MicroZooming - From MicroNoob to Unlimited

Definitely agreed on #2

But I still strongly disagree with opening 2x from the SB. Yes, you give yourself an extremely good price on your steal. You risk 1.5bb to pick up 1.5bb (both blinds) so your steal only needs to work 50% of the time. That's an extremely good price. However, the BB can then play basically optimally against you by never folding.

Yes, if their range is wider preflop (when 2x ing) that means there's more of an opportunity to take it down post flop. However, the idea behind a wide stealing range is to pick up the pot pre uncontested. And a larger 3x open achieves that much better imo. While your fold equity post flop will increase, your fold equity pre flop decreases, and against a somewhat thinking player will be almost 0.

Think about it, if you won't make your opponent fold often pre flop, then what's the point of stealing wide? Raising to 3x from the SB is the way to go for sure, because you generate a lot more fold equity that way, which is essentially what you're looking for.

The reason making it 2x from the BU for example is fine, is because you'll have position and thus a much easier time playing post flop.

So yeah, I genuinely believe raising 2x from the SB is a pretty big mistake. Since you are very keen on improving your blind stealing (which is an excellent idea for sure), I think you might be able to improve it even more if you start open raising larger from the SB

I hope that made sense ♦ I tend to make things sound much more complicated than necessary

Also keep up the royals, they're pretty +EV

I agree. 2x isn't enough to get most people off any hand unless they have folded before the action comes to them which does happen. 2x followed buy a stab on the river will shift most TAG players though. It's all stats dependant if you ask me but 2x on the button and 3x on the SB seems to be more standard

Hey Richard,

First off I must say you seem to have a very good plan ahead for zoom and I hope it goes well! I'm currently playing nl5 zoom and saw you a few times there. I'm so close to nl10 so I would love to try a sweat session or some strategy talk on Skype. I'm still a mega fish though.
Also good to see another person in Scotland haha.
Good luck!

Originally posted by TinoLaan
Definitely agreed on #2

But I still strongly disagree with opening 2x from the SB. Yes, you give yourself an extremely good price on your steal. You risk 1.5bb to pick up 1.5bb (both blinds) so your steal only needs to work 50% of the time. That's an extremely good price. However, the BB can then play basically optimally against you by never folding.

Yes, if their range is wider preflop (when 2x ing) that means there's more of an opportunity to take it down post flop. However, the idea behind a wide stealing range is to pick up the pot pre uncontested. And a larger 3x open achieves that much better imo. While your fold equity post flop will increase, your fold equity pre flop decreases, and against a somewhat thinking player will be almost 0.

Think about it, if you won't make your opponent fold often pre flop, then what's the point of stealing wide? Raising to 3x from the SB is the way to go for sure, because you generate a lot more fold equity that way, which is essentially what you're looking for.

The reason making it 2x from the BU for example is fine, is because you'll have position and thus a much easier time playing post flop.

So yeah, I genuinely believe raising 2x from the SB is a pretty big mistake. Since you are very keen on improving your blind stealing (which is an excellent idea for sure), I think you might be able to improve it even more if you start open raising larger from the SB

I hope that made sense ♦ I tend to make things sound much more complicated than necessary

Also keep up the royals, they're pretty +EV

Well in most cases players will fold anyway to 2x, even if they do start calling your 2x opens we got two things - first, the HUD is gonna tell us that, second, we can always re-adjust. If someone starts calling your 2x opens very often, you as a competent player must notice that and thus taking action such as adjusting.

In my opinion the biggest misconception that players on microstakes use is that they think "Oh, I open 2x so it looks like obvious steal and they will call or raise me". Yes it is does look like that, BUT just because you think that way it doesn't mean other think that way and should always beware of that. Most of the players think ABC, there are very few competent player out there and you should know this. I think you have noticed already that on NL10 most of the regs are actually bad at adjusting. The only adjustments they tend to make are in 3betting/4betting because of their plain thinking that those are the spots where you make most money.

Hope you understand what I am trying to deliver here.

Originally posted by kierantierney
I agree. 2x isn't enough to get most people off any hand unless they have folded before the action comes to them which does happen. 2x followed buy a stab on the river will shift most TAG players though. It's all stats dependant if you ask me but 2x on the button and 3x on the SB seems to be more standard

I think players make more mistakes when they get married to this standard play.

Originally posted by stompy91
Hey Richard,

First off I must say you seem to have a very good plan ahead for zoom and I hope it goes well! I'm currently playing nl5 zoom and saw you a few times there. I'm so close to nl10 so I would love to try a sweat session or some strategy talk on Skype. I'm still a mega fish though.
Also good to see another person in Scotland haha.
Good luck!

Dunno what about sweats by the way as the Uni has started, but you can easily contact on skype if you wish to discuss poker stuff. Just send me your skype via comm.tool and I will send you request.

Pre-session post.

I didn't play yesterday at all as I was very tired from work and was barely keeping my self awake. Before starting my session at 7 gonna watch 2 videos for some knowledge.

Gonna update after session.

Regards,

Rihard

Gl will see you if NL10!

Update #5

Had the most unluckiest session of all time. Even finishing it +2BI's I am not happy with the result like at all. I was playing like godlike, was making the best decisions ever and still was getting standard pokerstars shit.

This is simply ridiculous. Even the last 1k hands was really weird and my redline start started to slip because people were playing back too much at me. Sometimes I hate Zoom when people start waking up with nuts hand after hand and they don't fold. ♦

The EV hands.

Some nice pots I won.

Why does the luck factor is against you even more when you play perfect poker? The harder you work the less you win - how it looks like for me so far.

Regards,

Rihard

Update #5 part 2

Managed to squeeze another small session before sleep.

Tomorrow will see whether my bad run continues.

GN ALL!

Regards,

Rihard

I seen you with a $4x.xx stack at one point and thought MBN to be Rihard. Maybe you are playing too long of a session? I know I get spewy after a certain point?

Originally posted by HollyMichelle
I seen you with a $4x.xx stack at one point and thought MBN to be Rihard. Maybe you are playing too long of a session? I know I get spewy after a certain point?

I wasn't spewing at any point of the session and also didn't tilt. Was just unlucky to lose vs 3 outters. Session length is pretty much standard ~4h. And it certainly can't be a spew with 7BI's under EV. ♦

Random post for Epic music listeners. I wonder how many here listen to this kind of stuff?

Peace!

Call 44 oop vs MP 3bet seems a bit dodgy to me, even 200bb deep.

Originally posted by metza
Call 44 oop vs MP 3bet seems a bit dodgy to me, even 200bb deep.

He doesn't have strong range though when 3bets pre to 8bb vs UTG raise, and as well 200bb deep. He would make his QQ-AA raise a lot large to extract value. A lot of them even flat QQ pre this deep vs UTG open. So his range in this spot is more like ATs-AKs, KQ and some weird fd. Basically I ahead of his range most of the time.

Ahhh! I'm a fan of epic music too! Audiomachine rocks!

Update #6

Played a terrible session. Was making loads of mistakes which need to be sorted. Gonna review my cbetting, because I made most mistakes there. And of course on top of playing bad was running bad again.

Redline sucks big time. Wasn't picking the right spots to steal the pot I think, and was missing some thin value. I think another issue that did influence my play was that I got distracted too much at home, couldn't fully concentrate on my session so I was playing more fit/fold. Plain stupid.

Regards,

Rihard

Originally posted by Rihard4a

Originally posted by metza
Call 44 oop vs MP 3bet seems a bit dodgy to me, even 200bb deep.

He doesn't have strong range though when 3bets pre to 8bb vs UTG raise, and as well 200bb deep. He would make his QQ-AA raise a lot large to extract value. A lot of them even flat QQ pre this deep vs UTG open. So his range in this spot is more like ATs-AKs, KQ and some weird fd. Basically I ahead of his range most of the time.

Preflop, 44 is not ahead of any 3betting range, its barely even ahead of ATC. Have a look at it against some ranges in equilab.

Even when you do have ok equity vs his range, I think it is very hard to realize your equity out of position with 44. I would rather call something like T9s, still folding it here though, just cos it is so much more playable. Basically any flop that we don't hit a set we gotta check fold, check/calling only to play guessing games on later streets is worse. And when we hit a set it is much harder to get value oop.

I think you will argue that you get awesome value oop with sets based on the hand, but I think this scenario is actually very rare. The guy is an idiot/tilting to stack off 200bb w AK here, most players will not IMO. The drawy board and the fact that on that texture not much beats his AK (only KQ/44 since you probably 4bet KK/QQ here) was super lucky in terms of getting the money in, but even in these perfect conditions any decent reg wont pay you off with worse. Bottom set is also very tough to play 200bb deep on certain runouts oop, either through not being able to easily get stacks in, or WA/WB decisions for 400bb pots.

44 is basically the bottom of your UTG opening range, so its not at all bad to fold it vs mp 3bet.

Originally posted by metza

Originally posted by Rihard4a

Originally posted by metza
Call 44 oop vs MP 3bet seems a bit dodgy to me, even 200bb deep.

He doesn't have strong range though when 3bets pre to 8bb vs UTG raise, and as well 200bb deep. He would make his QQ-AA raise a lot large to extract value. A lot of them even flat QQ pre this deep vs UTG open. So his range in this spot is more like ATs-AKs, KQ and some weird fd. Basically I ahead of his range most of the time.

Preflop, 44 is not ahead of any 3betting range, its barely even ahead of ATC. Have a look at it against some ranges in equilab.

Even when you do have ok equity vs his range, I think it is very hard to realize your equity out of position with 44. I would rather call something like T9s, still folding it here though, just cos it is so much more playable. Basically any flop that we don't hit a set we gotta check fold, check/calling only to play guessing games on later streets is worse. And when we hit a set it is much harder to get value oop.

I think you will argue that you get awesome value oop with sets based on the hand, but I think this scenario is actually very rare. The guy is an idiot/tilting to stack off 200bb w AK here, most players will not IMO. The drawy board and the fact that on that texture not much beats his AK (only KQ/44 since you probably 4bet KK/QQ here) was super lucky in terms of getting the money in, but even in these perfect conditions any decent reg wont pay you off with worse. Bottom set is also very tough to play 200bb deep on certain runouts oop, either through not being able to easily get stacks in, or WA/WB decisions for 400bb pots.

44 is basically the bottom of your UTG opening range, so its not at all bad to fold it vs mp 3bet.

When I was doing PokerStove I was still ahead of his range on that board. I can't remember the % right now, once I get back from Uni I might do it again. Maybe I was lucky that he went broke with worst possible combo there, however while on the hand I was putting him on range and I was right. IMO he has to be very weird to shove his nuts IP 200bb deep if he wants to extract value from me, even fish wouldn't do it.

Actually 4betting KK/QQ in that spot vs guy who is deep is as insane as statement below. If we 4bet KK/QQ pre vs him, what hands are 5betting/shoving on to us? Only AA. If I had KK/QQ I would flat the same as 44.

You have to be insane folding 44 to a small 3bet and having it multiway postflop and especially deep. It's just the money maker in poker.

The bottom UTG range is 22.

Didn't see BB cold call sorry, I would definitely call then for that price. Just EP vs MP is clear fold though imo.

With the comment about being ahead of his range, I said that regarding preflop, preflop it is hard for 44 to be ahead of any 3bet range.

I am never saying you should fold the 44 when you flop a set and he randomly ships like that, dunno how you got that from what I said.

Originally posted by metza
Didn't see BB cold call sorry, I would definitely call then for that price. Just EP vs MP is clear fold though imo.

With the comment about being ahead of his range, I said that regarding preflop, preflop it is hard for 44 to be ahead of any 3bet range.

I am never saying you should fold the 44 when you flop a set and he randomly ships like that, dunno how you got that from what I said.

Never said anything about folding my set.

Just referring to first paragraph where you're justifying the call, I thought maybe you thought I was suggesting a fold in a snap call spot but I'm probably just reading subtexts that aren't there.