Video: Entity and the Road to Robusto
 

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).


<embed src="http://www.deucescracked.com/flash_videos/flvplayer.swf" width="640" height="480" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" flashvars="file=http://s3.amazonaws.com/twoplustwo/07_1007_entity_rtr.flv&amp;displayheight=480&amp;i mage=http://s3.amazonaws.com/twoplustwo/dc.png&amp;autostart=false" />



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. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

thanks,
Rob (Entity)

Re: Video: Entity and the Road to Robusto
 

hey rob

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

Re: Video: Entity and the Road to Robusto
 

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?

Re: Video: Entity and the Road to Robusto
 

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

Re: Video: Entity and the Road to Robusto
 

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?

Re: Video: Entity and the Road to Robusto
 

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....??

Re: Video: Entity and the Road to Robusto
 

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.

Re: Video: Entity and the Road to Robusto
 

[ 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

Re: Video: Entity and the Road to Robusto
 

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.

Re: Video: Entity and the Road to Robusto
 

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.