Poker Video: MTT/SNG by vandweller (Micro/Small Stakes)

I've been really excited with this series and I think Vandweller does an excellent job. I'm so glad this one came out before my subscription ran out.

first

Sorry about the length on this one guys, but I didn't want to end it arbitrarily at 60 or 90 minutes (since even if I did, John and I would have kept talking anyway, so why not get it all recorded.) Just think of it as a two-parter put out all on the same day. I think maybe the lack of a powerpoint is to blame. :-)

Also I realize that a lot of the hands may seem pretty basic to some of you, but as I indicated in Episode One, my priority is on helping Velo, while crossing my fingers that it ends up being interesting viewing to the lot of you.

Anyhow, with that out of the way, get a 6-pack of Red Bull, hit "Play" and enjoy.

If this one is half as good as the first, it will be epic.

If this one is half as good as the first, it will be epic.

It's certainly longer than several epic films. It's probably 40% as good, though it's probably better than Waterworld.

I have to say that before I got involved with DC, I just released videos on my site, on my own schedule, and if people bought them, whatever, it didn't matter all that much; but here on DC, I actually get kind of antsy on video release day. Weird feeling.

Please, no need to be sorry for how long it is. It's really useful infomation from the perspective of someone like me who has very little sng knowledge or skill at all.

It's series like this that cover the absolute fundimentals and take it from there which are completely solid and the most helpful. I really like the way you're taking your time over concepts and adding the building blocks, it works

As for powerpoint, don't worry about i was taking notes

thank you very very much

I will be playing more SNG's due to this series

It's probably 40% as good, though it's probably better than Waterworld.

So this video's range is somewhere between Waterworld and Field of Dreams, resting around Dances with Wolves?

If so, I'll take it. Just no Postman vids.

NO POWERPOINT?! ...for shame!

Good video guys, solid coaching of a beginner for sure.

Good luck Velo, this is pure gold being shoveled your way, I hope you took some notes! It would be cool to hear from you in the tournament forum. Maybe a thread of your progress or questions. Hand Histories or questions are always welcome.

I swear to God this is classic. I'm sorry John but your thought process is completely backwards

first

Fail!

Nice video. Thanks.

Sorry about the length on this one guys, but I didn't want to end it arbitrarily at 60 or 90 minutes

yeah what the f*** is that all about i came on here expecting an hour long video and here i get double the value wtffff godamn DC has gone down hill recently, gonna cancel my subscription and go to The SNG Academy

on no wai-

Watched it all, pretty basic stuff still of course due to the nature of the video.

I liked that you started asking velo what he thought about his play and what he was trying to achieve when making a move. I'd like to see more interaction by him in the future when he applies the concepts presented in this session.

Is there a way to get ahold of your earlier videos? I looked on your website and it says that it is being redesigned.

Thank you both for this series. I will be taking van's guidelines for velo and apply them to my play for the next 2 weeks as well.

Usually not watching STT vids, but just picked that one up before going to sleep.
And surprise surprise a very well done presentation of a look into fish mind and thoughtprocess.

Even pretty valuable for cashgame imo, to better understand why they do click buttons.
A+

I`ve already played something like 6k SNGs and consider myself a somewhat solid player. But even given the fact that this was some kind of really basic stuff i totally enjoyed watching the full 2 hours and wouldnt mind if it were 3 hours also. I also feel hearing all that basic stuff again will have a positive effect on my game. Especially the things you said about speculative Hands were pretty usefull to me. I think i got a little to fancy with that lately. Hearing again that sometimes it just isnt worth it was exactly what i needed to hear. I am sure this will help me conserve a couple of chips in spots where i used to talk me into calling.
So please dont worry about the size of your videos, its worth every minute.

"This series is gonna get legend... - wait for it - ...ary"
as Barney Stinson would say

I swear to God this is classic. I'm sorry John but your thought process is completely backwards

I want to know what books lead him to this strategy!

Thank you both for this series. I will be taking van's guidelines for velo and apply them to my play for the next 2 weeks as well.

I think that's fine, but I want you to keep in mind that my guidelines for velo are deliberately exaggerated and extreme for instructional purposes. Once we eliminate all the complications from his game and he gets a better feel for what to be thinking about, we can and will add in a few extra-curriculars as appropriate.

Someone with more SNG experience wouldn't really play as rigidly as my guidelines suggest, because even though it is a winning (or at least non-losing) style, it isn't a maximally winning style. On the other hand, if you are struggling and not feeling good about your game, these kinds of restrictions might serve as a good base to go back to if you are looking to "start over".

Just wanted to say thanks for doing this series. I usually play LHE cash games and I've tried playing SnGs in the past but always got my fingers burnt. These videos are really inspiring me to give it another go and maybe make SnGs my main game.

It's like deja vu all over again. Just like the 2.5 hours of video HH review he did for me. Mind blowing. A lot of the basic stuff that I learn in this video and the aforementioned HH review, I've been using in my MTT-SNG 45 & 180 endeavor. It's somewhat applicable with some slight adjustments.

Don't mind this post. just trying out eMail notification.

How embarrassing to watch these hands... Thanks to those watching the series. I'll be posting more in the future. Going out for the night...

How embarrassing to watch these hands...

If it weren't embarrassing, you wouldn't be here. Nothing to be ashamed of.

w00t! 200th post!

2nd hand...

vand: "so, why did you make another $80 bet here?"

velo: "Uhhhhh...."

hahaha

thanks though, this series is great so far.

Don't worry about it Velo. We've all been there. Except JTP of course. And maybe the Tall man. But everyone else fo shizzle.

If I wasn't thinking about winning before, I'm not sure what was trotting through my fish head. I fired away randomly.

This system is definitely better. I'm winning more, having more fun, and even taking the beats in stride. I played so tightly before that I didn't really dole out many bad beats either. Now that I'm shoving with Qs6s, shortstacked of course Van, it's Bad Beat City when I'm at the table.

I've been taking it more seriously too; scheduling time for poker, creating a separate folder for my sites and tools on the computer, and learning more about Hold' em. Glad to see the forums humming constantly with the next generation of poker. Good luck.

about 1:27 in, (one hour and a half) with ace queen suited, is the standard play to shove all in preflop? Or is it better to call and see a flop?

I'm done with turboes, again!! 1.) My ITM is better playing the regular games. 2.) I benefit from low blinds after a hit to the stack. 3.) and my shoving range improves.

Anybody else just do regular SNGs? And what kind of poker experience do you have? Is it because I'm just learning SNG play?

Thanks

Talk to vandweller about exploiting fish when you have no fold equity. You may find you need a tighter hand range to shove, which does mean they can start to exploit us, but at this level I am not sure they will.

What your probably seeing is people folding more at regular sngs, which gives you more fold equity, which means looser shoves are not as sub optimal as it is in a micro turbo.

A looser shove is basically a defensive play, it prevents us from being exploited and that is why we have the shoving ranges we do. But it is very sub optimal in a game where no one is folding, and instead we can shove a much tighter range as long as they are not going to exploit us for doing this.

Fold equity is a large part of ICM, and the less fold equity we have the tighter an ICM shoving range is. As a result, if you see someone calling shoves light then you should be making a note on them asap. You need to know who these guys are, the last thing you want to be doing is shoving crap into someone that is going to call you with queen high.

This student guy is dumb as a wall, easier to teach poker to a gorilla.

Excellent video for beginners. It will be very interesting to see how Velo develops as a player as the series progresses. Looking forward to the future vids.

This student guy is dumb as a wall, easier to teach poker to a gorilla.

That's neither true nor necessary.

looks like im about a month behind, but i plan to catch up rather quickly. the one hand that surprised me was the AQs hand at the 87 min. mark. like a poster above, my instinct was to shove pre-flop. actually, though, when i plugged it into SNGWiz, i was pretty shocked to see that not only was it not a push... it was actually tremendous spew to push there (given reasonable expectations on opponents' calling ranges).

so, do you think that calling or folding is better? if calling, is it just for speculation with AQs? seems "weird".

This student guy is dumb as a wall, easier to teach poker to a gorilla.

Nice first post.... Please keep these comments to yourself.

Nice Video. Very basic stuff. Great video for the beginning player.

Great video, great gift, a fresh air on knowledge, congratulations.

Time Link to 00:17:35

Time Link to 00:25:58

One interesting thing to note here is that after winning this hand Hero is at 1435 chips - or basically what he would have right now had he not played a single hand yet. That's a lot of complexity and "action" to go through for no actual gain, especially so early. I need to remember this myself.

hi guys, I'm back again!

I'm just wondering about your explanation about limping for set value. If we hit our set (or quads) 1 time out of 8.5 (7.5:1), we are totally break even if the pot is 7.5 BB and we have to call 1 BB (assuming we are last to act and therefore not facing the possibility of a raise behind us).
Like you say that "we have to make up for the other times (7.5 times out of the 8.5 times) we don't hit or set (or quads)" isn't correct at all to my understanding, because if we contribute less than 1/7.5 to the actual potsize, we already are breakeven!

thx to anyone for clearing this up!
(it's about at 1:10:00 or so)

I don't exactly remember how this was presented, but there are at least two reasons why you shouldn't limp for setmining when effective stacks left are exactly 7.5:1.

1. Sets aren't the nuts. You're going to lose set-over-sets, against straights, flushes, bigger full houses, etc. When you lose with a set, you're usually losing your whole stack.
2. Even if you hit your set, you don't get your opponent's whole stack every time. If your opponent doesn't hit anything when you hit your set, he can just fold on the flop.

ad 1. You are talking about reverse implied odds. The calculation before (getting 7.5:1 to be break even) doese neither include implied odds nor reverse implied odds. As a rough estimation we may say that reverse implieds and implieds compensate each other.
ad 2. The fact is that we don't have to win ANY chip from our opponent(s) to make a 7.5:1 call break even.

So, non of your points explain why we should get 30:1 (or 20 or 40) instead of 7.5:1. (At least I didn't see it.)

The whole discussion on the video was about implied odds for setmining, not pot odds. I think you might be mixing up the two together. The question there was "How big stack I should have, that limping this small pocket pair to hit a set would be profitable?".

The whole discussion on the video was about implied odds for setmining, not pot odds. I think you might be mixing up the two together. The question there was "How big stack I should have, that limping this small pocket pair to hit a set would be profitable?".

Exactly.
Implied and reverse implied odds are just an adjustment of calculating our pot odds, so I won't say I'm mixing up anything here.
I guess you aren't getting what I'm trying to point out here.
(If you'd like to I could explain it to you per skype or any other IM.)

lol, sorry guys, I don't know why I did so, but I mixed the stack:callingamount ratio up with pot odds.

So just forget my comments above please
(thx JtX for pointing it out to me)

I would gladly have you take to me about poker all day let alone 2 hrs per session.Feels like I'm having a personal coach watching the vid.Great vid learnt alot can't wait to finish the series and go back onto a table

As promised, I have started to watch Vans vids to try to improve my STT and MTT play. I thought this was a great video and I took some really good notes after rewinding and pausing a few times. Several of my main problems were outlined here in this video and i look forward to making some changes.

As much as i usually like to sit down and watch a few vids in a row, this vid really makes me want to start over from the ground up, so i am gonna wait a few days to do the next video, maybe even a week.

Quick question though, does anybody have any sort of 9 man STT starting hand chart that would be pretty tight and straight forward and in line with Vans last few minutes of discussion on starting ranges from certain positions? If not I can watch the last few minutes and make my own, but I was just wondering if someone has a good one they can email me?

Thanks, and great job Van!!

Time Link to 01:41:55

Instead of shoving here, if he folds, yes he loses 80 chips and loses the chance to gain 50% of his existing stack if the villian folds, but doesn't he buy 7 more chances to get a hand better than 6Qo to shove with? He'd even have decent position for 3 out of those 7 hands. I dont know what the numbers would be but a rough guess would think that Ax would be better, no? Im just trying to think through all options.

Time Link to 01:52:00

wouldn't this be the kind of hand where 450-500 would get it done?

my thinking is that 500 gets both to fold trash and prevents the BB from shoving/calling with Ax(2-6) and the hands that the BB would call are ones I would want position on because I'm probably behind and want a good (or blank) flop to check or bet without major risk.

or am I being to prudent in thinking this?

Time Link to 01:51:08

Considering Hero's stack size (10bb but still big enough to cover the sb and seriously hurt the bb if he he calls and loses) and the late position limper, which puts some extra "dead money" in the pot, this is a clear shove, right?

Time Link to 00:28:21

Notice the chat, the guy is actually pointing out a K2.
Explanation? Luck or what is it?

The video advises a preflop raise size of 3x. Is this still the norm? I have heard others advise either a min raise or 2.3x.

great series so far thinking about getting a 6 month subscription after my 7 day free trial runs out .