blonde poker forum

PokerStars Game #41132502701: Tournament #301010756, $5.00+$0.50 USD Hold'em No Limit - Level XXVI (10000/20000) - 2010/03/14 6:13:09 WET [2010/03/14 1:13:09 ET]
Table '301010756 282' 9-max Seat #5 is the button
Seat 1: chansmaster (669716 in chips)
Seat 3: daybreaker62 (2643750 in chips)
Seat 4: popra (691095 in chips)
Seat 5: Ironside (1070950 in chips)
Seat 6: joelip (343374 in chips)
Seat 7: xpokerplaya7 (679962 in chips)
Seat 8: MACHECOULE (2350724 in chips)
chansmaster: posts the ante 2000
daybreaker62: posts the ante 2000
popra: posts the ante 2000
Ironside: posts the ante 2000
joelip: posts the ante 2000
xpokerplaya7: posts the ante 2000
MACHECOULE: posts the ante 2000
joelip: posts small blind 10000
xpokerplaya7: posts big blind 20000
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Ironside [Jh Jc]
MACHECOULE: folds
chansmaster: folds
daybreaker62: folds
popra: folds
Ironside: raises 25000 to 45000
joelip: folds
xpokerplaya7: calls 25000
*** FLOP *** [2d 2c 3d]
xpokerplaya7: checks
Ironside: bets 80000
xpokerplaya7: raises 120000 to 200000
Ironside: raises 200000 to 400000
xpokerplaya7: raises 232962 to 632962 and is all-in
Ironside: calls 232962

if you won, yes - if you lost, no.

so maybe?

Just set him in with the flop 3bet. But yeah standard.

Don't get cross with me Lads, but serious question...is that the standard size raise pre with that much in the pot? 

pretty much. 45-50k ish is good here

ridic badly disguised 'I had 1 meeelion chips' brag in op

So isn't the BB kind of priced in to call at that point with any 2?  He's got enough chips to risk it and there's 89k in the pot and only 25k for him to call. 

This is where I get confused.  Where do ye split the difference between priced in vs. position? 

I'm probably missing something obvious, but, when the stacks are this deep, i personally dont think it's wise to play for most of your stack with this hand. The raise seems  too small to me too. There is 46000 in the pot before you bet. There will be a lot of flops that you wont like, so i would personally be inclined to raise bigger. As it is your opponent could be playing any two cards. He could easily have flopped a set, full house or even quads. I'm not sure of the best way to play it but i would try to keep the pot small once you've been called. It's an interesting dilemna though. Cheers for posting it. I dont claim to be any good BTW. Just posting my thoughts.

Raise size is perfect. We can't start raising more with this hand because we don't want to see certain flops. We need to be consistent in our raise sizing.

BB would be priced in to call with a big range if it was an all in showdown. It isn't. We have 3 more streets of poker to be playing and heads up out of position is not where we want to be, irregardless of the nice pre flop odds we apparently have.

iron

you played it fine

Laxie - people who continually call from the BB with ATC cause they are priced in have a terrible leak in their game and are a pleasure to play against

*check fold flop* is what they do 90% of the time - that or continue to spew by floating

Try not to get too cross with me too. What sort of range should i be flat calling with from the Big Blind against a raise of 2.25BB? I appreciate that we dont want to give away the strength of our hand because of our raise size, but, isn't this a bit small, particularly from the button, or is it best to just stick to one size regardless of position?

raise sizes should be the same irrespective of hand and position

dont flat from the BB unless you are super deep and have something of a hand - and even then - raise rather than flat

reason for not flicking it in with any two: you have J3 - flop comes 3 6 9 - you check he bets you?????????????? (continue to spew?)

Position is massive in holdem, if the bb wants to call with atc that is cool with me. Even when I miss and opponent makes weak 1 pair hands, I am often going to win the pot by making a cbet and potentially firing again on good turn cards.

They also will making calls with dominated hands which is great as if we both make a pair I am going to make quite a bit.

Also smaller bets allow more play after the flop which is good as it makes the stack deeper post flop giving us a lot more options in position post flop. Especially with position and a likely skill advantage over an opponent.

We also should be raising a lot and attempting to steal the blinds at this stage, it costs us less to steal the blinds by making it smaller. If we suddenly start making it 4x with our bigger hands, our opponents are going to be able to narrow our potential range a lot easier.

If you watch any decent buyin tournies online the winning players are almost making around 2-2.5x in the latter stages of the tournament.

Cheers for those replies. Very helpful thanks.

rage i doubted the 2.5 raises but its totally changed my results. 3x pre ante though

If people who continually call from the BB with ATC cause they are priced in have a terrible leak why not adjust to their tendancies and raise 3x to exploit that leak as much as you can? If the guy calls 3x then raising 2.5x for consistency costs you money imo.

because when you raise 3x (post antes) people think you are a retard

and because it is that stupid mind set of "oohhh its not much more to flick in" - whereas 3x seems like too much

So if the bb is a defender and has shown he WILL call 3x you would still only raise 2.5x because you don't want people to think you're a retard?

yes

and also when they call the pot is slightly smaller so it is easier to control should they check call and you have something to continue with.

are you suggesting 3xing all the way or just being "you"

Mantis

When your range is strong you want to build a pot, when your range is weak you want to steal the blinds for the minimum amount that is necessary to achieve that goal. 

In late positon your range is generally weak so a smaller raise is optimal and if this encourages a player to call with a similarly weak range all is not lost when your attempt to steal the blinds fails (although for what to do after this point I am probably not the best to advise). 

What would be bad is to build a big pot with a weak range as a cunning opponent might realise that your range is weak and put pressure on you.  So just because someone calls a lot it is not necessarily a good tactic to raise more with a weak hand in the hope that they fold. 



 

this thread is going back to 2006 imo

(but good work double up)

can can we talk about 5 betting light pls  ;D

Not advocating 3xing all the way. Hoping to have a debate to challenge the always keep raise size the same theory but I'm just getting the basic theory behind 2.5xing for my troubles. If the bb is bad then straying away from the basic 2.5xing theory to exploit that badness is a good idea imo and one reason to increase the raise size.

"When they call the pot is slightly smaller"...Why is that good? If the bb calls wide oop pre-flop why don't you want that pot to be bigger considering you're holding the advantage of a strong hand and position?

sigh

the fact that ironsides hand is strong is irrelevant - his range as he is on the button should be weak and if he changes his bet size when he has a strong hand a cunning........

there is a sb to consider (and others depending upon where we raise from)  and 7 other players watching this play out too thou!

you have the conflict of changing your raise sizes leading to a tell and the balance between to the two suggests consistant raise size is more sensible route to take

If he increases the raise a cunning player will know he's got a strong hand? If the bb has a habit of calling wide oop he isn't cunning. You are trying to fit a general theory into a specific situation. So if the bb defends wide the fact ironside has a strong hand is very relevant. And we don't want to exploit that bad player because it fecks up our range balancing? For that to happen we've firstly gotta showdown, and if we do showdown those other 7 players get what tell? That when we increase our raise size we've got a strong hand? If we increase our raise size with junk in future hands our range now re-balances and we can steal more because of our tell.

Don't forget Outragous you said the bb will c-fold like 90% of the time. So pre is your chance to exploit. You don't want to exploit cos of range balancing and yet bb c-folds 90% remember.

Wow just wow. LOL

If you are trying to say that against a player who is not paying any attention to your raise size or your range and who calls too much you should forget about anything that might be exploitable against a better player, I would agree with you but that is not what the discussion is about.

The discussion was about a button hand that happened to be near the top of the range against a player who we know nothing about.

we know nothing about bb as its just gone from 19 to 18 players about 3rd hand oppo has been at table

to cut long story short he had 23o and i missed but it was nice to know he was defending blind as i got

intrest back off him later

posted to make sure i wasnt supposed to fold on flop


though his range could include alot of weaker pairs

Yes, I'm not talking about this hand. Quite a few posters said never vary your opening raise. Raising more to isolate a fish who calls wide is one reason to vary. I also think you should consider raising more from ep to give callers with position less room to manouvre post-flop and thus create good post flop SPR situations. Varying your raise size is also a good idea if you are skilled in manipulating your opponents perception of you.

Your post would explain why all the high stakes regs who crush the game never vary their raise sizes. WD

concur with mantis, only elect to NOT vary your opening raise size IF you are being exploited/ anticipate being exploited. ppl that say never vary your raise size need to really really think about the logic and whether balancing betsizing pre in gigantic field tournaments is going to be optimal. Just imagine some ridic circumstances, set controls and run the math. Clear cut.

n.b obv highstakes smallfield comps v skilled regs, sizing for the sake of balance is pretty huge if ur a reg (incase i was unclear).

Your post explains how you are blindly dying to imitate what all the high stakes regs do in their games rather than adjusting to the immense diversity at intermediate level. So WD to you.

Mantis

you are failing epicly in this thread just to try and be different from convention

its fairly well accepted that  a constant raise size is better than your raise on hand strength/opponent method.

the only except is obv +ev jamming Ax hands in LP with <10bb

Meh think Mantis has a point tbf, though with the caveat that when varying bet sizes you have to be very aware of who you are trying to exploit and what this does to your range/image in the eyes of other skilled opponents.

Hasn't done me any harm so far so WD me. Obv your style works in the £20 live games at Walsall. So WD you.

He sure beats the game.

Btw you're now forgiven for not coming to Luton mr Bedi. x

Are you the same guy who was getting staked by Longy a couple of weeks ago because you were busto?

Talking of beating the game, just caught up with your staking thread.

lol and another thread turned into flame war

get a grip guys

my dicks smaller than yours too

was using that stake more as a learning tool and can honestly say it worked. anyone reading your posts will realise your not a learning tool. just a spanner who has absolutely no idea how to play the game.

I've enjoyed the constructive / instructive input on this hand. Thanks for posting the hand details Ironside. Just getting away from the raise size discussion for now, could anyone please give me an approximate set of ranges that, if i were in the big blind's shoes here, i should be either calling , or, 3 betting with?
 I understand the points made about not calling off my chips with ATC. With the stack sizes in this hand, surely the implied odds are good enough to correctly call with a very wide range of hands? was the call with 23 off a terrible call, or was it a good one, knowing that he can get away at a loss of 1.25 blinds if he doesn't hit the flop massively?
  Any suggestions / advice appreciated. Cheers :)
 

Ouch. That sounds so bad.

Longy can you teach me some of your skillz as well please? I'll try to earn you a few bucks while you teach me the skillz that have taken you years to acquire but then I'll be off to win mad dimes on my own. No point sharing big bucks is there :)

I'll try not to give you any rubs though mate if that helps.

As far as the varying raise sizes goes I personally do vary them if the circumstance suits. Usually it doesn't btw.

Pre antes anything between 2.5x and 3.5x depending on position  and who's acting after me.

Post antes anything from 2.2x to 3x again depending on position and who's left to act.

Obviously these numbers change if there's a limper or 2.

If I think I've built up a rep for raising different amounts I may then add the factor of hand strength in to the equation if I don't think I'll be giving anything away.

The argument for sticking to the same raise size is that nobody ever knows what you've got. You could use the same argument for constantly varying it as well as long as you really do vary it for every raise.

George2Loose > Mantis

Calling with 32o is def a leak here. There aren't many flops you'll really like (22x, 33x, 23x, 45x). Your chances of hitting one of these is v low, low enough to mean you probably don't have implied odds unless you're v deep. And your implied odds may even be less if you're against an aggro player who's playing smallball and just trying to pick up the uncontested pots. eg, i've 2.5xd it with Q6o in late pos to pick up blinds/antes. You peel with 23o. Flop 223. You check, i cbet, you call/raise - i'm prob done in general, unless i have reason to believe you're playing back at me. This is obv a bit of a simplification as not all spots will be so clear cut, but also remember as BB you're always out of position here which is v important.

Basically in short: no you don't have implied odds :)

That is what I get for agreeing with Mantis I guess. There are deffo situations where varying raise size is optimal and despite all the com flaming that is the point Mantis was trying to make.

at work but will respond in full to posts above. there were reasons i left the longy stable after such a short period of time. i hope mark doesn't see things the way they have been conveyed it this thread

Which one? The first one where I made around 100 buy ins and shipped all the stakers almost double their investment over a few months?

Or the one where I'm staked by Blatch, currently in little makeup and he's up over a few K over about 10 events I've played for him?

Or the thread I'm not currently updating as I went on a downswing and was doing better when not updating. The same one that I'm currently winning steadily on?

Just so you know :)

Meanwhile, feel free to post your name on full tilt, or a some results from Poker Tracker. Hendon mob will do, though they don't track the results from the £10 limited rebuys and £30f's I'm sure you crush over in Walsall.

fu I agreed with Mantis first

There really is no hard feelings George. I understand why you left the staking arrangement and tbh it really is only me and you who need to know why.

If you want to go ahead and explain then that is cool with me either way. Just don't feel you need to do so cos of me or my feelings.

back to the hand, this is 100% standard - nice stack btw

as for raise sizing, in general keeping these consistently small makes stealing more profitable as you lose less when 3bet etc. Obviously if you can manipulate sizing to your advantage in specific situations then you should. Generally at later stages of tournaments the worry is more about whether your open will get 3bet rather than if the blinds will peel off a flop. As people have said, if the BB consistently wants to peel small raises then it plays into our hands.

I was only giving some gentle rubz George and it's only cus I'm jealous that you're winning at the moment :)

If I genuinely thought there was any poor form with the way the deal ended I would keep my nose well and truly out cus it's none of my business.

I also know that Longy doesn't mind cus he's a top fella and all round good egg.

Small raises also mean that your c bet can be proportionately small keeping the costs down on your stealing mission.

Down side to this is that a decent player gets to 3 bet you with air on the cheap or do a flat call then raise your c bet.

Even worse is when he calls from the blinds and check raises one deep in to your blind stealing eye!!!

Defending preflop from the bb to a 2.4x raise is underrated and underused.
Varying raise sizes to punish opponents tendancies is underrated and underused.

Welcome to 2012 poker. Can bump it in 2 years when people have caught on.

Now go back to 2010 with ur 3bet or fold pre nonsense.

I liked 2004 when a 3 bet was Aces and 5 bets didn't exist

The person you sought poker advice from agrees with my contribution in this thread. Yet you enter the thread just to flame me for making that contribution. Anybody not blinded by clique membership will see the irony very clearly.

If you read both our contributions to this poker discussion you will see quite clearly who the spanner is. My posts were genuine and sought to provoke debate about poker and utilse the board for it's intended purpose. Your posts were designed purely to flame. This only spoils the board for members who want to use it for their own learning tool just like you used Longy. Funny cos he was staking you for small buy-ins a few weeks ago and suddenly you seem to be scoffing at people who play those kind of stakes or locally at their casino. That's prob about 95% of Blondes. You have come across as a cheeky kid in this thread, like a bit of fortune has gone straight to your head, luck comes and goes buddy but class is a timeless commodity, and it's a quality you seem to lack.

[  ] You have class.

[  ] You know Bedi.

you should hear him laugh.....

There does seem to be a bit of religious orthodoxy about a single style of play - I like Dubai's and Alex's take on things quite a bit.

Also, I'm sure Mantis doesn't need me to say anything on his behalf but..... he posts an opinion, I'm sure he doesn't mind being challenged but why does it have to be childish and personal ? People could opt to climb out from up their own and each others butts for a second, grow up and disagree like adults

With respect, mantis rarely posts his own opinion, he merely questions others and never commits

OK a few things:

1) I disagree with those saying varying pre flop sizing. I don't think in full ring it can work. It's far too exploitable.
2) I'm not bashing anyone who plays low buy in events at local casinos. It's where I started. I still play them. I enjoy it. However I wouldn't ask the local players for hand advice. They're not actually that good.
30 As for bashing blondes. I care for blonde, the pics when I won the 300 pound event for seventeen and a half thousand pounds kissing the badge prove that. Hence point number 2- your accusation of "flaming" is me trying to protect blonde from your "advice"
4) Longy is right. What happened during that stake is our business. No one elses. There were reasons I did it and reasons it didn't work mainly that I found sit and go's a grind. I haven't played any 45 manners since the arrangement ended.
5) As Cos says. [ ] You know me. I don't usually do cheap jibes but for you "buddy" I'll make an exception
6) http://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/player.php?a=r&n=84288

With respect outragous a couple of pages ago you said my opinions were so at odds with conventional thought that I was failing epicly. A couple of pages later and I no longer have opinions and don't commit. Radical, unconventional opinions to no opinions is quite a shift. Also with respect, Longy, Alex Martin, and Dubai have all advocated varying raise size and I have yet to see you suggest they fail epicly with their unconventional opinions.

Mantis

I have made my thoughts clearly on this thread and they haven't changed despite the subsequent posters comments, so yes I disagree with them too fwiw.

I would go as far as to say that your INITIAL respomse to any pha post is rarely your opinion but rather a question. You frequently use this form of 'politicians' response. I personally prefer to give my opinion and if I have time reasoning.

I am not in the 'bash mantis camp' but I think that if you turned up with your own point of view on a thread people would prefer it

I think you would protect Blonde more effectively if you simply deconstruct my arguments. If you read page 1 you can see infrequent contributors are worried about getting involved because of people like you. People who just flame other members for no real reason. If you don't think varying raise size is effective why didn't you put down your thoughts? What was the purpose for entering the discussion with LOL? Your contribution in this thread is not good for Blonde and I don't think kissing a badge proves otherwise, footballers do that all the time.

Oh ok, so you think I don't offer enough advice...and the last guy is flaming me to protect Blonde from all my advice.

I reckon a question is a good way to start a debate and if you're interested in what the other guy thinks then it seems a reasonable way to enter a discussion but w/e.

A question is a fine way to open a debate, but that is what the OP does

Varying your raise sizing is great if you know how an oppo will react to the different bets, if however you don't know how he will react it just adds in another variable and makes taking optimal lines a lot harder.

I'm not sure I'm comfortable with Flushy being the voice of reason in this thread.

I think that was the whole point (or a large point of it) that Mantis was making?  He wasn't advocating varying bet sizing for shits and giggles, he was suggesting raising more to exploit an opponent who calls liberally and then c/f's all the time.  The "other" camp were too frightened to deviate from decreed optimal play in case they should be exploited, or worse still , in case someone should think less of them for their non-text book raise amount.  I'm all for exploiting opponents that c/f too much, and as Mantis points out, if his leak is to c/f the flop too much, you'd better hurry up in the hand if you want to earn from that exploitation.

Some people like to call from the BB getting 3/1+ with anything.  Some of those people don't understand that they get 3/1 on that call, and even money on the rest of their stack thereafter when HU.  Some of those people don't really care about odds, they have already worked out that the button raiser will fire a cbet and give up on the turn too much, so will look to give them future opportunities to do so.  The exploiter can quickly become the exploited.  You have a button raiser looking to exploit a loose BB and you have a loose BB looking to exploit a button raiser that doesn't get to showdown enough.  Both players may or may not be playing sub optimally by looking to follow through with their plan, leaving themselves out of balance.  Which is only a problem if anyone else notices this imbalance and chooses to act on it. 

Back to the thread, I'm getting pretty bored with the Mantis wars, at lot of it is unmerited imo, he makes a decent contribution and supports his points well and while I don't always agree with them, I quite often do.

I've reached this thread too late to do much about it, and there is a lot of good stuff amongst the cat-calling

For the record, lets go easy on the name calling/flaming/personal stuff please. It really is not, IMO, warranted has carried on for thread after thread for far too long and reflects very badly on this board. I know it puts people off, which is the exact reverse of what some of you guys, as experienced and successful players, should be bringing to PHA. It's a very uncomfortable read


Please, tone it (the personal attacks, many just for the sake of it) down a lot please

For the record - I sit back and read more than I post on the PHA board mainly because a fair bit of the time, my questions are asked and answered by you lot as the thread goes on.  When I do make the rare post here I jokingly start it with, 'be gentle' or the like because I know how heated it can get here.  But to be fair, I've never felt personally attacked and for that I'd like to thank all of you...on both sides. 

You all have a lot to offer and looking at it from both sides has helped me a lot in the past year or so especially.  Still have a long way to go.  Mainly because I don't put in the learning time I should.  But it's nice to know I can always land here for some good lessons when I'm in that learning mood.

interesting observation from someone on my table the other day..."you min raised utg so must of had AA"

we'd been playing same table for 90 minutes...

so many unashamed and sickening brags in this post!

You literally are all terrible.

A great drunk post that ive been told not to make anymore.

haha that is class

:D

as soon as you posted demps i knew it would be some kind of sycophantic lure towards dave.

WOTD IMO.

Eh? Let me make it clearer for you.

DO NOT VARY YOUR RAISE SIZING

Yes, it is a nice word. You learn something every day on these boards. :-)  I've actually found this thread extremely helpful in improving my appreciation of the importance of raise sizing, positional advantage and when to defend, or, not to defend, the blinds. Maybe even a watershed moment for me. I live in hope.
  Thanks again to Ironside, the original poster and to everyone who has chimed in with little nuggets of advice. :)

I'm confused now.

I thought that the whole point of Mantis' posts was that increasing your raise when you know you can exploit the BB's tendency to call then c/fold the flop is a good thing, and this appears to be agreeing with that strategy.




I may have misunderstood though - especially given this later post

I think Mr Flush saying DO NOT VARY YOUR RAISE SIZING is aimed towards the majority of players. Players who are good enough to vary it in the right circumstances know why they are doing it and will use it to exploit other player's weaknesses.

If you aren't 100% certain of the reason for varying a raise size then don't do it.

Personally speaking I very rarely vary my raise size. When I do it's because I've picked up on a particular tendancy from a particular player and decide to exploit it. This is usually in live play because online you just don't get the opportunity that often.

You have to be careful though because if there's a good player at the table he may also notice what you've spotted and realise what you're up to so use it to exploit you.

So unless you're very good and know that there's nobody good enough to spot what you're up to DON'T DO IT. It's just easier.

The problem is you wont know what the player your trying to exploit thinks of your different raise sizing so unless you know his thought process it make determining his range a lot harder.

Yeah in live games you can get away with it and vs people you play often you can get away with it, vs some random in a low stakes (especially) MTT just dont do it.

You also have to be careful that while you think you have a golden tell that you are exploiting, your opponent hasn't worked out what was going on and adjusted.  By time you work out that he has adjusted, you could have cost yourself a few chips.

This happened to me a while back playing LHE.  I had a habit of donking flops with a set.  Regardless of the merits of donk bets, I was experimenting with it because it had won me some giant pots where opponents had discounted sets from my range because "he would definitely slow play a set there."  I was trying to work out if those giant pots were earning me enough to compensate for the times where I won a smaller pot by not check raising.  Anyway, I did notice that one particular opponent was folding to my donk bet 100% of the time, so obviously I started donking a whole lot more against him.  I spoke to him months after by chance, and he mentioned that he had a nice spot exploiting my donked sets by folding cheaply.  I somehow forgot to tell him that I'd noticed that he'd noticed, and was now picking his pocket.