How to not pay off sets
Last night in online APT tournament:
Preflop limper in MP -- I'm in BB and check with a not-so-great hand. I don't remember if there are folds all around, but pot is 2-way or 3-way.
Flop comes out small and disconnected, and I have top pair (hit a 10).
I bet pot (60?), MP raises (200?), I reraise (600?), and MP shoves (~1800 -- early stages of double stack tournament).
Yes, I should have folded. But, being sick of getting pushed around (I was forced out of a few small pots) and having more than my usual amount of...umm..."courage" at that moment in the evening, I look him up -- trip deuces.
I know, here everything is pointing to my opponent having a set, and I had a "bad poker" moment.
--
But here's why I am bringing this up, and why I am not putting this in "Specific Hand Questions:"
I know there aren't any hard-and-fast rules, but would you generally fold to just about any 4-bet from someone who's not a total maniac, assuming you don't have the pure nuts (or close to it)?
But for instance, how would you have played top 2 pair here? I'm assuming you call with bottom set and figure set-over-set is a risk you have to live with.
And then, if you're on offense with what figures to be the weaker hand, how much can you just hit folks with the 4-bet, watch them fold, and scoop the pot? I know it's a dangerous tactic, but what the heck...
So maybe the "question" or "topic" here is not sets but "4-betting offense and defense." I don't want to just roll over every time someone puts a large portion of their stack in the middle. KGB's Dungeon is not reality, but those AI's will certainly 4-bet their share of marginal hands. If it was live 1/2 with no "Peek at End" feature, I would not even know who hit a set and who was playing with air.
Thanks!
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This is a recurring nightmare for yours truly. The terror of the small set.
Goes like this usually.
In the BB, early in a MTT, catching a decent hand, say QQ, blinds 25/50. Preflop the betting progresses around with 2 players limping and, finally, the LAG sitting at the cutoff raises to 300 (VERY typical position move for him). Button gets out of the way, SB bails out too. Pot is 475. I call, limpers both abandon ship...... I'm H2H OOP (out of position) but with a good hand.
Flop comes 3D, 7H, JS. Good flop for me. Disconnected rainbow.
I decide to preempt the coming continuation bet and raise the pot..................... LAG goes all in. Do I risk my tournament on my read of him/her?
Pretty typical situation. In my mind alarm bells go off. 2 Pair? A set??? I ponder it and decide that he's pushing me around (like think up above) and I call................... ( These days I'm trying to remember that the keys to tournament survival are selective aggression and recognizing when I'm beat. ThomPerry is teaching me these lessons daily! )
Regardless of whether he has it or not (he does btw) was my decision right or wrong given my LAGish style?
Discuss amongst yourselves.................
Syn
This is a recurring nightmare for yours truly. The terror of the small set.
Goes like this usually.
In the BB, early in a MTT, catching a decent hand, say QQ, blinds 25/50. Preflop the betting progresses around with 2 players limping and, finally, the LAG sitting at the cutoff raises to 300 (VERY typical position move for him). Button gets out of the way, SB bails out too. Pot is 475. I call, limpers both abandon ship...... I'm H2H OOP (out of position) but with a good hand.
Flop comes 3D, 7H, JS. Good flop for me. Disconnected rainbow.
I decide to preempt the coming continuation bet and raise the pot..................... LAG goes all in. Do I risk my tournament on my read of him/her?
Pretty typical situation. In my mind alarm bells go off. 2 Pair? A set??? I ponder it and decide that he's pushing me around (like think up above) and I call................... ( These days I'm trying to remember that the keys to tournament survival are selective aggression and recognizing when I'm beat. ThomPerry is teaching me these lessons daily! )
Regardless of whether he has it or not (he does btw) was my decision right or wrong given my LAGish style?
Discuss amongst yourselves.................
Syn
BTW I realize that my posts aren't as intellectually deep as thinks are! Nonetheless I try to present myself well.
Think and nytider are in class by themselves in this forum..... They both make me ponder what they've written and I appreciate that.
Warm regards,
Syn
I'm reading a free sample on Kindle from the book by Matthew Janda, "Applications of No Limit Hold'em." The section "Preflop 3-Betting, 4-Betting, and 5-Betting Frequencies".
Janda, Matthew (2013-08-22). Applications of No-Limit Hold'em (Kindle Location 677). Two Plus Two Publishing. Kindle Edition.
The book is about cash games but I think the principles of 3-, 4-, and 5-betting may be similar in tournaments.
Janda, Matthew (2013-08-22). Applications of No-Limit Hold'em (Kindle Locations 740-743). Two Plus Two Publishing. Kindle Edition.
So your ranges need to reflect the percentages here. So do your opponents'!
Thanks for sharing that MonkeySystem.
Recently I went through my library of poker books from 10 -12 years ago. I gave 80% of them away and kept a few gems that I believe are timeless. After doing that I availed myself of the public library system here in the Chicago burbs and requested all the poker books published in the last 5 years. They don't have many but it was a start. I also perused the top 100 poker books blog posts here on APT. One book I got from the library pinpointed a horrendous leak of mine with a really easy fix that I IMMEDIATELY incorporated and glory be it worked like a charm. (Sorry not telling). Maybe if some one asks nice. It was elementary but hidden by my pre-conceived notions of how to play at a certain point in a hand.
Mind you I've been, slowly, recouping my old poker chops without ever having heard of some of the innovations that've emerged since, say, 2010. GTO, ICM, "polarized" ranges and on and on............ Been playing without applying any of this higher level math, and psychology, and not doing any computer simulations other then the games here at APT against the bots. The bots have racked up a lotta chips against me as I messed around (I wouldn't mind resetting things someday btw).
Now as I delve deeper into recently published books ( including both of Matthew Janda's books that I ordered recently ) some of the ideas are starting to coalesce for me. I've begun to play live again and I'm having great fun. I think I do okay in the APT daily tournament events too. Not spectacularly but ok. I think some people have gotten my ranges down pat - looking at Thomperry! One book I ripped through was Phil Gordon's Gold Book. Not current but thought provoking in alot of ways.
My point is that I was doing all right WITHOUT applying the recent innovations. Adding them to my repertoire of tools can only help right? The more I play the more I miss having online poker for $$$ in Illinois. I'm going to call my State Senator Don Harmon and go see him to chat about it. Illinois needs the rake!!!!!!!
I still fear the hidden set but I'm getting better at not going all in all the time with TPTK.
I wanted to, once again, reaffirm my thanks to the Blays for starting this forum and to everyone in the APT community who contributes to it in any way.
Warm regards,
Corey "synthesist" Gimbel
I know this is more of a discussion question, but is solid poker from ten years ago still winning poker? I have a pile of books from ten years ago -- I just make a habit of popping into used book stores whenever I pass one. It's hard to pass up something like Super/System 2 for $4 (even though the NLHE chapter seems to be mostly a repeat from the original Super/System).
I figure Theory of Poker is timeless, as is Caro's Book of Tells. But what are the innovations that we need to work into our game? And what tactics should we figure on leaving behind/changing?
I would think that play got more aggressive (generally), but then is the Gus Hansen style going to work, or is it passe? Or am I thinking too hard about this? I mean, "Every Hand Revealed" is still a great read, and his style is still way more aggressive than I tend to play -- I have a hard time thinking that anyone got more aggressive than he was.
One of the recent books I did order was "The Course" (Ed Miller, 2015) -- and he closes every chapter with a section on multiway pots (in fact, his whole theme is that people take too many hands too far). That's really the core weakness that every strategy has attacked since Super/System.
I also want to avoid the pitfall of being a decent "amateur theorist" who plays a game that is only profitable against relatively weak competition. I feel like I'm hitting a plateau at the moment. I won a couple of the APT tournaments earlier on, but now I just seem to finish in the middle of the pack.
@thnk said:
Yatta yatta.....
I also want to avoid thepitfall of being a decent "amateur theorist" who plays a game that is only profitable against relatively weak competition. I feel like I'm hitting a plateau at the moment. I won a couple of the APT tournaments earlier on, but now I just seem to finish in the middle of the pack.
Syn responds:
I'd like to respond to what think is agonizing over in his remarks above. First I've wondered those same sorts of things myself. Can a decent 60+ year old amateur compete in tournaments with the young guns in their ball caps and sunglasses?
Personal answer: hell yeah.
Admonition: It takes work and willingness to abandon ingrained behavioral habits.
What do I mean by work? Well if you belong to APT you recognized that you needed help and chose a tool that could/will facilitate the process and, perhaps, speed it up dramatically. You also need to dig into recent books, videos, forums and maybe software simulation tools. Doing these things means investing time and some cash. In my case, over the last 8 months, that would amount to almost $1,000 and many, many hours reading, playing the APT bots (thousands of hands), playing many APT live tournaments, and, finally, finding some live events, relatively cheap ones, to use the new found skills in.
If you research my APT record I think you'll see that my efforts are paying off. I don't believe it's all luck winning an APT tournament. The regulars aren't playing like donks. There are some nits and serious LAGS who are very, very tough. Alexfish, Nabilgedeon, ssserrbbb, Publisher, ThomPerry, mrbenson2u, Jazzygirl, Vandelay , duxman, microbet, redryder, mgmbob, riverside, ohar, DavidL, kuushu, llizh, lisav, 22tango, Helenkeler, Aligning, PFAL the list of tough competent players on APT goes on and on . To compete with and beat them I've evolved and adjusted personally. I'm here to tell you that we all hit plateaus. Keep playing. Play tighter, play position, study your opposition. You'll improve I did.
Warm regards,
Corey "synthesist" Gimbel
The game has certainly changed. And it will probably keep on changing. Just one clear example that I encounter all the time is that some players religiously open raise to 3x pre-flop, while a lot of the current thinking seems to be more in the 2.2x - 2.5x range. Likewise, the light 3-bets and 4-bets you see today would have automatically meant aces or kings a while back.
But at the same time, a lot of what you read from times past is really still valuable in the sense that it teaches you how to think about the hands and the players. And a lot of that is, as someone said about tells, fairly timeless. To the extent that older material teaches problem solving, it is still relevant to today's game, and will be relevant to tomorrow's game as well.
Interesting discussion. I am just getting back into poker from a 7-8 year break. I guess I was an average/above average player back then, I practiced hard on PokerSchoolOnline (before it was bought by PokerStars) and I would make money at online and live small stakes cash games and make most final tables at low buy-in tournaments.
I'm amazed at how much the game has changed. I'm now delving deep into game theory and honing math skills. I haven't touched GTO, ICM yet... but I guess I'll have to get there.
LasV3gas
Above I said I'd culled 10 year old poker book collection down dramatically, keeping a few timeless ones:
Super|System 1 and 2,
All the Harrington Tournament and Cash Play books
Hold'em for Advanced Players
Theory of Poker
3 volumes of Winning Poker Tournaments One Hand At A Time
Gus Hansen's book
Barry Greenstein's book for the lovely photography
Phil Gordon's books
Chen's Poker Math book and a couple other poker statistics/math volumes
and a couple of books on sngs and h2h
I've begun reading ( from the library ) or replacing those I ditched with books by:
Jonathon Little
The 2 most recent Harrington books
Matthew Janda's books
Advanced Concepts in No Limit Holdem by Hunter Cichy (this one is SERIOUS as hell),
The Poker Tournament Formula and Poker Tournament Secrets by Arnold Snyder,
I'm perusing these ( in several cases studying them intently with a marker in hand ) in an effort ( along with hours of practice on APT ) to get myself, relatively, up to date.
Why I'm willing to invest time like this is simple. I have a passion for poker as a mental exercise that WILL help keep me mentally engaged as I age.and, in an anthropological sense, I get to interact with people far outside my typical circle of acquaintances which allows me a much broader worldview than I'd get any other way. Both very beneficial to me.....................
Warm regards,
Corey " synthesist" Gimbel
Just wanted to add one more comment here that Occurred to me when I was away from my computer but thinking about some of the discussions here. The original question was relative to what the value of the older information is to me, in terms of my game and the way I play. It seems to me that there is a second component to this, which is understanding what my opponents are doing. That can be impacted significantly by the books they are reading. So even if I decide there is value in a decades-old methodology, I still need to know what the young'uns are learning. And perhaps to a lesser extent, even if I am ahead of the curve on current theory, I still need to know what the old guys are up to when I get to the table.
I had an interesting conversation recently on this topic. A couple of friends and I rode together to a home game tournament about an hour away. The driver is a very good player, and the other guy is just starting to get into poker and has been steadily improving his play. In this conversation on the way home (Both me and the young guy cashed in the tournament.) the driver and I learned that our friend was a little off-base on a couple of ideas he had. We eventually figured out that he had mis-interpreted some things he had read in Doyle's first book, which he was treating as the Bible of poker. He had bought the book for $0.50 at a garage sale, and that was what he had access to. So that was what he was using.
Dang, I paid full price for Super System back in the day...
nytider, I think you hit a key concept when you said " I still need to know what the young'uns are learning. And perhaps to a lesser extent, even if I am ahead of the curve on current theory, I still need to know what the old guys are up to when I get to the table."
I have found that knowing what "school" or theory the other player is following might be more important than knowing the details yourself. I remember the first time I realized a player was "squeezing" me after I called an opening bet. I raised him on the turn with nothing and he insta-folded. What a rush! Same think when you realize a player is using a recognizable 3 bet percentage.
You can 4 bet with a good chance of shutting him down. If you know a player is old school, you can just fold to the three bet.
Phil Helmuth or Jonathan Little (can't remember which) said Mike Matasow told him this about calling big bets by amateur players in the main event. "Just fold, they always have it!"
So to sum up this disjointed response:
1) know what books or coaches your opponent is following, if any.
2) when you play in the WSOP main event, if an amateur goes all-in after you bet a 2-4-T rainbow flop,
throw your cards away as fast as you can!
Also... yes, aggression exploded when the online kids started invading the live tournaments, but that bubble burst just like the one that broke just after I bought my house. Well, not quite that bad.
Your three bet will often get 2 or 3 callers now, but it will not be 4 bet very often.
enough already, this is an interesting thread
Yes, a lot of it boils down to trying to put on the other guy's glasses and seeing if you can figure out why or how his actions make sense to him, even if they don't make sense to you.
Synthesist said:
One book I got from the library pinpointed a horrendous leak of mine with a really easy fix that I
IMMEDIATELY incorporated and glory be it worked like a charm. (Sorry not telling). Maybe if some
one asks nice.
I am asking nicely - Please share.
Regarding trips--this site allows you to tag hands. So I started tagging all the hands where I got busted with a set. I highly recommend that you consider tagging hands because you can go back and replay however many hands you tagged. There are some signs the villain has trips, and I talk about that below, but I don't think any advice about this is as good as replaying hands. And then replaying them again because you always (or I always) seem to see stuff I missed the first time. I have replayed hands where I came against sets. It was not a magic bullet but I have started to catch on.
I never have a problem facing a set if I don't have at lease top pair with the top kicker or very close to it. I just fold. So, the first symptom is: I have a hand.
Second, when I make a set on the flop what do I do? I slow play it by checking, and I may just call a bet on the flop. In Think's hand, the Villain checked (in mp) and Think made a pot size bet. The villain made a 3x raise. I would have just called it unless it looked like a straight and/or a flush draw could come in. The Villain with trips needs to play it fast enough to deny pot odds if there's a likely draw.
A second symptom is that the Villain shows little interest in the hand, and then all of a sudden he has a great interest. He has to show a great interest at some time point. Sometime the villain will make a small, seemingly reluctant bet on the flop.
Whenever I have gotten into a raising and reraising battle when I have had top pair--those hands, if we put them all together--I am a big loser.
I think Think knew he was beat but he called anyway. That is the first thing that needs to stop.
As far as a Villian or a group of villains 4 betting--count how often they do that. If they are doing it all the time, top pair might be good most of the time. The Villains are going to come up with sets a certain number of times--not many. If the cards were evenly distributed, a villain--in 6 max--will get a pair once every 3 hands, or slightly more often, or 78/1,326, or 1/17.
Next, he will make a set--lets just use 10%.
.10 x .059 = .0059
Which comes to 1 in 170, or about 1 in 30 hands. The Hero will get top pair only about 10% of the time, so, if I have done the math correctly--look, I am really tired now, but I think the way it works out, when the Hero has top pair, if the cards were evenly distributed, the Hero would face a set 1 in 30 times.
Somebody please check my math.
Keep,in mind the cards are never evenly distributed. But the math says they won't have trips very often at all.
But I know I am going to face trips and could get broke. Even though it is not often, the consequences can be awful. We could also figure out how many top pair hands we can profitably fold incorrectly as long as we are correct. How much do we lose when we come up against trips divided by how much we make from top pair. If we average 100 from top pair, but lose 500 when we face a set, then we can incorrectly fold 4 hands as long as we correctly fold one hand when the villain has a set.
Playing Hold'em is like walking through a mine field. I came up on 5 card draw and there are nowhere near as many traps in 5 card draw. (5 card draw is a much more fun game to play than most people seem to think. In 5 card draw you can have somebody suck out on you, but the emotions from it are nothing like the emotions in Hold'em, like the time a villain called me with me with 7-5 suited when I went all in with AA and he made a flush. I mean, in Hold'em it can be brutal. But, of course, I am happy to be playing cards with people who will call an all in with 7-5 suited. In 5 card draw, drawing three cards to a flush is unheard of. It is seldom going to be profitable to draw one card to a flush. I don't know, Hold'em might be more profitable overall, but in 5 card draw, for me there was little variance from night to night. There would be variance from game to game with different people.
Harrington's Law: Big hands / Big pots, Small hands / Small pots.
Game Theory: You can't second guess a bluff that's part of a well executed strategy, but neither can the villain. If you see him moving off game optimal exploit it. Easier said than done, but that's it.