Comparing Simple Strategies

Poker Strategy
101

Random Fool results:

I ran much better over the last 200 or so hands, and finished in the black. I think some of the adjustments I made may have helped slightly, but on the whole I think luck was just with me over those last hands.

Tables played: 2k/4k NL Holdem (6 Max Tokyo Drift and 9 max Silicon Valley)
Hands played: 1,018
Chips won: $1,048,133
BB/100 hands: 25.74

I suspect Random Fool would have had a higher win rate with a somewhat smaller default bet size. And of course, a more complex rule that would have allowed a wide variety of bet sizes would have created even more room to improve value. Still, I can’t complain. It’s awkward making random plays, as it leads to a lot of lines you’d probably normally avoid, and a lack of experience with those situations makes it harder to visualize the ranges you’re facing.

Summary of strategy results so far (order reversed, with most recent first):

  • Random Fool @ 2k/4k: 26 BB/100
  • The Maniac @ 1k/2k: 39 BB/100
  • Value Village 2 @ 500/1,000: 109 BB/100
  • Orphaned Pot Adopter @ 200/400: 49 BB/100
  • Pre Flop Hammer v2 @ 100/200: 2 BB/100
  • LAG Problems @ 100/200: 125 BB/100
  • Robo TAG @ 50/100: 131 BB/100
  • Pressure Cooker @ 25/50: 139 BB/100
  • Lazy Limper @ 10/20: 244 BB/100
  • Value Village @ 5/10: 220 BB/100
  • Passive Fish @ 2/4: 73 BB/100
  • Pre-Flop Hammer @ 1/2: 222 BB/100

Might also be interesting to just play normally as a bench mark at some point here, just to see how much value we’re losing with these various, fixed play styles. I might save that for either the highest high stakes tables, or for when we move this up to elite stakes.

102

I’ve been trying out a variety of approaches on 5k/10k over short test runs, trying to find frequencies that might work for the I’m Supposed to Look at My Cards? strategy, and I’m honestly not coming up with a balance that seems workable.

  • I’m opening slow tables, since I feel I need a little more time to multi-table with something like this, and I find the transition from short handed play to full table challenging for simple, random strategies. It feels like the frequencies need to be modified quite a bit for short handed play.
  • Players from table to table have been quite diverse, and so what seems suitable for one table feels likely to flop on another.
  • I can actually see my cards, which makes it rather annoying to fold AA and other premium hands pre flop.

So in short, I haven’t hit on anything yet that I feel has a reasonable chance of finishing positive, especially at a level where there are not a lot of full tables already open.

That said, I do have a fun, new idea that I suspect might be moderately powerful: some kind of cycling of the simple strategies already played, maybe picking 4 to 8 and just rotating through them each hand. Especially multi-tabling, there should be no regular, easily observable patterns. It would like be easier to try initially with a smaller number of strategies to rotate through, and then gradually increase. I’d probably want to modify the strategies, as some have defensive mechanisms in place to protect their frequency imbalances to a degree, and those defensive mechanisms usually sacrifice some EV. Getting a good mix of strategies can mean some of those defensive plays inside the strategies can be removed (an example would be with Orphaned Pot Adopter, where I would make the same, small, annoying bets with premium hands, rather than bigger bets that could extract more value, just to help protect the high density of bluffs the strategy was using).

Oh… and a name for this just popped into my mind: Multiple Personality Disorder.

103

If an issue is being able to see your cards you could just cover it with something on your screen like a piece of tape or something like that. I agree that it would be hard to fold aces or raise 83o.

104

Yeah, not sure I want tape on my monitor… but that’s really the most minor of the issues: the big problem was I didn’t think I could make it work. I’m striving for relatively simple strategies that others can hopefully imitate, and the rules also needed to be clear enough to allow me to ignore my cards (otherwise it is too easy to just “kind of” follow the strategic rules of engagement, and then you don’t get a very good test of the idea).

I liked your starting suggestions, and think even something like that might work on some of the tighter full ring tables in the middle levels.

105

Strange… sometimes I swear I’m responding to a particular thread, and then when I post it, it seems I haven’t.

106

Have started playing Multiple Personality Disorder on 5k/10k.

I’m blending Pre Flop Hammer, Value Village 2, Lazy Limper and Orphan Adopter, though I’ve modified the mechanics a bit for all 4. I began just switching from one to the next every hand, and that worked well enough when I was only playing one table, and even two… but it started to feel dizzying once three tables were rolling. I then tried to decide on each table which strategy would be best for the environment, and eventually that led me to really just playing all 4 simultaneously. Pre Flop Hammer and Lazy Limper merged into one idea: make lots of over bets and jams with strong value. VV2 is the dominant strategy, but with Lazy Limper I’m also limping with a wider range of speculative hands. Orphan Adopter then has me trying to steel lots of pots no one seems to want, which is a nice add on to Lazy Limper anyway. So in the end it just becomes a somewhat more diverse, more complicated playing style, while still (I hope) being relatively easy to communicate what I’m doing.

It got off to a horrible start, where I got stacked 3 times in short order in the first 40 or 50 hands. Then the next 40 or 50 ran hotter than the first had run bad… The highlight hand is a spot everyone always hopes for: when you have a monster hand, and someone else has a monster that will provide max value.

Note that my opponent didn’t really do anything clearly wrong. But at the same time this shows one of the hazards of set mining: you’ll hit your set sometimes, even on a relatively dry board where you’ll want to try and get all of your chips in the middle, and well, bigger pocket pairs make better sets.

107

Multiple Personality Disorder continues. Kind of a dull stretch, without many big hands, but some interesting dynamics that show how some of these strategies can be very table dependent.

On one table, I had a fairly aggressive player seated right behind me, that would often attack limps, my own included. This reduces the playability of Lazy Limper and Orphan Pot Adopter quite considerably, by reducing their implied odds (how much bigger is the pot they might hope to win relative to their pre flop, speculative investment).

I’ve also largely discontinued Pre Flop Hammer with two exceptions (the third bullet is really just normal play):

  • I’ll jam with many of the usual hands from the blinds
  • I’ll occasionally limp jam from early position
  • Occasional 4 bet jams with some of the premium holdings

Earlier, I included a hand where I got a really nice match up with pocket pair over pocket pair, where both hands hit sets on the flop, and stacks went in on the turn. Here’s another hand where I got a good pocket pair matchup, and stacks all in pre flop, and well, after that it’s just poker.

108

I’m glad that you’re continuing the experiment!

I’m not surprised that Pre Flop Hammer is not successful or much less successful at the 5k/10k stakes. My observation is that the PFH relies heavily on other people calling your shove with a wide range of cards which, I expect, is not going to happen so much as the stakes increase. As you noted, playing your premium cards in a more standard way should be expected to be more +EV at higher stakes.

As an update, I did play another, roughly, 200 hands using the Pre Flop Hammer at 1/2 and 2/4 tables and it continued to be as profitable as we’ve come to expect. I didn’t keep track so I don’t have the actual numbers this time. It is far too boring, even with 4 tables running, for it to be a long term strategy for me though! There’s no doubt that PFH is a great strategy for low stakes players, like me, who take a big hit at, say, 10/20 to rapidly replenish the bankroll by “milking” the even lower stakes tables.

Regards
TA

109

Ick… the last 500 or so hands were painful. I think that’s about as card dead as I’ve seen in all of the test runs I’ve done since this thread started. If felt like I had top pair or better post flop about 5 times or so in 500 hands. I did get lucky in one spot, hit a nut straight, and stacked another top 100 player that plays a lot down at this level, but that was offset by losing my stack with AA against 88 in a hand I 4 bet pre flop (to another pretty strong player that often plays me heads up on much higher stakes). I then just slowly bled chips in nearly all of the other hands, with tiny offsets from a handful of stolen pots. So almost all of the winnings here came from a brief 20 or 30 card stretch fairly early in, and a bit from a 200 card session shortly after that. The rest was suffering, lol.

Multiple Personality Disorder results:
Tables played: 5k/10k NL Holdem (9 max Midtown Manhattan and 6 max Hudson Bay)
Hands played: 1,003
Chips won: $6,602,051
BB/100 hands: 65.82

110

Next test run started on 10k/20k. Bonus points for anyone that identifies the style being played. I’ll wait to identify this one until after the run is complete, as I feel it is relatively exploitable, especially against some of the better opponents playing on this level.

It’s gotten off to a rough start, with the hand below one of about 3 or 4 tough breaks. Will hopefully run a little better over the next two thirds of the run.

Despite the tough losses in several large hands where stacks went in, I’m only about 50 big blinds down, so there were a few offsetting big pots that went my way also.

111

Test run completed. Style played: Small Ball.

Now, I should start with a disclaimer: I’m not a fan of the style popularized and made famous in Daniel Negreanu’s books and videos, and first labeled as Small Ball in Dan Harrington’s books. I believe he’s one of the all time tournament greats, but I’ve always felt the “system” he’s pitched just seemed like a beginner’s version of LAG play (even though he seems to love describing it as an advanced system).

  • play seems a bit too one dimensional, where it seems like you’re trying the same tactic over and over and over again
  • small bets = bluff or marginal, big bets = strong, also seems too unbalanced
  • the style seems to be focusing on the wrong things: pot control, and trying to cultivate a “crazy” image (even though it seems frankly timid as LAG styles go) hoping to improve payouts when you hit big hands, instead of focusing on whether or not a given play actually maximizes value

Disclaimers aside, here’s the version of Small Ball I actually implemented:

  • generally wide opening (raising) ranges, using small raise (I used the 1/2 pot button here), but much tighter early and from the blinds (I didn’t stick to this religiously, but I think this was generally very close to the ranges I was using):
    • 6 UG: all pairs, AK, AQs and AJs
    • 5 EP: +AQ, ATs, A9s, KQs
    • 4 MP: +AJ, KQ, Ax suited, QJs, JTs, T9s
    • 3 LJ: +all suited broadway, all suited connectors
    • 2 HJ: +QJ, JT, all suited 1 gap
    • 1 CO: +all broadway, all suited 2 gap, Kx suited
    • 0 BTN: Qx suited, T9
    • from blinds much tighter, and full pot raises (EP range plus some broadway as bluffs, and usually just calling with small pocket pairs)
  • Frequent small bets (I just went half pot, though slightly smaller can be fine also)
    • Fired continuation bets most of the time
      • if top pair or better
      • if board looks like it hit a normal raising range
      • if board looks like it missed the defenders range
      • if I had a good draw
    • Careful on turn, often checking, but continuing with another small shot if:
      • felt there was a good chance of getting a fold
      • if I had a good draw (though I would check often in this spot too)
      • with strong top pair or a weak two pair on a dryer board
    • Careful on river, making a mix of small bluffs if draws missed, and small value bets with the strongest marginal hands
    • Bet big with best value (typically sets and up, though sometimes 2 pair)
    • Bet big with some draws (I think this might not be standard small ball, but I feel like these bets are often outright +EV, and they help to slightly balance the larger bets (though value outnumbered bluffs by probably 3 or 4 to 1)

The results… I didn’t do all that well.

  • It probably doesn’t help that I’m not a fan of this style, and that might create some unconscious bias that reduced the quality of my play
  • It felt like I ran at least a little bad, getting all of my chips in good quite a few times, but then losing to a tough turn or river
  • I was able to get a lot more calls of my big bets than I was expecting at this level, and so I think if this had been a longer test run, I’d probably show a stronger result

Small Ball results:
Tables played: 10k/20k NL Holdem (9 max Temple Mount and 6 max Great Sphinx)
Hands played: 1,004
Chips won: $559,761
BB/100 hands: 2.79

112

One detail I forgot to mention: I always sat down with the max buy in, and I would usually reload if I lost more than 20% or 30% of my starting chips. With a style like this, where you are playing a lot of speculative hands, you want to maximize the chips you can win on those rare spots that you hit a disguised monster.

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113

I’ve come up with the final simple strategy, and have begun playing it on 20k/40k. I think after this I’ll just track how I do on 50k/100k playing normally, doing whatever I think might help me win chips, over a thousand hands as a kind of bench mark. That will probably then be a good time to either finish the thread, or at least take a longer break from it.

I was off to a great start on 20k/40k, playing on 3 tables, when the following hand wiped out much of my winnings:

This was a good example of emotion in poker. I remember right after seeing AJ thinking to myself, “that expletive expletive call station!”. On the plus side, I didn’t type anything in the chat window.

Here’s where I find it helps to replay the hand in your head, and try to think about the hand from your opponent’s perspective. After doing that once, you’ll often find, like this time, that you might have played the hand the same way the opponent did, and then you can think about your own play and try and decide if you found the best line (you might have… that you lost the hand doesn’t mean much).

My pretend dialog in my opponents head:

  • “AJ suited… awsome… good for a raise here, in good position in the cut off seat”
  • “arrrgh… that aggro nut, raising again. Gee, if I fold AJ suited here, what do I continue with? I can’t just wait for aces here. OK, I’ve got position. I could maybe 4!, but with position calling can’t be that bad.”
  • “ouch… ok, I knew he was going to fire a continuation bet here. T98 can’t be that good for most of his 3! range. I’ve got an open ended straight draw, a back door flush draw, and two over cards to the board for possibly some more outs still. I can’t just fold to every bet from this guy. And raising seems a bit dicey.”
  • “darn, a brick, and he’s still firing. My back door flush draw is gone. Errr, I have some implied odds here… it feels like maybe I can get a call on the river if I hit? OK, deep breath… let’s call again.”
  • “Yay! We hit. OK, he checked the river. I don’t have the nuts, but especially with that check, it feels like I have to be good. Maybe he had an over pair, or possibly a set? Two pair doesn’t seem that likely given his 3! pre flop. He’ll probably fold to a big river bet here with the over pairs, and maybe even the sets? OK, maybe half pot? There’s probably some bluffs in his range too, but they won’t call… he might bluff raise if I bet really small, but with a half pot bet a bluff would have so little fold equity because even going all in it would practically be a min-raise… so I don’t think a bluff over my bet is too likely”

Anyway, on the whole I think our villain was in a dicey spot, but none of his plays were clearly bad. On my end, I think my half pot bets on the flop and turn were smaller than they should have been. I had a strong hand that I thought was ahead of most of the calling range, but my hand was obviously vulnerable to being out drawn, and so the half pot bets allowed my opponent to reasonably realize his equity in the hand.

Oh, once again, I think it might be great practice, especially if you happen to be at the table playing with me, to try and guess in advance what you think my strategy is in this test run. Profiling other players is an important part of poker, and I’m aiming for another classic category with this run.

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114

Thanks for yet another update!

What about your preflop calling range and 3-bet range? I would imagine that, from MP on, having a robust calling and 3-bet range would be a significant part of a strategy like this.

The same, I think, applies on the flop. Is there room for check-calling and check-raising?

One other problem that I’ve seen commented on many times is how “sticky” many Replay players are even at higher stakes. I imagine that your 1/2 pot open averages about 3BB which probably sees more than the desired number of players going to the flop. My understanding is that 3BB is a fairly decent raise in cash games but, I think, it is not a significant amount to many players here.

Just my thoughts as I watch and learn :slight_smile:

Regards,
TA

115

In Small Ball I was using a smaller raising size, just clicking on the 1/2 pot bet button. My pre flop bets in the other strategies were generally pot sized or larger. In my normal game it is a bit more varied than that, but pot sized bets are still the most frequent.

Sticking with the last strategy finished (Small Ball), I would call raises in position most of the time with pretty much anything I would have raised with, as I think that is consistent with the strategy. I tended to avoid 3 betting with this strategy, except from the blinds. In most of the other strategies my range would contract to at least smaller than I would have needed to raise from the raiser’s seat, and then the upper part of that range would be 3 bet, and the lower part would be a call, though connected hands like KQs, QJs and JTs will go into the calling range more often, especially in position. Also note that I mostly was not bothering to polarize my 3 betting range, though this can help better protect your calling range.

On getting too many callers… shrug, that will happen sometimes. It does mean you will be less likely to win the pot, and you will need to play more carefully post flop. But assuming you are raising with value, every call is still on average, over the long haul, a donation to you. Yes, it becomes a smaller donation per opponent, and it then requires more patience as you’ll often just have to give up when you see the flop, especially out of position, but as you get more used to raising pre flop, it doesn’t seem much different than if you had limped to get there. Some flops will show promise, and you’ll put more money in. Others will not, and you’ll just wait for another chance.

On the flop, I did some check-calling and check-raising with most of the strategies. With Small Ball, there were always some hands I would check on the flop, and if I then faced a bet, I would just make a normal call/fold decision. I didn’t do much check raising with Small Ball, as I think the main theme with this style is really pot control, but an exception to that was when facing a min bit from an opponent where min bets are usually weak or bluffs, and in that spot if I checked and then got a min bet, I would usually make a standard 1/2 pot raise with almost any 2 cards.

On check raising in general, I think it is mostly a great bluff move. I prefer to mostly avoid it with value bets, as just betting out usually appears weaker, and will get calls over more streets and with a wider range within each street, and also more consistently puts chips in the middle when you have good hands. I do think it is sometimes useful to mix in check raises with value as a defense mechanism, but I just wanted to stress that I think it is mostly just best to not try and get too tricky.

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Post above was a reply.

117

OK, most of the way through the run at 20k/40k. For those of you watching or playing against me, I’m curious how accurately you were able to peg the style. Sometimes it can be difficult over a fairly small hand sample to really tell what your opponent is doing, and that helps this style quite a lot.

This has been Super Nit. It’s doing well enough that even if a few of the people I’m playing against read this thread, that will mostly just reduce the number of calls I get, and my guess is that the percentage of people aware of this that are actually playing me is not super high.

This style emphasizes the tightest pre flop ranges I’ve used yet (well, aside from Pre Flop Hammer), and transparent bet sizing: more value equals larger bet sizes. There are no pure bluffs in this style, although semi bluffs with smaller bets are fine, representing the fact that your equity share with some of these hands can be quite high (note that this is probably not a classically nitty move).

A big drawback to this style: as people play you more and more while you are playing this way consistently, you’ll get fewer and fewer calls when you bet, and you’ll get more and more aggression when you check, greatly diminishing winnings, and with good enough opponents, even leading to significantly -EV results. Note also that this is a very tight/weak style, and quite exploitable in the face of skilled aggression.

On the plus side, if your play is normally quite aggressive and with lots of bluffs, taking a vacation of sorts with this style can be incredibly lucrative. But the style breaks down if no one calls your bets, and if people know what you are doing, you are fundamentally pretty easy to play against.

Super Nit mechanics:

  • Very tight pre flop (note that a real nit would probably think the ranges below are way, way to wide, and would never include the “board coverage” holdings, but still, this is much tighter than any of the other ranges shown where you play at all post flop); note that, unlike prior ranges shown, the ranges here are not cumulative, and each row is the complete range for that seat
    • no limping except from blinds: all hands below are played for a full raise at least
    • 6 UG: AA-JJ, AK, AQs, T9s, 88, A4s
    • 5 EP: AA-TT, AK-AQ, AJs, 98s, 66, A5s, A3s
    • 4 MP: AA-99, AK-AJ, ATs, KQs, JTs, 65s, A2s
    • 3 LJ: AA-77, AK-AT, A9s, A5s-A2s, KQs, QJs, JTs, 43s
    • 2 HJ: AA-55, AK-A9, Axs, suited broadway, KQ, 98s, 76s, 54s
    • 1 CO: AA-22, AK-A8, Axs, suited broadway, KQ, QJ, suited connectors down to 43s
    • 0 BT: AA-22, AK-A7, Axs, all broadway, all suited connectors
    • -1 SB: complete with all button hands, plus suited one gap, and attack with UG hands
    • -2 BB: attack with EP hands, defend normal bets with HJ
    • 3 bet with any hands you would have raised with from seat before raiser
  • Never bet without value or decent equity (8 outs or more)
  • With outs and lacking a made hand, mostly check; take direct odds plus a very conservative estimate of implied odds for call decisions
  • Over fold: contract your calling ranges… you still want to make calls where you think you are mostly behind if the pot odds demand it, but you should significantly reduce the number of hands you’d usually call with (tight/weak)
  • Transparent bet sizing: try to use your bet sizing to tell your opponents the exact cards you are holding (LOL)
  • Primarily increase/decrease bet sizes based on the strength of your hand (what fraction of calling range you think you are ahead of), but also consider the value of your opponents equity (how vulnerable is your hand to being out drawn), but reduce bet sizes when your hand is less vulnerable, and increase when you are likely ahead, but facing more outs

That’s pretty much it. Note that a style like this seems quite popular with a number of pretty high ranked players on Replay, and so I certainly think it is possible to get into the top 100 or even higher playing roughly like this. Even better, if you occasionally switch gears into a tight, conservative style like this, I think you will find it will do quite well against a lot of players (especially call stations).

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118

Super Nit results:
Tables played: 20k/40k NL Holdem (9 max Tasman Sea and Hagia Sophia and 6 max Liberty Bell
Hands played: 1,006
Chips won: $23,509,904
BB/100 hands: 58.42

Summary of all strategies played:

  • Super Nit @ 20k/40k: 58 BB/100
  • Small Ball @ 10k/20k: 3 BB/100
  • Multiple Personality Disorder @ 5k/10k: 66 BB/100
  • Random Fool @ 2k/4k: 26 BB/100
  • The Maniac @ 1k/2k: 39 BB/100
  • Value Village 2 @ 500/1,000: 109 BB/100
  • Orphaned Pot Adopter @ 200/400: 49 BB/100
  • Pre Flop Hammer v2 @ 100/200: 2 BB/100
  • LAG Problems @ 100/200: 125 BB/100
  • Robo TAG @ 50/100: 131 BB/100
  • Pressure Cooker @ 25/50: 139 BB/100
  • Lazy Limper @ 10/20: 244 BB/100
  • Value Village @ 5/10: 220 BB/100
  • Passive Fish @ 2/4: 73 BB/100
  • Pre-Flop Hammer @ 1/2: 222 BB/100

So I got lucky: nothing finished at a loss. I suspect if I did this again, with roughly 1,000 hands each again, at least one or two would finish at a loss just due to variance. Obviously Pre Flop Hammer v2 and Small Ball came really close to finishing negative, and I imagine both got a little unlucky. With some of the others, I probably ran hot and got lucky.

Well, I’ll do one more run of 1,000 or so hands, playing on 50k/100k, this time just playing however fancy strikes me. I guess I’m hoping to outperform Super Nit and Multiple Personality Disorder, but it’s no sure thing: I’ve lost money plenty of times over a 1,000 hand stretch playing the best poker I know how to. Poker is like that, and still finding something like your best game during hard stretches like that is another skill that can make a big difference over the long haul.

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119

LOL, I didn’t significantly outperform Super Nit playing my normal game, and if I was to give an honest assessment, I’d say I ran good. Oh well, so it goes… and any winning session is a good session. But it is somehow embarrassing that I couldn’t do significantly better playing a more balanced game.

Still, that gets to an interesting point: you make most of your winnings with a fairly small part of your range, and much of the rest of your range, while you’re hopefully deriving direct profit from it, often serves mostly to improve the value of those best hands. Dropping into a really tight style of play can be especially effective for someone that normally plays very aggressively, but as you do it for longer and longer, gradually you start to lose value, as people adjust to your tighter ranges (if they never adjust, well, you’re going to be quite happy).

Night Rain results:
Tables played: 50k/100k NL Holdem (9 max Grand Canyon, Mt Everest, and 6 max Mt Kilimanjaro
Hands played: 1,011
Chips won: $77,473,363
BB/100 hands: 76.63 BB/100

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120

OK, I think I’ll pick this up again for a second drive through all of the levels, using a different strategy a each level than was used the first time around. This will allow us to see how different strategies compare at the same level. I imagine I’ll take my time a bit more this time, and so it will take a bit longer to get through all of the levels. I might also extend it and try some runs on some of the elite levels.

First up, on 1/2, will be Super Nit, which fared pretty well on 50k/100k. It will be up against Pre Flop Hammer, which finished with a very respectable 222 big blinds per 100 hands played (or roughly $4,400 over 1,000 hands).

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