DreaDk

I don't think you will get an answer to this one buddy.

Nick Howard Could you provide more info about your expansion pack? Is this like an upgrade to the original night vision package?

Nick Howard
How would you adjust to a very high VPIP environment that has practically no 3 betting except from few aggro fish and regs? Would you still go for a high PFR strategy just cause we are playing against extremely weak and passive opponents? Also what about a 3 betting strategy? Would you go super linear and pretty wide? I'm having doubts about all of this since from one side these players like to play a pot and it seems like playing many hands against them would be good but on the other side these type of players also have practically do not fold to 3 bets or flop cbets so we would be mostly trying to hit a flop every time or give up. I Would love to hear your thoughts on this.

Nick Howard Is this coaching offer only for 200NL+ players? I'm playing somewhere between 50-100NL would like to volunteer.

What type of streams are you going to do this summer? Will it be something like the 2016 streams where you played poker and discussed important concepts and ideas or are you having in mind something else entirely?

Don't worry guys he is alive. Saw him posting pics on instagram.

Well played Nick . Was definitely fun final match although he ran pretty good against you. Could you explain your JT fold? I don't think you had enough data points there to make an exploitative fold so I saw you trying to get some more information by talking to him. Did he give something away?

Nick, how can I get in touch with you? You don't reply to RIO messages or email.

1.call
2.call
3.fold

Very interesting @Zamadhi108. Thanks.

I dislike the linear 3 betting strategy against very strong ranges. They are way too many nitty players who will over fold to 3 bets and call/4 bet with a very strong range. Against these players 3 betting all the garbage can be very profitable and pretty easy to play. But once you start 3 betting AJ,KJ and you hit the top pair you will just end up being dominated way too often.
I'll make sure to check snowie but heard there are some questionable decisions in there.

@MrFalvo Thanks for your effort and I believe the things you mentioned may be true for this level. You didn't count any implied odds for any of the hands however which is something crucial. Although it is not so often that I get paid on flush runouts we can very much assume for the villain in first hand that if he is value betting on 65598 board with his overpairs then I doubt he is folding them on flush completing rivers. Same thing with the other spots where the gutshots have pretty good implied odds and are not very obvious. I think those things may give me the necessary odds to call. Not sure about your defending range from the button but I think most people should defend quite wide if they are opening 50% or more on the button. Othewise you will just get demolished by getting 3 bet. ATo is pretty much in all the 3 bet defending ranges I've seen so far, including some Cameron Couch videos and the video Steve Paul did on Designing preflop ranges. I agree that the ATs defend MP vs SB is marginal at best and maybe even slightly -EV against population. I would love to hear more about the button defending strategies because it is something I struggled with. It is very tough to figure out if the blinds are defending by 3 betting as wide as they should for me to defend the optimal strategy (Although I'm still defending far from optimally, in the video linked before we should defend as wide as A8o K7s etc). Still unsure about all the flushdraw/gutshot turn floats listed here so I would very much enjoy someone else expressing their opinion.

@Resolve
I appreciated your help before but I would also love to hear some of your thoughts on the way I played the hands, specifically the turn spots.

I will for future hands but I feel like since I already made this thread they are kind a part of it.

Since everyone asked for hands I will go ahead and post some spots where I think I might have potential leaks specifically against population.

Lets begin with my biggest problem - my redline. Now this can be a cause of not fighting for pots enough or floating too much with marginal hands and draws. I will list some spots where I think this can be easily noticed.

1. http://www.pokerhandreplays.com/view.php/id/8455646
2. http://www.pokerhandreplays.com/view.php/id/8455645
3. http://www.pokerhandreplays.com/view.php/id/8456609
4. http://www.pokerhandreplays.com/view.php/id/8456610
5. http://www.pokerhandreplays.com/view.php/id/8456612
6. http://www.pokerhandreplays.com/view.php/id/8456611

First hand

I open in MP and get minraised. This is a spot where I'm going to hardly fold many hands, one because the price he is giving me and because I also am in position. I might fold the bottom of my range that doesn't play well if I know he is doing this polarized. The flop comes 655 and I have a flushdraw with two overcards. It is very tough to construct his range here because we don't know which type of hands he is min3betting with.I think the flop is standard call and I do not want to have a raising range here. Turn is a 9 creating a second flushdraw and It's definitely not great card for villain. Considering I'm going to be opening as wide as 87s and calling I will have decent amount of nut hands here (Potentially every single one). So my flushdraw is pretty low in my range however he bets pretty small and for all we know he could have underpairs so even my Q or J can be live hards. On other hand it is a pretty bad runout for him and he really shouldn't be betting too light here. I decide to call. On the river I'm facing an interesting spot. My only missed hands here are gonna flushdraws. This is perhaps a good spot to turn this hand into a bluff I would like to hear some thoughts about which hands should we be turning into a bluff here. It blocks hearths and QQ JJ from one side and other side It's pretty much the absolute bottom of my range with 0 showdown value.

Second Hand

Preflop I decide to flat a MP open with KJs. I think it's too strong to be turning into a bluff against this player but it's too weak to 3bet for value. Also we have potential fish behind which I want to come along. Flop is pretty standard with minor considerations of raising. It's however not the greatest board for my range and the only real value hands I'm raising here is sets so it will be pretty tough to balance while not overbluffing. Therefore I choose to not have a raising range and let the other player come along sometimes. The turn is again my biggest problem. I'm not getting direct odds but his range is relatively strong here and I do have some implied odds being in position. I can also bluff of on certain runouts so I decide to call. River is quite standard I think there are better hands to turn into a bluff here mainly hands containing a queen.

Third Hand

I get 3bet by the small blind and decide to call. ATo is pretty much the bottom of my range here and it is tough to say if this is a profitable call (Players at these stakes sometimes end up having value heavy range only from all positions) . Against villain I felt like it will be alright so I called. My button defending range is going to be quite wide so I will want to defend some more hands by floating. This I felt was a good candidate and could certainly be mistake on the flop. On the turn yet another familiar scene. He bets and I'm with a marginal draw which is sometimes also good against his draws. My implied odds are significantly lower here I believe unless he has 2pair+ simply because I don't expect to get paid on a flush river. On other side it's a hand with alright blockers and can be turned into a bluff on some rivers ( It's gonna be tough to find bluffs if we don't float some of these hands ). River comes a blank and considering my blockers I decide to turn this into a bluff. I think a decent villain will have tougher time calling this off but as usual I get snapped off.

Fourth Hand

Short hand and nothing of significant importance occurs. I think it's too wide to 4 bet against unknown so I call. Flop is the only interesting spot. It's a board that it's extremely good for me and I expect villain to bet this rarely. His flop betting range is pretty strong on this spot so although I have two over cards, backdoor flushdraw/straightdraw and pretty good bluffing potential on turns and rivers my float is perhaps way too wide. That's up to you guys to decide and comment.

Fifth Hand

Yet another marginal defend preflop. Pretty much bottom of my defending range here and would fold against stronger opponents / NITS . Given the smaller 3 bet I decide to call. Flop again as the other hands I decide to float with my gutshot backdoor flushdraw and here we are on another magical turn creating the backdoor flushdraw. Need around 30% to call here while I usually have 23% against his value range not including any draws/bluffs. So you could say that I'm almost getting the odds to call here if we include even 1 bluff combo also have pretty nice implied odds because my flushdraw is not so obvious. It's also a hand that can be turned into a bluff on certain runouts.

Final Hand

Here you can maybe spot another potential leak of mine preflop. I decide to just call with QQ. I know most people would get in this preflop but hear my reasoning. Over the 30 000 hands I played on pokerstars lately I can hardly remember a spot where I was able to get in QQ with decent equity preflop ( exception few spewing players ). Our villain has 15/10/8.8 over 82 hands so not too helpful but at least he might be wide 3 better. We are also 130bb deep so QQ definitely becomes more questionable stack off hand. Another point is I do expect people to 3 bet bluff a decent amount here and making them fold their 30% equity certainly sounds great ( most villains do use Axs hands as bluffs ). On the flop another questionable call here. One side is I will maybe be too exploitable folding QQ here. Other side is I just don't expect villain to have too many bluffing hands here. He will need to have some T9s and QTs ( which I block quite significantly ) and then maybe even bet some Axs with backdoors to have a profitable call here. Again I leave this to anyone interested to criticize this.

That's all for now. If I get enough people interested in commenting these spots I might keep posting hands that I'm unsure off. Otherwise I guess I'll just find other means to improve.

I apologize for being rude to you Resolve, however I'm not a complete beginner who doesn't know how to use HUD or how to mark hands. I hope I'm at least beyond that. I'm quite on the edge these days and as a fellow poker player you probably can understand that. I thought I would be able to beat 10-25NL with no problem ( and I was for some time ) and then soon enough here I am battling at 2NL in the same waters with players who open shove 56o for 150bb. Only thing I hoped for is maybe someone kind enough would take 1 hour of their precious time and spend it analyzing my footage/database. Was I being very optimistic? Perhaps. Yet I've seen on several occasions even pros helping RIO members with such problems. I'm not gonna become winning player by couple of potential small mistakes I'm gonna find. For me to be massively losing at these stakes I either have no idea what I'm doing ( applying every concept I've ever read or heard very very incorrectly ) or I'm somehow playing marginally bad and being extremely unlucky. I need to know which one of these I am. If I could figure it out myself I certainly wouldn't come here begging for help.

I play 1 game for the last 3+ months now. I already have a HUd/HH program. I never played with less than 25BI for cash. Marking hands very often and / or reviewing all significant pots down to 20bb. What's the actual problem? I'm at the lowest level possible. There is no more moving down for me. The next moving down is going to be exactly - busting. As you can see my time for "learning" is very limited and I can hardly afford to deposit any significant sums again. So if anyone has to offer what I'm asking for go ahead and post. Otherwise I really don't need people repeating thing after thing which are obviously of no use to me at the moment. I can't spend my last 40 buyins marking hands hope that I actually end up spotting huge mistakes or that all this is somehow major variance and I will just grind it out.

The biggest problem is I do not know where I'm at. I played 10NL and 10PLO before and definitely didn't feel like I've been getting crushed. It's not like I make some stupid call downs/bets all the time or I tilt and end up punting off stacks. I'm trying to be as objective as possible and still can't find such huge mistakes resulting in my negative winrate. That is why I decided to write this post and hope someone is actually willing to help, after all I've been playing using the strategies and content provided on this site.

Phil, the amount of content for essential PLO lately is pretty low. Perhaps you could do something about it? There's been 3 videos since the beginning of the year from which 2 were made by you.

Yes and those flush draws would include 2 combos at most AT and AK ( although AK should probably get it in preflop considering all the possible dead money). I put both of these flushdraws in their hand ranges AT in the UTG and AK the original squeezer and we have around 32% 3way in most cases which is more than enough to put it in without hoping that we actually do get headsup sometimes.

I did some rough calculations and considered that you are quite often getting it in against 2 players and put them on somewhat reasonable ranges. The shove is profitable especially if sometimes we are getting 2 folds. We have around 40ish% heads up and 30-35% multiway against their ranges ( I did put 2-3 combos of hands that they shouldn't be cold calling like JTs for the sake of this being 2NL).