Dee Jenn

Great wry jokes, really interesting content; I'm in for all future vids. Re: the "careful with 76 because the 6 is not a clean out" idea, I think that pre-solver, consensus was probably just that the ev of bottom pair here was so low that any additional negative factor was enough to tip the balance to fold. Now we see that these hands have more value than is intuitive for most of us, so folding a flopped pair is just almost never a thing.

Great video, Hunter; hope to see more of this type. You do a great job of illustrating big universal concepts through the hand examples you've chosen.

Re: the concept of not 'wasting' your monsters by inducing with them on the river, I approach it differently. Especially in high stakes ('big' 5/10 and above) live poker, players often get so imbalanced by the river that it's hard to argue against inducing in so many spots. Take your example, but give yourself KJ (top 2) instead of KQ (good top pair). If you check river vs the player type you described, not only does he 'find' the Q9s bluff, I believe it's likely he bets it pure, as opposed to the 25% or whatever the solver recommends. Additionally, he probably takes every natural bluff and bluffs it 100%, he probably gets to the river with other goofy hands with no showdown value and bluffs those, and he may even value bet a bit too thinly (more player-dependent).

In this situation, I prefer to induce much more than optimal with my monsters that have the strongest blockers to a calling range. Here, KJ fits the bill perfectly because it not only blocks calls and unblocks bluffs, it isn't quite as strong as the other monsters you may have. So, I'd always bet JJ and AA without a spade, occasionally check KK, and often check KJ. AsKx seems pretty appealing as a check, too.

The main downside I see to this approach lies in future hands, where I don't get to bluff as often as I'd like vs. observant opponents, since when they face my river bet, they can surmise that more of my monsters than normal may've gone into a check line. Still, I think that when it comes to live poker river play, whatever option performs best in this moment should trump other considerations since my opponents get such a small sample to analyze. Thoughts?

Hi Matt, really enjoying your strat and sense of humor. With the 77 at 54:50, you cbet 1/3 at spr1, and i believe "ready to go with it" referred to bet/calling. It's not clear to me what the advantage is of this sizing is, vs jamming. Are you hoping 55 or 22 will continue more often?

Hi Mark, at 30:20, the recommended play is to bet 75% w/ K9ss on 8s4h3d. Earlier on a similar texture, you bet 75% and the opponent folded A9s with a bdfd. I play primarily live and deepstacked, and I think most tougher opponents will not fold 2 overs +bdfd. So returning to the 1st example hand, if you expect your opponent to be sticky here (not saying it's right or wrong when deeper--not sure), would you instead check the K9s, or bet small and look to barrel more aggressively? Great video, btw; I find this type of review extremely helpful.

Great Video! Re: the ATT99ds hand (at 19:21), I'm not sure I understand the output correctly. It looks like it says to mix between all 3 options with the combo that's got an offsuit Ace. However, it looks like the EV gains from calling and 3-betting are 0.2bbs and 0.3bbs, respectively. Why would we ever turn down a 20bb/100 option (or for that matter, choose 20 over 30)? These outcomes don't seem close enough to be mixing. Thoughts?

I think most people who take this line show up with the A-blocker most of the time. How is his hand big enough to bet the turn OOP after c/c flop? What are you, a player who folds too many rivers, supposed to be able to call with twice?

This was really helpful, ZF, but if you don't mind, clarify one thing: does "peel and stack off" mean we check and hope he shoves? Or that we donk the non-spade turns? It appears to mean the former, but this gets muddy since he may not always bet again. If we jam a brick turn, are we expecting him to call with just a fd, getting 3:1? Am I interpreting your analysis correctly?

Calling makes the most sense to me. Your opponents sound decent, and decent players aren't giving a reraise the action you want with middle or bottom set on this flop in an unraised pot. Great draws will be delighted if you cold 3bet with 5k effective stacks, since taking this action will turn your hand faceup in most people's minds as the hand you have. 

Given the small raise (to 210), the BTN seems to have a plan for this hand that involves building the pot without allowing the bettor to get more than half of his 1500 in. I think it's pretty clear he'll have a big draw almost always, given your hand and the fact that he's raising a weak-tight player's bet.

Coldcalling looks strong, but since no one's ever bluff-raising here, it keeps your range wider than reraising. If you call the 210, to a weak-tight guy especially, your hand must look more like a good draw than top set. By calling, you may destroy the BTN's plan, allowing the bettor to make it 920-ish if he wants to. With a hands like JT97, JT87, J987, or 7789, you couldn't really blame him for that.

If the BTN has a wrap and you repot the flop, he can call the 700, and the 1500 on a brick turn, so you end up on the river with 4500 in the pot and 2800 behind--I just threw up a little in my mouth.

I know this isn't the point of the OP, but is this a standard defend HU?

Interesting video. I agree with DirtyD above that the AQ27 defend doesn't seem too consistent with your general read of the table. UTG raising ranges are going to have that hand crushed and you'll mostly find yourself check/folding high or medium boards or bluffing low card boards with very little equity when called (as here).

I'm curious where your pre-flop standards come from; I'm somewhat new to PLO and you folded a bunch of hands from non-steal positions that looked plenty good to me--8776ss, QJ87ss (to an UTG open),  and I think a couple of similar hands. Where can I learn some good pre-flop guidelines?

There are 10 combos of AK/AQ that his stats indicate he would likely play this way pre, though your note said that he'd LRR AQ (and presumably AK as well). If that's a solid read, how can you ever fold? Probably a few spazz bluffs plus a smaller flush once in a while plus almost 2:1 equals call. If he's likely to limp/call AK/AQ, then it gets VERY close--I can find about 20 boats in his range (including the outside chance that he slowplays AA/KK/QQ), and I struggle to find 10 flushes. J9s, J8s, J7, 98s, 86s, 54s, 43s, 32s is still not enough. Throw in a couple bluffs and it's break-even, but then, some fish won't jam all flushes here, and many would be bluff a little less on a board like this.

ButterNjam,

My point in the last sentence was just disagreeing with your statement that if we had flatted the flop raise, our opponent would (always) stop barreling.

"Regarding calling flop to let villain bluff more streets: our range
looks very strong to cbet and call the flop X/R here- most villains will
see this as strongly indicative of a king (since we would rarely float
air here having to fold to a turn bet, and we would often check back
marginal hands like QQ or AJT). I think very few players would continue
barreling here once we take air out of our range like this. 3Bing the
flop small at least keeps in air combos that are too weak to call an
X/R."

While I strongly agree with you that 3b'ing the flop small as OP did keeps Villain's (and our perceived) range wider, I don't think you can be confident that flatting the x/r takes air out of our range, especially if "air" includes very weak bluff-catchers like QQ. If the dynamic of aggressively attacking paired (and other lockdown) boards exists between two players, then it's plausible that a call of the x/r can be a float or a call with a bluff-catcher. Thus, I don't think flatting the flop x/r automatically makes it impossible to shove the river for value.

That said, I think that even as played (with the flop 3b), it's extremely close/marginal to value-shove the river.  I think you are at or a single notch above the bottom of your perceived value range (AK) for shoving the river. Further, I'm not sure Villain really expects you to bluff much at this point at all; being willing to step out of your "solid" approach to 3b a lot IP pre is a far cry from being a person expected to try to 4-barrel bluff out probable trip Ks here. I expect you to be winning a lot on the river, but I doubt Villain considers calling on the end with a bluff-catcher like KQ, unless he seriously levels himself about what your dynamic with him is.

As it played out on the flop, I'd be torn between calling the 400 and playing mostly to hit, and min-raising (obv call a shove) the flop and shoving most non-club turns when the BTN calls.

Wow I cannot believe people don't like this spot on the flop. Someone who thinks it's a tough situation please explain why. From my perspective, we have an overpair and a wrap vs a fish who is calling with over half his hands pre-flop and presumably continuing on the flop with all open-enders, many/all flush draws, and probably lots of other hands like one pair + weak draw that we crush AND have a playing advantage against. Is my perspective way off?

Pre-flop, I think we have to open a hand like this with a deep-stacked fish in the pot (I would open it in nearly every situation regardless). It sucks when the SB squeezes but he's only doing that with a small % of hands, we're not crushed by most of them, and the fish will often call the squeeze as well with a hand worse than ours.

Just to be clear, I am genuinely looking to have the flaws in what I'm saying explained to me and not berating anyone for disagreeing.

I like potting the flop because stacks are right for the 3rd bet to be all-in (obv if you can get all-in on this flop you'd love to), and because you get called or raised by dominated draws all day.

The turn is very likely to have made someone a straight, and coupled with your read that Villain would've likely raised 2 pair+ on the flop, it's even more likely. The good news is this also makes it very likely your boat outs are all live. I would check-call this turn and check/evaluate rivers where I didn't improve.

I would definitely lead heart rivers big because non-flushes will always check back, flushes of any kind will usually check back, and as someone else mentioned, the dry ace is your only plausible bluff. I doubt you can rep a boat vs. typically unsophisticated live players here after 3-betting pre-flop and he'll be getting a nice price to call, so I would not attempt to bluff on this card. However, if he were to go all-in after I checked, I'd seriously consider calling because I doubt he expects us to call 1200 on this river, and for him to have a boat he'd likely have to have turned 2 pair+.  Calling depends on how likely he'd be to bet trip 9s for value though--it's an obviously good bet IMO, but many live players would not make it.