May Review, 5/10 Shot

yo lets see those tinder matches xD

haha. Told you guys I deactivated facebook. Also I realized that I just don't have it in me for a good tinder strategy...my conclusion being you need some staple elements to succeed at online dating. Things that help are :

Being Tall
Being White
Nice Car Pic
Nice Bod pic
Nice Pictures of Social Circle
Facebook/Instagram activity

I have none of those things and building them would take too much out of me so I decided to stay away, not to mention the "runbad" associated with such sites.

edit: oo I see the tinder alert at the top now, rofl.

Hand 2= Squeeze larger, your squeezing range is likely not balanced enough to squeeze smaller, and anyone calling 100 to win 1200~ is getting a great price with all theirs pocket pairs and suited connectors, your better off squeezing larger and having a more defined range.

Why would you check the flop in hand two? seems bad.

"Check-UTG Bets 260, Folds, Hero raises to 520." This is really bad. Whats the point of this line? in fact this is probably the worst of all possible options you have.

Also whats the logic behind going all in blind on the river blind except telegraphing to your opponents that your not likely bluffing?

This is all very bizarre. You need to spend more time thinking about your optimal strategy instead of just focusing on playing and putting in a lot of hours.


My intituion tells me you should spend more time studying, working on your mental game, working out / eating better and playing less. I would guess for every 5 hours of play time you are getting 1 hour of productive work done.

I agree that there's alot of questionable things going on in hand 2. All-in blind yeah looks pretty bad.

Logic of checking flop is that I think even with the small-sizing my range was pretty defined to certain hand types, AA, AK, KK, QQ, JJ maybe the very rare AQ type of hand. I don't c-bet here with 2 people behind with AK ever, so I decided that checking my entire range would let me represent much wider range. There are some live players that squeeze with some weak hands from the SB here (more typically BB) I guess but I know that in my range it's pretty much 0%.

I felt like with a larger sizing preflop would essentially be overbetting to take the pot down with a really strong range as opposed to getting value. I feel like I am good enough to fold on bad flops and turns and was ok about getting calls preflop and obv hoping for a 4-bet. I considered what to do on the turn because I felt I had the best hand and I wanted to get value despite there not being too many hands in general to get value from + not having a bluff balance c/r turn range so I chose a very small sizing on the turn. I'm aware that it was really not making a ton of sense from a balance / game theoretic perspective but my logic was that that it's sometimes just not possible to be balanced 100% in certain spots. So I decided to make the turn raise anyway because I thought it was too +EV (felt I had the best hand at the time and there was indeed some small chance to get value from worse hands). I agree that the river all-in blind doesn't really make a ton of sense. I mentioned I felt I was good enough to fold bad turns and flops but apparently am not good enough to get away from the river in this situation with 1500~700 and end-up going all-in blind which looks awful.

For sure I might have played the hand poorly. As played as far as turn for sure I can see merits to leading turn, check-call turn or, different sizing on turn.

Also, just want to clear the air with you casino and make sure we are both on the same page. I think the lp community is very good and I guess just want to make sure your advice is sort of not with the mind-set that hey this guy hasn't been around as long as I have and he probably is a complete noob or anything like that (sometimes kind of giving off that vibe...last 3+ posts from you in my blog has been mostly negative feedback). From my perspective, how on earth could you tell what I am doing away from playing just from intuition? There are for sure many hypothesis I'm not sure how you can just consistently narrow down to a generally negative point a view. I guess this happens sometimes when you are online and there are barriers to communication so maybe I am misunderstanding where you are coming from. If that is the case, I certainly apologize. I am pretty shy in real life but I don't doubt that we'd get along in person. Hopefully I'm not the type to just want people to give me positive feedback and just pat me on the back of course. I'm just trying to work on improving myself day-to-day and do the best I can so as long as your critiques are genuine I'm overall really appreciative of your feedback~

I am bit confused on what you are trying to say but I did not mean to be disrespectful with my criticism or give you any indication that I am trolling you.

I personally do not know too much about you or your game but I admire that you are willing to openly share your experience.

In regards to the second hand.

Preflop, you want to approach this situation (at 5/10 at least) but having a exploitative strategy, the general understanding I have is if you make it 160-180, your opponents will still peel with the same range of hands. Its not that 14bb is a small squeeze in theory, but in practice in a live game vs opponents who rarely fold to 3 bets, it is. You are better off protecting your hand and winning a smaller pot then letting your opponents have a chance win a big one, occasionally adding AQ, AJo ,KQo hands seems very reasonable to me. When you construct your range like this, you should be c-betting most flops, even multi-way. Now you mentioned you check +fold AK vs two opponents, occasionally that's fine (especially without much history) but in general you want to construct your range so you are playing it aggressively as you would with you AA, so you shouldn't even contemplate checking flops "to balance" your AK. Meaning you want to "balance" AK so that you are playing it like AA and not the other way around. I hope that made sense.

In regards to the check raise on the turn (and carried over to the flop) it's bad in theory and in practice. 9732 with 2 flush draws has so many drawing hand possibilities that you can't give you're opponents the option to check behind with a draw or 1 pair hand if they wish, which is a very common tendency when you play live. Now you said "I wanted to get value despite there not being too many hands in general to get value from + not having a bluff balance c/r turn range so I chose a very small sizing on the turn" Because your range for check raising the turn is indeed not balanced optimally, you need to make a large raise and not a small one, this is pretty self explanatory as having a unbalanced range leads to very easy decisions on the river for your opponent (he is never bluffing here this check raise is 100% for value, now I can play my rivers perfectly by continuing when I hit and folding when I miss)

Stick to 5/10 imo and rebuild at 2/5 if you fall down to 35k. you want 5/10 to be your sweet spot an be in position to game select 10/25 soon as possible. Nit rolling live won't get u anywhere. Long as you know you can crush 2/5, u should aggressively take shots and rebuild again if it goes wrong.

Ok, no worries that's all I wanted.

I think the way you explain your thought process is well thought out and the way I think comes naturally to me. Conversely I'll tell you what I thought about what you said so maybe you can better understand my thought process.

" Meaning you want to "balance" AK so that you are playing it like AA and not the other way around. I hope that made sense."
Yeah that does make sense and of course I did think about balance my AA with AK. And I have been reading a bit of the Phillip Newall limit holdem books to get better at thinking about Optimal play and a reason why I'm thinking about it the way I did was that he mentions that a tenent of GTO play is that you never use -EV plays to balance, meaning that if I feel with the AKo or whatever that c-betting is -EV since he is going to peel alot of flops and I am going to have to either c/f turn, be put in some weird spot with A or K, or have very few if any spots to steal on the turn, the combination of those strategic options have to be +EV for it to make sense to c-bet there to balance my AA. I've been trying to adapt sort of a limit based approach to poker and guys like Hoss, Newall, etc have iterated this same principle.

"but in general you want to construct your range so you are playing it aggressively as you would with you AA"
Just another thought process fyi to give idea of my thought process/style. I think drone666 quoted something by OTBRedBaron on some 2p2 thread where he mentioned checking back alot of flops as part of what he views as what looks like a GTO approach. Another consideration I had was some quote by Ben86 talking about how he was discussing checking-back flops with PhilG and PhilG conversely warned against taking some passive approach. But in general the check-back with AA or check-backs in general is something that I find myself doing alot of. I do miss value in some spots, but the way I think about it the merits are sometimes I make it back by playing more aggressively on later streets, I save money by not having to bluff junk holdings that are -EV, I am able to c/f flop, turn in some situations.

I suppose I can change my sizing of the c-bet, or perhaps use only AKs combos that connect with backdoors on that board and think about the EV with possibly connecting with A or K on the turn and potentially stealing with AKs flush draws that hit the turn somehow? But regardless that was my thought process on deciding not to balance AA with AK. I really can't see AKo being a c-bet on that board.

So I guess my logic with my AA was that I don't have too many c-bets on that board given that AKo I defintitely 100% check. In honestly balancing AK so that playing it like AA might be right (albeit for AKs), and I wasn't really thinking about those 1.5 combos too much admittedly when I made the decision to check. Furthermore I didn't really consider the option of c-betting that board despite not being super balanced with lots of AK or perhaps just thinking about it as a linear range from JJ-AA type hands which I guess can be ok from a gto point of view. Or perhaps as mentioned the problem starts with not having enough bluffs in the squeeze preflop.

"Because your range for check raising the turn is indeed not balanced optimally, you need to make a large raise and not a small one"
This is really good for me and I think you are clearly right here and kinda shows that I don't understand that concept well at all.

You can and you should certainly be cbetting AK on many flops and you can balance that by also betting AA. Now if you don't want to double barrel AK (which is what I would often do) you can check both AA and AK on the turn and your opponents can't effectively know 100% what you have ( I am not advocating that is precisely what you should do, but that it's probably a better alternative then to checking 100% of your AKo on the flop) ... I am obviously simplifying the situation to illustrate my point.. Its obviously not 100% static approach, like I would prefer to have AQ over AK here... but that's smaller things that don't really matter to the point I am trying to make

Also, I've been telling this to people forever but should never take what someone said with 100% authenticity to being correct no matter how much you admire that person, its often blown completely out of context and the message gets passed around like playing a game of broken telephone.

You need to do your own thinking.

"tenent of GTO play is that you never use -EV plays to balance"

I don't really understand this statement and I think it is a wrong assumption, I wish the author gave some better examples of what he was trying to say. I am assuming hes tying to say that you want to select bluffs which would be as close to +EV as possible so you can optimize your overall EV when your betting for value. But just because a bet is -EV does not mean checking is inherently better overall. In this case it very unlikely that the EV gained by checking AK would offset the EV you get by betting and having a less defined range overall. I could be wrong

On June 01 2015 06:02 AndrewSong wrote: Stick to 5/10 imo and rebuild at 2/5 if you fall down to 35k. you want 5/10 to be your sweet spot an be in position to game select 10/25 soon as possible. Nit rolling live won't get u anywhere. Long as you know you can crush 2/5, u should aggressively take shots and rebuild again if it goes wrong.

agree with this

45k seems to be plenty to pay bills and play 5/10 comfortably live

On June 01 2015 06:34 casinocasino wrote: Also, I've been telling this to people forever but should never take what someone said with 100% authenticity to being correct no matter how much you admire that person, its often blown completely out of context and the message gets passed around like playing a game of broken telephone. You need to do your own thinking. "tenent of GTO play is that you never use -EV plays to balance" I don't really understand this statement and I think it is a wrong assumption, I wish the author gave some better examples of what he was trying to say. I am assuming hes tying to say that you want to select bluffs which would be as close to +EV as possible so you can optimize your overall EV when your betting for value. But just because a bet is -EV does not mean checking is inherently better overall. In this case it very unlikely that the EV gained by checking AK would offset the EV you get by betting and having a less defined range overall. I could be wrong

"But just because a bet is -EV does not mean checking is inherently better overall. In this case it very unlikely that the EV gained by checking AK would offset the EV you get by betting and having a less defined range overall. I could be wrong"

Well yeah, I mean sometimes I also get confused in how I interpret that statement...whether it can mean overall EV or not. I do take it to interpret it as I have however. But the statement isn't some mumbo jumbo from some poor quality author or anything imo, actually I think it was hosstbf originally stated this.

On June 01 2015 07:32 TimDawg wrote: Show nested quote + On June 01 2015 06:02 AndrewSong wrote: Stick to 5/10 imo and rebuild at 2/5 if you fall down to 35k. you want 5/10 to be your sweet spot an be in position to game select 10/25 soon as possible. Nit rolling live won't get u anywhere. Long as you know you can crush 2/5, u should aggressively take shots and rebuild again if it goes wrong. agree with this 45k seems to be plenty to pay bills and play 5/10 comfortably live

AndrewSong, TimDawg:

Took some time to blow off steam. As a general rule I use sleep as the ultimate reflection after a bad day of playing poker so we'll see where I am at when I wake up.

Anyway I think you guys are right. I am considering "experimenting" with my buy-in next couple of sessions to playing a 100bb game (buying 1000) instead of buying in the full 1500. I guess this brings up the whole debate about what reasons live cash players have for wanting to be as deep as possible at all times, whether or not it's an ego thing or whatever. I guess me personally I'll use it as a temporary transition thing? Things that come to mind are liquidpoker's Panorama writing about just playing 100bb live during his 5/10 run, and some dongerkim story I heard on the joeingram podcast about losing some huge pot deep set over set at 10/20 claiming he essentially just bought in super deep to be "showing off"

I know when I was playing 2/5 buying in 200bb a huge motivating factor was to get more and more used to playing with 1k behind and playing bigger pots in preparation for 5/10 but for sure at times you wonder whether certain styles of play are suited for xyz and whether buying in full is an ego thing or ev thing or whatever.

buying in full is an ev thing. i think you are a bit too defensive with casino. if you don't like someone's post on the internet just move on imo. but somehow u got casino to spend time articulating his thoughts so that was a good result.

at the risk of you being offended to this, not buying in full seems to indicate a lack of confidence in one's skill. on one hand you are bank rolled to play nl1k pretty comfortably. on the other, there's nothing wrong with grinding nl500 until you are comfortable enough to move up. still plenty to make at nl500 esp when buying in deep.

On June 01 2015 23:04 mnj wrote: buying in full is an ev thing. i think you are a bit too defensive with casino. if you don't like someone's post on the internet just move on imo. but somehow u got casino to spend time articulating his thoughts so that was a good result. at the risk of you being offended to this, not buying in full seems to indicate a lack of confidence in one's skill. on one hand you are bank rolled to play nl1k pretty comfortably. on the other, there's nothing wrong with grinding nl500 until you are comfortable enough to move up. still plenty to make at nl500 esp when buying in deep.

I mean I wouldn't really say offended. Kind of hard to take you seriously though when it comes to poker.

I 3 bet bigger in both hands and checking flop in hand 2 is criminal. Also I'm sure you know but the all in blind is pretty ridic/bad. All ur doing is giving free info. Just don't say anything and shove all rivs if thats ur play. I mean I guess announcing allin blind is fine if ur opponents are retards who will misinterpret the info more often then not but don't fall into this trap. I haven't read everything but I tend to agree with alot of things casinocasino is saying

Buying in 1000 is certainly a good idea if it makes you feel more comfortable & it will reduce your variance slightly.

some pretty srs leaks in your hhs. if its bc you were playing higher than normal that happens but if this kind of stuff is your stnd id recommend putting in a lot more work

On June 02 2015 10:57 PoorUser wrote: some pretty srs leaks in your hhs. if its bc you were playing higher than normal that happens but if this kind of stuff is your stnd id recommend putting in a lot more work

this