The joy of trying to find strategy articles on the internet
The key to improving my results with AK/AQ type hands - just don't play it all!! lol
If nobody ever 3-bets without QQ/KK/AA then poker is going to become a very dull game... but perhaps I'm not giving people enough credit when I enter pots
"How to Play Ace-King in No-Limit Texas Hold'em
Ace-King, the Big Slick, is a big starting hand in No-Limit Texas Hold'em but it is still a drawing hand. It is a difficult hand to play and for many players, AK is often a big money loser in the long run. In fact, for this reason, some players don't play Ace-King at all.
Handling a Preflop Re-reraise
If you get re-reraised preflop, it is often advisable fold since anyone re-reraising here should most likely be holding AA or KK. Of course, they may be holding QQ but its still wiser to fold. The reason is because firstly, most of the time you will be wrong and the re-reraiser is indeed holding AA or KK. When that happens, you are at least 70% dominated. Worse still, you lose even more if you hit the ace or the king on the flop. Secondly, even if you are right and your opponent is only holding QQ, you only have 1/3 chance of hitting your ace or king on the flop. Finally, even if you hit the ace or king, you will not get paid off since your opponent will usually fold his QQ when overcards hit the flop because you have raised preflop and likely to hold the ace or king."
Ace-King, the Big Slick, is a big starting hand in No-Limit Texas Hold'em but it is still a drawing hand. It is a difficult hand to play and for many players, AK is often a big money loser in the long run. In fact, for this reason, some players don't play Ace-King at all.
Hmmm, not sure I agree with this. Yes it is a difficult hand to play for many players but it is only a big money loser if we mis-play it. VS Super Nits facing a 3bet we can just fold if we know they won't 3b without kk or aa! I'd play it against anyone else depending on what I know about their style. You will frequently see players push all in preflop higher up where the 3betting and 4 betting ranges include "light betting". However, not so much at microstakes. Against calling stations who can't fold any pair then betting three streets for value is the way forward as over time we will make money from these players.
Well that was two brutal sessions of cash today. I didn't make too many outrageous mistakes, but AA and KK are just not my friend at the moment.
Should have realised it might be one of those nights when I 3b a 5x open to 15x, get called, bet big flop and turn and end up being outdrawn for 100bb by 75s that catches a 5 on the river for 2pr.
That was my play against the stations.
Against the loose players I couldn't hit a cow's behind with a banjo... maybe should learn to just go with A-high hands and assume I'll be good enough, but struggle to accept that sort of high-variance/super-light call down being such a nit.
In total, being just over 4BI down probably wasn't so bad.
Can but hope that variance will fall back my way and spin back up again next time out.
But hang on a minute, terrible session but the bankroll has gone up?
Yeah, OK, I pretty much deserved the cash session because lady luck was super kind to me in the 7pm freeroll tonight.
A fish shove with A9 (straight after the AA v 75 hand above) got called by AK (and a hopeful A2) but hit a 9 on the river to near treble up.
Mid part of the tourni I flopped a set of jacks and doubled up. Then got the same two jacks next hand and near doubled again vs AJ.
Probably got a bit too frisky with 10 left and tried to steal shove (with c 10bb stack) with 89 on the button. Called by QJo but 9 was my lucky river card again.
Down to 4 with top 3 getting entry to UKOPS1... I'll be honest, I took the cheats way out and regged the tourni at this point.
There was one player in the final 4 playing way too loose and thankfully it wasn't too long before they KO'd themselves and so...
shakinaces02Entry to £25,000 UKOPS 1 + As you have already registered/qualified for this event you have been awarded the cash equivalent of £110, which is equal to the Buy-in and Fee.
Received a random text from an unknown number with a name of a horse and race meet. No idea who from, they didn't respond when I replied 'who is this?'
Well, can't really fail to have a punt, so lumped what was left in another gambling account on it to win and tuned in a cheeky bit of radio at work.
Just a quickish stint as got a couple of mates around for dinner.
Yet more rivers destroying my premium hands, I feel like a broken record and really don't want to, but the last week or so it is just proving impossible to win a pot with AA/KK apart from the odd occasion you raise pre and get no callers...
The daft thing is, I'm sure I must be doing reasonably well because I'm not stationing / sucking out and if I were to remove all the AA/KK hands (not assume I won the, just remove the hands from my session completely), I'd be nicely up at the moment.
It just makes me really query that assumption when my cash is going down - I know I still need to improve, we all do, but am I kidding myself about my ability and am actually a far worse player (with a LOT MORE to improve)?
Ah well. May return for a cheeky hour after dinner if I'm not too tired, otherwise here's hoping the weekend madness sees an upturn in performance!
A cheeky hour or so which would have been a few quid better if I hadn't mugged myself over in a FH vs better FH hand. If I'd be concentrating more in that hand, the oppo pretty much showed me that the river had topped my flopped FH.
To make things worse, the reason I just lazily called was because I had a tougher decision on another table at the same time and looking back at the FH hand meant I timed out for an all in call vs a maniac with TPTK on a mono board (he showed TP with a 4 kicker).
Also, 2 days after my last post about this:
Player
Action
Cards
Amount
Pot
Balance
xxx
Small blind
£0.05
£0.05
£6.66
xxx
Big blind
£0.10
£0.15
£6.20
Your hole cards
J
10
xxx
Fold
shakinaces
Raise
£0.20
£0.35
£8.34
xxx
Fold
xxx
Fold
xxx
Call
£0.10
£0.45
£6.10
Flop
4
K
A
xxx
Check
shakinaces
Bet
£0.23
£0.68
£8.11
xxx
Call
£0.23
£0.91
£5.87
Turn
Q
xxx
Check
shakinaces
Bet
£0.40
£1.31
£7.71
xxx
Fold
I can't believe how I happen to be at the table so frequently when royal flushes arrive. If I've picked the right number it's a 30,940 / 1 shot which means that I ought to have played in excess of 250,000 hands on Sky to have seen 8 or 9 of them now?
Maybe my multi tabling has gotten me closer to that number than I thought, but feels more like I'm overdue going a year + without seeing another RF at my tables!!
Read, read, read some more
Have dug out some good articles in Poker Player in the last couple of days which I think have made useful bedtime reading to try and focus my mind on one or two simple concepts - ones which I pretty much already knew, but prove a good refresher reference.
Some of the stuff Ross Jarvis adds in there I think is hugely helpful to micro levels. He seems to have a knack of writing beneath his ability and stating the obvious to mirco stakes players - a lot of the pros that write stuff tend to be thinking (and explaining) at far too high a level for someone at my stakes (rightly so) which I think can often result in my trying to make sense of it... then levelling myself against a level 0 calling station that just doesn't warrant any sort of fancy dan plays.
I barely played on Friday, pretty much hit a wall after the week or work so lost a few quid and when no enthusiasm was forthcoming, switched off the laptop and sank a couple of beers, watched a film and left everyone else to the pokers.
Saturday I was feeling a lot more. Wasn't much going on in the early afternoon so played a bunch of NL4 to drown my sorrows at yet another crushing defeat for Nottm Forest in the lunchtime KO. I pretty much hate football right now and would love it if the season could end immediately.
Then after AK < AQ in the iPad freeroll it was cash all the way. 207pts raked in indicates it was easily the most volume I've put in for a while, bouncing between tables on a regular basis to avoid NL10-reg tables as players moved around.
Only one table was particularly beating me, thankfully that being a CAP game where nothing could stick. Elsewhere the poor variance of recent sessions was mainly reversing itself and I was playing good tight poker by and large.
There were a couple of things I think I spotted as areas for improvement.
1) Getting the most out of my big hands
One hand in particular I knew I ballsed up as soon as it was finished. I need to add more subtlety and not just chuck the kitchen sink at pots all the time. There is a time and a place to shove rivers / bet big every street and there are times to find plan B to get all the money.
2) Keep a closer eye on NL10 multi tablers and, if tangling with them, have a better plan as to how the hand will run
I'm pretty sure there was one reg that owned my soul multiple times, but I didn't play close to A game against him and pretty much pulled my own pants down in some spots.
Need to either avoid getting into those spots by playing premiums only, or think things through in more detail. FWIW I think this is 90% positional - probably caused my downfall by trying to play back too frequently when I was OOP.
I'm in a bit of a rush atm so can't post a long reply, but I'll come back and try to give some input about playing AK/AQ. I just wanted to say that I don't know where you found that article but it sounds like pretty terrible advice.
That's always the danger online, like you can go and watch a load of poker training vids on youtube but you might not know if the guy is a clueless fool and just filling your own game with leaks/bad thought processes.
"How to Play Ace-King in No-Limit Texas Hold'em Ace-King, the Big Slick, is a big starting hand in No-Limit Texas Hold'em but it is still a drawing hand. It is a difficult hand to play and for many players, AK is often a big money loser in the long run. In fact, for this reason, some players don't play Ace-King at all. Hmmm, not sure I agree with this. Yes it is a difficult hand to play for many players but it is only a big money loser if we mis-play it. VS Super Nits facing a 3bet we can just fold if we know they won't 3b without kk or aa! I'd play it against anyone else depending on what I know about their style. You will frequently see players push all in preflop higher up where the 3betting and 4 betting ranges include "light betting". However, not so much at microstakes. Against calling stations who can't fold any pair then betting three streets for value is the way forward as over time we will make money from these players. Posted by freshfish1
Go to any casino and hear some genius say "it's only Ace high"
Diary is a good read Shakin. Condolences on being a Forest fan.
In Response to Re: a little fish trying to out-swim the sharks... : Go to any casino and hear some genius say "it's only Ace high" Diary is a good read Shakin. Condolences on being a Forest fan. Posted by Jac35
Cheers Jac - that's a filthy pic you have on your profile
The 5-0 was the final shoeing of a filthy run that was down to almost our whole first team being out injured, exaccerbated by the poison dwarf and his one man vendetta against all media outlets. Shame really as we could easily have got top 2 this season, but no team at this level can expect to perform with their whole first choice back-four and midfield missing for such a large part of the season.
Can but hope we get better luck with injuries next season and Psycho gets the club buzzing again and maybe uses his U21 connections to get in a handy loan or two (plus clear out the mass of deadwood, mostly left from Schteve's short, painful reign!)
I'm in a bit of a rush atm so can't post a long reply, but I'll come back and try to give some input about playing AK/AQ. I just wanted to say that I don't know where you found that article but it sounds like pretty terrible advice. That's always the danger online, like you can go and watch a load of poker training vids on youtube but you might not know if the guy is a clueless fool and just filling your own game with leaks/bad thought processes. Posted by Lambert180
Ha ha yeah - just to clarify I wholly acknowledge how poor that article (and the site it came from) is. If you don't want to be playing AK then it's time to find a new hobby!
It really is a challenge with the internet and it's hard to source free info that you can genuinely appreciate as being value adding. Trouble is, I'm still too cheap at the moment to sign up to one of the recognised coaching sites so am mostly getting by on their 'free' output via pokertube.
Any help offered via you or other winning Sky players will always be appreciated.
I suppose I currently take the view to c-bet all flops that are disjointed (eg J-7-2 rainbow) and have started to cbet more gutshot type flops (Q-T-2 rainbow) that can improve to the nuts, but when you get called it always feels so weak to have to give up, even though invariably a call means oppo has a pair and will be stationing if you bluff / bluff-betting PP type hands if you check.
Although yes, it is only Ace High so I do need to avoid over-valuing it!
Two pretty *sigh* days play resulted in very small losses totaling less than a quid.
Wasn't really going to play at all yesterday, but logged on and saw a couple of fairly nuts NL10 tables running so jumped on.
One table in particular was incredibly frustrating in that I felt I completely read a crazy big stack and his bet-sizing, but just couldn't pick up a hand... and even when I was 100% certain he was bluffing the river, I simply don't have the cajones to call with Q-high for my whole stack!
Despite that, I was looking to wander away with a decent little profit for an hours play, but then this happened:
Incredibly loud sigh - a great spot to be in position against the table maniac villain (that had already called me down with A high earlier in the session and seemed to be regularly trying to push people off with big all in bets) and table calling station UTG - BB was a multi-tabling reg who was certain to be set-mining here IMO.
Part of me wonders if this is a hidden leak in my game - I seem to suffer these suckouts loads but (in cash play) never seem to be the beneficiary of this variance. Is that a sign I'm not bluffing frequently enough?
I can only hope this (which was discussed at the table as well) gains me the credit to get a few extra bluffs through to compensate for throwing money away.
Original raiser was playing pretty wide, although didn't expect to see them at light as they were. BU was likely calling to take pot down later and seemed pretty competent post flop.
SB was playing multiple tables and I hadn't seem get out of line much... given they were effectively committing vs original raiser and knew they were highly likely to be called by both oppo (as it was the original raiser stopped that), this was never going to be a bluff-raise and would be JJ-AA and AK IMO.
I rolled the bet slider up to £4 and proceeded to dwell up until the time bar was spent, in what would have seen me berated for slow-rolling if I had actually pulled the trigger.
Unfortunately convinced myself the SB MUST have AA in this spot, no doubt gun-shy from losing so much with KK in the past fortnight.
loose opener, and creative button get squeezed by a good reg...sounds like a good spot for a light 4bet! never ever folding KK here. if you dont want to 4bet you should at least be calling. I think you know that though
edit---
just noticed stack sizes...probably not the best light 4bet spot, certainly never a fold though
Yeah I know I should have 4-bet here - just completely out-levelled myself. I need to stop making poker more complicated than it is and just be happy to gamble with KK.
Although saying that, I hate getting it in pre with anything other than AA for full stacks. With KK it feels like once the rake is factored in + the times oppo does have AA + the times you get sucked out on = it's just not that winning of a play for 100BB at cash.
FWIW I'm never cold-calling the 3bet. I was 100% expecting original raiser just to flat (the jam surprised me), then button 100% calls with position and I'm in a spot with KK, four-ways, OOP, without the initiative, which is just bleurgh.
There's another query though - if I DID 3bet (which I wouldn't), maniac jams, button calls, SB calls... is it a snap-call with KK?
A nice round amount to end last night. It should have been more but I ran into a few dodgy spots and made a dumb call with KK, to add to my dumb fold with KK above.
I didn't play especially great, but benefited from having position on some of the weak/loose players that made it easier to get decent value from my hands without needing to be too clever.
NumptyAces 1
Not been at the table long and had no notes on villain - was hoping to tangle with UTG limper. Villain may as well have just typed 'I have a 6' in the chatbox. Call. Facepalm. Start again.
Kept small on flop as wanted to get an Ace to come along for the ride - SB had given me a walk most of the time it was checked round, so figured that or a pair would make up a lot of their hands here.
Should I be checking back the river? I don't have much in way of notes, apart from that they have donked out flopped 2pr and set OOP vs me previously, then checked turn / river.
Villain here was playing his cards face up, he'd already lost a whole stack, deposited, come back to the table a couple of times.
His post-flop play seemed to consist of check/fold (no pair no draw), check/call (draw/no pair), bet pot (any made hand from 1pr upwards) - with very little deviation from that pattern.
I probably could have c/c the whole way, but given I'm a nit there's always a chance I fold another diamond on the river - plus if he's betting pot he's not folding anyway - so chucked it on the turn and saw the bad news.
Comments
The key to improving my results with AK/AQ type hands - just don't play it all!! lol
If nobody ever 3-bets without QQ/KK/AA then poker is going to become a very dull game... but perhaps I'm not giving people enough credit when I enter pots
"How to Play Ace-King in No-Limit Texas Hold'em
Ace-King, the Big Slick, is a big starting hand in No-Limit Texas Hold'em but it is still a drawing hand. It is a difficult hand to play and for many players, AK is often a big money loser in the long run. In fact, for this reason, some players don't play Ace-King at all.
Handling a Preflop Re-reraise
If you get re-reraised preflop, it is often advisable fold since anyone re-reraising here should most likely be holding AA or KK. Of course, they may be holding QQ but its still wiser to fold. The reason is because firstly, most of the time you will be wrong and the re-reraiser is indeed holding AA or KK. When that happens, you are at least 70% dominated. Worse still, you lose even more if you hit the ace or the king on the flop. Secondly, even if you are right and your opponent is only holding QQ, you only have 1/3 chance of hitting your ace or king on the flop. Finally, even if you hit the ace or king, you will not get paid off since your opponent will usually fold his QQ when overcards hit the flop because you have raised preflop and likely to hold the ace or king."
"How to Play Ace-King in No-Limit Texas Hold'em
Ace-King, the Big Slick, is a big starting hand in No-Limit Texas Hold'em but it is still a drawing hand. It is a difficult hand to play and for many players, AK is often a big money loser in the long run. In fact, for this reason, some players don't play Ace-King at all.
Hmmm, not sure I agree with this.
Yes it is a difficult hand to play for many players but it is only a big money loser if we mis-play it.
VS Super Nits facing a 3bet we can just fold if we know they won't 3b without kk or aa!
I'd play it against anyone else depending on what I know about their style. You will frequently see players push all in preflop higher up where the 3betting and 4 betting ranges include "light betting". However, not so much at microstakes.
Against calling stations who can't fold any pair then betting three streets for value is the way forward as over time we will make money from these players.
Can but hope that variance will fall back my way and spin back up again next time out.
A cheeky hour or so which would have been a few quid better if I hadn't mugged myself over in a FH vs better FH hand. If I'd be concentrating more in that hand, the oppo pretty much showed me that the river had topped my flopped FH.
To make things worse, the reason I just lazily called was because I had a tougher decision on another table at the same time and looking back at the FH hand meant I timed out for an all in call vs a maniac with TPTK on a mono board (he showed TP with a 4 kicker).
Also, 2 days after my last post about this:
Maybe my multi tabling has gotten me closer to that number than I thought, but feels more like I'm overdue going a year + without seeing another RF at my tables!!
Read, read, read some more
Have dug out some good articles in Poker Player in the last couple of days which I think have made useful bedtime reading to try and focus my mind on one or two simple concepts - ones which I pretty much already knew, but prove a good refresher reference.
Some of the stuff Ross Jarvis adds in there I think is hugely helpful to micro levels. He seems to have a knack of writing beneath his ability and stating the obvious to mirco stakes players - a lot of the pros that write stuff tend to be thinking (and explaining) at far too high a level for someone at my stakes (rightly so) which I think can often result in my trying to make sense of it... then levelling myself against a level 0 calling station that just doesn't warrant any sort of fancy dan plays.
The 5-0 was the final shoeing of a filthy run that was down to almost our whole first team being out injured, exaccerbated by the poison dwarf and his one man vendetta against all media outlets. Shame really as we could easily have got top 2 this season, but no team at this level can expect to perform with their whole first choice back-four and midfield missing for such a large part of the season.
Can but hope we get better luck with injuries next season and Psycho gets the club buzzing again and maybe uses his U21 connections to get in a handy loan or two (plus clear out the mass of deadwood, mostly left from Schteve's short, painful reign!)
Oh, and hope that your lot stay down of course
It really is a challenge with the internet and it's hard to source free info that you can genuinely appreciate as being value adding. Trouble is, I'm still too cheap at the moment to sign up to one of the recognised coaching sites so am mostly getting by on their 'free' output via pokertube.
Any help offered via you or other winning Sky players will always be appreciated.
I suppose I currently take the view to c-bet all flops that are disjointed (eg J-7-2 rainbow) and have started to cbet more gutshot type flops (Q-T-2 rainbow) that can improve to the nuts, but when you get called it always feels so weak to have to give up, even though invariably a call means oppo has a pair and will be stationing if you bluff / bluff-betting PP type hands if you check.
Although yes, it is only Ace High so I do need to avoid over-valuing it!
Two pretty *sigh* days play resulted in very small losses totaling less than a quid.
Wasn't really going to play at all yesterday, but logged on and saw a couple of fairly nuts NL10 tables running so jumped on.
One table in particular was incredibly frustrating in that I felt I completely read a crazy big stack and his bet-sizing, but just couldn't pick up a hand... and even when I was 100% certain he was bluffing the river, I simply don't have the cajones to call with Q-high for my whole stack!
Despite that, I was looking to wander away with a decent little profit for an hours play, but then this happened:
PlayerActionCardsAmountPotBalancesbSmall blind £0.05 £0.05 £17.75 bbBig blind £0.10 £0.15 £9.90 Your hole cards Q Q utgCall £0.10 £0.25 £8.57 utg+1Fold villainCall £0.10 £0.35 £13.06 shakinaces Raise £0.60 £0.95 £17.68 sbFold bbCall £0.50 £1.45 £9.40 UTGCall £0.50 £1.95 £8.07 villainCall £0.50 £2.45 £12.56 Flop 10 8 2 bbCheck UTGCheck villainCheck shakinaces Bet £1.75 £4.20 £15.93 bbFold UTGFold villainCall £1.75 £5.95 £10.81 Turn 5 villainCheck shakinaces Bet £4.00 £9.95 £11.93 villainAll-in £10.81 £20.76 £0.00 shakinaces Call £6.81 £27.57 £5.12 villainShow J A shakinaces Show Q Q River A villainWin Pair of Aces £26.17 £26.17
Incredibly loud sigh - a great spot to be in position against the table maniac villain (that had already called me down with A high earlier in the session and seemed to be regularly trying to push people off with big all in bets) and table calling station UTG - BB was a multi-tabling reg who was certain to be set-mining here IMO.
Part of me wonders if this is a hidden leak in my game - I seem to suffer these suckouts loads but (in cash play) never seem to be the beneficiary of this variance. Is that a sign I'm not bluffing frequently enough?
I can only hope this (which was discussed at the table as well) gains me the credit to get a few extra bluffs through to compensate for throwing money away.
Original raiser was playing pretty wide, although didn't expect to see them at light as they were. BU was likely calling to take pot down later and seemed pretty competent post flop.
SB was playing multiple tables and I hadn't seem get out of line much... given they were effectively committing vs original raiser and knew they were highly likely to be called by both oppo (as it was the original raiser stopped that), this was never going to be a bluff-raise and would be JJ-AA and AK IMO.
I rolled the bet slider up to £4 and proceeded to dwell up until the time bar was spent, in what would have seen me berated for slow-rolling if I had actually pulled the trigger.
Unfortunately convinced myself the SB MUST have AA in this spot, no doubt gun-shy from losing so much with KK in the past fortnight.
Although saying that, I hate getting it in pre with anything other than AA for full stacks. With KK it feels like once the rake is factored in + the times oppo does have AA + the times you get sucked out on = it's just not that winning of a play for 100BB at cash.
FWIW I'm never cold-calling the 3bet. I was 100% expecting original raiser just to flat (the jam surprised me), then button 100% calls with position and I'm in a spot with KK, four-ways, OOP, without the initiative, which is just bleurgh.
There's another query though - if I DID 3bet (which I wouldn't), maniac jams, button calls, SB calls... is it a snap-call with KK?
A nice round amount to end last night. It should have been more but I ran into a few dodgy spots and made a dumb call with KK, to add to my dumb fold with KK above.
I didn't play especially great, but benefited from having position on some of the weak/loose players that made it easier to get decent value from my hands without needing to be too clever.
NumptyAces 1
Not been at the table long and had no notes on villain - was hoping to tangle with UTG limper. Villain may as well have just typed 'I have a 6' in the chatbox. Call. Facepalm. Start again.
Think I should have raised more pre.
Kept small on flop as wanted to get an Ace to come along for the ride - SB had given me a walk most of the time it was checked round, so figured that or a pair would make up a lot of their hands here.
Should I be checking back the river? I don't have much in way of notes, apart from that they have donked out flopped 2pr and set OOP vs me previously, then checked turn / river.
Villain here was playing his cards face up, he'd already lost a whole stack, deposited, come back to the table a couple of times.
His post-flop play seemed to consist of check/fold (no pair no draw), check/call (draw/no pair), bet pot (any made hand from 1pr upwards) - with very little deviation from that pattern.
I probably could have c/c the whole way, but given I'm a nit there's always a chance I fold another diamond on the river - plus if he's betting pot he's not folding anyway - so chucked it on the turn and saw the bad news.