Brady2moss79

Kravean,

Props on overcoming that 80bb downswing. That which does not kill you.....

Looking back at the downswing is there something you would change with your approach once it got bad (down 30?)

I ask because I am experimenting with using shorter bankroll requirements that entail moving up (and down) relatively quickly, essentially dependent on how I am running. I look at my poker past and wonder how many extra buy ins I lost at say NL200 playing C game poker during a downswing (I don't think I've met anyone who's game is immune to downswing tilt) when I should have been playing ~100 and getting my confidence back.

Basically, do you think you should have moved down quicker than you did? Not from a maths perspective but from a sanity perspective?

My worst downswing was playing live LHE as a prop in southern California post black friday. It was hell, because I HAD to play the game I was getting abused in on a daily basis and even the fish smelled the blood. I survived financially but the year long swing basically killed my passion for poker....at the time, anyway.

Nice posts, sir. I am interested in your progress!

If you’re c-betting in a spot where someone else has opened it means you 3bet.

You can be losing money in single raised pots as the caller preflop because if you’re playing low stakes and playing preflop correctly, most of those hands are going to be you defending your BB, in which you start the hand -1BB

Get the filters worked out though. Gotta make sure the data is correct.

You could possibly be cold calling preflop too much as well. Some fishy guys opens on 30bb stack and you start just calling with kj, 22, qj etc and the rake is gonna kill you.

This is something I always think about in softer games. Yes we can open more hands than usual since people are passive and not 3betting enough, but the trade off is that they will have stronger hands postflop than average. Is the tradeoff of realizing the equity of the lowest part of our RFI range worth playing vs a stronger range postflop?

I would say yes because they don’t stop making mistakes post-flop. Suited aces and pocket pairs are doing well here provided you play well postflop. Crap like JTo not so much.

There’s a few things I would consider here:

1-The pool you play against. If they are underdefending and/or not check raising enough then a solver is going to bet more often, sometimes at 100%

2-from what I’ve read 80% is a good default threshold, but again make sure to take into account pool tendencies. IIRC Sauce likes 1% or less pot loss and 80% usually aligns with that.

3-The ease at which you employ a strategy. Say your arbitrary cut off point is 80% and you come across a 70% board. I would investigate how that 30% check range is comprised and really do an honest estimate as to how likely you are to replicate the solvers strategy.....you could easily lose more money overall by checking 30% as opposed to going the other way and range betting.

I’ve heard Sauce say he aims for <1% loss in EV when making a range simplification decision.....I certainly don’t aim for 1% as I’m not nearly as skilled. Instead I’ll start big, like 5% and then pare my way down until I see a strategy that I can employ, which is probably somewhere between 2-4%.

Obviously the goal is to get to Sauce, but it’s just my humble opinion that it’s better to start with simplistic strategies and look for ways to get closer to 1% as I go along. If you’re playing 100 or lower I really doubt your opponents are going to capture that 4% theoretical loss whereas the guys Sauce plays will.

Any feedback appreciated. Best of luck!

Just to summarize:

Build a tree, go to advanced and click flop tab.

Then enter your size options separated by comma. Example: 33,66,90

Run the sim.

When you check the results you will find all the info you are looking for.....if you want the EV breakdown of each size used, click the EV tab and hover over a hand. You will get the EV of each size separated by a comma and color coordinated.

Alternatively, you can play against the solution and click “show hints”

The boxes at the bottom will have EV breakdown.

Tips on getting a faster solve:

Keep turn at default betsize (75%) but on the river give two options, 75, 150

The 150 is there to make sure any hand that chooses to bet small has the option to get value.

If you’re analyzing a situation where the IP player is the one with initiative you can make it so there’s no donking allowed which speeds things up.

Still might take a while with wide ranges.

Hope this helps.

For the record, I think your English skills are better than at least 10-25% of native speakers in America, at least written word.

What's wrong with your 'safety'?

HeavyMask
I implore you to read that book. In the meantime, check out this 20/20 episode on Dr. Sarno.

Helpful Link

Read the comments, I'd be surprised if something someone says doesn't remind you of your situation. Still, buy the book...I've read a few hundred books but I find this one is the only one I ever passionately recommend to people.

You're not alone out there. The answer as to why you may be suffering from some sort of phantom in nature (although real) pain could be a multitude of things, up to and including some sort of trauma.....or maybe you're just afraid of success and you allow your pain to debilitate you to the point where success is never really an option. I have no idea as I don't know you at all.

Obviously figuring out why you may be driving yourself nuts is beyond my pay grade (and the books) but I found that once I was willing to believe I could be using my pain to distract myself from life, the pain went away. My situation doesn't sound as painful as yours, but it sucked enough to bring tears to my eyes. I was convinced I was broken from sitting so much during the golden era of poker....I was 35 at the peak of my pain. Imagine that, a thirty five year old man convincing himself he was broken. It worked.

Anyway, hang in there and keep posting.

Regarding undiagnosed pain:

Dr. John Sarno

This book has helped me tremendously since I bought it about eight years ago and I've recommended in several times to people. As the title suggests it's about the connection between the mind and pain and how sometimes pain isn't real. People tend to get suspicious about this claim (as was I) then I realized I imagine things all the time that have a physical effect on me and I became open minded.

I'm now pain free after 'suffering' for years with carpal tunnel, neck and back pain. Quite a dramatic effect on my life.

Best of luck!

DeadManWalkin
Struggle myself, lifelong. Poker was a respite once, until it became a career at which point it just became part of the day. Took close to five years off and wallowed a lot but I'm excited to be back. Hang in there and if you ever need someone to vent to about things, @ me here.

Post some hands and GL!

Don't want to pry about depression, but since it's in the title of your post and your user name includes the word dead, please feel free to get anything off your chest. I've been finding solace in poker myself and struggle with depression this time of year. Hang in there and GL at tables!

I didn't say you shouldn't have a raising range, though, I said the hand you had was a bad one to raise with due the situation.

Even if he does only pot with his two pair plus, the rest of his range contains twelve over-pair combos, flush draws with pairs, flush draws with gutters and numerous top pairs.

Of course if you had a read he would fold all those, nh. I'm not that good at reading.

I'm curious as to why you think a near three-quarter sized bet on the turn from villain is weak? It just seems like a reasonably normal size to use here as a default.

For the bluff itself I think you are jamming a lot of money into a situation where you're at a range disadvantage overall and doing it with a hand that just doesn't win often enough and doesn't block any of his sets or two pair. Standard fold methinks.

:-)

Thank you, sir.

One more quick one while I have you. I notice you're using a randomizer, which I assume most players at that stake are doing. My question relates to your perceived error rate when using the randomizer to make decisions, i.e you end up mistakenly randomizing a hand that is actually pure at equilibrium.

Finished the video, nice work!

Best Wishes,
Mason

Patrick,

Early on you mention (~4:00) you wanting to have a flat call range on the BTN and that regulars that don't are making a mistake. Certainly I can't argue with you here, I don't play these games. I would however like to ask you if there's a line in the sand rake wise where you won't be flatting the BTN ever (say 200z vs 500z) or if the pool tendencies (lack of squeezing, too much checking too you, downstream exploitation opportunities) will override the rake concerns.

Maybe a vague question but any input is appreciated.

Still have a little of the video left but I am enjoying the content, thank you.

You can filter for certain flops to make sure they are hitting at correct percentages. You can check to see if you're getting dealt AA at the correct frequency etc....

Also, the poker world needs monitoring and I agree with you. IIRC I read a thread on here (I think) once where one of the pros was concerned about a site because his stable was winning much less than they were over a massive sample. So he gathered as much evidence as he could, did his research and presented it to the world to see.

No rigging found, but that's not the point. It's the work that went into the investigation and the hard data provided. We need more of that and less of this.

His thread title was also a tad less inflammatory. Just a tad.

How are you tracking flops hitting correct % or number of KK vs AA being correct? Seems impossible to track

I use DriveHud.

I'm guessing some rooms are APP only but others allow emulators to support trackers.

I think my argument holds more weight because i'm not a losing player complaining. I have 108k hands tracked with pretty crushing results.

Except the only actual evidence you've provided (winning on the site) doesn't support your argument.

Perhaps since you're used to crushing so much (over a somewhat small sample) you're not properly prepared for the inevitable....which is losing in ways you never thought imaginable. A ~7bb/100 winner is probably going to lose over 100k hands something like 2% of the time.

You could also just stop playing on the site....but please, do us all a favor and provided some sort of tangible evidence before declaring a site RIGGED on a poker training forum that non regs might be reading. And winning at a small rate over 3k hands is not evidence.

it's just these constant coolers eating away at what would be a ton more profit!

Really, you don't say?

I checked my equity when all in and the site is legit when money is all in, you record is true to you equity.

I (and others) have also checked things such as certain flops hitting at correct percentages and pre-flop distributions being correct.

The place isn't rigged (although like anywhere theres prolly morons trying to collude) and you've offered zero point zero evidence to suggest that it is. Instead, now there's yet another thread on the internet proclaiming a site is rigged, which certainly doesn't help the state of the game.

On top of that YOU'RE WINNING!!!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

Lot of ground covered, love the accent(s)!

RIT,

I'm curious as to why you check raised the flop here, or perhaps more specifically if its what you always do. I can see it being a very small part of a mixed strategy but I would simplify by just always calling. We're at an equity disadvantage vs a decent 3b range and being deeper makes future decisions tougher. This is with or w/o BDFD.

On the turn I think you can obviously continue at a good rate but I believe (I am v rusty) that calling vs raises is leaking money. Just something to run over if you are prone to calling here due to our nut flush potential and the pure size of the pot.

I like the river check and I think you need to call any bet. I think he can find the KT bluffs at some frequency and barring any reads you gotta suck it up, the pot is just so big now.

Glad it went well in the end ;)

Stoic,

Obviously you have gotten some great advice ITT but I wanted to chime in myself, perhaps to just feel like part of the group!

The situation you are trying to explore is so vital to ones success in poker that I would begin with a more big-picture viewpoint. Instead of trying to match other players statistics, just consistently study your BB defense hands, both OOP and IP.

One method is to post a bunch of hands and that certainly has value but I think eventually you're going to want to invest in solver/range analysis software and get working in that direction.

It probably sounds like overkill at your stakes, but I think the primary benefit is the ability to solve a wide range of flops and see how your aggression/call levels should change based on various board textures.

Other hints:

Meticulous pre-flop standards. What sort of hands are you 3betting preflop? What are you calling with, vs 2.5x and 3x? Are you sliding your defend frequencies based on HUD stats from RFI? Your defense patterns vs NITs will be different than typical forum reg.

It sounds tedious but write down by hand your entire defense range vs every position against a typical opponent. Considering you are OOP any deviations from a good preflop strategy are going to compound and give you problems.

Color code your HUD preflop stats. Find guys who RFI at higher rate than normal but then also fold to 3bets more than they should etc. At the very least make sure you are 3betting these guys at least at an optimal rate. Avoiding flops when the rake is sky high will help your bottom line a lot.

Most of all, be patient, for a few reasons.
A) You're already winning in this spot and poker is not easy.
B) It's the most difficult spot to be in and ANY progress in this spot is going to have tremendous spillover to the rest of your game, specifically when you RFI from the button.

Best Wishes,
Mason

Not all the way through but props for showing the JJ mistake! I'm sure it would have been easy to make the video without showing that even a higher stakes player still punts some big decisions. Good luck at the tables!

GTO simple chart

Maybe this well help some.

E = 1 - A : (MOP p113 : "1- alpha" )

• Optimal Calling Frequency : used on the river to prevent the bettor to make a profit on his bluffs and thus, to make him indifferent to betting or checking his bluffs; EV(river bet) = 1 P

• Minimum Defense Frequency : used on the flop or turn, to prevent the bettor to make an immediate profit on his bluffs; same as above, except that it is used as a minimum threshold and is not static (more streets to play, other factors relevant)

Sauce,

When I was little my father was famous. He was the greatest poker player in the empire and he was the Shogun's personal poker horse. In his time my father played a hundred and thirty one Lords HU4ROLLZ and he felted one hundred and thirty-one Lords HU4ROLLZ.

It was a bad time for the Empire.

The Shogun stayed inside his castle and never came out. Some say his brain was infected by devils and that he spent all of my father's winnings on Daniel Negreanu's masterclass videos.

My father would come home and he would forget about the feltings. He wasn't scared of the Shogun, but the Shogun was scared of him.

One day the Shogun sent his ninja spies to our house. They were supposed to kill my father, but he was busy in the shed writing equations on the wall trying to figure out if it was worth it to have multiple bet sizes across a wide range of flops IP.SRP.BTNvBB and instead they killed my mother, who was oddly enough a dead ringer for Jennifer Connolly.

That was the night everything changed.

That was the night I quit poker.

That was about four years ago and now I miss the game terribly and I want to come back. I've been devouring your videos the past few weeks and I believe my former coach picked your brain a lot back in the day so I thank you for help shaping whatever game it is I have left.

You mention how you're long in the tooth for poker, which I guess is true`but since you're younger than me (41) I've let some doubt creep into my head. Do you feel your cognitive abilities are slowing, specifically in the ability to play something like four challenging games at once? Or is it just more of a, "I'm relatively wealthy and recognize the utility of these years of my life and I'm not willing to put in the eighty hour weeks the young nerds are."

Anyway, you put out excellent content.I enjoy your cadence and never find my mind wandering during one of your videos. As a philosophy guy I'm guessing you take pride in being a good teacher.

Best Wishes,
Mason