ZeroCloo

Hi Phil,

That's a very well-communicated post, and given the state of the industry that skill might be more important than any of the policy decisions you've discussed. Keep it up.

I wonder, if you're planning on giving out open-card hand histories to users after 24 hours anyway, have you considered just making the whole hand database open to the public with that delay? It seems like there are some useful things that could come of that, like you could offer bounties for evidence of collusion or botting, which would prompt people to create automated identification tools.

I prefer check-call on the river. Seems like there are way more bluffing hands for him than paying-off hands.

The other option is a smaller bet that 66 or whatever will pay off. I don't see the purpose of your large bet.

Q and A are really the only cards we're worried about immediately costing us a pot we're ahead in. But half the deck or so makes the rest of the hand a real pain in the butt to play oop if we don't reduce his range. This runout is a good example of that - if we bet the flop he's folding most of his diamond combos and leaves us with a much easier spot on the river.

I'm betting that flop because there are lots of ugly turn cards and they all improve hands he'll fold to a flop bet. I don't like checking this board oop very often though, for precisely that reason..

River, I think you get more value bets from worse hands when you check than you get calls when you bet. It's close enough that sizing issues might make it a bet anyway, depending on what you think he'll do.

You need to stop. You don't have a healthy relationship with the game. I'm sorry. I know you don't want to. But if you develop a poker career, you will revert to this pattern in stressful situations throughout your life, and it will be awful. There are a million things in the world, look for one that you can enjoy as much as poker, while having a better approach.

(Also, I don't think anyone reads this subforum, so if you want more responses you should probably repost it in General Poker or Mental Game.)

Variance-wise, you don't get credit for extra buyins just for buying in short.

Is the 2k total live/online bankroll, so busting it would remove your ability to play online? If it's purely live bankroll and these are the smallest stakes you can play, then bankroll management is essentially irrelevant, so go ahead and play.

If it's combined live and online, then you should treat it just like you would shot-taking at a new online limit - figure out how much you can afford to lose without damaging your ability to play in games you know are profitable, and use that as your shot-taking bankroll. If you lose it stop playing in that game until you have enough money again.

Prioritizing whether to take a shot at a live game vs. the next higher online limit is of course a decision that comes down to personal goals or preferences.

Very much so. Can't speak to Party games but there are sites/games where HUDs aren't allowed and they tend to be much more beatable than the ones where they are, due to a lack of mass-tablers.

In simplest terms, if two players are playing a game against each other with game theory optimal (GTO) strategies, then neither player can gain an advantage by changing his strategy. This state is called a Nash Equilibrium. These are relatively easy to determine mathematically in simulations, depending on how complex the game is.

When you see "GTO" used here, it will usually mean a single player unilaterally using a strategy near the equilibrium strategy in order to avoid being exploited, and making money off of the parts of the opponent's strategy which are self-exploiting.

Just value bet. Either way he has AJ plenty often for your stack to go in, but I think you're more likely to get the occasional call from AQ/JT/whatever than to induce extra bets.

I'm not saying you should give up on Zoom, just take a couple hours a week for some slow-paced, heavily exploitative play. In that time, stop thinking about PIO, and standard, and GTO, and just think about what each opponent is doing wrong and how you can use that to take their money from them.

That should help break you out of the plateau mindset. If the pace is really troublesome, try some microstakes headsup sit & gos instead, it's essentially the same process. (I think you have to stay really micro on Stars to get a decent population of weird players though.)

Spend some of that study/refining time playing two normal tables, or even one if you can manage it. Give yourself time to pay attention to individual players and think things through more. That should help you get to that higher level.

hkabir I'm definitely not thinking of my hand as a bluffcatcher on the river here, but it's hard to find too much value in a raise with this specific action. I'm checking to induce value bets from worse, bluffs (mostly from CO), and calls of BB's bets from CO that he wouldn't overcall. I think most of the hands that will call a bet from me will bet themselves and I can make a decision later. If CO bets, or if BB bets small, or especially if BB bets small and CO calls, I'm willing to raise.

But against this specifically, BB needs to pay off with just an ace to make a raise at all sensible, and I'm marginal on how likely that is.

I don't think I'm ever bluffing here with this CO and a passenger. Bigger sizing might still make some sense though.

In general, it takes some specific sophisticated action in a previous hand for me to assume that a player at these stakes knows what a squeeze is. Without that I'm inclined to treat this as a BB raise from a nit and enjoy the opportunity to deny him value.

Oh man, a suited connector value raise on the button. It's like it's 2008 all over again. I'm not sure that works in no limit, but I enjoy it.

How do you range BB after the turn jam that allows you to call? I'm not seeing it, really.

When you check this turn, you're opening the door to your opponent to value bet hands worse than yours. Which can be a good thing if you're prepared to call the bets, but it's a disaster if you're inclined to fold, because now he's accidentally overbluffing and you're allowing that to exploit you. If he has something close to a balanced bluffing range, plus KQ which he thinks is a value bet, it's a clear call.

Despite our hand strength I probably think pretty hard about folding the turn. The double minraise followed by reasonable postflop sizing is AA so often even though it's one combo, and once he fires the turn it's probably not KK/QQ. Take a note on this guy that he did it with considerably worse.

Good hand.

What do you peel this flop with that doesn't bet this turn? All of our spade draws just became combo draws, most of our aces bet, sets bet. I know I bet a lot more turns than most people here but my checking range in this spot is like ATs and Js9s. As you pointed out we're getting checkraised here very rarely, so there's not a lot of risk in betting wide.

I feel like if your goal is to bluff out JJ and TT you should be betting the turn, as it's much harder for them to call there. As a bonus you get protection against AK's six outs.

You're not folding anyone at 5nl off of AA/KK on this board.

If we can put him solidly on Ax, he only needs to fold 10% of the time for the bluff to be profitable, potentially much less than that if we have rakeback. It doesn't really make any sense to bluff QQ and not AQ here if that's the extent of his range. There's no calling frequency that makes that good. If QQ makes money AQ makes more money up until the point where he folds so much we're happy bluffing 100% anyway.

I would not expect your flop call to be profitable in the long term.

This seems like a really unlikely way to play AK/AQ/KQ. Straight bluff from preflop, or a middle pair, would also be really out of the blue. It's just hard to figure out anything he can do this with that you beat. I think if you call you'll see QQ, AA, and the occasional 88, and not much else.

You absolutely want to lead the river against this opponent, unless you think his range for calling a checkraise is exceptionally large. Even if his betting range is larger than his calling range, which may be true, sizing still makes leading distinctly superior. When you check, a lot of the time he's going to bet $0.90 again. And unless he calls your raise, he needs to do that four times as often as he calls your $3.50 for you to make more money that way.

Plus, often you end up making a stronger move with the check-raise while your bet size isn't a great deal larger, because he's bet so small. So donking is definitely best.