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Lesson 7 - Playing UTG as aggressor OOP
I said no more theory, but still there are some things I wanna point out before we start analyzing actual hands. I explained some frequencies to use and some other math related stuff. But here I will use a little bit different frequencies we calculated before. Why ? Because we did this in theory, but in practice I think player who bets has greater chance to win a pot than a player who defends. This applies only in situations where player gets in that situation very rarely or he bets a strong range. For example, we cbet 95% of the time. When we check, we almost always give up. In this situation it will happen only once in 20 hands, so we don't care if villain can bet atc super profitably if we are able to make +ev cbets 95% of the time. Maybe it's not clear what I'm trying to say here, but I hope u will get it when we start analyzing something.
I tried to find a hand, but I didn't find actually what I wanted. It's 3way, but for this lesson assume BB folded preflop and we're in HU pot. I really don't wanna analyze multiway pots now, it's 10 times harder than HU pots. So the hand is :
$1/$2 No Limit Holdem
6 Players
Hand Conversion Powered by weaktight.com
Stacks:
HERO (UTG) ($273.81) 137bb
UTG+1 ($99) 50bb
CO ($253.50) 127bb
BTN ($63.02) 32bb
SB ($201) 101bb
BB ($236.20) 118bb
Pre-Flop: ($3, 6 players) HERO is UTG K♣ J♣
HERO raises to $5.30, 1 fold, CO calls $5.30, 2 folds, BB calls $3.30
Flop: K♠ Q♥ 6♦ ($16.90, 3 players)
BB checks, HERO checks, CO bets $14, BB folds, HERO calls $14
Turn: 9♠ ($44.90, 2 players)
HERO checks, CO bets $32, HERO calls $32
River: 9♦ ($108.90, 2 players)
HERO checks, CO checks
And the million dollar question is - Is this played good ? U will see something like that many times a day in forums. Then people usually ask for villain's stats etc. Actually if he's a reg and pretty decent, our range matters much more than any stats and I haven't seen someone asking for hero's opening range here. Now I'm going to analyze not this particular hand, but our entire range how we should play. After that we will be able to see was it played good or not.
Our opening range is AA-22,AKo-ATo,KQo,AKs-ATs,KQs-KTs,QJs-QTs,JTs,T9s. On the flop we have 154 total combos including blocker effects.
Flop:
First of all I'd recommend to start with hands we definitely can bet 3 streets for value. We will bet most of them and slowplay some. We can do it here with all sets, KQ and AA. AK actually is questionable. Most of u will think WTF?! we don't bet AK here ? I think we really can't bet it for 3 streets here because our villain will call it down with AK+, maybe some combos of KJs, but we really don't beat his range that much because he can slowplay his sets and KQ very easily. We still can bet AK for 2 streets, but that doesn't mean we have to start betting on the flop. Also we wanna slowplay some combos, so I'd bet here AA,KQ, for 3 streets. It's only 15 combos. Do we wanna bet some 1 street or 2 street hand right now ? I think we definitely don't bet 1 street hands here, but we should bet some 2street hands. I'd go with some combos of AK now. Definitely not all of them, but lets take half - 6 combos. We still can do ether way, this is opponent dependent more or less, but we still should bet some, otherwise we can't defend our turn checks. This gives us 21 combos total. Previously we calculated we need something around 2:1 bluff:value ratio on the flop when we barrel turn with 50% frequency. But this applies only when our range is perfectly polarized, in this case it isn't, villain still can beat some part of it. So we should decrease this number a little bit. No idea by how much, I'm pretty sure it's almost impossible to calculate, at least while playing, so let's take a guess. I will decrease it by 25%, so it's 1.5:1 now. 1.8*21=32. Lets add 32 bluffs!
T9s(4 combos) is perfect. Then I'll add 8 combos of AT and AJ, that gives us 20 total (we wanna leave some of those for c/r and c/c). Now we don't have any good bluffs left (JTs is not a bluff, I will talk about it later). We really have to start bluffing with super bad hands because rest of our range is low pocket pair heavy. We don't have any other choice than adding 12 combos of PP's, so we should bet 88,77 as well. I don't wanna count JTs as a bluff, it's pretty good draw here. It's not very strong, so we shouldn't balance it out with any bluffs, I'd recommend to just add it. That gives us 57 combos. 57/154=0.37. So we're betting this flop only 37% of the time.
Now we have to defend our checks. We did the math some time ago and if I remember correctly, we have to defend 57.5% vs 0.75PSB. Because of our low cbet on this board our opponent will get opportunity to bet very often, so we wanna defend close to that number, I will go for something around 50%. Lets see how much we can get with decent hands and then add something if needed.
First of all I wanna c/r QQ and 66. It's 6combos, but it's almost impossible to beat these hands, so we can balance it out by using our 2:1 ratio. Lets add 6 more combos of AJ and AT. It's 18 combos for c/r.
Now we have to c/c something like 60 combos to get our 50%. We c/c our KK, it's 3 combos. Then rest of our AK gives us 9total. Then we should add rest of our AT and AJ, that gives us 17. Next hands I'd add is KJs,KTs it's 23 total now. Then 18 Qx combos, it's 41 total. As we can see, it's very hard to defend this flop because we want 20 more combos, but all hands we have left is some pocket pairs. So we have to c/c JJ-99. This sounds a little bit silly, but we can do that because we have some very strong hands in our range and our opponent won't bluff that much on later streets. Actually this is pretty bad flop for our range because it's PP's heavy. Or maybe our overall range is bad. Anyways, we have 59 combos and that's what we wanted. tbh, I'd c/f TT and 99 at the table, but I'd do the rest same way pretty much. 59+18=77. 77/154=0.5 so it's exactly 50%! He actually made it a little bit bigger then 75%, so we could call less, but better just stay with this for now. This looks scary and we're only on the flop, but actually it gets much easier on later streets. U will see, if u're still following 
Turn:
As we c/c, we have only 56 left (9 removes 3 combos of 99 if I'm not missing something). First question is do we wanna donkbet here. I think the answer is no, so we're always checking. We could consider maybe donkbetting only Q turn because it hits our range pretty hard. As we're not donkbetting, we should defend our checks very close to 57.5% because our opponent always will get a chance to bet. It's 32 combos. Lets start with c/r. We have KK and 99 in our range and we don't wanna slowplay them anymore, so lets raise! It's 6 combos and we can use our previously calculated 1:1 ratio because it's nuts, so add 6 more bluffs. I will take AJ and AT for 6 combos, I believe we c/c 8 of those total. We have 12 combos to c/r, 20 more to go. We're definitely c/c AK for 6 and we have KTs,KJs for 6 as well. It's 12 total, so 8 more left. I didn't tell anything about suits of our AT,AJ. Lets assume we have 1 combo of AJs with fd left, so we c/c it for 13 total. Then just add 7 more of AQ and we're good to go.
River:
We have only 20 combos left now. Same thing about donkbetting - we don't donkbet here. We can't have any nuts, but our opponent can be super strong, so it's out of the question here. For that reason we again wanna defend 57.5%, it's 12 combos. Now it's super easy - we have exactly 12 combos of TP left. So we call AK,KJs,KTs and fold the rest.
So the answer is - we played this hand correctly according to this. As I said, turn and river was easy. Actually before I did this, I thought this texture favors UTG opener, but now I'm kinda thinking it's pretty bad 
That's not my exact UTG opening range, but pretty close. If I will notice this on many more textures, I could start folding lower PP's. Also this is pretty common flop, not like 7hi board. We could maybe start betting more AK on the flop to make it easier, but then our river calling range is super weak. Now we have half our range TPTK, but if we bet more AK on the flop, we will have to call down with some AQ as well and I don't like it.
Anyways, GL @ tables and feel free to leave some feedback or ask questions on this. If u liked this, I will do the same stuff on different board textures with different ranges, so let me know.
Edit : I reread this and I know what I actually did wrong I took to many combos for our c/c range on the flop. As we bet 57 combos of our entire range, we have to defend only around 50% of our remaining range, so it's around 50 combos, not 60 on the flop. Then it makes more sense and it's much easier. I don't wanna correct all of this right now, but this means we don't have to call TT and 99 there. This will affect our play on later streets a little bit as well, but I will stay it as it is. Next time I will know how to do it correctly
I loved the walkthrough of that hand, now calculate how many bb you win/lose per utg hand u open with 1 caller on that board with the frequencies you estimated and I'll take my hat off for you 
Thanks guys, but u will have to wait for the next lesson. I fucked up my pc yesterday and I need new key for my flopzilla because it's written for hardware configuration, but I changed it. I wanted to make it today, but I can't without flopzilla and going to Amsterdam tomorrow. So I will make next lesson only after like 10 days. I will try to post something from there. cya !
Yo !
I'm back from Amsterdam. I wasn't running good there, now back to online grind FTP games seem very soft now, so I will be playing online this week a lot.
I really liked being in Amsterdam. Organisation of event was great. But the city is even better Definitely returning there, only next time I will relax more and play less poker.
P.S. I'm thinking of some sick challenge with my FTP money. If u have any ideas, post them here.
hai.truong79
Originally posted by Riverdiver
100k in three months playing nl500 rush
I´m pretty sure this is impossible.
I was thinking about playing with 20bi brm up to nl1k, but there is no action above nl400. Maybe in evenings, but I need 24/7 action because I play in different time every day. This week played some mtt's on stars and ftp, but without any huge success, I'm up a couple of buyins so far. Today I'm a little bit tilted because of 2 3rd places @ftp. I got to the ft with almost 150bb, still wasn't able to ship it 
Also busted @ft bubble on stars with QQ vs AK in chiplead pot. All that in one day tilts a lot.
Originally posted by acceleration123
Originally posted by Riverdiver
100k in three months playing nl500 rushI´m pretty sure this is impossible.
I know nothing about the traffic on these limits 
Hi !
I'm a hand judge in nl20-50 forums now ♦ So if u wanna my opinion on some hands, post them there.
I know, I haven't done next lesson for some time, but I've something awesome in mind. I think I could do it tomorrow or on holidays. It will be some cool stuff u won't find online or in any books that easy.
Originally posted by getdotacom
Hi !I'm a hand judge in nl20-50 forums now ♦ So if u wanna my opinion on some hands, post them there.
I know, I haven't done next lesson for some time, but I've something awesome in mind. I think I could do it tomorrow or on holidays. It will be some cool stuff u won't find online or in any books that easy.
you'll be seeing hands from me ♦
Lesson 8 - Defending blinds in a modern way
OK, folks, time has come and I have to make this post
I'm writing this after sick session, got sick upswing in last 3k hands. I'm in really good mood and I hope it will help to make this awesome. This post should be pretty large, but I will do my best to make it readable.
Introduction
Everyone have heard that games are getting tougher and tougher, nl1k crushers now play nl50 and so on. Of course this is true, but not by that much u may expect. I'd say they're a little bit different because meta-game has changed a lot during last years. Mostly this happened because of newcomers in game. They learnt how to exploit oldschool players and made a lot of money. Some of those players adopted, some quit poker and some are playing much lower limits. There are some exceptions where they didn't drop limit, playing same way same limit and losing a lot of money. I know 1 very sad player on stars. Some time ago, when ptr tracked stars, I looked him up. His profits in 2008 was ~200k. Then he made ~100k in 2009, he was b/e in 2010 and was losing ~100k in 2011. U can make a guess about his profits this year. He's basically playing fit/fold and he's super tight, like 16/14 in SH games. Everyone knows how to rob that guy. I didn't play in that time, but I assume that most regs played that way.
Nowadays standard reg plays like 24/20/8 with some variations and 60% BU steal can be considered as standard now. I know some players who manages to open more than that as well. They are printing money that way when blinds fold too much. With some great postflop skills they can make huge profit even when they got called and see the flop with hand like K3o. Lets see math behind that. We open BU to 2.5bb. How much blinds should defend to make our steal b/e preflop ? We risk 2.5 to win 1.5, 2.5/(1.5+2.5)=0.625 So blinds should defend 37.5% combined. If they defend same range, it's easy to solve for that. range*range=0.625. Range = Sqrt(0.625)=0.79, 1-0.79 = 21%. As we can see, blinds should defend 21% each, but this should be the number when they defend only by 3betting. When blinds call, BU will see free flop and will win the pot sometimes. Most people 3bet from blinds around 10-18% vs BU steal. I will take average - 14. Next question is how wide we should call. I don't know exact number, but it should be much higher than these 7% we still need. Reasonable calling range from BB is around 14%, but only 7% from sb. This looks solid and BU should be breaking even with some crap hands. But in reality this isn't true. BU still will be able to make huge profit postflop with trash hands vs mediocre player. I will explain why in next chapter.
Problem playing OOP
U probably know that playing OOP is much harder than playing IP. Many books and some other stuff says u should avoid playing OOP as much as possible. But what can we do when BU steals a lot ? We saw how much we have to defend and we don't wanna allow him to raise 72o and make profit. So we don't have any choice than playing OOP. I will try to explain how bad is being OOP by explaining how good is playing IP.
Basically being in position means we can dictate how many streets of value we wanna get. This usually works for 2-3 streets, it's a little bit trickier with 1 street. When player OOP checks to us, we can bet flop, turn and then decide on the river. We can bet again or check back (2 or 3 streets). We can go for 2 streets in many different ways as well, like checking back flop or betting flop and checking the turn. This means, when player OOP checks the flop, we will always go for one of these options. This is why BU can open super wide range. He will flop many 2 street hands very often. Like top pair with weak kicker, which is worth 2 streets. Same for 2nd pair with good kicker on some coordinated board etc. Also position allows us to play draws more efficiently - we will get all 3 streets when we hit, or we can take 1 more card without paying for it. U get the idea why position is so important, now lets look at 1 quick example.
We open BU, BB calls. Flop comes K62r. Our general strategy for this board - we will bet all our weak Kx for 2 streets, then we will bet KQ+ for 3 streets. Also we will have some hands like TT which is 1 street worth most likely, but I don't wanna talk about how we should play 1 street hands here. Lets focus on 2 and 3 street hands. Basically we will be able to do that all day long and make huge profits while BB will check to us. We have so many marginal hands to bet here that we can balance it out with almost our entire range. And this will happen on many other board textures as well, not only this one. Lets take a quick look to this hand from BB perspective.
We called with KQo in BB and we floped TP 2nd kicker. We have the second best hand we can have in our range. We check because we expect our opponent to bet. We call flop, turn comes blank and we call again. River is a blank and we check. Our opponent bets again. Are we happy about or hand now ? We had super strong hand on the flop, but now we have the bluffcatcher. When we call, we will see AK or total air. So what's the difference between having 88 or KQ here ? Actually these hands are pretty much the same when facing 3barrels. And we didn't get 3rd street from opponents K3o. If we were IP, we'd have gotten 3rd street from his K3 and many other weaker hands. OK, u probably already knew that playing OOP sucks and don't wanna hear it again Now I will explain how to solve this problem, but before u read that u could think about it for a moment yourself.
Solution
The solution is quite simple and u probably have figured it out. If u think it's check raising, u're totally wrong. It's donkbetting ! Before any explanations why and so on, I wanna look at BU defending range vs donkbets, assuming he opens 60% preflop. I will use same board as before, K62r. Then turn will be 8r and the river 2. So basically board texture didn't change at all. I will do it in similar way I did it in previous lesson. We will defend 50% of our range on the flop, it's 30% of total hands. This means BU has to call with 77+, then all possible backdoor fds and gutshots. We could raise some hands, but I think this board is good enough to slowplay, only thing we could raise is some 2pairs. It's pretty wide, isn't it ? Now lets get to the turn, I will take 50% again. Now we have some OESDs, but still we're calling with hands like 99. On the river we can raise around 10% for value (AK+). Balancing it out with some bluffs, we can raise 15% total. That leaves us with 35% more to call. It's basically all top pairs. (down to K5o and K3s). As u can see, KQ absolutely crushes that range. I didn't calculate it, but looks like we can even valuebet KT vs this range on the river.
U maybe will come up with arguments against donking here, like which hands do we call down then ? Our calling range is super weak since we donkbet! What to do if he raises ? His range is much stronger (bullshit), because he has AK,KK,AA(so what ?) . To convince u, I will go through BB range, same way I did that in last lesson.
I will use range of 99-66,AJo-A9o,KQo-KTo,QJo,JTo,ATs-A8s,KJs-K9s,QJs-QTs,JTs,T9s,98s,87s,76s,65s (13.3%) as BB calling range.
We have 33 combos of KT+ to bet 3 streets. As I said, KT is pretty marginal and we wanna leave something for calling, so we will bet like 23 combos of KT+ (mixed version from KT,KJ,KQ) and 1 combo of 66. Now let's add some bluffs. I won't use our 2:1 rule because our hands aren't super strong vs all villains range. I will go with 37 bluffs for our 24 value hands. That's all our backdoor fds. Now we just drop out half of our bluffs each street and we will have like 9 bluffs for our 24 value hands on the river. Looks fine for me.
We had 159 total combos on the flop, we defended 61 by donking. Now we have 98 left to check. We're not c/r any hands here, so let's start by calling with most obvious hands. We left 10 combos of KT+ and 2 combos of 66. It's 12 total + 3combos of K9s, it's 15 total. We wan't c/c something around 50% or 49 combos, it's 34 to go. It's 24 combos of 77-99 and 6x. We don't have any reasonable hands left, so we should call with some Ahi's. We can pick AJo for that or mix it up with our donk bluffs and take something like ATs + bdfd. As we don't donk any turns after calling the flop, we should defend close to 57% of our range. It's 28 combos. Now we basically call our TP combos, 66 and 99. We can c/r our turned 88 set and balance it out with some bluffs which should give us needed combos. On the river we have to call down only with TP and c/r our 66. We actually can turn 1 combo of KT into a bluff because we don't need to call down with all of them.
Now u can see that donking doesn't affect our c/c range at all. I'm pretty sure u will end up calling down with same hands even u don't donkbet at all. Our opponent will be able to bet KQ for 3streets, but I doubt he can bet KJ. Maybe for smaller sizing, but not 3/4pot. Only thing that comes into the mind u could say against donking is : Why should I donkbet any value hand when our opponent will bet almost atc and I will get more value from his bluffs ? Yes, it's true, but u will lose much more value by not getting 3 streets from his super weak TP hands. EV of donkbetting should be much higher than EV of checking for a hand like KQ. U could try to exploit this even more by check/calling the flop and then donkbetting turn, but this will work only if they don't adjust. They should start checking back all 2 street hands on the flop and then bet turn and river. Then u won't be able to get 3 streets again. I didn't mention anything about checkraising. That's because we don't have that many strong hands to do that. Remember, when we donkbet we attack opponents entire range, but when we c/r we attack only his betting range which usually is much stronger. If they bet way too much, we could raise KQ and bet all streets, but I think it's super close even they cbet as much as 70% on this texture.
We analysed only 1 board texture, but which textures are best for donking ? I will try to point out some things :
Board should contain broadway cards (when u look to our preflop calling range, u can see that it consists of many broadways)
Board puts many 2 street hands in opponents range (like example)
Our opponent can't have too many nutted hands, while we have pretty strong hand as well (like QJT board, where he has all possible combos of stright, I wouldn't recommend donking that much here).
I will list best boards for doing this :
K,Q,J,T hi boards with low cards (flusdraws doesn't matter that much)
AJx,ATx boards. U can donk other Ax boards, but these 2 are the best because we have AJo and ATo
Some other 2broadway boards where we have top2 offsuit combos
Some lower boards aren't that great because our opponent will have many overpairs and we don't have that many strong hands on these boards. Like 652 is terrible. Even if we have some overpairs and other stuff, it usually won't be enough to bet 3streets. Opponent will outdraw us very often and he has much better overpairs.
Conclusion
If u read so far, u're reading this as well. I explained donkbetting theory a little bit and I predict that this will be considered "standard" after a year or so. Now I've seen maybe 5% of players doing this. They usually stick to oldschool c/c style. I think most of them think that my range is something like middle pairs on Khi boards when I donk. They usually raise the flop and 3barrels with total air a lot. This kinda is standard vs fish who donks mid pairs there, but raising vs range like this with air isn't right way to go. Also they have some sort of a mental leak, they just can't donk into preflop aggressor, because it's now considered "standard" to check to him.
Anyways, it will take some time for something like this to come into the game. But I think next generation of players will come with this and some more innovations to bring game to the next level. This is the way how to combat 60% BU open, but there are many other tendencies to exploit.
