Poker Video: No Limit Hold 'Em by WiltOnTilt (Micro/Small Stakes)

Fold A5s on the button against a utg raise and cold call from 47/25 and 51/21 players? (16 mins 30 secs into the video)

50 mins in.....
you have 76s. Raise OTB, moneysans calls and he c/min raises.

I think this is a clear fold.

While this player is very loose and somewhat aggressive, I doubt this is a pure bluff.
After studing these players a lot, this type of player is NOT the manical LAG that bluffs every opportunity, but a loose semi aggressive player that will raise hands that have hit boards.

The c min raise here is always {strong draws,top pair hands,overpairs, and sometimes middle pairs/underpairs}

Ok you say that he does c/raise a lot but this is over a short sample and I believe if he was check raising as a total bluff he would be c/raising a lot higher, and that the c/min raise is an attempt to show strength, get value and also get him to showdown.

I think also by the turn this is a definite fold, especially when you were talking about people playing straightfowardly. I do not think this player is super bluffy (as you saw he does like to get SD), and I think when he bets this turn its definitely a TP+ hand.

Great vid thanks guys. Learnt a lot particularly the parts about dealing with flop check raises. Looking forward to the rest of the series.

Just watched the first half and have a few questions before I forget...

37min KJo in SB: When CO opens I agree folding here is best but do you ever 3bet if say there wasn't a super loose BB or your sample on Hansli was bigger and he had a decent steal percentage? What if you'd been in the BB instead? He seems loose enough that your not crushed by his CO range and you haven't 3bet him yet that i remember.

38:45m You mention its a shame that you don't have position on the mega-fish but seat 6 is open. Why not switch and get position on him and the other solid player you've played before and have reads on?

Really looking forward to the rest of this series, probably going to end up being my favorite of the season (excluding any stand alone FR vids).

Fold A5s on the button against a utg raise and cold call from 47/25 and 51/21 players? (16 mins 30 secs into the video)

I also dont get that fold? on the button?

Dunno if it has been asked previously, but is there a file config for the HUD setup.

Dunno if it has been asked previously, but is there a file config for the HUD setup.

I don't think that you can put the hud setup into a file? Does any one know how I can pull it off my harddrive? If you can I will post a link for it.

Alex is Fruitypro! Ah, dear ole Fruitypro.

Nice vid.

Just watched the first half and have a few questions before I forget...

37min KJo in SB: When CO opens I agree folding here is best but do you ever 3bet if say there wasn't a super loose BB or your sample on Hansli was bigger and he had a decent steal percentage? What if you'd been in the BB instead? He seems loose enough that your not crushed by his CO range and you haven't 3bet him yet that i remember.

I would prefer a bigger sample size to make this decision. As he is only raising 13% of hands, and we have no info on whether he folds to a 3bet. If he does flat our 3bet it is going to be by a hand that likely has us dominated and we are out of position for the rest of the hand. Would prefer to do it with air, or something with a bit more potential would prefer it with KJs, but it would definately be a marginal 3bet in my opinion.

Will get WiltOnTilt to give some input on my last two posts as he should have better explanations as this is still a learners view...

Great video, keep up the good work.

Question about the AJo hand in which the rationale for flat-calling drc's squeeze play was to induce MoneySan(?)(the fish) to call:

What if WhiteHeat had had something like QQ in that position? Would you still advocate just flat-calling drc's squeeze in order to get MoneySan to call or would you rather re-raise in order to (theoretically) force out MoneySan and have a heads-up pot with drc?

Also, say you had the QQ and you flat call as you did with the AJo and MoneySan calls. The Board comes down the same: 4cKh8h. And drc bets out his $15. What would you do? If you just called drc's $15 bet, aren't you giving good odds to MoneySan to call with a flush draw? But with a re-raise, aren't you committing too much of your stack so that if drc re-raises all-in, you're pot committed and have to call, praying he doesn't have a king?

Question about the AJo hand in which the rationale for flat-calling drc's squeeze play was to induce MoneySan(?)(the fish) to call:

What if WhiteHeat had had something like QQ in that position? Would you still advocate just flat-calling drc's squeeze in order to get MoneySan to call or would you rather re-raise in order to (theoretically) force out MoneySan and have a heads-up pot with drc?

Also, say you had the QQ and you flat call as you did with the AJo and MoneySan calls. The Board comes down the same: 4cKh8h. And drc bets out his $15. What would you do? If you just called drc's $15 bet, aren't you giving good odds to MoneySan to call with a flush draw? But with a re-raise, aren't you committing too much of your stack so that if drc re-raises all-in, you're pot committed and have to call, praying he doesn't have a king?

I have a lot of history with Drc13, and my view on the hand is that the worst that he is going to be betting into me with is KQo on this flop. After discussing the hand with him, he said he had KQo, and knew that if he could get past me he would be shoving any flop against the fish. But with QQ I would of 4bet him pf, as I know his range could be 99+, KJs,KQs,AK,AQo. So would only be dominated by only two hands. If it did get to the flop, I think that raising or folding is the best play here, as in effect you are drawing to a couple of QQ. I don’t want to play 2nd pair in a re-raised pot multiway.

Just a quick question. Is this video not available on an ipod compatible version? I noticed episode one was, but episode two appears not to be. Apologize if this is a newbie question as I am new to watching dc videos on ipod.

You can only watch the one table and powerpoint videos on an ipod, as otherwise it is to small. Not sure about the ipod touch? As it may be watchable on this, but this is Entity's area....

Yeah, only one tabling vids are converted to iPod format. Two and four tabling vids just look too small on the iPod.

Rob (posting from iPhone)

Fold A5s on the button against a utg raise and cold call from 47/25 and 51/21 players? (16 mins 30 secs into the video)

yea you're right, we should have probably called there. i guess i was too into what i was saying at the time and just felt to pass on that play, even though it is probably +EV against those 2 donks... although in my defense they were both short stacks.

Just watched the first half and have a few questions before I forget...

37min KJo in SB: When CO opens I agree folding here is best but do you ever 3bet if say there wasn't a super loose BB or your sample on Hansli was bigger and he had a decent steal percentage? What if you'd been in the BB instead? He seems loose enough that your not crushed by his CO range and you haven't 3bet him yet that i remember.

Yes, we can definitely 3bet a hand like KJo, but we need at least one of the following criteria:

a) we don't expect to get 4bet very often
b) we expect our opponent to call us with dominated hands
c) we have a good idea of how to play top pair against him in a 3bet pot when we either get raised or called on the flop

Basically we need to have some sort of gameplan with our hand and be willing to play big pots with just a pair of kings or jacks when we flop one, it also helps to know how aggro he is for when we flop say middle pair on an A J x board and if we decide to check, is he the type who will barrel us thinking we wouldnt check an A, or is he the type to just play straight up?

38:45m You mention its a shame that you don't have position on the mega-fish but seat 6 is open. Why not switch and get position on him and the other solid player you've played before and have reads on?

Really looking forward to the rest of this series, probably going to end up being my favorite of the season (excluding any stand alone FR vids).

Yea totally agree it's perfectly fine to switch seats to get position on fish, especially at the lower stakes. at the higher nosebleed games or something like that, I think it's a bit unethical and disrespectful, but at these stakes the player pool is so big that no one probably is even paying attention to that... so yes I think it's a good idea to switch seats real quick!

WoT

Question about the AJo hand in which the rationale for flat-calling drc's squeeze play was to induce MoneySan(?)(the fish) to call:

What if WhiteHeat had had something like QQ in that position? Would you still advocate just flat-calling drc's squeeze in order to get MoneySan to call or would you rather re-raise in order to (theoretically) force out MoneySan and have a heads-up pot with drc?

Also, say you had the QQ and you flat call as you did with the AJo and MoneySan calls. The Board comes down the same: 4cKh8h. And drc bets out his $15. What would you do? If you just called drc's $15 bet, aren't you giving good odds to MoneySan to call with a flush draw? But with a re-raise, aren't you committing too much of your stack so that if drc re-raises all-in, you're pot committed and have to call, praying he doesn't have a king?

Hi Fischie, great questions!

with a hand as strong as KK we would definitely be flat calling to keep the fish in and let him make a huge postflop mistake, but with QQ it becomes much harder because of the spot you describe -- getting an overcard to hit. I can definitely go either way, either 4betting to make the hand easier to play (probably what i would advocate to beginning players) or also calling and having faith in our postflop play. If the flop did come down king high with a flush draw then yes by just calling we would give the donkey good odds to hit his flush, but we're assuming his range is so wide that he will not have the flush draw very often at all.

There are times in NLHE where you often have to sacrifice a sub-optimal play against PART of your opponent's range in order to optimally exploit the entire range. Does that make sense? In other words, we're willing to take the slight risk that he actually does have the flush draw THIS TIME to get more information about his holding and potentially play a bigger pot against an inferior made hand that he can't let go of. Basically it's a balancing act, we have to try to mitigate our risk against hands that will get a good price against us to suck out, but also be willing to ensure we don't blow out the worse made hands that can pay us off.

hope that makes some sense.

also part of the reason we're calling there with AJo is we're almost "slowplaying our bluff" because we assume DRC's range is wide and the other guy's range is wide, so we can almost just let them both stick some money in with a wide range that we know won't be able to stand too much postflop heat very often, then we have the option of either hitting a pair and attempting to keep worse hands in, or when we miss, have the opportunity to still win the pot because we assume that DRC wont be cbetting 3 way with air too much given the loose player AND our hero in the pot, therefore when DRC checks, we'll be able to take the pot often since the guy behind us is probably calling preflop with anything he played before the squeeze.

I should also note that people should not look at this situation and say "oh, wiltontilt calls squeezes with AJo, so therefore i should ALWAYS BE CALLING WITH THIS!" -- no no no i hope no one thinks that. if you think that, please re-read this post and also re-listen to my in game logic around the 44 minute mark.

Alex actually asked DRC on AIM what he had this hand, and he told him KQ. I feel if he had AQ he would likely check there, which would give us the green light.

is changing seats really considered unethical in HSNL? i dont really understand why it would be when other things like coaching arent considered unethical. i always assumed this was b/c theres no "one player to a hand rule". hell FTP has a "seat change" button so THAT is clearly allowed in the rules.

is changing seats really considered unethical in HSNL? i dont really understand why it would be when other things like coaching arent considered unethical. i always assumed this was b/c theres no "one player to a hand rule". hell FTP has a "seat change" button so THAT is clearly allowed in the rules.

i think if jay and those guys are playing 300/600nl and someone leaves guy's left or david b's left and i think it's a pretty dick move if everyone immediately clicks the stand up button and it's a race to see who can get the seat on the left and then everyone re-sits down at their old seat when they missed the jesus seat and play continues. i think it's less obvious and note worthy if it happens at a 50nl table where there are 35 tables running instead of the single, high profile, nosebleed game running.

I really love this series so far and am eagerly awaiting further episodes.

Dealing with a downswing!

As Wilt has become a posting machine, whilst I slept. I didn't want to be out done. Here is my 'experienced' view on downswings. I did a post on it a couple of months ago, will try and find that as well.

‘At some stage you will run worst than you can ever imagine’. I have heard those words so many times and just discarded them. Well it finally happened to me. It just happens to coincide with working with WiltOnTilt. To be honest the experience other the last two months has been one of the most rewarding, and one of the most difficult poker ‘eras’ that I have had.

I feel that my game has improved beyond recognition since I have started working with Aaron. I am learning more and more by the day, and feel the excitement of being able to make moves, or put some one on a range and get it right. I think that Aaron has helped with so many aspects of the game. I would say that I have become a lot better player.

I felt that I have had to relearn the game. Which has made to me making mistakes, which may have compounded my downswing? Sorry if this is a long winded way to get in to how I dealt with my downswing, but felt it is important to give a flavour of the experience so far.

With everyday that pasted I became more and more frustrated with my game. It just didn’t seem to stick. I would make a few buyins, and then get coolered for four, and the cycle would continue. I analysed how I was playing hands to much, and over working scenarios. I felt that the only way to get out of it was to play hands, hands and more hands. Which now I realise was the wrong way to approach it. I would rather play 500 optimally than 5000 sub-optimally. There is no sense in trying to get even; if you are not playing you’re a-game. I think that emotionally it is not worth it. I mean, I live in my opinion the greatest city in the world. I should be making the most of it. Instead of playing 1200 hand sessions. By trying to get even you are sacrificing everything in life that is important. At the end of the day poker is a game (a great one at that) but only a game. It look me until last week to take a complete break from poker, and to re-rationalise my life. The more that you try and get even the worst you compound your downswing. From my point of view, I stopped training, was thinking poker 24-7, and putting myself under far too much pressure to make it, both for myself and DC. I had become emotionally attached to the game, which I feel under no circumstances you should be. At the end of the day, we make the decision to sit at that table; no one is forcing us to do it. So we have to live with what happens at the table. I started to wonder what my life had become. A winning or losing session would effect how I carried myself for the next day. I have had to make the decision myself to detach myself from the results of the game.

This leads me on to the do’s and don’ts of dealing with a downswing.

DO
Take a break from the game.
Keep posting hand histories on the forums.
Look at other people’s blogs that are/have experiencing the same as you.
Go and do something else that you enjoy.
Look for support from your poker friends.
Get people to sweat sessions so that you can check your lines.
Realise what is important and what is not.
Move down a level to get your confidence back.
Go back to the basics, TAG style.
Watch lots of DC videos.
Keep studying the game, even if the results don't improve your knowledge will.
Go and get drunk with your friends.

DON’T
Play mega sessions to get even.
Add more tables, to try and beat variance.
Let everything else in your life become second place.
Look at your results every 10 minutes of a session.
Become to hung up on graphs, stats and all in expected Value.
Become a victim, look for solutions not blame.
Tilt, if only....

The thing that has helped me get through the last couple of months is the support of Aaron and his community. I feel that the guys on his coaching forum are an awesome sounding board. They have kept me going. I also chat a lot on Skype to Drc13 which is a great help.

To conclude, I will come out of this a better player for the experience. I strongly believe in my ability as a poker player, and so feel that things have to turn around for me in the long run. Success doesn’t happen over night, and I continue to put a great deal of time and effort to improve as a poker player. I think that no one has had an easy ride to the top, but with the support and resources around me I will make it to certain level. Sorry if this is a bit personal, but feel that I want to give my experience ‘warts and all’. I am also very proud to be involved with DC, and anything I can give back to our community I will.

A couple of books I would recommend reading – Elements of Poker, and the Poker Mindset.

As for my winrate, I have started a new database after my break, as I now feel ready to start crushing the game in the next few months. Will give you an update on 25k hands as only play 3k hands since my break last week.

If any one has questions, please post. Or PM me.

Sorry to hear you are on adownswing man. What you just eplained is my life since last month. Anyway Let me reformulate my question. Do you think you can have a 7-8BB/100 hands while being sweated by WOT or more precisley is it possible for a player like WOT to beat NL50 or NL100 for that kind of winrate???

I think that it is definately do able. I hope to prove this over the next 25k of hands (but you would have to do it on a large sample to get a fair answer). With WoT sweating me, it makes it more likely. We will see how the next few weeks pan out, and then I will tell you yes or no.

Sorry to hear you are on adownswing man. What you just eplained is my life since last month. Anyway Let me reformulate my question. Do you think you can have a 7-8BB/100 hands while being sweated by WOT or more precisley is it possible for a player like WOT to beat NL50 or NL100 for that kind of winrate???

its definitely possible to get 7-8ptbb, maybe even 10ptbb if you arent heavily multitabling and datamine

Dunno if you tryed other sites @ NL 50 but imo FTP is the toughest and most aggressive site on this stakes, i played there about 50k hands on nl 50 and had just such massive swings due this aggressive donks. For me playing @ Stars or Party is way more softer and the fish are more passive

Alex,

Thanks for the write up on running bad. I look forward to the episode you talk more about it and I look forward to Aaron's take on it too.

A question - the loose donkey on our left on the left table, if his fold to cbet % had been lower, how would you have been adjusting your opening ranges and cbetting / two barrelling frequencies to compensate especially OOP..

I think that you need to be doing the reverse of them. I would be tightening up my range a bit, and value betting second pair etc. If you can’t shift people off any flop, there is no need to get into marginal situations with him. I prefer to wait for a hand and just value town them. So I would say that it is a game of patience. Looking at the VPIP, Fold to C-bet and WTSD as a combo, is a good indicator for your plan for the flop. I think you are spewing money by trying to take it away from them if they are never folding.

Dunno if it has been asked previously, but is there a file config for the HUD setup.

this

Alex - thanks for your downswing essay. I think it describes almost exactly my experience too, and your do's and don'ts are fantastic.

Great series, guys

Greetings from Sunny South Africa

Great video guys!

Just watched it and have a question for WoT...

One hour in Alex picks up AKo in the SB and it gets raised UTG by 995994. Alex elects to 3-bet and 995994 calls. After 995 calls the cbet on the A4T rainbow board, I'm not sure I agree with checking the turn, especially due to Alex's remaining stack size and the board texture. 995's flop action seems to indicate either a very strong hand (ie. set of 4s, AT, but more likely AQ, AJ, A9, 55-99, KQ, QJ). This range is deduced in combination from his pf action with his flop action, of course. Therefore, especially when the 8d comes on the turn bringing the flush draw, I feel there are a lot of combination draws AdQd, KdQd, QdJd, 9dJd, and just generally Ax hands, as mentioned, which will probably call a pot-sized bet on the turn but still be behind our AK. Plus, if Alex checks, there is a still a small chance that 995 will push AI on the turn, and then are we really comfortable snap calling with only TPTK for the rest of our stack? (Maybe I'm forgetting how loose 995 was in this video?)

As the hand played out I feel that to some degree Alex was lucky to get the river call from second pair (QJ), though I guess you guys had some specific reads on this opponent. However, given 995's flush draw and double-gut shot on the turn (with QdJd), my guess is he would most probably be calling Alex's AI bet on the turn, so why not make the bet then, avoiding a possibly difficult river decision? I feel this might be superior to checking the turn and shoving (any?) river, but I'd love to hear your comments on this line of thinking. It could be that I am 2-barrelling my TPTK hands too much and missing value when I could check one street and induce a bluff. Not sure.

I am new to this nl thing being mostly a stt and lhe player, but I am now wanting to add nl to my games as well. I can't for the life of me figure out why we would call w AJ at 43 min. Someone posted that we can get an overcall from the fish. Do we want to be in a multiway pot w AJ? During the vid WOT said that we can jam some flops if it is checked to us? What flops would those be? How often would someone 3bet pf and then check flop? We did have some data on the 3bettor so is that the reason? He is a dc member or 2+2er so he can be 3 betting light oop here? I know part of NL is not playing your cards but I can't figure out how to continue if we do call. Have a plan and I don't have one! Do we jam an A or J here? I wouldn't feel comfortable with a one pair hand here too much. I would be calling pf and folding a huge range of flops. I hope this post isn't too late as I am catching up on vids, and because I really like this series. But I am lost here.

Is this a hand we are going to make a play with exclusively? ie if the board comes really dry we raise his cbet?

Sorry for bumping such an old video, but i have a question for a hand in this vid.

At 48:20 at the table on the right, how do you like betting the turn and shoving the river instead of just giving up? I mean, since since he lead 2$ in ~8$ into 2 people on a semi-drawy flop i think we can cap his range a bit? I don't think he ever has a strong 8. His strongest hand is probably something like J8, and his most likely hands are weak 8's, 4's, 55-77 and flushdraws. So i was thinking if we bet ~10$ on the turn that would leave us with a $41,8 shove into $45,9 on the river.

Thoughts?

Great Video Guys looking forward to finishing the series. Also I love the in dept analysis you do for every hand it gets me to look at poker in different ways.