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-EV Rivershoves

I Guss I'll Repost This

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by , 10-21-2009 at 07:36 PM (3652 Views)
I originally got rid of this post because I felt that it gave way too much insight into how I thought about poker and didn't want to fix any of my opponents leaks since I do play with the same people almost every day I play. But I realized that the opponents I am talking about in this post aren't reading poker forums and even if they did read what I'm writing here they would probabally misunderstand their problems and actually play worse trying to counter everything I'm saying here. So I decided to repost this since I would like to hear if anybody would like to expand on any of these ideas.

Exploiting Columbus Players Narrow 3betting Ranges in deep stacked situations

I'm bored right now so I feel like thinking about poker outloud. So to spare my roommates from 10 minutes of boredome I'll do it on here.

Since I started playing mostly live poker, it seems like everday I am still surpised about how many major leaks the live players in columbus tend to have that can be exploited. I'm not sure if this is true for live play everywhere but here in c-bus, the play is attrocious.

One of the funnest leaks to exploit is their inability to disguise their hands preflop. Busting aces is fun!!!

This is not a common leak you see online. For the most part players tend to make their preflop betsizing standard and 3betting light is so popular that is usually a mistake to put a player on a very strong range when you get 3bet. Also the small stacksizes make it hard to exploit even if you do have a read on them.

This is not the case live
.


1) A lot of players here in columbus tend to signal the strength of their hand by their preflop size. e.g. a limp is a suited connector, small pair, or trash hand, 12-18 is a broadway hand or medium pair, 20+ is Ak or a big pair.

2) Nobody 3bets light at gemini or places like it. Most players will never 3bet bluff and a majority won't even 3bet hands as strong as Ak or JJ. I see some players who will only 3bet AA and never KK!!!

3) A players postflop plan with their hands will always be the same.

4) Live play, it's not rare to be very deep with multiple fish.


We can exploit this badly

Sooooo, once a player defines their hand range (whether they are defining it to be very weak or very strong), with deep enough stacks, and especially in position, you can play a super wide range. You have a lot of options postflop.

The reason this leak is so huge is because stacks are so deep in live play. It is really important to keep your hand range wide preflop and on the flop when the bets are only worth a few blinds so that you can have an edge on your opponent on the river and turn when the bets can be worth 100 blinds or more. It is important to be able to have the nuts/air/or a thin value bet at any given time against a good player like us so that you can't easily be exploited. The casual live poker players of columbus don't understand this.

Some examples of this and how it applies to players preflop leaks.

One of the best and easiest ways to exploit this is to just fold everytime someone opens to 20 or 3bets you even if you have a hand as strong as QQ. This is easily the best way to play if the player in question does not have a very deep stack. That means when he 3bets he is only getting action from AA and maybe KK and we win just by always having the best hand when the money goes in.

When they are deep you have some other options though.

More common traits of live players:

1) Some players will never cbet AK if they miss. These players may check-call and try to hit an a/k on the turn but they will eventually fold if they miss. Easy players to spot out because when they fold they slam the AK face up on the table and complain about how they never hit and how much they hate AK since it is a drawing hand. These players will however fire the flop with overpairs to protect their hand.


This means their is no such thing as reverse implied odds. If you call with AJ against this type of player and flop an ace, you can fold the the cbet and never be folding the best hand. If they check then you know their range is AA or underpairs to the ace and you can go about getting value from your hand. If call with j7s and the flop comes QT7, you will get to showdown with the best hand against Ak everytime since they will never bluff.

2) Some players will stack off with an overpair no matter what!!!!

This one is simple to exploit. You have massive implied odds and can see a flop with almost any 2 cards. How deep a player has to be to call if you know he is stacking off every time i don't know but in live play they are usually more than deep enough to call with any 2.

3) Some players are smart enough to fold overpairs. Some even cbet AK.

This one is not as easy to exploit. These players can read board textures and understand that AA is the nutzz on a k75 board but garbage on a jt8 board. They are better than the stack off everytime players and much tougher to play against.

Doesn't matter.

It's deep stacked poker and especially if we are in position, if we play good and kinda balance our range a little it is impossible for a player to play any hand profitabally when we can easily narrow their range to AK JJ+ but the have no clue what we have. We are going to need to be in their head a little bit and make some moves here though.

Contrived Example:

We open 5c 3c from the cutoff. SB 3bets to 35 and he has 800 behind. We call.
The flop comes Js 10c 5d which gives us a pair and a backdoor flush draw. He cbets 50. We believe he cbets Ak along with the rest of his range and since we can outplay him on the turn/river badly we want to float the flop with as often as possible so we can cash in on our reads. So a pair with backdoor draws is a no brainer sinnce we do have some equity even if we are beat.

So we call.
The turn comes a 8s putting a flush draw out there that is not ours. He bets 150 this time. We can pretty easily put him on an overpair (Trip jacks maybe but it's really hard to flop trips and you usually can tell when somebody is that strong or just hoping his overpair is good when you are at the table with the person) at this time and our pair is not good.

So we fold here sometimes. Except every once in a while when our instincts tell us that this might be a spot where we can jam here as a bluff. He may be cheesing for the day and not want to risk it. He may of just got even. He may have gotten his aces cracked the other day. Any reason that he may be folding will usually make a high-variance bluff here profitable.


We can see why this spot on the turn where where his inability to 3bet light and show up with a straight or a set or even air here really shows why it's iamportant to keep your range wide in deepstacked poker against good handreaders like us.

There is nothing he can do when we shove here. We can easily represent a set, 2pair, a straight, a draw big enough to be a coinflip agaisnt an over pair. All hands that we can have but he cannot since he never mixes up his 3bets. We know what he has and he knows that we know what he has. But our hand range is still not defined. That is how often we will be bluffing here is not defined. Our value shoving range is huge though so he probabally should be folding but if he is, we will be making moves like this a ton and he will be folding so often (since overpairs are rarely the nuts on the turn) that we will steal loads of $300 pots like this one and completely dominate him in the long run. If he doesn't fold here often than he has leak number 2 has and we will show up with a set here often enough to crack him for $900 when he puts all of his money in with one pair.

We can bluff so much because it is impossible for him to have a big hand unless his range is wide. We are never bluffing into the nuts. The only risk is that he may make a bad call against our range. It's a bad call because we can easily value shove a huge range since we know what he has and aren't in risk of valuecutting ourselves agaisnt better hands. Basically we will be very aggressive on the turn and river.\

Also we don't need to always shove. Sometimes a smaller raise to threaten his stack followed by shoving the river (sometimes giving up) works just as well if not better.


After the hand it is very important that we talk about how good we run and apologize everytime they fold or we crack their big hands so that they continue to think that they are better than us and just the unluckiest poker player in the world so they continue to tilt and fail to improve. We want them to think "stupid donkey emmer effer calling me when I had AA and he only had 5 high how do I run so bad" .

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Updated 10-23-2009 at 08:01 AM by ThrillCory90

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Comments

  1. Vestvik7's Avatar
    Excellent post cory.

    Lately I've been thinking how good cash game players think of the game as something floating which they can shape, and tourney players think off the game as something rock solid they have to break down.

    I'm a tournament player from my toes til my heart and wont claim its easier to succeed in tourneys, since the two games really isnt the same at all. But your understanding of ranges, and how to exploit them, resemble something close to what im thinking about late game mtts these days.

    Again excellent post Cory, and im sure none of these players know how to google "poker".=)
  2. rryu87's Avatar
    assasinato once said something about using shoves /river shoves in cash games as your weapon for tournament based players. What's your insight/opinion about it?
  3. ThrillCory90's Avatar
    assasinato once said something about using shoves /river shoves in cash games as your weapon for tournament based players. What's your insight/opinion about it?
    In what context is he talking about "using shoves/rivershoves as your weapon". I'm unfamiliar with assasinato's videos so I'm unsure what he specifically means by "using shoves/rivershoves as your weapon in cash games".

    I do feel that pulling the trigger on very thin river shoves both for value and as bluffs is something that seperates a lot of marginal winning players from the game-crushers.
    Updated 10-23-2009 at 08:24 AM by ThrillCory90
  4. cusecrusher's Avatar
    Great post Cory. I play a ton and consider myself a successful live cash and couldn't agree more with what you've said. I always have to "swallow my pride" when I call an $18 bet with 5s6s and crack there KK and just tell them unlucky instead of telling thm how transparent there play is.

    1 question if you don't mind. I agree with you about no one ever 3betting without Ak and 1010+, so I have found myself lately 3 betting in position with 76o and things like that for value. You almost never get 4 bet, and more often than not they seem to fold or call then check/fold 90% of the time. How bad of a leak do you think that is, if one at all?
  5. ThrillCory90's Avatar
    play a ton and consider myself a successful live cash and couldn't agree more with what you've said.
    Yea, I think I played with you once last spring and you played pretty decent from what I saw.

    so I have found myself lately 3 betting in position with 76o and things like that for value.
    3betting 76o is a bluff
    You almost never get 4 bet, and more often than not they seem to fold or call then check/fold 90% of the time. How bad of a leak do you think that is, if one at all?
    Pretty bad leak. It's +EV to 3bet any 2 cards in position against players who fold too much or call too much and play too fit or fold postflop. Not very many players fit outside of either these categories. Most players are scared out of their mind to 4bet AK. You just have to p ick your spots to 3bet. At Gemini for example I have played many times where I 3bet the 2 people to my right every single time they opened (I dont mean most of the time I mean every time) and got away with it.
  6. geoff99gt's Avatar
    chapter one of how to crush the gemini. i was talking to bill a few weeks ago about how i need to start 3 betting preflop more.
  7. ThrillCory90's Avatar
    Yea, people call 3bets so much OOP and play so badly postflop that you gotta 3bet a lot. You don't have to be Joey, but it is an easy way to win a few more $/hour. You make most of your money because you are good at playing multiway pots so it makes sense that you choose overcall over 3bet more than I do.