Finally!!! (live 5/10 win)
After many many trips to the 5/10 table with only wins under $100 or losses of $200 booked, I finally walked away from a 5/10 game up what I consider to be a reasonable amount of money.
I was hit by the deck pretty hard, and even some of my less spectacular plays (calling 2 bets cold with Ah7h OOP into a couple of bad players) were paying off.
I ended up walking away up $345 my largest win at the BCC to date. I know this isn't a lot of money for most people, but for me it's a nice addition to my depleted bank roll...
I was hit by the deck pretty hard, and even some of my less spectacular plays (calling 2 bets cold with Ah7h OOP into a couple of bad players) were paying off.
I ended up walking away up $345 my largest win at the BCC to date. I know this isn't a lot of money for most people, but for me it's a nice addition to my depleted bank roll...
Comments
Arrived about 9 and left at midnight. Short Session, maximum profit
Started when I had AdKh UTG early and I raised. Flop came 3 diamonds with the K, I bet it, called, turn came a blank, bet my TPTK with nut flush draw, river came the missing diamond and I got 4bets in before my oppt just called. I actually stopped and verified the board when he went to 30 just to make sure I didn't miss a pair on board or a straight flush draw. (He had the J high flush AJ)
That was the type of night it was.
Unfortunately the gentleman in question left the table right after that hand so I didn't get the pleasure of his company.
Did you do anything better/different? ((Besides cold calling with Ah7h OOP?)) that could account for your win? Or is this just variance of getting hit with the deck?
I can't take any credit. My normal tight brand of poker (except for a couple of suited A's from late position and a 9s7s that got raised behind I ended up donking off a few bucks to)
I had AA's 2x (both held)
KK's 2x (once lost to a straight, other won a decent pot)
Flopped set's 2-3x, (once with 2's on a K2Q board, so awesome, another JJ's flopped a J)
Got called on a 4bet on my nut flush...
Things like AQ raised preflop, flop comes QQ4, check the flop, check raise the turn (when flush draws appeared).. Stuff like that.
Hmm... I don't know if you're looking for any advice at all in this thread, but some stuff sticks out as possibly pretty big errors. I'm not trying to knock you, they are common LHE errors, and you're missing out on a lot of value I think.
Never one to turn down free advice
Ok, first off in a game like 5/10 live you should be playing fairly loose, especially for only one bet in late pos., and with hands that play well multiway.
I haven't playd Btfd - how would you describe the game? No doubt it's loose, but is it loose passive or loose agressive? Are there many preflop raises? Many pf 3bets? How many players to a pot on average?
The AQ hand you describe is typical. Everyone says the problem with LHE is that nobody folds anything. Then players get a monster hand and.... check it so nobody folds!?!? I mean if no one has anything, it's ok, but people like to call. If they called 2 cold preflop, they will call here. If they have a 3flush on that board, they will call to pick it up. Even if they do fold, its ok because you'd be betting AK on that flop too and you'd want them to fold almost any hand then.
The worst thing would be if you got cold called by something like QJo and you're slowplaying each other and missing out on a lot of bets.
What would you say is your range of hands playing in late position (button or CO) after several limpers? What hands are you cold calling a raise with there?
Ahhhh, strategy talk.....
It really depends, that time of the evening it's a lot more tight than you might think. Getting heads up or 3-way with a pre-flop raise happens alot more than you would expect. There is a 2/5 game here that really sucks up the very loose players (expect 7 players to see a turn at that game), 5/10 are for the moderates.
Raises vary from game to game, some nights you get some guy who 3-bets every chance he can, last night we had 1 hand capped pre-flop in the 3 hours I was there and only 2 hands were 3-bet. Raising really does tend to thin the herd (obviously the later the raise, the more people to the hand since they are already 50% invested
I have taken more $27 pots at 5/10 because of pre-flop raising and leading out when I hit a flop like that. Who is calling?? Only the hands that beat yours because of the preflop raise. If they don't have a Q and they can't beat your overpair (or AK, AQ), since that's what you represented, they will fold (I have a tight image). You will get occasionally someone chasing a 3 flush but again at that time of the day, not as common as you might expect..
Or everyone folds and you take a smaller pot than you could get check-raising the turn when the bet size doubles... Worst case there they fold to the 20 shot and you've lost 1 sb (by not leading the flop). Otherwise you lead the turn (after leading the flop), and have lost 1 sb because you can't check-raise after he calls the turn (You make 1 sb on the flop and 1 bb on the turn instead of 2 bb). If he calls the 20, you are ahead 1 sb over leading the flop and you are still way ahead and sure to get 1 bb on the river.
You also can't really check-raise in that position because unless a true scare card hits the board (on the turn) he's a) close to his draw and it'll cost him nothing to get there, b) ahead and he doesn't care about a c/r c) taking a free card to try to improve his hand..
It's rare he thinks the turn hurt your hand and that you'll fold to a bet on the turn (bluff??) because it's just 2 big bets to see the river, he's likely to check behind and try to get there on the river.
Late position, no raise in front??
A5s+ A8o+ 22+ K8s+ K9o+ QTs/o+ any 0 gap suited connectors (minus the 23/45) and suited 1 gappers above 7-9
after a raise??
A9s+ AJo+ 22+ (take one shot to make a set in position), KTs+ KQo+ QTs+, likely also any 0 gap suited connectors (higher than 7/8).. That's about it.
Note I haven't re-read this to make sure it makes total sense.. I'll double-check it later
Well, it seems I can't give very specific advice, you know that game far better than I. I can say this though, if your bet there isn't getting called very often, then you need to be raising a lot more hands and always firing a continuation bet into one player.
Have you read the book Small Stakes Hold'em by Ed Miller? I think you should work on making your image loose(r) and aggressive. That's the best way to crush a game like yours. I have no doubt your strategy is a winning one, but almost certainly isn't maximizing your winrate.
Can't argue with your limping range much, but I'd add in A2,3,4 suited if there's more than one limper.
After a raise, what are you 3 betting vs cold calling?
Certainly one leak in my game is the ability to fire a C-bet when I miss. I have a hard time with showing a loose image (though that A7h hand last night pretty much crushed my tight image and got me paid on 2 subsequent hands)
3 betting:
88+ AJs+ AQo+, hands like KQs, JTs as well. Very limited range though.. Maybe that's a spot I could loosen it up a little.
I've been on a sick run at the casino as of late:
+345 (from original post)
-200 (lost buy-in)
+150
+150
+150 (this was Tuesday night this week)
+360 (this was last night)
Not doing anything differently though I do feel much comfortable at the 5/10 table than I did the first bunch of times I sat.
I also seem to be reading players better and picking my spots. As an example, I NEVER bluff at limit, players will almost always call 1 bet on the end. The other night, the river completed a four-straight. My heads up oppt (who had been complaining about getting rivered all night) shoulders slouch just a bit when the river card hit. I check, he bets, I insta-raise. He folds after about 15 seconds. I had 3rd pair on the board and missed flush draw.
So as Phil would say.. I'm at FULL POWER BABY!!
Nicely done. Feeling comfortable at a given level definitely goes a long way towards being a winning player.
Never or very rarely bluffing is probably a pretty good strategy live, certainly on the river. Hopefully you are still semibluffing at least sometimes, even if only on the flop as a continuation bet.
Nice river checkraise ( I love river checkraises), though depending on the board/action/your opponent it could have been either very theoretically bad or excellent.
Don't bluff into a crowd, but you can be pretty liberal at betting heads up if you don't expect the player will ever raise you.
I rarely play Limit, but I got sick of losing my NLHE tournament buy-in every Thursday so I played Limit (5/10) for the first time in over one year last week. I managed to win $176 in 1 1/2 hours so I won more than my buy-in back, but when I looked at my Sklansky Limit book after, I realized that I made many wrong plays! :redface: There was one weird hand where villain flopped the nut straight but my Q-J kept improving on every street to end up with a full house. I was about to bet two $5 chips on the river when my overly eager villain's out-of-turn bet threw me off and I shuffled my two chips right in front my stack. The dealer himself ruled that I couldn't raise. I thought, "WTF? It was the other player that bet out of turn and I'm the one getting penalized by not giving me the option to raise?! Shuffling my chips after an out-of-turn bet is not a forward motion." Is this dealer ruling correct or should I have asked for the floor?
I know TDA, WSOP, Robert's Rules, etc., but the relatively few times I have played at Brantford, I have seen some weird rulings for both their tournaments and cash games that don't make sense. At yesterday's $300 tournament, both the dealer and acting TD made a wrong ruling that affected me and I was 100% sure that I was correct. I made an appeal but nobody on duty knew the correct rule; just like what happened at Fallsview once, it was only after the tournament was over that they found out that I was correct and apologized for the error.
And every casino Ive been in has one or two really whacky rules (like Rama's out of turn rulings). But I know that Brantford is really strict with movement with chips in your hand. A lot of people play with their chips and then check with that hand, while holding chips, and they will make you bet. I know they enforce the intent to bet, but I dont think Ive seen an intent to 'call' be enforced. From what you said Im sure you should have been able to raise still. Unless of course they decided that you brought those 2 chips far enough out to 'play with' for it to be considered a call.
Thanks for the words of encouragement, it was more about my comfort level as I saw a few plays I didn't necessarily understand and made a few mistakes that I overheard better players commenting on, added to my nervousness. But it's mucho better now
10% of the pot to $5, no minimum.
small stakes hold'em?? I love that book..
First, I've never seen an inspector (the new term for what used to be supervisor or floor) overturn a odd or tough decision. I've seen them do things like fix puck issues etc correctly but this is still a place where IWTSTH can be used for information gathering purposes..
I would agree that your move wouldn't indicate a raise. However in these situations I weigh if I want to get that one BB back slowing the game down and drawing a bulls-eye on myself for being a bit of a nit or let it go, let the next hand commence. At the end of the day, it's limit and causing a huge ruckus over $10 is almost never worth it (imo)..
One of the down-sides of having non poker players running the poker room. Most times they are doing what's in the best interests of their regs (I've seen someone double-blinded out, show up a couple of minutes later and get his seat back over a largish list, because they are a reg) When will poker staff and players realize that it's the fishy players they want to come back (they keep the poker economy rolling), stop insulting them, give them a little extra attention, open tables promptly, keep the lists moving, treat all incoming players with respect and attention. A perfect example is I sign in (I've called ahead), and within 2 minutes my name is up for a table. I come back to the same 'inspector', and he doesn't remember me.... even though I was there 2 minutes ago. I can understand he doesn't remember my name, but they can't remember a face for 2 minutes??? I'm even a semi-reg (I've been about 6-8 times in the past 2 weeks) now and none of the floor knows me, barely a few dealers know me, but many more players have gotten to know me. Take some time, learn about your cleintelle...
Long story short ended up $-50 for the night. Would have stayed past 4 am as I would have eventually got it back but had to be up with the kids this morning
Good Luck
I'll have to check it out next time I have an afternoon..