Video: Entity and the Road to Robusto

[DeucesCracked]

A few months ago, I started a series of videos called the Road to Robusto. Here's what I had to say about it then:

[ QUOTE ]
I know a lot of microlimit players today look at the online poker landscape and wonder if it's feasible to beat the games, or what sort of path is the right path to take to ascend through the limits. It's certainly not as easy of a world as it was before, but it's still far from impossible for a microlimit player who has aspirations of playing medium-stakes or higher within a reasonable timeframe. Through bonus hunting, rakeback, and most importantly, lots and lots of grinding, it's still quite reasonable to expect to be able to turn microdeposits into big rewards…over the next few months I'll be posting lots of Deucescracked.com videos demonstrating the skills necessary, specifically at these lower limits, to crush the games and to move higher.

[/ QUOTE ]

Over the months since then, I've done several videos on the general topic of moving up limits and playing in microlimit games. I've worked a starting bankroll of 380BB at .5/1 to what is now around 350BB for $2/4 by playing, getting rakeback, and collecting a deposit bonus, and have talked about a lot of basic concepts along the way.

Here's a recent video that I did that was a bit of a departure for me, where I tried to talk about basic plays at limits that aren't necessarily the most aggressive:



<h3>Entity and the ABC's of Robustoing</h3>
I took a lot of time in a lot of my decisions in this one, and there was at least one fold that tilted the hell out of Deathdonkey when I told him about it. It's always tough playing at a limit where you don't have much of a read on the players around you, and this was meant to tackle the question of how you play when all you've got to rely on is numbers (which is still a lot more than nothing at all).


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Post away if you have any comments or questions -- I'll be checking in regularly to answer them, whether it's about a hand I played or anything else related to the video or the Road to Robusto series as a whole. /images/graemlins/smile.gif

thanks,
Rob (Entity)

[FUJItheFISH]

hey rob

do you plan on taking this series as far as you can? when will you stop?

[dying2win]

i wish to go robusto.

can you tell me wether you think the limit games or no limit games are tougher?

i know nothing about limit but how does like 5/10 limit holdem compare to 1/2 or 2/4 no limit?

[DeathDonkey]

Hi dying2win,

2/4 NL is a lot bigger game than 5/10 limit, probably a decent comparison is 1/2 NL to 5/10 limit but the NL is probably still a little bigger. Both games are going to have a bunch of tight but not great players and some bad LAGs and if you're lucky, a loose passive guy. I would say this is much more true for 2/4 NL than 1/2 NL depending on the site, time of day, your game selection, etc. Overall at that level the options for NL are much more but I feel the limit games are very undervalued these days.

-DeathDonkey

[JohnnyJoe]

Thanks for the video, enjoyed it. Not sure with my BR I can justify a subscription, but maybe X-mas and chalk it up to a gift. Anyway, notice a lot of "note worthy" comments but you didn't post them. Is that because you were doing commentary or you just felt it was relevant to that session only?

[lzfsb3]

First of all, I loved the video and your explanations and commentary.
I'm not sure how to ask this. Did you make some plays in this video where you were trying or hoping to set someone up for the long run in hopes of exploiting their play? Or do the players come into the game and leave after too short of a time to make that possible? I see you have some stats where the players have over 500 hands played while most were around 150 or less. Do these players tend to sit down for over an hour or is it more of a 30 minute to hour table? I know this will vary per player, per game, per when the session is held, whether at 8PM EST or 2AM EST or 10AM EST, but as a general rule....??

[Toronto86er]

Just thought I'd ask what all your pahud stats were aside from the standard vpip/pfr/af etc, and how you use them?

I personally have decided to take a break from the preflop-oriented play that the NL games I play tends to lean towards, and I'm going to be playing probably 10 or 20k hands of .5/1 to work on my postflop play and just to get a change of pace. I'll decide when I'm done whether or not I want to keep moving up, but for now .5/1 is fine for me. The video was nice and gave me some good insight into your thought processes, thanks.

[Entity]

[ QUOTE ]
First of all, I loved the video and your explanations and commentary.
I'm not sure how to ask this. Did you make some plays in this video where you were trying or hoping to set someone up for the long run in hopes of exploiting their play? Or do the players come into the game and leave after too short of a time to make that possible? I see you have some stats where the players have over 500 hands played while most were around 150 or less. Do these players tend to sit down for over an hour or is it more of a 30 minute to hour table? I know this will vary per player, per game, per when the session is held, whether at 8PM EST or 2AM EST or 10AM EST, but as a general rule....??

[/ QUOTE ]

I find that pretty frequently a player I have a lot of hands on is going to be a TAG who is often playing multiple (often 4-6 or more) tables, which allows me to easily gather statistics when I observe tables on them before I sit down to play. That said, I very rarely engage in any specific play that is "non-standard" in order to set anyone up later; I will, however, play hands differently based on how they play (or on how I believe they play). For example, you'll note a pretty questionable fold I made with TPTK (DeathDonkey later yelled at me about it) that I think is pretty close but only because I know what I know about that player (tight preflop, which leaves lots of suited hands in his range but very few 1pr hands given his play there), and when I combine my knowledge of his stats and how he's played TP-type hands vs me before it becomes a much much closer decision.

Rob

[sweetjazz]

Rob,

I think your AT fold is really bad. Obviously his most likely hand is a flush and a hand like 65s or T6s could also be betting. But there is too good of a chance he has a hand like T8/T9/JT/QT/KT that waited to see if overcards came and then decided to bet this "safe" river hoping to get a call from a worse pair or A high. Or that he has a ridiculous hand like A6, or he's making a ridiculous bluff with QJ.

I think this is an example of where you overvalued your read. Your read is good in that it tells you that you are beat a lot, more than one would expect without a read. But it's pretty much irrelevant, because the pot is laying you a good enough price (7 to 1) to call.

[bigblackbuddha]

Is the Road to Robusto series all 6max LHE? From the video list it looks like its all SH, but I can't tell if they are all limit.

Also where I can get that table mod for FTP? It is by far the most pleasing I've seen and would make staring at my screen for hours at a time much less straining on my eyes.

[DeathDonkey]

[ QUOTE ]
Is the Road to Robusto series all 6max LHE? From the video list it looks like its all SH, but I can't tell if they are all limit.

Also where I can get that table mod for FTP? It is by far the most pleasing I've seen and would make staring at my screen for hours at a time much less straining on my eyes.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes its all 6 max LHE starting at 50c/1 and through 2/4 I believe.

Check out this post (http://www.deucescracked.com/Poker-Forums/General-Discussion/3286-Full-Tilt-Table-Mods-from-the-videos?ref=2p2) which has a link to the table mod and instructions.

-DeathDonkey

[Chris Daddy Cool]

could you guys please use a 4 color deck next time? this is especially crucial when you have a black background.

[Chris Daddy Cool]

yeah i agree i think at fold is pretty bad.

[Entity]

[ QUOTE ]
Rob,

I think your AT fold is really bad. Obviously his most likely hand is a flush and a hand like 65s or T6s could also be betting. But there is too good of a chance he has a hand like T8/T9/JT/QT/KT that waited to see if overcards came and then decided to bet this "safe" river hoping to get a call from a worse pair or A high. Or that he has a ridiculous hand like A6, or he's making a ridiculous bluff with QJ.

I think this is an example of where you overvalued your read. Your read is good in that it tells you that you are beat a lot, more than one would expect without a read. But it's pretty much irrelevant, because the pot is laying you a good enough price (7 to 1) to call.

[/ QUOTE ]

At 7:1 I don't think it's even close to a pretty bad fold. It might be slightly bad but the combo of stats and how he had played top pair in the past on very similar boards made me very inclined to think that he's not one to make a thin valuebet at all, and he is one to be afraid the river is going to be checked through. You'll note that I timed out trying to make the decision which is partly a byproduct of talking while making the decision but mostly that I think it's razor-thin vs. this player and anyone saying "it's a bad fold" hasn't played these limits or doesn't remember what a tight-passive player's river value bets are like.

Rob

[sweetjazz]

Rob, I don't remember over how many hands you had developed your read on this player (you were playing this table before the video started I presume).

The problem I have is that players at low limits when I was roading it to robustoness did lots of strange erratic things, even players that otherwise seemed decent or better. There were few players who you could put on a definite, narrow range of hands where you'd be right 7 out of 8 times. I'll admit that evolutionary forces have likely come into play since that time, and the more erratic players have likely been thinned out of the games to a certain extent by frequent losing.

I do see how it could be a thin fold against some players, especially in a live game (where paradoxically one has a smaller sample size to base their read on, but there are so many other observations that can reinforce a read based on betting patterns). I'd need more than he usually does c/c, c/c b his top pair hands to fold here. First, I need to know he has little to no chance to have made some bad peels with Q high or K high and decided to make a desparation bluff to knock out A highs; second, I need to have a good reason he'd neither check/raise a flush draw nor check/raise a made flush on the river. Sure I might feel like he might not do these things and if it were a no limit hand where his c/c's narrowed his range significantly (so that flush draws were a much larger part of his range after a turn call), betting out with a flush on the river made more sense, and the odds I was getting were something like 2:1, then it would be a trivially easy fold.

I'd be curious if you were willing to go back and post some (all if there aren't too many) of the past hands you had played against him at that point where he showed his hand and see what kind of read we could collectively come up with in hindsight. I'd also be interested in trying to esimate our equity given that read. With my limited read of casually watching your video in the background while I was doing other things, I'd put your equity at about 20-25% when he donks that river. Whereas if spourgitis had been the one donking, I'd put your equity at about 80-85% and expect you won't get 3bet unless he has Ah xh. /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[Willem_D]

Great video. I play the same tables (3/6 now) and the video actually made me some money already since I faced one of the players you analyzed in the video (spourgitis) who was kind enough to sit down on my right.

[lsaw2]

"loose passive, semi-spastic" is possibly the best description of a player i've ever heard. :-p

[Gap23Razor]

thank you for putting up the video and inviting questions...here's one re: your play versus loose spastic player on your left in the 1st game

the rule of thumb is to open raise in 6 max rather than limp...

but with a loose player on your left, i thought a few times i thought you might limp early with your low suited 1 or 2 gapped hands, or maybe even with high/low suited hands not A high...you had an opponent to your left that seemed to play all hands usually calling if the pot opened already, and i believe the rest of the table was playing passive--was i wrong on those counts? and if the table was loose passive pre-flop would you play low suited connectors early?...your thoughts: ?

[Fadook]

I don't get the 88 preflop cap. OK, so you've got Sporgitis cold-calling light and the other guy played really badly postflop, but you don't have anything to say that he's crazy preflop. Does 88 really have a big enough equity edge to cap?

[Entity]

[ QUOTE ]
I don't get the 88 preflop cap. OK, so you've got Sporgitis cold-calling light and the other guy played really badly postflop, but you don't have anything to say that he's crazy preflop. Does 88 really have a big enough equity edge to cap?

[/ QUOTE ]

I think the advantage that capping will usually have there is that it will help to define my opponent's handrange by their postflop actions vs me much better than if I were to just call. In addition, I get to push a small equity edge preflop but more importantly, this isn't the sort of opponent who I believe will resteal easily postflop vs. me even if the pot is very large, so I get to take advantage of the loose-spastic guy and the somewhat shortstacked (IIRC) guy who is 3-betting a bit wider than normal, IMO.

Rob

[Sushiglutton]

Good 1!

On the J /images/graemlins/spade.gif8 /images/graemlins/heart.gif hand (~51min) you talk about wanting your opp to make 'bad free-showdown raises' with hans like A /images/graemlins/diamond.gifQ /images/graemlins/spade.gif (board was 3 /images/graemlins/spade.gif8 /images/graemlins/spade.gifT /images/graemlins/spade.gif4 /images/graemlins/heart.gif). Why would that be so bad /images/graemlins/blush.gif.

Another topic you touch a bit that I would be very interested in hearing more of is showng down A-high UI. Based on ur comment I get the feeling I do that way too much. Anyway it would be a good topic.



Korvgubbe = 'hotdog salesman' (don't know the english word), in swedish by the way /images/graemlins/grin.gif.

[olliejen]

Rob,

I just wanted to chime in and say that I thought this video was well done. Do you come back and lay the audio track after it's done? You speak pretty clearly (i mean, into the mic, it's clear what you're saying) and you have insightful commentary to your play-by-play.

good stuff!

[Entity]

[ QUOTE ]
Rob,

I just wanted to chime in and say that I thought this video was well done. Do you come back and lay the audio track after it's done? You speak pretty clearly (i mean, into the mic, it's clear what you're saying) and you have insightful commentary to your play-by-play.

good stuff!

[/ QUOTE ]

This as well as most (if not all) of my videos are just me talking while I play -- I have a tough time getting back into the "flow" of a match to explain why I made a specific decision sometimes when I'm doing the audio commentary after the fact, so I tend to prefer doing it in the moment. I think it's mostly a personal preference thing, though.

thanks for the kind words /images/graemlins/smile.gif
Rob

[Entity]

[ QUOTE ]
Good 1!

On the J /images/graemlins/spade.gif8 /images/graemlins/heart.gif hand (~51min) you talk about wanting your opp to make 'bad free-showdown raises' with hans like A /images/graemlins/diamond.gifQ /images/graemlins/spade.gif (board was 3 /images/graemlins/spade.gif8 /images/graemlins/spade.gifT /images/graemlins/spade.gif4 /images/graemlins/heart.gif). Why would that be so bad /images/graemlins/blush.gif.

Another topic you touch a bit that I would be very interested in hearing more of is showng down A-high UI. Based on ur comment I get the feeling I do that way too much. Anyway it would be a good topic.



Korvgubbe = 'hotdog salesman' (don't know the english word), in swedish by the way /images/graemlins/grin.gif.

[/ QUOTE ]

I like it when my opponents do anything with bad frequencies: if they are good with their FSDR frequencies it's tough, but many people raise the turn when they wouldn't otherwise call the river (the Js8x board is a pretty good example of that, since I know a lot of people who don't think, then raise the turn with AQdd, when they wouldn't call a river bet if they called the turn). Basically I'm saying I want my opponents to make bad plays that are exploitable and that's one of the ones I see most frequently versus aggressive opposition.

Rob

[Sushiglutton]

[ QUOTE ]
many people raise the turn when they wouldn't otherwise call the river (the Js8x board is a pretty good example of that, since I know a lot of people who don't think, then raise the turn with AQdd, when they wouldn't call a river bet if they called the turn

[/ QUOTE ]

I would pay off AQ (call, call blank river) here very often, thinking there are so many possible semi-bluffing hands. That is a big leak?

[DosXX]

Entity- great video, thanks for that.

Around 10 min, 4-handed after the flop gets checked through to the river. You mention in a 2BB pot that you would think about betting A-high for value in that situation. Can you expound upon that?