BRC Supporting Blog

Originally posted by VorpalF2F
What program do you use to create them?

It is LibreOffice Calc. I am still playing around with the different possibilities but for the start I thought less is more.

Originally posted by irieill

Originally posted by VorpalF2F
What program do you use to create them?

It is LibreOffice Calc. I am still playing around with the different possibilities but for the start i thought less is more.

Cool
I've used OpenOffice, but not often, as I have a full copy of Excel

I have a leak in calling too tight. I know this and I am working on it. In todays session I had 8:1 blunders in terms of folding when I should have called vs. pushing when I should have folded. I am asking myself if and what has more impact on EV if we take our opponents into account. Let us assume that the pool has the tendency to fold to much but at the same time pushes a little more because of this.

If the pool folds to much we should widen our push range what I am not doing obviously. That means I loose some EV here.

If the pool pushes more because we are folding to much does that mean we should call more? But should we not tighten up if opponent is more loose? And does that in the end mean I gain some EV here?

That is confusing. Does anybody have some insights?

I often say that especially recreational players tend to have somewhat static calling ranges. Meaning if they should be very tight nash wise they likely call too wide and vice versa if they should call wide they likely call too tight. For shoves if nash wise any2 shove or close to it is fine its better to assume as default that they shove tighter.

Originally posted by ghaleon
I often say that especially recreational players tend to have somewhat static calling ranges. Meaning if they should be very tight nash wise they likely call too wide and vice versa if they should call wide they likely call too tight. For shoves if nash wise any2 shove or close to it is fine its better to assume as default that they shove tighter.

Thank you for the input. I can only agree with you. Do you have advices to review and evaluate situations with reads involved? For now what I do is to load all hands of some specific game type of the session into ICMIZER and auto-analyze them. But at the end of the session I do not always remeber all the preconditions, e.g. if some spot was the CL and so on, especially ICMIZER does not show nick names. So my in game thoughts and reads that might have very huge impact do not count.

The main problem is that although I feel comfortable at my main games, I still have not the fundamental confidence to only mark hands that I am unsure about. I want to have some score on my overall game and detect every mistake I made. But that is somewhat not effectice.

For example take this very very interesting hand.

PokerStars - 200/400 Ante 25 NL - Holdem - 5 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

BB: 8.38 BB
Hero (UTG): 36.91 BB
CO: 9.92 BB
BTN: 7.19 BB
SB: 5.1 BB

5 players post ante of 0.06 BB, SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.81 BB) Hero has 8♦ 3♥

fold, CO calls 1 BB, fold, SB raises to 5.04 BB and is all-in, BB raises to 8.32 BB and is all-in, CO calls 7.32 BB

Flop: (21.99 BB, 3 players) 9♠ 6♣ J♥

Turn: (21.99 BB, 3 players) T♥

River: (21.99 BB, 3 players) 6♥

In equilibrium this is an any two for me (I know it but omit the push). I gave CO what you called static calling range and folded. All the other players are regulars with solid stats. But look how crazy they go on the bubble with this guy involved. How to deal with that?

Change villains calling ranges to something you expect them to be. These are exactly the type of spots where they should call extremely tight. 18man direct bubble and heroes big stick size make ICM tax absurdly high.

I have not played these in long time but I think e.g. CO should call only TT+ or something in nash?

Originally posted by ghaleon
CO should call only TT+ or something in nash?

Exactly. To be 83o a negative shove I have to give him at least somthing like 99+, ATs+, AJo+, KQs and thats fairly reasonable for this guy.

I still do not understand what SB and BB are doing here and why. I mean CO had openlimp/folded before but I am pretty sure he would not fold to SB push at this stage and SB should know this. Because both SB and BB are solid there must be some point here that I am missing.

Originally posted by irieill

Originally posted by ghaleon
CO should call only TT+ or something in nash?

Exactly. To be 83o a negative shove I have to give him at least somthing like 99+, ATs+, AJo+, KQs and thats fairly reasonable for this guy.

I still do not understand what SB and BB are doing here and why. I mean CO had openlimp/folded before but I am pretty sure he would not fold to SB push at this stage and SB should know this. Because both SB and BB are solid there must be some point here that I am missing.

If these are small stake games you play even most regs have lot of leaks in their game in general. Otherwise they would already be in higher stakes. Also note that if you widen ranges for all players then they probably dont have to be calling quite as wide as you mentioned for 83o to be -EV shove.

Also versus recreational especially you might run into situations where they get annoyed by frequent shoving and just decide to call way too wide. Might be something to consider sometimes.

BRC Update

Bankroll: €1125.02
Games: 110
Hands: 5463
Winnings: €121.59
Rakeback: €0.00
Bonus: €0.00
Movement: €121.59


Week 5 was the best since the start of my BRC €-wise. But this is for some reason I would like to assert. I did a good portion of theory, especaially for the early game of 18-man where i definetely had leaks in terms of being way to tight. Now, being more loose/aggressive early I get into better situations at the final table which helps a lot. Still I have a very big leak in big stack vs. big stack situations. Take these two hands for example:

There is some space to justify the actions I have taken, but in the end I am not good with what I have done there. Just awoid those marigal situations and take advantage of the opportunity that to tight opponents give you. My BR now allows me to include more of the $10s. Even if the start was somewhat bumpy I still belive that there are more bad players than at the $5s. For sure there are better regs as well but overall I am looking forward to play these games regulary.

At the Scholars LB I managed to get 55 points which is OK and keeps me on track. With ~211 points after 10/13 tourneys another 55 points in the remaining tourneys would lead to some extra cash for sure. So again keep your fingers crossed!!!

So there is one point I am not sure about. I am differentiating between pure winnings, rakeback and bonus. How do you count the extras? For me tickets are nothing worth until you make some profit out of them. So I do not count them at all and only count profit made out of them like some kind of freeroll winnings. Rakeback is easy, as I can directly transform $ into € from my balance. And finally there is T$. I got some with my last treasurebox at PokerStars. But as I do not know the exact exchange rate ATM I recieve the bonus, I just go with it like tickets. I can buy in for free, but I have to make it ITM to gain some money. Is this reasonable? The last thing is StarsCoins: I already had some when I started the challenge, but did not mention/remeber them. Now I got some more. But for me they do not count until they are realized as some money. So should I instantly realize them as it is always 100:$1 or is it OK to "keep them" to beautiy results in bad times?

Sadly no payoff

Originally posted by irieill
Sadly no payoff

I hate it when that happens
— well I hate the no payoff part, but the royal flush part is nifty.
Somebody needs to have a high club to continue on the turn, so really hard to get value.
If you check, someone with a club might bet, but if not, you get nothing more anyway.

Nice hand!

Did you pot turn? If so that is bad sizing in general as we also block big flushes. I would go like 1/3 pot with aim to potentially get some two pairs to continue along with small to medium flushes. Sets are calling likely pot size bet also but those are very rare with high card heavy board assuming single raised pot.

Originally posted by ghaleon
Did you pot turn? If so that is bad sizing in general as we also block big flushes. I would go like 1/3 pot with aim to potentially get some two pairs to continue along with small to medium flushes. Sets are calling likely pot size bet also but those are very rare with high card heavy board assuming single raised pot.

Have a look at the spoiler. The HH is in there.

Originally posted by irieill
Turn: (15.67 BB, 2 players) Q♣
Hero bets 6.27 BB, fold

40% with the same thoughts.

Ah I somehow missed whole spoiler

God damn! I have to do some update just to exhaust. So maybe I am a little bit on tilt but not that much I used to be when things went in the wrong direction in the past :f_thumbsup:. Today I had I mind changing situation: I did a perfect +EV push on some table, then focus went to other tables and after I was back on the first one I had the hated PokerStars popup. But instead of going to the replayer I just hit the "register to another" button and forgot about that hand. Even now I have no need to look it up. I am sure I made the right decision and I am not interested in the outcome. I wish it was always like this. But I am only some human being. But nevertheless I am going to do it like this in the future.

But near the sessions end I got some bad beats that i noticed and they really hurt. Thankfully the hands happend when I already decided to call it a day, so in the end it is half that wild. It could have been a really good session today but the poker god did not want it to be...

In the end I am still up with the highest BR since the start of my BRC but it just hurts as it could have been even more. There are two more things that hurt a little bit.

1. I did not manage my PokerStars monthly challenge and therefore miss a great portion of rakeback. Not sure about it if I compare to last month where I ended up BE clearing the challenge though.

2. I failed to score high in the Scholars LB in the last two tourneys. And now I am a little bit scared about the last one wich is not a good starting situation for tomorrow. On top of that I got trapped today by some guy that did also limp/fold before.

Now as I wrote down all this, my mind is back on the right track. Sometimes you just need to shout it out and have some time to recover. Tomorrow I will make it to the FT in the Scholars LB tourney and I am also going to leave the $5s behind me. Always think positive!

Ok here is some other question to you guys... I am still not able to classify myselfe. Except of winrate, ROI and stuff like that. Is ther some other qualitative value to use? I am doing the ICMIZER MTT COACH on a daily basis. Is there some indicator in terms of current streak or overall percentage that I can rely on? I mean who are the top 20 or top 1% players of some game type? There is exactly one player name I encountered on my tables right away. Does that mean it is spread across all limits? I do not understand it.

Also how much valuable is Sharkscope for example? How do they build up their boards? Is it just net winnings? I somehow switched from red to green within one day winning some bucks. That is confusing.

If it makes any better, the first three was quite standard on both sides, maybe the A8o was a bit loose call, but you could shove there pretty wide, so I can understand that too. KJo push with a read is okay too, so it wasn't your fault to loose these pots. I totally understand these situations can be frustrating when you run under EV, but on the long run these kind of decisions will get you some $, more than you lost today.

Sharkscope is actually great, it has over 99% coverage of all tournaments played on supported sites. It has it's limitations tho, like it can't tell the exact number of rebuys, so it uses the average number of them in a tournament for all players who don't use the Sharkscope desktop app. You can read about their methods under the FAQ section on their site.

Thank you for your kind input! I am aware that all hands were played ok on both sides. It is just the result that hurts in that moment. To clear things up: I am not running under EV I just do not post the suckouts I spread around So in the end everthing is ok! Sometimes it is not only the pure probability and chances but also the context.

For example take the very last tourney of this months Scholar LB. I am defending some ITM place. I bet I am going to miss it with these key hands:

BTW hand two to six where played within nine hands

BRC Update

Bankroll: €1043.01
Games: 116
Hands: 4951
Winnings: -€87.73
Rakeback: €5.72
Bonus: €0.00
Movement: -€82.01


Not a good week. First of all: as I predicted I failed to make it ITM in the Scholars LB. Because it was only 4.62 points as 56th it hurts double the time. But new month new chance! I made some graphs to get some visual clue about the results:


Not sure about what they should tell me though.
What else? I had a nice peak over €1.2k where I was able to include up to three $10s into my setup. Sadly it did not work out to leave the $5s behind. Instead I had some setback. Fortunately a new week is starting right away an I can leave all the bad stuff behind.