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

I want to thank you for your comments on this video, DeathDonkey. I think I speak for everyone when I say we appreciate your tough love more than you could ever know. I feel like I got hundreds of dollars worth of free coaching from you breaking down 1/2 of a session.

I have not watched Entity's portion yet but I can't wait to take a look and listen to that, too

niceeeeeeeeeeee

Really really good commentary Chris. Fun to listen to this after making mine. Let us know what you guys think of this concept, it was a lot of fun to record.

Rob

Some random thoughts on the hands I played:

JJ vs Hypno on KTxy flush board, very first hand
I agree with both of you, pretty standard on my part, I would almost certainly have called down a turn raise.

K8 vs PH's AK
Preflop is pretty light obv and I hated my hand once PH 3bet me preflop. I think my postflop line is OK, but I agree that I should have layed it down on the river. I realized I was beating nothing but an overplayed JJ/AT and came sooooooooo close to mucking it. In all honesty, I probably would have folded had I had one minute to think about it, and maybe I was too afraid of looking silly on camera in case my hand was good. Most likely though my thinking was more along the lines of "I has top pair, Don't Bloat And Fold, CAAAALLLL."
BTW no need to feel bad for bashing me, DD. After all, getting an honest critique of my play is what makes these vids so valueable for us players (that and it was a ton of fun to play in this bad a game against all these friendly folks ;-)). But plz don't call me an "OK TAG". I might just play OK, but hey, I opened K8 UTG, so at least make that LAGTAG :-) At the end of the day, I'm not kicking myself too much for the way I played the hand and am happy that at least I was seriously considering folding the river which imo is a major adjustment in and of itself for a lagtard hu showdown monkey like me.

AK vs gus's 54:
Close river spot imo and looking back at it I probably should payed him off since the flush draw missed. OTOH he has an easy valeubet with anything that has me beat and I don't think he ever expects me to fold anything here. Then again, he would probably fire the last barrel anyway if he had a missed FD, so I guess it's "just a math question" at this point. Needless to say, I'm too lazy to do the math right now.

89 vs Sushi flopping the nuts:
Well played by Sushi. Yeah I understand your guys' arguments for folding my 9 high no draw. Guess I'm just too used to getting bluffed on this board to ever consider folding though.

AA vs deepsquat's 44:
owned imo :-) I'm totally fine with his calldown btw, I'm pretty certain I would play AK and AQ the same.

AQ vs gus's 87:
wtf u folded a pair there??? are you some kind of superuser or have you been playing to much NL lately? ;-)

AQ vs Sushi's Q9:
My ttime to flop the nuts. Too bad Sushi didn't peel. I'm pretty confident I would have won a big pot on a turn Q, river 9.

QT vs Hypno's A8:
Regarding the flop: I think Im going to semibluff this hand in this spot 100% of the time. Such a good board to cr a wide range and I think I do have some fold equity here. Regarding the river: Yes, I was check/folding and yes, it feels good to hear that DD liked that play.

AJ vs nobody:
You nits! So easy to win against people that respect my raises :-)

Q5 vs Hypno's K8:
I really, really hated this spot, but I just felt he way unlikely to be semibluffing here. Just like everybody else at the table, Hypno seemed to be playing pretty straightforwardly (except for that one hand vs gus, at that didnt work out too well for him) and he didn't seem to have to think before raising the turn. Yeah, I'm getting an OK price and hate (read: HATE) folding pairs, but my implied odds are terrible unless he is semibluffing way too much. If I call the turn there's virtually no river card I can fold because I dont have the slightest clue which draws he can have here. That said, I felt strongly that he wasnt semibluffing at all and was pretty confident in my fold. Plz dont tell anyone how easy it is too run me over :-)

J9o vs Sushi's 85:
Another classic BS spot, at least in HUHU. Was briefly considering spewing here, but wisely refrained from doing so.

Hey Chris, thanks a lot for doing this! I just finished watching both your and Rob's versions and both videos were excellent. I'm going to try and watch both videos again tomorrow and then offer some specific thoughts on both hands/commentary (which I didn't want to do until hearing you both), as well as on the split commentary you guys did.

Thanks for doing the vid review chris

I was skeletor2000 if you didnt already know.

In regards to my 44 vs Fnupple's AA hand on the 662 flop, i agree with you in regards to me beating nothing and i had these exact thoughts as i called down.

The only concern I have with laying down a pair here is:

1)Villain will play AK/AQ the same as his AA here preflop i assume (just calling instead of capping), Admittedly i didnt know this at the time but in the games i play $30/$60 etc this is a strategy that I take with all of my hands OOP and i believe that you do too and many other solid regs. I will often c/r this flop with AQ/AK for value vs some opponents and bet 3 streets for value so i do have problems with laying down a pair here.

What are your thoughts?

2) If im folding pairs on this flop/turn i will be doing the same with any good A-high obviously. Do you think this is highly exploitable? Admittedly solid regs wont be c/r a paired board with QJ too often but i do think its profitable for them to play back at me with a wide range if they see me folding this kind of dry board on a regular basis. And it is amazing the way the some people play on paired boards for whatever reason..

What are your thoughts?

Thanks again for taking the time to do this video, I know we are all very appreciative

James

Great video guys, big thanks to all of you for doing this and to DD for the excellent commentary.

Hey deepsquat,

Yeah absolutely you make a good counter argument that you would be incredibly exploitable if you are always laying down here. I think there are two main issues at work here though - the first is would villain ever play a worse hand this way? Both you and villain say he could have AK/AQ so I guess the answer is clearly yes and that makes it a calldown right there. Still, I don't think this is typical of even mid to high stakes TAGs.

Second issue is the exploitability thing. My rebuttal would be that 44 is almost no different from good ace high hands here in terms of how they will fare against his CRing range at showdown unimproved. BUT the big ace highs will improve much more often than the 44, so if you had to decide which hands to call down with it would be better to do so with AK even though 44 is the "stronger" hand.

Among the things I learned from this video: Death Donkey is on a whollllllllllle 'nother level o.o

Thanks for an excellent video. I do have one question and I apologize if this was covered and I missed it. Since these
players are all good winning players, I assume they might have picked a smaller stake than they usually play....if so
could the players mention their usual 6-max LHE stakes? I'm curious because I play some LHE 6-max at 1-2 and the games
I see are no where and I mean NO-WHERE as aggressive as these players were. Thanks...

Hi villainy,

I think that everyone plays 3/6 or higher if that helps. In fact I think some of the players are in games quite a bit higher than 3/6, too.

However, a few of us in the game were playing .50/1 just a year ago or less.

Some random thoughts on the hands I played:

AK vs gus's 54:
Close river spot imo and looking back at it I probably should payed him off since the flush draw missed. OTOH he has an easy valeubet with anything that has me beat and I don't think he ever expects me to fold anything here. Then again, he would probably fire the last barrel anyway if he had a missed FD, so I guess it's "just a math question" at this point. Needless to say, I'm too lazy to do the math right now.

- i would have called down AK here ...

AQ vs gus's 87:
wtf u folded a pair there??? are you some kind of superuser or have you been playing to much NL lately? ;-)

- thanks to DD for his comment on balancing never realy noticed that myself but ill have an eye on that from now on.
ok so why did i fold a pair here ... to my mind the Q and J are crushing his openraising range from utg and i realy had the feeling that im not good here. but i thought about raising a non broadway turn here. in retrospect the fold is a bit weak + the missed raise on flop but i realy had the feeling that im not good here.

---------------------

- my QJs agains Hypnotic on 575 flop BU vs BB

ok this hand is a spew i know but to my mind it was a very good board for him to play back at me with any2 because i was very aggressive during the last hands ... so i tried to represent an overpair here. but i agree its a spew and very very marginal.

- my T9o vs Skeletor BU vs BB

entity got the point i was thinking about ... check to induce a bet on the river ... DD doesnt like this line as i remember. is it something style based or just to marginal overall. i was very sure i had turned the nutz here agains skeletor so i decidet to do something ive learned from dc vids ... but i agree the raise on the river is overplayed and i NEVER thought about what to do if i get 3bet there ... puh good point entity! thx a lot



@villainy ... i play 3/6 FLSH regular and this game u just saw here is a good example of the agression at these stakes.

Hi villainy, the stakes were kind of chosen before the players were known and a smaller game was favored because we don't want to exclude anyone. In the threads to organize these I have been very encouraging of 1/2 players to grab a spot in the game, and even for 0.50/1 players to strongly consider it (selling action if necessary, considering it a shot, etc.). My contention has been that the benefit of a DC coach review your play vastly outweighs the fact that it may be -EV to sit with such a lineup.

As for the players I don't want to 'out' anyone re; limit played and I don't know who's comfortable revealing what, so I will just confirm your suspicions that we all normally play in bigger games (and as Hypnotic said, some play quite a bit higher and some of us played 1/2 very recently). I personally have no problem revealing this information (especially since it's clear if you watch the RLMG videos anyway), so I'll tell you that I normally play 5/10 and occasionally hop into 8/16 games. So don't worry about it - the normal 1/2 tables you run into will most definitely NOT look or play like this.

Hey Chris, thanks again for doing your usual excellent job on this video and special thanks for taking the time to do commentary (especially since I know Chuck was announced so I appreciate you presumably filling in at the 11th hour).

I don't have too much more to say about the hands since I already posted about them in Rob's half and, again, you guys often think about the game similarly. So I'm going to use this post to tackle some meta stuff and offer feedback on the format.

~7 I take absolutely no offense of your general characterization of my play. We're all trying to improve and I think not being honest and realistic about your current skills severely hampers future improvements. I would much rather endure some constructive criticism to maximize my chances of getting better than continue to make mistakes but be blissfully unaware.

Also, it was pretty easy to take since I like my play of the specific hand in question, but more importantly feel that I chose my plays for exactly the reasons you and Rob laid out. It was more than just that I randomly clicked the correct of the 3 buttons - my thought process was sound. Also, you really weren't even being harsh at all.

~25:15 gus defends 87o in the BB against fnupple's AQ UTG
Re; balance - yes, it was me you discussed this about in the first home game. And actually I owe you a huge thanks for that. Thinking more about balance and exploitative/GTO play has been a lot of fun and helped my game immensely.

Gus (but really I hope many people find this useful), I had a few really important realizations about balance after DD did the first home game:
1) Yes I am often not balanced in spots.
2) BUT others are NOT exploiting me very often when my range is unbalanced.
3) So against weak players (the vast majority) it's still definitely okay to be unbalanced and I believe in those spots this does a better job maximizing our return than GTO play.
4) This is probably the most important thing - I think I'm a decent player. Not a world-beater, but I do alright. It occurred to me that if I'm making this balance error other players must be making it also. Certainly almost everyone worse than me, but also many who are on par. Even better players frequently are unbalanced in many spots.

So the number one thing I've taken away from DD's comments in this area that's helped my bottom line is that I need to observe when others are unbalanced and then use this knowledge to exploit them (often by making what, on paper, looks like a thin bet/raise or a 'big' laydown).

~37:45 DD's apology for the tough love
Sometimes I think you're overly careful. I get that you don't want to offend your customers, but honestly I just don't think you're as 'mean' as you may fear you're being. Besides that, I actually think it's really important sometimes.

I can think of a few times you've popped up and replied to something I posted saying, 'I really hate this thought / that line.' When you do that I think really hard about it. I try to figure out why you say that instead of just, 'I disagree.' I decide you don't dislike me - my thought process must be really off, causing me to make some really large, perhaps fundamental error in my poker play or my approach to the game.

It's good that you can quickly convey that rather than making an overly-elaborate post stating that there is a flaw in the way I am doing x or y and I need to take a long and serious look at it to re-evaluate and adjust my plan while learning more about the poker concepts that are in play here, etc. etc. etc.

~45 My AA UTG gets cracked by Hypnotic's Q8s in the BB
Wow, great point about Jordan being able to hold a hand that he c/r's for value that I actually beat. To be honest my thoughts were mostly along the lines of, aces, huge pot, can't get owned on camera since folding a winner in this pot would be a huge mistake, etc. (I'm half-joking of course), but you make a great point.

Lastly, a general comment on the format. I really really liked it. I know dual-commentary has often been a big hit, and it's great that here you both had a chance to be in control of the video and spend as much/as little time as you wanted on each hand. Also, I think there's some benefit to hearing each of your thoughts unaffected by what another person may say for the hand. And of course I love that it seems to result in more content for the DC members.

That said, I understand that taking longer may not be a huge positive on the production side. So I guess I'll just say thanks to you and Rob for your time and effort on this and I hope there'll be a place for videos in this format from time to time.

This video is super awesome. I just can't stop watching