Poker Video: No Limit Hold'Em by threads13 (Mid Stakes)

Your comment about raising small with AJ but big with for example AA and Q8 pre, and your two minute explanation of those concepts, made 0 sense whatsoever

After watching this video, I have to recommend people not watch it - I really think that most of the advice is bad, that Threads seems lost in most situations, and the student seems to have better intuition than threads. Not c-betting the T7s on Q53 or whatever it was is bad, as is a lot of the advice here. The opponent not betting the turn with the AhTh is pretty standard as he is ahead of anything but a queen, no scare cards can come, and he's gonna get check-shoved on by a queen a lot. Better to check back turn and induce river bluffs or hopefully get value from 99, 88. (this is in his opp's shoes).

Too often on DC, the members are quick to dish out praise. Constant nonstop praise. The viewers tend to be more honest on CR. I really think DC should work on making sure that all of their producers are both highly skilled and well able to express poker thoughts that make sense. Most are good, but this is not DC quality.

Your comment about raising small with AJ but big with for example AA and Q8 pre, and your two minute explanation of those concepts, made 0 sense whatsoever

Allow me to more carefully explain it so that it may make a little more sense.

The book "Professional No Limit Hold V.1" by Flynn, Mehta, and Miller explains this topic very well. The raise size is interesting here because we have a hand that we want to get all in with if we flop top pair. So I am trying to plan my hand accordingly such that I have a postflop pot that is to my liking here.

If we flop top pair with a hand like Q8o we are happy to get it in, yes, but we aren't AS happy as when we flop pair with some like AJ. The happier we are to get it in when we hit top pair the more money we want to have left to get it in(to a certain point of course... that point being when we have so much behind that we don't want to get it all in ) and conversely the less happier we are to get it in the less money we want to have to get it in. So, with Q8o I might raise to 4bb which sets up an SPR(stack to pot ratio) of 4.5. With AJo I might raise to 3bb which sets up an SPR of about 6. Now, if flips around when you have a hand like AA because you are getting so much preflop value that you would like to get ahead and put in the extra bb.

Hope that helps.

Time Link to 00:02:50

The distinguishment between 60/0 and 40/0 is neglible, espically given you only have 26 hands on him. Since you havent seen him play post-flop too much, you can make the basic passive fish assumptions, but I wouldnt read too much into him being a 40/0 makes it a profitable double-barrel spot. It almost certainly is not a profitable double-barrel spot against any variety of passive fish.

Have to agree with Alex somewhat... the hand where your opponent has AhTh especially, is super standard to check back the turn. Yet you (and your student) are surprised he did not bet? Why? He has like zero fold equity here against hands he's behind, is very rarely getting called by worse if he considers a value bet, and has decent equity if you have a Queen.

Time Link to 00:04:48

The reason you raise to 2.5x, 3x, or 3.5x here is mainly to collect dead money on the flop when the fishy villain plays fit or fold and c/f's most flops. You are going to collect this money regardless of your holdings of Q8o or AJo. You said that you wanted to get less money in post-flop with a pair of 8s or Qs from Q8 hitting the board, because they are more marginal than AJ's pairs.

I would argue in both cases though, getting money in when you hit a pair is going to be profitable against a fish, and you should attempt to get the maximum in pre-flop that you can. This means more dead money for you to collect on the flop. It also means more money for you to collect if calls you with some draw or smaller pair. Yes Q8 will be less profitable than AJ, but they are both profitable enough to warrent a bigger pre-flop raise size.

The main reason you make it 2x or 2.5x on the button or cutoff is
a) The blinds are shortstacked
b) The blinds are 3-betting or folding and not flatting often.

Time Link to 00:07:52

This would be a decent spot for a delayed c-bet assuming the fish doesnt like to make moves. Namely, the board isnt likely to change too much, but because of the flush draw on board, the fish will feel obligated to bet any pair he has on the turn if you check back the flop. This will allow you to cbet with a lot more success. The drawback of this play is it takes a certain type of passive fish for it to be successful. It looks like this guy fits the bill quite well though.

Time Link to 00:13:06

I think raise/folding is probably the best line here. You need to protect your hand and make your opponent fold his equity share (if he has overcards or a smaller pair). You also dont know what turn and river cards are bad for you. If he shoves over the top this is AA/KK/AQ like 99% of the time so you have an easy fold, but 95% of the time he's just going to fold or call. If he calls, you can probably make another bet on the turn and get a lot of extra value out of a smaller pair of villain's.

The main key is the villain's small bet. When someone bets really small, most of the time they have a very weak hand and occasionaly they have a monster. But if they have a monster they are almost always 3-betting if you raise their small bet. So it puts you in a great spot to raise and read the opponent's hand correctly.

Time Link to 00:19:55

You definitely dont want to check this flop. First you claimed it was basically a WA/WB situation and a bet wouldnt get any value, but I would argue that bet still gets value from his weaker draws and protects our hand. Also checking to induce bluffs from a very tight player doesnt seem like a good idea, because he isnt going to be doing much bluffing and he will play a lot closer to perfect against our hand if we do choose to check here.

I wouldnt be worried about the explotiable nature of a bet/fold line on the flop, because most villains that have these stats just arent going to take advantage of this enough. They are just going to play ABC poker. Against predicatable villains, its O.K. to play exploitable.

Allow me to more carefully explain it so that it may make a little more sense.

The book "Professional No Limit Hold V.1" by Flynn, Mehta, and Miller explains this topic very well. The raise size is interesting here because we have a hand that we want to get all in with if we flop top pair. So I am trying to plan my hand accordingly such that I have a postflop pot that is to my liking here.

If we flop top pair with a hand like Q8o we are happy to get it in, yes, but we aren't AS happy as when we flop pair with some like AJ. The happier we are to get it in when we hit top pair the more money we want to have left to get it in(to a certain point of course... that point being when we have so much behind that we don't want to get it all in ) and conversely the less happier we are to get it in the less money we want to have to get it in. So, with Q8o I might raise to 4bb which sets up an SPR(stack to pot ratio) of 4.5. With AJo I might raise to 3bb which sets up an SPR of about 6. Now, if flips around when you have a hand like AA because you are getting so much preflop value that you would like to get ahead and put in the extra bb.

Hope that helps.

Raising to a smaller size with strong hands to bloat the pot-to-stack size ratio is a bad idea. Yes your making the fish make a bigger mistake by getting it in when you have AJ and yes your AJ is a strong hand and can stack off with greater pot-to-stack ratios. But the problem is the EV you lose from putting less money in pre-flop when you have both a hand strength advantage, positional advantage and player advantage (you can outplay him), outweighs the EV gained from making the p2ss ratio bigger.

Time Link to 00:29:14

if your playing 100% of your hands you should absolutely never give up anyways on boards that are great to c-bet like this one. Your worried about being about balancing but your opponents are very poor and would never be able to exploit you. Plus, even if your opponent was really good, he's never played with you before and doesnt know that you are firing with 100% of your hands on this board.

Cliffnotes: Dont worry about balancing if you have no history or your opponents are bad.

Also, delayed c-betting against bad hand readers is better on wet boards, but against good hand readers delayed c-betting is better on dry boards. Since villain is probably a bad hand reader, delayed c-betting is probably bad here, plus it allows him to catch something that he can call us with.

The distinguishment between 60/0 and 40/0 is neglible, espically given you only have 26 hands on him. Since you havent seen him play post-flop too much, you can make the basic passive fish assumptions, but I wouldnt read too much into him being a 40/0 makes it a profitable double-barrel spot. It almost certainly is not a profitable double-barrel spot against any variety of passive fish.

I think it's fair to say that we can't tell much from the sample of hands, but if the decision is kinda close I'll use what information I have.

Say it's a 40/0, I do think it's a decent spot to double barrel because he has a lot of hands like that he will fold on the turn like QT/JT/QJ/22/A5, for example. Also, we have some decent back up pot-equity against some of the hands that we are behind.

The reason you raise to 2.5x, 3x, or 3.5x here is mainly to collect dead money on the flop when the fishy villain plays fit or fold and c/f's most flops. You are going to collect this money regardless of your holdings of Q8o or AJo. You said that you wanted to get less money in post-flop with a pair of 8s or Qs from Q8 hitting the board, because they are more marginal than AJ's pairs.

I would argue in both cases though, getting money in when you hit a pair is going to be profitable against a fish, and you should attempt to get the maximum in pre-flop that you can. This means more dead money for you to collect on the flop. It also means more money for you to collect if calls you with some draw or smaller pair. Yes Q8 will be less profitable than AJ, but they are both profitable enough to warrent a bigger pre-flop raise size.

The main reason you make it 2x or 2.5x on the button or cutoff is
a) The blinds are shortstacked
b) The blinds are 3-betting or folding and not flatting often.

I agree that there are times where I will make it bigger against a looser player because I want the pot bigger even if I have a smaller hand. However, with these stack sizes I find that our villain will often commit with a wider range of hands once the SPR gets low. So, the dead money consideration isn't as paramount as if we had 100bb. If the stacks were deep I would be making a bigger raise with my whole range for the simple fact that I have an edge on him and the bigger the pot the bigger my edge.

In this particular spot I think either raise size is fine and the difference is admittedly small, but I do think it is slightly better to raise more with Q8o because that sets us up better postflop. It's probably close to even money either way.

if your playing 100% of your hands you should absolutely never give up anyways on boards that are great to c-bet like this one. Your worried about being about balancing but your opponents are very poor and would never be able to exploit you. Plus, even if your opponent was really good, he's never played with you before and doesnt know that you are firing with 100% of your hands on this board.

Cliffnotes: Dont worry about balancing if you have no history or your opponents are bad.

Also, delayed c-betting against bad hand readers is better on wet boards, but against good hand readers delayed c-betting is better on dry boards. Since villain is probably a bad hand reader, delayed c-betting is probably bad here, plus it allows him to catch something that he can call us with.

If we raise ATC and then fire at all dry flop then our range is way out of whack. IMO, we don't want to put ourselves in a position where we are very often on the turn with an extremely weak range and up against a somewhat strong range. That has us giving up in a lot of medium sized pots. We can check back and often times make a better c-bet or get away when he actually has something. Of course, if we have a read that this guy is playing extremely fit or fold then I am totally fine firing all of those good c-betting boards. That's a time when we can get away with it. But I think we have to be careful to make sure we can get away with it before we start doing stuff like that. Also, as an aside it isn't my favorite thing to be firing c-bets at loose players when I have no equity. My basic strategy against them is going to be value bet a wide range so I am going to try to make my range align with that strategy.

I personally do put an emphasis on remaining somewhat balanced until we have some sort of read on our opponents. That includes checking back hands that have about no equity when we are on a very weak range. Now, if I had raised preflop from early or middle position I am pretty much firing this board with my whole range(but even then I don't do anything 100% of the time without a read) because I actually have a strong range at that point as compared to a very weak range.

I should say that looking at the hand again that I probably wouldn't be raising ATC with a guy that loose in the blinds. So, T7s would be more towards the bottom of my range and then I would be much more willing to bet it than if I had raised ATC.

love the vids threads, keep this sh** coming.

Doesn't help, isn't relevant, doesn't make sense. You're neglecting to consider the fact that when you raise larger pre, the range of hands he calls with is stronger, and more likely to dominate Q8 when you flop top pair. In general we just want to be raising small with our hands against a fish because they will make so many postflop mistakes. I certainly would NOT raise big with AA because stacks are shallow and we want to encourage them to call and overvalue some hand that they hit.

It's really just a bad, unhelpful video, littered with sporadic jumbled thoughts that hurt more than they help. Sorry to be harsh but honesty is the only way to ensure quality.

Very good video, good discussion

Have to agree with Alex somewhat... the hand where your opponent has AhTh especially, is super standard to check back the turn. Yet you (and your student) are surprised he did not bet? Why? He has like zero fold equity here against hands he's behind, is very rarely getting called by worse if he considers a value bet, and has decent equity if you have a Queen.

Been a while since this hand so I don't really remember it, but pretty sure this was my thought process. tras's flop bet looks really strong when he bets near pot 4-way, so I'm happy just to call the flop, hopefully stack him if I hit my flush and proceed cautiously if I hit an ace or ten. Now when he doesn't barrel the turn, it does look weak but I don't think he'll call me with anything worse, certainly won't fold anything better, and if he raises me then I have to get it in likely being way behind. It'd be very different if I hadn't hit the pair and just had a draw. Additionally, I think if he does have air, he'll bet the river almost always and I can pick him off. So I'm more likely to get value by inducing a river bluff than by getting called by worse on the turn.

Pretty interesting hand, it's fun to hear how others perceive you. tras, I think you definitely missed value on the river there cause at that point I've definitely got more marginal made hands that can look you up than I do air hands that would bluff. I think we've both spewed to each other a few times, but I tend to do most of my spewing on earlier streets.

Been a while since this hand so I don't really remember it, but pretty sure this was my thought process. tras's flop bet looks really strong when he bets near pot 4-way, so I'm happy just to call the flop, hopefully stack him if I hit my flush and proceed cautiously if I hit an ace or ten. Now when he doesn't barrel the turn, it does look weak but I don't think he'll call me with anything worse, certainly won't fold anything better, and if he raises me then I have to get it in likely being way behind. It'd be very different if I hadn't hit the pair and just had a draw. Additionally, I think if he does have air, he'll bet the river almost always and I can pick him off. So I'm more likely to get value by inducing a river bluff than by getting called by worse on the turn.

Pretty interesting hand, it's fun to hear how others perceive you. tras, I think you definitely missed value on the river there cause at that point I've definitely got more marginal made hands that can look you up than I do air hands that would bluff. I think we've both spewed to each other a few times, but I tend to do most of my spewing on earlier streets.

It's really a pretty interesting hand. Now that I've watched it and spent some more time thinking about it I do like your turn check more than originally. If I were in your shoes I wouldn't expect tras to bluff the river too often. The question is can you get him to call with enough worse stuff and/or is getting him to fold something like AK worth it? Since you have an A in your hand and he probably doesn't have KJ that makes a check much better than I originally thought.

I do think you can value bet the river though. He could have something like JT that will call and maybe we'll even look you up with 99 or something.

Another thought I have if I were in your shows would be shoving the turn. That is a pretty interesting play and is one I might make if you actually hadn't hit your T (or say you have A6s and you catch a 6 on the turn I might like it better). Or you could bet small as sort of a free showdown play. I think all plays have merits.

Time Link to 00:47:48

Hand where tras has K8 on the 5547 board. Threads advocates raising the turn here because I could be stabbing with pretty much anything. The problem is that against a decent hand reader, when you raise this turn after not cbetting you just look like you're completely full of shit. A player like me is going to be inclined to call you down super light when you take that line on that board. You'd call with almost anything with showdown value, so your raising range is like 10% monsters and 90% air, probably not even any draws cause you'd have cbet those.

LOL I just looked up the hand and I actually had 54s. Yeah you should've raised for sure. Nice soul read with not cbetting there.

Hand where tras has K8 on the 5547 board. Threads advocates raising the turn here because I could be stabbing with pretty much anything. The problem is that against a decent hand reader, when you raise this turn after not cbetting you just look like you're completely full of shit. A player like me is going to be inclined to call you down super light when you take that line on that board. You'd call with almost anything with showdown value, so your raising range is like 10% monsters and 90% air, probably not even any draws cause you'd have cbet those.

LOL I just looked up the hand and I actually had 54s. Yeah you should've raised for sure. Nice soul read with not cbetting there.

Absolutely. I also suggest also checking back hands and making some value raises for balance so that we don't end up in that 90% air situation that you described.

Raising to a smaller size with strong hands to bloat the pot-to-stack size ratio is a bad idea. Yes your making the fish make a bigger mistake by getting it in when you have AJ and yes your AJ is a strong hand and can stack off with greater pot-to-stack ratios. But the problem is the EV you lose from putting less money in pre-flop when you have both a hand strength advantage, positional advantage and player advantage (you can outplay him), outweighs the EV gained from making the p2ss ratio bigger.

If you truly can outplay a fish postflop then bloating the pot preflop is a bad idea. All those advantages you list are then reduced when you see a flop with a lower SPR. Say we have KK and we have perfect 100% advantage over a fish and know exactly that he or she is holding AQo. It is higher EV overall to keep the pot small and get the money in postflop where our edge is much larger.

I assume the "fish" is a loose passive calling station postflop.

Allow me to more carefully explain it so that it may make a little more sense.

The book "Professional No Limit Hold V.1" by Flynn, Mehta, and Miller explains this topic very well. The raise size is interesting here because we have a hand that we want to get all in with if we flop top pair. So I am trying to plan my hand accordingly such that I have a postflop pot that is to my liking here.

If we flop top pair with a hand like Q8o we are happy to get it in, yes, but we aren't AS happy as when we flop pair with some like AJ. The happier we are to get it in when we hit top pair the more money we want to have left to get it in(to a certain point of course... that point being when we have so much behind that we don't want to get it all in ) and conversely the less happier we are to get it in the less money we want to have to get it in. So, with Q8o I might raise to 4bb which sets up an SPR(stack to pot ratio) of 4.5. With AJo I might raise to 3bb which sets up an SPR of about 6. Now, if flips around when you have a hand like AA because you are getting so much preflop value that you would like to get ahead and put in the extra bb.

Hope that helps.

If your trying to make hands easier to play would not raising larger with AJ and smaller with Q8 be more optimal? Being more pot committed post flop with TPWK hands does not seem a very sound strategy to me.

If your trying to make hands easier to play would not raising larger with AJ and smaller with Q8 be more optimal? Being more pot committed post flop with TPWK hands does not seem a very sound strategy to me.

I don't necessarily want to make hands easier, I want to make them more profitable. I'm committed with both an SPR of 4 or 6 with Q8o if I hit TP. I think 4 is more profitable than 6 with Q8o. I think 6 is more profitable with for with AJ.