Demondoink

hey, this is not a personal attack in any way, you are a good player and seem like a nice guy as well.

first of all I wanted to clarify the difference between the two levels of memberships; it seems that essential (at least in terms of cash game coaches) seems to be 200z and lower, and elite seems to be 500z+ (roughly speaking.) so when people are opting to pay for the Elite membership, in my opinion they should be watching coaches who regularly play that stake, or play higher. because they are paying quite a lot of money per month, as far as subscriptions go.

the issue I have is that I don't feel these videos are representative of what you actually play. these hands I played vs you in this video were the first hands I had played vs you at 500z in 4 months, and I am in there most days and if not playing then I am observing and I never see you play then either. this is not just specific to you, either. Teunuss, I know for a fact as I occasionally talk to him, is now grinding 200z pretty much exclusively. yet when one of his videos are released, lo and behold it's back to 500z again.

I am not sure whether or not one of the mandates when signing up to be an Elite Pro is that you have to mostly release videos of a certain stake or higher, but if it is then the paying members on this site are being duped to an extent because neither of you guys are regulars in these games and only play them when making coaching videos.

This is not a personal attack, so please I hope that you don't take it the wrong way. but as a paying member i am entitled to my opinion whether it's controversial or not. i know that both of you guys' content is of good quality, but that should be a given on this training site. perhaps dropping both of you back to essential would free up more room for other 500z+ regs to create some content on the site. which would be very beneficial to all involved imo.

no hard feelings, and hope your grind is going well this year :)

haha well I am a red line player as well so I recognise one when I see one :P

it's always nice to have a red line coach on the site haha :P

honest assessment at the end of the video, I think you were spewing a bit and not really thinking through your decisions (but you realised this anyways.) however you still done some really cool plays and I always enjoy watching you play bvb with your all out aggression vs their passive lines haha.

I take it you are not playing any of SCOOP? cos if you were would be cool to watch you play some 500z and I will hop in as well haha.

like in the dark for your like in the dark :P

excellent video again. I think your final example gave me a very clear picture in my head of how to construct a value betting range on the river throughout the various sizing's because you decided to use the range explorer, which I never really use but I certainly will from now on! because it can be pretty easy to assign different value hands to the incorrect range, or even end up checking back a very strong hand on the river as you don't want to turn it 'face up' by using it in a smaller sizing when you know you will have some all ins.

for example the other day (at 6 max) I block/2x pot OB turn on KJ4rs5s with JJ and the river comes the 7s and I end up checking back because I was playing vs a former high stakes reg who is excellent at hand reading and exploiting capped ranges. I know he has a bunch of flushes here so I don't wanna get x raised but I end up missing out on a ton of value from Kx as well as 2 pairs as well. so next time I won't be such a bitch and I will just include a smaller betting range as well with a couple flushes in that range to protect me.

yeah 3 betting a non linear range only works vs opponents who fold both pre and post-flop. and also the more marginal 3 betting hands perform okay in HU pots but fairly poorly when the flop goes multi-way (which will happen more often in live games.)

when you start playing vs better players either online or live then you should adjust your 3 betting range, but in the mean time just value bet the donks :)

hahah :D

oh and I would also say that, even though they are not HU videos per se, that watching Tyler Forrester's videos are well worth your time. he mainly plays 3 handed in his last few video's, which is very similar to the way that HU plays, and offers excellent detailed analysis of a multitude of spots that can really help you to expand your thinking.

I would just 3bet for value and with a pretty tight range. just because people are playing very loose and splashy doesn't mean you have to as well. there are no antes or anything and if players aren't folding then I would prefer not to 3bet A4s and just wait until I have a stronger hand. you don't necessarily have to flat these hands vs large opens either, you can just play a very tight/aggressive game with a narrow range of value hands when squeezing. I would also consider using a larger 3bet sizing like around 5x to dis-incentivise speculative peels and mutli way flops.

yeah I agree with Jeff. K-Rab videos are very good, and Sauce's HU videos are sick (I would say that it is worth going back as far as his earliest videos because they are still worthwhile to watch imo.) he had a couple HU series from around 4-5 years ago if i'm not mistaken. he also has some more recent ones, such as a HU match vs Linus.

and yeah Nuno Alvarez video's are also well worth watching, it wasn't just shameless self promotion :D

I don't think it's terrible, and can actually be good when you have a weak fish who has opened and is very splashy and you want to keep him in the pot without cold 4 betting.

however, from the positions you mentioned I believe that it is best to cold 4 bet or fold, because vs good regulars your range will be very transparent to perhaps TT-88 and then the odd AQ/AJs. you also end up letting in the button player to the hand who is also able to easily identify your range and cause you problems on certain flop textures. and by allowing him in to the pot easily as well (he would have to fold all but the top 3-4% of his opening range vs a cold 4bet) he is taking some of the EV away from your range because he is IP and we end up playing OOP on all subsequent streets. which isn't the case if we cold 4bet, we end up playing IP or end up with very trivial call/fold decision vs all ins.

the pro's are that, again, if IP is a fish we are happy to let him in to the pot, and if the sb ends up playing very straight forward by x folding a bunch when he misses the flop, and betting when he hits, then it is pretty easy to play vs him.

so I guess you should never be so closed minded as to say, I will NEVER cold flat a 3bet, but I would say that your default, from these positions especially vs a very wide 3 betting range, should be to cold 4bet/fold.

hahah that title! at least this site doesn't try to be extremely PC and title it-new layout, same recreational players. doesn't have the same ring to it :P

Nuno Alvarez okay yeah cool that makes sense. but I guess in game villain is probably not limited to this option unless he has previously decided to only utilise one smaller raise size (which could be the case) for simplicity.

Apotheosis but why would villains raise size be locked in to one smaller sizing? I mean if he can have two turn c bet sizing's then why can he not have the same when he is facing a turn donk?

hmm don't think I can properly grasp what Sauce/Apotheosis are trying to say here. maybe I am out of my depth in this discussion :P

why would IP not be able to raise larger vs the turn lead?

Nuno Alvarez nice comment. very insightful.

I guess it could be that AA unblocks folds from villains 2 pairs such as K4 and 84 so it's a decent hand to bluff jam with. Also with regards to the club/no club situation I don't think that OOP ever plays A high clubs to this line so I think that the suits are completely irrelevant and it is just jamming all combo's of AA at fairly constant frequencies as a result.

brilliant video, really enjoyed this one. would be happy to see more of these types of reviews of high stakes hands in the future (although hopefully with you in them haha.)

tomdrinkwater12 I wouldn't be flatting any of the lower suited Ax to this huge 3 bet sizing. my weakest defend would be ATs so I wouldn't have any of those hands in my range. if I did have them, then yeah I guess I would probably fold them, but always defend with AJ/AT and I wouldn't be betting any hands on the flop here when checked to. because when we have a straight we don't mind checking back as it's still very easy to get all of our money in by the river and villain will end up turning his range pretty face up when he checks twice ott. allowing us to turn some hands in to bluffs as well.

so when playing vs this strategy I tend to tread extremely lightly on early streets, particularly on the flop, and play a reactive style ott once his range is a lot more defined.

yeah like I said, I am not stating that villain is definitely blindly c betting 1/4p with range in 3bet pots, but I thought there was a possibility he was doing so. was more to initiate a discussion on whether or not we, or the population, would actually be able to counter/exploit this strategy or whether or not we would be far too passive. it seems like most players would be in the latter category, in which case it could be a smart adjustment to make from villain until population actually does some node-locking work on how to exploit said strategy.

in all likelihood this was just variance and my impression was inaccurate, but was interesting nonetheless :P

tomdrinkwater12 yeah but the problem is that people will always say that I have x and y hand to defend so I don't need to call with this hand. but in reality they end up betting x and y hand most of the time when checked to on the flop, and thus end up folding basically their entire range on the turn to a large turn bet. i'm not saying this is the case for you, but you have to be very honest with yourself and decide whether you will actually check back both a straight and 2 pair when checked to on this flop.

sure I agree, villain is most likely to go all in on the river, but that doesn't matter because we need some hands to call/fold. in poker you need a region of hands to call on every street, and a region of hands to fold. so even if we know villain is going all in most of the time on the river we still need to call this hand because 1-we can sometimes improve to either a straight, 2 pair or trips and win. 2-we want to prevent villain from having extremely profitable bets on a particular street. it's not GTO to fold 90% of the time on the turn because villain is likely going to fold on the river. it is, however, GTO to fold 50% of the time on the turn, and 50% of the time on the river to pot sized bets as villain isn't exploiting us any longer.

so yeah, even if you know you are folding a hand 100% of the time on the river to a bet it doesn't mean that you just fold on the turn. even though it seems like you are 'saving' yourself vs a large turn bet, in actuality you are just giving villain the entire pot.

Lezaleas no it's not. because if villain is supposed to have an extremely high betting frequency on a particular board in 3 bet pot, and he checks, we shouldn't be arriving at this node at equilibrium and because his range should still be very strong (all hands should be mixed and it's impossible to identify his checking range as either weak or strong) then we can end up checking back 100% of the time.

this is pretty much because of this exact case. clearly villain is saying that on the flop he checked an extremely strong hand and now he wants to bet pot/jam river. so if we start betting with the stronger parts of our range then we are unable to defend vs this delayed aggression properly and end up massively over-folding on latter streets or having extremely low EV with our turn range when facing a bet.

you too man :) I do love a good comments section strategy discussion haha

we can never just fold here on the turn. sure, there is a chance that he only has value hands but if that is the case we can just attack his turn checks very aggressively to counter that strategy. we should probably be betting 0% on this flop when checked to (because it is such a strong board for the OOP player) so his betting frequency should be fairly high. so we should have hands such as AQ/JT and perhaps AK to call down with. however, we also have 7s-Ts, as well as some KJs/QJs etc so this hand needs to defend on the turn and can safely fold on the river. otherwise we let OOP player print with his bluffs on the turn. also, if you bet the aforementioned strong hands when checked to on the flop then your range is gutted here and AJ is basically the top of your range. in that case you are folding 100% of the time here on the turn. which isn't recommended.

Fishfeast or maybe you are over-estimating him ;) I am sure he is a good player, I gathered that from watching this short amount of footage, but from what it appeared to me (based on an albeit small sample size) he was betting 1/4 pot regardless of the board texture. even though the sample was only 4 or whatever it was, when somebody does this 4/4 times then imo there is a somewhat reasonable chance that this is his default strategy. of course it could just be variance, but many players like to simplify their strategies and so doing this (if IP isn't raising enough and is still folding a decent amount of hands on the flop) could be a good population exploit that makes it pretty easy to play as we don't really need to think when the flop comes down in a 3bet pot.

again, I could of course be completely wrong, and I am not saying he is certainly doing this or not, but once we see a couple show downs (such as the ATo hand) and the same line from villain (on boards where his default sizing should be much larger) then I either think he is using this with the fairly weak parts of his range, or is exploiting populations low flop raising frequencies. because if you have QQ and the flop comes down 764FD then you do not want to be betting 1/4p unless that is the only size you are using and subsequently you are pretty handcuffed to using a sub-optimal flop c bet sizing.

and also when we raise K8 on the flop we get immediate folds from most A highs unless they contain a club, as well as all stronger K highs unless they contain a FD. and then if we bink our K on a latter street it will be much higher EV because OOP's Kx region is vastly reduced because almost all of them have folded on the flop (bar AK and Kx FD.) so it leaves us with a clean out as well as the 5 for a clean out. so I think it may actually be better as a raise and then we can just call 98/T9 which are drawing to the nuts with their SD's, and then call with A5/A8 instead, which have much more SDV than K8.

yeah i'm not saying that this exact combo wants to raise or anything, but we definitely need to expand our flop raising range if he is just auto c betting 1/4p on every flop texture.

I do agree that this hand is probably slightly preferring call with, but then what hands would we prefer to raise?? 98/T9 don't wanna get blown off their equity by risking getting jammed on, a hand such as A4/A6 wants to keep his A highs in his range so that we can dominate them when we turn 2 pair and they make top pair. and likewise they don't wanna get jammed on. A5/55 type hands are both better flats imo. AQ/AJ/AT with the Ac all seem pretty good calls. so unless we wanna start raising rando air hands or raise/stacking off with a hand such as A7 then it's pretty easy to just talking ourselves in to NEVER raising these marginal hands and then we aren't exploiting his strategy and he gets exactly what he wanted.

so even though a hand such as K8 is good as a call, I mean it's not that amazing really. makes a poor bluff on a club, when we make top pair we aren't exactly thrilled as one completes a 4 card straight and the other gives OOP many other stronger top pairs. we don't really have that much SDV either. we beat some random Q/J highs but that's about it, and they will both be very likely to bluff at some point anyways. we mostly end up showing down vs A highs and losing.

so unless we start mixing in some raises with these types of hands we don't do anything to dis-incentivize villain from continuing with his strategy. raising an uber standard range of strong hands such as sets/2 pairs and some FD's isn't really a very good counter.

@35:30 OOP block bets again on a board that is not particularly good for his 3 betting range with a hand with very poor equity. surely this is an indication that we are not raising the flop enough when he can just auto c bet as the 3 bettor regardless of flop texture?? this is not even a board we want to be c betting small on (at least not in 6 max) we would be using some very large sizing's up to the pot sized c bet.

cos it seems like the hand played out exactly the way he wanted it to: get some flop folds from air and some calls by a wide range. then see a dry turn and either let us bluff with our wide range (in which case he can sometimes call us down very light with AK/AQ etc) or check down with a worse hand. where as when you start raising flops more aggressively his life becomes a lot more difficult and now he has to start checking much more on the flop and actually has to think about how to construct a proper range for betting/checking as opposed to blindly c betting.

really enjoyed the video. just thought that his strategy was very noteworthy and if I was playing vs him I would be raising a ton on the flop. especially as his range seems to be too wide pre-flop with a bunch of off suit broadways that should be high frequency pre-flop calls if i'm not mistaken.

the 7h is a negative blocker because it blocks some bluffs from IP such as 76o/75o with a heart that would take this line and always bluff on the river.