---

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

Can you incorporate stats more in your decision process, when reviewing hands? I know, stats aren’t that important, but Blah has a lot of hands on most of his opponents and I’m pretty sure some of the hands should’ve been played a little bit different because of them.
.

Stats play a very minor role once you get to midstakes. Most people play differently at different tables so stats is just an average. Someone that opens 15% EP could be opening 25% at this table and 10% at the next table for example which makes it not so relavent. I use HUD only to spot obvious leaks in bad reg's games and prevent me from donating to nits while multi tabling.

Epic first post Tolp, tl;dr obviusly because I'm lazy, but still.

On the AK hand, don't you think the nit can have AA also sometimes, that hand was completely left out of the discussion? Obviously it's only one combo and he probably 4bets pre or jut calls the turn the vast majority of the time, but if you think his range for jamming is somewhere between 5-10 combos anyway, might as well include half a combo of that.

But I think it's not reasonable to fold the turn there, his value range is basically 6 combos of 77 and 88, which he may not even call preflop, and probably folds the flop with 88 most of the time. If we're valuebetting the turn to get called by basically only AQ, maybe some AJs, and a couple of combos of flushdraws, I think we have to consider that he's just gonna "what the hell" jam those, for reasons threads13 mentioned, and click call needing only 26% equity.

Stats play a very minor role once you get to midstakes. Most people play differently at different tables so stats is just an average. Someone that opens 15% EP could be opening 25% at this table and 10% at the next table for example which makes it not so relavent. I use HUD only to spot obvious leaks in bad reg's games and prevent me from donating to nits while multi tabling.

I think this is an incredibly useful post regarding stats. I definitely find myself relying on stats too much, this really sums the reasons why we [should] use our HUDs.

Stats play a very minor role once you get to midstakes. Most people play differently at different tables so stats is just an average. Someone that opens 15% EP could be opening 25% at this table and 10% at the next table for example which makes it not so relavent. I use HUD only to spot obvious leaks in bad reg's games and prevent me from donating to nits while multi tabling.

While this is certainly true for really good players, I would be pretty surprised, if all stats lose their meaning as soon you make the jump from small to mid stakes. As you said I’m pretty sure the nits play the same game on every table. So do bad to average regs. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a guy, who thinks stats are the most important thing in poker, far from it, but they help to determine the average range villain goes to the flop with and to spot some leaks in their postflop game. What I believe we should do is to think about these averages and how they correlate to certain table conditions and what we have seen from him and what he has seen from us so far. So in my humble opinion I don’t think that all stats play a minor role, even on mid stakes.

One example:
If I have 3k hands of a guy and his river raise percentage is very low, then he almost never is bluff raising the river on any table. If it’s not very low, then you know he is at least capable to bluff raise the river, when the conditions are right. I think this is valuable information.
It’s true, stats only tell you an average, but when a guy has very low raise percentages, he simply can’t be bluffing unless he slow plays most of his big hands. It would be kinda far fetched to believe such a guy all of the sudden starts to bluff raise, because the table conditions are right.

Maybe this video was an exception, but almost every hand was played rather poorly by your villains. In the K9s hand you and FWF think it’s possible villain holds K10 or middle PPs. Only a very bad reg could show up with such hands in that spot. If he is so bad to play these hands oop in 3bet pots, then he certainly isn’t good enough to adapt to table conditions.
Again, you give some guys way too much credit.


@fizzo:
I don’t want to start a discussion about stats, but there are some useful ones and some less useful ones. For example the good old PFR isn’t really that useful. You also should not mix up FR, 6max and HU stats and stats from different stakes. Also a lot of people make the mistake to mix up stats from tables, that aren’t full, with stats of tables, on which every seat is occupied. Stats tell you, what the average game plan of a player is. Not more, not less. And when we spot a certain leak in a players average game plan like someone almost never raises the river as bluff, then we don’t need to bluff catch, because it’s unlikely villain has changed his game plan exactly for us.
Another example: We see somebody is 3betting on average 20% in late position. Now we are going to give him hell with any decent hand. Really good players like Blah can act by feel and observation, but it doesn’t hurt to double check your observation with your stats.

your example of 3k hands someone raise river % tells you something? people don't face a river bet in 3k hands that much so the variance in that stat is massive. I also said HUD is useful for spotting obv leaks. Never bluffing in some spot or 3 betting 20% would fit in those obv leaks. We assign people a range mostly based on observations and use stats to add or subtract few combo but stats should never play a huge role especially stats like raise river %.

Lets say you got 5k hands on someone he 3 bets almost never, then he starts 3bet bluffing because his game changed(he got a coach that says 3bet bluffing is awesome and he should do it 20% of the times). Now over the next 5k hands stats will average and you will not notice this guy is bluffing more if you give stats lots of weight and his stats will not show that he's bluffing too much until many month later. Those stats that takes long time to converge is even less useful because people's game do change in that period.

I don't really want to start a huge stats argument here. I never said stats are useless they do provide information and any information is better than nothing. FWF doesn't seem to base his thought process much on stats either since he never asked to see stats during the videos so since both of our decision making process doesn't involve the use of stats much it's reflected in our video and not talking about stats much.

Time Link to 00:18:48

You are saying that it makes for Villain no sense to have on this river a C/Call-range.
I somewhat disagree with this because the rivercard is a card which makes it hard for Villain to valuebet some hands such as for example KTs.
So to have here a C/Callrange with top-hands can protect some hands where he now wanna to C/F.
It is furthermore a spot where your perceived range are just some potcontroled Qx,Kx-hands -> all those bluffcatching_hands (unless QJ, KJ) will not be rly able to call on this rivercard because it improves Villain`s turnbettingrange so hard.
If he now perceives you as aggressive, than likely your bettingrange (regards to turned madehands into a bluff) is bigger than your callingrange here.
So imo it makes for him some sense to C/C here sometimes his toprange on the river.

I also think that it is a somewhat obv. "turn_into_a_bluffspot" where you cannot rep too much because of your flopplay.
So i would check here back at least any Kx-hand and maybe only consider to bluff with Qx-hands.

btw.,
what was your plan for the river, should it blank and Villain would have bombed there again?

your example of 3k hands someone raise river % tells you something? people don't face a river bet in 3k hands that much so the variance in that stat is massive. I also said HUD is useful for spotting obv leaks. Never bluffing in some spot or 3 betting 20% would fit in those obv leaks. We assign people a range mostly based on observations and use stats to add or subtract few combo but stats should never play a huge role especially stats like raise river %.

Fair enough.
You are right, the raise river stat probably needs more than 3k hands to become reliable (as far as variance goes), but 3k should be a decent sample size for the flop raise percentage for example.
But we are on the same page, observation and taking notes is the key to success in poker and stats aid us in that process. How much they help is a matter of opinion to some extend. Personally I would never give stats more weight in my decision process than observation, especially postflop. I just use them, when I’m unsure of my opponent’s tendencies in a very difficult spot like the one, when you got raised on the river in the first AK hand. If the overall postflop raise stats are very low I rather click fold and vice versa.

Lets say you got 5k hands on someone he 3 bets almost never, then he starts 3bet bluffing because his game changed(he got a coach that says 3bet bluffing is awesome and he should do it 20% of the times). Now over the next 5k hands stats will average and you will not notice this guy is bluffing more if you give stats lots of weight and his stats will not show that he's bluffing too much until many month later. Those stats that takes long time to converge is even less useful because people's game do change in that period.

Obviously it would be a great mistake to use stats in that fashion. If someone, who never 3bets starts 3betting me I start to wonder. Why? Because I have a note on him (mental or written down) telling me he never 3bets and/or because his frequent 3betting isn’t congruent with the stats I have on him. When multi tabling I can’t count every single time he 3bets me, so I check my session stats and make a note that this guys may have changed his 3bet frequencies considerably.
True, people change their game. Obviously more in mid stakes than in small stakes games, but this could be used as an argument against notes and old observations as well. I don’t use stats older than 6 months and I don’t trust old notes either. We have to stay focused all the time. I think we all can agree to that.


Let’s talk about the hands, that’s more interesting anyway:

K9 hand:
Would you consider turning AQ/Q10 into a bluff on the river? Personally I would just give up about any one pair hand on that board. It just hits the oop 3bet calling range of an average reg too hard. Do you think that a reg will ever fold two pair in that spot in a 3bet pot?
Is calling 3bets oop common in mid stakes? As long someone has a reasonable 3bet range most coaches (like BalugaWhale) recommend not to call a 3bet oop at all. Personally this advice has helped my game a lot.

99 hand:
What do you think about raising the flop?

K9 hand:
Would you consider turning AQ/Q10 into a bluff on the river? Personally I would just give up about any one pair hand on that board. It just hits the oop 3bet calling range of an average reg too hard. Do you think that a reg will ever fold two pair in that spot in a 3bet pot?
Is calling 3bets oop common in mid stakes? As long someone has a reasonable 3bet range most coaches (like BalugaWhale) recommend not to call a 3bet oop at all. Personally this advice has helped my game a lot.

99 hand:
What do you think about raising the flop?

K9 hand I think we should at least think about turning the bottom of our range into a bluff and it doesn't matter if its K9 or QT. AQ should be turned into a bluff before K9 since it wins at showdown less often.

99 hand raising the flop without short term dynamic is bad because we rep a very strong range for playing back given positions and it will be very difficult to stack most competent player. Their playing back range should at least bet the turn anyways if we call. We have the hand locked most of the times so villain has more reversed implied odds than implied odds for seeing turn and river.

K9 hand I think we should at least think about turning the bottom of our range into a bluff and it doesn't matter if its K9 or QT. AQ should be turned into a bluff before K9 since it wins at showdown less often.

So you think there are regs, who are going to fold KJ, KQ, QJ, when you have checked back the flop and shove the river? That's a little bit too optimistic.
What do you think about calling 3bets oop? Isn't that what rather weaker players do? I followed a two+two thread about this topic a while ago and the conclusion was that it's almost impossible to play profitable in 3bet pot oop against a decent 3bet range unless you stop 4betting your value range PF.

99 hand raising the flop without short term dynamic is bad because we rep a very strong range for playing back given positions and it will be very difficult to stack most competent player. Their playing back range should at least bet the turn anyways if we call. We have the hand locked most of the times so villain has more reversed implied odds than implied odds for seeing turn and river.

True, we rep a very strong range, when we raise, but the nit also has a very strong range to begin with. And normally a nit isn't a very competent player and mostly plays his cards. Many turn cards could destroy all your action, while only a few can give you some more. That's why I believe it's better to raise against this particular opponent. The value range that is going to bet on the turn, when you just call the cbet, will almost always call a flop raise. He might even go broke with most of his overpairs and some of his big flush draws immeadiately. But he might not go broke with a big overpair, when the turn completes the flush.
I also don't think this villian has that much more reversed odds than implied odds. If we get lucky and a blank A or K turns and villian holds AK (or AQ) he might go broke. That's about it. If he holds QJ and hits a pair on the turn you'll most likley get only one more bet out of him. That's 4-5 (6 would be too optimistic) outs that might give you some money vs. 2 outs, who boat him up and give him all your money.
I think it's only a call, when raising would fold out his flushdraws plus 2 overs, but I really doubt he is going to fold them to a flop raise, when he is IP. Against a reg with a non nitty utg range a call is obviously the best play though.

Time Link to 00:33:54

You agree that we cannot assume that such a player will with those positions 4bet/C light pre and as well hardly bluff4bet, preflop?
If so,
then imo it would be here pretty ugly to face a 4bet. (actually with the assumptions above you in fact would not be able to play +ev 3bet/5betjam vs. such a Nit).

River:
he can have as well some AK-combos himself regards to his nitty tendencies and the positions.
When you give him a tight range and then add some AK-combos where you split, even ignoring AQ-combos,
then we always have the needed EQ to call it off and folding should be out of the question.

You agree that we cannot assume that such a player will with those positions 4bet/C light pre and as well hardly bluff4bet, preflop?
If so,
then imo it would be here pretty ugly to face a 4bet. (actually with the assumptions above you in fact would not be able to play +ev 3bet/5betjam vs. such a Nit).

River:
he can have as well some AK-combos himself regards to his nitty tendencies and the positions.
When you give him a tight range and then add some AK-combos where you split, even ignoring AQ-combos,
then we always have the needed EQ to call it off and folding should be out of the question.

I'm turbo folding if I get 4 bet.

I'm turbo folding if I get 4 bet.

So Blah, in a sense is AK a 3-bet bluff here then? Like obviously AK is ahead of his calling range, but are you saying he's folding enough pf, and we have enough equity when called to make it +EV to fold to a 4-bet?

So Blah, in a sense is AK a 3-bet bluff here then? Like obviously AK is ahead of his calling range, but are you saying he's folding enough pf, and we have enough equity when called to make it +EV to fold to a 4-bet?

I don't think in terms of value or bluff only in terms of EV. I think 3bet>call>fold in terms of EV in this spot. EV comes from the fact villain will fold with a reasonable frequency and we have good equity vs his calling range. Getting 4bet and fold will happen rarely and I don't expect this villain's 4betting frequency to be high enough for me to worry about folding to be exploitable.

I don't think in terms of value or bluff only in terms of EV. I think 3bet>call>fold in terms of EV in this spot. EV comes from the fact villain will fold a bunch and we have good equity vs his calling range. 3bet/folding AK is exploitable but I don't expect this villain to 4 bet bluff enough for that to matter.

Ok cool that makes a lot of sense.

really good video guys going to watch this one twice. fwf you make me laugh