3k hands of NL200

So, I decided, why not? I had the roll for NL200 (in fact I had more than enough, as my roll is now over 5k) and I decided to give it a go. Here's what it's looked like so far.



Quite a few coolers in there as well, including JJ vs QK on a 9TJ board (all-in on flop, I reraised preflop, donkey opponent cold-called twice and flopped the nuts) and A5 vs 56 on a 55xx6 board (valuetown on flop and turn, bet on river with a crying call of his small all-in raise).

I did deliver one whopper, facing an UTG min-raise, the button called, and I called from the BB with 3h 5h. The flop came A26 rainbow, and it went check/check/check. I turned my 4, bet, was instaraised big by the original preflop raiser, and realized pretty quickly that I was probably up against AA. I shoved, instacall, sure enough, there's AA. The river was a harmless 9 and I won a $400+ pot.

I can't blame the guy for the check on the flop, but the min-raise preflop was just stupid. People need to stop worrying about "only" buying the blinds when they pick up AA, particularly from EP. You're maximizing the odds that you'll be facing a set of hands that you REALLY don't want to face with your one pair, and you'll be facing them from OOP in many cases. AA is only the nuts preflop.

Anyway, I'm encouraged by the number of idiots I still run into at the NL200 level. How they manage to play this high I have no idea, but there are still the usual 45/5's that just get carved to pieces. The regs are better and there's more floating, stealing, semibluffing, and adjusting in general, but my standard game still feels like it's working. The first 3k hands have shown a decent winrate, and I have no reason to believe that something similar to that isn't sustainable.