Rant: Stations are *sob* so hard *sob* to play against

The right play is almost always the opposite of your opponents.

Versus very tight players pf, open up your pf range and take blinds. Versus loose pf players tighten your range and take down big pots as they call you down.

Nobody ever said it was mandatory to c-bet missed flops v's multiple calling stations.

did somebody have a bad day today?

I am a FTR station-pwn'ing badass motherf**ker.

I am a FTR station-pwn'ing badass motherf**ker.

I am a FTR station-pwn'ing badass motherf**ker.

Originally Posted by trump

I am a FTR station-pwn'ing badass motherf**ker.

I am a FTR station-pwn'ing badass motherf**ker.

I am a FTR station-pwn'ing badass motherf**ker.

hellz bellz!

Bitches and hos, bitches AND hos!

Originally Posted by GatorJH

did somebody have a bad day today?

LoL. Glad to be alive today. And lookin' for some station bitches. Let's win some damn money, dammit!

Originally Posted by sarbox68

Bitches and hos, hos AND bitches!

FYP.

You drink it too?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRuNxHqwazs&NR=1

I hate micro-stations with a passion. My cold run of cards and horrible post-flop luck (yes, you do need luck when facing 5 calling station minnows) caused me to break the golden rule of moving up in stakes without the adequate BR.

The play is so horrible I couldn't stand it any longer. Raising 10x the BB and having some jackoff calling me with T8o out of position and flopping 2 fucking pair OVER and OVER makes me want to kill myself.

Goodbye $10NL... hello $50NL. Been there for almost a week and love it. Already made above and beyond the proper roll for these stakes, so bring it on variance! The calling stations can still be found, but there sure is shit ain't 5 of 'em!

Originally Posted by Grinder

I hate micro-stations with a passion. My cold run of cards and horrible post-flop luck (yes, you do need luck when facing 5 calling station minnows) caused me to break the golden rule of moving up in stakes without the adequate BR.

The play is so horrible I couldn't stand it any longer. Raising 10x the BB and having some jackoff calling me with T8o out of position and flopping 2 fucking pair OVER and OVER makes me want to kill myself.

Goodbye $10NL... hello $50NL. Been there for almost a week and love it. Already made above and beyond the proper roll for these stakes, so bring it on variance! The calling stations can still be found, but there sure is shit ain't 5 of 'em!

What site? Is your screen name Grinder there too? It would be pretty cool if that name was open without having to add numbers to the end of it or something.

Edit: Might have a new video soon.

Originally Posted by Grinder

The play is so horrible I couldn't stand it any longer. Raising 10x the BB and having some jackoff calling me with T8o out of position and flopping 2 fucking pair OVER and OVER makes me want to kill myself.

What's not to like about T8o calling a 10x preflop raise? Yep, better move up where they respect your raises.

Originally Posted by spoonitnow

What site?

Edit: Might have a new video soon.

FLMFAO

Originally Posted by ProZachNation

Versus very tight players pf, open up your pf range and take blinds. Versus loose pf players tighten your range and take down big pots as they call you down.

This is wrong.

Tightening up against players who make terrible post-flop mistakes reduces the number of tickets you get in the grand "bust the fish" lottery.

When the rake is low and your opponents play bad with lots of money behind, see flops with your good hands.

When the rake is high or you opponents have fewer leaks, then you need to play pretty snug.

Originally Posted by Robb

Originally Posted by Grinder

The play is so horrible I couldn't stand it any longer. Raising 10x the BB and having some jackoff calling me with T8o out of position and flopping 2 fucking pair OVER and OVER makes me want to kill myself.

What's not to like about T8o calling a 10x preflop raise? Yep, better move up where they respect your raises.

Better yet, figure out what they're doing when they hit and pay off less often. Figure out how to determine the various gears fish get into. When they're going to dump it and when they're going to go into suicide mode. Think like a fish a little. Talk to them at the table and don't judge, just listen.

Grinder, I hope you have Poker Tracker. Go back to your 10NL winning hands and look them over. Are you saying that those wins are all due to your poker expertise? Or are there quite a few in there where fish called you with T8o out of position and you took them for a bundle?

Your jump from 10 to 5oNL is, shall we say, unorthodox. But I will hazard to say many of the regs have seen it here in this forum before. Now that you know you can beat 50, you will have it made. Good luck....

over under on busto?

I love calling stations, except when that calling station is me. They give money to people when they shouldn't. example from tonight.

POKERSTARS GAME #15964768482: HOLD'EM NO LIMIT ($0.50/$1.00) - 2008/03/14 - 00:51:41 (ET)
Table 'Edasich IV' 9-max Seat #6 is the button
Seat 2: pgil ($195.50 in chips)
Seat 3: buddydowg ($106.65 in chips)
Seat 5: araani ($23.35 in chips)
Seat 6: KeiChi ($98.50 in chips)
Seat 9: chevalesse ($26 in chips)
chevalesse: posts small blind $0.50
pgil: posts big blind $1
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to pgil [Ts 9c]
T H K joins the table at seat #7
buddydowg: calls $1
araani: calls $1
KeiChi: folds
chevalesse: calls $0.50
pgil: checks
*** FLOP *** [Th 8d Js]
chevalesse: checks
pgil: bets $2
buddydowg: calls $2
araani: calls $2
chevalesse: raises $2 to $4
pgil: calls $2
buddydowg: calls $2
araani: calls $2
*** TURN *** [Th 8d Js] [7s]
chevalesse: bets $1
pgil: raises $13 to $14
buddydowg: calls $14
araani: folds
chevalesse: folds
*** RIVER *** [Th 8d Js 7s] [3c]
pgil: bets $20
buddydowg: calls $20
*** SHOW DOWN ***
pgil: shows [Ts 9c] (a straight, Seven to Jack)
buddydowg: mucks hand
henk sound joins the table at seat #1
pgil collected $87 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $89 | Rake $2
Board [Th 8d Js 7s 3c]
Seat 2: pgil (big blind) showed [Ts 9c] and won ($87) with a straight, Seven to Jack
Seat 3: buddydowg mucked [Ad Tc]
Seat 5: araani folded on the Turn
Seat 6: KeiChi (button) folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 9: chevalesse (small blind) folded on the Turn

Originally Posted by spoonitnow

What site? Is your screen name Grinder there too? It would be pretty cool if that name was open without having to add numbers to the end of it or something.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Originally Posted by Fnord

Originally Posted by Robb

Originally Posted by Grinder

The play is so horrible I couldn't stand it any longer. Raising 10x the BB and having some jackoff calling me with T8o out of position and flopping 2 fucking pair OVER and OVER makes me want to kill myself.

What's not to like about T8o calling a 10x preflop raise? Yep, better move up where they respect your raises.

Better yet, figure out what they're doing when they hit and pay off less often. Figure out how to determine the various gears fish get into. When they're going to dump it and when they're going to go into suicide mode. Think like a fish a little. Talk to them at the table and don't judge, just listen.

Dayam, fnord, you're talking to us like we wanna stop sucking at poker. Hell no! We won't go!!

when you start running bad at 50NL you will busto fast.

For reasons totally unrellated to this thread, I have decided to make the jump to 50NL.

Fuck it, im moving up too.
$3/6 here i come.

Originally Posted by wesrman

Fuck it, im moving up too.
$3/6 here i come.

F**kin' nit.

Can I put my entire bankroll on one big blind? That would be awesome. That's why they call it gambling, right?

Originally Posted by wesrman

Fuck it, im moving up too.
$3/6 here i come.

LMAO

Yeah, the move up was risky but it paid off. I have well over 20 buyins for $50 NL. But since you're moving up to $3/6 maybe I should too.

I think I preferred fusty professor Robb to Spoon-wannabe Robb

the station is the scourge of the shortstacker. I hate playing with people with 0% fold to Cbets and like 50% fold big blind. Theyre majorly -EV players, but that EV never seems to go to me.

The end.

Originally Posted by Robb

Fold adroitly.

how the fuck did this get in there?

Originally Posted by wesrman

Fuck it, im moving up too.
$3/6 here i come.

soon enough both of us will be there hopefully

Originally Posted by blackatom

Originally Posted by wesrman

Fuck it, im moving up too.
$3/6 here i come.

soon enough both of us will be there hopefully

What are you doing out of the community? Get back in there before you hurt yourself.

Originally Posted by Unibomber14

What are you doing out of the community? Get back in there before you hurt yourself.

Did i touch a nerve??


Was just a joke, you can move up to $400 for all i care.
Actually you make a good point.
(Although im sure it was meant to be a put down)
I dont post enough hands for everyone to critique.
I usually just post them in my OP and get the opinions of my friends.
Kmind was saying that he thinks it would be better if i posted more responses too, but im not very confident in my game so i usually just read the stuff and keep my opinions to myself.
Food for thought.
Thanks.

I was talking to blackatom dude. It's a joke...


besides, you got more posts than I do, and I've been a member longer.

Originally Posted by Unibomber14

I was talking to blackatom dude. It's a joke...
besides, you got more posts than I do, and I've been a member longer.

Sorry. I get a little defensive sometimes. <---Personality LEAK.
Maybe you touched a nerve??? ..lol
I think i got something out of it anyway.
So its all good.
Peace.

Originally Posted by dev

Originally Posted by Robb

Fold adroitly.

how the fuck did this get in there?

Originally Posted by biondino

I think I preferred fusty professor Robb to Spoon-wannabe Robb

Same person. I change in a phone booth between paragraphs.

Bump due to some recent threads.

Originally Posted by Robb

Bump due to some recent threads.

^^^this (x2)

Originally Posted by Robb

Originally Posted by Robb

Bump due to some recent threads.

^^^this (x2)

did i mention this is probably one of my biggest leaks, basicaly out leveling myself and playing weak holdings against fishstations.

It's a short-term vs. long-term thing. I actually was playing against a kind of station at $15/$30 live limit last night, though this was a slightly different type of station than you get at micro-limits.

Basically, in mid-to-high limit live poker, there's a fair amount of aggression, especially in position. People may very well open from the cutoff with J6 offsuit, for instance. And then the blinds will play back at the player (because they know he's willing to raise J6 offsuit!). So the big blind might call or re-raise with 74 offsuit, for instance.

So now J6 and 74 see the flop. And the flop comes AQ2 rainbow. J6 fires off a continuation bet, 74 calls. Turn comes 8. J6, still representing the ace, 74 calls. River comes K. At this point, J6 might bet or check, and 74 might check, bet, raise, or fold.

The thing is, what 74 has resolved himself to do there is not be bluffed by players raising trash or c-betting with air. And to do that, he basically plays as a calling station post-flop in raised pots.

In any event, I was playing against one of these guys last night, and the reality is, what a station does is make it impossible or unlikely to take down a lot of pots with pure aggression. You basically have to wait until you have a hand and then value bet. And thus, what frustrates players in the short term is that (1) their fancy poker techniques don't work and they have to go back to being patient and tight and waiting for a good hand, and (2) if you go card dead, the calling station will almost assuredly win money from you.

But you have to think long term.

Eventually, last night, after 2 hours of total card death, I had 6c4c in the SB and was able to see the flop which came 642, with another 6 on the turn to give me my boat. This guy paid me off royally.

But sometimes, that hand will never come. And you just have to remember that it's long run +EV to play against calling stations, even if you have a bad run against them.

Love this thread.
Can somebody explain this line to me in noobie terms?
Robb wrote:

I hear you crying now. "I can't overbet the pot with JJ on a KTx flop *sniff*." Adjust your pansyass cbetting range. Tighten it up.

Originally Posted by Vinland

Love this thread.
Can somebody explain this line to me in noobie terms?
Robb wrote:

I hear you crying now. "I can't overbet the pot with JJ on a KTx flop *sniff*." Adjust your pansyass cbetting range. Tighten it up.

The bread and butter of a lot of low-stakes players is the continuation bet. They open the betting pre-flop with a raise, hoping to get most of the other players to fold and end up heads up against 1 or 2 pre-flop callers. Then the flop comes, the betting is checked to them and they make a continuation bet representing that they hit the flop and take down the pot when the other players fold.

The calling station may be a bad player in many respects, but the one thing you can say about him or her is that being a station is a +EV strategy against players who make too many continuation bets. Calling station calls preflop with T7 offsuit, flop is Q97, Hero continuation bets with his AK, and calling station calls. Maybe Hero tries again to buy the pot after the turn is a blank, calling station calls. River comes another blank and calling station takes down the pot with his 7's with a trash kicker.

So what you have to do is tighten up your continuation betting range against calling stations, so that it is more likely that when you are doing it you have enough equity in the pot to justify the bet.

Originally Posted by ProZachNation

The right play is almost always the opposite of your opponents.

Versus very tight players pf, open up your pf range and take blinds. Versus loose pf players tighten your range and take down big pots as they call you down.

I know it's 14 months late, but that's not how it works.

Tight players -> raise more often
Loose players -> raise less often
Aggro players -> tighten up
Passive players -> loosen up

in fact if you're a table with eight 50/10 fish (see: live poker) you might as well limp Axs and small pps
in fact, they're so bad you can open limp and show a profit

Originally Posted by Vinland

Love this thread.
Can somebody explain this line to me in noobie terms?
Robb wrote:

I hear you crying now. "I can't overbet the pot with JJ on a KTx flop *sniff*." Adjust your pansyass cbetting range. Tighten it up.

The point is NOT to bet JJ (necessarily) on a KTx board. The point is to value bet when you DO hit a hand. If they're not folding, and you've played TAGG preflop, then when you hit the flop you're WAY ahead in most cases and need to bet/overbet the pot for value.

Like BJ said over a year ago, no one said you had to cbet into 4 stations. If they're stations and you've got air, betting makes no sense. If some stations came along and you have AK TPTK, then you bet (or even overbet) to extract maximum value.

Ok, thats clear....thx.

Originally Posted by iopq

Originally Posted by ProZachNation

The right play is almost always the opposite of your opponents.

Versus very tight players pf, open up your pf range and take blinds. Versus loose pf players tighten your range and take down big pots as they call you down.

I know it's 14 months late, but that's not how it works.

Tight players -> raise more often
Loose players -> raise less often
Aggro players -> tighten up
Passive players -> loosen up

in fact if you're a table with eight 50/10 fish (see: live poker) you might as well limp Axs and small pps
in fact, they're so bad you can open limp and show a profit

Yep. I was thinking of how wrong this is. For instance, against a maniac, if you can succeed in isolating against him, you can play all sorts of trash, because your +EV comes from the fact that you will bail out of hands when you are obviously behind and the maniac won't. So you can actually play loose aggressive against a loose aggressive.

Against a nit, it may be true that you can open up your range and rely on your fold equity. However, once the nit indicates that he has a hand, you have to retreat back into tight-aggressive mode and only play when you can out-nit the nit.

So it's way more complex than "play opposite".

Originally Posted by LawDude

Originally Posted by iopq

Originally Posted by ProZachNation

The right play is almost always the opposite of your opponents.

Versus very tight players pf, open up your pf range and take blinds. Versus loose pf players tighten your range and take down big pots as they call you down.

I know it's 14 months late, but that's not how it works.

Tight players -> raise more often
Loose players -> raise less often
Aggro players -> tighten up
Passive players -> loosen up

in fact if you're a table with eight 50/10 fish (see: live poker) you might as well limp Axs and small pps
in fact, they're so bad you can open limp and show a profit

Yep. I was thinking of how wrong this is. For instance, against a maniac, if you can succeed in isolating against him, you can play all sorts of trash, because your +EV comes from the fact that you will bail out of hands when you are obviously behind and the maniac won't. So you can actually play loose aggressive against a loose aggressive.

Against a nit, it may be true that you can open up your range and rely on your fold equity. However, once the nit indicates that he has a hand, you have to retreat back into tight-aggressive mode and only play when you can out-nit the nit.

So it's way more complex than "play opposite".

Yeah, play opposite is retarded advice that keeps getting spewed around. Such general labels rarely apply well to whole tables and aren't even that great a description of a single player's game. It is often the case that Hero ought to open up and play more hands because of specific advantages, usually relating to weak-tight pstflop play from villain.

You: "Hm, looks like that flop didn't connect with me, but I showed aggression preflop so I need to do a continuation bet against him. There's two diamonds there, so I want to bet an amount that gives him the wrong odds to go after the flush. By betting this strong he's definitely going to put me on an overpair or something good preflop that held up and get out of the hand, because hopefully he's seen how few hands I've played recently. And let's hit the bet button.... now."

Him: "Hey I have a pair of fives; I call. lol "

He just accidentally outplayed you because you're thinking at the wrong level.

Originally Posted by S1x

You: "Hm, looks like that flop didn't connect with me, but I showed aggression preflop so I need to do a continuation bet against him. There's two diamonds there, so I want to bet an amount that gives him the wrong odds to go after the flush. By betting this strong he's definitely going to put me on an overpair or something good preflop that held up and get out of the hand, because hopefully he's seen how few hands I've played recently. And let's hit the bet button.... now."

Him: "Hey I have a pair of fives; I call. lol "

He just accidentally outplayed you because you're thinking at the wrong level.

Great post. Very true at the microstakes.

Awesome thread, just been having this problem myself! Helps me feel better about things