You need to be logged in to your Sky Poker account above to post discussions and comments.
You might need to refresh your page afterwards.
Sky Poker forums will be temporarily unavailable from 11pm Wednesday July 25th.
Sky Poker Forums is upgrading its look! Stay tuned for the big reveal!
Balancing your play.
Right, just reading a book on cash games and i am trying to balance my play and make more deceptive moves. The following hand is only like 5% of the time i am calling with these cards, the rest of the time i am definitely raising it up. Is this a mistake in a multi pot or should i be just more deceptive heads up to make it easier. Anyway, i totally butchered this hand but is it ok just for balance 1 in 20 times in this situation and is this an easy fold? Obviously the big blind can have any two and with this action it is obvious that this particular player has the 4.
I realise this is only 4NL and it should be black and white but i am trying to get in to the habit of mixing my play up as i feel i became a bit too easy to read. Whats your lots views on balancing your play and when to do it? Really trying to improve my game here but i am not convinced.
I realise this is only 4NL and it should be black and white but i am trying to get in to the habit of mixing my play up as i feel i became a bit too easy to read. Whats your lots views on balancing your play and when to do it? Really trying to improve my game here but i am not convinced.
Hand History #403032913 (17:01 15/08/2011)
| Player | Action | Cards | Amount | Pot | Balance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DrSharp | Small blind | £0.02 | £0.02 | £5.23 | |
| x | Big blind | £0.04 | £0.06 | £4.56 | |
| donnaj | Big blind | £0.04 | £0.10 | £1.56 | |
| Your hole cards |
| ||||
| XAVIER57 | Fold | ||||
| donnaj | Check | ||||
| y | Call | £0.04 | £0.14 | £1.29 | |
| DrSharp | Call | £0.02 | £0.16 | £5.21 | |
| x | Check | ||||
| Flop | |||||
| |||||
| DrSharp | Bet | £0.16 | £0.32 | £5.05 | |
| x | Call | £0.16 | £0.48 | £4.40 | |
| donnaj | Fold | ||||
| y | All-in | £1.29 | £1.77 | £0.00 | |
| DrSharp | Fold | ||||
| x | Call | £1.13 | £2.90 | £3.27 | |
| x | Show |
| |||
| y | Show |
| |||
| Turn | |||||
| |||||
| River | |||||
| |||||
| x | Win | Full House, 4s and 8s | £2.68 | ||
Comments
Raise pre 20-24p.
After raising I find it hard to fold on that flop.
As to the hand I sont think limping is horrible here, but I would definitely value raise
Postflop even in a limped pot I would find this really hard to fold when the shorty shoves
Limping here has let in 48 for free when you could have isolated K7 and won a nice pot.
first thing to do is never ever limp
then you balancing is to do with whether you 3bet or just call with hands - you dont want people to know if you 3 bet u have AA KK or QQ
then post flop, vary what you do with weak and strong hands
BUT only vary your play against people you are pretty sure are paying attention to what you are doing
In terms of NL8 it might be worth playing 1xNL8 and say 2/3X NL4 to get into it but defo with over 20 BI's at NL8 you should play at that level and for me it's basically NL4.
For me it's doing the same thing with various differant starting hands.
So for example raise to 20p with JJ and 78s
I could be totaly off the mark here but essentially it's not being predictable.
This really does apply to online where there is software that tracks your patterns and
people can use this against you. This is like high level stuff so really not for NL4.
Just keep betting/raising for value.
EDIT i stepped up over the weekend and played a few nl20 and nl30 tables and despite what some think it WAS a totally diff game
To DrSharp - You said if you raise with 2 broadway cards and limp with small pairs and odd connectors then its obvious what you're playing. Firstly I don't think you should EVER be limping with ANY hand at 4NL and secondly, you don't need to be playing low suited connectors because at this level you have top pair,top kicker is enough to get someone to stack off if they have anything. Dudeskin put a post on here recently in reply to someone (the_Don I think) asking for cash help and there really is a strict plan to follow.
You're playing with about 22% of hands which is any PP, AK, AQ, AJ, AT, KQ, KJ, JT suited, AK, AQ, AJ, KQ off suit. Every single time you get one of these hands, raise 20p, plus 4p if you raise UTG and plus 4p for every limper.
I'd suggest raising to around 28-32p with AA/KK/QQ because you're going to get called quite often and you just wanna get it all in against these players.
C-bet occasionally when it's a dry flop. If you get called raise, just get rid and find a better spot.
When you flop top pair, two pair, a set etc, always bet somewhere between 75% and 100% of the pot. NEVER SLOWPLAY hands at this level.
This was a rough idea of what dudeskin said, anyone feel free to add anything I missed out, I did this quite quick. But yeah follow this system, don't deviate from it because the donkey players won't notice you've deviated from it anyway.
If you rule out limping from your game then I feel your missing a trick
Always raise your big value hands though but you can limp 22 UTG on a loose table
However if it's limped before me I might limp along but still most the time it needs to be 2 limpers before me as then there's a chance of getting a family pot.
unless you really know what doing, you are likely to be far better off just never limping