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Message: [QUOTE="Aballinamion, post: 5440283, member: 289533"] [b]Perceived range[/b] Hi there John A how you doing? Good evening and I would like to wish you happy new year for you, your friends and family. Your work here is awesome and I follow your posts with enthusiasm. I hope not to be trolling here with a lot of post, but I have a couple of doubts. I began reading the last chapter of your amazing book, "Perceived Range" and I confess that I found it very hard to understand how to play balanced against regulars and good opponents. Because I play mostly 2 NLHE to 10 NLHE and the ammount of regulars are so, so small. Thus, I am almost everytime playing exploitative and unbalanced lines. I am analysing my older sessions and hands that I played, three months ago, specially those I got to the showndown (following your book advices) and I see that the vast majority of players of 2 NLHE and 5 NLHE are [I]donkeys [/I](even me). At 10 NLHE changes a little but, even so, the majority of players are weak. I made hundreds of notes and got to some basic observations of the field 2 NLHE (Based on players types of Polished Poker Vol I): [B]A) [/B]AK bluffers: many players when they do a 3bet preflop with AK, either IP or OOP, they like to triple barrel bluff, as they had the cold nuts itself. The lines are very similar: bet flop, bet turn and jam river. Or bet flop, check-raise turn, jam river. Some check-raise flop and jam turn with AK in board with absolute air! [B]B) [/B]Flush Chaser/ Flush Bluffer: Those either call two streets of value to see a river flush, or they check-raise flop with a back-door flush. Player call raises, 3bets, squeezes with any two suited cards and follow eagerly back-door flushes and runner-runner flushes. When they miss they jam the river. (not every player) [B]C) [/B]Gutter Chaser/Gutter Bluffer: Any gutter of any straight in any kind of board texture is enough for these players to be betting flop, turn and jamming river. [B]D)[/B] Hard to leave hands postflop: This is the vast majority of the population at 2 NLHE: players who never fold a Top Pair in a heavy connected river, example double paired, with a flush and a straight. Some others will go 200 bb Pot with TT, JJ and QQ, when the board is low. Some players would never fold JJ+ postflop no matter what happens flop/turn/river. Lol. Guys who never leaves Bottom Set, never leaves a set when it completes a flush or a straight in the river and many other akward examples. I also read these types of players in your book. They are far much better than the default classification as "TAG", "LAG", "FISH", etc. We might know, indeed, that the player is a Tight Aggressive one, with stats of VPIP 20, PFR 16, AF 3, but this information doesn't offer us a picture of how the player reacts postflop. I saw more than once NITs opening from EP hands such K3s, K4s, 98s, and even some small pocket pairs such as 33, 44. The HUD display will tell us that the Raise First of this hypothetical NIT player from UTG is 14%, 6-MAX, but from time to time it is going to open a wider range. (This is why notes are so important to take) Generally, the postflop game of 2 NLHE is very poor and most of times nonsense: players are bluffing because they think it is a good spot for bluffing, and betting whey they think they have the best value hand, without noticing the cards in the board. I was playing a more exploitative game at 2 NLHE and making a good winrate a few months ago. But I made a poker course and the teacher defends a more GTO approach and so I started doing it. Boom! And then I lose incredible ammounts of value! My Bankroll was of 45 Buy-ins of 2 NLHE, give or take, and after this poker course I went broke. (Now I have 9 buy-ins and I don't feel confident enough to play again. So I am trying to improve myself and build a more comfortable and decent bankroll, with faith, work and patient). The GTO way of play drained my bankroll. When the field realized that I was balancing too much, controling the pot most of times, I became the perfect target for exploitation: many times I had the nuts in the turn on in the river but I folded to an absurd aggresion which is not GTO. It seems to me that the players at the 2 NLHE look at GTO moves as weaknesses to be explored: [B]A) [/B]If I bet 1/3 pot in a dry flop, out of position, players check-raise because they think I have a bluff. OR they call to float me in many turns and rivers that I could not possibily continue (by the logic of the game). [B]B)[/B] If I check flop, or bet flop and check turn, almost 100% of players look at this move as a weak one. They see that I was trying to bluff flop, it didn't pass and I gave up in the Turn (Look-up Artist). However I can be easily be betting many flops and check many turns even with the nuts because of pot control and balancing postflop range. [B]C)[/B] If I call flop, or turn, most of players will look at it as another weak move, as that I am either trying to float on later streets or that I have the medium-weak part of my range that could easily fold to aggression. When I read this chapter for the first time, I almost cried. I was playing GTO against players who don't even think about ranges sometimes! Players who are only looking down at their hole cards and wondering "I have Top Pair, so I bet, I have a Flush so I bet, I have a Full-House I am going all-in...". The exploitative game is so much better against weak players because we don't really need to be balancing anything against guys who are in the metagame level of thinking, in between level 0 and 2. When I comment some hands here in the Forum, I am often criticized because some of my lines are too "fishy" or crazy. Indeed, I play like a crazy player when I am facing an opponent weaker than me. I am weak and I am starting to accept that fact. If I were that strong I would already be the field beat. I am struggling like many here to find the optimal play against recreational ones, because IMO, they are the real source of our winrate. Knowing that I have weak points to work in my game, I avoid to play against the regulars of the field, no matter if they are good or bad regulars. Against them, whether I want it or not, I gotta make a more GTO approach, otherwise, they are going to put my head on a spike. Now either I play way to passive against aggressive-violent players, and against passive players I go mad and absurdly aggresive. Am I doing the right thing? Your book is helping me a lot, and I would love to quote the begin of the chapter where the author explain how to play a more exploitative game against recreational players. [B]Polished Poker Vol I - Chapter: Perceived Range:[/B] [spoiler] "[I]The weaker your opponent is, the more unbalanced your range can be simply because they won't be placing you on a range of hands well enough to make good decisions to begin with. This consequently means that if your opponent isn't thinking much beyond their own hand strength, you won't need to worry about balancing your range"[/I] [I]"Micro stake players mostly won't understand either concept, except for the most competent of regulars in your games. For that reason you can keep a mostly unbalanced range against those kinds of opponents, and play as exploitative as possible[/I]". [B]Polished Poker Vol I, Balancing your range, pag: 147 [/B][/spoiler] Regards; Carlos 'Aballinamion' Barbosa [/QUOTE]

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