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

u should make some vids on stars (where the real men play)

Time Link to 00:12:27

This is a very interesting spot worth further discussion, imo. It's especially interesting because the A is NOT a clube (AsKc9c 7d). Since we have the Qc and Tc, most of his FD's are top pair+NFD, and very few, if any, are lower FD's, unless he's flatting in the BB with a hand like 87s or J8s. I would imagine that Axs would be more likely than small SC'ers or J8, and there are many more combos of Acxc than the few SC'ers he does choose to call with. I would also expect a ch/R on the flop from sets and the top pair+NFD almost always. When he DOESN'T raise the c-bet, he's either very passive, has one of the few worse draws, or he has a 1 pair hand. These hands are unlikely to raise a blank turn, and many of them have us beat. Therefore I like the plan to 3 barrel here, however there would be some very interesting river cards that could make me think twice, especially board pairing cards, and maybe even an 8, but i'm not sure about that.

If villain ch/R the flop, do we call 1 time and fold unimproved? Part of me feels like we may not have the equity to call since a good portion of his range would be top pair+NFD, so we have many tainted outs. the only set that makes sense is 99, and I would expect him to raise pf with AK, so unless we had a read that he was aggro and could show up with QJ or AJ with 1 club, I'm not certain calling is correct, seeing that we have all our outs vs only the 3 aces up combos (assuming hes not playing a9o).

Time Link to 00:11:38

Hi Threads, Table 1 you flat with QTs here. I noticed in some other videos you would fold some suited 1 gappers and such like T8s vs. some opens. I know that when stacks are more shallow we can fold sc'ers more because spr's will make lower implied odds or give us less chance to steal post. My question is this, when full stacked how do you make a decision as to which sc'ers you want to flat? Do you cut it off at like 56s+ or what? I usually take flops in position with almost any sc'er and 2 gapper if I chose not to 3-bet bluff, but I've seen you fold some...

This is a very interesting spot worth further discussion, imo. It's especially interesting because the A is NOT a clube (AsKc9c 7d). Since we have the Qc and Tc, most of his FD's are top pair+NFD, and very few, if any, are lower FD's, unless he's flatting in the BB with a hand like 87s or J8s. I would imagine that Axs would be more likely than small SC'ers or J8, and there are many more combos of Acxc than the few SC'ers he does choose to call with. I would also expect a ch/R on the flop from sets and the top pair+NFD almost always. When he DOESN'T raise the c-bet, he's either very passive, has one of the few worse draws, or he has a 1 pair hand. These hands are unlikely to raise a blank turn, and many of them have us beat. Therefore I like the plan to 3 barrel here, however there would be some very interesting river cards that could make me think twice, especially board pairing cards, and maybe even an 8, but i'm not sure about that.

I agree. I'd add that he looked pretty fish thusfar so he can have some more SCs with FDs in his range.

If villain ch/R the flop, do we call 1 time and fold unimproved? Part of me feels like we may not have the equity to call since a good portion of his range would be top pair+NFD, so we have many tainted outs. the only set that makes sense is 99, and I would expect him to raise pf with AK, so unless we had a read that he was aggro and could show up with QJ or AJ with 1 club, I'm not certain calling is correct, seeing that we have all our outs vs only the 3 aces up combos (assuming hes not playing a9o).

I think we're pretty thin there. If he makes a big bet it actually get's pretty close to a fold outright if we feel he's c/r'ing TP+NFD hands, but I had him as loose passive so that means his range will not have as many FDs and be more nutty. Thus our implied odds get better and our FE gets worse, so we can call to spike.

If he gets more aggro and is c/r'ing NFDs, I probably fold... as dirty as that feels. However, if that's the case I might just delayed c-bet and 2-barrel river. We also have the option of floating turn. I think I like that option better vs an aggressive, but not overly aggressive, player. This is an actually a thought that you hear me consider in the video. The "the question is should I bet now?" comment was me thinking about that.

Time Link to 00:20:53

Hi Threads,

Table 2 you took a flop against the button with 57s when you were the BB. I see a lot of producers fold sc'ers in the blinds or 3-bet them I suppose since it may be hard to profit w/them oop. However I've watched a couple of Bluefire vids in the past and guys like Giggy and Galfond are almost always calling stuff like 78s etc...The players and yourself I mentioned are vastly superior post flop players then myself, so what would you advocate to a decent player, but not a coach type caliber player with these hands in the blinds? Also would you have folded if a tighter player opened from an earlier position?

-Thanks.

Hi Threads, Table 1 you flat with QTs here. I noticed in some other videos you would fold some suited 1 gappers and such like T8s vs. some opens. I know that when stacks are more shallow we can fold sc'ers more because spr's will make lower implied odds or give us less chance to steal post. My question is this, when full stacked how do you make a decision as to which sc'ers you want to flat? Do you cut it off at like 56s+ or what? I usually take flops in position with almost any sc'er and 2 gapper if I chose not to 3-bet bluff, but I've seen you fold some...

Good question. I actually don't really view SCs and S1Gs as "implied odds hands". Yes, they probably are second or third place in terms of their implied odds (PPs, then Axs/SCs), but that doesn't mean that's what they are best used for.

I think of SCs/S1Gs as hands that have a lot of playability post-flop so that I can bluff my opponent or try to catch his bluffs (as you mentioned... chances to steal or steal equity). If the opener is a decent player with a tight range, then the implied odds aren't going to be there because our draws are pretty obvious and TAGs know how to get away from hands. In that case we would prefer the TAG be opening from a later position so that his range is wider. If his range is wider, we can do the things like bluff and bluff catch that SCs are good at doing. If it's tighter his range is too tight to do those sort of things, and thus I fold. Of course, there's in between hands so if his range is semi-tight but not nitty I'll be more likely to call with the better SCs (suited broadways). As his range gets looser I start calling more with the worse ones like 54s, 64s, and even 2-gappers like J8s.

Certainly other things like.. our position, how the villain plays post-flop, stack sizes... etc... can add or remove hands, but I start with how wide he is opening and adjust from there.

In this particular spot I had a pretty good suited broadway and a player who had opened from the HJ and I would have position on him. So, I felt I his range was wide enough and my hand was good enough to call. However, in this same spot I'd fold stuff like 54s and 75s.

I don't actually end up 3-bet bluffing with these hands too often nowadays because I'd have to be going pretty crazy on a guy if I want my 3-bet bluffing range has started including those hands. I'd usually rather have something like Kxs or QTo that has blockers to his value range and the ability to out-flop him much more. TP type hands, and thus high card strength, becomes more important than suitedness in 3-bet pots 100bb deep because of the lower SPR.

Time Link to 00:39:59

Here's an example on table 2 of my above thread, villain opened utg and you folded T9s in the hi-jack. So possibly you folded because his range will be tighter and you'll have less bluffing equity post, or because you have players left to act behind you.

Here's an example on table 2 of my above thread, villain opened utg and you folded T9s in the hi-jack. So possibly you folded because his range will be tighter and you'll have less bluffing equity post, or because you have players left to act behind you.

It's a combination of the two, but mostly because he opened UTG. I'd consider calling OTB (still mostly fold), but from the HJ I think it's a pretty clear fold.

Note also that I had a very active image vs him post-flop so I won't try to steal vs him anyways. I still doubt my implied odds are there with 98s though.

Time Link to 00:56:12

Excellent commentary on the delayed c-bet line.

Good question. I actually don't really view SCs and S1Gs as "implied odds hands". Yes, they probably are second or third place in terms of their implied odds (PPs, then Axs/SCs), but that doesn't mean that's what they are best used for.

I think of SCs/S1Gs as hands that have a lot of playability post-flop so that I can bluff my opponent or try to catch his bluffs (as you mentioned... chances to steal or steal equity). If the opener is a decent player with a tight range, then the implied odds aren't going to be there because our draws are pretty obvious and TAGs know how to get away from hands. In that case we would prefer the TAG be opening from a later position so that his range is wider. If his range is wider, we can do the things like bluff and bluff catch that SCs are good at doing. If it's tighter his range is too tight to do those sort of things, and thus I fold. Of course, there's in between hands so if his range is semi-tight but not nitty I'll be more likely to call with the better SCs (suited broadways). As his range gets looser I start calling more with the worse ones like 54s, 64s, and even 2-gappers like J8s.

Certainly other things like.. our position, how the villain plays post-flop, stack sizes... etc... can add or remove hands, but I start with how wide he is opening and adjust from there.

In this particular spot I had a pretty good suited broadway and a player who had opened from the HJ and I would have position on him. So, I felt I his range was wide enough and my hand was good enough to call. However, in this same spot I'd fold stuff like 54s and 75s.

I don't actually end up 3-bet bluffing with these hands too often nowadays because I'd have to be going pretty crazy on a guy if I want my 3-bet bluffing range has started including those hands. I'd usually rather have something like Kxs or QTo that has blockers to his value range and the ability to out-flop him much more. TP type hands, and thus high card strength, becomes more important than suitedness in 3-bet pots 100bb deep because of the lower SPR.

Super great answer that has just kicked my thinking up a notch about these situations, much appreciated!

Time Link to 00:16:12

Why do you want him to fold 77 with 7h?

Why do you want him to fold 77 with 7h?

That was a pretty bad explanation on my part.

I don't really expect him to call with 7x7h, but at the same time I don't really want to give him a free card either. My bet is for thin value and collection of dead equity. The dead equity hands become stuff like 7x7h, and I want to bet small vs that hand. The smaller I bet the more likely he calls with hands I want him to call with, so betting small is good there too. If he has a folding hand he's folding to the small bet just as well.

The point I was trying to make is that on a monotone board there's a lot of random FDs that will fold a large equity share. If he calls with it that's fine too, sure, but we are betting to put him in a spot to do call or fold, and both of those are fine with us.

That was a pretty bad explanation on my part.

I don't really expect him to call with 7x7h, but at the same time I don't really want to give him a free card either. My bet is for thin value and collection of dead equity. The dead equity hands become stuff like 7x7h, and I want to bet small vs that hand. The smaller I bet the more likely he calls with hands I want him to call with, so betting small is good there too. If he has a folding hand he's folding to the small bet just as well.

The point I was trying to make is that on a monotone board there's a lot of random FDs that will fold a large equity share. If he calls with it that's fine too, sure, but we are betting to put him in a spot to do call or fold, and both of those are fine with us.

Cool, thanks - i can understand why betting small there is good

Great video , Do you play much 6max , any chance of some 6max video from you in the future ? What is it about FR that you prefer ?

Sorry i cant time link

7.30 - KJ , you decide to slowplay and check the flop , which i really like. But had he bet the Ace on the turn you said you would of raised. Could you explain why ? i play 6max and dont see myself raising there , UTG at a FR game doesnt this board hits your range pretty hard , i cant really see him calling a raise with much worse and i dont think we are to concerned about protecting from a diamond given how few combos hes likely to have.

20min - AQ sqz , with 2 fish in the blinds to me your sqz range becomes more weighted towards value and hands you dont mind getting all in pre with the fish plus youve already been seen sqz/folding so i dont think you will get played back at lightly. Is the EV of sqzing greater than calling ? To me our hand seems to strong to raise/fold

1hr - T9o hand , villian who called the sqz seems nitty - i dont think we have much FE on the flop and no real bd equity - i would c/f my hand here , we will have hands with more equity to bluff here with , not really any cards we can continue on. I dont think we always lose when we check either , maybe he checks back and we pick up gutter and plan to bet turn and river? As played i wouldnt even consider c/r the turn so really not sure if its good or bad , villian seems way to nitty to mess around in 3bet pots with

Right at the end of the video you 3bet QJo BB vs BTN - i have always thought this to be a poor hand to have in our bluffing range - maybe you just decided this time or maybe this is a standard for you ?

Great video , Do you play much 6max , any chance of some 6max video from you in the future ? What is it about FR that you prefer ?

I play 50/50 6-max/FR. I'd definitely enjoy doing some 6-max videos moving forward. I'd say that I actually prefer 6-max at this point in time, but I still play both.

Sorry i cant time link

7.30 - KJ , you decide to slowplay and check the flop , which i really like. But had he bet the Ace on the turn you said you would of raised. Could you explain why ? i play 6max and dont see myself raising there , UTG at a FR game doesnt this board hits your range pretty hard , i cant really see him calling a raise with much worse and i dont think we are to concerned about protecting from a diamond given how few combos hes likely to have.

He seemed to be a loose-bad so I figured he would call a turn raise and a river bet with a lot of Ax, of which he would have plenty in his range.

20min - AQ sqz , with 2 fish in the blinds to me your sqz range becomes more weighted towards value and hands you dont mind getting all in pre with the fish plus youve already been seen sqz/folding so i dont think you will get played back at lightly. Is the EV of sqzing greater than calling ? To me our hand seems to strong to raise/fold

I don't think AQ plays that well calling and playing 4-way - even IP. TP doesn't becomes worth that much, and bluffing isn't really that great 4-way. In general, high card hands lose strength as the pot becomes multiway so I don't become that big of a fan of flatting them. I just think we set ourselves up to not really be able to do much at all post-flop. 3-betting goes up in value because there's a ton of dead money.

1hr - T9o hand , villian who called the sqz seems nitty - i dont think we have much FE on the flop and no real bd equity - i would c/f my hand here , we will have hands with more equity to bluff here with , not really any cards we can continue on. I dont think we always lose when we check either , maybe he checks back and we pick up gutter and plan to bet turn and river? As played i wouldnt even consider c/r the turn so really not sure if its good or bad , villian seems way to nitty to mess around in 3bet pots with

I wouldn't call him nitty. This is pretty much a standard TAG in my book. Perhaps a little on the tight side, but there are a lot of guys who aren't just nit who run similar stats. Plus, it's only 123 hands so he could easily be a 15/12.

I think not betting flop is fine, and using a delayed c-bet is pretty ideal here actually. If I had to do it it over I probably would check flop.

Right at the end of the video you 3bet QJo BB vs BTN - i have always thought this to be a poor hand to have in our bluffing range - maybe you just decided this time or maybe this is a standard for you ?

Super standard for me. This hand has blockers to his value range, and plays pretty well in a 3-bet pot because we can flop TP, some overs, some straight draws. It's also not good enough to call, but just barely. So, it would be one of the best hands we would 3-bet bluff.

Time Link to 00:20:00

AQo squeeze on #3. Were you considering flatting or was it raise or fold? Are you planning on folding to 4bets? What about AQs, KQs, KQo, TT?

AQo squeeze on #3. Were you considering flatting or was it raise or fold? Are you planning on folding to 4bets? What about AQs, KQs, KQo, TT?

I think flatting is +EV, but playing AQ in a 4-way pot isn't really going to turn as much profit as taking down a ton of dead money pre-flop. TT is going to be a lot more playable 4-way as the implied odds for hitting a set are pretty huge. KQ plays similarly to AQ.

Time Link to 00:40:40

Your comment here brings me an interesting question I wanted to point out.

You call with KJs, and would 3 bet KJo.
So in short, you are calling with hands that are OK playing post flop vs vilain's opening range, and you are 3 bet bluffing with hand slighly outside your calling range. This is mainly what I am also doing. My question here is more about the 3 bet bluffing range.

Would you do it with other trouble hands like QJ, QT, KT etc in this spot? I mainly use SC (98, 87, 76...) connectors for 3 bet bluffs. I think that SC have more deceptive value, but are harder to play post flop. Tought, I think that I heard you few times during this series mentionning that its better to play hands that flops well (avoid tough spots...). The only downside would be to face domination some times with trouble hands in 3 bet pot?

Would you recommand 3 bet bluffs more with high cards than SC, or both?

Thank you!
Great series so far!

Your comment here brings me an interesting question I wanted to point out.

You call with KJs, and would 3 bet KJo.
So in short, you are calling with hands that are OK playing post flop vs vilain's opening range, and you are 3 bet bluffing with hand slighly outside your calling range. This is mainly what I am also doing. My question here is more about the 3 bet bluffing range.

Would you do it with other trouble hands like QJ, QT, KT etc in this spot? I mainly use SC (98, 87, 76...) connectors for 3 bet bluffs. I think that SC have more deceptive value, but are harder to play post flop. Tought, I think that I heard you few times during this series mentionning that its better to play hands that flops well (avoid tough spots...). The only downside would be to face domination some times with trouble hands in 3 bet pot?

Would you recommand 3 bet bluffs more with high cards than SC, or both?

Thank you!
Great series so far!

I think deceptive value is extremely overrated. I almost never play a hand pre-flop for the sole purpose of it being deceptive post-flop. Sometimes hands will be deceptive, but that's more a side benefit. When villain is calling with a range of JJ-99, AQ would you rather have KJ or 65s? You flop more equity more often with KJ so you definitely want KJ. The SC's deceptive value is pretty much worthless in this spot. You need to flop two-pair for it to be deceptive, but those sort of hands only happen about 3% of the time. The value of a SC is that it flops some draws that are good to bluff with. I would sometime 3-bet a SC in this spot, sure, but it's because we flop draws that we can bluff with SCs. The fact that there is some deception is just an added side benefit.

Domination is also not too much of a concern. Say you 3-bet QJ and he holds AQ. There's only a couple things that can happen that's bad for you. You could both flop a Q, but there's only two Q's left in the deck so that has the same probability of flopping a set when you hold a PP. So, that's not happening a lot. The other bad thing is he could flop an A. Most players will be folding unless one of those things happens. So, most of the time he's just c/f'ing the flop. That means we will the pot most of the time. So, domination isn't that big of a deal if we just win 75% of the pots post-flop.

I would only be 3-betting SCs if I thought he was folding a lot, but also opening a strong enough range that I can't call them. Versus CO raises I routinely and calling SCs OTB so that will remove them from my 3-betting range a lot in the particularly obvious 3-betting situations.

Time Link to 00:44:55

i think you can c/f QQ here because the only hand i think you beat is Jx or a stubborn 7x and I don't think they are betting river. the only possible hand he will bet as a bluff is a gutshot calling down but not sure how often that is.

i think you can c/f QQ here because the only hand i think you beat is Jx or a stubborn 7x and I don't think they are betting river. the only possible hand he will bet as a bluff is a gutshot calling down but not sure how often that is.

I agree if we check, it's a fold. I'm not sure about checking though. I feel like we can still get some value there, but it seems close. Definitely feel free to Stove some stuff to put up here for discussion.

Time Link to 01:03:13

why wouldn't you 3bet pocket 9s? Is it because the preflop raiser is tight, so you'd need to expand your bluffing range and not your value betting range?

why wouldn't you 3bet pocket 9s? Is it because the preflop raiser is tight, so you'd need to expand your bluffing range and not your value betting range?

I almost never 3-bet 99 in this spot in these games. I'd be much more likely to 3-bet bluff him as you mentioned. 99 isn't good enough to do it for value as he'll mostly just continue when he has good equity.

Time Link to 00:51:44

You open K6o 4x because he's a fish and you want to play a bigger pot w/ a fish? Your goal is to hit top pair and value bet right?

You also seem to have a great read on how this guy is donking flops w/ draws/air and not many made hands. So would you bluff raise his donk bet if it was a drawing type of board instead of what flopped?

As flopped if he checks the flop instead of betting it, would you check back because he would bet most draws and he's not really calling with worse? Also not a huge hand you hold, so you can play a smaller pot and probably only want two streets of value anyway?