First, a small brag: over the past five days, I played about 80k hands, netting about $4200 including rakeback, bonuses, and giving lessons, my best week of the year so far. It's comforting to be on a formal schedule, spending long stretches grinding hermetically, Dexter playing in the background, Kanye in the front. Yeah. I watch Dexter and listen to My Dark Twisted Fantasy at the same time. The latter's almost a soundtrack to the former. Think about it. Pow.

Also, if you haven't already, go subscribe to my youtube channel: youtube.com/citizenwindpokervids. I'll be doing a dissection of interesting hands I played this week on there soon.

To help alleviate the ennui of perpetual grinding, I've been doing sessions while skyping with Kevin Kushion, Brendan Keenan, and Verneer, often spending hours of time talking hands and poker. It's exponentially increased my perception of the overall state of the game, as well as some more abstract concepts I've never really explored. The following rant will be on some of the things I've been tossing around in the ol' pressure cooker.

Before this week, if you asked me how the concept of balance plays into the hand by hand skirmishes between players, I would have explained with difficulty, inarticulately-- while we all have some ingrained, intuitive concept of how we balance our play, it doesn't always translate to recognizable situations over the table. However, in order to improve as a player, I realized I'd need to have a good answer to that question, to be able to articulate and apply it.

In vegas, while talking poker with Pooruser, he mentioned experimenting with raising TPNK, along with a wide range of bluffs, on dry boards, checking back the turn, and calling the river. While discussing some drawbacks of this plan, he said "The big problem is I'd have a gutted flop calling range." And that sentence turned on a lightbulb for me.

On any flop, facing your continuation bet, your villain has two options with his medium and strong equities-- he can either call or raise. But if he does one action too often with his strong hands, he neuters the range of the other. You cannot have both a monster slowplaying (calling) range, and then a strong flop raising range. It becomes too obvious. Let's say you're a known slowplayer, and you always flat dry flops with your sets, overpairs, or TPTK. If you always slowplay, you shouldn't wonder why, on JJ5r, your bluff-raises always get called or 3-bet. Conceptually, you think your perceived raising range on JJ5 will be balanced, but to a perceptive regular, you're always calling, not raising, with trips or better.

This is why it's important to take quick notes on even standard hands-- it's imperative to get a general impression of how a villain plays hands like KQ on K84ss, and how he plays sets on wet boards. You don't actually have to see villain showdown those hands to come to fantastic conclusions: if you saw a player snap call AJ on A75ss, OOP, BB vs. Button, then you imagine that he never c/r's KQ on Q85ss. And that's a very important read to have on a player, because it tells you how balanced they are.

With every line we take, we tell a story, but we also imply many other stories, some of which we understand fully, and some of which we don't. Fortune cookie enough for you?

Here's an example. I flat KQ in the BB against the TAG button's raise, and then C/R the K65ss flop. What story does this line tell? "I think your cbet is weak enough on this texture that I should have a C/Ring bluffing range against you, and hence you should have a bluff catching range. I think KQ destroys your bluff catching range, so now it becomes for thin but solid value." If all of those lines are true, and villain is slightly behind your level of thinking, your value C/Ring range is going to wreck him when he's got Kx.

But the C/R also tells two other stories with hugely negative downsides: "If you have a hand better than TP2K at any point, I'm going to go broke to you." And "Since I'm C/Ring KQ+ here to balance my C/Ring range, my flop calling range is always TP3K or worse. I can almost never stand three barrels." The first one is less of a worry, because BB vs. BTN KQ is a monster on a K high, two-tone flop, but having a neutered calling range on the turn is an important concern. In today's aggro games, where you'll often face multiple barrels, you don't want to always take aggressive flop lines when it risks a severely weakened turn and river range. For God's sake, slowplay more!

So how do you choose the frequency you distribute strong hands among your calling and raising ranges? I often ask myself In what way is this villain giving me the most trouble? If his strength comes from his aggression, I want to bolster the range I can be passive with. For example, if a tough, aggressive barreling villain opens, I want to call see a lot of flops with him with surprisingly strong hands. I want to force him to make tough barreling decisions (does he have it? Is he drawing? Is he made?) while mine are relatively straightforward (Duhr I have toppest pair so I callz...). However, if villain's mistakes are passive, and he calls too much, then i want to take as many opportunities as possible to attack with thin value plays. This is often the exact decision tree I go through when facing a CO steal when I have AA in the blinds: if the villain isn't going to be spewing against 3-bets, I'll often see a flop and develop a more balanced range for check/calling, check/raising, and donking OOP.

Students often ask, How do you fight very barrel happy opponents? Well, that'd imply "His c-betting range on the flop and turn aren't very strong," so I'd always call with my strong hands and bluff-raise the flop. I'd rarely flat with medium hands if I hated facing a turn barrel. I'd keep bluff-raising the flop until he caught on, and then I'd begin raising the flop for (occasionally thin) value until he spewed, after which I'd revert to calling the flop with strong hands and bluff-raising him until caught.

Of course, this strategy also tells a negative story: "If you tighten up and I don't notice, and I continue thinly raising /calling for value or if I continue bluffs in spots where I misread your hand, I'm going to spew." Which then tells a postive story: "If you tighten up and c-bet less, I can win more pots when you c/f to me." And from there the positive and negative implications to each subsequent adjustment, with ups and downs to every decision, always continuing on and on.

Every line leads to imbalances. Even very standard plays leads to gushing weaknesses. How gaping? Think of this very common leak: if you c-bet a lot, say, 75% of the time, you've probably got a fantastic balance of bluffs and value in your barreling game. If you have good turn barreling frequencies, you're going to be pretty tough to play against without the betting lead. But when you give up the betting lead, especially out of position, you're a total lamb. Ask yourself, my dear 75% c-bettor: when you check OOP with a betting lead, are you intending to C/F 90% of the time or more? If so, then there's a gaping imbalance in your play. And you might not even feel the knife sinking in, as the money slowly leaks away.

I don't c-bet that often, opting to have defended C/Cing and C/R ranges, a double barreling ranges with the betting lead (if I don't cbet often, then shouldn't you give my double barreling range a lot of credit?). There are quite a few downsides to this style, which annoy me, namely, I lose value when I could have 3-barreled, I sometimes let free cards come off and then lose a pot I ordinarily would have won, and I get into tough spots when someone 3-barrels me in position and I don't have an absolute monster. So I adjust by making sure that against villains who show unlimited aggression against weakness, I can check the nuts to them x3 on any flop texture.

When deciding on the best line for any hand, I intuitively ask myself "What story does my opponent's style tell me about his strength? What does his style tell me about where he is weak?" If my opponent is a thinking player, I ask "What implications does villain expect from my game? And how can I play him in a way to throw him off that scent?"

One particular bad reg at $100 is pretty curious. He plays 18/15, has a fold to 3-bet of 26%, and he floats a lot of flops and is capable of turning his hand into bluffs on turns and rivers. His style tells me "I'm going to make your life really difficult if you try to 3-bet and barrel me lightly. OOP, you need to have a strong hand to beat me, and I'm going to win a lot of strong and medium-sized pots from you." But the flipside is "When you have a strong value hand and hit, I'm going to pay you off in dramatic fashion, especially when I misread your hand." So when constructing my overall plan against this villain, I keep these two conclusions stiffly in mind. I stop running big bluffs on this reg completely, willing to lose an above average handful small pots to him, but I know 3000 hands he'll spew a stack or get it in 70/30 against me. The key to making this plan successful will be making sure that I'm not losing too many small pots between his spews.

How do you beat regs, SSNL players often ask. This is how. Figure out the overall strategy of your opponent, get an idea of his profile, and then play that profile. Use reads from individual hands to put together a kind of mental dossier. INTERNETPOKERS calls this a player's bluffing aesthetic. And it's more important than board texture. People too often ask "What boards should you barrel?" And that's a bad question, because it doesn't ask any questions about the villain. What villains should you barrel? That's a better question. Barrel villains who tell stories of weak calling ranges.

Another example: Villain has a high 3-bet out of the blinds and consistently C/R's thinly for value OOP. The flop comes Q75ss and villain check calls the flop. This is is a great time to put in two or three barrels. But let's say that villain is 14/6 with a 2% 3-bet and folds to cbets 65% of the time. You should bet once and then only put in money on future streets with extremely strong hands. The board, in this example, was mostly irrelevant, and the villain was the main concern. See how much stronger our plan became once we focused on the villain!

Yet another example: Villain has a really high turn stab rate (70%+)when you check back the flop. This implies that should should have a wider bluff-catching range when you check back, you should have a wider than usual turn raising range (gutshots, overcards, TPTK, all 2p+, premium draws), that you should usually bet your air on the flop and end the hand. These are all standard strategies to fight wide aggressive ranges: call a bit more, bluff-raise a bit more, try not to show up with weak hands when you expect barrels.

Since villain is likely to donk the turn all of his decent hands, he's very unlikely to have strong hands in his turn check/calling range. You should usually bet a reasonable size on the turn (hoping for a call) so you can overbet the river. You'll be amazed at how unreasonably you can wreck an opponent went he's obviously weak. Attack! Attack! Go!

Thinking about the full implications of a style helps weigh out frequencies for value and bluffing lines. For example, let's say an opponent c-bets a lot, and you c/r bluff him. When he calls, how often should you bluff the turn with total air? Almost never. When you C/R the turn, you're saying "I think villain's C-betting range is so wide he'll fold a lot of air when I C/R him. So when he DOES continue, he's usually pretty strong, and because your C/R bluff was +EV in the vacuum of the flop, you don't have to spew by bluffing the turn. You can usually just continue firing your made hands and premium draws.

After bluff-raising a flop, you should have a C/Fing range on the turn. Having a C/Fing is range is the unappreciated range, the one you neglect and want to kick under the dinner table. But it's so vital! A C/Fing range tells the following story: I can have air here. I'm bluffing often enough that you should occasionally make moves or show up with less than a premium holding. You WANT that. You WANT people to float you on the flop, or to raise you too much, or fold too much, or do ANYTHING so often that you can easily match the the positive implications of your style against the negative implications of theirs. Similarly, when you 4bet a bunch preflop and sometimes fold to a shove, you're saying Either you need to stop 3betting me less, or you need to start 3bet/5betting me, but then you expose yourself to my 4bet/call off range. If villain doesn't do one or the other, you're going to slowly own them.

When people talking about TAG or LAG play, they overemphasize the strengths and weaknesses, depending on which side of the argument they are on. But there's no definitively winning style, everything depends on the piloting player's competency and ability to adapt and change plans and balances depending on the villain. Malleability and fluidity are such necessary traits in a winning player that you can't judge boil it down to Tight or Loose.

Though I may take a break tonight from grinding (wait, probably not), I'm going to try and tinker my approach to Rush by always thinking about my opponents lines of strength and weakness, and how my overall gameplan should attack that strategy. Since it's hard to pay a lot of individual attention to each hand when 6-tabling, I'm going to be more concerned about an overall game theoretically sound strategy to attacking my opponents, rather than one more based on flow or hand to hand combat (get it?). I think it'll keep me viewing poker through the lens of macro, rather than micro, which is definitely the way to go when you've got 1850 hands flying at you every hour.

Good luck at the tables!