[ChrisB]

Hey

It's been a long day for me, getting in 90 games AND a small badminton match, that I sadly lost. It has also been a while since my last huge strategy post was posted here on Tagpoker, particularly the "Fold more" It was posted in May 2010 so here we are, almost a year later.

I've been working intensely on self-leakfinding during my so far 3 days of very hardcore grind, and every day I play, I learn more about my strengths and weaknesses.

I have been thinking a lot about leaks and therefore I felt it would be a nice service to the TagPoker forums and its members to provide a strategy article that looks at some of the common leaks that the "fish" you play will have, you will undoubtedly have done some of them at some point and maybe even do them now.

There is no specific order in the Top10 - It's just kinda what comes to my mind kinda order, although I call it TOP 10 it should probably be more like "10 mistakes/leaks"

No 1 - Position
Position in heads up is extremely important. You've heard this before and now I'm repeating it. You could probably be a winning hu sng player if you played every button and folded every BB except for pairs and AK - Obviously playing this tight OOP is also a major leak, but my point is if you are calling hands like K6 and Q3 oop you are making your life hell. Likewise if you are not opening said hands from the button you are losing out on value.

LEAKFIND YOURSELF: Go to HEM - REPORTS - chose "Preflop - Position" from the menu and take a look at how much you win or lose in the BB, breaking even should be quite good whilst a slight loss should be O.K. Specific % depends entirely on your opponent but I strive not to play more than 30-40% of my hands OOP against most opponents but at least 10% of that will be 3bets, so my cold-calling range is probably around 20-25% Notice that I'm not saying that my range is correct or is even optimal against X opponent, I'm just saying that I play very tight OOP and it helps me stay out of trouble. Some seasoned pros like Croixdawg like to play a lot of hands OOP because they have a very strong post flop game - Nothing wrong with that.

2 - Overvaluing weak hands
Something that I constantly see when playing sub par players is super overvaluing weak hands in spots where it really makes no sense. This trait is very common in the calling station player type where they will just call multiple bets with a weak made hand or even ace. Sometimes better players will do this as well. I have multiple times caught myself calling way too much trying to bluff catch (I guess that's the cool players way of saying being a call station) which can be alright, but make sure you have the correct reads and you don't JUST do it based on "I have XX hand" A little note on this is when you see people call your c-bets with ace high no draw on like K7T make sure NOT to c-bet unless you have at least a pair

HEM Leakfind: Goto REPORTS - HAND AT SHOWDOWN (DETAILED) to get a really good overview of the different hand strengths you have on the flop and how you have performed with them so far.

3 - Slowplaying

Bad players often slowplay so much that they never get any value from decent players unless the hand turns into some kind of setup. You have seen it so many times the hand goes check all the way to the river and the fish suddenly decides to bet 5x pot in a desperate attempt to get some value - Be sure never to mistake this for a random/hopeless bluff, it really often isn't in my experience.

Fish never really tend to regard board texture either when slowplaying - It could be as simple as a top pair on really coordinated board.

Slowplaying is a biiig part of my game, but I do it when it makes sense. Let's say a frequent button opener opens the button 6-8 hands into the match and I decide to flat with KQo - the flop comes Q26 with no flushdraw and I decide to check-call. This is a spot where I often find that fish/bad players will click it back or do something silly, when their hand is really well protected.

My point is, slowplaying is a really powerful tool and can win you many buyins, but often I find that fastplaying induces a lot more than slowplaying. Let's say you have A5 and the flop comes 554, as with the other 8 times you raised pre you c-bet half pot, you don't check behind just because you flopped trips. If he truly has nothing he will fold, which he would have anyway, unless he magically improved enough to continue, but not enough to beat us. You'd be surprised how little people believe you when you bet half pot on 554.

4 - No concept of endgame
This is something that I again have run into a lot in the turbos. When playing the regular speeds getting into end-game (10bb effective stacks or below) happens somewhat infrequently. At the turbos this is almost a guarantee and so often I see people just play waaay too tight when blinds are high and stacks are really low. Against a lot of these I just jam any two cards from the button. They will sometimes wake up with a hand, but percentage-wise we are cruising. A typical tight endgame player will have a calling range based on all Ax, KQ, KJ, KT and all pairs, and this range might even be slightly generous.

Be sure to learn end-game even if you play deep stack hu sng, people never have anything in heads up and 89s is 48.6% against A4o and is rarely dominated where if you jam stuff like A2 you are just setting yourself up for domination against their Ax and pairs calling range. Learning how different hands (like 89s) perform against their calling range will tell you how to play them. 89s for instance plays like a dream and will almost always be at least 40% - This is GREAT news when people fold so often on top of that

Once blinds get high enough we have to start calling wider, but in general I like to keep my bb call% very low based on monsters primarily, unless I can tell from the villains frequencies that he is minraising/jamming wide. If he is minraising every button we can start jamming over with a really wide range, if he is jamming really often then we need to widen our calling range to include better/suited Kx, good Qx and some suited connectors JTs, 9Ts etc play really well here.

HEM Leakfind: If you go to the REPORTS tab and click filters you can in other set "All-In Preflop = TRUE" and then all the data will be based on only your all-in situations. My favourite is to go to the "Expected Value - By Stakes" where I can see my avg. EV PF (which is 50.1% FWIW over all blind-levels) I'm 49.7% avg EV ai pre at the 75-150 which IMO is the most important level in this turbo format. I'm about 48.8 at the 50-100 level which to me indicates that I'm jamming/calling slightly too wide.

5 - No agression

This is really self-explanatory. To get action when we get really good cards we need to be aggressive the times we dont. Winning pots without the best hand is a really big thing in this format.

Raising most buttons whilst staying aggressive postflop (c-betting a ton, checkraising many flops etc) is such a key element that many players seem to miss. Many of the fish just either go completely crazy donking every flop or they just sit back passively and wait for some kind of hand (and then most likely slowplay it)

No one ever has anything heads up, thats a fact. Don't get blinded down early, stay aggressive!

It's important thought not to be mindlessly aggressive. For instance when a limper limps in and you have some trash like K3 - No reason to bloat the pot here OOP with that trash when he is so often calling you and making life hell for you on most flops.


Anyway, I hope you could use any of the above and I wish you the best of luck on the journey towards heads up poker greatness. This thread is WORK IN PROGRESS and I plan to add a few more points.

[NinjaReads]

[ChrisB]

[NinjaReads]

[quote="ChrisB:27049"][quote="NinjaReads:27048"]

[U Cook Socks]

Ninjaread, I am loving those stats. They remind me of how mine used to look. Very tight oop, not a huge 3 bet % just generally solid aggressive play. It shot me from the $2s to the $30s- $50s. Just lately I really think I should revert to this basic but effective strategy. It seemed to work so much better.

I think I thought I was to tight oop, but you know, it's so difficult to play out of position, it can't really be that big a mistake.

[ChrisB]

[Ljava]

Very nice and useful post. Tnx mate  

[U Cook Socks]

[Ljava]

Here are my stats. Hope someone will comment it so i could change things which i am doing wrong. Tnx  

http://img822.imageshack.us/i/unled1kb.jpg/

[ChrisB]

[Brokerstar]

Yes very nice post mate some solid fundimentals for newer players and a few of the older ones to think about.

Never a bad idea to play lock down poker  

[Ljava]

[ChrisB]

I understand what you say and c-betting the flop 6x% is not nearly as big a mistake as c-betting the turn only 30% is...

Stations do fold, and if they dont, well why arent you valuebetting more ?

[wap]

Nice post Chris, really helpful.

[Refraction]

Hey Chris, thanks for the post, it was real good.

I do need to work on my endgame. To you have any suggestion for that?

Thanks again for the post and take care.

[ChrisB]

Definitely watch Cogs ST vids on husng along with Mersennarys vids! They are super for endgame

In general: We need to jam very wide when effective stacks are less than 10bb and call depending on how our villain is jamming, if he jams very rarely then call tight and if he jams every hand widen your calling range (a lot)

I find that the Nash chart is a good fundamental to base jamming ranges from, but what I would suggest would be to run certain hands in stove for the calling ranges...input some tight, loose and really lose shoving ranges and input your various hands...you'll be surprised how well hands like 67s fares and maybe shocked at how poorly A2 fares!

Give it a go

[evprop]

i only have a small sample size but:

playing 30% in BB and +21bb/100
3bet%   =  15%
---------------------------------------------

not exactly sure how to plug leaks with the wtsd% detailed, i looked at my biggest losing scenario and its high card???

===============================

all in all excellent thread!!

[ChrisB]

Of course you are going to lose the most with high card It's the times you have nothing, so you are often either folding or not winning the showdown!

30% seems good, assuming its the right 30% you chose

[z1s6arn]

Slowplaying is a biiig part of my game, but I do it when it makes sense. Let's say a frequent button opener opens the button 6-8 hands into the match and I decide to flat with KQo - the flop comes Q26 with no flushdraw and I decide to check-call. This is a spot where I often find that fish/bad players will click it back or do something silly, when their hand is really well protected.

Could you just explain (bold) that in a different way for me Chris.

z1

[ChrisB]

[Wannawin]

nice post, well explained - cheers.

[N86xps]

Really great post! Could you expand more on leakfinding using HEM? I have tried to filter my hands and see what I am actually doing. For example I filtered it to bet river/get called/lost the hand.. Found out, that I have been betting ace high on the river which I know is a blunder 99% of the time. Any more ways to find common blunders?

[z1s6arn]

Thanks Chris.

The AT5dd A22 and A27rainbow example hit the nail on the head!

z1

[Kim Cardassian]

The reason I often bet in such situations is because of balancing. You might argue that balancing at the $10s is unneccisary, but I just like to not play face up just in case. Often when I start betting very big vs calling stations, they just happen to fold when I have a monster. Often when I start checking back made hands vs ubernits they start calling cbets with ridiculous hands (they do show they're still horrid players, by calling with like T7 on 944 and not bluffing the turn or river when I check). It often has me scratching my head, do they really think T high is good there most of the time? "wow I won with Q2o".

I just like to eliminate the possibility that he's actually got enough brains to figure it out. It frigging sucks when you flop a set on a dry board and a guy that calls 90% of flops suddenly snapfolds to a 3/4 pot bet. Or when a guy that folds 90% of paired boards suddenly starts raising and floating because he saw you check behind top pair.

So it isn't because "I have top pair, I bet". I just don't like to get outdrawn, allow him to start playing back light in the future and such things that can make life difficult. If he's a station I bet despite the fact that even a station will often fold. Picking up the pot is nice enough (and it allows me to see if he's the "Call ANY flop with ANY backdoor draw" or the type that only calls if he actually hits at least a gutshot) and if he has anything he's calling. If he's a nit he's not paying me off anyway, so I might aswell bet to win the pot now, I mean betting is still +EV if he only calls with better 10% of the time.