OsamaBinFoldin

Sorry, I'm not sure what you mean?

Sample size around 500. So this gives us a pretty good idea of villain's tendencies already

Ok cool, just wanted to make sure it wasn't too thin! Do you think x/f 4 straight and flush cards is good?

Villain only has 75bb left

I read Scourge's reply and I think he has hit the nail on the head. I'm not super happy calling it off here, but it's simply just too likely villain could be doing this with a worse hand, especially BvB where ranges are just super wide. Throw in a couple combos of spazz bluffs and it's highly unlikely that calling here with our particular hand is going to be -ev. 

That's just looking at the hand in a vacuum, in a hand vs range type of scenario. If you were striving to play some type of GTO strategy, where you fold the bottom x% of your range and call the top x%, a fold here would just be blasphemous.

The reason I started a blog in the midst of my downswing was so I could not only hold myself more accountable but also hopefully inspire others to keep on keeping on as they see me bust out of it (which I know I will). Try not to focus too much on the individual beats. No river no fish, right? :D

I'm glad you like what you've seen. Blink-182 was my anti-drug as a teenager so their songs will always have a special meaning for me, I guess it's only apt I somehow think to apply their lyrics to a downswing lol.

GL to you too sir! 

Glad you found something useful out of that wall of text. Haha. I agree. It's going through the steps, analyzing and evaluating others' thought processes and not just taking everything at face value, that will truly help develop our games.

Chapter 4: Finding the Boomswitch and LOLLIVEPOKER

So I've kept up the grind, kept up my studying. And I delved into my database to look at the way I was certain hands in certain spots. And overall I was getting too aggro, and even though that looks good for your redline, the only line that really matters is your green line. So, I knew I needed to tone down on the aggression a little and start playing more showdown poker. People just hate to fold, there is no way around it. 

Sometimes when I'm having a downswing I'll play live a little more (I play 2/2 live). I've just recently started tracking my live play so I can get a gauge of my WR and hourly after a decent sample. Ran pretty hot live, and made just under 3k over 5 sessions and 34 hours of play for a whopping $91.77/hr and 183.53bb/100 hands. Those are some ridiculous numbers and regressing to the mean will happen in the near future, but it's pretty amazing how bad live players are, especially in my country. I play a very fundamental game live: make a good hand and stack a donk. Nothing more to it. When 5 out of 10 players at your table are playing over 50%VPIP... you can expect a lot of junk to be paying you off.

Getting back to playing a more fundamentally sound, basic game has helped. I've been watching a kinda old series from DC, where Dani Stern plays 4 tables of Zoom. Hearing a good player talk through his thought process is actually amazingly helpful. I think theory videos are great, but I personally respond the best to these "live play" sessions, or video reviews where the pros are talking through their thought process. It really gets me thinking.

Online poker can be a lonely game. You don't always get to hear another perspective and it's easy to trick yourself into thinking you just played a "standard" spot, when really there is a more +EV decision.

So always be open to opinions, suggestions. A mistake I see a lot of people making at forums is that they get very defensive about their play. I think this is counterproductive. Even if someone who you think is a weaker player suggests a line that perhaps you think isn't as good, taking the time to properly address the flaws in his thought process and pointing out the reasoning behind your play can and WILL help your game. I surprise myself how sometimes as I reply to posts I have epiphanies, just as much as when someone takes the time to post a thoughtful reply to one of my posts.

Take your time to think through your replies. Don't reply just for the sake of replying, and watch your game grow before your eyes.

Depends on how you construct your entire range here imo. If you have a cold calling range as default I think you should not have a cold 4b range. Ranges are too narrow in this spot to have a balanced calling and 4b range imo.

If you want to cold 4b, you should 4b your entire continuing range, and call off the top x% of it. Do some math and figure out the MDF vs 5b ship and construct a range for calling in every situation. E.g. if 1st raiser folds, 3bettor jams, what do we call with. If 1st raiser jams, 3 bettor folds, what do we call with. If both go AI what do we call with.

Easy b/fold OTT. Your huge bet sizing polarizes your range and villain is telling you he doesnt care.. I would say majority of his jamming range has you crushed once the flush hits

He is not the one shoving, hero is the one shoving. Hero is asking what he should do vs the villain's small 4bet.

They were both unknowns, this was at Anon tables I believe. I agree, btw. If MP is likely to be a weak player BU is less likely to be semi-bluffing and more likely to be raising for value, and we probably are not ahead of his value range in this spot.

I think we are getting good odds to call when he CIB pre flop. We need to call 8bb to win 27bb, effectively giving us better than 3-1. We only need about 25% equity, and even vs a range of JJ+ and AK, AQ has 29% equity. And I highly doubt his range here is only JJ+ and AK.

I don't think that we should automatically assume that him clicking back is just going to be AK, JJ+. We have no basis for this assumption.

Nope, just bad spots in the first 2 pots. But I don't think that your calls are going to be -ev, vs LAGs. Versus nits the KQ becomes close. Especially since he 3b pre to a bajillion bb, we are getting pretty bad odds to call. We could argue for a fold pre. I think you should definitely make a note that villain 3bs to this size with AA. It could be a sizing tell, keep a lookout for it. 

Last hand, fold pre. QT is probably not close to the top of your opening range in this situation. You have better hands to defend. Not to mention it's going to play terribly post flop most of the time. Even if we flop TP we don't want to face 3 barrels. Turn is also a fold. Turn smashes villain's range, and even if he is just barreling with something like a FD he has good equity vs us, but most importantly if he barrels river and we don't bink a Q or a T we are in a tough spot. And as you can see, sometimes even if we bink Q or T we were already drawing dead.

We shouldn't bluff catch or play back light with the bottom of your range most situations in cash games, you have a RANGE for a reason. Play your range, and not your hand. Or at least start thinking about what your range looks like in certain spots. :)

I would probably fold 44-66 to a raise. Continue with 33, 77, 99+, FDs, and 8x. As long as we are not folding too much of our range we cannot be exploited with this spot. It's usually not going to be a problem if you fold the bottom of your range to a raise in any situation. I'm still trying to learn to play my range vs villain's range and not just my hand vs villain's range, so if you have any insight on this it'd be cool.

Hmm I think I might actually agree with b/f after further review. Most of his "air" hands have 6 clean outs against us and we really don't want to let them get a free look at the turn. We should be able to just pick up the pot there and make them fold their equity a fair amount of the time. 

@Earl

I think the villain's range is very dependent on the type of player we are up against. Yes, some villains will have bluff heavy ranges but I don't think we should have a problem folding the bottom of our cbetting range. We have alot better hands in our range to bluff catch with.

Haha! Thanks for taking the time to read my post. Fingers crossed, hope to finish April sprinting and not limping to the finish line. Vamooos!

@Combatcarl

Does this mean youre only stacking off QQ+ from the blinds vs UTG/MP? I would prefer flatting in position as opposed to OOP because we are able to play a lot better in position. UTG range is usually tight enough that we will have a pretty clear idea of how to proceed post flop, but its going to be easier to get creative IP.

That being said, I like a x/r otf as played. We have really good equity vs most of his range, and he is probably going to fold a decent amount of hands that beat us. Weak Jx (QJs, JTs are reasonable hands to be in his raising range), underpairs. Also this will balance our range as we will most likely be x/r sets on this board.

I think the whole hand is well played. Calling the flop in position is good. We wont be folding out many better hands and we have fantastic equity vs almost any range. 

The river ship is a little thin, but i think overall its going to be more +ev than calling. Folding is not an option at any point in this hand. We can get value from overpairs, 9x, TP, flushes, depending on how good or bad the opponent is. With that being said, we have to accept the fact that we will sometimes value cut outselves vs the top of his range, which is nut flushes and boats.

Overall, well played sir

3b GII preflop imo. Even if he really only has a 3b% of 3.4 QQ is top 2.5% of hands. Highly doubt it would be -ev to 4b stack off QQ in this spot. As played I call turn. His range probably will look something like overs + FD, and TT+. I would expect him to just barrel turn and barrel river with his FH as he doesn't need to x/r to GII by the river when he has the nuts here. I'm pretty sure we have enough equity vs a range of like AQcc, AKcc, and TT+ to make this a profitable call. Don't have time to run it through PPT right now though

I agree with doncamatic, I think that 3betting AK here OOP is significantly better than flatting. Do you flat AK here as standard? Do you 3b AKo?