Probably the best plog in the world

Originally posted by Kyyberi

Played few hands at GG today to fill the buffet. Remembered why I should not. Let me put it this way: if there would be news that GG has security issues and some players have been able to see hole cards, I wouldn't be REALLY surprised. So many quite weird ways to play hands, and they seem to win pots way too often.

I always found GG had some flavour of scam although there is no clear sign of it. I am avoiding it anyways, especially the Rush tables I have been never able to beat them, they look like rake traps. So many nits and they are incredibly tight, they regs play also very cautious, it is much harder to win in such an environment imo. Furthermore the incomplete HUD is so confusing and does more harm than it is helpful. Says someone has a VPIP of 60 but if he is betting big he still could be one of those nutpeddlers. It's a hoax.

Originally posted by taavi1337
I hear GG is some big newcomer, trying to mix poker with gaming experience?

That could turn out well if it can attract some fish. Did not work well at Pokerstars though as far as I can remember.

GG hud is another story. I have no idea how it works, but clearly it's not as reliable as PT4 or HM3 huds. Normally HUD is simply showing statistics from database, and that database is based on hand histories. But at GG I have no idea how they calculate the "stats", as they are not always correct. Especially 3bet stat seems to be off sometimes, even when there seems to be decent sample size in hands. I don't know if it's calculated on total hands played by the player, played in the session, played with hero on the table or what. But it's definitely not all the hands the player has played, as then some players should have huge amount of hands. It might be hands in the current session, but then again at R&C there should be thousands for some regs. And the don't.

Then you see a player with 1,2K hands, 3bet 27% and you wonder whether the stat is correct or not, as the player doesn't seem like a maniac.

R&C is hard to beat, as rake is high and players tight. It's just pure math, tight players make small mistakes in terms of $$$. So hero's edge is smaller, and sometimes it's not enough to beat the rake unless there are Good Customers in the pool. Profit is made in leaderboards and flipament tournaments.

But at GG I have no idea how they calculate the "stats", as they are not always correct.

That is formulated very generously haha. I feel like the GG HUD is total Scam..

I am sure they use some very "alternative calculation methods" just like not accounting rake in their pokercraft graphs (so everybody thinks he's a winner despite the account balance stating it otherwise^^). I absolutely felt the same. So when not GG, which sites do you play atm? Which Tracker do you use?

Cause I found some very promising Indian sites that allow tracker. They could be very soft just like the Chinese were soft in the beginning. I think there are plenty of way better rooms than the big ones like GG, Stars, Party or 888. Ipoker among those big from what I can remember was the easiest on low stakes. Another alternative are the US sites which I have never played either though. On my room adding PLO100 tables the traffic there seems to be lowering already, so I might have to switch, at the moment I am still just mixing all those stakes down to PLO20 which gets the job done aswell.

Originally posted by Kyyberi
Just watched this Bencb's video: https://www.pokerstrategy.com/video/54212/

The discussion of gto applies to PLO too. How much you should invest your time to learn solver stuff, compared to using that time to learn how to exploit opponents? As Bencb says, we make money in poker by exploiting our opponents. Solvers don't teach us that. If we spent all our time in learning solver output, is that increasing our winrate? Another good point is that if opponent deviates from solver strategy during the preflop, it changes solver output for whole postflop. If we stick too heavily to solver strategy on the flop and turn, we might be quite far away from good EV strategy.

My advice to all small stakes players is that along with some solver work you should focus a lot on exploiting opponents. That is something I did a lot back when Pokerjuice was available, I studied how wide we can valuebet versus different assumed ranges on the river.

But how would you apply those exploits into studies now where Pokerjuice is gone? How do you do it in general? Maybe you need something like Pio-Solver?

Raisers edge is locted in the same state I am living...^^

I think at least at some point GG hud was working in a way where fast fold affected those 3bet stats. So if player uses fast fold and would have faced open raise it doesn't get counted for the stat. Meaning when player does face open raise there is high chance he is already considering open raise at least. Naturally makes 3bet stat look way higher than it should be.

Lol, that does sound like GG for sure!

PokerJuice was just an user interface to Odds Oracle. It saved time for sure, but you should be able to calculate valuebet thresholds with it. It's not easy, the biggest problem for me is that the range gets realy long and confusing. But with notepad it should be quite doable.

Like this: We open pre, opponent calls. Flop is XXX, we bet and opponent calls. Turn is X, we bet and opponent calls, River is X and we ask ourselves can we valuebet. We define opponent's range on each street. Once we have this situation set up on Oracle, we can start to explore how wide we can valuebet, or how changes in opponent's pre, flop or turn range changes the situation.

I play on our national, closed network. And every now and then on GG network as I often have money in Estonian skin Olybet for sports betting.

I did play on Indian sites some years ago. Games were a time trip to past. Some of the games were in mobile apps, with no security for bots, collusion or other cheating. And one of the sites was 99% rigged. They had forced run it twice, where the underdog seemed to win one run almost always. One outers kept coming, even for me so often that it smelled fishy. With some googling there were posts from people that claimed to be former employees and they said that rng was rigged to favor the underdog to keep games going. Back then there was also fixed 30% tax for every withdrawal.

Hello Kyyberi. Just shortly watched your video https://www.pokerstrategy.com/video/53760/

In just first 5 minutes I saw you making terrible preflop mistakes.
At the very start you open KTT2ds UTG which is -EV considering micro stakes rake and also two 50bb stacks on the table.
Then at 2:09 you call in big blind 3,95bb iso with 449Jss 5way.. Well.. This is very bad..
Then at 3:20 you call 2335ss in SB. Another terrible decision.
Then at 22:50 you limp CO with 45TQ trip suit and CALL 7 bb iso. This is just disaster and can never be profitable. I closed the video after that as I couldn`t watch anymore.

You are long term coach here and make educational content. You also offer paid coaching in private coaching forum.
I believe you should remove that video as there are very bad mistakes that can turn people who watch in loosing players.

Please dont consider this as personal attack, you look like a cool dude to have couple of beers with. This is just constructive criticism from another pro who played 3mil+ hands NLHE and 1mil+ hands PLO midstakes.

Also do you have any bigger sample size graph/database in the past 3-4 years?

Thanks for the feedback. Not sure where to start. The first thing is that when we play with players that are VERY far from solid PLO (like at WPT, where there are literally 0 good regs at those stakes), playing solver strategy is not maxEV strategy. That applies especially to postflop, but also to preflop. I had been playing in that table for some time. As it happened over a year ago, I can't remember what info/reads I had on the players, but most likely that they are passive and call happy. In that environment we can play more hands for two reasons:
- Their ranges are superwide, so even if we play 30% range we still have significant range advantage
- They are passive and call happy postflop, meaning that we don't really have to worry about bluffs or opponents having balanced lines, instead we can focus mostly for value when we hit our hands. That turns the tables for a lot of hands that are not good versus better players (flopping a lot of medium strenght stuff) suddenly become with better EV versus these opponents.

That being said, KTT2ds is an open from MP in solver world. Versus passive call happy players I am 100% sure it's +EV from UTG.

J944 is crappy hand. But once again this is not solver world, this is WPT table where I am sure I can play even a set of 4's profitably postflop. We have to pay 3bb into a pot of 21 and we close the action. If I estimate that in the long run I can play set of 4´s profitably versus those specific opponents, it's a call based on simple pot odds. The question is now, am I overvaluing my abilities or not? I can't be sure, but I have to play with my assumptions, as we all in poker. With that assumption, it's a call.

5332ss goes pretty much with the same reasoning. Open is less than a pot, and players behind me haven't 3bet so I am not really worried about getting raised. We have to pay 2,25bb into a pot of 16,5bb. Huge odds preflop. Normally we shouldn't enter multiway pots with crappy hands even with good odds, cos the reversed implied odds are significant. But versus very one dimensional players, who are quite easy to play against postflop, and they reveal when they have better hands, once again I estimate that if I hit the hand I can't play if profitably in the long run. In this specific table, versus these specific opponents.

For QT54sss it gets more borderline. This is something we talked about yesterday in Primetime: how to adjust when there are multiple limpers in passive table. We all can agree that hand is not good enough to raise, and as a default it's a clear fold. Previously I don't think there has been iso raises in similar spots, so my estimation is that if we limp behind we can see the flop for 1bb most of the times. Once again, I think that is +EV as our hand has components that can hit hard enough to valuebet versus these players. But even then it's very borderline and I don't really like the limp.

But when opponents play with VPIP100, what happens is we would play also with VPIP100? Who would win? We have position to limpers and we have significant postflop edge. I am 100% sure that even if played with VPIP100 in that table it would be +EV for me without the rake. With the rake, I don't think our edge with 100% range is enough to beat the rake. So the question is where do we draw the line? If we play solver preflop, we are leaving tons of EV on the table. I don't like the limp, looking at it now. But I understand my reasoning for that and I don't hate it. What I listened in the video it might also be a case where that iso raiser shorty is playing VPIP100, raising every hand and stacking of postflop with almost anything. Classic tilt gambler. If he plays 100%, we play a bit less, he stacks of on any flop and we stack off when we hit the flop, who makes money in the long run?

What comes to graphs, I don't like them. The thing is that if I say I am 30bb/100 winner at micros, would you believe it? Does it affect your believes if I post a graph or not? Graphs are so easy to manipulate, that I can make a graph with any winrate I want. So when someone posts a graph, it's as reliable as their word or hand drawn graph.

For past years I have played most of my games on closed network with a lot of similar players that were seen in that WPT table. Tracker works, but I have played with 3 different computers so the database was in 3 pieces. And I changed my harddrive for my main computer this month, and I didn't see a point to save my database. So at this very computer I don't have any hands, on other two I do. Winrate at PLO5-PLO20 is around 20-25bb/100 overall with big sample size.

Well well, next PLO Primetime is after my holiday, somewhere around 24th day. Topic will be an interesting one, 6 card PLO.

I have never played it, and I haven't played even 5 card PLO. There are no solvers or sims for 6 card one, and even the 5 card one solves are from some super secret cracked software, as official Monker (only preflop solver) doesn't support more than 4 cards. So we are blind and start from the scratch.

But I am looking forward, as this reminds me of old school poker before solvers. We had to make calculations, estimations and strategies ourselves. Odds Oracle can make 6 card calculations, but there isn't hand ranking. So the most simple question, what are good hands and what are not, and what is our UTG opening range are not easy ones to answer.

Now I have to open my calculator and notepad, and hit the tables. And then tell you in 3 weeks what I have figured out.

Played first session at 6PLO, lowest stake (6PLO2). Definitely a lot of value at lower stakes, no idea how good the players are at higher limits.

It's nice to see that the games are 5max and hole cards are hidden until it's player's turn. Collusion will be a problem at 5 and 6 card PLO, but especially at 6 card version. I am quite sure that at higher limits it's a LOT about nuts and blockers. And with 6 hole cards collusion gives high amount of blockers for cheaters.

These are the spots where I am a bit lost in 6PLO:

4bet is most likely Aces. If that's the case, then we are not behind preflop. Usually flipping with AA and 3bettor is slightly behind. So I guess we should peel the flop? I had no idea about my equity in the game and thought that 3bet is likely higher cards and we block each other. But even versus that kind of range the situation remains, AA and I are flipping and he is slightly behind in preflop equity.

We managed to make this month Primetime a bit earlier. It's this Thursday this week! So put it into your calendar, you don't want to miss this one!

#when4isnotenough

Originally posted by Kyyberi
These are the spots where I am a bit lost in 6PLO:

4bet is most likely Aces. If that's the case, then we are not behind preflop. Usually flipping with AA and 3bettor is slightly behind. So I guess we should peel the flop? I had no idea about my equity in the game and thought that 3bet is likely higher cards and we block each other. But even versus that kind of range the situation remains, AA and I are flipping and he is slightly behind in preflop equity.

i activate nitmode usually when stuff like this happens and quit all tables

That's normal in 6PLO. I like it a lot, as it's a fresh breeze of old school poker. Although it's very one dimensional at lower stakes. Most players are passive and bluffs are super rare. Then there is small bunch of players who like to gamble with anything.

I run out of ink for making notes "doesn't raise without nuts or better", every other player got that one.

Got bad beat jackpot on one table, for the first time in my life! I wasn't in the hand, but received 500bb when others had straight flush vs quads. Too bad it was the lowest stake where I tried to learn how to play the game. But every dollar is earned dollar.

There was a player in 6 tables, going blind all-in on every hand, on every table. Weird thing was his tournament record, lifetime winnings was over 1,4M! Not 100% sure if he was a pro (MTT) or not, but I am quite sure that he is a very good tournament player. No idea what he was doing at lowest PLO flipping out. Maybe tilting, maybe for fun, maybe some kind of sidebet.

Now comes the hard part: with what range are we calling? If we are last to act for HU pot, it's kinda easy. Just call with hands that have around 60% versus random hand. That's pretty much AAds, KKds. Then there is bunch of hands that are about 55% against random hand. But due to rake shoving those pre seems breakeven.

Problem comes when it's 3way. Now even double suited aces are not that great, as the third player often has an Ace or high cards (which either blocks our high card hand or has good equity versus our low cards in hand). So in this situations it's about waiting for premium hand and making a big flip fro small EV. All-in gamblers kill the game, as it's hard to get +EV situations and normal game is completely shut down. My advice is to change table if possible.

was +ev his strategy probably ♦

It wasn't. Someone was always willing to flip with 50/50 hand, house wins the rake.

Originally posted by Kyyberi
That's normal in 6PLO. I like it a lot, as it's a fresh breeze of old school poker. Although it's very one dimensional at lower stakes. Most players are passive and bluffs are super rare. Then there is small bunch of players who like to gamble with anything.

I run out of ink for making notes "doesn't raise without nuts or better", every other player got that one.

Got bad beat jackpot on one table, for the first time in my life! I wasn't in the hand, but received 500bb when others had straight flush vs quads. Too bad it was the lowest stake where I tried to learn how to play the game. But every dollar is earned dollar.

I think game has already changed after that when more player have started to play PLO-6. Bluffs are not super rare anymore and I have seen lot of raises with non-nut boats.

I haven't been lucky yet to be in Bad Beat pot but I have seen few quads vs quads where loosing hands wasn't at least JJJJ as required.