Aballinamion
Dark Lord of the Sith
Bronze Level
Hello Cardschat community how you doing? Hope everyone is fine because Christmas is coming and Santa Claus has a lot of requests. Here in brazil is a lot of rain these days so I can take a time to put the things I have learned to the test.
First of all, I would like to consider the Elements of Poker:
1) Focus
2) Decision Making
3) Emotional control (tilt control)
Second the game for itself requires a simple question, in which I saw a lot of confusion here around some conversations, so I guess the question is: What is the objective of the 6-Max Cash game (Regular or Zoom)?
The objective is to win Chips/Blinds. Recognize the importance of the Blinds in the first place(1 out of 3 times we pay the Blinds at 6-Max Cash Tables). Second is what do we have to do to win Chips/Blinds?
The rule of thumb is: As the 6-Max Cash Game revolves around the Blinds, we must Defend our Blinds and Steal Blinds with great frequency (huge!).
How do we Steal the Blinds?
Usually, we Steal more blinds from the Button (BTN) because it is the position that has the most equity/probability of stealing blinds.
Principles of the 6-MAX Cash Game:
1) Attack the Blinds
2) Defend the Blinds
3) Focus to play more in position, preferably against recreational players. (Fishes, Whales, Aggro Donkeys, Wild Animals, Unhappy young millionaires, Chip Donator, Broken Stacks and so on).
I do not believe we should try too much steal from EP (MP and UTG), this is why I advocate we usually, not always, are going to play a more Tighter Range from EP and MP hoping to get called or 3betted for a recreational player out of position in relation to us.
What are the best stealing positions?
I advocate that the best Stealing Positions are: Cut-Off (CO) and Button (BTN), thus the chance of stealing the blinds is higher, there are fewer players to give action and so we have more Fold equity and Playability with our hands/Range when we are playing in position.
Try to play as much as possible against recreational players! Do not try leleving versus Regs, TAGs, competent LAGs as I see a ton here in this Forum: most of the EV problems that I see is that Regulars are playing versus other Regular and then you will be mostly in Breakeven/Losing situation and when you win versus a Regular, never is so much that compensates this huge effort.
I don't know about the general population today, but I am not a good player, so I will try to face a player with less skill than I, so the probability of that I win is higher no matter the result of some singular hand or scenario.
Against a regular we will win very little, 1BB/100 and against the Fish, Whale, Donkey, etc we have 15BB, 20BB, 50BB/100! (Even more!) Our focus is always to be playing in position against recreational players.
Note: About leveling: https://upswingpoker.com/glossary/leveling/
How do we do it?
Make a good selection of tables and just play against Fishes and Whales (Just/Only! There is no mathematical need for leveling against regulars). Here I also defend the Zoom Tables because you will find infinite scenarios with a lot of Fishes (Recreational) players are crazy to give their chips/blinds away!
Isolate recreational players. Attack his/her blinds more when he/she is defending the SB and the BB and you are the Hero in the CO or BTN (Also 3bet more, 4bet more, bluff more and at any sign of Aggresion run away, just kidding, but versus Passive Recreational is kind of) When you are in the CO you better know who is in the Button before start getting 'laggy'.
Use hands with higher post flop gameplay. Hands with higher Nuts potential, such as Suited Connectors, Pocket Pairs, and a few combos of Off-Suited Broadways and Suited Overcards.
If we get stuck, because we play more in position, we should play a wide raise (3x or even more versus Fishes) and steal a lot of blinds. At the SB our game will totally depend on who the Big Blind player is.
We should have a balanced RANGE for Raise / Steal and Steal Preflop Defense. (If anybody likes this I will talk about Ranges later)
We are playing in a Table as long as we have Edge/Advantage upon the other players. If not, we simply move on and find out another Table where we have Advantage upon Recreational players.
I can't remember the name of the movie with Matt Damon where he plays poker, not a very good movie but he says something interesting: if you play for over than 20 minutes in a Cash Table and you didn't spot the Fish/Recreational player, probably you are the fish.
We can unbalance our game and make giant pots, as large as we can so we increase our Winrate versus these kind of player.
Regards;
Carlos 'Aballinamion' Barbosa
First of all, I would like to consider the Elements of Poker:
1) Focus
2) Decision Making
3) Emotional control (tilt control)
Second the game for itself requires a simple question, in which I saw a lot of confusion here around some conversations, so I guess the question is: What is the objective of the 6-Max Cash game (Regular or Zoom)?
The objective is to win Chips/Blinds. Recognize the importance of the Blinds in the first place(1 out of 3 times we pay the Blinds at 6-Max Cash Tables). Second is what do we have to do to win Chips/Blinds?
The rule of thumb is: As the 6-Max Cash Game revolves around the Blinds, we must Defend our Blinds and Steal Blinds with great frequency (huge!).
How do we Steal the Blinds?
Usually, we Steal more blinds from the Button (BTN) because it is the position that has the most equity/probability of stealing blinds.
Principles of the 6-MAX Cash Game:
1) Attack the Blinds
2) Defend the Blinds
3) Focus to play more in position, preferably against recreational players. (Fishes, Whales, Aggro Donkeys, Wild Animals, Unhappy young millionaires, Chip Donator, Broken Stacks and so on).
I do not believe we should try too much steal from EP (MP and UTG), this is why I advocate we usually, not always, are going to play a more Tighter Range from EP and MP hoping to get called or 3betted for a recreational player out of position in relation to us.
What are the best stealing positions?
I advocate that the best Stealing Positions are: Cut-Off (CO) and Button (BTN), thus the chance of stealing the blinds is higher, there are fewer players to give action and so we have more Fold equity and Playability with our hands/Range when we are playing in position.
Try to play as much as possible against recreational players! Do not try leleving versus Regs, TAGs, competent LAGs as I see a ton here in this Forum: most of the EV problems that I see is that Regulars are playing versus other Regular and then you will be mostly in Breakeven/Losing situation and when you win versus a Regular, never is so much that compensates this huge effort.
I don't know about the general population today, but I am not a good player, so I will try to face a player with less skill than I, so the probability of that I win is higher no matter the result of some singular hand or scenario.
Against a regular we will win very little, 1BB/100 and against the Fish, Whale, Donkey, etc we have 15BB, 20BB, 50BB/100! (Even more!) Our focus is always to be playing in position against recreational players.
Note: About leveling: https://upswingpoker.com/glossary/leveling/
How do we do it?
Make a good selection of tables and just play against Fishes and Whales (Just/Only! There is no mathematical need for leveling against regulars). Here I also defend the Zoom Tables because you will find infinite scenarios with a lot of Fishes (Recreational) players are crazy to give their chips/blinds away!
Isolate recreational players. Attack his/her blinds more when he/she is defending the SB and the BB and you are the Hero in the CO or BTN (Also 3bet more, 4bet more, bluff more and at any sign of Aggresion run away, just kidding, but versus Passive Recreational is kind of) When you are in the CO you better know who is in the Button before start getting 'laggy'.
Use hands with higher post flop gameplay. Hands with higher Nuts potential, such as Suited Connectors, Pocket Pairs, and a few combos of Off-Suited Broadways and Suited Overcards.
If we get stuck, because we play more in position, we should play a wide raise (3x or even more versus Fishes) and steal a lot of blinds. At the SB our game will totally depend on who the Big Blind player is.
We should have a balanced RANGE for Raise / Steal and Steal Preflop Defense. (If anybody likes this I will talk about Ranges later)
We are playing in a Table as long as we have Edge/Advantage upon the other players. If not, we simply move on and find out another Table where we have Advantage upon Recreational players.
I can't remember the name of the movie with Matt Damon where he plays poker, not a very good movie but he says something interesting: if you play for over than 20 minutes in a Cash Table and you didn't spot the Fish/Recreational player, probably you are the fish.
We can unbalance our game and make giant pots, as large as we can so we increase our Winrate versus these kind of player.
Regards;
Carlos 'Aballinamion' Barbosa
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