OnMyWay_01012015

Interesting... I agree that we won't be thrilled if we get raised and I also agree that we're unlikely to get 3 streets of value. I'm never sure which street(s) to check in this cases. I bet the flop becausse:

- I thought BB would be forced to play (somewhat) straightforwardly since it's a 3way 3b pot

- Also, I think we get value/protection

Don't you think we should be protecting our hand here? Also, if we check , I don't think BB will be betting weak very often so we're not thrilled either.

I don't think he's got many AX combos but I don't think he's got many bluff combos either. It's one of those cases where both his value ramge and his bluffing range are pretty narrow and I often get lost in this spots.

Here though, I thought his value range was wider than his bluffing range, mostly because he lead the turn 3 way. I didn't think he would do it with a draw since:
- It's a 3b pot and the flop hits my range
- For all he knows he could get a free card by checking
- He's not closing the action

I guess it's still a call sometimes, even when Value combos > Bluff combos, depending on our odds but in this case I didn't think he had much of a bluffing range so...

I would, sometimes. I mean, if he's got a FH we're getting it in anyway and I don't think he's got a tone of AX combos, AK, AQ, maybe AJs. I don't think he will call 3 streets with say JJ or TT so I think checking once with AQ or 88 wouldn't be awful. Do you think it's bad idea?

Alright, that's pretty much how I feel. Maybe I'll see you at the tables soon. GL! :)

This one made me smile... Agree with everything you said. Absolute hand strength, a funny thing... I played a hand 2 days ago I rivered the 2nd nuts (K-high flush) and when vilain barrelled, I couldn't call fast enough! Reviewing the hand I realized there was almost no way Vilain had anything other than the nuts.

"Paying this off multiple times".. :) - CHECK! The only thing I'm worried about is being result oriented/selective memory, so it's nice to see some people agree that this isn't the worse fold ever. I will say this though: I definitely wasn't "quite happy" when I folded here. Painful.

Hey Moonmin,

I think you can't really infer much from their  sizing, not without a read anyway. Some people will minraise the nuts, some will shove... It's very player dependant. I've never played 2NL so I'm not sure how similar/different the player pools are. My guess is they're pretty similar, I don't think anyone really knows what they're doing because if they were they wouldn't be playing 2Nl/5NL - Who knows...

The stack sizes are interesting: If I call the raise then we get to the river with P= 5.17 and Vilain's stack = 1. The way I look at it, he's comitted / AI on the turn (so to speak) but I don't know if that's the right way to think about this spot.

Right, thanks knoxox. Actually that's pretty much where I stand now, this idea that there are better spots at these stakes. It just feels really gross sometimes, especially when I fold hands that are very close to the top of my range. Glad to see there are at least two guys on the internet who think folding here is not completely awful. Reassuring. A bit.

For some reason I do feel more strongly about the turn than the river: I think the turn is a clear fold whereas I don't feel terrible about calling river. You seem to think the opposite is true. Interesting... Thanks knoxox.

Hey Anht,

How would you account for all the postflop scenarios in CREV? I'd like to hear Chael's opinion on this as well. Fwiw, I think you're right: I can't see how calling AK vs [KK+] can be profitable here either. In fact I agree with pretty much everything you've said so far.

Hi SPrince,

"Why do you want him to stab? It`s not like you have the nuts or anything."

I thought I was keeping his range wider and that having him stab would either maximize my fold equity or allow me to get the money in on the flop. I now realize that trying to get all the money in on the flop may not be a good idea when we're so deep. So you may be right, maybe betting is best here.

Definitely agree that as played, flatting turn is best.

Thank you.

I'm obviously not sure what I should do PF. I 3b because I think MP is likely to call with worse. Am I throwing money away by 3betting and not calling when I get cold 4b? I don't know. It's probably very exploitable, but they don't do it too often..:)

I think you're right about folding turn if he doesn't have these one-club hands, I'm very likely drawing dead (That's never good).

Thanks!

Hey Chael,

I feel I kinda have to call flop once I call PF but as Anht pointed out above, I think the best play may actually be to fold pre. Given how deep we are I'd say we're looking at KK+ 90% of the time. I called mostly for implied odds, I basically thought: "We're deep so can't be that bad..." - I think I was way too optimistic given how tight Vilain (probably) is. If you've watched poker videos, you've probably heard it before, something along the lines of : "Vilain being tight means we have better implied odds when we hit" - I think that crossed my mind as well but it doesn't really apply here since even if I hit TP+NFD I'm not that far ahead and I may even be behind...

As for my turn play, the reason you don't understand it is because it doesn't make much sense I guess. If I call turn, the pot is $9.08 and Vilain has got $3.64 behind (0.4P) and I really don't know what to make of it.

Maybe I thought I was protecting my hand a little but you're right there isn't much to protect from. I tink the only Ac or Qc in his range are AcAx which is ahead anyway and maybe QcQx, so yeah...

Mostly, I was thinking: "If I call here, I'm never folding the river so I might as well shove" - This is the closest thing the closest thing to an explanation I've got... Probably not a very good one.

Thanks for your input!

Great point about calling QQ instead of AKs, makes a lot of sense! I believe you are absolutely right about people 4betting ranges at these stakes even though Vilain did actually 4b bluff in this case.

Thank you very much!

"If you're folding flop you should be folding pre instead."

Really? I'm confused here: I thought this was a really crappy flop because anything with a club has EQ vs me. Initially I wanted to get it in on rainbow Kxx or Axx but maybe I have things backwards Maybe I should fold PF since I don't want to shove this deep.

You say that you would call/fold turn depending on his stats. That was the first option I considered too but then I thought: If I call turn, am I folding any rivers? - I decided I wasn't and figured I might as well shove. Are you ever folding to a river shove after calling turn?

I thought his range was very strong here and really the reason I called PF was because we were deep, I was hoping for hearts. I think I would have folded (or shoved) 100BBs deep. I don't have stats on Vilain although now I know his range for cold 4betting PF isn't nearly as strong as I thought it was...

Tell me about it! Happens to me quite a bit too but it feels so wrong to be folding top 2 here. I'm not exactly sure where it fits in my range, I guess I have JJ,AA, sometimes 33 and that's pretty much it as far as better hands. But maybe my range is actually very narrow and so it becomes OK to fold AQ. I'm not sure. I know one thing: It hurts. :)

I'd like to know why you think this is the case as well because it doesn't get much simpler than Flopzilla.

I don't know of any free tools available. I think you can try Odds Oracle for free and if you want to do flop analysis there is also Flop Inspector. The creator of this program is a RIO member:

http://www.runitonce.com/chatter/most-useful-poker-softwares/ (last post)

I  obviously agree that aiming for GTO is not the way to go if you want to maximize profit @5NL.

When it comes to "fundamentals" however, I think learning theory is a very good idea. If I understand what you're saying correctly, you think that one of these "fundamentals" is the ability to put people on a hand/range. Well, I agree... It's a pretty big one :), but I don't see how learning about game theory could ever be a bad idea.

I don't understand people who wonder whether a given video (or rather the concepts touched uppon in a given video) are applicable to the stakes they are playing. I mean, if the video maker is a great player, how could it not be! Whether you play 5NL or 1000NL,  mostly you're playing Poker!

I'm reading Will Tipton's books on game theory and it's really fascinating stuff. Obviously I don't understand half of it yet and yes, if I tried to apply these ideas to my game, I would do it wrong and lose a bunch of money (which I am probably doing), but I still think that studying these concepts is very important.

To me, it's these concepts/ideas that are fundamental.

I agree that CREV looks much more complicated but the problem I see with Flopzilla is that it doesn't do range vs range analysis. Have you ever heard of Poker Ranger? Looks really good for this kind of analysis: http://www.pokerranger.net/Features.

It does Range vs Range calculations and also "heatmaps", which looks really nice. I think it would make it much easier because instead of writting everything down, you could take screenshots and include them in your excel files or whatever program you use.

Hi,

I have been thinking about doing flop analysis myself to try to get a better idea of what my ranges look like. I think Insilicio makes a very good point: Some flops are much more common than others, another example:

A-high flops (Axx) -> 20%

9-high flops (9xx) -> 7%

I was trying to come up with some sort of classification myself and I found a few threads that may help you or at least give you something to think about:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/15/poker-theory/can-someone-give-me-exhaustive-list-all-flop-possible-texas-holdem-plz-thanks-guys-864888/ (See posts by Plexiq (#10) and Erdnase17 (#31))

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/15/poker-theory/statistical-analysis-flops-633448/(See posts by Spadebidder)

This guy actually has his own website and he's done some very interesting research: http://www.spadebidder.com/category/flop-analysis/ (maybe part 7 is the most relevant here)

I haven't done much work yet, I am still unsure how to organize the data/analysis myself. I believe Odds Oracle can generate graphs, which would be much more appealing to me. I don't want to end up with walls of texts either. I'll think about it some more and post if I come up with something.

@RegularBlue: This sounds so right. What you said about filtering hands where I get raised on the river, well, it may be selective memory but really I don't think I even need to do this: I'm almost positive I'll find that I am very rarely getting bluffed. In fact, most of the times I get raised and we get to SD, I get shown a real hand.

I think one of the reasons why I'm not too great at folding is because I have been reading up on poker theory lately and so very often a spot will come up where I get raised/bet into and I feel/"know" I'm beat or not doing great but I will say to myself: "I can't possibly fold here, otherwise I'm exploitable!"

Now, I know very little about game theory, I don't know what my range looks like in these spots and I'm certainly not playing against a bunch of "Phils". I know that my opponents for the most part don't care about balance but still... It just doesn't feel right, on principle.

I'm trying... :)

Right, in-game I was just thinking: "Well, this turn clearly did not improve me and so he's probably more likely to call - I give up." - Thing is, Tyler makes a good point, it's probably a good idea to have some bluffs in my range too, and clearly it's a good candidate. I mostly think about my opponent's ranges when I play, I mean, My hand vs Their range and that's it.  So yeah, in these spots, I quickly give up. I definitely need to think about my own range more. Anyway... Thank you!

That's the kind of things I'm interested in: How to play my ranges. That's also why I'd rather not post "reads" on my opponents. I'd like to know how people play their ranges readless, their "default" plays.

Thanks a lot!