Put hero on a goddamn range part II- The 6max years

The original full ring version of this operation basically sucked because I didn’t have a clear direction to take it. I think I was hoping to start with a good idea and it would set its own course, eventually creating a solid foundation to build from. Basically all I got from it was a hand chart on a desktop sticky. Black Friday dealt the final blow to that op as well as my poker aspirations, at least for a little while.

After black Friday I wandered around the wasteland of US friendly poker sites trying to get a fix from anywhere I could; freerolls, play money on stars and even Zinga poker on facebook (pathetic). If Zinga chips were real money I’d be a millionaire. Eventually I binked a freeroll on Cake for $5. With the gods on my side I played $1 sngs and somehow drove my roll up to $20. I started grinding 4nl and eventually started taking shots at 10. With help from rakeback and some more freeroll moniez I’m solidly rolled for 10nl and taking shots at 20.

I switched to 6max because fullring on cake is a fucking nitfest and was boring the crap out of me. Over 20k hands I have a decent winrate at 6max but that’s pretty much from just mashing buttons and running good against mega whales. Which has been fine but I’d like to get out of the micros someday so I guess it’s time to try to start learning again.

For this operation I’m using HEMs “perfect your game” articles as a guide. It’s written for 50nl+ and I’m not sure how outdated it is but it’s a good place to start. I’ll be copy pasting basically everything from the articles and compare my stats with those from winning 6max players. I realize just mimicking good players isn’t the best way to become a great poker player but that’s not what this is about, it’s about building a solid foundation.

So let’s kick this thing off. Here’s the link to the first article for anyone that wants to play along. res://HMArticles.exe/PluggingLeaks1.html *edit- dunno why the link isn't working, I'll try to fix that.

And here are my 'plugging leaks 01 – overall’ stats for 6max.



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There are some glaringly obvious leaks here even without the comparisons. The gap between vpip and pfr is way too big and I’ve actually started working on that. Somehow I just got a little too cally. I didn’t have a HUD for most of these hands and it seems to help keep me in line if I can see my own stats during the session. I realize this is a leak in itself but I need to focus on one thing at a time. I like having a place to start so I think I’ll leave it at the introduction and get down to business later. As always, all comments, suggestions and beratements are encouraged.

Hi supa!

I never really understood the argument against having a gap in your vpip and pfr. ABCD says we have a calling range, and with ppl raising a ton...and us being restricted in how much its optimal to 3bet (for value or a bluff), it seems something like this is reasonable. Obviously the gap is bad if its the result of limping though, and also if its too wide because you could probably 3bet or fold more instead. I'd say 6% is fine though, idk. Set mining 77-22 is ~3%, and its not hard to add some broadways and strong sc's that arent good 3bet hands (Stuff like AJ, ATs that would be lol to fold, depending on the raisers range of course).

If you're finding you're losing money in these cally spots...i think u should focus more on adjusting your strategy with when and what you call with rather than maintaining a close vpip/pfr. Obviously i havent played in a year so whatever, but it makes sense to me! :P

JKDS is back and the world is a better place for it!

I get what you're saying and agree to an extent. I think for me it's not limping but calling raises in places I'm not sure what to do. Like places where I could be 3betting but I don't know whether or not I'm actually doing it for value, so I just call. I guess it's really just a matter of if I don't know why I'm calling I shouldn't be.

I'm glad you brought up ABCD because it's something I need to spend more time with and understand. It's obv what this op is about so incorporating it in here makes sense. I haven't had time to get rolling on this thing with the holidays and me being a degen grinder and a bit of a lush, but I'll get it going soon.

Thanks for checking in J, glad your back.

I hate actually having to work on shit but I got my balls busted today for having a shitty blog and not updating with graphs and stuff. So here are my updated stats.



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The following shows average bb/100 for players using a datamined database of NL 6 Max from NL100 to NL1000 over the last 6 months – I took results from the 1790 players with at least 5K hands in the database. For each stat I have grouped results into 5 equal ranges and then taken the median bb/100. Often it is more meaningful to look at combinations of stats but this should give you a general guide.


Median bb/100
VPIP: < 18.3 2.18
18.3 to 20.2 3.46
20.2 to 21.9 3.04
21.9 to 25.3 3.72
25.3 + -2.76

At 24.3 we’re looking good according to above but I think with my postflop skills this number could stand to be lower. Probably watching out for things like calling out of position is the best solution here. I also find myself limping behind with Axs or suited connectors which I probably should be raising. Thoughts?

Now, if you are in that bottom group what do you do? Well, if you have never had a VPIP below about 22 then taking steps to get below this would make a big impact on your game. Throw away a lot more hands from early position and the blinds to get your VPIP down and you should find that you are more profitable and can play more tables and face less difficult decisions. Once you have learned how to play very well with a lowish VPIP and you have spent a lot of time working on your postflop play, that is where you can safely return your VPIP to higher levels. Some of the most profitable players in the game have VPIP’s in that last section but they do this by exploiting players, mixing up their play and constantly making +ev decisions postflop.

Threw this in because it made sense.

Median bb/100
PFR < 12.3 -0.97
12.3 to 14.4 2.48
14.4 to 16.1 2.27
16.1 to 17.7 3.84
17.7+ + 3.64


This clearly shows that being aggressive preflop is key. Really you want to generally be above 15% here. Generally profitable ways to increase your PFR% would be raising limpers instead of calling, 3betting raisers especially when they raise from late position and stealing more blinds.

Nothing really wrong here. I’m in the higher group but not by much. Same as with vpip I could probably tighten up just a little.


I jumped ahead for this next one but I felt like it belonged here. While at 77% I’m doing ok, this shows that there is a correlation between a closer vpip/pfr ratio and I could stand to squeeze this together a little more. But as JKDS noted, this probably isn’t a good substitute for better postflop strategy.



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Do You Have Sufficient preflop Aggression?

What we are looking for here is your PFR% divided by VPIP% and in the report you just ran it appears as a PFR / VPIP value. This tells you how often are you raising preflop out of all the times you put in money preflop. In the original article Pokey suggested your ratio be at least 50% but higher is better. In todays 6 max games anything close to 50% makes it extremely difficult to be a profitable player.

Here is the data from the mined database showing a strong correlation that high values lead to profitability although there is a point where not calling once in a while begins to impact your results as well. What was consistent is that very few people with a ratio less than 0.60 were winning players. If you are in that bottom group you need to raise more often preflop and call less often. When there are players limping in ahead of you, raise them (or fold) when you would normally call. When a player open from late position, 3bet him instead of cold calling etc.

Note: The database used hands from 4 to 6 handed No Limit and only included players with at least 5000 hands - this resulted in a sample size of about 1800 players. Using the median bb/100 is an effective way of overcoming sample size issues related to bb/100.


Median bb/100
PFR / VPIP < 0.57 -2.76
0.57 to 0.72 2.04
0.72 to 0.79 3.50
0.79 to 0.83 3.93
0.83 + 2.95

This isn’t much of a start but copy/pasting/imageshacking makes me tired and I want to grind some more tonite. I promise this will get more interesting.

Here’s your graph Fat.



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Filtered by stakes. Looks like I'm playing scared at 20nl and need to start playing like a man or stop taking shots until I have a full 20 buys.

10nl


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20nl


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Nice blog so far supa.

Looks like I too need to bring my PFR/VPIP% up.
I'd really like a link to the original HEM articles, although I'm a PT user, not HEM, so not sure if I'll be able to access them.

I totaly get what you mean when you say its a NIT fest at the Cake full rings. You saw my post about struggling on Cake. I've found the 4NL 6max to be pretty damn tight there too. I'm finding it really tough to find any Whales. My schedule forces me to play mostly durring the morning and day time hours though so that might have a lot to do with it. Have you found any specific times durring the day or night to be more profitable on Cake?

your stats look fine, you'll find that bad regs pay you off stupidly when you're flashin' larger than average regstats up front -- just keep workin' on postflop and you'll do fine. If you think you're playing scared at 20NL then start using your brain more and vagina less and remember that the regs are still not better than you cuz half of them break even and some even lose.

As it turns out the HEM articles are incorporated into HEM so no links available. I'll be copy pasting the pertinent information here, but this is mostly just so I can keep track of my progress and hopefully the people at HEM don't get pissed about it.

@Nickels- You really shouldn't be having too big of a problem at 4nl. If you're not winning your doing something really wrong. Even if you can't find whales you should be able to beat the nits for at least 5bb/100. I think the earlier hrs are harder to find great tables, but there's usually pretty big fish on cake at all times of the day. I played on a 20nl table this morning with 4 players that had vpip' of >45.

How many tables are you playing? This might be part of your problem. If your playing 6 or 8 tables I'd suggest dropping to 4 at the most, prolly 2 would be better. Mostly make sure you're playing tight, aggressive, positionally aware poker. Value bet your strong hands and don't try to get tricky. Slowplaying will cost you value, people call down with an amazing amount of crazy shit.

@d0zer- vagina

Playing terribad and running about the same. Lol ev gragh says I'm running 89000 bbs below ev. Can't be right but almost seems like it. Will get back in here soon to try and breakdown some leaks. Just needed a quick rant.

Since I'm sucking at doing anything productive with this operation I'll go with this. I love where I live.

Decided to pull $1k out of my cake roll to by a new bike. Hopefully by the time I actually get the check I'll have another 2k saved and have a decent down payment for the bike I want. Also hope cake doesn't take so fucking long I'm not riding until next winter and I'll be putting this bad boy around this summer. Still rolled for 20nl (kinda) so hopefully some rungood will pop me back up to the fiddys soon.

wait, poker money can be spend in the real world? kidding brah, good job. always nice to know some non-zero % of a valued possession was paid for with dirty gambling money.

I love it that you're using Spoon's "Put him on a g**damn range" as the title to this operation. How ya been? Hope it's all good with you. I'll be following along to see your progress.

Originally Posted by Robb

. How ya been? Hope it's all good with you. .

well according to the post a couple up , he's living under a bridge /pier now .

Originally Posted by rpm

wait, poker money can be spend in the real world? kidding brah, good job. always nice to know some non-zero % of a valued possession was paid for with dirty gambling money.

Yep, it's a really interesting thing. The last time I was able to use poker profits in the real world I was forced to cash out from stars by the DOJ. This time it's like, 'I want this, and hey, I actually have some cash over here I can use'. Who knew?

Originally Posted by Robb

I love it that you're using Spoon's "Put him on a g**damn range" as the title to this operation. How ya been? Hope it's all good with you. I'll be following along to see your progress.

Gotta keep spoon alive somehow.

Things have been good. Back to work full time again and it looks like at the next few years are gonna be really great. Working for a company that's building a couple hospitals locally so the works good and the pay isn't half bad either. Getting used to working my ass off again isn't easy but I don't remember anyone saying life would be. Now it's a matter of finding a balance between everything, esp when I'm dead tired. It's starting to take a toll on my br because I'm playing to often just because I found the time, but I'm nowhere near playing my A game. Need to step back and keep that in check.

I'll try to get back into this op and make some headway on it. I tend to get lazy and lose interest so feel free to pop in slap me around a bit if I'm slacking off.

Nice to see you around again. How've you been? Still livin in the sticks?

Originally Posted by Keith

well according to the post a couple up , he's living under a bridge /pier now .

If someone was in need of living under a pier they couldn't choose a better one. But no, not living under it, but it isn't a very far walk.

Awesome!

I see after some looking through the BC that Spoon's "put him on a range" is a no no now? Now it's trolling?

Next thing, you'll tell me FTR gave up advocating nitty br management.

Yep, I'm still in the sticks of North Georgia, in that part of the U.S. where you often hear: "I'm Bulldog born, and Bulldog bred, and when I die I'll be by-God Bulldog dead."

Loving life, just trying to get back on FTR and learn which is up in the poker world once more.

Easy game, amiright?

Funny. I remember writing a response to your last post Robb. Must have not actually posted it before navigating away. :P

If anyone's has some ideas I'm looking for a topic to research for my 1000th post. I'm not looking for anything too technical but something I can benefit from while researching and may be useful in the BC. I'm thinking bet sizing or value betting or something along those lines. Ideas are much appreciated.

Kinda cool little project I'm working on at work. Bending conduit is my favorite part of my job and prolly wouldn't still be in the trade if I couldn't do this stuff. Projects like this make me want to get up and go to work.

I worked as an electrician's helper part time when I was a teenager - long enough to appreciate how skillful that work is, and to know I couldn't do it.

nh

Originally Posted by supa

Decided to pull $1k out of my cake roll to by a new bike.

nh sir

Thanks guys.

Starting the "Insanity" work out tomorrow. 60 days of crazy high intensity work outs. Looks like hell. Actually looks like the hardest part is gonna be eating enough calories throughout the day. Should be interesting.

Oh, 2 weeks in and my cake account still shows cash out pending. I'm assuming that means they haven't done a fucking thing. I'd really like to be riding pretty soon. Hopefully they get it together.

Originally Posted by supa

If anyone's has some ideas I'm looking for a topic to research for my 1000th post. I'm not looking for anything too technical but something I can benefit from while researching and may be useful in the BC. I'm thinking bet sizing or value betting or something along those lines. Ideas are much appreciated.

i think the age-old B/F vs C/C on the river thing doesn't get as much attention as it deserves. i think most of us micro/SS grinders could be doing much better if we had a sharpened intuitive sense of when to be B/Fing marginal value hands and when it's best to C/C, what factors go into this decision etc etc.

Originally Posted by rpm

i think the age-old B/F vs C/C on the river thing doesn't get as much attention as it deserves. i think most of us micro/SS grinders could be doing much better if we had a sharpened intuitive sense of when to be B/Fing marginal value hands and when it's best to C/C, what factors go into this decision etc etc.

Good idea, thanks.

I'm trying to iron out my lagtard tendencies this month. I just keep running myself into shitty spots playing to many hands. This is all so far this month. The first big losses on the graph were 20nl and really just standard but hit the bankroll hard enough so I dropped to 10nl. Started adding 20nl tables again at 15buys.

Stuck myself on a crap table at the end there which is a big issue for me. If the table sets up bad like this I need to leave it and start a new one.

20nl vpip is scary low there. Could be sample size but that's with starting tables. I think I just over compensated trying to tagg it up. Gotta keep an eye on that.

Originally Posted by supa

Thanks guys.

Starting the "Insanity" work out tomorrow. 60 days of crazy high intensity work outs. Looks like hell. Actually looks like the hardest part is gonna be eating enough calories throughout the day. Should be interesting.

Yep. Started this yesterday morning. Went to work and installed two 500lb wall mounted VFDs (just me and 1 other guy) and got up and did the workout again this morning :P

That's legit.

Good news for the day.

It's Friday!

Cashout no longer says 'pending'!

Bankroll's on the steady climb up!

Cake gold card games are back to cash payouts instead of tickets into games you can win more tickets...! I either have a huge edge or run really good (or both) in these so I'm stoke to get to play these again. Huge boost to my roll last time.

This little beauty might derail my ninja thou dreams for a minute. Too good a deal if my cake funds come in before it sells. Only question then is cafe or chop?

1972 Harley Sportser XLCH 1000

the old harley is defo cooler :rawk:

Got a good deal on this so ran with it. Pretty close to the bike I wanted but way cheaper and I'll have it paid off in 3 months. Damn stoked to be back on 2 wheels. Not sitting in traffic on the way home from work is gonna be awesome too.

Originally Posted by supa

Not sitting in traffic on the way home from work is gonna be awesome too.

Hey Supa - This looks like a nice, clean bike. Good for you, dude! I want to caution you on the "beating traffic" thing. If you're talking about splitting traffic, just be careful, I guess. I've never done it, but it's scary to me. I have raced on the track, for instance. I'm just worried for newer riders and such.

Originally Posted by PlayToWin

Hey Supa - This looks like a nice, clean bike. Good for you, dude! I want to caution you on the "beating traffic" thing. If you're talking about splitting traffic, just be careful, I guess. I've never done it, but it's scary to me. I have raced on the track, for instance. I'm just worried for newer riders and such.

Thanks Play. I understand the concerns people who don't live in states where lane splitting is legal. Living near L.A. it's really just the standard here. I guess all I can really say is I am a veteran rider who has been commuting on motorcycles for years. There will always be things that happen on motorcycles and honestly commuting on one really ups the odds against you but I honestly hate driving cars and love riding so I make that choice.

Not to mention that's an air/oil cooled bike and it won't be happy sitting at idle or doing 5 miles an hour for long periods of time.

you're allowed to weave between traffic stopped at a standstill on a bike in cali?

That's awesome

Originally Posted by d0zer

you're allowed to weave between traffic stopped at a standstill on a bike in cali?

That's awesome

There are places you're not allowed to do this?!

Played some poker for the first time in a couple months today. Won some bbs. Felt good.

Played some more today. Lost a few stacks. Still felt good.

wp sir, though I do read your blog the rare times you update. You've got potential as a power player, just seem like you play even less than I do these days

Thanks d0z. The shitty part is I really want to play but I'm really fucked for time right now. When I do find time after work my brain is usually so fried that any decision making I may have possessed are thrown straight out the fucking window. Which leads to making bad decision which leads to spewing monies which leads to tilt ldfo.

It just doesn't seem to make much sense to play when I'm subject to spew and really not learning anything on top of it.

LOL spewy hungover labor day sesh. Stack off with A high heads up vs a nit? Sure, why not?

Played some single table heads up after work today.

Then I lost some dead weight...

Nice pubes! You feelin' all smooth and sexy now?

mildly epic bump

No poker lately.

Me and some other guys have been doing some jam sessions on wednesday nights. It's all kinda free form sit down and see what happens type stuff. Mostly just drinking and having a good time making music. Some of it sucks. Some of it doesn't. Have a listen.

Oh, we tend to get pretty long winded.

https://soundcloud.com/jukeboxmutiny/pretty-lil-ditty

https://soundcloud.com/jukeboxmutiny...lades-of-grass

The second one doesn't really start until .55

Cool tracks man, enjoyed listening to them during the grind.

Originally Posted by Micro2Macro

Cool tracks man, enjoyed listening to them during the grind.

Hope you ran good.

Originally Posted by supa

Have a listen

cool grooves - which one r u? guitars?

Nice tunes Supa - sounds a bit like Tool to me who are one of my favorite bands.

Thanks for listening guys.

JJ, yeah one of two guitars on first track. Only guitar on 2nd.

Carrotman, I don't think anyone in the room would have been insulted by that.

Fun HU session today vs some asshole that was berating me on a 6max table for not folding to his bluff when I flopped trip A's and stacked him. Idiot calls me out to play HU because I obv know nothing about ranges. We 2 table 20nl for a while and he folds way to much so I just pound the crap out of him with 3bets. Redline goes through the roof. We got stacks in once when he called the turn with a gutshot vs my set and he rivered me but I was still up like a 1 1/2 buys when he finally just left both tables. He didn't even say goodbye. Was great fun.

People stack off with the most random shit.

I really need to pay more attn to stack sizes, especially when I'm 4bet bluffing bu vs bb.

I guess I can thank the spammers for bumping this cuz I've been meaning to update for a while.

After cashing out last time I went on a pretty good downswing which took me from 50nl to 10nl and started the grind back up. Most of the early part of the year was horrible. I can't blame it all on runbad because I played horribly as well, mostly playing when it wasn't optimal for various reasons. Last month I had a huge comeback though and I'm feeling way better about my game. I'm taking shots at 50nl again with 20buys. Actually I would just be moving up altogether but with the fairplay thing at revolution there are hardly any tables at 50, so I'm paying a mix of 10, 20 and 50 depending on table action.

This month hasn't gone superbly but I'm not concerned. Just trying to play better and keep grinding. Hopefully I'll come back and post some graphs and stats later today.

Of yeah, how's this for runbad? I sat down and opened 2 tables this morning, one 10nl and one 20nl, 100bbs each. Apparently juicy is having some server issues and the site's all f'd up so I closed the client and opened it back up to check my cashier and it's down twice what I bought in for. Hopefully they correct this, we'll see.

I've been going through some pretty severe life tilt and having zero outlets to express my frustration is just making shit worse. It also sucks in that it drifts into my poker game pretty severely. I'd been really good at keeping tilt on the tables at bay but I'm noticing it coming back. It's not even like fuck I'm mad cuz I got it in bad or sucked out on tilt, more like I don't give a shit tilt. Ok, take my stack you monkey, I don't care. I've tried multiple outlets to try and burn some of this shit off but none have worked. I even saw a therapist a while back just so I could get some shit off my chest but the guy was a complete tosser (new catch phrase) so I stopped going. I fucking really just need a break from reality and I see no chance of that in the foreseeable future.

On the whole therapist front I think you should give it another shot, there is a chance you just got a bit unlucky with the person who you ended up with. If you don't really have any other outlets then it's definitely going to be a good idea to try another one.

The "i don't care" variation of tilt, or "I don't care" state-of-mind, is primarily caused by two things. The first, which I don't think applies here, is a feeling of satisfaction in other area's of your life which makes you not need it from poker so you don't try very hard at all. The second, which is you atm, is a frustration that things just don't seem to be working out, which puts your mind in a state of not trying very hard anymore. You experience this as seemingly not caring anymore.

A huge factor here is also mental fatigue. When you say you feel like you need a break from reality, it makes me think this applies to you. This isn't something special though, it's pretty common. I have found that all people, from casuals to pro, go through all variations of tilt at some points in their lives.

Never done it but I don't see much use in talking to a psychiatrist. They're not a peer, you're never going to get from them what you need. Would be nice to have some close friends you can spew whatever is on my mind to. However, you need to bring value to a friendship also. If you only use your friends to complain to, they won't be your friends for very long.

What you should do now imo is go see a psychiatrist again, a different one. And don't go with the intention of talking things through, but rather ask for a specific kind of prescription. A mix of anti-depressants and relaxing stuff that you can take before you go to sleep. The anti-depressants are a misnomer here, because you aren't depressed, you just need the ones that give you a good night's sleep. After that, aim to set your life up in a self-enforcing way.

Ultimately we are descendants from people living in small communities where not much of note ever happens. Most of us aren't well adapted to the stresses of current-day globalized life. Imo a big challenge of life is to organize your life in a way that you perform best.

Taking an actual break, as in a vacation, change of environment, can also help tremendously.

My 2 cents.