My favorite type of video you make. Great stuff. Thanks

Why in the J775ss example why do you use continuing when we have 55% equity or more? Random number, best guess, other?

@16:50 I think you must have made a mistake with SB and BB.  SB would be OOP and be acting first preflop if SB-r and BB-3bets.

That makes sense :X

aint nobody got time for PLO examples. Just NLHE please. hahahah jus kidding. love your vids! u r duh man >.<

Your concept videos are great, please keep doing more of these, whenever you have a good idea for one! For me, this video put some of the plays from your videos in a new light, helping me to understand them better (since you sometimes might omit some information that is relevant for the hand, assuming "everyone" realizes it by default...which may or may not be the case). Anyway, much love for this video format!

How did you calculate the average EQ of your Callingrange in the  J775ss?

Nice!

I've already learned it from watching your videos, but before i came to RIO i was playing with 25% donkbet and aggression factor 5 :). I saw other regs videos playing more passive style, but I thougt that there are more cons than pros. Your videos gave me a great tools to make this style more effective- finding good spots to bluff, and getting used to lose at showdowns when you call down.

I have also same theory, that our brain it's not good at learning in terms of pot odds. I remember 3 years ago, when I found River call efficiency stat and was trying to find out what it means. I asked other pros about their numbers. I had the lowest RCE and it was still about 60% of wins when I called. Of course there are times when you are check calling with very good hand, just because oponent range is very draw heavy. But stil  winning 60% means that I was folding to much. 

I had very good 2013 year playing pl50 with ev 9 bb/100. Finally I got to pl100, and had two months of break even, than I came to RIO and completely changed my style and since then I have ev 9bb/100 for last 110k hands. I checked down my RCE stat for before RIO: 1,35, and after RIO: 1,17. So if you want to learn how to play more profitable, and win more, you have to learn to loose :)

Phil, nice video as always. No questions for now.
Sidenote: The 200/400PLO games have been running daily. Are you going to kick some ass there shortly?

I see that it is cap plo right now.

Hey phil could you give the solution for the homework? If i cbet half pot on the first street and he folds 40% i am profitible or not ? As I only need 33% folds. Ty

Enjoyed the video.  Helped me find a few flaws in my thought process.

Great vid as always, Phil.  Hope you are doing well in the high-roller events.

A few things that came to my mind:

a) As for defending often (or not) from BB both preflop and postflop, I think a huge part of what leads people to under-defend is the visibility of our hands, which is often marginal to mediocre, and the resulting playability on the future streets.  At least, this is something I have been constantly struggling with, and I don't think I'm alone in this camp, so if you could enlighten me a bit I'd greatly appreciate it.  

For example, with J775ss we will flop >55% equity ~20% of the time or so against his range, but even in those cases it's gonna be hard for us to know where we stand, as we can't flop too many nuts (or nutty draws) with this kind of hand.  PLO is a game where boards change drastically in most occasions and flopped good hands (sometimes even very good ones) don't mean much, so if our hand isn't strong enough to x/r for value on the flop or doesn't have a nut potential (~=good visibility), it's generally not gonna be strong enough for us to keep calling down.  

Imho, this results in us not being able to realise our equity or claim the pot as often as what our flop equity dictates, either because we will get forced to fold the best hand or good equity on turn/river, or because he can improve to a better hand.  Of course, we can have some RIO (reverse implied odds, not Runitonce!) issues with these non-nutty draws as well, which even complicates our problems.

Thus, I think it is possible that we might not be able to win as much as 55% or 70% of the flop pot even we flop that strong.  In theory we might be, but in practice that ain't easy.  And if this is the case, we (=players like me) might as well think we can't do much better by flatting JJ75ss than open folding it.  Plus, most of us are taught from the beginning that we should be careful about hand selection in PLO, hence we tend to be nits from the blinds. :)

I am by no means saying your calculations are wrong.  I do agree that flatting preflop is gonna be a better option than 3-betting it, and this is a hand I will defend pretty much all day against described villains.  My only point is, for beginners and mediocre regs it might be one thing to say "we're getting a very good price and our hand is decent enough, this is a clear call" (which is theoretically correct), and quite another to actually flat those hands and play well postflop, which is not always easy due to their mediocre or marginal visibility and playability.  In short, some of us might not be able to play as profitably as what GTO (or simply, just "theory") suggests.

Another relevant example would be calling 3-bets in PLO, both OOP and IP.  On one hand, we are getting good prices (especially when IP) and don't want to fold too much.  On the other hand, hands like AJ93ss doesn't fare all that well in a 3-bet pot.  It goes without saying that our EV of calling on a given street will heavily depend on how we play on the later streets, which was a recurring theme in this vid.  Hence, if we can't play later streets very well, it is possible that what seems to be a +EV call right now might turn out to be -EV later on.

Sorry for the rambling, but hopefully you got my point!  

b) I really like your 50%-myth busting.  Only thing I would like to add is, this whole idea about "setting up for a profitable spot later on" is also prevalent in tournament plays, and actually can be much more efficient there, compared to cash.  Reasons are twofold: 1) in tournament we tend to (c-)bet a smaller amount, thereby we are getting a better price on our barreling or floating; 2) people are often reluctant to call down because they (over)value their tournament lives.  

For example, in HUSNG where we start with a much shorter stack than in cash (75bb for turbos, 25bb for hypers), most regs tend to c-bet a VERY, VERY wide range on flop and barrel off quite relentlessly.  There is no way you can get away with this strategy in >100bb game if your opponent is competent.  But here it works rather well, because you're often gonna start with a small c-bet (1/2 pot, sometimes even smaller) yet start to kind of threaten his whole stack.  In some sense, this relates to what people often call "leverage effect," although I tend to think this is a somewhat overestimated aspect of the strategy.  

Once again, I wholeheartedly agree with your analysis and I am looking forward to watching the 2nd part.  Above are just my thoughts, and it is possible that I am missing something or thinking about the game seriously wrong, so please tell me if I am.  At any rate, if you could comment on my remarks, that'll be awesome!

- midori

Bumping for some opinions on my tl; dr post above :(

great video

Janda discusses some of this in his book and videos too.  It's not a disaster if our opponent sometimes gets into a spot where they have an automatically profitable bet (bluff), as long as it cost them something to get there, and as long as we're doing well when considering the entire ranges of hands and board textures.  Well laid out Phil.

Frickin Awesome! Thank you

THE Best video I've ever seen!!

im an mtt player but out of all the videos i watched over the last couple years i know i have improved my game the most because of yours, esp through your general ideas and philosophy videos. Another great video thanks

Man, pro for 6 years and I always do that 50% thing. Lol.

Is anyone else getting "Error Loading Media: File could not be played" on this?? 

Hey where can I find Episode 1?

Holyfucking shit, such a simple math issue (50% myth) and we weren't realizing that!

< 3

Where did we get $62 preflop from at like 9:13? Is it a raise to 22.5 from the CO? So if we call from the BB there is 22.5 + 22.5 + 5 in the pot or $50 in the pot?

Where did you get 79.5 from at 12:07? Also, 70% of $137 is 95.9 right and not 96.25?

This sort of implies that when a board is favorable for us, and villain has low fold equity, that if he double barrels, we can fold A LOT to the second barrel.

E.g. You raise CO. Villain 3 bets from BB. Flop is 986. He bets. Turn is a 4. We could probably fold a hand like JJ here, because he has to risk a lot, and had very little fold equity on the flop.

Am I correct?