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

jizzed in my pants

Always good to hear you'll be making a new series looking forward to it.

woot!

It makes me smile when I watch super successful profesionals run bad. It reminds me that "not being results oriented" is good for your game, but still sucks. And that I am not the only person who can intentionally get stacks in the middle with the worst of it.lol. Glad to hear about the new series.

omg omg!

wow you'd have a hard time beating 2/4nl playing like that... turning that 6T or w/e into a bluff at the beginning when the guy donked into you and you said out loud it was for value and you had very limited history. value cutting yourself here and there... also think it's not cool to call so many people bad. if i was coaching you i'd say don't extrapolate all your theorums before the hand is played or even while it's being played, play the hand in the natural rythym of the game, and then if you notice tendencies or w/e, expound on the theoretical knowledge. doing it in the middle of the hand really fucks shit up and is super tilting to watch as a listener. better luck next time, this video fail lol

Time Link to 00:23:19

i dont really agree with your assessment that giberling's line with the TT was bad. Assuming he has no previous knowledge of UTGs opening range but assumes that he has a fairly tight range for opening and calling a 3bet (not unreasonable) then TT is a hand that gets put in gross spots when it 3bets pf. Especially if they don't have a dynamic that allows him to comfortably get it in pf every time.

Also considering that you seem to be somewhat squeeze and 3bet happy I think calling gains even more value cause he can backraise and be pretty happy getting it in with a lot of dead money against your squeezing range.

I don't think 3betting TT is terrible either, but his line seems fine with an unknown UTG and a really really laggy player acting last.

Time Link to 00:20:27

I don't really like the 5Ts raise in the CO. The hand is just too trashy to want to play even with a fishy player in the SB. Especially when the fishy player just 3bet our last steal so if we had to guess we'd err on the side of him being aggressive.

I also don't really like the turn value bet because we're going to end up in absolutely gross spots on a ton of rivers. and I just don't think we are getting enough value from various draws to make up for the crappy spots we are always going to find ourselves in OOP with 4th pair on a very coordinated board.

imo it's a fold pf, and the turn is probably a c/f as well.

Time Link to 00:26:56

yeah you said it, raise size too big. also this is a spot I wonder about a lot because obvious there is a lot of value to raising fish that donk into you. I tend to prefer raise boards that are a little less coordinated and where I can credibly rep a hand and villain will almost never be 3-bet bluff. For example bluff raising boards that have an A, K, or Q high card where villain can give me credit for top pair and also often won't even have overcard outs and will just give up their donk. I tend to shy away from bluff-raising coordinated boards where villain can have a pair and a GS and just isnt giving up and I'm going to have to make a huge multi-street bluff to blow them off their hand.

thoughts on board textures for bluff-raising donk-bets?

A general thought: you are not the best player at the table as you claim; pmilanov is. Just because you use talk theory, are a DC coach, and speak in an absurdly condescending tone, does not make you close to as good as most of the high stakes winners.

Can't wait to watch this
Thank you!!!

Trying to find something positive in this video ie thinking what I might've learned from it. Seemed to me there was a huge mismatch between theory and application; too many spots seemed questinable in the light of theory pieces from the book, application too hasty and spewy. I just don't think it is possible to take on all the theory concepts and trying to pound on all of them in an hour of 2-tabling.

wow you'd have a hard time beating 2/4nl playing like that... turning that 6T or w/e into a bluff at the beginning when the guy donked into you and you said out loud it was for value and you had very limited history. value cutting yourself here and there... also think it's not cool to call so many people bad. if i was coaching you i'd say don't extrapolate all your theorums before the hand is played or even while it's being played, play the hand in the natural rythym of the game, and then if you notice tendencies or w/e, expound on the theoretical knowledge. doing it in the middle of the hand really fucks shit up and is super tilting to watch as a listener. better luck next time, this video fail lol

+1
Except it was pretty funny. An alternative title could be "How BW rationalises spewing a few buy-ins at 1000nl".

this is one reason i'm not a huge fan of live play/commentary vids. Several times BW would start explaining a concept only to get distracted by a hand - it seemed like he lost his train of thought a few times, or would leap to a new topic without finishing the last thought. One of my fave instructors on DC but I prefer the coaching tree style to this.

Time Link to 00:40:00

Baluga, shouldn't you value bet the turn smaller to get a strong A to come along w/ a well-disguished TP 53s? (A 1/3 to 1/2 psb on turn would still give you an easy psb on river.) Plus isn't the turn a good time to check back to induce a bluff from A hi and/or to give 2 overcards a chance to catch up & value bet the river?

TT hand where Gibberling flats pre-flop and backraises was well played imo. The preflop call seems really standard, hard to RR and call a ship w/out any history imo.

can't believe this is only rated a 3.2.

I always find it very interesting to watch Balugawhale play non-ABC poker for us.
So I don't really understand the negative comments.
I can't speak for anybody else here but for me there is a ton of value in watching how BW gets himself into tricky spots over and over just for us students.
Obviously most of us (me at least) are probably not good enough yet to play the same way he does. But just watching his videos, and listening to his concepts is so great for building that poker-mind.
Watching BW's videos for me is always like going down that rabbit-hole.

Cut this guy some slack.
He's on a 160k downswing and obviously tilting hard.
Only a matter of time before he will be back to his winning ways.

I also don't get the negative comments at all.

I really liked the vid Andrew and I think it's soooooooooooooooooooooo much more interesting to watch/learn while you play loose then watching you play like 18/16.

I always find it very interesting to watch Balugawhale play non-ABC poker for us.
So I don't really understand the negative comments.
I can't speak for anybody else here but for me there is a ton of value in watching how BW gets himself into tricky spots over and over just for us students.
Obviously most of us (me at least) are probably not good enough yet to play the same way he does. But just watching his videos, and listening to his concepts is so great for building that poker-mind.
Watching BW's videos for me is always like going down that rabbit-hole.

the negative comments are because he's not making non-ABC plays, he's making some really spewy -EV plays. And the problem is that we'd prefer to see him play his best because most of us are trying to improve not trying to learn how to lose as little as possible when we decide to splash around and spew like a monkey.

no doubt the dude can play, and I'm sure he understands the game, but if you had nothing else to go on but this video you'd probably be wondering wtf DC was doing putting this out.

hey guys,

1) the T6o hand is OBV questionable, I more-or-less raised it because I wanted to see if my hunch was right (it wasn't), but because I thought it was an interesting moment to talk about for a video. Basically, I'm sure he's valuebetting the turn, but given that I hold a T, I have to figure its more often thin value than thick, and i've got to assume all of his thin value bets on the turn fold to a raise. Maybe that part was wrong also.

2) i still think the TT hand by gibberling is played badly. A bad player against whom he could clearly get value raises, and he doesn't reraise. Then, given my propensity to be calling hands in position, he's just super likely to end up in a multiway pot OOP vs me and that's just good for him. Whereas, if he 3-bets, he gets the fish to himself and gets value in the process. Just lucky for him that I pick up a squeeze hand worse than TT.

3) acknowledged in the video that I shouldn't call players bad like that. It's important to remember that it's all relative, in some games I'm bad and in some games the worst reg at a 5/10 table is excellent.

Anyway, hope you guys liked the somewhat alternative content.

Andrew

Credit to you for posting up a vid where things did not go smoothly. I can only remember seeing a couple of videos (out of hundreds) like this, and I think it's good that we get to see the pro in a real game where things do not go well. I think it's stil an educational vid.

Thank you Andrew for this original video, i liked it a lot.
The most interesting part for me, was when you talked about fold equity and dead money and then about implied odds/hand range especially when calling with small pp oop. Just for that, this video worth it.

Wow people are so results oriented.

Baluga has a lot of ideas and a certain style playing poker. If you won't give these ideas credit because he is on a big downswing or just losing in high stakes it's fine.

But how he plays a particular session has never been an issue before he lost 3 buyins during a video.

One thing baluga I was shocked to see you being only up about 80k in about a year. Are you not putting in hours? Do you play somewhere else?

Fwiw it seems like you'd do better just grinding 2/4 when the games are good. Not that I can do it, just feels bad for aspiring poker players to see someone they look up to has made about as much as many ppl do working day jobs.

hey burcak,

its a combination of not playing many hands and having a rough year poker wise. i tend to travel a lot and not play when I'm traveling (my situation at the moment). I'm also up a fair amount on stars this year, bwhale28. i try to avoid results orientation though, especially in tough high stakes games.

Andrew

Well I hope things get better, and winning on stars is nice also

Since your videos helped me SO much (I barely started beating 100nl on stars but still) I'd like to see you do well just because it'd make me happy.

Enjoy Australia!

hi fanboys you add nothing to the poker discussion and think constructive criticism is a negative thing. you also have as many excuses as baluga has assumptions about people he's never played against. if baluga thinks his play is fine and his losses are due to just running bad and variance rather than spew so be it you can continue to treat him as an infallible god and deal with the consequences of that at a later time, if you ever get around to it lol.

hi fanboys you add nothing to the poker discussion and think constructive criticism is a negative thing. you also have as many excuses as baluga has assumptions about people he's never played against. if baluga thinks his play is fine and his losses are due to just running bad and variance rather than spew so be it you can continue to treat him as an infallible god and deal with the consequences of that at a later time, if you ever get around to it lol.

I don't think there is any reason whatsoever to limit the conversation under a video to poker discussion. I wonder what makes you think it should be.

It is only funny that whenever Baluga loses 3 stacks in a video suddenly the rating is lower and everyone suddenly thinks he is playing like a fish relative to that game. Wouldn't that be a big coincidence?

There are things baluga is trying to teach ppl, and in this video, he says (or does) nothing opposed to what he tries to teach at all times. The only different thing that happens is that he either makes bad reads or runs bad, depending on how you see it. This isn't a change from what Baluga is trying to teach at all times.

For example, with T6, when he says "he definitely does this for value" is a very, very typical Baluga way of looking at things where he first assings value and bluff %'s to the bet. This is one of the things he has been trying to teach all year. Now after that he tries to bluff the guy off his value hand, and it doesn't work. However, that doesn't reduce the quality of the video, because the idea he was trying to get across wasn't to tell you how to feel when a guy will fold his hand and when he won't. His message was to first think whether or not he was betting for value or as a bluff and with what percentage. This is EXACTLY what he does. It may even be that the guy will fold there 95% of the time, he just had the nuts this time.

So if this video has lower rating just because the guy didn't fold, excuse me, but I don't only find this results oriented, but I also find this lame. If you think it is idiotic to think of bluff % vs. value % first and then make a decision, fine, but I wonder why nobody had any problem with it in videos where the producer didn't lose 3 stacks.

hi fanboys you add nothing to the poker discussion and think constructive criticism is a negative thing. you also have as many excuses as baluga has assumptions about people he's never played against. if baluga thinks his play is fine and his losses are due to just running bad and variance rather than spew so be it you can continue to treat him as an infallible god and deal with the consequences of that at a later time, if you ever get around to it lol.

your criticisms are just as rude as they are constructive. this is supposed to be a community where everyone is trying to get better at poker, whereas you just seem to be getting off on hating on things.

as for constructive criticism, i think the way baluga discusses poker would probably lend itself better to a video review over a pre-recorded session rather than live play

Nice vid.

On another note, what are you doing in Surfers Paradise, its one of the biggest ****holes in Aus. Get down to Byron Bay, much nicer place and much better surf. If you're heading north instead get to Noosa or the town of 1770.

the KJhh spot isnt nearly as good as the KQ spot in question (on the 2+2 forum) to float for a couple subtle reasons

i don't think zed used much tact in making his point, but you guys who think our criticisms are just us being negative jerks are kind of overreacting. The guy made some pretty bad spewey plays in a video and some of us called him out for it. Our criticisms are not whether or not the play works, but just whether or not it is a good play in general.

some of his plays were suboptimal, and we were critical in a fairly constructive way. i think baluga reasonably answered some of the criticisms, and even though I don't agree with some of his responses he doesn't seem to be upset about our comments.

Nice vid.

On another note, what are you doing in Surfers Paradise, its one of the biggest ****holes in Aus. Get down to Byron Bay, much nicer place and much better surf. If you're heading north instead get to Noosa or the town of 1770.

just got back from byron bay. awesome. seriously i love that place. we're basically just exploring the coast, surfers is alright but a little trashy. did get to play some 5/10 live, that was pretty fun. i think we're going north to noosa tomorrow.

i don't think zed used much tact in making his point, but you guys who think our criticisms are just us being negative jerks are kind of overreacting. The guy made some pretty bad spewey plays in a video and some of us called him out for it. Our criticisms are not whether or not the play works, but just whether or not it is a good play in general.

some of his plays were suboptimal, and we were critical in a fairly constructive way. i think baluga reasonably answered some of the criticisms, and even though I don't agree with some of his responses he doesn't seem to be upset about our comments.

ive been in the poker community long enough to take harsh criticism with a grain of salt. its a pretty awesome opportunity for me to have my game be a focal point for so many poker minds to pick apart.

i also think that poker is a constant battle with one's own ego. so, just as at times id like to defend both my play or my character (both of which being attacked here), its important to try to realize that fighting these criticisms is nonproductive and that the only real responses are either to internalize accurate criticisms or to ignore inaccurate ones. I'd say that there are both accurate and inaccurate criticisms here, and that's okay.

really, im just doing these videos because i think talking about poker and helping people learn is fun and interesting. im pretty sure im helping at least some people, so even if some people think i suck i think its still worth it.

also, pmilanov is obv a very good reg. i say that at the beginning and id say it again. and jungleman's name is adam junglen, not adam jungler. my bad.

Andrew

I don't really like the 5Ts raise in the CO. The hand is just too trashy to want to play even with a fishy player in the SB. Especially when the fishy player just 3bet our last steal so if we had to guess we'd err on the side of him being aggressive.

I also don't really like the turn value bet because we're going to end up in absolutely gross spots on a ton of rivers. and I just don't think we are getting enough value from various draws to make up for the crappy spots we are always going to find ourselves in OOP with 4th pair on a very coordinated board.

imo it's a fold pf, and the turn is probably a c/f as well.

all very valid.

if pre is a fold though it's probably not too far off from a raise imo. but quite possibly a fold pre and the turn could definitely be too thin.

Andrew

I don't think there is any reason whatsoever to limit the conversation under a video to poker discussion. I wonder what makes you think it should be.

It is only funny that whenever Baluga loses 3 stacks in a video suddenly the rating is lower and everyone suddenly thinks he is playing like a fish relative to that game. Wouldn't that be a big coincidence?

There are things baluga is trying to teach ppl, and in this video, he says (or does) nothing opposed to what he tries to teach at all times. The only different thing that happens is that he either makes bad reads or runs bad, depending on how you see it. This isn't a change from what Baluga is trying to teach at all times.

For example, with T6, when he says "he definitely does this for value" is a very, very typical Baluga way of looking at things where he first assings value and bluff %'s to the bet. This is one of the things he has been trying to teach all year. Now after that he tries to bluff the guy off his value hand, and it doesn't work. However, that doesn't reduce the quality of the video, because the idea he was trying to get across wasn't to tell you how to feel when a guy will fold his hand and when he won't. His message was to first think whether or not he was betting for value or as a bluff and with what percentage. This is EXACTLY what he does. It may even be that the guy will fold there 95% of the time, he just had the nuts this time.

So if this video has lower rating just because the guy didn't fold, excuse me, but I don't only find this results oriented, but I also find this lame. If you think it is idiotic to think of bluff % vs. value % first and then make a decision, fine, but I wonder why nobody had any problem with it in videos where the producer didn't lose 3 stacks.

if you think i think he sucks because he got stacked a few times we're coming from two different places. my issue is with some of the assumptions he was operating under. 'this guy is bad therefore i do this'. everybody has their own style and it can be costly to assume all 'bad' players play the same way. that's a very simplistic way to look at things imo. you could argue ok this guy sits w/ a half stack so in a general way i'm gonna be skeptical about his abilities compared with mine but that still doesn't tell you how to go about dealing with him. what kind of 'bad' is he. what are the soft spots in his game? usually that takes some time/history to establish and making snap judgements can result in overextending/owning yourself.

again, i'm not condemning the entire video for a failed bluff attempt. i love when people try stuff outside of the norm and respect baluga's ambition for going down that path. my argument is more about his timing. do you play xyz poker before any semblance of an abc dynamic has been established? how do you know what will work when you have no or limited history with the player. just take a random shot as to what his c/c flop donk turn range is? ok i have no problem with that on occasion but when thin assumptions habitually aren't panning out i think it's wise to take a step back and make sure the ground you're standing on is stable. if baluga just tried a bluff it didn't work and he gravitated back to forming solid reads and acting accordingly the idea of him spewing wouldn't have crossed my mind. sometimes it's more +ev to let the game come to you is all. again it can work the other way as well. a mix i think.

on your other points i don't think baluga is a fish, didn't know he was on a downswing or think that matters, am not a student of baluga and don't know what he's trying to teach other than what's in this video, never rated the video so don't get mad at me for that lol, and don't think comments need to be limited to poker discussion. I do however think it's ok for an actual poker discussion to take place under a video and also that that discussion reflect different opinions of which can be debated. some guy said baluga opens up the rabbit hole for me. that's great i have no problem with that, but that's not something that can be debated, it is already so. what line to take in any given hand is a different story. this is the discussion i was more or less referring to.

/defending my honor

your criticisms are just as rude as they are constructive. this is supposed to be a community where everyone is trying to get better at poker, whereas you just seem to be getting off on hating on things.

as for constructive criticism, i think the way baluga discusses poker would probably lend itself better to a video review over a pre-recorded session rather than live play

at least they are constructive rather than superficial? agree i was rude to the fan boys but their sentiment that disagreement = negative therefore bad is outside the scope of strategy discussion about the video. sure they are entitled to their opinion and are free to voice it here or anywhere but to excuse a discussion about the quality of a line baluga took for whatever reason doesn't produce anything except the opinion that baluga is infallible. cool, that's your opinion, does that mean we can't talk about the hands lol.

hey zed,

no hard feelings in the slightest man. thanks for watching my video and offering your opinions.

the one thing that i think is substantive to talk about in this is the development of assumptions. you're right-- quick judgments are often incorrect. however, they're better than nothing (i'd usually say they're necessary). So, for example, we can look at a player sitting with 55bb and say that they're probably bad. That's an assumption, usually a true one but not necessarily true. Then, i'd say that most bad players are passive (probably true), so that it's more likely this guy is passive than aggressive--this is an assumption that often proves false, but its impossible to know at the time.

Let me phrase it in an example. You raise KJ in the CO and a 55bb unknown player calls in the BB. Flop is K65r. He checks, you bet, he calls. The turn is a 7. He checks, you bet, he goes all in. You have to have default assumptions here to make a play--if you call, you're assuming that he has a range wider than strong value hands on the turn. If you fold, you're assuming that his range is only strong value hands. Either way, you're making an assumption on limited info. That's poker.

It's tough to pack strong, nuanced reads into an hourlong video. And, were I to have a strong nuanced read on a regular that i'd played against before (say, pmilanov), it'd be pretty not legit to share those specific personal reads in a video.

Andrew

lol also by the way

<<----super fallible. we're all just trying to get better at poker right?

Hey Baluga and the rest of you,

I found the vid interesting and the discussion following also very interesting.

There have been claims here made by some that you're downswinging somewhat roughly Baluga, I'm not sure if this is in fact true and if it is true I'm not sure how much information about your results you're willing to share.

However, if you are in fact catching the bad end of swongs I think this is a fairly interesting subject and if you, as an instructor here and well known player would be willing to go into it in detail I'm sure it could be very helpful for a lot of people here, and possibly helpful for you as well.

Maybe in a post here, or possibly even a vid (I think it could be really cool) go into some detail of your latest swongs, x buyins, y hands etc and discuss how this has impacted your game.

Maybe talk about how to get out of a rut if stuck in one, what mistaked you have made in the past and how you're not making those mistakes now etc. Maybe do some things like session reviews etc where you talk with someone (you seem to have tons of students, maybe some other poker buddies would be better, who knows).

I'm sure you get what I'm saying, if not I'll be glad to write more about my thoughts on this, but in an attempt to not make this worlds longest post I'll stop here.

I actually think this would be a decent idea for a series/mini series for DC so I'll post it in the ideas thread over in the general forum.

Thanks and the day anyone think that they or any other poker is infallible is a bad day for them in deed.

yea my first comments were really harsh i apologize for that and my use of language. my intentions were def. not to make unsubstantial criticisms and if my lack of tact got in the way of my points that is entirely my fault. i also think it's big of you to ride it out in a tough thread, --zed

baluga opens up the rabbit hole for me. that's great i have no problem with that

Whatever turns you guys on

Time Link to 00:00:55

Baluga.

I would give a different range from what you gave, but maybe might thoughts might generate discussion.

I doubt when he donks the turn he has a weak ace, just because he gains little value and the only aces I can see him doing this with 2 pair ones or Axss. I would assume villain would just c/c or c/f turn most of the time with a hand like A3s.

So we bothed assume his range is for value. I would assume its something more like turned 2pair, KQss, QJss,pair and 2 spades, and I doubt you get any of them to fold.

Training videos are designed to make people think more deeply and in a more focused way about their strategy and style of playing.

I think Baluga does this wonderfully as this thread shows.

The fact that he entertains us at the same time is a double bonus.

I'm a newbie here, and this is the sort of vid that I joined to be able to see. The results of the play are irrelevant. The thinking and discussion is golden.

I AM NOT ADAM JUNGLEN

I AM JUNGLEMAN, KING OF THE JUNGLE