Poker Video: Limit Hold'Em by DeathDonkey (High Stakes)

For future videos I think you guys should strongly consider playing the original commentary of the submitted video and stopping periodically when you have something to comment on. There's just way too many assumptions and blanket statements you guys end up making.

I know for a fact that Rail has played with these guys before, and his insight and reads are much more valuable than whatever you've seen over this short span.

For example, you guys keep referencing Ballzdeepx's play with ATo. I agree that it looks atrocious, but he happens to be a pretty accomplished player in FTP's Mid/High stakes games(As well as a Stoxpoker coach). Who knows, maybe he had a read? It's just kind of irritating to hear mike l. continuously say "Do you remember what he did with ATo?!?! He can't have XY, he would have gone berserk!"

"why did he check???" (in the KT hand about 35 mins in)

because he thought the turn action was check-bet-call (was still multitabling at that point), lol. i agree, river is an auto-bet.

Great video guys!

Basically the topic of this post is (lack of?) balance.


4'30:
We have A5. Ballzdeep R, we 3-bet he calls. We c-bet flop: 264, he calls. We XC K.

Obv Jeremy knew what he was doing. But like u guys touch on Im curious about our X range on the turn. The problem I have is that our XF range is empty (agree?). Because the K is a super scary card and if we had any type of bad hand JT etc I think we would bet it? So the X sort of turns our hand face up. So villain should not bluff in this spot. But if we take that one step further we could XF hands like Q7? Since a tinking vilain "shouldn't" bluff what hands do u like toput in a XF range?

Hope this makes sense, despite all the levels .

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A similar spot is when fnupple limp 94o and XC a AT4r flop in a BW. This may seem smart but Im thinking donking is a better way to balance. If Im villain I will bet flop and X back turn UI a lot. That means villain puts in one sb on the flop and get to see both turn and river. Given our weak holding he is not that great of a dog an he has the privilige of value owning us perfectly on the later streets.

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I think ur discussion on pf strategies from the SB in BW's is way too simple. Basically it seems like both of u are trying to find a simple, lazy default strategy. Mike.l says he raise pf and c-bet flop and X a lot on the turn intending both to XF, XC, XR. I mean it's pretty obvious how such a strategy could be crushed?

And DD talks about limping and XC etc. But if we have AA we love if our opp peels a lot of flops and pops the turn? limping just misses a ton of value.

Isn't the best aproach to do both limping and raising and balance both ranges acording to our opponent? If he floats and raise the turn a lot, make the pf raising range stronger by moving some weaker hands to the limp range (or fold). If he plays fit or fold move hands to he raising range etc.

I mean u gys are too smart to be ths lazy. Otherwise sushi may have to move up and spank u .
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In general I think this touches a concept I think many people misses:

Pf is NOT different in theory than the flop/turn (however the river IS different). In theory pf should be played like any other street:
Try to get value from strong hands and mix in some semi-bluffs. And slow-play sometimes to protect ur weaker hands etc.

That said good players can use the extra info the flop brings better than there opps and may profit from keeping the pot small pf. Also it requires a lot of thought to work out a good strategy pf that includes 3-bets and if you are just "guessing" chances are u will be very unbalanced. So it may be better to use a lazy call/fold aproach. Finally the auto c-bet is obv exploitable.

For future videos I think you guys should strongly consider playing the original commentary of the submitted video and stopping periodically when you have something to comment on. There's just way too many assumptions and blanket statements you guys end up making.

I know for a fact that Rail has played with these guys before, and his insight and reads are much more valuable than whatever you've seen over this short span.

For example, you guys keep referencing Ballzdeepx's play with ATo. I agree that it looks atrocious, but he happens to be a pretty accomplished player in FTP's Mid/High stakes games(As well as a Stoxpoker coach). Who knows, maybe he had a read? It's just kind of irritating to hear mike l. continuously say "Do you remember what he did with ATo?!?! He can't have XY, he would have gone berserk!"

What they are saying, and the plays they are referencing are EXACTLY what I would/should be thinking and referencing if I had sat down at the table when the video started and seen these things myself.

True, OTR's reads are and insight are much more valuable than what we have gathered so far, but they would also be somewhat irrelevant at these stakes since most decent players have/ make reads of their own, so a lot of his thought process will be influenced by past plays and reads that are really only specific to HIM.

Speaking of value, if you were OTR and Ballzdeepx was someone you had a pretty good line on, would you want that to be feature commentary on this video?

These videos are NOT how to beat Ballzdeep, raze_ALL_IN, or even play like OTR, Mike. l or DD. It's about formulating reads and making correct decisions in a super-shorthanded setting.

For future videos I think you guys should strongly consider playing the original commentary of the submitted video and stopping periodically when you have something to comment on.

As a general comment (haven't watched the vid), I +1 this idea in general - i think it makes for a really interesting format (I saw it in a HU limit vid with bryce on stox poker) - student records vid whilst discussing his reads, thoughts, questions, then instructor(s) replay it back and discuss hero's play with his reads and reasonings. It's a format haven't seen DC use (although i haven't watched the whole catalogue, i could be wrong) and it makes for a good vid dynamic.

Re: The QT hand (paused right now so I don't know results)

Ballz knows I'm capable of looking him up light here (see A5 hand) so I think that I actually beat some 9x valuebets in this spot. I mean if you think about it, the reason for calling is the same reason for bluff-raising the river sometimes when you don't make a pair. He can have some one pair hands that he'll just bet because he doesn't think there is value in c/c. I mean it's not like ballz is a total fish whose range is going to be super polarized in this spot.

Just finished my portion of the show. I think the biggest adjustment I needed to make in this session was preflop, cold call in my sb more and maybe limping my sb some. Those are two things I'm experimenting more with now, and I like them in certain spots.

I'm gonna disagree with KCarlstrom just a little. While I realize that the information they have is less than the information I have about these players, I think the point of the series is for mike. l and deathdonkey to take the session as a thing in and of itself. It makes the most sense to do it this way since one of the main goals of the show, imo, is to help ppl become better information gatherers...

I do understand how it can be frustrating on a micro-level not to have my reads in some of these spots, but I think it's an interesting excercise in information gathering to do it this way.

nice vid, guys

Thanks for all the comments guys...

The video submissions do not include audio that we are removing, as I didn't request or require that, so its not like we are taking out some interesting info, though I agree that would be a neat series in its own right.

As I said in the EP 1 thread, I didn't know who Ballzdeepx was, I really still don't other than what you guys have posted since I haven't played on Full Tilt in a really long time and don't watch Stox vids. I hope that our commentary wasn't too offensive to him, as I certainly would have had some more tact to a colleague had I known anything about him. Other than that, I basically agree with Nfinity's great post, that we aren't trying to tell you how to use your read of a player and crush him perfectly, we are trying to help you develop the reads when you don't have them, and any random HH or video footage can be used as an example to help us achieve that goal.

Btw, its not like calling someone "spazzy" and "unpredictable" and emphasizing that we'd have a distrust of folding hands against someone is a complete criticism. A lot of those things are admirable traits to have in a 3 handed game.

kudos for another awesome vid!

I liked the analysis on the last hand about checking the river. I agree with Mike L about calling the raise on the end as we should just have so few queens that we're going to induce a lot of bluff raises when we do bet. The reasons you guys give for checking (i.e. villain will have nothing very often) are the same reasons for calling the raise when you bet out on an obvious scare card.

Season 1 & 2 are without a doubt the best LHE series on DC. I wish DD and Mike L. would make more similar videos on shorthanded play because i can take so much away from these.

I also think this format is fine. The whole point of this series(for me at least) is gathering reads on the fly and how to use those reads to modify ranges and lines. If the submissions had reads from past history it would nullify this factor, thus making it useless for the reasons i find these videos so great.

Love both the series. My fave, and you cant have enough of your fave, so shoo, make more .

On the last hand played by Fnupple:
Given the action villain is representing a straight. TJx 9.
AQ, Q7 down to Q2 are consistent with the river and Turn action. But what about PF. Is he really raising all of those?.
The point is that bet folding was not the best option.