Part 1- The Basics

In order to work out how to crush, the simplest place to start is often to say 'what do I despise happening to me?' That is because, assuming you aren't self taught like Isildur, we've all been brought up on the same 2p2/Cardrunner/Leggo/ way of thinking and our default game is, largely, very similar.

Playing around with GTORB or other game theory software shows just how mental this really is, as the 'solutions' we've all reached are mostly a product of group-think, loss aversion, and wanting to make our lives simple.

A very good example of this is the hatred all regs have of calling marginal pairs OOP, especially on middling, wettish boards such as t85ss. Actually, scrap that, it's just as true on AK5r in late position. Take a look at this simulation, standard range for BB PF.

We have villain calling all GSs + on the flop, then all flushdraws and Ax+ on the turn, 50% of his Kx.

Our profitability of betting on the turn:

Obviously not all these hands will be in our betting range, but the point is that a ridiculous number of hands are profitable here, and that's with villain being fairly call happy with his Kx. Crucially, I think Kx calls very rarely. If Kx doesn't call, then we print money by betting 100% of our range on the turn. If it calls sometimes, we still make money betting any hand with a smidgen of equity, simply because of all the gutshots that fold turn. if they folded flop, then we make more money on the flop, if they call turn and river, we make more money on the river, etc etc.

Where the exploitation can come in, is that the reason x gets folded so much is because villain is expecting to be playing a 'competent' opponent. By competent, they mean one that they assume is going to make them indifferent at best in calling Kx. What I'm saying is, maybe we should be slightly less 'competent' in that regard, until people adjust.

The effect of over-adjusting for reverse equity is more pronounced on wetter, middling boards. I've done a CREV example with 97dd on 874cc BB-CO. Check calling the flop, VS a standard opponent and us playing standardly, loses us 2 BBs. In my opinion, the hand should mostly be folded PF, check raised on the flop, or check raised on the turn. In reality, the hand is virtually always called on the flop in order to fold the turn.

Because this blog is about aggression, not about our own adjustment to it, I'll give you the cliffs, which are that in position we need to be borderline maniacal with our barrelling frequencies, until we decide that a villain has adjusted. Alongside this, we need to be value betting and value bluffing very thin, giving us protection, keeping our options open for the river, not completely owning ourselves VS lighter calldowns, along with not handing our opponent the chance to control his own bluffing frequencies on the river. This would not be a factor if people were able to bluff into capped ranges by check raising and barreling, but they are not.

An extremely important factor in this is awareness of inflection points. The typical inflection point at 500 is on the turn, ie if the turn gets called then so will the river, except for those hands with showdown + good improvement potential. Typically the weaker the player, the more chance that their inflection will be the river, because they are less aware of the 'importance' of avoiding reverse equity spots and are more call call fold happy.

Tomorrow, I'll go over more barrel spots, in particular late position on very dry boards.

About This Blog

As I play the 500nl Zoom games, I occasionally get a flash of inspiration that allows me to win a pot that, under normal circumstances, should not be 'mine'. Indeed, I actually rely on these flashes of inspiration quite a lot. In order for it to happen, I need to be playing in 'The Zone', which is a basically description of being fully confident, refreshed, relaxed, and thus able to play poker in a super sick manner.

In the past 3 months, since going on an anxiety drug called Citalopram, this zone has become more of a habit and my results have been very good. When in the zone, I have a feeling of complete control over the table, and feel myself able to completely overrun it. This is partly a feature of the 500nl Zoom games, which are insanely nitty in many respects, but the player pool is still obviously skilled enough such that it's not enough to simply go bet bet bet a lot. When in the zone, I find myself picking up on vast imbalances in timing, sizing, and then obviously the manner in which the hand has been played- turn stabs weakening the checking range, etc.

From my experience of playing in the zone, I am strongly of the opinion that there still exists infinite room for pure exploitation of these imbalances. Sure, people drop out the games complaining it's 'solved' (lol), but all that has actually occured is that the super duper obvious imbalances have largely been shored up, and the players who quit haven't been good or wise or patient or confident enough to advance their game to the next level. In a lot of spots, people have cured one imbalance, and simply created a new one elsewhere. An example is the propensity to check back weak and middling top pairs- great, you can't get stabbed into on the turn as much, but you're giving free cards and now you're much more open to flop check raises. What's more, you're still susceptible to turn and river overbets.

(
While sorta on this subject, I want to stress a really crucial point, and that is the players who can still beat midstakes+, have gotten too wise to share their important secrets on training videos. They won't misplay hands or anything, but they'll gloss over super important concepts and over-stress the unimportant. Watching them, sure you might pick up the odd thing, but the main goal of watching them should be to work out how to destroy what we are seeing in the videos, because this is how the population at large is now playing and is going to play.

So stop watching them to try and copy their style, in the current poker environment we need to come up with our own ideas and concepts.
)

So I digress...... in the past week or so I ran out of Citalopram, I basically forgot to order more. This has meant I've been less relaxed at the tables, and my higher level brain functions are finding it much harder to constantly re-invent solutions in complicated spots.

It's made me realise just how little I have learned to unconscious competence, in particular the art of winning pots. (Lucikly I still have playing the nuts down to a tee, sicko that I am).

This art, of being super high intensity, is particulary important in Zoom and especially at 500nl, because as I already mentioned the population at large is ripe for exploitation in this manner. Or put another way, there is zero edge in 'out-showdowing' people at 500nl. Also, counter-intuitively playing in this manner is the only way to get regs to loosen up and call you down once in a while.

So, this is going to be a study blog, with CREVs and stats and things, and focus exclusively on the lost art of playing like a maniac and printing money in doing so. I'm sharing it only with very few trusted players, so please don't share it if I have linked you to it.

Enjoy!