Hand for review

In this hand I tried to think about possible ranges and also bet sizing.
I don't have any reads on the villain but he was playing the usually kind of thing for 2NL which means any pair, and any single broadway card.
$0.01/$0.02 No Limit Hold'em - 9 players


UTG+1: $1.49
UTG+2: $2.91
MP1: $2.18
MP2: $1.21
Hero (CO): $1.89
BTN: $0.94
SB: $2.72
BB: $1.34
UTG: $3.31

Pre Flop: ($0.03) Hero is CO with Q:diamond: A:heart:
4 folds, MP2 raises to $0.07, Hero raises to $0.12, BTN calls $0.12, 1 fold, BB calls $0.10, MP2 calls $0.05

I raised him because I am trying to get out of the habit of limping in CO or button with hands like this. If I'm going to play it then I'll raise it.

Flop: ($0.49) K:heart: T:club: A:diamond: (4 players)
BB checks, MP2 checks, Hero bets $0.24, BTN folds, BB calls $0.24, MP2 folds

I hit with the flop and I'm thinking if either of them had AA or KK preflop they would bet something here so I make a c-bet. Also I now have a straight draw. If either of them had hit their straight then they would raise.

Turn: ($0.97) 3:spade: (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $0.48, BB raises to $0.98, Hero calls $0.50

Now I'm not sure. Maybe he has Kx or Qx and he thinks I am bluffing. I have pot odds (I think) because I still have a straight draw and the chance of getting another pair or trips.

River: ($2.93) 5:club: (2 players)

I didn't get anything out that so I checked and so did he.

What are the things I should be noticing?

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I raised him because I am trying to get out of the habit of limping in CO or button with hands like this. If I'm going to play it then I'll raise it.

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This is not a reason to 3bet. You either 3bet for value or 3bet as a bluff. Obviously other factors come into play here as well. But don't 3bet pre just for the sake of not limping or calling. Furthermore, what's with the bet sizing? I mean, it's barely a minraise. Raise to 3x the original raise, if not more.

On the flop, I'm not sure why you're thinking about AA. You have a blocker for that hand and now there's an Ace on the flop, making it extremely unlikely for anyone to be holding that hand. Flop bet is meh. Just think about what's calling a bet here and how far you're willing to go in the hand.

You need to work on hand ranges (ldfo) and your bet sizing both preflop and postflop. You're probably inducing raises from worse hands with your betting. This is fan-fucking-tastic if you're doing it on purpose, but I know you're not and when it happens, you get confused by it.

On the turn, I don't get calling the C/R. Doesn't the BB have like .12 (6x) behind going into the river? Luhlz. Commit or gtfo.

Ok, what does Ido and Idfo mean? I am not l33t.

Linkage

I'll put it in caps since the past 50 times in regular letters didn't work.

PUT YOUR OPPONENT ON A GODDAMN RANGE

Come on now, you keep posting wanting help, but you're not following the advice you get.

How cute/wrong.

I know its been mentioned before but why aren't you fully stacked?

Tasha what kind of hands is MP raising with?
What type of hands is he calling a 3 bet with?

Lastly, when you provide someone (this ignores other people in the pot) over 4:1 odds on your money, with decent implied odds, what does your 3 bet really accomplish. I am attacking the size of your 3 bet. if it was just the two of you in the pot he would need to call 5 cents into a pot of 22.

So it seems Star's covered a lot of this already but I figured I'd help out a bit and get you thinking about ranges for each of your villains - on each street.

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Originally Posted by Tasha

Pre Flop: ($0.03) Hero is CO with Q:diamond: A:heart:
4 folds, MP2 raises to $0.07, Hero raises to $0.12, BTN calls $0.12, 1 fold, BB calls $0.10, MP2 calls $0.05

I raised him because I am trying to get out of the habit of limping in CO or button with hands like this. If I'm going to play it then I'll raise it.

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Step 1 here is to put together a decent raising range for your villain. Lacking reads we can assume a rational opponent, break-even (minus rake) over the long term, neither tight nor laggy; i.e. we assume total averages. This will help you think about unknowns. I want to qualify this by saying that some others treat unknowns as total passives and thus give more weight to their aggression; that's fine too. Some may even suggest my assumption is incorrect, and there is an argument to be made for that as well.

A few things to consider when putting MP2 on a range:

A) His position. He's in MP2, otherwise known as the HJ (hijack). This is a location where stealing is common. We assign a wider range due to this.

B) The stats of the players in the blinds. The tighter they are, the wider a range MP2 will open.

C) The 3-bet percentage of players behind, including those in the blinds. The more often they play back to preflop raises, the less likely MP2 is to open, and the tighter his range will be.

D) His tendencies. You mention you have no particular reads other than being a typical micro noob, however even looking over a smallish sample of 30 or 40 hands should tell you whether he is apt to try to steal or not. This is possible even without a HUD. Naturally, the more likely he is to steal, the wider his range will be.

E) Other factors such as stack sizes, perceived reads etc. I'll leave these for your own research.


Since you provided nothing other than 'A', we'll assume a wider than normal range. I figure something along the lines of (22+,A2s+,K5s+,Q8s+,J8s+,T7s+,97s+,87s,76s,65s,A4o +,K9o+,Q9o+,JTo) is reasonable. This is a shade under 33% of hands.

Once you've put MP2 on a range, you decide your best course of action given the factors at hand. You decided to minraise here, and you now face a call from the BTN and the BB. Ask yourself what type of hands are these players likely to call with here, facing a preflop 3.5x open from the HJ and a minraise from the CO?

Further, how does your minraise affect the range of MP2 (once he calls)? I'll leave these to you as an exercise - I'm hoping this will shed light on why your minraise is not an effective play.

As for postflop - I don't really have time to type up a treatise on the subject of hand ranges (and probably am not qualified to do so) - but I'll give you a little food for thought and hope you can piece together everything else that went on in this hand.

Whenever you bet, ask yourself the following questions: "Am I getting called by worse?" and "am I folding better?"; in this particular situation you had TPTK on AKTr, and face 2 checks with 1 to act behind. Does Ax check/call? Maybe, maybe not, but it's certainly possible. Does KQ call, KJ, QT, JT? Obviously, this is a very wet board and you stand to earn value from weaker holdings, so betting is natural.

To get an idea on sizing, ask yourself what parts of your opponents 1/2 pot bet calling range would be folded out when facing a large bet, say 3/4 or pot-size. If the difference is marginal, or otherwise relatively small, then a larger bet is necessary.

Alright, I'm sort of out of time. I suggest you try putting each villain on a range on every street, figuring out their continuing ranges to your bets and so on.

I didn't intend for this to be so long but I wanted Tasha to not make the same mistake(s) I did.

Tasha,
Maybe you are a little overwhelmed with everyone telling you to put villian on a range as this seems to be the case every time you post a hand. When I was asked this question a couple years ago I had no idea what everyone was talking about. (Keep in mind that I also had never heard of cbet, 3bet, donkbet, potodds, etc. and I also thought that the BB was considered in position as you get to go last preflop)

When I finally figured out what they meant by range, my resonse was "I don't know how to play poker so how the hell am I suppose to figure out how someone else is playing poker". The way you figure it out is to review old hand histories and see how players play in general. If you don't have PT or HEM then get one as they both have free trials. If you will use them as you should then you will be able to buy one of them with your BR by the time you trial runs out.

Using either of these and pokerstove while going through HHs and use whatever range of hands you think villian has on every street based on how they play. Narrow it down on every street and see how you do when the hand is over. Spenda has a great video on GS doing this in alot of detail. At first you will probably be way off but that's ok cause you'll get better. PT and HEM will also show you your pot odds at any given time during the hand and show you what kind of pot odds you are giving villian(s).

I rarely ever did this and when I did I would get bored after about 5 minutes and think "I could be playing poker and winning money instead of doing this crap since I only have a couple of hours I can devote to poker anyway". In one of my blogs, M2M told me he knew my biggest problem and it was that I just mash butons and never put villians on a range. I thought "yeah right. I just get sucked out on every time I get a good hand".

It took me until I got to 25NL to start doing this seriously and is also why I've been here almost exactly 2 years and only just recently started playing 25NL regularly. When I started reviewing hands before a session I started running better. I would select all hands where I won or lost 5bb or more and review them from 2 days previously. If I selected yesterdays session I would usually remember what villian had so it didn't help as much with ranges.

My Dad used to say "The more you practice, the luckier you get". He was actually talking about studying for a test, baseball, football, etc. but the idea is the same. The word "luckier" should be in quotes as your are not really getting lucky, you are just putting in the time with practice so that you will play better during actual game play. When I first started doing this I chose one day a week for study only. I selected every hand from the previous month and went through them using pokerstove. Now I look forward to the review sessions to see how well I can do at those damn ranges.

This past Tuesday(I think) I spent 1.5 hours going over hand histories using poker stove and by the time I was done I was tired. I think I even posted a hand in IRC. I took a break for 30 minutes and started the grind. It was amazing how "lucky" I was during that session (up 5 BIs):clap:

If only I had started doing this 2 years ago instead of 4 months ago...:roll:

My Dad also used to say "I can because I will" but that's another story...

Nice post sasquatch, Tasha, read that as carefully as you can and don't make the same mistake, it's all too common and the main reason so so so many random people come and go from FTR, failing at poker and never knowing why.

where can i find spenda's video of doing that? (i dont know what GS is)

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Originally Posted by Mr. Bucket

where can i find spenda's video of doing that? (i dont know what GS is)

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Grinderschool.com - Low Stakes Poker Strategy Videos

Firstly, many, many, thanks to all of you for the time and effort you have put into your responses. Too many and too much to thank individually but the intention is there. It is a big help and has certainly given me something to think about and some directions.
Secondly, without sounding like I am trying to defend my play here are the details of (and answers to questions about) some of the things I was doing and that I think I need to fix immediately.

Firstly, I always buy-in for 100 BB which for me at 2NL is $2.00. However, if I lose a bit from placing blinds or even losing a hand I don't refill until it drops to at least below $1.50. Is that bad? Should I always maintain at least 100 buy-ins as long as I am at the table? I imagine it also depends on the stack-sizes I am playing against but mostly they are around the $2.00 mark with a tendency to be less.

As for the 3bet, I have to admit, I was in a bit of a panic. I knew I should be raising him I just didn't know how much, but now I can see I was way short so thanks for that.

As for the rest of the bet-sizing, I'm still not up to getting calculations down in the time allowed but I feel that I am facing another problem. At 2NL there is so much fold equity that if I make a bet of more than half the pot it is likely to make everyone fold so I have been betting lower when I think I have a good hand. It seems like this is a bad habit that I am picking up so I'll stick to the advice above although I would like to ask this:
If I have a strong hand and I am facing two opponents (or even one) and I know that a large bet will make them both fold but a smaller bet will keep them both in which should I do? Bear in mind, that at the moment my ranging skills are non-existent. Should I therefore just play it safe and make a larger bet to keep things simple?

That leads to a central problem I am having. The play at 2NL seems to be very erratic with a strong element of gambling to it rather than strategy and that is making it very hard to estimate ranges. Should I compensate for how others or playing or rather stick to learning how I should be playing at not worry about others making a mess of things? It seems to me now I should be doing the latter.

Lastly, I have to admit I didn't want to use a tracker program at first for different reasons but I can see that it really isn't an option to try and play like that. So the good news is I downloaded PT3, they have a 2-month free trial. I'll get it setup and see how it goes. :)

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Originally Posted by Tasha

Firstly, I always buy-in for 100 BB which for me at 2NL is $2.00. However, if I lose a bit from placing blinds or even losing a hand I don't refill until it drops to at least below $1.50. Is that bad? Should I always maintain at least 100 buy-ins as long as I am at the table? I imagine it also depends on the stack-sizes I am playing against but mostly they are around the $2.00 mark with a tendency to be less.

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Simply put. If you have $1.50 and have the nuts and are up against a villain who is full stacked and comes with you .

You win $1.50 , your stack is now $3

If you maintain a full stack , you would now have $4.00 .

Extra value .your init to winnit ;)

I hope you see the sense , your always being reminded :rolleyes:

Don't all sites have an auto top up feature nowadays? Cake has it for Christ's sake...

Tasha, it's really hard to play actual poker at 2nl and 5nl, so don't make it any harder than it has to be. I'm not downplaying the importance of villain ranges, and fold equity and all that, because it's good to think about this kind of stuff while it's cheap. But from the sounds of it you should be working on your game first before moving on to another level of thinking. And by this I mean position, bet sizing, preflop strategy, etc, etc.

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Originally Posted by Tasha

If I have a strong hand and I am facing two opponents (or even one) and I know that a large bet will make them both fold but a smaller bet will keep them both in which should I do? Bear in mind, that at the moment my ranging skills are non-existent. Should I therefore just play it safe and make a larger bet to keep things simple?

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If your ranging skills are non-existent you will not KNOW that, so yes make larger bets for simplicity...

1) Turn on auto reload if you can, it just one issue you don't want to worry about.
2) In some ways, I just played 7k hands at 2nl, there isn't much fold equity, which is why that limit IS so profitable. People will call you with a 79o gut shot and all the sudden your Ace high is just that much more profitable.

It isn't that the ranges are harder to estimate at 2nl it just they tend to be wider than at higher limits. When people have wide ranges and the tendency to call with any piece you should bet bet bet. I use the texture of the flop to decide how much I bet regardless of my hand. Like on a 35Jr flop, I tend to bet closer to 60% or 70% of the pot, regardless if I have a set or 67o (not that I would have that hand :)) , if the pot is 78K two suites, I tend to bet close to 90-95% of the pot. I make small adjustments if the stacks are deeper, but I wanted to give some insight into how I decide on what to bet. Likewise, on paired boards, also tend to bet closer to 50-60% of the pot. Just some thoughts.

Good luck.

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Originally Posted by !Luck

1) Turn on auto reload if you can, it just one issue you don't want to worry about.
2) In some ways, I just played 7k hands at 2nl, there isn't much fold equity, which is why that limit IS so profitable. People will call you with a 79o gut shot and all the sudden your Ace high is just that much more profitable.

It isn't that the ranges are harder to estimate at 2nl it just they tend to be wider than at higher limits. When people have wide ranges and the tendency to call with any piece you should bet bet bet. I use the texture of the flop to decide how much I bet regardless of my hand. Like on a 35Jr flop, I tend to bet closer to 60% or 70% of the pot, regardless if I have a set or 67o (not that I would have that hand :)) , if the pot is 78K two suites, I tend to bet close to 90-95% of the pot. I make small adjustments if the stacks are deeper, but I wanted to give some insight into how I decide on what to bet. Likewise, on paired boards, also tend to bet closer to 50-60% of the pot. Just some thoughts.

Good luck.

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You might wanna try being a bit more unbalanced with regards to your sizing. there's no reason to always bet the same amount with different parts of your range at 2NL if betting less with air and more with strong hands is going to be more profitable and trust me it often is.

Thanks all for clarifying the auto-top up. I must have missed that in the reading I have been doing but it certainly does make sense now that I think about it.
The good news is that PT3 is up and running although just looking at the interface made me gasp. :)

whch site are you playing on

If I tell you will you promise not to shout?

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Originally Posted by Tasha

If I tell you will you promise not to shout?

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no guarantees

brokebackpoker?

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Originally Posted by Penneywize

no guarantees

brokebackpoker?

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Who? That just sounds nasty.

{Locked}

Getting too far off topic.