Poker Video: Limit Hold'Em by DeathDonkey (High Stakes)

Time Link to 00:05:51

I really like just calling on this board texture with our whole continuing range. While a lot of the things that you say make sense regarding the coordinated nature of the board, the thing that stood out to me was that you said you should be waiting for the turn with a pretty weak range and raising the flop with hands like 77 and JT.

I strongly believe you need to call both of these hands planning to raise the turn. If you're also peeling your marginal hands (such as this one), draws, and strong hands, you're going to have semibluffing opportunities on pretty much any turn card. So your range will be more flexible and opaque if you wait with all of it... Also since your range is so wide when you peel the flop, there are no turn cards that can come that will make your range too strong when you raise that card.

Nice vid Deathdonkey really enjoyed it

Can't wait to see new season, anything with you and mikel usually involves mass arguing and a ton of strategy so all fun

Just one though piqued my interest here

You mention that you almost never raise this board. Does that mean you're not a fan of dry board flop bluffs on boards like these as you don't have enough value hands in the your range to balance the time you're taking a shot so instead you tend to wait for the turn if you're going to bluff here since you'd do that with strong hands too? Just a thought that interested me since I know more than a couple of players you'll love to take shots on boards like that.

Wow did that table on the right go the the wall at the end, bye bye Mr West and brad, hello Zzeigler and B0rg....d'oh!!

Anyway, good stuff and thanks for the vid

Time Link to 00:34:38

In my playing experience when a situation comes up like this and I raise, I'm either getting 3bet by a hand I can never beat or the opponent is folding. It never seems to be a +EV play.

Time Link to 00:39:35

With the 99 hand do you ever consider a b/f on the turn when this opponent calls the flop? Are you trying to get to a SD vd. him based on the odd play he made earlier in the game with AQ?

Time Link to 00:40:26

There's no way I'm folding 99 on the river here vs this guy even though you soul read him.
The fact he c.called your UTG open with A3o shows he's really just looking to play back at you. He's probably pissed you didn't respect his river C/R on the 3c earlier with your TPTK. I'm pretty sure in the QAAA hand he could find reasons to fire with his KJ/KT etc stuff too. I mean I'm not sure yet but I'd find it hard to fold any pair here, even if the river came T,J or K.
I would have also made the KQo call earlier as you talked about on the, I think it was something like, 89553 flop. He definitely strikes me as the type who may be 'bluffing' with his weaker Ax on the river but I think he'd barrel all his QT/QJ/KT/KJ too. Not sure what stove says about our overall equity here though, it might be a good fold.

Very cool to hear you and Mike are going to do another series.

Time Link to 00:15:29

Re: AK blind battle with heisenb3rg

I think the river decision is a close but clear call. Yes, a scary card did hit on the river and his range will be fairly strong, but we have one of the stronger hands in our range, especially since the 4 paired on the turn. I'm not sure if you put more action in with your sevens, but either way he'll be giving up with zero bluffs on this particular river card. I would guess on a more blankish card, he'd be checking back with, for example, the king high flush draw pretty regularly.

So his bluff range should expand here along with his value range. Interestingly this is why, if heis is going to raise this flop, he should be raising with hands like Kx and Ax of diamonds... the fact that we have the ace of diamonds makes me want to call a bit less, but not enough to fold such a strong hand within our range.

Edit: I thinking hoping for him to be valuebetting like AQ is really optimistic... If he does bet AQ- on this river it's as a bluff.

Time Link to 00:23:25

Re: unknown's opening range


We've already seen him give you at least once which makes this an even clearer fold than it normally would be.

FWIW

Time Link to 00:25:20

Re: A3ss OTB against boc

DD,

What are your thought on chking back this board texture, both with your hand and with different parts of your range in general?

Time Link to 00:27:25

Re: weird f'ing river c/r with AK on K3573 board

I stopped when you mention that it's between call and threebet... I think I threebet, I think. How's that for committal? It just seems so much more likely he decided to play a hand like KQ, QQ, JJ, TT like this until the river than a hand like AA, KK or AQ, AJ of clubs... Remember the hand started 3ways and his relative position is good so he would probably be betting his biggest hands for value on the flop...

Of course he probably has like A3 of spades.

Time Link to 00:32:33

Re: KdQx against mr west

Does the fact that he raised the flop (rather than you checking the turn out of rhythm as you said in the vid) make you want to fold more?

Time Link to 00:42:32

re: K6 against mr west

Given his propensity to barrel with whatever non-sd type hand he has on pretty hopeless board textures (eg 34 on AKx), what do you think about calling turn and c/r river (when he bets the turn)?

Time Link to 00:43:57

Re: Q8ss against heis

I'm also a bit perplexed by your comment re: raising this flop texture. I feel as though, because the board is so dry, you'll have a bit narrower peeling range so you'll need to be raising right away far more often than you generally would.

In my playing experience when a situation comes up like this and I raise, I'm either getting 3bet by a hand I can never beat or the opponent is folding. It never seems to be a +EV play.

Meh, people hate folding, high stakes players especially hate folding, I don't worry too much about people over-folding

It's hard to think how I'm beat and he doesn't go for the CR, that said, its hard to think what he has at all.

With the 99 hand do you ever consider a b/f on the turn when this opponent calls the flop? Are you trying to get to a SD vd. him based on the odd play he made earlier in the game with AQ?

I think checking gets him to make a bad bluff more often. That said it doesn't seem like the sort of flop texture I'd expect him to float a ton on. Overall though I don't want to be folding much to him given his weird plays earlier.

Re: A3ss OTB against boc

DD,

What are your thought on chking back this board texture, both with your hand and with different parts of your range in general?

My thoughts are that its probably right, but I am not great at it yet. I think its one area of LHE that is a bit wide open right now and the winning players are going to come to some conclusions over the next year or so. Hopefully I figure it out

re: the AK hand - you are def right, I regret the fold.

Re: KdQx against mr west

Does the fact that he raised the flop (rather than you checking the turn out of rhythm as you said in the vid) make you want to fold more?

Ah, good catch, yes it definitely does. I mean the turn is awful for me given his flop raising range.

re: K6 against mr west

Given his propensity to barrel with whatever non-sd type hand he has on pretty hopeless board textures (eg 34 on AKx), what do you think about calling turn and c/r river (when he bets the turn)?

I think my hand is just too strong? I mean its gotta be close to a turn cap and river lead. Make my hand a weak ace and it has more merit.

Re: Q8ss against heis

I'm also a bit perplexed by your comment re: raising this flop texture. I feel as though, because the board is so dry, you'll have a bit narrower peeling range so you'll need to be raising right away far more often than you generally would.

I guess its pretty clear that there are two reasonable strategies on a dry board, either incorporate outright bluff raises, or make some light peels and semibluff when you pick up a hand on the turn. I tried to mention its an ok board to peel with a pretty silly looking hand, such as JT, but those dry flops are a bit annoying when your range is wide but you hit the board so rarely. I need to think about it some more I guess.

Only watched the first 15min or so, but just wanted to say that these kind of mid/high stakes videos are great coupled with the discussion afterwards. So more of this please!!

Time Link to 00:02:11

This spot where a limper gets raised from the SB and we are in the BB has come up for me a couple of times recently. Given ur play (3-bet JTs) it is safe to say I have been too passive . If we talk ranges here do u 3-bet a similar range as u would from the BTN vs a CO opener or do u go even wider?

Good stuff! I think the prize of making vidz became clear given how boc4life played. Pretty scary.

Good stuff! I think the prize of making vidz became clear given how boc4life played. Pretty scary.

I'm a bit unsure if you are insulting him or not, but I think boc is one of the toughest players out there.

I'm a bit unsure if you are insulting him or not, but I think boc is one of the toughest players out there.

I didn't intend to. I just think u have revealed some spots where u have few bluffs though. Maybe I'm totally wrong about everything .

Re: AK blind battle with heisenb3rg

I think the river decision is a close but clear call. Yes, a scary card did hit on the river and his range will be fairly strong, but we have one of the stronger hands in our range, especially since the 4 paired on the turn. I'm not sure if you put more action in with your sevens, but either way he'll be giving up with zero bluffs on this particular river card. I would guess on a more blankish card, he'd be checking back with, for example, the king high flush draw pretty regularly.

So his bluff range should expand here along with his value range. Interestingly this is why, if heis is going to raise this flop, he should be raising with hands like Kx and Ax of diamonds... the fact that we have the ace of diamonds makes me want to call a bit less, but not enough to fold such a strong hand within our range.

Edit: I thinking hoping for him to be valuebetting like AQ is really optimistic... If he does bet AQ- on this river it's as a bluff.

He flats pre so I doubt AQ/AJ is in his range all that much, and I agree that he'd be bluffing with it sooner than valuebetting it. In fact I really doubt he'd ever flat pre then raise the flop with those hands so I think we can assume that part of his range is somewhere between negligible and non-existant.

The fact that we have the Ad makes me want to call more, because if he had the Adxd he could check behind and expect to win vs worse flushdraws, so because we have the nutdrawblocker he'll have a flushdraw without showdownvalue more often.

That said, I think the 8 is such a horrible card that I like a fold because we only really beat flushdraws, our hand kinda looks like either a draw or ace high and I doubt our opponent expects us to fold very much (we hit the 8 pretty hard too with our range, and if he has a hand he needs to bluff with he'll usually have missed diamonds which decreases the chance that we have them) so I can see this as a spot where he might give up with a hand like Q6 some of the time. Getting 7:1, meh. I think it'd be too stationish to call here, and I would definitely muck AK with the king of diamonds.

I only don't mind a call if we realise it's probably slightly -EV but we're doing it to get some info, look unbluffable and maybe be right once in 9 times or something.

(Disclaimer: LHE is like my 5th best game, so feel free to point out flaws in my thought process)

I'm a bit unsure if you are insulting him or not, but I think boc is one of the toughest players out there.

I got the impression Sushi was actually complementing Boc referring to where he was able to lay down what seemed to clearly be a pair on the turn in a big pot on the 444 board at about 7:30.

The fact that we have the Ad makes me want to call more, because if he had the Adxd he could check behind and expect to win vs worse flushdraws, so because we have the nutdrawblocker he'll have a flushdraw without showdownvalue more often.

That said, I think the 8 is such a horrible card that I like a fold...

it'd be too stationish to call here, and I would definitely muck AK with the king of diamonds.

Heisenberg is barreling every single flush draw in his range on this particular river because of this mindset. His total range is stronger because of the river card and so he needs to bet some hands, as a bluff, that he'd check back otherwise...

The fact that we have the Ad really should decrease the number of bluffs in his range. That said, what hands, with which you took this passive line, would you call on this river? Basically my contention is that AK is the top of your range in this spot and thus should be a call. You can fold more hands that are closer to the bottom of your range imo...

I got the impression Sushi was actually complementing Boc referring to where he was able to lay down what seemed to clearly be a pair on the turn in a big pot on the 444 board at about 7:30.

Yeah this was my thinking. Seems like DD just cant get over the Kitten business. I tried to convinve M.B. that "Nuclear" was a good name for a kitten but she disagreed .

About the AK hand: Isn't it a bit dangerous to fold 100% on scare cards and very little on blanks? To be able to fold AK on he 8 river we have to believe that Heisenberg has so few bluffs that it doesn't matter if we fold an exploitable amount. That is even if we fold more than the pot-odds he is getting on a bluff he doesn't have enough bluffs in relation to v-bets to exploit that. But that means IMO that he has made unbalance errors earlir in the hand?

It's the OTR rule of flop XR: We need to XR a range that gives us enough bluffs on scare cards. So he needs to take the line he did with some hands that doesn't improve by the 8.

Or is the truth that if he has enough bluffs on scare cards he will have way to many on safe rivers? Perhaps the price of having enough bluffs on this particular river is too high?

What say thy DH, god of GTO?

Not sure when your video with Mikel re: open-completing comes out, but I would like to see how your approach compares and contrasts with mine.

Not sure when your video with Mikel re: open-completing comes out, but I would like to see how your approach compares and contrasts with mine.

From what I understand of your sb strategy mine is going to be more traditional in the sense that I am limping the middle portion of the my range, and raising a polarized range of premiums and the low end hands that I judge are slightly too good to fold. For those that don't know, mitch has adopted a "limp any hand he will play" in the sb strategy at mid/high stakes (please correct me if I'm wrong). I would imagine we have a similar attack plan for when we get raised, or when the BB checks his option, though I CR more flops than you against good players who I believe will correctly not double barrel too often.

great thread

Re: weird f'ing river c/r with AK on K3573 board

I stopped when you mention that it's between call and threebet... I think I threebet, I think. How's that for committal? It just seems so much more likely he decided to play a hand like KQ, QQ, JJ, TT like this until the river than a hand like AA, KK or AQ, AJ of clubs... Remember the hand started 3ways and his relative position is good so he would probably be betting his biggest hands for value on the flop...

Of course he probably has like A3 of spades.

I agree with your thought process here but I have a couple problems with 3 betting. First, I would hate to get capped since this is such a WTF situation. I think I am happy to just call and see what he has for future reference. This leads to the second problem I have and that is he may not call a 3 bet and we will be left wondering if he made a big laydown or was bluffing.

I don't mind the 3b once I have a stronger read of what this guy is capable of. I intuitively think in this particular spot the villians range is polarized between monsters and bluffs with the rest being the hands you described. He should have played his flopped monsters faster given it was multiway as you mentioned. Therefore, I think things are tilting more towards a bluff.

I guess its pretty clear that there are two reasonable strategies on a dry board, either incorporate outright bluff raises, or make some light peels and semibluff when you pick up a hand on the turn. I tried to mention its an ok board to peel with a pretty silly looking hand, such as JT, but those dry flops are a bit annoying when your range is wide but you hit the board so rarely. I need to think about it some more I guess.

I really like this. BGLL has worked a lot on this.

If we float stuff like JT, he needs to bet the turn again sometimes. So we semibluff sometimes, and if he's laying down PPs and other unpaired hands (any/all since we do not plan to SD UI), this balances us well. If he bets once and gives up, this makes our float really good.

Time Link to 00:15:22

AKo BvB OOP vs Heisenberg on 47948 (busted flop FD)

I know that calling the 8 would be pretty bad in a small stakes game (straightening cards are generally much worse than flush cards), so I'm really having a hard time understanding why you and OTR now seem to feel that it's a pretty clear call here in a high stakes game. How are the game conditions changing such that this is the case?

Size of villain's bluff range
In a typical small stakes game I would say the villain's range that is not paired on this particular river is VERY small (only busted FD's). Will a good aggressive high stakes reg show up with a lot of UI bluffs here on the end? What would those other hands be? Some 5x, 6x, QJ type stuff?

Presence of the A in our hand
In a small stakes game this would reduce villain's bluffing range. That is, people semi-bluff A of suit here because they value to hand's equity more than it's ability showdown. But Soepgroente makes an interesting counter argument:

The fact that we have the Ad makes me want to call more, because if he had the Adxd he could check behind and expect to win vs worse flushdraws, so because we have the nutdrawblocker he'll have a flushdraw without showdownvalue more often.

Would you say that the latter more typifies the high stakes player's mindset?

Time Link to 00:36:30

This is a hand you're not actually in, but I found it really interesting.

Heisenberg opens the CO with 99, Mr West cool calls the SB, BB folds.
Flop: Q K T goes check, check
Turn: 7 West checks, Heisenberg bets, West calls
River: K West donks, Heisenberg calls

I'm not sure I understand anything after the PF action.

I know you and OTR talked about checking back the flop a bit earlier in the thread (you had A3 OTB and got check/raised on a 749t), and I was hoping you could elaborate here. Is the idea basically that you're getting check/raised a ton on the flop texture and your hand hates it? I'm still kind of at a loss as to how to play most turns after a flop check back.

On the turn I guess given West checking twice Heisenberg has a value bet versus the myriad draws.

Then on the river Heisenberg calls because relatively few of the draws came in and West has been SUPER erratic. What cards (if any) do you think Heisenberg would have folded on the river here?

re: AK hand

I think what OTR and I ended up saying is that basically, we are playing against someone who is at least as capable as we are of assigning hand ranges, reading board textures, and mixing up his play. When those things begin to be true, you can't just say "well that's a scary card for his range" because his "range" has already accounted for representing scare cards and all that nasty jazz. We need to revert to a fairly unexploitable strategy, and I can't imagine folding AK falls into that.

I think your thoughts towards the typical villain ranges in smaller stakes games are accurate, and it would indeed be a good fold.

This is a hand you're not actually in, but I found it really interesting.

Heisenberg opens the CO with 99, Mr West cool calls the SB, BB folds.
Flop: Q K T goes check, check
Turn: 7 West checks, Heisenberg bets, West calls
River: K West donks, Heisenberg calls

I'm not sure I understand anything after the PF action.

I know you and OTR talked about checking back the flop a bit earlier in the thread (you had A3 OTB and got check/raised on a 749t), and I was hoping you could elaborate here. Is the idea basically that you're getting check/raised a ton on the flop texture and your hand hates it? I'm still kind of at a loss as to how to play most turns after a flop check back.

On the turn I guess given West checking twice Heisenberg has a value bet versus the myriad draws.

Then on the river Heisenberg calls because relatively few of the draws came in and West has been SUPER erratic. What cards (if any) do you think Heisenberg would have folded on the river here?

I think Heisenberg played it well. I'll take a stab at his thinking, and say that he was trying to exploit a poor player by checking back on a board texture where really nothing positive happens with 99 for us. I mean ask yourself why would you bet this flop with 99? The real answer is because you just bet this flop with everything, and that's actually fairly unexploitable, because your open raising range dominates villain's defending range, especially on this board texture.

I agree he thinks he has a value bet on turn, I don't hate a turn check behind fwiw, to try to induce a river bluff in a tiny pot.

I guess on the river he could fold an ace, almost nothing else after a check, check, then check, bet, call line of action on the previous streets.

re: AK hand

I think what OTR and I ended up saying is that basically, we are playing against someone who is at least as capable as we are of assigning hand ranges, reading board textures, and mixing up his play. When those things begin to be true, you can't just say "well that's a scary card for his range" because his "range" has already accounted for representing scare cards and all that nasty jazz. We need to revert to a fairly unexploitable strategy, and I can't imagine folding AK falls into that.

I think your thoughts towards the typical villain ranges in smaller stakes games are accurate, and it would indeed be a good fold.

Yeah I think that's fairly accurate. The thing you have to realize about very tough player is that they read the hand not only from start to end (ie what has happened) but also from end to start (what might happen).