Battling with large player pools on lower stakes
Posted by Daz
Posted by
Daz
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Gen. Poker
Battling with large player pools on lower stakes
i've had to drop down in stakes and i find the task no less challenging. Although i'm less likely to get played back at and players overplay their hands, there are certain key occasions where you require a read and it becomes costly to find out each time what the specific opponent tendencies are.
i have outlined the different areas below, how have fellow RIO members overcome some of these difficulties
1) Ascertaining some preflop value ranges per position, the HUD values don't seem to converge adequately. i really feel i'm overplaying AK preflop versus some of these players.
2) their propensity to fold their one pair hands by the river. i kick myself whenever i've triple barrelled only to be called by Ace rag. "he wont call with the onecard straight out there" "now that the flush draw gets there i'm sure he feels his lone pair has shiveled up".
the point is if i'm making a triple barrel, or stacking off preflop that's one buy in - its the cost of finding out something about my opponent. if i did that for the 400+ player pool in $25, or for the 1000+ players that play within the week, i wouldn't have a bankroll left.
of course i'm watching the tables when out of the hand and making notes, but the superior reads are the ones when your opponent plays against YOU> your image may be affecting their play and so your reads are more accurate when the hand/note was versus yourself
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You may be better off thinking of your opponent as a certain player (arche-)type, or even as the whole player pool combined. Players seem to react somewhat similarly as (fish) trends come and go.
Oh, and learn how and when to bluff at the micros. It can be done, but it doesn't quite work as at higher limits. Most things happen in extremes, so the players who fold they fold like crazy, and the players who call make the most insane calls.
With no reads, just fall back to simple & solid.
Imo there are three things you can do in large player pools (beyond slowly acquire reads):
1) Play according to general pool trends. If you see most people doing certain things in certain spots, assume an unknown will unless you have compelling evidence to the contrary.
2) Work somewhat based upon GTO/your range. If you have no clue what villain is likely to be doing in a spot, make a guess about your range and base your play on that. It's not ideal, especially in games where we want to be maximally exploitative, but if we have nothing else, aiming for GTO can't be bad.
3) Try and extrapolate the limited information you have. Has a guy flatted three preflop raises in his first orbit? Probably passive and therefore that river bet is for value. It's not ideal, but gaining the most from the information we have is really valuable when we are regularly gonna have <100 hands on villains.
To me though, it mainly sounds like you just haven't had that much time in these games yet. The idea that you are barrelling in spots where people aren't folding etc. could easily be because you simply aren't aware what the player pool tendencies look like as of yet (you still expect people to play somewhat similarly to the randoms from the games you played previously). Give it a few sessions and you'll probably find yourself making better decisions in the spots you want reads for.
1) the 'general' pool trends are generally very varied. there are wide discrepancies even between very like players.
from 2) from what GTO i have constructed based on the sizing i use, i have a big problem with AK. As a value hand it doesn't fair well versus their shove, they routinely flatting QQ/AK to a 4bet. With 40% equity versus a premium value range, and with a 4bet sizing of around 21bb. i'm risking an entire buy in to pick up a few big blinds.
3) i'm happy extrapolating, i guess i'm struggling to make a reasonable read and assumptions when the player is a complete unknown. [i'm looking over specific hands in my database, to dissect where i may be going wrong]
After a handful of orbits you should have enough stats to know who the fishier players are at any given table. You know you can't bluff those 35-5s and people are 3betting much less frequently at the micro stakes so you have to be careful not to overplay hands like AK and JJ. So basically if you adjust for these 2 things and just play a tight solid game with few bluffs until you have specific reads it might help improve your winrate.
I saw a guy just today 3bet/call all-in on the flop with 2nd pair top kicker, and I suspect he was putting his opponent on a flush draw. He didn't understand equity obviously and had no idea he was making a -EV play longterm, he just thought he had the best hand and his opponent was bluffing. He was right. His opponent showed up with the bottom of his range, a flush draw with overcards to 2nd pair and sucked out.
some players are calling flop and turn only to fold the river. others are stubbornly calling down no matter what card comes out. two different players will both seemingly have the tendency to be call happy, but only one type will be folding to the big river barrel, the other wont.
ye, i'm thinking i need to give up in more spots EXCEPT then it wont tell me whether the player would of actually folded.
TBH I don't see how multi barrel bluffs w/out reads can be good at any stakes. To get the read you take the same line for value and that tells you who's folding and who isn't. Finding good spots to barrel is as much about knowing your opponents frequencies and ranges at micros as it is at any other stake.
Overall, i think i'm over-thinking too many spots. making the sessions tougher on me mentally then they should be. this is low stakes and i'm performing worse than when i play higher
start by just playing solid and make your goal to move back up in stakes again...yes you will give up some EV by not knowing every single player but that's impossible...yes you will miss a spot to c/r turn when a guy's range is totally imbalanced..
what I would do is just play your cards / situations etc...basically everything Tom said..just play solid and move back up.
if you have free "time" in between hands you can start by focusing on the the guy to your direct right on your tables...that is prob the best person to learn about. this way you're not focused on everyone everywhere. your brain will blow up doing that :) hah.
you also might want to expand your hud to add more stats so you don't need super-solid reads based on history to get by all the time.
HUD stats aren't reliable without large hand histories. I do use a HUD but work with stats that converge the fastest. i make player notes as my primary means of 'player reads'
... i'm back on 100NL :)
not sure how many tables you play, but if it's more than 5- 6, your hud is going to converge a lot faster than your note taking. there are tons of hands going on that you are missing while you focus on hands you're in. and there's no way you are going to remember little nuances of players at 100nl...there are just too many players. plus if you are playing a bunch of tables as you're taking a note or looking at a note you're missing action...i'm not discouraging you from doing that but it seemed like you were overwhelmed with too many spots where you don't have the reads you are used to...just my opinion on how to ease that a touch.
you can just take into account the sample size...put the number of hands right on your hud...or in HEM2 there is a dim feature.
i dunno...sounds like you should worry less about making specific reads and eeking out the absolute most EV...just simplify and get back to your higher games and then go back to that.
4 tables of ZOOM, with the hand replayer alongside
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