---

Poker Video: No Limit Hold'Em by blah234 (Mid Stakes)

Hi, I renewed my subscription here just to check out your latest content, it's awesome!

I have one question regarding decision making, variable counts in poker, risk vs reward and whether or not that decision is +/- EV.

You 3bet that AQ vs UTG open - it's very simple to understand and it's a one-step plan.

How do you view low EV, high risk multi-street plans that can be very -EV if you have one of your variables wrong (out of many that were involved in the hand) - basically, where your lack of information can induce big mistakes from yourself.

I find that it's very easy to make decisions based on math when the pot is very small and opponents ranges are widest, but whenever I narrow my own range and my opponents range (big pots), I end up spewing, because my assumptions about my opponents range and his reaction to my actions was wrong to begin with (after we got to turn or river). At least on small stakes, turn and river play should be fairly honest in my experience so I like to draw the line that I don't cross on the flop and very rarely deviate from that unless I have good reads on my opponents.

I have another theroy. To sum it up it goes basically like this - if you steal pre flop and on the flop where you are automatically +EV in a vacuum and after that always shut down, never give anything away unless you are at big equity advantage (PE and FE combined) & your opponents steal from you less than you steal from them, you basically end up freerolling with the top of your range and exploit the fact that they put too much money in the pot for no reason. When faced with agression you don't fight for "splits" or "0EV", you just fold and lose nothing, you only fight when you are offering your opponents some kind of reverse implied odds, where he only wins small pots and ALWAYS loses when the pots get big. Does this make sense and should I follow this philosophy?

Lack of information should never lead to a "Big" mistake. We are not only playing vs villain's range but also playing our own range. For example, if we bluff into a villain who only has the nuts then as long as our bluffing frequency is not too high (proper range construction) then mistake will not be that big since the frequency of it happening is fairly low.

Street by street EV is almost pointless because the hand doesn't end on 1 particular street there's always the possibility of the hand to continue. We only care about the EV of our line. So stealing is auto + EV or not on the flop is irrelevant unless villain folds often enough preflop and we can x/f every flop still make profit.

We should always look for the highest EV play. Folding is 0EV so if there's something that's higher EV we should do that instead of folding. Only win small pots is fine as long as we don't lose any huge ones, this is the typical example vs nits. No one can force you to play a huge pot, you are allowed to click fold whenever you want. Reason like I have to call here because <insert reason here> or when I bet the turn, I have to bet the river because <insert reason here> are all just excuse for poor postflop play.

I have another theroy. To sum it up it goes basically like this - if you steal pre flop and on the flop where you are automatically +EV in a vacuum and after that always shut down, never give anything away unless you are at big equity advantage (PE and FE combined) & your opponents steal from you less than you steal from them, you basically end up freerolling with the top of your range and exploit the fact that they put too much money in the pot for no reason. When faced with agression you don't fight for "splits" or "0EV", you just fold and lose nothing, you only fight when you are offering your opponents some kind of reverse implied odds, where he only wins small pots and ALWAYS loses when the pots get big. Does this make sense and should I follow this philosophy?

In many situations both players will have marginal hands with a very high frequency => your strategy is only good if you have not put much money into the pot to begin with. What you are advocating is 3betting a very narrow range and calling 3bets with a very narrow range.. As I hope you can see this leads to a very poor strategy.. What you need is a better understanding of position.

In many situations both players will have marginal hands with a very high frequency => your strategy is only good if you have not put much money into the pot to begin with. What you are advocating is 3betting a very narrow range and calling 3bets with a very narrow range.. As I hope you can see this leads to a very poor strategy.. What you need is a better understanding of position.

I don't understand where you are getting this from. When you have a lot of fold equity you can always resteal, but the idea is to give up spots where at best case scenario, according to your own ability to play poker, the result is breakeven. From early positon only having value oriented opening ranges unless we are specifically isolating a player from the blinds and the table allows us to do so. Late position however we can minraise/fold buttons for example and don't have to worry about playing back vs 3bets. We can for example, tighten our opening range vs players who stop folding... If they players call X % of the time, but fold enough pre to make our open +EV in a vacuum, we are freerolling the times we flop the nuts vs his continuing range and he spews into us. I use this kind of logic pre flop and on the flop very often, when my hands are marginal, but there's some small edge pre flop and profitable opportunities later on (if our opponent folds A LOT we will steal with a cbet, if not, we don't start fighting over a questionable edge, because we have to beat rake etc and can make mistakes ourselves).

We invest X amount of BB-s with a profitable plan in mind (it can be as simple as the EV of our own action in a vacuum, and if it's +EV, we can stop the hand after that if we don't like the future). Post flop again, only take good spots as they get more complex, avoid big mistakes by managing the pot size well with questionable hands, if you can't come up with a plan, you could bet/fold X% of the time to break even vs opponents folding frequency (you are choosing your odds on a bluff).

I really don't like spots WHEN i am not targeting a specific leak of my opponent and I'm forcing myself to call or fold, it's something I completely try to avoid (again, when I'm not targeting a specific leak) and pre flop my choice becomes raise or fold if 3bet is +ev in a vacuum or for example, if my opponent calls 3bets and folds enough to cbets to make that plan +EV. If not, I might just choose folding pre. Post flop if I'm out of position, my options become betfolding or checkfolding in most cases, vs aggressive opponents who bet fold, I may choose to checkraise, based on just the odds. Again, no plan - I'm giving up. With marginal hands after these actions when I considered them +EV in a vacuum, I say I can safely check fold. And when I have huge equity advantage vs my opponents continuing range, I can easily get value. Now if my opponents call me a lot, I punish them by doing it for value only, and if my opponents fold a lot, I slowplay to extract value that way (underrep my hand and they perceive my continuing range to wider still, because they don't know I'm polarizing my calling range to hands that I beat his valuebetting range (this is when I don't have a reason to bluffcatch (if I can't bluffcatch, I can check/fold or bet/fold if opp folds X% of the time - very effective for donkbetting for ex. [these are examples "plans", ofc I have many more complex and very opponent specific types aswell]).

To sum it up... We can end the hand with a bet, when we don't have a reasonably profitable "plan" & we can squeeze out some immediate profit. And if not, we c/f, because we were profitable up until that point.

*Reasonably profitable = We know where we stand in the hand and how it will play out without us making mistakes (we know where our profit is coming from, we have it defined) & we are showing X amount of profit.

This is getting long... but I hope you understand how my though process is by now.

I really don't like spots WHEN i am not targeting a specific leak of my opponent and I'm forcing myself to call or fold, it's something I completely try to avoid (again, when I'm not targeting a specific leak) and pre flop my choice becomes raise or fold if 3bet is +ev in a vacuum or for example, if my opponent calls 3bets and folds enough to cbets to make that plan +EV. If not, I might just choose folding pre. Post flop if I'm out of position, my options become betfolding or checkfolding in most cases, vs aggressive opponents who bet fold, I may choose to checkraise, based on just the odds. Again, no plan - I'm giving up. With marginal hands after these actions when I considered them +EV in a vacuum, I say I can safely check fold. And when I have huge equity advantage vs my opponents continuing range, I can easily get value. Now if my opponents call me a lot, I punish them by doing it for value only, and if my opponents fold a lot, I slowplay to extract value that way (underrep my hand and they perceive my continuing range to wider still, because they don't know I'm polarizing my calling range to hands that I beat his valuebetting range (this is when I don't have a reason to bluffcatch (if I can't bluffcatch, I can check/fold or bet/fold if opp folds X% of the time - very effective for donkbetting for ex. [these are examples "plans", ofc I have many more complex and very opponent specific types aswell]).

Hands are never played in a vacuum and this strategy will lead to a weak/tight game. It's a pretty bad idea to have a polarized calling range...

I don't think it's bad when you only put yourself in that position when you are playing a strong range vs a weaker range (but in this scenario I'm mostly dominating my opponent and people in my experience make big mistakes because they perceive my continuing range wider than it actually is and my range is very strong to begin with).I don't put myself in spots where I'm creating passive dead money and give it away. It only happens as a calculated loss in spots where my investment was +EV overall (stealing small pots etc).

This is getting long... but I hope you understand how my though process is by now.

It sounds very tight weak to me, but I could be misunderstanding something. It seems to lead to a lot of situations where you cannot bet very often on later streets => you will only get cooler action and your opponent will have a very easy time with his marginal holdings. That is the opposite of what you want.
But again I could have misunderstood you.

Hi, great vid, like all other by you.

Sorry for not linking the spot.

14:10
KQs, the 4 flush board.

Don't you expect unknown villain to bluff the river in some % of the time, to makes us higher EV than donking 1/5 pot ?

I think a lot of 200nl regs should bluff there river a fair amount of the time, because they still have some fold equity against bottom of our range, and probably all little bit more aggro regs can bluff their whole range, which has no showdown value.

So i think check/calling can be higher EV there, instead of smallish bet.

All in all I would rather 3bet/5bet the suited aces.

If villain for example have 60% f3b, 25% 4bet and 15% call vs 3bet, you prefer suited aces, because they have almost the same equity as pocket pairs, but also villain has a calling range and suited aces play way more better in 3b pots, than low pockets.

Is this the reason you prefer them to 3bet/5bet ?

Thank you.

@blah234, Don't you expect unknown villain to bluff the river in some % of the time, to makes us higher EV than donking 1/5 pot ?

I think a lot of 200nl regs should bluff there river a fair amount of the time, because they still have some fold equity against bottom of our range, and probably all little bit more aggro regs can bluff their whole range, which has no showdown value.

So i think check/calling can be higher EV there, instead of smallish bet.

What is my perceived range for calling flop and turn? it doesn't matter if you have FE vs the bottom of villain's range a bet is +EV or its not. For example, getting bottom 10% of someone's range to fold by betting 2/3 pot is in the -EV category.

Thank you for answer.

So your percieved range looks like pocket pairs and probably some nut flushdraws, like AsQx, AsJx, AsTx (if not raised turn with) and flushes which not raised the turn.
I think if you check, he can bet his whole no_showdown_value range (i think he has a lot of bluffs, because our percieved range for floating this flop is fairly wide and he has good fold equity with his turn bet, and have a good equity with 2 overs against our turn calling range), because we have to fold all non-flush pocket pairs + lowerst flushes, which should make his bluff on the river +EV, because he has arround 40% fold equity.

Thank you for answer.

So your percieved range looks like pocket pairs and probably some nut flushdraws, like AsQx, AsJx, AsTx (if not raised turn with).
I think if you check, he can bet his whole no_showdown_value range (i think he has a lot of bluffs, because our percieved range for floating this flop is fairly wide and he has good fold equity with his turn bet, and have a good equity with 2 overs against our turn calling range), because we have to fold all non-flush pocket pairs + lowerst flushes, which should make his bluff on the river +EV, because he has more than 40% fold equity.

If my perceived range is PP and some FD then on the river assuming I'd call with every flush then how am I folding more than 40% of my range? Half the pp combos also has a FD. He may think he have good FE with his turn bet then when I call again on the turn what is my perceived range for seeing the river? How does that relate to betting the river?

If most 200nl regs expect unknown to float OOP with a wide range then they are bad at poker because it means they do it themselves and it's impossible to float OOP with a wide range and be +EV vs a competent opponent. Especially given positions on that hand.

If most 200nl regs think that float wide range on the flop = wide range on the river they are bad at poker because people don't call with anywhere near 100% of their flop range facing a turn bet. They are making incorrect assumptions on villain's range.

I made the assumption villain isn't super terrible. I could be wrong. If would take a villain with no idea of hand reading or concept of EV to bet this river with a wide range given the actions.

Thank you for the answer.

We most likely raise the turn with our non_nut flushes and boats in his eyes, and we call 55-77 only with flushdraw, so our turn calling range looks like
{TT-99, 7d7s, 7h7s, 7s7c, 6d6s, 6h6s, 6s6c, 5d5s, 5h5s, 5s5c, AsQs, AsJs, AsTs, As7s, As6s, As5s, AsQh, AsJh, AsTh} - total 27 combos on the river 9s.

There we will call with :
{TdTs, ThTs, TsTc, 9d9h, 9d9c, 9h9c, AsQs, AsJs, AsTs, As7s, As6s, As5s, AsQh, AsJh, AsTh} - total 15 combos, which means he has 43% fold equity, which makes his bet +EV.

Ofcourse i might be wrong with my assumptions, but i think it's okay to make wrong assumptions.
Ofcourse2, it's impossible for villain to calculate this at the table and he may or may not betting the river, given his overall estimations in real time.

So if there is a chance he thinks, that we can slowplaying the nuts on the turn, we can expect him to not bluff his whole bluffing range on the river.
That depends on our overall observations for 200nl regs, so this spot seems to be superclose on the river, i think.

My standart play there is to check/call, because most ppl thinks that they can bluff this board without showdown value, because he knows we have some random % of our range, which we gonna fold.


Sorry about wasting your time, i appreciate your posts.

what's the point of calling with 55 with the FD and then fold the river when you hit the flush anyways, especially when you assume people will bluff.

Your range is really really bad. You can't assume people will raise 100% of their made hands because its impossible for it to be true. Why would people call with AsQh, AsJh, AsTh but fold the other off suited AsX? It's not like having 1 heart gives you more equity vs villain's range. It's ok to make wrong assumptions but making assumptions that has little to no chance of being true is not ok.

Yeah, you're right, there's not a lot of sence in some of my sentences. I'm gonna think about it.

Time Link to 00:14:07

why do we not raise the turn when we catch our flush OTT?