[Closed] Operation Ace of Clubs - Poker PRO by Dec. 2011 Business Venture

And here we go!

Today's session is gonna happen on Party Poker and I'll play 4-6 tables @ NL4 until I get 50 more party points. By doing this I'll be able to clear a bonus I have there and transfer whatever I got to PokerStars, where I'll start on NL10.

I'll post a graph tomorrow, as well as a critical hand for evaluation.

But until then.......... as I like jazz A LOT and can't avoid listening to it while on the tables....... I'll leave you with Mr. Miles Davis:

Good luck, all sounds good except I think you should have 50 buyins for a limit when you turn pro at the very minimum.
The pressure of having to make x amount each month is immense and after losing 5 buyins in a small downswing you only have 20 buyins left. That will be really hard to handle.

Everything else though sounds well thought out.

Originally posted by lennonac
Good luck, all sounds good except I think you should have 50 buyins for a limit when you turn pro at the very minimum.
The pressure of having to make x amount each month is immense and after losing 5 buyins in a small downswing you only have 20 buyins left. That will be really hard to handle.

Everything else though sounds well thought out.

Yes indeed. Sounds like a reasonable advice. Maybe I could try to make it to NL200 before going PRO and move down to NL100 when I decide to go pro at last, you got it? This way I can move up faster until I get there and then begin this pro stuff with a nice BR to back me up.

Thanks for the advice!

So here we go with yesterday's session weird hand. Villain was a 24/9/2.2 guy with 22% WTSD.

I feel quite bluffed on this hand ♠_confused:

Maybe villain hit his two pair? KJ may be in his BU calling range, as well as KQ. I don't see people bluff-raising a lead on the river so often.

Party, $0.02/$0.04 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 6 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

BB: $10.58
Hero (UTG): $7.15
MP: $4
CO: $2.09
BTN: $5.16
SB: $6.58

Pre-Flop: T♠ K♠ dealt to Hero (UTG)
Hero raises to $0.12, MP calls $0.12, CO folds, BTN calls $0.12, 2 folds

Flop: ($0.42) 4♥ 4♠ 2♥ (3 Players)
Hero checks, MP checks, BTN checks

Turn: ($0.42) K♦ (3 Players)
Hero checks, MP bets $0.28, BTN folds, Hero calls $0.28

River: ($0.98) J♦ (2 Players)
Hero bets $0.47, MP raises to $1.17, Hero folds

Results: $1.92 Pot
MP showed and WON $2.53 (+$1.66 NET)

Well... today's session sucked a**. My mother came home tonight and payed a visit. I spent some of my poker tme with her and played for just 1.5 hours, making a little over $1.5 on NL4. It's always better than leaving in the red, tough.

I have made a commitment to myself to play for 4 hours a day and have not been able to do that this week. I'll get back to Party Poker this weekend and grind two sessions of 3 hours each in 6 tables on both days. I want to make up for the time I wasnt able to apply to the tables.

Operation Ace of Clubs Week #1 Debriefing

Not bad, uhn? Considering that the week began on Thursday for me, I really think I had nice results. ♠_cool:

I'll play for more 6 hours today, but that is gonna come in next week's graph. I'm very satisfied with my overall results, but I'm also definetely looking forward to increase my 3-betting percentage from 5.6% to something around 9% this week.

NL4 BSS SH on Party Poker
Uploaded with ImageShack.us

I'm looking for new spots to pull this kind of trigger again. Villain was a 29/19/3.0 agressive regular with 193 hands on my HM already. He had a 18% frequency for SB raise vs steal. I had some history on him running over the table with pure agression earlier.

My reasoning was simple: He could not have a lot of strong jacks in his SB calling range. For some reason, I thought he was just trying to level me. When the board came like that, I thought that even if he had a strong J he would not willing to go broke with it. After he leaded and called my raise, I thought he maybe had the Ace of spades and was trying to hit that flush anyway, even without the odds. When the 5h hit, I had anything else to do but shove. He could not call that too often. Even a set would have had a tough time calling that shove.

It worked

Party, $0.02/$0.04 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 6 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

BTN: $4.31
SB: $4.04
BB: $4.82
UTG: $2.89
Hero (MP): $3.94
CO: $10.75

Pre-Flop: A♦ Q♣ dealt to Hero (MP)
UTG folds, Hero raises to $0.12, 2 folds, SB raises to $0.36, BB folds, Hero calls $0.24

Flop: ($0.76) 2♠ J♠ 9♠ (2 Players)
SB bets $0.56, Hero raises to $1.20, SB calls $0.64

Turn: ($3.16) 5♥ (2 Players)
SB checks, Hero bets $2.38 and is All-In, SB folds

Results: $3.16 Pot
Hero showed A♦ Q♣ and WON $5.39 (+$3.83 NET)

I'd like to make this blog useful for those who read, instead of just filling it with trash talk. This way, I'm about to finish a short article called "Exploiting regulars with pre-flop 3-bets" tonight and will post it fast as possible. Followed by that I'll challenge myself with a new section on this blog, called "Improvement Opportunity of the Week".

It's gonna be a nice thing to focus the improvements in my game. I hope you guys can do the same when you read it. ♠_biggrin:

Originally posted by blackops888
I'd like to make this blog useful for those who read, instead of just filling it with trash talk.

I think you just pointed out where I'm going wrong.

Originally posted by jbpatzer

Originally posted by blackops888
I'd like to make this blog useful for those who read, instead of just filling it with trash talk.

I think you just pointed out where I'm going wrong.

Well... I like your blog, man. It's kind of funny.

But anyway... This poker business thing I talk about in my intro leads me to a very simple thought: time is money. I have to work all day long and can't afford reading a lot of non-improving stuff when I get back home. I think most people in PS are like that too.

I can even read a lot of stuff on the forums during my lunch time at the company, but that's it. When I get back home, it's just the tables.

Exploiting out-of-the-line regulars with pre-flop 3-bets

I was playing NL4 on Party Poker yesterday and had the idea of making a deeper analysis of this specific spot. In one of my tables I had a regular sitting on my right who was constantly isolating the fish before the action got to me, taking away the opportunity I could have of making the isolation raise myself. As expected, he was raising light and getting a lot of folds from the fish. Looking at all that, I thought: “Can I 3-bet bluff-raise this guy with air and still get a profit from it?”. I made a few fast calculations, 3-bet him with trash like 83o or K5o and got my folds, having some nice profits right on the spot and also establishing a table image that told him that he was not going to get too successful in running over the table while I was sitting there on his left. Nice results.

Right… I leveled the guy, but this is not the intention. The point in this business is making money, and in that moment I felt that that guy was actually delivering money on my doorstep by isolating light like that. It's a profit opportunity floating in the "market" (AKA "table"), just waiting for someone to grab it. Taking all that into consideration, I took a pen and a piece of paper, began making a few hand range analysis as soon as I got a break on my dayjob this morning and came to some conclusions that might help the people in here, especially those who are just in the beginning (like me). Also, by writing all that in a consistent way I'll be able to crystallize this line of thought in my own game and make a more solid improvement for myself. That's what I call a win-win situation.

- Initial considerations:

It doesn't matter how much is at stake (the pot size), as long as things go "as they should be" (no insane 10BB open-raises by villain, no maniac-type players involved, etc). Consider the following pre-flop action in which we have position over a regular/loose-aggressive player:

EP and MP fold, Regular raises 4BB from CO, Hero on BU...?

There is a lot of combinatorics and probability analysis involved and I don't really think it would be good to develop all those numbers at once. For what reason? Because profit lies in the application alone, and what we need here are the general guidelines that we could use in order to make immediate profit by 3-betting regulars and loose-aggressives pre-flop. That's why we should stick to the essential math. There is no time to open the Equilator or draw numbers on a piece of paper when you have 10 tables running at once.

The core of this 3-bet move lies in an accurate evaluation of villain's positional open-raising hand ranges. This evaluation consists of estimating which hand range a player will open a pot or isolate a limping fish with IN RELATION TO THE POSITION HE IS AT THE MOMENT. The best thing I've done with my HUD was setting up a new line for positional raise-1st (stats only. I have one line that is formed by 5 percentages: EP, MP, CO, BU and SB raise-1st. These stats show the distribution of a player's opening frequency through each position he occupied while we were able to collect his information on our database. If we know that over a reasonable sample of hands some specific regular has been opening pots from CO with a 23% frequency, we can also come up with a plan to make profit from that whenever we are sitting on BU or the blinds, for example. In fact, after making up "the plan" just a few times, we will actually be able to execute it by reflex and without further analysis even when multi-tabling. From then on, when proper judgment is established, profit will rise in the long-run as a few more BB/100.

Let's establish three hand ranges form which we are able to begin. This first analysis will assume we are holding pure trash only (hands that won't have a lot of showdown equity, like J2, 83, K7, etc)

These three ranges will be what I call "continuation ranges". These are the ranges with which villain is expected to continue playing the hand instead of hitting the muck - and he can continue either by calling our 3-bet or by 4-betting it. In both cases, as in our initial analysis we have anything but trash, we lost it (we'll either check-fold a flop if villain calls, or muck our hands if he 4-bets). It is important to understand that these three ranges are not meant to be understood as absolute ranges at all, but rather as simple rule-of-thumb ranges that we can use for fast calculations while multi-tabling. In this situation, we cannot afford the luxury of dedicating too much time to the evaluation of probabilities.

- Range #1: "Unfoldable" range
That's a nitty range. It consists of {JJ+, AK}, or about 3% of the hands. This one is obviously used by rocks and some scared-money guys, and lead more often to a shove than a call.

- Range #2: Strong Range
That's a decent continuation range for the use of ABC poker players. One cannot go too wrong by sticking to it as his continuation range. It consists of {TT+, AQo, AJs+, KQs}, or about 5% of the hands.

- Range #3: Broad semi-strong Range
That's a reasonable loose-aggressive continuation range. It's not so out-of-the-line, but still exploitable. It consists of {TT+, AT+, KJ+, QJs}, or about 10% of the hands.

The reduction of our opponent's "continuation range" in these three categories will always be meant to simplify on-the-go calculations when we try to exploit people's looseness while multi-tabling. Of course there are a lot more ranges out there (all of them player-dependent), but we are not going too wrong when sticking to these three ranges, at least in the micro-stakes. Consider the following line for a 6-max game:

EP folds, Villain open-raises 3BB from MP, CO folds, Hero raises 7.5BB from BU, Blinds fold, Villain...?

That's a classical one. What should villain do in this spot? Shove, fold?

These are the wrong questions. A better one should be "What CAN this guy do if I 3-bet him right in this spot?". That changes a lot, and I'll tell you why: It's a matter of what kind of readings we have on this guy. From that moment on, our concept of "continuation ranges" becomes crucial.

Before anything else, let's estimate what kind of pot odds we are getting: (7.5)/(3 + 7.5 + 1 + 0.5) = 62%

It means that if we are looking for immediate profit by 3-betting this opponent with pure trash (83O or J2s, for example), he has to fold to our move at least 62% of the time. That's our break-even EV limit.

What do we do now that we have all these numbers? The solution is simple: We ask "What could be this guy's continuation range?". It really depends on our observation AT THE TABLE. There is just no way we can talk about it enough on an article. One has to learn to assess it by himself.

Let's suppose we think our MP raiser would fold everything but the top 6% of the available hands. What could happen if our HUD gave us each the following MP open-raising frequencies?

Villain open-raises MP with 30% frequency: That's an easy one. This guy is really out-of-the-line by opening so much. Mathematically, he cannot have that many premium hands to continue playing with against our 3-bet. He is folding (30% - 6%) / (30%) = 80% of his hands. Once we need him folding only 62% of his hands, our move has an immediate expected-value of 0.8x(3 + 1 + 0.5) - 0.2x7.5 = 3.6 - 1.5 = +2.1BB. It's a nice move, unless villain is well known for 4-bet bluffing a lot or calling out-of-position just to make moves post-flop.

Villain open-raises MP with 22% frequency: Same thing. He is folding (22% - 6%) / (22%) = 72%. This is a bit close, but we still have a positive value-expectation on our move.

Villain open-raises MP with 15% frequency: Now things change. Villain is only folding (15% - 6%) / (15%) = 60%. This is a close break-even situation. There is actually a tiny negative expectation for this move. We would not recommend doing this with pure air, but rather with a hand that still has some kind of equity once called.

Villain open-raises MP with 10% frequency: This is a losing proposition. This guy is quite tight and will only fold (10% - 6%) / (10%) = 40%. It's a clearly -EV move when done with anything but trash. It requires a bit more post-flop equity to be even close to a profitable play.

The same reasoning applies to the two other "continuation ranges" we assigned above. All we need to pay attention is to the proportion between what we think our opponent's continuation range is like and his actual open-raising frequency from that particular position; if this number leads to a folding frequency that is greater than our pot odds, we should pull the trigger.And as I just can't emphasize enough, these are simply rule-of-thumb ranges we can use for fast calculations when multi-tabling. Maybe someone would feel more confortable by assigning five ranges instead of three (even though fives ranges would be quite tough to accurately evaluate that fast).

One more observation: We have just considered situations in which we are in position against our opponents. A similar line of thought would apply if we want to defend our blinds against a CO or BU raise. In this particular spot, especially the BU is opening a lot of hands from that position and will fold most of the time to our 3-bets. It's actually the same line of thought with a few more adaptations.

That's it. Let's get to work. It seems quite easy to apply this move when in front of a simple mathematical explanation. One could say "Yeah... I'd obviously do that all day long and make nice profit out of it", but the application itself is a bit different. It requires a lot of trials and errors until we get to a balanced point.

That said, just do it. Math is on your side and profit will show up in the long run, as long as you make the long-run long enough. Once you start this thing, do until the end. Good luck.

From now on we're gonna have in this blog a weekly challenge called "Improvement Opportunity of the Week". With this new section I'm intended to find some kind of "leak" and turn that into a strength and source of profit.

Objectives will be described, as well as the method for tracking their success. See below.

Improvement Opportunity of the Week #1: Exploiting regulars with pre-flop 3-bets

Step One: Identify the problem. What is happening?
I've been struggling a lot with regulars who open-raise on a seemingly too high frequency from their positions. At the same time, I've noticed that they will often fold whenever I actually have a strong holding and 3-bet them. They fold a lot. That's the point.

Step Two: Come up with a solution. What can be done? (What is your plan?)
Getting more familiar with the exploitation of loose-aggressive regulars who open-raise pots a lot from their respective positions. In accordance with the method described in the above article, I can either 3-bet bluff with trash for immediate profit or 3-bet with hands that still have some showdown equity and can be played post-flop. It's essential to create the habit of pulling this trigger.

Step Three: Make a plan and stick to it for long enough. What are you going to do about it and for how long?
This one is gonna last for 3 weeks, with one report each Sunday.

Step Four: Establish a metrics. How are you going to evaluate the effectiveness of your solution?
I just need to apply a HM filter for pre-lop 3-bet = TRUE & saw flop = FALSE & period = last 7 days, as well as another one for pre-lop 3-bet = TRUE & period = last 7 days. This is gonna give me the immediate exploitation profit, as well as post-flop results.

We need an effective method. That's all. Money is floating all around. ♠_cool:

Should I fill this blog with more trash talk so people might start reading it?

Originally posted by blackops888
Should I fill this blog with more trash talk so people might start reading it?

Yes Deffo

lol joke. Its alright from a poker point of view but when you just see a massive post it stops people (me) reading some of them when it could be quite interesting but i just cant make myself get to the interesting bits no offence just break it up with pics of boobs.

there's no such thing as pure air preflop, so even 'bluff' 3betting isn't a pure bluff, you still have equity when called, plus you can have (a varying amount of) poft-flop fold equity/bluff equity when your 3bet is called

Originally posted by Kruppe
there's no such thing as pure air preflop, so even 'bluff' 3betting isn't a pure bluff, you still have equity when called, plus you can have (a varying amount of) poft-flop fold equity/bluff equity when your 3bet is called

Completely agreed. But I'm just talking about immediate profit on pre-flop moves. Like I wrote, we consider our hand is done once called, just for the sake of explanation.

OVERKILL!

My first Royal Flush EVER! ♠_biggrin: ♠_biggrin: ♠_biggrin: ♠_biggrin:

Party, $0.02/$0.04 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 5 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

CO: $5.91
BTN: $4
SB: $6.47
Hero (BB): $4
UTG: $4

Pre-Flop: K♥ A♥ dealt to Hero (BB)
3 folds, SB raises to $0.16, Hero raises to $0.44, SB raises to $1.42, Hero raises to $3.96 and is All-In, SB calls $2.56

Flop: ($8) Q♥ Q♠ J♥ (2 Players - 1 is All-In)

Turn: ($8) 7♦ (2 Players - 1 is All-In)

River: ($8) T♥ (2 Players - 1 is All-In)

Results: $8 Pot ($0.40 Rake)
SB showed Q♦ K♦ and LOST (-$3.98 NET)
Hero showed K♥ A♥ and WON $7.60 (+$3.64 NET)

Guy floped trips... must have got PISSED! ♠_o:

i understand what you're doing. but you don't C/F every streets on every board every time you bluff 3bet and are called