In his debut video Sonny plays 4 tables of $25NL 6-Max while discussing typical leaks people have at micro stakes. He also goes into an in depth discussion on how to construct light 3-betting ranges versus late position opens.
Wanted to stop in and say this has been a long time coming. Sonny put a lot of work into this video and I think it turned out quite well. I'm excited to welcome someone to Leggo with a lot of relevant experience at the 25NL and 50NL levels to help players at those limits.
I thought this was a great video, lots of good topics covered in a good clear manner. I really liked the idea of the mid session presentation on a theme.
You said the arguments for 5bet shoving TT+ AK+ would have to wait till another video. I think that it would be great if you could cover this in your next video as another presentation. I would almost always 5b shove QQ+ vs randoms at 25nl but would expect to be doing pretty badly with TT and JJ. I don't think that most players 4b light much at all and a ton of them have very tight 4b ranges. I don't have the sample to confirm this and i guess you do so it would be good to see the numbers based on your experience.
I thought this was a great video, lots of good topics covered in a good clear manner. I really liked the idea of the mid session presentation on a theme.
You said the arguments for 5bet shoving TT+ AK+ would have to wait till another video. I think that it would be great if you could cover this in your next video as another presentation. I would almost always 5b shove QQ+ vs randoms at 25nl but would expect to be doing pretty badly with TT and JJ. I don't think that most players 4b light much at all and a ton of them have very tight 4b ranges. I don't have the sample to confirm this and i guess you do so it would be good to see the numbers based on your experience.
Thanks-my second vid. is already done and will feature another presentation-this time on dealing with flop raises in 3 bet pots (there was an interesting hand I butchered which kind of led me to discuss that topic). I am presently working on my 3rd video which will deal with crushing short stackers at micro stakes. Just briefly on the TT and JJ, of course you are going to be well less than 50% equity with these hands when your 5 bet gets called, but in my experience you get enough folds to compensate. Let's say you 3 bet to 2.5 at 25 NL and your opponent 4 bets to 5.75. Now your EV is 5.85 if he folds, -25 if he calls and you lose (on 100 BB stacks), 22.6 if he calls and you win, and -2.5 if you decide to fold to the 4 bet. Going through my last 50 hands in this spot and excluding hands against non regulars, my opponent called the 5 bet 56% of the time and folded 44%. When he called, he usually showed QQ+ or AK, but I ran into 99 twice, ATs once, ATo once, AQo once, and AQs once. So if I construct a range for the opponent based on that sample both JJ and TT have around 41% equity. So if you break down the numbers:
Total EV = -0.5 which is better than the -2.5 you would get if you folded to the 4 bet. It's nothing great, and it's not any sort of absolute proof obviously but my feel is that against most of the regs at 25 and 50 NL you will be better off 3 betting for value with TT and JJ as opposed to 3 betting as a bluff. I would really love to address this topic in more detail in a future video though as I do think it is a very interesting one. The basic idea, however, of 4b/5b game is that if you are really going to widen your value range the best hands are the smaller pairs. Since most people don't 3 bet 77-99 out of the blinds, your best hands for playing the 4 bet/5 bet game are the small pairs 22-66. With these your equity will run in the 33-35% range against a typical 4 bet/call from the button. Other hands usually have less than 30% equity and are much less attractive candidates. So there are certain spots where you can profitably play the 4 bet 5 bet game with these small pairs, but they are pretty opponent and dynamic dependent. TT and JJ are to some extent as well, as there are a small number of regs I would not 3 bet for value with these hands, but only if they are on the very nitty side.
I agree with you about the 3-bet range stuff but one thing I don't hear people stress enough is relying on game flow and villain's postflop tendencies which are also huge for me. I also factor in my perception to him accordingly. I say accordingly because at 25nl it's going to be really weird because a lot of the time they just have certain lines they always take because they saw it in a video before.
question about the AK hand on Kxx with FD. You bet and your opponent checkraises flop, bet turn, bet river. You say that you want to call because of his 'smaller betsizing'. On the other hand you can use that argument to say that he could have a monster and wants to let you call. How can you decide that this villain uses small betsizing with a bluff? In my games (30nl/50nl on 888, semiregs and regs often use bigger betsizing when bluffing and smaller betsizing when valuebetting)
BTW i dont think that more than 1% of the 25nl regs ever have KQ in that spot :)
question about the AK hand on Kxx with FD. You bet and your opponent checkraises flop, bet turn, bet river. You say that you want to call because of his 'smaller betsizing'. On the other hand you can use that argument to say that he could have a monster and wants to let you call. How can you decide that this villain uses small betsizing with a bluff? In my games (30nl/50nl on 888, semiregs and regs often use bigger betsizing when bluffing and smaller betsizing when valuebetting)
BTW i dont think that more than 1% of the 25nl regs ever have KQ in that spot :)
Yes I as well have seen many situations where the smaller bet sizing can mean a value hand and the bigger sizing a bluff. For instance, some players do this in situations where they perceive you as having top pair with an iffy kicker or second pair. If they have top pair with the top kicker there they will bet a small amount that will make it easy for you to call, while if they have a missed draw they will make a big bet to get you to fold.
I have found, however, that people rarely take this approach with their nutted hands when they perceive you to have a strong holding as well. For instance, if you have 77 on a KQ7 board and you figure your opponent likely has KQ, AK, or AA, almost everyone will instinctively take a line to play for stacks as they usually figure it is suboptimal (quite rightly I think) to only try for 60% or so of the opponent's stack. In the hand you mentioned it was clearly quite likely that I had an excellent but non nutted hand, so if my opponent had one of the few nutted hands that I feared I thought he would take a different line. Of course, some players play differently so if he had shown up with a set I would have just taken a note-but I still would have felt right about the call.
Also, I agree with your comment that KQ will be incredibly rare there-if I saw that that would definitely be worth a note as so few regs play top pair that way.
whats your opinion about using huds? what hud do you use
I started playing cash games seriously about 18 months ago. I had an excellent coach and my plan was to steadily build my bankroll and play up through the different levels, and then unfortunately there was the crackdown on online poker here in America. Suffice it to say I had a huge amount of money on Full Tilt, which I lost and that was a rather traumatic experience. At this point, until the legal situation clears up with regards to online poker, I don't want to leave much more than $500 or so in my online bankroll so I will go ahead and just play microstakes-most of the hands in my graph were since the shutdown of the sites last April. I also intend to live abroad about 3 months out of the year, and I do intend to play somewhat higher stakes during those times. I will also mix this in with some live play. The hands you saw me play on Stars were the result of a 3 month trip I took to Budapest, where I went to play in the international chess tournaments organized there and mix that in with some online poker play.
Since I usually mass table, a hud is pretty much a necessity for me as otherwise it would be too hard to separate the fish from the regulars. If, however, you play 4 tables or less I think you could do just as well without one, and I know some people who say that you do better without one since it helps you read the players better and not get bogged down in numbers that may be misleading. I use Hold'em Manager and the numbers I keep up there are typically just VPIP/PFR/3bet%/# of hands. If I need more specific info I just click on the box usually. I have also created a popup for my 3 bet statistic that lets me see how often they 3 bet versus an open from each position, as I tend to find this quite useful. For instance, some people 3 bet the same hands no matter what seat the initial raiser opened from, while others are very tight against early openers and extremely aggressive versus late openers.
Another question about that AK hand. If you think he has TP so often, why not jam turn and rep a draw? I think players at this limit hardly fold any TP here, and they are not likely to bluff river when they miss their draw, so why not get ur value on turn?
Another question about that AK hand. If you think he has TP so often, why not jam turn and rep a draw? I think players at this limit hardly fold any TP here, and they are not likely to bluff river when they miss their draw, so why not get ur value on turn?
Yes-quite a good observation. If I feel strongly enough about my bet sizing read to call down in the AK hand, then I would be better off jamming here. That prices him out on his draws and also earns value if he has something weaker than AK that he can call with like a pair+flush draw type hand.
