mfutoma

Personally I would call. On occasion he will have AQ or 77 but often times recs will want to slowplay those hands with another player to act rather than shove. You're doing fine against A7. I bet players will spew enough with AJ or something to make it a call.

Here are my thoughts on each street:
PF I prefer a fold because KQo will play so badly postflop, as the situation shows. But maybe there is room to 4bet some percentage with KQo.
Flop I like your bet as played.
Turn I would bet. You might be dead against AQss or ATss on occasion but I think you can get value from some QQ/TT/KT type hands and you still have equity against KJ, QT, and sets.
River I am a little hesitant, and curious what an equity calculator has to say. You're up in your range for this situation but I do not think many players would bluff their medium strength hands like QQ, TT, AJ with an ace of spades. I would guess at this point he will have a hand like KJ, QT, flush, 99, JJ, maybe even AA at too high a frequency for you to call.

Phil-- thank you for continuing to be accessible to us in the poker community. I remember back in the days on TwoPlusTwo you spent so much time giving thoughtful responses to each question asked of you in your Well thread. I appreciate that you haven't changed since then.

I actually like all of the concepts you listed. I think it makes for a welcoming environment for recreational players and addresses some of the bumhunting problems we've seen on other sites. I don't need a HUD or to know each person I'm playing with. But I do want a sustainable environment where recs feel comfortable.

It would be nice if there was a high stakes table that was not anonymous, in case some pros wanted to recreate the RailHeaven days of old.

And it would be great if you found a lawyer who would convince you to offer Bitcoin service to those of us in the U.S. :)

Hi Phil-- it is understandable that RIO Poker is not available for Americans, given the current political climate. Do you have any advice as to what can we American citizens do to help change the regulatory climate to make RIO Poker possible in the U.S.?

Hm, I'd probably fold preflop, as played bet bigger on flop, as played lead turn. If you can get people to fold A4+fd with a c/r on turn, maybe it's not such a bad idea though.

Personally I would play this the same way. Hand is strong enough to squeeze preflop, would 1/3 pot with my whole range on that dry flop, check/shove turn to represent an overpair and get him off KQ+ or a bad two pair. He will have JJ or TT a decent amount of the time but I still think a shove is profitable. Well played!

First of all I just want to make clear that it's great that these players are playing too loose. That's how you make money.

You should make some adjustments when playing these limits. Tighten up your opening range and focus on playing hands that do well multiway, and throw away hands that do poorly multiway. For example QJ45ds in the cutoff. Against tight players I might open it, but if I know it's likely to go three-way, I might not bother to open it. It just does too poorly postflop. I'd much rather open a hand with an ace high suit and a pair. So, open tighter but 3-bet a fair amount of hands, especially in position. For example if you have AKJx double-suited in position, 3-bet it, because you'll find yourself getting value when someone calls with a hand that flops a worse draw. If you flop bottom pair with backdoor draws, it's also nice to be able to check it back.

Postflop you should be betting your nut draws often and be ready to barrel players when you choose to bluff (which should be less often against calling stations). In my experience many players will chase draws but give up later.

I know you said you haven't had much success playing nut value hands. PLO is a brutal game in terms of variance. I would definitely suggest continuing to play those nut hands. It's the winning play. If you're still not winning in the long-term, it may be due to high rake in these low-stakes games.

PG On Demand: Analyzing 3-bet Pots OOP (Phil Galfond, Essential vid)

I haven't seen the elite vids, so no inside knowledge from me, but can just list a few candidates here.

3Betting Out Of Position from the BB (Tyler Forrester, Elite vid)
Daniel Dvoress has at least four Elite videos specifically for OOP 3betting.

Hope this helps!

Question for you-- I stopped playing on Ignition because I kept getting disconnected about a month ago. Is this better now? I also had Windows 10 at the time and downgraded to 7 since... maybe that was an issue. But I keep seeing people complain about disconnects on 2p2.

If I were you, at some point I would watch Phil Galfond's NLHE videos as his are the best quality I've seen online and there aren't too many to get through. Otherwise I usually have good things to say about Paul Atwal's videos. Here's some of my own advice, mostly just common sense:

-Be patient and focus on making the right decision. Ignore how much you are winning or losing.
-Spend more time watching videos in the first month, then transition to playing more. Try to think about what your decision would be while watching these videos, before the pro chooses his action. It helps you remember, when your choices are inconsistent with theirs.
-Try to focus on one game you particularly enjoy or are good at and branch out to other games after you develop a good understanding of one.

BB: As BB I am probably betting straights and trips+ for value and bluffing hands with poor to medium equity, preferably with outs & blockers (say, AK56 for some straight outs and blockers on AA/KK). I'll check the rest, preferably hands with decent equity (middleish draws, QQJx).

HJ: The HJ can still represent boats, trips, overpairs with diamonds, so I think a 1/2 pot protection bet is good here because the board is draw-heavy, yet the BB may not want to call a poor draw on a paired two-tone board. A bet/fold is my preferred line here.

Hope this helps.

I would probably cbet 40%-50% pot here trying to fold out pocket pairs and face card hands. The ace hits your range harder than his. If you're not comfortable with a bet, I would check/fold and not check/call because we'd just be giving a chance for those face card type hands to hit. I'm not barreling often... maybe on a K or Q, to put a hand like A8 or AT in a tough spot.

Sorry, not sure about the formatting.

I probably am not flatting preflop here with only 20BB behind. Preflop I think fold > shove > call. I might call if I was on the button here. I don't think you're calling someone who shoves behind you, and then you're dropping 10% of your stack. Also you have to think an early raiser has a strong range, so giving up on AJs in middle position is OK.

As played on flop I think AJ is pretty good because opponents will often have shoved AQ or AK pre, and his leading range probably isn't likely to be a monster. I would just shove the flop to make sure they don't have good odds to hit the turn.

Hope this helps. Congrats at just making the final table.

I like everything here except I would have raised the turn. I think he almost always has two pair+ or a lower flush here, and I'd like to get more money in before another diamond or pairing card ruins your action.

I'm probably calling TT+ and AQ+. If button is super active, I think SB would be shoving wider rather than narrower, thinking button can't call often or his range will be crushed. I think a reasonable range for SB is 66+, AT+, KJ+. The key for me is that I don't expect the BU to knock out the SB very often if BU truly has such a wide range, because he's folding a good percent of the time and his calling range equity isn't great either. So I would jump in there and act as the defender here, because I don't want the SB picking up chips here. It's also worth noting that if the BU overcalls, his range is likely very strong, which isn't a disaster for you because you get 2nd place if he knocks both of you out.

ICM might say I'm way too wide here, not sure.

Sounds like you could exploit them by betting 1/3 with your strong hands and bluffing more with 1/2 pot. Or just switch to a single sizing and lower your cbet frequency.

Check out Paul Atwal's videos. They're recent, interesting, and he communicates concepts pretty well. Not sure I've ever watched a full ring video from him though, def 6-max around those stakes.

I would definitely call. If he's calling a 3b UTG with A6 I think he'll be raising hands like AQ or AJ here, and also might have two hearts or even worse as bluffs. There are just very few hands that call preflop & still beat you here.

Each street seems good to me. I think this is a river spot where you'll lose pretty regularly, but getting 2:1 odds, I think you should call. He could potentially have trips/58s that is trying to get value from an overpair or worse trips. Maybe some sort of missed gutshot + flush draw too. The better hands-- JJ/J7/74/77/76-- often raise at some point before the river. I wouldn't fold the top of your range worrying about a slow played hand or 66. Sometimes you'll just get coolered.

Do you cover this guy? If you both have 10k it seems like you're 2,000 big blinds deep?

Preflop I probably just call his raise. I think raising is OK to isolate though, if he's the type of guy to get 35s all in preflop.

As played, postflop I bet/call flop as you did.

On the turn, though, I would have pot controlled and checked back. You're in a really gross spot if he check/raises and have to fold there. As played on the river I also fold.

Since he never 3bets you want to raise quite often, maybe 85% of buttons. Since he limps 90% and seems to call most hands, I'd also be raising top 25% from the BB.

You'll probably need at least 100k hands before being able to compare the two. At that point if there's still a stark discrepancy, I'd say it's because 1) The games are tougher in Zoom as you said, or 2) The lack of reads in Zoom is causing you to play poorly.

Hope this helps.

Preflop I usually fold, but if the player pool tends to call instead of 3bet, you can probably get away with a call.

On the flop I would call if we closed the action. Unfortunately with the SB still active I would fold here, as if he calls he could easily be covering our draws, and if he raises we've just made the hand 11 BB more expensive.

Turn play is good, river is very close. Against an unknown on the weak sites I play on, I call river here; against a reg I fold. You need something like 30% equity and he could have JJ, KKxx betting the turn with a draw using his blockers, or some spaz hand. I've seen enough players spaz wildly in PLO that I think calling against an unknown is OK unless you're on a tougher site.

I think you played it well. Easy call pre. I usually check my whole range on the flop here but leading does prevent it from getting checked through. Not much else to do on turn and river.

Lots of players would have busted here so I think you got off easy.

Preflop against a normal BU raiser I think you should be raising a lot of hands besides AAxx, such as double-suited kings, double-suited rundowns, AQJx double-suited, and so forth. So raising pre with single-suited aces and some connected cards is my standard here, although calling I think is OK too, especially to shove over a squeeze.

As played postflop, I would c/r flop. You deny equity to hands that you are ahead of (i.e. 8776 that can hit a set or backdoor cards), and get value from hands that are worse (i.e. KQJJ with two clubs).

As played on the turn, I would c/c. He's probably only continuing with two pair or better if you raise, and by checking you can pick off bluffs on certain cards on the river.

As an essential member, I did long expect this move. I think at the time of the RIO launch, it made sense to price Essential somewhere between $10 and $30. But once you've built a large library of videos, I think a price increase is necessary. When I first subscribed, there was no reason to purchase Elite because I knew I'd spend a few months digesting Essential videos anyways. If I wanted Elite, I'd just upgrade later. Getting more revenue from that initial period makes business sense to me. But thank you for thinking of your current members.

I am curious if in the long-term, there will be any changes to the current structure, where Phil creates one specific Essential video each month? I know Phil had some trouble keeping up with the Essential videos, and I'd imagine it's a hassle for him to create low stakes videos, especially if Essential business isn't going well. I would be interested in a "pay per play" option for videos if there was one. I'm not a poker professional-- I have a regular 9-5 but love poker as a hobby-- so it'd be great if there was something besides Elite that I could still purchase. Essential works great for me if you continue doing it. But I figured I'd just let you know your members are open to options, if Essential isn't going so well.

I think poker will certainly get tougher as time goes on, but I don't know if GTO means the death of poker. The concept has been around for a while now and the vast majority of players still spaz every other hand. The best thing you can do if you want the more prosperous times to come back is to try to push for legislation in the US. Next best thing is to share the game with your friends. Outside of that... just do your best to adjust and accept the times.

Any update on these?