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Del

As i begin a new chapter in my life, i decided to reset my Pokerstars graph from my days/years as a donkey... i was $59 down over 500 games(which isn't as bad as i thought it would be tbh).....i am now ready to test my metal against some 9/18 man and 45 man SnGs, once i have a good enough sample i will be approaching a coach @Ben 'Machine' Smith  to take my game to the next level.

He's a good guy from our community over on AceHigh Poker Page over on Facebook and have heard nothing but great things from people he has coached.

I am comfortable playing MTTs as a whole, but feel my weakest areas still need to be addressed, so am going to use SnGs as a training ground to try and eliminate some of my current leaks/issues;

1) Maintain a good focus on my Opening Bet Sizes and adjust to the blind level/opponent at ALL times.

2)Undertake more intensive ICM study, while at the table take more care with close push/fold situations.

3)Evaluate HandHistorys with a heavier critical eye- place hands in categories according to size of leak; Important,Critical or Less Important.

 

My life as an imaginary Baller starts here ; )

At least i've made the bed today.....B165L1Ck75 just reached the level 3 in Geek Habitat!
What about yours? Check it out on your About page!

AceHigh Hoody arrived at last.....  : )  Nice cosy and warm too.... AceHighFTW ................... #Famalams

 

 

B165L1Ck75 just reached the level 1 in Geek Habitat!
What about yours? Check it out on your About page!

#PokerNugget (cool name btw)  ; ) #PreFlop

How often should we defend our blinds against the button?

On level zero we all know what good cards look like, but we also know we should be playing mostly "In Position", so how do we know when we should be 3betting (from the blinds) preflop and how often?

 

Lets say a guy on our right is opening 2.5x  the majority of the time he's on the button(which he knows he should be), we are trying to make the button indifferent to opening or folding the worst hands in his theoretically correct opening range. We thus only care that he loses money or breaks even with the worst hand in his range, which will of course fold to a 3bet. So how often do the blinds need to defend combined to prevent the button from opening ATC(any two cards)?

When the blinds fold the button wins 1.5bbs. When the blinds 3bet, he loses 2.5bbs

 

Therefore the maths is relatively simple  1.5(1-x)-2.5(x)=0 where x is going to be our optimal 3betting frequency.

So solving for X we end up with

1.5-1.5x+ -2.5x=0

1.5+ -4x=0

-4x = -1.5

x = 0.375 or 37.5%

For me, this little nugget made me look at my optimal 3betting ranges from the blinds and tweak them into another dimension, we all 3bet the obvious hands and a few extra bluffs i'm sure, but do we defend often enough?...apparently not...

So i will now reveal my own personal 3betting ranges from the blinds, they dont add up to exactly 37.5% but it's close enough when you take into account most people open between 2 and 3.5x from the button...(online at least anyway)

3BETTING RANGE SB vs BTN 18.4%

Before i learnt this stuff i definately didnt 3bet enough even though i knew i was supposed to, i always tried to maintain a polarised 3betting range so my stats looked like there was a few bluffs thrown in but not so many that they could 4bet me light too often.  Here is my Big Blind 3betting range against button opens...3bet BBvsBtn

3BETTING BB VS BUTTON 17.5%

These ranges are my own personal ranges so it does NOT matter what cards you chose to 3bet just so long as your percentages add up to roughly 37%, what i love about maths is that it doesn't lie...

So when you see me 3betting 4♠3♠ from the big blind, you know i've done the maths(however donk-ish it looks lol) 

I'm not great at maths but i forced myself  to learn "frequencies" so i understood the "bigger picture"...there are obvious shortcuts in basic situations, for example, most people tend to use RISK/RISK+REWARD= BREAKEVEN FOLDING FREQUENCY as the equation for solving pot odds or folding frequencies and this works totally fine, but to delve further into the other frequencies for further streets and more complex situations i find algebraic equations makes sure we dont make any mistakes and helps to train us to solve much tougher problems later.

So applying a bit of 3bet maths here shows just how silly it would actually be if the button  actually opened 100% of his range against two players (ie;he would have to defend against 3bets ridiculously wide)

I hope i kept this short enough, it's just a tiny little nugget but it helped me once upon a time and i hope it helps someone else somewhere one day, hopefully we all know this stuff and learn it, if we dont...then we're not doing enough to improve imo... i know i've got a million miles to go still, so the more gold we find the richer we'll be...hopefully ; ) 

Remember...."Sharing is Caring"  lol 

 

EDIT: btw as any game theorist will tell you, we can never get exact solutions, but can  only create parameters like these to show us when something is NOT correct.Rarely will the parameters show us the right answer anyway, but these restrictions are  indeed very useful for guiding us on the right path to becoming very theoretically sound players. ; )

 

 

 

 

12 Comments Display all

Thank you @Elena, i am def much better now...i will try and make a vid.....and yes Jonny i'll see if i can beat 721 hours  hahahahhaha : p

i tried to make a video today...lol......lets just say.... i've only got a face for radio and a voice strictly for the silent movies ; )

*i did try though : )

Hope you are all well btw, its good to see you all again 

Interview With Elena RKH : )

Can you briefly introduce yourself to the community?

My name is Delano when i'm not being called a "donk" or a "fish" ; )
I'm 40 years old but act about 20 most of the time, i suppose it helps having a much younger wife ; ) you're only as old as the girl you feel eh.....


Since when do you play poker and how did you start?

I started playing poker 8 years ago after losing my job/career due to a disability so had a lot of time sat on my backside and needed to find a stimulating way of passing the time
and distracting from the pain i was in too... in all honesty, as weird as it sounds...poker saved my life.... and kept me sane...sounds like a good name for a song imo lol.


How would you describe your playing style?
I find myself switching styles often depending on the table i'm sat at, i can play TAG if at a wild table but can also turn into a complete maniac for a little while if i need to "advertise"

Usually though i play a very LAG style as i now find my postflop skills are outweighing my preflop skills so i get involved a lot more with players that a few years back i would have avoided.


How did you find out about RankingHero?

I found out about you guys through a Facebook poker group(AceHigh) i was kindly invited by one of the lads and was warmly welcomed, through this group i've met a lot of great players
and as this is what was missing from my game i have definately felt the benefits that talking poker can bring to your game.


What do you like best about the website?

I like Ranking Hero for many reasons, mainly because i have met players whose skills and knowledge are wide and diverse and i feel i can actually talk to them openly and honestly without being judged on my "noobness"
I am only a micro cash/mtt grinder but i study the game so much i felt i needed some more experienced players to talk to, 
Ranking Hero is amazing because i feel i have sooo much to learn from you guys.
Also the competitons have made me feel part of a community, whereas before now i found my poker life to be very isolating and lonely at times...

 


What do you think about HeroScore and who, in your opinion, is the biggest influencer in poker today?

Heroscore is pretty cool, it gives us all something or someone to aspire to, me personally i feel Daniel Negreanu/Phil Helmuth/Phil Ivey have had the greatest affect on the game over the last decade or more

There are obviously loads more to chose from but these guys stick out in my head when i look back to the start of my journey.

 


You won the Unibet package thanks to your persistence and the votes of your friends.


Did you have a particular strategy to win this RKH mission?

Just to play my table really and not worry about anyone else til i got there, i had planned to abuse the players who were being too tight and steal the crap out of their pots initially
I also planned to play my normal aggressive game which i did and it was going very well until i made a noob "live" error which i'll NEVER make again lol.....

Tell us about your experience at the Unibet Open . The trip, the hotel ... and especially, the tournament!

I feel like this needs a whole post of its own as it was so amazing, but i'll try and cover it as briefly as i can ( i am aware that my posts are too long and people can't be arsed to read them lol)

The trip ended being a 6 hour drive by my amazing wife with my 3 year old son in the back behaving unbelievably well for a kid his age.
I lived in Glasgow 15 years ago as alot of my family are up there, so it was an emotional reunion to begin with and i couldnt of been happier seeing them all again.


The hotel was amazing, room service was fantastic ...food was top quality and as i was once a chef many years ago my standards are pretty high and they done pretty well.
I did have to complain about one dish where there was no "olive oil bread" as it said on the menu, so they sent up some bread with a bowl of olive oil which i thought was pretty funny
, i have a feeling they had run out so tried this as a little cover up, either way they refunded the whole meal because of this tiny thing and obv that was pretty decent of them and pretty shitty of me
but hey, if it says it on the menu...

The tournament started fantastically, from the very first hand we were three handed which i loved, i played hyper aggressively and took down pretty much every pot i opened
the two other guys were so tight i just opened every pot in positon and kept betting and taking them down, with a few nice 3bets OOP too... which was nice as they folded an awful lot ; )


After an hour a very aggressive Dutch guy sat on my left which stopped me bullying the table as i had been so easily, had some good reads on him though as he was making tiny bets in large pots
when he had bottom pair or similar which made raising his river bets nice and easy for me.


My stack took a 7K dent when i flopped Top Pair with the nut flush draw against one of the nits, i remember calling his hand in my head on the turn,
i thought he had pocket 7's as the turn was a 7 and he started re-raising while his leg was spazzing out under the table...unfortunately the river was a brick and he did indeed show up with a set.
meh....

My bustout hand was weird, as i peeped down at my KK i had a feeling in my gut it was all over, you kinda just know when its coming sometimes...
But i messed up pretty bigtime although i still cant be sure i would of got a fold...


I opened from the button(110bb eff) to 500 (blinds were 100/200) he 3bet to 1200 i picked up a 5K chip and tossed it in without announcing "raise",( i said "five" as i threw it) the dealer apologized and said it's only a call
As soon as he said it i realised what i had done, leading up to this tourney i watched a few different "live" videos where the narrator kept reminding the viewer about the "one chip two chip rule"
I didnt realise how important this was until this very point in the game...i had now just let my opponent know the exact strength of my hand AND had let him in cheaply to see a flop.


I cant help but think if i jammed instead would he then have folded his AQs...i still dont know....
The flop comes down three hearts, i have the K of hearts and the guy check raises me, now im thinking he has a set or maybe just the Ace of hearts, i jam, he snaps and turns over the nut flush.
I think it took me a good 2 days to stop beating myself up over this ridiculous hand which i butchered, but it was a great way to teach me a lesson, expensive lesson(even if i was freerolling)
but worth it all the same.

 

 

You had a very special fan with you on the trip to Glasgow - your son How old is he, have you taught him poker yet?

My beautiful boy will be 4 in August and inspires me to improve every day of my life, even if i fail at poker, i am hoping to leave behind a legacy of information for him if he ever does want to learn.
A few more years i think and i'll start teaching him properly ; )

 

Do you imagine yourself as a sponsored player? What is your greatest ambition in poker?


I imagine getting a sponsorship is more difficult than its ever been, so i'm not holding out for one in my lifetime, but i can still dream i guess...
My ambition is simply to do my best to provide for my family and keep them happy and loved as best as i can in the position i'm in...
any nice binks along the way with the odd trophy would be nice too ; )


You are a member of the Ace High Poker Group on RKH. Have you considered starting your own club on our website? What would you call it?


I have always wanted a poker group dedicated to those useful/beautiful nuggets of information that make you go "Ahaaa", there's so many things i'd like to get down in print
somewhere so that when i die, i have a place my son can go an read all about poker and get those little "nuggets"... i would call the group " Poker Nuggets"...one day i may actually start this project.
I am yet to meet anyone willing to share their "nuggets" though so i reckon i'd be the only member of the group hehe


Outside of poker, are there any other games you are passionate about?


... i'm a complete sucker for "Civilisation 5" which i've been playing since returning from Glasgow, i'm a geek for these strategy games sometimes, i also play a lot of Minecraft just because my
son loves it so much and it teaches youngsters a hell of a lot in my opinion, it's a very isolating game like poker too, you can spend days underground building tunnels and mines and NEVER see daylight LOLOL
... Call of Duty/Battlefield/Halo on the Xbox are also in my array of games i play to chill out when im tilted......my wife is waaay better than me at the shoot-em ups which is frankly embarassing ; )


Do you have an idea for a fun mission we could offer on RankingHero in the future?


Although i missed the Bet365 comp where we were to post an impressive hand we played, i feel this would be a good regular competition as everyone can get involved discussing a hand from different angles while hearing the reasoning from the actual player also...
Some kind of SnG race would be cool too i reckon, or maybe a DYM(double your money) Race....will have to think about it for a while ; )

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

11 Comments Display all

whereas if i had thrown in 2 chips equaling the same amount i could stay silent and it would be a raise instantly...lesson well and truly learnt tho lol

 

Hey Delano,

I like your write up of the tournament here. Also like reading and you have a captivating style.

Just a tad concerned about you. Are you OK?  You've vanished off fb. Are K and R ok too? Would be great to hear from you. 

Hopefully touch Base soon.

ah hey Mon, i been off FB for a while as i was pretty ill and had some stuff going on, am back now, but in a much quieter capacity : ) x

Getting Back On My Horse...

Hello, good morning/afternoon/evening and goodnight to all of you...

After a well deserved poker "break" after my Unibet Open experience, i am finally back to bang my poker drum however exhausting  it may be...

I have written and then deleted about 4 or 5 different posts over the last two months or so and have concluded that i am just simply, utterly and hopelessly unable to write anything at all less than a full A4 pages worth of writing...which does make me question....

why i bother writing anything at all most of the time...if i'm boring myself wtf am i doing to people reading it? looool

So unless you're a glutton for punishment and like to read long undigestable posts on my ramblings i suggest you just stop reading now....cos i can talk.....and talk.....and talk and sometimes never actually get to the point i originally thought of....

 

I'm not sure about other people(cos i guess ive never asked), but i really do enjoy writing/rambling/splurting primarily for myself and then after that  for anyone else who has the patience or speed-reading skills that  that allow you to skim through pages and pages of tripe to pick out anything worth retaining.

So basically, i apologize sincerely if you accidently started reading this and then realised you could be here all day.....my wife has made me very  aware a long time ago that i'm a MASSIVE waffler...some things will never change i s'pose ; )

I'd like to say i'll keep my posts shorter....but that'd be a big fat BLUFF hehe

(there are definately better things you could be doing right now .....like boiling your head in bleach hahahaha)

All jokes aside and my rather perculiar habit of typing fullstops everywhere......(which i think represents the tiny cogs in my head going round) i tend to type/write as i think, so often there are thoughts, feelings, concerns or maybe just micro-thoughts

that i utter in an instance without a second thought, re-assessment or re-evaluation of my own accounts or mutterings.

This is obviously problematic for me until i take the time to read back the stuff  i've written and then either "insta" delete it or amend my own mistakes accordingly.

A good example of this was the various competition entries/posts i've submitted over the last couple of months, i lost count of the amount of mistakes i kept finding in my calculations or statements i had made, some of these errors i found immediately, some took longer maybe hours or days even....some may even still be there probably....

Lesson learnt= proof read your shit 

 

Long story short......(not really, i'm kidding)........I think perhaps i write and talk about poker as a "therapy" kinda like a poker massage  so i do realise i kind of say a thousand words when perhaps i could say none, so i have tried to stop myself writing time and again through a temporary state of "whats the point-edness"..... seems like motivation is at an all time low at the minute,so  i am about to attempt a re-boot and hopefully will find the dam horse nevermind get back on it lol.....

 

Sometimes a break from poker is good for the soul...for me sometimes it feels like the longer i "break" the more i disconnect from it...

i've played the odd mtt since ive got back, and noticed mainly B-game and C-game behaviours recurring in a few spots so i i need to get back on this horse pretty dam fast....and if that means waffling to you guys like a loony, so be it....the ONLY people in the world who understand a poker player are other poker players, so be prepared in advance for some of my future rants on whatever madness i endure over the next coming months.

Wishing all of you the best of luck on AND off the tables, it's good to be back : D......... NH WP GG

 

BTW; Elena RKH sent me a few questions about the Unibet Open, i'll post the answers shortly..... i tried to keep it short i swear.....  : )

10 Comments Display all

nice, congrats:0

thanks man, hopefully first of many on 365....Thanks to RKH again : D

makes me all warm an fuzzy lol

 

#OOPS365  #Part2

So you 4bet the crap outta me then check.....errrrr ok then.....

 

If i was in  the early seat and had just 4bet i'd be inclined to cbet any board repping a big pair or a big ace, worse aces are definately calling here , KK, QQ, even JJ/TT might even peel another card here perhaps knowing that the probability of other aces being out are very slim... the guy sandwiched between us could definately have a hand this strong or perhaps just some connected broadway cards or a middling pair hoping to hit a set...

 

Remembering that they know that i know they've 4bet light and they also know that i know that they know i "misclicked" they are either trapping with a monster, drawing to a fullhouse, or have just given up entirely in the face of action

 

Seems unlikely they are just going to surrender when we know "The Ninja/Samurai Code" does not allow surrender without a FIGHT.....to the death....

 

The cascade of "checks"  doesn't provide me with any additional information...however

 

when two Aces come down it seems unlikely he has one of the aces, although with his check it's a possibility some raggy ace has filtered it's way into the ninjas arsenal through some trancendental mysticism...

 

But instead of doing this

 

I want to  change the habit of a lifetime and 

The guy with initiative completely relinquished his power and could be trapping here...my instinct says "Jam" and stick it in their collective eyeballs but my inner dialogue says "you've been here before in Malta and spewed your stack off like a donk...don't do it, too many turn cards can destroy you..."

I can't believe i flatted the 4bet...what was i hoping to do here?

I rap the felt, lean back in my chair with my hands behind my head trying to look confident, relaxed and cool as a cucumber...but i'm dying inside....

Que Sera, sera.... i check

while the dark tilt sets in.....

 

#OOPS365  #Part1

Well this was all a bit.....

Being the donk that i am...i would squeeze here "in the dark" a high percentage of the time anyway, anything with any kind of implied value, suited or connected and in position
gets my vote quite a lot of the time.

Unfortunately these guys now know that i know that they know that i know that they know i wasn't intending to raise, so we are somewhere at level 27 here and the metagame
is blowing my mind.

They are seeing my range as being wider than "The Great Wall" at the moment

which can only end up like....

 

where as i can only make a loose assumption that the early position raiser is reasonably tight as would be expected...

However considering the Gap Concept for a moment, i would assume that the middle position caller must have a strong-ish calling range here as he is calling an early position open
with another 4 players behind.He must be taking into consideration his implieds odds so is more than likely calling with all his pairs, broadways and suited connectors
down to about 56s , as well as his big pairs...

ive given a range of about 15%

which is roughly 22+,ATs+,KJs+,QJs,JTs,T9s,98s,87s,76s,65s,ATo+,KJo+

It would be a standard "iso" here for me In Position with a similar range, although i would probably add all suited Aces and some more suited Kx and Qx a percentage of the time for balance.

Again though, this is totally unique in that every Ninja, Samurai and local "Street Fighter" knows than i'm going into this pot with nothing but my nuts in my hand...

 

Stacks are pretty deep here so if i have to raise it has to be small enough to allow the middle position to come along as well as the original opener giving me implied odds if i smash the flop
with a straight/flush draw/gutshot/two pair combo or maybe something sexy like a straight flush...here's hoping ; )

Normally i would squeeze here to about 11 0r 12 bbs to about $4800, but as i'm playing a 100% range here,
i should make it slightly smaller so if i get re-raised i can get away moderately cheaply considering the
cock-up...

Its not all bad tho...

actually it really is that bad.....


i'm in rough shape against both of them i'm sitting with about 22% equity (3.5-1)
while guy in MP has 35% (1.8-1), and our Early position guy has a whopping 42% equity (1.3-1)

(This is if i run a "Monte-Carlo" simulation over about 100 millions games, my computer spazzed out when i tried to do the calculation but this is close enough)

Playing cash games, Stack-to-pot ratios become a little more complex, with deeper stacks players have to precisely guage the size of their bets and plan their streets
constantly thinking about keeping their hand range equilibrated to the correct ratio.

IE; with a premium hand, we're more likely to try and create a low SPR (looking to get stacks in early) with overpairs or top pair type hands,
whereas with connectors and one gappers, we need to allow more cards to come down for our absolute strength to improve.

Essentially we don't need to build a big pot while we don't have a made hand and i still have position so if the flop looks like they've both whiffed
i can take a stab at it, but if i meet any resistance i can get away pretty easily and the damage has been minimal.

I'm raising to about 2800 looking to play a flop with these guys who now have to put me on a range of 100%, good luck reading my hand now NinjaBoy...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

8 Comments Display all

Adrien are these people fighting? Dancing? Zombies?  

the caption under the gif should say...... "When three donks try to play LAG".....  : )

Good luck mate

#HandMalta