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

Time Link to 00:56:10

Do you think it would be bad to flat the 3bet and hope for the fish to call too and try to win the pot postflop or is it just better to play as you did?

Do you think it would be bad to flat the 3bet and hope for the fish to call too and try to win the pot postflop or is it just better to play as you did?

Hi thanks for the comment. I feel that in this spot it will be a bad time to just flat the squeeze. If the fish does call, I will be oop vs both of them in a large 40bb pot on the flop - this will be a very bad spot with most flop textures. Either an overcard comes and there is action, undercards come and it either checks through or I face a bet from a hand I can't really identify (for example cbet from the squeezer could be air, draws, lesser pps, overpairs, sets... I'll have no idea whether to stack off if there's action).

Basically the hand will be very tough and dangerous to play in such a situation, whether the fish calls pre or not.
If I were say raising pre from the button, and the Fish called from SB, squeeze from BB, that is a spot I'd more consider flatting the squeeze to keep the fish in.

disagree with the AJo blind hand against rask in the blind. For one I don't think he is so super aggro that 5-bet shoving AJo is going to be real profitable. And second I think flatting it has much more value because he's going to barrel a lot of boards that you'll have him crushed on and you make considerably more money postflop when you flat and get two barrel off of worse Ax than you do by folding out his fairly wide stealing range.

plus assuming that you flat a decent amount in that spot you can rep just about anything so you'll either hit the flop or you can rep it and either way it is going to be extremely difficult for him to play against you.

Unless you are just 3betting an absolute ton against him I think you are actually making it easier on him by 3betting than flatting.

9:50 in vid

don't really agree with flatting the AKo against the unknown UTG open. AKs maybe because we let worse suited hands CC behind and we can get a flush over flush, but with AKo our hand really only has value as a TPTK hand or as something with pf FE. Because of that I think 3betting is better because it allows us to prevent CCers behind (especially good regs of which there are some at the table), gives us a very good chance to buy the button, and creates a stack-pot ratio that is much more conducive to getting all the money in when we flop an A or a K. I think you are taking a very rare scenario and using it as justification for making a suboptimal play. The times that villain has AA or KK and 4bets us and we get it in are pretty rare. Even rares based on the fact that we have an A and a K, and villain both posted OOP and has already raised one hand (meaning it is less likely that he is a total nit).

And when we just flat here we end up with terrible position in a m-way pot with a hand that plays really bad OOP in multiway pots.

this looks like a clear 3-bet to me, and the only times I'm not are going to be against total nits or against a LAG if there are other LAGs behind and I think I'll get squeezed and can back raise

disagree with the AJo blind hand against rask in the blind. For one I don't think he is so super aggro that 5-bet shoving AJo is going to be real profitable. And second I think flatting it has much more value because he's going to barrel a lot of boards that you'll have him crushed on and you make considerably more money postflop when you flat and get two barrel off of worse Ax than you do by folding out his fairly wide stealing range.

plus assuming that you flat a decent amount in that spot you can rep just about anything so you'll either hit the flop or you can rep it and either way it is going to be extremely difficult for him to play against you.

Unless you are just 3betting an absolute ton against him I think you are actually making it easier on him by 3betting than flatting.

Thanks for the comment, rewatching this I felt that right off the bat the AJ hand would come off as over-aggro and possibly not even +ev. I'd like to establish that Rask likes to screw with me, we are on the same message boards and chat on IM sometimes too so there can be a lot of leveling.

Usually right off the bat in sessions, he seems to like getting into it with me to establish his dominance or tilt me. I felt like he would 4bet small bluff here quite often and fold to a 5bet. He may call the 5bet with flipping hands as well and it is good for my image that he thinks I stack AJo there, I don't want him thinking I only 5b ship AK+ TT+ for example BvB. Also when he folds to the 3bet or 5bet, it helps me gain ground in metagame stuff.

For these reasons I played it like I did, I agree that against a random reg even an aggro one, flatting pre is probably optimal, it may have even been here.

9:50 in vid

don't really agree with flatting the AKo against the unknown UTG open. AKs maybe because we let worse suited hands CC behind and we can get a flush over flush, but with AKo our hand really only has value as a TPTK hand or as something with pf FE. Because of that I think 3betting is better because it allows us to prevent CCers behind (especially good regs of which there are some at the table), gives us a very good chance to buy the button, and creates a stack-pot ratio that is much more conducive to getting all the money in when we flop an A or a K. I think you are taking a very rare scenario and using it as justification for making a suboptimal play. The times that villain has AA or KK and 4bets us and we get it in are pretty rare. Even rares based on the fact that we have an A and a K, and villain both posted OOP and has already raised one hand (meaning it is less likely that he is a total nit).

And when we just flat here we end up with terrible position in a m-way pot with a hand that plays really bad OOP in multiway pots.

this looks like a clear 3-bet to me, and the only times I'm not are going to be against total nits or against a LAG if there are other LAGs behind and I think I'll get squeezed and can back raise

Is it really that rare that he 4bets and I am put in a very marginal to bad situation? I think it is more rare that he would call the 3bet and then I hit TP and get him to stack. I can hardly ever see that happening.
Depending on his UTG range, I would expect him to raise or fold at least 80% of the time if I 3bet.

The multiway factor isn't a big concern because I haven't invested much, and I can see a flop 3 or 4 way if that happens and proceed cautiously.

When I do get the unknown heads up, I will be IP and I can play very well against his range, including spots where I extract a lot of value from hands he would have folded to a 3bet pre (unless hes a huge donk which I cant assume). This is my thinking, I see some merit to yours as well though. Let me know if you see any glaring holes in my logic here

Is it really that rare that he 4bets and I am put in a very marginal to bad situation? I think it is more rare that he would call the 3bet and then I hit TP and get him to stack. I can hardly ever see that happening.
Depending on his UTG range, I would expect him to raise or fold at least 80% of the time if I 3bet.

The multiway factor isn't a big concern because I haven't invested much, and I can see a flop 3 or 4 way if that happens and proceed cautiously.

When I do get the unknown heads up, I will be IP and I can play very well against his range, including spots where I extract a lot of value from hands he would have folded to a 3bet pre (unless hes a huge donk which I cant assume). This is my thinking, I see some merit to yours as well though. Let me know if you see any glaring holes in my logic here

lol no glaring holes

but I do think you are maybe giving unknowns that buy in for less than 100bb and post early a little too much credit. I tend to assume that these guys are fish and are often going to call 3bets with a fairly wide range and will have AQ and AJ often in their 3bet calling range, or they'll have something weak that will have to c/f a lot of the time. I guess the difference is that I'm assuming based on a few things that this guy is more likely to be a typical loose fish, and you are taking a somewhat more cautious approach. And while I don't think flatting is at all -EV (especially considering you likely play very well postflop and won't stack yourself in a marginal spot) I just think that 3betting is more +EV. I think we find ourselves in more profitable scenarios by 3betting than we do flatting.

regarding the AJo hand, your dynamic makes that 3bet a lot better and the play makes more sense after the explanation. Especially if you guys tend to monkey a lot pf with each other. I would probably still rather flat, but that is just because I tend to prefer to do my monkeying postflop a lot against regs that I think are opening their SB too much. But the 3bet is even better if after that you can tigthen your 3betting range and possibly induce some light 4betting/calling it off.

good vid though (I still have to watch the second half stopped to play a sesh) and I'm enjoying the discussion.

I have a question about the JJ hand on table 3 where you got squeezed by the reg on the button with the fish (who earned back his 400$ empire ;D) in the pot and you decide to 4bet/call.

The fish to your left is playing 75/x so far - so pretty much every hand. So imho the button - if he's a halfway decent reg - doesn't squeeze light because he's to be aware that the fish might call almost anything except a shove. I think this makes the range of the button a lot stronger and we're not in that great of a shape w/ JJ vs. that range. As calling sucks too - we would have to play a 3way-3bet pot oop - I'm leaning more towards folding here since the best we can expect is to have a flip if we get it in. JJ probably was at the bottom of the buttons range I believe.

Too nitty?
Or can someone make an argument for calling b/c of the fish? (since he protects the pot and the reg is forced to play straightforward)

I have a question about the JJ hand on table 3 where you got squeezed by the reg on the button with the fish (who earned back his 400$ empire ;D) in the pot and you decide to 4bet/call.

The fish to your left is playing 75/x so far - so pretty much every hand. So imho the button - if he's a halfway decent reg - doesn't squeeze light because he's to be aware that the fish might call almost anything except a shove. I think this makes the range of the button a lot stronger and we're not in that great of a shape w/ JJ vs. that range. As calling sucks too - we would have to play a 3way-3bet pot oop - I'm leaning more towards folding here since the best we can expect is to have a flip if we get it in. JJ probably was at the bottom of the buttons range I believe.

Too nitty?
Or can someone make an argument for calling b/c of the fish? (since he protects the pot and the reg is forced to play straightforward)

that was exactly my thoughts there when people squeeze and there is a fish involved his range is usually stronger and JJ imo was the bottom of villians range

I have a question about the JJ hand on table 3 where you got squeezed by the reg on the button with the fish (who earned back his 400$ empire ;D) in the pot and you decide to 4bet/call.

The fish to your left is playing 75/x so far - so pretty much every hand. So imho the button - if he's a halfway decent reg - doesn't squeeze light because he's to be aware that the fish might call almost anything except a shove. I think this makes the range of the button a lot stronger and we're not in that great of a shape w/ JJ vs. that range. As calling sucks too - we would have to play a 3way-3bet pot oop - I'm leaning more towards folding here since the best we can expect is to have a flip if we get it in. JJ probably was at the bottom of the buttons range I believe.

Too nitty?
Or can someone make an argument for calling b/c of the fish? (since he protects the pot and the reg is forced to play straightforward)

I don't really think his range will be that much tighter since he should have no problem playing any hand worth 3betting with position against a huge fish. So In that spot I would be 3betting a lot as well expecting seraph to fold and to get the fish HU playing a big pot with a hand that is likely ahead of his range. If anything I'll squeeze wider as hands like KJ, KQ, AJ, AT, QJ etc play much better in this scenario than as a 3bet against seraph (which they usually play better as a flat).

that being said I would rather call the squeeze than get it in because I want to keep the fish in the pot and against most regs at 2/4 FR on FTP getting JJ in pf as a 4bet-call is probably only a little profitable. I think we are going to be able to flat and lead a lot of flops and expect the fish to call with a lot of worse hands and the reg is going to have to play very honest in that scenario. if the flop is brutal we can pretty safely check fold as it is pretty often that one of the two players will have flopped an overpair or better to our JJ.

41:37 in someone minraises UTG and you fold QJs in the SB. This seems pretty nittish to me. 100bb deep can't we pretty much play all suited broadways for 1.5BB pf? especially considering we'll have a pretty large and disguised range postflop.

upon closer inspection we are 400bb deep, and villain appears to be 35/15 if I'm readying your HUD right. So yeah I think that is a pretty bad pf fold.

LOL @ german shorties that don't understand you ^^
but guess what, we germans also hate them

20:00 - Q6o, I think your 3bet size isn't that great here.
In position I tend to make it 3x to make our bluffs cheaper and to make his 4bet bluffs less profitable.

31:20 - KJs, I think most of his range is something like 87 or 44-77 which doesn't see any value in betting the flop. Then you bet the flop and he thinks you might be bluffing etc and it would be to weak to fold a pair after checking back the flop and calls, he could have some heartdraws too.
If we don't hit on the river it would be a great opportunity to fire another one imo.

KK - LUCKBOX!!!!!!
but i like your shove, don't think he will ever lay down something like TT-QQ, maybe he even stacks off with 88 or 99 and he could have some flushdraws.

39:00 - 87o, what if the guy behind you bet something like 30$ after it's checked to him? do we peel one and fold to any further action unimproved? or do we give up directly on the flop?

on the turn I actually like a call more than a raise.
the reasons for that are:
1) we encourage the most likely weak player behind us to continue with whatever he has
2) there aren't that many ugly rivers, you say there are a lot of cards that can counterfit your hand, but actually it's just the 3 remaining 3s and 2 Aces
3) we can get most of the money in on the river, cause he just has a midstack
4) if one of them has an A we most likely get it in anyways and they might decide to fold it to a raise on the turn (I doubt it, but maybe ^^)

holy crap how can he fold on the river? was expecting everything but not that
must have been a misclick

49:00 - A6s, I think a small 4bet to like 135$ is better than a shove. I don't think he is 5bet bluffing that often if ever (or is he? ^^) and we can easily fold to a shove, despite it's ugly.


reading the comments here, I am on goldseraphs side with the AK hand.
3betting is profitable for sure, but it is with pretty much any 2 cards, cause he just can't continue without the nuts.
Also we are getting ourselves from a great spot against a decent wide range to a not that exciting spot against a very very strong range if he wants to continue.
and I don't mind coldcallers, cause if we flop the A or the K its pretty much always good and we can now valuetown not only UTG but the other player(s) too.
Moreover handreading here is pretty easy, which means we can play basically perfect postflop.

sorry guys I'm on vacation at the moment - I will answer all of your questions in 2-3 days when I'm back home. Thanks for watching and the comments!

GS

I have a question about the JJ hand on table 3 where you got squeezed by the reg on the button with the fish (who earned back his 400$ empire ;D) in the pot and you decide to 4bet/call.

The fish to your left is playing 75/x so far - so pretty much every hand. So imho the button - if he's a halfway decent reg - doesn't squeeze light because he's to be aware that the fish might call almost anything except a shove. I think this makes the range of the button a lot stronger and we're not in that great of a shape w/ JJ vs. that range. As calling sucks too - we would have to play a 3way-3bet pot oop - I'm leaning more towards folding here since the best we can expect is to have a flip if we get it in. JJ probably was at the bottom of the buttons range I believe.

Too nitty?
Or can someone make an argument for calling b/c of the fish? (since he protects the pot and the reg is forced to play straightforward)

Hi, thanks for the comment. I do think your reasoning is a bit faulty. Yes, the donk on the cutoff has been loose but its 75 vpip over 12 hands.
I think that the squeezing reg would be pretty happy if I folded and the donk called OOP, that has to be a close to ideal scenario along with the squeeze play working and getting all folds. I feel that getting a fish with a really wide range to call a sqz oop may actually factor into him squeezing light here more often.

If we DO happen to get it in vs the reg, yes we aren't in great shape against his range, but I feel that he folds to a four bet a solid % of the time.

I def wouldn't call the sqz... being OOP in 3b pots sucks esp with a hand like JJ, if the fish calls too that is better, but I am still OOP against two opponents with a hand that isn't gonna like getting it in on that many flops.

I don't really think his range will be that much tighter since he should have no problem playing any hand worth 3betting with position against a huge fish. So In that spot I would be 3betting a lot as well expecting seraph to fold and to get the fish HU playing a big pot with a hand that is likely ahead of his range. If anything I'll squeeze wider as hands like KJ, KQ, AJ, AT, QJ etc play much better in this scenario than as a 3bet against seraph (which they usually play better as a flat).

that being said I would rather call the squeeze than get it in because I want to keep the fish in the pot and against most regs at 2/4 FR on FTP getting JJ in pf as a 4bet-call is probably only a little profitable. I think we are going to be able to flat and lead a lot of flops and expect the fish to call with a lot of worse hands and the reg is going to have to play very honest in that scenario. if the flop is brutal we can pretty safely check fold as it is pretty often that one of the two players will have flopped an overpair or better to our JJ.

I agree with your first point, I was thinking the same thing that the BU would often squeeze broadways here. I also agree that calling the squeeze is reasonable, but I felt that I had a lot of FE equity if I came over the top, plus the added meta value if I make the squeezer fold or get it in bad. It also makes the hand v easy to play, where I didn't have a solid plan for calling and prob seeing a 3 way pot oop.

41:37 in someone minraises UTG and you fold QJs in the SB. This seems pretty nittish to me. 100bb deep can't we pretty much play all suited broadways for 1.5BB pf? especially considering we'll have a pretty large and disguised range postflop.

upon closer inspection we are 400bb deep, and villain appears to be 35/15 if I'm readying your HUD right. So yeah I think that is a pretty bad pf fold.

Yeah terrible fold actually, pretty inexcusable. It happened at the same time that the big 87 hand went down, right when the guy folds for his last 50 bucks on the river.. I think that distracted me and I made an autopilot play... whoops

I agree with your first point, I was thinking the same thing that the BU would often squeeze broadways here. I also agree that calling the squeeze is reasonable, but I felt that I had a lot of FE equity if I came over the top, plus the added meta value if I make the squeezer fold or get it in bad. It also makes the hand v easy to play, where I didn't have a solid plan for calling and prob seeing a 3 way pot oop.

yeah I guess I poorly phrased that since getting JJ in there is much better if we assume that he's squeezing lighter more often and thus you will pick up the dead money more often. Getting JJ in there certainly is a fine play, and I don't have any problem with it. I just think we can often call there and lead a lot of good flops and the fish is going to get it in with worse and villain can't really bluff us in that spot. The only bad spot about not 4betting there is that we given him a chance to spike with AQ and KQ both hands he'll likely fold to our 4bet.

so it's def close and there are merits either way.

20:00 - Q6o, I think your 3bet size isn't that great here.
In position I tend to make it 3x to make our bluffs cheaper and to make his 4bet bluffs less profitable.

I agree, I've started making my 3bets generally 3x IP, 4x OOP.. filmed this vid a while ago before I made that adjustment.

31:20 - KJs, I think most of his range is something like 87 or 44-77 which doesn't see any value in betting the flop. Then you bet the flop and he thinks you might be bluffing etc and it would be to weak to fold a pair after checking back the flop and calls, he could have some heartdraws too.
If we don't hit on the river it would be a great opportunity to fire another one imo.

I think on the flop he has a hand that has showdown value, or he is giving up on the pot. Both scenarios its a pretty good spot for turn and river barrels (depending on texture).

39:00 - 87o, what if the guy behind you bet something like 30$ after it's checked to him? do we peel one and fold to any further action unimproved? or do we give up directly on the flop?

on the turn I actually like a call more than a raise.
the reasons for that are:
1) we encourage the most likely weak player behind us to continue with whatever he has
2) there aren't that many ugly rivers, you say there are a lot of cards that can counterfit your hand, but actually it's just the 3 remaining 3s and 2 Aces
3) we can get most of the money in on the river, cause he just has a midstack
4) if one of them has an A we most likely get it in anyways and they might decide to fold it to a raise on the turn (I doubt it, but maybe ^^)

I disagree with flatting the turn, there is too much danger of being counterfeited and I may be scared off my hand by a big river bet, esp on particularly ugly rivers. There aren't that many counterfeit cards youre right, I was also referring to suckout cards.

49:00 - A6s, I think a small 4bet to like 135$ is better than a shove. I don't think he is 5bet bluffing that often if ever (or is he? ^^) and we can easily fold to a shove, despite it's ugly.

This villain is capable of 5b shove bluffing, I've seen him do it several times, with stuff like QJo even. Regardless I'd have to fold to his 5bet shove. So it's not like if I 4bet small he is turning his hand face up like many regs.

I notice you check back alot of boards even vs loose players with extremely low aggression factors on drawy boards. Should this be standard? Generally against loose fit or fold type players i try to fire at those flops, but if they are the type to ever c/r a draw i check behind. Your thoughts? Is this bad even vs fit or fold low aggression?

Hi can you give any timestamps or examples of me doing this? Its a pretty vague question, I could explain my reasoning if you can provide an example, thanks.