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

Food for thought:

Off the topic, but it was good to put a name to the faces in your preview of this seasons Coaching Kristy series a few months ago when Andrew and Kristy were speaking on camera.

Makes it easier to visualise who is speaking during the video, instead of picturing comic book guy telling us how to play poker.

Maybe other coaches who arent too camera shy could do a quick live intro before a series. Good for self promotion aswell i guess.

Thoughts anyone?

Baluuga is so much win!!

Table1: KT

Do you expect vilain to fold his Jx hand to a river bet ? After c/c flop, c/r turn and bet river, I think that if vilain is somewhat competent, he will think that you have better than TPTK here. But do you give vilain credit to be competent at 100NL ? I know you (kristy) play 50NL and I think also 25NL and I want to know if you expect the same play to works at 25, 50NL against someone with regish stats ?

And what about a flop c/r instead of float oop? because when we c/c, we must have a plan for what to do on the turn and its hard to know vilain's range for betting the turn and how will he respond to a c/r.
Even at these limit (50NL-100NL), you dont think that you can be vs a loose player that call too much and make our bluff very bad ? the same kind of player that we saw in the first coaching Kristy serie and that we didnt want to bluff..

1) its an awesome win if he folds a J. some players will, some won't, its worth trying to find out.
2) c/r the turn is often a better plan than c/r flop vs a lot of regs.

your point about the looseness of the limit is very valid, though. Kristy and I were going through some more advanced stuff as her game has developed.

Andrew

Hand 1: 44 (3bet question)

question for you baluga about the postflop play with small PPs after 3betting oop and get called. I would assume vilain's range to something like that: 88/99-JJ/QQ depending on the dynamics, AQ, AJs, and maybe ATs, KQs, KJs and come T9s, 89s but not a lot imo.

So when flop comes KT6, its a clear c/f. But when flop comes 225, you said we cbet for value (and protection I guess). But this is hard to play the turn oop. Vilain can either float with A high or suited broadway, but he can also call with better PP so what to do if turn is:

1) blanks
2) J, Q, K, A

- On a blanks, if we bet, we only get a call by better hand imo. (float will fold)
- On an A turn (for exemple), if we bet, he wont fold better hand (he call with all his 99-TT- JJ hands), wont fold his float turned into a pair (A high float in my exemple), but fold all stuff that we beat (KQ, KJ, etc)

Is there anything wrong with my thought here?

thx

on a blank, i might bet super, super small.
on an A, it depends on how my opponent plays things like AT and JJ. if he folds AT pre its a bet, if he calls its a c/f. if he 4bets JJ pre, its a c/f, if he doesnt, its a bet. I think. running through these quickly.

I'd only say that i'm not too worried about A hi floats given that they will almost never turn their hand into a bluff.

Andrew

Baluga,

Table 2, the KQs IP vs on the AJx vs the reg w/o history who checks back flop. I don't really understand why you think we should give up on the river. I wouldn't ever expect an unknown reg to go into c/c mode for 3 streets with anything w/o any history.

That plus our raw equity vs his total range, I think would make a 3rd barrel very profitable here, we can even put a very good price on it and make it 2/3 or 1/2 pot and make our bluffs very cheap, this looks very much like value.

When our opponent checks the flop I don't think he's ever planning to call 3 unless he improves, and I don't expect the way this board runs out that he ever improved here.

Basically he could take this line with any J, maybe TT/99, QQ/KK or some weak A's that he's pot controlling. I would expect most reg's to fold all these hands w/o any history or reads on us. When he calls turn I think the worst hand he can have is Jx, but normally I would say that it would be more likely that he holds QQ/KK, Jx which turned a FD (allthought he maybe would have CBET his 2nd pair +BDFD some % of the time), or a weak A. But on a blank river I don't think he calls with anything, if he somehow does manage to do this tho, we get a great read and value bet the shit out of him in the future.

Edit: WoOopz just decided to type a big ass question, w/o a proper thanks for the work here. Excuse me, thanks alot for a great video again!

against some regs, youre exactly right. weaker regs won't fold an A though, which (combo wise) is most likely. especially if we think he folds a J on the turn (I do).

Andrew

Allright, thanks alot for fast responds. Much appreciated! And yeah I definately agree, I would expect the J's to be folded on the turn also.

your point about the looseness of the limit is very valid, though. Kristy and I were going through some more advanced stuff as her game has developed.

Andrew

So you dont necessarily recommand to make a fancy play like that at this limit (and lower) ? I mean by fancy play the c/c, c/r, bet line.

thx

against some regs, youre exactly right. weaker regs won't fold an A though, which (combo wise) is most likely. especially if we think he folds a J on the turn (I do).

Andrew

I agree with Andrew. Also, I dont think its a good idea to try to make vilain fold a range that only contain TP and 2nd pair when we dont have read about vilain because he can be a standard bad player who call too much (or maybe I dont give enough credit to micro and ssnl player? I tend to think they are calling station a lot)

on a blank, i might bet super, super small.
on an A, it depends on how my opponent plays things like AT and JJ. if he folds AT pre its a bet, if he calls its a c/f. if he 4bets JJ pre, its a c/f, if he doesnt, its a bet. I think. running through these quickly.

I'd only say that i'm not too worried about A hi floats given that they will almost never turn their hand into a bluff.

Andrew

If we 3bet preflop, like you said, its because we expect vilain to call with worst. If he call with worst (JT, T9s, etc), I think he would also call with AT. For JJ, I think its common to flat 3bet IP with that hand. He could have AT in his range and also JJ. And these two hands wont fold to a turn bet (on A turn). But if he is floating lite (because he isnt a good player and call too much) and we check turn, he could easily be bluffing us OR be value betting us and we dont even know when he bluff and when he value bet.

thx for all the quick reply Andrew! appreciate it and sry for all questions but I like your thinking method so I try to take the max info as I can from your vids.

So you dont necessarily recommand to make a fancy play like that at this limit (and lower) ? I mean by fancy play the c/c, c/r, bet line.

thx

those "fancy" lines are good against good players. there aren't very many good players at these limits. However, if you think someone is good enough to make it worth a try, then it shouldn't matter what limit you're playing at.

Andrew

Time Link to 00:12:01

Hands like ATo/ A9 etc are going to fold on the turn or river too. I would bet three streets here, if the turn and river are blanks. Because he never can have something like AJ/AQ/AK/JJ/22/AA, so the best hand in his range is ATo i think.. Villain could have picked up equity on the turn also, which makes it better for us to fire the turn and the river. If we see vilain calling with ATo on the river, we know enough and are prepared to valuebet three streets with TPGK+ next time

Time Link to 00:47:21

Table 1 KT: I agree with all said here, however I just noticed this is the same bad player from table 4 with the A8 hand that donked the 3-to-flush turn into 2 people. Does that change our thoughts for this KT hand? I would think he has some draws after the C/R that he continues with; would it make it more of c/c on the river to let him bluff or does the fact that he might have Ax draws makes us more inclined to bet ourself?

Time Link to 00:22:10

Safe to apply this same concept in Live Brick and Mortar Cash games up to 2-5 NL? How about 5-10 NL?

Safe to apply this same concept in Live Brick and Mortar Cash games up to 2-5 NL? How about 5-10 NL?

i assume you're asking if , "bet for value/ fold to a raise" works at B & M cash games?

And the answer is yes, even up to 5/10. Bad aggro players are even easier to identify live, usually because they are drinking and talking.

Andrew

Table 1 KT: I agree with all said here, however I just noticed this is the same bad player from table 4 with the A8 hand that donked the 3-to-flush turn into 2 people. Does that change our thoughts for this KT hand? I would think he has some draws after the C/R that he continues with; would it make it more of c/c on the river to let him bluff or does the fact that he might have Ax draws makes us more inclined to bet ourself?

I was kind of leaning towards c/c river anyway, so I think this makes that more plausible. I think it's probably pretty close either way. If he folds any pairs, then its worth a shove. He probably has enough pairs+A hi to make shove best, but if he doesn't, then c/c all the way I think.

Andrew