6-Max Zoom Progress

So far it's been a nice variance-free month at 200nl zoom ;)

Ok, not so much. Obviously the sample size is so small that I'm just posting that more or less as a joke since the results don't mean a heck of a lot over 13Kish hands. On a serious note though, the time for learning 6-max is almost over and the SNE grind basically starts for me in May. I don't feel totally adjusted to the 200nl Zoom games as much as I did to the 100nl games before I moved up but I do feel confident enough in my overall game plan to put my head down and start grinding hard. I made some solid adjustments near the end of March (well not so much adjustments...more like put a plan in place that originally wasn't there) and am pretty happy with my opening ranges from all positions and am ok with my defending strategy. Here are my results since I started playing 6max at the end of Feb:

So you can clearly see that just after hand 100K things started to take off as I found a better understanding for the game. I was still playing breakeven poker before that, according to EV, but things still felt pretty messy. Currently, I still don't feel like I've got 6-max all figured out (not even close lol) but I feel that at least I have a more solid foundation in place in terms of an overall game plan.

My SB game plan vs. late position is fairly straightforward but I'm happy with it...basically I have no flatting range so I 3bet a linear/merged range against steals. I think this is the way to go since the games seem so aggro that by flatting you're going to open yourself up to getting squeezed quite a bit and playing OOP just sucks in general. Also, people are opening LP so wide that I want to try and exploit that by either getting immediate folds or by playing a range that has good board coverage since players defend 3bets quite loose. Like maybe a while ago it would make less sense to 3bet a hand like AJo or KQo because you'd have to fold to a 4bet and players would just fold all worse hands. Today, however, people seem to be defending the CO/BTN with a range that includes all kinds of dominated hands. There will still be times when I'll flat the SB but usually that will be a vacuum play if there's a weaker player in the BB or if we start to get quite deep.

I think the worst area of my game or the part that causes me the most trouble still is my defending strategy from the BB against CO-SB steals. This is tricky for me because unlike being in the SB, flatting from the BB becomes much more appealing for a number of reasons. You're still going to be OOP vs. CO/BTN but you don't have to worry about being squeezed and you already have 1 BB invested. Also, a large portion of my range doesn't want to start building a 3bet pot (ie small pairs, QTo etc) because it's difficult to play post-flop and puts us in a lot of bad spots when called. From the SB, I still think that 3betting this portion of my range is fine because the threat of being squeezed or even just giving the BB a good price to complete the action makes it much harder for us to win pots. However, because steal sizes are so small and ranges are so wide I've found myself probably flatting too often and losing too many pots just because I have to c/f a lot being OOP post-flop. Even being IP vs the SB, it's tough to decide exactly what hands I want to be 3betting and what hands I want to be flatting with since ideally I'd like to be balanced with both plays. It seems that I'm either going to be flatting or 3betting way too much and I'm not sure which side I'd rather error on. Anyways, I have a lot of ironing out to do but I think my general line of thinking about these spots is decent enough overall.

My plan is to finish out the rest of the month at 200nl Zoom barring no big downswing. I'm stoked on the VPP/hand rate that I've been getting (about .4) but I'm not sure if sticking to the zoom games will be more profitable than regular tables. I might decide to try out normal tables since unlike before, I would now be very comfortable playing a mix of 6-max and full-ring. We'll see how things shape up over the next week or so before I gear up for a heavy month in May.

gl at the tables!