Replay is all fish!

On station who call any card on flop bet any pair and draw for value! When have top pair and higher continue pot on turn! if big fish bet over size pot and go allin river! top pair top kicker and higher go allin on river if player is station! it depend on player you adjust it! with fish bet all pair and pair + draw to build pot slow down if no hit, go allin if hit 2 pair or higher! On below elite stake player IQ is below 80! Top pair 2nd kicker+ equals Bet pot! lower pair and Draws = bet < half pot! With nut or even top pair top kick and draw miss bet >2x pot or allin! On static board with two pair bet pot and call by ace pair! Bet set allin and call by ace pair or two pair! top pair top kick+ is 3 street! top pair weak kick is depend on player! 2nd pair top kick is 1-2 street depend on new card! draws is 2 street allin when hit and minbet if miss! You have to read player and figure out how to destroy it!

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@gamergirI
I see what you mean i agree, i was just talking from a strategy perspective. If you try to play balanced vs good players. Vs fish I would just do the same as you

This spot and range is unbalance cause you never in this spot against balance player! If you r, this strategy still balance! kq bluff balance jj aq ak, AA AT AJ protect qj kj kk qq, depend on turn/river raise aa aj and bluff kj qj kk qq early or late! TT and 99 is bottom of range so check fold! Against good player range wider so more bluff on flop!

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Excellent advice for when you are HU. How about when you are 3-ways+ on the flop because its very hard to raise large enough to get HU? Specifically, are you now checking some top pairs on the flop to look for 2 streets on turn/river or do you still fire top pair with decent kicker? How far do you shift your relative hand values down to account for the extra player(s)?

Another question for multiway pots - are you ever donk-leading and if so, with what types of hands? Say you are BB with Q7o and pot is limped to you with 4 others. Flop is Q 6 5 rainbow. Would you donk-lead top pair with no kicker but with some backdoor straight potential or would you check/call check/fold depending on the rest of the action?

I agree 100% with your assessments about the TT hand so far. There is a big difference with how you address certain spots depending on who you are playing against. Many people here are over complicating things and losing value because they are balancing. Unless you are playing against people who notice, this is a total waste of chips and effort. Balancing against people who donā€™t know what a range is will never be optimal.

You are helping to create a realistic picture of what optimal play looks like against a weak population. Keep it simple and go for as much value as you can get away with. It is ā€œuglyā€ poker but it is the most efficient way to win here.

More questions tomorrow. Will try to get into the other side of the equation - not paying people off. Maybe a bit on bluff-catching at these levels and whether you need to protect your checking range or not?

@1Warlock Uhmm personally I dont have a leading range on most flops from the BB, with some exeptions like for example a 225 flop (which is best for the BB range) Q65r I guess you can lead but meh it just shows exactly what you have a weak Q or a 56 just check call imo.

Just to add real quick you should work from a perfect poker (GTO) and try to adjust from here to the players. Just because you are playing vs the passive players on replay doesnt mean you should never bluff. Just bluff a bit less for example

@JoeDirk

  1. Cant really go into my opening range on the forum for obv reasons. On a diffrent site which i play 6-9max on my VPIP is 23% and my PFR is 17% I would say these are good stats vs balanced people vs calling stations play more tight something so lower VPIP and PFR and vs NITS a higher VPIP and PFR
    VPIP=% of hands in which you volentary put chips in pot
    PFR=% of hands you raise preflop

For this it would be helpfull if you try to show some hands as an exampleā€¦ maybe if you see me playing once we can talk about some hands in a second window and i can give my thoughts. If the other player looks strong i might be more value heavy or i have some good blockers and like to raise. If the story told by the other player doesnt make sence i might raise.
But agression is not a counter for aggresion! if you play vs aggresive players play more tight let them barrel off and call down with your good hands.
3.
I just wanna play you because I see you help people on forum and see you as a nice guy, so I like to help your strategy out a bit also you can help my strategy out aswell if we play together. If we would play i wouldnt wanna play high stakes

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I love this discussionā€¦ Started by a gentle provocation it turns to one of the most interesting chats. Yes I have to learn a new language and be ensured I try hard as im not native. It opens my liitle horizon of poker strategy. Please keep it alive.
Just want to thank you all.

@ all my german players. There is no intention to translate any part of this. Sorry

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Hey @NoBluf - good to see you posting again. This should be a great thread for you and would probably be helpful to others to see how another person also tore through the ranks here. Just to clear things up so you know what Iā€™m trying to do here - All I am doing is asking the questions I think many/most players would be interested in. Iā€™m looking at typical behaviors here and asking @gamergirl whether they could be successful or whether she has a better option. As @unranked has stated many times, its not just about finding an EV+ line, its about finding the most EV+ one.

Everything I do with my training is looked at through the GTO perspective and then run through actual data for the player pool I am interested in. This ties in nicely with your statement about knowing the GTO-based premise and then adjusting it to the population. There are two big problems with trying that here, at least in terms of trying to help the vast majority of players. 1st, we have almost no data available to us on this site. 2nd, Iā€™d estimate 99%+ of the players here donā€™t know a thing about GTO so attacking it from that standpoint would be meaningless for them. Iā€™m trying to help facilitate a discussion aimed at the vast majority of players, not just the theory wonks. We can do our own stuff elsewhere.

What we have going for us in this thread is someone who has crushed the games here and is willing to share how she did so in simple terms. Iā€™d love to hear your perspective as well - not on how the theoretically optimal play would go but which have been the most profitable lines against this particular player pool. You would compliment @gamergirlā€™s input and give another perspective on how to quickly accumulate chips here. We know that basic ABC poker is profitable and there are top-10 players who have gotten there this way. We also have evidence that this is not the best way to get there because you and gamergirl (among others) have reached the same place in a fraction of the hands. I see looking at your play as the closest we can get to finding the most EV+ lines specifically for playing here. I hope this makes sense.

I donā€™t want this thread to be about me and I am trying not to give my opinions on hands as a result. I want to facilitate the discussion and get responses from the players who have objectively achieved the most success in the shortest period of time. I want to help draw out their knowledge and advice so that the vast majority of players here can benefit from it. Iā€™m doing this because I like seeing players helping players and I encourage people to learn this great game no matter where they are starting from or their goals. I also admit to a great curiosity as to how far from optimal the maximally profitable lines are here. Its obviously way past ABC poker on the spectrum. Iā€™m very interested in seeing how far the envelope can be pushed and will incorporate that knowledge into how I look at the game overall.

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Need to address just a few things and then step back again to facilitate

To clarify, I never suggested eliminating all bluffs vs all players. I said that balancing vs table of stations is unnecessary and probably wasteful. Bluffing frequencies vs stations of course go down and thatā€™s playing HU, Passivity had nothing to do with my statement as you can have passive nits and passive stations.

This was a question to determine if and when donking is profitable here. This is something I genuinely donā€™t know the answer to but since we see it all the time here, I thought Iā€™d bring it up. In solid online cash games I donā€™t have a donking range HU and my donking range multiway skews towards strong but vulnerable hands, like 2 pair+ and my strongest draws. Those ranges are irrelevant to here, I think. So, what are the optimal donking lines, if any?

Lastly, back to the TT hand from the SB - If you are playing strong, balanced players, on AJ2 rainbow flop this is the wrong part of your range to turn into a bluff for balance. As IR and OOP, this should fall into your checking range and more towards the check-fold than check-call portion. Your check range is protected for balance with some extreme strength, like some AA and JJ and some other combos that would depend on backdoor draws, ā€¦ I donā€™t want to do a lot with this here but would be happy to talk about it elsewhere. I brought the question up as a situation that happens frequently here and thought would be a good example to work with. How it is played optimally vs perfect players wasnā€™t on my mind at all. Sorry if I gave that impression.

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first of all, great strategy posts every1, i like it :+1:

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sounds great!
have to say iā€™m a little short in time as well lately. but as soon as we both have time i would defenitely like to play HU against you and hopefully we can help each other improve

ā€“

fair enough, would defenitely like to play with u again as well.

ā€“

gl every1.

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Hi gamregirl, i couldnt help but to notice that u dropped from 4th to 5th place after losing 500,000,000 chips. I know we always talk about how to make a lot of chips fast and u are giving great advice and answering our questions so thanks for that. I was wondering if u could tell us what u did wrong and why or how as far as losing 500 million so fast. We all learn from mistakes too so im asking u if u could tell us any mistakes or why was your play bad or what u did wrong and why? I think most of us here could learn from this, thanks and look forward to hearing your feed back.

It could have something to do with posting your strategy to the forum.

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I know right. Iā€™m even one of them.

Well I may be a fish to some players but I just hit level 30 so I I had a good week.

People should pay more attention to their own stats and progress and less to others IMO.

This is a free chip poker site after all and I use it just to practice strategy and socialize.

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I could be wrong, but from my observation rank seems to correlate directly to bankroll. If my assumption is correct, then isnā€™t it possible to rise to any rank if you just pay the site enough? If that possibility exists, then thereā€™s really no way to prove that the rank on this site reflects anything. Furthermore, being the most skilled player on a free site is naturally relative to skill level of the population youā€™re playing against. My experiences tell me that being considered good here isnā€™t nearly as difficult as even the most humble real money stakes where thereā€™s a rake to fight against that will continuously pulverize your profits as well as produce more motivated competition.

Now all that being said, to be fair I have to acknowledge that Iā€™ve never played against a top ten player on this site and have no idea what their skill levels actually look like. I have played against many in the top 5,000 and so far have yet to see a skillset that Iā€™d expect to consistently make money at any significant stake in serious games. I donā€™t say that to knock on anyone, but to point out the significant difference in the skill level of competition here vs real money sites, especially at higher stakes. Another thing Iā€™ve learned over the years: Most peopleā€™s true motivation behind poker is not to win/make money. It can be to gamble, to have fun, to socialize, to test themselves, to pass time, to play the toughest competition possible, or a host of other reasons, meaning that their actual skill level will not necessarily align with their ambitions. This means that someone who is better at this game than another can absolutely make worse decisions on a regular basis. To elaborate, why fold your gutshot draw when you know youā€™re getting a horrible price if nailing it would be super funny? Just an example.

All in all Iā€™d take rankings here with a grain of salt and not worry too much about what anyone says about it. In poker, real money or otherwise, itā€™s very difficult to gauge a personā€™s actual ability without mountains of data.

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Yep, thatā€™s it exactly. Rank is where the size of your bankroll is relative to everyone else.

And the rest of your post is accurate too. In absolute terms of ā€œgoodā€ players who are able to make significant money playing real poker, there are going to be very few here. Why would they be playing a free money site if they can be making real money?

The skill level on average does seem to increase as you move up through the ranks, but as you say itā€™s all just relative to the player pool here. I have heard that among the very top players here there are some who have played professionally at some point.

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I have for quite some time wondered that - if there are/were at any time any players on this site who have played televised poker or live poker in a scheduled setting against/with professionals. Even if they have/had just come across the site and play(ed) periodically/temporarily.

I have spoken to idiotplayer and unranked, the top 2 players, who are by far the best players here in my opinion (no offense to the other top 5 players who are way above everyone else). They are not professional players, but they have been successful when they have played for real money (maybe they can correct me on those details if they would like to jump in). Having watched a lot of professional poker, I donā€™t see much missing from their games to be able to play at that level, but playing at a full table of elite players with big money on the line would definitely be a bigger challenge than only facing one another (since they were the only one capable of matching one another). Their comfort level at evaluating range strength based on board texture seemed to make the game super easy for them here.

Every player outside of the top 5 (or top 2) have massive holes in their game that would either require adjustment (because they have adapted to the competition here) or they would be crushed in high level professional poker.

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Thanks for the reply. Interesting to hear that about them. I assumed pretty much anyone here would be easily dominated by high stakes professionals. I just didnā€™t know if there may have been any, say in the top 15-25, who may have at some time played against some professionals or decent high stakes amateurs in a scheduled setting at some point. Itā€™d be cool to know that you could somewhere find footage of someone who plays here playing against some known poker players who have played professionally.

It would be surprising if there werenā€™t at least a few. Most of the big boys (and girls) donā€™t pay cash for their major tournament entries, instead they win them in satellites costing a fraction of the entry fee. A few others ā€œsell pieces of their actionā€ to raise the entry fee. The very top guys donā€™t bother with the satellites because they put that much money (or more) on the table every day for normal (to them) play. Most of the time, those satellite or private events are not recorded in any way that would ever be useful to a player (casino security, yes, playerā€™s memento, no). So, probably yes to some players have met big names, and no, itā€™s unlikely thereā€™ll be film at 11.
*
Having said all that, in the 1989 - 1993 period, in various tournaments (some were satellites, others just low buy in events), Iā€™ve run across Mike Sexton, Hans ā€œTunaā€ Lund, Seymour Liebowitz, Ron ā€œCarolina Expressā€ Stanley, and Roseanne Stanley (his now ex-wife, also a fine poker player), By sheer chance of being in the right places at the right times, Iā€™ve metā€“but not played againstā€“Mad Mike Caro, Suzy Isaacs, and Doyle Brunson. Did it improve my game? Not a bit. But, I got some neat stories to tell, so I count myself ahead.

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