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Poker Video: No Limit Hold'Em by threads13 (Micro/Small Stakes)

Time Link to 00:00:52

Like the fish icon on "AshleyTheGrinder" on table 3. For those who are unaware and like a good laugh see this car crash.

Time Link to 00:46:57

Would calling w/57s be profitable in that spot if the raiser had more aggressive stats,such as high CB and turn barrell #'s? I personnally dont like to defend my BB that often,Unless the UTG opens for 2.5x with what i expect to be a pretty strong/tight range. Great Video BTW.Need some more micro stuff from you though.=)

Time Link to 00:48:31

Wondering what type of hands you would ever Donk Bet the flop with and vs what type of players.Donk betting flops seems to be getting more and more popular.Im not sure if its mostly the micro limits that theyre doing this.Ive noticed that you havent taken this line at all so far and youve folded to each Donk Bet in this Vid.Any thoughts on what types of hands most players take that line with and why?

Would calling w/57s be profitable in that spot if the raiser had more aggressive stats,such as high CB and turn barrell #'s? I personnally dont like to defend my BB that often,Unless the UTG opens for 2.5x with what i expect to be a pretty strong/tight range. Great Video BTW.Need some more micro stuff from you though.=)

That guy kind of always has the nuts when he raises and SCs (and S1Gs even more so) don't really every flop anything to out-flop overpairs. The price isn't good enough to try to out-flop him given how rarely you do it with these sort of hands. I don't think we can realistically get him to pay us off often enough to justify the call unless you know he's unwilling to fold an overpair ever.

Wondering what type of hands you would ever Donk Bet the flop with and vs what type of players.Donk betting flops seems to be getting more and more popular.Im not sure if its mostly the micro limits that theyre doing this.Ive noticed that you havent taken this line at all so far and youve folded to each Donk Bet in this Vid.Any thoughts on what types of hands most players take that line with and why?

Constructing a donking range is going to be really dependent on so many variables that it's a tough thing to talk about in a post. I'll give it a little bit of a crack, though.

One spot that I'm more likely to donk is when I've flatted in the blinds vs a wide BTN range. In that situation, if my opponent doesn't c-bet a lot I will start donking hands that I would have c-bet myself. Once I develop some reads on my opponent I might be able to change that range around a little. Let's say our opponent raises a lot of donks. Well, now you have an effective way to induce a raise so just start donking the top of your range. If your opponent folds to a lot of donks then we start donking the bottom of our range (complete air) and checking the top of our range.

In multi-way pots it's a lot more to think about, but maybe that'll give you something to get started with.

What hands fish donk with is largely random so you just have to pay attention and see how often they do it and what they do it with. Conversely, you want to see what they XC or XR. That will tell you what they don't donk.

Is there a video on DC where I can learn more about how to use that cardrunners EV program?

Is there a video on DC where I can learn more about how to use that cardrunners EV program?

Not that I know of, but it looks like CR has some free tutorials.

a CR question on DC....? odd

Time Link to 00:12:07

"I think AJo is just a fold" is the only reasoning you give for junking AJo from ep? No specific players behind that you're worried about? I ran a filter for 400,000 hands Full Ring ZOOM NL100 on Stars, simply "Hole Cards: AJo, Heroes Position: EP, PFR = True" and I'm winning at 24.55bb/100 for those 3 conditions. (951 hands returned out of the 400k sample).
You really think AJo is a standard fold long term by default in FR?

"I think AJo is just a fold" is the only reasoning you give for junking AJo from ep? No specific players behind that you're worried about? I ran a filter for 400,000 hands Full Ring ZOOM NL100 on Stars, simply "Hole Cards: AJo, Heroes Position: EP, PFR = True" and I'm winning at 24.55bb/100 for those 3 conditions. (951 hands returned out of the 400k sample).
You really think AJo is a standard fold long term by default in FR?

Yes, and I don't think it's too close. You didn't run a filter for 400k hands. You ran a filter for a hand, and that gave you the 1% of the time you got dealt AJo in EP and it wasn't raised. You looked at a 4k hand sample or so... probably smaller because sometimes it was raised. 3.5k hands? Not 400k hands. 3.5k sample isn't very helpful results. I've ran at 25bb/100 over 4k hands... and I'm sure you have too. If it was 200bb/100 - let's talk.

I think opening 12-15% in FR EP(which you should be if you're opening AJo) is too wide as a default. I do it sometimes when there's a spot in the blinds. There's also a big gap between AQo and AJo.

As a more general point, opening too wide in EP is a huge leak that people have and if you clean that up I think your results will improve dramatically.

If you open 66+, ATs+, AJo+, that's only 8%. If you're not balancing with AJo then what are you opening EP with? 66+ AQo+, AQs+ is only 6.5%. I think AJ plays better than mid suited connectors oop. I'd have to combine several databases to get the entire 3 million + hands I've played, but I'm certain I'm running a neat profit opening AJo from ep. Are you saying you've found from personal experience for 50,000 times+ opening AJo from ep and it's returned a net negative for you? That surprises me. To say it's "not even close" surprises me even more. I think we should have enough of a skill advantage to manage AJo OOP at small stakes with all the crap broadway, mid suited connectors and small pairs people are calling with. Maybe the games at MERGE are way tougher than ZOOM right now though?

If you open 66+, ATs+, AJo+, that's only 8%. If you're not balancing with AJo then what are you opening EP with? 66+ AQo+, AQs+ is only 6.5%. I think AJ plays better than mid suited connectors oop. I'd have to combine several databases to get the entire 3 million + hands I've played, but I'm certain I'm running a neat profit opening AJo from ep. Are you saying you've found from personal experience for 50,000 times+ opening AJo from ep and it's returned a net negative for you? That surprises me. To say it's "not even close" surprises me even more. I think we should have enough of a skill advantage to manage AJo OOP at small stakes with all the crap broadway, mid suited connectors and small pairs people are calling with. Maybe the games at MERGE are way tougher than ZOOM right now though?

I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of balance. I don't think you need to "balance" your preflop range by putting AJo in it. Honestly, I'm not even sure how that really applies to balance.

I'm saying that I have no reason to think a mediocre hand like AJo is a good hand to play every single time it's dealt to me in EP and that a 4k sample size isn't going to change my mind. You could even make a case that you're losing money in spots, but more than making it up in other spots such that you're turning an overall profit, but you could be making more if you folded it in bad spots.

I don't think I have much of a skill advantage to play a weak hand OOP vs good players who have strong ranges. These games aren't exactly the easiest in the world... and almost 20% of the time someone to my left has QQ+,AK. That's a tough hurdle for AJo to overcome.

I think 8% is plenty to be opening in FR EP for a starting point. ATs+,AQo+, 66+ = 7.4%. I think that's a fine range. Then when you have a spot you can add in your suited broadways and AJo, KQo, etc. I just don't believe it's an auto-open. You could make a case that I should have opened it in this hand because one of the blinds looked like a mark.

I do imagine the games at Merge are tougher than Zoom, but maybe easier than standard Stars games. Probably close there, though.

There is a lot of ways putting AJ into your EP PFR helps balance your range, not just pre flop but post flop. I take balancing your range to mean a particular action you take cannot be easily interpreted as a narrow set of hand strengths the majority of the time. Is that a fundamental misunderstanding? Here's one example: On a TJ2r type flop, by having AJo in your pfr you increase your top pair combos by almost 4X, while your gutters remain the ~same at 33.7 from 37.2%. Your c-bet has become more "balanced" as your weak pair to top pair ratio has decreased substantially. I personally always check EP PFR on my HUD pop up vs regs and it's pretty easy to exploit a 7.1% range by balancing your own flop ck-r/raise/float/ect ranges accordingly. Just increasing from 7.09 to 7.99% EP pfr by adding AJo is going to barely affect how people react to you pre-flop but is going to make a correspondingly much larger difference in how easily your hand can be read on a variety of board flop textures.

Anyway this is a long debate just to point out AJo from EP is not an auto fold as you imply in the video. You decide your folding UTG1 before you even know if UTG is opening and you say nothing about your observations/reads of the players yet to act. I think you're throwing away a lot of value there if you're autopilot folding that strong of a hand. You say yourself you're only going to be up against a premium hand less than 1/5 times. However, you will get called by much weaker hands than AJ far more than 1/5 times.

My point is that 7.09 to 7.99% EP PFR is not significant enough to be "not even close" for considering opening unless you're worried about getting outplayed on average post flop. If you're auto folding AJo then you've strongly restricted yourself to this very tight 7.09 since it doesn't make sense from a game theory perspective to open for example KQo if you're auto-folding AJo.
AJo/KQ are right on the border for open/fold range from EP, almost any other hands would be much easier to argue for a "not even close" fold.

There is a lot of ways putting AJ into your EP PFR helps balance your range, not just pre flop but post flop. I take balancing your range to mean a particular action you take cannot be easily interpreted as a narrow set of hand strengths the majority of the time. Is that a fundamental misunderstanding? Here's one example: On a TJ2r type flop, by having AJo in your pfr you increase your top pair combos by almost 4X, while your gutters remain the ~same at 33.7 from 37.2%. Your c-bet has become more "balanced" as your weak pair to top pair ratio has decreased substantially. I personally always check EP PFR on my HUD pop up vs regs and it's pretty easy to exploit a 7.1% range by balancing your own flop ck-r/raise/float/ect ranges accordingly. Just increasing from 7.09 to 7.99% EP pfr by adding AJo is going to barely affect how people react to you pre-flop but is going to make a correspondingly much larger difference in how easily your hand can be read on a variety of board flop textures.

Anyway this is a long debate just to point out AJo from EP is not an auto fold as you imply in the video. You decide your folding UTG1 before you even know if UTG is opening and you say nothing about your observations/reads of the players yet to act. I think you're throwing away a lot of value there if you're autopilot folding that strong of a hand. You say yourself you're only going to be up against a premium hand less than 1/5 times. However, you will get called by much weaker hands than AJ far more than 1/5 times.

My point is that 7.09 to 7.99% EP PFR is not significant enough to be "not even close" for considering opening unless you're worried about getting outplayed on average post flop. If you're auto folding AJo then you've strongly restricted yourself to this very tight 7.09 since it doesn't make sense from a game theory perspective to open for example KQo if you're auto-folding AJo.
AJo/KQ are right on the border for open/fold range from EP, almost any other hands would be much easier to argue for a "not even close" fold.

Balancing is about having a correct portion of good to weak hands in your range, but your hand is going to miss most flops. You have plenty of big card hands to miss the flop with in EP. I don't think you need to add more for balance. I think of balance in a much more specific manner (giving my opponents an appropriate number of equity, for example) but I don't think it applies to "you need AJo in your preflop range in EP". I think you nee to consider your balance more in how you construct your postflop range, but fundamentally if your range is strong but not only premiums (like in EP) you're going to have a pretty good balance inherently. I think we need to be concerned about balancing our response to 3bets more than anything, and AJo hurts that balance. Somebody can correct me if I'm wrong.

I never said it was an auto-fold in the video. I just didn't go into a lot of detail because I'm doing a video and there's a lot of things to talk about... so sometimes I miss something. I've definitely also stated in many other videos something like "I would open AJo in this spot if..." so sometimes I skip over points that I've made in so many other videos. Maybe I shouldn't do that moving forward. But I never said it was here either. In fact, I explicitly said it wasn't. If UTG opens it's a snap-fold though unless he folds to a lot of 3-bets. I'm not sure why you keep saying that. I said this...

I think 8% is plenty to be opening in FR EP for a starting point. ATs+,AQo+, 66+ = 7.4%. I think that's a fine range. Then when you have a spot you can add in your suited broadways and AJo, KQo, etc. I just don't believe it's an auto-open. You could make a case that I should have opened it in this hand because one of the blinds looked like a mark.

Also, vs good players I don't get called by almost ANYTHING worse than AJo. If there is a bad player in a the blinds, then AJo is a pretty clear open here.

Comparing 7.09 to 7.99 is irrelevant. You could make that argument from 8 to 9, and 9 to 10, and 10 to 11, and 11 to 12. That doesn't have anything to do with whether AJo is ALWAYS +EV to open in EP. AKo is, sure. I don't think AJo is and none of these arguments are going to convince me. You don't need to convince me that it sometimes is. I'm not buying that it always is and there's really no way to prove it. I think it's -EV unless the situation is right, and I'm going to err on the side of "too tight" in EP.

If you think AJo is fine... then cool... I can't disprove that it's an auto-open. I just disagree with a lot of the things you're picking on me about , and I think you're concept of balance is a little fuzzy here. I have a pretty good mathematical understanding, but I don't think I can nail down what a balance EP range in FR is. There's too much to happen post-flop to do that. It's so much left to talk about that I can't really articulate why I think it's not so great.