8:45 As 8s 3d Qd 5d with A3o. Raising the top two pairs and bottom 2 pairs is the thought process I usually have. As you mentioned we don't have 83 in our range, so if we don't have the bottom two pairs in our range, do we just raise all 2 pairs? Do we start mixing A8 and A3 as sometimes call and sometimes XR?

I do not believe it changes much when we don't have bottom 2, we still play top-2 aggressively, and top and bottom more passively

13:45 Any merit to clicking the turn double barrel to check back the river?

Too thin, at that point we're just banking on them having KJ KT which prefer checking turn anyway

17:45 calling T8s BTN vs LJ 3BB open you mentioned is potentially a terrible play preflop but ok vs 3 recreational. How bad can these guys be if they are playing 5kNL? Do you put any weight into just avoiding some volatility for these small .01 edges for a peace of mind?

Recreationals are Recreationals, no matter the stakes. Hell, some of the biggest whales are the guys playing nosebleeds

T8s in theory theory is a pretty terrible play, yeah, however, with 3 recs behind and being IP, it goes from "terrible" to printing quite a decent amount, definitely not a .01 edge-type situation

19min T42-T-3 holding KQs was interesting to hear your thought process on this river. Thinking you will check back the river and always lose to ace high to bluff catching vs B50 on the river hoping he finds enough bluffs. Would AK be a value bet on this river or always XC? And the betting range is more polar to pairs and air?

AK is definitely a value bet for OOP on the disconnected texture. You can hear my thoughts in game; "I'm losing a lot to AK here, but I'm blocking it".

This hand do seem odd to me too. I don't think the hands Luke played were vs a super-user though, given that they run it twice and chop despite the fact they would have scoop it if they had run it once. My suspicion is that it could be collusion between the other 2 players in the hand, whereby they create fake action between them to push the 3rd person out of the pot. Most people in Luke's shoes commit 20bb here then fold to the back-shove a huge percentage of the time given that the action looks super-strong and BTN appears to have 7x+ almost always. This is a common form of collusion, so it could be an attempt at that?

This previous odd hand has the same pattern - a player raises, the short player reraises, the other re-raises, the action looks super strong. This time the 3rd player sees that and folds. The downside to this play was that the BTN had to expose the fact that they were doing it with K3o. So if they are colluding in this way to squeeze players out of mid-large pots then they are not good at it and presumably losing a lot of money given that this one showdown allows the other players to tag them as either a spewy whale or a colluder jamming in trash.

matlittle I came to the same conclusion after about collusion. Months prior we saw mobius poker post a bunch of hands on X about this type of collusion. When someone is accused of cheating, the site might check that they are a losing player and sweep it under a rug. They are likely just dumping money to another player on the site who is cashing them out. Then that player is claiming he is winning large amounts because the other player is a whale. Its obvious collusion but as you said they are not very good at it.

On other sites with weaker security there are players from mobius poker finding these types of players and wrecking them by just calling their strong hands preflop instead of 3 betting. And when the cheaters attempt to squeeze them out of the pot they end up stacking one or both players. I believe one of Nacho's students also got banned from Ignition from destroying some of these bots / cheaters. He was on the S4Y podcast a month or so ago telling his story.

RunItTw1ce matlittle

I can see how it looks a little weird. I am 99% sure they aren't cheating, though. Just some bad poker and random things appearing not so random.

35:12 You mentioned when you are playing against someone you might start to feel bad for them. In A-game Masterclass book there is a story by Berrisweet where he is up maybe 10+ buy-ins against someone and feels bad for them, so he starts to play worse against them because he doesn't want to destroy them. This was one of Berrisweet's mental game issues of showing mercy for his opposition. I think he learned to keep up the aggression and not care about busting people's bankrolls though because that is your job.

Cool post, thanks RunItTw1ce

Sometimes I do have to remind myself of these things. It is part of the job to beat up some villains, but also get beat up by some other villains. That is variance for you.

With that being said, despite sometimes feeling bad, I wouldn't ever soft play

35:35 T#1 You mentioned vs recs that open smaller with weaker hands and bigger with stronger hands you try and 3bet more liberally against them. I see this a lot in live cash as well, but what I noticed is they still tend to call the 3bet. They might be opening smaller with hands like 77, ATo, KQo, 97s etc. But for some reason they still call the 3bet. Which puts me in a pickle with hands like KJo A3s or QTs when I choose to 3bet wider. It's nice when they just fold the flop vs a cbet, but when you both make top pair, at least for me I start to regret 3betting them light. I find sticking to normal 3bet ranges and just increasing the bet size against them does pretty well.

Size up your 3bets to quite an obnoxiously big size. Notice how I did the same here. Perhaps I should have gone 13.5bb.

37:40 BvB on K92dd-Jx when you are trying to figure out if you should go 2/3 or pot. My understanding is when there is a straight available with all 16 combos possible, we want to use 2/3 and when there is only 4 combos possible, then we can use pot or OB. I got this heuristic from Mattlittle in a previous video. This has cleared up my thought process a lot.

As I have mentioned to you many times RunItTw1ce , relying on heuristics like this isn't a good way to think about poker. You end up not really learning poker. Instead, try to work out the times you can size up/size down when all 16 combos are present, this will trigger more development and understanding in your thought process.

With all that being said, it seems fine to go 2/3p / pot here, as we can choose how much we want to polarise and not lose any EV, practically.

46:10 on KJ9r-Tss hero uses a 3/4 float turn bet with K6o. Is this for value? Hard to imagine getting called by worse here. I thought we would have a small and big size on 4 liners here where we want to get value with our 2 pairs hands, so we would use a block size 1/3? Then put some AX / 98 and QX into our 3/4 size.

It is thin, however, we're super LP in a passive sequence, so we can find some thin tp vbets for 1/2p or 2/3p. It is a mix, though, which I forgot to do in game

48:30 when you talk about how it's hard to play well while recording a video because of the extra commentary. First thank you! Second, in TMGP2 book they call this the bloated brain! You have too much going on to focus on what is important. I find learning these terms helped me mentally with some of the mental game stuff I struggle with.

RunItTw1ce welcome!

There's pros and cons for sure. Pros are that I sometimes consider 'new' thought processes by being forced to talk to you guys; occasionally I will mention something in commentary and immediately realise I'd have never have come to that conclusion had I not been talking aloud. Cons are obviously being overloaded as you say :D. Swings and roundabouts!

Hey 777TripSevens777 thank you very much!

Please could you leave a timestamp for the KTovsTT?

Outstanding session video!

Hey SoundSpeed thank you very much!

8:35 table 4 a3, I feel like checking isn't so great because he won't have that many bluffs with his turn chk back. I'm also not so sure about overbet even with blocking the Ad as he should have quite a few flush draws that check back turn giving him a flush now so he isn't totally capped and we block his ax river calls. I was thinking pot or 75% pot.

b75, b100 and b133 are all good options for our big sizing OOP OTR. It depends how you want to leverage. If you play around with the solver you'll notice little-no ev loss.

22:15 table 2 q8 what is the purpose of the river block? Seems pretty thin for value and a K won't fold.

This is HUNL in a XX XX line. Q8 will be an easy vbet here. If he never calls worse then Q8 won't perform well, but bluffs will massively overrealise.

23:10 table 1 tt the lead is interesting. I feel like it narrows his range a bit and if he floats are you willing xc down?

I'll always make sure to consider villains sizes/timings before deciding what to do on future streets. I may XC down, I may even cbT depending on what the turn brings.

If I were 100bb I'd never do this. However with a <3 SPR and no diamond, I quite like leading

Thanks!

Welcome sir!

Hello Luke,
Just curious if this is a play you are only making vs recreational players?

Hey matlittle yes only vs recs

Would you exploit-call a raise with all your hands that bet for value here?

Sizing/timing dependant, potentially also yes

HU seems to be such a different game than ring. I would never find a bet that thin.

Yep, and compounded with an XX XX line, we get to bet hands that may seem very, very thin!

You said you would consider bet sizing and timing to be a factor on later streets. At 5-10 and up, do you find that the majority of players are well balanced in sizing and timing?

Definitely the majority, however only a few have what I'd consider consistent tells. For the most part, people are well balanced in the smaller pots and then become a little more unbalanced the larger the pot gets, both with sizings and timings

Yeah, super crazy play with the KTo bluff...

After seeing this, I will not only look to inflate my vpip, but also look to skew my vpip's to allow him into the pot. E.g. I may flat some premiums vs opens if the player is behind me, as to not isolate him out of the pot too often. Naturally, more money will come from him than anybody else at the table

Hi LuminoI I would snap call vs most/all recs, bar the hyper nitty ones

Green tag is actually some type of bad reg, and in this case, he is a weak, quite boring reg who won't bluff me enough bluffs IMO

I just checked for clarity, this is a BE call in theory. If we assume villain doesn't find enough bluffs, we have a pure explo fold

Thanks for the answer Luke Johnson then it's def a fold, thanks for the clarity of the explanation

You are very welcome TRUEPOWER !

Hoping to see hands like A3cc, AQcc, that turn themselves into a bluff, unblocking my bet-folds and blocking my bet-calls

Haha

Gotta love texas no limit hold'em for spots like this ^^

Yep, 93%→0% & good bye $5k :'(