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

Looks like an awesome video

nUL? =)

watching now

Time Link to 00:30:00

Why did you decide to cbet instead of checking behind here?

YES!! Have been waiting for a new micro 6max video for a month, and it's by Balugawhale. What a treat. Will watch immediately.

Time Link to 00:17:45

'Im isolating my Q2s for thin value'

To me this doesnt sound right , what would sound right is

Im isolating my Q2s to steal the pot

Unless you knew the guy calls 3bets oop very light i dont see how you could iso for thin value , i dont think players are calling 3bets that wide for this to be for value , the money may be small but it still matters
Whereas if you where to say its for a steal , your looking to take it down preflop or if he is calling 3bets wide with a cbet post flop , if you do hit a Q your not going to be to happy if a lot of money went into the pot

I like the way this video is going , playing loose to beat these games sounds great and its something ive just discovered , a good sense of villian type/tendencies and baord texture and you could win without looking at your cards , but id much rather you spoke about this in terms of stealing , we play loose to steal pots pre and post flop since villians are passive and we can easily fold to aggression , we play loose so stealing becomes a bigger part of our game more so than getting value simply cas we dont hit so often

Loving the video so far ...

Why did you decide to cbet instead of checking behind here?

for value

shades, stealing pots later equals to getting value aint it?
cool video, keep doing em

Unless you knew the guy calls 3bets oop very light i dont see how you could iso for thin value , i dont think players are calling 3bets that wide for this to be for value , the money may be small but it still matters
Whereas if you where to say its for a steal , your looking to take it down preflop or if he is calling 3bets wide with a cbet post flop , if you do hit a Q your not going to be to happy if a lot of money went into the pot

I would suggest that vs this guy, who miniraises, we could probably call Qxs a thin but good isolation, because he will check to fold a lot on the flop. Maybe Andrew wouldn't be 3-betting here if the open was a normal size or the player less bad.

Would it be possible to get a microlimit video that doesn't focus on the same things over and over again? Yes, we all know to isolate fish and they will always fold blah blah blah.

Can we get a video that focuses on playing all the crazy/weird aggros instead? Please?

awesome video

Great video! I've got a question for you BW. I'm playing 50 nl and I beat it over the last 100000 hands at 4.5 ptbb with a 19/16 sort of weak tight style. Do you recommend to first get used to a more loose playing style, really crush 50 nl and then move up? And what winrate should i think about to really crush 50 nl? Thx

Hi Baluga, great vid as always !

when I used to watch the coaching tree videos, I understood that a good c-bet, double barrel or any kind of bluff was a smart combination of equity and fold equity and I also understood that hands with high cards value were more adapted to play fishes since they love to go to showdown, you need hands which often win at showdown.

By isolating with basically any 2 cards, don't you think you will have both a problem of equity and fold equity since we can't expect them to fold anything and we don't make a hand often enough to beat them. I have the feeling that in this video, you create aggressive dead money by looking after passive dead money. Am I wrong?

Thanks again for your vids

Paco

for value

So you think that you have >50% EQ against his calling range? I find that pretty hard to believe.

just had to laugh when i saw the new tables name "Herluga"

Great video! I've got a question for you BW. I'm playing 50 nl and I beat it over the last 100000 hands at 4.5 ptbb with a 19/16 sort of weak tight style. Do you recommend to first get used to a more loose playing style, really crush 50 nl and then move up? And what winrate should i think about to really crush 50 nl? Thx

I think a huge factor that baluga didn't factor in this video was the rake. At 50NL the rake is a huge portion of your winrate. I'd say w/ the same type of players at the same levels he's used to this is very profitable. The thing is that the rake will be a huge portion of your profit making playing these hands to a player who can't profitably 2B, 3B and make good folds/marginal calldowns you will definitely be losing money playing this style.

I know at 100NL there are a ton of regs with 8-12% 3bet and will mercilessly 3bet you in pos and resteal. So unless you are used to 4betting, and 3bet postflop play i would not recommend this style. As baluga said. Play tight until you win. Once you win playing tight loosen up your game. You will hit a learning curve at first and find a ton of mistakes. Once you loosen up work on 2Bing in spots.. Then working on 3B... Do one thing at a time. Do not do everything at once!

I would suggest that vs this guy, who miniraises, we could probably call Qxs a thin but good isolation, because he will check to fold a lot on the flop. Maybe Andrew wouldn't be 3-betting here if the open was a normal size or the player less bad.

After watching the rest of the vid i realized that what i would call a steal is what baluga would call thin value , after reading Ed millers new book im in the mindset of theres 2 ways to win a hand , 1. win with the best hand 2. steal the pot , so when villian calls in this cas i know i can steal it on the flop alot , i kind of went into a bit of a useless rant in my last post , sry about that

Time Link to 00:24:10

A8s table1
You say its a bad call from him with 44 on KTT.
Im not so sure, i mean you play like a maniac, its CO vs BT, hes got a pair on a paired board, i would expect to call for value here a decent amount of time (>50%).
I call here w AQ,AJ too, so why shouldnt i call with a made hand?

P.S.
nice stuff, tx!

A8s table1
You say its a bad call from him with 44 on KTT.
Im not so sure, i mean you play like a maniac, its CO vs BT, hes got a pair on a paired board, i would expect to call for value here a decent amount of time (>50%).
I call here w AQ,AJ too, so why shouldnt i call with a made hand?

P.S.
nice stuff, tx!

bc random hands have like really good equity so its a pretty bad float bc hes going to get counterfeit for sucked out on and hes never going to get value from worse

A8s table1
You say its a bad call from him with 44 on KTT.
Im not so sure, i mean you play like a maniac, its CO vs BT, hes got a pair on a paired board, i would expect to call for value here a decent amount of time (>50%).
I call here w AQ,AJ too, so why shouldnt i call with a made hand?

P.S.
nice stuff, tx!

If you flat there with 44, how do you plan to play the turn/river when practically every card in the deck is a scare card for you? Your equity is bad against almost everything. AQ/AJ play much better because you have overcard/gutshot outs. It's very rare that you're gonna be able to showdown 44 successfully on this board, and even if it is the best hand you're gonna get barrelled off of it a lot on the turn/river.

I like how all the pros say it's profitable to play like a maniac in small stakes. Baluga makes a video raising crap UTG and gets crushed. The other day Dr.Giggy on BFP made the video and got raped as well. Yes, you could play loose at 0.25/0.50 but not by raising crap UTG. You raise loosly on the BU and CU and 3 bet mercilessly in position. The one who does it really well is mdm13.

I like how all the pros say it's profitable to play like a maniac in small stakes. Baluga makes a video raising crap UTG and gets crushed. The other day Dr.Giggy on BFP made the video and got raped as well. Yes, you could play loose at 0.25/0.50 but not by raising crap UTG. You raise loosly on the BU and CU and 3 bet mercilessly in position. The one who does it really well is mdm13.

I love Baluga but I kinda agree here, this video really demonstrates why this isn't a great approach when you have opponents who don't fold preflop or postflop. You play right into their hands by building up big pots preflop, cbetting the flop ~100%, and then giving up. I think you need to barrel a lot more (cbet less, but barrel most of the time you do cbet) if you're gonna do this because these guys call the flop super-light but play much more straightforward on the turn. The three mantras are really good, but I don't think you followed them very well.

Disagree with mogwai316 that you should barrel most of the time you do cbet and cbet less. This is going to have you likely with 1 of 2 other problems in my view: 1) barrelling to light against people you admit "don't fold preflop or postflop" will leave your turn range to weak or, 2) you will not be c-betting enough of your range which means you are not capitalizing on the value of the loose calls made proflop by small stakes players (e.g. passive dead money), which is an important consideration when isolating.

I like how all the pros say it's profitable to play like a maniac in small stakes. Baluga makes a video raising crap UTG and gets crushed. The other day Dr.Giggy on BFP made the video and got raped as well. Yes, you could play loose at 0.25/0.50 but not by raising crap UTG. You raise loosly on the BU and CU and 3 bet mercilessly in position. The one who does it really well is mdm13.

Results oriented much? I mean this was like a 200 hand drop of water in the giant ocean that is a poker career. I think you're kind of missing the point of the video.

I love Baluga but I kinda agree here, this video really demonstrates why this isn't a great approach when you have opponents who don't fold preflop or postflop. You play right into their hands by building up big pots preflop, cbetting the flop ~100%, and then giving up. I think you need to barrel a lot more (cbet less, but barrel most of the time you do cbet) if you're gonna do this because these guys call the flop super-light but play much more straightforward on the turn. The three mantras are really good, but I don't think you followed them very well.

I couldn't agree more. The concept that uNL players call PF then play fit-or-fold on the flop is just flawed. Many will call with extremely wide ranges on the flop - so how is cbetting a very high % then giving up on the turn any good?

This was an interesting vid to watch but left me a bit confused.

I think that a good definition of "thin" value would help. Come to think of it I'm not sure I fully understand what "thick" value is now.

It seems that sometimes realising some of our thin value requires the opposition to fold their slightly worse (how much worse can they be?) holdings. Thank heavens for rule #2...Don't bluff. Rule #2 may need to be amended to read Don't bluff... unless you are betting for thin value.

Results oriented much? I mean this was like a 200 hand drop of water in the giant ocean that is a poker career. I think you're kind of missing the point of the video.

This is not the only sample i've seen of people playing like this at uNL. I've seen other videos of people trying this out and ending up losing money. Sure, people fold a lot to your cbets. It's still not as profitable as you think. Remember when you cbet and get a fold you win the pot and when you cbet and get called you usually lose pot + cbet size. So you need to barrel a lot of turns. That soon becomes unprofitable as well as they are giant calling stations. So you'll need to switch gears and have very detailed reads to make this profitable.

first of all guys, i was playing excessively loose to prove a point. I was raising to 6 or 7x preflop at times to prove a point. I was doing things that are absolutely non-standard in this video because I wanted to get a lot of examples to demonstrate the 3 principles.

The solution is NOT to 2 barrel a lot. 2barreling stations is a bad plan in general. The solution would be to not c-bet so much, except for the fact that people play fit-or-fold postflop and actually do fold to a lot of c-bets. Don't get into the habit of having a few c-bets get called and think that c-betting is a bad strategy. It is a good strategy.

The reason why pros say its super profitable to play loose at micro stakes is because the pros' skill advantage is significantly large to merit playing a LOT more pots with bad players. I said, at the very beginning of the video, that you need to guage your own skill advantage and play loosely accordingly. which is not going to be as loose as me.

Andrew

first of all guys, i was playing excessively loose to prove a point. I was raising to 6 or 7x preflop at times to prove a point. I was doing things that are absolutely non-standard in this video because I wanted to get a lot of examples to demonstrate the 3 principles.

The solution is NOT to 2 barrel a lot. 2barreling stations is a bad plan in general. The solution would be to not c-bet so much, except for the fact that people play fit-or-fold postflop and actually do fold to a lot of c-bets. Don't get into the habit of having a few c-bets get called and think that c-betting is a bad strategy. It is a good strategy.

The reason why pros say its super profitable to play loose at micro stakes is because the pros' skill advantage is significantly large to merit playing a LOT more pots with bad players. I said, at the very beginning of the video, that you need to guage your own skill advantage and play loosely accordingly. which is not going to be as loose as me.

Andrew

Andrew could you possibly make a video of playing "correctly" at the micros? I play very laggy at the micros and people float me OOP a ton. To make it profitable I make reads on the players and bluff raise a ton of rivers as well as check raise turns OOP. IMO you cannot just play c-bet give up style at the micros anymore. What does make me a ton of profit is 3 betting hands like QJ IP against loose openers.

This video was the nuts imo.
Thank you BalugaWhale!

Andrew,
I have seen and appreciated all your DC videos. Whilst I have not much problem with 'fat value' Bet/bet shove etc, I do have some difficulties maximising thin value.
Say we choose to iso-raise limpers a ton with hands like Q3s J7s of this world and we hit a pair....How do we....
(a) Get appropriate pot sizes for our holding
(b) Avoid assigning calling ranges to fit our objective - e.g. avoid putting in more equity when we are likely to lose x cents in every dollar added to the pot
Corollary to (b)
(c) know when to seek shelter of showdown


Also I agree with your 3 principles.
On not paying off too much - There was a hand example where villian, Perhaps unwittingly, thinly value-betted you with AJo as second pair... given that Under-sized bets are very common leak at uNL - how should measure when the price is right to bluff-catch?

That "never bluff" rule is some pretty poor advice imo coz the game has evolved the last few years and most low stakes regs and even the fish can figure out that your bet bet bet lines are always for value so they can adjust. In order to maximize value you need to at least make it look like you have double barrels and river bluffs in your range so they get suspicious and look you up. People arent that bad anymore and you need some balance to get paid..the problem is finding the perfect line between bluffing and value betting and who you bluff or dont bluff.

So you think that you have >50% EQ against his calling range? I find that pretty hard to believe.

I just stoved a calling range for the fish and it looks like BW has more than 50% equity against his range. Bear in mind that I didn't include the offsuit gutters to balance for the times when he doesn't peel with a gutshot. But I honestly think this guy will probably peel with just about any pair. So here it is and I think it is a decent depiction of BW's equity vs his calling range with KQo (its definitely thin but still +EV I think):

Text results appended to pokerstove.txt

167,310 games 0.005 secs 33,462,000 games/sec

Board: Qs 3d Ac
Dead:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 53.693% 51.84% 01.85% 86741 3093.50 { KhQc }
Hand 1: 46.307% 44.46% 01.85% 74382 3093.50 { JJ-44, A4s+, A2s, KTs+, Q8s+, JTs, A8o+, Q8o+ }

Also, if this guy flats our PFR in this spot with hands like A2o then the bet would be -EV :

Text results appended to pokerstove.txt

211,860 games 0.005 secs 42,372,000 games/sec

Board: Qs 3d Ac
Dead:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 46.608% 45.15% 01.46% 95651 3093.50 { KhQc }
Hand 1: 53.392% 51.93% 01.46% 110022 3093.50 { JJ-44, A4s+, A2s, KTs+, Q8s+, JTs, A4o+, A2o, Q8o+ }

Andrew could you possibly make a video of playing "correctly" at the micros? I play very laggy at the micros and people float me OOP a ton. To make it profitable I make reads on the players and bluff raise a ton of rivers as well as check raise turns OOP. IMO you cannot just play c-bet give up style at the micros anymore. What does make me a ton of profit is 3 betting hands like QJ IP against loose openers.

you need to table select a lot better, or find a new site, or something. cash games up to 50nl (and higher of course) on FTP are full of loose-passive fish.

That "never bluff" rule is some pretty poor advice imo coz the game has evolved the last few years and most low stakes regs and even the fish can figure out that your bet bet bet lines are always for value so they can adjust. In order to maximize value you need to at least make it look like you have double barrels and river bluffs in your range so they get suspicious and look you up. People arent that bad anymore and you need some balance to get paid..the problem is finding the perfect line between bluffing and value betting and who you bluff or dont bluff.

meh. i think that the true nature of hte games is somewhere between this and between andrew's description, but probably closer to andrews. there are tons of fish, and if you haven't found them, youre not looking hard enough.

its not that ur bluffing per say its more ur barreling them off air which sometimes is ahead and/or has good equity. Example u open c/o w/89s flop 722 u cbet fish floats with JTo. turn is a 3 changes noting but u can barrell here bc hes peeling flops w/ his entire wide range so u can steal pots later bc his range cant stand barrells. That being said its not different than the idea u are going to open pots vs fish and c bet to take down dead money. Just in some instances ur bloating pots to steal it later vs a range that cant stand heat. So ur not bluffing a 722 board to make him fold A7 66 AQ type hands that fish neverrrrrrrrrrrr fold but ur barrelling to build the pot and make him fold his air basically. Which is why u can check down so many showdown hands profitably at micros. For example i have a higher WTSD than most but its bc I under stand spots i can show down vs fish profitably. I am pretty sure it took me from a 5bb winner to a 7+ bb winner at 25-100nl.

Barrelling at micros or bluffing however u want to look at it has value u just need to realize what you are barrelling a fish off of. you cant get ppl of over pairs top pairs etc etc but building a pot regaurdless of ur hand has value vs some players who call call fold or cal fold etc etc.......

I think this video sucks, yes he had some good points, but he didn't win 1 fucking dollar...

Either way, don't ever upload a video where the author isn't winning!!!

I think this video sucks, yes he had some good points, but he didn't win 1 fucking dollar...

Either way, don't ever upload a video where the author isn't winning!!!

part of your development as a poker player should involve a realization that one doesn't have to win every session in order to be a good player...especially when he is specifically playing looser than optimal to illustrate a point

I think this video sucks, yes he had some good points, but he didn't win 1 fucking dollar...

Either way, don't ever upload a video where the author isn't winning!!!

Is this a level?

The thought process is far more important than the result.

I think this video sucks, yes he had some good points, but he didn't win 1 fucking dollar...

Either way, don't ever upload a video where the author isn't winning!!!

Odd, because watching this video broke a major mental block I had, and it was specifically because he was losing. If he had crushed here and won a ton of hands I would have been left stuck behind that mental block and not absorbed the thought process that he was trying to demonstrate.

I was really frustrated because Ive been trying to absorb all these new concepts about loosening up your game from videos on here and a coaching class with ybother and tubasteve, but not knowing what to expect in terms of reaction from opponents was really confusing me having always played as a super nit. I was incorrectly interpreting normal playback from opponents as something that I was doing wrong.

If he had selectively edited this video to only show a session where he was running super hot and winning, I would have still been left thinking I was doing it all wrong somehow.

I think this video sucks, yes he had some good points, but he didn't win 1 fucking dollar...

Either way, don't ever upload a video where the author isn't winning!!!

hmm gotta say I really liked it. First video I've watched on the site as well.

I don't really think you understand the big picture yet Aredo. You need to stop watching the little instant $ signs and appreciating the process.

While I agree with the idea of isolating limpers and stealing, this was a spewfest. Selective aggression is good. This is overkill. I'd love to join any table where someone is raising 5xbb with random crap in all positions (and 3-betting super light too). I'd consider him a fish. It's no wonder BW had such a bad session.

I know BW is a great player and I've enjoyed his Coaching Tree videos. I don't know what happened here. It's like everything he was teaching went out the window. He plays such high stakes that he's disconnected from the reality of microstakes play and assumes people are much more exploitable than is really the case. Such a transparent style probably wouldn't beat even the softest microstakes in the long run. You're constantly committing a lot of chips in hopeless situations and your opponent's loose calling station tendencies become virtues.

Sorry if I'm being too harsh. I hope you can convince me that I'm wrong.

Baluga, I'm of the school that this absolutely opened my eyes. i was stuck in a rut for a long time and seeing this really REALLY helped me out. dont listen to these haters on here. if they actually watched the vid you point out on multiple occasions that you must use discretion, be objective, and pretty much that you were proving a point. great, great video man. keep up the good work.

Time Link to 00:54:25

Just wanted to say that your saying "3-Leet" made my day...

Great video! Much better than most of the other content I have seen so far for micros on this site. Will be watching more of BalugaWhale for sure!

Great video! Much better than most of the other content I have seen so far for micros on this site. Will be watching more of BalugaWhale for sure!

Make sure you check out Coaching Kristy S1, it is the mothaflopping nuts...!

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