Darkened Poker

The thing about most poker interviews is you often have to listen to 5 or 6 hours of bad interviews to collect a few gems of info.  But at 2 + 2 I have been surprised how good some of these are even though they are often a bit of a time investment.  Most of the pokercasts that are not coverage of some tournament are really worth your time.  Free knowledge…

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Darkened Poker

Was doing some coaching for a friend with some screen shots from his poker tracker database.  In the last post about his stats it was identified that he was not respecting position nearly enough.  In this screen shot we can see that all the money he is making with his good hands he is then loosing on High Card ( Pre-Flop, c-bets, draws ) and One Pair hands.

Final Hand Stats

How to fix this massive leak:

High Card

• From his last stats we know he is not the aggressor enough so he can not c-bet and take enough pots down on the flop.   This means he is playing hit to win poker and that is causing his high “Fold Flop %”.  He needs to raise more, get heads up more so he can c-bet and take down pots.
• He has a pretty high “Fold Turn%”, either people are pricing him out of the draws or he is giving up his c-bet on the flop and people are taking the pot away from him.  More aggression pre-flop and on the flop would fix this for him as he would either get free cards from other players on his draws or he would not be in be in this situation to begin with.  This also likely means he is playing out of position to much and people are betting after he checks the flop.
• 32% “River Fold” means he is folding 7% of his total hands on the river, that is about right 1/2 his draws are bound not to come in.
• 11.61 % WTSD ( Went to show down ), what is interesting about that is it is the exact number of hands that he gets to the river with so he is never bluffing on the river at all with a hand that can not win a show down ( or only 18% of the time will ).  He should be throwing in some good river bluffs so people do not get in the habit of calling him down with small pairs any time there is a draw out there as they know he will give up on the river.

One Pair

• 41.36 % W$SD ( Won money at showdown ), this is really bad, at the river you should have the winning hand a majority of the time or it is impossible for you to make money.  He really needs to work on his hand reading skills and get away from 1 pair hands earlier when he is beat, if he is playing multiple tables he needs to stop and focus on the action at just one table until he recognizes all the patterns.
• The “Fold Turn & Fold River” % are a little high they should only be about 18% if he fold anytime a draw got there.  Most likely this means he is not realizing his pair is beat on the flop and only figuring it out on the turn or river which is very expensive.
• The “Fold Flop” % is most likely way too small since we know VP$IP is on average 22% and that means he is playing a lot of non top pair & top kicker hands against multiple opponents.  If he his not going to play more flops heads up his fold # needs to be closer to 60%, if he is playing flops heads up then his fold % with One pair should be closer to 15%.

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Darkened Poker

This post is a continuation of the thought process started in “9 Handed Late Position starting hand range for Texas Hold’em” , we will finish the topic out and talk about how to bet individual hands from late position.

Factors that go into making this betting chart:

• Betting with either hands that are good EV heads up if there are no limpers so far or very good multi hands if there are limpers since most people that have money in tend to call late position raises.
• Betting with enough with different hand types that people can not put you on a range of hands within the 30%
• Betting with at least 50% of all the hands we play

ie: AA 4 = Bet 4 out of the 6 possible pairs and limp with the other 2

Limping:

• The hands that are only limping hands need volume and I would probably not limp with them unless someone before you also limped.
• 7% of your monster hands ( AA – JJ AK – AQ )  you will be limping with to catch people trying to raise you off your limp, this % does not really have to go up since your in late position and there is less people to raise you.
• 8% of your hands ( small pairs ) you will limp with but can stand to call a raise with for set value.

Betting:

• Betting with a lot of your Top EV hands but also has it balanced with low pairs and suited connectors so they can not always just call your raises and re-raise your c-bet on low flops.
• Betting with small pairs and suited connectors does mean you have to c-bet a lot flops if you get heads up and count on they only hit the flop 33% of the time to make a profit.
• Also sometimes betting with all suited cards that contain an Ace or King

2-Betting:

• Again a good range of Top EV hands that play well heads up but balanced with the low pairs to avoid people putting you on a narrow range of flops.
• Of the big pocket pairs that you limp with I suggest 50% of the time re-raising with them and just flat calling if heads up so your smooth call is not predictable and means you have a small pair.
• Now also sometimes 2 betting with suited connectors to add more hands that hit the lower range.

3-Betting:

• Still trying to keep a range of hands as a lot of people call 3-bets light just to take flops away from people.
• Dropping all hands that can be dominated and just playing hands that flop hard.

4-Betting:

• No longer worried about a range of flops, if they call the 4-bet then we really want to have the best hand, I am only putting in enough hands so they can not always assume we have AA or KK and will consider giving us action.

I would also map these betting percentages on each hand the color of the cards instead of just trying to randomly remember how often your betting each hand.  Humans are really bad at being random.

ie  AA 4 = Bet 4 out of 6 possible pairs, I would bet all pairs that are mixed color and only limp with the ones that are all black or red.

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Darkened Poker