IwinUfail

Villain has a smaller flush here always.  Like 89cc etc.  river is REALLY close but I wouldn't be surprised if it was a fold.  Bet pot on the flop.

I just can't imagine preflop in this hand being good, it seems as though you're pushing it a little too far.

Calling the turn is +ev.  

I think there's a misconception about the villains in this hand.  This is a 5/10 live game where both villains are very average, I'm not sure if some of you have ever played in a live 5/10 game.  

To put a long story short, villains aren't on the level you're proposing they're on and they're definitely not checking because they think I'm going to be betting this flop a ton.  They're ABC straightforward regs who are playing their own 2 cards most of the time.  I'm pretty sure neither of them would adjust to this because of the slow nature of live poker and people just don't pay attention. 

Yes this is true if villains are playing like that but they're not.  They're playing their own hand the majority of the time.  We don't have to worry about being exploited in this spot.

Just bet the flop. 

I know he's not always check/folding but his range is very capped isn't it?

I'm beginning to think that our exact starting ranges doesn't really matter in these really soft live games because they're completely a function of our post-flop play.  Obviously if you suck postflop then playing more hands is just going to extrapolate on that.  If you have a little edge in good games and no edge in tougher games playing more hands is just going to give you headaches.  If you have a big edge post-flop then playing more hands is only going to help you.

I'm surprised actually.  I thought after the pfr checks (He's giving up a lot) and the caller checks their ranges are heavily biased towards hands that are check/folding.  Our hands equity shouldn't matter a ton in this spot?  I'm happy to accept being wrong, I just want to make sure I see the logic behind it.

Thank you for expanding. I always go through these stages when I downswing, I tighten up and eventually come out of the bad stretch.  I then get confident and start playing more hands and then when I start losing I blame it on playing too loose and tighten back up and do the whole process over.  I just don't have a real solid understanding of how loose/tight I should be playing and I'm starting to get the feeling that it doesn't really matter.   I'm just going to start posting more hands and see where I can go from there. Thanks again!

Is there a big differencw overall between opening 4x and 5x or does it not really matter at all in the grand scheme of things.

How wide are you opening your range up?

#2 is definitely not a fold.

Don't you think you should be opening bigger?

I'm looking a little deeper into this.  Like how wide should we be isolating these players etc. 

That's pretty much the same thing I was thinking.  Live poker is a bizarre thing and there are a bunch of adjustments we should be making to exploit the players.  It's just weird how face up everyone plays, and they win which leads to everyone playing more face up because that's how the other people are winning.  It's almost as if it's causing players to devolve in poker. 

How do we adjust to this preflop?

I think checking the flop is for sure the best option but you're not checking to fold or call specifically necessarily.  It's a spot where you really shouldn't be cbetting 4 ways but you can check and make things happen sometimes.  If you're going to cbet here make sure you cbet bigger.  You're just asking to get raised here.

Yeah after looking at it now it's a pretty simple raise.  Should we be making it smaller with our entire reraising range or is jamming the right size?

I've started taking a breath at the beginning of each hand, this is SO helpful.  I've followed it by saying "Don't become attached to winning this hand" which is something I personally battle so saying it before every hand is beneficial to me specifically.  I think you can then add things when those become unconscious. 

Thanks for the reply buddy. I appreciate it 

I'm thinking about switching this thread over into PGC on 2+2 because I have a lot of friends over there.  Or maybe I'll just keep it here and put it there as well.  

You're not being rude at all.  I appreciate you being honest and leaving your (valued) input.  I wish I could like your post about 1 million times because it's 110% true.  The best advice I've ever heard is:

"Folding isn't losing" 

I can't count how much more money I would have made if I had just folded more in my life.  The problem is it's just still there and I don't know how to fix it. 

What I'm having a hard time with is finding the underlying reason why I'm doing this.  I mean I can say fold more or play with less FPS but those are just band-aids to a real underlying reason.  I get that it's ego related but the hand that I posted can't possibly be ego?  I'm just trying to win too many hands that I should just give up in.  What's the reason though?  Do I just think I'm better than I actually am?  Should I tell myself not to make a play unless I'm 100% sure it's correct, otherwise just fold?  That seems like my best option right now.  

I've had a good week so far at the tables other than my one mishap on Wednesday, tonight we're going to continue the momentum.  

Yes I play in Hammond, are you familiar? 

Again, thank you for the advice.

I just got back from Vegas and am settling back into Chicago.  I played ~80 hrs in 9 days which is good and right around where I expected it to be.  I didn't fuck around at all and just played as much as I felt like.  A lot of my time was wasted walking from one poker room to the next.  If I didn't feel good in a game or I didn't think it was great I would just move on to the next room. I didn't play optimally at all for 80% of the trip though.  I got carried away and played too many hands.  This is always something that haunts me and I'm not sure why.  If I don't see anyone at the table as a threat I will proceed by trying to run the table over. I love to be the table captain and love to watch people have to adjust to me. The problem with this is that they don't adjust, they just do what they were doing initially which is playing tight and I level myself eventually and boom, they've adjusted correctly by just playing tight.  Later in the trip I started to calm down and realized I cannot play a 30%+ vpip in these games.  This leads to a recurring theme though and something I'll run into again when I get home, getting in my own damn way. 

When I arrived home on Tuesday I was greeted by my gf and dog, and after 2 weeks of being alone without them I was back in my element.  Her and I had talked a lot while I was gone about ways that we could work together to improve my efficiency and productivity with poker. I want to increase volume and increase study time away from the table.  I'm very lucky to have her in my life, she wants to see me succeed even more than I want to see myself succeed.  

The plan is to play 200 hrs in June, coming home from Vegas I had 93 hrs so far.  Being halfway through the month already I'm really going to have to push it to reach my goal. Yesterday I went in with the intention of playing for 8 hrs but ended up playing 10 because the game was just too good to leave.  I'm glad I stayed because in the last hour this happened:

Hero is cruising on the night, up ~4k and just being patient waiting for good spots.

5/10

Aggro lady fish opens utg1 60 1.9k (Her and I have a little history, she's seen me bluff but overall views me as a pretty tight player.  She's not going out of her way to play with me.)  

Folds to hero in bb with AsKh who raises to 240.

She calls fast (When she calls fast it's always a hand that is "pretty" to her.  PP, SC, suited broadway, etc.)

Flop (485) Td8h7d

Hero checks (I feel like this flop hit her range hard but she's aggro so I'm checking to call a lot, I don't know if this is good or not.  It's the decision I made and I want to figure out if it's good or not?)

She bets 320

Hero calls

Turn (1125) 3c

Hero checks

She bets 500 (Now here's where I just get lost. I "feel" like I have the best hand a lot which may or may not be true, it's just what I felt at the time. This is what I'm concerned about and what I want to figure out because I think it's holding me back)

Hero puts villain all in for 1300. (Lol I felt like I had the best hand)

She tanks for 3 minutes and calls with JT.

Nothing like lighting 1.6k on fire based solely on feel.  It just bugs me because a lot of my play is based on feel and I've been right so much recently.  Is it because it was 9 hours into my session that my "feelers" are tired and out of whack?   I just can't get over this hump of making these in game mistakes.  They're holding me back SO much.   

This pretty much comes down to meditation then.  I've heard it 100 times already from poker players about how much meditation has helped their game.  I get it though, I've experienced that calmness at the table and it is the zone for sure.  There's nothing that compares to it.  How come I haven't been meditating then?  Laziness I'm sure. 

I'm doing well, I'm going to write something up in the next few days.  It's hard writing a lot my phone, and by hard I mean annoying. :)

I have a lot to talk about though. 

Thanks everyone for the replies.   I feel like I'm getting closer and closer to getting what I wanted out of this thread.

I definitely think everyone's "checklist" should be different and tweaked to their strengths and weaknesses.  I also think we should all just have a default checklist that we can fall back on when things get tough. 

My revised checklist (1.1) had 2 different lists for both calling and raising but I think it's better if you can narrow it down to a universal list.  This makes it easier to remember and you don't become overwhelmed.  Your super detailed list might look amazing and thorough but it's useless if you can't actually use it or remember it in real time. 

I revised mine quite a bit over the last month.  I added in the R.E.M. process from PNLHE. Let me know what you guys think.  Remember this is tweaked for live poker. 

1.) Take a deep breath & remember you can take your time.

2.) Remove yourself emotionally from the hand. 

3.) What is your opponents range?

4.) What's our equity vs. that range?

5.) Maximize. 

6.) What's my plan for the rest of the hand?

I have about 20 minutes left of my flight to Vegas. I wrote up a big update when I first boarded and unfortunately (stupidly) wrote it in the reply section instead of my notepad.  Needless to say it got deleted and here I am writing again.  The good news is this post should be more insightful, at least that's what I'm hoping for. 

From last Wednesday to this Sunday I didn't play at all.  I needed a short break from actual live poker after the rough May.  It's always nice when I have a really bad stretch of poker because it forces me to spend the majority of my time just living and enjoying the amazing life I have.  It forces me to vacation kind of.  I also learned a critical lesson while on the vacation.  It's so crucial to give whatever you're doing 100% in that moment.  I spend a lot of time talking/thinking/ playing poker and I'm wasting a lot of time multi tasking or just being mindless.  The same goes with my everyday life, I just spend a ton of time thinking about poker when I shouldn't be thinking about it at all.  I really worked while I was away on scheduling my days and setting priorities.  Every time I take time away from poker I have great intentions of reading up, posting, playing online, etc. and it never gets done.  This time I segregated a few hours a day to just focus on poker things and it worked wonders because my free time was exactly that, free time! I talked it over with my gf a lot too and she definitely appreciate the effort and said she could notice it. 

I played on Monday for a while. Played mostly 2/5 with a few friends, we do it every so often snd use it as a sort of sweat session where we evaluste each others play.  I've always enjoyed playing with friends and battling with them.  It helps keep it fun and entertaining.  Live poker can get pretty boring at times. It's crazy how much clearer headed I was than a week earlier.  Every time I come back it's amazing how much we can overcomplicate the game. 

I just finished watching Rounders so I'm ready to get to the tables.  Every time I watch the movie I pick up new things.   Today it was that the one of the State Patrol guys was Angel Batista from Dexter.  It's amazing how good the movie actually is as a poker player.  It could have been SO much worse. 

The first few days of my stay will be occupied with mostly bachelor party stuff so there won't be a lot of pokering until Monday.  I'm going to set some trip goals from Monday-Monday, I'm not quite sure what they'll be yet.  I feel like I can set some lofty yet realistic volume goals now that I have a good understanding of what games I'll be playing and when. 

I'm still debating if I want to travel over to the Rio and try playing cash there.  I love the plushness of the strip poker rooms so I don't know if it's worth it for me.   This is just ridiculous though, I should always be putting myself in the most profitable game. 

A thread I started a while back regarding thought process has gotten some more traffic recently.   I really think it's a great topic and I feel like I've made some big progress by working on it.  I feel like we should be working at fundamental basics like this instead of spending time working on specific spots or hands.  I feel like if you teach yourself how to think well and critically you can maneuver your way through hands and problems much better. 

Wish me well this week, hopefully I survive the alcohol.  :)

Android app AND a podcast?  Christmas in June! 

Thanks for responding.  What so you think our raise size should be here?  Should we just jam our entire range? 

glgl!