So Many Mistakes

Poker Strategy
1

So many mistakes, can you catch them all ???

I log on, primetime for a chg ( 7pm mst), thinking I can get a few SnGs… wait over 45min for a 100k 9ppl to start… bottom line playing standard poker, and got rivered (Badbeat) to go out 5th…

So after recent luck, I sit on a 2k/4k, buyin @ 214000 ( 9ppl ) … after about 12-14 hands, and never playing unless limp BB, I see these 2 consecutive hands…

https://www.replaypoker.com/hand/replay/308648127 ( had Kd 6d )
https://www.replaypoker.com/hand/replay/308648510

I’m sure Warlock, JoeDirk, and SunPowerGuru, can show my mistakes, feel free everyone to revel in my loss… no biggie, I’m still up over 2m in last few days… but can you show all my mistakes ???

2

I don’t revel in your losses.

I also have never understood the logic behind your bet/raise sizes.

3

In my humble opinion, the first hand was a semi-bluff gone wrong. I’m not sure that can be termed as a mistake. Because you’re waiting for the flush and if it doesn’t come you can bluff-shove. You didn’t really get the opportunity to, so, I think that’s just your luck.

On the other hand, I would have played small ball and just called the bet, and then see what the others did on the turn.

But that’s just how I play.

P.S.

I agree with SPG on this one.

4

[quote=“SunPowerGuru, post:2, topic:6580”]
I also have never understood the logic behind your bet/raise sizes.
[/quote]Well, @least I’m doing something right…:innocent:

5

first of all, i saw that you were in both of them were very short stacked, so all players have a big edge on you that way. so wioith rings i should rebuy to at least the average, but if possible even to the max.

but to the first hand:

  • preflop: K6 suited is a quite weak hand when playing 8handed, so this one i would fold in the first place, especcialy with the loose limping table image. if you hit a king, you have big kicker trouble. if you hit your 6, it’s rarely top pair. you only flop a flush 118:1 times and a flushdraw about 8:1 times. however you are on a limping happy table, so you could have limped if you were in the BTN because of your possible implied odds, but i won’t try in MP.
  • flop: i would way sooner take the free card as played and check it back. you have 4 opponents and semi bluffing is mainly trying to win by folds with your equity of the flush as backup. the chances all 4 would fold is very small. as played if i would semi bluff the betsize should be way higher, probably about 65-70% of the pot, this would give you way better probability to get them folded. if you were OOP however i would make the semi bluff, or i would make a smaller bet about 40% (still slightly higher then used now) as blocker bet to make yourself get good odds.
  • turn: pretty much same story, the minbet was an easy call to get good odds, there were still 2 players after you if you would make the call, but since they checked the flop and turn i don’t think they would check-raise you anyway, even if they did you know enough to fold.
  • river: very straightforward fold. so this was the right play.

now the second hand:

  • preflop: seems like you played this one well, AJ is a good hand and would have raised it to about 3BB’s .
  • flop: i would defenitely raise this one, but the massive overbet of 100K won’t sounds like a good idea. you want value from your hand. there are indeed draws out there, but with about 40K you will already make it unprofitable to call off any flush or straightdraw. of course he has AKs which gives him 12 pure outs, and 6 additional outs as overcards (in fact there are 3 but he doesn’t know that). which means he won’t go anywhere no matter the bet.
    turn: obvious all-in, still a very strong hand and you are pot committed. pure bad luck that he hits.

hope this helps.

6

Yiazmat,
I said Limp BB(bigBlind), so the table is not “limpy” just that in the hands I have sat for, I only came in for my limp BB, so 1 hand and folded when I saw the flop. Second of all , its on purpouse I sit with (min buyin)+BB+SB+buyonBlind… so here 212,000… I’m always shortstacked but don’t feel that way… if I wanna buyin 500k, I’ll move 1 level up where min is 500k.

7

@ Sassy_Sarah . Your first mistake was that I received an invite to that table and couldn’t make it so you lost out on my 100k chips.

2nd mistake, same thing lol.

I just had too say it. :wink:

1 Like
8

Sarah -

Just a few things in response from me:

  1. While there are plenty of players who I honestly and deeply enjoy watching get lit up, you are not one of them.

  2. At some point I recall you claiming you “could fart 50K away” in your sleep. OK, so at 300K of losses here, you had some Chipotle before turning in for the night. Still not a big deal and I know you aren’t even remotely concerned about it.

  3. While I do enjoy analyzing hands and play, when I do so it is from a sterile / forensic perspective. While the 3 hands you mention above aren’t ones to put up on your mantle and show off, they aren’t train wrecks either. Heck, if I listed all the hands that I played here which were worse than these, it would take up so much space on this thread that you would be complaining about how long it took you to scroll to the end of it :slight_smile:

You are an interesting person Sarah. Maybe an acquired taste but you definitely have become one of the people I enjoy reading most here. Now grab some Pepto and get back out there! :wink:

9

Warlock,

It was just after see’n Joe’s post on Yiaz’s play, I kinda just wanted if there were mistakes I didn’t catch myself… even I can learn something new… after my post I ended up winning a small MTT ~30players, so no I’m not worried, just curious as to how those hands fair when under that sterilized microscope… Im glad you enjoy my posts… ( blushes )

10

ok, didn’t actually based the “limpy” thing on what you said about limping the BB (didn’t actually got that one since you can’t limp the BB.) but based it on the fact that in both examples almost everyone before you limped in till it was your turn, which made me assume the table had a limpy image,
as for the short stack buy-in. it’s not that i really hate the strategy, but i do think you ccan do more with deeper stacks, playing short has the advantage of losing less with difficult hands, but at the same time you win less with good hands, and to break the tie on this, short stacked play gives you less possible plays then you could use when you are deep. also drawing hands (or anything with implied odds) go down in value with nothing in return.

sounds to me like a very good thing that you wanna know this. i have also learned several things about it, and this kind of stuff let you keep learning further.
if you were interested in the post, you should also read the part idiotplayer wrote about my play and look and the replays of them, there is so much detail in it and she has it all right, learn from my mistakes too :wink:

so do i. you often have much detail infused in them. i like it.

11

Well Yiazmat,

I gave basic details, to get an unbias’d review… kinda Ironic how I lost to the same diamond draw I miss’d the hand previous… I’d rather get more replies before I asses the hand from my point of view.

no big deal really, specially since I already got the 200k back :innocent:… was just curious…

Yiazmat, there are several reasons I sit with the min, it also has built in advantages.

12

I won’t say that you had no business even entering that pot from that position with such rags. Well, I shall say no more about it anyway. (this will all be about the K6 hand)

What did you hope to accomplish with that cute little mini-raise? It wasn’t enough to make anyone fold. It gave UTG, UTG+1, and UTG+2 the chance to lower the boom on you if they had limped a big pair hoping for just such a situation.

Suited preflop, you will flush by the river less than 7% of the time. Since we usually bet relative to the pot, all you did is inflate the pot and make it more expensive to continue post-flop… and you will usually miss the flop, so it’s just throwing chips away. You also made it less likely that anyone else would come in, which is the opposite of what you wanted there.

So please do tell, Ms Sarah, what the heck were you thinking?

1 Like
13

ROFL

14

I finally have time to weigh in (since I was mentioned directly :blush:).

I don’t think these hands are particularly big mistakes, and the opponent who won both pots played the hands far worse than you did. Your biggest mistakes are your preflop raise sizes, which lead to bigger problems on later streets. On the first hand you raise as a bluff (K6s is obviously not a “value” hand but it is suited and blocks kings) and in the second you raise for value (AJ is way ahead of most players’ limping ranges), but you need to adjust your raise size for the number of limpers in the pot. If you raise to 22k-26k you will be more likely to get folds with your bluff hands and bigger pots for value with your value hands. You are giving your opponents a great price to call with any hand, which makes it impossible for you to bluff with K6 and makes it more likely that they will suck out on you when you have a value hand.

Starting with the 2nd hand because it is easier to analyze. After the raise-size issue, I think you played it just fine. Your opponent made a huge mistake by limping AKs, which is a huge waste of value and puts them in a terrible multiway pot. The only reasonable explanation for limping would be if they hit you with a big 3-bet once you raised, which they did not. I am not a fan of your overbet on the pot because it should only get called by hands that beat you (e.g., sets and two-pairs), but in this case it did get called by a worse hand, so it worked perfectly. Your opponent had a ton of equity, but they had to overpay to chase it. I would have folded that equity and looked for a better spot, unless they thought you were bluffing. The turn was standard, it made sense that they thought you might fold and they had equity to hit the river.

The first hand, I might limp behind with K6s because there are so many other limpers, but generally I would fold K6s. If you are going to raise as a bluff, you need to attack aggressively. I would have raised to 26k and then just folded if I got 3-bet. Your bet size makes it impossible to get folds, so you have to either get lucky or get more aggressive postflop, which is more risky. You flop the diamond draw, so I think it is fine to either check back and try to hit your draw because your opponents are not likely to fold, or it is also fine to be aggressive and represent an overpair. Your bet size on the turn and river did neither, but you got a fine price to draw both times. Seems like your opponent liked the jack on the river, so folding was the only option.

All in all, not huge mistakes, but small areas for improvement. I really don’t like the idea of buying in for the minimum. I try to always buy in for the maximum because when you have a good hand you want to get your opponent’s entire stack. I think I am less likely to make a mistake for my whole stack than my opponents are, so I want to be able to play big pots. Having a bigger stack also gives you maneuverability to make plays postflop. When you are shortstacked your decision is often basically made for you by the size of the pot. If the number of chips you could lose is too many, then playing at lower stakes would be better. I made similar mistakes where I stepped up to 50k/100k for 1/5th of my chips, tried to bluff with a bet of 5,000,000 into a pot of 12,000,000 just because I didn’t want to risk any more of my bankroll, and of course my opponent called with a medium strength hand. Being shortstacked takes weapons out of your arsenal.

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15

Joe - since you seem to be top-dog on bankroll management theory, why not start a thread on the basics to help people become familiar with the concepts? You could add in a bit on pros and cons of sitting with minimum vs maximum. This is really good stuff for people to learn and while it isn’t as applicable here as it is with actual cash, for anyone who wants to build a strong foundation, it is essential.

I have my own issues with bankrolls and stakes here as well. My guess is that most people are playing at least 1 or 2 levels above where they should be or where they are comfortable. This would explain a lot of the limping behavior. So, instead of limping every hand at 20K/40K, why not play a 5K/10K and open raise that same hand a standard 2.5x-3x? You will wind up having almost the same initial wager in front of you but not dilute your hand’s equity by allowing all the junk to come in to the pot?

16

Sarah -

Nice job climbing up in bankroll some more. Some interesting hands along the way, including 1 fast-played A9o for 3+ million. That one was dangerous as I’m sure you know. The way it was played, he easily could have had 10’s+ there. You both were way too aggressive, even if you had a perfect read on him as only being on AK or AQ. It worked out but as you well know, it may not the next time.

Bigger mistake you made today - but it didn’t cost you, thankfully. You sat at a table, above your bankroll, with a player to your direct left that is very aggressive and has a bankroll large enough to run you over without even noticing. You may get away with a limpy 20K/40K game but you realistically cannot play at a table with this guy at those stakes. On most days, when he is on the table, entering a pot is going to cost you 120-140K, not 40K. His post flop play is more brutal so you can expect at least a half-pot bet to be fired by him 75%+ of the time, no matter the flop. You were probably in the worst possible seat you could have selected.

This has nothing to do with whether you are capable of playing with him. You are. It is that you are at such a huge disadvantage with both bankroll and position that there is no earthly reason to voluntarily put yourself in that spot. If you see him at a table, get to his left. Open up when he doesn’t enter a pot and lay back when he does, until the moment you feel like playing a hand for your stack and then pounce if you like.

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17

Am I miss’n something here ??? we have Joe say that a smallish preflop raise is not helping me, then I see Warlock saying why not drop levels so you can make a 2.5-3x initial bet rather than limping… that implies that a raise/bet of that size will influence ppl more than a limp, yet my 2.5x raise according to Joe… did no such thing… Then I’m told all the negatives of shortstacking, yet none of the advantages… yes there are some… Just like in PLO, “potbuilding” can be adapted to NL hold’m, so was that a possibility ???

I think the setup told more of the story and the mistake : Never play angry, just step away and take a few deep breaths…

Understanding that mentality, before I stepp’d on the table, explains alot. Next, to me any preflop raise says 1 thing… you like your hand, its up to others to decode how much you like your hand. Also, there is what is call’d “defensive betting”… sometimes the 1st person who raises, freezes the raise, and gets in a hand cheaper than they might not normally have. At times, a 1/2 stack bet can seem stronger than a all-in…

my opinion of my actions were as follows :
mistake #1, playing angry/annoyed…
Hand 1 : simple, appearing tight, I bluff’d… rep’n 1 hand while playing for a different hand, and fired 1st three streets, to reinforce the bluff but to not appear to be playing the draw… when I didn’t hit, I got out cheap (kinda).
Hand 2 : I tried to make money with a good hand ( get callers ), then I tried to just take the pot down on the turn… got called/sucked out on… I would’ve got great value had my hand held up… and my chips back from the hand before…

Now sure I could go into alot more detail, but I don’t want to write the “this is how to beat Sarah” post…Thanks all for your advise/de-brief … I really wanted to see how others viewed those hands…

Joe, recently I stepp’d on a 50k/100k table … Eze and Idiotplayer were there, trust me I should not have done that… its above my buyin range, luckily I won a hand… then banked 1.75m … you can’t play “scared” poker, no matter how u got there… There also is a art to playing shortstacked, not that I’m a fan… I’ll stick to the 10k/20k or 20k/40k tables, before moving up to the 50k/100k level… for now.

18

Sarah - I was speaking in general terms, not about your hands specifically. I also should have made more clear in my post that my suggestion was for opening, with no one having entered the pot yet. Sorry if I wasn’t clear about that but since you brought it up in relation to your hand, I’ll add a bit here. I’m going off memory but I think you had 1 or 2 limp before you. If you are going to make a raise there, “standard” would be 3BB + 1BB for each limper.

So, open for 2.5x-3x is pretty standard but raising after action has already taken place must include those bets in your bet sizing.

19

[quote=“1Warlock, post:16, topic:6580”]
ou sat at a table, above your bankroll, with a player to your direct left that is very aggressive and has a bankroll large enough to run you over without even noticing.
[/quote] was that bb-something ??? 140k sounds like him… if so, I sat where it placed me… I had no choice… and just like Daunte, I gave him crap once for his raises, then said … if I do this, you will stop, he said yes… while I don’t trust his “yes”, I do know that there are ways to get ppl to stop doing that… next off if that was the table, you would have saw later on I ripp’d a couple slo play hands, and made a point to point it out, both before I did it and soon after … the table got that msg loud&clear …I’m not a fan of limpy poker, but if you can manipulate ppl so you see a few cheap flops, why not… hehehe…

I 100% understand why you say I’m playing above my means, I just don’t agree… Yes, I have done good last 6-8 days, but it was by me playing “boring” ABC poker, and not making some plays that are both necessary and wierd in MTTs… If I cannot buy back on a table, then its outside my means… even that 50k/100k table was too much (kinda) it was 40% my bank just to sit… usually I think 10% should be max…

With current , uhhhhh, Rathering rules, my approach has been, never allow too much to be on table at any 1 given time… so that I don’t fall into the trap of playing “scared” … by that I mean, being “scared” to make the right bet/call/raise due to chipstack/bankroll sizes… So if I sit with 1m, I’ll work to dbbl that, then leave for another table… so later on I’m returning to that table with “OPM” ( ie- 1m to re-buyin, without having to sit with the whole 2m )… when I got someone on the ropes, and I can’t call his all in, then I’m on the wrong table …

20

ahh I see, yeah I don’t add the +1 per limper as a base raise amt.

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