The shame of poker education #1

Here we go, another column in the blog that will have a post once in a blue moon. Anyway, this one is about the terrible content, experience, posts etc. that you can find by reading forums, watching videos on educational sites, etc. Sometimes it's gonna be just a one-sentence fun stuff, like this, but sometimes you'll get a bit more out of it (I hope). I have a couple of ideas in my mind - well, let's be honest, I have shitloads of examples on this, trying to select the best ones. Oh, and I'm not gonna name the sites or forums where this is from, if you want to find them, you will.

Warning: since my only 2 spoken languages are Hungarian and English, these will be mostly examples from these two languages, but I don't really think it's that different in most other nations.

So here we go, pop quiz on a Hungarian educational site, let's say we have AK on a K992 board, what would we prefer in Villain's hand: 22 or 98? So far 25% (150 from 600) of the people said 98. Ridiculous.

Epic sessions gonna be epic...

570 hand, +140BB

Quality post coming soon...

Note to self:

GF learning poker #1

Yeah, long time no see... exams and shit, but I'm free at last. At least for the next 2 or so months.

So to cut to the chase, the Mrs made up her mind to learn a thing or two from me in terms of poker, trying to make some money in the process and be a consistent winning player. - Well, that's gonna be a loooong journey, but I put on my 'Challenge Accepted' face, and we dove into the deep sea yesterday.

I wouldn't write this post, if it wasn't for her fishiness accompanied with infinite cuteness. I noted some quotes from her, that I just literally cannot withhold from you, dear readers.

1) In the second or third hand of the session she made a quick decision on the turn with an A hi flushdraw, not letting me explain her the situation. After the end of the hand she was making the excuse that "she must be tilting right now".

2) She was wondering about the BronzeStar display at the bottom of the avatars on Stars: "It's like someone shat on it or something..." QFT

3) Talking about preflop strategy: "I have to rethink my position, because I sometimes forget that the table rotates around me."

4) After a guy sitting down, who we played yesterday with (.02/.04 FR): "He must think I'm a fish, so now he's sitting down to play with me again."

5) Derived from the last one: "Hey, what if we sometimes play like a fish, so we'd confuse other players."

Cutest girl EVER! She's gonna be a killer at the tables in no time! (Not sure if killer in a positive sense, or my bankroll's killer, but I love her anyway.)

HU PLO is dead

Yesterday with Toma we were thinking about what could be a good second game, and we decided PLO was the ultimate choice for having a second game. And since I consider HU the purest form of any poker, I decided that I'll put a little bit of effort into learning the game. After watching some DjSensei and TwiceT vids, I hit the .25/.50 shallow tables ($25 max BI). Results are not bad. (The picture was just against 1 guy, I won ~5 more buy ins overall.)

Hand analysis #1

Hey Everyone,

Here's the first 'hand of the day' type of analysis. If you can get through me having troubles with my English early in the morning, you may even be able to get some content out of it. Enjoy.

(To see everything clearly go to fullscreen and HD mode.)

5/T here I come... yes

Ok, I wrote yesterday's post, then had a session, and found a benevolenter playing 80/60 with an empty left-hand seat, so I had to give him company. It led to a session where I was actively looking for 5/T tables too, and honestly I don't mind that, I played well, and found good tables. Also I played with Bryce!

5/T here I come... not

Good news: I gathered the bankroll that I set to the absolute minimum to play 5/T - it means if good luck comes my way I may be able to forget 2/4 and introduce myself to the 5/T players in the very close future.

Bad news: With the volume I played in the last 1.5 months I can't comfortably move up any limits. I played a session today (first in 4 days), and felt I didn't even know the rules of the game. I was rusty and had to play ~100 hands to get back to the grinding mode. That's awfully frightening for me, I have to play more in the future, and not just more, but frequent too. After the fucking exams and end-of-the-semester shit go down I'll focus on this aspect of my game. I have to, sadly.

(Why) Do I 3bet A2o SB vs BU?

While you're listening to the awesome music in the previous post, I'd like to address this question just a little bit. I think it's one of the most common preflop leaks in SH LHE players from low to highstakes. At least I think now, but I haven't done any calculations whatsoever, so maybe it's one of my biggest leaks, we'll see.

So do you 3bet A2o vs a regular BU opener? I sure do. I've heard a lot of arguments against it, and very few for it. Let's see those arguments, so that we could tear them apart and see if they're wrong or right.
A few of those arguments (if you have any further, let me know, so that we can elaborate on them too):

• A2o is a dominated hand
• if we 3bet with A2o, we either win a small pot, or lose a big one with it (I think Deathdonkey said that for raggy aces)
• A2o will be in the no men's land on the turn unimproved, we usually have to check/fold or check/crying calldown with it, which sucks
• (our range won't be balanced, it will be too A-high heavy - that one I made up, but for me it's the only reasonable argument against it)

These are all that I could think of, but if you have any, let me know. So let's get into it:


Against my own BU range:


ProPokerTools Odds Oracle Results (2.05 Professional)
Holdem, Generic syntax
PLAYER_1 $ORBU
PLAYER_2 A2$o

13068304128 trials (exhaustive)

All-in Equity

	$ORBU	A2$o
Equity %	51,2244%	48,7756%
Wins Hi %	47,7664%	45,3177%
Ties Hi %	6,9159%	6,9159%
Wins Hi Count	6242261895	5922256311
Ties Hi Count	903785922	9037859

Ok, so first off it seems pretty weird that I don't want to 3bet a hand with 49% equity, but I want to 3bet a hand like T9s that has 46%. (Of course HCEQ is not everything, it's more close to nothing than everything.)

Doing a quick HCEV calculation (assuming Villain doesn't cap anything and BB always folds): 0.49*4.5 - 0.51*2.5 = 0.93 SB

So that ~1 SB has to be lost either by not realizing our equity or by RIO and other factors, like BB being involved in the hand.

True Equity calculation:

Let's take an easy example: we bet the flop, Villain calls, we check the turn planning to check/fold if we don't have the appropriate equity to continue. The pot odds would be 5.5:1, so we have to have 15.38 equity to continue. Since we usually have to call down here, and can't continue drawing, we should use more like 5.5:2 = 26,67%. Since we can call/fold sometimes, let's say 25%. What will our average equity be, when we have either more than 25% equity on the turn, or 0. I made a quick PQL script for it, I'll write about that in a later post. Now just accept, that our preflop equity if we always check/fold the turn below 25% equity is around 46.3%. That still doesn't sounds bad, considering we should have around 43-44% equity to 3bet from the SB. Also this script doesn't take into account, that most of the time we're also gonna make him fold equity (or even a better hand), therefore I believe our actual True Equity should be higher, or at least even to our HCEQ. That didn't change anything, let's see the RIO stuff.

Reversed Implied Odds:

That's a yucky one. I'm not certainly sure how to calculate that exactly, but I'd say against a weak range that contains a lot of rubbish hands that won't make that much valueraising hands, I don't think there is a RIO of 1 small bet. In my mind that would basically mean that the opponent plays incorrectly (by not bluffing or vraising thin enough), which we can exploit in theory, so a RIO of 1 SB seems extremely high to me. When I did some RIO calculations in the past, I got around .2-.25 BB maximum to RIO, I'm not sure if it was exhaustive enough, but I got the feel that it won't ever be that high.

About the domination

The hands this hand is dominated by but A6o is not, are hands that most usually split with our hand (or we make them fold by the river):



ProPokerTools Odds Oracle Results (2.05 Professional)
Holdem, Generic syntax
PLAYER_1 A4$o
PLAYER_2 A2$o

184928832 trials (exhaustive)

All-in Equity

	A4$o	A2$o
Equity %	53,3909%	46,6091%
Wins Hi %	28,4576%	21,6758%
Ties Hi %	49,8667%	49,8667%
Wins Hi Count	52626276	40084728
Ties Hi Count	92217828	92217828

As you can see these hands will split the pot almost 50% of the time. Also in these situations we will have the advantage of initiative and we can barrel them off of these hands quite easily, so I find that argument very invalid. (Also the chance of him having the A and the board to have an A on it is pretty low.)

About balance

Now here comes the tricky part... I think I convinced myself well enough, so that I could say fuck balance in this spot, but let's still take a look at it. Let's assume two different 3betting ranges: one we put together with a friend of mine for these spots, and the other one with all the aces included in it:

Range 1: 22+,A2s+,K7s+,Q8s+,J8s+,T8s+,97s+,87s,76s,A6o+,K9o+,QTo+,JTo,T9o
Range 2: 22+,A2s+,K7s+,Q8s+,J8s+,T8s+,97s+,87s,76s,A2o+,K9o+,QTo+,JTo,T9o

So if we take a look at how the BU openrange shares against these 2 ranges on an A hi dry board (let's say A83r for the extreme).

ORBU vs Range 1: range asymmetry is on our side with 56.6%
ORBU vs Range 2: range asymmetry is on our side (LDO) with 59% equity.

Now range on range it's quite a lot of difference that 2.4%, however I believe that our initial range is maybe a bit tight, and with the offsuit aces included, we maybe can include some more suited/connected stuff in there (Q7s, 98o maybe, Q9o, J9o, something like that), and make peace once again. Also I still don't hate that 59% percent in itself, although seems a bit highish.

So that would conclude why I 3bet A2o BU vs SB, hope I could convince you to do so (although I'm fine if you don't :P), and I hope you liked the analysis.

Any feedback or comment is appreciated. Cheers.

Chavviness of suits

I've just spent more than half an hour discussing with Toma (a fellow poker player friend of mine whom I speak daily) what is the chavviest suit in poker. We couldn't agree on it at all, so I'd like you to post your order of suits from the pimpest to the chavviest. Also, if you have time, please let me know why you think the way you do. (And everybody who says hearts is the pimpest please also send me your nicknames so that I could instantly mark you as fish.)

My list (from the pimpest to the chavviest): diamonds/blue (not a question), spades(if black), hearts/red, clubs/green, spades(if yellow)

PS: only upside of this half an hour was that I learnt a new word (chavvy)
PS2: BTW the reason for discussing was that he had the second chavviest Royal Flush yesterday. (The one where he flops the draw, and the river completes it.)


//Hungarian version

Tomával ma vagy fél órán keresztül azon vitatkoztunk, hogy mi a legputtóbb szín, de nem sikerült megegyezésre jutnunk. Ha van időtök, írjátok le, hogy nálatok mi a sorrend.

Nálam: ld. az angol posztot.

The lifetilt of a regular

Dear xxx regular,

This happens when, while being a small stakes HUSnG grinder (and honestly not a good one), you think it's a good idea to sit on medium/high stakes HUSnG regulars. Thank you for letting me be a part of this. ;)

</sarcasm>
#whyBRMisimportant
#whynotbeingstupidisevenmoreimportant (well maybe not)

Update: after a friend's comment I realised it's not clear from the text, but it's not me. I'm some part of his 'downswing' tho...

Lingo: Protection

This is going to be a repost of my rambling on lingo and protection: here it is in Hungarian.

I've been thinking for a long time, if the first of the Lingo series should be about protection or "raising" (in Hungarian lingo betting is called raising by a lot, also raising called 3betting, etc. #NLFTW), honestly both of them are driving me mad, but the fate has decided for me, so let's talk about protection.

People, please understand FFS, what protection is. Not because I ask you nicely, or because I'm posh in poker or anything like that, but because by using the expression wrong, you just show that you don't have a fucking clue about what you're talking about. So once and for all, let's make it clear for you.

There are two, and only two basic reasons for being agressive: getting better hands to fold (bluff) or getting worse hands to call (value). In specific cases, however, an agressive action can have side-effects (rarely good reasons) for it, which will add a little to our expected value. One of these is protection.

Protection means that you can make your opponent fold a certain amount of equity.. Make someone fold, get it? That's why I get frustrated all the time when I see or hear something like "I raise here for protection against his flush draws". Do you really think he would fold a flushdraw for a-million-to-one? Oh, no? So we raise because we have equity edge over those hands? So we are valueraising, right? Then why the hell you call it protection?

For example, you can bet a smaller pair or A hi for protection in a huge pot to make Villain fold 6 outs against you (they won't ever fold more, so...), and it's probably better than any other option. But these kind of situations are pretty rare, betting for pure protection is close to a non-existing thing in my mind (of course talking about FLHE, not NLHE or PLO), therefore we usually use it as a combination with a bluff or valuebet.

I hope I could make things more clear, and I'll see less "raise for protection against a small pocketpair" type of bullshit on the forums... (I think it's maybe less of an issue in native English forums BTW, still I can hear these stuffs here and there, but in Hungarian it's just amazingly often misused.)

Szakmai elismerés

Oh yeah... Kattintsatok a Testimonial fülre...

Sigh + meh

Az itt található 3. kommentre válaszoló 4. kommentem margójára.

Here you go, buddy, hope you like it!

Preflop: Hero is BB with A A

2 folds, CO raises, 2 folds, Hero calls

You are god obviously

- hangzott el a "regulár" szájából, amikor párszáz HU kéz és ~50BB elvesztése után kiült, miután sikerült 6betelnem a riverre leeső flush-sét nem nut fullal. Kb. én is így éreztem az elmúlt két napban. Pedig már majdnem elfelejtettem, hogy a húzókkal nem csak a frekvencia megtartása végett blöffölünk... Running like god LDO.

Mai kudos + a rinyálás ereje

A Cake bevezette 50$ fölött is a FL HUSnG-kat kb. 2 héttel miután javasoltam nekik. Azt hiszem, ez megmutatja, hogy igenis mindenki változtathat nagy dolgokon is.

Hood

"Hi Madorjan, I watched through your vid, your play is certainly very good, you already have a pretty strong game." - Hood

Ha lenne ilyen out-of-the-world mosolygós smiley, most beraknám.

Partypoker support

Kurva anyád, Suzana, honestly...

Suzana: Welcome to Live Help! How can I help you?
Suzana: Please confirm your last name and date of birth for security reasons.
ADORJÁN: Hi
ADORJÁN: *************
Suzana: Thanks for the confirmation. Please give me a moment while I retrieve your account details.
Suzana: how can I help you?
ADORJÁN: Is it me or are there really not any HU FL SNGs between the 22 and 109 ones?
Suzana: let me check
ADORJÁN: because if that's the case, I'd like to strongly suggest it
ADORJÁN: to have some
Suzana: if you select cash games and then Fixxed Limit and in all other fields leave All will see what we do offer
Suzana: there are games at 30/60, 50/100 level
ADORJÁN: it's SnG not cash game
ADORJÁN: HU FL SnG
Suzana: what exactly you have selected
Suzana: the heads up games are under cahs games
ADORJÁN: ok I'm gonna go clear, there are not any
ADORJÁN: please implent
Suzana: under 1 table, Sit and Go there are tables for 2 players
Suzana: FL
ADORJÁN: that's it
Suzana: they are just not names Heads up
Suzana: there currently speed tables with buy in 33 and 55
Suzana: just select Sit & Go and then 1 table
Suzana: then sort the list of tables by game so can see the FL ones
ADORJÁN: 33 and 55 ones are not 2 player ones
ADORJÁN: 2 player = HU you know
ADORJÁN: but as I said, there aren't any, and I would like you to implement it
Suzana: yes, but this is if you look for FL hol'em
Suzana: there are under FL 7 card stud
Suzana: FL 7 card stud Hi-Lo
ADORJÁN: since it clearly doesn't make sense at all to have none of these limits, but higher and lower
ADORJÁN: oh it's so sad that 7 card stud is not holdem...
Suzana: it may have no sense for you , but the games are offered for many and different players- if there is no interest in the games you are looking for they are not offered
ADORJÁN: there are interest on every other site that offers them, so that's not an excuse
Suzana: I can escalate your suggestion to our respective department but will not be able to guaranteetaht such tables will be offered
Suzana: this is your opinion:)
ADORJÁN: that would be nice, thanks
Suzana: and we can keep arguing but this will not add the tables:)
Suzana: I will let my colleagues know
Suzana: and if they decide we can offer the games- they will be shown in the lobby soon:)
ADORJÁN: no, that's a fact - look at Stars, Boss media, iPoker, etc. lobbies - the players waiting there are not my opinion IMO
Suzana: my colleagues will look into this
ADORJÁN: you're right, no point in arguing, just let the department know, thanks for that
Suzana: you are welcome:)
ADORJÁN: that would be all, thanks for your help, looking forward to the changes
ADORJÁN: have a nice day, bye
Suzana: :)
Suzana: I hope we can offer you more games so you can enjoy the games:)

Hogy a francba?

A kérdés nagyon egyszerű: top mikro/smallstakes LHE coach nemzetközi oldalon, hogy a francba lehet, hogy egy 9fős asztalon, amin 2 játékos van összesen, az egyikről tudja, hogy reg - hogy a francba ül be egy teljesen random helyre (persze messze az ismeretlen játékos baljától)??? És így fogadjak el tőle tanácsokat?

((Mostanában eléggé leállt a blog, de mivel rólam szól, ez is jelent valamit - update-ek hamarosan.))

HUHU Alapok - 1. rész

Tádá, új videó ezüsttől: HUHU Alapok - 1. rész

Jó hír: lesz 2. rész (a session befejezése)
Rossz hír: nem tudom még, mikor

Ha bármi kérdésetek, visszajelzésetek, stb. van, ne tartsátok magatokban!