Quick break between meetings, hopefully that limits me to a quick post. I got to play a couple times this week, which for me is a rarity these days. I feel like my game is solid, if unimaginitive, for the most part, although I am still being a nit preflop...17/14, and only attempting steals 27% of the time. I am however, opening up my 3-betting and even 4-betting range (as bluffs and for value) a lot. I'm 3-betting 13% of the time, which means I'm definitely doing so with air. I pick my spots against really active stealers, but in part that's why I'm choosing to stay tight otherwise.
In some of Taylor's old videos, I remember him saying that he will tighten up his preflop raising and compensate by opening up his 3-bet range. Not that the 100NL game is like the games he was showing, but the principle is the same. Until HUDs with 3-bets become more prevalent, my opponents will just see that I don't raise a lot, and that I'm pretty nitty. In fact, it's how I probably misperceive some of them as well, and it's not until you see the stats later that you realize it's disproportionately weighted to 3-bets.
Anyway, I'm playing a little bit more to stay out of trouble postflop and to play perhaps more defensively than I had been playing. I'm not winning as big as I might, but the variance is lower. From a psychological standpoint, I think that's good for me, as I have been in a pretty wild up and down mode for a few months now. For my last 33k hands at 100NL (which is most of them), I am a whopping .5 BB/100 winner. Hey, at least the number is green, not red.
Matt (schlucky1) happened to be online one night when I was firing up a session, and he gave me a nice sweat. I had a nice little session, but he did turn me on to one area that after thinking about it, I agree with him I've got a pretty decent leak. That is playing medium hands OOP against an aggressive player. I forget the exact hand, but I had something like 88 on a moderate board, OOP to a pretty loose passive player. On the turn, I checked and he bet kind of small. I said that I would call one street, since he was passive I didn't expect him to bet the river again unless he beat me.
The key thing is that I said I would have check/folded against an aggressive player because he would have bet the river if he bet the turn, making it too expensive to call on the turn. I now think I have that wrong, assuming I can trust an aggressive-player read. Matt talked about hitting a middle pair on the flop against a really aggressive player, and pretty much calling all 3 streets as a default plan, as the blindly aggressive player is going to make more mistakes betting than anything. Of course you need to be confident in your read, but the point is that you should not be looking to check/fold hands with showdown value against an aggressive opponent, even OOP. Whereas I am probably playing more to not make a (theoretical) mistake OOP.
[Edit after schlucky clarified: He did not say to call down all the time OOP...by "default" I meant that his plan against that particular player was to call down a hand with showdown value, and he stuck to the plan. My plan would be to pitch the hand because an aggressive player would make me pay on more than one street. This could be flop-to-river, but more of the time it's turn-to-river or flop-to-turn. The point still stands that for me, I was too quick to pitch too many really good bluff catchers due to being OOP. While being OOP sucks, you still need to use your opponents' ranges and tendencies correctly. At least I think I got it now :P.]
That's the sort of thing that comes up in sweats/coaching that you don't get from just reviewing things yourself because you don't even realize that there's a different way to view things. I'm finding it hard to get in a coaching session. Wish I had more time for sweats, but c'est la vie. I'm still making improvements, just not leaps and bounds. In the long run, anyway, it's a good thing it's not easy.
I feel like writing
7 years ago
3 comments:
Holla!! I wasn't really advocating calling down all 3 streets vs an aggro player (although this can be used with extreme caution). The example I gave was when your c-bet gets called on a pretty dry board by an aggro player, who has position, and you read a good chance that he might be floating. This is a good spot to check/call the next two streets with a medium-strength hand, as this type of villain will fire a lot with air after you show weakness. This allows aggro villains to take themselves to value-town, and is pretty much the only way to get value from medium-strength hands when your opponent has nothing. Reads/ranges are huge here, and you shouldn't get in the habbit of doing this too often.
Good post Marc, I think that doing sweats with people is a very optimal way to learn about the game, as evident by your post.
Yeah, whoops...I misrepresented what you said, although the point you make in your comments is kind of what I was talking about, which is that against someone who is aggressive, you should be a lot less willing to fold hands with showdown value even if it will cost you more to get to showdown, whereas I was thinking more about folding to the aggressive player because he would bet two streets.
Post a Comment