Strategies in cash games are lazily labelled bad and good, but an equally vague label, Hard vs. Soft, is actually a cunning insight because it is simple while still having true descriptive power. A soft strategy is a pot controlling, bluff catching strategy. It encompasses Small Ball poker. It involves mixing up ranges and playing highly…
One of the most interesting aspects of learning poker from forums is that we are almost always given: A hand history Questions about how to get a better result Sometimes we get an answer. But what we rarely get at is the heart of the matter, which is to say, the problem itself. In this…
There is always a funny post in the forums the other day about online vs. live play. The consensus, as usual, is not wrong but has grasped the beast by the tail and not the horns. Online play is obviously simpler than live play. There is far less information to deal with, and that information…
I’ve been reading the “Double Barrel Challenge” hand histories with curiosity. There are, on the whole, two things to be learned. One, aggression rules. Two, poker players are mostly in the dark about what they are doing. I suppose these theorems work very, very well for the likes of Ed Milller et al, who have…
The other night I heard a faded but distinct second echo of the strategy post where I talked about applying cbetting principles on a board that favors the blinds. To be frank, when this hand started, I was tilted or more accurately, trying to control my tilt, so I may have been a bit blinkered. The runbad of…
I thought of this RC thread when I was put in a tough spot last night. In that forum hand, an iconic and classic situation, the answer is difficult to understand if you have been programmed into bet/folding as your strategy, but is in fact simple and clear: there are very few hands one should be continuation betting here,…
Tonight I stack off with kings versus fairly obvious aces, for the second time in the past few weeks. It’s the third preflop set up of late, but why am I getting it wrong? 3bet KK with tight image over TAG’s raise. He massively 4bets, I snap fold. He shows me aces. I 4bet KK…
After leading into a paired, two diamond board holding trips decent kicker, I am min raised. With A10, I’m above the dividing line for winning and losing in a limped pot, so I’m going for max value against a perceived Ace rag. I can’t be certain because this fellow limped AJ earlier, but that is…
When DZ checks the turn after raising Miniman’s donk lead, I put the pro on eight-six suited. It’s a fast check, really much too quick, because if DZ had a set he would have considered continuing his aggression, even with the severe hit the straightening card delivered to his perceived equity share. Holding eighty seven…