5BetJam

Always a great joy to see one of your videos Chris!

Two points really resonated with me:

1) Asking: When am I rushing and how am I rushing?

I find I fall into specific thought patterns when I am making a rushed decision; it's something akin to panic state. For me, I find I am more likely to make a rushed decision if bad outcomes start stacking and subtly start to distort my thinking.

2) Learning to think on the fly and problem solve creatively

I think this skill becomes very important as one begins to move up. It's also a great reminder/practice to combat the rushed decision process one might begin to feel as the lollapalooza effect comes into play etc.

In those moments, we can just take a deep breath and remind ourselves that we are just trying to solve a problem :)

Your analysis of all TTC verses are amazing as always. Deeply appreciate all your thoughts and wisdom.

5betJam

Great video! Appreciate all the work and the level of detail you get into in your videos!

Thanks :)

Hey Richard,

Really great format! I think other coaches should follow lead and do solver analysis right after the hand rather than playing out all the hands and choosing important ones at the end of the video. This way, things can still be fresh in viewers' minds.

I really enjoyed the concept of card sharing in multiway spots - it makes a ton of sense!

Some questions:

• I was surprised to see ATh87 being lead on turn at such freq on Q65rKhh board. You said that you rolled 10 on rng that's why you lead but monker was leading >80%. Hands like KJTx make most sense to lead obv but I don't understand why this hand would want to lead so much? Is it merely because this hand is just to hard to play as a check call?
• KT76 preferred going into a block bet ott on Q97ss9 board and you suggest that it was because this hand is hard to play as a check call. Do you see such leads in game by other players with this hand class? Is this a good exploit the population given that they probably don't raise enough on the turn against leads on such boards?

Thanks in advance!

Great content and keep it up!

Hey RunItTw1ce, was curious also! So ran a sim and seems like Tyler was on the mark!

• AA-QQ and TT seem to be the most interested in overbet jamming river. Hands like KJs/AJs/JTs seem to want to bet a more standard size even if spr <1.5. So I think tyler had the correct read that he's not jamming hands such as AJs (atleast at the time before knowing that the opponent was a random rec).

• Opponent's bluffs mostly come from hands like A7s/A6s and KQ in b/x/b line.

• Seems like AxQs are called the most (within the subset of AQ) because Qs is very well represented in turn bluffing range for bb. So after turn xx Qs has a nice removal effect and doesn't block the bluffs.

Anyways, in short, well played Tyler! You make it look so easy, at this point in time :P

Thanks for the great repliy Cory! Re hand #2, yeah it makes sense that we'd want strong hands to protect our weak hands and therefore go into the block sizings sometimes.

I would personally be interested in looking at a further break down of this hand and KK9dd board hand.

Thanks for the reply again! Appreciate the work you are putting in :)

Hey Cory,

Great video!

Had a few questions and would be delighted if you follow up on some of these:

1) On the board KK9dd where opponent x raises J987r, are you calling down on river without having made a boat? In your opinion are these boards typically overbluffed?

2) You blocked turn with AT92ds on 982ccAc and then followed up with pot on A river. How would you go about constructing a bluffing range on the river given most natural bluffs would not want to block turn at all (eg Kc blockers etc) - I guess you can use hands like Kc98x or a similar hand?

3) On a board of Q9xr, you xr QQJ8. Was very surprised by this; aren't we crushing continuing range too hard and having the gutter helps us use this combo to xc a lot? I think you reasoned it saying that opponent's are not bluffing through often enough...so I guess you don't want them to realize all their backdoor equity by letting them x back the turn always?

Thanks a lot in advance! Looking forward to your next video!

Think #2 is a great question. Even if you deviate from equilibrium at one node to exploit, there would be a new equilibrium at the consequent node. Its just not the same as it was before you decided to deviate!

I think when saulo talks about x'ing behind AKss on Ac turn in equilibrium, he means the new one after he decided to call. As you pointed out, the old one doesnt exist anymore.

Hey chris,

Thanks for a great video! Think this was a good intro on how to really study off the tables effectively.

Would you be going over how to organize the data on excel once you've created aggregate reports? I'd think lot of people would find that useful since there's just so much data and it's hard to parse that data effectively.

Excited for the next part on exploitation.

Thanks for this series :)

Happy new year!

Hey chris great video!!

I enjoyed the highway 99 killer and poker hands as a book analogy! :)

Liked verse 27 as well. In my experience having fluidity in terms of thinking and assumptions is mostly a plus, but as "a traveler who is not intent upon arriving", I often times get lost in the tangents and don't finish the tasks I set out to do. How do we create a balance between having concrete plans/deadlines for tasks and yet be fluid in our thinking and ideas (which allows us to go off tangents and think outside the box!) when we are doing the work?

Hey guys, great video! Loved the format. Appreciate all the pio sims you guys ran as well! Eager to see part 2 :)

On hand 1 J63J6 board: I was wondering if oop is ever supposed to donk small on the river. I'd think that 6x are well represented in both ranges but maybe bb shows up with 6x a little more often than bu as played?

Also liked nuno's explanation on AJ5 board about why 95ss, despite having spades, becomes a better call otr than other 95s combos since hands containing spades bet turn more often.

Great stuff!

While watching the video, I thought that it was pretty neat to see how ev for specific hands was generated by being in profitable scenarios on future streets more often; so I'd be excited to delve deeper into the idea of equity not translating into ev and seeing more examples of that. :)

Ohh and I also liked that you showed how equity doesn't always translate to ev by comparing JTss to other JTs combos. Kind of drives home the point that solvers possibly choose combos to bet that have opportunities to reach very profitable nodes on later streets. Well done IMO!

Hey Darren,

Personally I feel like this was one of the best videos of 2019! You did a great job of presenting your ideas and then coming to good conclusions from the observations you were making. Thinking of poker hands like kind of a battle for equities, rather than the old standards of polarity and hand/range strengths etc, is very fresh and exciting!

I think this video greatly complements Qing Yang 's video about equity distribution where he outlines how betting ranges/frequencies are a function of how the equities are distributed within both ranges.

Keep up the great work! Eagerly waiting for part 2,3,4,5 :D Haha.

Earlier on in my career, for a time period I also used to pretend that human players were just bots! While playing live poker, I'd pretend that all players would have floating number w/ stats over their heads! Think it helped me relax and focus on playing my best game based on stats I was collecting, rather than dynamics or "feelings" etc. I think it's okay to feel some anxiety in the beginning of the session, just know (or convince yourself!) that over time, as you make more decisions, these feelings will pass and you'll focus better on your decisions and other actions at the table. So you don't have to brood over them :)

The Journey of a thousand miles starts beneath your feet

Probably one of the most famous adages from Tao Te Ching, but so easy to miss in our day to day lives! It's so easy to get just get swept up by the current of our thoughts and our grandoise plans to do miraculous things in the future that we forget to take those first mindful first steps! Haha!

Great video as always Chris! I like how you are always able to integrate taoists philosophies and poker so seamlessly!

This video isn't working for me. Tried both html and flash; other videos seem to be working fine.

OP busto obviously. Haha kidding. Just got lazy and didn't keep up with the blogging I guess. Update in short: Making very slow progress at the phd thesis, playing poker twice a week, doing coursera and edx courses on the side, going on trips and traveling with SO :)

It's quite liberating to acknowledge that our existence is governed by fair amount of randomness and fate and it is something we have little control over. I think this realization prevents us from being miserable when things don't go our way. But to have the inner calm and ability to completely trust yourself when everything around you is falling to pieces (so to say) is the real challenge.

Thanks so much Mr.Sneeze. Yes monetary goals aren't good at all. Initially, I used it as an added motivation. Yes, streaks are mental projections used by our minds to fill in the gaps and alleviate confusion. It's so easy to answer the question "Why am I losing so much?" with "I'm just running bad right now." It's so hard and time consuming to critically analyze everything. You are correct in saying that I should be extra cautious - I have felt the need to "get back to where I was" before. 

I feel like I have tilt issues from time to time. One of the point mentioned in the article is that you shouldn't be concerned with either past or future. There's only the hand you are playing now. There is so much wisdom in that thought. I am definitely a culprit of not staying in the now. I feel like I understand the randomness inherent to the game very well, but when I'm in a bad mental state, I interpret it as being helpless against the random events that are abusing me left and right. This mindset makes me detached from the results, but also impedes me from critically analyzing my decisions and I tend to avoid responsibility for them altogether ; and I convince myself that "Oh I'm running bad right now, nothing to do against variance, just keep playing and randomness will be with you soon". While there is some truth to it, it is very dangerous to attribute everything to variance and luck. It makes one lazy and irresponsible. 

Thanks for bringing all this to light Mr.Sneeze. I shall take all of your great advice to heart and sincerely work on being more self aware and mindful. 

5BJ

Hahahaha absolutely right! Now the fish tries to find another heater :)

Hey thanks man. Yeah don't want to be bothered by results so I think having comfortable BRM will be good. I'm accumulating a lot of self doubt and am very critical of my skills at this point, so I'm not even sure I can beat 600nl. I played around ~4 hours today and I like it. Just hard to keep track of everything on 4 tables; but in time, I hope I get used to it. 

Hope you had a good WSOP man. 

5BJ

Hey I'll try to help. 

1) Never heard "felting a hand" but have gotten "felted" quite often :P

2) Yup

3) Fancy term for doing different actions (check, call, raise etc) with different parts of your range. 

When you arrive at a decision, you won't play your entire range in that spot the same way. For example, you'll fold a part of your range, you'll raise or call with others.

Hey guys, I've taken an extended break from poker now and have done much needed catch up at school. But now it's time to get back into it. I am not going to go back to playing 5knl/2Knl as that would be a poor bank roll decision. I have around ~40BI remaining for 2Knl. But this is my life roll, so I'm not totally comfortable playing high stakes anymore. I feel like I should improve more and to that effect I've decided to play lower stakes online. I'm mainly debating whether I should play 200nl with 50BIs or 600nl with 20BIs. I can't handle multitabling too much, but I'll probably play 4 tables of 6max. 

Progress (or lack of ) so far:

My goal for this online "experiment" is to understand my own game and see where I fall. I'm thinking of taking more creative lines and play a very loose aggressive game to gain a deeper understanding of opponents' psychology and tendencies. I've done this before but I ran absolutely terrible and lost 16BIs at 600nl. After that, I gave up on online poker thinking I can't play more than one table at a time, but this time around I'm confident I can handle 4 tables and come out with some great insights and experience.

Good luck to me. 

5BJ

Seems good. Agree with taking this line with all the hands you mentioned, except TT. Think that one's too strong to jam. 

River xr could be because he sees your small river bet as weak? He doesn't think you have bunch of Ts and are mostly OVP heavy. I think I'm calling river. I don't think we are getting beat by a boat ton of times, if anything, we are getting beat by 89 and that's it. I suggest betting bigger on river though since it polarizes and doesn't seem very thin valuish. You want to get called by bluffcatchers. A lot of it depends on table dynamics etc too though. 

3b bigger pre. Bb cold calling range is going to be something like 99-JJ, AQ. He shouldn't have any combo draw or and draw with real equity on that flop like AsQs or AsKs since you have As. You should hammer the flop a little bigger. I don't like checking, because I cant build a big pot. Against your flop sizing I expect him to raise TT there. On the turn I like one more bet - he never has a straight there. But check jamming is cool too because he's betting JJ for protection and he semi bluff with 99. If you barrel turn hard, you should be looking to jam river on a non 9, non J card.

LMAO I like it. Maybe say "I had what you thought I had ;)". I'll definitely remember for next time haha

Hmm in game I never considered checking. I was conflicted about shoving or betting very small. I was hoping to induce a shove from him with worse hands when I bet small. Shoving seemed suboptimal though because I thought he sometimes jams hearts or smaller pp if he sees my turn bet as weak; but he's almost always folding to a shove. 

Hey thanks for the help. Yeah shoving seems okay but as I said in my original post, I felt like he folds out hearts if I shove here, but maybe he check jams if I bet tiny to induce a jam. I don't know might be giving him good price to peel though...