One of the things I offer through my site is complete preflop ranges for sale, showing how we should change our ranges based on the size that villain opens.

Despite what people may tell us, preflop play is not super straight-foward or anything and requires a decent amount of work.

Auto-Profit Vs Population



Just to recap, we have seen so far how -

1. Auto-profit works
2. How we can use auto-profit to increase our efficiency with a HUD.

It’s easy at this stage to say something like -

“Well I play anonymous tables”, or “I play without a HUD”, or “I have no sample-size on my opponents yet”, so all of this information about auto-profit is not helpful.

The truth is that we can use understanding of automatic profit against complete unknowns. But how?


Population Tendencies

The first step here is to understand that there are situations where the population overfolds. We are not mind-readers, we never know for certain what an unknown player is doing. But if we look at our experience with a large quantity of unknown opponents in the past, we can begin to see patterns. There are situations where we can generate automatic-profit on average vs the entire player-pool.

Now, while this information is common knowledge amongst good players, it didn’t necessarily come easily. Someone had sit down with a huge database and look for all the situations where we can bet any 2 cards with a significant profit margin. This was especially the case before tracking software became as powerful as it is today. We didn’t have these extra perks like the HM2 add-on Notecaddy, which make population analysis very easy and very powerful, for those that know what they are doing.

Anyway, let’s look at some of the results of such analysis.


Automatic Profit Spots vs the Population

While there will always be exceptions to the rule, it’s reasonably safe to say that we can make automatic profit (on average), against an unknown opponent in the following situations.


Bet vs missed cbet IP on the flop turn and river.
(Sometimes referred to as float flop, float turn, float river).

Bet vs missed cbet OOP on the turn and river.
(Sometimes referred to as probe turn and probe river)

Delayed Cbets both IP and OOP, both single-raised and 3bet pots.

SB lead flop after completing preflop and BB checks back.


These are just a few examples of common situations that we should be looking to exploit. We should use our tracking software to check our betting frequency in each of the above situations. The numbers should be all be high, in the 70%-or-higher region.

The list is by no means exhaustive. For example, we probe bet the turn. (We cold-call preflop, PFR checks back flop, we lead the turn OOP). It’s also worth noting that we can generate automatic proft on the river with a followup bet after our turn probe fails.

This does not mean we should always fire. We spoke about this in a previous post on automatic profit where we mentioned that +EV does not necessarily always mean max-EV. We could fire river every single time in the situation described above and we would make money. It won’t necessarily be the most profitable line however. So if we are not sure what to do, it might be best to fire every single time in certain spots, but ultimately we need to study hard and bring a little more sophistication to our game by understanding when not to fire.

This post and the preceeding two contain very powerful information and underscore the essence of what exploitative poker is really about. If we can harness and correctly use the information, we should find our winrate takes a huge boost.

Love you writings I'm waiting for the next one

Hey, was just reading the part about "Exploitative Auto-Profit " and there you state: "In other words if SB is folding more than 67% of the time to a BB 3bet, it means that the BB is generating automatic-profit with any 2 cards."

Ok, i can relate to that.

Yesterday i was reading BlackRain79 - Micro Stakes Poker Strategy and there he states: "Remember that in a 3Bet pot a CBet of as little as 50% of the pot is very commonplace. When betting such a small percentage of the pot you don't need to get folds all that often in order to turn a profit. In fact, if you can get them to fold about 1 out of 3 times then you will break even on your CBet."

Is Blackrain than wrong, or i'm i reading something wrong from his post. But i can't believe 1 on 3 folds is enough.

That is just simple math buddy! If you bet $1 into a pot of $2 and villain folds you win $2! You then do exactly the same two more times and lose both times you have only lost back the $2 that you won in first hand! Break even!

I think you didn't read the question good. I believe it should be 2/3 fold in stead of the 1/3 fold like blackrain said, but wanted to be sure.

No if you read my answer you only need 1 of 3 folds to break even!

no you only need them to fold more than 33% of the time to breakeven. Anything above that is pretty much auto profit, assuming you have a large enough sample size.

The equation for break even point is risk/risk + reward. In Jeff's example of a $1 bet into a $2 pot, the risk = $1 and reward = $2:

$1/$1 + $2 = 1/3 = 33%

So 33% folds is your break even point on a 50% PSB. You obviously want them to be folding more than that to be profiting that is just the point at which your bet breaks even

Not sure if there is some confusion arising because we are talking about 2 different situations.

1st one is a preflop 3bet where it needs to work in the region of 67%.

2nd one is a postflop 1/2 pot cbet which needs to work in the region of 33%.

Crushing Lower Limit Poker


Poker strategy is complex. Many books and training sites do a disservice to poker by presenting its audience with over-simplified principles which work in some situations but not in others. There is no get-rich-quick scheme here or some type of winning formula where we can click the same buttons over and over again and print ourselves a few million.

Having said that, it makes sense to avoid unnecessary complexity and try to focus on the things that are the most important. To be honest, no-one cares if you have developed a perfectly balanced GTO-correct strategy for 5bet pots with 150bb effective stacks. Actually, we are not saying that wouldn’t be awesome, we are just saying that it’s not that relevant for us if the fundamentals of every other more-important section of our game are completely missing. We’ll find that there are some guys out there who have absolutely no clue how to play in 4bet pots, but are still crushing the lower limit games online (maybe this is you). This is because they understand what is important.


The Important Skills

So what we want to do is here is simplify poker by focusing on the things that are most important. We understand that those concepts in themselves are not necessarily simple, and we don’t want to do ourselves an injustice by oversimplifying those concepts to the point that they are unusable. We can simplify (at least in our early development) by deciding which concepts are the most important, and focusing our attention on these almost exclusively.

So which are the most important skills for lower limit games?

1. Extracting value and thin-value.
2. Knowing when to hero-fold.

That’s it. Master these two things and it doesn’t matter too much if our 6bet pot OOP strategy is a little bit weak (or even horrendous).

Extracting Value and Thin-Value – Most of us when asked might be able to list a common problem with the population at lower limit games. They call too much. Simple. How do we exploit that? By value-betting more than we might do against a competent opponent. This includes intelligent use of bet-sizing to help us extract value in scenarios where others might miss. It sounds simple, it’s mostly not. A lot of our early level development will focus around extracting value and thin value.

Knowing when to hero-fold – Another population weakness. Guys are passive. They don’t bluff anywhere near as much and they don’t go for thin value. The result? Usually when someone is raising or betting into us, they are way stronger than they should be on average. How do we exploit that? By folding more often vs aggression than we might do against a competent opponent. Again, it’s probably more complex than it sounds, but a lot of early development should focus around this topic. A good place to start might be the 2-part video series here at pokerVIP.com, “hero folding at the micros”.

Have a Focus

If we find we are a bit off course with our poker development, focusing on the above 2 concepts during live play can help us to get back on track. We could make it our session goal to not miss any thin-value spot, and not to pay off an opponent who is clearly way stronger than he should be. Many of the upcoming strategy posts will revolve around improving these 2 concepts, so stay tuned.

Awesome idea creating this thread, love a bit of Weasel's Wisdom.

So to my question... If you haven't noticed in the 'my journey' section I've started a building a bankroll with a twist. I currently have 6.5 buyins for 100nl but I'm playing semi-pro so it's cool if I go bust I'll wait until I can deposit on my next payday and I want a 100nl pay-rate to justify my playing.

So what would your top tips be to lower variance?

I'm playing 1-2 tables so my game selection should be lower variance.
I'm also 3betting less and calling with the likes of AK - unless I'm playing some crazies but should I be getting QQ in (both late and early position)?
I'm guessing my c/r and and raising ranges should be pretty tight too.
Perhaps even my calling ranges should be a bit tighter when it's very marginal as to is it's profitable?

Cheers

If you are only playing 2 tables of 100nl you are only getting in 150-200 hands/hour so even if you have a 5bb/winrate you would only average at best $5/hour... If you play 6 tables of 20nl you will be able to make more than that and have a far lower risk if ruin and have lower perception of varience as you will play more hands and play worse players so will have a higher win rate.

Honestly, and I think Weazel will probably say the same, you would be far far better playing 20nl at least 50nl and up the volume. Playing 100nl like you are may in the short run feel like you make more, but in the long run you won't and you will busto more often than you think.

Cheers Cookie,

I forgot to add it's a lifestyle choice to play 2 tables, I don't really fancy the multi-table grind. I think my win-rate is more like 10bb/100 on Unibet as it plays more like live poker, also I'm fairly comfortable with a probability of going bust of like 20%.

Yeah.....well true, it sounds a little fishy tbh. Probably better to just play with good BRM even if you are playing casually. "Casual" basically just means "gambling" in this context, and I am not a fan of gambling. Poker is a type of investment for me.

Anyway yeah.....3bet less, play tight, don't stack off in marginal spots even if it's +EV to do so. Keep in mind that you won't maximise your winrate this way, you will likely lower it. Your lower standard deviation will probably result in a lower risk-of-ruin, but ultimately it's just better to get bankrolled and play some maxEV poker.

Hi @w34z3l

I think I have my opening ranges pretty much nailed down but two of my biggest problems right now are knowing which hands to 3bet with (apart from the obvious ones) and when I get 3 bet myself - I am unsure which hands to lay down at this point and which hands to continue with. Do you have any tips or articles that would help with this?

Cheers!

Someone could explain me this with some examples?

Not stacking nut flush draws OTF, not stacking QQ preflop, not stacking AKo preflop.

These if all played correctly will be a higher EV way of playing the hands rather than calling draws and calling QQ / AKo preflop. Not stacking them will therefore win you less money in the long run but will reduce the chance you go bust as AKo and QQ will be likely flipping preflop when you get it in and same with getting draws in on the flop. You could easily lose 3 of these on the bounce and with only a tiny bankroll you will go bust pretty quick.

on top of that even calling a river bet where say he bets half pot, so we need to win 1/3 of the time. If he's bluffing 40% so it's a profitable call we should probably fold anyway do decrease the variance at the cost of lowering our expectation. We may also avoid aggressive games even if there very lucrative because that could increase our variance, however that isn't strictly true as higher bb/100 games do naturally lower the probability of loss also.

Higher winrate will give you better long-term varience but you are looking at short term varience which is effected by aggressive games, gii as flips and ye calling down correctly but the hands at the bottom of your range to make his bluffs break even.

Recognizing Strength



In the previous strategy post we talked about getting out of the way when our opponents are clearly strong, i.e hero folding. Hero-folding is a little bit of a strong word for this, since when we really break down our opponent’s range, we are often completely crushed with some of the holdings we are describing. It’s simply that to the untrained eye, it may seem at first as if the decision is close.


Baluga Theorem

Take for example the Baluga Theorem. This is one of those theorems that experienced players know like the back of their hand, while anyone who cropped up in the last 5 years or so is often like “Baluga what? Who the hell is that?”

Anyway, a little piece of poker history, the Baluga Theorem was coined by mid/high stakes pro Andrew “Balugawhale” Seidman. He eventually disappeared off the poker scene, although he did make some kind of comeback in more recent years. His theorem however, the Baluga Theorem, really stood the test of time for lower limit games today. It basically states the following -

“We should strongly re-evaluate the strength of any one pair holding in the face of a turn raise”

When translated that basically means -

“If you have one pair and you face a turn raise, you probably should be folding”

The reasoning is simple. Recreational players rarely/never bluff-raise the turn. And assuming they are value-raising it is typically going to be a holding that beats one-pair, i.e two-pair plus. We can save ourselves a lot of hassle by simply folding all of our one-pair hands on the turn. But did we come here to talk about the Baluga theorem? No not exactly.


Other Spots

The Baluga Theorem is just one example. There are many other spots which function in an extremely similar manner to the Baluga Theorem, they simply don’t have a name yet. For example, the following -

- A flop 3bet (also a 3bet on any street)
- A river raise
- A 3x 4bet
- A triple barrel
- A pot-sized bet (especially when followed by another pot-sized bet on the next street)
- A check-raise as the PFR (any street)

Basically, as soon as we identify one of these spots, alarm bells should be ringing and we should calmly be tying up the shoe-laces on our hero-folding boots.

Isn’t This Exploitable?

So I’m folding every pair to a turn raise? Can’t my opponent exploit that really easily?

Of course he can. He can raise like a complete monkey and print money. But he won’t, and if he does, we will adjust anyway. Folding all pairs to a turn raise is obviously really bad strategy in theory, but it brings us to a simple fact that we have to accept when playing lower limit games. The way we win at lower limit games is by playing really bad poker.

This is of course, completely dependent on our point-of-reference. Folding every pair to a turn raise is actually good poker, in the sense that it is maximally exploitative, but is technically very bad when viewed through the lens of a perfect nash-equilibrium strategy which we might need to use against a player who bluff-raises the turn with a reasonable frequency. So it’s useful in a sense to understand at lower limit games that we are not trying to play “poker” as such, but rather to simply to print as much money as possible.