akissv7

Nice results.

Now that you have a decent foundation, one needs to improve step by step. The way I try to go about this to create a topic list of things to study. From this topic list I pick one or more topics (that fit together) and study them and practice them during sessions by putting extra focus on the things I learned. Do this every two weeks or so rinse and repeat and improve stepwise.

I create the topic list by reviewing sessions on a regular basis just writing down in which spots I felt uncomfortable can be a winning hand can be a loosing hand etc. I do not go into depth and try to find out what the solver would do it is about if I feel comfortable in that position and think I know what I am doing or not. For this you do not need a solver. To study a topic one can use lectures and/or solvers to try to find out general concepts. I like to find some lectures and then use the solver to check if I understand why the solver is doing what it does given the concepts I learned.

Playing poker is not about trying to do what a solver exactly does as that is very impractical and just leads to getting lost in percentages. It is more about trying to get the idea behind certain sizes what is it accomplishing. How is the opponent reacting and will the player pool react the same.

Did have conflicting thoughts about how to start simplifying do I go for strategies per flop type or more per spot type.
Flop types:
- broadway heavy
- monotone
- low connected
- A-high
- paired
- ...

Spot types as aggressor:
- Spot 1: Range and NUT advantage and NUT advantage over time
- Spot 2: Range and NUT advantage and NOT NUT advantage over time
- Spot 3: No NUT advantage

As a more conceptual leaner I like the spot approach more as it gives a concept that can be applied in all kind of situations e.g. BU 3B vs HJ but also BU vs BB Call. It are spots where we are the preflop aggressor. Another benefit is that it is more dynamic and that if I know that villain is wider in the situation e.g. calls 3 Bets to wide I can more easily exploit his range given the Spot concept. Within the spots one can still think about certain flop types but one has not to go that deep one needs only to describe why this type of board falls within a certain spot which makes it clear what to do.

Now, to be fair: I made a ton of mistakes along the way, but the thing I made sure of was that at the end of each day, whether I was winning or getting demolished, I could tell myself: It doesn’t matter, just keep doing what you are supposed and one day you might get there

Need to be able to do just that :)

Life
I always feel that feelings are always present so how can one say that first first behavior then thoughts and then feeling. If he's talking about actions to take like wanting to become a poker player then yes I agree but when I play a hand at the poker table as soon as I see the flop the feeling comes first then the thinking and then the action. So as you say when you want to achieve anything then yes one need to start (behavior) first and think about how to achieve the goal and if that is worth it (feeling). One should by the way not wait for the perfect moment but create the perfect circumstances to excel, so building a good morning routine for instance like Huberman talks about is an essential part of becoming a good poker player as well as making sure that your health is optimal.

Poker
Problem here is that one does just not know if one is a good player or bad player unless someone else tells you. Humans are just bad at judging how good or bad one is, our mind is just not wired for it. We always want and therefor our mind will always try to trick us to believe that we are good or even the best at something.

Variance is indeed a big thing in poker and not getting good results for longer periods is just part of the game.

If your temperament is not fit for high stakes poker well that is one of the main things you should work on. One could e.g. limit sessions to at most one hour at a time and make sure you calm down in between and just play more sessions a day. Also making sure that you start with the correct mindset or have focus point (e.g. attacking weak check backs) during the session that is other then winning money may make it easier to take bad beats as that is not your focus point.

Yeah I also struggle at what time to play. I live in Europe and the only site with enough volume I can play on is GG. So one need to balance between two things:
- When is the optimal time to play your A-game
- When are the most recreational/fun players around

If you post your stats (and include Raise First In (RFI)) people here for sure will give some advice,

The bb/100 point forward. Lets go

see above need a shit load of hands to say anything about your real win-rate and indeed there is poker software for that.

As for what is wrong in your spreadsheet it probably has to do with not dividing by the total nr of hands played. Would just SUM the total winnings and SUM the total nr of hands then divide the one by the other otherwise you might end up with the average session win-rate and not the average of each hand.

The line villain took is hardly ever a bluff line he overbet turn and overbet jam river. You have a boat but you hardly beat any other boats espciaially none that villain most of the time has here. You even block his best two pair which is not great either. I dont blame you for calling as I do it many times with e.g. the low set and get beat by a higher set. But when I look back at it I always need to remember myself that in these lines villains hardly ever overbluffs so we need to beat some of his value range to call in this very strong line.

Think the BU win-rate can be better as this is the most profitable position studying this spot and looking at cBet frequency and fold to 3Bet frequency and fold to XR (also how much are you being XR-ed, aka how wide can you cBet without being punished by XR). Is one of the spots you can not study enough.

Also WSD is high and WWSF is low making me think that you miss either some thin value on the river or give up to early.

Depends heavily on the player (pool). Does the player pool 5 bet jam 200bb with AKo and/or QQ often enough if yes then call otherwise just fold.

Think just unlucky that he had that one of the two combos that beats you. He can have a lot of two pair that call you or even worse trips ?

Think bet folding is the best line here. As villain can call with a lot of rivered two pair or even flopped two pair or a lower set that did play passively.

A small range bet is not a 1/2 pot bet in my book it is 1/3 pot or less. So you do not need 75% of value hands and if the bet is smaller what can be considered value is also lower.

Preflop
3 betting 54s is ok preflop, would make it 5x at a minimum though especially deep stacked. Although deep stacked think the call of the 4 bet is to speculative as the pot is not 54bb and your OOP with 54s which only hits the flop seldom and even a pair or a draw is not something you would love if villain bets again.
Flop
Again your call is speculative
Turn
Goes check check on a double flush draw board. Villain should bet his top pairs and overpairs on this type of board in order to deny your equity unless he has a good flush blocker. He can check flush-draws as if XR he has to hate life.
River
I like your bluff as your not blocking villains folding range.

Indeed you will get decent reviews here and for sure learn to think about poker spots your self. Just make sure to include you own thoughts when you played the hand. So try to post them when you still remember why you played like you did,

crush live poker youtube

Preflop OOP against 3 players I would make it at least $30 (that is online) and in live cash games one can go even bigger.

The way you played your up against 3 players on the flop and OOP your AA are way less a favorite now. As played the flop is difficult to navigate and hard to say what is the best play. Assuming that they would raise KK/QQ preflop you likely have the best hand so betting flop seems ok to me. Having said that you get two callers and then someone goes all-in that is a complete disaster scenario one could make a case of just folding. Yes your ahead if he has a draw (but what about the other two guys they can wake up with a good hand also. So folding on the flop and let go off AA could be a thing here.

Anyway think preflop is the bigger mistake. When you bet bigger preflop you might some folds and also if all call. You have an easy jam on the flop as the SPR is much lower.

I am a big fan of GTO+ as it is so cheap.

The way I see it is that PIOSolver and GTOWizard use a lot of money to promote themselves and therefor has to ask a high price to get there money back. GTOWizard did run the SIMS and gives you very nice aggreated reports but you can't run SIMs yourself so that is basically a different type of offering.

Btw there is for PC a total free solver https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9i_TnfnVNU

There is no theory behind these charts they are made by running solvers who play perfectly against each other and the charts represents the outcome. They are just a baseline not something you need to remember perfectly. You need to have a general idea on which hands are profitable in a GTO situation and adjust accordingly against players. E.g. when the BB and/or SB are tighter then GTO you can open wider then GTO. If they are way to loose one could try using a more tight strategy but open bigger. Etc. The charts are just references on what 'perfect' ranges should look like in a set situation (rake, stack depth, perfect play, bet sizes etc)

Against players that underfold big time you can just 3 Bet linear for value only. So you need to figure out his calling range and 3Bet all hands that beat his 3Bet calling range. One can use flopzilla or equilab to get an idea what hands have value against a given range.

Understanding what someone is saying is different then being able to come to the same conclusion yourself. Our brain likes to fool you into believing that it understands something otherwise it has to admit it is dumb and our brain wants to be smart so to speak.

As far as I can see you only learned passively. I would strongly recommend to post hands here and explain the thought process you had and then ask for advice. That way you teach you brain to think for it self. => Active learning

These are general guidelines. The reasoning is that on a 'dry' board you have a range and NUT advantage as the preflop raiser against the BB caller. As the BB should 3 Bet most of his good overpairs and his bets two broad way cards. This means that you have so many good hands that your bluff frequency is not that high that you violate rule 2 if you follow rule 1. On dry boards even AKo is ahead of most of villains range and thus is a 'value' bet.

Variance can be such that you have a loosing session of $87 on 10NL. The only thing I would recommend is to look at you mental state at that time where you still playing your A-game or not. When not playing your A-game it is time to either regroup and play your A-game or to stop the session early and regroup. The only thing that is under YOUR CONTROL is that you play your A-game.

Nice job moving up in stakes.

Hope everything works out in the new year :)

Way to go Cyd.

Just read the blog for the first time and I must say that I admire your mindset and your early bird attitude as well as your results.

Hey there I transitioned from Cash games to Tournaments and looking for an active study group. My discord username is: Jos#7630

When villain has only NUTs and Bluffs and you only have buff-catchers yes then RCE 1 is the perfect number. But that is not the case you will sometimes have the NUTs and thus your RCE should be more then 1.

Preflop would def raise you don't want to give the BB the correct price to get in the hand with any two cards. And you want to charge UTG Ax holdings.

Would make it something like 8-9 BB and call it off if UTG shoves.

As played I think the fold is to tight but not a very big mistake as the BB can easily have a 5 and if he is on a draw he still can beat you on the next street and then there is the UTG player to consider also who is willing to cold call in the middle with a player left to act.