Return of VeniVidi: Victory in a Tennis Bet, Peak Form in 6-max PLO and Detailed Analysis of Hands on Twitter
GipsyTeam
09.12.2023 19:16910
The top Omaha reg proves by its own example that the rake on GGPoker is not beaten even by the best players in the world, but they are in no hurry to abandon the marathon.
At the beginning of August, the high roller wrote another update, after which he disappeared and did not appear on social media at all for several months.
A like on this post is much appreciated. Cannot believe a little over three months have passed since my last post. A lot has happened since and in this post I will break it all down.
1. I was in the process of wrapping up a tennis prop bet. It was quite demanding both physically and mentally, so a lot of headspace was going towards this. After winning the bet I decided to enjoy life a bit more and partied more than usual for about two months.
2. Traveling to a couple of new places, trying to find out where I want to spend my time in the next few years. I had a holiday in Beirut/Amman/Petra. Spent some time in Lisbon with friends and family and now I'm ready to get back into the action.
3. A bit unsure about continuing this challenge. At some point I thought it was becoming repetitive and I didn't enjoy spending time to update, so I decided only to continue if everything felt right. It helped that a couple of people reached out to me to ask me about the updates. Today felt like a natural day to continue the challenge. The donation will be affected by the status of the challenge. I will post the receipts at the end of the year.
Back to the results! As you can see we ran a bit under EV when the chips went in, but the results of these hands are quite hopeful. As you can see the screenshots show something different than reality. It is quite hard to make money on GGpoker. I continued playing every now and then and spent quite some time leveling up my 6-max game too.
As everything mentioned above is finished now I'll have more time on my hands than ever since starting the challenge. I plan on showing people what it takes to make it in poker, which often comes down to grinding very hard and being able to forget about yourself. I don't want to promise something and not being able to deliver once again.
I will play a bunch of poker because I enjoy doing it and will keep you posted on the process. Stay tuned and don't forget to like this post.
4.9
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“Tell me the details of the tennis bet,” they asked in the comments.
“I just had a bet with a friend who could learn to play better in a year.” Both started practically from scratch.
– Are you saying you paid $35k in rake? Incredible.
– Yes, it looks scary. I paid $60k in rake and received $20k in rakeback.
– Explain in a little more detail why it is impossible to play for profit on GG.
– At $10/$20 the rake is about 12-13bb/100. With an average rakeback of 40%, the result is 7.2-7.8bb/100. That is, there should be a fish at the table with a loss rate of 40-50bb so that the rest play at least to zero if the rest have the same skill. On GG, even the best regulars play with a minimum win rate (without rakeback), and not always.
In the following report, VeniVidi analyzed one of the hands in detail:
A like on this post is much appreciated
Swingy week and I finished roughly breakeven, so I decided to post a couple of hands this time to switch things up.
In this hand we are pretty deep stacked and face an open with 2 callers and a very interesting hands to squeeze with. When… pic.twitter.com/8tcxHo1AsL
– The week passed with great streaks and ended around zero, so for a change I decided to focus on theory.
In this hand I have a fairly deep stack, there is a raise in front of me and two calls. When we squeeze, we want to block hands that might 4-bet and we don't want to block hands that are likely to call our squeeze. Here, my hand fully satisfies these conditions. It's good that we have an ace and no kings and queens since KKxx and QQxx will fold often.
In this hand, no one folded, and the flop was perfect for us. In multiway pots, outs that can give us the nuts are very important, and non-nut outs lose a lot of value.
I have three options – bet the pot, make a small bet, or check. When we choose how to play certain flops, we need to consider the full range of hands we will squeeze with. These are almost all AAxx, very strong AKQx, and some “bluffs” like AT98ds, QT89ds, or our hand. The flop didn't work for most of this range, so I prefer to check even with strong hands.
The preflop raiser bet the pot and one of the callers shoved. I think I'm still better than his pot betting range (opponents usually don't fold in these spots, so sometimes it makes sense to call to see the turn and gauge how our expectation will change). But I decided to immediately play for the stack, my opponent spent the entire time bank, but still called my all-in. The pot didn't go my way, but this is not so important, the main thing is that I was satisfied with my analysis during the hand. I'm sure one of the opponents played just awful.
I feel that my advantage over the field is constantly growing, and I plan to play a lot in the near future.
I was very happy to see how enthusiastic people were about the first hand review, so here's another one. I'm using some screenshots from vision to show where I made the right play or made a mistake. This isn't a 1 to 1 solution to this exact spot, because vision has a limited… pic.twitter.com/KZy7il5f8d
– I was very pleased with how enthusiastically the first analysis was received, so I decided not to delay the next one. This time I’ll add a couple of screenshots from Vision to clearly demonstrate where I played correctly and where I made a mistake. Please note that Vision does not have a solution for all boards, so I took a similar one.
The button has opened, and we have KK84ds in the big blind. I'm well above the opening range, so I 3-bet.
On the K42r flop, we have our first difficult decision to make. The board suited my entire 3-betting range well, so we should bet both strong hands and bluffs. For this reason, KKxx should bet very often, but having a blocker at 4x makes our hand a rare candidate for slowplay.
I checked and my opponent bet. We want to protect the calling range; It’s also beneficial for us that he continues to bluff with air, so we almost always just call.
The turn came a queen, which also gave me a flush draw. I checked and it's a mistake. The queen fit my range (I often 3-bet with big cards), which had almost no air left. But my opponent still has quite a lot of air, which means I have a noticeable advantage in equity. Therefore, I need to bet almost all value hands and sometimes add bluffs.
My opponent bet 50% of the pot after my check. In a vacuum, check-raising looks very profitable, but it is important to consider all the hands we could end up with in this situation. My hand is so strong that it doesn't need protection at all, and I want my opponent to keep his air. Additionally, I need to protect my calling range.
The flush hit on the river, and I have another difficult decision. I block almost all the cards on the board, so I still don't believe my opponent has anything. With flushes that he can call my bet with, he will also bet my check. So I decided to check.
At first, I was very happy with my play, but then I realized that I had made a big mistake on the turn. Compared to solvers, regulars at even the highest limits constantly make mistakes. It's impossible to always play GTO. But what we can do is understand the general concepts. If I know why the solver bets the turn in this example, I can apply that knowledge to any similar situation. And this is very important.
Currently having peak confidence in my 6-max game at the moment. The latest coaching session I had confirmed what I was already thinking. My overall game is becoming increasingly strong and most of the leaks that were pointed out months ago have been plugged.
These changes are starting to show in my results too. Variance is still a big factor over the hand sample that is shown below (all hands played on 10/20 since August), but from the way I've been playing lately I think these results are somewhat representative.
Feel free to ask me anything about poker and if you do have other questions that are not related to poker I'll try to answer them as well if possible. Don't forget to like this post. Stay tuned for the next week!
– How did you find a coach? Do you pay for your time or share a percentage of the profit?
– I wrote to players who are tearing apart 6-max and offered to work together. Individual lessons can be helpful, but I prefer long-term collaboration. But it’s important to try interacting with different coaches before making a long-term commitment.
– How often do you encounter hands at your limits that cause you confusion?
– I constantly see mistakes even in good regulars. But individual errors mean nothing. We see 3-bets with hands that clearly shouldn't be in the 3-bet range and jump to conclusions. It is important to remember that even the most serious mistakes are not so terrible if they are made with low frequency.
– Is your poker dream still alive?
– It’s not a very good sign that my marathon is going through such difficulties, given all my knowledge and acquaintances. Probably a good way to make money would be to completely stop playing on GG. Here, even with my skill, it’s almost impossible to beat the rake.
– Is it still possible to win without solvers?
– If you have never opened a solver, you are probably already quite far behind the field. Even if you don’t want to work on your own, you can find someone who will analyze your database, find leaks, and analyze them in a solver together with you.
– How to play middle and low sets on the flop?
– For a detailed answer, more information is needed. In a vacuum with lower sets, I check more often. The solver prefers fast plays, so I never check-back sets that have two backdoors or a strong gutshot.
With medium sets in big pots you almost always need to bet, I also play them in 3-way pots. But in position we can also check, so we protect our check-back range and mask the strength of our hand.
Players do not balance such lines well. Strong hands are very rarely check-backed, which makes the bet-bet-bet line too strong and checks too weak. This can be exploited by throwing three barrels a little more often with an occasional attempt to steal the pot on the turn.
– Top five GG regs for $10/$20+?
– I rarely played more than 10/20; Of those with whom I crossed paths, the first to come to mind are David Mezei, Jelle Kroon, and Pedro Zagalo.
– How do I learn to play like you?
– Be obsessed with the game and invest in yourself. Find someone who will mentor you and want to help. Listen carefully to any of his advice and try to implement it. Also, be sure to keep the promises you make to yourself.
– I play PLO500 on GG. Should I deviate from 4-bet solvers depending on my opponent's statistics? Doesn't it make sense to play GTO against an opponent with a 3-bet of 2%? But I’m not sure whether such conclusions can be drawn at a distance of 100 hands.
– Statistics vary. For example, we know that continuation bets on the flop should be placed with a frequency of 50%; here we don’t need a huge distance to quickly notice leaks in our opponents’ play. But with 3-bets it doesn't work that way. At a distance of 100 hands, I would simply continue to play the solver. Declining makes sense in the most obvious situations, such as when someone calls with a hand that you should always 3-bet with. I also advise you to take a closer look at how the solver’s game changes against tight 3-bet players; at your limits, this is very valuable information.
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