Originally posted by BrokesoBroke
So in comparison to Stars.com is it a lot softer?
ahahaha don't even think about it!
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Originally posted by BrokesoBroke
So in comparison to Stars.com is it a lot softer?
Yeah, I think so. Definitely more fish, but less tables. Maybe on stars.com with good table selection is the same, but that means sitting in lobby all the time. At least I could do that a couple of years ago when I was 6 tabling.
Regs are a little bit weaker I think, but not quite sure. They play a little bit more straight forward, and they're not trying to exploit each other. But they have more balanced ranges and they play closer to GTO IMO. Biggest difference is playing with same regs at each table. On stars.com u will play same regs at some tables because there're like 40 tables running, but here u will be playing same guy at every table and that makes huge difference.
Hi,
I'm from the french community, and I just read about your challenge.
I think that, .fr and .com players are just so differents, and it's quite tough for you .com players to adapt your poker to those games. I guess it's like a time machine, most of french midstakes players start playing with the french law and .fr rooms creation, 3 years ago.
You, .com players, are playing those games for long time, and that make all the difference imo.
One example, the thin value bet; only few .fr regs use it, and most of them don't really know how to really do. Then they try to do it but it's most of the time on a bad way.
Some friends of mine, winning players on 2/4+ .com, tried to play .fr games, but can't even win at 1/2, they just don't understand what's happening because it's not the same game.
The rake is really high on .fr rooms, so regs try to not play each other, it's like they are waiting the good spot with a fish, that's all. You can't play with other regs or you'll be eaten by the rake. Fun fact is that .fr don't make any money, and they are almost BE since they were created, thanks to the government and the "extra rake". Can you imagine that 50NL HU rake is something like 20 or 25bb/100. You just can't play regs, or even super shortstack fishs, unless you want to win a stack and end BE.
I did play .fr games untill 5/10 and few 10/20, and recently tried 1/2 on some .com networks.
I was a bit chocked to see how aggressive people are, everybody is 3betting/squeezing/.. like crazy "monkeys", you don't see that on .fr, maybe with some top players, that's all.
As I said, it's 2 different worlds and the adaptation is not easy and requires time.
I found your blog and your last challenge because I start a similar one, rebuilding a roll from nothing. I'm playing 4NL now, and I was curious to see how you manage your challenge. IMO, it's a pretty tough challenge for a .com midstake player to come on .fr sites and play micros. I think it would be way more easy on .com sites.
You should play those games really str8forward, only for value, without any level or fancy plays, it's the best way to do some cash there, the field is really reggish, but they are stull pretty bad since they are learning poker, and they still have to find out many things about this game. But most of them are just bad standard nits. You don't have to overthink to crush them, just play standard, they will do mistakes without your help, then you just have to collect the cash.
Anyway, you quit this challenge already, so it's not usefull anymore (maybe for a next challenge?).
GL for your next goals and enjoy your beer.
(Sorry for my approximative english guys)
@scam
I'm playing nl200 and 400 now, games seem to be pretty solid. I can beat nl200, but not doing that good @400. I agree that rake is very high, especially for HU, but still I manage to win some money from regs HU and sh tables. I think regs play similar to stars.com, only this site is more fishier. There are some nits ofc, but still some sick action is going on most of the time. I think I failed with my challenge because I wasn't able to adapt to nl25 
I was bluffing like I usually do etc, but they just never fold and call me down with any pair 
Same when they bet - they never bluff and I call them with Ahi 
I remember being in some wtf spots calling with something like Ahi and they turned better Ahi into a bluff, that was tilting. I really don't wanna play that limit and I hope I won't decide to make such a challenge again.
I never really played on stars.fr, but I think 200nl and 400nl are pretty much the same, exept that you probably play less regs @400NL. Stars must bet one of the tougher .fr site, something like top 3.
I have a question about that, how much do you enjoy playing 'Ilares' ?
Originally posted by getdotacom
@scamI'm playing nl200 and 400 now, games seem to be pretty solid. I can beat nl200, but not doing that good @400. I agree that rake is very high, especially for HU, but still I manage to win some money from regs HU and sh tables. I think regs play similar to stars.com, only this site is more fishier. There are some nits ofc, but still some sick action is going on most of the time. I think I failed with my challenge because I wasn't able to adapt to nl25
Lol, these bad regs probably noted you as a fish 
Originally posted by scam60
I never really played on stars.fr, but I think 200nl and 400nl are pretty much the same, exept that you probably play less regs @400NL. Stars must bet one of the tougher .fr site, something like top 3.
I have a question about that, how much do you enjoy playing 'Ilares' ?
Haven't played many hands with him, only a little bit more than 1k. Don't remember any specific dynamics or anything else with him ether, so he's a standard reg for now
Preflop - part 2
Yeah, finally I'm doing it. I made first part of this 2 months ago, so I had to reread it myself to remember what was going on there. This time I will post some opening ranges I recommend to use and why. But I'm afraid I will have to make third part for this as well because there's a lot of content to cover. I wanna make this one from openers perspective and then the next one from 3bettor perspective. Also there is some stuff I'm experimenting with, so I don't wanna write about that while it's not fully tested.
I will have to write many ranges here, for that reason I will try to use pictures, I think it's much easier for u than reading. Unfortunately I didn't find any good way how to arrange pictures in text or something like that here, I will try to combine them in paint, that should work.
Before we start - all this stuff is meant for 100bb effective stacks. Also we assume both players use standard sizings, 2-3bb open, 8-10bb 3bet, 17-20bb 4bet IP and 19-22bb 4bet OOP. I don't wanna go into min5betting or something like that yet, but I will in next part. This time just assume villain 5bets AI. This will happen most of the time anyways, but min5betting becomes more popular in midstakes. It kinda was popular some time ago, but then I didn't see it for a while. Now it's coming back Anyways, I can bet 95% of people who read this play limits where min5bet is always nuts and happens very rarely. All ranges I will present here are pretty much balanced or super close to that and adjusted to current tendencies in midstakes. But I think u can easily use them in lower limits as well. UTG range is very tight, for that reason very easy to balance. I will start with that and then go to next positions.
UTG
Here u can see my impressive paint skills. I hope u can understand what I meant by these labels on each picture. First one is opening range for UTG, second one is our 3bet calling range (we're OOP, we got 3bet by lets say BU). Third one is when we're IP, so we got 3bet by blinds. Same for 4bets. Also that green bar below KTs in last picture means that we use only half of combos, but that's not so important for now.
Now some comments about these ranges. This utg opening range is on the looser side. Many players say that opening small PP's isn't profitable there, but I still can show profit with those. Not quite sure, but I think it's close. If u don't open, defending against 3bets should be more easier. But we should definitely open any pair when there's a fish in blinds, even we don't raise 22 by standard. 3bet calling range OOP looks pretty strong, but many players still won't call KQs and TT. Definitely we don't have to, if we open only 66+. Also some players 4bet AK here, I think it's a huge mistake unless u have some crazy shit going on with that player.
When we call, we have QQ-TT in our range and we're pretty much capped to QQ when board comes low. That sucks because we will be beat very often when we call down. Also we have to call some Ahi's on low boards if we wanna prevent our opponent from betting atc, but since we have AKs,AQs we will have at least some bd draws. But chances for 9hi or lower board are slim (not sure, I think something around 15%? If u know, let me know, don't wanna calculate it now). When flop comes Thi-Qhi, we have some sets, some overpairs, gutshots and some other stuff and we can play most of our range pretty good. Although we can have nuts on J62, still it's tough to play the rest of our range, but something like JT5 is much easier. When flop comes Khi or Ahi, basically we have the nuts. Especially on Ahi boards. Our opponent can have only 1 combo of AA and maybe some random Ax 2p combo which was bluff preflop, but when we have AK on Axx board, basically we have the nuts and we're never folding. For that reason I go crazy and start donking these boards with almost all my range. U maybe wanna say why ? We will lose value from his bluffs etc. Yeah, it could happen but again I think we got more value from his preflop bluffs, usually it's Axs or something like ATo. I've gotten 3 streets many times from these hands and sometimes even calldowns from KK. Also this gives more playability to our weaker hands, like we can bluff KQs and TT to balance this out, but it's super tough to play these hands through check. We kinda weaken or check/calling range by doing this, but it doesn't matter in 3bet pots. Villain has polarized range preflop and he can't valuebet thinner because he just doesn't have hands like AQ in his range.
Nothing much to say about rest of ranges. I don't like 4betting KK when facing 3bet from blinds, so we just call and our overall range is pretty strong. Obviously when we're 4betting, we use AQo as bluff OOP and ATs,KTs IP. OFC u can use some other hands, if u like them better, only the right count of combos matters.
MP
Again this is very loose. KJo and QJo definitely could be a fold here. Other hands seem reasonable, maybe we can fold some lower SCS's and suited Ax if don't feel comfortable with these. Also CO and BU plays huge role - if they like to call or 3bet a lot, definitely we should tighten up here a little bit. Our 3bet calling range OOP is much weaker now. Now we have even more problems playing lower boards. I'd consider to fold a little bit more than we should here and allow our opponent to make +ev bets with atc on low boards. Otherwise we have to call with many Ahi's, even without backdoors. As u can see, I still don't like 4betting AKo and QQ. Now it's much closer than it was from UTG, but it's still -EV if villain has a solid balanced 3betting range. Against some loose kids this could be an option. Our range plays very similar to previous - we flop OK on T-Q hi boards and a little bit better on Khi,Ahi boards. I'm still donking AK on these boards, I could consider donking AQ on Qhi boards as well against some looser opponents.
In position our range is almost the same, only we don't 4bet AKs and call ATs. Since we have position, this range plays very well. I think I told everything about this position.
CO
Here again we could fold some hands and argue that K6s is better than 98o, but still this is pretty loose IMO. At least we finally 4bet AK and QQ. Now we're even more screwed on low boards when calling 3bet OOP, still doing fine on Jhi type boards, but now we don't have the nuts on A,Khi boards. I still like donking Q-Ahi boards, but not that aggressive that it was when we had AK. I'd do that with some combos with top of our range, like with AQ on Ahi, Qhi boards, KQ on Khi boards. Also we can't have that many bluffs because we will lose more often with these hands. We have to play passively most of our range. That's the price for opening the CO so loosely, we could tighten up a little bit or say "screw balance, I'm playing nl50 ♦"
I still like calling 3bets from blinds with AKo and QQ. Most of the players will 4bet those, but our 4bet usually will be b/e or slightly -ev when blinds are tight with solid ranges. We will get it in only against QQ+,AK most of the time. These hands also help us to protect or range a little bit, since we're calling 3bets IP with hands like 98s, 77. And we still can flop basically the nuts on A,Khi boards very often. U're maybe wondering why I choose so random hands for 4bet bluffs every time, it's just for combos, as I said - use whatever u want.
BU
First thing u maybe wanna ask - wtf is wrong with that opening range ?! It's a little bit different from other players, they will prefer something like K7o over 72s. I don't wanna argue with that and this is the only spot where I say "SCREW THE BALANCE!". Believe me, u even don't wanna know how balanced 3bet calling range looks like when we open this Some players actually open even more, this is 60%, I've seen 80% at regular tables and 100% in zoom. Also AA in 3bet calling range could look weird. I put it there because I want to slowplay some combos. It doesn't necessary mean that we always call with AA. That means I'd like to slowplay some nut hands, it could be anything from top of our range - QQ+,AK. Mostly because we call with very weak range and we need to protect it somehow a little bit.
This 3bet calling range woulda been balanced if we opened around 40% BU and that's how much some tighter players open. Still we call 3bets with super weak hands and we have to call down with 2nd pairs and similar stuff very often when playing against some aggressive players. This is one of the biggest leaks for weaker players IMO. They maybe call enough preflop, but then they fold too much on every street when facing barrels. I felt really uncomfortable in this spot when moved to nl200 as well, now I kinda know which hands I'm calling on any board on each street. Also turning hands into a bluff is very important here, we have to understand our range and sometimes turn even weak TP into a bluff when flush completes and our opponent checks to us. This definitely is the loosest spot in SH games. I play some HU vs SH regs, but don't even wanna think what's going on when 2 loose HU players play. SH regs usually don't 3bet more than 20% in HU, so really no point to defend wide. Also my winrate with bottom 15% of this range is only 1bb/100 so it's pretty marginal. It will change overall winrate by 0.3bb/100 or something like that most likely, so this shouldn't be a thing to focus on if u're playing some lower stakes. Opening 40% BU is perfectly fine.
SB
This again is on the looser side, but why not. Definitely should consider folding something if BB is defending a lot. As u can see, I like to defend by 4betting here a lot. That's because BB usually will jam a lot of trash and also he will call our 4bets with much weaker hands. Only problem with this - our 3bet calling range is super weak now. We're even more more more screwed on low boards. Now we don't have anything there and we can't be very balanced, we have to fold a lot. We could maybe slowplay AA, it would been almost guaranteed to win a stack on low board. I think we can solve this problem by opening a little bit less or even folding a little bit more to 3bets if villain is not starting to 3bet shit out of us. Or we just can keep folding on low boards, they won't come very often. Again we have some solid hands for higher boards. Still could donk something, but not super aggressively, similar to CO vs BU.
I hope u guys enjoyed and read something u can put into ur game. As always, u're welcome to leave feedback, ask questions or post whatever u think about this. As I said, I want to finish this, but there're 3bets and 5bets left. I hope I will make that faster than this one. Also I'm happy I made this, it took some time and I didn't play any MTT's this evening. So it saved me at least 1k I guess
P.S. Maybe I will post some hands on this later, especially with donking, most likely u haven't seen that very often, only from a fish ♠_cool:
Great post, thanks!
One remark though:
Also my winrate with bottom 15% of this range is only 1bb/100 so it's pretty marginal. It will change overall winrate by 0.3bb/100 or something like that most likely, so this shouldn't be a thing to focus on if u're playing some lower stakes. Opening 40% BU is perfectly fine.
You should take into account that playing this bottom part of your range also increases the profit on the upper part of your range so actually, it will increase your winrate a bit more. And 0,3bb/100 is quite nice already.
Hi there,
over a last couple of days read your whole thread and can say very nice sir.
Really like the moment when you decided to write down about theory.
Also, was interesting to see how winning NL200 player struggle with NL20.
Now just a couple question and observation about last thread.
As NL20 player (fish ) don't like call 3b OOP so much so will probably 4b some.
People are nitty on this level and I usually play anon table, so when they see 4 b from UTG, MP they say omg he have aces.
You don't have small poket pairs in your 4b bluffing range.
I implement them against agg 3b bettor from CO and SB and work ok for now.
Your thoughts about that?
Looking forward next article and for those hand when you donk in 3b pots ♦
Cheers
Hi,
I stumbled across this blog yesterday and it's an awesome read, congrats. I've already read it all.
I particularly like the strategy segments and reading about your 250k hands in 1 month challenge. Pretty sick stuff. Would love to see another challenge but probably not trying to beat 25NL ♦ You don't want it to be too hard.
In term of your strategy articles, I think you choose some great topics to cover and also explain them clearly. I'll certainly be going back over them with complete concentration very soon.
For future theory topics I would love an article on donk betting so I look forward to that.
Thanks
Now go have a beer, you earned it. Not that you need an excuse by the sounds of it. ♦
@wesly
I mentioned a couple of times that I put those 4bet hands there only for combos. U can use whatever u want. I like small pps only in case if we're going to jam them over min5bet. I think they have worse playability when villain calls our 4bet than something like Axs. Still too lazy to find any hands for this. Probably will do it in a couple of days.
@J10aces
I had a topic about donking, u can find it somewhere here Not planning any challenge yet, but maybe I will think of something.
Now go have a beer, you earned it. Not that you need an excuse by the sounds of it.
A+, just drinking right now
I hope u guys enjoyed and read something u can put into ur game. As always, u're welcome to leave feedback, ask questions or post whatever u think about this
Thank you. This is definitely very useful for me and I'll apply some parts of it to my game!
I want to finish this, but there're 3bets and 5bets
How about write something like "how to defend vs above (Preflop - part 2)"? I mean how your defend ranges preflop looks like if you playing against yourself (so postflop skill is equal and we can ignore it).
I want to know how to construct defend ranges (calling PFR, 3bet, and 5 bet). I know it's far more complex than above, so taking part2 as PFR base will make it simpler. I want to know how to construct and not copying yours.
Originally posted by J10aces
Unfortunately notSounds like a good plan for tonight though ♦
He talks about it in his blind defence lesson iirc. I'll try find it
edit: here
How about write something like "how to defend vs above (Preflop - part 2)"? I mean how your defend ranges preflop looks like if you playing against yourself (so postflop skill is equal and we can ignore it). I want to know how to construct defend ranges (calling PFR, 3bet, and 5 bet). I know it's far more complex than above, so taking part2 as PFR base will make it simpler. I want to know how to construct and not copying yours.
I explained all the math in my first part. U can find how to develop preflop ranges there. If u wanna understand it much better, U should read some book or watch some videos about that. I'd recommend something from Mathew Janda, he has like 50 hours of videos about preflop play. Unfortunately not on this site
I tried to find some hands about my last topic, but my hem filters show nothing. Dunno, I'm doing something wrong most likely, but I can't find what I want. So I decided to mark hands during my sessions and post them afterwards. I got 1 pretty funny from yesterday's session.
€1/€2 No Limit Holdem
4 Players
Hand Conversion Powered by weaktight.com
Stacks:
CO (€352.27) 176bb
BTN (€416.85) 208bb
HERO (SB) (€677.97) 339bb
BB (€200) 100bb
Pre-Flop: (€3, 4 players) HERO is SB A♥ Q♦
2 folds, HERO raises to €5.30, BB raises to €14, HERO calls €8.70
Flop: 8♠ 9♣ A♠ (€28, 2 players)
HERO bets €20, BB raises to €54, HERO calls €34
Turn: 4♥ (€136, 2 players)
HERO checks, BB goes all-in €132, HERO calls €132
River: 2♣ (€400, 2 players, 1 all-in)
Final Pot: €400
BB shows high card Ace
K♦ J♦
HERO shows a pair of Aces
A♥ Q♦
HERO wins €397.50 (net +€197.50)
BB lost €200
This time it was pretty solid spew. We didn't miss any value from his bluffs, actually I think we wouldn't have stacked him by checking. So, yeah, donkbetting is pretty cool stuff It tilts people a lot and they're not used to it, like this guy. He expected me to have something like JT or spades draw most likely.
We could consider 4betting preflop because of his smallish sizing, but I think calling is perfectly fine as well.
Originally posted by Riverdiver
What kind of pfr do you get when you play preflop like that?
It's something like 22/18 with 6 people at the table.
Great thread!
Did you know Matthew Janda has a book coming out in the next month or two?
Here's the link to the 2+2 thread: Applications of No-Limit Hold'em; A Guide to Understanding Theoretical Sound Poker