Livethelife7

Homework lesson 1:

Question 1: What is your motivation for playing poker?

- Reach my maximum potential.
- Having fun.
- Use some skills I learn here at school (I'm studying business and economics).
- playing poker for a living or making money to start an own business someday.

Question 2: What are your weaknesses when playing poker?

- Definitely the biggest one is discipline. I have to get thinks done. I always think about a lot of stuff I want to do but at the end nothing gets done.
- To much playing, to little study and session reviews. Thats why i take this course.
- A big leak is that I start mostly my session with my A game, but if I get a weird situation and make a mistake, or the hand goes wrong (to result orientated) I get angry at my self and often it ends with tilt and not rational moves.
- If I have one or two sessions where I'm losing or losing big, I lose confidence and think about if I should change my game.
- Giving up to fast.
- Cashing out and not moving on.

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

- Playing tight aggressive means playing an solid tight range. Limit the hands you play preflop and play you're hands aggressively. What I mean by limit the hands you play is to choose the ranges you open carefully by your own postflop skills, opponents and position.

Sorry for delayed answer, I have been moving to new country so it did take me to set up everything at my place, now I am back and starting to evaluate the homeworks.

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

Discipline is common problem for a lot of players. Few things you could set up for yourself is that you can put a plan which you follow. How long sessions you have, when you play and not only about poker but could even set up some other schedule as well like doing some sports. But keep in mind that forcing yourself and getting used to the schedule is kind of must. At first it might be difficult but after time you adjust. The same goes for distractions what are common to happen when you ain't disciplined enough, try to remind yourself what you are doing on the table! Focusing enough is the key.

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.

Another option against tilt is to set yourself shorter sessions which might avoid you from tilting. If you playing longer sessions then it's more likely that during that session you can get upset. So work on your game and try to find out what makes you tilt and try to fight against it.

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 being with us here and will enjoy the course. In any case you have questions about anything then feel free to ask it, I will try to respond as soon I read it.

Thnx for your detailed answer.

I think you're are right about that when I'm not disciplined enough I easily get distracted and lose my focus.

Today:

1. I set a stoploss of 4 buyins.

2. I made a checklist before I start a session with the next questions:

- mindset ok?
- play to win longterm?
- Any tilt signs before session?
- Play A game?

Every time I start a session now, I go through that checklist.

The next thing I did is opened a notepad with on it: MINDSET, and every time I play I have it open so I can see it.

Homework lesson 2

Question 1: What do you think you could play differently than suggested in the BSS Starting Hands Chart and why?

The first thing that we can say is we can open more from late position if the blinds are tight, or passive fish that folds a lot
against cbets. The second thing is hands like KQs (what I definitely open from mp, especially if there is fish in the blinds) if we follow the chart we have to play it like QTs, or even worse: we play AQs the same as ATo.
What I also want to say is that we can isolate looser than the chart is telling us.

The problems I have is that often call to loose or just don't have any idea how my calling range should look like against different opponents if they raise.

Question 2: Do you have questions about your preflop play? Post your hand for evaluation.

Preflop question

Question 3: What is the equity of AKo against the top 5% range? 5% means 88+, AJs+, KQs, AKo.

Equity Win Tie
MP2 46.32% 37.92% 8.41% { AKo }
MP3 53.68% 45.27% 8.41% { 88+, AJs+, KQs, AKo }

Homework lesson 3:

Question 1: You are holding K :spade:Q :spade:. What is your preflop equity against an opponent who has 3 :diamond:3 :club:? How does the equity change on this flop: J :spade:5 :diamond:3 :spade:?

Preflop:

Equity Win Tie
MP2 50.60% 50.21% 0.39% { KsQs }
MP3 49.40% 49.01% 0.39% { 33 }

Flop:

Board: Js5d3s
Equity Win Tie
MP2 26.46% 26.46% 0.00% { KsQs }
MP3 73.54% 73.54% 0.00% { 33 }

I was playing a bit with Equilab and found the Scenario Analyser. It's quite fun to play with.
I analysed for this situation that a T would improve my equity with 3% and any spade (expect the 5s ofc) would give me an equity of 77%.
For this example maybe quite easy to see and not important, but I think this can help me improve analysing other hands in some spots.

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 :club: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 :diamond:(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...?

Pre we could argue about 3x or 4x open raise from the CO, but on NL2 it's definitely fine. Flop is an easy check multiway on this wet board. I think it hits BB range the hardest. Pre BU range: 22-TT(JJ), ATs+, AJo+, JTs+, KQo. Pre BB range: 22-TT, AQs-A2s,KTs+,Q9s+,J9s+,T8s+,97s+,86s+,76s,65s,AQo-ATo,KJo+,QJo,JTo. Those ranges are under the assumption that these unknown villains are ABC poker regs.After BU checks behind, I think we can exclude a lot of his range, like sets & overpairs. I think he would always bet this flop.On the turn we improve our equity a lot, and think to realise or equity we just have to bet (main reason why we bet here is to 1. semibluff, 2. pick up the deadmoney).When we get raised, what range does opponent have here. Because of the minraise I changed my mind about the opponent. I don't think he is an competent player any more, so I think you can include all kind of nutty bad slowplayed hands here like sets, 44, or mabye even an overpair to his range. I see alot of fish take this line with the nuts.So we assume that we have 10 clean outs (I don't think 77 is in his range so I count a 4 as an out). So or odds are (46-10)/10 = 3.6 to 1, and or pot odds are (0.25+0.22+0.44)/0.22 = 4.1 to 1, so its definitely a call, we doesn't need implied odds to make this call correct.

Or river play should be:
if we not hit: c/f
if we do hit the flush: bet if he checks, raise if he is betting
if we hit the 4: ch behind or call his bet.

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.)

Here is a Hand, but I have posted a lot of hands and been quite active the last days on the hand forum, and it's improving my game:)

One small comment about the straight hand. Does it count as "hitting" if the 4 comes down when we just split if that's the case?

My slightly faulty maths guesses he has aprox 80 cents left when after we call and the pot will be about 1.10 so what do we do when he jams? We would need to win 40%ish of the time but we're calling for a split so we'd have to split 85% ish of the time to make the call +ev.

good job on the answers, was pretty interesting reading your analysis. People don't write out their thoughts like that when posting HH's.

Good job! Homework #2 Done!

Totally agree with you about the stealing ranges. Against specific opponents we adjust, either wider range or tighter range. Against some shorties you can even steal with smaller raise, for example 3xBB. But don't overdo the stealing situations. Sometimes you might just put yourself into too many difficult spots if opening with marginal hands. As for example stealing too many hands from SB and being out of position.

About what kind of hands to call, what kind of hands to raise and etc the chart doesn't really tell exactly. Cause clearly it's impossible to tell a thing which always will depend, that's also why you should be using more of those hand evaluation sections and try to analyze your hands. It's nothing that comes over the night, it comes with hard work and putting enough of effort into it.

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.

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!