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

Time Link to 00:02:10

I kind of prefer betting here. A guy limped utg then didn't stab at a board that should hit his range pretty well. I'd definitely label him on the passive side and prefer that he calls down with A high, worse pairs, etc. I'm just not sure how often a guy will in fact bet that river as a bluff when he declines to bet the flop (and isn't lol tarp raising the turn).

Time Link to 00:05:50

You think you underrepped your hand here with Q8 on the 89J board? Sure we have some equity but our hand looks exactly like what it is to me. I'd never consider c/raising for value in this spot against 2 opponents at basically any level unless they were psychos.

Time Link to 00:07:52

cbetting AK on a J83r board 5 ways. I feel like in a FR game here you're up against so many Jx hands and pocket pairs that it's not worth trying to buy the button or get a free turn card because I think more often we get raised, and when we do get a free turn card we're often giving worse hands a free look.

I'd bet a slightly dryer board like T62r, T22, etc 5 ways figuring my hand is best more often, and also the other benefits you mention.

Time Link to 00:00:42

A5o vs an utg limper from the HJ does seem like pretty big spew to me. I think given the decently strong range I'd probably want the BTN to iso. If the guy were really terrible then I'd iso from the CO (assuming there weren't a bunch of really aggro guys or LP guys behind me).

Time Link to 00:10:54

1 more limper with KTo (so 3 limpers) do you overlimp? What do you do with K9o here with the 2 limpers, what about with 3 limpers?

Time Link to 00:12:52

tag 3bets you with TT and you c/r a 732r flop. If you had 66 here or 88 do you ever just b/f the turn if he calls/raises turn?

Time Link to 00:16:51

The fact that he snap bets the A river would make me think he's more likely to be polarized on the K985A board with KT. If you think this guy ever has a draw then he's going to bet this river for sure, and he's probably never c/raising worse on the turn for value so... FWIW I think this guy has a set or K9 a ton. It's not the standard line, but it is one I see from these sort of not too terrible fish quite often.

If you fold this river I'd rather just fold the turn. I'm not sure how much equity we give up but I really do think we're screwed here very often. That being said I usually calldown and snap call this river.

Time Link to 00:27:17

I'm glad you mentioned the possibility of a bluff raise. I agree with you that we shouldn't do it here as he won't fold an overpair, but we should definitely at least recognize the potential in this sort of spot.

I also agree that we probably shouldn't call this river - if his range is super prominent with UI overs we probably should have bluff raised earlier in the hand, so the river call is incongruent with the flop and turn play imo.

Lastly it's probably worth mentioning that I think two pair is a pretty clear value raise here.

Time Link to 00:31:50

I really like this river bluff donk. One factor you didn't mention is that I think some opponent will fold a mid-range here sometimes. I have no clue if this guy is that type of player or not, but it's probably worth mentioning. As you say, it's just very possible for us to have the A/K here and some players will recognize that the bare 9 is ~ Qx/JJ/whatever no club.

Time Link to 00:28:01

I think the J9 on the 87Q69 board is probably a fold. Even though some nitty guys will spaz barrel AK, I think you see it get checked on the turn or river a decent % of the time, same with any worse Ax hands.

That being said he probably isn't always betting something like JJ on the river and might mubs out with some other weaker value hands. So if he can barrel AK (usually people don't imo) this is a super easy river call (16 combos of AK are such a huge part of his narrow range), but since I think you have to discount it heavily even though he's kind of polarized I'd just fold.

Time Link to 00:30:28

I think you get red AK to fold (so what, 4 combos?) on this river. I don't think any other pair folds at all really.

It's possible with a read that someone is a decent hand reader and not a huge showdown monkey that a donk would fold out any non club some % of the time. I don't give someone credit for that until I've seen them make some folds in other spots though.


edit: I like your analysis. Once again it's very player dependent, but your bet is definitely very congruent with an Ax hand with a strong club and you'd probably get me to fold a lot of stuff on this board.

Time Link to 00:41:14

I disagree pretty strongly that we should 3b AQ on the turn if we get raised. I really don't think our hand is much better than A5 against that sequence.

Given his nitty PF stats and the flop check back I'd think it's a lol slowplay with AK almost 100% of the time if he raises the turn. Actually if the 3rd ace (visible to us) doesn't comes on the turn I would be considering that he has AA here a fair amount (again, if the flop gets checked and he raises a turn brick).

Time Link to 00:34:39

I agree the river is a decent spot to fold. But also in a FR game I'd be wary about calling someone a nit because they're 11/8 over 100 hands. Sure it's trending that way, but I'm sure I've been like 8/5 over 100 hands before and I play quite laggy. Make it a 6m game and I'd be petrified.

Time Link to 00:41:20

On the A42A board I feel like you'd need to b/3b this particular turn since it knocks out probably just enough AK combos and he will FSDR something dumb like 88 which checked back the flop.

If the turn weren't an A I'd feel a little bit more scared if I bet and got raised since AK seems more likely in that particular spot (ya it's only 4 combos but whatever).

In either event I think you can c/r this turn pretty easily, people almost never check back the turn after they check back the flop when raising or 3betting PF... they bet like 98% of the time.

Time Link to 00:59:17

From villain's KJ perspective on KKxxx board there are 4 combos of AK left in the deck (and an additional 4 KQ obv).

Time Link to 00:52:22

I'd think iso'ing an 11/5 in the HJ with QJo is probably a losing proposition to begin with.

Time Link to 00:55:02

So you don't have a CC range here in the BB? I'd imagine a hand like 45s, 78s actually does really well against the TAGs ranges... probably more so than QJs. And I think folding any pocket pair getting 5ish:1 with huge implied odds would be kind of bad. 4 way pot, TAGs can't really do too much w/ good info about what you are coldcalling.

Time Link to 00:20:01

Here in the T8 hand you're talking about maybe donking a good turn card, "The old stop & go" you said.

I am not familiar with the old stop and go or why you'd favor donking. What sort of turn cards are you donking? And for those are you donk/folding or donk/calling? What's your rationale behind such a line?

I kind of prefer betting here. A guy limped utg then didn't stab at a board that should hit his range pretty well. I'd definitely label him on the passive side and prefer that he calls down with A high, worse pairs, etc. I'm just not sure how often a guy will in fact bet that river as a bluff when he declines to bet the flop (and isn't lol tarp raising the turn).

i can't figure out which hand this is referring to. help pls

You think you underrepped your hand here with Q8 on the 89J board? Sure we have some equity but our hand looks exactly like what it is to me. I'd never consider c/raising for value in this spot against 2 opponents at basically any level unless they were psychos.

i agree. i like to go through my whole throught process and list lots of factors.

cbetting AK on a J83r board 5 ways. I feel like in a FR game here you're up against so many Jx hands and pocket pairs that it's not worth trying to buy the button or get a free turn card because I think more often we get raised, and when we do get a free turn card we're often giving worse hands a free look.

I'd bet a slightly dryer board like T62r, T22, etc 5 ways figuring my hand is best more often, and also the other benefits you mention.

yeah, i figured it was pretty close, and for the sake of the video and let's-see-what-happens i decided to do it. t22 and the other paired type boards are definitely good ones.

A5o vs an utg limper from the HJ does seem like pretty big spew to me. I think given the decently strong range I'd probably want the BTN to iso. If the guy were really terrible then I'd iso from the CO (assuming there weren't a bunch of really aggro guys or LP guys behind me).

i can't figure out this timelink either; sorry

1 more limper with KTo (so 3 limpers) do you overlimp? What do you do with K9o here with the 2 limpers, what about with 3 limpers?

yes

probably raise (assuming it's poster + overlimper like it was here - i think poster + overlimper is a small but important difference compared to 2 regular limpers)

probably limp

tag 3bets you with TT and you c/r a 732r flop. If you had 66 here or 88 do you ever just b/f the turn if he calls/raises turn?

yes, i would strongly consider it; 66 i could definitely bet/fold on the turn. i think i talked about some of this in the voiceover. i feel like with 66 and probably 88 i'm always drawing to 2 outs on the turn when he calls my flop c/r then raises me on turn. part of the reason i take/took the flop line i did with certain pocket pairs is to set up certain things happening on the turn which i feel like i'm mostly in control of.

The fact that he snap bets the A river would make me think he's more likely to be polarized on the K985A board with KT. If you think this guy ever has a draw then he's going to bet this river for sure, and he's probably never c/raising worse on the turn for value so... FWIW I think this guy has a set or K9 a ton. It's not the standard line, but it is one I see from these sort of not too terrible fish quite often.

If you fold this river I'd rather just fold the turn. I'm not sure how much equity we give up but I really do think we're screwed here very often. That being said I usually calldown and snap call this river.

yeah, in retrospect i agree and i'm wishing i'd called this river. my thought process wasn't very coherent on this one.

I'm glad you mentioned the possibility of a bluff raise. I agree with you that we shouldn't do it here as he won't fold an overpair, but we should definitely at least recognize the potential in this sort of spot.

I also agree that we probably shouldn't call this river - if his range is super prominent with UI overs we probably should have bluff raised earlier in the hand, so the river call is incongruent with the flop and turn play imo.

Lastly it's probably worth mentioning that I think two pair is a pretty clear value raise here.

agree - i'd almost rather bluffraise it vs a tag who can hand read some and make some folds as opposed to a mindless sort of barrel nit.

also agree that i dislike the river call which i think i mention in the voiceover.

also agree re: 2pair valueraise. and i think i can fold to a 3bet.

I think you get red AK to fold (so what, 4 combos?) on this river. I don't think any other pair folds at all really.

It's possible with a read that someone is a decent hand reader and not a huge showdown monkey that a donk would fold out any non club some % of the time. I don't give someone credit for that until I've seen them make some folds in other spots though.


edit: I like your analysis. Once again it's very player dependent, but your bet is definitely very congruent with an Ax hand with a strong club and you'd probably get me to fold a lot of stuff on this board.

i think it's also the kind of spot where it is less likely to work at an average 6m table than at an average fr table

I really like this river bluff donk. One factor you didn't mention is that I think some opponent will fold a mid-range here sometimes. I have no clue if this guy is that type of player or not, but it's probably worth mentioning. As you say, it's just very possible for us to have the A/K here and some players will recognize that the bare 9 is ~ Qx/JJ/whatever no club.

yeah i'd be surprised if someone folded a flush here but you make a good point that if someone is pretty good they'll realize that a medium club is really about the same hand as a nonclub good pair vs my donking range. i was certainly not thinking in those terms however!

I agree the river is a decent spot to fold. But also in a FR game I'd be wary about calling someone a nit because they're 11/8 over 100 hands. Sure it's trending that way, but I'm sure I've been like 8/5 over 100 hands before and I play quite laggy. Make it a 6m game and I'd be petrified.

good points. i think i can fold the river because these guys just can't valuebet. and good point re: stat sample.

On the A42A board I feel like you'd need to b/3b this particular turn since it knocks out probably just enough AK combos and he will FSDR something dumb like 88 which checked back the flop.

If the turn weren't an A I'd feel a little bit more scared if I bet and got raised since AK seems more likely in that particular spot (ya it's only 4 combos but whatever).

In either event I think you can c/r this turn pretty easily, people almost never check back the turn after they check back the flop when raising or 3betting PF... they bet like 98% of the time.

i might be misunderstanding you - i don't think 3betting here ever makes an AK fold and i'm not doing so with that in mind. can you clarify?

From villain's KJ perspective on KKxxx board there are 4 combos of AK left in the deck (and an additional 4 KQ obv).

just thinking about this hand tilts me.

I'd think iso'ing an 11/5 in the HJ with QJo is probably a losing proposition to begin with.

i think you are right and i think we'd seen him LRR already before which should make me a little less likely to want to iso imo.

So you don't have a CC range here in the BB? I'd imagine a hand like 45s, 78s actually does really well against the TAGs ranges... probably more so than QJs. And I think folding any pocket pair getting 5ish:1 with huge implied odds would be kind of bad. 4 way pot, TAGs can't really do too much w/ good info about what you are coldcalling.

this is actually something i'm working on/re-evaluating in my game currently, over the last month or so. i never really used to have a call-2 range in a 3 or 4 handed pot, no. in 5+ handed i agree you can setmine and call a lot of suited connectors and whatnot. but talking with and observing some players much better than i am (like fnupple for example) has made me start to realize that there just are times when we have too much hand to fold but not enough hand to cap and that there is a decent amount of balancing we can do inside of this range. the reason i never used to do it was that it made me nervous that people would know i was in my "call two" range and it would cut down on my implieds some. but given that people are 3betting pf (and stealing/restealing) more often these days and are also more aggro post and more showdown bound than they used to be, i think my implied odds start to creep up again vis-a-vis those factors.

so what i am trying to say is that i am developing a call-two range and hopefully will have it fine-tuned in a couple months.

Here in the T8 hand you're talking about maybe donking a good turn card, "The old stop & go" you said.

I am not familiar with the old stop and go or why you'd favor donking. What sort of turn cards are you donking? And for those are you donk/folding or donk/calling? What's your rationale behind such a line?

i understand the stop and go to be when you check/call the flop (stop) then donk the turn (go). i think it's a play you used to see more of back in the day, along with the free showdown raise for example. the basic premise behind it, as far as i understand, is that for whatever reason you don't want to c/r the flop (oop, hand is not hugely strong value-wise, you don't want to get 3bet, tons of turn cards change your equity, etc), but on a lot of safe cards you do possibly want to donk for value and to deny a free card. i think a situation where it works well is vs an aggro guy with a wide range who is to your left (like the lagbot guy in this example). i don't really want him to 3bet the flop with a wide range, which may knock out the other guy and isolate me with a meh hand oop. but at the same time he may check a lot of turns.

so here i would be donking turns that are basically bricks to the board; ie don't pair up the bottom card and don't fill any straights or flushes. overcards are scary too.

i can't figure out which hand this is referring to. help pls

BBB, a lot of nchabazam's time stamps are just AFTER the hand. That is, he watched it through and then paused the vid to comment (so often your cards are already in the muck). Just rewind it a bit.

The fact that he snap bets the A river would make me think he's more likely to be polarized on the K985A board with KT. If you think this guy ever has a draw then he's going to bet this river for sure, and he's probably never c/raising worse on the turn for value so... FWIW I think this guy has a set or K9 a ton. It's not the standard line, but it is one I see from these sort of not too terrible fish quite often.

If you fold this river I'd rather just fold the turn. I'm not sure how much equity we give up but I really do think we're screwed here very often. That being said I usually calldown and snap call this river.

Yeah I didn't comment on this one but I agree that if we're calling the turn we should just call basically all rivers. That said I do think turn fold would be best.

Also I don't mind overlimping this PF.

I'd think iso'ing an 11/5 in the HJ with QJo is probably a losing proposition to begin with.

Another one I didn't comment on but I agree fold is best PF.

So you don't have a CC range here in the BB? I'd imagine a hand like 45s, 78s actually does really well against the TAGs ranges... probably more so than QJs. And I think folding any pocket pair getting 5ish:1 with huge implied odds would be kind of bad. 4 way pot, TAGs can't really do too much w/ good info about what you are coldcalling.

I am not folding the QJs PF and pattern mapping has nothing to do with it.

yes

probably raise (assuming it's poster + overlimper like it was here - i think poster + overlimper is a small but important difference compared to 2 regular limpers)

probably limp

btw I think a lot of people would really benefit from Stoving out a few of these types of situations. I've worked on 2 limpers in front spots with a few students and they are almost always really surprised to see how they're faring with this caliber of hand (JTo is another great example).

That is, you don't necessarily have a hot/cold equity edge (depending on the limping ranges), might be 'only' at fair share, and fare little better than a random hand (again hot/cold).

But this is really the key - even if the Stove leads us to think we have a +EV spot that does not necessarily mean we should raise. The question we need to ask is if we can create a larger +EV situation by limping. But analyzing that is beyond the scope of this post. If anyone wants to work on it hopefully I've pointed them in the right direction.

i understand the stop and go to be when you check/call the flop (stop) then donk the turn (go). i think it's a play you used to see more of back in the day, along with the free showdown raise for example. the basic premise behind it, as far as i understand, is that for whatever reason you don't want to c/r the flop (oop, hand is not hugely strong value-wise, you don't want to get 3bet, tons of turn cards change your equity, etc), but on a lot of safe cards you do possibly want to donk for value and to deny a free card. i think a situation where it works well is vs an aggro guy with a wide range who is to your left (like the lagbot guy in this example). i don't really want him to 3bet the flop with a wide range, which may knock out the other guy and isolate me with a meh hand oop. but at the same time he may check a lot of turns.

so here i would be donking turns that are basically bricks to the board; ie don't pair up the bottom card and don't fill any straights or flushes. overcards are scary too.

Yeah I think it's used more generally - basically any time we donk a street after being an aggressor on the previous street but not the last aggressor. In other words I'm not 100% sure this hand qualifies (since we were never a flop aggressor) under a strict definition.

I think it's more common in NL with a classic example being something like:

I open 66
Villain 3-bets me
If I shove the stacks are such that he will call 100%
So I just call
Flop is xyz
I shove

If I had shoved PF I have at best a coin flip. But on the flop I will have some fold equity if he missed or the board came scary for his hand.

I kind of prefer betting here. A guy limped utg then didn't stab at a board that should hit his range pretty well. I'd definitely label him on the passive side and prefer that he calls down with A high, worse pairs, etc. I'm just not sure how often a guy will in fact bet that river as a bluff when he declines to bet the flop (and isn't lol tarp raising the turn).

j2o hand right? pyg explained to me how to find your timestamps

i think a bet is fine and in retrospect you're right, he can call a lot of small pps because my hand looks like bs to him.

The fact that he snap bets the A river would make me think he's more likely to be polarized on the K985A board with KT. If you think this guy ever has a draw then he's going to bet this river for sure, and he's probably never c/raising worse on the turn for value so... FWIW I think this guy has a set or K9 a ton. It's not the standard line, but it is one I see from these sort of not too terrible fish quite often.

If you fold this river I'd rather just fold the turn. I'm not sure how much equity we give up but I really do think we're screwed here very often. That being said I usually calldown and snap call this river.

good work nchabazam , i have been reading your posts and BBBs feedback through this video. On the turn when BBB was tanking i thought fold right there and then , i don't think id ever fold river once i called turn in spot like this. Could not agree more with your statement. Really good discussion by the both of you in this thread.

Time Link to 00:23:31

snap fold A6o here on flop. my thoughts are you are only slight fav to his naked spades JT QT type stuff , and you are way behind his value range.

snap fold A6o here on flop. my thoughts are you are only slight fav to his naked spades JT QT type stuff , and you are way behind his value range.

you put this better than i could!