HPFAP section great addition to SSH

[WalkAmongUs]

I was just taking a look through HPFAP and I think micro-players who are very familiar with SSH should get HPFAP just for the loose games section.

If you play in games where the VPIP is upwards of 40% and above, the loose games section has some extensions of concepts in SSH that are not quite spelled out in SSH.

This includes things like not raising high unsuited cards in order to manipulate the pot so that your opponents make flop mistakes. It also has great sections on when to play things like suited kings and queens.

I looked through the section because recently I've been playing in really really loose games and I felt like there were some parts of my game I wasn't adjusting right.

Take a look at the section. I feel like it should be added as an addendum to SSH.

[MrWookie47]

Yes and no. HPFAP's loose game section covers loose games where your opponents play fairly well post-flop. Online (or especially <15/30 B&M), you're seldom playing against opponents who play as well as HPFAP assumes. HPFAP is great when you identify yourself as being in a situation like those for which it was written, and it gives you some more things to thik about, but SSH is usually a better default for the vast majority of your play.

[deception5]

The thing I like best about HPFAP is the sections it has about making heads up plays. Betting the flop and check/raising the turn, raising for a free showdown, etc. Just be careful because a lot of the advice in there is for games against better players.

[jrz1972]

The "loose games" section of HEPAP sucks, and large chunks of it were basically overruled by SSHE. (The charitable thing is to say what Wookie said about how it's written for a different gaggle of players, but regardless it provides pretty bad advice for people playing in loose low-limit games).

That said, deception is right that HEPAP is worth reading for its discussion of short-handed play and for some of the HU moves it provides. These sorts of situations come up a lot if you play 6-max.

The preflop stuff is also good to think about, although a lot of the advice is also wrong for low-limit games.

[WalkAmongUs]

I can definitely see that. You should understand that when reading the section and apply concepts appropriately.

Regardless, there is some really good stuff there thats not in SSH.

As a side note, if your opponents don't care about pot odds, should you bother to manipulate them? Or just raise and take your pre-flop equity advantage?

My first thought was just raise. Then I realized that I still want them to make post-flop mistakes. So in certain situations, don't raise so they'll call with gutshots and bottom pair on the flop without proper odds, even if they don't know thats what they're doing. If I had raised they would get proper odds for calling.

I guess what I'm saying is its still a mistake on their part whether they have a clue about it or not, which would apply to both good and bad post-flop play.

Good post-flop players fold and you win pot. Bad post-flop players call with bad odds and you make money.

What do yo think?

[MrWookie47]

It's good to exploit postflop mistakes, but it's also good to exploit preflop ones. Also, just because the pot is so large that we can't protect our hand against certain weak draws doesn't mean that betting and raising the best hand is -EV.

[SlantNGo]

But if they already made a terrible mistake by entering the pot, why not extract value out of them now? The only time where you want to keep the pot small to exploit their mistakes postflop is when your pre-flop edge is relatively small (i.e. AJ after 4 limpers).

[MrWookie47]

[ QUOTE ]
But if they already made a terrible mistake by entering the pot, why not extract value out of them now? The only time where you want to keep the pot small to exploit their mistakes postflop is when your pre-flop edge is relatively small (i.e. AJ after 4 non-terrible limpers).

[/ QUOTE ]

FYP.

If they suck long and hard, I'm still raising, usually.

[Nfinity]

[ QUOTE ]
But if they already made a terrible mistake by entering the pot, why not extract value out of them now? The only time where you want to keep the pot small to exploit their mistakes postflop is when your pre-flop edge is relatively small (i.e. AJ after 4 limpers).

[/ QUOTE ]

The only time I find myself doing this against a table of bad players is play from the blinds, and sometimes from the button. In the blinds the poor position after the Flop is the determining factor, and on the Button sometimes it's a strategical postive to have a person willing to bet into you than for them to routinely check to you if you had raised.

But from the CO back the ability to buy the button makes the marginal raise a sound one.

[car ramrod]

Agreed. It can be confusing to read if you are applying it in the wrong situations. I actually was not too happy with my first read. I hope TOP is better. Although I do agree the short handed stuff is nice, I think it has me second guessing some of the things I was doing before that were working. I also found that some of the stuff was common sense and some of it did not apply to me or my games.