Matt Hunt (MTT Coach, Poker Fluency & Octopi Poker) - Ask Me Anything about solvers, studying, and learning poker

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monkeytilter said:
Following on from that am I the only one that struggles to immediately "read" and "bucket" equity (distribution) charts?
View attachment 418163

Does it leap out who has the nut and range advantage, how much of each range is "middling"/"trash"?
Does that come with practice?

Has anyone developed (in books, articles or software) 'equity density' diagrams like this?..

View attachment 418164

(Player 1:Button as PFR, Player2:BB calling - Flop comes AK4r)
X axis is equity (hand vs range) 0..100% left to right.
Y axis is the "density" or frequency that equity occurs in each players range.

To me the 'buckets' leap out now:
BTN has the nut advantage with the big blue peak on the right;
BTN has range advantage as their blue curve is massed to the right of BB's curve;
BTN does have some "middling" hands also that might need strategy consideration;
BB has a trash overload with the orange peak on the left.
Click to expand...
I do like the second kind of graph, so that's a nice way of displaying it.

However, the key to reading the first graph is just to understand that it's all about the gap between the lines, and where the gap is largest. This particular graph represents a spot where the BTN has a solid range advantage throughout most of the range - they don't have a big advantage at the very top, but they do throughout the majority of the middle portions.

I would expect the graph featured here to lead to a range-bet spot for the BTN for a small size, given that their advantage is significant, but not especially isolated to the upper portion of the ranges.
 
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Hi Matt!

So my question is this:
After breaking through the bubble on MTT's I find myself either blinding out to super aggro players or playing too tight and flunk out on the next table or two. How do I get past this "block" and start making FT's or at least within top 15? I've heard playing more aggressively early on before the bubble and up to 5mins before but a lot of the time that only loses me money and I will be buying in 4 or 5 times over? What am i missing?

Thank you!
 
How would you convince people that open limping and worse yet open limping with players sitting out(aka sitter limping) is far from optimal play?

Its a real epidemic in the CardsChat games.
 
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TeUnit said:
How would you convince people that open limping and worse yet open limping with players sitting out(aka sitter limping) is far from optimal play?

Its a real epidemic in the CardsChat games.
Click to expand...
This is an unfair question, not even a solver can sort this problem out! 🤣
 
MagikMunkey said:
Hi Matt!

So my question is this:
After breaking through the bubble on MTT's I find myself either blinding out to super aggro players or playing too tight and flunk out on the next table or two. How do I get past this "block" and start making FT's or at least within top 15? I've heard playing more aggressively early on before the bubble and up to 5mins before but a lot of the time that only loses me money and I will be buying in 4 or 5 times over? What am i missing?

Thank you!
Click to expand...
This is a super common issue in MTTs (I actually have a YouTube video coming out about it soon). There are a lot of reasons for it, but it mostly tends to come down to two things:

1. Simple risk-aversion, folding spots that are profitable just because they require some level of risk
2. Just making a bunch of mistakes at below 30bb, which is often tied to the above

There's a lot more to it, but the most important thing is just to stop caring so much about the bubble. The bubble is not that big of a deal. Yes, it sucks to bubble a tournament but you will bubble a bunch of tournaments in your career. Your goal is to win the tournament, and if you're not playing a satellite, you absolutely can and should still be taking plenty of aggressive lines in the period leading up to the bubble.

On top of that, when it comes to the early stages, if you find that playing more aggressively leads to you having to buy in multiple times, it just means you're not playing aggressively in the right spots. Aggressive poker is good poker, and if you take the right spots early on, it will lead to building bigger stacks in the early stages, and not having to fire so many entries.

But having said that, firing multiple entries is not a bad thing. If you make the right plays and you end up busting a few times as a result, it's just not a big deal, it's how tournaments work.

Hope that helps!
 
TeUnit said:
How would you convince people that open limping and worse yet open limping with players sitting out(aka sitter limping) is far from optimal play?

Its a real epidemic in the CardsChat games.
Click to expand...
It's certainly a mistake in most cases, but I'm a little confused as to why you would want to convince them that it's bad. Are you coaching them? If so, I would recommend illustrating with some examples why the EV of limping is lower than raising.

If you're not coaching them or they're your opponents, then just let them keep doing it and punish them for it. If limping is a 'real epidemic', it just means that players are making a lot of mistakes you can exploit.
 
mhunt_octopi said:
It's certainly a mistake in most cases, but I'm a little confused as to why you would want to convince them that it's bad. Are you coaching them? If so, I would recommend illustrating with some examples why the EV of limping is lower than raising.

If you're not coaching them or they're your opponents, then just let them keep doing it and punish them for it. If limping is a 'real epidemic', it just means that players are making a lot of mistakes you can exploit.
Click to expand...
These are forum games, its not big money, and I want them to improve. Its also nice to play poker, rather than watch a limpathon.

Its like Doug Polk says "Friends dont let friends open limp".
 
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TeUnit said:
How would you convince people that open limping and worse yet open limping with players sitting out(aka sitter limping) is far from optimal play?

Its a real epidemic in the CardsChat games.
Click to expand...
You can solve this urself by simply no more register to freerolls and instead buying into games above 5 Bucks. Actually even in 1-2 $ tournaments you will see significant less limpers and "sitters".

Obv noone is able to collectively convince a group of people that regularly changes (with people coming and going), to no more execute a certain beginner move. In games where half the field is on beginner level and a big part of the field is playing for fun and does not care at all about theory.
 
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TeUnit said:
How would you convince people that open limping and worse yet open limping with players sitting out(aka sitter limping) is far from optimal play?
Click to expand...
Why would you want to convince people of that? When I was playing cash games, I ran different filters in my PT4 to see, where I was winning or losing money. And the situation "rasing over a limp" was insanely profitable. I think, it was close to 100BB/100. So if you care about winning money in poker, you should be extremely happy to see people limp in situations, where they should either have folded or raised. This is a sign, you are playing in good soft games.
 
Octopi_Poker said:
You can have a certain amount of success at low stakes just playing tight and focusing mostly on value (primarily by virtue of how many loose-passive opponents there are), but if you want to achieve success at higher levels you simply can't be a tight player.
Click to expand...
Tight play can get you far though .
I finished 177th of over 7k players in the GGMasters and won 576$ , which I was very happy about since I only used a ticket - so 100% profit.

But I suppose you're right in the long run this won't happen often with tight only play.
My average VPIP on GG is 24%
What percentage would you consider a good ratio?
 
Maybe Matt has further input but ramp up your preflop aggression. PFR, ATS and 3-bet are all on the low side of, what is normal for winning players.
 
fundiver199 said:
Why would you want to convince people of that? When I was playing cash games, I ran different filters in my PT4 to see, where I was winning or losing money. And the situation "rasing over a limp" was insanely profitable. I think, it was close to 100BB/100. So if you care about winning money in poker, you should be extremely happy to see people limp in situations, where they should either have folded or raised. This is a sign, you are playing in good soft games.
Click to expand...
Guess I am weird, I kinda think that this a poker forum and most people come here to improve their game, especially in the learning poker section. The biggest leak that I see in the games is the open limping and the sitter limping. It could save a lot of players here a lot of money if they fixed this simple leak.

Its seems a bit strange for people who are constantly openly limping to be talking about GTO. I have always thought that you should exploit when you can and GTO when you cant, but the open limpers are only exploiting themselves.

Your forum posts have helped a lot of players here improve, not sure why this subject would be any different.
 
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