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Have to set aside some time to properly read and digest the posts! For that reason, I am a fair bit behind, but rather that than gloss over quality posts.
This post was easy enough though......
We used to have these on sky.
Am I right in thinking that rather than a traditional HU sng tournament on other sites, if we win our game in hand 1 @ 10/20 and the other game concludes @ 400/800, the final continues from 400/800?
It looks that way from the structure.
These kind of sngs/mtts, if done properly, would be awesome on here.
You just need to do a traditional "FA Cup" format, where each game is a new game and the winner progresses with a Turbo/Hyper structure to avoid long waits.
you have more 5x in his range and fewer bluffs, seems reasonable to be fair, but i hadnt seen much low offsuit 5x getting to showdown OOP.
regarding v a NAI xraise
if we have fold equity over a NAI 3bet then i think a jam with AK is better than folding [ if he folds 1/3 of the time then it is around 3BB better than folding]. the ev of a bet = fold equity plus pot equity when called. if he folds to our jam 30% of the time then we win:
30bb x 0.3 = 10bb
if he calls and we have 22% pot equity then we win:
40bb x 0.22 = 8.8bb
fold equity + pot equity gives us an average final stack size of
18.8bb
if we fold to the check raise our stack will be 16BB so we should jam - if we think he is folding a third of the time that is. we dont need much pot equity if we have good fold equity, and good means 30% here. [24% fold equity is the break even point for us here]. i had more than enough bluffs in his check raising range, but i guess i'd need him to fold some 5x against the range you suggested.
88 is interesting. if we flat we'll need 33% equity to call a turn jam. we are ahead of much of his value, all his bluffs and losing to his Tx. it's pretty polarised so i think flatting and bluff catching all turns does best. there arent any scare cards, if theres a ton of 5x in his range then a 5 on the turn does push our equity v range below 33%. in game it'd be hard to fold a 5. but thats what the numbers tell us to do. jamming just gets us called by his Tx and gives him a chance to fold 5x, 3x and bluffs, folding is meh, innit.
it might seem a bit abstract and pointless to look into this [afterall we werent 30bb deep, he didnt NAI check raise and i didnt have 88] but its an example of the kind of hand v range v equity study that can help make decsions 'in game' easier. certainly i have to work at these things as they dont come to me intuitively. i reckon most on her can intuit the right answer and make good decisions based on experience. but post game thinking does help less experienced players and i would encourage peeps to dive in and not be scared of the maths side of the game.
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dohhh, thats pretty much the structure. you start 100bb deep and most final tables have started 30bb deep. so scope for play too.
what if thelast two unopened boxes were £250,000 and 1p.
you get offered £85k.
would a poker player deal?
most would say no, as the our box is worth £125k on average. so it's +ev to NO DEAL
i think a poker player would DEAL though. consider BR managment. once we have been offered £85k we can consider the £85k as 'ours'. we are, then, being asked to flip for our £85k, where we will profit £40k on average. however this is like being asked to put all of our bankroll on a flip. even if the odds are weighted in our favour we know that doing this will eventually see us broke. we would never risk all of our roll on a flip in poker, so why would we do it on a game show? earlier rounds dont suffer from this as offer may be circa £8k and may not be a significant % of our life's worth. but 85k most likely is.
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goldenballs we have seen is a clear STEAL as no matter what our opponent does it does best. however it does pose an interesting philosophical problem: to profitably play STEAL you have to convice your opponent that it is safe for him to play SPLIT. that is you have to convince him you are going to SPLIT. after that discussion you pick your ball.
what if you knew you were playing a perfect 'soul reader' who could discern if you were lying? he tells you he will SPLIT if you convince him you will also SPLIT. if he dectects you are lying he will STEAL.
can you profitably steal?
the only way to convince him would be to honestly intend to play SPLIT. to do that you would have to resolve to play SPLIT - there could be no doubt in your mind that your intention is to cooperate. but if that is the case then how can you then play STEAL? the only way to convince this player is to mean what you say. and the only way to way to mean what you say is to resolve to do what you say. and the only way to resolve to do what you say is to actually do what you resolve. or summat.
so after the conversation you have to pick SPLIT, innit?
put another way: can you conciously 'cheat' this perfect player without conciously trying to 'cheat' him? cos if not then you may as well split and take your 50% share.
any others?
Personally I'm ruthless lol, same as te bash the bet button v disco'd players, I'm always stealing even if I knew 100% I'd always get 50% by splitting.....
(I love this kinda stuff lol)
I'm basically asking how you manage the available time, as I'm pretty sure HU I'm insta raising, insta c-betting then rushing to a decision in the final 15 seconds post-jam. How much of the analysis is being conducted in game and how much is being done after the event for embedding at a later date?
Great read.
PS - Clive Mendonca, possibly one of the greatest (dramatic/important) hat-tricks ever Charlton vs Sunderland Championship play-off final Wem-ber-ley (old skool version)?? Great technical striker. Heady days for the Addicks. RIP those.
PPS - Deal!
whilst i would be happy to risk 12k that i had binked on a gameshow, i wouldnt risk 12k of hard earned money. irrational, maybe. but goes to show the emotional attachment we place on money perhaps. 12k that's been worked and saved through sacrifice would be worth more to me than 12k money thats been handed to me for opening boxes. interesting where the line is draw and between 10 and 20k is it for me.
boxster: very little of that reasoning is going on in game. it's enough to know that he flats a narrow range, that range likely misses all but the T on that flop. and then it's a case of evaluating if he has a decent number of bluffs in his range and do i have two live outs if i run into value. if that's the case then i'm calling. in game i was considering calling a check-raise before i even cbet as the games were getting crazy, i knew i had one of the best hands i can have on this type of flop and that he had check-raised these dry flops previously. once he jammed i just checked the reasoning quickly, and hit-and-hoped. you can then look at ranges and equities post to get a more accurate feel for the right answer.
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little tip for visualising ranges and planning a hand:
you should have a good 'picture' of your opponent's flatting range in your head before the flop comes. you can then look at the flop texture to see how hard he's likely to hit it. you can get a very decent handle on villains preflop ranges as preflop decisions are made EVERY hand. it doesnt take many hands to match someone up to a general population tendency and react accordingly. 20bb deep i am playing certain hands RADICALLY different in the BB v a SB who has raised 4 out of 5 buttons than against someone who has limped 4 and raised 1.
and from the SB my post flop decisons will be different against a BB who has flatted 100% than against someone who has folded twice, called twice and 3bet once. and the two positional tendencies often go together and you can infer and reinforce one from the other. mr 100% limp IP is likely to be mr 100% flat OOP.
it's worth looking for example, at what hands that are in a loose 80% defending range that always flats aren't in a tighter 55% defending range that also 3bets a tight value range. use a program like icmizer that has a range matrix to do this:
you can see the second range whilst much stronger on most flops is also weaker on 347r type flops. visualising ranges like this is useful. especially against good players who exhibit range consistancy: they arent suddenly deciding to call 42o or flat AK on a whim. so you can 'range' them and plan accordingly.
once you have this feel for ranges and board texture you can plan on the flop what turns you want to barrel, how many streets of value you want / how many streets of bluffing you need. what part of villains range you are attacking / trying to get value from. that leaves more time for the 'thinking' later.
worth taking the time to build default ranges for some typical player types and use them as a base to adjust from as you get to see more hands and showdowns.
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re the sunderland game:
wow,$ i remember that game. the old division one playoff finals often were decided by the odd goal in seven. remember hoddle's swindon having a similarly epic game against leciester. bolton v reading was a goalfest too. that sunderland game was beyond ridiculous though. even the shoot-out went on forever. gray was it that missed the only penalty? always liked charlton in the late ninties. remeber bowyer playing against us as an 18 year old and just DOMINATING the game. seemed like the real-deal. such a shame he turned into an annoying mediocrity.
pepsi max was conceived as men had stopped buying diet coke. now in the late nineties we had two competing male archetypes: the new lad who swilled beer, sh-gged birds and wore expensive jumpers recommended by sartorial style-bibles like, er, nuts magazine and FHM; and the new man - a bookish type who can quote byron, cook lasagne and understand feminist issues all while wearing knitware and brogues. women it was said appreciated the later archetype, while the former was said not to care being more interested in seeing what trabs tim lovejoy was rocking on soccer am.
well the diet coke adverts cut right through those archetypes. here were successful city-women, far from being passive manhood vessels for burberry-sheathed meat-heads, making a sexual object out of a man. and not a bookish, new age man who whips up a mean risotto and can 'emptathise' and 'listen'. they were ogling a ripped alpha-male who was doing manual labour for them. the type who may struggle to quote nursery rhymes [much less 'sonnets for the portugues'] but can fix things innit.
new lads had the rug pulled from them as men became object and not the objectifier. and new-men realised that no matter how many deliah smith recipies and chicken soup for the soul self help gurus they brushed up on, they could not complete with raw masculinity. men stopped buying diet coke. i guess it made them feel like drips compared to the Diet Coke Man.
then we have pepsi max and cokr zero, strange adverts. one involved a man resorting to an elaborate set up where he had to convince a woman that an asteroid was about to hit the earth in order for him to get a chance with her - he had to con her into sex. another featured drippy, emasculated men protesting. not just protesting but marching. not just marching, but marching up city streets. the same city streets where the successful and objectifying diet coke women work. a column of maleness marching up an alley of femininity. the semiotics are clear. this was a metaphorical gang-rape of the diet coke women by these drippy non diet coke drinking men.
and what were they protesting for? well men have traditionally marched against oppressive governments, illegal wars and unfair taxation, they have marched for jobs, rights and notions of truth and justice. what do the men in this advert march for:
we want holidays without the packing, yeah... YEAH!
we want bras without the fumbling, yeah.... YEAH!
we want the right to drink sugar free coke without feeling insignificant and castrated, yeah... YEAH.
pathetic. dont buy pepsi-max, innit.
lynx is another brand that comes up with adverts that patronise and disturb in equal measure. their adverts feature similarly pallid men spraying lynx on themselves and then having women flock to them. but what happens to the women when they smell this lynx saturated man? they lose their rationality and become either docile or feral. their humanity dissappears and they cannot resist, cannot deny consent and then fall for a man they would otherwise pass-by. they call it the lynx effect; they may as well call it Lynx-Rohypnol and be done with it.
also smell is the most ephemeral and evocative of the senses. it can instantly transport you back to a time or place long before you consciously work out what the smell is. it can conjure emotion, recognition and memory. with that in mind why then would you slather yourself in lynx and be instantly associated with every bad 90's lacoste swathed scally going?
pathetic. dont buy lynx, innit.
This Diary just gets better & better.
one recently said: 'i love players who raise every button'. obviously he had plans for me. i did want to say in response : 'i love players who limp every button' but went for the passive aggressive: 'so do i, they are so dreamy'. does give a valuable insight into how they view the game though. if he doesnt see the value of raising a healthy amount of buttons, then there are other aspects of the game he maybe doesnt understand such as position.
if someone berates me for shoving or calling a hand shallow then it similarly gives away lots about their ranges and how they view short-stacked play. one player at the £3 level HATES being bluffed. even the thought of being bluffed or pushed around leads to all manner of: 'i'll snap with aces and you'll look silly' or 'i'll catch you at it eventually'. fortunately one of the few things he does hate more than being bluffed is the thought of getting it in light. the amount of tilt a standard cbet brings is astonishing. one kindly adjustment he made was to start limp trapping hands like A3 when shallow. thats an adjustment i'd pay someone to make.
the most joyful chat abuse comes after you give someone the run around. it doesnt happen often, but occassionally you hit your zone and cant make a mistake. having someone wish you cancer after your draw hits, call you a luck box when you crack his AK with suited junk and then type garbled mangled abuse after you sucessfully call a river bet with jack high is summat special. you maintain a cool head in the chat box, but really you can be doubled over with laughter.
the very best correspondance i've ever received however was in the form of a PM i did post about it in the TPT thread, and i'll copy and paste it here:
*********
played in a bounty hunter last night when the following hand happpened:
i'm a confirmed MTT fish, but i'm not bothered seemed like a decent play, much prefer my play to the villains, but, meh innit.
but what it did produce was THE most BEAUTIFUL private message [well 10 pm's as he hammered the send button that frantically he sent the ting 10 times] teammates, enjoy:
"Subject: Fish?
I just wanted to say hi,
I video all my games using screen capture software and "tag" each hand that gets me out.
You have knocked my out 4 times from various tourneys since November but I wanted to draw your attention to you hands.
Your 10-2 off beat my A-Ks
Your K-2off beat my pair of K's
You J-4s beat my K-Q's
An your K-2s beat my A-10o.
I have a massive post on 888 and Pokerstars (it would never be allowed on skypoker) and everyone tells me I made the correct descions overtime blah blah. But your donk/fish play is seems to reward you on sky. SO I decided to start watching tables you play. An it appears as I'm sure you'll agree....your a very lucky player with limited knowledge/skill"
now i didn't knock him out with that hand, and the other hands he posted are in neither my shoving or calling range except for very shallow stacks. moreover a quick sharkscope search reveals that last night was the first time we had even been in the same MTT since AUGUST, much less sharing 4 tables since november and me knocking him out in each. he was a reg on the forums and i noticed his name last night immediately and it was the first time i remember playing him, so i'm calling BS on the other hands, bless him.
the plot, however thickens. i was only able to read the PM's as my email archives all PM's sent by way of notification. when i looked in my inbox all ten messages had dissapeared and upon trying to view his profile the message "This community member's page is currently being reviewed by the editors" is there
it appears his messages have been deleted. i wonder how many other people got critiques last night? maybe some complained. anyways, it brought a little joy into my day. hope it brightens yours.
*******
bosssssssss
the other site does have its downside though: their turbo structure is a 75bb starting stack and 5 min blinds which is way too slow. also the rake is higher than here for non hyper formats. another 'quirky' feature is you cannot view opponent's mucked hands, even in the hand history. once they are mucked, they remain mucked.
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i've said in this thread that i'm still not at the stage were poker comes easily to me. i have to work hard to introduce new concepts to my game and apply them correctly and consistently. i also get lost in spots that i know others find easy to navigate. i do enjoy studying the game and that in itself is an edge i can bring to the table. but there are smaller edges to be gained, and i think they are there for ANYONE to grab, no matter what your level. get ready for a tangent:
the british cycling squad has dominated for the last decade or so. dominated to the point where there were rumours amongst the other teams of secret wheel technology or illegal bike designs. however the only 'secret' of their success had been their attention to detail; in particular what the head of their program calls "the accumulation of marginal gains". they realised that whilst eating a certain food in a certain time window before a race would only increase performance by some amount that could not be measured by the race clock, if you had twenty of these marginal advantages then that could add up to shaving say a few thousands of a second off a lap time: something that could not only be measured, but could actually be the difference between first and second.
www.independent.co.uk/sport/olympics/cycling/head-of-marginal-gains-helps-gb-gold-machine-stay-in-front-8010110.html]
there are similar gains we can make at the poker tables, call them the accumulation of small edges. things that in themselves may not increase bb/100 / roi by a measurable amount, but when piled on top of each other may make a +.5/100bb / +.5% roi difference to your game. i have a couple if anyone else has other feel free to share innit.
i stumbled across an interesting study that showed that the position or stance that you adopt [how you stand or sit] can alter your testosterone levels and make you less risk-averse. this is obviously an advantage to poker players. earlier in the diary i looked at a situation where a player had .3bb edge in a spot and so should jump all over it even if he's behind in the hand more often than not. obviously risk aversion can be a leak for some. just altering the way you sit when you play poker or are waiting for your lobbies to load can alter your testosterone levels, confidence and risk aversion. also your testosterone decreases after a defeat. so if you lose a big pot or bust one of your bigger mtt's you can replenish / temper that loss by sitting in an appropriate position. passive or low-power sitting positions lower testosterone levels, so avoiding them could be an advantage. [some players [rock i'm thinking of you] probably shouldnt be looking to increase their testosterone / lower their risk aversion, granted...]
http://www.people.hbs.edu/acuddy/in press, carney, cuddy, & yap, psych science.pdf
warm up and warm downs can help not just focus for the session ahead, but actually in-game. a simpe meditation / awareness of your breathing / bodily state can create a sort of tabla rasa that you can come back to after a beat. that is by repeating the breathing or focus exercise when you can feel tilt coming, you can halt that tilt dead in its tracks. this is especially useful heads-up where your adjustments matter. a couple of recent hands may illustrate this.
over on the other site i played a pretty ABC aggressive player. he raised lots of buttons but obviously wasn't used to people playing back at him. i had started 3bet jamming a pretty expanded range and calling him down a little light [and thankfully correctly] in some spots and he was getting very frustrated. we then had a lovely hand where he minraised 18bb deep and i jammed 55. he called, and i mean snapped, with Q4o. i have no doubt that he decided 'in the moment' to spite call. tilt had overtaken his poker brain. Q4 is a horrendous hand to induce with. even if i jam as wide as 32o i have plenty of pot equity. a queen flopped and he typed 'hahaha, caught out' in the chat box. the most beautiful rivered 5 elicited an insta decline. had he been able to reset himself in game he would have made the correct fold, no doubt.
i had an interesting opponent here the other day. when stacks got to below 18bb he started 4xing certain hands. right down to 10bb he was doing this. obviously its a terrible strategy, but i hadnt the hands to exploit this, and when i did he won the subsequent flips. i eventually pinned his 4xing range down through eliminating hands that were turning up in his minraising range. but for about 10 games i just couldnt get the hand to play back. being ripped apart by an exploitable strat was starting to grate and i jammed JTs over his 4x 13bb deep. terrible as i knew i had little fold equity and better jacks and tens had been showndown. yet despite him playing his range face up i still made a horrendous error through tilt. i used my breathing exercises, reset my mindstate and then eventually got the better of him. avoiding tilt would have made my session a lot more profitable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uz384dqU0XQ&noredirect=1
there are many others such as being comfortable, taking regular rest breaks to maintain concentration, eating the right foods / drinks before sessions. one lovely app for grinders is F:LUX. it adjusts the colour temperature of your screen so that it mirrors the effect of the setting sun in the sky. our bodies have evolved without electic light. so artificial light at night can play havoc with your sleeping patterns. this app can help you sleep after looking at a bright screen all night
http://justgetflux.com
none of these things in themselves will make you a better player, but if you add these small edges to your game then together they will make a small cumulative difference. if that difference plays out in the biggest pot of the night then more power to it.
we can also think of an accumulation of small leaks. this could be distractions, feeling hungry, uncomfortable etc. nothing revolutionary but, defiantly worth a little thought as these small changes are so easy to implement and can only have a positive effect, innit.
if anyone has any others of their own i'd be interested to hear them