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

Anyone else find it annoying that certain people seems to sit just to try to steal your initial blind or 3bet your first open and then immediately sit out? I feel like some people are ridiculous enough to be doing that on purpose.

I don't know how often this is happening to other people, but it's happened to me more than a few times. It's not really a big deal but I wish more people would post a ptr comment about that stuff when it happens.

I'm very glad to see continuation of this series. Have some qeustions.
1. do you open 70-80% from SB vs loose/passive guys. I just don't ideate how it can be possible to play lowest ~20% of 80% open range gainfully.
2. same vs lags and maniacs who 3bet relentlessly. do you open same 70-80% but minraising or tight your open range?
3. when I play my 1st hand vs regs/lags they 3bet very often and if I 4bet they often snap call, so maybe it make sense to wide 4bet for value in 1st hands of matches? it seems to me that without any reads it's better to play with initiative then to call 3bet with wide range and try to outplay on postflop. and when I just fold it looks like I spend much money just raising/folding in that situations

great start, really looking forward to the remainder of this.

Glad to hear about making this also a shorthanded series rather than just heads up. I'm like a deer in the headlights when I have like queen eight suited or TJ off and I'm in the big blind facing a button raise in a 6 max game from a tight 30% button stealer or a laggy hijack. But these ranges happen in heads up also. I'm fairly certain I leak money when the button raises just 50% by defending too loose out of habit, and then there are the button limpers who only raise 10-40% of buttons - a six max player is more used to dealing with these tight ranges, although a heads up specialist is better able to figure out how these ranges change dynamically based on game flow.

Epic Megaman and pirate ship illustration.

Pawn!

Heads up is dying. Please stop trying to finish her off.

Heads up is dying. Please stop trying to finish her off.

Ship builders need not apply.

Ship sinkers, right this way for your cannon balls and gun powder

Anyone else find it annoying that certain people seems to sit just to try to steal your initial blind or 3bet your first open and then immediately sit out? I feel like some people are ridiculous enough to be doing that on purpose.

I don't know how often this is happening to other people, but it's happened to me more than a few times. It's not really a big deal but I wish more people would post a ptr comment about that stuff when it happens.

Yes it is super annoying but it's part of the game we have to deal with. The sooner you can get yourself immune to being tilted by it and the other forms of hit and running, the better you will be.

I'm not saying that I don't ever get irritated when I get hit and run...i do, but the pain is less over time.

Part of the adjustment to this is to be more cally in the first several hands of the match.

Ship builders need not apply.

Ship sinkers, right this way for your cannon balls and gun powder

haha love it!

I'm very glad to see continuation of this series. Have some qeustions.
1. do you open 70-80% from SB vs loose/passive guys. I just don't ideate how it can be possible to play lowest ~20% of 80% open range gainfully.
2. same vs lags and maniacs who 3bet relentlessly. do you open same 70-80% but minraising or tight your open range?
3. when I play my 1st hand vs regs/lags they 3bet very often and if I 4bet they often snap call, so maybe it make sense to wide 4bet for value in 1st hands of matches? it seems to me that without any reads it's better to play with initiative then to call 3bet with wide range and try to outplay on postflop. and when I just fold it looks like I spend much money just raising/folding in that situations

Good and valid questions, let me try to answer the best I can.

1. We need more info to answer well. It's tempting to say something like "these guys play every hand, how can i profit raising J5o vs them?" and I understand the frustration, but look to his postflop stats. Many of these guys who play like 65 vpip oop might call a lot of flops really wide but they are forced to play more straight up on the turn. I mean, heck, if you are going to peel every 56o on 98Kr, there just aren't a lot of ways you can call the turn (and ofc many more similar examples). 2 barreling becomes super profitable vs these guys even if it seems like they never fold (flops). This is an area where a lot of people leak, they want to try to open a lot of buttons but they don't think past the cbet. Alternatively, some of these guys just play too fit or fold to begin with. Maybe they start with 65% of hands but they are only looking to continue with pairs and good draws. Now your preflop steal + flop cbet is just printing $. In short, try to look at the whole picture to judge profitability and not just the isolated stat.

2. Similar answer but now different consideration. We're opening 3x 80%, what's his vpip in bb? if it's like 33 we're still profiting. Similar consideration for the minraise. More importantly, how is he playing postflop? How balanced is his cbet range? his checking range? Is he just firing once then giving up a lot? Is he 2 barreling and giving up a lot? Is he going bananas? How does he react to 4bets? These are all questions I'd want to try to get answers for to know how wide I can be opening. You can absolutely still open 90% vs a guy who 3bets 28% provided you get a the schematics of his ship. SINK HIM!!!

3. "First Time" dynamics are interesting and hard reg on reg. Definitely some levelling going on with first hand, first 3bet, first 4bet, first donk, first checkraise, etc. There is no easy answer here unfortunately, but I think your adjustment is my natural inclination as well. Early in the match, just be way more inclined to get to showdown both for future reads and because people go nuts early in the match trying to be the boss and take control.

We need a Prequel to Pr1nnyraiding!

We need a Prequel to Pr1nnyraiding!

What would you like to see in a prequel?

Ship builders need not apply.

Ship sinkers, right this way for your cannon balls and gun powder

I was in a sub. Now DC is draining the water from the ocean.

[quote]I was in a sub. Now DC is draining the water from the ocean.

If poker ignorance is your water, the lake is slowly draining, and that's just a fact of poker.You're always going to find deep water in the microstakes, but further you go out in stakes, the shallower the water is going to get. If you got caught on a sandbar because you never figured out how to make a boat that can maneuver in shallow water, maybe it's time to put down the wamburger and french cries, and start building a solid boat (they teach you how to do that here). If all the water dries up, that doesn't mean that poker is dead, it just means that high stakes will be playing old school twisted metal instead of battleship. I think this series is going to be awesome and I love the aggressive mentality here. Maybe in season 4 you guys can start talking about tires and NOS.

I was in a sub. Now DC is draining the water from the ocean.

Just because great HU information is put out doesn't mean you can't profit. It's still up to the player to study and integrate the information better than his opponents, and to apply it better when it counts - at the table. Further, like Haseeb said in Dog is Heads Up, they can teach you as best they can, but at the end of the day it's up to you to put in the work to build your own ship (or these days to build your own ship destroyer).