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

Who? What table? What was my holding? Please be more clear about that stuff.

My apologies, I provided a time link just before you said you prefer to min raise in spots where there is no small blind.

So my question is, if we are on the button and it gets folded to us, are we opening our entire range 2.5bb (in this case it would be 2 due to no small blind)

You generally want to be consistent with your sizing to not give away your hand strength, unless you feel you can get away with it. There's no way of him knowing my default is minraise when there's no SB, so I could probably do my normal raise size with a stronger hand there. Or if I'm very new to the table and he hasn't seen me 2.5x yet, I can even 3x or pot. But always lean towards consistency unless you have a reason not to.

You generally want to be consistent with your sizing to not give away your hand strength, unless you feel you can get away with it. There's no way of him knowing my default is minraise when there's no SB, so I could probably do my normal raise size with a stronger hand there. Or if I'm very new to the table and he hasn't seen me 2.5x yet, I can even 3x or pot. But always lean towards consistency unless you have a reason not to.

thanks, great advice! one last question, aside from spots that you mentioned, would you say that your "standard" would be to 2.5x every button?

thanks, great advice! one last question, aside from spots that you mentioned, would you say that your "standard" would be to 2.5x every button?

Yes, as you can see in all my videos

Yes, as you can see in all my videos

kk thanks again! first day as a subscriber

Time Link to 00:34:49

Classic case of Baluga Theorem?

Classic case of Baluga Theorem?

I review the hand at the end of the video.

Great video, can't wait to watch #2 in your series!

You say in the video that you will be starting out with opening the SB 100% against everybody because people in general folds too much in BB.
Which player types (in BB) are best / worst to open against in the SB? Isn't it better to try and steal blinds from Tight players instead of loose players?

You open 4 x BB from UTG (with suited connectors). Is it always 4 x BB from UTG?

You opens UTG+1 with ATo, and folds to a SB 3Bet. Which Range should be Open-Folding / Open-Calling / Open-4Bet?

You calls in BB against a BTN steal (3 x BB) with pair 88. Do we call with all pairs? How loose will does the opponent have to be before we start to 3Bet him?

At the beginning of your session you have just argued that it is better to C-Bet closer to Pot size when you are up against a fishy player. After 21:45 minutes you only C-Bet ½-Pot, is that because this is a 3Bet pot?

After 31:30 minutes you play a multiway hans and you seems to believe that the only player who are able to trap is the player that are first to act. The other players would have bet the flop if they have connected with the flop.
Question: How much of this depends on how wet/dry the board is. Do people tend to be more trappy on dry boards and Value Bet on wet boards or the other way around?

Close to the end of the session you got dealt AJo in the CO, UTG opens (3½ x BB). You say: "If you don't call it 3Bet it, cause it is the best hand that you folded otherwise". I do not understand that sentence?
Could you please explain it a little further?

Great video, can't wait to watch #2 in your series!

You say in the video that you will be starting out with opening the SB 100% against everybody because people in general folds too much in BB.
Which player types (in BB) are best / worst to open against in the SB? Isn't it better to try and steal blinds from Tight players instead of loose players?

You open 4 x BB from UTG (with suited connectors). Is it always 4 x BB from UTG?

You opens UTG+1 with ATo, and folds to a SB 3Bet. Which Range should be Open-Folding / Open-Calling / Open-4Bet?

You calls in BB against a BTN steal (3 x BB) with pair 88. Do we call with all pairs? How loose will does the opponent have to be before we start to 3Bet him?

The answer to these questions: it depends... In my other series, The Thin Red Line, I talk general theory and focus on adjusting in the first episode, so that'd probably be a good watch. However, all my videos are geared towards players that already have all the fundamentals down, with as goal to help them expand beyond that. If you start expanding beyond the fundamentals without having them down yet, you'll do more harm than good to your game, so it might be better to watch some series by other instructors first. Don't underestimate the importance of what I just said, as many people did and proceeded to lose a lot of money and complain my videos made them spewy. I'd say when you're capable of beating NL50 would be a good time to start watching my series. But you're obviously free to watch whatever you want

At the beginning of your session you have just argued that it is better to C-Bet closer to Pot size when you are up against a fishy player. After 21:45 minutes you only C-Bet ½-Pot, is that because this is a 3Bet pot?

You should cbet close to pot for value and close to half pot as a bluff, as fish will fold anyway with air and will call anyway if they've hit. To a regular this strategy could be face up and you risk giving away your hand, but a fish won't adjust to it. In general I cbet half pot in 3bet pots as that works out well with stacksizes (river is a half pot shove this way). But I'll cbet larger (or smaller) vs fish in 3b pots too.

After 31:30 minutes you play a multiway hans and you seems to believe that the only player who are able to trap is the player that are first to act. The other players would have bet the flop if they have connected with the flop.
Question: How much of this depends on how wet/dry the board is. Do people tend to be more trappy on dry boards and Value Bet on wet boards or the other way around?

Yeah people are more trappy on dry boards, as there are less action killing cards, or cards where their opponent can suck out on them. On wet boards there are also more hands that can call you if you fast play.

Close to the end of the session you got dealt AJo in the CO, UTG opens (3½ x BB). You say: "If you don't call it 3Bet it, cause it is the best hand that you folded otherwise". I do not understand that sentence?
Could you please explain it a little further?

I extensively cover this in the first episode of The Thin Red Line. Keep the disclaimer in mind though.

Oops, my bad. I have 18% vs that range on the turn. Definitely a fold. Though you should never underestimate the spazzfactor, this particular kind of spot is so consistently for value that I should disregard it largely.

hey grindcore, any reason why you don't consider calling his minraise and either c/c or c/f river?

hey grindcore, any reason why you don't consider calling his minraise and either c/c or c/f river?

I know he's not bluffing. Call turn x/c river is the worst, because if he has a hand like AJ, he might check back a Q river while he'll call a turnshove, so if you're calling river anyway, you should shove turn. And calling turn x/f river is also no good as he's never bluffing and thus always betting river. Might as well fold turn and safe yourself some extra money.

ah ok, that makes sense. never thought about it like that

don't know about "definitely a fold" in this spot though. if I were in this spot I'd always just think that he could be spazzing out like you said and doing this for value with a lot of Jx hands, mainly cause he doesn't have a full stack since I won't have any other reads. Is this type of thinking a bit of a leak?

Don't get me wrong. They do spazz. That's why you generally shouldn't fold strong hands against unpredictable opponents, as explained at the start of the video. But this particular line is just so consistently for value. Run a filter on your database "facing turn raise = true" or something, and throw the hands in a replayer. Look for the ones where you got minraised on the turn by a fish, and see how many of them were a spazz and how many the nuts.

Time Link to 00:09:13

Hey Grindcore, I am sorry for not commenting earlier, I didn't have time because of uni, I might have lost my status as your no1 fan

This discussion comes up so often in micro stakes forums, an unknown or someone we don't have not completely stellar reads, but has a fullstack, autorebuy and decent VIP level on on opens in CO or OTB, and we find ourselves in the blinds, without a squeeze happy villain in BB, or let's say we are in the BB ourselves.

I am a huge fan of flatting mid strength hands like KQo AJo KJs ATo... and AQ too if the villain seems pretty tight and 3bet not much and when we do do it with a polarized range as we have a totally clean image (and there is 0 emotional attachment towards us as we are totally unknown). Then basically with out pretty much always 6+ outs I go ahead and check raise a decent amount of flops and float oop some small % of the time (like on obvious KXXr boards that people cbet and c/f with weak hands a ton on turn+ river). Because he is unknown reg but so are we people usually give us credit and 3betting will not get us a ton of value with those hands, but also when we attack him in single raise pot when his range is weak it should work a lot more than when we have history or villain has any reason to have an emotional intuitive response towards us.

I think with this approach I am open to a ton of mistakes and can bluff people that can't be bluffed at NL50 which happens a decent amount and am forcing play oop , but then again I find out right there and build an image and when e.g. someone re-pops me when I don't rep much on a dry board when I c/r and I snapfold I will be able to shift my range strongly towards value and if he does give me credit, great I got myself a weak spot (again with added complexity of estimating when he will feel threatened by our actions and will get pissed and start playing back).


Would you agree with this a lot less straightforward approach that seems optimal to me but that doesn't allow us 3bet, cbet and be done with the hand and avoid making mistakes, or would you say it's best to just 3bet unknown regs with these mid strenght hands and avoid making mistakes?

TY for your answer in advance I hope you see this after such a long time <3

Time Link to 00:13:47

I copied your note taking style pretty much, but I found out it gets complicated a lot when you have a ton of notes so I split it into 3 categories, e.g:

4/11 NL25 6MAX
*PRE*
-call AQo in BB
*3B*
*POST*
-check raise 2.6X AQ QXXs+stack off
-minraise TP+FD and ship

1) How do you manage to keep up when you have large amount of notes? I know you do a lot of refining and put the notes together and generalize patterns when you have blank periods, but I find a lot of the time that I am left with too many notes on various spots clumped together and I just ignore them.

2) Would you say this is good/logical categorization (PRE, 3B, POST) and would you add/refine some categories or add turn and river possibly once I move up to higher stakes where I have 5k+ hands on frequent regs?

Again I hope you see this
http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lbgb1qcr6o1qafrh6.png