hinuttaja

Nice videos!
At around 8:00, in the hand against Brian Rast, in which he "cr-bluffs" river:
His hand is sort of ideal for that (blockers, enough sd-value to check and
win sometimes, but weak enough to make him unhappy check-calling ), but I'd like to know the answer to the question: Which value hands would he play this way (bet-bet-x/r river) on this board run-out? This is important to stop you from fistpump-calling with any K.

I guess AA and AK and KQ are my strongest check back hands there.
AA and AK even block the nut straight.

In the hand, I called. He had QT. Strange decision to overbet with this hand - this might be actually a perfect hand to c-r bluff: has showdown value, is not strong enough to call and blocks the nuts.

The situation where you shoved 9876 on TT7rb flop against two opponents caught my attention, and I decided to do some math on it (using OddsOracle):
Flop: TT7rb
P1:6789
P2:10% (3-betting from the BB)
P3:20% (cold-calling form the button)

How often does at least 1P have at least trips: 37,4%
How often does at least 1P have at least FH: 7,8%

Our equity against random trips 26,3%
Our equity against a FH: 0%

Pot $181, bet $86, eff $485 left

Case 1: Nobody has trips, both fold:
Freq: 62.6%
Result: Win of ($111+$86)=$267

Case 2: P3 has trips:
Freq: 29.6%
Result: Equity of 26.3% of the pot of ($181+$86+2$486)0.263-$485=-$160

Case 3: Somebody has a FH
Freq: 7.8%
Result: We lose our stack=-$485

Overall EV: ($2670,626)+(-$1600,296)+(-$485*0,087)=+$82

So shoving does look awesome. As a bonus, we can now shove full houses for value on this
flop and sometimes get called by T** or 77.

Did I get this right?
I've done embarrassingly few of these calculations.

Yes, because you're up against MANY uncoordinated hands, some of which are coordinated... in poker, only the winner is rewarded.

Okay, if it's good for the action... surely you can pay $5 for the image of a "non-nit good guy".

I put your hand on PPT against top 50% and top 30%, resulting in the following:
JJ88s: 36%
top 50%: 30,25%
top 30%: 33,75%

So shoving is clearly +ev. I agree with qu1sk that it's the best play available here. With 100bb I'd prefer calling for setmining.

I understand that the $5 overblind (straddle) was a must in this game? Otherwise it's a huge mistake to post it with a 40bb stack.

I used to always call pre with such hands as yours. However, I've changed my mind now. These spots can and should be avoided simply by folding preflop. Wait for hands which can flop TOP set or such ones like AT98s which can flop very strong draws.

You'll surely miss some profitable spots against the loose players but making money on those requires quite a lot of skill, which is mostly NOT technical skill but more psychology/tells/feeling. Besides, as this scenario shows, bottom sets suck because not only you can be against a bigger set but also if you're against top2 and a combo draw you're not the money favourite either.

One more point: you're calling 6bb out of your 100bb stack, which is a 6% investment. I think hands such as yours hit the flop around 25% of the time (10% set and 10% nut fd, 5% flopped flush or straight), and as your example shows, you're far from sure to win the pot even if you "hit". And seeing the flop for 6bb is actually the BEST case scenario for you. So the risk-reward just sucks here.

And don't get annoyed about the fact that they raise every pot. Just wait for your spot. Getting the $200 in even with 70% equity is $80 profit. If you manage this once in two hours, that's $40 an hour.

I agree with both previous writers. In addition, you should fold even if your dangler was one of the cards you mention in the scenario 3.
Generally, these spots are +ev only if you're sure that BOTH your opponents have a big pair and/or doesn't have the same kind of hand as you. Otherwise it's just gambling with unclear odds, not much -ev but -ev nevertheless.

Let me try:

There are 13 cards of each suit in the deck; 3 of them are accounted for on the board. This leaves 10 cards. You have 4 cards yourself that you know of (none of which are of the suit), leaving 45 unknown cards. For the first two cards, the calculation is straightforward: (10/45) * (9/44), which simplifies neatly to 1/22.
Now for four cards, there are six possible combinations of the two flush cards:
(FFxx,FxFx,FxxF,xFFx,xFxF,xxFF). So the probability should be six times 1/22, or 3/11.

Is this correct?

Great video! Been thinking about this concept myself; it's nice that you made all the work for me!

The hand where you had AA99 3way with s/p about 2. I tried to construct a range for the villain: KKxx, JJxx, KJxx, Ah xh xx,QT9x, JhTh9x. This might be too tight, but he is betting a very 3bettingrange-connected board into two people. Propokertools gives you only 31% here.

What do you think?

I think your play here should differ heavily between online and live play. If this was somehow an online situation, I'd agree with Fabse - however, live games are a different world completely. You can raise to about 1100 which is close to all-in, so I'd definitely do that. If up against KK, then so be it (with that turn, it's just a set-up), but not stacking a smaller set or KT is a disaster here. I'd guess SB has his fair share of smaller sets, as this is a LIVE game and many people dislike folding in general. And if your read about him betting all kinds of draws is correct, raising becomes clearly the best play.

Also if you just call, there are a ton of river cards which will make SOMEBODY the best hand -
you're up against 3 players after all. You're pricing out weaker draws and only the mega-combodraws can call.

Nice video!
I think you're correct being angry at yourself for not making the play you considered to be the 'right' play at the time. Really impressive is that you took to time to crush the numbers, not only to find consolation, but also to find out what is the correct play under different assumptions.
However, there is a further point you didn't address. Weaker players' thought processes are usually simpler and less flexible than those of good players. In my opinion, it is a good idea to run some bluffs like this one against them - to find out how they think. And finding out the weaker players' tendencies helps your exploitative adjustments a ton.

I'll also comment to the prior discussion: I've noticed that losing over $1k in a session (I mostly play 1/2) is something for me that is difficult to get over with. If I start another session - even after several hours' break - it will be from "being down a grand" and will likely result some level of tilt to begin with. The only thing that seems to help is not to play anymore on that day - a good night's sleep does the trick.

Nice video on a fairly difficult subject! Gone are the days when people like Brian Townsend were telling you "not to play marginal hands out of position" on a video.

I have some questions on the hands:
First the hand in which you're trying to pronounce "vulnerable". For a Finn, I'd recommend trying to pronounce it like this: "vul-ne-re-bl".
On the board of 3h 9d 4d Ah Td, pot 3.3k and you having 4.6k left, how about betting small - like 1k - with a wide range (all flushes, top2 or top+middle as a blockingbet, 456 or 567-kind of stuff as a bluff)? His most likely holding is top2, as Pplbamba points out, so we'd like him to call with that. However, if you bet, he is probably only calling with some strong flushes, as the bet makes your hand look very strong (you are rarely bluffing with the naked Ad, as you did check-call two times with something!). This way we also avoid the problem of the checking range being too weak.

The another hand I wanted to ask about was the one you 3bet with AQK5ds. The flop was
Td 3c Ac and the pot on the flop 420, and the villain had 1,85k left. In his video on "playing 3bet pots out of position (2nd part)", Phil Galfond suggests potting these spots, "making the best use your equity advantage". Here a pot-sized bet would make the pot 1260 on the turn, leaving him 1430 behind - you're almost getting it in on the turn. Why did/do you prefer a bet of 250 in that spot?

I analyzed this question when I was playing 5/10 Live PLO at the casino Barcelona. I was not fully bankrolled for that game, so reducing the variance was certainly an issue.

According to my analysis, the best way is this:
In a game which is loose-passive preflop, buy in with such an amount that you can raise yourself all-in on the flop. This way you just claim your flop equity (which is good if you play better quality hands than the opposition) and
avoid most tough post-flop decisions.

For example, in your game, if the pot is raised to 3bb and there are 3 callers,
the pot is 12bb on the flop. Now if somebody bets the pot, the max raise is 48bb.

So you'd wanna have something like 50-60bb to get it in on the flop. If you play according to this strategy, you want to reload yourself back to that amount if you go below.

Another thing worth noting when playing this strategy is to AVOID PUSHING MARGINAL PRE-FLOP EDGES. Don't isolate limpers with marginal hands (you can limp behind if the hand has nut potential), don't 3bet marginal KK (play them for set value) etc.

Okay, let's not push the point too far. If you're adequately bankrolled for 10/20 NLHE, 1/2 PLO is definitely ok too. So I'd start with playing that. Besides, as a mid-stakes PLO player myself, I feel that 1/2 is the highest I'm comfortably beating. The games get a lot tougher and more swingy in stakes higher than that.

If you're only transitioning, I'd definitely recommend starting from VERY LOW STAKES, as low as you can "handle" without starting to spew money (you should AT LEAST go down to a level where you have a 200 buy-in bankroll!). This is the best way to get used to the variance imo. The players in the lower stakes are worse, so they'll make more mistakes and you'll make more bb/100 to compensate for the "opportunity lost" of playing smaller stakes. Then you can be almost sure that you're beating the game and you can really "play through the downswing" if you run into one.

The problem in the mid-stakes PLO is that it is played very aggressively nowadays, and the tables are full of quite skilled players with only a few worse ones. Even if you're beating the game, you need a lot of experience to distinguish between "variance through bad situations" (which is invisible to EV-corrected win rate) and losses induced by playing mistakes. Thus "running into a downswing" might actually signal that you're a losing player in those stakes!

I agree with prev. comments. Just shove the flop and get it over with. As played, turn you have to fold.

Preflop you created yourself a lot of trouble. Raising to something like 13-15 is enough to charge them for playing trash from the blinds.
As played, getting 3bet really leaves you in a dumb spot. Actually I think I prefer folding (!!) here, as you'll be in a bad relative position (Phil has talked a lot about this in his vids). Calling is probably correct mathematically, if you have a sizeable postflop edge, but the situation still sucks, as SPR is about 2,5 and there are a LOT of flops which you will have a piece of and then have to decide whether your equity is enough to play for your remaining chips.

Actually, this is one of the most variance heavy common spots in PLO, as even if you play 'correctly' you'll be stacking off with some nebulous amount of AVERAGE equity, which means that sometimes you'll be drawing dead (especially against two opponents) and sometimes you'll be making a marginal +ev stack off. These spots are better to avoid unless you like splashing chips, have a huge bankroll and can master tilt MUCH better than the opposition.

Generally, in these loose games, big pairs (AA-QQ) with bad side-cards should be played as "small pairs in holdem" - drawing cheaply to a set. If somebody raises behind you - fine, if you think you're a solid favourite against his range and/or there is a lot of dead money in the pot - go ahead and back-raise and get the money in preflop. If not, try to hit a set or some other profitable situation. If that all fails, you've only spent $10 of your $900 stack.

As a side note, this is also an effective way to counter aggressive position 3-bettors even when deep-stacked. If you raise, and the aggro-monkey on your left reraises, others will most probably fold facing a double raise. However, if you limp (with hands that play well in multi-way single-raised pots)
and the aggro raises, others will likely join the party with only one raise to call.
Then - postflop - in 5-or-more-handed pots, the value of position decreases a lot and the pots will have to be won by showing the best hand. And that you're likely to have more often than the opposition, if you play right kind of hands.

Nice simple explanations. You also quite correctly point out that by calling our shove "too wide" ICM-wise, the opponent makes a mistake, but it HURTS US TOO, instead of profiting. Frankly, I've run into that a lot when trying to "ICM-abuse" people in tournaments - people either getting frustrated by my wide shoving or understanding the concept and wanting to end the abuse even by making a -ICMev call.

If you feel like making another video on the topic, one interesting idea would be to analyze how to alter our strategy if we think that our shoves get called "too widely" compared to ICM optimal.

I used to feel the same way (and still sometimes do) - as an online player, the most suitable stack for me is 100-150bb. 200bb is fine but 300bb+ I end up spewing a lot.

About the hand posted, I agree with superbad: calling preflop with your crappy aces is better than raising almost always. Checkfolding on the flop isn't bad (your aggro villain did BET INTO THREE OTHER PEOPLE). Turn would be an almost automatic check/shove to me. Not only your might make him fold two pair, but you also get a ton of value against weaker combo draws.
And what is also not unimportant, you SHOW HIM THAT YOU'RE NOT AFRAID OF PLAYING A BIG POT AGAINST HIM.

Unfortunately, this does bring some more issues. If he has Q9 or a set, and you lose, you'll probably feel you've spewed $2k. This of course isn't the case, as you're probably a solid equity favourite against his turn barreling range, and you also get fold equity against some hands that are ahead of you. You'll just have to get used to putting 400bb in the pot if you think it's the correct play.

Of course, your bookkeeping will look horrible each time you lose one or more of these. I suggest that when writing down your score for the session, you keep a separate count for these huge hands. Writing them down and discussing them will also help you learn to play deep stack PLO.

Considering deep stack PLO technique, watching Phil Galfond's videos on the topic will help a lot. I would also recommend playing HU online with stakes that you're comfortable with investing on learning, and also watching deep PLO HU videos.

Have fun learning, deep PLO is a great skill to master especially if you're spending most of your poker time playing live.

+1

I also find this vid quite good. I came to (more or less) the same conclusions myself, but only through trial and error; had I seen this vid some three years ago, I'd definitely be wealthier than now!

I'm a mid-stakes (1/2,2/4, sometimes bigger) player - i've mostly been playing on prima.
I'm very interested in discussing some hands, so please add me. mikael_suomi on Skype.