First of all welcome to the team. I really enjoyed the video as well, especially in regards to the theme of balance vs exploitative play that has been floating around this site for a while.
You seem to have made up your mind for the way you want to play (loose and sticky) and build your gameplan around that. You also mention that you are winning more at non-showdown using this style which intrigues me greatly since from my own experience playing loose and passive usually led to a downward slope red line and I play lower stakes and in less aggressive games than you.
What I noticed in your play was that you are playing very static, if you don't mind me saying. You have quite a lot of hands on many of the players but you are using a very minimalistic hud and not once did you use any advanced features like 3bet vs position, cbet percentage, 4bet percentage or even opening percentages. For me this very much conflicts with your style of play. I would think somebody who is involved in a lot of pots postflop would benefit greatly from knowing if someone cbets and barrels a ton or not. Same goes for 3bet percentages. I play in games where the 3bet percentage of regulars drastically differs from person to person and vs different positions and I would assume the same is true in your games. I never quite understood the notion of "forming" your defend range vs 3bets to 50% when it easily could be way too wide.
I come from the school of poker where you make your decision based on the players you are playing against. There is a difference between being exploitable and being exploited. If everybody only 3bets the top 3% against your UTG raise there is no point in defending 50%. If we always defend the same range, does this mean we assume every single one of our opponents is making a mistake with their 3bet range?
I hope I didn't read too much into just one video but those are some general thoughts that have been going through my mind :) I would love to get some input from your or anyone that utilizes this way of thinking.
I wouldnt say i play particularly 'loose', my raise first in ranges are actually a little tighter than the average regular. But I definitely try to be on the not folding side when I VPIP and face aggression both pre and postflop.
In NLHE I do win more at nonSD than at SD, and it has been true since I started playing online. Over a close to 5M NLHE cash game hands sample it's about a 3-1 ratio nonSD-SD. But I actually don't know where it comes from, Im no expert on this and Ive heard different explanations of why it could be. One of these being that I'm just leaking by calling down too wide in certain spots (winning more at nonSD than at SD is not necessarily a good thing). But since I don't know much about it, I ignore it. Plus who cares, the single most important line is the green one!
I dont mind you saying anything, you can go ahead and criticize as hard as you want! You are right I use a very minimalistic HUD, this is because I usually play quite a bit of tables, they overlap each other, and bigger HUDs would just take way too much of my screen area. You are mistaken though when you think I don't use advanced features. I recorded a short 2-tabling session specifically to make a video here, and I made a demo before that where I clicked a lot on the advanced feature pop ups such that it was very annoying for the viewer to look at so I decided to keep it to the minimum when recording future video footage. While playing 'real sessions' though I use the big popups a lot, the numbers I find most useful are the RFI ranges, 3-bet and fold to 3-bet by positions, plus some c-bet numbers for single raised and 3-bet pots, both for the c-bettor and the defender.
Concerning your last point I have to disagree with you. I believe having a strong core preflop strategy is very important. But it doesnt mean at all that you never deviate from it, there are obviously many reasons to make exploitative adjustments which can sometimes deviate far from the core strategy. When you say "There is a difference between being exploitable and being exploited", well, yes and no. Anytime you are folding over 60% to 3-bets from a given position you are pretty exploitable to 3-bets, your opponent could start 3-betting you wider than usual and print money but even if he doesn't change his pf strategy you would probably be better off either opening slightly tighter or defending wider anyways. The whole point is a better core strategy is less exploitable but also wins more money on average against the field. You are saying 'If we always defend the same range, does this mean we assume every single one of our opponents is making a mistake with their 3bet range?', here the answer is absolutely not! Ideally there should be an equilibrium where both the weakest hand in the 3-bettor range and the weakest hand in the 3-bet caller range are about 0 EV. The 3-bettor should 3-bet enough non nut hands that the original opener cant exploit him by folding everything but the nuts, and the opener should defend enough hands (by either calling or 4-betting) such that an opponent cannot 3-bet him with ATC and show a profit.
Thanks a lot for the response, that was what I hoped to hear.
Regarding the HUD and your gameplay: I would really appreciate it if you could get as close to your normal environment when playing as possible or announce beforehand what you want to accomplish with the video. You have to remember that you are here to teach and explaining how you made a certain decision + solidifying it by using proper stats and reads is very important to the watcher. Much more important than having a clean video in my opinion, especially in replay videos :). I only harp on this because you are one of the few guys that seem to regularly play NL500 zoom and actually have decent samples on the playerpool, I wouldnt ask this of Phil Galfond :D
In regards to your 3bet defending range: After watching this video yesterday I went on and watched Leforts review of Lucas Greenwood (http://www.runitonce.com/nlhe/lefort23/ T9s starting at 31:30) and he made a point that he doesn't 3bet at all vs UTG because he feels he doesn't have enough value hands against such a tight range. Other players continue to only 3bet very nutty hands like AA, KK vs UTG and others again use their perceived strength to 3bet bluff way more against UTG. I understand that what you are doing is probably good against the field, but can it not be exploited just as easily? This is why I would love some more nuanced use of the hud or reads in your videos.
Well I understand your concerns but I just cannot use my 'real sessions' for poker videos, a lot of the time i will have over 10 tables overlapping all over the place and they will be different game types and stakes so its completely unpractical. To produce videos I have to play specific sessions, NLHE 6-max only, of me 2-tabling zoom or 4 to 6-tabling regular tables.
I didnt watch the video you mention before and apparently Lefort advocates not 3-betting all vs UTG and MP. I personally really dislike this and I dont know any other strong player who uses this strategy. Also if UTG and MP know they are never getting 3-bet they could adjust and open significantly wider but then have a big chunk of hands that are raise folding preflop making them exploitable to 3-bets. And so if the opponent was not 3-betting at all he now has incentive to counter-adjust and have some very profitable 3-bets to make. So from a game theory standpoint I dont see how it can possibly be correct not to have a 3-betting range against both UTG and MP.
Concerning last part of your post, I certainly dont pretend to play a nemesis preflop strategy, but my core strategy is definitely much better and more difficult to exploit than somebody who folds to 3-bets let say over 70% or under 30% to take some extreme examples. Also you seem confused about what is exploitation, in your example of someone who 3-bets excusively {AA,KK} he is not exploiting us at all, and we could start folding pretty much everything vs his 3-bets and exploit his bad 3-betting strategy. And in your example of somebody 3-bet bluffing too much, my core strategy is well prepared (hopefully) to face this, he will just make some -EV 3-bets. Plus here again we could deviate and exploit him by 4-bet bluffing a little more often which will show more profit vs that opponent.
@ 07:15, do you never consider sticking it in here? i would def. check durmas squeeze %
Raphael Cerpedes11 years, 6 months agoI dont like shoving here at all, I think calling is the only option. For shoving to be more profitable than calling you need to make kind of unreasonable assumptions. Also you don't really need to 4-bet wider for value to combat frequent squeezers, calling a lot vs squeezes is efficient too. As long as you don't fold too much you will be fine.
Liked the video a lot. You said you are a SNE, correct? I would like to hear more about this? Your reasons, how you accomplish it, the drawbacks, how playing NLH and PLO plays into it, and the toughest parts all would be extremely interesting and educational to me (and I think others).
That is correct, for 3 years, but I will lose SNE status at the end of the year as I'm not achieving it again in 2013. The reason for doing this is mainly rakeback $, you get a significant increase by reaching SNE. Also its a strong motivation to put in a lot of volume. To accomplish it you just have to play a lot! The drawback is that it takes a lot of time that a young male would rather like to spend on all the "sea sex and sun" type of distractions available in southern Asia. And playing many tables for many hours is probably not very healthy either.
Playing both NLHE and PLO doesnt have much to do about it. My volume is spread out all over the place, I'm just very flexible with what game types and stakes I do play and can play several at the same time.
you make more in non-SD then SD? graph please! if you call more that would make you SD prone? this all seems very interesting and i would like to learn/know more
Raphael Cerpedes11 years, 6 months agoMy biggest leaks have always been to make lots of stupid river calls and being real spewy overall when I play my C-game or worse, which happens a lot more than I would like. The way I understand it everytime you make a bad river call you transfer nonSD losses to even bigger SD losses. But it cannot possibly explain a 3-1 ratio so there must be other reasons and Ive heard different opinions on this. In any case winning at nonSD is way overrated since it may not even be desirable to do so on a 6-max table. If you take 6 identical strong players playing against each other for an indefinite amount time they will obviously all end up winning at SD and losing at nonSD.
if you filter for called 3bets in HEM, there is a hands grid tab above the list of hands in the reports page. of the hands that you call 3bets with OOP do they lose less than your raise amount (had you simply folded instead)?
Oh I see what you mean, but its hard to deduce anything significant from this. Sure you will see that calling 3-bets with strong hands is profitable and doing it with complete crap is not. But what would be interesting would be to deduce where the treshold is, what can we profitably play or not. But here you will run into all sorts of variance and sample size issues such that its pretty much impossible to correctly differentiate between a slightly +EV call and a slightly -EV one by statistical methods alone.
well i was hoping that your 5 million hand sample size was significant. the threshold will be -3bb (your opening size) or -300bb/100. so anything more than this, would make the hand profitable calling a 3bet OOP
Most of it is irrelevant since played years ago but anyways lets assume a 1Mil hands sample if you think you can deduce precisely what can you call or not just by looking what hands perform better/worse than -300bb/100 you are definitely wrong. The sample size for specific hands/situations coupled with the inherent variance will make it useless. Out of 1mil hands how many times did you open T9s on the CO and got 3-bet to 9bb exactly for example? very few times indeed. From statistical methods you can deduce general trends but its almost useless to decide if, for example, the bottom 10% of your 3-bet calling range really performs better than -300bb/100.
Or lets take a situation that comes up a lot more often, If you try to check the profitability of each individual hand in your UTG opening range for example, you will very quickly see that strong hands are huge winners but even over large sample you will see, for example that you're winning with 22,33,55,77 but losing with 44 and 66. The general trend is pairs under 88 are winning a little bit but not much, and its impossible to decide this way if the weakest hands in the opening range 22 and 33 are profitable opens or not. You can only deduce a set of hands that are borderline, but you already more or less knew that beforehand.
Really enjoyed the video. Cool to see the thought process that goes into a looser style.
When constructing your 3bet defending ranges, how much do you take into account villain's 3bet percentage? Like if you raise the CO and the button 3bets you, does your defending range change vs someone 3betting 5% of buttons as opposed to say 9%-10%? A lot of the time I'll get 3bet there against a 5% button 3bet and fold hands like KJs that I would normally defend against a 9%-10% 3bet. My assumption is that if villain's aren't 3betting that wide, my defending ranges don't need to be that wide since in theory I'm not getting exploited as much.
Constructing 3-bet defending ranges is something you do away from the table by trying to find the best possible core strategy and it does not take into account any specific opponent 3-bet %. Then in game when facing a specific situation the question becomes is the way this specific opponent is playing justifying an exploitative adjustment? In your example of raising the CO with KJs and facing a 3-bet (assuming to a 'reasonable' size), the standard action is obviously to call, there is no way the nemesis is folding or 4-betting there. But obviously if the BTN is so tight to the point where folding is better, by any means go ahead make the exploitative adjustment and fold! But then knowing where the threshold is, at which point the 3-bet % is so low that we are better off folding, this is much harder to answer. There is grey area where the threshold must be but nobody knows the exact answer.
Related to last question, you mention that you never consider 4betting 98s MP vs CO. I assume you give importance to having blockers to construct 4bet bluffing ranges at any position at the table? Thanks
22:00 AJo on BB : u said u can have TT on the flop. u dont 3bet always TT vs CO open here ?
in the beginning u said u live where and with who ? i couldnt understand that, sound quality is not optimal.
overall solid vid, need better microphone, GL on tables
Raphael Cerpedes11 years, 6 months agoI do not always 3-bet TT from the BB vs a CO open. I moved to Asia 4 years ago, I used to live in Phuket, Thailand with other french poker players then 2 years ago I moved to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam where I currently stay with wife and kid.
You said you normally would c/r Q76r vs a reg. The problem for me here is that I never defend 66 and defend 77 50% in this spot. I would generally check call flop and proceed from there like I would do with all Qx hands which I have a decent amount of. Then I would c/f turns unimproved or bluff rivers when it goes check check on the turn. Thoughts?
Raphael Cerpedes11 years, 6 months agoOn many boards having a strategy of only calling or folding and not raising is viable too but lately I've been trying to implement raising ranges in most situations, especially against opponents that c-bet 90%+ in 3-bet pots. Q76 is a decently strong flop for me so I want to x/r there sometimes, also I always call 77 preflop there, 66 is a lot closer and I do both folding and calling.
I think that with such a big red line winnings you should have a big Xraise flop/turn frecquency ? Id like to see some of the explotative plays that makes you this kind of player..
my guess would be it comes from you not folding all the slightly profitable hands preflop which is what most other people are doing. enjoyed the video and the mix of playing theoretically sound/having good fundamentals as well as knowing when to deviate from it - combining those two is something i definitely need to work on and watching videos like this really helps
Really nice video, your way of "teaching" and trying to make people understand your plays at the video is at the same time "simple" yet veryyyyyyy good :)
"If you take 6 identical strong players playing against each other for an indefinite amount time they will obviously all end up winning at SD and losing at nonSD."
Not 100% sure, but I don't think this is possible. Wouldn't SD and nonSD each be zero-sum?
As for where your positive red line comes from, playing sticky could definitely be part of it. Any time you fold after putting money in the pot your red line dips, so by refusing to fold you would be pushing that red line up.
The most obvious cause for positive red line that most people think of is bluffing more. If you bluff someone out of a big pot that goes right into your red line. But, it doesn't sound like applying tons of pressure is really your style, so that's probably not so applicable for you.
Another thing that's less obvious that contributes to red line is value betting thinly. If there's a spot that you value bet thinly, whereas another player would be content to check down, what's going to happen a lot of the time is your opponent will fold. That means for you a lot of time that profit is going into redline, while for the player who doesn't value bet thinly it would go into his SD profits.
You are wrong. SD and nonSD are not each zero sum. Any time there is a multiway pot if 1 or more players fold before showdown then some money will be transferred from nonSD losses for somebody to SD wins for somebody else. Therefore the cumulative SD of all players will go up indefinitely while the cumulative nonSD will go down.
I'm surprised that this gets so much discussion, its most probably just me leaking money away. And once again, who cares, the red line is way overrated in the poker community, the only one that really matters is the green one.
After 6 years and about 6.5 million total poker hands of play on a laptop Im finally trying to upgrade to a monitor! But its not so easy to find top notch monitors where I live. I can find 27" fullHD easily but I would like to get a higher resolution one (2560 x 1440), even though Im not sure how much of a difference it makes. There is only one such product available in Vietnam (Samsung S27something) but its currently out of stock, I cannot order it, and nobody can tell me when they will have it again. I assume it should be before the end of the year though, so Im waiting a little bit more.
since you are a speed poker guy used to using a laptop the 27" should rock
i have a 30" with 2560x1800 which is very nice but i can't run it from laptop and had to buy upgraded video card to get it to work with desktop. so if you plan to use monitor with laptop you will be limited on how much res you can use anyway
PM me if you want more details as i spent a lot of time researching new laptops that could run my monitor :)
Raphael, I don't think it is possible to achieve a non-SD winnings to be 3 times more than SD winning. Something is wrong with your poker tracker/HM. First of all, it is really really difficult to have non-SD winnings to be positive at all. Some people can manage, but you have to fight for every little opportunity and be on very aggressive side. I think most winning reg will have non-SD line to be negative and some close to 0. SD winning is where pretty much all of the $$ are made. Double check your software.
Raphael Cerpedes11 years, 4 months agoWell, I never touched any option in my HEM so I dont know what could be wrong because thats definitely what my graph is showing. Actually its extremely unlikely that something is wrong since I use both pt4 and hem and both are showing the same thing. I'm closing in on 5M NLHE cash games hands so when I hit the mark somewhere in dec or jan I might post a graph in a video.
@7:40 AQs in squeezed pot on 865r, when 12Durma89 is betting only 1/3 pot, if the UTG guy would have folded would we ever call ? and what if UTG would just call ? then we get 5:1 but ye only 2 overs so prob not even great.
@10:20 w AJo 3b pot, from BTN's point of view, should he barrel turn there 1/2-2/3 pot or should he give up ? with only 2 overs vs our 8x,7x hands, vs Ax he does pretty bad and i would guess we got more Ax in our range than 8x,7x type hands, so im not sure.
@16:55 89s 3bpot on Q67r vs cbet oop, why would you c/r your 66,77 on this board ? i dont really get it, im thinking we get stacks in vs his big hands allot of the time anyway and when we call we give him room to barrel down. But maybe they are less likely to barrel down Qxx board allot since we hit it allot w AQ,KQ hands and by c/r our strong hands here we are allowed to c/r bluff this texture more as well, i guess that is the reason ? Do you c/r AQ for value as well then ?
@24:20 AJo on QT8s T turn, so how would you play your FDs there ? could you elaborate a little more how you would play them ?
@7.40 I think I would need at least of my suit on the flop to consider calling there and even then its prolly super marginal at best, squeezer's range should be pretty strong overall to bet out 3-ways on that board. If he bets likes KQo there he's just burning money.
@10.20 I think he should give up most (if not all) of the time with QJo there. Im pretty sure auto barreling 100% of your range on the turn is a bad strategy.
@16.55 x/r sets sometimes is part of an overall strategy there. When I look at the board I definitely want to have a x/r range there so that needs to include sets as value hands and I will obv bluff too. Also having a x/r range has game theory implications and allows me to fold more often to his c-bets than if I only had a call or fold strategy. I may x/r AQ here too, but mostly ve people I have some aggressive dynamics going or if positions were slightly different.
@24.20 As I said that T turn is a terrible card so if I did decide to lead the flop with some FD (I would obv check flop very often with FD too) I end up checking that turn, along with my full range, and facing that overbet I just have to x/fold all FD there.
Great video Raphael. Lots of quality analysis without going into rants. I especially like how you focus more of your analysis on range rather than your hand.
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The audio quality could be better imo. But the content is very good!
I think it has to do with my laptop heating a lot and thus the ventilation being pretty noisy but I wil try to improve this in the future.
First of all welcome to the team. I really enjoyed the video as well, especially in regards to the theme of balance vs exploitative play that has been floating around this site for a while.
You seem to have made up your mind for the way you want to play (loose and sticky) and build your gameplan around that. You also mention that you are winning more at non-showdown using this style which intrigues me greatly since from my own experience playing loose and passive usually led to a downward slope red line and I play lower stakes and in less aggressive games than you.
What I noticed in your play was that you are playing very static, if you don't mind me saying. You have quite a lot of hands on many of the players but you are using a very minimalistic hud and not once did you use any advanced features like 3bet vs position, cbet percentage, 4bet percentage or even opening percentages. For me this very much conflicts with your style of play. I would think somebody who is involved in a lot of pots postflop would benefit greatly from knowing if someone cbets and barrels a ton or not. Same goes for 3bet percentages. I play in games where the 3bet percentage of regulars drastically differs from person to person and vs different positions and I would assume the same is true in your games. I never quite understood the notion of "forming" your defend range vs 3bets to 50% when it easily could be way too wide.
I come from the school of poker where you make your decision based on the players you are playing against. There is a difference between being exploitable and being exploited. If everybody only 3bets the top 3% against your UTG raise there is no point in defending 50%. If we always defend the same range, does this mean we assume every single one of our opponents is making a mistake with their 3bet range?
I hope I didn't read too much into just one video but those are some general thoughts that have been going through my mind :) I would love to get some input from your or anyone that utilizes this way of thinking.
Let me try to answer your points:
I wouldnt say i play particularly 'loose', my raise first in ranges are actually a little tighter than the average regular. But I definitely try to be on the not folding side when I VPIP and face aggression both pre and postflop.
In NLHE I do win more at nonSD than at SD, and it has been true since I started playing online. Over a close to 5M NLHE cash game hands sample it's about a 3-1 ratio nonSD-SD. But I actually don't know where it comes from, Im no expert on this and Ive heard different explanations of why it could be. One of these being that I'm just leaking by calling down too wide in certain spots (winning more at nonSD than at SD is not necessarily a good thing). But since I don't know much about it, I ignore it. Plus who cares, the single most important line is the green one!
I dont mind you saying anything, you can go ahead and criticize as hard as you want! You are right I use a very minimalistic HUD, this is because I usually play quite a bit of tables, they overlap each other, and bigger HUDs would just take way too much of my screen area. You are mistaken though when you think I don't use advanced features. I recorded a short 2-tabling session specifically to make a video here, and I made a demo before that where I clicked a lot on the advanced feature pop ups such that it was very annoying for the viewer to look at so I decided to keep it to the minimum when recording future video footage. While playing 'real sessions' though I use the big popups a lot, the numbers I find most useful are the RFI ranges, 3-bet and fold to 3-bet by positions, plus some c-bet numbers for single raised and 3-bet pots, both for the c-bettor and the defender.
Concerning your last point I have to disagree with you. I believe having a strong core preflop strategy is very important. But it doesnt mean at all that you never deviate from it, there are obviously many reasons to make exploitative adjustments which can sometimes deviate far from the core strategy. When you say "There is a difference between being exploitable and being exploited", well, yes and no. Anytime you are folding over 60% to 3-bets from a given position you are pretty exploitable to 3-bets, your opponent could start 3-betting you wider than usual and print money but even if he doesn't change his pf strategy you would probably be better off either opening slightly tighter or defending wider anyways. The whole point is a better core strategy is less exploitable but also wins more money on average against the field. You are saying 'If we always defend the same range, does this mean we assume every single one of our opponents is making a mistake with their 3bet range?', here the answer is absolutely not! Ideally there should be an equilibrium where both the weakest hand in the 3-bettor range and the weakest hand in the 3-bet caller range are about 0 EV. The 3-bettor should 3-bet enough non nut hands that the original opener cant exploit him by folding everything but the nuts, and the opener should defend enough hands (by either calling or 4-betting) such that an opponent cannot 3-bet him with ATC and show a profit.
Thanks a lot for the response, that was what I hoped to hear.
Regarding the HUD and your gameplay: I would really appreciate it if you could get as close to your normal environment when playing as possible or announce beforehand what you want to accomplish with the video. You have to remember that you are here to teach and explaining how you made a certain decision + solidifying it by using proper stats and reads is very important to the watcher. Much more important than having a clean video in my opinion, especially in replay videos :). I only harp on this because you are one of the few guys that seem to regularly play NL500 zoom and actually have decent samples on the playerpool, I wouldnt ask this of Phil Galfond :D
In regards to your 3bet defending range: After watching this video yesterday I went on and watched Leforts review of Lucas Greenwood (http://www.runitonce.com/nlhe/lefort23/ T9s starting at 31:30) and he made a point that he doesn't 3bet at all vs UTG because he feels he doesn't have enough value hands against such a tight range. Other players continue to only 3bet very nutty hands like AA, KK vs UTG and others again use their perceived strength to 3bet bluff way more against UTG. I understand that what you are doing is probably good against the field, but can it not be exploited just as easily? This is why I would love some more nuanced use of the hud or reads in your videos.
Well I understand your concerns but I just cannot use my 'real sessions' for poker videos, a lot of the time i will have over 10 tables overlapping all over the place and they will be different game types and stakes so its completely unpractical. To produce videos I have to play specific sessions, NLHE 6-max only, of me 2-tabling zoom or 4 to 6-tabling regular tables.
I didnt watch the video you mention before and apparently Lefort advocates not 3-betting all vs UTG and MP. I personally really dislike this and I dont know any other strong player who uses this strategy. Also if UTG and MP know they are never getting 3-bet they could adjust and open significantly wider but then have a big chunk of hands that are raise folding preflop making them exploitable to 3-bets. And so if the opponent was not 3-betting at all he now has incentive to counter-adjust and have some very profitable 3-bets to make. So from a game theory standpoint I dont see how it can possibly be correct not to have a 3-betting range against both UTG and MP.
Concerning last part of your post, I certainly dont pretend to play a nemesis preflop strategy, but my core strategy is definitely much better and more difficult to exploit than somebody who folds to 3-bets let say over 70% or under 30% to take some extreme examples. Also you seem confused about what is exploitation, in your example of someone who 3-bets excusively {AA,KK} he is not exploiting us at all, and we could start folding pretty much everything vs his 3-bets and exploit his bad 3-betting strategy. And in your example of somebody 3-bet bluffing too much, my core strategy is well prepared (hopefully) to face this, he will just make some -EV 3-bets. Plus here again we could deviate and exploit him by 4-bet bluffing a little more often which will show more profit vs that opponent.
Excellent first video! Looking forward to more.
@ 07:15, do you never consider sticking it in here? i would def. check durmas squeeze %
Liked the video a lot. You said you are a SNE, correct? I would like to hear more about this? Your reasons, how you accomplish it, the drawbacks, how playing NLH and PLO plays into it, and the toughest parts all would be extremely interesting and educational to me (and I think others).
That is correct, for 3 years, but I will lose SNE status at the end of the year as I'm not achieving it again in 2013. The reason for doing this is mainly rakeback $, you get a significant increase by reaching SNE. Also its a strong motivation to put in a lot of volume. To accomplish it you just have to play a lot! The drawback is that it takes a lot of time that a young male would rather like to spend on all the "sea sex and sun" type of distractions available in southern Asia. And playing many tables for many hours is probably not very healthy either.
Playing both NLHE and PLO doesnt have much to do about it. My volume is spread out all over the place, I'm just very flexible with what game types and stakes I do play and can play several at the same time.
Bienvenue !! Good video.
I particulary appreciate :
- when you take time to explain on a certain spot how you will play your entire range and why.
-eventually how and why you can deviate from your "standard" line to an exploitative line (as 98cc hand at 16min).
-when you expose what you think regulars doing bad in their general game plan.
These stuff are very valuable to find in training video.
you make more in non-SD then SD? graph please! if you call more that would make you SD prone? this all seems very interesting and i would like to learn/know more
In any case winning at nonSD is way overrated since it may not even be desirable to do so on a 6-max table. If you take 6 identical strong players playing against each other for an indefinite amount time they will obviously all end up winning at SD and losing at nonSD.
how profitable is your spread of hands that call a 3bet OOP?
Im not sure what exactly you are asking but anytime you call a 3-bet the goal is to lose less than 3bb on the hand (or whatever your opening size is).
if you filter for called 3bets in HEM, there is a hands grid tab above the list of hands in the reports page. of the hands that you call 3bets with OOP do they lose less than your raise amount (had you simply folded instead)?
Oh I see what you mean, but its hard to deduce anything significant from this. Sure you will see that calling 3-bets with strong hands is profitable and doing it with complete crap is not. But what would be interesting would be to deduce where the treshold is, what can we profitably play or not. But here you will run into all sorts of variance and sample size issues such that its pretty much impossible to correctly differentiate between a slightly +EV call and a slightly -EV one by statistical methods alone.
well i was hoping that your 5 million hand sample size was significant. the threshold will be -3bb (your opening size) or -300bb/100. so anything more than this, would make the hand profitable calling a 3bet OOP
Most of it is irrelevant since played years ago but anyways lets
assume a 1Mil hands sample if you think you can deduce precisely what
can you call or not just by looking what hands perform better/worse than
-300bb/100 you are definitely wrong. The sample size for specific
hands/situations coupled with the inherent variance will make it
useless. Out of 1mil hands how many times did you open T9s on the CO and
got 3-bet to 9bb exactly for example? very few times indeed. From
statistical methods you can deduce general trends but its almost useless
to decide if, for example, the bottom 10% of your 3-bet calling range
really performs better than -300bb/100.
Or lets take a situation that comes up a lot more often, If you try to check the profitability of each individual hand
in your UTG opening range for example, you will very quickly see that
strong hands are huge winners but even over large sample you will see, for example that you're winning with 22,33,55,77 but losing with 44 and 66. The general trend is pairs under 88 are winning a little bit but not much, and its impossible to decide
this way if the weakest hands in the opening range 22 and 33 are
profitable opens or not. You can only deduce a set of hands that are
borderline, but you already more or less knew that beforehand.
Really enjoyed the video. Cool to see the thought process that goes into a looser style.
When constructing your 3bet defending ranges, how much do you take into account villain's 3bet percentage? Like if you raise the CO and the button 3bets you, does your defending range change vs someone 3betting 5% of buttons as opposed to say 9%-10%? A lot of the time I'll get 3bet there against a 5% button 3bet and fold hands like KJs that I would normally defend against a 9%-10% 3bet. My assumption is that if villain's aren't 3betting that wide, my defending ranges don't need to be that wide since in theory I'm not getting exploited as much.
Constructing 3-bet defending ranges is something you do away from the table by trying to find the best possible core strategy and it does not take into account any specific opponent 3-bet %. Then in game when facing a specific situation the question becomes is the way this specific opponent is playing justifying an exploitative adjustment? In your example of raising the CO with KJs and facing a 3-bet (assuming to a 'reasonable' size), the standard action is obviously to call, there is no way the nemesis is folding or 4-betting there. But obviously if the BTN is so tight to the point where folding is better, by any means go ahead make the exploitative adjustment and fold! But then knowing where the threshold is, at which point the 3-bet % is so low that we are better off folding, this is much harder to answer. There is grey area where the threshold must be but nobody knows the exact answer.
Related to last question, you mention that you never consider 4betting 98s MP vs CO. I assume you give importance to having blockers to construct 4bet bluffing ranges at any position at the table? Thanks
Yes I do, 98s does not block any of his value combos and also blocks lots of the combos the opponent will be 3-bet folding with.
22:00 AJo on BB : u said u can have TT on the flop. u dont 3bet always TT vs CO open here ?
in the beginning u said u live where and with who ? i couldnt understand that, sound quality is not optimal.
overall solid vid, need better microphone, GL on tables
I moved to Asia 4 years ago, I used to live in Phuket, Thailand with other french poker players then 2 years ago I moved to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam where I currently stay with wife and kid.
Curious about the 98s hand.
You said you normally would c/r Q76r vs a reg. The problem for me here is that I never defend 66 and defend 77 50% in this spot. I would generally check call flop and proceed from there like I would do with all Qx hands which I have a decent amount of. Then I would c/f turns unimproved or bluff rivers when it goes check check on the turn. Thoughts?
I think that with such a big red line winnings you should have a big Xraise flop/turn frecquency ? Id like to see some of the explotative plays that makes you this kind of player..
No I dont. As I stated before I dont know where it comes from, Ive heard different opinions on this.
my guess would be it comes from you not folding all the slightly profitable hands preflop which is what most other people are doing. enjoyed the video and the mix of playing theoretically sound/having good fundamentals as well as knowing when to deviate from it - combining those two is something i definitely need to work on and watching videos like this really helps
Really nice video, your way of "teaching" and trying to make people understand your plays at the video is at the same time "simple" yet veryyyyyyy good :)
"If you take 6 identical strong players playing against each other for an indefinite amount time they will obviously all end up winning at SD and losing at nonSD."
Not 100% sure, but I don't think this is possible. Wouldn't SD and nonSD each be zero-sum?
As for where your positive red line comes from, playing sticky could definitely be part of it. Any time you fold after putting money in the pot your red line dips, so by refusing to fold you would be pushing that red line up.
The most obvious cause for positive red line that most people think of is bluffing more. If you bluff someone out of a big pot that goes right into your red line. But, it doesn't sound like applying tons of pressure is really your style, so that's probably not so applicable for you.
Another thing that's less obvious that contributes to red line is value betting thinly. If there's a spot that you value bet thinly, whereas another player would be content to check down, what's going to happen a lot of the time is your opponent will fold. That means for you a lot of time that profit is going into redline, while for the player who doesn't value bet thinly it would go into his SD profits.
You are wrong. SD and nonSD are not each zero sum. Any time there is a multiway pot if 1 or more players fold before showdown then some money will be transferred from nonSD losses for somebody to SD wins for somebody else. Therefore the cumulative SD of all players will go up indefinitely while the cumulative nonSD will go down.
I'm surprised that this gets so much discussion, its most probably just me leaking money away. And once again, who cares, the red line is way overrated in the poker community, the only one that really matters is the green one.
Yep, didn't think of that.
Oh...and why don't you just get a bigger monitor??
After 6 years and about 6.5 million total poker hands of play on a laptop Im finally trying to upgrade to a monitor! But its not so easy to find top notch monitors where I live. I can find 27" fullHD easily but I would like to get a higher resolution one (2560 x 1440), even though Im not sure how much of a difference it makes. There is only one such product available in Vietnam (Samsung S27something) but its currently out of stock, I cannot order it, and nobody can tell me when they will have it again. I assume it should be before the end of the year though, so Im waiting a little bit more.
since you are a speed poker guy used to using a laptop the 27" should rock
i have a 30" with 2560x1800 which is very nice but i can't run it from laptop and had to buy upgraded video card to get it to work with desktop. so if you plan to use monitor with laptop you will be limited on how much res you can use anyway
PM me if you want more details as i spent a lot of time researching new laptops that could run my monitor :)
Nice video, man!
Looking forward for the next ones =D
Like your simple and straightforward style of explaining spots. Keep it going!
Nice PACING.....and also some thoughtful and interesting commentary:)
Raphael, I don't think it is possible to achieve a non-SD winnings to be 3 times more than SD winning. Something is wrong with your poker tracker/HM. First of all, it is really really difficult to have non-SD winnings to be positive at all. Some people can manage, but you have to fight for every little opportunity and be on very aggressive side. I think most winning reg will have non-SD line to be negative and some close to 0. SD winning is where pretty much all of the $$ are made. Double check your software.
Nice vid!
@7:40 AQs in squeezed pot on 865r, when 12Durma89 is betting only 1/3 pot, if the UTG guy would have folded would we ever call ? and what if UTG would just call ? then we get 5:1 but ye only 2 overs so prob not even great.
@10:20 w AJo 3b pot, from BTN's point of view, should he barrel turn there 1/2-2/3 pot or should he give up ? with only 2 overs vs our 8x,7x hands, vs Ax he does pretty bad and i would guess we got more Ax in our range than 8x,7x type hands, so im not sure.
@16:55 89s 3bpot on Q67r vs cbet oop, why would you c/r your 66,77 on this board ? i dont really get it, im thinking we get stacks in vs his big hands allot of the time anyway and when we call we give him room to barrel down. But maybe they are less likely to barrel down Qxx board allot since we hit it allot w AQ,KQ hands and by c/r our strong hands here we are allowed to c/r bluff this texture more as well, i guess that is the reason ?
Do you c/r AQ for value as well then ?
@24:20 AJo on QT8s T turn, so how would you play your FDs there ? could you elaborate a little more how you would play them ?
@7.40 I think I would need at least of my suit on the flop to consider calling there and even then its prolly super marginal at best, squeezer's range should be pretty strong overall to bet out 3-ways on that board. If he bets likes KQo there he's just burning money.
@10.20 I think he should give up most (if not all) of the time with QJo there. Im pretty sure auto barreling 100% of your range on the turn is a bad strategy.
@16.55 x/r sets sometimes is part of an overall strategy there. When I look at the board I definitely want to have a x/r range there so that needs to include sets as value hands and I will obv bluff too. Also having a x/r range has game theory implications and allows me to fold more often to his c-bets than if I only had a call or fold strategy. I may x/r AQ here too, but mostly ve people I have some aggressive dynamics going or if positions were slightly different.
@24.20 As I said that T turn is a terrible card so if I did decide to lead the flop with some FD (I would obv check flop very often with FD too) I end up checking that turn, along with my full range, and facing that overbet I just have to x/fold all FD there.
Great video Raphael. Lots of quality analysis without going into rants. I especially like how you focus more of your analysis on range rather than your hand.
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