A rare strategy post from me, but I hope to start doing this more often. Hopefully that makes the blog a little more worth reading. I’m going to talk about something alot of regulars subconsciously know don’t think through fully.
First thing first, I’m a HUGE advocate of taking extensive notes. The most important thing that a micro/low-stakes regular can start doing is taking notes on the regulars in their games. I always tell my new students this and you’d be shocked (or maybe not) how few new students are taking notes at all. Alot of players don’t know how to take notes or even worse, think they know how to take notes and won’t listen. Are you someone who thinks they know how to take notes?
Here’s a few tell-tale signs that you aren’t doing the notes thing right imo:
- You only take notes on hands that result in a large pots.
- You only take notes on hands you lose.
- You only take notes on hands you are involved in.
- You don’t include board texture in your notes.
- You don’t color code different types of opponents.
Be honest with yourself and your note taking. You know you take notes? Only you can hold yourself accountable for your note taking. The hardest one of these for a multi-tabling poker player is absolutely note-taking on small pots you aren’t involved in. The key though is not taking notes on every hand so that you have 15 notes on each player. The key is taking important notes that allow you to do what i call “think backwards” from them so you only need 3 or 4 lines of notes.
The way I can define backwards thinking is best displayed in an example. Lets take a hand between CliffordTheBigRedDog (hero, a good 17/13 reg w/ 5% 3b) and Curious George (villain, we have almost no hands on this villain but he’s 12 tabling).
Curious George opens from middle position and we are on the button with AQss. We decide to take the standard line and 3b for value to 10bb. Curious George flats our 3b out of position. Flop comes down A23 rainbow. Villain checks to us, and we c-bet to 14bb (our standard). Villain quickly folds.
That was crazy standard amirite? We had the best hand and our villain likely was holding onto a hand like 99. No need to take a note on that. Obviously, that’s not true. That hand is exactly the kind of hand that we can take a note on and think it backwards in a later situation. Noting that hand will tell us, this villain’s likely range for flatting 3b’s isn’t Ax hands. But the real point here is this note can be applied on flops that don’t look like that. By noting that hand we realize our villain is likely making a mistake of calling 3b’s with speculative hands or going set minding out of position. So now we can really narrow down the range of not only what hands he’s folding/calling with but also know what kind of hands he’s 4b’ing with.
So just from this hand we realize that its likely curious george is calling 3b’s with pocket pairs or hands like KJs so that begs the question what hands is he going to be 4b’ing? The answer is likely a super-polarized range of nut hands (QQ+, AK) and total air. If we know he’s not 4b’ing hands like 99, all of the sudden hands like 88 start looking more like the nuts to 5b jam.
Oh dear did we just infer our 5b shoving value range from a villain’s flatting 3b range? Obviously, we will need more than this one example to have conclusive evidence of our villain’s range here. But I’d say if we see our new regular do this kind of thing more than 3 times we can start assuming these are real ranges for our villain. We learned that from one standard looking hand.
Here’s what my note on that hand would look like for me:
-flat mp against btn 3b; ch/f Axxr
(each player should create their own shorthand for notes, but feel free to steal mine)
From that one line, after I see that type of hand play out a few times. I can tell what my villain’s likely range is and adjust my own value ranges to cater to this specific new regular’s tendencies.
Thinking backwards is a REALLY important stat in a regular. It allows you to take one hem number/hand and assume a vast number things from it. Most really good regulars do this thinking and don’t even realize they do it, but most breakeven regulars don’t even bother or know its there in their hud or in front of them on the tables.
I’ll talk about one more common situation that backwards thinking is really useful.
In this hand, we are playing against a SenseiChen (a regular we have several hundred hands on). He’s a 1ptbb winner and overall plays a pretty decent game. He’s got a high c-bet % but a rather low turn c-bet %.
Villain opens from early position. We have JJ in the cutoff and flat. Everyone else folds. Flop comes down 932. Villain bets and we decide to call. Turn comes an offsuit ten. Villain checks (like we expect him to with all non-value hands) and we decide to bet. Villain calls us quickly. River comes an offsuit K. Villain quickly checks to us again, and we decide to go to showdown thinking there’s not much value in betting and there’s a chance we could have gotten beat on the river. To our surprise, the villain flips over AA and takes the pot down.
Now this hand is another hand we should take a note on for sure. This note will tell us that our villain loves to pot control his medium-strong hands (a trait of many weak regulars). This is an awesome note to have in itself because if we happen to flop a set here, we know to just fire in big barrels on the turn and river against this kind of opponent. Even doing things like overbetting with sets, will pay big dividends with a note like this due to him feeling as though he underrepped his hand. And after a while we can start taking away pots at our will because he will relate the overbets to a flopped set.
The backwards thinking here is when we see our villain double or triple barrel here in the future. What could it mean when he bets twice or three times? He doesn’t bet AA on this board what in the world is he betting with? We can now use this note to think the opposite when he does the opposite. We can remove hands like QQ-AA from his turn betting range and now if you think right, his range is really only hands he is going to fold to a raise or has a set. And as durrr says, “its hard to flop a set”.
That note would look like this:
-opened AA ep; c-bet 9xx rainbow; ch/c Tx; ch’d K
There’s a million different things you can figure out from your opponents game, but spotting these kinds of glaring leaks just become second nature after you practice thinking about what each hand really means for the villain’s range and style. I recommend taking a look through your database at standard hands and say to yourself “This means this range, but what isn’t in that range? and what would he do with that?”. Also remember, players are adjusting to you and your play. So always keep in mind, what the notes your opponents are taking on you and what things they are inferring.
Good luck at the tables, and hopefully you guys enjoyed my attempt at a thoughtful strategy post. Please comment if you’d like more.
Haha, welcome back to the blog. I have chosen a sparkling glitter gif of a royal flush. Gay? A little bit but relevant… indeed it is.
Well hello boys and girls… I got alot of really positive feedback from the last post and if you enjoyed that last post, you’ll likely really enjoy this news…