[Stupeters187]

Friday August 28, 2020

Today was my first study session, and I decided I would do some preflop training using a similar workflow to what JNandez suggests in week 3 of the 10 week transformation course. My database is pretty small, and I wanted to focus on EP RFI, so instead of using my own hands I used a hand generator at random.org to generate hands and if I wasn’t sure whether it was a RFI or fold I used the discord preflop helper to dig a bit deeper.This was a very enjoyable workflow, and it allowed me to explore similar hand types and find thresholds that weren’t immediately intuitive.

The first hand type I decided to explore was 3 card rundowns with an Ace and see what the impact changes to suitedness had. The first hand I looked at was $ds A234, which to my surprise was a fold. Next I looked at $ds A345 which is a slightly profitable open but a fold to almost all 3-bets. Very interestingly $ds A567 is a raise and 4-bet vs almost all types of 3-bets, my inference is that this is because we are OOP and simply calling with a hand like this to play the rest of the hand OOP is going to be very difficult to show a profit doing.

I was curious about rainbow broadway hands that fall into this category, so I took a look at the output of the preflop trainer and saw that almost every combo is RFI and then folding to a 3-bet. Without a suit we don’t have the equity to play a hand like this OOP.

Next, I decided to see what the threshold for big pairs with bad side cards was in EP and I was pretty surprised by the results. $ss KK73 suited to the King was a fold. Upon further inspection if the side cards connect better this turns into a raise, even as low as KK56 but again we are folding this to all 3-bets. This trend is magnified with Queens and Jacks and especially $ss even Queens need to have well connected side cards to be a RFI in EP. Jacks almost need broadway side cards to RFI in EP and even $ds strong connectivity is required.

The main takeaways from this session:

• Low cards even with strong suitedness and connectivity must be avoided in EP

• Even with strong suitedness and connectivity these hands cannot stand up to a 3- bet preflop

• Big pairs, other than Aces still require connected side cards to warrant a raise in EP

+4 More Photos

[Stupeters187]

Saturday August 29, 2020

I want to keep the RFI calibration momentum going, and my intuition is that because EP and BTN ranges will be so polarized that they will be a bit easier to calibrate accurately and the MP and CO ranges will have some more subtle nuances to them. Honestly, I don’t have a good sense of where the demarcation between MP and CO will lie and I often would use a similar set of ranges for both positions.

My studying today will be on MP, and specifically how much less nuttedness is required for an RFI range in this position. To start I decided to use the $ss KT87 suited to the King. This particular structure falls into category 20 (connected near-broadway) and is a slightly profitable RFI that should call against almost all 3bets, but fold vs squeezes. Once we take this structure down to $ss KT56 it becomes a fold and it has become a category 23 hand (disconnected K/Q/J-high, 2 card broadway).

Once the hand structure is no longer suited to the King it becomes much more of a marginal hand. The $ss KJ78 suited to the Jack for example is a fold, but $ss KJT9 and $ss KT98 suited to the Jack and Ten respectively are both profitable RFI (the second marginally so) and should call 3bets, but not squeezes. My thoughts about this is that these are relatively well connected hands that will either have position on our opponent or play well against the wider ranges of our IP opponents, but will not do very well multiway.

Next, I wanted to take a look at 2 broadway cards with a low pair. To start, I used $r AK55, which is a fold. If it is suited to the Ace, it becomes a raise and a call for a 3bet and we have pretty mixed results vs a squeeze. Not very surprising results.

It seems the presence of the Ace is essential, because most combos of 2 other broadway cards and a small pair are folds, most notably $ss QJ55 and KJ55.

Main takeaways from this session:

• Non-nut hand structures with good connectivity and at least 1 suit make good RFI candidates and most can withstand a 3bet if the pot remains heads up

• 2 broadway card hands with a small pair generally need a nut suit to be able to RFI

• The Ace is a critical component of this hand and even if hands of this structure are double suited they are not a good RFI candidate

[Adelaney]

Hey Stu,

Welcome to the PLO Mastermind and the community, thanks for creating this progress log allowing us to be apart of your journey!

I wish you the best of luck not only with taking poker more seriously but also outside of poker with your start up business.

Like the look of your milestones and it seems you’re already putting those into action with the studying you’re doing already.

Keep up the good work and I look forward to following along!

[Stupeters187]

Tuesday September 1, 2020

QQxx-TTxx RFI from MP

In this study session I continued with RFI in MP, this time focusing on QQxx-TTxx from that position and trying to understand where the RFI threshold lies. I get the sense that I have been opening these types of hands way too wide, especially from EP and MP.

The first hand I found for analysis was $ss QQ76 suited to the Queen. To me this seemed like a marginal hand from this position, but according to the solver it is a clear fold. This hand falls into category 47 (SS KKxx-QQxx) and upon further inspection of the hand charts is near the bottom of that category. From this position a QQxx hand will have to be suited to the Queen and will need at least 1 broadway card. The category has a 57% RFI in total. OOP we are folding to 3bets 76% of the time and IP only just over half. Against squeezes we almost always fold.

The next hand I found for analysis was $ss JJT7 suited to the Jack. This hand has high connectivity and will have a smooth flop equity distribution overall because of that. This hand falls into category 48 (JJxx-TTxx) which has an overall RFI % of 22. Even the bottom of this range requires high connectivity and minimal gaps to be playable. We are calling at a very high frequency (86%) to 3bets when we are OOP and at a 100% frequency when IP. This was essentially the inverse to category 47, which is likely because with the weaker pair higher connectivity is required making the flop equity distributions fairly smooth. Because of this playing this hand category in lower SPR situations will allow us to realize equity better over multiple streets.

Finally taking a look at the $ss KJTT yielded results that weren’t particularly surprising. This hand has a relatively high RFI EV at 0.3bb, and falls into category 48 again. This is much higher in the overall range largely because it is made up of all broadway cards even if it isn’t very nutty. This hand is going to call 3bets from every position and is mainly calling squeezes as long as we are IP to the squeezer.

Main takeaways from this session:

• QQxx needs connected and high side cards to be played profitably from EP

• Playable JJxx hands from this position will mainly be well connected, giving smooth flop equity distributions allowing us to play many 3bet pots in or out of position

• Hands made up of all broadway cards are high EV RFI from this position and will mainly be continuing in the face of aggression when IP

[JNandez]

Hey Stu! Great to you see posting here! I admire your work ethic. Looking forward to more updates. I think you’re doing a great job structuring your workload. Keep it up.

Cheers

Fernando

[Stupeters187]

Thanks Fernando! You’re encouragement helps a great deal 🙂

[Stupeters187]

September 15, 2020

I was struggling a bit to find a productive workflow for studying over the last couple of weeks. That led me to be a bit less than enthusiastic about studying and potentially use that as an excuse to play more than study in an attempt to “apply what I’ve been learning”. While application of the concepts I’ve learned has been helpful to some degree, it is not in line with the plans I’ve made to weight studying over playing and I don’t want to fall into old habits where I just play and try to intuitively improve through results-based thinking.

I’m a mca user, and I’ve been waiting for about a week for my new desktop PC to arrive so I could use the PLO Trainer to improve my study workflow, and now that I have everything set up, even into 1 training session with the Trainer I can tell that it will not only improve my study workflow, but my enthusiasm for studying which will make a huge difference.

I’m going to start from the ground up and will be focusing on my preflop RFI calibration. I’m going to 500 hand training sessions at a time and focus on each position until my accuracy is > 90%.

Session #1 – UTG RFI (all 18 buckets)

Hands: 500

Accuracy: 78%

Weakest Buckets:

• 3 – 71%

• 4 – 71%

• 7 – 69%

• 8 – 72%

• 9 – 61%

• 11 – 73%

• 13 – 71%

Session #2 – UTG RFI (all 18 buckets)

Hands: 500

Accuracy: 83%

Weakest Buckets:

• 3 – 70%

• 4 – 69%

• 7- 60%

Session #3 – UTG RFI (all 18 buckets)

Hands: 500

Accuracy: 80%

Weakest Buckets:

• 3 – 71%

• 4 – 70%

• 8 – 68%

• 9 – 54%

• 13 – 63%

• 18 – 71%

There are some very clear trends in where my weaknesses exist in this spot. The results of buckets 3 & 4 were very consistent in each session. KKxx and QQxx from UTG is a huge area of opportunity for me. I am going to spend a little more time on all 18 buckets, but will clearly have to focus on those areas in particular to get my accuracy percentage where I want it to be.

[Stupeters187]

Over the past few weeks I’ve spent some time familiarizing myself with the preflop RFI ranges from UTG-BTN and have gotten my accuracy % consistently into the high 80s. I took most of last week off of studying due to high work volume so I’m going to spend a few days re-familiarizing and getting into SB and BB RFI before I expand into more complex preflop situations. To do this I am going to do study sessions where I go through 500 hands from each of the 4 positions and see how my accuracy is when I am not focused on one specific position.

Session #1 UTG RFI (all 18)

Hands: 500

Accuracy: 87%

Session #2 MP RFI (all 18)

Hands: 500

Accuracy: 86%

Session #3 CO RFI (all 18)

Hands: 500

Accuracy: 90%

Session #4 BTN RFI (all 18)

Hands: 500

Accuracy: 86%

This was definitely a good re-familiarizing session for RFI ranges. I felt pretty solid in the middle part of the ranges, and I feel like all of my uncertainties were at the margins so with a bit more practice I should be able to aim for consistently being above 90%.