slowlane123's poker blog

Thanks for the hand analysis. I found it very helpful to look at the different levels, and well explained for us micro-stakers, too.

' 6 tagged red (very good players/big winners).'

I would hope im on this list :) , i agree there are about 4-6 i also have tagged red

About hand 1
I also played some 100NL 6 max during holidays and as in hand 1, I tried some overbets in a couple of spots. I felt players didnt react as they are in FR games. I got called each time I went for an overbet in 6 max games.

Considering my comment on hand 1, I think that the overbet OTR in hand 2 is a really really good play!

I have a couple of questions:

1. How can you possibly rep AKdd in hand 1 because you would cbet that so often, same really for AKhh. I think you can't really rep anything credible with that play to be fair.

2. If you put villain on some sort of showdown value(which I agree with), I'm still not sure I like your turn/river play. Checking back the turn should flip your hand face up as being not air unless you really have some big history together. After this hand he will no longer see it as "not air", but during he really should. River valuebets after turn goes ch/ch are just so obvious in general and you making it an overbet makes his call pretty horrible. I would make it alot smaller expecting to see 88-QQ the FAR majority of the time.
Also after this hand I would be raising villain alot in 3b pots on dry boards unless he really has shown to understand game flow and know how his play affects your view of him.

Thanks for all the comments.

As for your questions DwelF. Against this particular villain I would be check/calling boths AKs (almost 100% w/ hh) some % as I expect villain to bet his entire range when checked to by two players giving my AK huge SD value.

When I know with almost 100% certainty that one of the players will bet, then checking and deciding what to do will almost always be best on this board. The cold-caller is ABC and will only bet for value (this board smacks his value range and he will bet it fairly high %), whereas BTN will bet everything. I think I was a bit narrow in my initial assessment of what range I would x/c flop with also. I think any AQ/AK will be fine here given that MP is always x/folding and I feel we're very often good with these hands against BTN.

I also think my river assessment was a little narrow also. Given that I felt sure villain had pretty much KQ exactly it would be a great spot to thin vbet with AQ, KK, AA. I wouldn't cbet KK/AA in this spot very often either if I know that villain will bet his entire range ip. He won't often call a cb and getting raised on this board isn't the worst thing in the world, but a x/c (or x/r) is drastically better for the reasons mentioned above.

Anyway, as I said I'm not a huge fan on my line on the first hand as I do rep fairly narrow. But I used it to my advantage in hand 2.

Hand 2: Your assessment here is spot on, but you're thinking one level below what he was thinking. He had already thought through everything you just assessed. I guarantee he knows that in a vacuum this will always be a horrible call. BUT, he thought that I knew all of that and was trying to use that to pull of a sick bluff in a spot that should never be a bluff.

Anytime someone says something with definition: "River valuebets after turn goes ch/ch are just so obvious in general and you making it an overbet makes his call pretty horrible" then I often do the opposite. If something is 'never gonna be a bluff' then I bluff there, making his call often good, just not this time. DUCY?

"I also played some 100NL 6 max during holidays and as in hand 1, I tried some overbets in a couple of spots. I felt players didnt react as they are in FR games. I got called each time I went for an overbet in 6 max games."

Makes it a good spot to be only be overbetting for value then huh :-)

Also @ DwelF, KQ is the same as JJ+ here so I expect my overshove to be called with the same frequency by both. Infact I made the move with the expectation that he had QQ (maybe AA) and would call.

Yeah I agree with your analysis, It just seemed far fetched for him to think on that level. However this hand does clearly show he does think like that. So nh!

btw, maybe we can't 100% rule out that he is thinking on the level you describe, but that he is just thinking i haz top pair. :)

Also, wow the posts come out so horrible in the blog comment section.

good stuff man. especially liked comments about chat you had in hand 3 with the good reg...

hand 1 is probably FPS. first you're going to have some portion of his range beat and you'd rather just get to SD (or conversely bluff catch or rebluff if he goes for thin value). Secondly if you think his check back indicates strong SD value this play simply isn't going to work often enough to be profitable. Especially when your line a) makes little sense and b) he knows he's capped his range. When thinking players cap their range their going to increase the size of river bets that they'll call because they know this.

so yeah I don't like it.

Hand 2 is also FPS because you cost yourself money all the times he wants to c-jam a draw on the turn and you give him free equity and then he check-folds the river. If you just go bet-bet you still stack his TP hand and you avoid losing value from the parts of his range that will semi-bluff or hero call. Your range should be pretty wide on that turn so you should be betting the top of it both for value and to protect your floats.

Hand 3 looks good. nh.

You can't have FPS against thinking players because of the reasons I've already stated multiple times. FPS only happens when you level yourself against people who are levels below you or not thinking at all. In hand 1, I got outleveled. So it clearly isn't FPS; just a good thinking call from villain. If he was a level below me it would have worked perfectly.

Hand 2 also is very clearly not FPS. I don't mean to sound however I'm going to sound when I say this but, if you think I don't already know why checking back the turn in a vacuum isn't a great idea then you must think very, very lowly of my playing ability. The 2nd hand particularly was an exceptional circumstance where I had just received excellent and accurate information as to what level villain is on. I used it to my advantage and boom, ship the nickels.