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

Very good video. You elaborate on every play and explain your thought process very well. Do more!

For the record, I much prefer when someone records the audio while they play, I feel like the commentary is more true to how we think while we play and make our decisions.

good vid

Wot,

When you talk about 3 betting @ 21:20 against someone who is limping a decent amount as well as pfr'ing 21+% wouldn't it be good to be 3 betting a polarized range at times cuz he has to be thinking you're not 3 betting junk and will give you more respect?

@ 36:00 After 3 betting AA and AQ fairly recently and getting folds from him, 3 betting K8s didn't seem like a good spot. Which also makes me think he might have 4 bet lite there.

@ 41:30 Q3s, not a fan of the ai bluff just after staking him, Seems like he's not likely to fold any piece on the turn, esp when the turn didn't really change anything. Just in terms of game flow it didn't seem right to 4 bet nor bluff ai on the turn.

@45:30 AA, I hear what your saying about why you didn't 4 bet, but he did just call a 4 bet w/ T7s. Also, if you are going to 4 bet bluff, don't you need to 4 bet the nuts pf too? Do you think his play was that bad, cuz if you did hit that flop it's likely to have hit you big in some way, and if it didn't hit you, then you might try to barrel him off a hand?

@ 56:00 JTs, was it really bad that he didn't cbet that flop? A9o on a Q44ss brd... Would you have called the turn bet if was a PSB?


Another great DC hu video, TY!

I am villain in this episode. I think the analysis is very good. I think my flop check with A9 was pretty standard. It's a spot where I don't expect to get called by a lot of worse hands , and yes I'm betting the turn for value to protect against both fluh draws and the straight draws. I figurd when you just called the turn and bet the river you did not have a medium pocket pair, so you either had hearts, diamonds or missed str8. However I was pretty confident you had hearts so its a bad river call perhaps. I checked AK on KJ9 because we are so deep and I dont want to play a huge pot at least til i see a safe turn. When you fired that bet size on the turn I didn't like my hand so much. Some of the weird stuff I did like limping a lot, etc. is not my standard play. Partly TBH i did it to mess around and hear how you would analyze it on video. Although I like the idea of always working to change ones HU game, encorporate new concepts, etc. so I figured I'd try limping smoe big hands (like when I limp-reraised you) and some garbage hands. I tend to 3 bet a somewhat polarized range although that is entirely opponent dependent. You seemed to be fairly tight defending my 3bets so 3 betting middle to high strenght hands like KT seemed bad because I'd often be dominated when called. Also as you mentioned, I smoothed for flop check-raising deception.

One more point: I think my call of your four bet with T7s is perfectly fine for two reasons:
A) we are 200 bbs deep and T7s is a great hand to crack a big hand deep.
B) It was your first four bet and I was naturally somewhat suspicious. I tend to be fine getting it in lightish on flops/ turns in 4 bet pots if I feel my opponent is bluffing and I tend to feel I have a good radar for that. Having said that I tanked only because i felt my flop call indicated a decent amount of strength and I had to make sure I thought there was a good enough chancey ou are bluffing. If you're never bluffing obviously I only have 11 outs, not enough to call. And for what its worth I think live commentary is WAY better than the edited kind, because you get the producer's honest reaction.

Great video.
I'd like to hear more thoughts on the merits of 3-betting a fluid range vs. a polarized range.
If your fluid 3-betting range looks like A9+, 88+, KJ+ and suited connectors, is my understanding correct that your flop raising range is more polarized? Is that because you're less likely to have a strong hand since you're raising a wide spectrum of hands preflop?
On the other hand, if you're only 3-betting preflop with strong hands and weak hands (like AQ+, TT+, suited connectors and some trashy suited cards), does that make it easier to raise the flop because your strongest hands make up a larger part of your range?
I'm just trying to work out your logic.
Am I understanding it correctly?

I am villain in this episode. I think the analysis is very good. I think my flop check with A9 was pretty standard. It's a spot where I don't expect to get called by a lot of worse hands , and yes I'm betting the turn for value to protect against both fluh draws and the straight draws. I figurd when you just called the turn and bet the river you did not have a medium pocket pair, so you either had hearts, diamonds or missed str8. However I was pretty confident you had hearts so its a bad river call perhaps. I checked AK on KJ9 because we are so deep and I dont want to play a huge pot at least til i see a safe turn. When you fired that bet size on the turn I didn't like my hand so much. Some of the weird stuff I did like limping a lot, etc. is not my standard play. Partly TBH i did it to mess around and hear how you would analyze it on video. Although I like the idea of always working to change ones HU game, encorporate new concepts, etc. so I figured I'd try limping smoe big hands (like when I limp-reraised you) and some garbage hands. I tend to 3 bet a somewhat polarized range although that is entirely opponent dependent. You seemed to be fairly tight defending my 3bets so 3 betting middle to high strenght hands like KT seemed bad because I'd often be dominated when called. Also as you mentioned, I smoothed for flop check-raising deception.

Hi alexhandros,

Just curious... do you know anything about who that guy was chatting with us and why he brought up leatherass? Do you have any ties to stoxpoker or were you getting coached during the video? I found it really weird that some guy came out of the woodwork and started talking about some other video site coach asking him questions about our match.

Thanks,
Aaron

Ok, all of you guys that have questions on the Q3 hand, please read below:

You get a better price on your bluff on the river, but whether or not the EV of a 2 step bluff is better than a 3 step bluff is a separate question, right?

I guess what I'm saying is that while 3 steps might very well work better than 2, I don't think getting better odds on your river shove is an argument for choosing one line over the other. You have to compare the EV of the two lines starting on turn, don't you? Or am I just misunderstanding your point.

yea i should have just left out the word "river" when i said "on your river bluff" -- essentially what I was saying is that when chopping up that last $600 or so you'll get a better price (and therefore higher EV) in this spot as opposed to giving him one decision where he has to fold a higher % of the time.

Calculating the EV isn't something that easy because we don't know how often he folds to the overbet shove vs the 2 smaller bets, but something that can be considered is that there will be times where he calls a small turn bet to fold to the river shove (which nets us the most profit) and there will also be times where he folds Tx to the turn overbet shove.

T7s there is a hand at the very top of his range and he TANKED with top pair and the flush draw... I submit to those who are hesitant about the turn shove on that board texture that if he's tanking forever with one of the best hands he can have in that spot, that we can definitely show a profit bluffing there.

Let's take a look at how the hand probably should have gone if i thought it through more:

so on the flop the stacks are about 740 and the pot is about 210

if i bet 115 on the flop I'll still get him off most of his air range, but even if he floats me it's not so bad because his hand is pretty face up as being not JJ+ here, and hands like AT, KT, QT, JT are probably not 3betting me based on the reasons I gave in the video about him polarizing his range. Additionally, he snap called the flop, another indicator that he doesn't have a hand like JJ+ or even a flush draw as he'd have to consider whether or not he makes a raise here.

On the flop let's say I on average have 2 outs (which is prob v conservative, its probably mnore like 2.5 or 2.75) but regardless sometimes he'll have 6x here and sometimes he'll have some sort of backdoor flush draw etc, but we'll call it 2 outs.

So say he c/c the 115 on the flop, the pot is now 440 and we got 625 left. Now if we bet 200 into 440 it only has to work:

0 = 440x - (1-x)[880 * .04 - 220]
0 = 440x + (1-x)[880 * .04 - 220]
0 = 440x + (1-x)[-184.8]
0 = 440x + 184.8x - 184.8
0 = 624.8x - 184.8
184.8 = 624.8x
x = 184.8 / 624.8 = 29.6%

So we only need him to fold less than 30% of the time on the turn. but even if he doesn't, all is not lost because we can still bluff him on the river (or heck, maybe even get value when we hit our Q ?)

so let's look at the river assuming we bet 220 on the turn. The pot is now 880 and we have 405 left. if he checks and we shove it in (assuming we didn't hit our Q) we have zero equity in the pot, so let's look at how often our river bluff has to work.

0 = 880x + (1-x)[-405]
0 = 880x - 405 + 405x
405 = 1285x
x = 405/1285 = 32.5%

So by sizing the flop and turn bets better, we get a better price on our bluff on each street and he only has to fold the river less than 1/3 of the time with the additional benefit of us having another street of information about his hand strength (as opposed to big flop bet and turn jam).

The way I actually played the hand, the pot was 504 and we shoved in 590, so here's the FE calc there assuming again we have 2 outs and 2 cards to come

0 = 504x + (1-x)[1684 * .08 - 590]
0 = 504x + (1-x)[-455.28]
0 = 504x + 455.28x - 455.28
0 = 959.28x - 455.28
455.28 = 959.28x

x = 455.28 / 959.28 = 47.4%

So as you can see the turn shove as played has to work 47% of the time to be break even. I still think this is a very profitable spot especially when villain's hand is so face up as a pure bluff catcher when just check/calling the flop. The nice part about sizing the bets differently is we can even further confirm that villain's hand is weak when he just calls our small turn bet (most people, even if they did play AA tricky here on the flop will go ahead and stick it in on the turn etc), so in practice what ends up happening is they peel again on the turn with their marginal made hand or draw and then fold it on the river to our shove. Regardless, either street (turn or river) the play only has to work less than 1/3 of the time and in reality the success rate is much higher on both streets. Notice how the play gets even better if we have something like KJ where we have 2 overs instead of just one.

Hope that makes some sense. Someone double check my math, but intuitively it should make some sense that when bluffing for half pot laying yourself 2:1 then the bluff only has to work about 1/3 = .3333 and considering we have some outs to improve, the numbers make sense that it should be less than 33%.

Aaron

very good video so far. it really gives me an idea of how much i need to turn on my preflop aggression in HU
38:30 - you've been talking a lot about how he has a very polarized 3betting range preflop and you conclude that you're going to 4bet bluff him to adjust, but then you get T7s and decide to flat his 3bet. I don't really understand that choice since against a polarized range it's going to be kind of hard to play your hand. Any further comments ?

4betting would have been OK. I made a mistake by not 4betting him earlier in the match...but if you look at his comments later in the thread, it was as I feared where he was giving me less credit to my first 4bet (which is reasonable). A lot of people have it stuck in their mind "first 4bet = bluff" - which like many things in poker is a generalization that holds true a lot, but doesn't necessarily make sense in all situations. To show an extreme example, say you had been 3betting a guy 30% of the time and he folded every hand for 3 hours straight, then he 4bets you, is that 4bet going to be a bluff since it's the first one? My point is, I had been folding a fair amount so after 100 hands of not 4betting I don't think it's very reasonable to assume the first 4bet is still a bluff.

Anyway got a little off topic there, but yea 4betting the T7s would be OK since he has a polarized range, but so is defending and making a move on the flop. As it turned out i flopped the nuts so I didn't need to make a move on the flop.

I can't believe you give this guy a bunch of credit for playing well and "hat's off to him" etc. The guy played terrrrible

He had some plays I didn't agree with, but given how he played I definitely think he's a winner at these stakes.

Right around the 50 minute mark you have Q7o in a limped pot. You flop a gutshot straight flush draw on a monotone flop. Was it not worth minbetting there to at last try to take it down?

one of the hazards of making HUNL videos is that you can still be talking about a hand that was played 20 hands ago and sometimes miss some spots like this where it would have been perfectly fine to make a semibluff.

Wot,

When you talk about 3 betting @ 21:20 against someone who is limping a decent amount as well as pfr'ing 21+% wouldn't it be good to be 3 betting a polarized range at times cuz he has to be thinking you're not 3 betting junk and will give you more respect?

this is sorta what i mean by "adjusting for him" that I try to tell my students not to do. What you're suggesting is a leveling game, which is good that you're thinking about these things, but we don't have enough info to suggest that he knows how I will adjust. In other words, we dont know if he knows that I'll adjust to his limping by 3betting less trash when he does open raise. If we knew that he was thinking as you suggest, then yes it would be good to get our 3betting range more polarized.

@ 36:00 After 3 betting AA and AQ fairly recently and getting folds from him, 3 betting K8s didn't seem like a good spot. Which also makes me think he might have 4 bet lite there.

its possible? again don't adjust for them.

@ 41:30 Q3s, not a fan of the ai bluff just after staking him, Seems like he's not likely to fold any piece on the turn, esp when the turn didn't really change anything. Just in terms of game flow it didn't seem right to 4 bet nor bluff ai on the turn.

sorry you feel that way. check out the long post i made about some of the math behind the play and see if you change your mind.

@45:30 AA, I hear what your saying about why you didn't 4 bet, but he did just call a 4 bet w/ T7s. Also, if you are going to 4 bet bluff, don't you need to 4 bet the nuts pf too? Do you think his play was that bad, cuz if you did hit that flop it's likely to have hit you big in some way, and if it didn't hit you, then you might try to barrel him off a hand?

Couple thoughts. I hear what you're saying about the AA hand, and yes I could have 4bet, but within the gameflow I feel it was better to call because I feel like this guy was thinking about what was going on (he knew it was a vid) and it seemed super unlikely that he would put me on another 4bet bluff after he just caught me 4bet bluffing Q3s.

If the Q3s bluff worked, then I would have definitely 4bet AA expecting him to be more frustrated and/or worried about getting outplayed on vid. Certainly I was not trying to portray in this video that we should be only 3betting air and slowplaying the nuts, if it came across that way I apologize because that's not what I meant.

Against a lunatic monkey I would have definitely 4bet the AA there as I expect his thought process to be more in line with "omg he just bluffed me he's bluffing again!" but when playing against a thinking tag I expect him to be like "ok he had air last time in this exact spot, i highly doubt this guy making a video is going to bluff me again in the same spot 5 mins later" After that, you get into the leveling game...because he knows i know etc etc

@ 56:00 JTs, was it really bad that he didn't cbet that flop? A9o on a Q44ss brd... Would you have called the turn bet if was a PSB?

if he pots the turn i probably fold. if I'm in his shoes and opt to not cbet the flop (which would be more a function of gameflow than anything... as a default though i'm cbetting there) then I'd be playing my hand for a bluff catcher and looking to keep the pot small and get to showdown. I think when looking at the range of hands that I'm not betting the flop with here, his A high doesn't do too well against my range on the turn when called, and a lot of times if i have total air that I decided to not bluff with on the flop, i would not be bluffing that often on the turn, so he can just get to showdown that way.

Another great DC hu video, TY!

You're welcome, glad you liked it! Good questions.

Aaron

Great video.
I'd like to hear more thoughts on the merits of 3-betting a fluid range vs. a polarized range.
If your fluid 3-betting range looks like A9+, 88+, KJ+ and suited connectors, is my understanding correct that your flop raising range is more polarized? Is that because you're less likely to have a strong hand since you're raising a wide spectrum of hands preflop?
On the other hand, if you're only 3-betting preflop with strong hands and weak hands (like AQ+, TT+, suited connectors and some trashy suited cards), does that make it easier to raise the flop because your strongest hands make up a larger part of your range?
I'm just trying to work out your logic.
Am I understanding it correctly?

You're close. I might not of explained it well enough in the video but basically the point i'm getting at is this:

if we're 3betting hands like KJ, KQ, QJ, etc then when we flat call and checkraise say a J or Q high dry board, our checkraising range is much more polarized because we "can't" have a strong top pair hand here very often.

if we're NOTTTT 3bettting hands like KJ, KQ, QJ and we opt to checkraise a J or Q high dry board, then our range is more fluid there as we could be anywhere from bluff to medium strength hand to monster. The bad news is that if we take this route then preflop our 3betting range is much more polarized.

So say we take the polarized 3betting range, how does our range look on a Q high board? How can we take advantage of that?

Basically it's a stylistic and "pick your poison" approach. One way or another you're going to have a partially polarized range. Both strategies are good just as long as you have an idea as to how (or IF) your opponent is going to adjust.

for me, i prefer to have a fluid 3betting range because I like to 3bet a lot and i want my opponents to know if they are going to try to play back at me, i can have a wide range of medium strength hands that I can felt...however once I show someone that I'm capable of 3betting hands like QTo, it can be good to pull the old switcheroo and just call with those types of hands and checkraise a Q high board because they should be taking those hands out of my range etc. It's a back and forth leveling game...

if you're playing against a guy who isn't going to play the leveling game and force you to adjust (which is like... i dunno 99% of HU players?) then feel free to play your hands based on how often they are folding pf vs how often they are folding to checkraises and use the strategy that makes the most sense about how they are defending against your aggression.

Hope that made some sense.
Aaron

honestly i think i've made the games a lot tougher just by the answers i've given in this thread lol

honestly i think i've made the games a lot tougher just by the answers i've given in this thread lol

thx for all the answers, and keep these golden videos comin' !