sil693's return (not that you noticed he left)

welcome back

Yeah I remember you bro. 2009 was the glory days of FTR. Welcome back.

welcome back! i've missed that avatar...

Fuck me carrots! Everybody coming out the woodwork.
Don't know you dude but good luck and welcome back.

just like old times, but better?!
good to hear that life is feeling cool

Originally Posted by Carroters

Yeah I remember you bro. 2009 was the glory days of FTR. Welcome back.

Pffft, that's what all the 2008'ers think. If you weren't there for for the winter of 2006 you don't know what you were missing man!

I remember that face!

So as it turns out I managed to get $40 back onto Stars yesterday so I am already back up and running. In the past I have almost exclusively played full ring for a number of reasons:

- Less variance
- Requires less work / study (imho)
- Regs are worse (imho)
- I can get away with autopiloting
- I like saying that I play 24 tables

Only one of those is a genuine reason to stick to playing full ring and I don't think that reason on its own is good enough. This time round I have decided to try my hand at 6max, as it should force me to put far more time and effort into studying the game.

So its 2NL 6max for me, and in the last two days I have logged 10k hands - which brings me to the first thing on my mind. How many tables should I play? I assume the general consensus will be to start off low and add tables as I get more comfortable, but having tested out playing between 6 and 18 tables over the last two days I think I'm going to stick with 12 tables. Even playing 12 tables of 6max I feel like I have enough time to think hands through, take notes and play without feeling rushed. I'm not playing any fast tables and that definitely helps.

This volume isn't going to be standard for me, it just happens that I've had 2 days off whilst Hannah has been working. So my flat has seen a poker / xbox marathon.

The other main thing I've taken from my first 10k hands is working out how I'm going to go about learning / improving. In the past, I'd maybe look through HEM at my losing hands, think to myself "you should have done this" and just left it at that. If I posted a hand on FTR all I'd look for in a response was "you should have done x,y,z". This time, I'm going to be far more proactive in how I look to improve my understanding.

Instead of looking at hands and thinking "what should I have done in this spot", I'm going to focus on the "why should I have done x,y,z". In this blog, every hand that I post will serve the purpose of highlighting a specific topic that I feel I need to work on. I'll post the HH alongside links / extracts from posts that I feel are relevant. This way, I'll be forcing myself to read up on almost every topic. That has to help, right?

I'll start the updates / hh's tomorrow. That's enough for now I'm sure.

Dave

During my sessions I'm noting down any interesting hands with a pen and paper (there is probably a way to do this with HEM but the pen works fine for me) and going back over those hands at the end of the session. As it turns out, unsurprisingly, the same topics are coming up in these hands. After playing 10k at 2NL 6max the hands I have noted cover:

- Extracting value postflop
- Weak overpairs vs aggression
- Cbetting in multiway pots
- Betting the turn for value
- Playing low pp's from the blinds
- Iso range vs limps when I'm in the blinds
- Double barreling turn scare cards

Of these, the topic that seems to crop up the most at the minute is definitely value betting the turn. In the past, I have been far too passive postflop. I'd cbet and then just shutdown and look to check hands down if I wasn't looking to build a big pot - all this does is give villain the chance to catch something that beats me, or bet (whether this be a bluff or a perceived value bet) and scare me into folding.

Par example:


NL Holdem $0.02

SB ($3)
BB ($1.85)
UTG ($2.21)
UTG+1 ($2.41)
CO ($3.87)
Hero ($2)

Dealt to Hero K K

fold, fold, fold, Hero raises to $0.06, fold, BB calls $0.04

FLOP ($0.13) 7 9 A

BB checks, Hero bets $0.10, BB calls $0.10

TURN ($0.33) 7 9 A 2

BB checks, Hero bets $0.23


Despite villain being a whale, in the past I feel like I'd have checked behind here, convinced that the ace on the board means I'm not getting called by worse than KK - looking at it now though that doesn't seem at all right. Villain can still call a turn bet with 9x, straight draws (68, 10J, 56), 1010, JJ and any sort of flush draw he may have picked up.

Obviously it helps that villain is terribad here and I'm in position, but I still think this hand demonstrates the point I'm trying to make.

I need to pay more attention to spots where I can value bet the turn with hands other than the nuts.

However, I also need to be aware that in doing so, I run the risk of being overly aggressive and spewing in very marginal spots and value towning myself. Something to work on.

Originally Posted by UnmentionableForum

Another thing that may apply: You should bet the turn with a medium strength made hand (second pair, sometimes even AK high) on draw heavy boards on occasion, simply because you should be able to beat any draws that can call, and draws should call a greater amount than medium strength made hands.

For example, we should not always say "okay, we've got the nuts here or a very strong hand on the turn and therefore we're going to bet it, but check behind one pair hands because, hey, we don't want to play a big pot with a one pair hand." That is just fundamentally incorrect at some levels, and the higher you go, the more exploitable it will be. In these spots, I feel like we can say "opponents range is x,y,z... we can't ONLY be betting hands that beat his entire range on the turn, we need to be betting hands that beat x and y at times." So although AJ on a A 6 4 9 board can only beat smaller aces (and some kind of draws), we should choose to bet it against some opponents because it beats the majority of his range. So though it BARELY beats the majority of his range, if we think he'd 3-bet with AK and AQ, we can pound the turn because we think his hand is specifically a smaller AXs type of hand calling down light, or a draw. If we get CR'ed perhaps we can fold, but we aren't really discussing that.

I guess this is what I was trying to get at. Although it is important to note that in the discussion of the quoted thread, there are a number of posters advocating checking these weaker hands on the turn to value bet the river instead as Villain is likely to call a river bet lighter with weak made hands, knowing that is the final bet they will face. The only thing I'm questioning about this is that obviously we miss value from draws.

So I think the conclusion I have come to is that if, by the turn, we have a marginal hand and villain has a number of draws in their range, we should value bet. If villain is unlikely to have a draw, we should consider checking the turn to bet the river to get the most value from weaker "made hands" in villains range.

This may be painfully simple, but I feel like I've learnt something just writing this out. If thats the only purpose this blog serves, it can't hurt, right?

tl;dr - villains range and board texture on turn define whether we should value bet weaker hands on turn or look to check through and value bet on river. who'd have thought.

Dave

So after writing my post on value betting the turn last night (and then thrashing Hannah at monopoly) I played a session on stars hoping to put what I'd read through into practice. The tables were so soft, with at least 2 players of the 60/4 type on the majority of the tables. Obviously this gave me the perfect opportunity to put my "value betting the turn with marginal hands" into practice.

I think I managed to do this is most spots. Having been through the session in HEM I have found one example of where I opted to check the turn rather than bet:

$0.01/$0.02 No Limit Holdem
5 Players
Hand Conversion Powered by weaktight.com

Stacks:
UTG ($2) 100bb
CO ($2.60) 130bb
BTN ($3.25) 163bb
sil693 (SB) ($2) 100bb
BB ($3.73) 187bb

Pre-Flop: ($0.03, 5 players) sil693 is SB
3 folds, sil693 raises to $0.08, BB calls $0.06

Flop: ($0.16, 2 players)
sil693 bets $0.10, BB calls $0.10

Turn: ($0.36, 2 players)
sil693 checks ...

Villains range here is pretty much ATC - he was something like 74/20. At the time I thought I'd hope for the turn to check through so I could value bet the river and be called down light. Seems pretty terrible. Against this player I can quite comfortably go for 3 streets of value with TP. Also, being OOP really doesn't lend itself to checking the turn ldo.

During the session I felt like I was maybe playing a little carelessly as I seemed to be losing a fair number of mid sized pots - although having been through HEM I'm fine with how I played the majority. What I am noticing though is that so far (only 11k hands) I do seem to lose more pots than I win. I realise poker isn't about the amount of pots we win - but I am wondering if this is something I need to address?

In unrelated news - I enjoyed supporting England this evening. That doesn't often happen.

Dave

Agree. Unless you've got a note suggesting he folds to a second barrel, then the whole point of finding opps like this is to go for 3 streets of value with a hand like this.