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My final Steve Paul video (membership ends soon) and I am not disappointed. Honestly, this was one of the most productive and informative training video styles for my type of brain. In fact, if there were a course where all of the common game tree nodes were covered in this type of video, I think I would become a very astute poker player in a very short amount of time (relatively speaking). Anyway, thanks for teaching, Steve!

Thank you for teaching, and have a nice day. =)

Very, very helpful response. Thanks again, Alex!

Hey, Gary Chappell - I enjoyed this one! My favorite live-play videos are the very rare ones where the coach actually runs like a normal person. So despite it being a bit insensitive to you, I enjoyed and got a lot out of watching you run bad =)

Seriously though, watching you make solid decisions while running bad is far more beneficial to the general poker audience than watching you make solid decisions while in "god-mode." I wish more coaches would coach through bad sessions.

Thanks, Gary!

Another great video. Thanks, Alex Theologis!

I have noticed that a lot of the times when you are analyzing hands, that your decisions in the hand can be very similar—if not practically identical—to what I would believe the 100bb cash-game strategy to be. I know this is not the case overall or in general, but it is interesting to me that there are so many situations where stack depth doesn't seem to play a hugely important role in the decision making process. I'm sure this is situation dependent and that there are plenty of situations where stack size is virtually the primary deciding factor, but it is interesting nonetheless.

So a question related to the above comment: At what stack-depth do you believe our overall strategies change vastly? Or is it more akin to an evenly distributed spectrum where strategies simply change more and more the smaller the stack depth gets?

Thanks, Alex!

Qing Yang - Awesome video, man! While I've obviously heard this information from you before, I still got a ton of value from this video. Thanks, QY!

Admittedly, I have not viewed this video yet (I will be doing that in a few moments). But I have been feeling quite jaded with my RIO subscription lately and am likely going to cancel it. Nothing against RIO at all, because I absolutely love this site and the community, but after watching something like 600+ training videos in the past 12 months (and over 2,000 of them over the years) I think that my autistic brain finally understands what poker is (which is certainly a different thing than understanding how to play optimally, to be sure).

Why am I saying all of this on KRab's video? Well, because I saw that KRab had a new video posted and I legitimately got excited. And definitely not because Kevin's videos are the most entertaining—because frankly, they are not. But they are some of the most beneficial videos in existence for my poker mind and I felt the need to say that before I no longer have an account with which to metamorphose my thoughts into words. Thanks for the videos and for all of the knowledge, Kevin Rabichow!

My takeaway: Your bet sizes will literally (technically) dictate the ranges that your opponent is supposed to have. Manipulate your bet sizes, manipulate Villain's range. Brilliant.

As for the actual topic of the video, I'll put it this way: Thank you, Steve Paul for this video! While I have only played around 120k hands in the last 12 months, out of those hands I have overbet the turn exactly 5 times. After watching this video—as well as double checking my (and your) work with Pio—I now overbet turns 10x more often than my current pool. You rock!

Howdy, Sheriff! This town ain't big enough for the both of us!. . . . . so I will just quietly and politely leave. =P

Alex Theologis - Seriously, thanks for another very helpful video. You have solidified yet another concept in my mind, from this one video alone, and that often takes 10 random videos or more to have the same result, so thank you for the efficiency! =)

Hey, Tariq Haji - Thanks for another great video! I would really appreciate you doing a database review/analysis of spots where you RFI and get flatted IP.

Thanks, Tariq!

". . .I guess that makes some sort of sense. . . from. . . from someone's perspective. . ."

— Tariq (Legend)

=)

Patrick Cronin - Thank you for this video; seriously.

A hypothetical alternate title: "DRLuck3 Presents: A More Accurate Depiction of Poker."

One of my private resentments (though now public, I suppose) about watching coaching videos—and I have viewed probably around 500 of them over the past year—is that I have never seen a coach run as bad as I run. And this resentment is not purely perspectival, nor is it merely caused by my own selection and attention biases, although those most certainly do exist in all of us in abundance.

But think about it: if I am relatively new to the game and I play 50 hours worth of poker and I watch 50 hours worth of live-plays. . . what is my perception going to be? That I am just legitimately unlucky and everyone who is winning seems to be running way better than me. And that won't even be a baseless suspicion. In fact, in a warped sort of way, I would actually have evidence to support my suspicion. If it were remotely realistic and if I had the wherewithal, I could track all of the results of the coaches and myself and compare them. While 50 hours may be far too small of a sample to be all that meaningful, the point still remains, especially when you also take into consideration the multitude of innate cognitive biases and other assorted errors in reasoning that are so prevalent in humans.

Too many words. Get to the point. . . Got it.

It's like social media. When all you ever see is other people's highlight reels, you start to question your own mundane existence. And that sucks. It's nice to see someone run as unspectacularly as I often do; and it's nice to see them have the intellectual and intestinal fortitude to put it on display.

Thanks, Patrick!

screamdustry - Let's not be so hasty =P I have discovered that the BB actually overfolds his offsuit Aces, and therefore 39.717% is the optimal c-bet sizing, as long as you mix in 3x overbet cbet with KK about a third of the time.

I learned that from a guy on YouTube who streams on Twitch. ;)

Nice one, Tyler Forrester, thanks. That first hand with the boat on board was pretty enlightening. I'm not a math guy, so I have no clue what kind of odds I need in those spots, or actually, I probably don't even know what odds I'm getting in the moment. But I feel like I picked up a heuristic somewhere about potential-chop-pot-boards being good to bluff at and bad to call. Obviously that is way oversimplified, but generally speaking what sorts of things are you considering in situations where the board is a potential chop on the river? And yes, I know that you are going to use math to answer the question, and no I'm not offended =)

Thanks, Tyler!

Hey, sauloCosta10 - Very helpful video, thank you. Especially since your student's stats look very, very similar to my own (albeit I am playing lower stakes on a softer site). I had some ideas about how I could improve my game before, but you really helped to solidify for me the areas that I need to address first (as well as how to address them). Looking forward to part two.

Thanks, Saulo!

Hey, Tariq Haji - Outstanding video; thank you! And I won't hold the running good against you. ;-P In fact, I think you got into some really interesting spots because of it. That last hand you reviewed with the flush over flush was especially insightful. While I initially thought about the Q4 of spades being at the top of his range and how a fishy opponent may re-jam the T-high flush in your shoes, once you got me thinking about what bluffs you could have there I finally saw the light. Thanks a bunch, Tariq, and keep up the excellent work!

Ahhhh, very nicely said, and thank you! I was neglecting the preflop aspect, but while reading your comment I realized that this is indeed the core or "root" of what poker is. While it may seem like a pretty silly comment/question to ask an Elite coach, especially someone like yourself who I would place in the top handful of Elite coaches, your answer really is sincerely helpful for me and I thank you for your answer and for your time!

"Hopefully that was helpful." - Kevin Rabichow

Lol. If this video was not helpful, I:
a) was not paying attention
b) am not yet prepared for this level (depth) of analyses
or
c) am already too advanced to be wasting an hour of my life watching this

I can't claim to know that hypothetical solution with any semblance of certainty, but I am confidently going to go with: "definitely not c."

Thanks, Kevin Rabichow!

Hey, Alex Theologis - Thanks for another great video! I enjoy the "wild side" =)

Theoretical concept idea: "What (the f*) is NLHE poker?"
- While I'm mostly kidding, I can't quite seem to figure it out exactly. It seems to be something like a perpetual sequence of "range vs range" interactions (at least postflop), where bet, pot and stack sizes are taken into consideration in order to find the optimal strategy. I know this may appear trivial or even pointless, but any input that you may have on the topic would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks, Alex!

Heeeyyyy, Patrick Cronin - Thanks for the vid; I'm happy to see another live-play from you!

I think that coaches finding the correct video styles for their own abilities and personalities could be a training series in and of itself. And although I do say that jokingly, a series thus constituted would likely be quite valuable. I imagine being a poker coach who produces training videos for a random and mostly unknown group of paying viewers is somewhat like a young adult trying to "find themselves." And I sympathize with all of you =)

But as for your live-play videos being beneficial, I think the main thing that stands out to me is that we get to observe the "real-time" thoughts that you try to go through with the in-game limitations, and in some ways that is much more helpful (at least for me) than seeing a coach show us their ridiculously awesome and rare spectacular play that they made one time out of 50,000 hands and how it miraculously is "PIO approved."

Anyway, I ramble. My apologies. Thanks, Pat!

Hey, Gary Chappell - Thanks for the video and for providing a little more context regarding yourself personally and your thoughts on your future as a poker player (and on your future in general). I appreciated that and found it beneficial to know. I also enjoyed being able to see the action much better without the HUD, although I didn't really mind it too much when it was there.

When you are feeling a bit rusty or out of practice, do you have a specific routine that you implement to shake the rust off, or do you just grind through it?

Cheers!

Hi, Chris Pimmer - Thanks again!

Acceptance. That is my own personal and transformative takeaway from this video. Sometimes things may seem unfair—and to be fair, sometimes things are—but we still have the power over how we think and react to those things; and that's something. Having some power is better than having no power at all, and to disregard this fact and cave-in to the natural temptation to simply become a victim would be far too easy, as well as completely disrespectful toward the very fact that I am, presently, experiencing existence as a human being (whatever that ultimately means).

"He holds nothing back from life; therefore he is ready for death, as a man is ready for sleep after a good day's work."

Nice. Any specific centuries or time periods? As cliche' as it may be, I really enjoy Dostoevsky, especially his writings after his imprisonment. I have also really been trying to understand Chekhov, but it seems his style may be a bit too advanced or obscure for me presently. I still enjoy his work though. Anyway, sorry for the tangent and thanks for the reply!

(My personal favorite authors in general are:
Franz Kafka
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Vladimir Nabokov
Albert Camus)

Hi, Steve Paul - Thanks for another highly beneficial video! Beyond the obvious and immediate benefits of further refining my check-raising strategies, you're also exemplifying what actually 'studying' poker can look like, as opposed to simply watching tons of training videos with little personal private study. Thanks for the knowledge, but also for the added motivation!

Kevin Rabichow - What a cool idea! I've not studied much heads-up, but I have been playing online poker (on and off) since before "Black Friday," so I can definitely appreciate the things that you are saying regarding how 'we' poker players thought about the game back then. It's something that a lot of the younger guys can't even imagine, let alone comprehend.

And @35:39 you said something that really hurt me: "I was kind of just mimicking the other regs."

That, unfortunately, is what I have done for my entire poker career (in truthfulness, "side-income" would be more accurate than "career"). But here I still am, haven't given up yet, and you just helped me realize that emulating players better than myself may be a good way to learn, but it is not an appropriate endpoint.

I know it's an old video, but thanks for it, Kevin. I'll be checking out part 2 for sure!

Hey, Tyler Forrester - Sorry for the silly and irrelevant question here, but sending you a private message in order to ask seemed potentially unwarranted (or worse, inappropriate), so here it is:

Your RIO name was inspired by Nikolai Gogol, yes? Is there a story behind you choosing it? Or is it based on his short story "The Nose," or on his own nose, or yours?

Sorry, man. I have an interest in seemingly pointless things and I have actually been meaning to ask you this for months. While curiosity may have "killed the cat," it seems to be one of the things that keeps me alive. =P

Alex Theologis - Well, I'm glad I came back and finished watching the rest of the video after the technical issues have been resolved; really great stuff! I agree with what hapagto mentioned in their comment above about you being their favorite RIO MTT coach. In fact, you are the only MTT coach that I watch consistently and am always excited when you release a new video.

As a cash-game player I don't feel right making any video requests from you, but my "tournament-player-friendly" request is for you to please release more videos where you talk about poker and poker hands in depth. You really shine in your analyses and there's a very simple reason why I will continue to watch every video that you produce despite you focusing on tournament play, and that very simple reason is this: your teaching/coaching improves my cash-game play. =)

Thanks again, Alex!

Hi, Tyler Forrester - Thanks for all the detailed explanations and analyses of your thought processes! =)

RunItTw1ce - Absolutely, I completely agree. And to add to what you're saying, while I may personally occasionally find some of those hero folds (not [yet] in an anonymous pool though), I am never finding that AJ (on the 225) or the Q9s floats/bluffs, so maybe I'm just over-folding in general, while Tariq appears to be picking his spots very thoughtfully and based on actual knowledge, which is very impressive and motivating.

Steve Paul - I'm greatly enjoying journeying with you as you get back into poker shape. I sort of thought of a series like this close to a year ago now. I just started getting back into poker a year ago and thought it could be very informative to have someone who knows the game fairly well go through and "re-learn" it, so to speak. Well, I'm sad I didn't voice my idea, but I'm very happy that you had it as well because you are both more qualified and better able to pull this sort of thing off. So well done. I'm going to check out the next videos and hopefully I can find something to complain about =P

Thanks, Steve!