[KurtSF]

Hey Ryan, nice thread. I'm going to tell a little story and then ask a few questions, so if you don't like tl;dr posts just skip the next paragraph of backstory and move on to the meat below.

I am the struggling 50NL player you're talking about. I was solidly beating 50NL and having good results taking a shot at 100NL when (for various reasons) I took a 6 month hiatus from online poker. My game was [censored] when I returned, so I started out at 25NL and it took a good two weeks to put my game back together. But I did put it back together and after a month I was winning a lot and confident again, so I moved to 50NL where I wanted to grind out a roll to move back to 100NL. It wasn't to be though. I got absolutely obliterated at 50NL. (It was so bad I downloaded a poker EV calculator and found out I was $1500 below expectation in all-in situations (yes, 30 buyins!) so whatever leaks there are, and rest assured there are many, I was also running sick cold.) So I "tightened up" to "get it back together" and just play for straight value. The thing is, by narrowing my range I fell right into the pit you are describing - I became one of the robotic 12-tabling TAGs that are so easy to exploit. It really felt like my hand was face up all the time, and reading your posts I realize that essentially it *was* face up to my opponents. I dropped back down to 25NL and things are going swimmingly there. Its like printing money (albeit twenty-five cents at a time), so I'll soon be rolled for 50NL again and will be back taking shots. This time I have promised myself to do it "right" - not just opening 50NL tables instead of 25NL and grinding my style, but reading and re-reading some books, reducing my tables, studying like mad, and basically giving my game a complete overhaul in the move up.




Anyway, your posts struck a chord with something I've been thinking about lately which is range balancing in a 100BB game. Basically, 100BB seems so small or awkward to me right now. You mention getting 3 streets of value, but 3-streets of value is at least half my stack (often more if the pot is multi-way or 3-bet), which means that any playback at me results in playing for stacks. I already stack off light too much (one of the afore mentioned leaks), and if I don't have a "get the stacks in hand" I have to fold. So this opens me up to being exploited by floating and, well, any random aggression. But if I tighten up then my perceived range in a given hand is small and opens me up to being exploited by anyone paying attention (basically they can get away whenever I have a hand and I never get paid).

Now if I had a shorter stack I could just play a game of entering pots when my 2 cards beat the villain's range and just play 2-street poker. If I had a deeper stack (>200BBs) I could manipulate pot equity and fold equity and keep my play +EV. But recently 100BB stacks have me feeling "in between", unable to put anything together, and open to exploitation from all sides.

Do you have any advice about finding the balance? Reading these forums I know there's a solid tight-aggressive style for 100BB stacks, but I'm oscillating between nit and spewtard and can't find it. Sorry about the ridiculously open-ended question, but rambling stream-of-consciousness responses are cool.

For context, I usually play a 15/12 highly positional preflop game which is 10/10 UTG, takes a turn at the highjack and leaves me at 25/23 OTB. My flop play is decent, but I'm a fish on the turn and river, with my AF wavering, but around 1-1.5 on those streets. Yeah, I need help with that too.