I helped out a friend over the weekend at his pokers whilst our loved ones had a girls spa weekend break.
He has been playing on off for the last 4 years and in that time he has never progressed beyond 25nl.
Anyhows here is a few things i picked up in his game which someone might think will help them.
He was playing 25nl 6max..
UTG he opened his usual range 22+ AJo+ all his suited Broadways KQo 78s+ so about a 13 to 14% range no problem there.
The table was playing quite tight but he never changed his range, he just tightened up?
At the time there was little 3betting so the first adjustment i made to his game was to drop the small pairs 22 - 55 and add some suited connecters and 1gappers in 65s - 67s, 57s - T8s
His std plan of tightening his range was the wrong way of adjusting to the players behind him, rather than changing his frequency i suggested that he change his opening range so that it played better against the tighties ranges behind. The problem with small pairs is that oop its very hard to get them paid off, normally on dry boards oop its difficult to get 3 streets of value out of a tighty and when you do get action from the tighty on wet flops and you hit a set then the hands they mostly play back or on with have good equity with combo draws of some sort. If it had been a fishy loose table then drop the SC"s and replace with the small pairs..
He asked quite rightly WHY? he had the initiative even with the small PP"s but when cbetting if he got called he had little equity, at least with the SC"s he had more chance of hitting the flop plus if his cbet was called on the flop this meant more ways to improve..
Here is an example of how he played 55 -
the usual raise pre and 1 caller on the button, flop - jd
in which he cbets his std amount. The tightish villain was a fairly straight forward honest fit or fold type who called the cbet with AJ for top pair so at best 55 had 12% equity and little chance of improving, even if Mr fit or fold had called TT-99,AJs,KJs,QJs,AJo then 55"s equity is slightly worse.
If he had
in this spot then his equity on the flop would of been 31% and far more ways of improving, any 8 any 9 any spade any 10 any 6 and plenty of options in how to continue with the hand if any of these cards came on the turn...
Other things cropped up about his game such as how he adjusted to 3bets, his cbetting and well hmmmm pretty much alot actually lol, post-flop he missed alot of spots to take advantage of because he didn"t adjust to the villains tendencies and so forth..
I"ll post those up later time permitting, hopefully the above might help someone review how they think and adjust there ranges to players plus it can get you thinking on what/when to cbet on whatever flop texture..
[mods - please leave post in Saturday Donkey]
tyty
noble