Tuesday, December 21, 2010

YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG

I desperately wanted to post a win tonight. I was playing well, no big mistakes, no guessing in marginal spots. Example: I call a raise with 55, pot goes multiway, board is 667. Not a bad flop for me. Someone comes out betting. I check my HUD for his aggression but I don't have any hands on him. With players to act behind me, I fold. No floating, no turning my 55s into a bluff with a raise, no silliness - just fold and move on.

I have made a few adjustments to my game this week. In full ring, I'm now folding ace-queen and king-queen offsuit from the first three positions (still raising the suited variety). I'm limping up front with aces and kings more now since everyone loves to punish the limpers. If someone does, I backraise and try and take the pot down, or set up a low enough SPR to shove by the flop. If nobody raises, I play for a small pot and don't go crazy (out of position with one pair in a multiway pot is a great way to lose a ton).

One other adjustment - I'm trying to three bet light from the button more. I have started to look for the correct player type- a normal TAG who is raising at least 10% from the position he is currently raising. Also a fold to three bet up at least in the 60s. These stats give me an aggressive player raising wide enough, and being smart enough to fold. I have found some success working this into my game.

Because I was so eager to book a win tonight, I was continually refreshing my HEM session data. Down 10 blinds. Then 20, 25. Up to -15. This is obviously the wrong way to play poker, but it wasn't affecting my play - I was playing normally, just distracted by the stupid red line in the database software. I finally broke the water line with poker sixes. Raised a limper in position, he called me. Flop was queen-two-two. He thought for a few seconds about calling my cbet, then folded.

I refreshed my HEM screen again. +1 big blind for the session! Huzzah! I closed my tables and called it a night.

2 comments:

Forrest Gump said...

"I'm limping up front with aces and kings more now since everyone loves to punish the limpers. If someone does, I backraise and try and take the pot down, or set up a low enough SPR to shove by the flop. "

Matt, I've found min-raising with AA/KK from EP more profitable. The benefit I've found is:
- you build a bigger pot pre if someone 3 bets you.
- this is the same play many regs make with low/med pocket pairs. When i limp-4bet, they often put me on a low pair and I'm more likely to get called.
- open limping then check raising tips many players off to your hand. You're basically playing face up post flop. If its multi-way, it's very hard to put in enough to give the set miners bad odds.

Anonymous said...

After listening approximately 2000 or more than bad words which explains me the pain of boss due to only my one mistake,he told me i will fired you,i was just thinking Ohh man my one mistake lead me to the jobless person,i was looking in to the red eyes of my boss,after 5 min of silence,he come again and said,one of the most beautiful words of my life"Boss:David always remember Life never goes in the way wish to be"
that was a really nice line from my bad boss