This is a response to some questions Malfaire asked in the comments of the last post. My reply got a bit long and I figure it might be useful to other people so I'll post it up here. Plus I wanted an excuse to post that wicked Outkast song ;)
"when can / should we start 8+ tabling?"
I'd say never. I was 8-10 tabling over the last couple of days for bonus/rb type reasons, but I came to the conclusion that it really wasn't worth it. When I play more than 6 tables my play is weaker and I get tired quicker.
I don't feel like playing 8+ tables is playing poker, it's just clicking buttons. I like to be able to spend time looking at shown down hands, making detailed notes on players, picking up pots where villain ranges are weak, having time for decisions and keeping track of ranges and lines. I struggle to do that most of the time while playing a ton of tables. It's a lot better playing 4-6 and having time to actually player poker rather than play tagfish poker.
Also, I'd probably agree with anything BalugaWhale says ever... and if I don't I'm likely wrong :)
"How did you get up through the ranks table # wise? And would you do it differently now that you've done it?"
I mixed it up between 4 and 8 tables at times. Over the last 6 months I've been sticking to 4-6 tables max and it's definately optimal for me. My goal has always been to be a solid msnl reg. Now that I've done it (probably) I'd say that I should have played less tables, preferably 4 but never more than 6. I'd also have game selected more and taken more shots.
If my goal was to make money than I might have been more inclined to get good at 10-12 tabling and beast $100nl and $200nl. But doing that is just playing ABC, feeding on the weak players and shuffling money around with the regs. Yea that makes monies... but it's dull, you're not learning how to beat good players, and you're going to have a tough time moving up to the levels where you make the real money. I'd say my game really took off when I stopped concentrating on taking money from fish and started concentrating on taking money from every single player at the table. I enjoy playing that way a ton more, owning people is fun.
I played some $25/50 for the first time tonight, it was a 4-handed game with a strong reg, a standard reg and a big fishay. I bought in for $2,500 but topped up to $5k after a couple of orbits when I realised that the table was set to be crushed. Never quite got a five-figure pot which would have been cool, the game was playing pretty loose/passive with a lot of small/medium pots... and to be honest I didn't want to get $5k of my money in without a strong hand. I ran well and finished up around $3k which made up for a bunch of money I lost at other limits tonight.
Here's a hand I'm not sure about... it's against a very good msnl/hsnl reg.
$25/$50 No Limit Holdem
4 players
Converted at weaktight.com
Stacks:
| CO | ($4428.50) | ||
| BTN | ($4621.00) | ||
| Hero (SB) | ($2800.00) | ||
| BB | ($4054.00) |
Pre-flop: ($75, 4 players) Hero is SB
1 fold, BTN raises to $150, Hero calls $125, 1 fold
Obviously he's opening the BTN really wide, especially because BB and I are playing relatively nitty and there's not much 3betting going on. Villain tends to call 3bets a lot in position and my objective of being at the table isn't to create big pots OOP against players that are better than me, so I figure I just flat and keep the pot small.
Flop:
($350, 2 players)Hero checks, BTN checks
I figure he'd fire the flop with most of his air, definately all flush draws, obviously Qs and strong Ks. I figure his range is mostly pocket pairs and stuff like weak draws with showdown value like AJ/AT.
Turn:
($350, 2 players)Hero bets $285, BTN calls $285
I can rep a ton of stuff, a Q, strong K and the flush. I know he never has a Q or the flush. Also the A and T are likely outs for me. So I bet.
River:
($920, 2 players)Hero bets $700, BTN calls $700
Question is really whether I should bet the river or not. After he calls turn I figure his range to be pocket pairs with a spade, gutters/etc with a spade and weak kings. Meh looking back over it I think I played the hand fine, my line merges sick good with strong hands too.
Final Pot: $2,320
BTN shows:
Hero shows:
BTN wins $2,318 ( won +$1,183 )
Hero lost -$1,135
5 comments:
Lol dude - thumbs up to your attitude. You're like the anti adam when it comes to going pro and game selecting. God I was a nit. Job Interviews suck :-(
Adam
wow, thanks for the lengthy / detailed response, baz. much appreciated. might have some questions but i need to ponder a bit.
i award you the most awesome azn site if you have a fetish for azn's, which i know you do: http://asianposes.com/
EPIC link. SO going to Korea in a couple of months now.
Wanted to ask this about the hand -- what about leading the turn for a slight overbet? That, or possibly overbetting the river slightly?
TBH I feel like I prefer the river overbet as when he when he checks back he almost certainly something willing to call a couple streets, and YOU should know that (from his perspective, I mean), therefore you'd never want to risk blowing him off of his likely range (nearly all of which is medium strength at best), and you're narrowing your range to a Q, possibly JTs and air. And if he calls you, we're in an even dicier spot on the river for more money.
I was talking with someone the other day as to why river overbets work so damn well (I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir, but poke holes in my logic if there are any). I think it's because most guys operate in a PL Hold'em type of construct -- they never really overbet the pot unless if it's a clear river value shove. Therefore, when they decide to check back the turn, they're operating under the assumption that, at worst, the other guy is going to pot into him on the turn and river. So then the obvious solution should be to take such a villain out of his comfort zone, right?
Without knowing a ton about his cbetting range (how polarized is it?), the only way I would deviate here from your play is to take him out of his comfort zone and overbet the river slightly. If we can get some of his weaker kings to fold for just a bit more money, then it should be more profitable than betting around pot sized on the river.
No clue how fishy this would look to a $25/50 reg though. Thoughts?
Interesting. Firstly I think his range is very polarised here, he always has showdown value and he never has a flush draw or a queen. I think he'd bet a K a decent chunk of the time too, maybe like half of the time. So his range is basically Ahi gutters, some Ks and pocket pairs.
Overbetting should fold out practically all of that range and 3/4 betting should fold out some of the Ks and everything else. So even if this guy couldn't handread I'm not sure the increase in variance would be worth the overbet anyways. Especially not when I'm playing high, I'm not looking to increase my variance for marginal value.
BUT... the cool thing about this hand is that villain is a strong high stakes reg that can headread well.
At the time I remember thinking that overbettng the river might polarise my range to a boat or air making it easier for him to put me on a bluff make a light call as there really aren't many boat combos I can have. I guess I could be overbetting the A hi flush here too but my value range is still pretty small.
Here's where it gets more interesting... I expect this guy to be able to read through an overbet bluff here a good amount of the time. I think he should know that I should know that he has a pot controlling hand, so if I did have the nuts I wouldn't overbet as I'd want to extract value. So he can weight my range to bluffs more. So now I really prefer 3/4pot.
Would be interested to hear other people's comments... I'm too much of a pussy to post it on Leggo as I'm clearly no 25/50 reg! :)
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