Alex W.

Hey Ben,

For a long time the best way to get better at poker was to watch training videos. That’s a great method (and I’ve learned a ton from it), but training videos can only teach you to be as good as the person you’re learning from.

Modern players have resources like PIO and Monker to study and break new ground in games, but I’m curious how a guy like you who has been on top for so long and was on top before tools came out “studies.”

In other words, what does it take homework-wise to meet and surpass the greatest players? What’s worked for you at different stages of your career? And how do you work on the games like Stud/Draw that don’t have solvers?

Thanks Ben for this and all the great poker content you’ve made!

Liking this for video title

Hey Steamer, sorry you feel like we’re spamming you. We’ve got the A-Game Poker Masterclass launching on Wednesday and wanted to give everyone a chance to learn more about Elliot. Plus we felt there’s some real value in the emails (free vid, free MP3s, etc).

We’ll be back to regularly scheduled programming after Wednesday :)

What Tyler said :)

Hey Supernova5,

I'm not sure if it's directly covered in the video, and I don't want to speak for Peter but I can share a few tips I've gathered from other videos on the site that I use when I play:
- In general, we want to bet more polar as pots go multiway
- In general, we want to keep our sizing smaller to make betting with bluffs more attractive

So to answer your question, I don't think there will be many situations we continue to range bet multiway.

Hope that helps

When you purchase the course you should receive a PM with a link to download them. If you didn't, PM me or email [email protected] and we will get you sorted out :)

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It's a tricky spot. In theory Qx is supposed to mix (because it's a big part of our value range, and we don't want to call 100% or 0%).

Can Qx take this line? I don't think so, because you have every combo of KQ in your range, so he will run into the nuts a lot and never get called by worse. His only goal would be to fold out chops (not a terrible goal, but let's assume he doesn't check/jam Qx).

KK is a natural hand for him to bluff with, but does he always bet it on turn, and always bluff it on river? If we assume yes, he has 6 combos of potential bluffs, and 12 combos of value.

Hero is getting 2.4:1.

If he plays KK this way 100% of the time, you have a winning call. If he plays it this way less than 5/6 the time, you have a losing call. In these spots, especially live, I think it's best to go with the player pool read that no one is meeting these bluff frequencies in spots like this and just fold.

The cbettor will cbet this board a lot. He probably opens wider than 15% anyway

Hey Chris, at 34:30 you have AJ55 on AJ8r. I ran a quick sim and you have 40% against two 15% ranges. This seems like a clear raise, but more specifically I'm wondering how much equity you'd feel prepared to give up on the extra small bet for playability purposes. Do you have a sense of what the highest equity you'd pass on the raise for playability is?

Same Problem

Hey Tyler, good video. I like the format and the short handed content.

In the T9o hand at 11:59 I’m curious what bluffs you would choose to support that size. Normally on boards like this we’d like to have Qx or something to block the nuts but I’m wondering if that’s the blocker you’re looking for once he presumably has capped his range to never include a straight. It seems likely he’s folding a lot so maybe we could go a little crazy bluffing and do well but I suppose I’m wondering what bluffs you’d choose from a more theoretic perspective.

Big fan of this video series conceptually. I found this video a little basic. That's not exactly a criticism because it's intended to be an intro to the games, but I would enjoy a series that went more into detail about opening ranges etc.

Crazy hand but it's hard for me to believe there's much to learn picking this hand apart. No chance is it a GTO call or anywhere close, so it means he either had some crazy read/timing tell/misclick.

As a long time RIO sub, poker player, and casino industry employee I’m impressed. I have some detailed knowledge of the economics of online poker, and I was very skeptical of your decision to open an online poker site. But I love RiO and was always hopeful you’d surprise me.

It’s obviously early but this post and these policy choices seem exceptionally well considered. I’m prepared to take you at your word when you say you can effectively ban huds, and contingent on that, I think you have some fantastic ideas here.

Looking forward to more posts like this as I think they’re educational for everyone and interesting reads.

Can someone provide a link with more info on Pio Cloud?

First

Great content. One of my favorite videos in quite some time. Thanks Jason

I've used the calculator at the beginning of the video for some time. I find it useful for conceptualizing variance.

The calculator is designed to give you a range of outcomes and the associated information based on your TRUE win rate and TRUE SD (as you mention in the video). However I have always wondered if you can use the calculator to estimate a range for your true win rate.

IE if we put in our OBSERVED win rate and sample size can we then use the calculator to say that our TRUE "theoretical win rate" would lie within a 95% confidence interval from that observation?

I would intuitively lean towards calling turn and folding river to any meaningful size (50%+).

I ran a quick sim of this spot in PIO and it seems that PIO almost never folds this hand on the turn, and slightly prefers to fold this hand on blank rivers facing a 50% pot bet.

Reasons I think turn is a call:
1. Hands that he 3B on the flop will break into roughly three categories:
A. Semi Bluffs
B. Value
C. Backdoors
He will continue to fire all of A (which is now mostly a good hand) and C, while slowing down with some of B. He'll find himself unable to go nuts with many of his C-category hands on most rivers because a significant amount of your r/call range on the flop has now improved to a straight or flush.
2. I usually don't like to fold hands that PIO doesn't play a mixed strategy with, because that's very exploitable. IE I never fold a hand that PIO always calls.

All of that said, it's certainly possible that Villain is someone who only ever has categories A and B in his range, in which case it's an easy fold :)

Please do more of these :)

Hey Tyler, late comment but I really enjoyed this series. You make excellent videos.

Glad to see you making more videos.

I'd like to suggest you mostly pass on reviewing Limit Hold'em spots in your videos. Similar to PLO/NLHE there are already RiO pros who make very good LHE videos.

I find the Stud/Draw/Omaha footage much much more interesting!

At 15:00... In Villain's shoes are we opening every hand that has an equity advantage over our opponent's up cards?

If so I get that he should be opening 695 as roughly his worst hand

Which means that he's a significant equity dog on 4th street with that hand even against our hand (a hand that seems relatively low in our range). Even though he's getting 3.5:1 (meaning he should call if the bet was all in) he can be as much as a 4:1 dog against our better hands.

All of this is just to suggest that he has SOME correct folds on 4th street... Do you agree?

Hey Iteopepe, enjoyed the video. Curious about the spot at 48 minutes.... We open 8542 and get 3 bet. Call, 1/1, X/X. You talk in detail about how you think his check allows you to rule out a clean seven draw.

Do you think he should be capping his range here? Should he play a mixed strategy with his clean seven draws to try to protect his checking range?

Curious to hear your thoughts on this spot from his perspective.

Really enjoying this series as someone who has played HU (off and on) since 2010.

Surprised not to see more comments on this... I'm really enjoying it a lot and looking forward to watching more of Iteopepe's mix vids!

I think river is a fold as well.

I wouldn't bluff shove. His river value betting range is probably AK+, and given your description of villain I would default to avoiding large river bluffs.

That said I think it's a good hand to do it with. So if you think he's capable of folding what will feel like "big" hands to him (AK, KQ, AA) here then go for it. But as someone who has played a lot of 5/10 and 10/20 live you don't make your money getting 35 year old indian guys to fold AA.

On the 9 turn I would just go into call down mode. He can have all the better hands and I think we start to isolate them quickly when we put in a raise.