[Closed] Chavez Challenges FL SH.

Looking forward to the hands & the chartporn - will it all be exclusively FL SH?

Also, if you're doing some extra-curriculum reading or video watching, let us know what it is, and what your thoughts are.

Best of luck!

good luck

Well, time for a little recap.

After a few days of poker I ended up break even after 1k hands. ♠_mad:
In fact, this was a huge improvement considering my recent -6BB/100H rate in FL SH.

My main aim was to fix my tilt leaks and I guess I had some success.
I've analysed the spots where I was losing money and reduced my strategy to a rather basic ABC poker with no fancy play. I stopped playing very marginal hands and tried to focus on extracting value from strong hands and folding all weak hands.

I'll list the leaks identified in case they are helpful for other FL'ers:

- FPS (aka fancy play syndrome). Making stupid moves hoping that they would confuse the opponents and pay off. Overthinking the game. This was not a big issue for me but still I've lost quite a few BB due to fps.

- Playing by the articles without adjusting for opponents. Something silly like 3-betting 99 into a maniac who plays 65/4/4.0 (vpip; pfr; af). Under-thinking the game.

- Playing preflop looser that the charts. Loose openings and loose isolation and 3! have surely cost me a few dozen BB during my tilt and since these are quite easy to fix, I'm hoping to fix them very soon=)

- Not quitting when hit stop-loss marks. This could have saved me a large chunk of my roll :f_mad:.

If you are not happy with your winrate I suggest that you have a look at your game and try to identify and fix the leaks above=)

I've heard many high-limit players saying that micros are very easy to beat but I would dare to disagree.

Your ideal table would be something like:
LP; LP; You; Weak-tight; Weak-tight; LP.
These tables are very easy to beat and hero's position is great. YOu'll never see such a table though.

The main problems of 0.5/1 are a large number of maniacs who are absolutely inadequate with their bets and a generally high WTSD of all players. This results in pots that easily grow out of control as well as next to 0 fold equity against such tables.

Of course, you have to adjust your strategy and aim to extract value from their loose calldowns and raises with air. Sure. All you need for that is a few strong hands that will actually win. Now, suppose that you start folding all weak hands, calling down in big pots with semi-strong holdings and jamming all monsters. Playing for value is good unless you run cold for a week or two. Imagine you don't get many good hands, so you bleed blinds; you don't hit the flops with the few hands you get and you lose half a dozen monster pots to 2- or 4- outers.
This can easily take you down 200-300BB in a few k hands and there is nothing you can do about it. If you had some fold equity, you would have been able to smooth the losses and wait until your value hands start winning again. But what can you do in the games packed with maniacal fish? Shut up and keep playing? drop down a limit and rebuild? Would you quit a table where you were running cold for a 100 hands and were forced to play weak and fold way too often just because you miss all the flops and there is no point double-barelling against 2 players with WTSD of 60?

Please prove me wrong, but without some good luck one can be stuck in micros for a very very long time...

And the winner of this week's "Sunday's Shittest Showdown" goes to this hand!

Known players:
[tg]Position_Stack:hands/vp$ip/RaisePreflop/AF/WTS/ORL/BBvsSteal/W$SD;Hero$44.4:///////;MP3$73.33:787/30/22/2.5/36/39/52/57;BU$16:57/51/7/0.6/48/14/33/43;[/tg]
0.5/1 Fixed-Limit Hold'em (6 handed)
Hand recorder used for this poker hand: Elephant.Base 0.99 by www.pokerstrategy.com.

Preflop: Hero is MP2 with A♥, A♣
Hero raises, MP3 3-bets, CO folds, BU calls, 2 folds, Hero caps, MP3 calls, BU calls.

Flop: (13.50 SB) 9♣, 6♦, 5♥ (3 players)
Hero bets, MP3 calls, BU calls.

Turn: (8.25 BB) 2♥ (3 players)
Hero bets, MP3 folds, BU calls.

River: (10.25 BB) 3♣ (2 players)
Hero bets, BU raises, Hero calls.

Final Pot: 14.25 BB

Results follow (highlight to see):
Hero shows (Ah Ac)
BU shows a straight, six high (8d 4d)

BU wins with a straight, six high (8d 4d)