Road from NL10 to NL50

Totally.

Your explaination about soft and hard exploits makes perfect sense. Shouldn't do that with 22

Yea simplifying as TPTK bet most of the time is really dumb. I think (i hope) I know more than that, I just worded it way too simplified. In the last hand for example, I know that AA with spade would bet but without would mostly check. But you are right that I can't think this way, and will remind myself about what you said.

I do feel like those are good fold. I mean Ive grinded quite a bit micro stakes, and I just feel like the turn shove/xr are soooo underbluffed. I agree with your take on HUD, but I just dont think that people with 16 vpip or 19 vpip can all of a sudden pull out an 100bb bluff shove in the hands Ive shown above

But yea! Thanks for the thoughts! They are definitely constructive!

Day 13:

I think i grinded to much yesterday and today my brain is a mess. 300 hands in a realized i probably shouldn't play today. spewing around literally. taking today off

Br:784

Global Poker, WPT Gold, PokersStars, WinMax, PartyPoker, Ipoker, ignition. Pretty much anything other then ACR.

But idk, how easy/hard its to get on those sites using VPN (I don't use it).

On one hand you say you understand HUD stats and that you should not put too much weight on them. Yet in the very next sentence you try to correlate someone’s turn play with their VPIP. Even if the stat itself is accurate, it often has little to no correlation with how someone plays later streets. A player can be very tight preflop and very aggressive postflop. You keep making large assumptions about people’s ranges and tendencies based on very weak evidence, whether that is a supposed timing tell or a HUD stat that may have no relevance at all.

This is exactly why I think it is important to approach spots from a theoretical baseline first, and only make big deviations once you have clear and reliable evidence that justifies it.

Take the hands you shared as examples. I will not go through all of them, but focusing on the first two, there does not seem to be much planning or structure to how the hands are played.

Starting with the first hand, on the flop you choose one third pot. Why that size? What is the underlying thought process? At this point you should already be thinking that your hand is strong enough to play for stacks by the river. The question should be how you are going to construct that line. Starting with one third can be fine, but are you planning to size geometrically on later streets?

You get check raised on the flop, which is a great result for your hand. You are only losing to a very narrow part of the range, so you call. The turn is excellent, as it removes some combinations that beat you. You then bet one third again and fold to a jam. That implies you are assuming they never bluff raise or jam worse for value here. In my view this is a snap call, and you should already be planning to call if they shove. Your sizing may even encourage jams from weaker Ax hands looking for protection, as well as bluffs.

What are you actually losing to? There is one combo of 33, which likely does not jam the turn. There are three combos of JJ, and some of those are removed because they sometimes get 4 bet preflop also are they really going to jam turn with a house or quads? They should not really have AJo, but a weaker player might, and even then that is only a few combos. Even if you are extremely generous and maximise the combinations that beat you, you are still looking at a very small number overall. Compare that to the number of Ax hands they can have, plus potential bluffs, and it becomes clear that AK is far too strong to fold here.

You state with a lot of certainty that you were beat, yet you never saw their hand. You have to accept that sometimes when you call you will be behind. You are playing against their entire range, not just the top of it, and this hand is simply too high up in your range to fold given how the action played out.

The second hand follows a very similar pattern. Again, how are you choosing your flop sizing? This is a board that often favours very large bets, sometimes even overbets, yet you go with a small continuation bet. Is that just your default in 3 bet pots? How are you choosing your turn sizing? It is not geometric. At what frequency are you checking AA on the turn here?

You then reach the river and check fold, again assuming you are beat. This is another spot where the hand is too strong to fold. It is very plausible they are jamming worse for value or trying to bluff hands like AK. If you are folding AA on this line, you are massively overfolding. Once again you try to correlate their VPIP with their ability or willingness to bluff rivers, which is not a reliable connection.

Anyway, do not take this personally. You said you were open to criticism. From my perspective there is a consistent lack of forward planning in these hands, combined with very strong assumptions about opponents that are not supported by solid evidence.

Yes, I think what you've said are definitely all theoretically correct. AK in the first hand and AA in the second hand are both "top of my ranges" that I should never fold.

However, I'm making these folds exploitatively based my experience in the micro stake these lines are heavily underbluffed.

For the first hand, the first problem you mentioned is flop sizing. I think range b20-33 is totally fine for A high two broadway. I think solver mix some AK for b75 if its OOP vs IP, but even that is way too complicated. For turn and river if villian xc and the board allows, then the only option for AK is to bet big OTT and shove river. Turn solver goes b125 but who does that haha. Just b75 turn, shove river.

Focusing on the xr now, you said that I can beat some value such as weaker aces looking for protection. First, I don't think that it is intuitive at all to find hands like AQo as well as most Ax to xr. And second, my line in most people's perspective would be claiming to have an A. I don't think villian would xr jam any Ax. And how often does villian bluff here? Yea some obvious combos exist OTF, like KQ, KT for example. Maybe some other flush draws. But surely there would 1) not xr jam on a paired turn, and 2) the price is so good for them, especially the flush draw, to make an easy call. Perhaps the villian goes crazy and jam some 22 44. But i think it's so unlikely. Yes the value combos are very few, but so does this line occur not very often. I think villian purely has value here. I mean if he has a crazy bluff after my taunt he would show most likely.

For the second hand, again the first problem you mentioned is flop sizing. Here there's no solver answer because the preflop is so weird. I am actually unsure about the theory here. It is definitely true that in a normal headsup situation, for example villian opens and calls 3b, then this board is for sure big bet or check. I just think this hand is different in 2 ways. First it's 200bb deep, I am not sure if AA is comfortable getting it in here. I've never studied 200bb. But I would assume AA would prefer betting smaller since it's far from the nuts that deep. And second villian range is not normal call 3b range. It's flat preflop + cold call 3b range, which is predominately PPs that's lower than JJ. many many 66-99, in my experience. On a board like this, against a weirdly constructed villian's range, I think AA is furthur away from being nuts, and even range vs range perhaps villian has the nut advantage. I don't have nodelocker, so I can't run it. But I suppose a smaller bet might make sense given its 200bb and that villian has a weird range.

On the river, I decided to xf. Perhaps the better option is to block bet, now that I think about it. You said that villian might jam worse for value. What worse for value hand is he jamming? Is Nl10 players really jamming AJ OTR here for overbet? I am fairly confident that QQ is not even doing that, suppose villian have AJ and QQ is his range. And what bluff does he have on such a dry board, after cold calling 3bet? He doesn't have the natural bluffs, and even if those combos do exist, they are not calling flop and turn for big sizing. Is villian's 33 going to call flop and big turn, with the intention to bluff jam river? I simply don't think so. Yes, AA is my top of the range. But villian is not playing equilibrium strategy, and I also shouldn't be playing that.

I agreed to your previous post that HUD shouldn't be given too much credit. However, based on my experience, players that have a 16 vpip after a decent sample of size, who has proven their passivity by flatting and cold calling, does not suddenly thin value jam nor overbet river. I am not sure which site you previously played on, and I do acknowledge what you've done in your own challenge, super impressive. I just haven't met such players on GG Nl10 yet.

I am not taking it personally, I'm just sharing what I truly thought of these hands. I truly enjoy the conversation and the clash of opinions 😀

Day 13:

Just kidding poker is too fun, there's no taking today off. I grinded another session tonight and realized the sad reality of rake. I thought I was doing so well in the end, and the GG graph would agree. I walked out finding out that my BR has decreased by 3 from where I started. I mean the rake isn't too crazy, 7bb/100, and I don't know if any other sites are better, but man, its dissapointing. I can't start my session punting around being 5 BIs down and then decide to recover from it. Had I make less punts I could definitely make this session such a profitable one.

Folding to reg 3b shove next time, screw this.

Thought villian 59 vpip is a fish and would call worse. Knew he definitely had a flush because lead turn. But yea, probably just call. Losing to straight flush is kind of brutal though ahha

This is just straight up punt. Yea theory approves, but come on. 150bb deep, villian confidently 4 bets and b50 OTF. Not doing that with AK I don't think.

Straight up punt. Yes again theory approves jamming at low frequency, but NL10 players dont find the correct turn bluff barrells. I had no fold equity there.

I unfortunely lost the battle of 12th place by 30 points and didnt get that extra 0.5 BI :(. But I think im pretty talented in just sitting and grinding. That's a 9h30min straight grind. Maybe next time I should try a full 18 hour grind for that first place 😀

BR: 799 (I added the $20 leaderboard) I think I can get another 20$ from platinum fish haha. We'll count that in by the end of the week.

i'm loving this.
i feel your pain with paying off the nits, i've been overdoing it myself. 😂

i'll keep my thoughts on the hands short: putting hero's bet sizings aside, i don't fold the AK, but i fold the AA on that particular runout and line.
after that you fold a different AA to the fishy check/minraise of death, but you have a combo draw.
emoting before folding could be a sign of accumulated frustration.

the postflop assumptions i make based on VPIP/PFR are not about directly correlating them to aggression, but it's an important starting point for our hand reading.
if we are having trouble finding the bluff combos in a tight player's range, we have to consider the possibility that they don't exist. it's very easy for wide fish to overbluff because they have a very high proportion of garbage combos.

Yes DEFINITELY accumulated frustration. I use that everytime I face a turn raise. It's the emote of disdain because there's no bluff. Tilt got nowhere to release but at my villian. A moral victory in my book. And it does have an additional benefit: Imagine you pulled a bluff and your villian emotes you, how do you not show him the bluff? imo if I emote and villian doesn't show hand, its value.

WWSF is at 49% this week. Pretty bad imo.

Stats wise, just comparing with something I saw in Saulo's video, I guess a baseline for good frequency. Turn barrell also on the lower end. the hands that I opened I only cbet flop 54% of time. 3rd barrell seems fine, but that's probably due to under barrelling OTF and OTT. I do use a big bet cbet strategy on most two tone flops, but yea still wayyyy too passive.

Comparing BB stats, some pathetic xf and under xr. I think I overadjusted by BB strategy. Gotta be more aggressive here as well.

Day 14:

Just a quick session today, feeling a loss of confidence towards the end, decided to end it early.

That's it for the week: pretty good improvement from last week i'd say. But still so many punts, avoiding those could make the week so so so much more profitable.

In terms of goals:
[x] 27k/10k hands (yea played a lil too much) Next week school starts so I won't be able to play as much
[] 1h/4h study (haha didn't study this week at all. feel like exploit and being aggresive is way more useful now than grinding solver)
[] 1.5h/4h reading (yea lacking)

Goals for next week:
[] 15k hands. (I am doing 4 tables rnc now after learning some exploits. I feel it's manageable now)
- [] WWSF 51%
[] 2h study (yea gto is not that useful at nl10, but I still need to improve my basic knowledge at some rate
[] 2h reading (you know school is starting so I have excuse)

BR: 819 (i punted $10 in sunday $1 and $2 tourneys 😀

Punt of the day:

I am again influenced by some trivial stuff (ice cube) and thought villian could pull some crazy stuff. Yes he is probably tilted, therefore he xr his QQ to a huge sizing and turn barrels pot. I put 77 to win 215, so I need 36% equity. I have 32% facing overpairs. I was thinking maybe he is on some draws and he is tilted. Nah. I talked myself into this call of bad equity

Classes got canceled today because of big snow. Grind leaderboard day~~ hope I can get top 6 and get that 5BI leaderboard reward

The session was super tough in half way through, with 2 topset vs straight, 1 set over set, one bombpot KK vs AA, one turn all in with flush blocker AA vs flush.

but then in the afternoon couple recs slid in the groupchat and made many donations.

We are currently at 2nd of the leaderboard, but I need to go eat dinner and take like 2 hour break. Goal is to maintain top 5 today and get around $60 in leaderboard. Then the rakeback would actually be quite decent! If ggflip goes well, you know.. 😀))

Day 15:
I mean, the best day so far?
I was to planning to grind till 32k points, but I got so tired. Also lost 150bb preflop bomb pot facing shove. Couldn't folded AQo. One guy all in 150bb and another 100bb called. Perhaps a fold? I don't know. It was AQ vs QQ vs TT.

Stopping at 28K points means that I will probably only get, i dont know, $35 - $50 in rakeback. Damn it's tough to be grinding all day. Hella respect to those russians regs that I always see on the tables

He seems like a nice guy too 😀

BR: 910 (let's pray we get some nice leaderboard rakeback and some ggflip rakeback plzzzz)

Im closer and closer to my goal of 1050, which is 40+2 buyins for nl25. I have been stuck in NL10 for so long, and these couple days I've finally been playing quite well and understanding some general exploits.

I am so sorry villian

BR: 955 ($45 Leaderboard, ggflip let us down)

wait NO I actually got $25 from GGflip. I actually only ended up getting $20 from leaderboard becasue I missed the most important rush hour. bruh. Pretty unsuccessful leaderboard grind then. Nah i gotta run it back now because I am so dumb.

Day 16 & 17:

School has begun and I am so busy lowkey. Didn't play, but studied quite some preflop exploits and went over my data base for leaks. I think I found a couple leaks and am pretty pumped.

There are plenty of account sharing LB grinders on GG. GL with trying to reach their daily volume alone unless you start playing on meth. One of the many reasons I haven't played a hand there since the super user scandal that alone should've taken that site and it's douche bag ambassadors down.

Playing on meth sounds like a incredible idea.

which other sites do you use?

Day 18:

Played a little bit today early morning and late afternoon. I always make some mistakes early on and then start getting into the flow. Tomorrow I need to remind myself to get in the zone quicker. Not extremely happy with what I did today, but definitely not upset either. I think my preflop adjustments are good.

BR: 971

Tomorrow I think I can play 10+ hrs because I have no classes. Got something in the afternoon but hoping to do the leaderboard right this time, not missing 1AM to 3AM

Yeah 10/10 idea to play on meth, can't think of any long term -EV in that.

Any site that is not GG is better, as long as you have options ofc.

Day 19:

Faq the grind ended early because of tilt.

]

Quite unhappy with my play today. Again, the problem is taking hands for granted and not exploitatively folding enough. Yes, on the one hand it's run bad. But your villian gives you every opportunity to avoid. You can't play like a sheep and you gotta use your brain bro.

AA 4bp, river flush complete river donk shove 80 bb. Yes you have the nut flush blocker. But what do you expect a player with reggy stats to have except for flush? Shows JTs. - 130bb

BVB 120bb effective villian 5b not shove (what could it be??). Villian has 3% 3bet but you dont want to check. You see AKo and you go **** it lets go. Villian of course has AA. -120bb

Other big pots lost:
AA 4bp lose to KT. Flop TTx villian fast xr and shove turn. Couldn't dodge this imo. Or can I? does it population fast play JJ QQ often enough to justify the call? Perhaps I can fold? -100bb

Preflop villian 80bb effective AKo vs AA -88bb

80bb effective bvb JT629 river flush complete AKo with flush blocker ran into 86s flush. - 65bb

The small pots are feeling better and better though. WWSF 52% for the day. I can't be playing half-asleep and making mistakes like this. Nono.

BR: 959.6