How far is poker gone in the last five years? (possibly a rant)
Posted by Eriol
Posted by
Eriol
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Low Stakes
How far is poker gone in the last five years? (possibly a rant)
Hi, just a brief introduction: I used to play poker for a living, played up to NL100 on Fulltilt.com and on Italian sites after the online poker regulation in Italy. I wasn't a big winner, but did quite well at least up to NL50.
Eventually I stopped playing about five years ago, due to burnout. I'm happy with my decision, life's going well and I don't regret it.
Recently the love for the game kicked in again and I deposited some money and starter playing NL5 zoom. I have no plans to play for a living anymore, still I want to be a winner and to study the game as much as I can while enjoying it.
Now the bitter part: I played under 20k hands, so nothing really relevant, but I feel like I'm not supposed to beat this level at the moment, which is kinda a surprise to me.
I understand that poker has gone a lot far (solvers weren't a thing 5 years ago), but what bothers me the most is the fact that some concepts that were widely considered true five years ago seems wrong now, at least in my small Experience so far.
I don't really know if that's due to the fact I'm playing quite lower than what I was used to or the fact that people is a lot better.
I'll try to point out some general impressions, so you can give me your opinion.
I feel like the necessary hand strenght to win at showdown is much higher. Overpairs are not winning big hands like it was before, top sets are constantly losing to flushes, flushes to nut flushes etc. While when I've the nuts rarely I'm able to stack someone. This could be just variance, could be me playing bad or could be that NL5 just play a lot passive than what I'm used to (preflop dynamics doesn't seems so passive tho).
ranges with I'm willing to stack off pre flop seems too wide given what capable villains are showing off. Rarely I see someone broke pre with AK or JJ-QQ and almost never with weaker hands. Even in BvsB situation.
Again could be just a micros' thing.5 years ago calling a 4bet pre was considered an huge mistake. Today I feel like I should have a range to call 4 bets with, the value part of this range could be JJ-QQ, AK while in position given what said in the point before. Not really sure what I should add to balance it tho
bet sizing is much different today. When I was playing a 2/3 pot c-bet was the to go size. Now I see much smaller sizings. I can see the merits of this, but I should study the math behind this (if you could suggest a video about this topic would be nice)
I don't want to put out too much things, so I'll stop there. Thanks to everyone that will help me by answering
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Hey Eriol,
cool post and interesting to see your fresh personal experiences on the progress poker has taken in the last 5 years just after 20k hands. Serge Pouliot is about to release a microstrakes NL10 Full Ring video during which spoiler alert he noticed how proper players are playing at these stakes already. He compared it to some decent stake cash games he's playing himself which is surely quite frightening. You should check it out when it is releases here during the next weeks. So compared to live online seems to have become considerably tougher. Thus it's not super unreasonable you might feel some doubt if you're beating the game as a fresh come backer in the beginning. Maybe you're really not at this very moment or it has at least become close.
But at the same time pros moving down from their regular stakes to the low stakes and micro stakes are often celebrating the amounts of EV dropped by players in comparison to their usual higher stakes games. So it's not that edges have disappeared you just need to be way better to capture them which means catching up to new concepts / improve on bet sizings / ranges / frequencies etc.
About the smaller c-bet sizing: When you stopped playing 5 years ago it might have been the time where high frequency c-betting with a 2/3 sizing (Barry Greenstein style :P) was still effective. Why was it effective? Because people back then did not defend well enough / wide enough against c-bets. But people have catched up on that and noticed that it's not necessary to just accept that the preflop agressor c-bets and there is nothing you can do - because you can by defending with weaker hands. This makes it harder to continue in the beginning but when being used to it it was super valuable against all high frequency 2/3 c-bettors. As a result of this once again if you wanted to bet 2/3 pot as a c-bet you had to reduce the c-bet frequency to not be exploited by the people defending well.
And then probably mostly at least somewhat linked to solvers players found that you actually can c-bet a high frequency but just should do it with a smaller sizing so that it's not a big problem if villain will defend with bottom pair because you just risk so few. Now there is certainly still the 2/3 cbet in action but not as a default but rather in spots where you (mostly) will have a lower betting frequency or at least a very dominant range advantage versus your opponent. I'm sure there's way more professional and better ways to explain that shift - take this just as my shot.
Iain Salter has produced a live play video where he focuses on betsizes throughout. I'm quite positive that there will be some c-betting spots so maybe that can help you. Als you can check out the:
Learning Paths -> NLHE
-> Continuation Bets
-> Bet Sizing
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