dayung

When I reached out to QY I struggled with learning and understanding GTO concepts. I feel a lot more comfortable working through solutions on my own now. For everyone who is reading this and is on the fence. I would say if you have the budget and you're probably looking for help if you're reading this. QY is a good bet.

9:40 what's the deal with sitting out here? Everyone just sit outs next blind at msnl

24:00 My thinking would be to call turn and bluff river when he gives up flushdraws, which would happen quite often since his fd will block the IP folding range. So basically stacking bluffs into the river floatbet node.

4:09 K4o I assume this is an adjustment towards the recreational player to coldcall wider. What leaks do you expect to OOP to make to make the K4o call higher EV than folding? I hear a lot of players say 'play more pots with the rec', but I find this a bit lazy.

5:00 J7o x x b75. I don't understand that play, can you explain your analysis? Is this an adjustment to IP being so capped that Third pair is valuebetting?

3:30 Do you ever consider bluff checkraising this hand? Aren't hands make good bluffs by betting also good candidates to bluff checkraise?

Hello Luke,

When deciding how do you decide between bluffcatching and bluffraising? The properties that make a bluffraise will also make it a good bluffcatch, so how do you differentiate between them?

Hello Krzystof, interesting video.

In the first hand how do you go about the flop strategy? My thinking would be to bet small to be able to bet as thin as the underpairs and getting calls/folds from overcard, or using a large bet A8+ and putting more money into the pot vs draws, but letting OOP realize equity with their overcards. How do you determine what's more important?

Aren't you worried about giving IP pot odds to draw?

Nice video! A couple of questions:

30:31 JT7 mono w/ KJo. Does the texture of the monotone flop affect strategy? So generally broadway flops are better for the preflop raiser, but does the flushes that exist in both ranges nulify that advantage?

33:00 A9, I would have used a 75% strategy OTT. My thinking was that our betting treshold is 88+ and get called by underpairs, pairs, draws and 9x. We would still have plenty of 9x in our range to not get completely crushed by raises

2:52 The spot with JJ. I see this quite common in other spots in which we raise non-all in, but the SPR will be super low. What is the logic behid raising non-all in instead of jamming ourselves in these spots? Do we even have raise/folds at this low SPR?

Congrats on your results for 2020!

Are worried about getting counter-exploited playing a highly exploitative strategy? Since the counter can cost quite a bit I tend to worry about getting counter-exploited, also I don't really know what signs I should look out for that my exploits aren't working for one reason or the other. Do you have advice on how to readjust your strategy?

Nice format, also interesting thoughts about playing against the rec. With the recalibrating after seeing showdowns. Wouldn't mind hearing more of how you exploit weaker players.

That makes so much sense, thanks!

Hi Tyler,

I wanted to ask you about some practical applications of MDF. How do you get your frequencies right in game when defending? It seems like you need to know your range fairly exact and being off by just a few % means villains bluff will make too much money.

Hi Patrick,

I enjoyed the video and liked the mindset talk in the beginning.I have one question regarding your betsizings. What is the reasoning behind not rounding you betsizings? So for example 74% instead of 75%, 2.45x instead of 2.5x

Yeah no need to rush

Could also let them know you're interested in a coaching position :)

Hi Ben
4:12 How do you go about studying these multiway postflop spots? Most solvers are heads up only, there is simple 3-way that solves multiway situation. What is your opinion on that software?

Pausing this journal

So I realise there is so much EV to be captured in every node of the game tree. The bottleneck right now in my carreer is to effectively improving every single node of the game tree. So my plan to improve my strategy is pretty simple. Becoming more efficient and optimizing my PIO work and sim a lot of hands. RIO is I think a good place to learn that since it is very theory and PIO oriented.

I don't have anything to really share since it is just a matter of puttin in some time and effort, so I will pause this journal. And also I don't really need it anymore.

Good luck to everyone with their carreers!

Correct me if I am wrong, but the EV of a lot of decisions are similar because it won't get counter exploited and villain makes your hands indifferent. So is it an educated guess that you can group your low Ax together and having the frequencies of those correct? What about grouping Weak Kx and Qx?

What I am trying to ask is. How do you determine the impact of making a mistake in practice?

That makes sense, so in a situation where villain is a weak regular at lower stakes and isn't aware that missed flushdraws are a bad bluff. Does that change the value of the blocker?

12:44 Why would you rather have a spade? My thinking would be that not having a spade unblocks his missed flushdraws, so it would be better.

How do you prioritize your study work? I find it hard to estimate what has the biggest impact on the winrate. Bigger pots are having a bigger impact, but smaller pots that happen more frequently add up as well.

Hi Patrick,

I can't remember the timestamp, so I'll describe the spot. It was a BvB spot against Squa1l. You were in the SB. You decided to RFI A3o, was this an error? Because in the sims I have seen A3o is a limp. But than again there are a lot of differences in models that have been set up, how do you deal with differences in different models?

At the beginning of the video you mentioned the limping strategy with 99. I have seen some solutions with the limp strategy and tried implementing it into my own game. The issue I ran into was that I couldn't make sense with all the mixing, even spending a lot of time I still make a lot of mistakes. Worried about messing it up and costing EV over just have a RFI only strategy, I decided to disregard it for the time being.
So that leads me to the following question, since most of the strategies requires a lot of mixing.

Do you mix all your hands with the right frequencies? If so, how did you do that?

Thanks in advance!

I do agree with what you have said. What I mean is studying exploitative poker or studying GTO comes down to the same thing, to maximize EV. And you don't have to chose between one or the other.

Regress to progress

So I decided to use more accurate betsizings and frequencies into my strategy. It might not seems to be a big deal, but the complexity is drastically increased with it. And with the added complexity my efficiency of playing a good strategy decreases and so does my winrate. I do believe that it will be worth it in the long run. Being efficient in a very simple strategy has the downside that the growth is capped. This means a change of plan, I am going to focus on studying and practicing. Until I am efficient enough to have a positive winrate at the tables.

See you at the tables!

Playing GTO and playing a max EV strategy is the same.

So I went deep into the lab to learn a deeper understanding of the game. One thing I learned is that playing 'GTO' and playing maximum exploitative poker is the same thing. It's just that people making bad plays for the sake of balance that gives GTO a bad rep. I realized I would be an absolute whale if I would jump into the highstakes pool at this point a time. It hurt a bit, but was very freeing to see how many 1-5bb/100 mistakes I made. And even an occusional bigger punt from time to time. I realized that the regs in my pool are doing the same and more. With some exception with the top regs of the pool. And the recreational players are obviously still making a lot of losing plays very frequently, which stays the same across the stakes.

The insecurities start to fade away and I believe that I can become a professional player. I got all the tools I need, I can ask for help if I need it. Now it's just a matter of putting in the time and effort to make it.

That's a huge difference to go from volume to focusing on plugging leaks.
The goal is to get better, at the time I felt that putting in volume was necessary. Now that I know that I can improve by studying I am going to do that.

Which leaks did you find? How are you planning on fixing them? What will you study to do so?
Not any specific strategic leaks, but I got the sense that my frequencies are off in a lot of spot. My plan is to study sims, compare how the pool play against it and how to adjust. And using Simple gto trainer to practice these spot. When a sim make sense than I'll throw it in a gto trainer and drill it into my subconscious.

Day 10: Recognizing skill level

So I feel like I got most out of my volume challenge. It exposes a lot of mental leaks and strategic leaks. Mental leaks I could address directly, but strategic leaks are mainly some tresholding hands. But will add up if I misplay a lot of thresholding hands. So a change of plan, I am going to drop down to 1 table and focusing on plugging as many leaks as I can. Until I can beat 50z pool during daytime (toughest time of the day). And will continue this as I move up.