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

Sorry my volume seems to be a lot lower than the other guys - first time I had talked on Skype in forever so I wasn't sure how it'd turn out. If anyone has questions about anything I said, just post here and I'll clarify. I'll try to speak up next time and see if there's any setting I can boost my outbound volume with.

But Dan's the one you want to listen to, anyway, not me!

Time Link to 00:18:18

The 55/45 estimate was almost exactly right:


Board: 4d 7d Ks
Dead:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 53.737% 53.74% 00.00% 532 0.00 { 8c8d }
Hand 1: 46.263% 46.26% 00.00% 458 0.00 { 6d5d }


One thing I forgot to mention when we were talking about this one, was I really felt he had a lot more draws in his range to raise that flop because the only made hands he could have were 44, 77, and maybe KQ. And there is a non-zero chance that he would flat with made hands, but I believe there's a zero chance that he would flat with a draw. So my play is admittedly kinda spewy, but flatting his raise out of position with such a marginal hand where at least half the deck is a scare card is a very tough spot. In retrospect, check/calling instead of cbetting is probably the best play.

The 55/45 estimate was almost exactly right:


Board: 4d 7d Ks
Dead:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 53.737% 53.74% 00.00% 532 0.00 { 8c8d }
Hand 1: 46.263% 46.26% 00.00% 458 0.00 { 6d5d }


One thing I forgot to mention when we were talking about this one, was I really felt he had a lot more draws in his range to raise that flop because the only made hands he could have were 44, 77, and maybe KQ. And there is a non-zero chance that he would flat with made hands, but I believe there's a zero chance that he would flat with a draw. So my play is admittedly kinda spewy, but flatting his raise out of position with such a marginal hand where at least half the deck is a scare card is a very tough spot. In retrospect, check/calling instead of cbetting is probably the best play.

Do you expect him to pretty much auto-bet if you check? In that case I think I like the c/c line, but I find that TAGs people don't take that aggressive of a strategy. However, TAGs seem to love floating. I think the bet-check line probably exploits a player like that's tendencies a little more.

Excellent, tyvm, playing pairs 77-jj is one of those topics that i've been wanting to see a video on. I played a session immediatley after watching and put some of this to use right then and there.

Hey this series is great so far, enjoy it a lot!

Really like the last JJ hand, and the idea of c/r AI on the river.

What about a 3x c/r on the river to about 125, do you think you would still have the same fold equity here but you would save yourself 70 for the times he does herocall?
Or do you think that the smaller c/r leads him to more herocalls, because it is not threatening his whole stack?

The first hand, 77, was mine. xLRidgex is a very aggro regular who runs about 20/17ish and is very capable of firing turn barrels w/ a big portion of his range especially on scare cards. I feel like flatting allows us to be barreled far too often and I actually would rather fold then just call. Imo there are too many turn and river cards that can come that make it a very uneasy proposition to be calling a good aggro reg w/ just 77. Had it been a weaker "one and done" type of C-bettor, then I agree flatting and betting the turn when checked to is the better play.

10 to 1 set mine is to low on a minimum you need 13.5 to 1 and even more if opponent isnt likely to pay off or if you are deep because 16 percent of time you flop set you still gonna lose

The last JJ hand was mine. I think he shows up here with KK here a vast majority of the time. I don't think he's the type of player who is going to check AK back twice. I don't think he'd check TT back twice, but I also don't think he ever has it here. He might check AA back twice, but there's only 1 combo of that out there.

Checkraising all in on the river is an intriguing play. We're basically repping TT, AQ, or some goofy 66 or 33 with that play. I'm not flatting the 3 bet with AJ or AK OOP here and I'm pretty sure he knows that. To be honest, I'm pretty much never showing up with 33 or 66 here either because his 3 bet size is not giving me very good set mining odds.

Do I think he has the stones to make a call if I do c/r him all in? I'm not really sure. He's a good player so he is definitely capable of putting the pieces together and making a hero call. That said, I'd rather take this line against a thinking player than some calling station fish that refuses to lay down his KK because he can't fathom KK ever losing.

Long story short:

10 to 1 set mine is to low on a minimum you need 13.5 to 1 and even more if opponent isnt likely to pay off or if you are deep because 16 percent of time you flop set you still gonna lose

1) Where do you get 13.5 from?
2) 10-1 is not a hard and fast rule for remaining stack size, its the amount we need to expect to get paid when we flop a set on average to justify a preflop call. And it already accounts for the times we flop a set and lose, since our actual set-flopping odds are better than 8-1.

Sometimes I'll set mine getting no better than 10-1 odds on his stack, sometimes I'll fold getting better than 20-1 stack odds. It depends entirely on his range, position, and his skill level.

I am hoping to actually participate in this series, my apologies so far as my timeline in Europe doesn't work well with the 'filming' schedule.

K, get ready to flame me for being a nit but this exact situation was discussed on the cardrunners forum..but I advocate a fold or 4bet with the JJ hand to the 3bet never a flat call oop. You said in the video that he is a very good player that occasionally makes moves and 3bets light..how often does he do this? How often does he make these moves when we are raising in early position? Does he do it often enough for us to profit when he does this compared to how much he makes from us when he's not 3betting light? Probably not.
We are taking a good but not great hand in full ring and trying to out play a good opponent when we are out of position. To me that is recipe for disaster. There are much easier ways to make a profit from JJ but this is not one of them.

1) Where do you get 13.5 from?
2) 10-1 is not a hard and fast rule for remaining stack size, its the amount we need to expect to get paid when we flop a set on average to justify a preflop call. And it already accounts for the times we flop a set and lose, since our actual set-flopping odds are better than 8-1.

Sometimes I'll set mine getting no better than 10-1 odds on his stack, sometimes I'll fold getting better than 20-1 stack odds. It depends entirely on his range, position, and his skill level.

I think calling to purely set mine with 10 to 1 is wrong.

I went through the math in my 3 bet thread after I watched this video.

If we put in 10% of our stack pre-flop and they stacked off 100% of the time we hit a set and never hit a bigger set/draw/flush by the river it would be profitable!

That would be totally unrealistic amd math impossible.

If you think I am wrong I would be more than willing to listen to a math justification of 10 to 1 against any player and any range.

Now you could claim that you might try to outplay the opponents pre-flop but thats not purely setmining and something totally different.

Here is math follow up I quickly did using pokerstove. I am no math guy so I could be wrong. I am willing to learn.

If purely setmining getting 10 to 1
Lets assume he has AA 100% of time and will always stack off on every flop not matter how scary.
We have 33

88% of the time we miss flop and fold 88 x 10BB = -880BB

12% of the time we hit our set we win 12 x 100BB = +1200BB

Except we don't!

When we hit our set we will still lose about 14% of time.(set over set/draw/flush/quads A kicker!)

So final math is roughly

88% x -10 BB = -880 BB

1.68% x -100 BB = -168 BB (14% of 12%)

10.32% x +100 BB = +1032 BB

grand total = -16 BB per 100 flops or -.16 BB/flop LOSS.

This is with purely AA in his range 100% of the time with 100% stack off.

With KK he might not stack off fearing AA or an Ace comes or a scary board ect.

I cannot possibly see how 10 to 1 is even remotely close enough to call a bet to purely setmine.

I should also add I didn't include rake in the above calculation which is a very important percentage at lower limts.

I thought I was pretty clear that 10-1 was the amount we need to expect to win when we hit a set, and it doesn't have anything to do with stack sizes.

If there's 20 in the pot, we're facing a bet of 10, and we don't expect to win the pot without a set, then we need to expect to win 80 postflop (on average) when we hit a set. This is roughly true whether the remaining stacks are 100 or 1000.

Time Link to 00:34:54

I would think his hand is QQ because if he knows your flatting 3bets with JJ+ then your entire range beats him on the flop but the question is after you check twice do you think he will vbet QQ bc he put you on a wider 3bet flat?

I thought this video was good; I disagreed with the hand with the jjs though.
You should raise on the flop, either take it down, or have a pretty good idea you are beat (against a usual opponent).
Even if he has two overs he has 25 percent equity against you. Plus there are so many things that could go wrong on the later streets. What overcards are you going to fold two? Are you going to put him on an overpair if he fires 3 barrels?
Against a standard player, just raise on the flop and figure out where you are at.

I thought this video was good; I disagreed with the hand with the jjs though.
You should raise on the flop, either take it down, or have a pretty good idea you are beat (against a usual opponent).
Even if he has two overs he has 25 percent equity against you. Plus there are so many things that could go wrong on the later streets. What overcards are you going to fold two? Are you going to put him on an overpair if he fires 3 barrels?
Against a standard player, just raise on the flop and figure out where you are at.

I disagree. If we raise the flop we will induce him to play perfectly, folding worse hands and continuing with better hands, and thats fundamentally bad for us. Additionally, by flatting we allow him to fire multiple barrels of bluff, which means we can win even more money from worse hands (but we don't necessarily lose more to better ones than we would if we raised the flop).

25% equity isn't much in NLHE, and it definitely isn't so much that we need to go out of our way to protect our equity in a relatively small pot.

And the things that you say can go wrong (overcards, dealing with multiple barrels) aren't really that bad, and certainly they aren't much worse than what happens when we raise flop. Against most aggressive villains i'm happily calling another barrel on a K or Q turn, since those are great barrel cards that make up a smallish part of his range. Ace turns are worse, but I don't mind folding on them since I don't expect him to exploit us very much in those situations. If he fires 3 barrels we can make a decision, and having done so and learned from the results will make us a stronger player than avoiding such decisions altogether.

In general, I would strongly advise you to get the whole idea of "raise to find out where you are at" out of your gameplan. It is rarely the best choice, and the logic behind it is faulty.

I'm not sure that I really like the river c/r on the last hand with JJ. We don't rep a wide range at all, and I think it's pretty likely that we would have bet earlier in the hand if we were looking for value. If we have TT here we're certainly betting either the turn or the river, right?

Since villain is a solid 200nl player on Stars I think it's pretty safe to assume that he can hand read somewhat well and I think he could probably look us up there with KK and maybe even QQ, which are the hands he is certainly most likely to have in that spot.

Time Link to 00:57:55

One guys microphone doesn't work and I can't hear him. Very aggravating.

Time Link to 00:05:40

You think this raise is too big? I think if we're raising this flop, it should be to the same size that we would raise our very strong hands, which, for me at least, is 3- 3.5x. Without history, I expect a lot of tags to fold hands as strong as AA at these stakes.

Time Link to 00:45:08

I still play some 100nl and I don't think putting AA or AQ hands in villain's range is reasonable. They will definitely take a check back line and call turn and river, but bet/check/bet after a brick turn is reserved more for hands like QT and worse here. I don't think folding is the most ridiculous thing to do on the river, but call>fold>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>raise imo. I don't think check/raising as a bluff here is terrible, but doing it with 99 is silly and unnecessary - not to mention that you now won't know what he had.

Time Link to 00:44:33

it's pretty obv he had a hand like QT-QJ or TT-JJ and he was just making a thin valuebet. nit could fold to a check/raise just b/c he isn't capable of calling with hand like JJ here. Hero doesn't really rep anything in this spot but it might be an OK play against a nit who you know is capable of vbetting thin but isn't capable of making a call with JJ here. But w/o good reads i think this is really really spewy cos most ppl woun't fold any Q in this spot.

Time Link to 01:14:34

shouldn't villain snapcall w KK vs a river c/r AI? esp if he is making a small bet like 1/3psb or smth like that - it looks weak and villain most prob knows that it could induce some action.

it's pretty obv he had a hand like QT-QJ or TT-JJ and he was just making a thin valuebet. nit could fold to a check/raise just b/c he isn't capable of calling with hand like JJ here. Hero doesn't really rep anything in this spot but it might be an OK play against a nit who you know is capable of vbetting thin but isn't capable of making a call with JJ here. But w/o good reads i think this is really really spewy cos most ppl woun't fold any Q in this spot.

Typically I wouldn't make a play like this unless I know the guy is a TAG who probably won't call the raise. There's plenty of TAGs(most regs) at these stakes that will have trouble making a solid read AND following through with it. Against that sort of player I still really like this play.

shouldn't villain snapcall w KK vs a river c/r AI? esp if he is making a small bet like 1/3psb or smth like that - it looks weak and villain most prob knows that it could induce some action.

I think it's just really hard for him to call. He has to give us credit for playing an A this way (it is a reasonable way to play it), and it's hard for him to imagine us turning a hand into a bluff like this. This holds true if he had bet 1/3 pot because he should perceive us bluffing in this spot so rarely to begin with (when we face a half-pot bet) such that him only betting 1/3 shouldn't increase our bluffing frequency nearly enough.