Thinking about your game

To improve as a poker player it's important to look critical your game from time to time.
It helps to read articles and watch video's from other players, who may have an other view on certain situations.
When playing as much as I do, I notice that I'm sometimes playing as a machine. The positive side of this is that I never tilt, but the downside is that I play some hands/situations the same too often.

A few days ago a read an article on 2+2 (could not find it back), but one thing in this article was about 'upfront' and 'backdoor' agression. It really opened my eyes a little, because a lot of the good players (including me) know how to use upfront agression (continuation betting, double barrel, triple barrel and so on), but using backdoor agression in a good way is a lot more difficult, but makes you so much tougher to play against.

Backdoor agression is about check-raising flops/turn/river when you are the pre-flop agressor. It's also about leading into the raiser (AKA donk betting). I think when your capable of balancing this agression into your game with strong/mediocre and (semi)- bluff hands it really makes you a bigger winner in most games and also a lot tougher to play against.

Triple barrel gone wrong

Finally I like to show a triple barrel that went wrong in a HU game against a pretty good player (his stats were 49/40/3 or something like that) and he views me as a good, but tight player (my HU stats are 38/34/3).

This hand made me think about 3-barreling ranges. On the river I'm about 100% sure that his best possible hand on this board is QT (AT would have been re-raised pre-flop and 2-pair+ would have bet the river/turn).
On the other hand he knows that the king on the turn is a perfect second barrel card for me and when I bet the river he probably knows I have 2pair+ or nothing here, because a lot of the time a hand like AK would check behind on turn or river.

I'm not sure if I like his call here so much, because I could be bluffing with better hands here, but it made me think of why it's so important to value bet thin against players like this. It not only makes you tougher to play, but it also makes your range a lot wider then just top2 or nothing when betting 3 streets.

EverestPoker Game #2604287733: Table Luanda-1 - $3.00/$6.00 - No Limit Hold'em - 19:58:05 - 2008/01/04
Seat 1: BldZwtTrn ($1,706.00)
Seat 2: tagomaga ($881.00)
BldZwtTrn posts the small blind of $3.00
tagomaga posts the big blind of $6.00
The button is in seat #1
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to BldZwtTrn[Qh Jd]
BldZwtTrn raises to $18.00
tagomaga calls $12.00
*** FLOP *** [Ts 2d 6c]
tagomaga checks
BldZwtTrn bets $27.00
tagomaga calls $27.00
*** TURN *** [Ts 2d 6c] [Kc]
tagomaga checks
BldZwtTrn bets $69.00
tagomaga calls $69.00
*** RIVER *** [Ts 2d 6c Kc] [8s]
tagomaga checks
BldZwtTrn bets $164.00
tagomaga calls $164.00
*** SHOW DOWN ***
BldZwtTrn shows [Qh Jd]
tagomaga shows [6h 5c]
*** SUMMARY ***
Board: [Ts 2d 6c Kc 8s]
tagomaga collects $555.00