Player Levels

Poker Strategy
42

This is an excellent taxonomy, and it would be worthwhile to tag all regular tournament players accordingly.

I had recently tried to up my game by adopting a TAG strategy, but after failing at the bubble time after time, I went back to LAG and am doing much better recently with several in-the-money finishes. The problem with TAG is that it can get you overcommitted to the pot on later streets vs Super Fish Trappy Fish. When Super Fish calls your King high flop bet and you have AK and he has K5, there is no knowing when an offsuit non straightening 5 falls on the river.

How would you categorize an aggressive player who loves to passively call early raises from middle to late position with a variety of hands and then turn nasty after the flop and attacks continuation bets? (I have done this myself sometimes, but often lack the guts and opportunity to do it more often. You don’t want to try it with easily dominated hands like KT or KJ)

43

I don’t play tournaments very often anymore, but in the cash games I play I don’t see this player type very often. That said, I have seen a few players that are passive and with wide ranges pre-flop and on the flop, but then on the turn and river love to get aggressive. We’ll call this villain type the Floater for now, and here’s a typical script:

  • TAG hero in the cut off seat raises with AJs pre flop over early limp from Floater, and gets a call from the BB and Floater.
  • Hero bets half pot on the flop with a marginal made hand on KJ4 rainbow board. BB folds, and Floater calls.
  • Hero checks behind with KJ45. 83o, maybe he doesn’t…

If I once see a player take a line like this with a zero equity hand, that’s usually enough to push them into this category in my mind, until subsequent observations are capable of providing a more complete picture.

Edit: you’d noted middle to late position for Floater, and in this example I have them doing it even from EP, but I agree it is a stronger strategy when they do it IP.

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Level 27: The Squeeze
I might begin to need some kind of special belt with all these tools I’m finding…

The squeeze play is interesting. I’d started 3 betting more, against opens that I thought were not unusually tight, a while back (level 16). It looks like this is a particular type of 3 bet were an initial player raises, someone behind cold calls, and then you put in the 3 bet. An example:

  • first seats fold to the cutoff, who raises
  • button folds, small blind calls
  • player in the big blind 3 bets, squeezing the initial raiser

The squeeze is supposed to put more pressure on the initial raiser, as if they call the 3 bet, they don’t close the action, and so cannot be sure that the player in the middle won’t put in a 4 bet, making calling less appealing, and pushing the initial raiser to contract their calling range, and choose more between a 4 bet or folding (and thus generating more folds). The player in the middle also acts as dead money, as their cold call rather than 3 bet earlier leaves them usually more likely to fold to the 3 bet also.

Because the middle player is almost providing tasty free chips, and because of the improved fold frequency for the initial raiser, you typically want to squeeze with a somewhat wider range than you’d normally 3 bet the initial raiser with.

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45

Level 28: Bank Roll Management

When I started playing on low stakes, especially early on, I would often sit down at a table with 30% or more of my total chips. I would soar up and down, rapidly moving up to play on higher stakes tables, and rapidly fly back down, going completely broke several times in the process. I began to notice, that even as I felt I was beginning to play noticeably better than most of my opponents, it was still common to lose 2 or 3 max buy ins over a fairly short stretch in time, especially on tables where many hands saw players getting stacks in.

If losing 2 or 3 max buy ins was a nearly daily occurrence, then losing 4 or 5 was something that might happen once a week, 6 or 7 something that might happen once a month, and maybe even 8 to 10 once a year? I’ve now started playing 500/1k. Early on, I might have started playing at this level if I’d gotten my bank to 500k or 600k (not that I ever did get my bank that high back then), but now I see that is almost a perfect recipe for disaster, as losing stacks twice will wipe out most of your chips, and then if you reload and lose a third time, weeks or months of effort at building bank roll can be erased, and you are back at zero.

I suspect if you are incredibly disciplined about stepping back down to lower stakes, it might be possible to play at a table with 20% or even 30% of your chips. But when am I usually the least disciplined? LOL… I’ve found it is right after I’ve been stacked by someone that called my pre flop raise with 93, called my continuation bet on a board of AQ3, raises my turn bet all in on AQ39, and then hits a 3 on the river to beat my AQ. After getting stacked in general is the hardest time to act with rational discipline, and so I’ve just found it easier to wait until I have about 100 times max buy in before playing at a given level (so I waited until I had 20 million before playing 500/1k, where the max buy in is 200k). I suspect that’s a bit excessive, in that everything I’ve read or watched on the internet seems to suggest that 20 times max buy in is enough, but I’ve also found that doing this helps me be a little less risk averse, so that I’m less worried about whether or not I might lose a big stack, and more focused on whether or not I’m taking the best lines I can find.

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46

Context Note:

I should probably briefly clarify that in most of this thread I’m writing from the voice of a fictional new player that just started playing (level 1), and is working hard at improving. Specific references to bank roll, stakes being played at, and experiences are also mostly fictional (though sometimes inspired by real events).

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48

Level 29: Range Construction
So I’ve continued to define and evolve the ranges I typically play from different seats, and have also thought more about how to modify those ranges based on various parameters. I think I’m still very tight pre-flop, but imagine now that I am 3 betting wider than most.

I’m usually buying in for 200 big blinds, but many opponents are buying in for 100 or slightly more, and there are usually a few stacks much shorter than that. That said, I’m usually playing moderately deep stacked, where speculative hands have a fair amount of value, but not so much that I feel bad about folding them also. I never open limp, and so my RFI ranges (Raise if First In) these days:

  • 6: AA-JJ, AK, AQs
  • 5: AA-TT, AK-AQ, AJs-ATs
  • 4: AA-99, AK-AJ, ATs-A9s, A5s, KQs
  • 3: AA-88, AK-AT, A9s-A8s, A5s-A4s, KQ, KJs, QJs, JTs
  • 2: AA-66, AK-A9, Axs, KQ, suited broadway, suited connectors down to 87s
  • 1: AA-44, AK-A8, Axs, KQ-KJ, suited broadway, suited conn → 54s
  • 0: AA-22, AK-A7, Axs, broadway, K9s-K7s, Q9s, suited 1 gap → 53s

How to modify these ranges:

  • if I have been inactive for a while, I can add a few combinations of the next most suitable hands for the situation
  • if I have been very active recently, I want to drop the combinations least playable given the circumstances
  • if we are truly deep stacked (I have over 200bb, and most of the people that might still enter the pot do also), then I want to add Ax suited combinations, small pocket pairs, and suited connectors and gappers
  • if I become shorter stacked, I can drop combinations that are included just because of being suited or connected, and replace them with high card value combinations

If I see a raise in front of me, I will take my range from the seat in front of that and 3 bet all of the value hands, and call or 3 bet with the balance.

If I get a 3 bet behind me, I will hopefully have notes on the 3 betting frequency of that player. If they 3 bet rarely, I will usually 4 bet AA and KK and fold the rest (though I’ll usually continue to a small 3 bet), and I will start expanding that to as much as half of my RFI range against someone 3 betting often.

I notice that there doesn’t seem to be much if any polarization in these ranges (especially for 3 betting and 4 betting)… something I’ve heard about recently. But this seems to be working for me fine so far. I’ll worry about that later…

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49

Level 30: MDF (minimum defense frequency)

Hmmm… not sure yet how to incorporate this into my game. This feels like a measure that really only matters against opponents that are really strong, where they have a near perfect mix of bluffs and value, or against weaker opponents that are very bluff heavy. It seems to be defining the percent of your range that you need to defend with to keep bluffs from being profitable, and really I usually never think about that at all, but am usually asking myself a question like, “what percentage of the time do I think I am ahead here, and do direct pot odds justify a call, and if not, do I have likely outs that might give me the right implied odds?”

Still, I do run across people from time to time that seem to have a broken check button, and seem to almost always bet, and it seems like the size of their bet relative to the pot is supposed to define my minimum defense frequency (the percentage I must not fold to keep a bluff from being profitable):

  • 25% pot bet: 80% mdf
  • 33% pot bet: 75% mdf
  • 50% pot bet: 67% mdf
  • 66% pot bet: 60% mdf
  • 75% pot bet: 57% mdf
  • 100% pot bet: 50% mdf
  • 150% pot bet: 40% mdf
  • 200% pot bet: 33% mdf

It’s strange looking at these. Someone that defends that wide seems like the classic definition of a calling station, and yet this idea is coming from pretty much every book and web site on poker… Calling with the bottom 80% of your range into a 1/4 pot bet feels like you’re calling with a hand that can’t beat most bluffs…

Hmmm, I wonder if that sense that those are call station numbers is because after getting used to low stakes were everyone is bluffing all the time, and call stations abound, at medium stakes you start to see the opposite a lot: the player that never bluffs. Calling those players that wide clearly won’t turn out well.

But now that I am in an environment where it seems like people are not bluffing as much, and value bets are the norm, it seems like the flip side of this equation might be more useful at the moment. I don’t think I’m going to call that often, because if feels like I’m mostly facing value bets, but I also think others won’t. If that is the case, and if these calling frequencies are the minimum needed to keep bluffs from showing an outright profit, even when they have zero equity, then as long as I don’t bet so frequently that people drastically increase their call frequencies against me, it sounds like almost every bluff I make is likely to be a profitable play?

  • do I get 1 in 5 players to fold to a 25% pot bet? Oh yeah
  • do I get 1 in 3 players to fold to a half pot bet? My goodness, it is more like 2 in 3
  • do I get 1 in 2 players to fold to a full pot bet? Strangely, this one feels closer… is that because a lot of people use this size for their bluffs?
  • do I get 2 out of 3 people to fold to a bet twice the size of the pot? Not sure, I’ve haven’t bluffed this big very many times… a few semi-bluffs and monster hands I guess
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Level 31: Multi-Way

It seems like everything I’ve been reading or listening to acts like you’re mostly going to be heads up post flop, when at mid-stakes at least, I’m often on tables where it’s heads up on the flop about as often as snow in May.

Thinking about the MDF numbers earlier, if I’m using them to decide if people are over folding enough for low equity bluffs to be profitable, the non-defend percentage is the frequency I need everyone to fold for a no equity bluff to show an outright profit. So if I make a half pot sized bet, I need everyone combined to fold 1/3 of the time for the bluff to be profitable. Getting 1 person to fold that often seems pretty likely, especially if they are tight, and the board doesn’t seem too likely to have hit their range. With 2 people, as an enemy team, they now have twice as many combos of everything, and so no matter what the board looks like, it is more likely that one of them has a hand they like. Still, I think even with two opponents there are probably a lot of spots where one or more of them calls or raises less than 67% of the time.

But that basic thought of facing the combined range of all of your opponents means that with a very strong hand you are much more likely to get calls, and also much more vulnerable to draws, as almost any card will often hit at least one opponent hard, strongly incentivizing you not to slow play. And on the flip side, it seems like bluffs just have no chance, as someone will usually have a hand that wants to continue.

This seems a little contrary to experience… I’m often involved in multi-way pots where everyone checks around on the flop, and then someone makes a normal or even small bet on the turn, and everyone folds. Why does that happen so often?

Let’s imagine the player to act after the turn bet, and that it is currently 5 way. That player has 3 players left to act behind him that might be trapping. If he calls, he doesn’t know if he’s even going to be able to see the river, as someone behind him still might raise. That forces him to be much tighter than the last player to act. The next player is in a similar spot. She has two players behind her still, and maybe one of those will often play trap lines, to make matters worse. So she has to really ask, does she have a hand that is better than what 3 other remaining players have? When we get to the last player, I think a bit of hypnosis often occurs… “gee, everyone else folded… they must think that bet is the nuts”, and don’t seem to defend as wide as they should either. Finally, stronger players at the table probably also realize that the bet usually represents a much stronger range than it would have if fired into a single opponent (at least if they think the player that made the bet understands all of this). So everyone seems to fold quite a bit more than you’d see in the same line with only 2 players.

Still, despite that, you face much higher odds that someone has a big hand. If you are early to act, even if you have a decent hand, it is hard to be confident that the turn didn’t just give someone a set, if you have all 9 players still around for the turn.

So the golden rules of multi-way play seem to be:

  • you need a much stronger hand to make a value bet
  • it’s harder to bluff profitably (but if it checks around a bunch of times, I still like to try)
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51

Level 32: Pressure
In watching some of the better players on the site, I’m beginning to think that one of the ways they generate very high win rates is through applying a lot of pressure. Obviously it is possible to apply a huge amount of pressure idiotically also (the classic low stakes maniac), and so this is easier said than done. But if you can find ways to apply pressure that have even the same EV as the lower pressure alternatives, I think that creates a number of effects.

  • passive play leaves everyone else comfortable, relaxed, and thinking clearly, and able to think about how best they can apply pressure to you
  • big bets can turn off our brains almost like having a tiger in front of you… knocking people into fight or flight mode can greatly reduce the quality of their normal decision making
  • frequent bets with a variety of sizes can be exhausting to face… it just forces you to make more decisions, and gives you more opportunities to make mistakes

So I think I want to gradually figure out how to take more active, pressure filled lines while still avoiding over bluffing. It’s probably going to take some work to figure out how to balance things, and when to use various bet sizes… but baby steps, baby steps…

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52

Level 33: High SPR Magnifies Positional Advantage
Hmmm… why is that? Ahhh, I guess it is simple. Greater effective stack depth relative to the starting pot on the flop means more total decision points on the last three streets. The informational advantage of the player in position is like a multiple per decision point, and so grows exponentially as there is the potential for more actions.

If the pot is large on the flop relative to my stack, I only have room for one decision really. Any normal bet is likely to put me all in, and if it checks over to me, it’s either check or go all in.

With a somewhat bigger pot relative to stacks, things might proceed normally on the flop, but then one player or the other is in the same spot on the turn, with no decisions after that. Bigger yet, and you can have one normal series of actions on each street. Bigger yet, and you can have one street where there is also a bet and a raise. Bigger yet and two streets can see that, etc.

On top of the informational advantage, there is also the equity realization advantage. If you are last to act, a check from you promises the ability to see the next card, while players acting in front of the last player to act lack that power. That alone gives the player in position a chance to realize the equity of their cards more often, and again, that gets multiplied when it can occur over multiple streets.

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53

Level 34: Statistical Notes: Measuring Frequencies

I’ve been looking at my notes, and thinking that some of them don’t really help me decide how to develop real counterstrategies:

  • “That lucky ******* **** ****** *******!!!”
  • “Complete imbecile”
  • “Mega Fish”
  • “Strong?”
  • “Played check raise on river”

What would really help? I think real statistics that might help me better place opponents on ranges…

  • 3!, raise, limp and cold call frequencies by seat
  • bet frequencies by seat
  • counting bets by size and street that are bluffs, marginal made or thin value, or value, when hands are shown involuntarily (track deliberately shown hands separately, as they may be an effort to mislead)
  • similar stats on raise frequencies
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Level 35: Having Players Behind vs Being Last to Act

Have finally moved up to high stakes, which has been exciting. All of these different things have been hard to keep in my mind all at once, but I think they must be helping.

One new thing I’ve started to focus on both pre-flop and post is the difference between calling when you are last to act, and when there are players still behind you. So often it seems like a call just flushes chips down the drain when someone behind me puts in a stiff raise, and my call had been borderline already.

On a similar note, it’s one thing to defend the big blind as wide as they say in the books when everyone folds to the button, who raises, and whether or not the small blind calls, as the big blind if you call it ends the action, and you get to see the flop. Here, it’s so much more often 3 limpers and then a cut off raise, and if I call as the big blind, every once in a while I’m at a table with someone that likes to limp 3 bet. I imagine it’s not even such a big problem here, as it seems like there’s mostly far less 3 betting than you read is supposed to happen.

But in general, I think I can have a much wider calling range when I’m last to act than I can when I don’t close the action.

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Level 36: Chips Flow Clockwise Around the Table

This one seems pretty straight forward, once you learn about positional advantage. But it’s interesting how many seat selection ramifications it seems to have.

  • Is there a really big stacks at the table, especially in the hands of a loose, weak player? Then I want to sit as close as I can past them (as the clock flows).
  • Is there a really strong aggressive player? Then again I’d like to be downstream, getting that extra information on what that player does, or instead, just sit on the opposite side of the table to minimize interactions.
  • Are there several seats in a row with really big stacks? I’d really love the seat just after them all, so all those chips will naturally flow my way.
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Absolutely, because if you are last to act, you can often take down the pot with a bluff at the flop when everyone misses, but it has to be the right type of flop.

  1. Ragged flop, Queen or Jack high. Nobody has bet this flop, so presumably no one made top pair. Pot is there for the taking.
  2. Paired flop. Checked to you at the flop. Either someone is slow playing, or they don’t have the trips. A smallish bluff bet can take down the pot as it looks like you are trying to build the pot.

Flops to avoid bluffing:

  1. Any flop that has a potential flush draw unless you have the draw. RP players will never fold any flush draw, regardless of the odds. If you have two cards to a flush draw, then that reduces the chances that opponent has a better flush draw and reduces his chance of hitting flush. If you have Ace of flush suit, then opponent knows he cannot draw to nut flush.

  2. Wet flops like JT8. This is certain to hit someones range with at least a gutshot draw. So don’t try to steal the pot here. For example, you bet with A8, opponent has KQ, and an Ace falls on the turn. You are headed for an early shower. But opponents with any J, T, 9 or good Q may call your bluff bet.

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57

Level 37: How Often am I Against a Flush?

It has sometimes felt like I’m always losing big hands to flushes, and I’ve started to try and think about how often a single opponent will have a flush when 3 cards of one suite are on the board.

Case 1: I have a weird type of opponent, that folds AA pre-flop, and all other pocket pairs, and never plays cards unless they are suited. I was thinking briefly that against such an opponent they would have the flush 1/4 of the time if 3 hearts were on the board (say on the flop), but then I realized that there are only 10 more hearts left, while there are 37 non hearts (assuming I have no hearts… it obviously gets better if I have 1), and so it is actually only 21% of the time.

Case 2: My opponent plays every pair, every suited broadway, every suited connector, and also 1 gap and 2 gap connectors, but never plays unsuited cards like AKo. That gives them 78 combinations of unsuited hands (6 for each pair), and 132 combinations of suited (4 for every suited hand). Since they can’t have a flush with the pocket pairs yet, then that diminishes the prior 21% by the ratio of pocket pairs to all cards being played, bringing it down to a little over 13%.

Case 3: They don’t play 2 gap connectors, and also play a few unsuited cards (AK-AJ and KQ only). Now they only have 104 combinations of suited hands, and 48 additional combinations of unsuited, for a total of 182 unsuited combinations, and only 7.7% of the time do they have a made flush.

I think most players are probably closest to case 3, or even less heavy on suited cards, though I think there are certainly some people and spots where people will be heavier in their ratio of suited cards than that, but this still tells me that I probably need to be a bit braver on monotone flops, and that I can probably still bet for value a bit wider than I do.

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These are probably dangerous boards for continuation bets, value or bluff, as they often hit calling ranges harder than raising ranges, and can often give the caller outs that can incline them to get a bit feisty. For the pre-flop caller, these can often be ideal spots to bluff.

For the pre-flop raiser too though, while these will be flops where you can expect the defender to fight back more often, which makes bluff continuation bets often less profitable, they will often miss the caller too, and if the defender is more passive and/or generally over folds to bets, even with these boards, I think you can often continue to fire some non-value continuation bets.

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Level 38: Isolation Raise
Hmmm… it looks like, as I play more difficult tables, unusually weak players become a rarer treat, and if I see what I think might be a weaker player limping in front of me, I’ll often want to raise with a somewhat wider range of hands, just to improve the chances of getting heads up post flop with this player. It seems this is generally preferable to limping behind: if my edge is equal to an average win rate without raising, let’s pretend 10 big blinds per 100 hands, then raising does at least 2 things

  • it generates a higher win rate by multiplying my edge against a larger starting pot
  • it generates a higher win rate if I’m sharing that with fewer other competent players
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60

Level 38(a) - Oh no! Some of the other players already figured this out and are now 3-betting my frequent iso-raises every single time. Maybe I need to have an actual hand sometimes when I try this? I should at least check to see how many other players are left to act behind me.

Hmmm, here’s a thought - what if I developed a 4! bluffing range? That could be interesting …

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61

Level 39: Streets of Value
OK, it seems like bets result in a contraction of my opponent’s range, in that most of the time they are not calling with 100% of their hands. In the same way that I may sometimes need to make smaller bets in order to get a broader calling range that I will actually be mostly ahead of, I need to consider how many bets I can make and continue to usually be ahead of my opponents range. If I make a thin value bet, a single bet on the flop might put me in a situation where I can really no longer bet for value on subsequent streets.

This feels like it ties in with pot control also… the same hands that want to build a really big pot are the hands I think I can get 3 streets of value from. Hmmm, this is obviously very board sensitive, and the size of the bets involved on each street probably makes a big difference too, but I wonder what might fit in the different categories?

  • 3 streets of value: hands like sets and up, and probably 2 pair on some boards too. I remember hearing that AA is a classic 3 streets of value hand, but it seems like it often gets surprisingly thin by the river if you’ve also made fairly large bets on the flop and turn.
  • 2 streets of value: Top pair good kicker often feels like you can get 3 streets from it too, but with opponents that over fold, it often feels like you can only get 2. Middle pair might be able to get 2 streets in some spots?
  • 1 street of value: Sometimes bottom pair or even an under pair (or an unpaired ace even) seems to be able to get calls from weaker hands, especially on later streets?
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Level 40: Blockers
OK, I’ve been playing my holding versus my opponent’s range for quite a while now, but just realized I’ve been missing something huge when thinking about the shape of their range. I’ve kind of intuitively understood that if I have AK, my opponent is less likely to have AA or KK than if I had QQ, but I hadn’t really thought about that more broadly in all sorts of situations, or to think of how the actual number of combinations had changed.

  • if I have QQ, my opponent has 6 combinations of AA and 6 combinations of KK (assuming we’re still in a spot where play so far hasn’t already begun to make those holdings less likely), for 12 combinations
  • if I have AK, there are now only 3 combinations of each holding, cutting the chances of AA and KK in half.

I see now that that can make AK an effective light 4 bet, kind of performing a bit like a semi-bluff: it has a lot of equity most of the time when it is behind (since it won’t be against AA or KK as often, is almost a coin flip against most other pocket pairs, and will do really well against any other ace). Perhaps that is why some of the small ace suited hands are used as bluff 3 bets and 4 bets in some of the books (blocking AA).

It’s also making me think about some other blocker effects:

  • it can be nice to unblock flush and straight draws when you are value betting on the flop or turn, as that creates more combinations of hands that are behind you that will often call a bet
  • in general, blockers will often change the ratio of hands in front of you versus hands behind you
  • when considering calling a big bet on the flop or turn with a bluff catcher, having blockers to drawing hands will normally be a bad thing, as that will typically give your opponent a higher ratio of value hands and require better pot odds to call, while blocking some of the value hands and unblocking the draws should mean you will be good more often
  • it can be good to bluff with cards that block some of the stronger hands in your opponents range