Party Poker 1/2 Hold'em (10 handed) FTR converter on zerodivide.cx

Preflop: Actuary is Button with T:club:, J:spade:. CO posts a blind of $1.
UTG calls, UTG+1 calls, 2 folds, BB checks.

Flop: (7.50 SB) 6:spade:, T:heart:, 9:club: (7 players)
BB bets, UTG calls, UTG+1 folds, MP2 folds, MP3 folds, CO calls, Actuary calls.


Turn: (5.75 BB) 4:club: (4 players)
BB checks, UTG checks, CO bets, Actuary calls, BB calls.

River: (14.75 BB) 5:heart: (3 players)
BB checks, CO bets, Actuary calls, BB calls.

Final Pot: 17.75 BB


At 1/2 I'm breakeven...
But I don't want to stay at .5/1
There is a difference and at 1/2 I can't afford to make as many mistakes and still make a good profit.

withholding any explanations for my play until later.

no raise on the flop?
for this hand, that's when to pop it, not the turn.

i soooo strongly agree, was just about to type it.

but, i'm not 100% sure.

this could be one of those spots where we passively play an overcard or bad turn (super-draw-heavy board) and aggressively play a good one, in which case actuary played it well.

aseem

rethinking it, i don't mind how you played it, actuary. a flop raise doesn't protect against anything, and you get more value pumping a good turn (and not pumping a bad one) than you do by raising the flop.

aseem

well..ok..I won't wait.. lol

I really thought this was a classic case of waitng until turn.
And I got lucky the bet came from my right.

What about the susbsequent call down?

I think i need to learn to fold more rivers. Pro folds, you know

yes, i now agree.



this is my newest dilemma.

it's sooo much easier to fold that river when we have others to act behind us, and, to a lesser extent, when we're overcalling.

heads-up, i think a fold is higher EV than calling, but it's just so insanely hard to do in the hand.

see my other post.


aseem

:-)

























I woud raise that preflop. Imo

I considered it.
Of course suited I do.

quite some junk to be raising with preflop.

aseem

:-)


It's a idea. I really don't do this every every time. Everyone has to find their own blend for ppl, situation, etc... But every time I like it I do it. fwiw

I think raising it... on the button... with it suited... in a loose/passive game is a pretty good idea.

If you do that, do you still wait for the turn to raise?

I think I do. That also makes me more likely to call down on the river.

Trying hard to find anything you did wrong here.

Flop: doesn't make much sense to raise it. I like waiting for the turn

Turn: makes all kinds of sense to raise there to try to force out draws by putting 2-cold to them, and you likely have the best hand. And you can't raise/fold getting 12:1 or whatever it is...

River: gotta call. BB has played the hand passively so I don't expect him to raise

I'm gonna go with 'nh' and 'poker sucks'...

Jeff

Don't raise PF.
If it was suited, yes.
If there were 1/2 loose limpers, yes.

Flop is good. You could raise for value, but that would be pushing a very small edge IMO. Wait for the turn.

Turn raise is goot. Follow through with the plan.
Call his 3-bet.

I sometimes fold this river depending on villian. Against an unknown, I call.

I don't really see anywhere to play it different. And I'm always happy when aseem and screech agree with me.



How many hands do you have at 1/2? Enough to know that it's not just variance? From what I've heard there's not much difference between .5/1 and 1/2. I'm basically following in your footsteps - just a few months behind - in the learning process so I'm always curious to see your experience moving up in limits/etc.

Are you still just playing one table? Tried multi-tabling at all? I've done 2 .5/1 and it doesn't seem to hurt me at all. In fact it tends to make me tighter pre-flop which can be a good thing. Tried 6-max yet? I haven't on party but I play .5/1 6-max on prima and it's quite a good learning experience I think.

Just about 4k hands, so early.
Speedz, CinciKid, and Liberty are all making moves..or moving back up to 1/2. I'd say there it is slightly more Taggish. And more players raising the draws / protecting hands on the flop. Not sure how much of it is actual and how much feels like more raisng due to bigger bet sizes, psychology.

Still playing 1 table.
Following a strict plan given to me by DXE (where is that dude?) apparently written up by Smasharoo.

CO had 66.

I don't see what villian can have besides a set or 87. I'm not sure that I'm fond of calling down the 3-bet, since you are drawing dead to both of those holdings (even with getting 11-1). I'm not saying that I wouldn't do it, but I certainly wouldn't like myself afterwards, just because CO's holding seems fairly obvious.

T4, 94, 64, and Tcxc to name a few.

Oops. Missed the club draw. I'd still feel bad about calling down, though.

what I have a HUGE problem doing is calling turn c/r's or 3-bets (even worse..I shoulda considered that)... with outs, and then NEVER fodling river UI, for jsut one more bet.

I put a lot into seeing what the villan c/r or 3 bet with and if the pot is >10BB's I"m stuck on calling almost everytime.

I think I need to be more selective. It's jsut that by the river the pot is 3BB's bigger and it's one more to see SD.

Got to fold River UI sometimes.

the only spot I could argue to fold is to the 3 bet, but since you called I think you almost have to call on the river in a pot this big. I think he overplays top pair weak kicker, or is semi bluffing with a flush draw and a straight draw or something like that 1 in 17 times.

I think the play is to pop the flop and fold when he 3-bets the flop.
If smooth calls and leads the turn, let it go.
If he has the balls to smooth call and check the turn, check behind. J10 is not that strong without turning a str8 draw--in which case you lead.

you think I should raise flop and if no one 3-bets, then check turn?
or
fold with top pair on the flop for 1 more back to me ?

I think this is lousy advice for $1/2 lhe.
but I do appreciate your critique.

Just to tell everyone, I did not read the rest of the posts after this one...

My thinking is that we must raise after the flop as to try to figure out where we are in the hand. At this level co could be limping with 9 10 suited, a 10, k 10, or even q 10.

If we raise the flop and CO just calls and then bets out on the turn we may be able to infer that he may have a strong hand such as 9 10 and have us dominated.

I say if we raise the flop the CO bets out at us on a non scare turn we are calling.

Just my two cents.

This alone is not a good reason to raise the flop.

If we were raising for value (which we would be), then finding out where we're at is an added benefit. The problem is, the value that we'd be pushing by raising is so small. The turn card will drastically change our equity and our raise would bloat the pot which would minimize our opponents mistakes. Waiting for the turn is a better play.



Getting over 13:1?

We will outdraw 2 pair here far too often to compensate for the times we are drawing dead.

The pot is way too big to fold this turn.



I think folding this river is better than folding the turn.

Most opponents aren't 3-betting the turn against 2 opponents without something that beats JT. The reason we can call on the turn is because of the drawing outs we have.

The river is a pretty easy fold against a known opponent. The problem is, there are enough weird plays pulled at 1/2 that you have to call here and hope you are up against one of these donks. While almost all of your opponents aren't 3-betting the turn without a strong hand, the few that do make calling here mandatory against an unknown.

i still think we must raise the flop here.

We do not have a strong hand, we have a moderate hand.

I believe we must try to extract information from the other players in the hand by raising the flop. Once we see the call/call line from the CO and the bet out after the turn we can re assess his strength.

Just my two cents.

I am gonna go with the raise the flop group here.

i think raising the flop here is vastly underrated.
I really think the most important think raising the flop here does is establish our hand and establish position. we'll be able to judge everyone else's hands by how they play into us, we'll probably have the opportunity to check a scary turn (7/8) for our free gutshot, and we can trust that people will make their hands obvious to us but not be able to lay them down if they're behind.
i do think you bet this turn on the 4 though if you raise the flop and probably check behind on the river.

IMO, if you raise this flop, you will almost certainly be able to fold this river.

and I really dislike the flop call, because you have no reason to think the turn bet will come from anyone other than the flop better and your turn raise will accomplish just as little as a flop raise would.

I know the benefits are not particularly mathematical, but I really think a flop raise gets us the most value from this hand, given a wider than usual definition of value to include our increased ability to fold later.

plus, short of something runner-runner or another 10, it's very unlikely we'll be in any better position later in the hand to think we have the best hand, so i'd be most comfortable raising the flop.

daniel

This discussion is why I love this forum.

You mention me in this post, so I feel like I should respond.

1) I absolutely HATE 1/2. There's just something about the way the game is played at Party's 1/2 full-ring that makes it a different game and I have had very marginal success there. Since I've been usuing GT+, I've also noticed many more TAGs and otherwise solid players at 1/2 than I've seen at .5/1. I think, among other possible factors, that this is because 1/2 is the level that the bonus chasers tend to play on Party.

2) My success at 1/2 was no where near as high as .5/1.

3) I would highly reccomend mulit-tabling. You get in way more hands, avoid boredom and even out your variance alot. I saw the plan that you're following in another thread, and while it looks like a great plan, it also looks like something that could take years to implement. If you have that kind of time and patience, that's great...but I don't think that's necessarily the only way to become good at LHE.

4) You might not want to follow my example too much. I don't exactly have the greatest bankroll management in the world and my plan has been to move up through levels fairly aggressively. I've already taken a 2k hand shot at 2/4 (without the 300BB bankroll to back it up) and I am down .5 BB/100 at that game, however I think it is way juicier than 1/2. Though, I'm afraid that my game may have leaks and I'm trying to shore those up by re-reading SSHE and maybe getting into some more advanced books, and I'm waiting to have at least close to the requisite bankroll before I go back to 2/4...so that I can ensure that I won't be playing scared.

Basically, what I'm saying is that I wouldn't feel too bad if I'm moving up and you're not. What I'm doing is not necessarily advised by most of the respected posters on this bored, but I lack the patience to grind out at .5/1 for too overly long, especially now that I've gotten to the point where the .5/1 money really means very little to me.

Furthermore, I haven't played six-max yet, and I probably won't until I'm consistenly beating online 2/4 full and feel like I'm ready to start looking into moving to the higher levels where 6-max is far more profitable.

Cincikid wrote:

Basically, what I'm saying is that I wouldn't feel too bad if I'm moving up and you're not

that part made me chuckle. slightly more than the rest of it.

just in case anyone is interested - I did the similar thing you guys are, except I never had the cojones for 6-max. After a while at 2/4, I took the time to do some other things, play less regularly, play other games, etc and moved to 2/4 early. I found the 1/2 game (then on Empire, but same deal) to be much less beatable than .5/1 and in need of more adjustments than 2/4.

I think for someone who is comfortable beating .5/1, most people will have an easier time beating 2/4 than they will 1/2. As has been said here many times, 1/2 is simply an odd limit, where everyone seems to hit their draws and fold to your sets, and nothing is as it seems....

Daniel

p.s. look out soon for an update on my bonuswhoring progress - might be some useful ideas in there for bankroll building.

So we raise the flop, CO calls, and the turn is now 7.5BB.

If CO leads into us, we are really folding getting 8.5:1? I doubt it. We have to raise to protect our hand.

If CO has a really strong hand, he may check to us again, in which case we will bet. We will be offering our opponents at least 8.5:1, so they can profitably call with just about anything they may be calling with on the turn. Then when it gets back to CO, he raises, and again we are forced to call getting ~ 12:1.

How do we get more info from these 2 raising situations? It seems like we still know the same amount about CO's hand on the turn (even less in the case when he bets into us).

By taking the raising route, we have not been able to cut down on our opponents odds. We have bloated the pot and gained no extra info about CO's hands. We are in the same situation as calling, but we have now invested more money with a second best hand.

Raising the flop is +EV, but it's a small edge, because of the many draws on that board. Waiting for a safe turn to raise is more +EV, because you're pushing a bigger edge. It just happens that in this hand we are drawing dead on the turn (as CO kindly informs us with his 3-bet ), but most of the time we are either ahead or at least drawing live to 3-5 outs, and our turn raise will either clean up overcard outs or get the straight chasers to pay 2 BB instead of 1 BB for the river. At $1/$2, anyone with a 8, 7, QJ, or KQ, AQ, AJ, AK is likely to peel on the flop, and adding another bet when closing the action isn't going to scare them away.

Interesting. I have been ping ponging between .5/1 and 1/2 lately myself and while I can beat .5/1 for 4BB/100 pretty easily, I'm breakeven at 1/2 through 5k hands, though it has seemed like pretty bad variance for all but a couple sessions. Maybe I'll try 2/4 for a couple thousand hands and see how that goes.

I don't mean to hijack this thread, but I'm just curious about something. Since it sounds like many people don't have sustained success at 1/2 on Party, where do you guys suggest playing 1/2? I'm just gearing up to make the switch and am trying to find a decent place to play. Thanks!

And for what it's worth, I like the turn raise over the flop raise. Raising that flop does nothing to protect the hand, as moderate as it may be. I also tend to call the three bet on the turn, and if the player has shown any solidity in his game, I say fold the river.

Party 1/2 is a goldmine, don't let any poster's string of bad luck fool you. It's the only place I've been where tables can be found that are consistantly 40%+ VPIP (Besides 5/10 B&M, of course). It's easy to datamine, too, what with being able to open 10 tables at a time.

Aseem speaks pretty highly of the fish at Pacific, but I think you can only play one table at a time there.

I hadn't even considered the datamine potential. Thanks for the reminder and the advice! I suppose either way I should just give it a go and see how it works for me.

I'll reserve judgment since I've only played a few thousand hands..but collectively, several players agree it's tougher to make $$$.
Now, I really like to hear from those playing above 2/4 now..as some have said.. 1/2 was tougher than 2/4. It's an anomaly or just variance, not sure.

On the subject of DataMining.. I have found 1/2 to be spiked with more maniacs that will pay you off HUGE. Overall, the players are better at 1/2, though.

I found 2/4 to be tougher.

I think the big thing is getting adjusted to the $ amounts. I've found every limit I've played to be tougher than the last. At first it seems like it can't be beat.

Once you get a few thousand hands under your belt, you get used to the feel of the game and realize it's much easier than you thought.

I'm not saying that 2/4 isn't better, Actuary, just that 1/2 is pretty easily beatable. I do run into a couple of TAGs per table, but there is usually a healthy population of LAPs, LPPs, and maniacs. Dead money is where it's at, baybee.

My foray into Party 2/4 wasn't successful, but I was playing poorly at the time (calling too many checkraises for two bets with TP and a weak or no draw was killing me. That is not a dig...it was my biggest postflop leak.). And I wasn't datamining either. Stupid me!

Ok I messed up when I posted this. I thought you had a straight draw on the flop. I was confused by another hand I was commenting on at the sametime.

The play here with the weak top pair is to call the flop and raise the turn.

p.s. Just kick me. Especially if your name is Gary Carson.


fwiw; but honestly raising the flop or the turn or calling it down are all viable.

Party 1/2 is overrated. Maybe it's just my table selection, but I find it quite hard to get 40%+ VP$IP consistently in full ring. 6-max is a different story.

There are softer sites out there. Pacific is #1, but the Cryptos are pretty good as well..

How many tables can you play on cryptos?

I've never done more than 4, but that doesn't mean it can't be done

I am one of the people who said they had success at .5/1 and 2/4 but not at 1/2. to clarify, i wasn't using PT at the time on any of the limits, but 1/2 may offer a higher PT advantage according to some people, and i don't find that hard to believe.
i also do not have a large sample size at that limit.

datamining on party = awesome. just got party 2 days ago and I am loving the 10-tabling. thing of beauty. and the bonus! PSO + Party bonus is $190 for playing only 250 raked hands at .5/1! I played 144 hands, and 90 were raked. really a fantastic bonus.

daniel