KillEV

Interesting, thanks.

About 3betting then, what have I missed in ~4 years of not playing? Because I'm really not sure why we should 3bet TT here. Are we 3betting linear or polarised with a wide value part? What is our plan facing a 4bet? And in general, what is our goal by 3betting?

I know you don't owe me an explanation or a preflop gameplan, but I'm curious because to me it seems far from standard. Both you and maco have said it so now I'm questioning myself! Any particular resources that talk about this in general?

My thinking is that we do just fine by flatting, but if we expect villain to fight us then we could start 3betting TT on the BU with the intention of jamming over a light 4betting range. I don't expect nl5 villains to have a light 4betting range, especially from MP. So 3betting would be more of an exploit against someone who is 4bet-happy rather than a standard.

Good stuff. Inspiring me to study harder :p I'll have to steal these ideas.

Yeah, I definitely feel like my game is patchy lol. I think because I've played for quite a few years I've developed a load of bad habits that are not only hard to notice but also really hard to change if I do see them. The thing I'm struggling the most with at the moment is even finding something specific to work on...

Last week didn't go so well - only managed about 25 hours for poker because I was quite busy. I also started losing a bit of motivation because it seems like the more I work on my game the worse my results get. I've spent some money on coaches in the past and although I feel like it improved my knowledge, for some reason that hasn't resulted in a better winrate. If I could afford it I would consider getting some coach to look over some sessions I've played and give me some things to work on.

IRL I've had a bit of energy in the last couple afternoons and decided to go to the gym more. I already go 3 times per week with a friend but the routine doesn't really include enough strength training because it is higher rep-ranges. So I decided to try an extra 2 days per week and work on deadlifts, squats, bench, and overhead press with lower reps/higher weight. Haven't deadlifted properly for a while now but somehow got a PB yesterday with 120kg x 3 reps so pretty happy with that! Will try to increase this over the near future because it is not quite 1.5x bodyweight (I'm 82kg). Would love to deadlift >2x bodyweight.

+1 for updates. where did you go?

Well manually calculating EV is only going to get you so far because it is only practical to calculate for end of action spots (e.g. calling a final bet on the river, or shoving over a 4bet preflop or something). These are relatively straightforward with a bit of practice and you could even make an EV calculator in excel which I definitely recommend. (Once you're doing this you can easily check out all-in preflop ranges.)

If it isn't an end of action spot then don't bother because the EV of any given decision point is dependent on all future possibilities so it gets pretty impossible without buying something like PIOsolver or CardrunnersEV to do it for you, which is probably pointless until you have the fundamentals down.

Or you could shortcut and find an EV calculator website. I would recommend you make your own though (and test against a website calc) if not only for practice. Doing it yourself over and over gives you a better feel for how it works. There is no substitute for hard work!

I'll try to keep this general - there are more than enough resources on this website and across the internet where you can and should search for more detailed answers.

1. Putting people on a range is something that you have to develop through experience, practice, and work away from the tables. I suggest going through some hand histories and taking a look at it. If you don't have tracking software yet then just check out the hand history posts. Try to pay attention to what villains/heroes do with certain holdings.

2. A good place to start with understanding board textures is to recognise key features:
   i. high-card value (is it AXX, TXX, 5XX? etc)
   ii. connectedness (are there many straight draws possible? Are they gutshots or OESDs? etc.)
   iii. suitedness (is it rainbow/two-tone/monotone?)
   Further from that, it's important to know that board texture is relative to the likely range that your opponent has: for example if villain is MP and 3bets your UTG open, and the board is 654, we can assume he probably won't have a straight and most likely will have overpairs or overcards. Most effective way to start getting a feel for this is to go through hand histories in the forums and look at the different textures, try to classify them in terms of those 3 factors. Even better if you have tracking software to go over your last hands.

3. Depends on the position of you and villain. Post some hands and get some feedback would be the best thing to do, but as for some general rules if you are always getting it in wider than QQ+ and AK then you are probably making mistakes. If you are always getting it in with QQ and AK then you are probably making mistakes. If you are only ever getting it in with KK+ then you are probably making mistakes. As a starting point, if either you OR your opponent are in UTG/MP then only stack off KK+. If youAND your opponent are both in late position/blinds (CO--->BB) then you should stack off QQ+ and AK (PROBABLY).

4. EV calculations take some effort. There are softwares that do it for you but I believe that for someone asking these questions it would be most useful to learn as much as you can about EV before using software. Firstly they are expensive, and secondly you should understand EV and you will only get that by doing it manually a number of times. I wouldn't worry about EV calculations until you start to get comfortable with the more basic things like ranges, board textures, and how they interact.

5. Remembering everything is just a matter of effortful practice. Don't just autopilot - pay attention to everything you are reading/watching and everything you do at the tables. Eventually patterns will emerge. Also don't spam yourself with millions of tables, otherwise you will autopilot.

HTH

Quick update - volume is still low, things are pretty busy at the university but I'm still getting off-table work done.

Regarding these medium won/lost 8-20bb pots, about half are when I'm the PFA, ~35% are when I 3bet, and ~25% are when I coldcall. I guess I will focus on these spots. Doesn't really narrow it down too much :p

Isn't PIO unlocked aimed at players on higher stakes than 25nl? I don't have it/haven't watched it so I'm not sure, but why would it be necessary to apply such an advanced approach to playing nl25 where the regs and fish both supposedly have huge leaks?

I updated my OP - before I didn't say a lot because I wasn't sure I would update very often or if I would continue playing poker regularly.

This week has been quite interesting. I started doing some "mass" database analysis and got quite into it. So far I have been condensing the useful information into excel so that I can analyse it properly later. As for my schedule, I have barely played poker this week:

I'm fine with this. I feel like the week has been very productive, and I've also begun properly trying to make use of CREV to model common situations so that I have a proper plan. It is a short sacrifice that will be better in the longrun.

In Nick Howard's last stream he gave some ideas for filters to run so I tried them out with my last 200k hands, and here are the results :

won/lost between 1.5bb and 4bb (+17.2bb/100)
won/lost between 4bb and 8bb (+101bb/100)
won/lost between 8bb and 12bb (-37.89bb/100)
won/lost between 12bb and 16bb (-30.31bb/100)
won/lost between 16bb and 20bb (-107.95bb/100)
won/lost between 20bb and 40bb (-270.92bb/100)
won/lost between 40bb and 99bb (+1735bb/100)

After seeing the other posts in Nick's blog and after seeing the graphs from the guys in my skypegroup it is pretty obvious I have some big issues in medium sized pots. It is petty fucking horrendous... So that needs work.

I feel like I have so much I want to work on with my game it's hard to find time for everything, but I want to
1. Do as much playerpool analysis as possible
2. Dig much deeper into these mid-large sized pots and spot some patterns in my game
3. Continue using CREV to model common spots
4. PLAY A BIT MORE?!

At least I have some direction to go in nowadays.

Ran these filters and saw some interesting things. Mine are looking different from what I've seen from others so far...

@Nick Howard, here's my coldcall from the BB vs single raiser.

Other than that, here are the same graphs as Resolve, mine looking totally different. I'd really appreciate some feedback on this! Note that I didn't use the <1.6bb because this looks like just the blinds.

1. won/lost BB between 1.5 and 4
2. ... between 4 and 8
3. ... between 8 and 20
4. ... between 20 and 40
5. ... between 40 and 100
6. ... greater than 100

...wtf is going on with #3 lol? Is it possible that by winning like I am in #1 it means that I'm getting to the bigger pots of #3 and losing there instead? Just eyeballing the graph looks like this might be the case because #1 starts off relatively flat and then skyrockets, whereas #3 starts off fine and then plummits... pure speculation though.

I was about to start a thread similar to this, so I'll just ask here (excuse the hijack)...

I know many people on RIO are using piosolver, but I'd like to know if anybody has actually compared the crEV solver solutions to the pio solutions. I don't have the money for pio but I already own crEV and want to be sure I'm not wasting time if the two don't agree.

fuck it, have a like

Could this be related to high fold vs 3bet/fold to cbet?

Hey why don't you start a blog on here? (Assuming you haven't got one already)

Stoploss is a really good idea. Do you have it whether or not the losses are from coolers? Maybe I'll do a stoploss of 2 or 3. The problem is that would interfere with my daily volume goals :D Which at the moment is just to play at least 2 hours. These days I'm preferring to not go for handcount but rather time spent playing.

I feel like my game is improving a lot lately. I sat down and tried to organise a schedule where I can play poker and study for uni. So far it is going really well - here it is:

My goal is to study/play at least 20 hours per week and no more than 30 hours. The rest of my time should be allocated to uni work, gym, and whatever else. I'm quite loose about what constitutes "study" but I'm not letting myself off easy with it. It involves at least 1 or 2 deep session reviews per week, and some working through spots in crEV. I'm allowing video watching to also be a part of study because I don't often watch videos and generally don't watch passively when I do. This is basically my answer to the "Studying Poker" thread I made, and I'm happy enough with this.

My plan for next week will mostly be some sort of player pool analysis and working on my ranges for certain lines. This nitty approach I've started taking might be ok but I'm obviously gonna have to start opening up in the right situations, so I think it's time to start looking for those.

A big leak I'm going to try to work on is when I play poker. I've always had issues when it comes to getting volume because if I run bad, I play for extended periods and get tons of hands in. If I run good, I cut my sessions short to protect myself. This is a terrible approach because essentially it is maximising volume under unfavourable circumstances and minimising it when I'm doing well. You can see from the table there are some >3hr playing days - these are for sure big losing sessions. It is pretty much just a mindset leak and I have to deal with that.

And now this post isn't completely showing everything. I give up, the forum is rigged.

the opening post doesn't seem to show the rest of my thoughts.

I was just saying that I know on the flop he's gonna shove turn because he has

If you have good reasons for these assumptions then it seems you have answered your own question.

My reasons for this are:
1. people are passive and often don't valuebet thin
2. people are super honest multiway
3. I look like I have the hand that I'm holding

I think that's enough to find the fold on the turn but the nagging feeling was that there are so few combos of Ax, so I felt pretty torn.

I should have said that I don't have reads so this is against average nl10 guys.

Still trying to get as much volume in as I can. My results are not improving though and I can't seem to stop losing :D but I will keep playing. Bankroll hasn't been this low for years.

2017 doomswitch

There's a lot of runbad but also I would be naive to suggest there is no mindset shit going on. Something I've noticed in game is that no matter how hard I work on my mindset off the tables, I seem to fall into a black hole whenever I face a tough situation. Nothing I study and reflect upon away from the tables seems to help - I'm just totally blind until the hand finishes. Not really sure how to overcome this. I would say that I will do my best to try to be more confident in my decisions, but I'm not sure if that makes much sense given how my results are!

In terms of technical aspects of my game, it turns out I'm sure that I miss good squeeze spots and I'm also struggling OOP in 3bet pots as the caller. I'm going to be working on this today and hopefully try to come up with some simple gameplan.

Re. the skypegroup, I'm happy now that we have quite a few active members and looking forward to having some sessions.