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

Great video guys, I hope you get a chance to do some more of these.

Some questions about this hand.

UTG open limps (my read on this player would probably be loose passive) hero raises Ac Ah from HJ, BB and UTG call.

Flop is Qd 6h 5c

BB bets, HJ calls and hero calls. You both thought this was a good time to call and wait until the turn for a raise. Your both a lot better at poker than I am but I don't understand waiting for the turn multiway.

Here is my thinking, where am I going wrong?

If the BB had bet out and the HJ folded then I think calling and waiting for the turn would be good. However with the third player in the hand I think raising the flop is better. The HJ appears to be loose passive but we don't have a read on the BB, so I am going to assume he is a typical 5/10 player. A typical player at this level would most likley check raise this flop if he had a pair of queens or better. I therefore think he is likely to have a pocket pair, a pair of fives or sixes or a draw.

When both his opponents call, I think the BB is going to be checking the turn with a lot of the range I gave him above. If the BB does check, then I don't think the loose passive player in the HJ is going to bet the turn very often, so I see the turn being checked to hero fairly often.

Great video guys, I hope you get a chance to do some more of these.

"Entity Coaches PygmyHero Part 1"

By the way guys, sorry about some of the confusion regarding the hands. I had them set up in a certain order (chronologically within each concept we were covering) and for some reason they automatically re-sorted (maybe during the import to the replayer) to strictly chronologically. Hence my confusion in the video.

Also, I included a hand or two I didn't mean to due to my inexperience with HEM and the copy to clipboard function.

Hey xrosswind, on the AA hand (~26:00) where I wait until the turn...

First of all Rob says early on that he would wait until the turn "up to 30% of the time." His rationale was to balance times he wanted to peel a hand like KJ and the like. So it's certainly not a play he's advocating making all of the time, but is something that should be thrown in at least on occasion.

My thought at the time were about the math. I think we've all read the math behind a c/r HU (as opposed to betting out): you must succeed more than 50% of the time for it to be a better (more profitable) play - so missing it sometimes is okay (if you never missed a c/r you're not c/r-ing enough).

Here the math is more complicated because we're 3 ways. I'm just going to toss some numbers out there - let's say on average when I raise the flop I get 3.5 BB on the flop and turn (2 SB from each villain on the flop, 1 BB from donker on the turn, ~0.5 BB from UTG on the turn). If you disagree with that, no problem - use different numbers.

When I successfully get to wait and raise the turn I think I might get on average 4 BB on the flop and turn (1 SB from each villain on the flop, 2 BB from the donker on the turn, and say 1 BB from UTG on the turn. Again, feel free to use your own numbers.

Note in each scenario UTG calls half the time and folds half the time.

But really that's not the whole story because I will often get the turn bets in with way higher equity. I played around with Stove a bit and if I give my two villains different combos of Qx, OESD, mid pairs, two pair draws, etc., I often have 50-55% equity on the flop. But on the turn that often jumps to 75%. So when i do get more (bigger!) bets in with the wait until the turn line I will often have way more equity in them as well.

So I guess that brings up the question of how often the donker will follow through on the turn. I don't necessarily disagree with your range, but I do think Qx still needs to be included. A lot of players prefer to just donk a TP type hand (I wasn't sure how villain would play Qx here and I find his river fold very odd - maybe he just gave up with 88).

Even when the donker has the weaker parts of his range (6x, 5x, or a hand like 99) I think he often has to fire again on a lot of turns. The J isn't a great card for him, but I think it's still a bet for most pairs in his range. And he should certainly fire again on a ton of other cards. I actually suspect he should bet again on the turn on anything except an A or K.

That said, I'd love to hear more discussion on this as I think the hand maybe looks a bit boring but I think it's actually interesting.

I love this format!!

The subject matter hits where my game is at also, even though I am playing lower.

Pygmy, consider asking Entity about semi-bluffing the turn,
and raising the turn in general. (ok selfish..lol)

Excellent job of explaining your thinking in this hand PH. I must admit I missed the bit in the video where Rob said he would wait until the turn up to 30% of the time.

Regarding your figures, they seem fairly reasonable to me, it's sort of difficult without knowing too much about the players to know what figures to use.

I guess the way I was looking at it was that HJ seems your loose passive type who is likely to peel flops very loosely but is likely to tighten up on the turn. So if you just call the flop, and BB does bet out the turn, HJ is going to call the turn far less often than he will call the flop. It's very difficult to put a figure on it, and I don't play as high as this, but I see players at 1/2 and 2/4 who peel flops multi way in raised pots, and then meekly fold the turn. I suspect they peel flops with any two just hoping to catch a pair on the turn, or maybe have a backdoor flush or straight draw hoping to pick up a draw on the turn.

It's a good point you bring up about your equity changing drastically from flop to turn though, and that is an important consideration.

The reason why I asked about this hand, was that just prior to watching this video I was watching a video by KPR16, and in this video he was saying that his default HU and in position with a big hand was usually to wait until the turn to raise. But when it was multiway on the flop he would usually raise on the flop and not wait until the turn.

pygmy,

glad to see you have moved up to limits where you can start making some $$$. nice job. keep it up.

I love this format!!

Hey Mickey, glad you enjoyed the video. And I will get that hand chart to you.

The subject matter hits where my game is at also, even though I am playing lower.

No worries about that - we're all a big family. I can't believe I didn't get the Mid Stakes tag for this video. Soooooo tilt-inducing.

Pygmy, consider asking Entity about semi-bluffing the turn, and raising the turn in general. (ok selfish..lol)

I actually think that'd be a really interesting topic. I'd be interested to hear Rob's thoughts on it, but my initial reaction was that semi-bluffing isn't a huge part of LHE (at least not at these stakes where people don't fold). I know it's important in NL, and I worry that we (as LHE players) are all a bit deceived because we've presumably watched more NL on TV than LHE. Since you can only bet a fixed amount it's just very hard to use your bet to leverage an opponent out of the pot.

But of course I'd love to see a hand example where we could discuss the merits of that play more. Do you have a hand or hands in mind?

Hey xrosswind, I'm actually really glad you picked this hand out because, like I said, I think it's interesting. But it would be easy to dismiss as 'just another hand with aces.'

One thing I wanted meant to say in my other post (which was already too long) is that I'm by no means sure if my thought process is good or right. I was just trying to give you an idea of what it was. I know Rob's out of town right now, but maybe he can chime in when he gets back.

And of course as far as the numbers are concerned they weren't churning through my head at the table. The structure of how to think about it (use strategy A, get x bets in with equity P vs. strategy B getting y bets in with equity Q) was going through my head and it just felt like maybe waiting would be more profitable. I only wish I were fast enough to quantify it at the table.

Ultimately I think I could construct different reasonable scenarios where jamming and waiting are each better (altering ranges, betting and calling frequencies, etc.). At the time my read was that donker would usually bet again on the turn. Obviously he didn't, which may mean my read was wrong, or just that this was not one of the 'usually will bet again' times.

Barring that, I agree with Kyle - my default is certainly just to gas the flop here when we're three ways. For me the best thing in this hand was that rather than just mindlessly mashing the raise button I thought about it and tried to make the best decision I could.

pygmy,

glad to see you have moved up to limits where you can start making some $$$. nice job. keep it up.

Thanks!

Hey guys,

I just got back from a few days of hiking (will post pics pretty soon IMO) but wanted to say thanks for the comments so far. As Mike has said, the discussion about the Q65 hand was really mostly based on board texture more than anything else. The nice thing about that board texture is that I think it will get bet quite frequently on the turn, and there are a lot of cards that can give him even reason to call twice on the turn. Raising the flop is definitely my default but by saying default, it's pretty important to note that there are alternatives that will sometimes be more +EV than the default, and this is one of those cases (IMO).

This was a fun video to record and I'm looking forward to part two this Sunday as well.

Rob