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Poker Video: No Limit Hold'Em by WiltOnTilt (Mid Stakes)

hi wilt,
can you discuss more from the villans point of view also? ... when you analyse a hand?
tx!

I just finished the series. It's the first one I've watched since I joined not too long ago and I just wanted to say it's been a good and helpful experience. I've recently moved up from 25 to 50NL and certainly have the ambition to get right up there with Alex.

I think I'll be moving on to your math series now Aaron. Like you say in the last part of this video, a lot of ''big decisions'' are very much related to the maths. Looking forward to next season!

Alex put up a blog entry last week describing the differences as he went up the stakes (thx Alex, n1). You should check it out, and add your own thoughts as comments.

This series was the one that got me to finally join DC, and it has been really useful watching "one of us" move up the limits. Alex definitely made the most of the experience, and it seems like it couldn't have happened to a nicer chap! I look forward to seeing a mid-stakes NL-grinder update sometime in the future, and Alex hopefully keeps his blog going.

Fantastic job WoT also, there was a great rapport between coach and student that made this very easy to watch and digest. Look forward to future WoT series.

Hey WoT and WHS,

At 69:00, 77 on 994 flop, we open pf and cbet the flop and get called. Now on the turn, sexyjuicygirl wants to chat. My gf is watching me play over my shoulder. It's awkward. Can you talk a little bit about what line is optimal here and why? Thanks.

Haha, great series guys. Loved the ending. Learned a lot. Looking forward to future content. Keep up the good work.

In the JJ hand are we bet/folding the flop?

In the JJ hand at the 30 minute mark Alex decides to cbet a very (imo too) large amount. Stacksizes will be awkward on the turn if villain calls us. I've just stopped the video to type this so my view will not be skewed due to results.

We don't need to bet so large to be able to leverage our entire stack. We can bet less so we minimize our risk, because how happy are we really to get it in on this flop for another 125BB vs his UTG-open/call-a-3bet range?

WOT: Do you think his betsizing here was fine? If yes, why? if not, what amount would be better to bet?

Sugar Nut

Hi Sugar Nut,

Good question.

Whether or not we can bet/call depends hugely on how many suited type hands he defends here pf as well as how many worse pocket pairs he's willing to ship here to protect his hand. Given that we're a little deep and given the table positions, you're right we're not real thrilled about bet/calling it off here. Herein lies the problem with preflop. When we're deciding whether or not to be 3betting this hand pf we should be thinking about whether or not the guy is capable of making big mistakes with marginal hands on the flop as well as what sort of range he defends with. I would argue that if we're not comfortable getting it in on this flop with two jacks, we should not be 3betting in the first place. What flop are we hoping for? A big % of the time we're going to get an underpair, so if we can't get the money in with an overpair, we should probably opt to slow things down a street in advance.

So the question is... is the cbet size ok? Well if we're planning to bet/fold it's probably not the best for reasons stated... if we're willing to bet/call then it doesn't matter much we bet (i dont think a smaller bet size on this board texture is going to induce too many flop raise bluffs...however that's opponent/dynamic dependant). If we bet bigger though, we do get more $ out of his flat calling range. Usually the range of hands he flats on this board will be the same no matter what you bet (mostly going to be the lower pocket pairs and weak draws, something like 5s7s or similar, assuming we don't think he's jamming those. if he's not jamming those then we should bet/fold probably... then back to the pf discussion above). It's true the bigger bet size makes the stacks weird on the turn, but i think we're in a spot where the profitability of the play hinges so much on what he does with particular groupings of hands in his range that our bet size shouldn't matter much and making the pot big when we think we have the best of it and are planning to go with the hand is probably OK. In other words, if we're in a spot where our bet size doesn't change his range, and we know what we want to do vs each part of his range, then we might as well maximize against the part that is just flat calling us here (assuming that we don't think we're getting jammed on significantly more than he's flat calling...and if that's the case, perhaps we shouldn't even be cbetting).

As you can see, it starts to become a circular problem that all goes back to pf and what we expect him to do with different hands on different boards on the flop, etc.

hope that made some sense.

The TT hand where Alex 4 bet bluffs the 3 better in the small blind . I think its a spot that folding PF might be a little better since we are not that deep and we are going to have to set mine or fold alot of the time. I think peeling might not be too terrible since his range is somewhat wide since Alex did isolate a limper on the BTN and he seems to be a thinking player. My question is how deep would Alex and the villian need to be to justify a call PF and play the pot in position?

oneillsurfer03

Hi oneillsurfer03,

Excellent question/comment. I tend to agree that I like folding best here. It might seem kind of weak, but absent better reads on how they play different hands in 3bet pots, I like avoiding a little variance here against a pretty dang tight player (at least tight based on vpip).

if we're playing solely for set, we'd ideally be getting something like 15 to 20:1. With a hand like TT though, we don't necessarily have to play just for set, we can also play for showdown and if we have decent reads we can also play some pots for bluff value. The more you can rely on your showdown value and your bluff value the shallower you can be to call. If you don't have much of a read on the guy and you aren't really sure how he plays, I would probably want to be getting closer to 12-14:1 or so to be continuing against a 17/13. In this hand, if we defended, we'd be calling 23 more to win 9 + 32 + 2 + 2 = 45 + 168 in his stack = 213 total implied, which means we're only getting a little better than 9:1 implied. If we were shooting for 12:1 then he'd need to have around $250 in our stacks (depending on our raise size and his 3bet size), give or take.

hi wilt,
can you discuss more from the villans point of view also? ... when you analyse a hand?
tx!

danndann1

Hi danndann1, thanks for the comment. I will be sure to focus more on this in future videos I do. I hope you continue to look out for my vids to see if I can successfully fulfill this request :-)

Hey WoT and WHS,

At 69:00, 77 on 994 flop, we open pf and cbet the flop and get called. Now on the turn, sexyjuicygirl wants to chat. My gf is watching me play over my shoulder. It's awkward. Can you talk a little bit about what line is optimal here and why? Thanks.

Haha, great series guys. Loved the ending. Learned a lot. Looking forward to future content. Keep up the good work.

xerocat

I think the optimal line is emailing skype support and telling them to implement some sort of functionality that allows me to truly stop people from contacting me unless i put them on my contact list lol...

I know that was a bit unprofessional to have that stupid thing pop up in the video, but I have to use skype for the vid with alex.

On a side note, i actually started speaking to one of these people once (text, not voice) just to string them along a bit before blocking them. They were using broken english so I decided to respond similarly. It was pretty funny actually... i wonder if i still have that chat around here somewhere....

But to actually answer your question, request pics first then once confirmed try to work in a private webcam show for you and your girlfriend to simultaneously enjoy.

In the JJ hand are we bet/folding the flop?

NoWayFolding

Hey NoWayFolding, check out my response above to Sugar Nut. It's a pretty gross spot that ultimately comes back to if we're not willing to stack off with overpairs in most situations, we probably shouldn't be 3betting pf to begin with. That said, I realize this is about one the most disgusting board textures that can come, so bet/folding on a very rare occasion can't be too bad.

Hi oneillsurfer03,

Excellent question/comment. I tend to agree that I like folding best here. It might seem kind of weak, but absent better reads on how they play different hands in 3bet pots, I like avoiding a little variance here against a pretty dang tight player (at least tight based on vpip).

if we're playing solely for set, we'd ideally be getting something like 15 to 20:1. With a hand like TT though, we don't necessarily have to play just for set, we can also play for showdown and if we have decent reads we can also play some pots for bluff value. The more you can rely on your showdown value and your bluff value the shallower you can be to call. If you don't have much of a read on the guy and you aren't really sure how he plays, I would probably want to be getting closer to 12-14:1 or so to be continuing against a 17/13. In this hand, if we defended, we'd be calling 23 more to win 9 + 32 + 2 + 2 = 45 + 168 in his stack = 213 total implied, which means we're only getting a little better than 9:1 implied. If we were shooting for 12:1 then he'd need to have around $250 in our stacks (depending on our raise size and his 3bet size), give or take.

I realize that certain flops we can like jam and he will fold out his AK and AQ type hands but i think there are alot more tought spots given stats on villian that will come up and it will just be a high variance spot in general IMO. How would we adjust here if the vilian is super laggy?

I realize that certain flops we can like jam and he will fold out his AK and AQ type hands but i think there are alot more tought spots given stats on villian that will come up and it will just be a high variance spot in general IMO. How would we adjust here if the vilian is super laggy?

I'd either be more willing to 4bet and call it off or be more willing to call down on a higher frequency of flops, depending on where he's laggy (pf? postflop? both? etc).

Also, if we have TT and we suspect he's on AK or AQ we won't be jamming the flop, we'd be calling to try and widen his bluffing range.

But to actually answer your question, request pics first then once confirmed try to work in a private webcam show for you and your girlfriend to simultaneously enjoy.

Hahaha! Great answer. I actually loved the ending and isn't the sort of thing we don't experience regularly on the interwebs. Definitely nothing that could blemish how good this series has been; made it even better imo.

Looking forward to a future season.

when alex says that hes got some stats on a player....and he says "half are datamined, half are played"...

how do you datamine players without playing against them? the only players i have lots of hand samples on are players ive played against. i play on stars and have HEM, just like alex.

alex mostly plays on FTP where opening the table is all you have to do to 'datamine'