Comparing Simple Strategies

Replay Poker Poker Strategy
41

OK, I’m about 80% of the way through Pre Flop Hammer v2, and I’m up a very small amount. I’ll go ahead and detail my modifications to the scheme, why I thought they’d help, and why I think they really all just lowered my winnings significantly, LOL.

One other quick note, I ended up playing this at 100/200 rather than 200/400, as I noticed there were usually no 9 max games going at 200/400, and I didn’t think this would fare as well on 6 max, and with this scheme I also didn’t want to start new 9 max tables and wait for them to fill up.

Pre Flop Hammer v2 mechanics:

  • min buy in (50BB, or 10k)
  • range with under 50BB: AA-88, AK, AQs-AJx, 87s-54s
  • range < 100BB: AA-99, AK, AQs, 76s-65s
  • range < 200BB: AA-TT, AKs, AK 66% of the time
  • range over 200BB (40k): AA-JJ, AKs, AK 33% of the time
  • extend ranges slightly if you have a lot of chips already in the pot
  • handling post flop from big blind: over fold; call only if you would usually raise; go all in if you think it is probably +EV

Hands opponents went all in with: AAx3, KKx2, QQ, JJx3, TTx3, 77, 44, AQx2, AJs, AJ, AT, A8s, A4s, KQ, Q3s, J8s, T9, 85s (this last ran down my aces)

We went min buy in to hope that would induce more calls, and also take better advantage of the folds we were getting, since the amount we’d pick up when betting over limps would become more significant relative to the amount we were risking. We went with wider ranges with shorter stacks because I think you have to just to keep from being blinded to death, and to make it so that we would have better cards when risking a larger amount. We polarized the ranges slightly, to encourage calls after some of our small suited connectors got called and seen, hopefully encouraging people to think there was a lot of junk like this in our jamming range.

Distribution breakdown:

  • premium pocket pairs (AA-QQ): 6
  • marginal pocket pairs (JJ-88): 6
  • weak pocket pairs: 2
  • strong aces (AK, AQs, AJs): 3
  • questionable aces: 4
  • complete trash: 5

How these hands perform against us:

  • hands that crush us: 6
  • hands that break even: 9
  • hands that bleed: 11

As you can see, the cards we saw should have lost a fair amount to our pre flop jams, but the min buy in idea (I thought it was so sophisticated, too, lol) hurt is here in two ways:

  1. blinds ate away at our investment capital very rapidly, and I was not reloading unless stacked
  2. if we assume ranges were not very elastic in response to stack depth, then we were just wasting possible winnings

The range polarization was a double edged sword, also. Did I really get more calls as a result? If not, then I’m just sacrificing equity for no gain. I’m still undecided on this… I’d probably need to run it both ways, and with a larger hand sample (which I’m not going to do, LOL).

Anyway, I’m not going to change it now, and will just run it for the balance of hands remaining as described. It’s going to be really close whether this comes out ahead or behind (even though, based on the calls we’ve seen, it looks like it should be a long term winner).

42

I’m curious about your logic regarding 9-max vs 6-max. In theory, your hammer strategy should work better on 6-max tables since people should be playing quite a bit more loose.

I’d be tempted to “hammer” your speculative hands (87s - 54s) with a big stack rather than a small one. Hopefully, that is increasing your fold equity by putting your opponents in the position of losing their own stack! You also “improve” your “maniac” image, even though that isn’t the “named” style that you’re playing, which could/should lead to more calls on your strong hands.

Staying with the fold equity thing, I would most definitely not buy-in at minimum or default. I would want to cover the table as much as possible to maximise my chips won and, as always, maximise fold equity.

I understand your argument regarding % of stack won but that isn’t the idea for me! I don’t want to win the most hands, I want to win the most chips! If I “only” steal the dead money, so be it!

I think you made the same point in your discussion of problems. I truly believe that maximum buy-in and constant top-up would have made a significant difference to your results.

As I said above, I like the polarisation but, because the ranges are wider than expected and not overly elastic, I would play for the most chips with the most marginal hands. This is expected to be high variance but, when you do collect, you collect big. You also have the advantage of playing a tighter range when you are short stacked and getting the same, or a greater, number of calls. I suspect that getting called with a short stack, tight, shove would more than pay for the losses of big stack, marginal, shoves.

I’m not in a position to try out my thought experiments but I’d appreciate knowing your feelings and thoughts about this.

Regards,
TA

43

I’ve never actually tried this on 6 max tables, so I may be wrong, but here’s a little more on why I think they are not suited for this approach:

  • blinds come around more frequently, so your blind losses are greater; this may not sound like much but we’re only playing a very small percentage of our possible starting hands, and on average, to break even, we’ll need to recover all of our lost blinds with each shove, and that can easily get to be too hard against players that are at all paying attention to what you are doing
  • you can kind of fade into the background more on a 9 max table; now obviously, shoving like this, people notice on 9 max too, but as new players sit down, I think they will notice your passivity more on a 6 max, and be more cautious with your shoves
  • yes, 6 max tends to have wider ranges (and needs to), but I don’t think that means you’ll get wider calls against pre flop shoves… but I guess it would be interesting to test some day
44

Pre Flop Hammer v2 is done, and has become the first test to finish close to zero. I do think I got unlucky at the end, where I lost hands to 64 suited, J8 suited, J4 suited, and 62 suited in rapid succession (though admittedly I held 65 suited on one of those occasions). But when a style gets closer to break-even like this, it’s normal that the little waves of volatility will be enough to knock you back and forth over and under the break even line, and I actually thought I’d lost money until I went through and ran the numbers a second time.

Pre Flop Hammer v2 results:
Tables played: 100/200 NL Holdem (9 max - Harbour Bridge)
Hands played: 1,006
Chips won: $4,601
BB/100 hands: 2.29

I’ll probably take a little break at this point, but do expect to come back to this.

1 Like
45

Have a new scheme about to run: Orphaned Pot Adopter

There are often pots that no one seems to want, that no one seems interested in. This strategy will focus on stepping up and giving these lonely pots a place they can call home.

46

LOL… I’ve played a few hands now, and think 200/400 may have been a bit early to deploy this: there are no unwanted pots. So far, someone has almost always been firing at every pot (I think I’ve had a chance to file adoption papers twice). Hopefully I’ll wind up at a few tighter tables from time to time, but assuming that does not happen much, this will wind up close to being a retest of Lazy Limper, as the rest of the play will have broadly that flavor (though with some interesting differences that I’ll get into when I post the full mechanics of the scheme).

47

This thread is a lot to read through but it is impressive how you are able to adjust your play style. I was wondering why you are never at the elite stakes tables before remembering that you are doing this challenge. It seems like your win-rate is consistently 100+/100 or even 200+/100 even with these varied and questionable styles.

It seems to show that the outcomes (apart from maybe the preflop hammer) are due more to your decision-making than the actual lines you are taking. It definitely seems educational to practice using different styles that differ from your preferred strategy to see different lines and situations. For me, I think it would be tough making plays that deviate from my intuition. Generally, when I try to use a new approach I just spew off a few buy-ins and go back to square one. Being able to make adjustments without springing new leaks is impressive.

You have the bankroll depth to try this strategy at higher stakes (like 20k/40k would be a drop in the bucket). Given how much of a spew-fest everything is below 500/1k, it would be interesting to see how these strategies work when players are at least somewhat valuing their chips and trying to win.

48

Yes, I’m also curious to see at what level some of these strategies start to break apart. I’m actually expecting a few of them to remain effective at least through high stakes. I’m not sure any listed so far would do well at even the lowest stakes elite tables, as too many opponents at those levels would start making correct adjustments to overly predictable play.

Concerning the question of how much of the win rate is coming from the style, and how much is coming from me…

  • Pre Flop Hammer: as you indicated, I’d think anyone should be able to see roughly similar win rates with strategy if they actually had the discipline to follow it, as it is so mechanically simple
  • Passive Fish: this is actually mechanically simpler than Pre Flop Hammer in terms of defining it, but you’re left to your own devices making calls, which is frankly a very, very hard skill to acquire, and one I’m still honestly working on; but if you follow the advice, and over fold, calling only when you might normally raise, I think most people could see relatively similar results playing at the same level
  • Value Village: This is a simplified version of the strategy that almost every book is trying to teach to beginners, and almost no one seems to be implementing it at low stakes, LOL. I think it has enough moving parts that it is hard for beginners to follow, and with many intermediate players, I think it is just not how they most enjoy playing. But also, there will always be hard decisions on the turn and river that the style doesn’t provide clear guidance on, and so yet, stronger players will of course see higher win rates on average with this style than beginners.
  • Lazy Limper: this one is again a bit easier to imitate, as most players know when they have a set, straight or flush that is probably worth betting big, and the strategy again calls for over folding, but I think beginners especially will sometimes over value two pair or even a set on a wet board with multiple opponents, and so still experience will help
  • Pressure Cooker: I wouldn’t recommend this for most beginners unless it fits into their natural style anyway. It’s hard for a lot of people to fold after they’ve been betting, even when they hold complete trash, the feel a compulsion to “be true” to the bluffing they’ve shown so far.
  • Robo TAG: this, and all the styles that follow are getting where I think they’ll only be simple to try out for pretty experienced advanced to intermediate players. There are just more moving parts.

I also think a lot of people also just have a hard time sticking to a game plan, and so even continuing to make decisions within the boundaries defined takes a certain kind of personality.

1 Like
49

Oops… I’d intended the above to be a response to your post.

50

OK, I’m about half way through, and I find I have been able to rescue a number of orphaned pots, providing them with a warm, secure environment, where they can make friends with my other chips. But in general for this strategy, I’d want fewer people submitting competing adoption papers, as part of the strategy below involves covering for my many flop limps and turn and river bluffs with some of the hands I’d derive top value from, and this reduces the value of that range of premium hands. So unless I’m getting a chance to make a lot of these turn and river bluffs, it’s not really worth the trade.

Orphaned Pot Adopter rules of engagement:

  • no pre flop raises except if
    • you are the big blind, in which case you can attack with a normal range of strong hands
    • you are facing a raise preflop, where again you can re-raise with the kind of hands you jam with in Pre Flop Hammer
  • limp with a wide range, tightening if the table is unusually aggressive preflop
    • roughly 20% to 30% of hands UG (seat 3, since this is 6 max)
    • roughly 60% of hands on button
    • slightly tighten range facing min raise in front (especially with a lot of players behind left to act) and ignore min raises behind (after you’ve already limped), unless a cascade of multiple people start doing this
  • almost always check the flop, unless you are the button, in which case you can treat this like the turn
  • if no one has bet previously, fire a 40% to 70% of pot sized bet with most of your hands on either the turn or river
    • avoid this bet with hands like bottom pair or a middle pair and a weak kicker
    • make much bigger bets with some of your strongest hands, but keep this sizing with thin value and normal value bets
    • if you bluff the turn, only bluff the river if you think your opponents were likely on a draw, and a safe river card comes
  • play normally when facing bets from others

Other notes:

  • you’ll be playing too many hands, so you need to be patient when other people are betting after the flop, and just fold a lot
  • you’re losing a lot of value from strong hands like QQ, JJ, AQ and others, that really do better if you raise before the flop and get fewer opponents; your frequent betting on the turn and river should give you more calls with your value
  • you’ll be losing value with all your hands that hit the flop well by almost never betting the flop, making it much harder to get all of your chips in by the river
  • you need to have some really big bets on the turn and the river with some of your best hands to offset this
51

One thing I’ll say for this as a practice drill: as you find that the strategy outlined is just horrible in so many unexpected ways (on top of all of the expected ways, LOL), it forces you to think of what you can still do inside the rules, of new moves that you might not normally rely on much to drive value. Doing that against players that play very differently from what you are used to, that you don’t also have mountains of notes on, is yet more practice observing, and quickly trying to find exploitable leaks.

I think this whole exercise is a better drill for me than I was expecting.

Anyway, adopting orphan pots is proving to be a challenge. I’ve been making chips the whole way so far, but it has been a struggle, as the primary areas I’d been expecting to see profit from have been mostly dry wells so far, and so I’ve had to really hunt for chips in other nooks and crannies.

I will also give some kudos to the 200/400 players on 6 max. While I’ve seen plenty of awful plays, on the whole betting decisions, calling decisions, and folding decisions made by these players are quite noticeably better than the low stakes tables. Still, there’s just way, way too much calling with next to nothing, and so the right way to punish that is to bet when you have value: pre flop, on the flop, on the turn, and on the river. And that is the main area where this strategy is letting me down… I’m passing almost all of my betting opportunities on the first two streets.

52

OK, the Orphaned Pot Adopter run is concluded. I don’t believe I was ever down chips, but over the first two thirds of the run, I was also probably never up by more than 3 buy-ins or so. At around 700 hands or so, I made a small number of tough calls that did not turn out well, and was probably less than 1 buy in up at that point. In the final 150 hands, things turned better, with one table having a hyper aggressive player that essentially allowed me to play my normal game without breaking any of the rules for the strategy.

Overall I found it hard to take a strategy like this (stealing unwanted pots) and make it the central pillar of play (it’s more of a nice thing to have as a weapon in reserve, I think), and I think I probably got a little lucky to do even as will as I did with it. Still, that doesn’t mean something like this can’t be profitable at medium stakes, and I think there are many ways this could be tweaked to still be similar, but more effective.

Orphaned Pot Adopter results:
Tables played: 200/400 NL Holdem (6 max - Japanese Sea)
Hands played: 1,067
Chips won: $209,043
BB/100 hands: 48.98

I’m torn for what to try next, but am thinking of trying out a maniac style. This will of course be extremely high volatility. One other thing I’ve thought about is to see how effective my vanilla playing style is at this level, to serve as a kind of baseline for the other strategies… but haven’t decided if I’ll really do that or not.

53

Summary of all styles so far:

  • Pre-Flop Hammer @ 1/2: 222 BB/100
  • Passive Fish @ 2/4: 73 BB/100
  • Value Village @ 5/10: 220 BB/100
  • Lazy Limper @ 10/20: 244 BB/100
  • Pressure Cooker @ 25/50: 139 BB/100
  • Robo TAG @ 50/100: 131 BB/100
  • LAG Problems @ 100/200: 125 BB/100
  • Pre Flop Hammer v2 @ 100/200: 2 BB/100
  • Orphaned Pot Adopter @ 200/400: 49 BB/100
1 Like
54

OK, I ended up going with Value Village 2 at 500/1,000. It’s kind of a relaxing cruise control for me, with its very straight forward play. If you have a hand that beats your opponent’s calling range, then bet. Lacking that, mostly check fold (though you can defend with some of the hands that were ahead of your opponent’s full range, but not ahead of their calling range).

This morning’s run I was mostly slightly down until almost the last hand played, where I flopped top set over bottom set in a multi-player pot, stacks went in, and my hand held up. The session yesterday evening I was red hot, and barring a really bad finish, it looks like this is likely to post some impressive numbers.

Modifications relative to the original Value Village:

  • bets do not need to be pot sized, and mostly just try to find the sweet spot for value extraction, using smaller bets for thin value (say half pot or less), and bets ranging from half pot to full pot for stronger value
  • no simple formula for deciding on flop value bets: consider your opponents likely existing range, and then the calling range, and then how many streets of value you can likely get, and then how likely your hand is to be out drawn if you think you are probably ahead
  • ok to trap on flop with standard trapping hands (top set, quads, nut flush)
  • ok to push value bets to turn and/or river, trapping on flop, with normal value hands, if you think you don’t have 3 streets of value anyway, and the board is fairly dry and you think your risk of being outdrawn is not large (helps protect your checking range)
  • since we are thinking in terms of range, we will be trying for more streets of value with thinner value against call stations than against those with tight calling ranges, and so we’re trying to pay attention to our opponent’s frequencies
  • can bluff with standard 8 and 9 out draws on either the flop or turn, but will be selective about this, only bluffing if we think we have good fold equity, or if the implied odds after the bet seem particularly good (we want to build the pot for a huge pay day if we do hit)
  • pre flop, limping behind is allowed with Ax suited, small pocket pairs, and suited connectors (though not suited gappers)
  • opening range is basically the same, though will make a few more small adjustments based on playing conditions
  • increase opening sizes if you are often getting 4 or more callers at a particular table

If I was to sum up the key theme here: play in a very straight forward manner. Don’t be worried about raising pre flop and then check folding post. You don’t lose more than maybe 3 to 6 big blinds typically when check folding, and you’re often going to win 20 to 50 big blinds when you do bet… so just fold when you think you are behind. I do a tiny bit of defending here, but mostly I’m just betting when I think I’m ahead, and folding all the rest.

55

Oh, two other minor adjustments I’d intended to mention in the prior post but forgot to:

  1. calling quite a bit wider as the small blind with multiple limps in front (but still staying very tight facing raises), calling with any reasonably coordinated hand
  2. defending wider in the big blind: In the original version I was probably calling a min raise with a narrower range than I’d normally use facing a normal sized range followed by a normal sized 3 bet in front of me. Here, my defending range is still narrower than my normal defending range (which is already narrower than what you’d see on a GTO chart), but is opening up to more hands that I think will have no trouble outperforming the loss of a fold.
56

Value Village 2 results:
Tables played: 500/1,000 NL Holdem (9 max - Acropolis)
Hands played: 1,006
Chips won: $1,097,348
BB/100 hands: 109.08

For a very strong player, I think this is probably too tight preflop to get max value at this level, as your post flop edge is probably sufficient to allow you to play more hands profitably, and so by being so tight pre flop you are just losing the money you’d be gaining from those other hands. Further, applying a bit more pressure post flop might generate more mistakes from your opponents, and again drive up winnings. But for a player that is new or not really confident in their post flop play, I suspect play close to this is probably close to your strongest strategy.

You’ll note that we are not winning as many big blinds per 100 hands played as we were with the earliest strategies at the lowest stakes… but the truth is people are not making as many horrible, massively losing plays at this level. When you have people calling all in bets pre flop with 72 suited (actual example)… there are just lots of ways to win lots of chips.

Here again, I’d love to see if anyone has something else that might be relatively simple to describe (notice that even this though is starting to get a bit nuanced) and doesn’t take pro level skill to put into effect that you think might give equal or even better results.

57

Next up, at 1k/2k, the most volatile style of all: The Maniac

  • wide opening ranges, but paying attention to position, and so widest at the button
  • frequent large bets, for maximum pressure
  • unbalanced play, with bluffs outnumbering value bets

Obviously this style is a bit more likely to be successful in real cash games, where people have a hard time defending against large bets and tend to over fold. Here, you’ll usually observe the opposite leak, with people calling too wide. It will be interesting to see if I can avoid going down in flames…

58

Having played about 500 hands, I think calling this a maniac style is probably a bit of an oversell… this is really just a more aggressive version of LAG Problems, as I’ve set too many restraints for this to come across as a classic maniac.

Core strategies for The Maniac:

  • Opening ranges are quite similar to LAG Problems, but I allow a bit more variability based on table conditions
  • When to avoid bluffing:
    • as there are more opponents, cut back on bluffs in a manner nearly proportional to the number of opponents (so if you have 4 opponents, maybe only bluff about 1/3 as often)
    • avoid bluffing with hands that will mostly get folds from worse hands, and mostly get called by better hands
    • against someone that seems to have a very high calling frequency, unless you see they also fold on the river a lot
  • When to bluff (but think about the rules above first)
    • when your hand has little to no showdown value (32 hole cards on a AJ954 board would be an example)
    • when you have a back door flush draw
    • when you have a gut shot straight draw
    • against players that over fold, or seem to be really wary of getting involved in pots with you
    • when no one seems interested in the pot
  • if you show down some big bluffs, or win a number of pots without showing anything down, dial down the bluffing
  • if you win a number of big pots with giant hands that everyone sees, dial up the bluffing
  • small bets for thin value or to steal unwanted pots are ok, but with this strategy, most of our bets will be on the larger side, at 60% to 100% of pot, with a fair amount of over betting the pot, also
  • over bets need to lean toward value… it’s fine to mix in some high equity semi-bluffs, but you want these outnumbered by strong value
59

I should probably also note that I’ve been playing this on both 6 max and 9 max tables, and so far at least, it seems to have been quite a bit more profitable on 6 max.

60

2 bills chip and biggest pot 50mills, must be a mega nit