Poker Video: MTT/SNG by vandweller (Mid Stakes)

Time Link to 00:05:50

Hilarious!

But just in case any newbies are following along and don't know this.... it's virtually always -EV to explain your logic to the person berating you in chat. If BUSSSSSS thinks vandweller is a donkey, that's going to be great for van.

Also, marking yourself as a knowledgeable regular to the others at the table is rarely wise.

Presumably vandweller knows all this and was joking, or believes BUSSSSSS won't know how to use the advice, or just thinks the fun of tweaking BUSSSSSS is worth a few pennies EV, or whatever.

You might have a individual judgment that your response might send someone to tilt, but against unknowns berating you just dummy up, take the abuse, and think of the profit it's generating.

Bonehead vandweller messes up the first hand. I set the blinds in SNG Wiz at 150/300 when the actual hand was 100/200. All the main points stand however, and the hand is still a call. See?

http://img716.imageshack.us/img716/4048/bussss.jpg

Also I refer to my HUD stats without explaining what they are. It's

VPIP / PFR / # HANDS
Open Raise SB / Open Raise BTN / Fold BB to Steal
CBet / Fold to CBET

But just in case any newbies are following along and don't know this.... it's virtually always -EV to explain your logic to the person berating you in chat. If BUSSSSSS thinks vandweller is a donkey, that's going to be great for van.

Also, marking yourself as a knowledgeable regular to the others at the table is rarely wise.

Presumably vandweller knows all this and was joking, or believes BUSSSSSS won't know how to use the advice, or just thinks the fun of tweaking BUSSSSSS is worth a few pennies EV, or whatever.

You might have a individual judgment that your response might send someone to tilt, but against unknowns berating you just dummy up, take the abuse, and think of the profit it's generating.

There's always going to be a group of solid regs and less solid regtards who will get a good read on you just from repeated exposure. I think the regtards see me as decent but way over-aggressive in spots because they don't actually understand equity and risk aversion all that fully and are just playing "monkey-see-monkey-do" poker. Unfortunately, you are going to educate the solid players just by playing and there's not much you can do about that besides not saying a word.

Generally speaking I don't talk anything strategy at the table. If someone mentions my play I just say something vague like "Very lucky today." or nothing at all. It doesn't help that I routinely get "OMG are you the REAL vandweller? ur vids are liek so sick" when I'm playing.

Mostly though if someone else mentions your play, it's a huge tell. If the stacks are at shove depth and a guy says "Is that your only move?" or "This isn't even poker" or "You risked your entire tournament with Q8 lol," that is a massive amount of information to betray, and I'm not going to miss it. So if you are the one giving out free info, there's usually going to be someone listening and waiting to use it against you.

I do make it a point to needle players who are winners but are whiners (no names here, but an example might be featured in the first hand) when they complain about thier beats. I don't know if this accrues to me in anything more than entertainment value but it seems that anything I can do to irritate or plant seeds of self-doubt in those who have a positive equity share at the table can only be to the good.

sigh, time link not working for me.

exporting hands from HEM to SNGWiz (8:25), i dont think it is possible from the replayer, but you can select the hand on the hand list(same screen where you mark the hands), right click copy to clipboard and then click on the paste button on the wiz.

Great vid Vandweller. I'd much appreciate it if you continued with the rest of your hands for at least part 2.

Thanks again.

Time Link to 00:22:04

The reasoning for how to extract value from drawing hands stated here is flawed, though. Sure, if he's on a live draw, and you raise, he's still going to call and the card that completes his draw is still going to come in, so that outcome doesn't change. However, you get value all the times it misses. Unless your read is that he's inclined to bluff a 3rd barrel of 1477 into a 3950 pot, you stand to miss that value.

Granted, you miss value from weaker (dead) draws like A7, A6, A9, and made hands like the case king, if he would fold to a raise but bet or call the river. But that's a different matter than what you seemed to be discussing in the video.

(This seems like a fundamental big-bet poker concept, so I'm wondering if I'm misunderstanding your point in the video.)

I don't mind the flat call on the flop with top set, because top set really does cripple the deck and you have no reason to think he has the flush or straight draw. But when the turn puts 2 flush draws and 3 to a straight out there I'm probably happy to shove and expect to get called by a lot of his bet-bet range.

I wrote the above before seeing the spoiler. His 3 barrel bluff may indicate that I'm undervaluing the line you took, but of course it's a question of ranges. If he's always always 3-barrelling any ace-high that he would have called preflop, then you probably played it perfectly no matter how scary the board gets, because now total trash that can't call a raise makes up most of his range throughout the hand.

Time Link to 00:16:35

Im not sure about this. We're giving him a chance to hit his hand if he doesn't has us already beat and then we shove. Basically he has to fold hands that has us beat for this to be a good play and im not sure if that's the case. It's true that our play should look stronger with a line like this but people don't like folding pairs from my own experience.

I guess it's fine. Just threw some thoughts out there Smile

And agree with AKQJT. I was going to comment on that aswell but he hit us with a wall of text.

Haha, I can be long-winded sometimes. Any volunteers to be my editor?

Time Link to 00:04:11

not a fan of vans but that is one awesome van!

Im not sure about this. We're giving him a chance to hit his hand if he doesn't has us already beat and then we shove. Basically he has to fold hands that has us beat for this to be a good play and im not sure if that's the case. It's true that our play should look stronger with a line like this but people don't like folding pairs from my own experience.

I would like this play more if there would be a legit draw on the board and still firing on every turn. People tend not to let go good draws on the flop, but they will drop them a lot easier if their draw doesn't complete on the turn. On the other hand, if the opponent would be on a top pair and 3rd to a flush comes, the turn would be a lot scarier for him to call. On this occasion, he would have to be on a stone cold bluff, because we bet on a board that's perfect on bluffing, but he should drop his bluff after our bet. If he is bad, we could have value from two overcards, which makes our play here terrible. Also, if he has a T here, we would have two streets to catch up with him.

By the way, now that I've finished the video, I really do like this format. I find HH reviews a lot easier to deal with than live play, frankly. In live play, i'm always trying to rewind by 45 seconds to find the hand that the narrator is talking about, now that it's over. In HH review, Hero's hold cards are still visible and I can follow the action.

I especially like the postflop hands, preflop hands with limpers, and pretty much anything that isn't just a simple SNGWiz calculation. Not that there's not value to seeing how a pro uses Wiz, also.

And I'd never thought about the technique for marking hands while I'm playing, even though it's pretty obvious. Already using it now.

Thanks Van for a great video. I love how you play situations with the stacks-setup.

Time Link to 00:44:46

I c/bet probably every time here and I take the pot down most of the time. Well over most of the time really.

I won't argue your play because I play $12's and not the higher stakes as in yourself.

What I really want to say is that you can't be afraid to bet your KK every time an Ace hits the board. Maybe it is just a lower stakes thing but I feel like I make a lot more chips not being scared here.

What I really want to say is that you can't be afraid to bet your KK every time an Ace hits the board. Maybe it is just a lower stakes thing but I feel like I make a lot more chips not being scared here.

It's not necessarily a matter of being scared, though. It's a matter of extracting value, and considering what hands (there may be some) will give you value if you cbet on an ace-high flop.

Whereas many hands have 6 outs to draw out on AK unimproved, so you might wish to cbet and take down the pot right there, most are drawing near-dead to KK if they didn't pair the ace-high flop.