Wednesday, 24 October 2012

barreling 2

"If you bet a street, and the thought of barreling 70% (or an equivalent combination of barreling, check-calling and check-raising) on the next street will make you feel sick, almost regardless of which card falls, you are probably betting too much on the current street"

"preflop raiser OOP - we're committing ourselves to a certain amount of betting, check-calling and check-raising on the next street. If we're not willing to do this, we're opening ourselves up for getting exploited by loose floating by a player with position on us."

Sunday, 21 October 2012

barreling

 defense strategy against flop floats can be generalized to:
2-barrel% + 1.75 x check-continue% = 70%

( We have here assumed that Bob always loses the hand when he bets the turn and Alice doesn't fold. Note that we are ignoring the equity of Bob's hand, and we assume that he never wins a showdown after Alice check-calls the turn. Bob is always behind when this happens, he never improves to the best hand on the river, and he never bluffs the river. These are simplifying assumptions, but this is fine when we're modeling a situation.
Also, keep in mind that sometimes Alice bets or check-calls the worst hand, and then she draws out on the river. So as a first approximation we can assume that these two effects cancel out. )

(On these (low dry) flops we'll often get a call-down scenario where the raiser c-bets any two cards on the flop, and then the preflop flatter sits in position with a medium/weak range of mostly one pair hands and overcards. usually the caller is not strong enough to raise anywhere along the way, so he will often be faced with a call/fold decision on every street those times the raiser fires multiple barrels.

What typically happens when two good, thinking players clash in this type of scenario is that both will be playing wide ranges on the flop (the raiser c-bets a lot and the player in position flats a lot). Then both players drop many (but not all) of their bluffs, floats and weak one pair hands on the turn, and then again on the river. And both players are trying to prevent the other player from bluff-barreling/floating profitably with any two cards on any street.)

Monday, 15 October 2012

post flop skills

" our goal is not to memorize everything, but to design a training method for postflop play."

"For each particular flop, we write out our complete flop strategy. By repeating this process over and over on many different flop textures, patterns will begin to emerge, and the thought processes will become more and more automatic. Through repetition we will slowly build knowledge and feel for how to play on different flop types."

"So the purpose of our work is to define the necessary theory, plus design a training method that you can work with on your own. The more you practice postflop play away from the table, the faster you'll learn, and the better your understanding of optimal postflop play will become. As a bonus, you will get a much better understanding of your own default preflop ranges, and how these interact with flops."
"I have already tested the optimal 3/4/5-bet strategies at the middle limits ($400NL to $1000NL), and they work very well as solid defaults, and as a starting point for exploitative adjustments against players I have reads on."

Thursday, 11 October 2012

on exploiting

theory:

To exploit a non-optimal strategy maximally, we have to make extreme adjustments. Even if the mistake we're exploiting isn't extreme.

practice:

Moderate Adjustments:

But if you think they will catch on and fight back more, you might be better of in the long run showing some moderation. 

Your task is then to find a sweet spot that balances your desire to steal a lot with your desire to keep your opponent in a tight state where you can continue to steal a lot.
So on the long run it might be better for you to steal something like 80%, and fold the absolute garbage hands like 83o, 62o, etc. They might be profitable opening hands in isolation, here and now, but if you open 100% of your hands, your profit from stealing on the button might decrease in the long run.

Saturday, 6 October 2012

Tuesday, 2 October 2012

working w ranges in practise

G flow
We still need to keep our thoughts efficient. Too many combos and we will waste our timebank and block other possible EV+ thoughts. An extreme example is PLO: there are far too many combos to ever get specific here: we have to make groupings of combos. Yet some grouping systems are better than others: those that have specifically looked at the combinations that make up a range are more realistic, and hence lead to better decisions. As in Hold Them, we are going to have to group hands together somewhat at the table, but every bit of specificity can help us work out situations. E.g. if we have the Ace of the flush on the board, we can reduce a lot of combos out of their range. These situations don't come up every hand, but they are a legitimate way to improve edge. Doing combo counting drills can help shape your groupings to be more useful than just: nuts, bluff, medium.

pre - sess boost

..(vids/ notes/ fire jams/..) that will boost me up into that gritty prize-fighting state. When I sit down at the table, I want to be there to crush that specific guy sitting across from me, using all the information flowing from the table and the best concepts I have to maximise my winning.