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

Great video. Thanks.

I'm curious about the hand you spend a lot of time on at 20:00 in on table 2. When BRO20 raised the rainbow flop like his apartment was on fire, what was your rationale for our hero sticking it out with his set of twos?

how do u get ui mods like this?

with the 22 hand where the board comes J25r 5way, utg bet $4 so he wasn't overbet donk leading. do you like the flop raise to 18 more then? on the river why do you check call leaving yourself with 80behind instead of check raising? what if he overbet jammed the river? or bet smaller? does 22 have reverse implied odds that deep 5 way? if you think about it, what could villian be cold 3betting on a J25 board (isn't that sick strong) especially since there are no draws and so few 2 pair combinations. would you be able to find a fold on the flop? if you were utg with 22 and you lead, and it went raise 3bet, would you fold 22? would you ever fold bottem set in fullring?

for the A9s hand in the bb vs the utg minraise with 1 caller, why would you call? would you call with A7s or A9o? would you call in the sb? what kind of flop are you looking for? would you call if it was just an utg minraise with no caller? what's your plan when you hit an ace or a 9, when you whiff, or hit a flush draw? if you hit an ace or a 9 and you lead and get called, your hand is in trouble. if you check/call your hand is not looking that great either. if you hit trip aces, your hand isn't that great since its so hard to get action from a weaker ace. so you're looking for trip 9s or two pair or a flush, but it's gonna be hard to play those for max value oop and you have rio when you dont hit the nuts.

also for the AQ hand where you 3bet and the flop comes 664 or soemthing like that and a relatively unknown villian minraises and you put him on 77,88,99, TT mid pocket pairs that you think will fold to a shove. you'll be risking your whole stack to try and bluff him off an overpair...isn't that kind of bad especially since he could easily have slowplayed kings queens jacks and you dont even know if he minraises midpairs in those spots? why would you put your whole stack in when there isn't a lot of 3betting history and you have Ahigh and you're facing a raise and you're just guessing that he has a mid pocket pair? how often have you been raised on a board like that and jammed kings and gotten called by 88 or 99 or TT (a whole bunch right)?

if there was more history, then i think getting it in with AQ with fine. but why are we taking such a huge risk against an unknown? i think this goes back to balugawhale's leverage video where the villian puts you in a spot where you have to put your whole stack on the line to bluff him and he doesn't.

I think Joe Tall plays as "The real Joe Tall" and "Joe Tall" is a fan/imposter

I have a problem playing the video. It just stops at about 43 min in (when the A9s hand happens). I tried playing the vid twice and it did the same thing both times. This is the WMV download format. I don't have any problems playing anyone else's videos. Does anyone else have a problem with the WMV format on this vid?

I can't FF or Rew either (but I can in other DC vids).

I think Joe Tall plays as "The real Joe Tall" and "Joe Tall" is a fan/imposter

The 'JoeTall' account on FTP is an imposter, yes. I am Tsar_Bomba on Full Tilt.

Great video. Thanks.

I'm curious about the hand you spend a lot of time on at 20:00 in on table 2. When BRO20 raised the rainbow flop like his apartment was on fire, what was your rationale for our hero sticking it out with his set of twos?

This is one hand I misadvised... upon further examination I think he may be able to get away from it. However let's take a few things into consideration. The flop is J52 rainbow in a limped pot. Someone leads 4 into 11, hero raises to 18, and gets cold reraised. This is somewhat alarming, but the opponent is 25/5, rather donkish.. he may be a loose timid player preflop, but someone who spews when they flop top pair.

Lemon's raise of the $4 bet doesn't necessarily represent set-level strength, it could be mid pairs and top pairs as well. You also are basically putting the opponent on exactly 55 or an unlikely JJ which is difficult to stomach against a noobish opponent.

For these reasons I couldn't see a fold at the time, but rethinking it, a fold somewhere may be correct. At what point do you guys think he should/could have folded? Folding to the flop raise is difficult because of reasons stated above, on the turn villain bets 54 into 77 - is it impossible he bets again with AJ? I can't really see a flop fold, perhaps on the turn, and almost assuredly he can fold on the river. My bad, guys.

how do u get ui mods like this?

try the software forum at twoplustwo.com, there is a thread about FTP mods

with the 22 hand where the board comes J25r 5way, utg bet $4 so he wasn't overbet donk leading. do you like the flop raise to 18 more then? on the river why do you check call leaving yourself with 80behind instead of check raising? what if he overbet jammed the river? or bet smaller? does 22 have reverse implied odds that deep 5 way? if you think about it, what could villian be cold 3betting on a J25 board (isn't that sick strong) especially since there are no draws and so few 2 pair combinations. would you be able to find a fold on the flop? if you were utg with 22 and you lead, and it went raise 3bet, would you fold 22? would you ever fold bottem set in fullring?

for the A9s hand in the bb vs the utg minraise with 1 caller, why would you call? would you call with A7s or A9o? would you call in the sb? what kind of flop are you looking for? would you call if it was just an utg minraise with no caller? what's your plan when you hit an ace or a 9, when you whiff, or hit a flush draw? if you hit an ace or a 9 and you lead and get called, your hand is in trouble. if you check/call your hand is not looking that great either. if you hit trip aces, your hand isn't that great since its so hard to get action from a weaker ace. so you're looking for trip 9s or two pair or a flush, but it's gonna be hard to play those for max value oop and you have rio when you dont hit the nuts.

Hi sir I think you are mistaking that I played the session shown, it is actually another deuces cracked member, I am just commenting on his play.
So if you are asking why did YOU do this and this, I can't answer for Lemonshillbot maybe he will respond in the thread. I think his raise to 18 was appropriate on the 22 hand, read my comments above for more post analysis of that hand, which I misadvised.


In certain situations I would def call there with A9s in the BB. Particularly if the opponents are weak and I feel that they will play very straightforward. In this situation I can look to outplay them sometimes when I miss, and play my hand well when I hit. Generally the passive nature of such opponents opens avenues to stealing the pot a reasonable amount of time in addition to my pot odds. I wouldn't call with A9o, possibly with A7s. You make good poitns about the general marginaly nature of a hand like A9s oop, I am not completely sure my play is +EV, I generally will take good pot odds scenarios against bad players though.

also for the AQ hand where you 3bet and the flop comes 664 or soemthing like that and a relatively unknown villian minraises and you put him on 77,88,99, TT mid pocket pairs that you think will fold to a shove. you'll be risking your whole stack to try and bluff him off an overpair...isn't that kind of bad especially since he could easily have slowplayed kings queens jacks and you dont even know if he minraises midpairs in those spots? why would you put your whole stack in when there isn't a lot of 3betting history and you have Ahigh and you're facing a raise and you're just guessing that he has a mid pocket pair? how often have you been raised on a board like that and jammed kings and gotten called by 88 or 99 or TT (a whole bunch right)?

if there was more history, then i think getting it in with AQ with fine. but why are we taking such a huge risk against an unknown? i think this goes back to balugawhale's leverage video where the villian puts you in a spot where you have to put your whole stack on the line to bluff him and he doesn't.

I feel that the opponent in the AQ was bordering on loose aggressive (22/13 after 630 hands). I don't think this type of opponent is as likely to slowplay KK AA oop facing a 3bet, I woud have expected a 4bet more often.
On the flop, the villain check - INSTAminraises on 866 rainbow. This smelled like BS to me, I think he is hoping to fold out AK AQ and other weak hands cheaply. I would expected him to check call, or have 4bet pre with QQ KK AA. I feel like he would not play a huge hand this cute, why would he make this CMR on the flop - to fold out all worse hands? I doubt it induces a light shove by many players, and he is getting lesser overpairs money anyway in a 3 bet pot. Also when he has 99-JJ here he sometimes folds, and when he calls we still have some reasonable equity.

I have a problem playing the video. It just stops at about 43 min in (when the A9s hand happens). I tried playing the vid twice and it did the same thing both times. This is the WMV download format. I don't have any problems playing anyone else's videos. Does anyone else have a problem with the WMV format on this vid?

I am having no problem playing it on WMP 9 on XP. Downloaded it and all functionality is working fine.

Wow, pretty bad analysis. Couldn't really follow your reasoning with the set of deuces. First you say you would check the turn but not fold to a bet, implying that you think you might be behind in the hand, and then you follow it up with saying you would check raise. Also, you actually can fold a set in this spot on the river, I think the lemon knew he was behind and you knew he was behind, and everyone watching knew he was behind, so why must we call because he have a set? Do we always have to call when we have a flush? Hand at 40:00. with AKdd you advocate check calling turn after putting villian on a low mid pckt pair. This seems to be a perfect spot for a CR to balance a range that includes over pair/strong made hands and air. It becomes a good weapon against players who will continually call (or float) flop bets light. CR turn >>>>> Check calling turn if made hands are also in your range here sometimes.

Wasn't feeling this. Will watch next episode and hope for more.

Wow, pretty bad analysis. Couldn't really follow your reasoning with the set of deuces. First you say you would check the turn but not fold to a bet, implying that you think you might be behind in the hand, and then you follow it up with saying you would check raise. Also, you actually can fold a set in this spot on the river, I think the lemon knew he was behind and you knew he was behind, and everyone watching knew he was behind, so why must we call because he have a set? Do we always have to call when we have a flush? Hand at 40:00. with AKdd you advocate check calling turn after putting villian on a low mid pckt pair. This seems to be a perfect spot for a CR to balance a range that includes over pair/strong made hands and air. It becomes a good weapon against players who will continually call (or float) flop bets light. CR turn >>>>> Check calling turn if made hands are also in your range here sometimes.

Wasn't feeling this. Will watch next episode and hope for more.

I admitted my analysis was incorrect on the 22 hand, I posted my explanation above. As for the AKs hand, we aren't worried about balancing our range against a guy thats playing 60/20. I hope that one 22 hand didn't ruin the video for you, I rewatched it and felt the rest of the commentary was solid.

Great video. Thanks.

raised the rainbow flop like his apartment was on fire,

That comment is just too funny!

I guess can substitute "apartment" for "pants"

I just started watchin the vid and the 22 hand drove me nuts. I mean I know one hand ranges are burning money and all, and that we all look at hands differently when were not playing but were 200BB deep, were in a limped pot, and a 25/5 passive villan is goin insanse. The only way I could see to play this hand differently would be to raise villans cold flop reraise to like $100 and fold to a shove. Im not saying this is what I would do cause Im pretty much not capable of folding a set on a dry board. I actually think the way he played the hand gets us the most value out of Two Pair or AJ/KJ/QJ hands but I feel that when he near pots the river that he is never doing this with those hands.

Wow, pretty bad analysis. Couldn't really follow your reasoning with the set of deuces. First you say you would check the turn but not fold to a bet, implying that you think you might be behind in the hand, and then you follow it up with saying you would check raise. Also, you actually can fold a set in this spot on the river, I think the lemon knew he was behind and you knew he was behind, and everyone watching knew he was behind, so why must we call because he have a set? Do we always have to call when we have a flush? Hand at 40:00. with AKdd you advocate check calling turn after putting villian on a low mid pckt pair. This seems to be a perfect spot for a CR to balance a range that includes over pair/strong made hands and air. It becomes a good weapon against players who will continually call (or float) flop bets light. CR turn >>>>> Check calling turn if made hands are also in your range here sometimes.

Wasn't feeling this. Will watch next episode and hope for more.

i dont think hero can fold if he check/raises turn. if hero check/raises turn and only getting called by sets, hero shouldn't be check raising turn. the river is an easy bet/call. check/call is pretty bad because it loses too much value from two pair that would be more than happy to check behind.

maybe i'm wrong, but i think the mistake with 22 was probably raising flop because we have no plan for when we get 3bet. so raising 22 there is as bad as raising AJ.

but after the check/raise turn. river HAS to be a bet/call. unless your turn check/raise was trying to bluff him off 55 by repping JJ, which would be kind of sick cause villian could level himself into think that you would never do that with 22. but once it didn't work, you would have to check/fold river which you didn't, so that was bad.

if you turned bottomset into a bluff to get someoen off midset, i would so love that line because of the super fanciness of it(minus the river call). that would be so so so so so so so hot (but terrible).

I admitted my analysis was incorrect on the 22 hand, I posted my explanation above. As for the AKs hand, we aren't worried about balancing our range against a guy thats playing 60/20. I hope that one 22 hand didn't ruin the video for you, I rewatched it and felt the rest of the commentary was solid.

I like the vid better for including the 22 hand. I'd also like to see a vid where KK gets folded pre-flop or else runs into AA. It happens all the time to me and vids that are too "perfect" don't teach me as much as vids that make the same mistakes I do. The 22 hand has prompted a lot of discussion. I can now see multiple ways to play that hand.

I am having no problem playing it on WMP 9 on XP. Downloaded it and all functionality is working fine.

My bad. I re-downloaded and it works fine now. First download was somehow 40Mb smaller. I dunno what happened.

I feel that the opponent in the AQ was bordering on loose aggressive (22/13 after 630 hands). I don't think this type of opponent is as likely to slowplay KK AA oop facing a 3bet, I woud have expected a 4bet more often.
On the flop, the villain check - INSTAminraises on 866 rainbow. This smelled like BS to me, I think he is hoping to fold out AK AQ and other weak hands cheaply. I would expected him to check call, or have 4bet pre with QQ KK AA. I feel like he would not play a huge hand this cute, why would he make this CMR on the flop - to fold out all worse hands? I doubt it induces a light shove by many players, and he is getting lesser overpairs money anyway in a 3 bet pot. Also when he has 99-JJ here he sometimes folds, and when he calls we still have some reasonable equity.

it also doesn't make sense for 99-JJ to turn their hand into a bluff does it? what are they bluffing you off of on a 866 board? A high? that's kind of ridiculous. so if they're planning on raise/folding 99-JJ is kind of silly. if you look at it even closer, i think it's more likely that villian is minraising a hand like KQ or something like that's behind Ahigh to get you to fold Ahigh. i really doubt that villian is going to be raise folding 99-JJ (that's simply too ridiculous since they can't be bluffing you off anything they dont already beat) they're calling with 99-jj 100% of the time so often if they're raising there. so if you're plan is to shove, i would much rather you call down with Ahigh to get max value from bluffs.

"donkey arsenal moves" lol

As to the 222 vs 555 hand, set aside the rare AA/KK/JJ that villain could have, and those hands about balance out anyway. Villain either has 55 or KJ. If villain plays 55 this way 100% of the time, then he needs to play KJ this way 1/6 of the time in order to call the river. So I would gauge that the river is a fold; I don't put villain on AJ ever. Don't hang seraph on his commentary within the video. The "$4 chips" lead by third player was only shown as "$4 ch"; the [real] leader's chips were half occluded by the HUD stats. Good thing we have the thread to straighten it out.

On the A9s hand, like seraph says, many good things could happen, so it's a must defend. Also, that hand occurs immediately following the hand where that EP minraiser folded to a turn raise (AKdd, below), so it looks like extra possibility to collect chips from an angry player.

On that immediate prior hand, AKdd, I've seen in videos where the turn is checkraised with a flush draw. The argument has been that we don't care if it is checked behind, because that is a free card, and we have a good enough hand to checkraise semibluff - hence, the check. I've also seen it in videos where the board is paired (like the flop was here). Perhaps that is even a better spot, because opponent should be really scared of trips? I'm curious about whether that is true. Of course the opponent bet the turn very small, monkeying things up, so we are left to balance our desire to get a cheap card, and our desire to punish a weak bet. Dunno which should win out.

If I counted correctly, there were exactly 2 times where hero faced a min checkraise of a flop cbet. Both times, Goldy was all over it considering a reraise. Hmm. These games are fostering a lot of mistrust!

OK, I've watched whole vid now and I quite like it. I particularly liked seeing the mistakes and the commentary about why/why not:

* Table 1 bad table selection with too many shortstacks
* 22 hand and Villain factors as well as board factors
* 3-bets and calling 3-bets in multiple spots and the thought process surrounding when/when not
* 45o OOP at 53ish minutes that lucked out but why it was hard to get value and hence why the call was bad

it's just that from a theory point of view, raising with an overpair to bluff you off Ahigh seems so ridiculous (because they're never getting you off your overpair). it maybe what's happening in practice, but X_X. raise/folding an overpair seems absolutely ridiculous. that's why i think when you raise AQ there and they fold, you most likely had the best hand to begin with...so you're actually value raising with Ahigh?

At 48mins Hero opens 3.5x w/TT from CO and gets 3-bet by a 24/12 from the blind, about 3.3x our raise and Hero calls, you said you didnt like this call, are we folding this IP always then...? I almost always call here and play postflop in position. We are ~110BB deep. Spewy?

What AHK are you using ?

do you still need more member videos? if so with or without audio?

I already have one or two videos in the queue, and it doesnt seem like this one went over very well. I will let you guys know if I need more, thanks for the interest

At 48mins Hero opens 3.5x w/TT from CO and gets 3-bet by a 24/12 from the blind, about 3.3x our raise and Hero calls, you said you didnt like this call, are we folding this IP always then...? I almost always call here and play postflop in position. We are ~110BB deep. Spewy?

It depends how well you know the 3 bet pot tendencies of your opponent. I feel that if its a standard reg who you don't have history with, it is more profitable to fold preflop. Considering he has the 3betting initiative and acts first all streets, it will be difficult to show down your TT if he is decent. If you knew the opponetn 3bets light and shuts down if his cbet is called, or check folds bad flops in 3bet pots, then you can enter TT into your range.

What AHK are you using ?

Looks like FTP shortcuts, very handy tool.

54:00 with 54o, esp. if he thinks the minraiser is strong, calling on the flop is OK. Folding might be better. But you should just lead the turn. It's the obvious play - allows you to lead two streets (turn and river) for value, and I doubt that the button is folding KT+ to one more bet. Check-raising looks to strong, check-calling puts you in a bad spot on the river.

I already have one or two videos in the queue, and it doesnt seem like this one went over very well.

Screw that noise. We need more full-ring at the small/mid stakes. Everyone jumped down your throat because of one street in one hand. Let 'em eat cake. The info overall was solid and helped me considerably.

Keep them coming.

I think this hand was so incredibly obvious. Villain has a set everytime (this is 200nl full ring, he's not a super 27th level thinker). 5 way limped pot, bet-raise-reraise with no real draws possible, this is 55 or JJ every single time. I also think shoving 200bb's with the AQ hand would've been awful too. The guy has QQ+ or a boat 95% + and I even think KK+ is more reasonable. He's never folding you probably average like 20% equity at best. He's not a 45/21 or anything.

I'm curious about alot of these videos. I don't claim to be the greatest player in the world, but I've been a professional 200nl full ring player for almost 2 years. Is GoldSeraph a current 200nl pro? Because I think that often in these DC videos we get 1000nl players, or even 1000nl+ 6 max players trying to make videos for 200nl full ring or 100nl full ring, and the ranges they put opponents on is just plain bad. 100nl and 200nl full ring players play very straight-forward, and when you show serious aggression, and they still raise you, they have IT. And bottom set, 200bb's deep in a 5 way limped pot is not IT. If you went broke with 55 there against JJ it's totally reasonable, but the 222 is never good, opponent never fires the turn and river with JX, and rarely 4bets the flop. If it was JT2 he could conceivably have JT of course, but on J52 rainbow you're playing a one outer everytime unless you're up against a spaz tilter. This hand should be folded on the turn, and not folding the river is just terrible unless the opponent is known for bigtime bluffs or is a 75/36 type donkey.

One of the major ways of profiting in 100-200nl games is not paying off you're opponents in these OBVIOUS cooler situations.

I've noticed this in alot of DC videos. Players making videos for games they aren't pros in currently. Correct me if I'm wrong of course. But 25nl, 100nl, 400nl, and 1000nl games all play very differently, and I think most 1000nl full ring players would lose badly if they suddenly switched to 100nl full ring (and obviously the reverse is true). It seems like you are consistently giving your opponents credit for ranges that are way too wide, and giving them credit for non ABC plays that they just aren't making. The way you are thinking about these hands, I strongly suspect you would be a losing or breakeven player in these games.

I don't think these videos have all that much validity unless the videomaker is actually a current pro at the games being video'd. I can obviously see why this doesn't happen often. I sure wouldn't want to make a video showing how I make my living.

Any thoughts? I like hearing how you think, but I can't help but think that it's not as applicable to these games as you think.

There are tons of 25/5 players who play very competently post flop. And that style can work really well in fishy full ring games, where sometimes just flopping hands and getting them paid off is the most profitable play, rather than stealing blinds and 3bet stealing etc. Some of these players are consistent winner and have pretty low variance, they just make the nuts, and let it get paid off.

Exactly what happens here. At many of the fishier sites, the biggest low stakes full ring winners have stats like 22/4 or 25/6, and it has nothing to do with they being fish themselves. Sure they would lose in a game full of 15/11's, but their preflop stats alone do not by any means make them fish.

Thanks for the comments, I admitted that I misread the 222 hand earlier in the comments. I said that despite this mistake I hoped there was something useful in the video. Obv not one of my best videos. I am a SSNL pro still and I think back when I made this vid one of my big leaks was not giving enough tightness credit in certain spots, or overestimating the spaz/bluff factor in big pots. I have since improved quite a bit in this area.