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Message: [QUOTE="John A, post: 2345161, member: 88730"] Summary so far: [B]We have point #1, which is make sure you're c-betting enough in position[/B]. [B]#2 - Limit your cold calling out of position with trouble hands and speculative hands. [/B][B]Point #3. Being Lost on the Turn.[/B] And next.... [B]Point #4[/B] [B]- Don't play without initiative. [/B] How important is initiative in today's games? Extremely important. Several years ago, you could have a wider and more profitable cold calling range, and you could comfortably check/call a lot of spots. Not so much anymore, at least against most opponents. I'm not saying there won't be spots to cede initiative and call down against someone's range. What I'm saying is that you'll find yourself in more profitable poker situations if you are taking control of the hand as much as possible. This might seem like an obvious point in some ways, but I still see profitable poker players struggling with it. I had a 50nl student a couple of weeks ago for example, that was struggling with this in 3-bet pots when he called. When facing the second barrel he didn't know what to do, and this is a profitable 50nl player, someone who has won at 100nl+ as well. [U]This single point should be clear: [/U] You have many MORE options when you are the raiser, or the person betting the hand. [B]Your perceived range will always be stronger than your opponents calling range. [/B]A simple point, but extremely important. So this means you should make more definitive decisions against your opponent, and minimize/eliminate calling as much as possible. The alternative is that you're calling down against your opponents betting/raising range without really knowing what their 2nd and 3rd barreling tendencies are. Except for really extreme cases, where someone's stats are extremely high or low on one side of the scale or the other, knowing 2nd and 3rd barrel tendencies is not as cut and dry as I think players (and I'm including good mid stake+ players in here) really are. That's because you need a really large sample size on your opponents to really know this. So what this means in practice is that against decent/good regulars in your game, you're much better off depolarizing your 3-bet range (using my quasi 3-bet range like in polished poker) instead of flat calling pre-flop. You're also much better off 4-bet/folding depolarized hands than calling. On the flop, you're better off raising a lot of marginal hands where you have some equity than calling. The previous general strategy was always, call with strong hands that are beating your opponents range, and then call down against their weaker betting range. However, this is increasingly more difficult to do against competent and aggressive opponents. As you move up in stakes, some of this advice will change, but if you're playing 200nl or below, this will be a much less exploitative strategy long term. It will simplify the game, and make your decisions much easier and more clear. I can provide some more examples of this, and how it relates to a whole strategy, but I'll start with this for now. [/QUOTE]

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