(NLTRN) Poo Bah Post: An Introduction to the 25-50 Blind Level

[ChicagoRy]

Postflop maneuverability/edge is greater when you commit less to the pot preflop.

You can raise many more hands and if they even fold a small % of the time they are playing very incorrectly against your strategy.

Also, it makes it very tough to 3-bet correctly against a constant minraiser in the 25-50, almost nobody I play does it correctly.

But the main reason for it is so you can actually use your tremendous edge postflop against your opponent, as you improve your game that should be where your edge becomes greatest, postflop (except in 50-100 level, though against some you can have a huge edge postflop in 50-100). Raising to 125 or 150 constantly in this level commits too much to the pot preflop, except in unique situations (for the 150 at least it is rare imo), limiting your ability to take advantage of your opponent postlfop.

Fish are still going to call over raises with too light of hands on the river, they're still going to overbet-bluff or overbet-shove the pot, you're just risking less and able to see more flops to take advantage of the horrible leaks players have in these games.

Don't get me wrong, coming up I raised 125-150 in this level until I got around 900 chips, only recently have I basically been minraising almost always. I feel it gives me a tremendous advantage in terms of hand reading and postflop play. It also has a fair advantage preflop, most importantly that it is almost impossible to exploit.

[soop]

Nice post. Looking forward to articles 2-4.

[RyanJM]

I agree with Ry's strategy, it's what I've been doing for a while now. In simple terms, it makes your opponent pay more to see a flop, which puts more chips in when you are in position; but, it keeps the pot small enough that your c-bet doesn't take a huge chunk from your stack like it would if you raised 150 and had to c-bet 150/200 which would take a huge chunk from your stack should you miss and your opponent hit the flop. It's great to raise 150 if you're hitting or he misses, but I think it takes away your edge if you get a short run of bad cards and are down below 800 just from raising and c-betting w/nothing. Much easier to exploit a player post-flop than pre.

[TNixon]

Damn, I downloaded the video hoping to see some good 25/50 blind level play, since I'm pretty sure that's a weak spot of mine.

Instead, we just get to see ChicagoRy stack-a-donk twice over a very small number of hands.

Which is entertaining, to be sure, but not particularly informative, except for the comments about how you picked your raise size on the last hand in the second one.

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

Oh yeah, and articles 2-4 ASAP please. kthx

[ChicagoRy]

If I made any videos right now you'd just see me folding hands like 52 and 73 repeatedly OOP and consistently losing with like top pair to a straight in big pots OTB.

I'm going to watch the video I posted above over and over so I can feel good about myself.

[bbbushu]

also very excited for the next few articles [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

EDIT: wtf i am almost a poobah

[Nichomacheo]

[ QUOTE ]

Now that you’ve got a handle on preflop raise sizes, we can talk about the difference in preflop hand values. In the 25-50 level a lot of hands that were valuable to raise in previous levels will go down in value. Hands like suited connectors (56s, 78s) go down in value as the stack to blind ratio goes down. These are speculative hands and the main advantage of these speculative hands is the implied odds that you have with them. Your implied odds go down as the blind-stack ratio becomes smaller, meaning hands that make top pair are going to be going up in value while lower-card hands that need to make flushes, straights and two pair hands are going to go down in value.

[/ QUOTE ]

Would people advise not to raise these hands at all when the stacks are 20-30bb range? I'm talking about the medium suited connectors, 1 gaps, 2 gaps. On the flop, if the BB calls, the pot will be 6 bb, you'll have like 22 left. You'll miss a lot of flops and have to fire a c-bet of 4. Now the pot is 10bb + 4 if your opponent calls. Does the times you win big pots offset all the small and medium sized pots you'll hit a monster/draw out?

[HungryPeon]

thx for great post!

[Deewhizzle]

great post.

[MatteyA28]

When should we be expecting the next 3 parts?