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

First!
Can wait to see it

1st Hand - KJs 5bet shove vs AJ

You mentioned that from the BU's situation vs a possible light 3bet, you'd rather be 4betting hands like medium PP's since they don't play well post flop and you probably have the best hand right now.

1) Is it fine to generally be 4betting these just a little more than 2x the pot and folding to a shove or do we want to try to get more fold equity by 4betting more?

2) If we 4bet on the smaller end, say we have less than 33% of our stack in, are we folding most of the time? Let's assume the range is something like JJ+, AK (or some standard 5bet shoving range). Is there a rule of thumb, until we learn to estimate it quickly at the table, for what our commitment threshold is with the PPs vs a very standard 5bet range?

3) You 4bet from the BU, with say 88, 2.5x pot and the BB (who 3bet) just flats! Flop is xxx. Villain checks. The pot is obv. very large and we started with 100BB effective stacks. We only have a little more than a PSB left. Can you talk a little bit about how to correctly play some common situations post-flop (A,K high flops, low flops, etc)?

HONK, HONK....HONK, HONK. Get on the WoT Schoolbus!!!

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Do we really have to ship it in with K10hh on the flop with the open ender? I think the combination of the board texture and his bet size just screams out that he has a big hand that he's not in the mood to slowplay. I really don't think we have any fold equity on the flop because not only has he committed a large portion of his stack already, his bet sizing (as WoT pointed out) indicates he probably isn't messing around. I think the times he shows up with AK/AQ here is extremely rare, and every other hand he is gonna call anyway so can't we just cut our losses and fold the flop?

Do we really have to ship it in with K10hh on the flop with the open ender? I think the combination of the board texture and his bet size just screams out that he has a big hand that he's not in the mood to slowplay. I really don't think we have any fold equity on the flop because not only has he committed a large portion of his stack already, his bet sizing (as WoT pointed out) indicates he probably isn't messing around. I think the times he shows up with AK/AQ here is extremely rare, and every other hand he is gonna call anyway so can't we just cut our losses and fold the flop?

too good odds to fold the flop

WiltOnTilt: I think you are wrong when you say that you rather have a hand like QJs then KJs when you 5bet bluff. Hands with an ace or a king are the best hands to 5bet bluff, because of card removal effects. If his calling range would be something* like TT+ and AK, AQs, having a K or an A reduces his combo's of 5bet calling hands with +/- 10% and that is a huge number when you make a play that is often close to breakeven. Having a A or K is usually also great because of you will never be in super bad shape against his range.

* if his range is so wide that card removal effects have no significant effect on his calling range, his calling range is so wide that 5bet bluffing is a bad move to begin with (like the hand in the vid).

WoT: You mention that players are "wussies" when they're deepstacked in big pots (which I agree with)...does that mean our bluffing frequency should increase in spots where we think we can get them off a hand?

too good odds to fold the flop

What pr0wler said was basically what came in my mind. Do you actually think shoving it in here is a +ev move? I hardly doubt you got any fe against a decent player cbetting pot size in a 3bet pot.

Not that it matters much for the discussion, for those interested in the results:

*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $207.50 | Rake $3
Board: [8h 9s Jc As 9d]
Seat 1: BeaucoupFish didn't bet (folded)
Seat 2: pokermike54 didn't bet (folded)
Seat 3: W1gan didn't bet (folded)
Seat 4: WhiteHeatSYD (button) showed [Th Kh] and lost with a pair of Nines
Seat 5: guiltyspark686 (small blind) folded before the Flop
Seat 6: DroneMan84 (big blind) showed [Qh Qs] and won ($204.50) with two pair, Queens and Nines

I was disappointed Alex missed this chat (from another hand in the same session):

W1gan: QQ?
BeaucoupFish: ask wiltontilt
W1gan: who??
BeaucoupFish: lol nm

Does WoT usually coach these stakes or is he just coaching lower for this series? He seems really good but he is charging $300/hr. Probably worth it for people playing higher but how can someone pay 300bb/hr for a coach?

@hand Nr. 2 (66 Str8):

Why the Pot finaly went to Villain? WAs it some kin of graphic bug (we had the higher str8)??

Does WoT usually coach these stakes or is he just coaching lower for this series? He seems really good but he is charging $300/hr. Probably worth it for people playing higher but how can someone pay 300bb/hr for a coach?

The majority of WoT students are 200nl +. As for paying 300bb/hr, I am a very lucky boy (wink wink).

@hand Nr. 2 (66 Str8):

Why the Pot finaly went to Villain? WAs it some kin of graphic bug (we had the higher str8)??

The money definately came to me in real life.

1st Hand - KJs 5bet shove vs AJ

You mentioned that from the BU's situation vs a possible light 3bet, you'd rather be 4betting hands like medium PP's since they don't play well post flop and you probably have the best hand right now.


1) Is it fine to generally be 4betting these just a little more than 2x the pot and folding to a shove or do we want to try to get more fold equity by 4betting more?

Give him a range and bust out your poker stove!

Let's say we open to 3.5 with 55 from the CO, he 3bets us to 12 from the button, we make it 30 and he ships in 100. the pot would be 1.5 (blinds) + 30 + 100 = 131.5 and it costs us 70 more. So we're getting 131.5:70 or about 1.9:1, which means we need about 34% equity.

we have 55, let's give him some 5bet shoving ranges and see how our hand fairs. Remember in order for the hand to be in his 5bet shoving range, it has to be in his original 3betting range.

Here's a very basic range:

Text results appended to pokerstove.txt

410,952,960 games 0.024 secs 17,123,040,000 games/sec

Board:
Dead:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 33.217% 33.00% 00.22% 135617040 887916.00 { 55 }
Hand 1: 66.783% 66.57% 00.22% 273560088 887916.00 { JJ+, AKs, AKo }

vs JJ+ and AK we have 33% equity, so we're breaking even basically assuming he NEVER folds to our 4bet to begin with (i think we can all agree that people will be folding a non-zero % of the time when we 4bet CO vs button).

So what happens if he's willing to 4bet/felt a wider range? Which hands he's felting makes a big difference for what types of hands we want to 4bet. if something like 77 is in his oriignal 3bet range AND he's willing to stick it in over a 4bet then we can clearly see 4betting 55 isn't so hot:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 27.879% 27.58% 00.30% 181324908 1984836.00 { 55 }
Hand 1: 72.121% 71.82% 00.30% 472230156 1984836.00 { 77+, AKs, AKo }

What if we add in AQ and maybe a random A2s that he bluffs with occasionally:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 34.627% 34.34% 00.29% 296369556 2464716.00 { 55 }
Hand 1: 65.373% 65.09% 00.29% 561702228 2464716.00 { 77+, AQs+, A2s, AQo+ }


The key is playing around with the ranges...You have to figure out what their range is to figure out what ou can profitably get away with. Based on what I've seen so far I don't see a whole lot of people 5bet shoving much worse than JJ or AK at these stakes.

The original question was should we 4bet bigger to try to maximize fold equity or smaller so we can fold? Well it all hinges on his 5bet shoving range... if we think the smaller 4bet is going to induce more 5bet bluffs then depending on our hand it might make sense to 4bet small and call it off (say we have 99 instead of 55, there are more hands we dominate) whereas if we have 22 we'd prefer him to fold anything he has so a bigger 4bet might make sense.

Is that exploitable? yes. It's up to you to figure out how he is going to react to different 4bet sizes with different hands.

2) If we 4bet on the smaller end, say we have less than 33% of our stack in, are we folding most of the time? Let's assume the range is something like JJ+, AK (or some standard 5bet shoving range). Is there a rule of thumb, until we learn to estimate it quickly at the table, for what our commitment threshold is with the PPs vs a very standard 5bet range?

See the ranges above... in general if you 4bet small enough such that you're getting worse than 2:1 you're going to be able to 4bet and fold (edit: DEPENDING ON YOUR HAND). Keep in mind that in general i'm not huge on 4betting light. Some out there think it's -EV and against some players it is (they either aren't 3betting light enough or they are willing to 5bet bluff a range that you will make a mistake by folding against). I prefer, especially in position, calling to play flops against light 3bettors instead of 4betting, but in theory if you want to have a 4bet value range you need to have a 4bet bluff range too.

3) You 4bet from the BU, with say 88, 2.5x pot and the BB (who 3bet) just flats! Flop is xxx. Villain checks. The pot is obv. very large and we started with 100BB effective stacks. We only have a little more than a PSB left. Can you talk a little bit about how to correctly play some common situations post-flop (A,K high flops, low flops, etc)?

major consideration would be what does he do with AQ and JJ type of hands? When this situation arises, the best board for you is a K high board because people almost never flat a 4bet oop with AK (they stick it in pf), and more people realize that KQ is a pretty dominated hand, so most of the time they don't flat a 4bet oop with it (there are cases where this isn't true... ie pot odds are too good), so ideally we get Kxx and I would be cbetting smallish (30-40% pot or so, with both bluffs and for value). We can make a bet size there that threatens their stack and allows us to get away w/o being stacked (when we have air/underpairs). Same is mostly true for A high boards, however, people tend to flat AQ to 4bets more than most other hands I've seen. On 9xx or lower boards I'm a little more concerned because some contingent of players don't like getting it in with TT-QQ pf, and they call to wait for a non-AK board. It's not a bad strategy really, it just depends on what sort of range the original 4bettor has preflop (say the 4betting range is AK, TT+ and we have QQ, if we're going to stack off on a low board anyway it will be easy for us to get away on an A or K high board etc).

Situations arise in HUNL where people flat such a wide range oop to a 4bet that I wil 4bet a wide range just with the intention of cbetting 1/3 pot on any flop and it works... again think about how your bet sizes will affect their decisions for the rest of their stack... think about what type of range we're trying to get them off of (can we get them off made hands or just air? if it's just air, how big do we need to bet? if we can get them off made hands, does that change the need for our bet size? how many combos of air/made hands do we expect them to have? etc etc omg mathematics of nl hold'em episodes 4-8 )

HONK, HONK....HONK, HONK. Get on the WoT Schoolbus!!!

ALLLLLLLLLL ABBBBOOOOOOOARD!

WoT

Does WoT usually coach these stakes or is he just coaching lower for this series? He seems really good but he is charging $300/hr. Probably worth it for people playing higher but how can someone pay 300bb/hr for a coach?

Most of my students are at 400nl+. I mostly play mid and high stakes, which is why you'll often hear me in these videos saying "here's what we do at these stakes, but as we move up to the mid stakes the considerations change etc etc"

You can probably get more bang for your buck for small stakes coaching by hiring someone like jk3a, n0whereman, tubasteve or some others.

WoT: You mention that players are "wussies" when they're deepstacked in big pots (which I agree with)...does that mean our bluffing frequency should increase in spots where we think we can get them off a hand?

yes definitely. especially take into consideration how a raise size now will make our stacks look later. We want to be thinking about how to maximize either one of two things: credible bet sizing for maximum pressure (ie is he the type to get scared of big bets?) or credible bet sizing for maximum number of decision points (does he view 2 big bets as stronger than 3 medium size bets?) etc.

that's why deep stacked poker is so much fun... the decisions on the flop have greater impact because of potential river spots where the money is biggggg

WiltOnTilt: I think you are wrong when you say that you rather have a hand like QJs then KJs when you 5bet bluff. Hands with an ace or a king are the best hands to 5bet bluff, because of card removal effects. If his calling range would be something* like TT+ and AK, AQs, having a K or an A reduces his combo's of 5bet calling hands with +/- 10% and that is a huge number when you make a play that is often close to breakeven. Having a A or K is usually also great because of you will never be in super bad shape against his range.

* if his range is so wide that card removal effects have no significant effect on his calling range, his calling range is so wide that 5bet bluffing is a bad move to begin with (like the hand in the vid).

Card removal effects is something I should have talked about. You are correct though, I probably over emphasized (sp?) not wanting to have Kx in our hand. It's such a thin spot to begin with that unless there is game flow reads I don't really like 5bet jamming with anything very much. It's too difficult to analyze the situation in a vaccuum because the profitability of 5bet jamming hinges so greatly on how much he's 4bet bluffing and that type of thing is very tough to take into account while poker stoving.

@hand Nr. 2 (66 Str8):

Why the Pot finaly went to Villain? WAs it some kin of graphic bug (we had the higher str8)??

bug in the replayer, i don't know why it does that sometimes it ships the money to the loser first and if you click the arrow again it ships the money to the real winner. lol... riggeddddd!

Do we really have to ship it in with K10hh on the flop with the open ender? I think the combination of the board texture and his bet size just screams out that he has a big hand that he's not in the mood to slowplay. I really don't think we have any fold equity on the flop because not only has he committed a large portion of his stack already, his bet sizing (as WoT pointed out) indicates he probably isn't messing around. I think the times he shows up with AK/AQ here is extremely rare, and every other hand he is gonna call anyway so can't we just cut our losses and fold the flop?

We're not thrilled about it... but let's do some math. I can pretty much guarantee that if we truly have 0% fold equity then it's a bad shove. I don't think we really have 0% but it's not very high. Let's try some math as opposed to talking in the abstract.

Fold Equity Calc:

EV = [EV(he folds)] * x + [EV(he calls)] * (1-x)

where x is the % he folds.

solve for EV=0, where we break even:

First, find the EV(he folds)

pot was 28.5 + 27 = 55.5

EV(he folds) = 55.5

Now when we calls... what hands are he bet/calling here that he 3bet preflop? Let's give him a range...we said in the video he had a wide 3betting range. I personally don't think he cbets all his air here, but he probably does cbet some of his air here. I'm unsure if he 3bets 88 and 99 from the blinds, so let's say he 3bets 99 but not 88. If you disagree that's fine, come up with your own range and do your own math I'm certainly open to disagreements on the range.

Board: Jc 9s 8h

Dead:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 66.107% 60.36% 05.75% 21511 2049.50 { 99+, KTs, QTs, JTs, T9s, 98s }
Hand 1: 33.893% 28.14% 05.75% 10030 2049.50 { KhTh }

Again, those are just the hands he's bet/calling. Did I miss anything? If so it's up to you to post the new range and new math :-)

We have 34% equity when he calls.

effective stacks were 103.5, and 50c in the big blind, so total pot when we ship the turn is 207.5

We shipped in 89.5 on the turn

EV(he calls) = [total pot] * our equity - our shove

EV(he calls) = 207.5 * 34% - 89.5
EV(he calls) = 70.55 - 89.5 = -18.95

So when he does call us we lose on average -18.95

So how much fold equity do we need? Replug above and solve for x where EV=0 (break even point)

EV = [EV(he folds)] * x + [EV(he calls)] * (1-x)

EV = 55.5x + -18.95(1-x)

0 = 55.5x + 18.95x - 18.95

18.95 = 74.45x

18.95 / 74.45 = x

x = 25%


So that means he needs to bet/fold more than 1 time in 4 to make our shove +EV. Is the range accurate? Does he 3bet say 99 and QTs with the same frequency as AA ? Probably not... but at least this give us some idea... the less often he has some of these hands where we get the money in pretty bad the less often the shove has to work. At least it gives us a starting point to figure out how often he's betting air on this flop and subsequently folding.

The shove is definitely thin, but i'm not all together convinced that he can't cbet air here 1/4th of the time, especially a hand like AQ or KQ that has a gutshot that he ends up bet/folding...but even if he does cbet air here 27% or he doesn't 3bet QTs or 99 very often, it's still a thin and high variance play. I suspect if he had QT on J 9 2r our play would look a lot better on paper.

You can probably get more bang for your buck for small stakes coaching by hiring someone like jk3a, n0whereman, tubasteve or some others.

After have talked poker with all of the above. All are awesome, so you can't go wrong with any of them....

Been trying to look for hands as described in the "homework" but it's a pretty rare situation I think. The only case I can really think of is something where you're value betting pretty thin on the turn, you get called, and would normally be content to check down the river, but a scare card comes that you think did not hit your opponent, and you turn your hand into a bluff on the river. Seems a pretty risky play overall. I'm looking forward to hearing more from WoT on this topic in the next video.

This hand is the closest I could find:

Poker Stars $0.25/$0.50 No Limit Hold'em - 6 players
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

Hero (MP): $50.00
CO: $100.85
BTN: $47.00
SB: $46.45
BB: $50.45
UTG: $132.90

Pre Flop: ($0.75) Hero is MP with K J
UTG calls $0.50, Hero raises to $2.50, 4 folds, UTG calls $2

Flop: ($5.75) K 7 3 (2 players)
UTG checks, Hero bets $4.50, UTG calls $4.50

Turn: ($14.75) 6 (2 players)
UTG checks, Hero bets $12, UTG calls $12

River: ($38.75) 5 (2 players)
UTG checks, ...


In this hand I've made pretty big bets on the flop and turn, sizing them appropriately so that if I want to shove the river it's a very reasonable $31 bet into a $38.75 pot. But I have top pair and a decent kicker, but it's quite possible that he's called me down with KQ, and at this point I'm pretty content to check behind. However, the river card is scary because it completed the flush draw and made a straight draw, and it's unlikely that most villains would check the river if they completed a draw, although it's possible. So I could turn my hand into a bluff and shove this river, hoping to get him to fold KQ or a two-pair hand like 76.

It might be a better example if I had KT, then there would be another Kx hand that's ahead of me which would probably fold to a shove. In the actual hand, villain was very loose/passive (81% vpip) and I chose to check behind instead of turning my hand into a bluff (should have shoved for value, he had K8 and probably would've called). But if this hand was against a good but cautious opponent, it might make sense to bluff the river as he could put us on having barreled with the flush draw. If we were deeper, it might also be more credible, we'd likely have more fold equity.

So, anyway, not a perfect example but it's the best I could come up with.. hopefully that's kinda what you had in mind. Looking forward to the next video.

Been trying to look for hands as described in the "homework" but it's a pretty rare situation I think. The only case I can really think of is something where you're value betting pretty thin on the turn, you get called, and would normally be content to check down the river, but a scare card comes that you think did not hit your opponent, and you turn your hand into a bluff on the river. Seems a pretty risky play overall. I'm looking forward to hearing more from WoT on this topic in the next video.

This hand is the closest I could find:

Poker Stars $0.25/$0.50 No Limit Hold'em - 6 players
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

Hero (MP): $50.00
CO: $100.85
BTN: $47.00
SB: $46.45
BB: $50.45
UTG: $132.90

Pre Flop: ($0.75) Hero is MP with K J
UTG calls $0.50, Hero raises to $2.50, 4 folds, UTG calls $2

Flop: ($5.75) K 7 3 (2 players)
UTG checks, Hero bets $4.50, UTG calls $4.50

Turn: ($14.75) 6 (2 players)
UTG checks, Hero bets $12, UTG calls $12

River: ($38.75) 5 (2 players)
UTG checks, ...


In this hand I've made pretty big bets on the flop and turn, sizing them appropriately so that if I want to shove the river it's a very reasonable $31 bet into a $38.75 pot. But I have top pair and a decent kicker, but it's quite possible that he's called me down with KQ, and at this point I'm pretty content to check behind. However, the river card is scary because it completed the flush draw and made a straight draw, and it's unlikely that most villains would check the river if they completed a draw, although it's possible. So I could turn my hand into a bluff and shove this river, hoping to get him to fold KQ or a two-pair hand like 76.

It might be a better example if I had KT, then there would be another Kx hand that's ahead of me which would probably fold to a shove. In the actual hand, villain was very loose/passive (81% vpip) and I chose to check behind instead of turning my hand into a bluff (should have shoved for value, he had K8 and probably would've called). But if this hand was against a good but cautious opponent, it might make sense to bluff the river as he could put us on having barreled with the flush draw. If we were deeper, it might also be more credible, we'd likely have more fold equity.

So, anyway, not a perfect example but it's the best I could come up with.. hopefully that's kinda what you had in mind. Looking forward to the next video.

i feel like nobody on 50nl is ever folding 2 pair or KQ here, especially the way the hand played out. i can't see any worse hand calling, so i'm more than happy to check behind. correct me though if i'm seeing this wrong.

and sorry for my bad english, i guess im representing the euro-crwod