The live poker binge

Posted by sunny sen on 2012-10-21 at 12:00 AM

I spent the past month playing lot more live than i usually do, part of the reason being i won a HU volume prop bet on 2p2 (350k HU hands at 100nl+ with profit of atleast 1ptbb) and have been struggling to put in online volume this month since (18k hands LOL). Mostly been playing live in a few rooms that run regular games mostly 1/2/5 and 5/10, 10/10, 10/20 over the weekends.

While the lineups arent super tough, the games are usually played very deep, with atleast 2 peeps who have lot of experience grinding live deep FR; then there are the reg-rec players with big pockets and buyins being uncapped are willing to buy/rebuy 500bb+ , add to that a few bankroll sharing/staker-horse kind of dolts and lineups arent really one where i have a 15BB+ edge.

Now i am not super comfortable playing 500bb deep at FR/9 handed ROE games (HU is a different story) versus people who have wide/unpredictable ranges and are ready to gamble it up fr 500bb stacks at any point (trust me when i say that those who say playing super deep vs this player type is a dream havent played enough super-deep live poker).

So as a first adjustment I started off following someones approach who i consider one of the best mid-high (10/20 and up) stakes live FR player, quoting (those who follow the poker scene this is not gaucho2121, who paid for his NYC law school+2 houses cleaning up lol-awful rich NYC home games):

[I]1. I look around the room and figure out which table I want to be at
2. I sit down and buy in for the amount of the the loosest player at the table
3. If I don’t know anybody I buy in for 70 BB’s
4. I watch very closely and try to come up w/ an individual plan for how im going to break every player at the table. The plan includes a lot of factors but im really keen on whether the player is a “fit or fold” type, what the players weakest holding they’ll go broke with are, what the player is capable of in regards to running bluffs and how many bets the player needs to see before he considers a bet “significant”
5. Now I might add more money…a lot more money.[/I]
[B]
Regarding live tells: [/B]

It is absolutely essential to realize that “tells” in live poker are over-rated. You just dont pick a tell in the middle of a hand and make a heroic calldown or bluff shove (for every time u can gloat on being correct on picking up this “tell” there will be atleast 2-3+ times in which you were dead wrong).

Instead getting reads on a player is like a continuum, you start of by getting their tendencies right and then zooming in and being even more specific, most live players will let you do that as they are usually massively unbalanced (example: in a 9 handed 250bb+ game with a UTG raise, and UTG+1 flat, readless, what is your MP 3betting range, how about from the BB?). But putting the story together, takes time, a lot of time.

[B]Regarding bet sizing:[/B]

The next crucial thing is bet-sizing. This is obviously something in which I am sure i have an edge over the live reg-pool.

Next time you mash the live pot button, or bet £12k into a £14k pot, take a moment and think if 12k makes what i want to happen further in the hand happen, will 11k be able to do that? How about 10k/9k?

Conversely if betting pot on the flop gets me a call, how about pot+2k or pot+5k, will he still call that? If you are saving/adding 5-10bbs to every hand you are playing, think about the difference that you would be making to your bottomline.

[B]Regarding playing SCs:[/B]

And then there is everyones favorite the suited connectors. Everyone loves to play 5s6s, but few realize the amount of money that is burnt, many would struggle to answer in one sentence against what player type can you play 5s6s for 300bb+ stacks with (1) an open raise, (2) a call, (3) a defense from the blinds, (4) if you are calling multi-way with 5s6s frm the button why are you not calling J7o?

Sadly since theres no database to filter for hands for live poker, they will continue to play these hands, with complete disregard of who is in the hand. Hint: Trouble hands go up in their “troublesomeness” once the stacks get very deep especially versus tough TAGs (analogy: for the 150bb online HU player/6max player, do you 3bet QJo, KJo pre?)

Finally i constantly find myself reminding:

When you are playing super deep and high (i consider 10/10 high probably even 5/10 with straddle and 300bb+) versus the good gambling sort of player pool on a regular basis, a moderate to averagely good run on their part will destroy my bankroll, its not like 6-tabling 2/4 online HU where i not only get to see 300+ hands/hr, my risk has a spread.

Oh and never-ever over estimate your win-rate or hourly. The most very decent- good Commerce (LA) regs who rigorously grind 5-10 for a living have an hourly less than $70/hr.

happy durga pujo to you all and subho bijoya to the bongs and navratri to the rest.

till next time
-sunny

[I][B]PS: In a hand when you 3bet – exactly which hands would you 3b to in this situation? Now, imagine writing that range down, and handing it to the two villains in the hand- how could they best play against that range? Now try to imagine whether you could tweak that range to beat the range which beat your first range. Now hand that range to the villains. How might they exploit that new range? Repeat.

You want to be doing some process similar to this for every decision point you have in a hand. Ask yourself: if the villain knew my strategy (but not my exact cards) how much could he do about it? And try to make it hard for him.[/B] [B]
-sauce 123[/B]
[/I]

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sunny sen

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