This series is excellent. Especially episodes 1 and 2 on stud...Joe Tall's style of explaining and mixing it up with hand examples is really good and works for me. Today I will order some books on stud and start trying it out when I need a break from NL hold'em. Seems to be the perfect NL tilt cure + I can practise hand reading at the same time.

Did you consider 3-betting in the first hand example on the river when you hit the redraw to a pair of A's with the 7 low?

JQJ hand - 3rd street I like even though Jacks tend to be weak top-pair hands in S8b, the 4th street action from the agressive opponent screams 6789, or x789 with three spades but (AA)7 or (KK)7 is also very likely - which makes him an equity fav on 4th with the majority of his range - when you three bet here its as if your defining the villain's range, but the problem is when you do define the range he will often cap because he is agressive and you will be tied to the hand because of the size of the pot... since he is an equity favorite within his range of hands and the (xx)67 is usually never folding i don't like a 3-bet here. On 5th street I think your read is spot on, but since the (xx)67 had no intention of folding on 4th why do you think he might fold on 5th (of course leading is better than c/r in this situation, we expect to be raised by the villain quite often ). 6th street is important because he is probably a huge favorite at this stage but because of the hero's 4th and 5th street lines the pot is too large to fold even if we are 100% positive the villain is drawing to an OESD with 2 pair - but the real question is would you fold the river if you didn't improve?

great video as always! only one concern: in 90% of the examples you catch perfect and you scoop the pot. the two examples where things aren't going as well and you make "discipline folds", are probably more instructive than so many examples where you have great draws and jam and catch and scoop

Raist0000,

If you have watched EP1, you should see why I catch well in these examples...and this is KEY to winning at Stud games! My outs are live!

Joe, I have just a general question on non-HE games. I want to be able to play other games sometimes as a break from LHE, but I don't know what limit to play.

The problem is that I play low limit LHE (2/4), so I don't have a ton of money to throw around, nor do I want to risk a large portion of my bankroll in a game where I expect to be neutral EV at best, and probably -EV at least at first.

At the same time, I don't want to play so low that the game is just totally uninteresting to me and seemingly unrelated to the concepts you're teaching. That is, I wouldn't advise a new LHE player to start at $0.02-$0.04 since it'd probably be just excruciating and not really help them improve their LHE game. I guess I just want the games to be at least a little bit serious. That is, I'd like bad play to be the result of someone not understanding the game rather than just, 'oh, it's only a few pennies so I'll just call all the way down.'

So, I'm wondering if you can recommend a starting limit for other games. I'd preferably like a recommendation for each of the games, Stud, Stud8, O8, and Razz. I realize since you obviously don't play that low you may not have any idea what the current state of the games are, but even just an educated guess would be appreciated.

It is really up to you, your bankroll and what you are comfortable at. Some like to learn at the highest limits they can play or are available, see the 500/1000 game on FTP for example.

Joe I'm still running pretty well at this game. One more question though: What sort of average pot size should you look for in a game? Because it seems like it can vary widely. Should you keep an eye out for like 6x the big bet in full-ring games or else what exact criteria do you use for game selection. Thanks in advance.

Joe I'm still running pretty well at this game. One more question though: What sort of average pot size should you look for in a game? Because it seems like it can vary widely. Should you keep an eye out for like 6x the big bet in full-ring games or else what exact criteria do you use for game selection. Thanks in advance.

Look for the players plowing through 4th street in mulitway pots. These are the games you want to be in, stick to your scooping hands and you will do well.