metza

Question 1: What is your motivation for playing poker?

To have fun playing poker and to constantly improve my abilities within the game.

Question 2: What are your weaknesses when playing poker?

1)"Sheriff Syndrome" as it was put in the coaching, calling players that I am almost sure have caught their draw.

2) Playing when I am not playing my A-game.

3) Trying to bluff calling stations off of mediocre hands

Question 3: What does it mean to play tight aggressive?

To play a very selective range of only the best hands, to tend towards betting rather than checking, and subsequently avoid difficult postflop decisions.

Welcome to the Course and Best of Luck. Good job! Homework #1 Done!

Have seen you chilling @ Hand Evaluation forums, you are doing pretty great stuff there. Those kind of evaluations and posting hands really help to improve your game, not only cash but also of course even MTT.

Seems like you have most of the common problems for a lot beginner's, I wouldn't really worry that much about them and turn myself down cause of it. You will manage to improve in that with time and will realize actually how important it is to pay more attention on the game. For example to keep your A-game, cause usually what avoids doing it is being not focused enough.

The same applies for Sheriff syndrome, you just have to kick it out. If coach does that it doesn't mean that you can always do that. You also must understand the idea behind it and why he is doing that. Which usually for rather beginner's isn't the case. Try to be first conservative and then when moving up the stakes and seeing that your system is working then loosening up and try to be more aggressive. With being the sheriff at your phase you rather going to lose money, just from the whole hands I have seen on the Hand evaluation forums, I haven't really seen that many earning profit with it.

Most of the weakness you wrote can easily be fixed by posting hands (analyzing your session). We will start writing feedback to your play. Usually negative feedback will put you into thinking phase and trying to fix all those leaks. It's almost the same as you lose money, you will remember it more than winning part. By this situation it's gonna be that negative feedback you gonna remember and try to avoid them next time.

Tight style is usually called playing selected hands. Like following the Starting Hand Chart. Aggressive should be also pretty clear that already the word says how you should be playing. But the problem playing aggressively is that you have to watch that you don't play too aggressive. Find good spots, find good targets. About The tight-aggressive strategy you can read in this article: "What is the Big Stack Strategy?"

Hopefully you will enjoy the Course.

Thanks for the time you're putting in for this course Veriz, much appreciated.

Question 1: What do you think you could play differently than suggested in the BSS Starting Hands Chart and why? (Are there any hands you would play differently? Do you have a problem or question about how a specific hand or hands should be played?)

In short when it is thought to maximize EV, you can play differently to SHC

In my opinion some examples of this in my own play would be things like 3betting 67s/78s/89s as a bluff (in position only) against an opponent who is quite aggressive preflop but plays fit or fold postflop. I am not sure that this maximizes EV, but I have found that many NL2 players will just fold, and many who call the 3bet will play terribly postflop out of position, mostly folding to cbets when they miss. And of course super easy fold if they 4bet. I usually only do this to 3bb raises not 4bb, as many players don't notice that they steal for 3bb but value raise 4bb and when it comes to button and they raise 3bb it is so obvious what they are doing.

Question 2: Do you have questions about your preflop play? Post your hand for evaluation. ( Post your hand in the Hand evaluation forums and provide a link to your hand in your private thread in the Locker Room.)

Is it ok to raise small pocket pairs? I saw in the coaching podcast for lesson one you said you need to do it at higher levels but not lower levels, but I prefer it to limping because it is totally unbalanced to limp only with small PP, and also the main reason is just that its so hard to get all the chips in when you hit a set if you've only limped.

Also, this is a situation in which I am unsure of what to do, it doesn't happen often but:

PokerStars - $0.02 NL (9 max) - Holdem - 9 players
Removed to avoid clutter.

Question 3: What is the equity of AKo against the top 5% range? 5% means 88+, AJs+, KQs, AKo. ( You can either calculate this yourself or use an equity calculator such as the PokerStrategy.com Equilab.)

46.32%

Good job! Homework #2 Done!

You have pretty solid way to analyze the game, I really like the text about SCs there and that's true that those hands can easily be used to 3bet. Especially if opponent is folding a lot to 3bets or either even folding easily postflop. Your game has improved lately and I hope hand evaluation forum is also helping you out.

Is it ok to raise small pocket pairs? I saw in the coaching podcast for lesson one you said you need to do it at higher levels but not lower levels, but I prefer it to limping because it is totally unbalanced to limp only with small PP, and also the main reason is just that its so hard to get all the chips in when you hit a set if you've only limped.

Correct, limping on lower limits is totally fine. Not many players would understand with what you limping anyways which means we can also limp them to lower our variance and maybe even able to Call vs a raise. Whilst vs a 3bet you very often have to fold the hand.

Would be nice if you posted those hands into Hand Evaluation forums. Trying here to keep mainly theory stuff, it would be get too much spammed here and hard to follow those hands. Hope for your understanding.

About Question #3:

       Equity     Win     Tie
UTG    46.32%  37.92%   8.41% { AKo }
UTG+1  53.68%  45.27%   8.41% { 88+, AJs+, KQs, AKo }

Hopefully you enjoy the Course so far.

Yeah the course has been pretty sweet so far. Still needa watch week 2 podcast for coaching.

Had a lot of assignments for university, so not much time for poker, finished them today and had a massive poker binge 6 tabling. Ran pretty good. Technically was still under EV, but nowhere near as many bad beats as usual.

Not a lot of hands but things are looking good

Might have a crack at lesson 3 tomorrow.

Well, at least you running good whilst should be run under EV. ♦ Would be much worse when you would run -EV and then would also tilt more and maybe spew money away. Though get ready to also run bad which always going to happen for a poker player.

How have you been by the way?

Hi Veriz. Been pretty good, haven't done any more work on the course so far, as I was pretty busy with uni, now graduated, so there's heaps of time for poker, yay!!! Still managed to get a decent amount of hands in though haha.

I have also been thinking a lot about my game, not really studying theory so much, but thinking about why I do certain things and working on my game. It seems to be working quite well, also I managed to mostly stay untilted through a pretty bad downswing, maybe playing 80%-90% of my A-game. This is my graph for the last 2 months:

I think this beginners course has definitely helped, but the problem is I am moving away from it. It really helped me to understand the tight aggressive style, but I don't really like the idea of playing to patterns even though I now it can also be very profitable at my limits. The way I play now seems to be playing every hand as it comes, dependent on not just my cards, but my opponents style and their possible cards, so on one table I'll be 14/9/50 and another 26/19/60 and something else on the other tables. I don't think of myself as even really having a playing "style".

Do you think I should continue with this course even though the playing style aspects are different to my playing "style"? The rest of it I feel still is just fundamental theory so I think I will keep doing this course.

Congrats on your graduation. Time to get some work? ♦

Do you think I should continue with this course even though the playing style aspects are different to my playing "style"? The rest of it I feel still is just fundamental theory so I think I will keep doing this course.

I don't really get your question? What do you mean with your playing style? Style doesn't really close your course or anything, you still have a lot to learn mate. That's just a beginning.

Question 1: You are holding KQ. What is your preflop equity against an opponent who has 33? How does the equity change on this flop: J53?

Preflop: 50.82%
Postflop: 26.46%

Question 2: What would you do in the following hand? (Remember that it is important to explain your reasons, simply posting "Fold" or "Call" isn't enough!)
No Limit hold'em $2 (9-handed)
Players and stacks:
UTG: $2.00
UTG+1: $2.08
MP1: $1.92
MP2: $1.00
MP3: $3.06
CO: (Hero) $2.08
BU: $2.00
SB: $2.00
BB: $1.24
Preflop: Hero is CO with A J
5 folds, Hero raises to $0.08, BU calls $0.08, SB folds, BB calls $0.06.
Flop: ($0.25) 2 :club:6 :diamond:3 (3 players)
BB checks, Hero checks, BU checks.
Turn: ($0.25) 5 (3 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $0.22, BU raises to $0.44, BB folds, Hero...?

His play is indicative of a fish who has just made his straight, and wants more money in the pot, but doesn't want to 'scare us off'.

Because of this, I would call. We are not ahead of a straight, so raising is not an option. But, because opponents raise gives us 4:1 odds, and basically yells out that he is a fish (and thus probably will not be able to fold his straight cheaply if a club comes on the river). We actually don't even need the implied odds for this to be a breakeven call, but obviously even if he checks to us on a club river, we can bet 1/2 pot and he's probably not laying down a straight for that price.

Also we have position on him, so its likely that he's going to bet the river regardless and we can then reraise and hope he calls. He may even have a flush draw rather than a straight in which case our implieds are even better.

Of course we want to be a little careful if the board pairs with a 6 or a 3 :club:, as its possible villain has 55 too.

Question 3: Do you have questions about your postflop play? Post your hand for evaluation. (Post your hand in the hand evaluation forum and provide a link to your hand in your private thread in the Locker Room.)

I still have this problem of not giving whales any credit. Every time they come in a pot with me, I just think 'what rags have they got this time'. Over the last week I've stacked myself a lot vs loose passive fish, starting to be a big problem. Here is an example:
NL10 AKs

Good job! Homework #3 Done!

About Question #1:
Preflop Equity:

Equity Win Tie
UTG 50.78% 50.40% 0.38% { KsQs }
UTG+1 49.22% 48.84% 0.38% { 3d3c }

Postflop Equity:

Board: J♠5♦3♠
Equity Win Tie
UTG 26.46% 26.46% 0.00% { KsQs }
UTG+1 73.54% 73.54% 0.00% { 3d3c }

About Question #2:
There are several occasions on turn:
a) If we take just odds for the FD and we take into account that all our odds are clean. Which means:
Total Pot = $0,91 ; We have to Call = $0,22 -> According to that it means we are getting ~4,16:1 odds. For flushdraw we would need 4:1. Which tells us that we are getting perfect odds.
b) If we consider the opponent having sets here:
Which means we have to discount outs, for example 6:c and also 3:c. Which means we have 7 clean outs so that means we need 6:1 odds. That tells us that we need ~$0,41 on river to make it profitable. If we expect the opponent being loose enough and being able to pay us no-matter what then we can do the Call here properly.
c) We might even have overcards as outs or even 4 as a out:
Although this kind of situation ain't that likely. I'd rather discount that one and either pick a) or b). Most likely towards Call.

You are doing great progress, keep going!