Interesting situation

Fold pre. Wait for hands.

Seriously, if you can't stop bluffing calling stations, the problem is not them.

Fair enough, but it's not like all of my hands post-flop don't have some degree of equity. I'll have draws or backdoors that could become the best hand, however it's just not happening at that moment.

The other element that I get from the C-bets is that I like that this other player is now feeling as though he's always going to be in the better position. Like many poker players, they ride the wave and think it'll last indefinitely, but I'm a player who always keeps his stack depth to match the most on the table if that person isn't already me. Many times I've waited patiently for that one hand and then I double-up or stack the LAG....BUT (and this is a big "BUT")....there is the occasional session where for an hour the best hand I'll see may only be 67s. If I get that when I'm UTG +1 I'm folding it. Give it to me in the cutoff and I'm looking to open and potentially 3-bet it to keep balanced as long as the initial bet was not that big and the bet did not come from too early of a position from a tight player.

So I'm thoughtful and calculating about how I proceed, but I'm just curious if anyone else has come up against this and if they have had success neutralizing it in a way that I haven't thought of.

I'm not sure why you created a second thread to basically ask the same question you asked in the prior thread, which was "How do I play post-flop as the preflop aggressor when I miss the flop?"

+1

FWIW, you'll be card dead far more often than you'll be the opposite, so learn to embrace it, imo.

GcluelesscarddeadnoobG

This is the solution. At low stakes, nobody came to the room to fold. Don't try to bluff your way to scratch your gambling itch. That's why most people lose.

sorry i meant to start off saying that I was quoting GG here for truth of statement and to repeat and reinforce its applicability.

Sorry but I just chuckled pretty good at this

To always Fondling:

This thread is very different than the other one. Check the heading...it is specific to light 3-betting.

To BB-Love:

Your statement about being card dead for 2 hours straight is helpful. Yes, I have had sessions where hours go by without a playable hand, but I will have to say what you're describing where it's gone on for consecutive sessions over the course of a month I thankfully have not dealt with. I was interested to know if someone who obviously plays a lot like yourself had any tools to help turn things around. I think what I'm hearing is to just be patient no matter how long it takes and just wait it out. As for my time invested, this year so far I've put in just over 250 hours. Last year it was about 800 in aggregate. I've never played online...only cash games. 1/2, 1/3, 2/5 and 5/10 that usually has a $20 auto-straddle.

To Stupidbanana:

"Savvy and aggressive limpers" probably sounds like an oxymoron, but when I researched playing with limpers (because it's not something that GTO accounts for), some sites actually categorize them because they're not all created equal and I concur. There are the limpers you find at a basic 1/2 game that are total rec players who buy in for $200 and will fold to the slightest level of aggression. At the other end of the spectrum you have limpers who will stack-match up to $2,500 at a 1/3 table and limp the majority of their hands. It then requires an opening bet of 8-12BB to narrow the number of callers down to just one or two.

Anyway, the bottom line I'm hearing is that there are not really any tools that can help in this situation and you basically have to just wait it out. That's really all I was looking for.

Thanks for your responses...!

It caught my eye too. "Wait, what!?"

Tho did instantly think of GG, but he's kind of sui generis.

Anyway, though bluffing calling stations is a poor idea, playing lower nut-making hands/hands with blockers, on occasion is not. Thinking 77-, SCs, very rarely raising offsuit wheel Aces. Depending on stacks.

Unless the table is soooo bad that they haven't noticed H folding every hand for the last 90 minutes, and so won't instafold the second H catches JJ+/AK and opens.

I play in the same exact type of games. The key is knowing your opponents. Seriously. If this is a home game with the same players, basically, every time, you should know when to raise/3bet, when to fold, when to check, when to give up, etc. When you have a hand, go for value, when you don't, just slow down / give up. If you know someone is always calling w/ a draw, bet the river when it doesn't get there.

It really is all about knowing your opponents. Heck, you can play them with ATC if you know them well enough -- it's one of the benefits of playing in regular games. I guarantee you in the games where people limp/call a lot, they will never adjust.

Javanewt, so funny you should say that...I actually just started a player database about a month ago! It's more for the players who I'm not that familiar with, but it definitely has helped a lot.

I think how you frame the situation in your own mind makes a big difference. Like if I have a session where I just miss every flop and find myself folding to aggression postflop a lot. A couple hours in I might have lost 30% of my stack, but I will remind myself that I have been playing well and making disciplined folds. I'll think about how another player might be down a buy-in or two with the same run of cards. So by minimizing my losses I'm actually winning in the long run vs. other players.

It takes practice and perspective but you know you're a real poker player when you can call it a night and think, "Well played, you're only down two buy-ins. You could be down five."

So I've had some bad stretches online but because your hands/hour rate can be insane (there was a point i was trying to 10 table with ultra nit tight ranges at micro stakes just to see if a strategy of nuts or nothing could work - i know some dudes crush higher stakes at 12 tables, clearly I wasnt good enough at the time and required self limiting options to reduce decisions and even then it would get stupid if you had a top 5% hand on 3 tables at once. definitely left money on the table and definitely made some bad choices in those moments too)

After online poker in the US ended, i switched to live and for a good amount was full time 30+ hours a week.

The run bad in online sucks and can really **** you up but the run bad stretches in live poker? god damn. You want to talk about an indefinite uncrossable canyon? Its right there. I took multi year break from poker because it ****ing crippled me mentally - i was hitting a point where I couldnt deal with it and I couldnt make the money i needed. There used to be another poster on here DGAF who talked extensively about "the bad one" - I'm not here to compare or contrast bad runs though. Point is, you'll have some nasty stints and maybe you dont hit "the bad one" in your lifetime, but let me tell you this: if there was one thing that truly convinced me the entirety of existence is the result of just random insane **** and **** tons of unfathomable time. The only "meaning" you can find is through identifying purpose/desire/love within yourself - and thats all you need. Best explanation is the myth of sisyphus. Its not the mountaintop you love, its the work of pushing the boulder up the cliff where you can find meaning, purpose, desire etc. But the universe? An an infinite ocean of indifference.

I started really trying to look into academic papers on probability and statistical variance - is there some pattern there? is there some root cause? does everyone get the same variation? yes - given an infinite time line we do. but what about the finitude of our own life? what then? my research kinda ended there as most mathematics isnt focused on the mental health of someone whose living revolves around taking advantage of outcomes determined by chance. I would google topics like this. You'll find a lot of woo-woo bullshit. But I'm two feet firmly in science and that **** only made me mad.

I dont think i'm smart enough to really offer much more on the topic. It happens, by definition. The fact that a single die has sides means that it theoretically will land on all of em equally at some point ignoring all the variables but how then does the distribution via observable actions run out and why isnt it maintaining a visible distribution of results that trends to theoretical known outcomes? Because actions determined by probability HAVE to happen in a way where in any given snapshot or sample size, unbelieveable nonsense CAN happen. They're gonna hit that 2% miracle because the 2% possibility exists. And witnessing it 10 times in 1 month doesnt mean the math is wrong, it means we'll never EVER fathom the concept of a frequency distirbution (as it becomes more complex than a coin say) in some intuitive fashion. It requires "forever" and none of us got that, so we just have to accept it.

I downlaoded an app called "pretty random" you can set the range of 1-100 or 0-99 or whatever and hit the button. I sometimes give myself the 80% equity 0-79 is a win, 80-99 i lose. In 20 trials i'd have results as skewed as 8 Wins to 12 losses.

Dealing with a bad stretch of cards - play through it yeah? How does the operating mechanism of outcome "know" when youre playing poker vs drawing straws or flipping a coin or pressing the button on "PrettyRandom" app? can you power through it that way? Is it an individual affliction?

its not. recall the statement above: the universe is an infinite ocean of indifference.

etc etc

Its gonna suck sometimes pretty much, but mitigating those periods are where you as a player develop a better strategy thus getting more of an edge in situations. Maybe when you were mediocre you could net +100 during a bad session. When you are better maybe you net +500 during that same session (just pretend we can run it twice like that). You hit a lil variance the next day and its -250. One version of you is net negative, the other net positive.

Not sure really where else to take this though from here besides - take a break. walk away. just study the game. i quit playing for a long period of time and only studied. it helped a lot actually. in fact i dont think i've ever felt more confident in understanding at an intuitive level this game even back when i was playing 35+ hours regularly.

This all relates to bank roll management, mental health, a-game **** etc etc.

aiight im outta gas on the topic, hope there's somethin here though.

If nothing else, I GREATLY appreciate the time you took to write all of that. It would seem that the "ocean of indifference" hit you pretty hard. I remember reading Doug Polk's story of how he had almost completely quit because he was in such a bad rut, but managed to pull himself together and now he doesn't look back.

I really liked the part where you said you were reading probability papers to see if you could lock onto some patterns. As you wrote, there really shouldn't be any pattern at all since everyone is subject to the same variation. On the other hand, all of us poker players can't deny how often we see poker in terms of streaks. Isn't there always one player on a given night who seems to be getting a disproportionate number of beautiful cards?? It is purely anecdotal, but nonetheless there always seems to be one player, regardless of level or experience who is catching the majority of "good" cards. Although I am a true believer in science and math, I will confess that I sometimes have tipped the dealer to have them wash the cards. It shouldn't make an ounce of difference, but here I am giving in to superstition and Voodoo because I'm so incredulous that one guy seems to be getting everyone's great cards lol. As one would expect, sometimes washing the cards or changing decks seems to work and other times it doesn't.

I'm not quite ready to give up on the possibility that there is an answer in there somewhere, but I do accept that there likely is no answer other than we just have to deal with the huge swings of normal variance.

When you try to manufacture wins, you usually are fooling yourself. "Oh, they're sure to put me on a premium because I've been folding so much." No they're not. They aren't paying that much attention, and if they are, they probably think you're wide because you're frustrated.

Based on this OP and your other OP, it sounds to me like you are playing on autopilot a lot. For example:

" For example, let's say I'm in the HJ and dealt A8cc. The lojack opens the betting with 4XBB. This is a 3-bet all the way and I'll do that to the tune of 4X." - A8s is not an automatic 3!. In theory, it is a 3! about 25% of the time and is a fold the rest of the time. And that frequency is assuming a 2.5x open raise and a 7.5bb 3-bet size (3x).

So you are ending up in a 32bb pot when you are called, which is more than twice the size as theory and you are ending up in that position 4x more frequently. In other words, you are deviating significantly from theory. Which is fine, you shouldn't be playing perfect GTO against most human players, but when we are exploiting, we should be aware that we are deviating and be able to define why we are deviating. (If starting with 200bb stacks, then we are deviating slightly less on the size, but still 3! only 27% of the time and again with a 3x sizing)

It is great to end up on the flop with a bloated pot if V is going to fold too much to us. If V is folding too much, then we get to take down larger pots and we can bluff more frequently. But if V isn't overfolding, and might be overcalling, suddenly this strategy is a huge error that our opponents can easily exploit.

The reason is that on this flop and turn, a solver is taking it to the mat with A8cc. It is betting flop 100%, it is betting brick turns 100%, and it is overbetting or jamming brick rivers like 2s. Since the solver is only 3!ing A8s as a bluff 25% of the time, it has the appropriate amount of bluffs even when it triple-barrels A8s almost 100% of the time on this runout. If we are 3!ing A8s with 100% frequency, now we have too many bluffs. And I'm reading a bit into what you wrote, so forgive me if I'm wrong, but it seems like you get to the turn in these situations and sense that you have too much air, so you are checking sometimes. Which is a good idea to avoid compounding your prior mistake. However, for V, it makes life easy.

If we are betting 50% on almost any flop when we 3! with too wide of a range, the opponent can exploit us by calling pre, calling flop, and then when we check back turn, it is open season to steal an inflated pot on the river. While we might occasionally show up with a strong hand in this line, our overall range has too much air, and we are losing bloated pots too frequently. Opponents might be playing as "calling stations" exploitatively, or perhaps our strategy is just being exploited by their natural strategy. Either way, it is important to get off autopilot and think through decisions.

It should not be "I 3! A8s from the HJ, so I'm going to 3!", instead it should be "I'm 3!ing A8s against this V because this V: Folds too much post-flop. Will overfold preflop. Will overcall with an even weaker range." Or whatever specific mistake we have observed V making. If we are following the same pattern against all Vs in all situations, it might be a great pattern in some games, against some Vs. But poker is an evolving game. Vs will get better or go broke and be replaced by new Vs who might play differently.

It sounds like you found a pattern that worked quite well for you, but now it either isn't working as well or maybe you are realizing your upside is capped. The solution is to address your strategy from the beginning and question why you are doing things and work to adapt your strategy to what your opponents are doing.

As for being card dead - even when you are not in a hand, you are still playing the game. 90% of the game is watching your opponents, and you can do that much more effectively when you aren't thinking through your own hand. Watch the game, work on ranging your opponents, and update your assumptions as cards are revealed that confirm or deny the ranges you've assigned. So many people only play poker when they have a hand then turn to their cell phones, but you'll make far more money because of the information you gathered when you weren't in a hand. If watching poker and ranging opponents isn't stimulating to you, then maybe playing poker is just going to be an expensive hobby for you. It sounds like you're taking this rather seriously as a source of making money, and the bulk of the work is going to occur when you don't have a hand.

Some of you guys have a lot of time on your hands. Unfortunately, I don't, so I don't read a quarter of this stuff 😉 I wish you guys would learn to use bullets or just be less verbose!

...I wish you guys would learn how to edit your thoughts and present a coherent argument that has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

FYP

That, too.

I appreciate that these guys have taken so much time to answer my questions, but that's probably because it's specific to my issue.

To "Always Fondling", I am going to politely ask you to not reply at all on my threads. I've posted on this site about a half-dozen times and every time you add your $.02, it's just not very useful to me. It's typically some sort of condescending or extremely opinionated post that just doesn't provide any value.

Yami, I open to a very disciplined GTO range, but when it comes to general 3-betting, I lean towards a more aggressive approach than what GTO often calls for. I feel I'm able to get away with it because I don't play loose. When I'm in a hand, players are always concerned that I have "it".

With GTO in general, I also feel it's limited in a way that players often don't talk about. GTO is only ever shown as head's up because computers cannot run the calculations for the many decision trees it would have to run through beyond having only one caller. Secondly, GTO doesn't account for limpers. Instead, we have to try and do our best to discern the correct approach against them. Third, in my opinion it's far, far different when a computer plays against another computer versus playing against a human. I don't worry much about being "balanced" because most humans aren't going to remember if I played A8s as a raise or a call in a given hand from a specific position. When it comes to A8 in the scenario I described above, that's where my table image (exploitative) I feel allows me to 3-bet with more success than most. I have a lot more fold equity, so yes, it is 25% a 3-bet for GTO and a fold the rest of the time, but it's a generally profitable play for me to do it as a rule IF I'm in position and IF it's not against someone who's going to call me down every time.

With half-pot bets post-flop, I can't begin to tell you how well that adjustment has worked for me. It shows strength and I constantly get the folds I want. Here's a great example where I took down a hand that everyone at the table thought was pretty foolish until I explained it. It's a 1/2 game that plays very big and I'm dealt 9c8c in MP. There are two limpers and I bet $50. 25XBB seems insane, but one of the best lessons I ever learned was from Nathan Williams who said to bet whatever it takes to get one or no more than two callers. In this case I get two callers, one from the button and one from UTG. Flop comes Ac Kd 5s. Pretty much a whiff except for a backdoor flush draw. Pot is $159 and I go for a C-bet of $75. Fold, fold. I never show my hands, but my cards were accidentally turned over when they hit the dealer's hand and everyone gasped. The sarcastic comment I got was, "Geez...now that bet made sense with a board like that!" and some others nodded their head and chuckled. And then I explained the logic:

"By betting half-pot, I made it look like I may very well have had an ace which is part of my range. Guess what that did to anyone holding a king?? And what are the chances that someone else hit that ace? A player is 30% to hit one of their two cards on the flop. This translates into 15% to hit a specific card in their hand or 30% between the two of them. That means combined they are 70% to miss it. Since the board has an ace, it lowers the likelihood down further. " BTW, one of them did have a king. I get it...it seems crazy, but it makes total sense to me and the best part is, it's been very profitable at all stakes.

Where I do get stalled is in a specific situation where I'm not getting much in the way of cards that a GTO chart wouldn't open, and when I do get an opening hand, it's at the bottom of an opening range with some calling stations at the table.

From all of the responses I've seen, it just seems to be par for the course for everyone no matter what the level. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something in this particular situation.

I am thankful for all of the replies and they are very helpful!

FWIW, there is an Ignore List in your 2+2 user options where you can block out posts from specific posters.

Glol,you'renotaloneinyourthinking:AFisalreadyonmyIgnoreListG

And you don't get choose who replies to your threads. If you don't want to read them, put them on ignore as GG suggested.

Marcusio - I think you inadvertantly stumbled on the different between GTO in theory and Poker in practice though.

I wouldnt advise adhering to GTO against most lineups even in a 5/10 game.

GTO Strategy by definition would be an unexpliitable approach to the game but the assumptions used that formulate the strategy are based on the opponent also being unexploitable. The computer when finding a solution dosnt take the role of just player A as hero, but as both players. And it collides every decisions until neither player is capable of having an exploitable decision over the other. Therefore the resulting strategy works to ensure no strategy from optimal to worse will gain advantage over the decisions made when adhering to it from any position.

Nevermind multiple opponents and whether that is "solved", the point is: the choices you would make when adhering to it will never allow your opponents to expllit you.

but the nuance here, linguistically, should be apparent that this is a DEFENSIVE strategy. In other words: when facing opponents who do not play anywhere close to optimal, they will perform worse against the set strategy but you the player in this scenario will not maximize profit against them.

So per your statement above - its true: if you want to maximally profit from the game you play which is decidedly full of opponents player magnitudes of deviation from GTO (in a negative EV direction), you must also diverge from GTO by way of incorporating offensive strategies that take advantage of your opponents eggregious mistakes.

Herein largely lies the big misconception with GTO and hold 'em being "solved". The nature of the solution is so far from the idea that the game no longer has any veil of mystery or uncertainty as it did before. There are many reasons that support this, one large one being: most people (>99% or more) can never adopt a complete 1:1 adherence of a complex GTO strategy.

let me try to say the same thing in a different way:
Player 1 is an outlier and is able to adhere to a complicated and unsimplified mixed frequency GTO strategy and sits your 5/10 game, after 10000 hours they would walk away a winner in that game.

Player 2 also has a very solid understanding of GTO strategy, but less than player 1 AND in doing so, they understand where diverging from GTO strategy decisions would net them greater profitability by identifying how and where to exploit the mistakes/holes of their opponents stratgies. After 10000 hours, they would way away a winner in that game.

Player 1 and Player 2's win rates would differ by some noticeable ammount defined as "δ bb/100", but in our hypothetical, both are positive figures where its likely Player 2's win rate is higher than Player 1's.

Now Player 1 and Player 2 take these strategies and play 1,000,000 against each other. Player 2's win rate in this match up will always be a negative number.

This may strike some as contradictory and I'm happy to explain why but i'd rather give people the chance to think about it on their own first.