than 8% from any position, especially early on)
It takes a while and a bit of practice learning to 4 bet bluff, just the same as learning to 3 bet bluff
I call preferably in position where my hand matches up to the 3bettors range
If he is 3 betting 7% I call 77 to JJ along with ATs AJs AQ KQs
If someone is 3betting less than 4% (99+) I'm probably only flatting 99 TT JJ possibly QQ depending on position.
Deeper is different, we can call wider because the implied odds are better. but at 100bb I'm just not flatting a 3bet with small pairs or suited connectors unless the player is really weak or a manaic and i have position. I suppose to vary ones play against a reg i might flat a small pair or suited connector but only very rarely. (when its between 55mins and 00 on my clock, lol)

 

[mottotom27]

^haha love this classic using the clock method for deciding on whether to make a play

as for calling 3bets, there are some spots where in order to not get exploited by some regs, i am pretty much forced to defend hands like suited connectors in spots like button vs blind. thing is there are two approaches to stealing the blinds imo, there's the steal wide and defend wide approach and the steal tight and defend tight approach. the idea is that you must defend x% of your range overall in order for people to not be able to 3bet you with ATC, and i'd say the value of x is around 40%

figaroo from what i recall steals like 30% on the button, and so in order to avoid being exploited would have to defend 40% of 30 which is a 12% range to a 3bet. i steal on average more like 45-50% to exploit the zoom population (who overfold A LOT to a button minraise) and in order to not get exploited would have to defend closer to 20% of hands to a 3bet. so a 20% range would include a lot more SC type hands than a 12% one

however i don't think trying to be unexploitable to 3bets is necessarily the best approach. vs nits who are massively overfolding anyway, we don't have to worry about being exploited. and hence you can open 100% OTB and fold 80% to a resteal 3bet vs two tight regs who fold 80%+ to steals from their respective positions and won't adjust, and 30% steal with 0% fold to 3bet vs someone who 3bets ATC. so this 60% fold to 3bet is only really applicable vs players who are balanced in how they defend vs 3bets and you can widen/tighten the way you defend based on reads on villain (being careful not to overvalue a small sample size)

so basically the way i approach this aspect of poker (and many other aspects) is to first pick a balanced default strategy, and then exploitatively adjust your strategy based on the players your up against. i feel like people tend to go for one or the other, either overadjusting to opponents without realising what a solid strategy is to start with, or playing a consistent solid balanced strategy but not altering their strategy vs different opponents (i do the latter sometimes).

i feel that exploiting people is more important than being balanced at the micros, but i also think having a solid balanced strategy can be a useful foundation to base your exploitative deviations

 

[Figaroo2]

Good stuff Tom
I notice you don't mention 4 bet bluffing at all but it is a really important tool to have in your arsenal. I would suggest you simply won't be able to move past 25nl without a 4 bet bluffing game. 4 betting is imo the single best way to stop players trying to exploit you by 3 betting you. Its the schoolboy bully thing, as soon as you bop him on the nose with a 4 bet he will just go looking for someone else to bully who won't fight back. Then when he does 3 bet you again at more normal rates you can give him a bit more credit for a hand.

 

[mottotom27]

Good stuff Tom
I notice you don't mention 4 bet bluffing at all but it is a really important tool to have in your arsenal. I would suggest you simply won't be able to move past 25nl without a 4 bet bluffing game. 4 betting is imo the single best way to stop players trying to exploit you by 3 betting you. Its the schoolboy bully thing, as soon as you bop him on the nose with a 4 bet he will just go looking for someone else to bully who won't fight back. Then when he does 3 bet you again at more normal rates you can give him a bit more credit for a hand.

oh yea sorry i forgot to mention this. well when i said "defend" what i meant really is "defend by either calling or 4betting". i do 4bet bluff on a regular basis vs players i see to be 3betting exploitably wide (and/or i have a big enough sample to determine that they fold a lot to 4bets). i also have "default" 4bet range vs every position which i can widen or tighten according to villain. one thing is that i don't 4bet just randomly. i do it when i have blockers and/or equity. when OOP i lean more towards equity that has some playability in 4bet pots. when IP i prefer blockers to generate more fold equity vs villain since he's more inclined to 5bet or fold OOP typically. (basically OOP i think villain is more inclined to call a 4bet and i don't wanna be stuck with AJ or AT in that situation where we're gonna be dominated a lot, i'd rather have 78s or something). do you approach 4betting in a similar way Bruce?

 

[John A]

alot more A's than me only about 30K for 6MAX

I think I'd focus on cutting down the 3-bet calling, and work on ramping up the aggression first. Also cut down VPIP because you're playing too many hands to be playing them that passively. What do you think?

 

[rhombus]

I think I'd focus on cutting down the 3-bet calling, and work on ramping up the aggression first. Also cut down VPIP because you're playing too many hands to be playing them that passively. What do you think?

def agree with 3bet calling. as for the VPIP, cut out more hands from UTG and low suited connectors from late position

 

[John A]

Whats your default opening UTG range right now?