© 2016 Peter Clarke (Carroters) Table of Contents 1 Introduction 1.1 About The Manual 1.2 EV - The Currency of Poker 1.3 The Bottom Up Learning Model 1.4 The Other Two Aspects of Poker Success 2 Opening the Pot 2.1 The 6 Handed Table 2.2 Rating Starting Hands 2.3 UTG 2.4 HJ 2.5 CO 2.6 BU 2.7 SB 3 When Someone Limps 3.1 The ISO Triangle 3.2 Frequent Strength 3.3 Fold Equity 3.4 Position 3.5 Limping Behind 3.6 Sizing An ISO 3.7 Example Hands 4 C-Betting 4.1 Light C-Bet Factors 4.2 C-Bet Sizing 4.3 More C-Bet Spots 5 Value Betting 5.1 Introducing the Value Bet 5.2 Relative Hand Strength (Question 1) 5.3 Building the Pot (Question 2) 5.4 Slowplaying (Question 3) 5.5 Thick and Thin Value 5.6 Sizing and Elasticity 6 Calling Opens 6.1 Reasons to Call an Open 6.2 Cold Calling In Position 6.3 Calling Out of Position 6.4 Calling Blind vs Blind 7 Facing Bets - End of Action Spots 7.1 The Two-Part Thought Process 7.2 Stats and Examples 8 Facing Bets - Open Action Spots 8.1 Defending the Flop with Made-Hands 8.2 Defending the Flop with Non-Made-Hands 8.3 Defending the Turn 8.4 Dealing with Donk Bets 9 Combos and Blockers 9.1 Using Combos Pre-Flop 9.2 Using Combos Post-Flop 9.3 Blockers 10 3-Betting 10.1 Polar 3-Betting 10.2 Linear 3-Betting 10.3 Practical Examples 10.4 Squeezing 10.5 3-Bet Sizing 11 Facing 3-Bets 11.1 Flatting 3-Bets 11.2 Complete Defence Ranges 11.3 Preemptive Adjustments 11.4 Example Hands 11.5 Facing Squeezes 11.6 Facing a 3-Bet Cold 12 Bluffing the Turn and River 12.1 Double Barrel Bluffing 12.2 Triple Barrel Bluffing 12.3 Delaying The C-Bet 12.4 Probing The Turn 12.5 Bluff Raising the Turn and River 13 3-Bet Pots And Balance 13.1 C-Betting 3-Bet Pots 13.2 3-Bet Pots As The Aggressor 13.3 Strategy As the Defender 14 Stack Depth 14.1 Playing Deep Pre-Flop 14.2 Playing Shallow Pre-Flop 14.3 Playing Deep Post-Flop 14.4 Dealing with Donk Bets 15 Appendices Appendix 1 - More About The Author Appendix 2 - Jargon Handbook (Glossary of Terms) Appendix 3 - List Of Figures 1. Introduction 1.1 About The Manual Welcome to The Grinder's Manual. This book is a comprehensive mega-course in No Limit Holdem cash games with specific focus on the online 6-max variation. It spans 532 pages and contains 152 hand examples and 80 instructive figures. This book is for the beginning player, the aspiring novice, the intermediate player, and the seasoned player who wants to improve his or her core understanding of the game. All but perhaps the very strongest players in the world will learn something from reading this book. This is a serious textbook that treats poker like an academic subject. Though online 6-max cash games are the book's focus, the material covered will be very useful for building a better understanding of the game in general for anyone with an interest in some form of No Limit Holdem. Players who are more interested in full ring cash games or tournament poker will still benefit greatly from working their way through the manual. Naturally, however, the aspiring 6-max cash player will benefit most. I have created what is, in my opinion, the first poker text ever to include all and only those technical poker topics mandatory for a complete game strong enough for the reader to crush his way through the microstakes, establish himself as a winning player at 100NL (50c/$1 blinds) and set up a solid basis for going further. After reading this book and appropriately applying the material, the reader will be strategically equipped to succeed at these stakes as the games are on the toughest sites on the internet as I write this in early 2016. This condensing process was by far the biggest challenge I encountered in writing the manual. My mission was for the aspiring online poker player to finally be dealt a complete syllabus that is both sufficient in detail and simple enough to digest without getting lost in the sea of 'too much information'. I know that I never came across anything close when I was learning the game. And so, finally, here it all is in one place! That said, if you were to quickly read this book only once cover to cover, picking up where you left off each sitting, the sea of too much information is exactly where you'd end up. Each chapter within the manual demands detailed study. The reader should try to read when fully alert, participating in the exercises with motivation to learn. Chapters are presented in a logical order. I take care to introduce new ideas as and when they become relevant. The reader's understanding of the necessary core technical skills is built gradually one step at a time. It is therefore advised that the reader avoids jumping between chapters, and follows this procession of complexity. If, for example, he were to leap straight from the 2nd chapter to the 11th, he'd quickly find himself confused by an array of material that was first introduced somewhere in between. The starting level of the manual is aimed at fairly new, but not completely clueless players. I assume that the reader has played poker before, is completely aware of the rules of the game and doesn't need to be told that a flush beats a straight. However, this book is written in such a way that more experienced players will also begin learning from the very start. I expect that even the simpler topics have mostly taught in a worse way before in other places and so I aim to clarify how to correctly think about basic areas of the game from the beginning. Even the more elementary topics, like opening the pot, are covered in an extremely high level of detail, building mathematical and logical foundations for what's to come. Perhaps the most important thing I've learned from years of coaching the game is that there is a very large gap in between theoretical understanding of concepts and the application of said concepts at the tables. In order to bridge the gap between concepts understood theoretically and concepts actually applicable in-game, it is strongly advised that the reader tries as fully as possible to solve hand examples and other exercises on his own before reading on. The manual is laid out in such a way as to put the reader in the driver's seat. I use the terms: 'Hero' and 'Villain' throughout this text. 'Hero' will always refer to the active player whose shoes we are in as we face each hypothetical poker situation. We shall assess every spot through the eyes of Hero. 'Villain' will always stand for his opponent. Essentially, we're the goody and he's the baddy. I shall be using the terms 'Hero' and 'we' interchangeably throughout the book to describe how the reader should play and think. I shall always use the male pronoun simply as a matter of consistency. The number of hand examples may at times seem excessive. As poker is such a complicated field, I actually consider the 152 hands covered here a bare minimum. I should also add that simply reading one book (even this one) should be far from the full scope of the aspiring player's study time. The reader is also advised to review his own sessions, regularly tagging hands in his database to match the topics covered here. It is possible to greatly solidify your understanding of the material in a practical way by reviewing real life examples that actually occurred in a session in which the reader's own money was at stake. Community is also highly important for learning in this game and I recommend that the reader discusses the themes and examples of this book with his poker peers. I deal with the mathematics of poker in this manual to exactly the extent that I think is appropriate for the aims of the book. The manual does not scrimp on any necessary math, but avoids overly complicated in depth mathematical material that has very restricted practical application. The rule for poker math is exactly the same as that for the rest of the book: lots of detail, but not a drop more than is necessary to become a very strong player. Poker is a massive subject containing an overwhelming amount of terminology. For the newer player or anyone not versed in speaking the lingo of poker, this can be daunting. Consequently, every new chunk of poker jargon you'll meet throughout this book is defined clearly and fully the first time it's introduced. Should you forget the exact meaning of a term somewhere along the way and want instant clarification, you can also consult the Jargon Handbook at the end of the manual for a quicker definition, where all of these terms are listed alphabetically. Before we jump into the real meat of the manual and get acquainted with the first technical topic, there are three short but necessary sections to read in this chapter. First we'll meet the concept of EV - a fundamental poker notion Secondly, I'll briefly describe the teaching strategy used throughout the book and why I've chosen it. Thirdly, while this book is almost exclusively a technical manual focusing on strategy and not psychological improvement, I would like to quickly outline what else needs to be done concerning the mental game of poker and the reader's professional approach to the game. 1.2 EV - The Currency of Poker Contrary to what you might think, the currency of poker decision-making is not money, at least not as we know it. In the real world, money is a stable currency that reliably represents the worth of what we buy and sell. If I sell my car for $5000, I'll get $5000 for the car. I make a transaction for X dollars and so I gain or lose exactly X dollars. In poker, things don't work like this, not in the short- term. You might make a raise that on average earns you $15, but end up losing $100 because of bad luck on that one occasion. You lost $100 in money, but you gained $15 in EV. So what exactly is EV? 'EV' stands for 'expected value' and is the real currency of poker decision-making. As we cannot control the monetary result of our poker transactions in the individual instances in which we make them, we need a stable currency that does not fluctuate with short-term luck. EV is simply the amount of money we gain or lose on average in the long-term due to our poker actions. Some plays are described as '+EV' meaning that they make us money in the long run, while others we call '-EV' because they'll costs us money over a large sample. EV is what we're trying to maximise each and every time we have a choice to make in a hand. For this reason, every range of hands I recommend playing in a certain way, every adjustment I advise against each type of opponent in every situation, and basically every piece of advice in the whole manual is geared only towards maximising our overall EV. So luck is entirely irrelevant. I don't care whether you gain or lose money over one hand, or 10,000 hands for that matter, just that you gain EV over that sample. The upshot is that in 100,000 hands of playing in a +EV way, there's a very good chance you'll have gained money. This is what beating poker is - a long term grind, churning out EV knowing that sooner or later it will become real money. Now look at Figure 1: Figure 1 - The EV Cycle Let's imagine that I played a 500 hand microstakes poker session one afternoon where the sum of every choice that I made earned me +$8 in EV. In the short-term, there exists a myriad of possible monetary outcomes for that session. In fact, this figure grossly underrepresents just how many different possibilities there are. Some days I'll win more than $8; other days I'll win less than $8. On more rare occasions, where the natural variance in poker has been against me over this small sample, I'll even lose money. My EV is still +$8, the actual results are just down to luck. Fortunately for us poker players, over an infinite sample of hands, we know this EV will translate exactly into money won and we'll get our $8 and not a penny more or less. Over large but not infinite samples, like a million hands, we can expect to come somewhere very near to making the same amount in money as we have in EV. It might be a little less or a little more, but the chances are it won't differ hugely like it does in the short term. So EV is king. From now on, make those little turquoise beads of EV your goal. Money is not important in poker over small samples, but EV is. As someone once told me when I was first learning the poker ropes: "EVs are not monies yet, they are baby monies that will grow up one day." With that clarified, the rest of this book is fully devoted to equipping you to fill your poker pockets with as much EV as you're humanly capable of. When that EV grows up into money, you'll have paid off the cost of this manual and much more. Unfortunately, that process can take time and a frustratingly long time when we're running bad. There's a point in every winning poker player's life where he wishes real world vendors accepted EV as a form of payment; when it seems like he just can't catch a break from relentless bad variance (luck). I can't teach you how to win money over a thousand, ten thousand or even one hundred thousand hands. Variance decides that (to a lesser and lesser extent as the sample gets larger). What I can teach you to do is to be positive EV over that sample. Before we move on, I'll quickly alert the reader to one common misconception in terminology. EV is not the same as All in EV. The former is what you're expected to gain or lose from any decision you ever make in poker whether the hand goes to showdown or not. The latter refers only to your expected earnings when a hand goes to showdown and is a measure of your EV from that type of situation alone. All in EV is often compared to monetary earnings as a measure of how lucky or unlucky a player has been. What we must remember is that it only paints a picture about variance in one kind of situation. It does not account for the player's luck in the many spots that do not go to showdown and is therefore far from the full picture of how well a player is running and I'd advise you not to get too fixated on this stat. 1.3 The Bottom Up Learning Model We're almost ready to launch into the heart of poker's technical game where we'll learn how to assess the many situations the game can throw at us. Before we get our teeth into the first chapter of rigorous poker study, I'd like to explain the teaching method I'll be using throughout the book and why I've settled on it after five years of coaching poker. As I mentioned before, the motivation behind creating this manual was to put an end to 95% of aspiring poker players getting hopelessly lost along their journey. Bottom up learning is all about starting with the most basic individual concepts and working your way up; identifying the critical elements that make each of the situations ahead unique and knowing which factors to consider in each one. My aim is to turn the reader's brain into a poker computer that efficiently considers only those factors most relevant to the EV of his decision. As we just saw, EV is the thing that really matters in this game. Many aspiring players go wrong because their thought process is jumbled in a way that actually neglects EV - in making their decisions, they tend to consider things that don't matter and ignore things that do. See the model below for an illustration of how we'll be learning to make logical and profitable decisions in the various poker situations we'll encounter. Figure 2 - A Bottom Up Decision Model This approach is a foundational one in that knowledge is built up from a solid base that grows stronger and stronger with each chapter. Learning starts by considering some of the most common poker situations and considering what's relevant. Factors that are introduced in the early chapters, crop up time and time again later and so the reader solidifies his grasp of them as he goes. By the time he is able to solve the examples for every chapter, he'll possess the computational poker thinking power necessary to succeed in the aim of this book. This will stand him in good stead to become a successful player, especially if he can piece it together with the other two aspects of poker success which I touch on in the next section. 1.4 The Other Two Aspects of Poker Success Undoubtedly, the largest component to success in poker is having a superior technical grasp of the game than your opponents. The following chapters of this book are all geared towards assisting the reader in this pursuit. This is a manual about what I call the 'technical game' of poker - how to actually play the cards in relation to the strategic needs of each poker situation. That said, there are two other areas in which the aspiring player needs to develop competency: I refer to these as the 'mental game' and the 'practical game'. The mental game of poker concerns having the mental constitution to succeed even through the more difficult times when variance is against us. The practical game concerns the player's poker habits outside of the playing of the cards. Practical game topics cover session length, game selection, bankroll management and much more. I'll briefly touch on the importance of these two aspects before we go any further. I don't want the reader to imagine for a second that just reading this technical manual is enough to succeed in poker. The Mental Game Poker is tough. Most of the students I take on have severe mental game problems that have massively impaired their ability to make money so far in their poker careers. In a nutshell, they allow bad short- term results to affect their composure. This leads to worse decisions which harm the amount of EV they make, which in turn leads to a dwindling bankroll over time. In poker speak this effect is known as 'tilt'. Tilt is entirely natural. It's a normal human response to negative variance, which can feel unfair and at times, brutal. Do, however, take your mental game very seriously. Work hard at it and spend separate study time learning how to control tilt and reduce its impact on your winrate. A good place to start is reading Jared Tendler's The Mental Game Of Poker. This book is, in my opinion, the leading work for aiding the aspiring player in gradually strengthening his mental game over time.