Feb 1

I played a session yesterday against some FT guy called zmb. He has a really good ptr over a small sample (I didn't check this until after I'd played him, and would've played anyway). He sat and asked me right away if i wanted to four table. I'm not comfortable doing that so I said two, and he didn't want to do that so we compromised on three. I'm not sure I should be three tabling hu yet as I definitely found it harder to think as well and pick up and apply reads as quickly. Maybe if I'd started with two and built up to three once I had a better idea of his game it would've been better for me.

Anyway, I lost around 3.5 buy ins to him, and I definitely think he played better than me. He's a good person to analyse because he didn't seem to be doing anything particularly amazing, but he's obviously a good hu player.

I thought I'd include his stats here as it may help with hands and I also want to think about a good strategy against him. (I had to upload them and link it as for some reason I can't get it so you click on the picture and they go bigger).

Stats

So the biggest things he was doing were:

1. opening nearly 100%

2. 3-betting a hell of a lot (more than 22% early)

3. always c-betting in 3-bet pots

4. barreling in single raised pots

To counter each of these I should:

1. 3-bet and flat more. Against this guy he was folding to 3-bets a lot so I should be 3-betting trash hands like 94s and 64o, which leaves me a wider flatting range of hands like J8s, 65s, etc. As long as my fold bb to steal is under 67%, he can't open any two profitably. I definitely think it's better to put more pressure on than that though as they have trash so so often.

2. Firstly I can min raise so he wins less when I fold and his 3-bet should smaller and I can defend more. Then I can 4-bet more. It's really important to pay attention to shown down hands to get an idea of their flatting range here. This guy was flatting a lot as well as 3-betting, so chances are his 3-bet range is still pretty polarised. This means 4-bet bluffing him should work pretty well (which it did). Another adjustment here is just to tighten up my btn open so that I just have a stronger average hand when opening.

3. There are a few things I can do here. I think I should be raising a lot more flops as he has a really wide range for betting. This means I need to be doing it with top pairs as well, and so it's probably a good idea to be flatting AA/KK to his 3-bets (which I didn't as I was 4-betting so much I felt I needed to balance) in order to have a stronger raising range. On dry boards I should be flatting a lot of top pairs as he's likely to barrel given his tendencies in single raised pots. If he's barreling too often then flatting the flop in order to shove raise the turn becomes a decent option with a variety of hands.

4. This is actually the one I had the most trouble with. I started off by check raising him a lot (just the way it worked out with hands/boards), and therefore I decided to check raise quite a lot of my good top pair hands as well. This leaves my check calling range weaker and I don't know if he knew this or not but he definitely made it tough on that weaker range. Towards the end of the match I started just check calling strong top pairs in order to call down, but even that had it's drawbacks as boards would run off poorly often and still make it tough. Also, if I'm flatting a wider range with hands like 97s in often, I'm going to hit a lot of middle pairs and it's going to be hard to show them down cheaply against this guy.

It seems like 4 should be really exploitable as he's barreling so often and I know he has nothing a lot, but every time I play against a guy like this I struggle to exploit it. This is something I definitely need to work on, and incorporate more into my own game. He was also good at showing up with it when I did call. This could just be luck, but I expect he was aware of gameflow and the spots I'd likely look him up.

Ok onto the hands for today...

http://weaktight.com/1962930

There's about $400 left in stacks on the river. Do you think I can profitably bluff here? He was folding a bunch to 3-bets, so I think his range for getting to the river is QJs, KQ, AQ, 77, not sure about 55, maybe a KJs that floated. I wasn't convinced he gets there with 99 or TT, and I'm not sure what other hands I can expect to see. I think a Q finds a call a decent amount here giving I'd been 3-betting a decent amount, so I think checking is probably best?

http://weaktight.com/1962928

On the river his hand obviously looks like Ax a lot. Is this a good spot for an overbet? I guess my question is, if I'm trying to get Ax to look me up are they more likely to do so when I overbet or bet normally? It seems like Ax would call a normal bet a lot, therefore I wouldn't bluff that way, so if I wanted to bluff I'd have to overbet, therefore a good player should work this out and be more likely to call Ax to an overbet. Is this overthinking or good thinking?

http://weaktight.com/1962929

He not folded that often to my c-bets in 3-bet pots so I suspected he might be a floater. I didn't really have any good reads though. On the turn I can definitely bet again for value but I didn't think there were many hands I could get 1/2 more streets out of, compared to quite a few hands that may have floated and now want to bluff. When I check call the turn I rep 9x, A high type of hands so I think it's definitely feasible for him to barrel the river as well. What do you think of my line here?

http://weaktight.com/1962927

Here's one where he triples. I think it's a fairly trivial call when I river two pair as he has more Ax combos that he might be trying to level me with (this was fairly late on and he'll know that I'm semi-frustrated with his barreling). I'd like to know what the weakest hand you call here is. Against a lot of people, K8 should = K4 here. I don't think it does against this guy as I think he will be able to value bet AQ like this sometimes. However, he gets there with a ton of bluffs too. If I hadn't hit two pair would you have called this?

Thanks!

EDIT - Realised I should be including results from yesterday's hands:

http://weaktight.com/1956639

In this one he turned up with 73. I actually think looking this guy up was good and it really felt like his range was going to be way skewed towards bluffs.

http://weaktight.com/1956637

Here he called the turn with K6o no club. I think my play was decent here too - given he had this hand he can have a ton more that don't improve and probably fold.

Jan 30

To start with I'm just going to post hands here, but I may well begin to write down goals as well.

If I could get some thoughts on my play in the first two hands here that'd be great.

Hand 1

This guy was a weird reg type. All of his decisions were snap decisions, and it was kinda weird to play against. He'd been a little bluffy in the match so far (~150 hands), and he'd been showing a lot of his bluffs. His bluffs had kind of been in obvious spots - he'd bluff raised an A63dd board in a 3-bet pot right after showing me another bluff, so he doesn't necessarily slow down once you know he can bluff. His 3-bet had shot up in the last 40 hands or so, and he'd also started going on in chat about how terrible I was despite the fact he was slightly up in the match.

So I defend here given we're deep, he's 3-betting a lot, and I don't think he's very good. He tended to try and get to showdown with marginal value hands and didn't ever seem to think about value betting even remotely thinly. I think calling the flop and turn are standard here against this guy, and on the river I figured that he probably flats AJ and maybe AQ this deep preflop, and he probably isn't overshoving a weak Ax hand. Also he doesn't value bet thin, and also my hand is well defined as a weak made hand that will find it hard to call this overbet so I didn't think he'd do it for value.

Hand 2

This guy 3-bet quite a lot (~18% over 130 hands), but wasn't a barreler at all. I decided to raise this flop as I think he can spazz out with worse sometimes, it's really hard to play if I flat, and I'm not doing badly against anything.

On the turn we have pretty much exactly pot left. I figure he's flatting the flop with a lot of one pair hands that are now under the K and shove. I'm obviously repping a flush or set/straight pretty well too.

Hand 3

I included this as I was really pleased with it as it means I'm thinking and concentrating better than I have been doing. This guy check raised around 55% but was fast-playing all strong hands. I don't think there are any worse hands I get three streets of value from (aside from the worse Ks, but it's more often that he has a better one), and it's going to be really tough to play this to a check raise as he is doing it with K8+. I'd been checking a ton of flops back against him and he was leading turns so I figured this is a good spot to balance.

On the river I figured that his hand is face up as a bluff catcher, and I can't ever have Kx in his eyes, so overbetting is the best play as he'll think I won't overbet with anything less than trips, but I can't have trips so I'm repping a tiny tiny range of 99 and QQ. Overbetting is something that had pretty much completely disappeared from my game because I've been to lazy to think enough to do it so I was really happy here.