Moving up the limits

You are correct in that we can't say you're losing or breakeven but since there are probably less than 10 players in the entire world who have a winrate of 3BB/100 or better at the stakes they are currently playing, and yes that includes micros aside from the very smallest stakes, over what would be considered a significant sample size (i.e. 200k hands+) and these guys are the best players at their stakes assuming that you can match that winrate right out of the gate is also presumptuous and assuming you're going to keep winning at 4.5BB/100 that'd probably put you in a class of 1 so, yes you probably are running hot atm, that doesn't mean you're not a winning player. We're not saying you're not a winning player, what we're saying is that atm you probably are running hot in terms of winrate and probably are just on a high.

Yes it's very possible you have a decent edge in the game because you just don't play crappy hands but I'm afraid the times where someone played a tight preflop game and played a fit/fold postflop game and took home 3BB/100+ are long gone at anything above 0.25/0.50, and even at 0.25/0.50 I'd say it'll be tough to maintain.

It's great you've started off as well as you have and it's also, as Sherlock Holmes says, is as much of a departure from the truth to underestimate yourself as exaggerate your qualities but you do have to be aware of just how big of a role variance plays, I'd say over a 10k hand stretch the vast majority of your winrate is decided through variance, yes your skill edge will have something to do with it but given the short period the sheer range of what your winrate can be over that period, even if you're a winning player is too big

Yes you can "feel" you have an edge but there's no way to determine how big it is unless you are up against completely godawful players.

And to answer some of your questions:

1) Yes I cold call 3 from the BB and fold on the flop. I'm getting 7-2 to play my hand preflop so I can play a lot of hands and on certain boards it's safe to fold and I shouldn't be fishing vs obviously strong ranges with much of my range. 3/5 is just a sample size issue, they could have called with JTs, QTs etc and the flop come AA5r, not really much you can do there

2) Calling river with 3rd pair is fine and in fact if you're against an aggressive player folding it is godawful

Apparently I have a lot to learn yet.

I've read quite a bit here and there, but it seems things pop up, which are probably entirely basic, which I don't know. I suppose one has just to keep on learning

Your doomsaying has come true - and when I've tried (at approximately 290$) to take a shot at 0.5/1 I fell off a cliff. I tried it because most of the 0.25/0.5 were pretty fishless at the time while there were about three incredibly fishy tables up there.

And it was good till' it lasted. It was like a scene from a horror movie. I've gone somewhat up (30$ something), but then while I wasn't paying attention, the fishes were gradually replaced by sharks and suddenly the only fish there was me, generously paying everybody at the table. Since I also went on tilt I've lost about 90$ at the session till I was able to get my bearings, notice the fishes left and I'm up to my shoulders in shit

As to the points you've made though.

Some of the reasons I didn't really think I was exaggerating that much:
a) Misinformation - I didn't really know that 3BB/100 is THAT much generally. So my bad, my bad.
b) Confidence in my general game-playing skills - I've played Go with some 80% winrate and am currently one of the best boardgame players worldwide (and I have some backing there, unlike my poker skills :)). So I just thought poker's another boardgame to master. It seems it has quite a lot to offer beyond what I've learned yet though.

Examples:
a)I wasn't talking about cc 3-bet from bb. I was talking about cc 3-bet from random position like sb/button/cutoff and on a folding on a normal flop not AA5. The guy had VPIP 80. But even on the bb - you're not closing the action, you can be forced to cap (making it 1:3) and you're probably OOP on the flop (or second to act at best). If I get the feeling that the OR would call, it's possible - but I'd assume a strong player would probably cap it. Still, that's just some arguments - I'm probably missing some important stuff.

b) Calling river vs. me who was fitorfolding most of the time doesn't really seem to do the trick. And I didn't mean calling just river, I mean calling all the way to the river with 3rd pair or worse or even calling with a busted draw.

As to the Fitorfold - I didn't say I f/f against anyone - just against CS/Maniacs/Fishes - and even some passive regulars. Generally the guys who just don't know how to fold.

With regulars strong/aggresive players I do things like ch/r river with ace high, if I get the feeling he's just trying to get me out (and I also try to avoid them in general:) Well, unless it's Nihility, who's hilarious). Yeah of course it's not just fitorfolding - for me at least it's about thinking the ranges mostly and hypothesising about possible plays. I actually like FL because there's a lot of betting rounds to make the ranges somewhat clearer.

However - I seriously think that if you had the patience to find a fishy table and leave everytime the fishes bust, it shouldn't be so hard to be strongly +EV even at 0.5/1. It's just that the bad players are less frequent up there. And you have to leave when you get fucked and not be an idiot like me tilting and trying to WIN IT BACK I suppose the winrate however includes occasionaly being an idiot, since everybody probably does that.

Given the overwhelming evidence I concede to have had an upswing. I just tried to defend some of the things I said

Don't worry happens to everyone, you're not the first guy to think they were a monster winner before they hit a wall and you won't be the last

Couple of things regarding what you said though:

"With regulars strong/aggresive players I do things like ch/r river with ace high, if I get the feeling he's just trying to get me out "

Why would you do this? A-High is the perfect bluffcatching hand in LHE, this isn't NLHE where players will fold 2nd/3rd pair to river x/r's especially if you're not representing anything. I can count the amount of times in FL it's good to bluff raise A-High in a 100k hands period on one hand I'd imagine. All that's going to happen most of the time is you're going to get a worse hand to fold (i.e. gain nothing) or you're going to get called by a better hand and lose an extra bet.

"But even on the bb - you're not closing the action, you can be forced to cap (making it 1:3) and you're probably OOP on the flop (or second to act at best). If I get the feeling that the OR would call, it's possible - but I'd assume a strong player would probably cap it. Still, that's just some arguments - I'm probably missing some important stuff."

Well the first thing missing is equity. You're getting between 22 and 25% odds to play the hand from the BB. If you just plug an opening and 3-betting range into Equilab and then run an equity range to give you hands which have even 27-30% equity (so giving you some leeway) vs those ranges I think you'll be surprised

Secondly while a lot of players will cap, it's also an option among the tougher regs who try to balance their game to adopt a pure strategy of never 4-betting in this spot in the BB so by doing that they protect their range and have ideal positon to be able to face the field with 2 bets on the flop should they feel the need to protect their hand or just try and get more value.

I do agree that it's certainly possible to be very +EV in those games and I'm sure that with hard work and genuine learning it can be possible

a) I would do that because - I could represent something (Q in that instance - it was on the flop and even turn was dry, so it was imo pretty reasonable to ch/r with KQ AQ)- and I thought he might have and fold 2nd/3rd because of
i) He checked the flop and betted the turn - it could be an anytwo steal, but then he seemed pretty tight post flop for that.
ii) He was playing reasonably and paying attention and I had a pretty tight image - so i assume he would not think he was good with 2nd 3rd against my turn raise.
iii) He thought a lot before folding - might be he had a worse A or just nothing and wondering what I had, but I assume my guess was right.

EDIT: Ooops. Sorry ! ch/r river doesn't make sense ofc, I meant ch/r turn. I think since the turn is the best place to get value out of strong hands, it gives also the most FEV, so is the best place to bluff somebody out. Not getting much FEV on river since the pot is too big and on flop, since it's just cheap. Sorry again ch/r river doesn't EVER get anybody to fold (only sb. really has nothing at all in which case ace high was better anyway).

The thought is good though - even if that wasn't the case I think I'm forcing out weaker hands too often.

b) i)Given we agree on the cc being ok from bb do you think it's ok from other positions ? Presumably raisor wouldn't cap and I'd get 1:2 equity + position. But ummm, I'm up there with two guys with strong ranges and called cause i might hit.

ii) The bb situation - I'm not sure if we understand each other. I was talking about the original raisor capping, making it less equity-profitable to make the call beforehand.

iii) The problem I have with the so-so +EV calls is manyfold:
1) You get the EV but there's a chance everybody in the hand before you has better EV Meaning you actually don't have it - do you get me ? I know it sounds pretty strange.
2) Calling on pure equity shouldn't work because of rake - do the equity calculators take this into account ?
3) Calling with Q10s, J10s and such can force marginal decisions. Suppose i hit the jack and I'm facing a bet and a call - do I reraise ? (probably yes but then I might be facing AJ/KJ/JJ+ and losing in calling down to river - and I would probably still have to fold to big action from both players especially if an overcard hits). I can't really overcall since everybody probably has at least overcards or sd/fd (or can I ? And what if there's a lot of action then, do I just fold ? Sounds reasonable - but still the overcalls often net losing to two players with better preflop hands). Can't really fold TPGK in SH (or can I ? - of course I can given there's a lot of action - but even there I've seen a lot of action on J76 flop with guys having 88 and 1010 -I'd gladly cap it there with AJ at least on the first street - but J10... phew). I mean i'm not only making the 2-3bb investment preflop, I'm also saying I will call being dominated, because I think you might be semi-bluffing with 1010-/AK/AQ (which could even turn out to be value-betting lot of the time). If it was NLHE i would easily call/fold J10s having TPGK just cause the implied odds on straight/fd are enough to cover my expenses. But here ... ? Hmmm.

That's precisely the reason i hate playing speculative hands at FLHE (especially from bad positions)- I don't feel like getting proper implied odds on setmining/fd/sd mining. And why I like KJo/K10s because i get a lot of showdowns and speculative hands simply don'r get that much value. Sometimes you win with KJ high or Khigh on sd.

I mean .. I do like playing speculative hands to steal from BU+ (sometimes CO) and to call them bb when closing the action or from sb with a passive bb against a raise and 1+ call, but that's about it.

Suggestions welcome That's just my thoughts.

Anyway - any good books to recommend on FL play? I've read the winning low limit holdem by i don't know who and a lot of the ps articles but always looking to improve.

Btw I've seen someone called Boomer on my table. That wasn't you perchance ?

Just noticed - thanks to Avataren - that my 2-tabling winrate is about 4-times as high as my 3+. Pretty sick, if you ask me. I did know that at 2-tables I make the best reads and player-wise strategy, but - wow. I don't care about the sample size, this *has* a lot to say It's just 8k each but still it's pretty clear. Sticking to two tabling for sure.

Got my loss halfway back btw. Still pretty confident I'm beating the limit. As far as the 0.25/0.5 goes, I'm still consistently 2.5BB/100 over 17k hands and 5BB/100 over 6k if 2-tabling. As far as 0.5/1 goes I'm -60$ quite sharply But that was 5-tabling and tilting. Giving it a next shot at 400$ for 100$ - 2-tabling. I'm expecting wr to drop to 2BB - if anything lowering expectation would make me less tilt-prone and more happy with winning. And 2BB is still pretty hell good.

Asked to join your home-game thing Boomer, btw. Lookin' forward to it.

Originally posted by M3lchior
Just noticed - thanks to Avataren - that my 2-tabling winrate is about 4-times as high as my 3+. Pretty sick, if you ask me. I did know that at 2-tables I make the best reads and player-wise strategy, but - wow. I don't care about the sample size, this *has* a lot to say It's just 8k each but still it's pretty clear. Sticking to two tabling for sure.

Got my loss halfway back btw. Still pretty confident I'm beating the limit. As far as the 0.25/0.5 goes, I'm still consistently 2.5BB/100 over 17k hands and 5BB/100 over 6k if 2-tabling. As far as 0.5/1 goes I'm -60$ quite sharply But that was 5-tabling and tilting. Giving it a next shot at 400$ for 100$ - 2-tabling. I'm expecting wr to drop to 2BB - if anything lowering expectation would make me less tilt-prone and more happy with winning. And 2BB is still pretty hell good.

Asked to join your home-game thing Boomer, btw. Lookin' forward to it.

np.. looking forward to the next session review.

Hi, I've just red through the whole thread, I'm sure that you can beat those limits wit 1-2 BB/100 with a good table select (maybe a bit more). Just consider the rake, and the positions on the fishy players, and the other regs, and maybe a fish looses avg 10 BB/100, thats making the other 5 players winrate (not equally because of the positions, tilt, weather, etc...) minus the rake. And the rake is really high on lower stakes.

To the x/r turn, river action: both can make sense, if you've got a value range, you should ballance that range with some bluffs, to make our opponents guess what, ofc not mindlessly do that. If you wanna read more about this concept, I suggest to read about Game Theoretical Optimum, and some basic game theory, if you've got time, on coursera you can find a game theory course.

Books: Philip Newall : Inteligent Poker player, PN: Future Limite Holdem, and to strenghten your mental game: Jared Tendler: Mental Game of Poker, there is the MGoP2, but I didn't used that, just started to work with the first book. Make it easier to understand what happens, when you go on tilt or feel angry, fear, etc...

If interested in game reviews, game theory discussion, or anything with climbing up on these limits, just happend to me in the last year, so feel free to ask!

Thanks very much baluu

1) First thanks for being supportive It's actually pretty nice to see someone saying I'm sure that you can beat that and not "ololol beating the rake is good enough you will fall down soon".

2) I just don't like x/r river - it seems really strange to me - I agree I should balance it to not be rring the river purely on value - but I think the FEV is just pretty small there.

3) Game theory - I thought I might get a course on this. I'm a huge fan of the MOOCs and especially coursera. Since I'm also a semi-proffesional board-game player it might be nice to get some abstract/formal insights aside from the years of practice.

4) Books - thanks I'll be definitely giving those a look. I'm currently trying to swallow things I know and getting them into practice - I'm still making mistakes I know about. Once I'm a bit better about that (prolly by the end of the month) I'll give some of those a shot. Btw, since I'm also having 4 finished psychology semesters - and also did some psychological research (actually published two papers on group dynamics in groups of six playing a prisoner's dilemma game - that's almost like FL SH CG ♦) in our lab I got some insight on how emotions work. Could be nice to get a poker perspective on that though.

5) I would definitely be pleased to talk theory and limit-climbing since I enjoy talking about poker and my friends can get a little annoyed by that ♦ So if you'd like - you can just add me here and pm me then or something.

Just thought I might actually post my winnings in 0.25/0.50. The winrate is actually going up currently as I started to focus on two-tabling instead of stupidly multitabling when I can't handle it. And uhm, I don't know how it looks to you, but it sure looks more like solid stable play, than an upswing to me. Currently 2.67BB/100.

Originally posted by M3lchior
Thanks very much baluu

1) First thanks for being supportive It's actually pretty nice to see someone saying I'm sure that you can beat that and not "ololol beating the rake is good enough you will fall down soon".

If you think that's what we've been telling you then you've not been reading it properly

None of us have said that you aren't beating the games and it's great that you're doing really well to start off your play with but you HAVEN'T been through any kind of downswing yet and you are putting waaay too much stock in your short term winrate.

That said your graph looks fine and since we're just bouncing the same subject around I'll stop becasue there's no point in continuing it.

Ok, I can't stand it anymore. As someone interested in poker and actually graduated high school, you (and everyone else btw) should be able to calculate winrate confidences (or at least using google to find the equation).

For the following calculation, I'll assume a 20BB/100 STDDEV (which is quite optimistic). In this case, in 95% of the cases you'll have a winrate between:

2.67 +- 1.96*20/sqrt(160) =

-0.42 and 5.77 BB/100. Meaning you can easily be a much smaller winner, a breakeven, or even a losing player. You can be an even bigger winner, however given most people's winrate at those stakes, it's unlikely. If you add some Bayesian math to it, it's pretty clear that this short sample means absolutely nothing in terms of guessing your winrate. You're probably not a huge fish, that's true - but other than that, nothing.

To put it in a less nerdy way: if you lost with -2.67BB/100 over this sample size, would you say you're a huge fish, or would you just blame variance and cry downswing? Most people would do the latest, I'm sure.

No I wouldn't blame it on variance. The biggest problem I had back then was actually overestimating my short-term losses and going on tilt then. The biggest advance was realizing that losing 50$ in one day is normal and doesn't mean I'm bad. I'm a student on a shoestring budget - I went from 20$ -> 250$. I have neither the money or inclination to spend 2.67BB/100 over 17k. I wouldn't touch poker with a ten foot pole then.

You see madorjan, maybe if you want to make non-math related guesses as to he side of the curve I'm on, you could at least see me play, don't you think ?

I would say there is a long list of things distinguishing me from a normal player, like topping ladder in boardgames or studying IT and psychology after 8year math gym. Or maybe just using HM and reading like several THOUSANDS of pages about poker. Or perhaps the fact I'm 4 standard-devs smarter than the average person?

That said it's hard enough to defend my short-term losses before myself alone and I'm incredibly sick of feeling the need to defend myself here. See you in 80k hands, guys.

Originally posted by M3lchior
No I wouldn't blame it on variance. The biggest problem I had back then was actually overestimating my short-term losses and going on tilt then. The biggest advance was realizing that losing 50$ in one day is normal and doesn't mean I'm bad. I'm a student on a shoestring budget - I went from 20$ -> 250$. I have neither the money or inclination to spend 2.67BB/100 over 17k. I wouldn't touch poker with a ten foot pole then.

You see madorjan, maybe if you want to make non-math related guesses as to he side of the curve I'm on, you could at least see me play, don't you think ?

I would say there is a long list of things distinguishing me from a normal player, like topping ladder in boardgames or studying IT and psychology after 8year math gym. Or maybe just using HM and reading like several THOUSANDS of pages about poker. Or perhaps the fact I'm 4 standard-devs smarter than the average person?

That said it's hard enough to defend my short-term losses before myself alone and I'm incredibly sick of feeling the need to defend myself here. See you in 80k hands, guys.

LOL

just looking for the definition of "smart". and please please please PLEASE

don't tell me it's IQ tests.

Oh, and by the way, you shouldn't guess that people here are telling you taht you are on the left side of the gaussian distribution. it's more as if you were trying to measure the diameter of an atom with a standard ruler. you can get 1mm as a read, of course, but it's absolutely meaningless.

Originally posted by M3lchior
No I wouldn't blame it on variance. The biggest problem I had back then was actually overestimating my short-term losses and going on tilt then. The biggest advance was realizing that losing 50$ in one day is normal and doesn't mean I'm bad. I'm a student on a shoestring budget - I went from 20$ -> 250$. I have neither the money or inclination to spend 2.67BB/100 over 17k. I wouldn't touch poker with a ten foot pole then.

You see madorjan, maybe if you want to make non-math related guesses as to he side of the curve I'm on, you could at least see me play, don't you think ?

I would say there is a long list of things distinguishing me from a normal player, like topping ladder in boardgames or studying IT and psychology after 8year math gym. Or maybe just using HM and reading like several THOUSANDS of pages about poker. Or perhaps the fact I'm 4 standard-devs smarter than the average person?

That said it's hard enough to defend my short-term losses before myself alone and I'm incredibly sick of feeling the need to defend myself here. See you in 80k hands, guys.

Wow... I've just proven to you 4-times-stddev IT and psychology student that you should blame it on variance. And not having the money or inclination to lose doesn't mean you won't. It means that you are probably not ready for poker.

Also no, I don't have to see you play, I read your posts, that was more than enough.

Other distinguishing factors: normal poker players understand variance and short-term, and don't try to defend themselves with obviously irrelevant arguments (actually they do, but that's why they're average).

If I were a psychology student, I'd say you should realise that people here don't attack you personally, why should they? Because they're envious of your results? Please, Boomer is a coach who can beat small stakes easily, I beat 5/T (not sure about the rest) - so no, no envy. Why else? Cause we want to hurt new LHE players? Cause we're sadistic mofos enjoying crushing others' dreams? (Spoiler: none of the above, we want to save you from a very likely (not 100% tho) disappointment when you realise you "only" beat the stakes by say 1BB/100, or when you have your first (inevitable) 200BB downswing.) You make it personal, cause your thoughts are attacked. That's human, also (as I'm sure you know) bad for learning purposes and discussion in general. So either be prepared to be corrected in your thought process (and that is good for you, believe it or not), or keep up the good work defending yourself and denying every help you'd get otherwise. And yes, this observation is based on the other thread as well.

i'm wondering how did m3lchior end up in poker... anyone knows?

Originally posted by JLeitmotiv
i'm wondering how did m3lchior end up in poker... anyone knows?

he got busy with other things in life. so hes on a break and will probably come back in a few months tops.

there are probably less than 10 players in the entire world who have a winrate of 3BB/100 or better

Really ? I saw a guy on iPoker who had around 4.5 BB/100 winrate up to 3/6. So on 0.25/0.50 3BB/100 doesn't sound incredible (over a decent sample ofc), that limit is really soft. Even I had 2.5BB on 0.25/0.5 on stars a year ago and I can't say that downs avoided me.

Originally posted by kavboj84

there are probably less than 10 players in the entire world who have a winrate of 3BB/100 or better

Really ? I saw a guy on iPoker who had around 4.5 BB/100 winrate up to 3/6. So on 0.25/0.50 3BB/100 doesn't sound incredible (over a decent sample ofc), that limit is really soft. Even I had 2.5BB on 0.25/0.5 on stars a year ago and I can't say that downs avoided me.

Probably a lot more than 10 players could beat 0.25/0.50 for more than 3BB/100, but they don't because they are busy playing higher limits.

@Boomer: On blinds play.

Losing money from those positions is fine because what you're actually looking to do is lose less than the value of the SB and BB (so less that 50BB/100 in the BB and 20-25BB/100 in the SB, becasue that's what you'd lose if you simply folded every hand)

In 6-max (assuming full tables) I'd say 16.666...bb/100 in the big blind and 8.333...bb/100 in the small blind (assuming a 1:2 structure). Your numbers makes sense for HUHU when BB is replaced by bb. Correct?