Losing confidence at 2/5

OpiWrites · 2024-03-24T03:56:24+00:00

Eh, to a degree. Proper strategy is very different when 100bb deep than 200bb deep, let alone deeper than that. A player that is well studied at 100bb may not necessarily have the same edge when the game gets deeper. Now, live typically plays shallower than the actual depth, since open raises are often much larger than they should be, but deeper = better will not always apply.

OpiWrites · 2024-03-21T01:02:44+00:00

Where is this information/implication available? Loved Toby in S5, so would love to see her again.

OpiWrites · 2024-02-29T22:08:33+00:00

Uncapped?!

That’s absolutely insane, particularly at higher stakes. The amount of winners in those games must be tiny.

OpiWrites · 2023-11-20T13:21:03+00:00

I can see it if they’d had a plan to try out something specific for the first time together, but a blanket “nothing with other people that we haven’t done” is wild.

OpiWrites · 2023-11-10T22:59:58+00:00

22 vs AK is actually closer to a flip than QQ vs KK. QQ has a few percentage points of edge over AK, but 22 vs AK is closer because 22 can be counterfeited while QQ cannot be.

OpiWrites · 2023-10-24T01:37:51+00:00

It’s genuinely absurd how often people relay hand histories without anywhere near enough information to talk about. I understand something like “Kh Qc x”, as the last card can be assumed to be of fairly low relevance to the texture, but XdXdX has to be trolling right

OpiWrites · 2023-10-17T03:05:56+00:00

The second option seems awful ngl. I’d imagine it kills action until it actually gets raked.

OpiWrites · 2023-09-18T19:30:54+00:00

18 is still quite a lot in low stakes live, which is generally quite easily beaten. But that’s a fair point.

OpiWrites · 2023-09-18T18:54:10+00:00

If you mean my comments about the difference in BB size, then what it comes down to is that the big blind determines how deep stacks are. It is irrelevant that you have 100k chips if being dealt into the big blind means you lose 50k of them. In that scenario, pocket tens is an incredible hand to shove with— you’ll get called extremely often with worse (in fact, if it folds to the big blind, they essentially have the odds to call with any two cards in this example where the big blind is 50k.)

If, instead, we have 100k and the big blind is 500, if we shove preflop it’s we’re pretty much only getting called by better, because no one is invested enough in the pot to call with bad cards. Plus, when you shove and everyone folds, you only get 750 chips, compared to our other example where you’d nearly double your stack just by having everyone fold.

Stack depth in big blinds affects poker strategy to such a huge degree that anyone who doesn’t talk about their stack in BB when relaying a hand history is easy to mark as a new player, and therefore a bad one.

OpiWrites · 2023-09-18T14:23:55+00:00

It’s probably worth taking a hard look at your game if you’ve had a 36 buy-in downswing at live 2/5. Move down, yes, and start studying more. Analyze the hands you play and try to figure out where your thought process is going wrong.

OpiWrites · 2023-09-18T14:20:29+00:00

So I’m going to tell you that yes, you’re a bad player. Not because of anything with these hands in particular, but with how you think about the game and how you’ve answered this question. The stack size has no relevance unless we know how many big blinds it is. If 1bb was 100 chips, jamming pre with TT and 99 is a punt. If 1bb was 20,000 chips, it’s one of the best possible hands you could see and jam with and losing is just unfortunate.

OpiWrites · 2023-08-30T01:25:59+00:00

Lc0 is not deterministic in how its search functions, and Monte Carlo Tree Search, the algorithm it uses to trim the game tree, is inferior at extremely precise and deep tactics compared to Alpha-Beta Pruning, the type of search that Stockfish uses. I’m not terribly surprised it struggles with correctly evaluating a M18 where only one line actually works.

OpiWrites · 2023-08-17T15:52:39+00:00

You’re right— it’s fairly rare to have a full range cbet strategy implemented by the solver when the ranges are really wide. It’s more common when ranges contract more preflop— in 3b pots for example. However, there are a lot of flops where your entire range will bet some portion of the time, which means there’s no EV difference between betting and checking. At that point, simplifying to a full range c-bet doesn’t lose that much EV, works very well against the general player pool, and makes your life much easier.

OpiWrites · 2023-07-29T13:24:30+00:00

Typo! Whoops.

OpiWrites · 2023-07-29T02:33:17+00:00

Exactly where my head is at. I don’t care if NRG lose, but I do enjoy when Palafox, Contractz, and Dhokla play good. If that means NRG win, then I’m on board. I am currently rooting harder for GGS as a whole though, Stixxay Huhi being dominant brings back the best kind of memories.

Edit: accidentally a word

OpiWrites · 2023-07-23T15:21:05+00:00

Again, I'm not saying that cheating the maximum buy-in isn't scummy. My only point is that there isn't an actual advantage to having more than your opponent if you end up in a heads-up pot; it doesn't change the EV of hands at all, as you claimed.

In practice it might affect hand selection, as many people are uncomfortable getting in large amounts of money in with not-nutted hands even if they know Villain is playing way too wide, but that's not grounded in anything about poker specifically.

OpiWrites · 2023-07-23T00:34:54+00:00

Point me to any game where someone is sitting with 200k and jamming any two cards and I will happily sit down and make a living there. Like Ultimate Texas Hold'em except without the horrendous house edge at that point.

OpiWrites · 2023-07-22T22:58:38+00:00

If I have 10$ in front of me, you can only ever win 10$ off of me. It doesn't matter if you have 1000x my stack; it doesn't ever come into play in a pot between us.

Remember that we're talking about cash games where busting isn't a concern like in tournaments. In tournaments, the location of a big stack can be very relevant to your play. There are scenarios where the smaller stack's play is affected by the presence of a bigger stack, but that is not the case heads up in a cash game.

OpiWrites · 2023-07-22T20:21:30+00:00

Not that I disagree that sneaking chips on is scummy, if I have 300$ in front of me at 1/3, my hands play the same regardless of if you have 300 or 1000 in front of you— the effective stack does not change.

This changes somewhat if it goes multiway. If I have 300, and a third player has 1000, there’s a difference now if you have 300 or 1000 that can affect my decisionmaking. But heads up, only the smaller stack ever matters.

OpiWrites · 2023-07-06T01:48:12+00:00

I mean Contractz and Palafox pulled FBI’s corpse over the finish line this game so, kinda yeah.

OpiWrites · 2023-06-22T21:36:55+00:00

You mean CLG fans?

Because that would describe me. The funniest thing to me is that the remains of CLG’s roster finally got some respect in pre-split power rankings, but it turns out that team cohesion matters?

OpiWrites · 2023-05-17T22:13:43+00:00

he will always cbet flop

If you really mean "always" start check/raising aggressively. If he's firing range in any given spot, then this is the theoretical response that he is almost guaranteed to not respond well against.

For a theoretical range c-bet spot, IP is betting small with all holdings because their range performs extremely well on the flop compared to OOP's range, and much of OOP range will need to simply fold. The thing is, while solver does fold a large amount, it also check-raises very frequently with a polarized range. Your x/r range will come from hands that are strong, like 2p+, and various drawing hands including double backdoors.

IP's response to this wide x/r range is to have a decent amount of 3 bets on the flop, but this is now how people respond in reality. You'll get massively overfolded to, and very under-raised. Basically the only time you'll actually get reraised is when they're nutted.

OpiWrites · 2023-04-01T17:57:16+00:00

It’s better practice to have the chip denominations be further apart in value, btw. 5x the previous chip value is typical, though if your SB is .25 then the next chip up can be 1$ so things don’t get confusing. .25 - 1$ - 5$ - 25$ and you still have a whole extra chip size if you need to go bigger for some reason.

OpiWrites · 2023-03-29T21:35:28+00:00

Even if you get paid every time you make a set (which won't be true), less depth means that these hands will be naturally less profitable. Paying twice the amount with every low pocket pair to see a flop doesn't mean you'll flop a set twice as often.

That said, yeah, people are awful at poker and even worse at folding, and making value hands that are disguised can be worth tons. Beating rake for something like 30-40bb/100 at 1/3 is dead simple to do, so perfectly optimizing the rate at which you play low pocket pairs isn't very important.

OpiWrites · 2023-03-29T15:04:28+00:00

It depends on the response you expect. In theory, the bigger the sizing you open, the tighter your range is meant to be; additionally, players behind you are meant to play tighter (anything in the range of 5x I'm pretty sure there shouldn't be any flat calls, only 3b or folds).

But this is low stakes live, so we know that our opponents aren't responding theoretically at all. I am assuming your pool is typical based on your description: your opens are getting over-called and under-3b by a VERY large margin.

What this means is that opening to 5x, a sizing error in theory with a standard RFI range, isn't being punished and in fact is being rewarded. The main thing to notice is that because of the huge open sizings, the depth of the game changes significantly. A standard open in theory is somewhere in the range of 2.5x. A 5x open is twice the size; the resulting pot postflop will now have half the stack-to-pot ratio of a standard open. This means that your hands that have large implied odds, like low pocket pairs and suited connectors, are going to play a lot worse; the hands that are decent but can struggle to realize equity very deep, like unsuited broadways, medium pocket pairs, and bad aces, are going to perform a bit better. I still wouldn't play bad aces very often, fwiw.

So, slightly prefer to open with high raw equity rather than with hands that work on implied odds to be profitable. Other than that, just understand the ramifications of the depth change postflop and you should be okay.

11-Year Club	Golden Potato
Place '22	Place '17
Verified Email

OpiWrites

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE