Harvey.gg

Cheers Dan!

Week Update - 29/09-05/10 - Training site & Youtube, Poker, coaching, Piosolver, etc

Lots to write about this week so I'm going to try keep it brief. My website ([url]www.harvey.gg[/url]) went live on the 29th and we're up n cooking, already with a few subscribers. For those who don't know, I'm uploading midstakes liveplay commentary videos three times a week on my website, access is only $5/week. I think it's a great resource for guys playing low stakes who want to learn what things they need to be thinking about to be successful in the games they're playing in, and to see what works at midstakes.

Microstakes Academy?

I'd like to consider make training videos for guys playing 2nl-50nl as well and am thinking this may be a good avenue for me to explore down the line as an appenditure to the current midstakes videos.

Volume

This week I played 42 hours of poker, across Bros and GG and won a bit. It's my plan to play a minimum of 39 hours of poker a week, no excuses. To do that effectively, I need to actually play more hours most weeks so that when various interruptions occur, I have a volume excess I can work with. I discuss this in more depth in an upcoming video.

Teething

This is my first week playing a full week's poker since end of WSOP a month ago. I'm not yet playing my best poker, but that's to be expected after not being consistent for so long. I've resumed weekly coaching sessions so I can recalibrate myself to a winning strategy and I'm sure in a week or two from now I'll be playing some really solid poker.

Poker Talk - Doing Piosolver wrong, and fixing it

Here's a picture I took earlier this week of me 15 tabling Piosolver during my morning study session,

[img]https://i.imgur.com/WuJqDeB.jpg[/img]

My routine was basically to look through about 30 odd hands from the previous day, ram em into pio, and basically check to see if I was using the correct flop sizing, turn barrel sizing, etc. Doing this I got really good at knowing what size to bet on the flop 'at equilibrium' and what to barrel etc, but a conversation with my coach recently revealed to me that this is a terrible use of my time. And here's why.

The true purpose of Piosolver is to identify sizing schemes your opponents will play most poorly against. Most people do what I was doing, and just try to learn whether to bet big or small on a board and why. But that's not going to help you win any extra money... What you want to be doing is using the solver to identify spots where people deviate the most from equilibrium, and then forcing them into those spots as frequently as possible. Let's look at an example.

BTN vs BB SRP board is 442r

What we should do is run the sim TWICE, first time using only 33% sizing, second one with 100% sizing. Compare the results. Ask yourself how far from equilibrium a reg will play vs a 33% sizing. Most regs are pretty familar with playing against the small sizing in this spot. They may overfold some Q/K high a little bit, but not always and people have learnt to xr aggressively.

If you're BB and someone pots this flop however, ask yourself how you'd react. Personally I'd just fold A LOT because in my pools when people bet big they tend to just have a strong hand lol. At EQ we're supposed to defend some Q and K high still, and most ace high, I gtd people aren't going to do that in practice. People are also still supposed to raise vs this pot sized bet and I suspect virtually no one will have a raising range, so when we cbet two overs we get to realise all our equity - whereas when we 33% and someone raises us, we have to fold equity.

We can use Pio combined with simply asking ourselves, how do we expect people to react to certain bet sizes? It comes down to elasticity at the end of the day. Maybe you think 2/3 or 3/4 does the same thing as pot.

The goal is to identify the most EFFECTIVE size to use - which is finding the balance between elasticity of size and how far from equilibrium people will play vs that size.

Once we've done that, we can sit down and go over our entire range and how we want to play various portions of it for that sizing scheme, and list out every turn card and how every area of our range will react on every different turn. This process can take hours but it's IMO the most effective way to use Piosolver.

Another example:

https://i.imgur.com/eE0fYYh.png

We 3b BB vs BTN and get this board. Pio is going to say we to bet all sorts of different sizes, split etc. What we SHOULD do however is identify the 1 size our opponents will play furthest from equilibrium against. 1/3 pot basically doesn't put any of his range in a tough spot. 2/3 pot makes low pocket pairs and ace highs and suited connectors hate life, so that's the one size I'd use in this spot. Then from there I'd sit down and figure out how I want to play my range using this size:

Checking AQ/AK – blocks his Jx really nicely, and reps super strong so we can do some delaying to get him off underpairs
Bluffs KQ, KT/Qts w bdfd, 89/9Ts w bdfd – give up without
88-TT = check (good because people probably don’t betbetbet bluffs enough on this board)
JT/JQ/KJ = check, delay 2/3
AJ+ = bet
Something like this ^

Alternative approach (coach's recommendation), pick a small size with AK,AQ,88-JJ and bet bigger with the rest - it's a simple split, very difficult to exploit (aside from the fact that no one's exploiting anyone to begin with for the most part) approach.

Whatever strategy you pick, the idea is to sit down and flesh it out, look at how it changes on all different turn cards, get intimate with it, and eventually you'll have thought about it so much that you can deploy it with confidence in game and you'll be one step ahead of your opponents.

People make mistakes in poker because in the 10 seconds they have to act, they're largely guessing what to do. If for every 10 second decision point you come across you've spent 2 hours off table drilling the spot, you will know sometimes immediately what to do or at the very least be able to figure out out on the fly much more efficiently.

Anyway that's the revised solver approach I'll be taking.

Rambled on for long enough today... congrats to everyone who read all of that lol, more videos coming soon!

Cheers,
H