Gent's I need some help from someone with some graphic design skillz.

Its my 30th Bday coming up and Im getting myself a new tattoo. I'm getting a celtic cross with celtic knot work on my sholder blade.

The original tat I was thinking about getting has a bit too much intricate detail in the knot work and I would need it to be bigger than I want. I have another which has a bit less detail in the knot work (which Im ok with) within the cross but I dont like the style of the cross itself in comparison to tat no 1.

I have some graphic .jpg which should be easy to put together by a stable hand, I have photo shop but I cant find any drawing tools which I need to tiday a few things when merging the two files.

If anyone has a decent bit of grahpic design experience and can help me out I'd really appreciate if you could pm me.

It could be your claim to fame that you got to help design a Tat thats on someones back for the rest of there life.

Cheers

Rhys

This is something I have struggled with well since I started playing. Really because we all know that 60+% of the time both players are going to miss the flop so when I hit the flop it's a unlikely that my opponent has and far far less likely they have hit something strong enough to raise me.

So to me this was like a total slap in the face. I have a hand who the F#$% does this guy think he is raising me. I know he cant have a good hand very often at all so he has to just be bluffing right? I constantly played bad in these spots and this situation was a spot where I asked for help and all anyone told me was something like "except even the worst players can make a big hand sometime, your oop and your hand doesn't have enough equity in the pot to play". This is all great advice and true, but this just wouldn't make my desire to stack off any less when playing. It took me a lot of work on my mental game as well as number crunching to get through this issue. Tilt issues aside (I can't help with those although I do recommend reading Jared Tendler's - The Mental Game ) , I needed to learn a stable thought process so I didn't spew in these spots.

Surprisingly to me (it really shouldn't have been) once I had done some work on this I could soon think through the process as simply as being 3bet preflop. Basically my range for stacking can move depending on the aggression (maniacal raising tendencies) of my villain. Easy!

Here is my working.

An example hand to discuss:

SB: $24.40 (97.6 bb)
BB: $60.70 (242.8 bb)
UTG: $25.94 (103.8 bb)
Hero (MP): $25 (100 bb)
CO: $10 (40 bb)
BTN: $25 (100 bb)

Preflop: Hero is MP with 9h9d
1 fold, Hero raises to $0.85, 1 fold, BTN calls $0.85, 2 folds

Flop: ($2.05) 5s4d2d (2 players)
Hero bets $1.70, BTN raises to $3.50, Hero ???

Hero now gets frustrated and tries to decide the best plan of attack to get even vs min raise!!!! HALT!

What hero should do is take a breath and go through the following process:

1. Identify villain type and range:

In this case our villain is playing 20/18 and is considered to be a stable 2+2 reading reg. He's probably a reasonable player but given he's playing 25NL its probably reasonable to consider he has some leaks, but generally is ok.

So what does his range look like?

This is what I think is kind of reasonable to assign our villain.

JJ-TT, 66-22, AdQd, AdJd, AdTd, Ad8d, Ad7d, Ad6d, Ad5d, Ad3d, KdQd, KdJd

If he really a good player I think we could discount a few of the hands like KJ, Ax less than AJs but I think these are the sort of hands many regs at these stakes regularly make a mistake and call with preflop and it would probably be unwise to rule them out of his range. He may or may not raise his JJ-TT here but I think he would at least some % of the time so I've kept them in here.

Plugging that range into poker stove give us the following equity:

Board: 2d 4d 5s

Dead:

equity

Hand 0: 35.056% { 9d9h }
Hand 1: 64.944% { JJ-TT, 66-22, AdQd, AdJd, AdTd, Ad8d, Ad7d, Ad6d, Ad5d, Ad3d, KdQd, KdJd }

So against his range of made hands and semi bluffs we're a 35% dog. While I haven't done the math I think it would be pretty obvious to most that we do not have enough $$ in the pot to make stacking off here +EV and really taking a more passive line hoping for no scare cards to fall will result in us throwing money into the pot only to fold a later street about 90% of the time.

So while 99 is an over pair looks like a hand to hold onto here, its in really pretty bad shape OOP.

As our hand strength increases obviously our equity increases and gets better vs his range and our ability to continue improves also.

I needed to find a base mark though, a start point to adjust from (similar to knowing QQ is generally to stack off pre but vs the tightest players you may fold, or against a real spewy guy you may adjust to include JJ and TT).

So against a villain with a range the same as above with JJ (no diamond) we end up flipping:

Board: 2d 4d 5s

Dead:

equity

Hand 0: 49.143% { JcJs }
Hand 1: 50.857% { JJ-TT, 66-22, AdQd, AdJd, AdTd, Ad8d, Ad7d, Ad6d, Ad5d, Ad3d, KdQd, KdJd }

(if we have the diamond we we get another 2% equity)

So for me now this is really my starting point, to start my adjustments.

Against a guy who is a bit of a maniac (I've chucked in a few more small SC's and all AJo hands to represent a chunk over straight bluffs) 99 is about smack on this flipping point.

Board: 2d 4d 5s

Dead:

equity

Hand 0: 50.749% { 9c9s }
Hand 1: 49.251% { JJ-22, AdQd, AdJd, AdTd, Ad8d, Ad7d, Ad6d, Ad5d, Ad3d, KdQd, KdJd, 7d6d, 7d5d, 6d4d, AJo, KJo }

Writing these really helps me to get things straight in my own head so I intend to keep em going. They may not be too frequent because I'm only going to put stuff up if I'm feeling confident in what I'm saying and I want to learn the stuff myself first. So let me know what you think.

As the title suggests I'm moving to Melbourne this weekend.

Getting relocated for work reasons. Should be a good bit of an adventure, even though moving house sucks at the best of times.

I'm really looking forward to getting into the poker scene a bit down there though. In Brisbane where I am now there is very little.

If you are from Melbourne and feel like a catch up some time gimme a bell. Would be great to meet you.

Rhys

Celebrations - stage 1 complete

Well I have what I want for a BR to move up to 50NL now.



It has been about 5 weeks (well 4.5 because I'm only half way through this weekend where I play most of my poker) since I started my mission to restart my game and really start playing poker as I should play it.
I really haven't played as many hands as I would have liked in that time since I have been sooooo busy with work that I have been to exhausted to play, but when I have played I have been playing my a game pretty often.

The Graph


You can see I have won about 23.5 BI in about 9k hands which is really crushing at ~13PTBB/100. Obviously it is a short sample size but I feel my consistancy is there and while it may not be possible to maintain this high a win rate I definately think something in the order of 8-10 is not un reasonable of a huge sample size.

The most positive thing for me is I have really been enjoying poker again. When I started this I have been trough a real bad spell of results and I had considdered throwing in the towel. I'm really glad I didn't now.

I will tryand do a summary tomorrow on things to do at 25NL. While not trying to give myself an ego boost I really think if people really take into account the things I have mentioned in my previous blogs it will help their game a lot.

25NL really is an easy game, there is no need to be 3betting light, bluffing (with the exception of cbetting, double barrelling), slow playing, at all. With out doing these things I would not have achieved the win rate I did but I really looked for great (not just good) situations to do this. I truely believe oyu can achieve a solid 4-5PTBB/100 win rate at 25NL by only betting for value, and making sure you dont get to cally / suspicious.

I really appreciate the comments, its sorta drives me on to keep blogging and blogging has given me a greater level of accountability so in turn the comments have helped me stay focussed and improve my game.

So I may play tomorrow at 25NL just because I think I would like to start the new week with 50NL.

Feel free to pm me if you are really struggling at 25NL and think I may be able to help you out.

GL all.

Results:

My win rate slowed a little this week, I experienced my first losing session since starting this series of blogs. Thankfully the loses were short lived and I turned things around and ended up another ~3BI this week. I'm about 8Bi away from a BR to move back to 50NL so if things go well this week hopefully next weeks blog will be the last talking 25NL. Redline stayed resonably flat this week due to me finding a few redline killer type players and also I may have tried to force things a little when I really shouldn't have.

Learnings:

Last week I said I was going to discuss a few action specific things, such as turning made hands into bluffs but before I do I want to discuss DISCIPLINE a little. As I said above this week when I started to lose I did notice myself trying to force the action a little (by that I mean I was raising or bluffing more, probably in less ideal spots). The result really was that my losses increased in both red and blue line. I think this occurred because I had a small stretch of cold deck obviously my sample sizes are small so I really wasn't having to sit through more than about 50 hands without something playable. Since I have been winning quite rapidly though it was strange for me (and my ego) to have to take a more (well what felt like) nitty approach and not be dominating the table. Realistically I wouldn't have been playing any nittier (my pre-flop ranges wouldn't have changed) I just wasn't getting cards. Because I wasn't getting cards for a short spell a couple of things happened. 1st when I did get a decent starting hand I tended to be far more reluctant to fold post flop, so I floated more often in increasingly bad situations and tried to bluff more. Blue line obviously goes down hill when my bluffs get called and my red line goes down hill when I either get raised with weak holdings or I have to fold later streets when my villain keeps betting after I floated flop).

Thankfully I'm now getting to a point that I recognise when I start playing like this and I quickly address it. Since this is definitely a form of tilt (its the early warning signs of the beginning of big loss tilt for me) the obvious one is to turn of the game and come back later. Or if you are still in control and not to tilted yet you can do what I did which was actually properly nit up for a few orbits. This does a couple of things:

1) it repairs your image a little on the table you have probably just been caught bluffing or have folded a few hands in a row so your table is now giving you less respect. Playing nitty for a few orbits guys forget these things when you show down a couple of good made hands.

2) it repairs your mind set / focus, since folding and / or losing pots has started the tilt process winning some pots generally helps you regain control. So just play a stronger range of hands for a while. Do try to loosen up and just outplay someone, just lets the cards do the work for a while.

So if you have read the first last 2 weeks of my blog, you will be now, picking a good table, identifying your target villain, and playing a range of cards that best exploit his range. So from my experiences this week really nothing should have changed from our plan. We are just reinforcing it. I had a short period where I wasn't getting cards and I lost focus on the plan, the minute I did I started losing $$. I'm actually glad I did lose this week because it helped me learn this lesson.

Why and when to turn made hands into bluffs:

So I'm assuming we all know how and why we bet for value, and why we bluff or fold with no hand at all. But....... what about those time when we have a hand but its not good?? Well this to me is really where poker really starts, because this is where you have to be able to read your villains hand to determine what your best course of action is. So this next section is generally all going to be river play because that's when our read really should be strongest and there are no more cards to come to improve peoples hands. Because of this people become a little more predictable imo. So lets have a look at a hand I bet a marginal hand for value:

http://www.cardrunners.com/pokertools/hand/6439498/

My open here may look quite light given my position but the 2 players with position on me are both playing super nitty with VPIPs of less than 12, and the small blind was one of my targets at the table. The villain that calls is a TAG type player playing 21/15. So my hand plays ok but not sensationally against his range.

Flop is obviously good for me, I make a standard Cbet and get called. When I get called I give my villain a range of JJ-66,A8s,A6s,KTs+,KTo+ (he could be slowplaying sets)he could have some other Ace and a broadway that decided to peal one but I don't think its very likely because this guy seems Tag post flop too.

back turn because I think really this sort of player may fold all pairs less than a K now and since I only beat KT that is possible in his range and there are so few draws, checking back means he may lead into me with a wide range on the river thinking I will fold. (He may even turn a made hand into a bluff). I also think if I check back here and he checks to me on the river I can get value out of hands like TT-77, A8, A6 that think I'm bluffing. Plus I cant get check raised, and I wouldn't like calling river if I bet here and he leads river, so this just controls the pot.

On the river I bet and he calls with worse. TOPS! I have no problems with betting turn again and against a more lose passive villain I'm definitely betting this turn for value. Against this villain though I control the pot and got the maximum value I could.

Turing a marginal hand into a bluff:

This one is going to look a little mad to some at first I think but once I give my reasons I hope you'll understand.

http://www.cardrunners.com/pokertools/hand/6439499/

Standard open. Villian is playing 30/10/6. So he is cally preflop but gets aggressive post flop.

I check back flop here for pot control because villain can call me with a lot of Ax hands in his range, but he can also call with a few draws and I wont know where I am later in the hand. I would prefer to check back try to induce 1 street of bluffs from him.

Plan works. Still not sure if I'm in front here but I many of these guys are very predictable and will let me know how strong he is on the river. If he has a decent Ax I expect he will bet for value, a lot of other hands he will check to me and I can check back. He may also bet bluffs, that I can pick off, I find may guys at micro are transparent that they bet small with bluffs and about 2/3 pot for value.

The river is where the fun begins, he bets really small. This means one of 2 things he is either bluffing or is really not happy with his hand now the flush has hit. My read is that he never has the flush here, because if he was betting for value with a good hand he would bet somewhere between 1/2 pot and pot. (I know that more sophisticated players may make this tiny bet to induce or to get called by something like KK but I don't think this guy is the sophisticated.

So I think he either has air that thinks he may get me to fold by betting again (in which case I can call and win) but I think more likely is he has an Ax hand and is trying to bet as a blocker. Given the size of his bet I think he is really nervous about his hand. So since I know I already beat his bluffs and think of his Ax hands he will likely fold about 75% of the time ( based on him acting weak) I think raising get the best return. So:

Probably going to get so negative response to this one, but I do think that calling behind in situations like this can so often be a bad thing. Because we can fold out better hands by betting and we keep our opponents guessing. Also if he calls this hand with Ax, I never expect to get any respect from this guy again. Given I have position on him 5/6 hands that's an awesome thing because I can then value bet the hell out of him and make my $6 back within 1-3 hands.

Appreciate any comments and feedback.

I gotta work out how to better post hand histories in the blog, so its easier to discuss them.

GL all

Rhys

Results:

This week I really haven't managed to play as much I would have liked due to work commitments and I've had a shocking head cold which has left me less than enthusiastic to do anything other than lay in bed. The hands I did play however I monstered. Looking at the graph I finished last week about the 2.5k hand mark, so I have won in excess of 8.5BI which is killing it really. I still haven't had 1 losing session since my revamp so obviously I'm feeling pretty good about the way I'm playing. I have been getting some good hands so I don't assume to be able to keep up this win rate, at the same time I have been making some great reads, and keeping my head about me and this has really been the secret to success.

Learnings:

Last week I focused on table selection, identifying the mark at the table, then focussing your play around the mark. I'm going to expand on this a little this week because I think it is soooo sooo important. Playing vs these guys really is easy and is where all my $$ is coming from. I'll admit it has never been something I has particularly focused on, not because I didn't think I should be but because I just wanted to prove I could outplay all the guys at the table, and the fish I could obviously outplay so why focus on them. Since I have been I have realised a few new things:

1. Play is so easy and so profitable against the fish that you really dont want to miss a spot to play them. If you put too much of your focus into playing marginal situations with regs you miss a number fo golden situations vs the fish.

2. If you are like me and know you have tilt problems winning pots is as important as winning $$. I find I may only win my fair share vs a reg and this can be very tilting if you go a log stretch where you can take down a pot (or sometimes even reach showdown). Against the fish you win so much more because if you are playing well you can bluff them off there week holdings, and value bet the hell out of them when they have ok holdings compared with your good holding.

So what am I doing differently? how am I exploiting these guys?

First let go of the ego. It gets drilled into us that we should be able to beat the fish with any two cards this should be true, Im not going to say it wont be, but what I will say is that hands like 65s and 67s are going to be a lot harder to play and really are more likely to lose you cash imo. You can open up your range against these guys but do it with hand with strong top pair. This doesn't so much apply when stealing on the btn vs the blinds because you will get a lot of folds there already. This mostly applies when isolating. This is a range I think is about right to raise vs a limp:

Really in position any pair is good, because vs the guys we are raising generally play there draws passively and will only bet when you are behind, so you can often pot control to and get to showdown. Ax suited will be good because when you hit your flush these guys will have a load of dominated draws in there range that will pay you off. The rest of the range is TP heavy, they are all hands that if I hit top or second pair I have a strong enough kicker to beat a lot of this villains kickers. Notice there are a few in there like Q8o, these would be sucide vs a reg or agressive player, because you would rarely feel confident showing down 1 pair and would rarely be able to get to showdown without facing 2 bets. Vs a passive fish if we hit a Q our 8 beats all the Q2-Q7suited hands in his range, and if I hit my 8 my Q is way ahead of the 84s-8Js and 86-j8o that are in his range, Plus once again we have position and can turn our hand into a bluff if situations dictate or can pot control if we feel we may be ahead and cant bluff out better.

I'm really focussing this blog on playing fish and ignoring all others at the table, the reason behind this is that this is the way I'm playing at the moment. (well not ignoring the others just paying enough attention to know how they are playing and generally playing ABC vs them)

I already have a topic for next week that I feel is really important. I've mentioned it a lot, I'm going to discuss when I'm value betting marginal hands, when Im checking back and when I'm turning my made hand into a bluff. I think its something I'm doing well at the moment, I am betting for value with my marginal hands against the right people but then also betting them as a bluff on favorable boards. I think this has been a big part in my red line shifting to a +ve direction.

Please leave me comments, ask some questions, or pm me if you are going through some trouble and think I may be able to help.

Rhys

Well I got two comments on my last blog, which means there is at least 2 people reading it. So I will make an effort to do this properly.

Results this week:

As you can see I haven't managed to get a lot of hands in, but I played about 45minutes a day I guess and when I have played I have played well. I didn't have a losing session all week. I finished p just short of up 6BI in just over 2500hands, which works out at about 11BB/100 small sample size true but it is a definate improvement from my long term losing streak.

I'm surprised that my red line has been so strong, but I can attribute this to playing snug, not getting cally with draws and definately not floating just for the sake of it. There is a patch in the middle where my red line goes negative during this time I was finding a few tables with very cally or maniac players. With these guys at the table really red line is going to go down, that said during this point my blue line shoots up rapidly as the same players paid me off when ever I had good hand.

Toward the end of the week, I wasn't finding as good tables, there where a lot of nits and regualrs playing so while I ws rarely getting paid off with my monsters and I was winning a lot by double barrleling and looking for good places to bluff. I had a period here where a couple of good hands got cracked.

http://www.cardrunners.com/cr_forums/showthread.php?p=819718#post819718

http://www.cardrunners.com/cr_forums/showthread.php?p=819719#post819719

Learnings this week:

While it has been said many times before table selection is huge. I have really tried to make sure my tables are good this week. I consistantly reviewed the tables and left the table as soon as they didn't feel good any more.

Looking more into table selection I'm going to have to be a little cheesey and use a quote from rounders "If you can't spot the sucker in your first 1/2 hour at the table, you are the sucker". While half our is more like 5-10 mins (3 orbits) this still holds true in online poker. This week I really looked at my tables and thought about, if someone asked me to discribe this table, what would I say. If I couldn't identify the player/s that was going to pay me I left.

After that I looked at who was on my left, if the player on my left was going to make my life hell I left anyway. I'm aware I have some tilt issues so I left tables that where likely to lead me to getting frustrated by being frequently 3bet.

Really the only other thing I have been doing this week is really concentrating with marginal hands, trying to take lines that get me to showdown if I think I can be in front a lot. Or turning them into bluffs if I think I dont have the best hand and can get the other player to fold.

Sounds obvious but is definately something I dont do well enough at times.

I hope who ever is reading this can take something from my very simple suggestions. I'll blog again next week.

PS please check out the hh's I have posted this week in the forums and provide comment, I think they all have something in them to learn for me and any other struggling uNl players.

Basically I have have run terribly and to add to that have definitely not played well either. There have been a number of occasions where during a session a couple of quick suck outs in a row (which this year has been a common occurrence) has lead to extreme monkey tilt, and inevitably greater losses.

I have been working to turn my game around, but I think I have spend so much time on tilt this year so far that I'm not even sure if my A-game is an A-game at all. When you have seen as many suck outs as I have recently its hard not to start doubting your play, which then results in you playing a still to protect your BR and inevitably playing badly.

I am lucky enough to have a some friends in the poker community who can help me out, and I sent my entire database for this year to one of them. I'm very grateful for the help I have received and continue to receive from this person and consider myself very lucky to have help from this particular person as I believe as far as help at my particular stakes goes I could ask for no one more qualified.

The Promise:

I have made a promise to myself that since I have received this help free of charge I will document everything I learn in my blog to help other Micro players learn and improve.

This will start with the feed back I get from the leak finder review.

I will blog each with a few new lesson learned including related hand histories.

I will also be more actively posting in the forums to help others (as well as hopefully learning myself).

I hope to try to align lots of my blogs with Verneer's new Micro stakes video series as I intend to be working through this in depth.

The Grind:

So I start back grinding 25NL with a starting BR of about $550. Will blog again on Monday which will be 1 week from the new start.

Hi all,

I really find posting this stuff helps me with my game, so Im going totry to keep going with 1 post a week as much as I can.

I hope anyone reading gets something from it too, or will commment if my logic doesn't seem right to you.

To the hands

1. http://weaktight.com/1699952