How to be a Poker player

So, here is my weekly update:

Hands: 7,670
Result: -$9.41 (+Omaha)
Rakeback: +$10
Total: +$0.59
Bankroll: $968.63

This week, despite the swingy Holdem, it was my microstakes Omaha8 ventures that did it for me. It feels like in that game there are stretches when you just can’t win (as in any poker game I suppose), and even if you find yourself in a good spot, you can’t win back a lot, because of a limit structure. But that’s fine, it’s still a fun game and I’m just starting to learn it. The one problem is that there are very few tables around, and sometimes it can take ages to start a session. During one of those downtimes I even played some PLO, and that, as far as I can remember, was the first time I played it outside of mixed-games rotations. It always was my weakest game, because, to be honest, it really scared me. But those were the days when losing two buy-ins in a Holdem game could totally ruin my day and throw me off my game. Now that I have a much better understanding of how variance works, I really enjoyed PLO and even managed to cover some O8 loses. Maybe I will play a few tables of PLO now and then, and see what comes of it. But enough about Omaha, let’s talk Holdem!

Well, there was some more studying and some more playing of course. It’s quite fascinating about poker that the more you learn about it, the more interesting it becomes, and your attitude towards it changes as well. Well, it’s like that for me at least. I also found that studying technical part of poker helped me improve my mental game. If you know that your play was correct and it yields you some EV in the long-term, why would you tilt if your bluff got called? Why would you be scared to fire that third bluff barrel, or check/raise river as a bluff, if this play makes sense. When you play without some research and theory to back your decisions, it really constrains you in a lot of ways. You can stick to some concepts that are very comfortable and familiar to you, such as setmining, c-betting, light 3-bets, because you know that they are profitable, but that’s just a tiny part of poker. There is a whole world of unexplored possibilities (at least for microstakes players), which we don’t even think about, or are scared to try out, because we don’t know if it would be a right play, or just because we are not used to doing certain things. Knowing what lies behind those concepts and what is required for their successful application can really remove a lot of constraint from your game and hopefully take it to the next level. And suddenly bluff raising rivers or check-raising turns or pushing for a thin value is not so scary anymore. Suddenly, where there was fear and doubt, there is now creativity that feeds the love for this game and makes you want to work even harder to fully enjoy poker for what it is and what it is meant to be.

Poker, at its highest level, is an art form. Traditionally, the notion of art is restricted to things such as painting, music, and the like. Yet, you will occasionally hear people speak of a beautiful baseball swing, or a sublime mathematical proof. In poker, we also speak of beauty, though we sometimes use different words for it—“sick play,” “a soulread,” and so on. What we apprehend as beauty in poker, I would argue, is the masterful demonstration of creativity.

Where does creativity in poker come from? What role does creativity play? And how can we be more creative?

In a sense, it’s natural to be creative. When you first began playing poker, just about everything you did was creative. You experimented, you made plays you’d never made before, and you were unafraid. It was only over time, after you learned what you shouldn’t do, that your creativity began to be stifled. By the time you become a fully capable and disciplined poker player, you are no longer even aware of just how restricted you are by your conditioning— at that point, you can no longer even see all of the available possibilities.

Qureshi, Haseeb. How to Be a Poker Player: The Philosophy of Poker.

Great stuff my friend, keep going.
It is very motivating to read your road to success.
Look forward to future updates!

This will be on my weekly read list! Really nice explanation and language. I also play SH and I am interested in psychology of poker - so some more common things with You for me to be here

Here are the results of this week, and, man, what a silly week that was:

Hands: 12.088
Won: +$416.10
Stellar: +$10
Ultimate bonus: +$62.50
Total: +$488.60
Bankroll: $1457.23

There was a ridiculous amount of “run good” this week, but I also feel that my game definitely improved in some spots and it resulted in my red line being much higher than I ever remember seeing it (thanks, w34z3l!). My game improved a lot in 3-bet and 4-bet pots, and I’m feeling more comfortable playing aggressively when situation demands it (previously I would chicken out to barrel with equity in 3-bet pots, and bluff pushing turns in 4-bet pots would be unthinkable). I feel like I’m learning how to see things in poker through the prism of EV, the skill I definitely lacked even a couple of months ago. Of course I treated my chips as big blinds, but when it was time to pull the trigger, the amount of money often could become a holdback. Bluff off 15 bucks? No way, it’s too much! What if he calls? I’d rather check and wait for a better spot! Yeah, right, you saved 15 bucks, go buy yourself a burger. These thoughts can be your worst enemy in poker sometimes.

As for my plans, I’m looking forward to playing with CREV some more and as a part of my preflop study I will try see how 5-bet pushing compares to small 5-bets. On the one hand, small 5-bets allow us to have a wider range, since we can 5-bet/fold some bluffs, but on the other hand, by 5-bet pushing our bluffs are guaranteed to realize all their equity and, for example, by bluffing with small pockets we are in excellent shape against some hands in villains calling range (excellent given that they are bluffs and all). So yeah, I was thinking quite a bit about it and I will try to study this topic more in depth. Also I watched a very interesting theory video about a famous 1-A concept (for those who don’t know, it’s a concept about break-even point of auto-profit, for example, if villain bets ½ on the flop, his bet should work at least 33% of the time, and, as a result, if we fold more than 67% of hands, we give our villain an auto-profitable bet). So yeah, by building our ranges following this concept, we aim to make EV of villain’s bet with his worst hands equal 0 in a vacuum, but given that according to theoretically sound strategy we don’t necessarily want to make villain's bet with his worst hands 0 EV, but rather make him indifferent between betting and checking with those hands, our defending ranges change somewhat, so that’s another thing I want to look into. I can’t say how helpful it will be for me at the micros, but this part of poker is the one I enjoy studying the most. I only wish that there would be more hours in a day to fit all the work, study and grinding.

Seems like we both had a great week, good job!

Great results!
I give you 2 months before you absolutely crush ZOOM NL50 and move to NL100!

Keep on going my friend, you have my full support

Originally posted by Anomic
Seems like we both had a great week, good job!

Thanks, man! Do you play on Stars? Haven't seen you there. Guess you have a different nickname

Originally posted by IvicaIliev77
Great results!
I give you 2 months before you absolutely crush ZOOM NL50 and move to NL100!

Keep on going my friend, you have my full support

Thanks, my friend! I wish I had the same confidence in my game But I will try my best!

I play on bwin.party

Originally posted by Anomic
I play on bwin.party

Oh, I see. I had a thought about playing on Party at some point, but in the end I decided to move to Stars and settle there.

Originally posted by elpsycho

Originally posted by Anomic
I play on bwin.party

Oh, I see. I had a thought about playing on Party at some point, but in the end I decided to move to Stars and settle there.

Is there some sort of zoom poker at Party? How's the player's field compared to Stars?

Originally posted by Alleen86
Is there some sort of zoom poker at Party? How's the player's field compared to Stars?

Yes, as far as I know, I's called FastForward. I chose to play on Stars because the games are always running and there are higher limits available. I played Rush before that, and there weren't any limits above NL100 pretty much, and also there was downtime during some hours, but I don't know what's the situation on Party.

And I guess the field on Stars is the toughest across all sites.

During my quest to answer a question about what strategy is better vs aggressive 4-betters, or balanced 4-betters for that matter, I stumbled across a cool video, where author tried to answer pretty much the same question using some CREV models and scripts. But the best part is that he shared his scripts for brute forcing optimal ranges and encouraged people to continue studying this situation on their own, using their own ranges, betsizings etc. So I decided to play around with it, plug in the default preflop ranges that I use, and see what ranges CREV will offer to me for both scenarios.

A quick word about how this thing works. This is a preflop 3-4-5-bet situation between BTN and SB. We are specifying fixed ranges for BTN opening, SB 3-betting and BTN calling 3-bets (since we don’t want CREV to use these hands as 4-bets in its search for optimal strategies). And from this point on, CREV script will try to find optimal range for SB's 5-bet shoving or 5-betting small, given that BTN's response versus these ranges will always be perfect.

Since we are trying to answer a question what is a better play for SB, 5-bet shove or small 5-bet, we have to be aware that our goal is not to maximize the EV of our 5-bets, but rather minimize the EV of BTN’s 4-betting strategy by 5-betting.

The blinds in CREV are going to be 5/10 for the sole purpose of seeing decimal points in EV numbers. As far as I know, by using blinds 0.5/1 there is no way to see more decimal points and the EV’s are rounded. But we need some precision here, so we will stick with bigger blinds during this study.

Ok, that was a rather lengthy introduction, so let’s move on to the analysis itself. Today we will take a look at 5-bet shoving, and later down the road I will try to post the same analysis for small 5-bets, so we can compare which strategy can minimize the EV of BTN’s 4-bets more efficiently.

This are the ranges that will be fixed in both scenarios:

First, let’s take a look at 5-bet shoving scenario. In this simulation we are trying to solve for SB’s 5-bet shoving range, which keeps BTN’s 4-betting EV at its lowest and gives him no incentive to change his 4-betting range in any way.

After running the script, we get the following results:

And here are the ranges:

To be honest, after running the script I thought that there is some kind of error and there is no way this is the optimal 5-betting strategy for SB, since it has so many –EV hands. It seems weird that SB has to shove this range to minimize the EV of BTN’s 4-bet.

After some checking it turned out that the script was working correctly and did what it was told, so I went on to play with the results.

Let’s take a look at SB’s shoving range. There are many –EV hands and it feels like that this shouldn’t be the case. Let’s try to optimize this range manually and remove some –EV hands. The main candidate that pops out is A6s, since it is the biggest -EV hand in SB’s range. So, let’s get rid of it and see what happens.

Now the ranges look like this:

These ranges look a lot prettier and it feels like that this strategy is more balanced, every player is allowed to balance their ranges with some bluffs. But let’s take a look at the whole picture:

By removing that single bluff hand from SB’s shoving range, we allowed BTN to have more 4-bet bluffs in his range and, as a result, his 4-betting EV became slightly higher - 1.629 bb compared to 1.626 bb in the CREV optimal solution.

So, by intentionally pushing –EV hands, SB is denying BTN the ability to expand his 4-bet bluffing range. Here is what happens if BTN tries to add bluffs to the range that CREV suggested:

This is just an example of some bluff hands, but we can see that apart from A6o every bluff will be –EV for the BTN and will decrease his EV. We are trying to minimize BTN’s EV with SB’s actions, not the BTN’s own, we are assuming BTN is playing perfectly vs any strategy SB throws at him, so that’s is why CREV gave us those ranges. They look like something is very wrong there, but as it turns out, this is indeed the best SB’s answer using 5-bet shoving strategy given this model.

Of course this is by no means an optimal overall strategy, only the best strategy for SB given the 3-bet range we gave him. Since there was so many 3-bet bluffs compared to value hands, he has no choice but to push all those –EV hands to prevent BTN from brutally exploiting his 3-bets with 4-betting.

And this is something to be expected, w34z3l designed these ranges for microstakes, and no one at microstakes is even remotely good enough to start exploiting this weakness in our 3-betting range. This explains why given these ranges SB’s overall strategy is rather poor, but let’s not take it into account, because that’s not the question we want to answer. We want to find out, whether SB will be able to make EV of BTN’s 4-bets lower than 1.626 bb using a strategy of small 5-bets instead of a 5-bet shoving strategy, given the same fixed opening, 3-betting, etc ranges.

I will post the analysis of the small 5-bet strategy a bit later, because these are quite lengthy, and I have no idea how long it will take to calculate the optimal ranges, since we have to add a 6-bet range. But stay tuned, and we will try to answer, whether small 5-bets are a better weapon for combatting 4-bets from good players or not.

Excellent analysis
Couple of things that I think are worth mentioning and you already mentioned some of them.
This is not optimal strategy
I feel that 4 bet bluffing range is nowhere near assigned ranges. If somebody does start to 4 bet NAI huge part of Axo that player can be hugely dominated as those hands will always have 12 combos therefore make huge % of his 4 bet NAI bluff range.
Also we should take into account that general tendency is that players at best will stack off facing 5 bet shove blinds vs BTN with something like JJ+ AQ+ or a bit wider (1010+ AQo+ AJs+).
Finally, I don't expect people to have a balanced strategy with their 4 betting BTN vs blinds up until NL100 ZOOM.
So far I have only seen couple of regs on NL50 ZOOM that do have 4 bet bluff late position vs blinds. In that sense it makes no sense to 5 bet light in those spots yet.

I like the fact that you did analysis and got some very useful +EV plays. I do think however that players on higher limits will rather 4 bet merged BTN vs blinds rather than Ax. Also I expect that better players will adjust faster and better therefore this analysis is not going to help you much vs them.

Also I believe that there is no need for this dynamic on any limit as adjusting is super easy!
Once you pick up that BTN is 4 betting you light, you can either 5 bet jam and own him or simply start 3 betting more merged range and flat to his 4 bets OOP to dominate him vs his whole Axo 4 bet bluffing range (if that is what you expect mostly in his range).

To save you time and trouble for 5 betting NAI smaller - 100bb deep or less stacks, it is very bad to start 5 betting and then folding to 6 bets because by doing so you are allowing your opponent to brutally exploit you with 6 bets (shoving his whole 4 bet range basically and allowing him to materialize on his 4 bet bluff range if you ever have 5 bet nai bluff there).
If we are however talking about 150bb or 200bb+ effective stacks then everything you did for 4 bet vs 5 bets now moves onto 5 bet vs 6 bets

Enjoyed reading this latest update, felt like contributing a bit as well

Keep them coming and all the best my friend!

Hey Ivica!

Thanks a lot for contributing, and I totally agree with every point you made. Of course from the practical point of view this strategy is pure garbage, because no one will play perfectly against us from the BTN's perspective. And even if there are players, who know what is theoretically optimal at some higher limits, I doubt they will get enough sample to adjust correctly.

I should have mentioned, that I have no intention to use these ranges in practice, because the model is far from perfect, we have to take into account calling 4-bets, etc. The whole point of this study is purely theoretical, it's just a toy game that is aimed to see how 5-bet shoving compares to small 5-bets in a vacuum versus a perfect opponent, a computer, who knows our hole cards if you will.

I'm just fascinated with how ranges can interact with each other and how those numbers work, but nevertheless it also provides some theoretical knowledge about poker.

I really appreciate your feedback, because, when you fire up those tables, theory isn't always your best friend

In practice these dynamics are quite different and you outlined them beautifully, thank again, man!

PS. My mentioning of whether it is good or not to use that strategy versus good players, was just because if, for example, the small 5-bets are able to generate some additional EV theoretically, than it can be a good idea to build upon that and incorporate them in my game vs some players, and build some more practical ranges for it. But I don't intend to use these ranges in any way

Previously we took a look at 5-bet shoving scenario and now let’s see what is up with small 5-bets.

I failed to mention it previously, so I guess I should elaborate a bit more on the purpose of this study. I don’t intend to find a practical solution in these scenarios using w34z3l’s 6-max walkthrough ranges. I just use them as a template for fixed ranges, and there can be any other ranges in their place. They are not designed for playing against aggressive 4-bettors, so the optimal ranges that CREV gives us will be far from perfect in a practical sense. Those are just theoretical ranges given our model, and if we want to improve our overall strategy and find a good set of ranges for 4-betting or 5-betting, which cannot be easily exploited by our opponents, we have to start with our opening and 3-betting ranges. And in this case CREV has no control over it. It just finds the best solution for SB taking into account the ranges we have specified.

So the purpose is to see whether adding an additional level of betting preflop can help us theoretically lower BTN’s 4-betting EV compared to 5-bet shoving scenario. The best result that SB could achieve using 5-bet shoving strategy was knocking BTN’s 4-betting EV down to 1.626 bb. And today we will see how low can we make it using a small 5-bet strategy, provided that BTN can’t do anything to increase his EV himself changing his 4-betting and 6-betting ranges.

I hope that now we are on the same page, so let’s start our script and see what CREV will offer us in terms of maximally exploitative ranges in this spot.

After running the scripts we get this result:

And here are the ranges:

As was the case in a 5-bet shoving study, in this scenario BTN also can’t do anything to increase his EV, if he starts adding some 4-bet bluffs or 6-bet pushing more hands his EV will inevitably drop even further. So we can see that by applying this strategy SB has managed to minimize BTN’s 4-betting EV a bit more compared to 5-bet shoving strategy.

So the EV’s are 1.609bb(small 5-bet) vs 1.626bb(5-bet shove).

Again, this is purely theoretical, and, for example, if BTN starts calling 5-bets with some hands, he will likely gain some additional EV and the numbers will be much closer. Nevertheless, we can make a conclusion that in a vacuum against a player that always adjusts and plays perfectly against our strategy, small 5-bets are performing better and allow us to minimize BTN’s 4-betting EV more than 5-bet shoving strategy.

So, we pretty much answered our question, but there are still a lot of fascinating things to learn from this simulation. For example, why is it profitable for BTN to 4-bet bluff with Q5s, Q4s and A4o and not some other hands? I checked other possible bluffs for BTN and every other hand turns out to be –EV for him. One would think that K5s and K4s have better blockers than Q5s and Q4s, but nevertheless they are –EV along with all the other hands.

Studies like this allow us to see how ranges interact with each other and how changes in our opening or 3-betting ranges can influence our 4-betting and 5-betting ranges in terms of optimal bluffs, blockers, etc.

By answering such questions we can significantly increase our understanding of how things work in poker and why it is such a complex game.

Hi my friend and once again excellent analysis

As I mentioned yesterday, when you 5 bet small you are allowing opponent to own you with his 6 bets if you are not ready to call your whole 5 bet range.
In your analysis you see that AQ is -EV 5 bet, but once you do 5 bet it and assign opponents 6 bet shoving range, it becomes very much +EV call. So this is the main problem small 5 bets. Also we should consider that opponents OOP will have flatting range to 4 bet things like combos of KK AA and perhaps AJs AQs type of hands. This drastically decreases frequency of blinds OOP 5 betting small range but increases OOP play in 4 bet pots vs aggro opponents who will try to rep top of the range there (KK+) huge % of time.

Final thing, I think that hands with 5 and 4 kicker for 4 bet bluff are mainly used to decrease the chance that opponent 3/5 bets small pps OOP (44 and 55 in particular here) but also because post flop IP in 4 bet pot we can flop 2nd nut FDs and with right post flop play get payed off vs over pairs (KK and AA). Just my assumptions and guesses, that's the way I approach that spot at least - might be way off don't take my word for it!

Keep up the great work , look forward to future updates!

Thanks once again for your insight, Ivica!

These ranges are computer generated and are way off, because of the fixed opening and 3-betting ranges I set. So there can be a lot of weird things going on.

But the main thing which I wanted to see, whether the 5-betting small strategy can lower BTN's 4-betting EV more than 5-bet shoving strategy did. Of course, as I said, it is purely theoretical, we are omitting 4-bet calling ranges, 5-bet small calling ranges etc. And it seems that theoretically, by using small 5-bets, we can lower BTN's EV a bit more than is possible by using 5-bet shoving strategy, and as a result our overall strategy will gain a bit of EV.

And also I'm not sure if I'm following you comment about allowing our opponent to own us with the 6-bets. For example, in this simulation any change that BTN will make to his 4-betting or 6-betting range will only lower his EV, he cannot do anything to squeeze more EV out of us. So it would be great to hear your thoughts about that, maybe I didn't quite understand what you meant.

As for 4 and 5 kicker thing, I think you are right, that has to do something with blocking 44 and 55, and Q is better than K is I guess because we block a QTs bluff, I don't know

This was the first week of playing only NL25 and it went pretty well:

Hands: 5,065
Won: +277.17
Rakeback: +$10
Total: +$287.17
Bankroll: $1744.40

The “run good” of the previous week continued on, but I haven’t played as many hands as I would like. On the other hand this was the first week when I dedicated more hours to study, than to grinding. I can’t say whether it’s a good thing or not, but since I got my hands on CREV I’ve been spending a lot of time constructing ranges, looking into some spots, experimenting with scripts and so on. When you spend a lot of time crunching numbers, it seems that some pieces of a puzzle are falling into their places and poker suddenly starts making sense, which of course is an illusion that sooner or later will be shattered by the next inspirational breakthrough. There is so much to learn in poker, and apparently this learning never ends, which is a good thing, since it means that all this study that I enjoy immensely will go on and on and on.

To balance out my theoretical ventures I started reviewing some hands with a fellow regular, who seems to be on the same page with me when it comes to this crazy game. To be honest, reviewing hands is something that I often neglect in my study, so these review sessions are a great supplement to my poker routine. It’s really great to talk poker with a regular who is on the same journey of mastering this game. You learn a lot this way, and it’s a lot of fun to spend a whole hour talking over a single hand and sharing ideas.

So overall it was a great week, and I hope that next week I will be able to dedicate more hours to grinding and try to implement some new concepts that I learned recently.

You must find people to talk poker with. People to bounce ideas off of, to learn from, to encourage you and make you feel less alone in this game. There is probably no single greater determinant of a poker player’s success than the people with whom he talks poker.

Qureshi, Haseeb. How to Be a Poker Player: The Philosophy of Poker.

Owning souls at NL25, time to move up my friend!

Your blog is quite an inspiration :). You have a penchant for writing my friend.