13-9

If i am running 13-9 over 18 k hands what does that say about me?? Also how would you exploit a player like me? Is this way too tight for the micros?

Scenario: You're sitting at a NLHE table, you've been playing for a bit and you find you are involved in a hand against a villain who is playing 13/9 pre-flop.
Challenge: What does their pre-flop play tell you about their big-picture strategy? What are their motivating goals and fears? What is a good range to put this opponent on? How would you adjust your play to deal with this villain?

Objective: How much information do you glean from those 2 numbers when they're not your own?

you cold call too much.

WOW. We've turned gotigers into a nit.

lol.

Anyway, yeah, now that you're playing tight, you can afford to start loosening up selectively I think, if you do it gradually you'll learn a lot from it I think, just make sure when you do add more hands that you open, you open them aggressively - add a few combos at a time, and resolve to always raise with them, never cold-call, at least at first as you introduce them.

How are your positional stats? How many hands are you opening from each position. BTW I believe you play only full-ring right?


MadMojoMonkey - you ask excellent questions. Here's my shot at them:

Scenario: You're sitting at a NLHE table, you've been playing for a bit and you find you are involved in a hand against a villain who is playing 13/9 pre-flop.

Scared money. Probably folds a lot to cbets, since he plays fit-or-fold. Not likely to bluff-raise like ever. Probably if I'm OOP he'll station down if I fire at him and he has a decent piece of the board. Very unlikely to play back with a good but not great hand like TPTK, so I can basically potcontrol from OOP to at least some degree, and prevent myself being put to difficult decisions.

If he's playing back at me, I'm folding without the nuts.


Challenge: What does their pre-flop play tell you about their big-picture strategy? What are their motivating goals and fears? What is a good range to put this opponent on? How would you adjust your play to deal with this villain?

Their big-picture strategy is to wait for dominating preflop hands, then go to the flop and play cautiously postflop. Their opening range is like {88+, KQo+, AJo+, JTs+}, with a better nit having a much wider range in position, but really, they don't generally steal blinds since they are afraid of getting played back at.

A lot of them don't really seem to have a huge amount of positional awareness, since they are so tight and basically rely on card value rather than aggression and initiative to win pots.

Push them off a blindsteal once and they don't try again all session, so whenever they open the BU once I've slapped them down the first time, I'm just folding unless I have the nuts. Their coldcalling range to a 3bet is like {JJ, QQ, AK, AQs} - sometimes not even JJ.

Again, whenever your 13/9 is playing back at you, he just turned his hand face up.

A lot of flops are going to scare them. Their motivating goal is not to lose big pots. Notice that's not really a goal, since it's about avoidance of something rather than something they want to achieve.

Their motivating fears are that they always put their opponent on the nuts (I tend to do this sometimes myself). I'd adjust by staying out of their way a lot of the time when I didn't have a hand that had reasonably equity against their opening range. When I did have good equity, I'd be 3betting them a lot, since they probably fold a ton to this preflop and they may also call and play fit-or-fold at the flop, so there's going to be ample opportunity to take it away on a later street.

I also want position on them, for all the normal reasons but also because on a drawy board they are going to bet out to protect their hand due to their fear of being drawn out on, so that turns their hand face up for me before I ever commit to anything beyond the preflop action. If they check a drawy board to me, they don't have a piece of it mostly.

Objective: How much information do you glean from those 2 numbers when they're not your own?

A little, but I want to know more about how they behave subsequently to opening, or calling. There's a 13/9/2 and then there's a 13/9/7.

There are 13/9s who get a hand and get married to it, and there are 13/9s who fold a lot post flop, fearing the few combos in their opponents range that beat them.

It's not a bad VPIP/PFR for a beginner (assuming you're playing FR - if it's 6max then it's way too nitty) and certainly able to beat micros. It's super boring and probably not optimal at those stakes, given that every player is hugely exploitable and you could probably run like 26/24 at FR and win bigger if you took advantage of those players consistently.

But seriously, if you're winning at a decent clip like this, keep doing what you're doing and try to improve...the change in your style will happen over time.

+ what Bikes said is definitely something to take note of. So many broadway and low pair hands you're just calling in MP just cos you might hit. I guess this is where filtering them in your DB might help you to see what's worth calling and what isnt.

Boris I was a nit way before I found FTR lol. Preflop at least lol.. Thanks for all the insight... I do think I play my hands face up alot but at this point It's all i know and i like to protect my big hands and check my bad ones lol...

I encourage you to answer the questions in my prior post yourself, gotigers. Consider the lines of reasoning Boris put forward, and put it in your own words.

The reason I chose that approach (as opposed to answering the Q's myself) is that with only 2 numbers to go on, it's hard to gather much. I want to understand what YOU gather from the numbers, as that will give me a better understanding of where you're coming from and what you REALLY want to know. Also, I personally feel that once you know the kind of questions to be asking yourself, you will really start to learn a concept to its fullest.

@ bikes: I keep reading your post and wondering if your reasoning is: At 13/9, you might as well be 13/13.

Sometimes having the answer and then trying to back into why is a better learning experience.

Originally Posted by gotigers1234

If i am running 13-9 over 18 k hands what does that say about me?? Also how would you exploit a player like me? Is this way too tight for the micros?

it depends.

Your vpip and your pfr aren't directly your leaks. Your positional stats matter. Your calling ranges and relative positions matter. etc.

the micros 13-9 nit is typically:
too nut-hunting, fold-happy, pot-controlling, bluff-and-barrel-shy. How would one exploit these traits?
hint, raising c-bets or floating are scary to these guys. And so is getting money in without the nuts.