The Weekly Freebie 1/2: "You can't win if you fold"

Hi Guys,

Excited to bring you hopefully the first of many videos in our series!

We want to stay away from ‘standard’ hands and get people really thinking about poker in lots of different ways. That was one of our goals with this video. This hopefully will make for some interesting discussions!

I’m looking forward to hearing peoples thoughts on the hand we talked about. I know it goes against the general advice of don’t try and make people fold strong hands, but Patrick and myself always try to push every edge.

What do you think you would do with A5 here as the villain, once you cleared all the puke off your screen?

Also would like to apologise for the lack of entertainment, although the series will be a one for poker geeks to bookmark, I'll make sure in the future we move the screen around a little and play about with the maths etc.

Let us know your thoughts

Please feel free to share any thoughts or questions about the video!

liked the hand, math though:

OTR: we need to put in an extra 521 to win 236, so it needs to be succesful 68.8% of the time. this is assuming he never calls river with worse (if he did this would become a pretty bad bluff )

This is something we should have put in to be fair.

If we give him a calling range of 55,A5cc,A5hh,K5cc,J5cc we need to find roughly 10 combos he folds

If we just give him 45-85s that is allready 8, we can add some A5o hands too etc 1-2 bluffs and we easily come up with 10 combos that he folds.

If we then decide that he only ever calls 55/J5cc/K5cc we only need to find 6 combos he folds and it becomes even easier.

Originally posted by CallumN

If we then decide that he only ever calls 55/J5cc/K5cc we only need to find 6 combos he folds and it becomes even easier.

This is the calling range that I assumed he would have on the river when I 3bet fwiw.

i liked the thought process of "lol i have top 2, call", that was my first immediate thought, when i saw the hand, but really nice analysis. would have never bluffed the river, maybe that's why i don't battle good nl200 regs

Love the format, but still not sure what i think about the hand.... Like yeah villains range is capped at 5x, but if he knows that we know that, we are pretty much fcked ♦

Originally posted by matusko
Love the format, but still not sure what i think about the hand.... Like yeah villains range is capped at 5x, but if he knows that we know that, we are pretty much fcked ♦

he still needs to put us on trying to make him fold 5x... and that's quite an ambitious assumption!

Originally posted by matusko
Love the format, but still not sure what i think about the hand.... Like yeah villains range is capped at 5x, but if he knows that we know that, we are pretty much fcked ♦

I think even if he knows this. He cant make a profitable call. we have 6 combos of just JJ-KK, We can also have all the J5o/K5o combos but he only has the suited combos.

He has to call roughly 400 to win 712 so is getting just under 2-1 so if we have say 10 value combos (we have a few more actually), he needs to find 5 bluff combos.

I dont think the average 200nl reg bluffs with that kind of frequency!

Worst hand we b3b shove for value? Wwyd w/ A5?
(if we want to set up a balanced b3b range).

Also, does anyone have a clue about how to do the EV calc when
a) villain folds 5x some % of the time
but
b) hero calls sth like kq some %?

Originally posted by Benps
Worst hand we b3b shove for value? Wwyd w/ A5?
(if we want to set up a balanced b3b range).

If he is capped at 5x we should definitely shove river with A5, it doesn't matter if he calls a tiny % of the time because in HU if you have the momentum and he feels you are running him over then you are able to pwn him alot more as we rereadjust quicker than he rerereadjusts.

Originally posted by CallumN

Originally posted by matusko
Love the format, but still not sure what i think about the hand.... Like yeah villains range is capped at 5x, but if he knows that we know that, we are pretty much fcked ♦

I think even if he knows this. He cant make a profitable call. we have 6 combos of just JJ-KK, We can also have all the J5o/K5o combos but he only has the suited combos.

He has to call roughly 400 to win 712 so is getting just under 2-1 so if we have say 10 value combos (we have a few more actually), he needs to find 5 bluff combos.

I dont think the average 200nl reg bluffs with that kind of frequency!

Those are very good points, completely agree. I just dont like the concept of trying to bluff villain off the top of his range in general. But spots like this will arise, where it might be good.
Interesting hand.

I think the fact that we are trying to make him fold the top of his perceived range & the fact he is almost always at the top of his range that gets to the river is the main reason why we shouldn't jam because he will be "LOL game theory, I'm super exploitable, cawl"

Also we can weight his range to hands that aren't full houses because of his bet sizing which to me looks like thin value rather than full houses.

Originally posted by pleno1
Also we can weight his range to hands that aren't full houses because of his bet sizing which to me looks like thin value rather than full houses.

absl, although instinctively sticking in 250bbs in a 100bb pot with top 2 as a bluff doesnt sound quite right

Yeh as I said in the video, my first thought was LOL, TOP 2, CAWLLLLLLLLL, but the aggressive side of me said waiiiiiiiittttta minute.

Ooh, red avatar, eh, EuanM?

When'd that happen? Congratulations regardless!

Originally posted by fruktpuff
Ooh, red avatar, eh, EuanM?

When'd that happen? Congratulations regardless!

Just a couple of days ago, I needed more access for a task in a team meeting.

Thanks btw!

Did you see the hand?