Demondoink

that's interesting I never even realised that 9 handed cash games ran any longer lol. like Patrick says, I doubt many 6m regs would want to play over there so that could make these games very profitable.

the chests on Stars are just a gimmick to make you think you are getting more rakeback than you actually are. a couple of years ago I was getting around 30% RB on Stars when I was a Supernova, now it is around 1% so is effectively 0.

fwiw I strongly recommend buying a computer as opposed to a laptop. this means that if you get PIO in the future you will be able to run it and store sims etc, something that you cannot do on laptops. my PC tower was around £1k and I just went for the one with the most memory in PC World, but this was a couple of years ago so probably a bit cheaper now. monitors are pretty cheap (I bought a new one the other week for around £150) and then all you need is a keyboard/mouse etc. i'd suggest a gaming keyboard, just a lot nicer to type on and is tilted to sit in a more comfortable position, as well as a gaming mouse and a decent mouse mat, not some foamy pos haha. the speakers it doesn't matter, I have like £10 ones from Argos haha.

your set up will definitely affect how you play, and so having a comfortable chair is probably the most vital aspect for grinding online poker. this initial investment will more than pay for itself in the long term if you stick with poker and keep studying/working on your game.

this would be in a tournament where you DO NOT pay rake per hand to enter the pot, like you do in cash games. also there are antes etc in tournaments, which make steals with a wide range more profitable.

nice question!

I know this question was aimed at Patrick but I will also give my 2 cents.

9 handed cash games are dead now, nobody ever plays them and only ever will if a fish sits at a 9 handed table for some reason. I don't think sites such as Party Poker even offer 9 handed cash games on their site.

Ante games are for sure more fun (the antes create bigger pots, and you get to play more hands/wider ranges cos the good pot odds you get to enter the pot) however these also don't run very often. Paying an ante every hand means that you also pay rake every hand, which is not a good idea given the fact that sites such as Stars are effectively offering 0% rakeback.

So I would avoid ante games as well, unless you are playing on a site that actually offers raekback (such as PP.)

Party is very reg heavy, but you get rakeback so I would still stay open to playing on there, but only when the games are good and be prepared to end a session early and play on a different site if your tables are exclusively regs. So just be more selective about what times you play on PP/make sure to game select as far as is possible (you can't see the players but you can tell from playing vs them who is a fish and who is not within an orbit or two.)

I would stay open to playing on zoom. Don't worry about dynamics or any of that, you are here to make money not to play in a tennis match vs one opponent where you figure out each others weaknesses etc. Zoom is often pretty soft in my experience cos it's easy for fish to load up a table and play very quickly. Again, just game select and don't play when the reg/rec ratio is too high and you will be fine.

good luck!

Hey Ben, thanks for doing this! Hopefully I am not too late in posting in here.

One question; if you were a 26 y/o 500z reg who has very few 'responsibilities' atm with regards to family etc, what games would you be playing/focusing on if you wanted to maximise your income?

You can make decent money at 500z, but sometimes I feel as if I should be perhaps playing some live, or playing on other sites etc as opposed to just loading up 3 zoom tables and grinding.

also, would have been interesting to review that KK hand in more depth in PIO, specifically our turn/river strategy. where we manage to pull our bluffs from when jamming on the river.

nice video, one of your better ones imo. i liked the fact that you decided to explore a specific topic, reviewed it in PIO and then explained your thought process during specific hand examples. really liked this format and hopefully you stick with it in the future.

how about reviewing this spot as the pre-flop caller in your next video? how we should react vs high flop frequency cbets/checks when we are IP and have called the 4bet.

haha probably cos its so unusual to see 44/33 being bet on the river for value in a 3bet pot when they haven't improved :P

oh and of course the fact that he just got promoted to Elite status as a coach.

the arguments. as a way of support I guess.

nice video!

@36:52 you say how Trueteller is bluffing some 44/33 and 5x, they can't be bluffs because Linus is calling with some Ax vs the block, and IP's range to x down to the river is very weak and doesn't contain many straights/flushes/pairs. TT is also just x'ing down with his Ax, so it would make no sense if he were to bluff with hands that have a ton of EV as x downs.

Gary Chappell completely agree with your comment with the exception of;

But don’t jump to conclusions because for all you know there may be
personal reasons why people aren’t playing a certain limit and not
just that they aren’t good enough - eg money issues after buying
property, investments, frame of mind after a bereavement, etc. Even
just a better hourly rate in a certain time zone/session time.

I feel like if you have just suffered a family bereavement then you shouldn't be playing poker at all anyways, so that goes without saying.

however, if you are unable to grind a higher stake because you have invested in property, or are simply focused on playing vs the weakest players and obtaining the highest hourly, then imo these are NOT Elite coach credentials. that's not to say you can't invest or game select, but when it comes at the expense of the content (which is why everyone is signed up here) then why should we accept such lame reasons for only grinding 500z when making a training video?

it sets a dangerous precedent when we start to prioritise non poker related issues over poker ones when creating poker content on a training site. the less someone plays at a higher stake, the more they play vs weaker players/fish, the more they stagnate/regress, and the quality of the video decreases.

I don't want an 'Elite' coach trying to teach me plays when he just bum hunts the 200z pool for a higher hourly.

there's no need to apologise imo. sure, you probably could have worded your original comment to be a little less abrasive (leaving out the losing player at zoom thing) but apart from that you brought up a valid point with regards to the clairvoyance of coaches results.

we are here to improve and get better, not be as nice as we can to avoid people ever getting upset. imo not enough people voice their opinions in the comments sections, so when I see someone else doing it then it can be quite refreshing. of course this doesn't mean just being rude for rudeness sake, but it means that, if you have a valid point/concern, then you should ABSOLUTELY say so in the comments section. after all, what is it for?

I think that many people can take a lot of value from what I say here,
particularly aspiring professionals which I assume a large portion of
the audience are.

this doesn't make a ton of sense to me, surely making a video that is catering to 'aspiring professional' is what an essential video is for? since when was Elite content aimed at 'aspiring professionals'?

don't worry Patrick Sekinger your reputation is not dragged through the dirt lol. imo Saulo Ribeiro was just addressing an important issue that most of the coaches/staff on here don't seem to deem very important, and that is the transparency of results from the coaches. showing your best results is not transparency, that is just cherry picking. if you allow yourself to brag about being the 'biggest 200nl winner on Stars' then you gotta take the rough with the smooth, and show that your results have not been up to a similar standard in other games, such as zoom. this won't detract from those results, it just gives some perspective.

thank you for posting your entire results, that is all we wanted. nice results and congrats on getting the upgrade to an Elite coach!

it's still 2019...

Saulo Ribeiro haha I had no idea that you were an essential coach tbh I just assumed that your content was elite. I think it is perhaps because you are a more recent addition and that when you joined the training site as a coach your main stake was 200z iirc? other guys such as Francesco Lacriola were producing elite level content for a while before they were upgraded, taking time and effort in to making very good videos and then you look at an 'elite' video and it's just a 30 min live play where the guy only plays the nuts and isn't interested in incorporating tools such as PIO in to their videos.

I guess it can be more difficult for the people running the site because they are not professional poker players, and are not grinding every day on Stars and able to see who is playing what games etc. also, it's probably harder for them to judge the quality of the content, because pretty much ALL content on this site could be deemed 'elite' to a more casual poker person. so I guess we have to cut them some slack, to a certain extent.

however, people join this site to become the best poker players they can be, I am not paying $100 per month to be entertained, I wanna get better. imo there are still some excellent elite coaches, to name a few I would say; Francesco, Tyler, Sauce, K-Rab. I also enjoy Dr Luck and Chaps, but I find these videos a little more entertaining than thought invoking. I think because the aforementioned coaches are normally more theory focused. apart from that, unless I have accidentally missed someone out, I think that the others could easily be cut. imo you have to offer something unique as a coach, if you don't then you are expendable and we shouldn't carry passengers just because someone has been a coach on this site for a number of years. as we all know, poker evolves and someone who was crushing 3/4 years ago can be breaking even/losing today.

fwiw, with regards to you, you are at the opposite end of this spectrum where you have moved up in stakes in the past couple of years, and look likely to continue doing so. Patrick Sekinger seems to also be in the same boat, so we cannot fault this 'promotion' imo except that we can just ask for full disclosure of results. cos I've played some hands with him at both 500z and 200z this year iirc. not many, but some.

what I would like to see in a coach on RIO;

1-full disclosure of results, at least once per year (either at the start or the end of the year would make most sense.)
2-a coach who is hungry and wants to learn/move up in stakes.
3-a coach who varies his content and doesn't just spurt out a live play every other week with no effort in to content creation.

that is all I ask. if someone doesn't meet a particular point in this criteria, imo they should be cut and replaced by someone who does.

EDIT: I mean those 3 factors should be what I see in an ELITE coach. I think it's fine if a 100z coach isn't bothered about moving up because he can improve the relative beginners before passing them on to the Elite coaches. I see no problem in this because they have a target audience and are not trying to dupe anyone.

EDIT 2: forgot to mention Nuno as well, he is also one of the better Elite coaches imo.

well said!

I think the biggest issue we have on RIO with the coaches is that there is no transparency with regards to results. I have said this before and 'called out' a couple of the coaches for making 500z videos despite never playing the stake except when they make a training video. this gives the impression to the viewer that they are watching a good/winning player at those particular stakes, and thus they are being duped. coupled with the fact that the higher level of coaches on here are labelled 'elite' then I would assume that the vast majority of viewers would believe their coach to be beating the game they are playing in/commenting in.

now, I am not saying this is the case with Patrick, nor does it really matter to a certain extent. but all we want is transparency so that when we watch a coach we know if we are watching someone who is beating the stakes they are playing, so that we can attempt to model certain parts of our games on them. doing this when they are, in fact, a losing player is a farce because the viewer may have adopted certain plays/a playing style that is not even a winning one.

I am happy to see that it is not just me attempting to 'police' these forums and that some of the coaches care enough to comment, and not just pick up their pay check after making another mediocre live play session video and don't log on to the site until it's time to post the next one.

I would make it part of the terms of contract for full disclosure of a coaches results. the good thing that this will do is to scare off the break even/losing coaches cos they wouldn't want to be found out. so it would benefit everyone involved :)

it's in Starshelper and I think its under HUD then buttons and you have to mess around with that. my friend showed me briefly but I have not tried it yet.

would swipe right

nice video. I don't play PLO but occasionally watch some of the training videos, however this was my first time watching you and I thought your content was excellent. good analysis and effective use of the solvers to expand on your thought process.

will be watching more of your content!

OMGIsildurrrrman12 haha im sure they would appreciate getting called VIP's, has to be the most flattering name to label a fish haha

really enjoyed this video, +1 to a part 2!

it's in the limping range at 100% frequency instead of the open raise range. I didn't put square size proportional to weight so that's why it looks weird that a random combo is missing, but some other hands such as K6s are limping almost always as well, but are opens like 5% of the time hence the reason they are showed in this sim.

it's bvb and this is the sb opening range. it's mostly limping with 97s and only opening around 10-15% iirc.

Tyler Forrester Jeff_ guess I was wrong then :P

great video again!

with regards to the K9 hand @9:46, you say that A9 should strongly consider folding on the river to our x jam because we very rarely have bluffs to this line, but what is our value region? sets are going to x raise on the flop close to 100% of the time, 88 should mix between 3bet/call pre and 52s is 4 combos which should also be a very high frequency flop x raise because it unblocks all pairs. 99 is probably pure 3bet pre, and even then is only one combo when he has his A9.

so if our value region is 44/33/88/52s then that is 16 combinations max. 44/33/52s are going to be close to pure x raises on the flop, so perhaps we have 1 or 2 combinations of these as slow plays and then 1.5x combos of 88 (if we mix between 3bet/call pre evenly.) so we may have 3 or 4 value combos, we only get to have maybe 2 bluffs. let's assume that you mix/call fold with your K9 combos on the flop, you get to the river with 4 combos when our opponent also holds 9x in his hand. we may again mix between x/bet small on the river, so we hit that 2 bluffing combo region on the nose with our K9. BUT that is assuming that we are slow playing flop with our value region at some none negligible frequency, that we are actually mixing call/fold on the flop and again mixing x/bet on the river. I think it's very easy to end up over-bluffing here and that villain has a fairly slam dunk call. and then we are gonna be bluffing with some other combos at > 0% frequency as well.

also, we can easily have A9 that mixed in to our smaller river lead sizing, so he chops with some of our value region. A9 can easily jam cos it only loses to 1 combos of AA and 1 combo of 99. and he will have to bet/call some 98 and some other Ax 1 pairs that went for the thin river raise, at low frequencies.

interesting hand. fwiw I wouldn't even consider folding A9 cos of how few combos, if any, beat this hand. 98 I would start to consider folding and would use either a player read (which isn't applicable in anonymous games obv) or an rng to influence my decision.

Jeff_ of course his red line is up have you seen his play style? lol

it's common on these boards where the run out has a made hand on the board. for example there is a 5 card straight in a 3bet pot where neither players has a ton of the straights (45678.) probably doesn't happen if you check down in a 3bp to the river, but when the pot is fairly large then you just jam as OOP and IP always calls cos you are chopping so often and you don't wanna check to IP to let him polarize and check back a bunch of chops and then bet 9x/chops at balanced frequencies. cos then your call becomes much worse as you lose 2/3 of the time, or whatever it is based on pot odds/bluffing frequencies and the other 1/3 you chop or win with whatever 9x you have.