MrSawyer

The problem with x/r'ing the flop is that you'll usually get the fish to fold. I think leading flop to get value from the fish is a far superior option.

Agree with pretty much everything Saulo posted. Also, probably not necessary to peel pre at this stack depth vs. a reg with no fish in the pot.

21:21 Top Left--You call CO open from SB with ATss and x/c on Ks 3c 5c. Assuming he cbets the 9s turn, are we x/c'ing or x/r'ing here?

It's too bad you won't be back next year. Of the Essential Pros, you were the best video producer imo. Really cool how you got a bunch of 2+2 legends to collaborate with you on a bunch of vids.

This one in particular made me think a bit about possibly incorporating some small "inducing-bets" for value since a few of your decisions to bluff were based primarily on the fact villain bet small and was therefore capped (although there were obviously other factors such as blockers).

@NoHubris Ah, I didn't realize he was playing them HU first before moving up to 6max.

Isn't it kind of shady to sit fish at 6max and try to talk them into playing you HU if another reg sits as well?  Seems like every reg in the player pool would absolutely despise you.   I think "SexyAngeline" took a lot of heat for behaving similarly at small stakes on Stars.  Also, I'm assuming you're (either intentionally or unintentionally) grimming guys all the time which is also a pretty terrible behaviour.

Thanks for the video, Jonas.

Just a suggestion: how about producing a hand history video in the future? As in a video where you pick 4 or 5 hands that help illustrate the importance of a/some particular concept/s. These live session review videos are ok but sometimes it feels like we're going over way too many standard spots and perhaps not delving deep enough into the interesting ones because we're jumping from table to table.  

Yeah, watching Doc play is absolutely brutal.

At high-stakes the edges are so slim that seemingly small details become infinitely more important.  It's not enough to just say "I saw this x/r a few times yesterday so I know how he plays."  I'm not trying to suggest that without a HUD most players are hopeless, but they do provide a tremendous advantage to those are willing to set up and use it properly.

lol

With regards to your first post: "If our strategy is to check all our strong hands then villain will never bluff when checked to as there are no hands we will be folding."  I may be wrong, but I don't think he's advocating checking ALL our value ALL the time.  The point is to x/ our value some of the time to balance the times we x/ with the intention of folding to a bet.  Balancing our range in these spots makes us much more difficult to play against because it causes our opponents to make more mistakes.

Really like the idea of 50/50 NL/PLO for Essential members.  Solid video, Phil.

I've never been involved in this type of thing so forgive me if this is a silly question, but wouldn't this sort of arrangement encourage a player who's deep in make up to play poorly so he gets dropped and doesn't have to pay the debt?  As terrible as it sounds, if I'm DEEP in make up there's a part of me that would consider taking the easy route out and tanking for a while so I don't have to pay up.  If I lose, it's not my money anyways and I get to play poker.  If I hit a big score, I'm out of make up and can continue to play poker. Again, terrible, but I have to imagine this happens quite frequently. How to backers deal with this problem?

I disagree with this post on so many levels.  Firstly, I think you should always be cognizant of the other stack sizes at the table so you can properly estimate your implied odds in certain spots, evaluate what kind of stack-to-pot ratios you'll be encountering on flops/turns before calling/raising etc.

Secondly, your assertion that shoving preflop with "two cards" in a cash game isn't sometimes a profitable strategy is just wrong.  Would you say putting all your money in preflop with pocket aces in incorrect?  Of course not, because pocket aces have excellent equity against any calling range.  

In this particular case, if we assign villain a calling range of TT+, AK, AQs, our AKo has ~43% equity.  If all the money goes in pre flop it looks like this:

 0.43 * (75 + 180) - 0.57 * 180

=109.65-102.6

=$7.05

Thus, we can show an immediate profit with this line vs. his calling range and it doesn't even take into account the amount of times we take down the pot a preflop when he folds all his 3bet bluffs.  Poker is all about finding profitable spots, and this is clearly a profitable spot.

There are several problems with calling here.  1) If we call and close the action we see the flop four ways and our hand's equity goes down tremendously.  There will also be times when we hit our hand and our opponents flop a better hand and stack us.  2)  We're not going to flop a pair often enough to compensate for all the times we miss and have to check/fold. 3) Our 4betting range becomes too narrow if we're calling here and we never get action from worse when we 4bet AA or KK.  i'm sure there are some others that I missed, as well.

Point being: Yes, this is a higher variance spot than getting it in with a set vs. a flush draw, but it's still +EV in the long run so I'm taking this line all day.

Yeah, basically everything Chael said.  It's also important to note that since the straddle is on, you're only ~45bbs deep.  Shallow effective stacks will restrict the "big stack's" ability to outplay you postflop, so I wouldn't worry to much about that in this particular scenario. 

As played I think the shove is more than fine.

Big fan of your videos.  I really look forward to them every week.

Also, If I drank every time one of you guys said "to be honest," I'd be dead by the 35:00 min mark lol

Bet/fold without a read, imo.  I also prefer to lead turn since I'll be stabbing with a lot of bluffs/semi-bluffs after he checks back the flop.

Hey James,

Really enjoy your videos.  Not a huge fan of the six tables though since it makes reading HUD stats and bet sizes pretty difficult for people watching on laptops.  Maybe it's just me but I found myself a squinting a couple inches away from the screen a bunch of times.  Other than that, solid work!

I've really enjoyed the videos you've published thus far.  Excellent thought processes, a good clear voice, and many interesting hands.  Keep it up!