An Update, And Some Thoughts

Well - how has it been going?

The answer so far, is very unspectacular. I've played 5000 ish hands in December so far and have dropped 2 buyins. This, believe it or not, is a huge result IMO. The amount of setup hands that I've ran into has been unbelievable. QQQ was no match for a fish's boat when I have notes on him saying he can't fold basically anything, nut flush in a reraised pot lost against flopped quads (luckily he slow played it lol so I didn't get stacked), you catch my drift.

The sick thing is, I'm playing against people who are basically desperate to give their money away. It's crazy shit, honestly. If I could hit some hands I couldn't help to get paid. I think when this stuff happens, you have to try to minimise your losses and not let them affect you. I haven't always done this - whereas some people tilt off money I tend to get too passive and see monsters and this isn't ideal either, and hence I'm folding the best hand a lot, and also my lines are inducing river 'bluffs' which are tough to call.

Speaking of river bluffs, this is quite an interesting concept. I'm facing them left, right and centre and it's something I'm gonna take a quick look at. If you raise preflop from position, get called by the BB, he check/calls your flop c-bet, and you check behind him on the turn, you are almost going to get bet at on the river, regardless of what your opponent holds. Any hand worthy of his flop call (air/draw/pair/set/completed draw) will bet at you. If you take this line on the turn, you have to be a good judge of whether the guy is bluffing or not. One thing I have done is added to my HUD their river bet %. This is pretty useful, for obvious reasons. I'm much more prone to calling with a hand like second pair, obviously, if a draw hasn't hit. It's wierd, because I never really encountered this much at the low stakes but at 200NL it's very widely used by many of the 'less decent' players.

An illustration of this, is a hand I played yesterday. I open raised A8c from position. BB called. He check called my c-bet on a 28Q flop. Turn was a 4, where he checked and so did I. River was another Q, he bet pot. I called. He showed J9.

Depending on your hand and the board, you could '2nd barrel' the turn with a hand such as top pair or perhaps even second pair top kicker. This play will sort the men out from the boys, so to speak, and establish whether your hand is good. If this gets called, then I'm probably going to check behind on the river unless I improve. I like this play because it makes draws pay, they are making a mathematical mistake by calling, and saves a tough river decision. When I was crushing the game, I used to make a lot of 'information' plays, and plays which generally keep me out of tough spots. I think I've over complicated my decision making lately and this is something I want to address. I know 'information raises' get frowned on by some people, but honestly, I think this does help me a lot, especially as I'm prone to getting bet off a semi-strong hand on a latter street by an aggressive player.

However, on the other hand, you could try to induce a bluff with a check. I've probably done this too much lately, and not always for that reason. I've played too passively on the whole and this needs to be addressed too. My turn and particularly my river AF have dropped somewhat lately and this isn't good. I need to get back to the tough, aggressive player that I was when I was smashing this game for 9ptbb/100 over a good sample at 200NL.

Feeling sorry for myself, I was going to go through PT and list how many times I haven't even seen a flop with AA/KK (honestly, the amount of times I've got walks or everyone has folded is so sick), or how many times I've flopped a set (surely <10/5000 hands) but having got my thoughts down onto 'paper' has really helped and I'm feeling much better already. I need to adopt this frame of mind on the tables and I'll be the better player for it. I think running bad = playing bad to a certain degree, and it's certainly true that it induces passivity and fear of monsters.

After writing this, I feel much more positive already.

One final thing I want to add is this. When watching Green Plastic videos, I never really paid attention to when he talked about timing tells. However, I was reading his 'The Well' thread on 2+2 recently (He should do one on CR too IMO), and one of the things he mentioned was that an instant minimum flop checkraise is a feeler bet, and not a huge hand. I've been paying a lot more attention to things like this over the last couple of days, and this is definitely the case a huge amount of the time.

One hand which illustrates this was one I played yesterday. I had 88 and raised in position. The flop came 2 4 5 rainbow. I bet $12, and I got instantly minimum checkraised to $24. I made it $65 to go. He folded. Now - whilst I fully understand that I'm not getting better hands to fold, this raise is basically all I'm putting in with the hand unimproved. It simplifies my decision making and informs me where I stand. If I call, and he pots the turn (or even a 3/4 pot bet to $48ish), it's going to be tough to call him down possibly two streets (although he may slow down on the river). For me, in any case, simple decision making is something I like.

I said in an earlier post that for those people who haven't read them yet, I highly recommend the strategy posts on the 2+2 SSNL sticky thread. There's some excellent stuff on there.

May I wish everyone good luck at the tables, and no matter what happens, to stay positive and aggressive.