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New challenge - From 500 to 10k

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Solidius
Joined: 28.12.2010

I really liked it. Keep on posting. =)


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M1rCea
Joined: 06.07.2010

been subscribed ever since your volume challenge. btw, can u pls mention a few of the main factors that motivated / kept u motivated to play that much?

now, gotta say I love the theory posts, so u know people r really finding them useful. Sry if we don't always say something, most of the time we're too lazy or on autopilot / distracted / feel a short appreciation post would be useless. Just look at the thread views to get more of an idea.

D.


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dannywratten
Joined: 11.05.2010

Originally posted by TilTmuch
thanks for the lesson janka, rly enjoyed reading it, ur writing like some pro article writer lol, easy to read and not complicated at all, unlike others when they write its math math and one more time math and other shit that doesn't rly make sense to avg joe :f_biggrin:

kepe up the good work and keep posting new lessons _cool:

+1 :f_thumbsup:


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peche025
Joined: 14.12.2008

WP nice article


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Klemjac
Joined: 19.06.2011

Nice blog mate=) awesome results. I tested myself in zoom also. Could u tell me your vpip and pfr stats so i can compare to mine ? =) tnx and gl
:)


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fruktpuff
Joined: 24.09.2010

Awesome lesson2, keep em coming!

Good information, broken down into easily manageble bitesize pieces, and then some examples, great structure!


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getdotacom
Joined: 06.04.2008

Thanks guys !

can u pls mention a few of the main factors that motivated / kept u motivated to play that much?

I'm not playing that much now, only during that challenge. I just wanted to know how many hands I can play in a month, that was my motivation I think ... I really don't wanna play zoom now at all, not sure can I make theses 250k hands I was talking before nl100 pisses me off, shouldn't play that stake because ppl are so bad there. I can make adjustments, I should make bad plays to exploit them because they're playing even worse. Only it's hard to do that when mixing limits, I have to pay extra attention which limit is that.

Could u tell me your vpip and pfr stats so i can compare to mine ?

I played something like 25/20 during my challenge, but now I'm nitting up a little bit because playing more tables, something like 21/17

Still waiting ideas for next lesson. I wanna make this about some topic u wanna know, so just post them here, I will pick one.


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I agree this is an epic blog!
I enjoy coming to look and those tall graphs


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M1rCea
Joined: 06.07.2010

Oh I see. Interesting, so the challenge kept u motivated.

About topics, can u pls talk about bluffcatching ? Like some math behind it and basic stuff. Since people, myself included, can start overusing it.

Ty and rungood!


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getdotacom
Joined: 06.04.2008

Lesson 3 - EV and Equity

OK, so at least 1 idea for next lesson, but I will make this one first. Not sure how many of u wanna see some math here, as u asked for bluffcatching and math behind it. But I think I have to do this first before I do some bluffcatching stuff. Many people just don't have basic understand of ev, equity and range polarization. I'm pretty sure some of u will have a huge aha moment after reading this.

This time I'm going to start with an example and leave all good stuff for later :)

Assume we're playing against some guy who plays only 2 hands - AA and 3 combos of 22. We have JJ, he raises and we call IP. Flop comes A96 and the pot is 10bb. He cbets for 10bb as he always does. We know his range and we can calculate our equity (assume we can't outdraw each other in this example, so we have 0% vs AA and 100% vs 22). It's 6 combos total and we beat 3 of them, our equity = 3/6=50% and we call. On the turn we know that our villain will just check/fold 1 bluff combo but bet the rest. So he bets 30bb into 30bb pot. Now we beat 2 combos, our equity is 2/5=40%. On the river he check/folds one more bluff combo and bets the rest for 45bb into a pot of 90bb. Now our equity is 1/4 = 25% and we call.

So who is making money in this hand ? Most of u will think it's hero because villain bet for a pot on the flop and turn, that means we need 33% equity to call, but we had much more. On the river our call is b/e because we need 25% according to odds and we have it. Looks like hero is printing moneiz here. But how much ? To do that we have to calculate EV of this hand.

We always win when villain checks, so we can calculate how much we will win on average for each street. On the flop we risk 10 to win 20, but it will happen only 1 out of 6 times, 20/6=3.3. On the turn we risk 30 to win 60, it will happen 1 out of 5 times, 60/5=12. On the river we're risking 45 to win 135 and we're expected to win total 180bb pot 25% of the time. 0.25*18 = 45. When we put it all together 3.3+12+45 = 60.3. Now lets calculate how much money we risk because we won't always end up winning. On the flop we risk 10*5/6 (times when villain will bet again) = 8.33. On the turn 30*4/5 = 24. On the river we risk 45*0.75 (times when we're not good after calling) = 33.75. It all together 8.33+24+33.75 = 66.08. Here it comes - our EV for a hand = 60.3-66.08 = -5.78. Can't believe it ? Do the math, maybe I was wrong somewhere, but it still should be pretty close.

What actually happened there ? Many people would say the math is totally wrong because we had +ev call on the flop and turn, we need only 33%, but we had 50 and 40. I've heard these lines a lot : I'm flipping with his range, so it's snapcall on the flop. Actually they're wrong and the math is correct (at least I hope :) ). We can subtract money we're losing from money we're winning on each street to get EV for our play on that street. It's negative for flop and the turn. As u can see I used equity only to calculate EV on the river. We can't get our EV from equity on any other street unless we go allin. Our EV almost always will be negative on earlier streets when villain has huge barreling tendencies. We just won't be able to win that hand till the river. In this example we're losing on the flop and turn, but got slightly +ev spot on the river. To justify our play on the flop and turn we need to make much more money on the river, for example our villain has to bet super small, like 0.2PSB.

This is how it should look like in theory, but not in practice. In practice usually player who bets will have some equity with his bluff and caller will outdraw him sometimes as well. Basically this is math behind bluffcatching, but not sure I wanna calculate something like this for specif hands next time, will see. Most likely I will show some spots and leave the math for u ;)

P.S. U can't convert equity into EV only in case u have a bluffcatcher vs polarized range on early streets. U still can use it to call with draws according to odds and it will be correct.


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M1rCea
Joined: 06.07.2010

hmm ev and equity, I feel it will be a good read, your posts look like a very good place to get some theoretical fundamentals down

before u go on writing the bluffcatching one
when I say math, I mean basic math (like how often we have to be right depending on sizing and other factors), since I don't really like complicated math either (I suck at it).

my reason was that when I successfully bluffcatch ppl bet their missed draws on the river few times in a row, I find myself in bluffcatching mode and end up just making spewy calls.

Here's an embarassing one
Poker Stars, $0.25/$0.50 No Limit Hold'em Cash, 9 Players
Poker Tools Powered By Holdem Manager - The Ultimate Poker Software Suite.

MP2: $40 (80 bb)
MP3: $50 (100 bb)
CO: $47.65 (95.3 bb)
BTN: $20.68 (41.4 bb)
SB: $41.31 (82.6 bb)
BB: $20 (40 bb)
Hero (UTG+1): $51.50 (103 bb)
UTG+2: $20 (40 bb)
MP1: $20.75 (41.5 bb)

Preflop: Hero is UTG+1 with K Q
MP2 posts BB OOP, Hero raises to $1.75, 2 folds, MP2 calls $1.25, 5 folds

Flop: ($4.25) J K 6 (2 players)
Hero bets $3.25, MP2 calls $3.25

Turn: ($10.75) A (2 players)
Hero bets $5.50, MP2 calls $5.50

River: ($21.75) 9 (2 players)
Hero checks, MP2 bets $10, Hero calls $10

Results:

Spoiler

$41.75 pot ($1.88 rake)
Final Board: J K 6 A 9
MP2 showed T Q and won $39.87 ($19.37 net)
Hero mucked K Q and lost (-$20.50 net)

Now that I think of it, this mostly happens OOP, I would have instafolded on the river to that bet IP.

So I think it would be beneficial to see how bluffcatching can be more theory based, to avoid spews like this, even though this really is an extreme example. Here I just called because FD missed and villain fish had posted and called my raise pre, giving him any2 cards he might go crazy with.

Poker Stars, $0.25/$0.50 No Limit Hold'em Cash, 8 Players
Poker Tools Powered By Holdem Manager - The Ultimate Poker Software Suite.

SB: $50 (100 bb)
BB: $25 (50 bb)
UTG+2: $54.34 (108.7 bb)
MP1: $74.25 (148.5 bb)
MP2: $31.61 (63.2 bb)
Hero (MP3): $50 (100 bb)
CO: $46.01 (92 bb)
BTN: $32.31 (64.6 bb)

Preflop: Hero is MP3 with J J
UTG+2 raises to $1.25, MP1 folds, MP2 calls $1.25, Hero raises to $4.50, 5 folds, MP2 calls $3.25

Flop: ($11) K A 2 (2 players)
MP2 checks, Hero checks

Turn: ($11) 9 (2 players)
MP2 checks, Hero checks

River: ($11) 8 (2 players)
MP2 bets $15, Hero calls $15

Results:

Spoiler

$41 pot ($1.84 rake)
Final Board: K A 2 9 8
MP2 showed A 9 and won $39.16 ($19.66 net)
Hero mucked J J and lost (-$19.50 net)

Again, I am suspicious to his overbet and decide to bluffcatch with no particular reads. I am guessing that in the long run, we are losing a lot with calls in spots like these.

Seeing how these kind of plays would seriously deteriorate our winrate in the long run would make me think twice before finding all kind of reasons for being suspicious, that's why I could use some of the theory behind bluffcatching. It doesn't have to be complicated stuff, just ur experience with the concept.

DISCLAIMER:

Spoiler

The above hands were posted here for illustration (of spew) purposes only, you should not try this at home, poker is played with real money.


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getdotacom
Joined: 06.04.2008

Lesson 4 - Bluffcatching

Well, only 1 comment on my last post, most likely because there was some math, I know how much u hate it :P I will try to avoid math as much as possible, but definitely this topic will require some. It's something like a week since last one, that's because I was playing a lot, but running pretty bad. I think I will do something like 1 in a week in future as well.

So lets start with the math I've received many questions from people asking should I call here ? This is so close, I don't know what to do. ofc it's opponent dependent etc. But there is correct range in theory and that will help us in close spots, at least that's how I decide what to do.

In order to calculate our calling range we have to look on a hand from opponents perspective. Most of u have seen formula bet/(pot+bet). This is how we calculate how often our bet should work as a bluff. So when we know what success rate our opponent need to bluff profitably, we wanna deny this opportunity. I will use standard 75% pot bet examples, so this means 0.75*pot/(pot+0.75*pot)=0.75/1.75=0.43. As we can see, this should work 43% of the time. For that reason we wanna prevent our opponent from getting any profit by betting, so we have to make it work not more than 43% of the time. In other words - we have to defend 57% of our range (1-0.43=0.57). U can calculate it same way for any sizings u want, but this is really elastic when betting less than a pot, there is almost no difference when facing overbets, it's almost the same for 1.5 pots or 2.5 pots.

Now we know that we wanna defend 57% of our range on each street when facing a bet. We can calculate how wide we have to call all 3 streets - 0.57*0.57*0.57=0.185 or 18.5%. ofc we will defend by raising sometimes, but I will focus more on calling here. Now lets see some examples.

I will use my own ranges here, but u will have something very similar most likely. For combos count I will use Flopzilla, I think there are some other software available, but I love this.

Example 1 : Some guy opens MP and we call BU. Flop comes K83r and he cbets. Our preflop calling range is : QQ-22,AKo-AJo,KQo,AQs-ATs,KQs-KTs,QJs-QTs,JTs-J9s,T9s-T8s,98s-97s,87s-86s,76s,65s,54s. It's 171 combos on the flop (including blocker effects). How wide we should call down 3 streets here, assuming turn and river blanks ? I'm not going through play on each street, I will calculate only how wide we should call down, but u probably should know now how to do that if we only call. Can't see any point in raising on this board, so we're always defend by calling and raising our sets on the river. We have to defend 171*0.185 = 32 combos. We can raise our sets, it's 6 combos + 3 combos of bluffs (It's 3 because I assume we give our villain 2:1 to call, we wanna his call to be b/e). We need 23 combos more, best hands we can have - AKo and KQ. It's 9 combos AKo, 12 combos KQ, 21 total. This means we have to add 2 combos of KJs. So basically we're raising all sets + some bluffs, calling down with AKo,KQ,2 combos of KJs. From this we can see that KJs should be a marginal call in theory. In practice I'm pretty sure most people will fold KQ on the river and I've done it too vs huge nits. But if we call down only with AK, we're actually defending something like half of needed range.

Example 2 : Same stuff preflop, but this time flop comes K83 with a flushdraw. We again have 171 combos on the flop, but now we're going to raise all our sets on the flop. So we have to defend 32 combos on the river again. Now we have to call super wide - AKo,KQ,KJs,KTs gives us 27combos. We need 5 more. That means we have to call almost all combos of QQ as well. As u can see, it's much harder to defend when we don't have any nutted hands in our range.

This is how it should work in common spots. In practice we will end up folding close to 100% sometimes after some weird action. It's OK in some spots, for example, we called some raise with a fd because we had odds. Now fd misses and we can't have anything else in our range. It's OK to fold 100% of our range here. Our opponent will get super +EV bluff, but he has to invest a lot of money to get there and maybe it's not worth the risk and he's still losing on average.

OK, I hope at least some of u read this till the end, it's huge wall of text As always, waiting for some feedback and good ideas for the next time. I could make next one similar to this, only about bluffing/valuebetting. Still let me know what u wanna see here.


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tl;dr Just kidding, great topics, great blog, thanks man!!!


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TetraQuark
Joined: 21.05.2008

Thank you very much sir!


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xenomorphic
Joined: 29.12.2010

hey man - really awesome idea with the theory posts :megusta: they are very helpful. i don't know how i missed your blog all this time! :f_eek:

definitely keep writing the lessons, :f_thumbsup: i've favourited your blog.

Lewis.


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Rsiatat
Joined: 21.12.2009

Originally posted by getdotacom
Why are You so interested in my nickname ? It's m000nshiner. Are You playing nl200 zoom too ? If so, I'd like to know your nickname as well.

sry didn't read this in a while , I have the same nick as I use here, I am a mtt HS grinder , recently moving to cash , trying to mix them both together somehow , playing zoom aswell yes


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pokerprons
Joined: 30.09.2009

Hey getdotacom!

Just popped in to say this is a really great blog!
Tons of very useful information.
I would like to ask you to do part two of your depolarization lesson, only this time use more concrete examples and if you could say things like "when you bet in this spot, you are so polarized/ not polarized" so we can see those spots. That would be great for a math noob like myself :f_biggrin:

thx again for the great thing you are doing for the community!

Cheers!


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xenomorphic
Joined: 29.12.2010

Originally posted by pokerprons
Hey getdotacom!

Just popped in to say this is a really great blog!
Tons of very useful information.
I would like to ask you to do part two of your depolarization lesson, only this time use more concrete examples and if you could say things like "when you bet in this spot, you are so polarized/ not polarized" so we can see those spots. That would be great for a math noob like myself :f_biggrin:

thx again for the great thing you are doing for the community!

Cheers!

+1


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getdotacom
Joined: 06.04.2008

Now at least I can see u really like this stuff.

@pokerprons
What did u mean by depolarization lesson ? I assume u wanna see part 2 of my last lesson about bluffing ? If so, I'm going to explain what frequencies to use when barreling, bluff/value ratios etc. Actually I'm almost definitely doing that lesson, because I haven't done exact math behind that, I could guess how it will turn out, but still I wanna see that :)


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Rsiatat
Joined: 21.12.2009

I am curious whats your winrate so far at nl 200 zoom?

also what sample do u think its necesarry to know your true winrate ?

and what do u think its the max winrate u can get at nl 200 normal tables and at nl200 zoom ?


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