Poker Video: No Limit Hold'Em by BalugaWhale (Mid Stakes)

Andrew and Kristy - thanks for two great series! I would like to say the Coaching Kristy series were the two most helpful series I have watched. I play 25/50/100nl 6-max player and 1/2 live and this was perfect to give me edge I have always worked for! Best thing I can take from the series was the "monsters under the bed syndrome" which refers to villain possibly having a better hand, but after constructing a corresponding range the most +EV play is to still value bet (instead of being scared they have those better hands resulting in loss of value )

Kristy - you are lucky to have had this opportunity, and it was fun watching you evolve as a player. Hope you run good and play well in the future

Andrew - Thanks for the great coaching! I really enjoy your teaching strategy of "why?" as the fundamental question to actions in poker. I hope you continue to make series as I enjoy watching yours the most.

Hopefully online poker in the US becomes legal and we can all have fun smashing fish again with no fear of our money freezing up

Time Link to 00:07:01

Can you explain a bit more with the 56s hand. Im actually with Kristy on this one I tend to fold here alot as well. Now you were saying we can bluff raise rivers vs villian, because its very hard for him to make the nuts but do you really think he needs even close to the nuts to call us? Ive been in spots where i sorta used your logic and have been called pretty light IE 10s on 278Q3 when villian 3barels. You see what im saying? How villian can put us on a draw and call off with things that are way worse than nutted hands. So with my bad experiences with hands like i normally just fold them pre. But maybe I just ran into variance over x amount of hands and that has percieved my judgement. Or i could be picking bad spots to bluff jam or bluff raise. Any more explanation on this topic would be greatly appreciated, TY!

Time Link to 00:39:35

I dont understand when you say if we call turn we never ever can fold river, other wise we should just fold turn. How is this true when I see so many 1/2 regs that will barrel two times alot and give up on river since they dont think your folding. Another example is when regs 2barel draws and they brick off, I see alot check giving up on river. Again because they believe there fold equity is not high enough to continue aggression.I think saying that can confuse some players at least it did for me when I heard this in another video by a diff instructor Where i kept paying off in spots where villians didnt have bluffing ranges, because all I had in my head was once I call turn Im commited. I removed that thought process after donating alot of money.

Time Link to 00:42:05

Baluga I really do love you man and I love the way you teach. But im really getting confused with your logic here, your saying most players will 3barrel K10 BVB on 1072dd yes I agree. What I disagree with is you saying hes going to fold it on the river, Example all draws miss he 3barrels he is rarely folding in that spot.

Time Link to 00:42:06

1more? you say with 810 on that board we were going to call Flop on 1072dd then bluff raise turns with no reads vs villian. Cant we assume in most cases our hand is best on flop given the positions and stats?
If so why are we planning on turning out hand into a bluff when villian still has a ton of draws and worse pairs he can be barreling 7x hands 8s 9s. So we are bluffing the turn because we are scared to play a river? Im not assuming thats what your teaching here at all Im just letting you know thats what it looks like to me. As i said in a previous post this spot fits it perfect he 2barrels here with draws and weaker pairs im sure we would both agree with that. Now what do we think he does with missed draws on river bricks? Clearly most of the time hes done its just way to likely hes getting called down. Now the other half of his range are the pairs 7x,8s 9s those hands as well checks hoping for a cheap showdown, unless this guy is one of the 2percent of extremely higher level thinking players at this limit.

Time Link to 00:51:55

I just love how you explained the paper rock scissors, litterally Ive been watching videos for about 5years str8 online and Ive never heard anyone describe the whole game of poker so clearly in less than 10seconds. Amazing!

Time Link to 00:51:55

Sorry for so many comments whale, Ive been cracked out on caffiene all day, to steal a line out of your book

Time Link to 00:51:55

Great series guys.... Sad to see it going. Hope you guys tag team up again! GL to you Kristy.

Hye andrew,

You said our hero seems to 3bet randomly. What's wrong with 3betting the Top of our folding range (as a bluff) A2s A9s T7s, when obv our opponents seems to open a fairly wide range IP and fold a lot to 3bets ?

(it is EV+ when they fold >60%, whereas folding is EV0)

His opponents seems to not adjust well by calling/raising to his wide weak 3betting range.

Hye andrew,

You said our hero seems to 3bet randomly. What's wrong with 3betting the Top of our folding range (as a bluff) A2s A9s T7s, when obv our opponents seems to open a fairly wide range IP and fold a lot to 3bets ?

(it is EV+ when they fold >60%, whereas folding is EV0)

His opponents seems to not adjust well by calling/raising to his wide weak 3betting range.

3betting weak things like T7s or A2s are fine vs a guy like that, but with stronger things like A9s, KQ, AT, etc, we should flat to keep his weaker hands involved.

Andrew

Sorry for so many comments whale, Ive been cracked out on caffiene all day, to steal a line out of your book

lol no worries-- im going to have to get to these later.

Andrew

i dont understand the T8 hand discussion on T7xs board, its a semi wet board , so villain would expect us to play our strong hands faster, so if we do call call jam river over his bet hes snapping with all the value hands since all the draws missed, only hands hes folding are busted draws that he 3barreled and we beat those, and not so many 3barrel busted draws anyways, i believe its a call call fold or call call check back spot in our shoes, or maybe im missing something

Time Link to 00:37:37

vs someone who check/folds a lot of flops though, when they do bet the flop and especially on that drawy board, they will usually have either a good hand or a draw, both of which are betting at least twice. So how can we take a call flop fold turn line vs them if we expect to see a 2nd barrel a large% of the time?

Time Link to 00:41:40

But wouldn't you say that most regs expect us to raise our sets on the flop? so when we raise river they've already taken them out of our range and therefore click call with KT?

Kristy's question didn't seem to be a matter of worrying about her actual range being balanced balanced, but rather a matter of being perceived to be unbalanced and therefore not getting our desired outcome (a fold). i.e. she's not saying, "we wouldn't play sets like this, so bluffing like this makes me exploitable, so I shouldn't do it," she's saying, "our opponent wouldn't expect us to play sets like that so why won't he call?"

Time Link to 00:41:40

great video, thank you for the series Baluga.

Baluga in a 10% 3 bet range that is polarized, what would the strong part of that range be (generally)? Also, when playing live in a game where 3 bets get routinely overcalled by one or two others (3-4 to the flop), how would your strong (depolarized) range be constructed (generally)? Would you keep the same frequency and 3-bet smaller or tighten up the range an bet bigger?

But wouldn't you say that most regs expect us to raise our sets on the flop? so when we raise river they've already taken them out of our range and therefore click call with KT?

Kristy's question didn't seem to be a matter of worrying about her actual range being balanced balanced, but rather a matter of being perceived to be unbalanced and therefore not getting our desired outcome (a fold). i.e. she's not saying, "we wouldn't play sets like this, so bluffing like this makes me exploitable, so I shouldn't do it," she's saying, "our opponent wouldn't expect us to play sets like that so why won't he call?"

Is this a distinction wthout a difference? It seems not wanting to be percieved as unbalanced is the same as wanting to be balanced? There are other hands besides sets villian must fear when your line is not "standard".

But wouldn't you say that most regs expect us to raise our sets on the flop? so when we raise river they've already taken them out of our range and therefore click call with KT?

Kristy's question didn't seem to be a matter of worrying about her actual range being balanced balanced, but rather a matter of being perceived to be unbalanced and therefore not getting our desired outcome (a fold). i.e. she's not saying, "we wouldn't play sets like this, so bluffing like this makes me exploitable, so I shouldn't do it," she's saying, "our opponent wouldn't expect us to play sets like that so why won't he call?"

also, If not having a set here is going to gt calls by medium hands and bluff catchers, then this is an example of a shift in dynamics where it would be good to start having sets here vs hand readers.

Is this a distinction wthout a difference? It seems not wanting to be percieved as unbalanced is the same as wanting to be balanced? There are other hands besides sets villian must fear when your line is not "standard".

don't see how they would be the same thing at all. Perception of your range does not equal your actual range at all.

What specific hands are you referring to that villain must fear when you take a call/call/shove line? (this is assuming the turn and river are bricks)

also, If not having a set here is going to gt calls by medium hands and bluff catchers, then this is an example of a shift in dynamics where it would be good to start having sets here vs hand readers.

well yeah it might be good to show up with a set there sometimes, but if you raise the flop he's not folding KT there either. So raising flop has the same result against KT, but raising gets money in before any action killing card can come, so raising flop vs his Tx hands is better in a vacuum. So your argument for just calling a set on the flop--that we can get called by Tx on the river--is invalid because we get action from that on the flop anyway. If you had said we keep in/induce action from more bluffs by flatting, then that's fair. But we also will probably induce action from air by raising flop since it's BvB, so even then raising might be better against his whole range.

Problem is that it's hard to show up with a set for both lines because you never flop sets.

also, If not having a set here is going to gt calls by medium hands and bluff catchers, then this is an example of a shift in dynamics where it would be good to start having sets here vs hand readers.

well yeah it might be good to show up with a set there sometimes, but if you raise the flop he's not folding KT there either. So raising flop has the same result against KT, but raising gets money in before any action killing card can come, so raising flop vs his Tx hands is better in a vacuum. So your argument for just calling a set on the flop--that we can get called by Tx on the river--is invalid because we get action from that on the flop anyway. If you had said we keep in/induce action from more bluffs by flatting, then that's fair. But we also will probably induce action from air by raising flop since it's BvB, so even then raising might be better against his whole range.

Problem is that it's hard to show up with a set for both lines because you never flop sets.

not sure what happened, sorry for the double post

not sure if it has been mentioned here, but you guys got something pretty much wrong regarding reading stats.

its a 3handed table (top right), i assume that a nl200 reg has filtered his stats by table size, so playing 38/32 3handed is pretty much a nit and not laggy at all.

not sure if it has been mentioned here, but you guys got something pretty much wrong regarding reading stats.

its a 3handed table (top right), i assume that a nl200 reg has filtered his stats by table size, so playing 38/32 3handed is pretty much a nit and not laggy at all.

the important thing is that the discussion was based on what to do vs someone is playing that loose/aggro at a 6handed table. playing against nits is easy so discussing as if the guy was laggy is much more educational, regardless if he actually was laggy or not.

Can you explain a bit more with the 56s hand. Im actually with Kristy on this one I tend to fold here alot as well. Now you were saying we can bluff raise rivers vs villian, because its very hard for him to make the nuts but do you really think he needs even close to the nuts to call us? Ive been in spots where i sorta used your logic and have been called pretty light IE 10s on 278Q3 when villian 3barels. You see what im saying? How villian can put us on a draw and call off with things that are way worse than nutted hands. So with my bad experiences with hands like i normally just fold them pre. But maybe I just ran into variance over x amount of hands and that has percieved my judgement. Or i could be picking bad spots to bluff jam or bluff raise. Any more explanation on this topic would be greatly appreciated, TY!

I think baluga nailed it...When he first started talking bout this hand and then kristy said well this guy is aggressive and were gonna be facing a lot of heat,Then baluga said u have to not play fit or fold and take those strong lines against him.BAM i jst got poker smarter lol...I think it depends alot of board textures and what we can rep as value.We got positon and villain is gonna be putting in a ton of dead money for us to pick up.We can prob bluff where our percieved range looks strong and of course v-bet when we got it...not totally sure though, waiting for the almighty baluga response

I think baluga nailed it...When he first started talking bout this hand and then kristy said well this guy is aggressive and were gonna be facing a lot of heat,Then baluga said u have to not play fit or fold and take those strong lines against him.BAM i jst got poker smarter lol...I think it depends alot of board textures and what we can rep as value.We got positon and villain is gonna be putting in a ton of dead money for us to pick up.We can prob bluff where our percieved range looks strong and of course v-bet when we got it...not totally sure though, waiting for the almighty baluga response

okay nvm baluga went on the sweet rant of goodness explaining it all, while i paused video to reply and then listened to the rest later on

Would also be cool baluga, if maybe u could do a video or something of the sort on street projection

Can you explain a bit more with the 56s hand. Im actually with Kristy on this one I tend to fold here alot as well. Now you were saying we can bluff raise rivers vs villian, because its very hard for him to make the nuts but do you really think he needs even close to the nuts to call us? Ive been in spots where i sorta used your logic and have been called pretty light IE 10s on 278Q3 when villian 3barels. You see what im saying? How villian can put us on a draw and call off with things that are way worse than nutted hands. So with my bad experiences with hands like i normally just fold them pre. But maybe I just ran into variance over x amount of hands and that has percieved my judgement. Or i could be picking bad spots to bluff jam or bluff raise. Any more explanation on this topic would be greatly appreciated, TY!

the point to consider here is this-- if a LAG player is going to put a lot of money in the pot with weak hands, our best route to beat him is to take a non-folding line to get him to fold his generally weak hands. Getting him to fold Q hi that he bluffed 3 streets with is pretty awesome with 6 hi.

Andrew

I dont understand when you say if we call turn we never ever can fold river, other wise we should just fold turn. How is this true when I see so many 1/2 regs that will barrel two times alot and give up on river since they dont think your folding. Another example is when regs 2barel draws and they brick off, I see alot check giving up on river. Again because they believe there fold equity is not high enough to continue aggression.I think saying that can confuse some players at least it did for me when I heard this in another video by a diff instructor Where i kept paying off in spots where villians didnt have bluffing ranges, because all I had in my head was once I call turn Im commited. I removed that thought process after donating alot of money.

im not 100% positive (couldnt really find it in the video perfectly), but i think my point was-- if our opponents are giving up on alot of rivers, we should be raising a lot of turns.

Andrew

Baluga I really do love you man and I love the way you teach. But im really getting confused with your logic here, your saying most players will 3barrel K10 BVB on 1072dd yes I agree. What I disagree with is you saying hes going to fold it on the river, Example all draws miss he 3barrels he is rarely folding in that spot.

you'll be stunned how many regs will fold strong hands to river raises. People simply don't really expect us to turn missed draws into bluffs, in general.

Andrew

1more? you say with 810 on that board we were going to call Flop on 1072dd then bluff raise turns with no reads vs villian. Cant we assume in most cases our hand is best on flop given the positions and stats?
If so why are we planning on turning out hand into a bluff when villian still has a ton of draws and worse pairs he can be barreling 7x hands 8s 9s. So we are bluffing the turn because we are scared to play a river? Im not assuming thats what your teaching here at all Im just letting you know thats what it looks like to me. As i said in a previous post this spot fits it perfect he 2barrels here with draws and weaker pairs im sure we would both agree with that. Now what do we think he does with missed draws on river bricks? Clearly most of the time hes done its just way to likely hes getting called down. Now the other half of his range are the pairs 7x,8s 9s those hands as well checks hoping for a cheap showdown, unless this guy is one of the 2percent of extremely higher level thinking players at this limit.

most times he barrels he has a lot of equity, calling vs equity = bad

But wouldn't you say that most regs expect us to raise our sets on the flop? so when we raise river they've already taken them out of our range and therefore click call with KT?

Kristy's question didn't seem to be a matter of worrying about her actual range being balanced balanced, but rather a matter of being perceived to be unbalanced and therefore not getting our desired outcome (a fold). i.e. she's not saying, "we wouldn't play sets like this, so bluffing like this makes me exploitable, so I shouldn't do it," she's saying, "our opponent wouldn't expect us to play sets like that so why won't he call?"

i think he's more likely to think we play sets like that than that we play draws like that. in general.

of course, game dynamics change.

Andrew

Baluga in a 10% 3 bet range that is polarized, what would the strong part of that range be (generally)? Also, when playing live in a game where 3 bets get routinely overcalled by one or two others (3-4 to the flop), how would your strong (depolarized) range be constructed (generally)? Would you keep the same frequency and 3-bet smaller or tighten up the range an bet bigger?

polarized, prob JJ+ or QQ+ and AK, maybe AQ

the more people that call with weaker hands, the more i'm going for value.

Andrew

Very nice listening to these two young people work on their series. What can I say Andrew, but your stuff is cutting edge and very intelligently communicated. Hope to see another series come out real soon. I'd also like to say I hope poker comes back in the United States real soon. All the best to you guys from Canada.

Cheers!

most times he barrels he has a lot of equity, calling vs equity = bad

Well im sure most of dueces cracked members play a aggro game. So raising the turn to get him to fold equity doesnt sound so awesome either tbh. If you are tag I think so with the right gameflow im sure it will be plus EV. But for a lag who is known as being aggro like myself I think its spewy given how often he reships with equity. In his mind he is thinking "fold equity + pot equity Im shipping".I think its a pretty easy call on F and T then decide on river, folding vs most villains without a extreme read. I think thats a pretty good default to have since we arnt playing 5/10 here... Please Let me know what you think of my logic after all you are the coach here.

the point to consider here is this-- if a LAG player is going to put a lot of money in the pot with weak hands, our best route to beat him is to take a non-folding line to get him to fold his generally weak hands. Getting him to fold Q hi that he bluffed 3 streets with is pretty awesome with 6 hi.

Andrew

Or possibly just avoid those very marginal spots and just call with bigger stuff that way we arnt bluff catching with BP,MP. Or over estimating his bluffing range and playing a draw in a -EV way. Least thats the line Iv been taking with pretty good success. Maybe I just play bad without the betting lead vs aggro dudes w/weak ranges but Im sure most pple do because it is not EASY!

Well im sure most of dueces cracked members play a aggro game. So raising the turn to get him to fold equity doesnt sound so awesome either tbh. If you are tag I think so with the right gameflow im sure it will be plus EV. But for a lag who is known as being aggro like myself I think its spewy given how often he reships with equity. In his mind he is thinking "fold equity + pot equity Im shipping".I think its a pretty easy call on F and T then decide on river, folding vs most villains without a extreme read. I think thats a pretty good default to have since we arnt playing 5/10 here... Please Let me know what you think of my logic after all you are the coach here.

I don't know if he won't 3barrel bluff here ever. Even if the FD misses and you call with all your Tx, you can still have a decent amount of draws and made hands worse than Tx in your perceived range for calling flop and turn that he now wants you to fold on the river.

Or possibly just avoid those very marginal spots and just call with bigger stuff that way we arnt bluff catching with BP,MP. Or over estimating his bluffing range and playing a draw in a -EV way. Least thats the line Iv been taking with pretty good success. Maybe I just play bad without the betting lead vs aggro dudes w/weak ranges but Im sure most pple do because it is not EASY!

Well if we are avoiding these spots, were are pretty much playing into the LAGs game and he is raping us because were passive or taking a passive lines and prob gonna get to a limit where we are never gonna get any better or move up..We shouldnt be bluff catching a LAG with btm of our calling range.Like baluga said the best way to counter is to take a aggressive line/approach into him being aggressive.Like the c/c c/c c/r line, unconventional lines where we let the LAG put in aggressive money with his weak range and we counter him by being aggressive back.to make him fold his weak range.And if we are always avoiding these spots how are we suppose to get better at them? and understand them.

Well if we are avoiding these spots, were are pretty much playing into the LAGs game and he is raping us because were passive or taking a passive lines and prob gonna get to a limit where we are never gonna get any better or move up..We shouldnt be bluff catching a LAG with btm of our calling range.Like baluga said the best way to counter is to take a aggressive line/approach into him being aggressive.Like the c/c c/c c/r line, unconventional lines where we let the LAG put in aggressive money with his weak range and we counter him by being aggressive back.to make him fold his weak range.And if we are always avoiding these spots how are we suppose to get better at them? and understand them.

Well they are marginal for a reason, and when I say marginal I mean I think they are -EV unless you have very good reads on the villian. Im almost 90% sure you can still crush higher stake games without deffending sml scs vs aggro dudes lol. Again lets wait till we have a very solid read that villain 3barrels bluffs at a very high frequency first. Ive played vs alot of very laggy dudes and even some of the laggiest dudes dont fire 3barrels with air... so just becareful cause Ive tried to be a hero in those spots and have been looked up with MP,3rd P and obv TPWK hands.

BTW we can still defends them when conditions are right but when its most likely going to be a HU pot it cant be that great of a play. Possibly neutral EV if you are really good post.

Well they are marginal for a reason, and when I say marginal I mean I think they are -EV unless you have very good reads on the villian. Im almost 90% sure you can still crush higher stake games without deffending sml scs vs aggro dudes lol. Again lets wait till we have a very solid read that villain 3barrels bluffs at a very high frequency first. Ive played vs alot of very laggy dudes and even some of the laggiest dudes dont fire 3barrels with air... so just becareful cause Ive tried to be a hero in those spots and have been looked up with MP,3rd P and obv TPWK hands.

Iam not disagreeing with you, And we arent using this as a default play all the time, has a ton to do with board textures and what he does in different spots. And if someone is bluff catching you with BTM pairs 3rd P, we prob shouldnt be trying to bluff these guys, because either we took some play that didnt make sense at all and our percieved range looked like air, or we are trying to bluff a aggro fish.

Time Link to 00:25:49

I actually often have some troubles playing against these guys who 3bet a massive amount of hands (depolarised and polarised).

Did I get you right that you suggested that we call with strong hands (that we'd otherwise 4bet. e.g. KK-AA, AQ-AK)? And that we with our weaker range, that could run into trouble by calling, just 4bet bluffs a lot?

When I encounter these players they are usually also adapting to the 4bets by 5bet shoving light, and this is where I find myself into most trouble. How do we readapt here? Just call their all ins very light? I just find this hard, without ever seeing what they actually shoves with, and I often just end up calling something like TT+, AQ+, which means I either have to shut down with the 4bet bluffs a lot (and hence get exploited by folding too much) or just call all ins even looser without even knowing if it is the right thing to do in the first place.

How do you adapt in these spots?