Stephen Baker

Julian, in response to your question at the end of the video, I would certainly welcome a follow up video (or videos) dealing with other textures e.g. what happens we are called on various high card flops, both dry and drawy.

Again, thanks for the video. Really good stuff as always.

Another excellent video. Thank you for the care you put into the these and the also for how you hit the spot with the most common but difficult issues/spots we encounter.very nice work.

At 9.40 we see the range for cbetting river after villain calls our turn overbet cbet.
The line makes perfect sense against a capped Pio villain range where a lot of the stronger the stronger hands have been check raised on the flop but it would be interesting to know whether you have any meaningful sample of applying this approach to the river in practice:maybe there is scope for a part 2 using Hand2Note Range Research as per your excellent range research series :) ?

I can see we will get a ton of folds v the population on the turn:they will not be calling with 3x etc. as per Pio. But once we are called by the population v a turn a cbet I think we will see a much stronger range in practice on the river: it will include decent Tx, some slowplayed sets which Pio does not have in it's range. I would be very wary of overbet bluffing with a balanced range v the non good reg segment of the population after they have called my turn overbet because I think you will be running into a much stronger range than Pio has by the river and you will not see many folds. I would welcome your thoughts.
Cheers and many thanks

Excellent video, as usual. This series has been outstanding.

Would you say that the middle group in your study (WWSF 41-46%) is the most common villain type ? If so, would you apply your reads and act accordingly readless v an unknown based on the tendencies of this group ?

Also, is the H2N report you are using a bought or self created set of stats ? I use H2N but do not have the same HUD/pop ups (I think ?!).

Many thanks

Just another thought. It would be good if you could cover where you would incorporate open limping into your SB strategy and talk about preflop and postflop aspects of that strategy .
I realise that this is a pretty big topic but it would be good to have some thoughts on how you would integrate this into your SB strategy at the SPRs under discussion.

Another excellent video.
In terms of further content, something on turn strategy and also guidelines when facing a raise of our cbet (readless) which I guess is most applicable to the cbet range scenario.

@BArracudaNL
Yes, the solution does include antes.Villain would have to be opening 40% from the CO for 3b jamming KQs to be more +cEV than flatting.

I understand and agree with the general point about being under ICM pressure if we flat too widely and have to pay a considerable risk premium post flop which of course can make a cEV flat a -$ev proposition.
But I was talking about this combo specifically in the context of this hand. It seems that KQs fits perfectly in our flatting range. If we hit top pair we can feel very comfortable, it can play well on high card/suited flops . I think there are better combos to 3bet jam which play worse postflop : a lot of the offsuit Ax combos and low pairs for example. If we jam our suited broadways as well as these other better jams then our flatting range is very weak and it is good to have some hands in our flatting range with this kind of strength.I think we get more value when the flop comes Kxx and villains think we are capped at this depth (which we are to an extent but having KQs mitigates this) and can barrel liberally either with weaker Kx or bluffs against our perceived weak range.

BarracudaNL nailed it really. Essentially, when we are the in the SB we do not close the action and we want to avoid getting squeezed. So this will incentivize us to move more 'mid range' type hands which we might otherwise be happy to flat (if we knew BB would never squeeze) into our 3 bet range.
In the BB we do not face that problem.We can flat with that group of hands and so when we are looking for the 'bluffing' part of our 3bet range we can use weaker hands.

In the spot you are in with ICM implications, I think a flat is definitely better.Your hand plays well postflop . I would prefer jamming pairs , my decent Axo (not done the HRC calc but allowing for multi table ICM I would guess A9o+) and flat the rest of my playable range.
Fwiw, the Pio preflop solution at this depth significantly prefers flatting KQs to jamming almost whatever (realistic) range you assign to villain.If this is the preferred option in cEV terms then this fortifies the argument of a call given the ICM factor.

Against an unknown at these stakes I think getting it in on the flop is best. The population is passive at low stakes so when a villain raises the cbet of the preflop 3 bettor his range is strong/overwhelmingly likely to call so we want to get it in now before the run out kills our hand or our action.
As commented by others, the turn card is one of the worst in the deck. Folding here is hard but I expect to be losing most of the time.

Agreed.If villain never folds 4th pair the fact we have blockers to the nuts does not help !But I do find having regard to blockers ihelps where I identify a villain is capable of folding.

I use the B-B-X line a fair amount and it seems to work well.I feel your pain on the triple barrel bluffs. I think your experience with triple barrel bluffs is not uncommon -it is one I have shared- but there are good spots.The trouble is the pain of triple barrel bluffs failing can leave us gun shy psychologically. I am trying to increase my triple barrel bluffs primarily focusing on identifying capped ranges, blockers and the correct villains.

I would be interested to know a couple of things:

1 .Have you studied (using Pio or whatever other method) which flop textures tend to favour the SB / BB and what you should do with your strategy on these textures ? I think a lot of villains with high flop cbets just auto fire v the BB on middle connecting/suited flops too much and this may be an area where you could set some filters to see if you are doing less well with your cbets on these textures.
2.I would be interested to know what your turn cbetting strategy looks like in general. From the stats I would guess you may be cbetting turn with a somewhat merged range which fwiw is reasonable at low stakes imo: we can often extract thin value and 'buy the showdown' v the generally loose passive population at these stakes who will not bluff raise the turn enough to damage this strategy. That said, I am trying to move towards a spot where I have a more hour glass shaped cbet F/T/R i.e. high-low-high cbet on F/T/R respectively by triple barrelling more bluffs with some good blocker qualities.
3. I agree with @hkabir200291 that at these stakes we can/should cbet and barrel more exploitatively. So while I may use Pio to establish a baseline, I will shift by cbetting/barrelling frequencies significantly away from what is theoretically optimal based on specific reads.

Anyways, nice post and it would be good to hear how you follow and what your findings/adjustments are because this is the type of stuff I am trying to do in various spots.
Gl

Hey Diego. Another great video.A very big yes to more of the same.
I would like to explore the point made by antidesitterspace above as the same point occurred to me when I was watching the video.
Given we are seeking to play exploitively, we would really need to node lock not only the population strategy for flop but also for turn and river after they play the flop this way and that does get tricky given the number of assumptions we have to make.That said, there may be merit in node locking villain's assumed river calling strategy against various bet sizings rather than have base our conclusions on Pio optimal river play in a way which the population would not ? For example, I imagine our value overbets get paid off more by Pio than the population because Pio knows it has call some % of the time.
Now, although you did not say this as such ,the conclusion I took from your video regarding turn play was that once villain checks the flop we could choose whatever sizing worked for any given hand/part of our range as villain is so capped and handcuffed in his ability to play back at our turn probe. I also concluded that we would not have to balance every part of the range for a given sizing because,unlike Pio, a real life villain would not be clairvoyant as to how we are constructing our ranges for different sizings. It would be interesting to hear if you agree with this conclusion and if so your thoughts as to what hands you would exploitively put into the different sizings on this example.
But for present purposes let's assume we go with something like the 66% pot sized bet turn probe size which I think was mentioned for K9 in the video. What range do we give to a real life villain when he calls ? Obviously the run out is important but if turn and river blanks I think we will see a lot of weak one pair hands including those with busted straight draws in villain's range. If turn and river brought running flush cards then there would be more one card NFD in villain's range. Either way , I am struggling to see how overbetting river with K9 is the best way to exploit the population here. If we are using an exploitive strategy I would have thought betting smaller for value with hands like K9 is best to extract value from the weak bluff catchers which I would imagine form most of villains river range on anything other than a 4 to a flush run out and using larger sizings with bluffs. Of course this is super exploitive/exploitable but I guess the theme of the video is identifying spots where we can do this v the population.

Really good stuff. Will the Excel file be linked on this thread ?

Belatedly got to see this and I want to say thank you. This is an outstanding video and I really appreciate the care and effort put into the preparation which translated to real clarity of thought and takeaways.This is a spot I have been looking at myself but you captured the key points in a way that has eluded me.I have come away feeling immediately wiser for watching your video. So thanks again.

I think a follow up dealing with river spots after we implement this strategy would be helpful.You have touched on this in a reply above but part of the EV gain of using this strategy will be to make sure we play the river correctly.

I would really like to see a video on a polarized leading strategy. Also, in the future some theory videos on river spots (leading,check raising ) would be great.

Outstanding Nick.This really resonated with me as I have definitely fallen into the trap of attempted implementation of overly complex strategies from Pio. It would be really good if you could do a series where you look at Pio solutions on flop,turn and river and show the simplified takeaways (again showing the process you used, as in this video).

Mike, agree with the XC.

As for the RFI range I am not really UTG- I am de facto in MP in terms of the number of players to act. Would you still open fold QJo from this position ?

Agree with your points re 66-JJ to a degree.In his videos Janda will often say it is sometimes hard to classify some hands as value bets or bluffs on the flop.I do say they are 'thin value bets'. The higher up the ranking the more likely they are ahead of villain's ranges-but yes 66 is almost certainly not ahead of most sensible flop calling ranges while JJ may well be .

Agree with the check call.

As for Snowie's raise suggestion , I also agree with you. A lot of the time Snowie is good at highlighting leaky lines but occasionally it comes out with something like this which seems to make no sense.

·         http://weaktight.com/7067613

·        
 Mainvillain is 24/17 reg (4.5k hands). He only
3 bets  4% from CO v MP and has a 25%
cold call range. His raise flop cbet is 9%. Other villain (who folds on the
flop) is tight (15/12) with an 8% cc in this position v MP.

·        
FLOP: My preflop range is

http://imgur.com/gallery/41IlSHp/new

First issue is whether to cbet here. I was
doubtful about this at the time. There are not many overcards I am worried
about and on this board there are few draws. I should have some hands which can
check call in my range and on this flop I may end up folding most hands I beat
and getting calls from those which are beating me .

So

STRONG VALUE CBETS:  55,44(6 combos);AA,KK (12) AQ (12) KQ(12)
TOTAL=42

THIN VALUE BETS: these are partly for thin
value and partly to deny free equity to the villains with overcards draws
66-TT(30)

So this gives 72 value combos

BLUFFS: If we work on the basis (see Matt
Janda's videos)  that we need a ratio of
approximately 1.5 bluffs to 1 value combo we would be looking at 108 bluff
combos-so I would be cbetting my entire range here. Now main villain folds to
cbets 62% and button 56%. In practical terms it cannot be correct to cbet bluff
so widely into  one let alone two players
OOP  so instead I would bluff as follows

2 card backdoor flush draws (38)

I am really struggling for decent bluffs
after this which may lead to the conclusion that some of the hands in my value
range above should in fact be check calls . I prefer KQ and even AQ to say JJ  and TT which are likely ahead but  do not want to give free cards.

CHECK CALLS: QQ(3), QJ (12), QT(3).

What about villain's range. 25% is a
massive cold call range. I have trimmed this down somewhat to allow for some
margin of error but I have it something like this

http://imgur.com/2OESK87

My specific hand has 76% equity v this
range and is the best hand 86% of the time.

Now having cbet (which in the light of the
analysis above looks wrong) I am faced with a raise. Villain raises 12% IP and
this figure is probably lower when he has another player behind him . At the
same time that figure may look standard but in the context of such a wide cc
range there will be a decent amount of bluffs. So I have assigned this raising
range to villain:

VALUE RAISES: 55,44 (6) 54s(2) AQ(8)

BLUFF RAISES: 76s say 50% of the time (2) .
Let's say villain also bluffs with gutshots with the backdoor  nut flush draw so A2,A3 cc,dd,ss (6). I think
that even this may be overdoing villain's bluff range. Now against this range  my hand is a 2-1 dog and I have the additional
problem of being OOP  and facing more
pressure on later streets.

Theoretically , I should defend  100-(4/(4+4.2)x100)=c51% of my flop cbetting
range . If we add QJ and QT into the flop cbet range for the purpose of this
exercise (though I think on reflection these are clear check calls) then I
would be cbetting  125 combos and would
need to defend a minimum of 64 to be unexploitable. Clearly , QJ would be in
the top 64 . So should I be calling here ?

As a sideline, Poker Snowie says the flop
cbet was wrong (agreed as stated but other views welcome) but states I should
have reraised. This seems to be me to be wrong-what worse hands are calling my
flop 3bet ?

Anyway I would welcome thoughts on the ranges
(my own and those assigned to villain) ,cbet and what to do against the raise
as played.

Really good stuff already. Looking forward to this.

So here is a hand from today where I think a fold is standard but have a number of issues ...

http://weaktight.com/6996091

·        
Main villain (SB) is 22/17 (1.8K hands). He 3
bets 9% from SB v a button raise and cold calls 8%. He folds to 25% of squeezes
as the caller but the sample is small. However, his overall fold to 3b is 28%
which would suggest he is reluctant to fold in these situations. It is relevant
that the button opener is the mark at the table (39/17 with a button RFI of
50%).

·        
Preflop my squeezing range is tight and value
heavy given both villains do not like to fold (button fold to squeeze as PF
raiser is 29% and both villains have WTSD>30%). So my range here is TT+,AJ+,KQ.
Based on the info above I put main villain on  a range of mid to small pocket pairs (say
22-99),some suited  aces ,connectors ,gappers
and  broadways (say A5s-A8s;KTs;Q9s-QJs;J9s-JTs;T9s;98s).
it is difficult assigning a range here because frankly I have no flatting range
in the Sb here especially when there is a standard villain in the BB( here, me).
But I think villain 3b TT+;A9s+, A2s-A4s;AJo+;KJs+;KQo.

·        
FLOP: I am not ordinarily worried by a monotone
flop especially with the Ace of the suit on the board. The button may call with
a lot of suited trash but the width of his range means that flopped flushes are
a small part of that range. I bet big for protection and value hoping to get
value from the button with all his Ax hands (and possibly weaker including  Tx and any hand with a spade). Checking is an
option to wait for a safe turn but I prefer to get value from the fish and
protect my hand. Another factor in my thinking was that in overall terms SB
rarely raises flop cbets (10% which equates with nutted hands) although on a
more limited sample (4 hands)he has check raised the 3 bettors cbet 25%.

When SB shoves I put him on a
strong range of sets,2 pair and flush draws .He may have some made flushes but
I think shoving here with say a K or Q high flush is less likely and
slowplaying slightly more. My cbet should look strong and he knows he has to
get through a station on the button.  I
put him on a range of A5s, Qs9s, Js9S, Ts9s, 9s8s and 55 in the pure value range.  I have allowed KsTx, QsJx and QxJs as a semi
bluff range.

Against this range my hand is a big dog but do people agree with the ranges I have assigned preflop and on the flop given what we know about villain? So is this an easy fold? Is there a case
for checking the flop, hindsight aside? Any comments on my flop cbet sizing ?

Hang in there. Had a similar day myself on Monday. It is hard to tell yourself that everything is Ok when that happens but logically we must love the fact that there are villains like this filling our tables and probably thinking they played just great when they do this stuff.

So after a break over the summer I am back to grinding and I have made some resolutions. One of these is to try to find or form a study group. I spend a lot of time reading books, watching videos etc. But this is a solitary activity and I think I may benefit from more interaction with other players. I do have a coach and while I would love to have a session every week, realistically this is not financially sustainable. 

So if there is anyone out there who is up for a small study group -perhaps no more than 4 members- who are into discussing HHs, mental game, software, videos,books and other learning resources please PM me.

Firstly,apologies. The link for the HH was omitted from the post. When I went back to Weaktight to find it the original link had gone. I tried to search my HM2 for the hand and have reposted it so you can now see the hand we are talking about !

No, I do not have crEV. Do you recommend it ? I should have talked about this with my current coach but a previous coach said to me that in practical terms of time invested/ reward it was probably not the way to go. I am now grinding 6 hours a day and allow 1 hour post session analysis per day then 4 more hours study at the weekend. If crEV can make a good claim for some of that time then I will definitely consider it.

The first hand analysis is up. Unfortunately the formatting of the images has been a problem so I have asked support to do it but a new thread has been started under poker journals. I am hoping all hand analyses will be posted under this thread in future.

I have been playing professionally for just under a year now and it has taken me this long to get to grips with the problem you identify. For what it's worth,here are my thoughts:-

1. Start by trying to work out roughly how much poker you want to play a week and what non poker activities you want to build into your life-seeing friends,family, recreational activities and just normal down time. Try to be realistic as to what is sustainable on all fronts.

2.Build a schedule using Outlook or similar.Allow time for stuff like meals, exercise, breaks between sessions, pre session warm ups and post session reviews, and all the non poker activities you have identified. This sounds a bit dull and restrictive but I found that only when I did this did I start to work out what was realistic.

3.From experience you will probably know your optimum session length. For me, I start to drift off mentally after about an hour and a half. Plan your schedule accordingly. Of course, in practice you may vary this (e.g. shortening if you feel you are tilting or playing longer if you have the biggest fish on the site to your right on 4 tables). Think about what you will do between sessions. Try to get away from your computer by maybe going for a walk,listening to music etc.

4. Over time review your schedule. You will find what works for you by reviewing in this way. Also sometimes a change in the routine can freshen you up.

While this sounds a bit regimented it does avoid then problem of coming to the end of a day/week/month and wondering how come you played so little. You get to know what you should be doing at a given time of the day. You still have a lot of freedom by virtue of the fact that you choose if and when and for how long you take time off. But on days you are playing I think it is important to have a disciplined and structured approach.

Thanks for that-any suggestion to slow me down is welcome. I am trying to use the technique of vocalising my thought processes also but that is easier said than done.

I agree with Robert. The themed videos are the most helpful and something Felipe does particularly well.