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Diary of a determined player

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  • peter27peter27 Member Posts: 1,634
    My performance in the late stages of a tournament continues to frustrate me. I finished 3rd in a £1k bounty hunter today, but was actually extremely demotivated given that I went to the FT with a 200K stack and 2nd place had a 50k stack. Not winning a tournament after having a massive stack has happened to me a good 4/5 times now. Truth be told, I was very uncomfortable from the final 18 onwards. I got to the FT purely based on lucky rivers.

    I have studied a theory called range capping which I'm sure most of you are familiar with already. I feel like I have some "performance capping" going on at the moment where I just don't posses the ability to win a tournament outright through skill, rather than relying solely on luck. It does lead me to question whether there's any point playing at all right now. There's only so much progress you can make with constant min cashes.

    On the other hand, my game in the early stages feels stronger than ever, I do feel able to run up a stack with relative ease now. My cash rate has improved from 1-in-10 to 1-in-3 roughly. I know, sample size blah blah blah. I get the concept, but I have to use some data to assess my performance otherwise I could be playing for years without making any progress.

    My plan is to finish off this mini's bet. Get through mini UKOPS, and then take a small study break without playing at all. Maybe a few days, maybe a week. Let's see how it goes. What's crucial is that I know where I am struggling. I just need to find a way to resolve it.

    I did want to say thanks for all your feedback recently by the way. The latest hands you guys analysed has genuinely assisted in developing my play. It has also led me to think about each hand in considerably more detail. I really appreciate it. :)

    Q1 2020:
    Online: Buy-Ins: £566.74 / loss of £58.92 from 83 MTT's / 7 FT's / 4 Wins
    Live: Buy-Ins: £380.00 / loss of £280.00 from 7 MTT's / 0 FT's / 0 Wins

    Q2 2020:
    Tournaments: 95
    Buy-Ins: £685.83
    Cashes: £973.32
    FT's: 17
    Wins: 4

    Mini's £10 Bet vs @cal69 (shown 2nd below):
    Played: 31 - 30
    Buy-Ins: £252.00 - £241.00
    Cashes: £91.77 - £94.84
  • Shelley7Shelley7 Member Posts: 128
    Maybe post some hands from the FT, so people can see where it went wrong, they may be able to give you some suggestions or tips. Do you feel like you play too tightly on the FT, or change your style of play at all?
  • NOSTRINOSTRI Member Posts: 1,459
    edited April 2020
    peter27 said:

    bbMike said:

    %of time you're not called x (1.5bb)
    +% of time you're called and you win x (12bb)
    -% of time you're called and you lose x (12bb)

    Hmm. I would estimate 80% of the time not called, 5% called and win, 15% called and lose. That would give an answer of exactly 0. I'm not sure what this equation is trying to show, what's the output?
    Let's take your assumption that the BB folds 80% of the time and therefore assume he's calling with the top 20% of his range. Your hand has about 40% equity against that range.

    Redoing the above equations, we get:

    80% * 1.5bb = +120bb
    8% * 12bb = +96bb
    12% * 12bb = -144bb

    Total: +72bb profit. Note that we make more from his folds than we do from our wins.

    The above 20% range is essentially all the Ax, all the pairs, and KTs+ and KQo. If we use a more realistic 20% range that sheds some of the worst aces and adds more suited and offsuit broadways, your equity gets close to 50% and you're making even more money. When it's a 50/50, the wins and losses cancel each other out and every time he folds becomes pure profit.

    Let's assume the SB is a total nit and only ever makes this call with TT+, AQs+ and AK. We'll call it 4% of hands, even though it's a bit less. We have approximately 28% equity against that range and again, we'll round up to 30% because maths is hard.

    96% * 1.5bb = +144bb
    1.2% * 12bb = +14.4bb
    2.8% * 12bb = -33.6bb

    This time we have a massive profit from his folds compared to the times he calls and we lose. The tighter he's calling, the more money we make from his folds, despite our equity disadvantage.

    I think this demonstrates why we can shove really wide against a short stack. He can't call with a very wide range, all he can do is fold and give us the money. The tighter you think they are calling this shove, the more profitable shoving just about anything against them becomes. Good players will understand this dynamic and call quite a bit wider but against bad or recreational players we should be happy jamming a very wide range in this spot.

    Here's a chart I pulled off RYE for SB vs BB 10bb effective. The BB actually has 11bb in this example but it's close enough. As you can see, you can use a very wide range. 62% of your hands. Hopefully you understand why now.

  • bbMikebbMike Member Posts: 3,701
    peter27 said:



    bbMike said:

    %of time you're not called x (1.5bb)
    +% of time you're called and you win x (12bb)
    -% of time you're called and you lose x (12bb)

    Hmm. I would estimate 80% of the time not called, 5% called and win, 15% called and lose. That would give an answer of exactly 0. I'm not sure what this equation is trying to show, what's the output?
    The output is the EV of the shove in blinds. EV of folding is 0, so we just have to beat 0 to make it a better option, and profitable - there might be other lines that get more EV than shoving, but the shorter you get the harder this is, particularly OOP.

    I'll express the calculation slightly differently which may help understanding.

    You got your fold equity, and you've got the equity of your hand versus the calling range you've assigned.

    You've assumed getting folds 80% of the time, and KQ has ~45% equity against the other top 20% of hands.

    So we can say the EV of the shove is

    0.8 x 1.5bb = 1.2bb (this is your fold equity)
    + 0.2 x ((0.45 x 24bb)-11.5bb) = -0.14bb

    So shoving here earns you approx 1bb, versus the 0bb of folding.

    When you're a very large stack in a tournament too, the ICM means that losing 12bb in the spot out of say 60bb doesn't harm your EV in the tournament itself as 1bb chip is not worth the same in cash terms across various stack depths.
  • FeelGroggyFeelGroggy Member Posts: 824
    It would probably benefit you to study some push fold content away from the tables.

    From a pure theory perspective, if both players were playing optimally and you were only allowed to shove or fold, at your stack of 12.5bb you should be shoving as wide as K4o, even Q2s, J4s, 87o, 74s and the big blind should be looking you up with the likes of K5s, K8o A2o, J9s. You can jam hands like 65s 75s A2o for over 20 blinds.

    In this spot with KQo not only should you be happy to shove, you should expect to be called by worse very often.

    It would be a mistake to call the optimal range because people shove far too tight on average however it is useful to know. It is far more useful to know optimal shoving ranges and that is something you should look to incorporate even if you go a bit tighter than suggested.

    FWIW the 44 hand you sent before is a high variance jam but is probably just about making chips. The AQ is an easy call.

  • peter27peter27 Member Posts: 1,634
    I'll do a proper update tomorrow, but just wanted to mention a few things quickly.

    - Took a rest day yesterday and only did studying which was long overdue, and also quite refreshing.

    - Played a £30 satellite on another site today and won a £150 tournament ticket which I will use to play the GUKPT #4 6-max event. It is the first time I had played on that site, and I have to say that tournament seemed very weak.

    - In that GUKPT satellite I witnessed the most crazy hand I think I have ever seen. Two people with significantly above average stacks play, the pre-flop action goes: raise, re-raise, shove, call. I then see a race between 48o and T3s. :o

    - I lost my mini bet with @cal69 by £3.07 and have paid him the £10. In truth, we both did terrible. However, both of us saw our results significantly improve towards the end of the bet which is promising. We have now made an identical bet for the mini UKOPS series.
  • MP33MP33 Member Posts: 6,237
    peter27 said:

    My performance in the late stages of a tournament continues to frustrate me. I finished 3rd in a £1k bounty hunter today, but was actually extremely demotivated given that I went to the FT with a 200K stack and 2nd place had a 50k stack. Not winning a tournament after having a massive stack has happened to me a good 4/5 times now. Truth be told, I was very uncomfortable from the final 18 onwards. I got to the FT purely based on lucky rivers.

    I have studied a theory called range capping which I'm sure most of you are familiar with already. I feel like I have some "performance capping" going on at the moment where I just don't posses the ability to win a tournament outright through skill, rather than relying solely on luck. It does lead me to question whether there's any point playing at all right now. There's only so much progress you can make with constant min cashes.

    On the other hand, my game in the early stages feels stronger than ever, I do feel able to run up a stack with relative ease now.


    I,m having same problem. I spend hours building a stack and getting in a good position but then don,t want to get knocked out and start bottling hands and tightening up to much.
    I plan to stop looking at the leader board and pay jumps too much and as someone else said concentrate on push/fold charts which i always think look too aggro but just make my decisions based on them - GL

  • MP33MP33 Member Posts: 6,237
    Just reading some of this diary and theres some gr8 advice on here.

    I think Waller made a good point on last page about forgetting your chipstack and just thinking of it in BB,s . I find this tough on Sky esp. when multi-tabling whereas other sites you can play in BB,s. I only learnt this a few weeks back but its definitely helped my game
  • peter27peter27 Member Posts: 1,634
    NOSTRI said:

    peter27 said:

    bbMike said:

    %of time you're not called x (1.5bb)
    +% of time you're called and you win x (12bb)
    -% of time you're called and you lose x (12bb)

    Hmm. I would estimate 80% of the time not called, 5% called and win, 15% called and lose. That would give an answer of exactly 0. I'm not sure what this equation is trying to show, what's the output?
    Let's take your assumption that the BB folds 80% of the time and therefore assume he's calling with the top 20% of his range. Your hand has about 40% equity against that range.

    Redoing the above equations, we get:

    80% * 1.5bb = +120bb
    8% * 12bb = +96bb
    12% * 12bb = -144bb

    Total: +72bb profit. Note that we make more from his folds than we do from our wins.

    The above 20% range is essentially all the Ax, all the pairs, and KTs+ and KQo. If we use a more realistic 20% range that sheds some of the worst aces and adds more suited and offsuit broadways, your equity gets close to 50% and you're making even more money. When it's a 50/50, the wins and losses cancel each other out and every time he folds becomes pure profit.

    Let's assume the SB is a total nit and only ever makes this call with TT+, AQs+ and AK. We'll call it 4% of hands, even though it's a bit less. We have approximately 28% equity against that range and again, we'll round up to 30% because maths is hard.

    96% * 1.5bb = +144bb
    1.2% * 12bb = +14.4bb
    2.8% * 12bb = -33.6bb

    This time we have a massive profit from his folds compared to the times he calls and we lose. The tighter he's calling, the more money we make from his folds, despite our equity disadvantage.

    I think this demonstrates why we can shove really wide against a short stack. He can't call with a very wide range, all he can do is fold and give us the money. The tighter you think they are calling this shove, the more profitable shoving just about anything against them becomes. Good players will understand this dynamic and call quite a bit wider but against bad or recreational players we should be happy jamming a very wide range in this spot.

    Here's a chart I pulled off RYE for SB vs BB 10bb effective. The BB actually has 11bb in this example but it's close enough. As you can see, you can use a very wide range. 62% of your hands. Hopefully you understand why now.

    This was a fascinating post. I've actually read it through 3/4 times over the last couple of days. It's blowing my mind that we can have more profitability despite less equity, but I do now get why it's a +EV play. I do have one question which is still a bit of a barrier in my mind though;

    I now see why this is a profitable play, and why over a long period of time this will make you money. However, isn't there an argument to say that it's just not worth the risk? In the original example, I was shoving 12BB effective. In our example, I am losing 12% of the time. When that happens, my stack drops from 54BB's to 42BB's. For the sake of argument, let's assume the average stack was 48 BB's. Suddenly, I'm below average after previously being comfortable. Even though probability is on my side here, I feel that there is an argument to save your chips and wait for a better spot. But, maybe you're going to reply telling me that these are opportunities where you need to take the risk and picking up 10BB's here and there are why people win tournaments; something which I am admittedly struggling to do.

    An example I have in my head is Russian Roulette for £500. You've got an 83% chance of winning £500, but would you do it? Certainly not.

    I assume you wouldn't be doing this every hand. If you do it for a third/forth/fifth orbit in a row, the opponents calling range will get very wide.
  • peter27peter27 Member Posts: 1,634
    Q1 2020:
    Online: Buy-Ins: £566.74 / loss of £58.92 from 83 MTT's / 7 FT's / 4 Wins
    Live: Buy-Ins: £380.00 / loss of £280.00 from 7 MTT's / 0 FT's / 0 Wins

    Q2 2020:
    Tournaments: 107
    Buy-Ins: £803.63
    Cashes: £1168.01
    FT's: 19
    Wins: 4
  • bbMikebbMike Member Posts: 3,701
    I don’t think you should be equating dropping from 54bb to 42bb in a poker tournament to shooting yourself dead. The downside of losing this pot really isn’t that severe!

    How do you define being comfortable in a tournament? There is almost zero difference in the playability of a 54 and 42bb stack. If you were risking 20bb from a 35bb stack then the point is relevant.
  • Jac35Jac35 Member Posts: 6,473
    edited May 2020
    People often say wait for a better spot
    What’s the better spot?
  • waller02waller02 Member Posts: 9,013
    edited May 2020
    You need to think about the long game Peter rather than the result of a certain spot in any one game. If a play is profitable, then over a large sample size you are making money.

  • NOSTRINOSTRI Member Posts: 1,459
    AA wins about 80% of the time.

    Banging 63% of your hands in against a shortstack in the above example wins 88% of the time.

    Is it ever worth not playing AA in case you lose a few chips?
  • MattBatesMattBates Member Posts: 4,118
    edited May 2020
    Of
    peter27 said:

    NOSTRI said:

    peter27 said:

    bbMike said:

    %of time you're not called x (1.5bb)
    +% of time you're called and you win x (12bb)
    -% of time you're called and you lose x (12bb)

    Hmm. I would estimate 80% of the time not called, 5% called and win, 15% called and lose. That would give an answer of exactly 0. I'm not sure what this equation is trying to show, what's the output?
    Let's take your assumption that the BB folds 80% of the time and therefore assume he's calling with the top 20% of his range. Your hand has about 40% equity against that range.

    Redoing the above equations, we get:

    80% * 1.5bb = +120bb
    8% * 12bb = +96bb
    12% * 12bb = -144bb

    Total: +72bb profit. Note that we make more from his folds than we do from our wins.

    The above 20% range is essentially all the Ax, all the pairs, and KTs+ and KQo. If we use a more realistic 20% range that sheds some of the worst aces and adds more suited and offsuit broadways, your equity gets close to 50% and you're making even more money. When it's a 50/50, the wins and losses cancel each other out and every time he folds becomes pure profit.

    Let's assume the SB is a total nit and only ever makes this call with TT+, AQs+ and AK. We'll call it 4% of hands, even though it's a bit less. We have approximately 28% equity against that range and again, we'll round up to 30% because maths is hard.

    96% * 1.5bb = +144bb
    1.2% * 12bb = +14.4bb
    2.8% * 12bb = -33.6bb

    This time we have a massive profit from his folds compared to the times he calls and we lose. The tighter he's calling, the more money we make from his folds, despite our equity disadvantage.

    I think this demonstrates why we can shove really wide against a short stack. He can't call with a very wide range, all he can do is fold and give us the money. The tighter you think they are calling this shove, the more profitable shoving just about anything against them becomes. Good players will understand this dynamic and call quite a bit wider but against bad or recreational players we should be happy jamming a very wide range in this spot.

    Here's a chart I pulled off RYE for SB vs BB 10bb effective. The BB actually has 11bb in this example but it's close enough. As you can see, you can use a very wide range. 62% of your hands. Hopefully you understand why now.

    This was a fascinating post. I've actually read it through 3/4 times over the last couple of days. It's blowing my mind that we can have more profitability despite less equity, but I do now get why it's a +EV play. I do have one question which is still a bit of a barrier in my mind though;

    I now see why this is a profitable play, and why over a long period of time this will make you money. However, isn't there an argument to say that it's just not worth the risk? In the original example, I was shoving 12BB effective. In our example, I am losing 12% of the time. When that happens, my stack drops from 54BB's to 42BB's. For the sake of argument, let's assume the average stack was 48 BB's. Suddenly, I'm below average after previously being comfortable. Even though probability is on my side here, I feel that there is an argument to save your chips and wait for a better spot. But, maybe you're going to reply telling me that these are opportunities where you need to take the risk and picking up 10BB's here and there are why people win tournaments; something which I am admittedly struggling to do.

    An example I have in my head is Russian Roulette for £500. You've got an 83% chance of winning £500, but would you do it? Certainly not.

    I assume you wouldn't be doing this every hand. If you do it for a third/forth/fifth orbit in a row, the opponents calling range will get very wide.
    Do you pay any attention to the average stack during the mid to early stages of a tournament? If you do does this effect plays you make during a tournament. Does a 42bb or 52bb stack effect how you play?

    Are you that amazing a player that you have all these great +ev spots?

    If you think opponents range adjusts then use that information to adjust our range.
  • peter27peter27 Member Posts: 1,634
    edited May 2020
    bbMike said:

    I don’t think you should be equating dropping from 54bb to 42bb in a poker tournament to shooting yourself dead. The downside of losing this pot really isn’t that severe!

    Hah, I was waiting for someone to reply with this :D Of course, you're right. The point is that following the maths isn't always necessarily the best option.

    Having said that, I would probably play the Russian Roulette scenario for £1M. But that's a different topic entirely!
    NOSTRI said:

    AA wins about 80% of the time.

    Banging 63% of your hands in against a shortstack in the above example wins 88% of the time.

    Is it ever worth not playing AA in case you lose a few chips?

    That's an excellent point. I have no counter-argument. Cheers!
    MattBates said:

    Of

    peter27 said:

    Do you pay any attention to the average stack during the mid to early stages of a tournament? If you do does this effect plays you make during a tournament. Does a 42bb or 52bb stack effect how you play?

    Are you that amazing a player that you have all these great +ev spots?

    If you think opponents range adjusts then use that information to adjust our range.

    I do pay some attention to it as a gauge of how I'm progressing, but I wouldn't say it impacts my play.

    There are certainly better EV spots that shoving king high into a player who could have any hand i.e. you have no information.

    I'm certainly going to progress with the "SB shove vs small stack" strategy as I trust your guidance. I can't say my brain is 100% convinced yet, maybe 90% of the way there, but I guess that extra 10% will come as I start to use the move over a longer period of time. Thanks everyone :)
  • peter27peter27 Member Posts: 1,634
    Extremely challenging few days of mini UKOPS. Poor runouts are killing me.

    Q1 2020:
    Online: Buy-Ins: £566.74 / loss of £58.92 from 83 MTT's / 7 FT's / 4 Wins
    Live: Buy-Ins: £380.00 / loss of £280.00 from 7 MTT's / 0 FT's / 0 Wins

    Q2 2020:
    Tournaments: 112
    Buy-Ins: £842.93
    Cashes: £1169.89
    FT's: 19
    Wins: 4

    MUKOPS bet with @cal69:

  • MattBatesMattBates Member Posts: 4,118
    I'm certainly going to progress with the "SB shove vs small stack" strategy as I trust your guidance. I can't say my brain is 100% convinced yet, maybe 90% of the way there, but I guess that extra 10% will come as I start to use the move over a longer period of time. Thanks everyone :)

    This is one of the hard things about poker. Doing things that don't feel right/natural. Sometimes you have to trust the maths/advice from other players. One key thing I have found is to make sure you understand the logic behind the plays so you can apply things correctly.
  • peter27peter27 Member Posts: 1,634
    edited May 2020
    MattBates said:

    This is one of the hard things about poker. Doing things that don't feel right/natural. Sometimes you have to trust the maths/advice from other players. One key thing I have found is to make sure you understand the logic behind the plays so you can apply things correctly.

    I have slowly figured out that making seemingly un-natural plays is the right approach when following advice. It is very valuable to me that you confirmed it though, cheers.
  • peter27peter27 Member Posts: 1,634
    Went deep in the mini UKOPS 19 event today, but didn't make the cash. I did manage to take five heads but I am particularly frustrated about this one after spending well over an hour as one of the bigger stacks. I have a number of hands to share here.

    1)
    PlayerActionCardsAmountPotBalance
    peter27Small blind40.0040.0013195.00
    Elmo69Big blind80.00120.002987.50
    Your hole cards
    • A
    • Q
    Davros82Call80.00200.005290.00
    sprad8Call80.00280.0019400.00
    SJspanky1Call80.00360.0014127.50
    tempest1Call80.00440.0013600.00
    peter27Raise515.00955.0012680.00
    Elmo69Fold
    Davros82Fold
    sprad8Fold
    SJspanky1Call475.001430.0013652.50
    tempest1Call475.001905.0013125.00
    Flop
    • 5
    • 5
    • 8
    peter27Bet555.002460.0012125.00
    SJspanky1Fold
    tempest1Raise1670.004130.0011455.00
    peter27Call1115.005245.0011010.00
    Turn
    • J
    peter27Check
    tempest1All-in11455.0016700.000.00
    peter27Fold
    tempest1Muck
    tempest1Win5245.005245.00
    tempest1Return11455.000.0016700.00
    I had diary reader @SJspanky1 'willing me on' whilst I was on this table which was nice.
    My pre-flop raise was very large due to the number of callers, I think that's pretty standard. Relatively dry flop, which tempest1 re-raises. Now this player had been very aggressive the whole tournament so I could easily see him making that play with nothing on the basis it doesn't really hit my range. That combined with the dry board made me call. I didn't think far enough ahead because when he shoved the turn I didn't know what to do. I feel like I backed myself into a corner here. I eventually folded even though I thought I was likely to be ahead. Struggling to know what I should have done better here. Do I shove after his re-raise based on my read? What hands can he have after flat calling pre and then re-raising on the flop? A5 (very loose), 55 (extremely unlikely), 88 (possible). I feel like I was ahead in all honesty.

    2) Very simple one here. New table, no reads. What do you do if you were me?
    PlayerActionCardsAmountPotBalance
    johnnyySmall blind250.00250.0016905.00
    nagromBig blind500.00750.0041290.00
    Your hole cards
    • 6
    • 6
    Bust1Call500.001250.0015661.25
    TsaaaarRaise1500.002750.0019730.00
    jedinemoFold
    peter27Call1500.004250.0042333.75
    johnnyyAll-in16905.0021155.000.00
    nagromFold
    Bust1Fold
    TsaaaarFold
    peter27Fold
    johnnyyMuck
    johnnyyWin5500.005500.00
    johnnyyReturn15655.000.0021155.00
    (1/2) ..
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