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Poker Video: Limit Hold'Em by DeathDonkey (High Stakes)

Time Link to 00:09:37

Great video. I'm pretty sure this series is going to be thoroughly awesome.

The AJ on KT995 hand (http://www.deucescracked.com/videos/989-Episode-One?seek=577): At first glance I thought there were enough whiffed draws to make this a call, but looking at the combos, I think there just aren't enough hands for him (her?) to bluff.

There are only 19 unpaired combos in a typical CO range that are not ace high. Getting 6.5:1 you need them to be value betting fewer than 124 combos. There are about 108 combos of JJ+ which I'd assume he always value bets. There are 33 combos of Tx, and 36 underpairs to the 9. So if he's value betting any pair here, then it's a pretty clear fold, unless he's also bluffing Ax. To make it a call I think he needs to value bet Tx less than half the time, or frequently turn Ax into a bluff.

Time Link to 00:34:57

The Q9s hand.. What about him having Q2-Q8? We beat those and he would check most of those Queens preflop. Combined with the possibility of him having a SD I think I call but its def close and we obv lose most of the time.

Edit: ah damn you mention that a min later ^^

The Q9s hand.. What about him having Q2-Q8? We beat those and he would check most of those Queens preflop. Combined with the possibility of him having a SD I think I call but its def close and we obv lose most of the time.

Edit: ah damn you mention that a min later ^^

Yeah, I think there are a ton of straight draw combos in his preflop checking range. 98 he probably raises often, but 96, 86, 84, 64, 63, 43 are 15 combos each. Even if you discount the gutshots, there are still 30 OESD combos. There are only 86 combos of 7x, and that includes A7, K7, all the suited 7s. Getting 8:1 on the river, he needs to be raising the turn with only like 10% of his straight draws to make this a call. That's ignoring flushes, flush draws, Qx, and 5x, which combine to weight it more towards a call, imo, although they may just wash each other out.

Pretty sure the hand was made up, but fnupple is a beast so maybe not

Why would it be made up? Seems like a standard brocathmel hand from the old Party Poker days.

This is Kenny from the video. I think that DeathDonkey and OTR analyzed the hand well after the fact and JayBeastie and GiantBuddha pretty much covered it in the comments.

FTR, I do know that DD likes to limp/call with a lot of his hands BvB and knew that at the time of the hand. I also knew that he would c/r a pretty balanced range (mixing in air, pairs, and draws) in order to protect those limps and as such I would be playing a significant number of my draws with no showdown value in this same manner. I think that folding any Q there is pretty bad, but especially one as strong as Q9.

On the river, if I have air, I basically haaave to fire. DD can have missed flush draws, missed straight draws, K highs, etc. If you add your Q's to your folding range, it makes it waaaaaay too wide, imo. On the AJ call-down hand, you guys basically called down because you had one of the only hands in your call-down range. If you aren't calling down Q9 on a Q7575 board Blind vs. Blind what are you actually calling down with?

Anyway, I can reveal what I had whenever DD or OTR gives me the Ok.

P.S. Great video. I only wish that my 99 check can be edited to a bet. What an awful missed v-bet that was.

Time Link to 00:19:37

Maybe... but the board is rainbow and the action went we bet someone raises and someone cold calls. It seems very likely that someone has an ace in which case we're facing terrible RIO as well as just having terrible equity in the hand.

Even vs. 2 killer ranges (33, some 9's and non-3betting aces, in SB and that range - the 9's) we've still got over 9% equity. The RIO is really only there vs. AJ/AT and sets (not a big chunk of anyone's range given pf). My big concern is % chance BB is raising the turn because it eats some of our peeling opportunities. That being said he needs 33 or Ax that 2 pairs to be raising the turn so we probably are only getting raised 7 - 10%.

Making joe happy w/time stamp.

Lol - in the Q9 hand my inernet lagged as the turn card dealt and my immediate thought was "wtf river can you possibly fold?" then the 5 bings off haha. I don't fold there in a blind battle when he can put you on a wide range and straight draws missed and such. But I'm really curious how my WTSD in those spots is doing over a huge sample.

43min:13sec:
XR A6o on 34Tr board. Can you explain the bluff here to me?

It seems to me that you still have enough equity to actually see a turn than to turn your hand into a total bluff?
Also, cc SB range pretty much beats you and he already called the c-bet.
It's just so unconventionally DeathDonkey-ish, who peels lotsa flops with these types of hands (+better) to turn these hands into a bluff?
Also OTR's comment was funny: "yeah, you're getting him to fold... uh... I don't know, what are we targeting?"

Even vs. 2 killer ranges (33, some 9's and non-3betting aces, in SB and that range - the 9's) we've still got over 9% equity. The RIO is really only there vs. AJ/AT and sets (not a big chunk of anyone's range given pf). My big concern is % chance BB is raising the turn because it eats some of our peeling opportunities. That being said he needs 33 or Ax that 2 pairs to be raising the turn so we probably are only getting raised 7 - 10%.

Chuck we're talking about having JTdd on the Ax9d3x board right? I'm pretty much incapable of folding pairs so I personally do have RIO in that spot

This is Kenny from the video. I think that DeathDonkey and OTR analyzed the hand well after the fact and JayBeastie and GiantBuddha pretty much covered it in the comments.

FTR, I do know that DD likes to limp/call with a lot of his hands BvB and knew that at the time of the hand. I also knew that he would c/r a pretty balanced range (mixing in air, pairs, and draws) in order to protect those limps and as such I would be playing a significant number of my draws with no showdown value in this same manner. I think that folding any Q there is pretty bad, but especially one as strong as Q9.

On the river, if I have air, I basically haaave to fire. DD can have missed flush draws, missed straight draws, K highs, etc. If you add your Q's to your folding range, it makes it waaaaaay too wide, imo. On the AJ call-down hand, you guys basically called down because you had one of the only hands in your call-down range. If you aren't calling down Q9 on a Q7575 board Blind vs. Blind what are you actually calling down with?

Anyway, I can reveal what I had whenever DD or OTR gives me the Ok.

P.S. Great video. I only wish that my 99 check can be edited to a bet. What an awful missed v-bet that was.

I mean... I keep going back and forth on the fold in my head. Yes I think it's pretty bad from an exploitablitity perspective, but I wonder how often we're beating value bets in this particular spot? My guess is that we aren't actually beating too many of them as Q6- probably aren't doing well enough against our continuing range to raise the turn in general...

That siad there are those pesky straight draws. I think what it might come down to is how often you're waiting for the turn with flopped flush draws vs. picked up flush draws, which made a flush...

On the whole I wish we had called in that spot, and I'd love to know what you had in that spot in this particular instance.

Thanks Kenny

Agree with OTR and thanks for posting Kenny, happy to hear results if you want to share!

43min:13sec:
XR A6o on 34Tr board. Can you explain the bluff here to me?

It seems to me that you still have enough equity to actually see a turn than to turn your hand into a total bluff?
Also, cc SB range pretty much beats you and he already called the c-bet.
It's just so unconventionally DeathDonkey-ish, who peels lotsa flops with these types of hands (+better) to turn these hands into a bluff?
Also OTR's comment was funny: "yeah, you're getting him to fold... uh... I don't know, what are we targeting?"

I wouldn't call this a bluff so much as a overrepresent my hand and get him to fold a similar quality hand or a hand with too many live outs to fold if he could see my cards. It's just a spot where we are definitely continuing and given the third player we might be able to get the PFR to make a mistake against our hand, and every now and then he even folds a better hand than ours.

I'd say that your average 30/60+ player is going to wait for the turn to raise with either a flush draw or straight draw way too often here for it to even matter if you beat any of the hands in their value range.

And here you beat all of my queens and possibly something I was FSDR and am now turning into a bluff (44 or something).

I think that the main factor that widens my range is the number of straight draws that DD can have in his c/r flop, bet turn range here. If I have something with decent equity and no showdown value, it's a pretty decent spot to re-bluff in a pot that grew quickly.

But with all that said, I had 79o for the binked 2-outer and you saved a bet. So I could be wrong and you have a disgusting read on me or something.

I'd say that your average 30/60+ player is going to wait for the turn to raise with either a flush draw or straight draw way too often here for it to even matter if you beat any of the hands in their value range.

And here you beat all of my queens and possibly something I was FSDR and am now turning into a bluff (44 or something).

I think that the main factor that widens my range is the number of straight draws that DD can have in his c/r flop, bet turn range here. If I have something with decent equity and no showdown value, it's a pretty decent spot to re-bluff in a pot that grew quickly.

But with all that said, I had 79o for the binked 2-outer and you saved a bet. So I could be wrong and you have a disgusting read on me or something.

Gosh we play so good...

Serious question for you Kenny: are you raising your worst Qs on the turn in this spot? What's our range of hands that you gain an extra bet of value from (ie not draws) and is that range large enough to make raising with Q2 correct?

Gosh we play so good...

Serious question for you Kenny: are you raising your worst Qs on the turn in this spot? What's our range of hands that you gain an extra bet of value from (ie not draws) and is that range large enough to make raising with Q2 correct?

If I did raise a queen in this spot, the weakest one would be Q6, where the kicker plays (I usually won't raise it). So that leaves "maybe" a raise with Q8, or, effectively, no queens in my turn raising range (bigger queens raise preflop). So I agree with the hand reading in the video that turn raise + river bet is either a 7, a backdoor flush, or air, because I would never expect DD to fold a queen on the river and I would have to consider the majority of DD's flop check-raise range for value to be queens and sevens.

Time Link to 00:06:49

This is a spot where I often find myself calling hoping that he'll barrel the river UI, but I'm beginning to think that raising is the better play.

Really, once the ace hits, the only hands that I'm going to be calling with that I didn't raise the flop are Ax and maybe some pocket pairs that I either was waiting for the turn or were babies like 44.

I think that any thinking villain realizes that you're not peeling this turn lightly at all, and he'd have to be pretty dumb to bet this river with QJs or whatever we're hoping him to barrel with. You both agreed that c/f was the play he should have made on the river even after he made a pair of 5's. So, in reality, we shouldn't really be getting any more value out of our hand if we're ahead by calling down unless he happens to have TT-KK.

That being said, people at the mid stakes games (I can't speak for 30/60 since I don't play that high ) definitely bluff raise a turned ace with some frequency. I don't think it matters so much whether YOU bluff raise this card, as long as the villain knows that it happens sometimes. It's a spot where you would have to have a few thousand hands with the guy at 6max before he'd have that kind of read.

So raising the turn and barreling the river definitely has merit, imo. It's an exploitative play that takes advantage of the "zomg calldown" attitude that a lot of the regs (including myself) seem to have. Villain will call down with any pair usually, and sometimes even KJ/KQ, and it's a spot where you can very comfortably lay your hand down to a raise at any point.