Arabella

I think there is a fundamental misconception about solvers that is pretty common these days.
For a lot of people, mostly people who don't work solvers themselves, often think of solvers as a standardized set of lines to take for each one of the hands in the matrix.
But the way I view it, solvers tell us where the equilibrium is. But the goal of poker is not to break-even, which is what equilibrium essentially means in this case. People study solvers, in many ways to see where profits are generated in poker, and how does an optimal (maximum profit for us) strategy adjust itself against a deviation from the equilibrium.
So if OP's definition of a "robotic style" is a quantifiable way based on data to measure and calculate exploitation instead of "looking the other person in the eye and tell this MOFO is bluffing", then yea, poker is dead I guess.

Hero has tight image, folds too much and ISO btn with 54o? Something's afoot here. Fold pre.

This is my cheat sheet for live poker
- I call more preflop (both with speculate hands and my traps), try to maximize SPR post flop to increase of decision making edge.
- I also use smaller sizing, especially multi-way (in some spots I make it up by using sizes like 25% OTF, 150% OTT, 200% OTR)
- Go for thinner value
- You better have a really good reason to bluff. Thinking about triple barreling? Make sure you have the perfect hand for it and be prepared to get called down by the "fuck you" hands from the whale who just doesn't want to fold.
- A note on the previous one, some of the best bluffing opportunity I found I learned by playing a lot against this player type. Be very mindful about the way the check flop in single raised pots. Be really aware in multiway situations. Sometimes you know the player last to act is weak and the player in the blinds probably won't be able to stand two bets with his top pair of sixes, go nuts, overbluff.
- In regard to bluffing, I have other useful tricks such as floating vs overcbetting donk to represent strength in future streets. Widen preflop ranges in good situations and try to extract max value when we hit our miracle flop (flatting more SB since BB always never squeeze enough/ aware of our capped ranges) But be careful, everything in moderation.
- All in bet carries a more powerful presence than usual.
- Assume every one sucks and adapt these as default strategy until they prove to me otherwise.
- Doug Polk makes fun of this all the time, but sometimes game flow is more important than the strategy. Normally it would be crazy to 3bet squeeze A5 off facing a 6x open from a 30BB stack and a flat call from SB. But if the 30BB has been rebuying for short for the past hour, making multiple trips to the ATM. Fuck yeah I'm getting it in here.

This. Big fan of the check/bet/bet line (bomb turn bomb river so we fold out most of if not all of his Qx combos). Live regs tend to trend towards not protecting check back range enough, so I also see a lot of value in delay cbet vs a check.
This is probably exploitative in many ways, but usually I don't like to get stacks in live poker with HU single raised pots. I think triple barreling AJ no diamond on this run out is fine, but personally I just don't like the added variance. And I think there are better bluff spots with more visibility. (For example: check/bet/bet line vs triple barrel in this hand)

Worse hand I'm calling is probably AQ here

Awesome video. Regarding the last hand on 974cc flop. I noticed we are doing a lot of mixing between the two bet sizing with almost our entire betting range. What are some of the criteria for favoring the small sizing and what makes us favor the bigger sizing?

Apologies, there's an error in the note I took down. I thought the pot was 280 (was actually 290), but the BTN did start the hand with a full 100bb stack.
I think I'm flatting AA and KK because of the BTN actually, he's been one of the most active 3bettors on the table and I had a loose image.
About your last question, I don't know to be honest. My read is that the BTN is not perfectly balanced, he tends to put too much money in with his cbets but also shuts down on later streets too frequently. I also don't think BTN is always shoving his cbetting range on most boards, like on some boards he will have a non all-in cbet sizing but I'm prepared to call down with TT in some situations.

You got the money in good and put yourself in a very good position to win a huge pot. That's what matters. You shouldn't really be asking question like "was his call reasonable?", remember this, you need bad players to make mistakes in order to win at poker. Sometimes their mistakes put a bad beat on you, but that's an essential part of the game.

On a sidenote, if I'm reading your hand history correctly, the money got it in on the turn. Unless HJ is drawing stone dead with a hand like AJ, it's likely he will share some of the equity. (pair+diamond draws, overpairs, some sort of straight/ flush combo draw are all reasonable holdings for HJ.) Another reason to not be thinking about the hand based on the river.

First post on RIO because this spot seems so interesting.
1. Why not cbet flop? I know this is a board we should be checking a lot because we don't have a lot of nines in our range. We also get called by hands better than ours (our kicker isn't great) But in a five way pot, seems like playing more straightforward can't be bad. Live poker is more about getting value than being balanced in certain spots IMO.
2. Regarding combos, since there are 2 nines on the board and you have 98s, theoretically he should only have one combo of A9s. Flatting A9o 5 ways facing EP open doesn't seem ideal and I would guess he has more 98o or even 97o than A9o.
3. I agree this is 99.9% a boat OTR for the BTN, can't completely rule out JT just because I haven't seen BTN play personally. I can see some really bad (usually wealthy) rec players that might just be spewy like this, but this is extremely unlikely.

As played I think it really depends on the BTN then, if I think he's ever doing that with 77 or 88 I'll probably talk myself into a call. Knowing your average thinking regs in local casinos mostly play a weak passive style, for some players I can see them having us beat 100% of the time here. My experience is talking really helps the decision-making in these kind of spots, player profiling, try to hint at him you have a boat, see if he gets nervous (because he overplayed his hand)