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

Nicely done. I agree with your comment that most of the hands played pretty straight-forwardly. It's almost like playing no-limit, it's either air or teh nuts! The run of cards in the beginning was good for you in the sense that you caught a lot of hands that were showdownable to get an idea of his strategy but bad in that you got rivered a lot. And it sucks to get value-owned by a player like this calling down with Ace high on a say 9KK63 board against 53o. :-)

One particular thing that I'm not sure was discussed that much on the video is what to do with semi-bluffs with non-showdownable hands, say like 45o on a 26Kr flop, against this sort of maniac. The problem with strong, aggressive semi-bluff lines is that it sucks to build up big pots only to get reraised in big streets knowing that your opponent might just be re-bluffing. So one has to be willing to commit a lot of chips to be able to win the pot UI. Though against this particular villain semi-bluffs with non-SD hands was hopeless strategy as he called down with even Q high. But say against a player who bluffs constantly but is willing to give up with his bluffs against aggression. (I'm not sure if this player type exists at all, though. It seems that most maniacs are typically also absurdly showdown bound, perhaps because of fear of being bluffed.)

One thing in particular I found useful was your discussion about how to handle the paradox of bloating the flop preflop by pure equity but getting in tough spots because the villain doesn't slow down. I remember him leading the flop every single time when you capped preflop. One just has to be somewhat optimistic about outs and accept that not all of those pots can be won even though they generally are rather big.

I took a 5 pages of notes. But I think its better to just summarize.
I play live with two maniacs, both are better than this guy.
This guy is bad, no doubt. Last weeks guy, is not as bad as you think he is IMO.
Cheeco is bad cause he never changes his game, he is for ever exploitable.

Maniacs exist because they are able to beat some players.
They can build huge stacks (with huge variance) because they intimidate some players,
and they take over most tables, they like being the "main attraction". They are constantly betting and raising, sometimes in a ridiculous fashion. This causes some opponents to fold too often or get tilty and start playing just like the maniac, and they have no idea how to.
When a maniac runs well, he wins a ton of chips cause no one ever believes him (with good reason!!).

He bets if you check, he bets if he senses weakness, he bets if its cloudy.
if he checks, its only to c/r.
he is the king of the semi bluff, cause he always sees a minimum of 6 outs in his hand!

As you are an aggressive player, I think it took you a while to figure out that c/c,c/c,c/c was ussually the best line. or...tight passive...beats a maniac.
You mentioned the best strategy(IMO) in your closing remarks, but it did not seem to me you played that way in the actual match.

how is this guy weak? where is he exploitable?
1) he bets/raises too much, without reguard to his hand strength.
2) he almost never folds, he is too SD bound(he has to be completely hopeless to fold, and sometimes calls anyway..lol)
3) he plays every hand...even in a full ring game.(he could/would play without cards)

the tilt question...perhaps this guy was tilted as its hard to tell on a replayer.
but one of the maniacs weapons is his ability to get you to tilt, cause if you play long enough he will river you with a 2 outer.
Both guys I play with almost never tilt, in fact they are real nice level headed guys, they just like action action action. One of them is a very good maniac IMO(if thats possible) cause he reads players well, and can read boards kinda. The other one just likes to see the river, kinda like this guy, but he doesn't spew as bad as cheeco.

one of your strenghts DD is hand reading, but the maniac has 100% of range all the way to river,and the meaning of his bets are known only to him. so good luck with that.

we exploit 1) by letting him bet. use a c/c c/c c/c line as default. However, dont be afraid to go to war if you get a big hand cause he cant fold, he must call, its in the maniac cookbook. And you did go to war a couple of times.
2) now this is one we can discuss/argue about. He is not ever folding until the river, ever.
35:18 was his first fold before the river!!! he folded on the turn to a c/r, with a hopeless hand I am sure.
Here is my main problem with your strategy...PF you raised or 3 bet/capped with hands lacking SD value.
Your hand must have SD value to put more chips in, cause you can be sure we are going to see all the cards most of the time. I think this means any pair Ax,Kx (Q something is debatable). With these hands we should try to cap and tight passive to SD. with anything else, we put in the least amount of bets possible, cause WE might want/need to fold before the river leaving maniac to take the pot. So dont bloat a pot we may have to abandon. THATS THE MANIACS PLAN!(not that he thinks in terms of plans..lol) so with j3,T3s,J4s,74,J4,J2, etc keep the pot small. you are wasting metagame on this guy.
We know all hands are going to SD. So we control, what we can. THE AMOUNT OF BETS GOING IN. we do this by keeping the pot small with no SDV. And by, if we make hand, we try to go to war. The maniac likes betting wars btw....splash, splash...
another thing to note, that I dont think you made clear. OUR IMPLIED ODDS GO WAY UP. so as I like keeping the pot small, but I dont fold anything PF even the 52o you folded. cause if we get a A34 flop and maniac has a Ace, he gives us unlimited bets.
We can beat maniac cause we have more options than he does. He cant fold and must bet. We dont have to bet, and we can fold. poor guy...

I did like how you noticed the change in his play, and you were ready to adjust.

off subject....I used to play golf, and one way to teach golf (or learn it) is to first make a one foot putt, then two feet etc....and work your way out to longer and longer shots.
Can we use that idea in poker? to play/learn HU first, then 3 handed, then 4 etc...??
the reason I ask is...my results are much better the shorter the field. hhhhmmmmm
thoughts, comments...

I'm jealous ;-)

Inspired by this serie I'm thinking about starting playing HU limit. Is it correct that if you play too low there in no way to beat the rake? How high do you need to play to make it worthwhile?

Inspired by this serie I'm thinking about starting playing HU limit. Is it correct that if you play too low there in no way to beat the rake? How high do you need to play to make it worthwhile?

I think Stars & Full Tilt 2/4 HU charge about 2-2.5BB/100 rake, which is certainly beatable with good game selection at least. At 3/6 it's pretty much the same, but I think at 5/10 it's equal to 6-max if not lower. Just look for places that cap HU rake at 50 cents max.

I think Stars & Full Tilt 2/4 HU charge about 2-2.5BB/100 rake, which is certainly beatable with good game selection at least. At 3/6 it's pretty much the same, but I think at 5/10 it's equal to 6-max if not lower. Just look for places that cap HU rake at 50 cents max.

Ok tnx. I probably wait awhile then and build my BR.

Aquestion for DD (all welcome obviously): About 45min you call
Q7 and then go for a CR on 7A6. You comment that you often do this agaisnt tough opps hoping to induce action. Could u expand some of what u mean by this?

Hi sushi, good question. I checkraise Ace high boards often and with a wide range, I also just call with many Ax hands preflop that some players would 3 bet, allowing me to have more Ax hands in my range than some might (which people don't realize). Against aggressive players you will get played back at a lot on ace high boards, because they think its unlikely you have one since you didn't 3 bet preflop, and they are just stubborn and aggressive. You have to be prepared to call down light, and lose the max when up against an ace. There are alternative strategies that involve balancing your range on an ace high board and doing a lot of check/calling, but I believe my method is more profitable in general though higher variance and possibly more self tilt inducing.

-DeathDonkey

Hi,

It was a very nice video as always. But I'm not sure I agree with all your preflop decisions.

For example openraising from the button with a hand like J2o, when you are going to fold a Q74 flop, when he is 3betting preflop nearly 100% of the time, I don't think is going to be profitable.

And capping light with hands with showdown value like k-high is obviosly ok, but I see you cap hands like T8s or T9o, and I'm not sure of that, because you don't gain any fold equity versus this kind of opponent and you have something like 52% equity against a random hand (not much), but it doesn't matter much if you are never showdowning T-high unimproved, because he is going to constantly bluff you and you usually have to fold it even if t-high is the best hand.

off subject....I used to play golf, and one way to teach golf (or learn it) is to first make a one foot putt, then two feet etc....and work your way out to longer and longer shots.
Can we use that idea in poker? to play/learn HU first, then 3 handed, then 4 etc...??
the reason I ask is...my results are much better the shorter the field. hhhhmmmmm
thoughts, comments...

I think it's probably better to learn full ring before HU because heads up requires more hand reading ability and full ring requires the least.

Hi,

It was a very nice video as always. But I'm not sure I agree with all your preflop decisions.

For example openraising from the button with a hand like J2o, when you are going to fold a Q74 flop, when he is 3betting preflop nearly 100% of the time, I don't think is going to be profitable.

And capping light with hands with showdown value like k-high is obviosly ok, but I see you cap hands like T8s or T9o, and I'm not sure of that, because you don't gain any fold equity versus this kind of opponent and you have something like 52% equity against a random hand (not much), but it doesn't matter much if you are never showdowning T-high unimproved, because he is going to constantly bluff you and you usually have to fold it even if t-high is the best hand.

I believe he is doing that because since there is a cap he gets to put in the last bet before the flop to keep the lead in the hand. Then if he flops any kind of hand he is more likely to be checked to and have options. If cheeco was donking almost 100% of flops after DD capped, then I don't like the caps as much. Also he explained that he wants the maniac to think that both players are "spewing together" (ok that sounds bad lol) in order to get more action on his good hands. He doesn't want to "slow the action down" and deter the maniac from spewing further. It's a debatable strategy.

MY question is this - you wouldn't be 4betting as light before the flop on a site that has no cap, would you? I prop on a site that has no cap heads up and because my rakeback is so huge I am playing almost exclusively heads up small stakes limit against all types of maniacs. If I 4bet vs a maniac he likely 5bets, and now the pot has become super bloated and I am forced to see a showdown with anything showdownable or flopped piece (I would have anyway but now it's even more sure). Because of this I have often reverted to a more passive approach preflop, even limping on the button and calling his likely BB raise, controlling the size of the pot and causing his bluffs to be more costly due to the smaller pot. You mentioned this in an earlier video as one of the three strategies to play against a very aggressive opponent. You did touch on playing with no cap, but you didn't talk about it much and I'd love to hear more about it. I've watched episodes 1-5, so maybe you discuss it further in videos 6-8.

Thanks for your amazing commentary.. You have a clear voice and speak fast enough to keep up with your brain, but not so fast that we can't understand you!

By the way, I forgot to mention (and you may have realized by now) that the hand when he 3bet the turn with J7o, he was actually double gutted and did have one overcard to your pair of nines. He couldn't know that his pair outs were any good, but to give him maybe just a little credit he did have 11 outs.

Yep if there were no 4 bet cap I'd have to narrow my 4 betting range a lot, or increase my 6 betting range (hello variance!)

-DeathDonkey