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Poker Video: No Limit Hold'Em by Gman (High Stakes)

Time Link to 00:24:14

Table 2 /UR w/ JJ

Just some minutes ago he caught you bluffing with the exact same sizing on the river. FWIW, don't you think he might be as smart as to know that you are smart enough to look the same fact, which would result in turning down your bluffing-frequency (a) and trying to look exactly the same as w/ K3 (b), when he now knows that you know he's supposed to bluff-catch just because all draws busted.

I hope you can still follow me here, what I am referring to is something you said shortly after the K3 hand that you shouldn't be bluffing for say 1/2 PS a lot in general but following the match and the thought processes I believe he might have levelled himself into a call on the river once you had bet smaller. If that happened this would be again great for you as you could just turn around bet-sizings accordings to boards etc. and just out-think him for at least a while.

Is there any special reason behind your big-sizing and what's your thoughts on the aforemetioned?

Thanks in advance, again pretty cool stuff so far!

Time Link to 00:26:06

Table 1 /UL w/ 85s

You say the way he plays his hand is ok. Well, I don't necessarily agree on that. I believe that your checking-back range consists of a lot of air here. I guess you'd most likely bet straight draws and gutshots, not always, but mostly it seems since he started to fold a bit more often to cbets. Looking onto his range in comparison to yours, him having air here and you having air or SD value, I'd say that he should probably bet/bet or x/c + x/r the river, which I prefer a lot.

His hand is the nuts definately and if he was thinking on how to get value from the very bottom of your range, it's most likely simply x/c here since you might have air which bets the turn and the river as well, while you will easily fold air to his very strong x/r, probably as well A high etc.

Also, if he had a draw he could easily expect to be good with some T-high/9-high hand here, plus you are most likely to bet your air twice anyway, which would be good for him in terms of bluff-x/r the river with busted draws. What you think?

Time Link to 00:28:32

You are 3betting 22 here vs a minraise 120bb deep. Villain was folding to 3bets 65% and not aggro 4betting.

My standard vs a 3X open would def be a 3bet (for reasons you know), but vs a minraise I would mostly flat in this spot vs this opponent.
My reasoning: he isn't 4betting aggro so a 5bet is less +ev than normal + the 4bet will be smaller do to minraise so less money to steal. He might be starting to adjust to your 3bets so less fold equity which you need. And vs a minraise 120bb deep I think you can play 22 pretty good by flatcalling.

I don't really remember how he was playing single raised and 3bet pots postflop, so maybe there lies your reason? Or do you think it is standard only looking at preflop tendencies?

Time Link to 00:31:00

would you ever overbet bluff in this spot with A high to get him off a chop?

Hey guys. Just realized this video was aired, so sorry for the delay.

Ya I know exactly what you are saying, and clearly we're talking about leveling here. Long story short, there are plenty of times where I just don't know. Specifically in this case, I just really didn't know if I would be called often enough w/ a 1/2 pot bet to make that more profitable than the 85% PSB I made here. Thus, I just went w/ my default play. Although there is logic behind what you are saying, I could give several plausible arguments that would make him want to call a big bet here.

The thing to take away from the above is that compared to some coaches, leveling, metagame, and gameflow are higher up in their relevance in my street by street decision making process. But even then, there is always a scale with this sort of thing. At times I feel very confident a certain line or betsize will induce whatever action I want from my opponent. Other times, I really have no idea, and at those times I think it is often a mistake to make a hero play.

Table 2 /UR w/ JJ

Just some minutes ago he caught you bluffing with the exact same sizing on the river. FWIW, don't you think he might be as smart as to know that you are smart enough to look the same fact, which would result in turning down your bluffing-frequency (a) and trying to look exactly the same as w/ K3 (b), when he now knows that you know he's supposed to bluff-catch just because all draws busted.

I hope you can still follow me here, what I am referring to is something you said shortly after the K3 hand that you shouldn't be bluffing for say 1/2 PS a lot in general but following the match and the thought processes I believe he might have levelled himself into a call on the river once you had bet smaller. If that happened this would be again great for you as you could just turn around bet-sizings accordings to boards etc. and just out-think him for at least a while.

Is there any special reason behind your big-sizing and what's your thoughts on the aforemetioned?

Thanks in advance, again pretty cool stuff so far!

Table 1 /UL w/ 85s

You say the way he plays his hand is ok. Well, I don't necessarily agree on that. I believe that your checking-back range consists of a lot of air here. I guess you'd most likely bet straight draws and gutshots, not always, but mostly it seems since he started to fold a bit more often to cbets. Looking onto his range in comparison to yours, him having air here and you having air or SD value, I'd say that he should probably bet/bet or x/c + x/r the river, which I prefer a lot.

His hand is the nuts definately and if he was thinking on how to get value from the very bottom of your range, it's most likely simply x/c here since you might have air which bets the turn and the river as well, while you will easily fold air to his very strong x/r, probably as well A high etc.

Also, if he had a draw he could easily expect to be good with some T-high/9-high hand here, plus you are most likely to bet your air twice anyway, which would be good for him in terms of bluff-x/r the river with busted draws. What you think?

I read your post a few times and mostly get what you are saying, but a couple of your sentences are run-ons haha.

First, I think his best line here is just to lead the turn and river. You are correct that w/ my total air I am v often giving up and even slowing down w/ a hand like Kx sometimes, and definitely like TT and gutshots most of the time. And as I have talked about in other videos, in really isn't that tough to balance here against the vast majority of players.

Next, I think you are overestimating the likelyhood in general of a HSNL having Qx here. The reality is that taking the line he took screams of Qx so much that many good players are a lot more likely to turn a weak made hand or an OOP float into a bluff here. Yes based on how he had played I felt pretty confident this was Qx, but against an unknown good player I really would be less confident.

Further, he was good enough that I assume that he realizes that in general this is a spot that I would look to give up w/ my air hands on the river. That doesn't mean c/c down and either c/c or c/r a blank river is incorrect per se, but it does make it a bit less appealing. This is very opponent dependent.

Finally, c/r this river w/ JT let's say on a blank is kind of a cool line, but you really have to be convinced that a) he is bluffing here some b) he is valuebetting <Qx here some, and c) that you would play Qx this way. In many matches I play a-c all apply which would make this a cool line if I played a minimal/non-SD hand this way (pretty rare but something I will def do from time to time to mess w/ my opponents hand reading when I hit) and the board bricked off.

You are 3betting 22 here vs a minraise 120bb deep. Villain was folding to 3bets 65% and not aggro 4betting.

My standard vs a 3X open would def be a 3bet (for reasons you know), but vs a minraise I would mostly flat in this spot vs this opponent.
My reasoning: he isn't 4betting aggro so a 5bet is less +ev than normal + the 4bet will be smaller do to minraise so less money to steal. He might be starting to adjust to your 3bets so less fold equity which you need. And vs a minraise 120bb deep I think you can play 22 pretty good by flatcalling.

I don't really remember how he was playing single raised and 3bet pots postflop, so maybe there lies your reason? Or do you think it is standard only looking at preflop tendencies?

he isn't 4betting aggro so a 5bet is less +ev than normal + the 4bet will be smaller do to minraise so less money to steal.

Your reasoning is logical and correct as it relates to it being less profitable to 3b/5b shove PF.

He might be starting to adjust to your 3bets so less fold equity which you need. And vs a minraise 120bb deep I think you can play 22 pretty good by flatcalling.

This I don't agree with as much. This is an okay reason not to go crazy 3 betting T2ss every time, but 22 may be the best "bluff" 3 betting hand there is or close to it.

And sure you can play 22 fine getting 3:1 PF and having a huge stack to pot ratio but...

The key here imo and in many other situations is to focus on the relative weight of specific information. In this case, the fact that he folds to 67% of 3 bets alone is often plenty good enough of a reason for me to snap 3 bet 22-55, even if some other pieces of info make it more appealing to flat. And yes, he was playing pretty fit or fold IP in 3 bet pots.

Let me give another example that I was discussing w/ a student the other day. Let's say you are playing a 3B pot IP and decide to call the flop and turn w/ a bluff catching hand. His turn bet interestingly was only 1/2 pot when he usually bet 66% of the pot in this situation. Thus when we get to the river and he shoves a total blank, it is a 1.5X pot size bet.

So its either a) he makes that small bet on the turn w/ a made hand hoping the river bricks and we will interpret his turn + river betsizing as weak

or b) he does this w/ a draw/air and decides the best way to get us to fold is to overbet.

How much of your decision making process should be based on the above? Against some players, a ton. Against other players, board texture, player tendencies, and gameflow are all much more important. I won't pretend this is an easy thing to teach, but what I will say is learning to assign an order of importance to each of the pieces of info you have at your disposal is a massively important skill.

Oh yeah, and most smart players fall into category a. Except the really smart ones, where as usual, just flip a coin or something

would you ever overbet bluff in this spot with A high to get him off a chop?

I feel like A high is too strong of a hand to overbet bluff here. 2 things:

1) A high is a reasonably small part of his overall range. When we have A high, we rate to have the best hand usually and are chopping somewhat infrequently, so I feel like a small valuebet is in order against some players. There are other spots like A226K where overbetting Ax to get him off a chop makes way more sense.

2) The other thing that goes into overbetting to get your opponent off a chop is being extremely confident we are at least tied for the best hand. In this case, I'm just not confident enough.

Time Link to 00:18:38

what would you do with a hand like 92 here instead of JJ and for the sake of this question dont consider folding would you still shove a hand that is going to be beat when called by a value hand or call and call blank rivers to get value from bluffs and missed draws and wouldnt shoving A2 or JQ here be effectivly the same as 92 considering he would be calling with his value hands and folding his draws and bluffs