Couple Spots, Couple Thoughts

Hand 2:
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One thing that worries me a lot is that I don't feel my play to be improving, I basically just play my own cards and the texture of the board, and I take note of some extraordinary plays of the villain and take notes, but thats about it. I rarely find myself calculating hand ranges, and my hand reading is still limited to vague, unsystematic inductions of strength and weakness, and a
rough idea of "the possible hands that beat me".

I don't feel I'm a weak thinker theoretically, but I find that all the quirks about actual playing creates a fog of war which reduces my play to instinct and the most obvious simple plays. This is serving me okay so far, but I feel like I need a quantum leap if I wish to be a long term winner on higher stakes, and again I'm not sensing much improvement in myself.

Did anyone have similar experiences moving up? If so, how did you winning mid-high stake regulars get past that to where you are now?

Sorry if this rant belongs in a blog, but I thought it was something constructive to share.

0 votes

hand 1 call turn bet imo

u were supposed to broke in hand 2

Hand 1 - if u want to semibluff then do it on flop, where u can easily represent an overpair or simply something strong given u raised preflop + ur hand is actually pretty strong if u were to get in allin on flop. And also these frontbets are often made with weak holdings, so there is a good chance he would fold. When you decided to just call, raising the turn is pretty bad imo - for one it is not very consistent with many strong hands lines and for two, ur draw is probably weaker than on flop since there is only one card to come. So u should def. stick to calling turn after u called flop.

Hand 2 - i would probably get it allin on the flop with top 2 pairs. Its quite drawy + there is a lot of overpairs, so there is enough hands which will go allin with u and u have beat and also there is not many hands that have u beat.

As for the learning proccess - it doesnt come up all at once. In poker, u are learning in circles, going over the same things again and again and slowly realising more and more things. Your hand reading becomes better with experience, u will learn some game plan for certaing situations, u will learn how to play consistently, how to disguise ur hand strenght, etc.
Everytime u feel like u learned something, u can be pretty sure that at some point later in time u will be relearning the same thing, just a little deeper.

But dont really worry, keep doing whats working for u and try thinking about everything u do and more importantly WHY u do it. Everyone of us was pretty much lost in understanding of poker back when we played microstakes.

hand 1 as other said, since you flatted the flop, when he's giving you easily good enough odds just call and see the river cheap rather then building up a pot you're (most likely) not a favorite in, and giving him the chance to shove over the top.

For hand 2, your bet on the flop is way to small imo, i'd make it at least $1 50. I'm not going to comment on the rest of the hand as im not quite sure my advice would be correct .