Hmm, that does seem like it could be possible. As @SunPowerGuru pointed out, it’s difficult to get a sufficient sample on most players, but I do have over 1000 hands on some players, so I could imagine at higher stakes games with smaller more consistent player pools it could be possible.
But the more I think about it, it seems like estimating ranges/equities would be highly inaccurate if it were based on actual hands shown. In games with normal aggression (3betting, etc.) <30% of hands you play go to showdown, so it would take many thousands of hands with that specific player, and the output would be biased if they were more likely to see showdown with certain types of hands (e.g. small pairs often don’t make it to showdown unless they flop sets while broadway hands get to showdown more with more medium top pairs).
The stats it does show like VPIP, pfr, 3bet are essentially ranges already, although imperfect ones. Even if we know somebody opens 45% of the time when folded to on the button, we don’t know if K8o or J5s are in that range. Maybe they open any 2 cards in some situations and a much tighter range in others. The HUD is extremely useful and makes the game easier (and makes studying a lot easier). It’s certainly possible it could provide equity estimates too, though I’m not sure how.
Thank you! I just wasn’t getting it. You mentioned “quoted win rates include the blinds you are paying”. Of course! I felt kinda dumb when I asked the question, but it kept bothering me. Thanks again for your response.
Rake is a beast at these stakes. If you are using PokerTracker or HEM for your HUD and hand histories, you can add a rake filter to your reports. It will tell you the amount of rake you are paying in either currency or bb/100. A 5% nearly uncapped rake should be running you about 8-10bb/100, pre rakeback.
WTF happened to you on the fast-fold tables? That is a huge gap from your winrate on the regular tables. I would expect a drop-off but not going from 15bb+ to 5bb-.
Rake is the single biggest reason that ~90-95% of players lose money playing this game. Its not enough to beat the players at the table, you have to beat them by a large enough margin to cover rake. Most players try to build a bankroll and get out of the microstakes as fast as they can. The dropoff in rake is quite steep once you reach 50nl because the cap becomes relevant. A $2 cap at 10nl is a killer. That same cap at 50nl is more manageable.
@AKFolds - HUD’s do not show ranges and therefore cannot estimate equity. Data analysis through your HUD hand captures can be done after a session. I agree that HUDs can be useful if used properly, especially for someone multi-tabling. However, many players do not set them up well, do not reference data in real time well or interpret the data they see properly. In the hands of someone not skilled in using one, a HUD can be a handicap.
I am not a fan of them, or of any real-time assistance programs. I don’t think any resources other than the players’ minds should be allowed at the tables. Several sites have done good jobs in eliminating them and/or making them irrelevant. Most of the private live games I play do not allow phones at the table either.
I don’t really know what was happening at the blitz tables. For one thing, the opposition seemed better, more aggressive. There seemed to be a lot of regs, including from eastern Europe and south America who may have been pros (or bots). If they’re playing 1000 hands per hour, they can win a living wage in many countries.
But from my own play, I had run up about 14 buy ins in 5000 hands at the regular tables before discovering blitz and figured it would be easy enough to autopilot and win with just value hands without bluffing (apart from cbets) or making hero calls. So, my red line went from nearly break even in regular tables to a steep downhill slope in blitz. Without reads, consistent position, or HUD stats, I was just folding my equity too much against aggression and not bluffing. I also lost 4 times in a row all in preflop with AA, so that was a big swing.
Since going back to the regular tables, I’ve recouped my losses and then some, and the red line is flat again. People say you don’t need to bluff or bluff catch against fish or in microstakes, but I think I make more profit doing both than I do by getting value with big hands.
On the HUD topic that has been frequent on this thread, I just have to say that I’ve both enjoyed playing with one, and without one. I think playing with one is good for getting you to think about the most useful statistics to be tracking and focusing on, and also for searching for leaks in your own game. Both with and without require plenty of skill. Certainly no HUD feels more like the poker I grew up playing, but I’m glad to have had a chance to play with a HUD for a few years, and think it made my game without a HUD stronger.
Yes, if the game is soft enough, you can really just fold everything except your biggest hands, then bet big and get called down. But just because that can still win in very soft games doesn’t mean that doing so isn’t still throwing away a lot of value (though I think a lot of people prefer that if they can still win that way, as it also avoids a lot of painful swings). But as games get tougher, bluffing and tough calls switch from becoming optional, to a matter of survival.
Great point. That was really the hardest lesson to learn transitioning from Replay to real money (and at the highest stakes on Replay). I had gotten so used to lazily pot controlling, overfolding, and just going for value that it was very hard to change it up.
Selecting good bluff spots is very tricky, as is deciding when to hero call, but as I believe Jonathan Little said in a video I watched recently, our brains don’t like doing things that are going to be wrong most of the time, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t profitable. If villain shoves 350 into a 500 chip pot on the river, you can call and lose 70% of the time and your call will still be profitable. Similarly, you can make that same river bluff and get called more than half the time and still be profitable.
It’s very tough to not be results oriented and regret the bluffs that get called or the hero calls that get shown the nuts, but the reality of pot odds is that you can be wrong most of the time in those situations and still be profitable. The skill in poker is knowing how things like ranges, board textures, opponent frequencies, and card removal make your decisions more profitable and being emotionally stable enough to handle the variance.
Too many great points in that sentence. I think I want to savor each for a moment.
ranges: having some idea of your opponent’s range versus none makes such a gigantic difference
board textures: having some sense how various boards hit different ranges, and who’s range is happier with a given board is another skill with huge impact, especially as you start playing harder tables
frequencies: observing frequencies is just so vital to finding leaks in opponents, and one of the key tools helping to better understand the ranges you are against
card removal: as we talk about bluffs and hero calls, on both sides understanding what you block or un-block greatly impacts when bluffs or hero calls will be profitable
emotional stability: tilt is the single biggest enemy of so many players; I see so many that generally play a reasonably strong game, but after a bad beat or two are just the weakest of fish
This is only for JoeDIrk to answer.
everyone in the table has 100 bb eff. stack, all unknown players, blinds are 100/200, 9 handed table.
folds to Hero who has JJ in the CO. Hero bets 400, folds to BB who 3 bets to 2,300
what does Hero do? and give me an explanation of Why?
First of all, my default open size is somewhere between 2.5x and 3x, so my initial investment is small and villain’s 3bet is quite large 5.75x the open, so alarm bells would be ringing. A standard 3bet would be between 1500-1800. That impacts how I might play the rest of the hand.
Having a hand like this with big value but unlikely to improve is one of the toughest spots in poker. With no reads or information, I’m going to call and play a pot in position. 4betting can be ok, but I’d rather have info that their 3bet range is wider than JJ+/AK because those players are still out there. It’s just pretty thin to 4bet.
On a board of undercards I’m probably going to have to call it off and get stacked by bigger pairs (or bluff catch), on a board with an A/K I might call a normal cbet (1/3) and then fold to a turn bet because what am I beating? KQs on an ace board or AQ on a king board.
Now, most players have a wider 3bet range than this (5%-12% in real money) which makes calling and calling down pretty great, but with no info, I’m going to be pretty conservative, especially with the huge 3bet.
I’d also say that folding is a fine option. Poker is a game of information, so doing a scenario like this where you just sit at a table for the first hand with no info and face a large 3bet with a low premium hand is difficult. I’d rather fold and make a more informed decision in a few orbits than get stacked because I’m in the dark. I’d rather fold JJ and face this 3bet with T9s in a few orbits when I know more about villain’s tendencies. Sometimes I play poker like every hand will be my last, and that’s a mistake. No hand is played in a vacuum, and if you are uncomfortable in a particular spot, don’t play it. As long as you don’t make a habit of it, it’s not the end of the world.
Also, I’d 4bet with QQ and also flat hands like TT/99/KQs/AJs
it is an example it does not change the answer. it is irrelevant our preference opening sizes. Also the size of the bet from villain should not be the primary focus other than to get intel on their tendencies. You are missing the big picture.
This is the right answer but you did not answer me the WHY, giving me examples of how are you going to play postflop is not the WHY and that was not even my question, although I will say your reasoning in postflop is good but like I said, that was not my question.
My question should had been answer by few 2-3 sentences max. your reply reminds me of criminals being interrogated by detectives and they talk about their life and nonsense to appease the detective when the detective question should be answer pretty straightforward…"
No, 4 betting is not ok and you just explained it why…
Folding is the wrong answer and you are being exploited if you do fold. I can tell you don’t play GTO and you lean more towards exploitative strategy, this is why you have problems with finding the answer and you believe there are many answers to the questions. yes, there are some situations where there are multiple answers where the difference is which line is the most optimal that has more EV than the other.
But my scenario was designed for one answer not multiples.
People on this site don’t know that beating 10nl for 15bb/100 is crushing it and 5nl has bunch of players that play solid GTO that they won’t be easily exploited so you see winning 15bb/100 is alot when the average is 3-4bb/100
unless the site you play is filled with fishes or you are actively being a predator and chasing the fishes when they play, 15bb/100 while it can be done it is not that feasible with todays modern GTO players and the 5nl are filled with them let alone 10nl.
and I will be honest I do not see you competing with GTO players and crushing for 15bb/100. you have to be playing a solid GTO strategy and at least beat the game for 3bb/100 while multi tabling for the minimum of 5 tables to see those kind of numbers. This is why people are saying poker is dead, cuz it is not easy anymore.
Honestly, your response shows a very rigid way of thinking, which doesn’t seem like it would be very successful. I know what the GTO chart says to do here, which is almost always flat, but the sizing does matter, even in GTO. Going outside of standard sizes changes ranges for both me and villain and subsequently changes actions. For instance I’d flat 44 against a 3.75x 3bet but fold vs a 5.75x. Having invested 2x instead of 3x in my initial raise does have an impact.
Playing GTO because lol GTO is correct is going to cost a lot of value. The WHY you seem to be asking for is because we have correct pot odds for our equity realization in position or because the GTO chart says so, but poker is way more complicated than that.
Against someone who 3bets 12% in this spot, 4betting is great, against someone who 3bets 2%, fold is great. Without any info, I’d go with the default, which is flat, but if you think gto is taking the specific computer default line every time, that is wrong. Solver outputs usually include a variety of percentages for a given situation (like call 40%, raise pot 40%, raise 2x pot 20%), so there’s an element of randomization (not exploitation). There are very rarely correct answers in poker.
Also, solvers are based on actions against other GTO players, so while it is important to know solver based strategies, I’m going to default to what I know about the player pool. On replay I would probably fold JJ here because my default is that their range is QQ+, while at 10nl I’m always flatting. Our opponents don’t actually play GTO, so the best approach is to start by knowing the GTO lines as well as possible and then adjusting to the data you have.
playing GTO because you are playing vs unknowns buddy. you were so close to get it.
By the way are crushers only playing TAG? come on mate crushers wont lose value and you know the answer to it.
compare this answer to your initial answer. The first sentence was really the only answer minus the GTO chart that is irrelevant. Poker is not complicated, you make it complicated lol
lol the late realization. I love how you are editing your original comment as im typing my reply lol you have improved a lot from a few months back. So you do understand poker is not complicated and what it takes to be a crusher.
I still kind of think you are missing the point. The answer is simple, sure. But that’s why questions like that don’t make much sense to ask. All that other information needs to constantly be going into your decisions at the table. In a vacuum, call because my hand has enough equity against a default opponent, but nothing happens in a vacuum.
Also, as I said my winrate is -5/100 in blitz, so on average it’s like 7/100. 10k hands (or 20k) is quite a small sample to get an accurate winrate. In my experience, 5nl was just a cash grab, far from GTO, and 10nl most players are either fish, nit regs, or lags, so still not near GTO. If your point was to get me to admit that GTO is a good default, then mission accomplished. But while the default in this case is straightforward, it’s tough to know gto lines postflop, and you don’t want to ignore the information that your opponents (and HUD) are giving you beyond the default.
I don’t want to give too much free info, but no I am not missing the point. I fully understand what you are saying.
My question was a straightforward GTO answer vs unknowns. since 5nl and 10nl+ are filled with GTO players who don’t get out of line, winning 15bb/100 in 10nl is pretty much BS in todays game unless you are multi tabling 5 tables and winning 3bb/100. stay on the site you are currently playing cuz those are some good winrate anything 5bb+/100 is good ■■■■.
and I do agree that 200nl is soft as ■■■■, 500nl is just below 5nl in my experience. but like I said you are in a good site if you are crushing the players there. surprisingly it is that soft.
Here’s another question for anyone interested. 100b deep, you open QQ from the button to 2.5x, bb 3bets to 10x, you 4bet to 24x, bb 5bets to 54x. You ???
Spoiler: acceptable answers include
a) nothing, this never happens because you never 4bet, only flat QQ vs the 3bet.
b) fold because a 5bet that isn’t a shove means villain’s range is exactly AA/KK.
c) call because with no information our default is to call and folding QQ is weak/exploitable
d) shove because QQ is a very strong hand
Multitabling 5 tables at 3bb/100 would give you a winrate of 3bb/100 not 15. I generally play 2 to 4 tables at a time, but again I’m not saying that is my true winrate. Without saying which site it is, it’s known for being the toughest site open to American players. I wouldn’t say many people on the regular tables are playing close to GTO (maybe the blitz tables?). Against the nit regs you bet a lot and they fold too much, against the lags, you check a lot and they bluff too much, so it’s good to start with a solid balanced approach but then adjust.