ryciaga

Ok, Homework 1.

My motivation to play poker.

It used to be fun to play freerolls at first, but now my motivation is to make money from it. I am willing to learn and do my best at the tables, as a I take poker really seriously. I would love to play in some live event one day, but for now I really want to achieve a level of knowledge that would bring my current game to the next level, as this would help me to crush the tables. I am determined to do my best in terms of studying and analysing and playing etc; in order to make my poker career profitable.

My weaknesses:

I think sometimes I should stick to my read more. Sometimes, not all the time, I put my opponent on right hand and then I overplay my cards. For ex, here:

Known players:
[tg]Position_Stack:hands/vp$ip/RaisePreflop/AF/WTS/ORL/BBvsSteal/W$SD;SB$2:219/12/10/4.0/22/24/80/25;BB$2,04:152/22/12/2.1/31/12/75/44;MP1$0,6:215/10/10/2.5/44/13/100/63;Hero$2,18:///////;MP3$2:827/8/4/1.1/32/15/100/65;CO$0,6:450/20/14/2.6/31/28/50/60;BU$2,74:114/10/6/4.0/14/17/100/100;[/tg]
0,01/0,02 No-Limit Hold'em (7 handed)
Hand recorder used for this poker hand: PokerStrategy.com Elephant 0.104 by www.pokerstrategy.com.

Preflop: Hero is MP2 with K♥, K♠
MP1 folds, Hero raises to $0,08, 4 folds, BB raises to $0,20, Hero calls $0,12.

Flop: ($0,41) K♦, Q♥, 6♦ (2 players)
BB bets $0,2, Hero raises to $0,40, BB calls $0,20.

Turn: ($1,21) A♠ (2 players)
BB bets $0,28, Hero raises to $1,58 (All-In), BB calls $1,16 (All-In).

River: ($4,23) 2♠ (2 players)

Final Pot: $4,23

Results follow (highlight to see):
Hero shows three-of-a-kind, kings (Kh Ks)
BB shows three-of-a-kind, aces (Ad Ac)

Hero wins with three-of-a-kind, kings (Kh Ks)
BB wins with three-of-a-kind, aces (Ad Ac)

When he reraised preflop I was sure I am against AA. Not QQ/JJ/TT. But only AA. And when flop gives me a set, I am ahead. But when Turn gives him a set, I just lost what was left in my stack, because I couldn't give up my set.

Sometimes I overchase flushdraws, also I should improve my "fold when you think you are beaten" mode Somehow I usually start my session by loosing 1- 1,5 BI every time, and then I am trying to catch up, this kinda wakes me up. Need to get rid of this.

Tight - aggressive means a careful selection of which hands you will play, also you take into consideration your position at the table at that particular moment, also you instead of making decisions whether to stick around and call, or just fold, you should be forcing your opponent to do that after your raise. That's why a position is important. In the end it's also important to be patient and just fold when you think you are beaten as this helps you to save money.

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

First of all, it would be nice if you kept the hands into Hand Evaluation forums. Which you can find here: https://forums.pokerstrategy.com/forum/board.php?boardid=1387

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.

Easiest way to fight against tilt is to set up stop-loss technique. Which means if you for example have lost more than 3BIs for a session then you just stop the session for some time. The BI amount is set up from your own results. Some may put it higher, some lower. Also after the stop you can spend some time with evaluation part to become better.

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. Some points earned.

Ok, homework 2:

I think that AQ both suited and offsuit could be played a little bit differently. I think that, it's good enough to reraise against some opponents, when they raise frome MP3, CO if we sit at CO/BU, and it's good enough to reraise from SB/BB against CO/BU raises. We must look at the exact opponent playstyle, because this hand is really good against blind steals, and we can force some opponents from MP3 to lay down their hands. But every single time we must think about exact opponent, because this move wouldn't work out against 10/8 kinda guy.

Here's the link to the hand that I posted into hand evaluation forum:

NL4 AJs against two aggro players.

Question 3: What is the equity of AKo against the top 5% range? 5% means 88+, AJs+, KQs, AKo.? If I am correct, then AKo equity against top 5% is 46.32%. But I see a need to understand the whole equity concept better.

Good job! Homework #2 Done!

I do totally agree with those type of hands as AQo that we can easily fight back with them. They are strong enough against loose stealing range and most likely I would also re-steal with them and then rather plan on further actions. If he shows strength then we can still fold the hand.

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.

I like the course!:)

Homework 3.

Question 1:

Preflop EQ with KQ of spades against 33:

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

Postflop EQ on J53 board with two spades:

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

(When I made this calculation, this improved my mind and thinking, whether I am holding a flushdraw or a set on this board, because with a set I am in a good enough position to go all in against an FD, and damn, I really don't have to waste any more money, while trying to buy a flush)

Question 2:
This one is nice. When BU calls my raise pre, i put him on TT-22, A9o+, A2s+, KTo+, K9s+. Since BB folds in this scenario, it's irrelevant. And the flop comes 2c6d3d. Nothing happen, so my presupposition stays the same. on turn we get reraised. So we got to exclude A9o+, KTo+ hands. That's easy. Also I would reduce his pair range, to 77-22 or 88-22. But 77-22 is more likely for me here, because I think that with pocket tens/nines/eights BU would have taken a stab at this pot after our check. Question is now whether to leave those possible diamond/club flush draws for opp. I think we should exclude them, because if he had one of these draws, he would be interested to have a look at cheap river card instead of reraising. The only possible combo we should leave here is A4s, which would give him a straight here. and though we are getting the good odds here with given scenario, our equity against 77-22, and A4s looks like this:

Board: 6♦3♦2♣ 5♣
       Equity     Win     Tie
CO     23.11%  20.96%   2.15% { AcJc }
BU     76.89%  74.75%   2.15% { 77-22, A4s }

BTW we lose some percent of equity if we reduce the range from 77-22 to 66-22. I also think, that after that turn card he wouldn't be reraising his 77 either, so we are left with 66-22, A4s. and we only have 20,29 percent of EQ left.
So if he has a set already, we exclude 2 out of our 9 remaining outs and stay here with 7 only, so we would need 6:1 to call here. If we stay with 9 outs we get our needed 4:1....
BUT, we will win only in 1 case out of 5 cases against opp range. 0,91- 4*0,22 =0.03., but we must think about the rake here too, so I think this move is slightly -EV. I would FOLD here.

Question3: here's the link.
AJs catches a flush on turn.

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!

Homework 4:

Question 1: NL4 AA bet sizing

Question 2: Tt 18.03.
AKs 18.03.
98s 3 way pot
QJo 18.03.

Question 3:
My equity here is 41.41 percent.
Board: Js9c8h
Equity Win Tie
MP2 41.41% 41.41% 0.00% { KsQd }
MP3 58.59% 58.59% 0.00% { 7h7c }

Got to admit that I love that move from lesson video material, where you isolate limpers while sitting on CO/BU, and target them for a hunt in other sessions works really well for me

Good job! Homework #4 Done!

This weeks homework was a bit easier. But the idea of that is to help you go through last weeks stuff if you didn't go through everything. Or either way maybe even read some more articles, watch some videos and of course attend in the coaching. What will also help for your game is the evaluation part of other members hands and of course posting your own hands.

If you have interests you could try calculating the equity with a formula which you can use even on tables(either playing online or live poker):
(Amount of outs x 4) – (Amount of outs – 8) = Your Equity

& Great to hear that iso works good, against fishy players I would always use it. ♦

About Question #3:

Board: J♠9♣8♥
       Equity     Win     Tie
UTG    41.41%  41.41%   0.00% { KsQd }
UTG+1  58.59%  58.59%   0.00% { 7h7c }

Hopefully this wasn't too easy homework for you.