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

Gman--You mention that you can make a decision on whether or not to bluff or call some rivers based on the way villain "checks."? I make a lot of decision based on bet sizing but rarely on the way he checks(the river). Can you elaborate on this tell? I find that a tank down can often be a weak hand looking for a fsd but I usually use that tell to value bet thin but not as often to make bluffs. I also agree with checking k8 suited vs a good hand reader and bluffing all rivers when he checks as I don't think you will see many bet/check/bet lines as a bluff from villain in this spot.

Gman--You mention that you can make a decision on whether or not to bluff or call some rivers based on the way villain "checks."? I make a lot of decision based on bet sizing but rarely on the way he checks(the river). Can you elaborate on this tell? I find that a tank down can often be a weak hand looking for a fsd but I usually use that tell to value bet thin but not as often to make bluffs. I also agree with checking k8 suited vs a good hand reader and bluffing all rivers when he checks as I don't think you will see many bet/check/bet lines as a bluff from villain in this spot.

I agree that tanking and checking can very often be a weak hand looking to get to showdown, so you usually will be looking for some other information to decide whether it's profitable to bet the river. Just because he doesn't want you to bet the river doesn't always mean he'll fold if you do.

Unfortunately the way different players check often means different things. A multitabling reg will sometimes snap check and then call 2 streets, but fold if you fire the third barrel after he snap chacks a third time. Contrarily, a weaker player might snap check w/ the intention of never folding his weakish hand, so I'll let him do just that and often overbet for thin value.

The best advice I can give you is to always focus on your opponent's timing on every street, while at the same time being aware of your timing. I can't tell you how many students I have coached who give away major timing tells when we do our first live sweat.

Because you brought the subject, i really want to see a theory episode about all postflop lines ip and oop discussing the types of boards and opponents should be apllied on...

good work, keep it up!

Hi, Tony and Gman.

At 24:30 there is a discussion over how difficult Tony finds it to think like Gman, even though the concepts are explained clearly, and are understood. I feel very much the same way, and have been pondering over this issue.

An analogy from language learning may be useful here:-
When learning a new language you need to understand that different exercises will improve different skills. If you listen to the radio everyday, then your listening comprehension will improve and your vocab will widen. However this exercise will have very little impact on your ability to speak the language. The new vocab sits in your head in a very passive way - if someone speaks, then you understand, but to access the same vocab store to respond is not possible until you make it active.
The key for Tony (and all students of the game) here is to take the passive knowledge that we gain from these videos and identify which exercises we can use to most efficiently turn this passive understanding into a store of info that we can use in an active sense.

In language learning you may read an article in a newspaper e.g new scientific evidence of global warming, and pull out all new vocab, hunt through the dictionary and then list the vocab and translations.
Then you may listen to a radio show or watch a tv show on global warming.
After that, and most importantly you need to turn the vocab active, and so you may have stuctured conversations discussing the article you read and the radio/tv show you heard/watched where the teacher poses questions to assess your comprehension, and also to stimulate active knowledge - once you have used a new word or idiom for yourself, then it becomes much much easier to find that word/idiom in the future. The final piece of the jigsaw is writing something on the subject - an essay for example.

Gman, (and all coaches on DC) would you consider posting a few questions in conjunction with the videos to reinforce the points you make therein?

For myself I intend to become more active on the forums (I am very much a newbie with respect to posting).

Hypoxia

Very interesting post Hypoxia. After a few sessions with Gman, I began to feel like I’m playing a completely different game from him. When I play its kinda like I have a bunch of generic answers I’ve heard and I try and fit them best to the question, whereas he is thinking dynamically and basically problem solving at each decision point.

I talked with him offscreen about this and thinking about poker in an active sense the way that Gman does is now pretty much my only aim in poker now. I feel that any improvements I make from the "passive" learning you describe can only be marginal and very specific to particular situations unless I put more effort in to change my entire mental approach to the game. I want to start reading forum posts and considering my answer to the question/hand history (as if its an examination) before I read anyone elses opinion. Otherwise its like sitting reading maths questions, turning straight to the answers and expecting to learn the technique with no thoughts in between. Your idea of questions after videos is actually pretty cool. Now you say it, its weird that it isn't already implemented in poker training sites as question/exercises are at the core of most educational courses.

Hi, Tony and Gman.

At 24:30 there is a discussion over how difficult Tony finds it to think like Gman, even though the concepts are explained clearly, and are understood. I feel very much the same way, and have been pondering over this issue.

An analogy from language learning may be useful here:-
When learning a new language you need to understand that different exercises will improve different skills. If you listen to the radio everyday, then your listening comprehension will improve and your vocab will widen. However this exercise will have very little impact on your ability to speak the language. The new vocab sits in your head in a very passive way - if someone speaks, then you understand, but to access the same vocab store to respond is not possible until you make it active.
The key for Tony (and all students of the game) here is to take the passive knowledge that we gain from these videos and identify which exercises we can use to most efficiently turn this passive understanding into a store of info that we can use in an active sense.

In language learning you may read an article in a newspaper e.g new scientific evidence of global warming, and pull out all new vocab, hunt through the dictionary and then list the vocab and translations.
Then you may listen to a radio show or watch a tv show on global warming.
After that, and most importantly you need to turn the vocab active, and so you may have stuctured conversations discussing the article you read and the radio/tv show you heard/watched where the teacher poses questions to assess your comprehension, and also to stimulate active knowledge - once you have used a new word or idiom for yourself, then it becomes much much easier to find that word/idiom in the future. The final piece of the jigsaw is writing something on the subject - an essay for example.

Gman, (and all coaches on DC) would you consider posting a few questions in conjunction with the videos to reinforce the points you make therein?

For myself I intend to become more active on the forums (I am very much a newbie with respect to posting).

Hypoxia

Hypoxia,

Thanks for taking the time to write all of that out. I try to make my students' learning processes as active as possible in 1-1 coaching, but usually it is a lot easier said than done in a video format specifically. But yes, I will do my best to pose questions to the viewers when it seems appropriate. I really liked your language learning analogy fwiw.

-Garrett

Hypoxia,

Thanks for taking the time to write all of that out. I try to make my students' learning processes as active as possible in 1-1 coaching, but usually it is a lot easier said than done in a video format specifically. But yes, I will do my best to pose questions to the viewers when it seems appropriate. I really liked your language learning analogy fwiw.

-Garrett

Hi Garrett,

Thank you for your response. I am aware that I am suggesting more work for the producers of training vids, but I think that there would be a tangible benefit for DC itself. If this idea was adopted across the site, and the members found it to be beneficial, then member retention would improve and rate of uptake of new subscriptions would increase.

A win win scanario.

Hypoxia

Hi, Gman. I liked the episode, but there is so much information and the conversation in the video is all over the place. It's kind of hard to actively follow the points that you are trying to make. It would be easier if you could use some visual material also (like the first episode) or something similar.

- LoveisHell