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

Time Link to 00:14:39

I am not sure really sure why we want to charge ourselves for draws. Not many live players fold pairs. It is also possible that we are drawing dead. In other words, I am leaning towards a fold more than a CR or a call just because the way the flop erupted. It is very possible that the bettor has something like AK with maybe an A of clubs and the initial caller has now a fd that he wants to get a free card on the turn.

Great vid as always. I love how DeathDonkey sees and explains the logic behind bad players' actions, very important and helpful.

Time Link to 00:35:00

DD,

If we assume that we took the standard line on the flop of c/r, with any hand that is in our c/r range including the 43dd, AJ, KJ, KQ etc., what would your checking range be on the turn when this card hits?

Is it nearly 100% if our opponent is either a good, thinking player or slightly passive? For instance, some overly passive players are simply not raising a bare A here if bet into because they are scared, and checking behind with a hand worse than a pair of Aces. Similarly, alot of good players are not raising a bare A in this spot because they think "the Ace didn't scare you, huh?", thereby depriving us of the opportunity of getting in multiple bets with 2 pair plus hands. However, they will bet any Ace, and likely call down to a c/r, as well as take some free cards when they should with hands such as KT.

What if our opponent is overly aggressive? Should we be playing slightly more exploitatively by continuing to lead at the turn hoping to 3! with our AT+ part of our range? Or, do you prefer to still check 100% of our range in order to induce bluffs when we have the middle part of our range (KT), and get in a c/r with our AT+ hands?

Just interested to hear your thoughts on the matter.

DD,

If we assume that we took the standard line on the flop of c/r, with any hand that is in our c/r range including the 43dd, AJ, KJ, KQ etc., what would your checking range be on the turn when this card hits?

Is it nearly 100% if our opponent is either a good, thinking player or slightly passive? For instance, some overly passive players are simply not raising a bare A here if bet into because they are scared, and checking behind with a hand worse than a pair of Aces. Similarly, alot of good players are not raising a bare A in this spot because they think "the Ace didn't scare you, huh?", thereby depriving us of the opportunity of getting in multiple bets with 2 pair plus hands. However, they will bet any Ace, and likely call down to a c/r, as well as take some free cards when they should with hands such as KT.

What if our opponent is overly aggressive? Should we be playing slightly more exploitatively by continuing to lead at the turn hoping to 3! with our AT+ part of our range? Or, do you prefer to still check 100% of our range in order to induce bluffs when we have the middle part of our range (KT), and get in a c/r with our AT+ hands?

Just interested to hear your thoughts on the matter.

I think checking the ace turn is good with hands worth 1-2 bets...Tx, 88, 6x, maybe even a hand as strong as J7. I'm betting with my draws and any hands that are comfy putting in 3 bets... namely decent Jx and up.

If I'm the button, I don't think I'm leading my entire range on this flop... it's ambitious to think we can get two folds on this board texture, so I think I'm taking a free card with my complete air/backdoor draw hands like Qc3c. I might also add A2-A5 to my check-back range to give myself a few hands that can call at least a turn bet, but I'm not sure if that's the right adjustment to make in a 3-way pot. My point is that if his b/c range on this flop is made up of "something", either a draw or a hand with showdown value, then the ace doesn't really hit him all that hard. He has less combos of top pair or better than he has combos of lower pairs, all of which are certainly calling the turn and which we lose value against when we have J9.

Furthermore, his turn range still has maybe something like 20-25% draws, so we have a compelling reason to continue with draws of our own (of which we have tons to choose from). Every value hand we add to our turn betting range allows us to 3barrel with more drawing hands.

Move the button to the HJ, and I think we can consider expanding our checking range considerably.

I am not sure really sure why we want to charge ourselves for draws. Not many live players fold pairs. It is also possible that we are drawing dead. In other words, I am leaning towards a fold more than a CR or a call just because the way the flop erupted. It is very possible that the bettor has something like AK with maybe an A of clubs and the initial caller has now a fd that he wants to get a free card on the turn.

I don't really agree with this, live players (all players really) can easily talk themselves into exploitable folds, people in general are very incapable of holding onto a set strategy and often just 'wing it'. Sometimes the biggest fish make the most surprising laydowns after making bad calldowns all night, they are unpredictable.

DD,

If we assume that we took the standard line on the flop of c/r, with any hand that is in our c/r range including the 43dd, AJ, KJ, KQ etc., what would your checking range be on the turn when this card hits?

Is it nearly 100% if our opponent is either a good, thinking player or slightly passive? For instance, some overly passive players are simply not raising a bare A here if bet into because they are scared, and checking behind with a hand worse than a pair of Aces. Similarly, alot of good players are not raising a bare A in this spot because they think "the Ace didn't scare you, huh?", thereby depriving us of the opportunity of getting in multiple bets with 2 pair plus hands. However, they will bet any Ace, and likely call down to a c/r, as well as take some free cards when they should with hands such as KT.

What if our opponent is overly aggressive? Should we be playing slightly more exploitatively by continuing to lead at the turn hoping to 3! with our AT+ part of our range? Or, do you prefer to still check 100% of our range in order to induce bluffs when we have the middle part of our range (KT), and get in a c/r with our AT+ hands?

Just interested to hear your thoughts on the matter.

Good questions / thoughts. Yeah I like checking the ace nearly 100% for the reasons you stated. It's basically the worst card to see range on range, and good players will play well against us if we bet I think. And as you said even though we can get greedy and bet / 3 bet our monsters vs over aggro bad villains, the times we are weakish and want to induce a bluff / avoid getting raised make checking still attractive for some semblance of balance. Though I will say there are some fish (particularly online) that are more apt to bluff raise us than bluff bet here.

Time Link to 00:09:00

I feel this is a fold pre flop, and definitely a fold on flop. An old poker coach told me to told plain old open end straight draws on 2 flush boards and I feel that advice is sound.

An old poker coach told me

I love this argument

Let's give a range of hands we could be up against:
Let's say Pocket pairs AA through 77.
Unsuited cards of: AK, AQ, AJ, AT, KQ, KJ and QJ.
Suited cards: All 12 suited aces, KQs, KJs, KTs, K9s, QJs, QTs, JTs, J9s, T9, 89, 78

So that's 8 pairs, 7 offsuits, and 23 suited combos.

Pair combos= 8 x 6 combos of each= 48
Offsuit combos= 7x 12= 84
Suited Combos= 23 x 4= 92

That's 224 total combos, 92 of which are suited. So roughly 40% of the tables hand range are suited cards. We have 4 opponents, so the most typical distribution is 2 of them being suited. That means half the time there's a flush draw competing with you straight draw, which can be quite expensive. Considering this draw is marginal to begin with, it's a long term loser with a flush draw out.

preston there are a ton of things wrong with the analysis you just did...

- you can't just count 6 combos of all the pocket pairs you included (and similarly 12 combos of all offsuit cards and 4 combos of suited cards) because they fail to take into account the cards that are blocked by the board. It's a king high board so for example there are only 12 ways someone can hold AK instead of the normal 16, and 3 ways they can hold KK. Not to mention your analysis totally ignores the betting actions taken, its like you made your decision about how likely a flush is out just based on the fact that 5 people saw the flop, ignoring the bets and raises, and how those actions affect the ranges.

-Even if your combos were right, your conclusion that on average there is a flush draw out there half the time is completely wrong and just bad logic. You count 92 suited combos, but only 1/4 of those would be suited in clubs, not to mention that the presence of two clubs on the board reduces the combos of two-club hands people could be holding even further (put another way, its more likely based on dealt cards that someone holds a hand suited in diamonds than suited in clubs once the flop comes with two clubs and no diamond). Your method of deciding the typical distribution of 4 opponents is that two will hold suited cards is pointless and handwaving, you can do the actual analysis without making such a leap / estimation that is totally unnecessary to figuring out the % chance someone holds a flush draw. It is a total red herring that tries to make your point seem more correct by estimating heavily in your favor.

There definitely needs to be tempered excitement for an open ended straight draw when a flush draw is present, but not to the extent that your bad numbers dictate, and also Doug and I specifically discussed the villains and how likely they would be to play flush draws aggressively on the flop.

Actually, my villain hand ranges were preflop given the action. There was 1 raise, so I figured a reasonably tight game and assigned hand ranges based on what I see in my games. The preflop ranges could be wider. For instance, I could say prople would play any pair preflop instead of just 77+, but as the opponent's hand range widens you get a lot more suited cards. A friend of mine told me a $40/80 hand where he played in a single raised pot with K2 suited- which wasn't part of my assigned range. Really, I think my numbers are low because people just love suited hands preflop and I could have thrown in a lot more.

So, in my estimation of their typical single raised preflop range, I came up with 40%. This seems a reasonable estimate. Once the flop comes, that preflop estimate could be fine tuned a bit, but it's still a reasonable finger in the wind, and hardly skewed in any manner. You don't seem to understand, how I arrived at saying their's a flush draw out half the time. I simply said half of the four opponents will have a suited holding roughly half the time. Since there are 4, we could estimate it at 2 opponents holding a suited holding. A suited holding will match the boards two suit roughly one time in 4, so that means that one of our estimated 2 suited opponents will hold the flush draw in question 2 x 25% = 50% of the time.

These estimations are rough, but there not flawed or skewed. But even if the occassion is as small as 25-33% of the time, that's going to have detrimental effect on your draw, and it seems to me a pretty clear losing bet. Meanwhile, you suggesting that he find out on the flop action what the likelihood of the flush draw being out is, but that seems an expensive way to play it. What's the plan? Put in a net and fold if it comes back capped?

I could see that skillful play might make this hand possibly break-even, but who needs the variance? It's a fold.

OK, here are some hand equities I ran at two dimes.

With the board of 6 7 K , 5 8 has a equity of:
34% against A K
32% against A K
20% against A K

So even if there's no suited holding out against you, having a flush draw out costs you a couple of points of equity if we assume that someone has a high rank of that suit. AK is a rare holding, but it's not all that rare for someone to have a flush draw and someone else to hold a high pair on this board. In those cases, your equity drops to 20%.

So let's average these possibilities. Let's say that you have 32% equity when there's no competing flush draw and 20% equity when there is.

If there's a flush draw out 50% of the time, then your equity is going to be 32% x .5 + 20% x .5 = 26%
If there's a flush draw out 33% of the time, then your equity is going to be 32% x .66 + 20% x .33 = 28%
If there's a flush draw out 25% of the time, then your equity is going to be 32% x .75 + 20% x.25 = 29%

So the hand's equity lies somewhere between 26-29%. If all four opponents call all the way, then you're getting correct odds to call, but that eventuality makes a competing flush draw more and more likely- which means your true equity is back down at 20% for that case. If you're up against 2 opponents, then you're losing money on your calls because you're getting odds of two to 1 versus a 29% best case hand equity which translates to 2.4 to 1 against.

So you'd need either a large pre flop pot to play, or some fold equity for this to not be a losing play. Having four opponents makes fold equity hard to come by in limit, although that was what he achieved in this particular hand.

I don't really have the time or inclination to make another long post pointing out the repeated mistakes in your analysis (there are many), so I'll point out one really important one and then make a conclusion. AK of clubs is the absolute worst case scenario where our equity is very low, at 20%, you then use the 20% number as our equity for every situation in which a flush draw is out, highly inaccurate.

Despite that and many other errors you arrive at a conclusion that we have at least 26% equity, and thanks to the preflop action we are getting *at least* 13:2 to continue on the flop.

Dd. I'm not making any mistakes in my analysis, you're just being lazy and not reading my posts. I said AK of clubs was a rare holding, but, as I said, it's effectively the same if one player has a pair and one has a flush draw. Secondly, I'm just validating work Mike Caro already did. So the likelihood that we're both making mistakes in our analysis is pretty remote. Furthermore, what are you basing your advice on? I'm the only one producing numbers here and you're just throwing up your hands and saying "whatever dude"

Also, 13:2 are the odds to call the flop. The equity from two dimes is based on seeing the river.
If I had some incentive, I could do a really detailed analysis of preflop hand analysis hands on the flop, but I'm not the coach here. So I don't really get much out of it.