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

LMAO @ Intro

Judging by the intro, I am very confident that this is going to be an epic series.

Watching ensues.

is there merit in folding the K Jo hand vs nanonoko PF?

ththis sounds interesting. might be the most innovative series ever? we'll see.

Oh, I was kind of hoping this series would be live coaching (or video review), not select hand histories. Will give it a try anyway.

Oh, I was kind of hoping this series would be live coaching (or video review), not select hand histories. Will give it a try anyway.

It's going to be both

Oh, I was kind of hoping this series would be live coaching (or video review), not select hand histories. Will give it a try anyway.

The Omakase series' are going to reflect each coach's style of coaching, so you will really get to see what a typical one on one session is like, as many people find the idea of private coaching to be sort of mysterious. I'm sure Hielko at the end of the series will have his own ideas about which methods / styles worked best.

nice vid
a lot of intersting spots
and some good discussion

The Omakase series' are going to reflect each coach's style of coaching, so you will really get to see what a typical one on one session is like

Oh, I see, that makes a lot of sense. Awesome!

Is Dogishead gonna do an episode? I really wanna see him and also baluga in this series.

Pretty good selection of hands to talk about. Looking forward to seeing the rest.

Very good start, it'll be interesting to watch a coaching series in which the coachee (Hielko) is an advanced very good player who is solidly beating/crushing his stakes with very little variance so it will be useful for me to make comparisons on the levels of thinking etc.

Nice job!

Ya, just wanted to edit/add that it would be great at some stage to see live play video from Hielko.

i'm gonna own everyone, KRANTZ will be the black miso cod of DC omakase, MMMMMM

Very good start, it'll be interesting to watch a coaching series in which the coachee (Hielko) is an advanced very good player who is solidly beating/crushing his stakes with very little variance so it will be useful for me to make comparisons on the levels of thinking etc.

Nice job!

Ya, just wanted to edit/add that it would be great at some stage to see live play video from Hielko.

We do live play in the vid where I coach him

When we have JJ UTG: What about bet/folding the Ace turn for 50$ ? I can´t see him bluffraising that special card.. Not sure about a brick river, but again, shouldn´t that ace "keep him honest" often enough to make make a c/f on the river the right play ?

I have a comment/question about the KJ squeeze at around 14:00.

I paused the video to figure out what I would do once the action got to Hielko (pretty much knowing he could only be squeezing there, since if he folded it wouldn't be in the video ). When I thought about how much to squeeze it to, the number I first thought about was much bigger than 88, something like 120-140 since I really do not want a player in position thinking that he can just call in such a large pot (which is why I don't like the squeeze to $88, it's only $64 for the CO/BU to call and the pot is quite large). So if I squeezed from the BB, I'd think that would be better than the smaller squeeze to take it down right away. But at that point, the pot is so large, that if one of the callers 4bet, you just about can call it off getting the right price against their range (which is what happened in the video).

So in that case, knowing the pot would be huge and you could very well be calling a 4bet, if you've decided to squeeze for sure, is it an option to just go ahead and jam yourself to maximize FE, not leave room for another player to think they can make a play at you, and be forced into the spot where you need to call?

This hand was really interesting to me because a lot of those things I thought about and didn't like, actually happened. It seems crazy to 3bet jam KJo, but under the circumstances, is that an option *if* you decide squeezing is better than folding? It would seem like making a smaller 3bet would only be for the purpose of not getting committed to calling a raise, but at that point the 3bet would probably be so small as to not be effective. I looks to me like it's either a big 3bet (jam possibly being best, unless you thought a normal sized 3bet would have more FE as it looks more like QQ+ than an overbet) or just a fold here. Thoughts?

raising the flop in the AQs hand

i'm gonna own everyone, KRANTZ will be the black miso cod of DC omakase, MMMMMM

this is gud news and…

raising the flop in the AQs hand

…this!

Very interesting discussion. (Hielko, I think you had some issues with your mic?)

this is gud news and…

…this!

Very interesting discussion. (Hielko, I think you had some issues with your mic?)

Nah, hes from holland

i'm gonna own everyone, KRANTZ will be the black miso cod of DC omakase, MMMMMM

I'm looking forward to it!

When we have JJ UTG: What about bet/folding the Ace turn for 50$ ? I can´t see him bluffraising that special card.. Not sure about a brick river, but again, shouldn´t that ace "keep him honest" often enough to make make a c/f on the river the right play ?

He's probably going to play 'honest' against us when we bet, but if that means he is only going to call us with better hands betting doesn't do us any good. If he isn't going to call with worse, why would we really want to bet?

I looks to me like it's either a big 3bet (jam possibly being best, unless you thought a normal sized 3bet would have more FE as it looks more like QQ+ than an overbet) or just a fold here. Thoughts?

I think that there are two major things here to consider:

1. We don't want to commit our stack preflop against the initial preflop raiser
2. We do want to induce light shoves from the other players when we do have a premium hand in this pot (balance: + we also don't want to shove total trash here, we want to raise/fold air here).

Very interesting discussion. (Hielko, I think you had some issues with your mic?)

Yeah, i watched the vid myself and it looks like skype wasn't working perfectly. But I don't think anything important was lost because of it .

in the jacks hand i immediately thought betting the turn was best but i did also like the check raise line dj sensei proposed. i guess check/call check fold is OK if you're completely comfortable with folding the river (ie you don't think he will ever fire again). But that's basically impossible to know.

The only problem with check raising that turn is you have no idea if he's betting draws on the turn (and how often he has to fold to the check raise for it to be profitable, assuming he rarely bet/folds an ace).

The Q9o hand was interesting to me because i would always isolate there. However looking at preflop equities against a "reasonable" 40% limping range it might actually be much closer to a fold or limp. I think it really depends on how he plays+the blinds. I also think checking behind the flop may be better with that specific hand than cbetting. Against his entire range you're actually only around 45%ish. I guess Axo is never check calling unless it has the Ac, but it seems like since you are flipping if he check calls his entire range, that since he's filtering it somewhat (and it will be difficult for us to double barrel with his stack size, thus we'll have to surrender the betting lead) that checking back may actually be better. If we check back and he's very aggressive we can comfortably call two streets when our draw hits. If he's passive we can just fire if he checks to us twice (no reason not to) and win a small pot. This strategy is obviously inferior if he's check folding hands that look strong but actually arent (like a pair w/o a club) since in that case he's actually folding some of the hands we are flipping against. This same logic could follow for hands that i just said (like a 98o hand where we are not actually that strong vs a check call range), even though it sucks to give a free card to his entire range the turn could be a much more profitable situation.

On the A8o three bet hand. DJ said that he would like to do it more with a suited connector. I have a question here... Let's say the blinds are mega nits and will never three bet. Would you still three bet a SC from the CO/button there or would you call (basically call to still play against the top of his range and not get 4bet).

Also if the original raiser raises the CO/Button three betting A8o there seems better (if he's folding to three bets a fair amount), right?

DJ says he really like the 4bet size in the KK hand. With villain over 125deep I really don't like it. Getting a little over 3-1 pf with another 6.5 behind he's almost getting the right odds to set mine.

I understand that the argument for 4-betting small is that it is usually committing/allows us to 4bet bluff smaller, but as stacks get deeper I think we have to enlarge our sizing in order to make up for our positional disadvantage.

With the sizing that we took good players will flat with a lot of stuff against a lot of our range and we are going to be playing huge inflated pots semi-deep OOP. Not really my favorite spot to be in. I think RRing to 150 or so seems better considering we are 135bb deep. That extra 7bb is enough to significantly cut down on villains implied odds, may get us more folds when we are bluffing, and sets us up for a nice 2/3 pot or so bet to get it in on two streets which could allow us to value town TT-QQ if villain flats them pre.

thoughts from the masters?

I wonder what u guys think about a c/r on the river in the last hand. I mean once we are on the river his most likely holdings are a pair of kings and bluffs.So in order to maximize our value against bluffs,which he will bet a good % of the time i think,we could do this by c/r.Furthermore i think he could fold a king looking for some thin value,and from time to time some weak aces he didnt want to bet the turn with.Thoughts ?

I have some questions about the JJ hand. I think u guys didnt cover the topic that the Ace would also be a good scare card for u to bluff if you raised preflop with a hand like KQ or KJ.

My standard line in this spot would be to bet, as my betting frequency in this spot is really high. Thus many villains are willing to call down light and I do get 1 extra bet from those mid pairs. I mean if we check he is checking those midpairs behind on the turn and river so we wont gain that extra bet.

So I am convinced, that betting the turn is superior to check/calling as it sets us up getting bluffed on the river. I havent made up m mind yet if betting is worse than c/r but I think that really comes down to what opponent ur playing against...

Thoughts?

On the A8o three bet hand. DJ said that he would like to do it more with a suited connector. I have a question here... Let's say the blinds are mega nits and will never three bet. Would you still three bet a SC from the CO/button there or would you call (basically call to still play against the top of his range and not get 4bet).

Also if the original raiser raises the CO/Button three betting A8o there seems better (if he's folding to three bets a fair amount), right?

3betting in position and out of position are very different things! I don't really like doing it with A8o anywhere, but I'd much rather do it in position if I had that hand.

FWIW I generally prefer to flat SC's in position unless the blinds are very squeeze-happy.

I wonder what u guys think about a c/r on the river in the last hand. I mean once we are on the river his most likely holdings are a pair of kings and bluffs.So in order to maximize our value against bluffs,which he will bet a good % of the time i think,we could do this by c/r.Furthermore i think he could fold a king looking for some thin value,and from time to time some weak aces he didnt want to bet the turn with.Thoughts ?

I typically don't like checkraising the river with air in a spot like this, because I don't want to show my hand down and I have so little showdown equity in case he checks back. Also if we had a big hand there I don't know if we're checkraising very often, simply because his range is so weak and we're unlikely to get paid off any more than by betting out. If he didn't bet the turn with a bluff, I kinda doubt he'd bet the river either, generally.

DJ says he really like the 4bet size in the KK hand. With villain over 125deep I really don't like it. Getting a little over 3-1 pf with another 6.5 behind he's almost getting the right odds to set mine.

Yeah, I also think that the size was just a little bit too small given stacksizes and if I remember correctly Dan says at some point that 140 would probably be better than 120.

is there merit in folding the K Jo hand vs nanonoko PF?

Nanoko range there is: 88+, KQ+, AJo+

just recently got omakase at nobu, that was the nuts.

highly recommended.

loved the content, really nice hand selection, nice job !

JJ hand - I would think all but the more maniacal players are betting the turn with anything but trips or set as opposed to checking behind w/draws or lower pairs - with hero leading into a 3-way, the ace hitting hero's range hard, that it'd be very reasonable for hero to check Ax for pot control, etc. I'd consider c/f vs a standard tagish, auto-piloting multitabler if he bet the turn - good or nitty?

I think in this exact spot with the A8 hand, 3betting A8 is much better than 3betting a sc here,, I agree w/ Hielko's reasoning that given the utg vs bb dynamic making the 3bet look super strong in combination w/ cardremoval this play will probably show a profit initself.. Especially, if we have stats on the villian that show a high fold to 3bet%, a high 4bet%,, and high utg vpip/prf positional stats..

I agree w/ DJ that if called we are in a crappy spot post flop, but think if we are aware of this before we make the move we can focus on minimizing any large postflop mistakes.. I also agree w/ Heilko's and DJ's analysis that a typical calling range of this 3bet will be heavily weighted towards 88-QQ, and I think we can profitably cbet K high flops.. Ace high flops are a bit more tricky but think between mixing it up between cbetting and taking down the dead money/ checking to potcontrol and pick off some bluff on later streets we should also be able to make money postflop on A and K high boards. Especially given that villian's range of aces here is basically limited to AQ and AJ..

By slowplaying AA and especially KK he risks not coolering JJ, QQ,KK, AK preflop and having shitty boards come off killing action on potiental coolers.. And since our percieved range in this spot should be wieghted w/ potietal cooler hands I don't really think he slowplays here that often.. Conversly, I think alot of decent players flat w/ QQ here in order to keep our range wide/reduce the frequency that they get coolered.

I also disagre w/ DJ about cardremoval not being very significant here.. The worst thing that can happen to us in this spot is to get 4bet.. I think the hands he's mostly 4bettting are AK, AA and KK, and having that lone ace in our hand reduces the combos of these hands from 40 to 33.

I didn't really understand DJ's thought process on the JJ hand. If he thinks c/shoving is ok then i would just c/c turn c/c river. I didn't like the c/c c/f line without knowing villain will never fire
another barrel after we call turn and there really isn't any advantage to shipping except to protect our hand. We're now just shutting out all his bluffs but losing the same amount as if we c/c two streets. Plus he may check behind on the river with an ace or better for some reason some percentage of the time which saves us a bunch of money.

I also didn't understand the iso raise discussion with Q9o. This is a very profitable iso. Just use HEM and filter for spots in which you iso a weak limper with the bottom 50-60% of hands and you should be showing a pretty nice profit.

I didn't really understand DJ's thought process on the JJ hand. If he thinks c/shoving is ok then i would just c/c turn c/c river. I didn't like the c/c c/f line without knowing villain will never fire
another barrel after we call turn and there really isn't any advantage to shipping except to protect our hand. We're now just shutting out all his bluffs but losing the same amount as if we c/c two streets. Plus he may check behind on the river with an ace or better for some reason some percentage of the time which saves us a bunch of money.

If villain is bluffing here it's almost always with a flushdraw, and if he has a fluishdraw the worst thing that can happen for him is that we c/r the turn.

If villain is bluffing here it's almost always with a flushdraw, and if he has a fluishdraw the worst thing that can happen for him is that we c/r the turn.

This isn't necessarily true since it depends on what villain does with his range on the river. Considering just the times villain has a flush draw he only needs to bluff a brick river about 20% of the time to make c/c c/c better. This isn't even considering other hands he can be turning into a bluff or the times we save money by him checking behind on the river with a better hand.

Actually it will be more like 40% overall but then probably only like 30% with the flush draw portion of his range. And then again factoring in potential money saved I still think c/c is better than shoving the turn.

Great to hear Hielkos voice! Awsome episode, good hands. good good!

Actually it will be more like 40% overall but then probably only like 30% with the flush draw portion of his range. And then again factoring in potential money saved I still think c/c is better than shoving the turn.

+1

Nice.

But why are we looking at one HERO + 5 unknown players without any HUD stats?

It's not too fruitful to analyze hands that go "average player does X, average player 2 does Y, what do we do?". Sometimes we get reads that are at level "he is reg and pretty aggressive" but that's about it. Please, HUD stats, otherwise we are crippled as we have like 10% of the information hero has we he is actually playing the hand.

Nice.

But why are we looking at one HERO + 5 unknown players without any HUD stats?

It's not too fruitful to analyze hands that go "average player does X, average player 2 does Y, what do we do?". Sometimes we get reads that are at level "he is reg and pretty aggressive" but that's about it. Please, HUD stats, otherwise we are crippled as we have like 10% of the information hero has we he is actually playing the hand.

I beg to differ. If you attempt to structure your entire game and set of strategies around a very specific and detailed interpretation of HUD stats, your growth as a player will be severely stunted and you probably won't rise through the stakes very successfully. It is much more important to develop a generally solid overall gameplan which is able to adapt and adjust based on reads. Especially in no-limit games!

In this video I think we did a pretty good job of describing the villains tendencies when necessary. Just because there isn't a series of numbers attached to each name doesn't mean you lack the information you need to make a good decision.

Yea I am going to go with DJ on this one too. I am not saying that a HUD is completely useless but they do cripple you if your getting 90% of your information from them.

Sure they are great for finding nits and if high variance is your bag you can probably find a hero call to make with one here and there. But your own image, actions, position and his responses to the information we are giving him is usually worth much more than a few percent.

Is it just me that thinks the over use of HUD stats forces players to think on level 2 and they struggle to get past it because they constantly use one?

Everyone on level 2 thinks everyone else thinks on level 1, I don't know anyone that thinks on level 1 all the time. But a ton of players are stuck on level 2, and it must be due to stats.

the ipod download appears too big to fit on my classic. like the sides are cutoff.

i'm gonna own everyone, KRANTZ will be the black miso cod of DC omakase, MMMMMM

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm lets all go to Nobu

Sensei, in the hand where you are advocating check shoving JJ on the 644A board, what are you doing with Ax hands?

Sensei, in the hand where you are advocating check shoving JJ on the 644A board, what are you doing with Ax hands?

Probably the same line, since Ax ~ JJ here. But I wouldn't get to this spot with Ax ever unless I had a heart draw too.

I beg to differ. If you attempt to structure your entire game and set of strategies around a very specific and detailed interpretation of HUD stats, your growth as a player will be severely stunted and you probably won't rise through the stakes very successfully. It is much more important to develop a generally solid overall gameplan which is able to adapt and adjust based on reads. Especially in no-limit games!

In this video I think we did a pretty good job of describing the villains tendencies when necessary. Just because there isn't a series of numbers attached to each name doesn't mean you lack the information you need to make a good decision.

A bit late reply from me, but still.

Yeah, that was basically just my point. I disagree in the "you did a pretty good job describing villains tendencies" - the reads I heard were not all that great. Sparse "this player once again is quite aggressive TAG" and that's about it. If I'm thinking about a hand I want to know what he does preflop vs how he plays post flop, does he spring into life on every turn etc.

I think it is quite hard to convey the full reads you have just by talking, as you will generally just mention those few things that you feel supported your decisions and omit the rest, which means the listeners cannot think about the hands the way they would if they were playing, and are guided to mindlessly go "yeah, that sounds reasonable" instead of thinking about how they would actually have played the hands. I am quite sceptical about anyone being able to communicate all reads just by talking in the time thats available during a video.

So I am not advocating HUD botting but if I have the choice of seeing HUD stats or having no / very limited reads I prefer HUD.

Is it just me that thinks the over use of HUD stats forces players to think on level 2 and they struggle to get past it because they constantly use one?

Everyone on level 2 thinks everyone else thinks on level 1, I don't know anyone that thinks on level 1 all the time. But a ton of players are stuck on level 2, and it must be due to stats.

Why would someone using HUD be correlated to him "being on level 2"? HUD just brings you more information and when you have more information you can use it and think on a deeper level. There's nothing in my HUD that makes me go "everyone else is on level 1".

Loved this episode, looking forward to seeing some of my favorite poker coaches.

Anyways, one point I have to agree with Hielko that we should raise Q9o OTB vs a fish limping in CO. Even though he won't always call with worse Qx hands, he can easily show up with worse 9x hands.

Loved this episode, looking forward to seeing some of my favorite poker coaches.

Anyways, one point I have to agree with Hielko that we should raise Q9o OTB vs a fish limping in CO. Even though he won't always call with worse Qx hands, he can easily show up with worse 9x hands.

My problem with this logic is that the situation you describe:
1) our opponent has X9 and calls with it, and
2) the flop has one of the remaining 9's, and
3) we get significantly paid

is combinatorically so rare that it cannot make up for the negative aspects of raising with Q9o. In fact I would say that we're more likely, if not much more likely, to lose more money when he has a better Q than us than we are to win when he has a worse 9 than him.

My problem with this logic is that the situation you describe:
1) our opponent has X9 and calls with it, and
2) the flop has one of the remaining 9's, and
3) we get significantly paid

is combinatorically so rare that it cannot make up for the negative aspects of raising with Q9o. In fact I would say that we're more likely, if not much more likely, to lose more money when he has a better Q than us than we are to win when he has a worse 9 than him.

IMO him limping with a better Q, and hitting, is combinatorically also very rare. On average the only better Q's he's going to have here are QT and QJ.

I think when we raise here the average fish is going to fold a decent amount preflop or on the flop when we cbet, because fish usually play fit or fold (gutshot is a fit though...). We can recognize good cbetting boards, and I think we can certainly get one or two streets of value when we flop top pair or 2nd pair because the fish is going to peel way looser then that. I'm really not that worried about domination, and because we are usually just going for 1 or 2 streets of value when we hit it's also not that costly when it happends.

Hi,

1 year old video, hope it`s ok to bump it!

First of all, thx a lot for a great video! The main reason I searched for this thread was to see if there was any interesting discussion related to the JJ hand and it sure was. Typical spot where I get lost and feel like I lose whatever I do

Also, I want to ask u a few question regarding your strategy vs the laggy "needfood". U basically 3-bet him a lot in this video and he folded most of the times. In one hand vs another player that you guys didn`t comment he went bananas w 10s5s when he hit top pair. So, what about actually calling against him sometimes instead of just 3-betting, to keep him in with marginal holdings? Don`t you think your post flop abilities/advantage vs him out weighs the fact that he has the betting initiative pre flop? He didn`t seem like the pot control type player, so by keeping him in with hands that you dominate you could actually still manage to get stacks in w strong one pair hands even if the pot was not 3-bet preflop.

Can't remember the hands your talking about, but if someone folds a lot vs 3bets it's almost always better to just 3bet a lot (especially oop) than play pots. If he's a bit decent postflop we should figure that seeing a flop should give him some +EV spots; he can bluff, semibluff and valuebet. If he folds preflop he will have zero EV.