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

yes please!!!

Preemptive 5

yes please!!!

!!!

Nice!

More HU-vids from balugawhale :-)

Baluga - you said min raising increases your ability to ustilize your skill advantage and thus its bad; isn't that a non-issue though, he shouldn't be playing you if you're better right?

Also you mentioned 88 as a good 3betting hand with deep stacks, which makes me confused, isn't that going to be hard to play in a deep stacked situation?

great commentary on our match Baluga :-)

Time Link to 00:12:13

Baluga, you were deep on both tables & villain did not rebuy to 200bb. Can you give the +/- to not rebuying when you sit @ a deep stack table when you get stacked twice early in a match?

No disrespect but I have to say I am quite disappointed that this is HU after I read this;

FRIDAY
NoahSD/BalugaWhale 6max
6max NL strategy from our 2 best 6max NL Producers, alternating each week.

Was looking forward to some Baluga 6max on the solo tip. Maybe next time.

Time Link to 00:04:59

Can you expand on yout turn check/call on the left table? You say he is often VB which sounds odd in my mind. I dont understand why we call and was just hoping you could help me clear things up in my mind. Thx

Time Link to 00:34:03

in the KK vs. my QT hand, the c/minraise bluff was just me not paying attention to stack sizes. I would do it 100 bb deep but not 200 bb deep where i would make a pot-sized bluff c/raise only on that board. This is because its not credible for me to really have trips here since i would be missing value in a deep stack scenario whereas 100 bb deep i can threaten Baluga's stake with just the minraise (and future barrels)

where can i get these mods mfor FTP baluge. and good content tyty

No disrespect but I have to say I am quite disappointed that this is HU after I read this;

FRIDAY
NoahSD/BalugaWhale 6max
6max NL strategy from our 2 best 6max NL Producers, alternating each week.

Was looking forward to some Baluga 6max on the solo tip. Maybe next time.

Must say I am disappointed as well. 6max content, especially from Baluga, is always great stuff and it seems it is getting harder to find. I know this vid is probably good as well, but slightly disappointed.

A few times you floated or considered floating a flop raise in a 3-bet pot out of position (AK on QJXr, KT on QQ9). What do about jamming in this spot? What would you do w/ a value hand on these boards (AA, AQ etc.)? I usually ship my entire range that I'm going to continue with in these spots. Seems to me like we're in no-mans land when we flat.

where can i get these mods mfor FTP baluge. and good content tyty

Here is a .exe to set up your FTP skins for their new software.

http://static.deucescracked.com/joe/DC-Gray-V0Fb.exe

Just DL, and run the program.

-Joe

to the guys expecting 6max--

don't worry, I will be releasing some 6m content this season. I wanted to try my hand at HU ( this is my first HU video), and I think it turned out alright (If a little bit hectic and helter-skelter, which could definitely be improved for my next vid).

Also, as someone who plays HU, 6m, and full ring, i'd recommend learning all three types, as understanding each context will help your game in all areas.

Andrew

Can you expand on yout turn check/call on the left table? You say he is often VB which sounds odd in my mind. I dont understand why we call and was just hoping you could help me clear things up in my mind. Thx

we call because
A) we have a lot of equity when behind (and also we can reliably get stacks in given the HU context)

B) we sometimes have the best hand on the turn, and he sometimes decides not to bluff the river.

C) its good to not c/f our entire range after we c/r the flop.

hope that helps
Andrew

A few times you floated or considered floating a flop raise in a 3-bet pot out of position (AK on QJXr, KT on QQ9). What do about jamming in this spot? What would you do w/ a value hand on these boards (AA, AQ etc.)? I usually ship my entire range that I'm going to continue with in these spots. Seems to me like we're in no-mans land when we flat.

on dry boards, there's nothing wrong with calling OOP because our opponents range is polarized between strong value hands (the ones that will continue to value-own themselves) and bluff hands (that are usually drawing dead and we don't want to reraise).

we'd want to shove when our opponents range has equity, or when they're raising for thin value and then planning to get to showdown later (the former is far more likely than the latter)

Andrew

No disrespect but I have to say I am quite disappointed that this is HU after I read this;

FRIDAY
NoahSD/BalugaWhale 6max
6max NL strategy from our 2 best 6max NL Producers, alternating each week.

Was looking forward to some Baluga 6max on the solo tip. Maybe next time.

i guarantee you'll learn a ton from this video and i haven't even watched it yet. please guys, don't pigeonhole yourselves; HU videos are great for your 6-max game.

i guarantee you'll learn a ton from this video and i haven't even watched it yet. please guys, don't pigeonhole yourselves; HU videos are great for your 6-max game.

I know that and will definately watch the vid but given the pre-vid hype of 6max was a little let down.

Here is a .exe to set up your FTP skins for their new software.

http://static.deucescracked.com/joe/DC-Gray-V0Fb.exe

Just DL, and run the program.

-Joe

ship the mods!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Must say I am disappointed as well. 6max content, especially from Baluga, is always great stuff and it seems it is getting harder to find. I know this vid is probably good as well, but slightly disappointed.

I hate learning about poker from Baluga!



p.s. You 6 max kids, watch it and tell me you don't learn at least something that will help you out...

this vid disappointed me.

Time Link to 00:13:52

while I agree that his flop and turn peel with KJ are pretty bad, I kind of feel like your turn betsizing cost you the pot. If you bet a little more (like around $100) something that looks like a more reasonable bet I feel like you get considerably more respect. Considering that the only Ax hand in your range is probably AT I think villain is assuming that he might have as many as 10 outs on the river and you are giving him better than 4-1 on a call. I'm not really sure what your line reps other than AT, and as an aggressive player you can have so much other stuff in your range that suspicious villains are going to call the turn light.

TBH I would almost prefer a check back on the turn which reps Tx or a mid pair that got scared, and then bluff the river if he checks it to you. That being said I can see a lot value to betting the turn if you would minraise some A4, A2s etc on the flop, I just think you need to bet more to fold out his weak holdings that have you beat (like small pairs GS or KJ KQ that are peeling).

pretty weird spot though since we pretty much dont ever expect villain to show up with KJ or KQ there.

Time Link to 00:16:02

I really hate the 4bet size, and am not a fan of the 4bet at all. After we've just shown the propensity to call a little light in 3bet pots, spew a little postflop, and run big bluffs this is about the perfect situation to call pf and raise a rando flop. We just got dealt the nuts, villain 3bet us again, and we haven't 4bet once the entire match and then we 4bet to waaaay over pot. So our hand doesn't look like a bluff (its almost a committing 4bet), we aren't giving him much room to shove over top, we aren't giving him odds to peel with KQs or AQs or stuff like that and villain just showed us that he may be overvaluing his outs and likes to make suspicious light peels. Instead we 4bet in a spot where we should be getting a lot of respect just when we don't want it.

I really like a flat in this spot and min raise pretty much all flops. and if you decide you want your first 4bet to be for value then I'd probably make it something like $96 and see if we can get him to call OOP or shove 88+ and AQs into us.

Time Link to 00:36:58

i think this is a great spot to take a LHE concept and apply it to NL. There are lots of times when great LHE players will raise the river with an Khigh hand when they think their opponent is bluffing because they think that their opponent could be bluffing with Ahigh but can't call a raise. In this case villain could be making that min raise with any paired holding or 7x just trying to end the hand on the flop, and if we assume he folds all of those hands to a river bet it may be more profitable to bet somewhere bewteen 1/3 and half pot on the river in order to make sure all of his weak value hands fold. Unless villain is making this flop play with KJ or JT (which seems unlikely) he shouldn't really have any value hands that can call us on the river. as well as the fact that we shouldnt expect him to bluff so there is no point in trying to bluff catch with AK.

my initial thought on the hand was to check the river as well, but after seeing the KJ hand, and some of the other non-standard lines that villain has taken I think we can rep some strength on this board, he can't, and we'll get a fold more than enough for the river bet to be profitable.

either that or I'm the master of results oriented thinking LOL.

NL strategy from our 2 best 6max NL Producers, alternating each week.

I really agree, two best MSNL coaches by a mile for me! Also would like 6max but will watch this too to improve my 6max game

Time Link to 00:34:54

Sorry messed this post up see below

Time Link to 00:34:54

Here you are about to start talking about range manipulation but a hand comes up and you never get back to it. Could you please cover this in your next vid or write a post about it.

Cheers

Wow that 4bet with AA early on is really really bad. Both the size and the fact that you 4bet at all.

lol there is alex again

Always great comments with really good arguments

lol there is alex again

Always great comments with really good arguments

see my post above, but i totally agree with alex I just got into more detail as to why.

it must be my educational background but I can't stand it when people say "horrible!!!!!!!!!", and then leave it with that

was also looking forward to baluga 6max content but im watching this anyways because i think he makes the best vids in the business.

so who here wants to take a guess why I decided to 4-bet? Cause I still think its best (and that given stack sizes, the raise size was probably fine but perhaps slightly big).

Andrew

so who here wants to take a guess why I decided to 4-bet? Cause I still think its best (and that given stack sizes, the raise size was probably fine but perhaps slightly big).

Andrew

i mean I guess we can make the argument that villain is going to be leveling himself into calling or shoving light because you might look fed up etc. I mean there are a lot of villain dependent reasons why making your first 4 bet for value might be best, but I'm not sure that we had enough history to make 4betting better than flatting. I gave all of the reasons previously why I think we've built up the perfect image for flatting, and I just don't think that we can level villain into some spew or light shove enough to override that value.

and either way the raise size was just too big. you were having some trouble getting raise sizes right at the beginning of the video and I think it was just a function of that. No reason this raise should ever be over pot, and considering you want to be able to bluff for a smaller amount I really don't think you need to make it more than 2.5x his 3bet size. Stacks aren't that deep, you have the nuts, position, and if anything you want to encourage him to shove over top thinking he might have more fold equity than he really does.

I'm not sure that we had enough history to make 4betting better than flatting.

ah, and thus the differences between HU and 6m

Time Link to 00:06:12

You say when people call our c/r they are not usually intenting to fold to our turn bet.
I dont really think this is that true.
There are many player types, and quite a few turns which we can bet to get our opponent to fold.

For instance many opponents wioll fold second pair to a turn bet, and even moreso on a good card for our range like a flush completing card.

Also in the video you c/c the turn. I personally think this was a c/f or occassionally a c/r,so Why did you go for a c/c?
The reason I think this is I doubt he is bet/floating the flop (especially a flop like this), which means on the turn his range is pretty strong to bet, and obv we cant c/r (as we have no FE), and a c/c just seems bad as we have little equity vs his range.

Like tyo hear your thoughts on this one.

Here you are about to start talking about range manipulation but a hand comes up and you never get back to it. Could you please cover this in your next vid or write a post about it.

Cheers

Andrew,

Could you reply to this, just thought you may have missed my post, cheers

You say when people call our c/r they are not usually intenting to fold to our turn bet.
I dont really think this is that true.
There are many player types, and quite a few turns which we can bet to get our opponent to fold.

For instance many opponents wioll fold second pair to a turn bet, and even moreso on a good card for our range like a flush completing card.

Also in the video you c/c the turn. I personally think this was a c/f or occassionally a c/r,so Why did you go for a c/c?
The reason I think this is I doubt he is bet/floating the flop (especially a flop like this), which means on the turn his range is pretty strong to bet, and obv we cant c/r (as we have no FE), and a c/c just seems bad as we have little equity vs his range.

Like tyo hear your thoughts on this one.

in my opinion (feel free to disagree), without a special circumstance (great bluff card, history of seeing a guy fold the turn in these spots, etc), people tend to shove blanks.

you think we have little equity against his range? I count 9 pretty good outs. Plus, there is the possibility that he has a hand like a FD or straight draw that will fire the turn and then give up on the river as well.

if I thought that his range was super draw-heavy then obv i'd c/r the turn, but i thought it was only marginally draw-heavy and thus im basically calling the turn usually hoping to spike, sometimes hoping to get to showdown.

Andrew

Andrew,

Could you reply to this, just thought you may have missed my post, cheers

saw your post, will try to see if I can work it into the next vid.

Andrew

i actually substantially disagree with a couple things, but meh

in particular, i think the c/c with A5 on the J6x7 board was spew

sorry i dont have the timestamp, but in the AA vs QQ hand that was 200bb deep, would you play JJ TT 99 AK differently?

we call because
A) we have a lot of equity when behind (and also we can reliably get stacks in given the HU context)

B) we sometimes have the best hand on the turn, and he sometimes decides not to bluff the river.

C) its good to not c/f our entire range after we c/r the flop.

hope that helps
Andrew

all of these are very contrived reasons.
c/calling turn is atrocious.
we're most likely behind. if not he probably has excellent equity and is in a position to put us in a shitty spot if we dont bink the river. our hand doesn't have enough equity to be c/calling on that board. not a profitable play imo.

Obv a great video. I just don't agree w/ you in that spot. Plz make more.

hjk

Less than 200bb deep and he 4bets you second time in a very short period and then shoves with QQ and you are saying something like "he's play there is probably bad"... really wtf? I've probably never played an opponent I wouldn't stack off against for 200bb with QQ.

But when you get JJ in the next hand (another table with ~160bb effective stacks) you immediatly take your words back, like "actually, that might have not been so bad, just a cooler for him"... And I really couldn't help but to think that getting into similar situation with JJ was the reason you said that.

Also, that 4bet sizing with AA in the beginning was really awful... I do like to 4bet my premium hands early in the match, but making it something like 35bb... wtf? He's not gonna stack off unless he has something like TT+, AK. When we make our first 4bet normal size, many ppl will shove over very light.

Other than that, there was a few weird situations, like that minraising the flop and betting like 1/4 on the turn... What are we really trying to achieve with that?

Also, you said something like people are not calling flop checkraises to fold on the turn, which is imo NOT true in HU. People are calling checkraises with pretty much any pair.

You also seem to play a lot of hands (esp OOP) and defend to 3bets very (too?) light, but I guess that's just a personal preference. But I find it really hard to believe that callings hands like A3o OOP can ever be good.

My post might sound a little negative, but I liked the vid anyway, there was a few interesting spots. I just disagreed with those hands.

100% true. I don't want to always be Mr. NEgative in the forums but I find in general people are much more honest in the CR forums and here everyone is all supportive. If the video producers really want to improve they need to read the negative criticism and truly think critically about it.

I did not care for the pace of the video. It DID seem frantic and I felt like my head was spinning not even 10 minutes in. A lot of quality information and thoughts in this but the rapid fire delivery took away from it.

Time Link to 00:44:13

Here on the 4 flush board where you have the Qc you bet and talk about how if he raised it would be a tough spot. You then go on to say you maybe should have bet smaller to induce a raise. Would you really want to induce a raise here and put yourself into a tough spot? Or would you just call it off because you feel you induced the raise?

Time Link to 00:58:58

This video did seem to calm down towards the end. Defiantly worth watching was just a bit too frantic in the beginning as I mentioned. Thank you for making it though there was a good amount of interested content and I think there was defiantly some interesting spots. Lucky for you towards the end you had the AA vs QQ and JJ vs 55 so you would not have to hear about how your student beat you forever lol =p