The Übernit
 

Errr OK (the traditional cardrunners video intro) I am writing a post on the übernit, I've been wanting to do this for a while, and todays discussion about starting hands in another post made me decide to finally follow thru.


First of all, why would anyone play nitty, when LAG is sooo sexy ?

Second is it good poker ??

Finally aren't you supposed to really concentrate on few tables, so that you can become amazingly good and play aba HU within a week or two?
http://img258.imageshack.us/img258/6...aisebidyy3.jpg


Well, yes you are supposed to concentrate on a few tables ... and no! It is not good poker to play the übernit, but ..... this is uNL. The thing is, when you are a noob, you have no clue as to what is happening and what you are doing, so no matter how much you concentrate, you will still be a noob. The following will is simple and straightforward, and the good thing about it is, that it allows you to build experience. I hope to have constructed it in a way that is clean and will not force habits onto anyone that will have to be unlearned later, what I've tried to do is to just keep it simple.

Ok so what are we talking about, well ... it all started in the brew, people where talking about lagging up 10NL .. and I chimed in in my usual grumpy tone and claimed that if you just raised AQ+, 22+ pf and folded everything else, you'd still show a profit. ... and the übernit was born. So here it is.

The Pure Übernit
First in:
Raise 22+ and AQ+

Facing a raise without coldcallers:
Reraise QQ+
Call AK (and AQ)

Facing a raise with coldcallers:
Reraise QQ+
Call 22+ and AK.

Postflop:
HU: Cbet and give up if not connected
Threeway or more: Do not even bother cbetting, if not connected.

Bet sizing: 2/3rds to full pot.

And that is basically it.

Discussing the pure übernit: As you can easily see, it is not very good poker ... transparant as hell ... no regards for position (at least preflop [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img] ) etc etc., but the thing is ... most pokerplayers truly play poor. They are there to enjoy themselves often and all in all, they like to bet, bluff and think that their opponents bluff. At lower stakes they play any two almost and will go broke with any piece of it even tho it is blatantly clear, that you are a nit. But there isn't much thought here, boring as hell ... fire up a zillion tables ! Still I have a feeling that you might very well show a nice profit playing like this even into SSNL is you table select well and change tables if you notice a good laggy reg on your left, who might decide to just pwn your sorry behind.

This basically requires players that are too loose and go too far with mediocre hands. Now what if we want to proceed. (If it is broken, then do not fix it, but if it starts to struggle, what then)


There are among other things two things that come into play.

The first is balance, the above is fairly transparent, so you might need to start doing something in order to get paid of (or not to get exploited).

The second thing is stealing, as you all know you can choose to construct your game around stealing instead of around value (this is value), but I will not talk about stealing here. (Just to be clear, there is a huge difference between stealing and bluffing).


Balance
So now that we have disregarded stealing, there is the matter of balance. So what am I talking about when I use the term balance here. I am thinking of Sklansky's chapther on bluffing frequencies in TOP (and not the more advanced Chen and Ankenmann stuff from MOP). Basically the thing is this. If we only bet when you have the nuts, then villian will notice this and adapt, so what do we do? We adjust and start to bluff. As you increase your bluffing frequency, your profit will increase until your frequency gets too wide and then it will decrease again ... until someday you might end up bluffing your way to BUSTO!


But if we do it right, there is an optimal bluffing frequency where your profit is maximized.


So what does this mean in context of the übernit? Well, if you consider the above as your value hands, then you can start adding hands that we can call bluffs. The point of these is not to show a profit on their own, but to increase the profit of your AK TPTK'ers and your sets etc.

Starting with the button, you can add more hands than the above. The button is the best position on the table, so here you can get hurt the least by playing hands of 'less' value ... next is the CO ... etc.

Basically what you hope to do is more or less nothing with each hand you add. Most of the time you will just raise pf ... and take it down with a cbet. But playing more hands will get you more action on when you hit something.

NOTE: If opponents are unobservant, you do not have balance your game.


More balance
There is turn play and 3betting play to consider. Again one approach to this is the same as above, you simply just add a few 3bets and 2nd barrels with 'nothing' in order to increase the profit on your good hands, if your 3bets or 2nd barrels with 'nothing' missfire, then no big deal .. villian has seen you 'bluffing' and is more inclined to pay you off when you have something. Again if you overdo this, then BUSTO is around the corner [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]



But how ... ?
How do you know if you should bet or not bet or .... on different flop?

Well pokerstove to the rescue.


But before I talk about stove, here is a definition of good poker:

Good Poker
When solving poker problems, they fall into two steps ... first is to accurately rate your opponent (is he aggro, how will he play this .. what part of his range will he fold, call and raise etc).

Once you have that down, the rest is math

So the uncertainty is your opponent. When playing a zillion tables like I myself sometimes do, then you have an average say 50NL villian and you adjust sliglty by taking your HUD into consideration, but HUD will now show everything .. like if he will only be aggro with semibluffs and play his made hands from behind or the other way around or ...

But accurately describing your opponent is key. So first some thoughts about your opponent and then stoving.


Pokerstove
We all know that if you put in a hand in stove and a range for villian, then it will evaluate your equity, so I will not talk about this, but there is also something else you can use it for. It is the how often does villian hold exercise.

Say you are facing a flop like JT3 and you want to know how often villian has hit a pair .. as you can see from your HUD or experience that he opens 22%?

What you can do is give yourself AK (the nut nonpair and then a two deuces on flop and river (unimportant as they are not really in his range, or at least there is very few hands in his range that hit those ducks)

3,220 games 0.005 secs 644,000 games/sec

Board: 3c 2d 2h Js Th
Dead:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 38.509% 36.27% 02.24% 1168 72.00 { AKs, AKo }
Hand 1: 61.491% 59.25% 02.24% 1908 72.00 { 66+, A3s+, K7s+, Q9s+, J9s+, T9s, A8o+, KTo+, QTo+, JTo }


Villian has a pair 61,49% of the time, which actually makes our AK look like bad, so question is if you want to cbet .. or call a cbet for that matter. Not that I've chosen a rainbow flop .. suits might even make this worse. Off course you need to know if villian will play back at your our not etc.


Or say that you wish to find out how often villian has a flush draw, well ... on a given board you give yourself top set and then complete the flushdraw without pairing the board and there you have it.

A final example could be how often does villian have an ace on an ace high flop ... give yourself KK and add in some ducks again and you got it. (you might hit the remaining 22 for quads in his range, but it shouldn't weight too much and not make much difference for the result).



So here is one tool to evaluate flop play etc for you, when you start to add more hands. (+ some of the common tools that float around a lot, but this is more unusual and I've learned it from The Bryce at STOXPOKER.com). It is simple as hell, but amazing that you don't think of it on your own, go figure.



Potcontrol
Sometimes when you hit a marginal hand like midle pair or tpnk on a DRY flop, you might consider checking behing either flop or turn in order to play a small pot, as it is WA/WB and not many cards can hurt you. Again like in the above it important to know who your opponent is. If you know he will not checkraise you without a hand, then bet/fold ... but if he is a tricky BASTARD !!!!! ... then take one of and you're in potcontrol land. (which we all know what is).




Gelford over and out, this is my attempt on a starting hands chart .... note that the AQ might well be a reverse implied odds hands vs an even greater nit (hehe .. drumroll). The thing I have attempted here is to keep it simple, but yet show enough to enable you too expand it on your own.

Keywords are
Value (that is the übernit itself)
Balance (adding more hands)

And knowledge of opponent, can I safely bet/fold or ??? ... and to assist in this, a quick course in pokerstove for those who didn't know these things.


NOT COVERED: Stealing, bluffing and all the sexy stuff, which takes skill and experience. This is intended as training wheels for noobs, but do not understimate this, I have been zillion tabling SSNL all year playing like this and it's been paying my rent just nicely (well at least until October .. I am no longer a poker pro, but now I'm just your Regular Joe).

Re: The Übernit
 

Note two things:

That I don't think you should call small pp's for set value and that AK/AQ play fairly bad oop for a pf call, when you're oop, so in the blinds AK might prefer that you 3-bet it

Re: The Übernit
 

Gelford, I [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] you.

Re: The Übernit
 

Bump

give it some [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]

Edit: beat me to it

Thanks for the brew link

Re: The Übernit
 

[ QUOTE ]
Gelford, I [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] you.

[/ QUOTE ]


Lol .. there aint nothing here, that is new to you

Re: The Übernit
 

Yeah but you described my style perfectly imo. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Re: The Übernit
 

[ QUOTE ]
Yeah but you described my style perfectly imo. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]

We'll ... we started out together back in the day, didn't we [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Re: The Übernit
 

Great post Gelford.

Don't think many people realize the true power of pokerstove. If you watch aba's videos you can definitely see that he's a pokerstove fiend and is a MAJOR part of why he is so successful.

Re: The Übernit
 

This is essentially The Bryce's stoxpoker video, which is the best non playing poker videos ive ever seen in my life.

He also goes into much more depth about stove, its worth it if you can buy the video as a single purchase for sure. Gets pretty confusing to, that guy is awesome and will probably chrush NL when/if(?) he makes the move to NL.

Re: The Übernit
 

[ QUOTE ]
Great post Gelford.

Don't think many people realize the true power of pokerstove. If you watch aba's videos you can definitely see that he's a pokerstove fiend and is a MAJOR part of why he is so successful.

[/ QUOTE ]

or indeed some of the slightly improved tools that are coming available.

nh Gelford. people like to moan about 'recipe' type ideas here, but i wouldn't mind betting that they are the most popular posts and that this will help lots of beginners find their feet while they start learning to think about poker. this feels like the new tien 'raise that [censored] up'.

Re: The Übernit
 

quality.

Re: The Übernit
 

Sweet post, and an original introduction [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

Re: The Übernit
 

I did this for about an hour and went on massive tilt.

Re: The Übernit
 

do you consider me a noob gel?

Re: The Übernit
 

[ QUOTE ]
I did this for about an hour and went on massive tilt.

[/ QUOTE ]

Re: The Übernit
 

you can beat 25NL playing 30/25, because everyone sucks postflop (i can at least probably). But you need like 60% rb, because of the sick rake. Way more profitable to exploit the hell out of all the fish because yo usee more flops, and you learn more stuff too. Once you learn to play this style you will move up very fast and beat limits like 50NL 100 and 200NL much faster. And its 10times more fun.

What you described is not real poker, lol.

Re: The Übernit
 

[ QUOTE ]
you can beat 25NL playing 30/25, because everyone sucks postflop (i can at least probably). But you need like 60% rb, because of the sick rake. Way more profitable to exploit the hell out of all the fish because yo usee more flops, and you learn more stuff too. Once you learn to play this style you will move up very fast and beat limits like 50NL 100 and 200NL much faster. And its 10times more fun.

What you described is not real poker, lol.

[/ QUOTE ]

please dont turn this post into a brag post for yourself. You were just lucky to go on a heater with those stats in uNL.

Re: The Übernit
 

Gelford, ty for posting.

A question:

[ QUOTE ]

Facing a raise without coldcallers:
Reraise QQ+
Call AK (and AQ)


[/ QUOTE ]...[ QUOTE ]
I don't think you should call small pp's for set value

[/ QUOTE ]

Is there a missing section on medium pairs here? or is anything <QQ to be dumped unless there is a cold-caller?

Many thanks,

dave.

Re: The Übernit
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
you can beat 25NL playing 30/25, because everyone sucks postflop (i can at least probably). But you need like 60% rb, because of the sick rake. Way more profitable to exploit the hell out of all the fish because yo usee more flops, and you learn more stuff too. Once you learn to play this style you will move up very fast and beat limits like 50NL 100 and 200NL much faster. And its 10times more fun.

What you described is not real poker, lol.

[/ QUOTE ]

please dont turn this post into a brag post for yourself. You were just lucky to go on a heater with those stats in uNL.

[/ QUOTE ]
I never played like that at micro limits and i learned how to play at 100NL. It took me like 70k hands to learn. but i did a little experiment a while back and it worked very well. My stats at micro limits were more like 25/17, with W$WSf of 36 or something. But there are alot of bad tags, and fish who you can exploit big time. I mean vs some 60/14 fish you wanna see alot of flops... or vs a spazzy 23/18 who starts calling you down with middle pair after a while, stuff like that. It doesnt work for alot of players because they just spew at start and then give up without finetuning it.

Re: The Übernit
 

[ QUOTE ]
This is essentially The Bryce's stoxpoker video, which is the best non playing poker videos ive ever seen in my life.

[/ QUOTE ]

Only the stove part for which I've already credited him, the rest is me (or a cook up of aba, chen etc .. all the folks that showed me how to play when I swithed to cash a year ago)

Re: The Übernit
 

[ QUOTE ]

What you described is not real poker, lol.

[/ QUOTE ]

Luckily I never claimed it to be .... Also I've loud and clearly avoided the subject of stealing as well

Tho actually once you've gone thru the process of balancing your ranges, you can get very far playing like this.

Re: The Übernit
 

[ QUOTE ]
Gelford, ty for posting.

A question:

[ QUOTE ]

Facing a raise without coldcallers:
Reraise QQ+
Call AK (and AQ)


[/ QUOTE ]...[ QUOTE ]
I don't think you should call small pp's for set value

[/ QUOTE ]

Is there a missing section on medium pairs here? or is anything <QQ to be dumped unless there is a cold-caller?

Many thanks,

dave.

[/ QUOTE ]


Heh ... yes, there is a hole in the chart there. Basically I've avoided all marginal situations here, and those medium pp's often end up in marginal situations, where you need to read.

I prefer coldcalling those and then to play poker once the flop hits. Sometimes this means playing from behind (ip), sometimes it means folding a lot of flops ... and since we are not playing for set value, then in order to stay profitable, you sometimes represent a set as a bluff.


OOP is even more tricky .. against a tight raiser I fold a lot ... against a VERY loose raiser, you might threat say 99 like if it was the mortal nutz and repop him pf ... and for all those in between raisers, I might call with the intention of checkraising an appropriate flop (tho folding pf is never a large mistake)


Experience and stoving ftw! ... (And tbh, I've need to do a lot more stoving myself [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] )

Re: The Übernit
 

[ QUOTE ]
I did this for about an hour and went on massive tilt.

[/ QUOTE ]


haha ... you limidonk [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

Re: The Übernit
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I did this for about an hour and went on massive tilt.

[/ QUOTE ]

[/ QUOTE ]


Hmmm .... so this has even caught the eye of the experienced poster [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]


Well Ama, you're no noob, so if you want to test this out, add SC's and maybe SC1s to your pf ranges asap (but if you want to stay true to the übernit way of life, don't coldcall raises. Keep the pump working, primarily raising first in .. and only 3betting trash for balance once in a while)

Re: The Übernit
 

[ QUOTE ]
do you consider me a noob gel?

[/ QUOTE ]


You're one of the few 2+2'ers that I don't have a big read on. So you must do something right [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Re: The Übernit
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I did this for about an hour and went on massive tilt.

[/ QUOTE ]

haha ... you limidonk [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]Heh, you are right that no one adjusts. That's what put me on tilt. Oh, that and all my big hands getting pwned. [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]

About 30 mins into it I started c/r'ing my mid/small pairs on the flop. I think one person folded and I did it like 9 times lol.

Re: The Übernit
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I did this for about an hour and went on massive tilt.

[/ QUOTE ]

haha ... you limidonk [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]Heh, you are right that no one adjusts. That's what put me on tilt. Oh, that and all my big hands getting pwned. [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]


Haha ... yeah, I should follow up with a 'Now that you gotten sets, overpairs and tptk cracked non-stop for weeks, why shouldn't you just jump out of the window' post

Re: The Übernit
 

Did a small experiment at .02/.05 along these lines just now, I didnt follow the rules exactly (sometimes called a raiser w PPs in position without any callers in between, sometimes made a few 3bets not prescribed against bad lags, etc) but i didnt play anything other than 22+, AQ+. Some pf folds felt a little gross, especially otb vs a limper or 2, or in BvB situations. I've never played as tight as this before (8/6.5, ubernit indeed) and i've never played more than 6 tables before either, but i bumped it up to 9-10 for this, but i dont think it caused any mistakes given the simplicity of the system. Obviously I ran pretty hot, didnt have AA or KK cracked once, and actually picked them up above expectation too. Anyway, I think i'm going to play a few thousand more hands and get a feel for what my actual winrate is, i'll post more results if anyone cares. Also, i'd be interested to know if anyone has tried this out at 10nl or above.

http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/e...om/ubernit.jpg

Re: The Übernit
 

I've actually be experimenting with something similar as well. After dropping 7 buy-ins at 25NL pretty quickly at the end of October (I was trying to be too tricky), I decided to try an experiment for November. I dropped down to 10NL, and I've been playing 12/9 "mindless" poker, while multi-tabling. It's been working. Obviously it's VERY boring, but I've ran about 5.75/100PTBB over 10k. You'd be surprised how many times you think you are playing your hand face-up, but people still pay you off with mediocre hands.

Re: The Übernit
 

[ QUOTE ]
http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/e...om/ubernit.jpg

[/ QUOTE ]

Haha ... that is simply brilliant, let's gogogogogogo [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

Re: The Übernit
 

[ QUOTE ]
you can beat 25NL playing 30/25, because everyone sucks postflop (i can at least probably). But you need like 60% rb, because of the sick rake. Way more profitable to exploit the hell out of all the fish because yo usee more flops, and you learn more stuff too. Once you learn to play this style you will move up very fast and beat limits like 50NL 100 and 200NL much faster. And its 10times more fun.

What you described is not real poker, lol.

[/ QUOTE ]

I aggree with this. I think it`s an important step to try this. Also, it will help to convert you from 19/13 to 22/19 or so. I played this style to as an experiment and you can crush 25NL with a very laggy aggro style. People at 25NL just don`t know how to adapt to the constant aggression, and pay you off bigtime.

Also, for the people that say it`s not a good strategy for 25NL, I`m willing to make a prop bet, over 5000 hands for 200$.

rules:

I select my tables, no 2+2 to join tables on purpose to sabotage.

My stats have to be at least 33+/27+/4+.

winrate on the end of the 5000 hands must be at least 5ptbb.

Re: The Übernit
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
you can beat 25NL playing 30/25, because everyone sucks postflop (i can at least probably). But you need like 60% rb, because of the sick rake. Way more profitable to exploit the hell out of all the fish because yo usee more flops, and you learn more stuff too. Once you learn to play this style you will move up very fast and beat limits like 50NL 100 and 200NL much faster. And its 10times more fun.

What you described is not real poker, lol.

[/ QUOTE ]

I aggree with this. I think it`s an important step to try this. Also, it will help to convert you from 19/13 to 22/19 or so. I played this style to as an experiment and you can crush 25NL with a very laggy aggro style. People at 25NL just don`t know how to adapt to the constant aggression, and pay you off bigtime.

Also, for the people that say it`s not a good strategy for 25NL, I`m willing to make a prop bet, over 5000 hands for 200$.

rules:

I select my tables, no 2+2 to join tables on purpose to sabotage.

My stats have to be at least 33+/27+/4+.

winrate on the end of the 5000 hands must be at least 5ptbb.



[/ QUOTE ]

Get the [censored] out of my post, this is not about your personal abilities playing LAG or whether it is important or not to learn how to play a style based on stealing. Nobody here is interested in your (or shizzle's) penis. Now [censored] off mate [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Re: The Übernit
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
you can beat 25NL playing 30/25, because everyone sucks postflop (i can at least probably). But you need like 60% rb, because of the sick rake. Way more profitable to exploit the hell out of all the fish because yo usee more flops, and you learn more stuff too. Once you learn to play this style you will move up very fast and beat limits like 50NL 100 and 200NL much faster. And its 10times more fun.

What you described is not real poker, lol.

[/ QUOTE ]

I aggree with this. I think it`s an important step to try this. Also, it will help to convert you from 19/13 to 22/19 or so. I played this style to as an experiment and you can crush 25NL with a very laggy aggro style. People at 25NL just don`t know how to adapt to the constant aggression, and pay you off bigtime.

Also, for the people that say it`s not a good strategy for 25NL, I`m willing to make a prop bet, over 5000 hands for 200$.

rules:

I select my tables, no 2+2 to join tables on purpose to sabotage.

My stats have to be at least 33+/27+/4+.

winrate on the end of the 5000 hands must be at least 5ptbb.



[/ QUOTE ]

Get the [censored] out of my post, this is not about your personal abilities playing LAG or whether it is important or not to learn how to play a style based on stealing. Nobody here is interested in your (or shizzle's) penis. Now [censored] off douchebag [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]

there gel i hit him with the american version too

Re: The Übernit
 

[ QUOTE ]

there gel i hit him with the american version too

[/ QUOTE ]


LOL ... but yeah [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Re: The Übernit
 

I can see people suffering from fgator syndrom soon ....

Re: The Übernit
 

I can play lag too but my dick is still short! wtf is wrong with me?!

Re: The Übernit
 

[ QUOTE ]
I can play lag too but my dick is still short! wtf is wrong with me?!

[/ QUOTE ]

At least you don't try to fake a large dick [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Re: The Übernit
 

[ QUOTE ]
I can see people suffering from fgator syndrom soon ....

[/ QUOTE ]
lol if playing nitty leads to losing gator dollars at uNL then people seriously need to improve on there table selecting skills.

Re: The Übernit
 

Figured I'd give this a shot as my usual megalag (donkey?) style has huge swongs and was kinda gettin me down. Up 13 buy ins in the last 2 days only playin a few hours each day but increasing my tables. Could be just an upswing but either way it got my confidence back, Thanks Gelford A+

Re: The Übernit
 

i play similar but 21/18
i iso a lot