The Official NLHE Theory and Practice thread.

Sup fellow feeshes.

For those of you wishing to take part in the discussion of NLHE Theory and Practice, this is where it'll take place. We'll go over one chapter a week, analysing what is said and discussing how relevant/applicable it is for the games we play and for online poker.

Having read through the first couple of chapters, I've already found some stuff that will need to be taken with a pinch of salt and that frankly is not sound advice for the aggressive, crazier nature of online poker compared to it's more docile live counterpart. Nevertheless, there will be some really good relevant stuff in here and our job is to dig it out and discuss why it's good, making sure we understand what's going on.

Week 1

We'll run discussion on a chapter weekly from Monday through to Sunday. The first weeks' discussion will officially begin on Monday 19th of April and will cover the fist section from pages 9-21.

This stuff seems pretty light compared to what will follow in the rest of the book, but it'll be a good introduction to get the ball rolling. There's some good basic advice in there though about value betting and the EV of a value bet. This is pretty relevant for you micro grinders.

So everyone that's involved, have a look at that section over the weekend and have a think about what stuff in there you want to talk about especially. If anyone wants to chip in ealier with any thoughts/questions/observations then feel free.

I wont set exact talking points as such, we'll just see what people want to talk about and leave discussion open on the entire chapter each week.

GOGOGOGOGOGO.

in for the subscription

'Adjusting correctly to stack sizes' segment, page 13-14
I know skanksy goes into it properly later - but is he referring to implied odds as the reason to adjust to changing stack sizes?

The discussion will take place in IRC? Or will this be a Skype / Ventrilo thing?

IRC and also just on this thread.

I'm in, just downloaded the PDF, I'll thumb through the first section at work tomorrow.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by mbiz

'Adjusting correctly to stack sizes' segment, page 13-14
I know skanksy goes into it properly later - but is he referring to implied odds as the reason to adjust to changing stack sizes?

---

There's a ton of reason to adjust differently based on the stack sizes of yourself and your opponents. Implied odds is certainly a good one. We obviously don't want to mine 33 vs a 25bb stack who opens to 4x, even if we know his range is [AA KK QQ AK] b/c obviously we just don't get anywhere near the implied odds we need to set mine, since we don't flop a set enough to justify only winning 21bb when we do but lose 4 the rest of the time.

Other reasons to adjust could simply be a result of the alterations a deep or shallow stack has on your oppoenent's range. Say a 20/18 opens OTB and we're 500bbs deep with him holding AKs in the bb. This is obviously an easy 3-bet/felt preflop vs most villains 100bb deep. After we 3 bet and he 4 bets though, it might not be so great to want to 5-bet with the intention of getting it in since villains range for stacking off 500bbs deep preflop is probably consdierably tighter than normal and may well just be [KK,AA] or something. Similarly, deep in post flop spot we need to adjust in order to protect our deep stack vs a stronger range for felting. Consequently, this works both ways and we can piut more pressure on our oppoenents, being able to threaten a 200bb stack for instacne in a 3 bet pot while only risking a fraction of that ourselves.

Say we 3-bet our AK 500bb deep to 11bb and the aggro BU villain flats. He folds to 3-bets 70% of the time. On an KJ9tt flop, we c-bet 14bb into 22bb and he's raises to 65bb. Now, if we call here, we're looking at a turn barrel of around 100bb and a river shove of 300ish. So with his flop raise, where we'd consdier doing nothing but staking off vs the draws worse Ks etc he can have 100bb deep, we're now in a situation where villain has threatened a lot of our chips and we don't think we're +EV vs his range for felting 500bb. if we're unsure of his frequencies and he's an aggro decent post flop player, we might decide to check the flop to protect our hand anbd keep the pot small oop where out massive stack is in danger, particularly if he isn't stationy and wont call 3 streets of value somewhat lightly. So our post-flop play totally changes in certain deep situations too.

Similarly we might want to avoid 3-betting hands like 99 for value preflop in this spot, since a 4 bet threatens a ton of our chips and we can't just stack off preflop.

So when we're deep we're looking to avoid reverse implied odds situations like playing AQo oop where we can flop dominated hands etc. We might want to fold these types of hands to our opponents 3-bet and continue more with stuff like 98s A2s 55 etc that have the potential to stack a big hand for 500bbs and also wont get us into too many bad reverse implied odds situations where we're the one's either beating a bluff or crushed facing action postflop.

So yeah stack sizes affect a ton of stuff: implieds odds being a big part of it. Hand/range selection for certain spots can change and postflop play can also change, making us less likely to build big pots oop with way ahead/way behind hands in deep pots and more likely to want to pot control and protect our stack in these situations instead.

As a general rule, the deeper you are, the tighter your range for felting in any given spot should be as your opponents range will be tighter and therefore have more equity vs you.

When Sklansky says

"when your opponent has $300 behind you do one thing and $5000 behind you do another."

It's easy to see how these concepts tie in here. If we have AJo in a 10/20NL game and the BU with $300 opens to 60, AJo is a trivial shove a lot of the time. When he has $5000 we might be very weary about inflating the pot oop with a potentially dominated hand in a 3 bet pot and chose to just flat instead, in order to keep worse hands in our opponent's range which we perhaps dominate (A9o for example) which he'll felt with the $300 stack and never ever with the $5000 stack.

Bit of a rant, but yeah everything changes with stack sizes not just implied odds. A lot of how to adjust is just common sense imo.

Like for instance the following hand, shoving on the flop would have probably been best, given the stack sizes, si?

Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

BB ($10.33)
UTG ($1.40)
MP ($3.77)
CO ($5.18)
Hero (Button) ($4.57)
SB ($8.88)

Preflop: Hero is Button with A:club:, 9:club:
UTG calls $0.05, MP calls $0.05, 1 fold, Hero bets $0.25, 1 fold, BB calls $0.20, UTG calls $0.20, MP calls $0.20

Flop: ($1.02) 10:diamond:, 7:club:, 10:club: (4 players)
BB checks, UTG bets $0.20, MP calls $0.20, Hero calls $0.20, 1 fold

Turn: ($1.62) K:spade: (3 players)
UTG bets $0.95 (All-In), 1 fold, Hero calls $0.95

River: ($3.52) Q:heart: (2 players, 1 all-in)

Total pot: $3.52 | Rake: $0.15

Not a fully clear cut hand, especially because of MP being in the hand on the flop. Also with a paired board full houses and quads are possible, so you don't know if you have to discount the flush you are drawing to.

Calling the turn may actually be a mistake. Let's pretend that the times you win with A-high, an A river and a 9 river outweigh the times someone has a full house when you do make your flush and pretend that you have exactly 9 outs. 9 outs once is 18%, so you may actually be correct to fold.

If we ignore MP in the hand shoving the flop does ensure you get the money in while there are two cards to come, which means your equity portion of the pot (assuming 9 solid outs again) is 36% rather than 18% making it correct to get all-in on the flop. Any equity you may realise by getting some folds just add to your EV (like if he's betting with two random overcards that may - and with this turn does - hit the turn).

If we don't ignore MP we have two opponents with two different effective stack sizes. So we may be correct to just get all-in vs UTG but not be correct to just get all-in vs MP. While it greatly complicates the example it may be considered an example in itself of how stack sizes change some moves from right to wrong and the reverse.

so to start off the disscusion, does anyone care to share what their feelings are on the key fundamentals skills that are listed in the book? Perhaps list what you do to bring these skills to game. Some examples, some practices and your prospective of them from your point of view.

-Manipulating the pot size
-Adjusting correctly to stack sizes
-Winning the battle of mistakes
-Reading hands
-Manipulating opponents into playing badly

Which do you tend to use more often? Which are you good at, lacking at, horrible at?
I know I could use some work in all these areas. Please tell me what you do to use these skills in your every day grind.

Wow. This discussion is a bit slow. Are people not reading or are they afraid to post? I urge all players that are starting to learn poker to take part in the discussion. This is a very important book and, in my humble opinion, probably the best book for beginners.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Santo2True

so to start off the disscusion, does anyone care to share what their feelings are on the key fundamentals skills that are listed in the book? Perhaps list what you do to bring these skills to game. Some examples, some practices and your prospective of them from your point of view.

-Manipulating the pot size
-Adjusting correctly to stack sizes
-Winning the battle of mistakes
-Reading hands
-Manipulating opponents into playing badly

Which do you tend to use more often? Which are you good at, lacking at, horrible at?
I know I could use some work in all these areas. Please tell me what you do to use these skills in your every day grind.

---

In order of what I feel is most important:

Reading Hands
First thing: remember that we are never putting our opponents "on a hand." We are putting our opponent on a range. We want to put our opponents on a range of hands that may play this or that way. The range of hands that villain may hold is very dependent on his playing style and any reads we may have.

A very general example is villain calling our MP open from the button and then raising our cbet on a T62 rainbow flop. We know villain to be quite passive as we have played many hands with him prior to this one hand. This is the first time we've seen him raise a cbet. On such a dry board (there are no flush draws on the board), what can he be raising with? With such a passive opponent, we can probably safely put him on a range like {TT, 66, 22}. What about JJ+ (overpairs)? A common mistake new players make is including hands that we took out of a players range on an earlier street. We can discount JJ+-type hands since he did not three-bet preflop. (Please don't nitpick this example and say villain shouldn't three-bet JJ here...I'm just coming up with an example off the top of my head). With no three-bet, we take JJ+ out of his range after the preflop action. We can't suddenly choose to include JJ+ on the flop.

By reading ranges (and becoming good at it), we can pick prime spots to value bet, bluff, etc. If we know villain has top-pair hands and fold them a lot to aggression, we can turn our weak hand/draw into a bluff/semi-bluff. If we know villain has a strong range and we cannot make him fold, we can counter by simply folding ourselves. If we know villain has a very strong range but we have the nuts, we can bet largely on all three streets to set up a river shove. The takeaway point here is that by becoming a good hand-reader (or range-reader if you will), we know exactly how to play against our opponents (and we will lessen our chances of making a mistake).

Manipulating the Pot Size
A mistake I always made when starting poker was being afraid to bet my set. I was simply afraid of "betting villain off his hand." I would check hoping villain would bet so I can call to "disguise" my hand or check-raise for whatever reason. A whole lot of the time, I ended up on the river with a tiny pot. There was not much value I was able to get due to my lack of pot-size manipulation.

Ironically enough, in a lot these hands from my early poker career, I would lose a huge pot with a marginal hand. I was allowing villain to create a large pot in which I may have stationed off my stack.

Or perhaps I missed a standard turn check that I should have made to manipulate the pot-size into being smaller by the river.

I hate the "small hand, small pot; big hand, big pot" blanket statement as do most players. Blanket statements in poker are horrible. As Sklansky explained, TPTK may be a stack off against some opponents while it may be an easy bet-fold against others (this relates back to our range-reading). We want to win the big pots and we can do so by getting into situations where our range is stronger than villain's range in these big pots.

Manipulating pot-size is covered pretty well in Professional No Limit Hold 'Em. I'm sure we will have a book review on that book as well.

Winning the Battle of Mistakes
As you may (should) have read, when we make less mistakes than our opponents, we profit. If our opponent stacks off too lightly and we don't stack off in those same "bad" spots, we profit from the difference in mistakes. If villain misses value with his nut hands but we always get value from the same kinds of hands, we profit from the difference in mistakes.

However, I feel there is a bigger mistake that most poker players (myself included) make that is not necessarily related to the physical cards and hands: tilt. Imagine a perfect scenario where we never ever tilt and we're at a table of hotheads. These players are making the mistake of tilting off money while we never make that mistake because we are not playing with our emotions, we're playing with our brains. We would make so much money at this table, it's crazy.

My point here is that mistakes don't necessarily have to be made during actual hands. If my opponents always play when they're tired and just get home from work and I never do, I win the battle of mistakes. If my opponent fails to observe what is happening at the table (live poker) and I make these observations, I win the battle of mistakes. I can go on and on. I feel the most important (and most easily avoidable) mistake is controlling tilt. If we can't control it, we can learn to identify it and not play when we are tilting.

Manipulating our Opponents into Playing Badly
I just wanted to throw an example from a recent session I had. There was this maniac/whale at my table that was basically giving money away. He was three-barreling a lot with super large bets and winning a lot of hands since nobody stood up to him. Funny enough, he would always fold to any bets/raises. So there are two observations right there: his three-barreling range is super wide and he always folds to aggression. How can I manipulate villain to pay off my hand? Value-betting probably isn't the answer in this scenario. Instead, I can manipulate his range to be weakest by checking and having him bet out. I will not raise since I know he will fold his weak range and probably call/raise with a rather strong range. Therefore, I was able to get three streets of value from my marginal hand by check/calling for three streets. Fun, fun.

When I read manipulating our opponents into playing badly, I kind of read manipulating our opponents range. This example showed how I manipulated villain's range to be weak by checking. Since he always folded to aggression, I know that his continuing range is probably rather strong.

Maybe we observed villain always bets on the turn when we check through the flop. By checking through the flop, we've manipulating villain's turn betting range to be weak.

Perhaps villain always bets his missed draws on the river as a bluff. By checking the river to villain, we have manipulated his range to include bluffs that he would have folded if we were to bet the river.

Perhaps we've been three-betting often against a certain villain's open. Now we three-bet with AA. Here, our past three-bets manipulated villain's CURRENT continuing range into being wider (assuming he is observing). He will continue with a weaker range since he has seen us three-bet often and assumes we have bluffs (which we do) in our range. Maybe he will four-bet light or flat our three-bet. Either way, we are at the top of our range and have manipulated villain into making the mistake of four-betting light or flatting our three-bet light.

Sklansky may have been aiming for a different meaning of manipulating our opponents. This is simply what I took from that.




I hope this helped a bit. Please don't nitpick my examples...I created them off the top of my head. Also, I would ask the regs to help generate discussion and help Carroters with this. It shouldn't be all on his head imo.

Nice post BooG, this should help a lot and has covered a ton of the basic fundementals that Sklansky was referring to.

Just one slight edit you should make:

"Perhaps we've been three-betting often against a certain villain's open. Now we three-bet with AA. Here, our past three-bets manipulated villain's CURRENT continuing range into being wider/weaker (assuming he is observing)."

I assume this is obv what you meant to write, but just so no beginners get confused: When we 3-bet often/lightly vs a guy he will eventually (if he's paying attention) adjust by defending to our 3 bets with a wider range, either flatting more of the top protion of his range, or by sticking in money with air on a 4-bet bluff. Either way, our past 3-bets have made this spot with AA extremely profitable since he now continues with a weaker/wider range than before and hence puts money in as a big dog a lot more often.

Thanks for catching that. Twasn't really a slight edit, it was pretty huge.

Anyway, I urge beginners to take part in this discussion. I never had the chance of a thread to ask questions as I read T&P. Additionally, a lot of regs are available on #ftrbc in IRC to answer any questions you have about the book (or anything else poker-wise) in real-time. If you do not know how to join IRC, please click this link. Later gaiz.

WOW, thanks BooG for taking the time to post that! I have some more stuff I want to go over but I can't get into it with a straight head here at work, so when I get home I will. Mostly having to do with pot sizing and some key points I think should be highlighted from the book

Thanks Carroters and BooG. I am reading my e-book (missing pg. 20-21) and following along.

i really like the ideas of manipulating villain's ranges based on what you know of their tendencies, and winning the battle of mistakes. especially at the micros where mistakes are rampant.
as for manipulating the potsize, i don't really buy into the PNLH "you want this SPR for these type of hands" etc, in my opinion it's best to think of manipulating your opponents range/the potsize as almost the same. if you 3 barrel TPTK vs a guy who doesnt call 3 barrels with worse than two pair, you've manipulated his range - you've made it stronger than yours (for calling the third barrel) and your river bet will likely be -EV.
however if you decide to check the turn vs this guy on dry boards (wet boards often require hand protection more as one card still to come yields equity for villain's ranges), you have manipulated both the potsize and your opponents range. and can v.bet more rivers as a result, as turn checks are often interpreted as weakness etc etc.

I have a simple question here about the fundamental concepts in this section of the books in relation to online multitabling. If a player plays too much tables for his capacity and it cuts down on his win rate, do you think that the reason he's playing more poorly is mainly because he cannot apply properly those fundamentals ? I mean he's playing more on the radar, by reflex, too rapidely. Which of the fundamentals do you think is fist/most affected in the play by "over" multitabling?

over multitabling can be a problem for sure. this would fit in with any other distractions one could have while playing poker. ofcourse if we are playing robot poker we are not maximizing our profit and in most cases probably decreasing as we are missing alot of value. the main goal here would be to add a table at a time until you get to a point where you feel you are not able to play your hands to the best of their value. you don't want to fall in the section of "making" the mistakes which i think to many tables for one's perticular ability is definitely a big one.

anyone care to explain to me the concepts or content of page 20 and 21? like someone else has found, the ebook i am using skips from page 19 to page 22. i dont really understand the equation on the first bit of page 22 because i dont know whats on the two pages before it and its bugging me.

as far as multitabling affecting quality of play goes, i believe that the more tables you are trying to concentrate on at once, the less aware you become of the specificities of villains' playing tendencies, or board textures etc etc. i personally find myself beginning to treat ALL people as TAGS, nits, or whales when i have too much going on - i just look at their stats and go "oh he's 12/9", he must be a tag, that means he probably cbets too much, likes to setmine, never checkraises the turn without the nuts etc etc. these may be true of typical TAGS, but every single player has certain tendencies that makes them different in some way from the next guy. its these things that i miss (and consequently fail to adjust to), and thus my expectation becomes lower as a result of playing more tables. because i think have made accurate generalisations about players, say TAGs for example, i begin to play robotically (which i guess makes me become one of them, if i wasn't already)

Have same book as playtowin and carroters.. no pg 20-21. wonder where it went

The main problem with multitabling on too many tables is you:
-can't read hands well. HUD #'s help some but don't tell all.
-some players don't note stack sizes... obviously don't want to play A5s 10BB deep.
-you also probably won't focus on manipulating an individual player, or noting that you (inadvertently) have.


At the micros I think the most important thing is winning the battle of mistakes. Which is pretty easy. Don't make crying calls and don't tilt. Easier said than done obviously. Hand reading can be impossible vs some but there's alot of nits that it's important to read. Also, put players on tilt if you can or at least notice when they are on tilt.

Had a sweet session yesterday @ 10NL deepstack on stars where I lost 2$ betting 62o in BB v button minopen (getting 5-1 odds) on AK298 3 diamonds (the 8 completed the flush) where i c/c flop b/c turn psb/c on river and lost to 98. Next hand the tightest guy at the table decides to shove over my big 3bet with his AKo. My aces got sweet value.

Then vs a different nit. Button v Blind. I raise up with K6o, he calls. flop is K83r c/c
turn is blank (2) and a Q comes on the river. he pots it, I 3x raise and he turns over AQo. which was obviously what he had.
Reason I never bet was pot was small and this guy would have instafolded anything worse. still debateable I know. but i figured I would switch it up since I'd been cbetting hard. I really liked knowing that he basically had to have AQ.

need 10 posts to post hands correct?

"Good no limit players magnify their opponents weaknesses and make plays to which the expected response is a mistake. Good players also actively avoid falling into situations where they are likely to make a mistake.

bad no limit players make things easy on their opponents by making plays to which the expected response is also the correct response. Bad players also don't plan ahead, and they wander into traps set by their opponents." David Sklansky and Ed Miller, No Limit Hold'em Theory and Practice Copyright 2006 Two plus two publishing.

Thats page 20 basically.

21 is an intro to "Thinking in terms of expectation" and begins by talking about playing the nuts on the river. The intro's basic point is that "you shouldnt bet to maximize your chance of getting called. Instead you should maximize your expectation" page 21 of the previous reference.

22 then continues in explaining what this means.

Also excuse the copyright shit...i think theres an anti-plagiarism clause or something in the ToS of ftr.

@rpm: That equation is the expectation of a bet on the river ignoring what is currently in the pot. Its basically assuming that we've already won that, so the EV of an additional bet is just how often we're called by how much we can win.

Thinking in a real example...if we have the nuts and bet nothing, our EV is 0. If we have the nuts and bet 10 and villain calls 50% of the time, or we bet 5 and villain calls 70% of the time...the $10 bet would be a better choice as we'll expect to win 10*.5 = $5 with the 10 bet...and 5*.7=3.5 for the 5.

i feel people are under-estimating the importance of allowing your opponents to make mistakes, but i may be interpreting this in a far broader sense than decisions on one street or one hand. it has been said that this is especially less relevant at the micros, but i feel the opposite, it is at the micros where people are more likely to be making mistakes, and their mistakes are likely to be more glaring and exploitable than say, a 100nl reg (i assume).

basically i think that most, if not all opponents, are going to have huge leaks at the micros which are very profitable for those who can spot them, and know how to exploit them. one mistake they make may be not knowing how "manipulate the pot size" or not knowing how to hand read, my interpretations pretty broad. however we have to play our range in a way that allows them to make these mistakes, even better perpetuates them. an example - i found a regular on absolute that opened a pretty standard nitty TAG range, like 10/8, 9/7 or something, and he never folded any pocket pairs to a 3bet, and 4bet QQ+. he pretty much raise/called hoping to setmine and turned pretty weak/tight postflop. he may peel one street on the flop if there's only one over, but folds to a second barrel with say, 88 on T256. obvious thing for me to do vs this guy is start 3betting a heap of hands in position, because he is going to let me know when he has QQ+,AK preflop, and he's going to smooth with a shitload of small pairs, which means i can cbet a huge % of boards and he check/folds 3bet pots to me. over and over again. villain's mistake here imo is that his range is so unbalanced and predictable. he is defending his opening range vs 3bets way too wide and is opening himself up to exploitation postflop, however had i not spotted this, and just 3bet a standard QQ+ or whatever range, i wouldnt have allowed him to make such a mistake. because i would be 3betting a strong range that made his setmining against me far less of a mistake, because his implied odds are better etc etc.

edit: another mistake i feel he's making here is not adjusting to my 3bets. he could start tightening his 3b calling range, or his opening range, he could possibly start 4betting wider, maybe JJ, AQs+ or even TT because i'm probably folding like 60% of my 3bets to against this guy, and AKs, AQs dont do TOO badly vs QQ or KK. i'm ranting again so i'll go back to school work.

oh, and thanks for the summary, JKDS.

Wooot, jus opened my ToP book after like 2 yrs cuz of this thread n found $80 in there....god knows how (or why) long ago I put the money in there and how long b4 i wudve discovered it if it werent for this thread. K k time to start reading it

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by EasyPoker

If anyone wants, PM me and I'll upload the proper e-book with no pages missing.

---

Strike imo

rpm, i think your analysis is pretty good as to how you're expoiting your villain's unjustified set mining in 3 bet pots and how you're changing your range to enforce his mistakes is awesome.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by rpm

edit: another mistake i feel he's making here is not adjusting to my 3bets. he could start tightening his 3b calling range, or his opening range, he could possibly start 4betting wider, maybe JJ, AQs+ or even TT because i'm probably folding like 60% of my 3bets to against this guy, and AKs, AQs dont do TOO badly vs QQ or KK. i'm ranting again so i'll go back to school work.

---

Couple of things about this though. Villain definitely should stop calling with useless unplayable implied odds hands where there are little to no implied odds vs your range; agreed. However, he shouldn't neccessarily be tightening up his continuing range completely, but rather chopsing hands to flat Ip that are either A: having good equity vs your 3 betting range i.e are ahead. Stuff like AQo, TT - things that he can't felt profitably. Or B: have potential to flop equity to semi bluff with - exploit the fold equity he will have asa result of your 3 betting/c betting range being weak.

Also, instead of 4 betting TT and AQs, he might want to flat these sorts of hands a fair amount and instead incorperate some 4-bet bluffs into his range, using hands that aren't good enough to flat with and preferably have blockers to your nut hands. The reason for this is that if you're 3 betting pretty lightly, most of your range will be folding to a 4-bet the first couple of times since you wont be aware yet of the change in dynamic. It follows from this that your range for felting to a 4-bet is pretty tight since you assume villain is still 4 betting a strong range like [QQ+ AK] So if this villain wants to adjust by 4-bet/felting TT and AQs, he's going to find that he's pretty much only getting it in with poor equity and folding out most of the hands he's ahead of due to your perception of him piror to any change in dynamic.

Here's TT vs the range you're likely to stack off with preflop.


Hand 0: 33.654% 33.45% 00.20% 22911950 138060.00 { TdTh }
Hand 1: 66.346% 66.14% 00.20% 45304090 138060.00 { JJ+, AKs, AKo }

And here's AQs

Hand 0: 32.063% 30.98% 01.09% 15911838 558540.00 { AcQc }
Hand 1: 67.937% 66.85% 01.09% 34340202 558540.00 { JJ+, AKs, AKo }

So villain shouldn't be 4-betting these hands before there is an aggro preflop dynamic established because he will not be in good shape to get it in and can flat very profitably with both of these hands vs your light 3-betting range. It is therefore, bad to 4-bet call these and a total waste of potential equity to 4-bet fold them.

So we can conclude a better adjustment for villain to make while he still has the fit or fold passvie image is to incorperate 4 bet bluffs with things like Ax and Kx and to alter his flatting range so that it incorperates hands either that are doing well vs your 3 betting range (AQs + TT for example) or that flop more equity post flop like T9s 87s etc - these are far better vs a weak 3 betting range where there are less implied odds because he can flop draws, equity in different ways and raise your c bets profitably since you're still going to be c bet/folding a ton of flops in 3 bet pots since your range is weak.

Hope that makes sense. If you put yourself in villains shoes, the above seems like the best adjustment vs the light 3 bettor.

Great post Carroters. I've been lazy as fuck and it was 420 yesterday so I haven't gotten around to reading the section yet. If I don't do it today, I'll be able to tomorrow at work.

thanks for taking the time to point that out, carroters, and i definitely agree. im not sure why i chose TT+,AQ, i think i realised that he could easily exploit me by 4betting and so chose the "strongest" part of his opening range that wasnt currently being 4bet, thinking "at least then when he gets called he still has an ok hand". obviously this is bogus because my 4bet calling range vs this guy, due to history, is like QQ+, so TT and JJ don't do well at all, and he'd be better off 4betting like A2s-A8s type hands or perhaps even a completely polar balanced range.

I deleted EasyPoker's post in this thread above, but be reminded of rule #9 in http://www.flopturnriver.com/pokerfo...ct-119995.html

Quote:

---

9. Soliciting or performing of illegal activities, i.e., sharing of pirated media or hacking, is forbidden.

---

So don't talk about it on the forum. Thanks.

PMs are great.

Thanks.

Wow, it's a surprisingly easy read, actually got carried away & read an extra 20 pages by accident.

Great stuff above from carroters/boog/erpel. Nice one guys!

Something I def struggle with is manipulating the pot size. I've always tended to follow the big bets for big pots theory, but I can get a bit lost when I don't want to build a big pot.

Obviously not betting big avoids playing in big pots, but check calling can just lead to you being bluffed off the pot or putting down a marginally better hand than your opponents.

Anyone want to give a some advice on this, perhaps with a few exmples? Or am I just being lazy? (Don't mean to be).

In fact, feel free to give some advice & examples, and in the mean time I will trawl through HM to find some hands where I have strugglede with this issue.

Can I suggest that every new section we read (or every 2-3 sections) gets a new thread? Kinda like Spoons 9 exercises he did recently.


Anyway I only have time for a quick comment on each one, kinda like an example:

-Manipulating the pot size
In its simplest form, raising preflop helps manipulate the pot and sets up a larger pot when you have good hole cards or hit the flop hard. This is a great scenario vs call stations who dont fold enough preflop or on the flop. I also try to practice pot manipulation when I have marginal hands by checking the turn, this keeps me from becoming pot comitted. I find having position usually gives the best control over the pot.
-Adjusting correctly to stack sizes
E.G. A player who is running 8/4/2 raises UTG and I am in LP w/ a small PP. I fold b/c his stack is too small to play for set odds. On the other hand if stacks are larger (100+bb) and a fairly aggro player opend in EP followed by a MP call, I can call on the BTN with SC's or even hands like J9, suited A's etc since the payoff potential is large.
-Winning the battle of mistakes
Hard for me to describe but I feel this has a lot to do with paying attention, knowing the players as well as possible and doing all the other keys found in this list. If you aren't doing them all, you are making a mistake.
-Reading hands
Putting opponents on a range and judging how you fair against that range to either make a call or to decide on betting or checking.
-Manipulating opponents into playing badly
You need to know their tendancies and let them hang themselves. My best example was in a 45 SNG where I made it HU. The opponent would bet every flop when oop. He would minbet with nothing and bet 2xbb with a hand of some strength. All I had to do was reraise his minbet to get him to fold but every once in a while I would fold my weakest hands so that he thought his strategy was still working and he kept doing it, the whole time. I erased the deficit and had a huge chip adv in no time.

Been rereading this over a few days - very good book.

Not much to add at this point except the bit about manipulating the pot size really struck home when I first read it - I used to worry about "scaring" opponents off by betting my nut hands, now I just try to build a big pot.

will we be starting section two for next monday? Someone has mentioned starting a new thread which seems like a really good idea, can put a link in the first post to all the threads for each section for quick reference labeling which chapters are discused in which threads.

multiple threads seems annoying to me, but w/e

Multiple threads are annoying now...but remember that something like this will most likely be added to the BC Digest or something in the future. One long thread is very inefficient for future FTR members to look back and find where we talk about Chapter X. So I vote for multiple threads just for the sake of having it organized and being able to separate the chapters in the Digest later.

And JKDS, wolves have no say. Keep your trap shut.

Hrm, that arguement was way to convincing and logical. Boog is clearly a wolf and is trying to turn the village against me!

yeah, just start a new thread and in the OP put a link to each new chapter discusion and we can refrence this thread to find each section. oh, and in the event of a sticky, you will just have to stick this thread. this is win win in my eyes ;)

Spoon can move the threads and sticky a link here for previous discussion threads. In" tools of poker" we have a book club forum for these discussions and have done others in the past.

I'll have Carroters make a new thread for each section and figure out where to go from there, kind of pressed for time atm.

cool..sounds like a plan

Next section please!

Ooops Rule #9

We've went over this dozens of times guys. No sharing links to illegal e-books online. If you're going to ask, ask in IRC.

Or PMs obv

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by jyms

Spoon can move the threads and sticky a link here for previous discussion threads. In" tools of poker" we have a book club forum for these discussions and have done others in the past.

---

I didn't know about the discussions on other books, that's awesome. I'll make sure to visit that. Thanks for the hint.

did anyone say what the next section we are supposed to read is?

i believe it will be the next chapter, as we are reviewing each chapter each week