Guess I didn’t think the no HUD thing through entirely – HEM shows you mucked cards really nicely, plus you can see previous hands at a glance. I could use the Full Tilt replayer, but it’s a lot messier than HEM. So I turned HEM autoimport back on, although with a twinge of guilt. I want this hudless thing to work, so reckon I’ll change my HU HUD (that’s not a stutter) to minimum details – just player notes maybe.
Last week I played a couple of games against a good player – the first game was difficult, and he was clearly thinking much more than the average fool at the $10s. It went my way and I figured that while I had a small edge it might be good to rematch just for the experience. Apparently he was thinking exactly the same thing, except he thought he had the postflop edge. The second game was a complete disaster, so he was probably more right than I was 
We agreed to swap HH, and had a small email exchange talking about some of the hands. I figured out how to edit the HH files so that HEM would load both hole cards up. I was quite surprised at how much thought this guy put into his play – more than me I suspect. Also, although this might be just because of the hands we talked about, he seemed to think a lot more about what my thought processes were, while I was thinking more about how I was being perceived – that sounds like I’m outlevelling him, but it wasn’t really. It was more the case that he was evaluating how much value he could get out of me, while I was looking at how effectively I could bluff him.
And that last point could be a leak for me. I’m always working on the bluffs, making them and catching them. It appeals to me because it’s all about the player, rather than pot odds and getting thin value. Very satisfying when it’s working, very expensive when you get it wrong. If on the other hand you’re working on getting value, then it’s rarely expensive when you get it wrong – you just get less value than you hoped, or maybe at worst accidentally value town yourself when something was just a bit too thin.
Anyway, it was really interesting to be able to talk about those games with him. I wish it happened more often. To quote the level we talked about; ‘the only reason I called was that I knew you knew I pretty much can’t have a strong hand’ – which is awesome that we could even have a game where that came into play.
It’s awesome because today I’ve played people who do this;
Pokerstars
2 Players
$10.00+$0.50
Stacks:
Hero (940)
BB (2,060)
Blinds: 10/20
Pre-Flop: (30, 2 players) Hero is SB 3
A
Hero raises to 60, BB calls 40
Flop: 9 10
2 (120, 2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets 60, BB calls 60
A lot of my cbets have been successful, so no reason to stop now. He calls this one though, so must have something. The board was quite wet so not totally surprising. I could have just checked back the A and let it go to showdown if no draws had come through, quite possibly this guy would let me do that.
Turn: Q
(240, 2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets 160, BB calls 160
ok, Q is kinda good, kinda bad – it made some of the straight draws, but is a good double barrel card for any 9′s, T’s and flush draws, so I reckon more good than bad. He calls again though. Either he’s really chasing hard, or has something already. I decide to shutdown regardless, even if the river is very blank.
River: 4 (560, 2 players)
BB checks, Hero checks
Final Pot: 560
Hero shows high card Ace
3 A
BB shows high card King
K 5
uh – he had King high? Hoped the gutshot he picked up on the turn might make good?
There’s no sense in that. You can’t play someone like this and say ‘if he’s calling there, then he’s thinking xxx’ etc. The easiest way to beat them seems to be to just chip away with small flop cbets, and get as much value as you can from strong hands. How exciting.
It wouldn’t be so bad if he hadn’t gone on to beat me as well (of course, lol).
6
J
(
Q
