W4lrusk4ne

Welcome to the Course and Best of Luck W4lrusk4ne,

Hopefully you will enjoy around here. If you have any questions don't hesitate to ask, we will be around for you. Meanwhile good luck on tables, we will be waiting for your homework.

You can now start with your 1st Lesson:
Lesson #1

The whole course plan:
Overview of Beginners Course

Best Regards.

Lesson 1.

Question 1: What is your motivation for playing poker?

My main motivation at this moment is to learn as much as possibly to improve my game and becoming a better player. I love the competitiveness aspect of a game that looks so easy to play at first sight but is so extremely complex underneath the surface.

Question 2: What are your weaknesses when playing poker?

I find myself often in a situation where lack of currage stops me from making the right decision.

Question 3: What does it mean to play tight aggressive?

The term 'tight' refers to the range of hands a player plays from a certain position considering the action in front of him and possibly behind him. Playing tight is the opposite of playing loose. Tight = narrow range and Loose = wide range.

Playing aggressive refers to the way a player plays his hand. Playing aggressive means taking controle over the hand by betting or raising. It is the opposite of playing passive.

Lesson 2.

Question 1: What do you think you could play differently than suggested in the BSS Starting Chart and why?

Since I play with the use of stats, i really play all group of hands differently.
for exemple: depending on the initial raiser i might 3bet with TT instead of just calling for setvalue while against another PF raiser i might flatcall QQ preflop instead of reraising.
The only moment that i intent to kind of follow the chart is if I move up a limit. Once my samplesizes on the players or big enough again, I start adjusting my play again to there's.

Question 2: Do you have questions about your preflop play?

I don't really have a question about my preflop play for the moment. A couple of months ago I started a thread on the dutch forum to discuss how to play AK out of position because I really struggled with that.

Question 3: What is the equity of AKo against the top 5% range? 5% means 88+, AJs+, KQs, AKo.

Welcome to the Course and Best of Luck. Good job! Homework #1 Done!

Most of the weakness you wrote can easily be fixed by posting hands (analyzing your session). We will start writing feedback to your play. Usually negative feedback will put you into thinking phase and trying to fix all those leaks. It's almost the same as you lose money, you will remember it more than winning part. By this situation it's gonna be that negative feedback you gonna remember and try to avoid them next time.

What about tilt? How do you adjust against? For example:
Easiest way to fight against tilt is to set up stop-loss technique. Which means if you for example have lost more than 3BIs for a session then you just stop the session for some time. The BI amount is set up from your own results. Some may put it higher, some lower. Also after the stop you can spend some time with evaluation part to become better.

Tight style is usually called playing selected hands. Like following the Starting Hand Chart. Aggressive should be also pretty clear that already the word says how you should be playing. But the problem playing aggressively is that you have to watch that you don't play too aggressive. Find good spots, find good targets. About The tight-aggressive strategy you can read in this article: "What is the Big Stack Strategy?"

Hopefully you will enjoy the Course.

Good job! Homework #2 Done!

I don't even mind playing those hands as TT-QQ passively. Often what is done is that people tend to overplay with them while they could get at the best a coinflip from the situation.

About AK hand is the case that it's totally true that it's not the easiest hand to play with. You ain't the only one who has problems with it and most likely you could even be losing with the hand. For time to time if you find any AK hand then try posting them and we will figure out the way how to play with them.

About Question #3:

       Equity     Win     Tie
UTG    46.32%  37.92%   8.41% { AKo }
UTG+1  53.68%  45.27%   8.41% { 88+, AJs+, KQs, AKo }

Hopefully you enjoy the School so far.

What about tilt? How do you adjust against? For example: Easiest way to fight against tilt is to set up stop-loss technique. Which means if you for example have lost more than 3BIs for a session then you just stop the session for some time. The BI amount is set up from your own results. Some may put it higher, some lower. Also after the stop you can spend some time with evaluation part to become better.

I don't ever tilt. I love it when my aces get cracked when i got them preflop all-in for 100BB. And when people are willing to pay to much to hit a draw the only one benefitting in the end will be me. That is not something to tilt about, it's something to be happy about. People who give you bad beats are your best customers. ♦ I guess i read to much articles about tilt, mindset, emotions... I never use a stop-loss. I play sessions of 1 hour and afterwards I review my game and check the result. I never look how much I'm up or down while I'm playing.

Lesson 3

Question 1: You are holding K :spade:Q :spade:. What is your preflop equity against an opponent who has 3 :diamond:3 :club:? How does the equity change on this flop: J :spade:5 :diamond:3 :spade:?

Preflop equity:

Flop equity:

Question 2: What would you do in the following hand?

Apart from the fact that i wouldn't bet out 88% of the pot on the turn...

Outs

Villian has one pair and doesn't have an A or J = I have 15 possible outs
Villian has a straight and no A or J = I have 9 possible outs
Villian has a set = I have 7 possible outs.

I will base my decision on the assumption that I only have 7 clean outs.
7 outs give me (46-7) / 7 = 39/7 = 5.6 : 1

Pot odds

I have to call 0.22$ to win 0.91$ = 91 / 22 = 4.14 : 1

I don't have the odds to call here.

But... depending on villians way of playing i might have implied odds. If i pressume that villian will call a valuebet of at least 1/3pot on the river when i make my flush then i have the implied odds to make a profitable call on the turn.

Question 3

This is a hand I posted in my blog today. I wonder if I overplayed it considering villian's stats.

VPIP 48, PFR 4, 3bet% 0, WTSD% 52 (sample: 254 hands)

Villian plays any two cards from the SB (he loves the discount ♦). I overbet the flop because I know he will call with any draw against all odds and he would be prepaired to play for his stack with TP. I just want him to make a mistake, as big as possible.

PokerStars - $0.05 NL (9 max) - Holdem - 9 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 3

BB: $3.73
UTG: $10.71
Hero (UTG+1): $5.05
MP: $4.26
MP+1: $2.53
LP: $5.00
CO: $5.00
BTN: $5.49
SB: $4.64

SB posts SB $0.02, BB posts BB $0.05

Pre Flop: ($0.07) Hero has Q♣ Q♥

fold, Hero raises to $0.20, fold, fold, fold, CO calls $0.20, fold, SB calls $0.18, fold

Flop: ($0.65, 3 players) T♥ 8♣ J♣
SB checks, Hero bets $0.75, fold, SB raises to $1.70, Hero raises to $4.85 and is all-in, SB calls $2.74 and is all-in

Turn: ($9.53, 2 players) 9♣

River: ($9.53, 2 players) 8♠

Good job! Homework #3 Done!

About Question #1:
Preflop Equity:

Equity Win Tie
UTG 50.78% 50.40% 0.38% { KsQs }
UTG+1 49.22% 48.84% 0.38% { 3d3c }

Postflop Equity:

Board: J♠5♦3♠
Equity Win Tie
UTG 26.46% 26.46% 0.00% { KsQs }
UTG+1 73.54% 73.54% 0.00% { 3d3c }

About Question #2:
There are several occasions on turn:
a) If we take just odds for the FD and we take into account that all our odds are clean. Which means:
Total Pot = $0,91 ; We have to Call = $0,22 -> According to that it means we are getting ~4,16:1 odds. For flushdraw we would need 4:1. Which tells us that we are getting perfect odds.
b) If we consider the opponent having sets here:
Which means we have to discount outs, for example 6:c and also 3:c. Which means we have 7 clean outs so that means we need 6:1 odds. That tells us that we need ~$0,41 on river to make it profitable. If we expect the opponent being loose enough and being able to pay us no-matter what then we can do the Call here properly.
c) We might even have overcards as outs or even 4 as a out:
Although this kind of situation ain't that likely. I'd rather discount that one and either pick a) or b). Most likely towards Call.

By the way, would be nice if you posted the hands into Hand Evaluation forums. We keep the Locker Room for theory and mainly homeworks. Thanks mate!

You are doing great progress, keep going!