Everything he said in his latest video is easier in theory than in practice. So much that you will more likely get better EV from those attempting (then failing) to pull 'dougs' playing style off.

There's no need to get upset

Thankful for the youtube memers who smash their face on their keyboard and try to leave a smart comment leading to Doug making a 25 min long strat vid

Also fwiw no need to complain like NLBiddy said just cause Doug is saying how you should approach spots / poker it doesn't mean everyone is going to be able to perfect that strategy and know exactly what 33% bluffs look like in a spot etc. Also I would bet that 90% of people leaving dumb uneducated youtube comments turned the video off 5 minutes in because it's essentially a poker training vid / theory vid not jokes and laughs and poker being played / william kassouf spouting non sense etc and they already probably have no dedication / motivation to go through valuable poker content and try to get better at the game or already hold their opinion as the right one.

It's 2017, it's not a secret anymore how the basic math stuff works in poker.


But a great vid anyway, mostly for the comedy value, that I'm not sure was even intended. D


edit: also lol for people thinking stuff like this will make fish better, the guys losing won't get better by watching this and not actually doing the work (hint: watching this video is not the work), and 99% of losing players don't have time/interest on doing the work. It will however maybe make some tryhard guys stuck in micros figure some stuff out.

He did articulate something in the video that I've not really seen anyone else explicitly state when discussing value/bluff ratio theory. Might turn some lightbulbs on for some people.

Our statements aren't mutually exclusive tho

Great content!

The river is 2 to 1 value to bluff ratio. How do you work backwards from there ? Is 1 to 1 turn ratio and 1 to 2 flop ratio anything close ? Where do you start with pre flop ? TY and please get back to the Twitch streets soon

The river example is just a simplified version of it all which is "easy" to grasp when it's shown. It's also why he picked a pot sized bet, because it's easy to show that 2:1 is the correct bluff ratio there. You can do the same exact thing with other bet sizes on the river too. Actually GTO bet size (when polarized) on the river is in practice over-bet jamming (when possible) and then balancing that ratio perfectly.

Obviously a lot more complicated when going to earlier streets... That's when poker needs to be played I think piosolver is used to solve earlier spots(?!)

Thanks a bunch! Really appreciated you taking the time to provide a substantive, helpful answer. If I may, just a very brief follow up: Given what you said, does that mean we should be adjusting out bet sizes in such a way that we get to bluff more often?

Whether you choose to answer the follow up or not, thanks again!

That last video was so good that I could actually feel the EV of every good reg dropping whilst watching it.

Agreed. Very thought provoking for any serious **** player like myself.

Every good reg will already know that concept of optimal bluff frequency at different river sizings in polarized spots.. And it won't help a bad player that much at all.

I think his continous discussion in videos about what to do with different parts of ones range is a lot more "damaging" - when he says "you don't have to call here with xx part of your range because you can just hero with all your yy hands instead. You need some folds here and xx is one, yy is not". That's a real zinger that will throw wrenches into games when he continously hammers on the importance of that, which he does in EVERY strat vid he has posted

I find myself in (PLO) spots where I want to hero a flush river, then realize I don't have to because I can just snap it off with my entire flush range instead, for example.

i just skimmed through his last one, he isn't telling ppl anything that hasn't been in books for a few years now and their contents widely discussed/copied online ect.. i don't think he's doing much dmg, might even be neutral to good for poker if traffic increases a bit

Can someone explain the 'why ever bluff?' question around the 12:20 minute mark in more detail? Still can't get my head around it.

Also, Doug says 'bluffing 33% can make the same money as bluffing 0%' yet if you look at his notes you see bluffing 0% (value betting 100%) makes you $100 if your opponent folds and $200 if your opponent calls which equals $300, yet bluffing 33% of the time makes you $100 if your opponent folds and $100 if your opponent folds which equals $200. So from my understanding, bluffing 0% makes you $100 more on average.

I'm fully expecting to be wrong here so could someone correct me?

Well, first, you can't add them together. A villain is either folding or calling, not both, so you can't make the money from both decisions. When both decisions are possible, we multiply the percentage of the time it happens by our expected value.

Next, in the bluff 0% scenario, the villain can always just fold, so you only make the 100% * 100 + 0% *$200 and this is just +$100.

Next, in the Bluff 33% example you lose $100 when called while bluffing but make $200 when called with value. So let's do the math again:
33.33% * -$100 + 66.67 * $200 and you'll see that this equals +100.

So, bluffing at the right frequency is the same as never bluffing.

Which comes to the second question: Why ever bluff if it is just as good to only value bet.
The reason is that because everytime you bet (either by vbetting or by bluffing) you win the pot ($100 here) if you're bluffing a balanced range. But, you'll get more opportunities to bet (and hence win the $100) if you have vbets and bluffs than if you just have vbets.

Hope that helps.

DUCYdonk already explained, but just in case you still need help I will try to make a very simple example:

Assume our villain knows our range perfectly and makes no mistakes against us. Also he always loses to our value bets and his calls always beats our bluffs.

Continuing in Doug's example, if we bluff 0% of the time the villain has an easy fold. He needs to win 33% of the time and is winning 0%, lol.
We win $100 every time we bet which is nice.

Now say we bluff 25% instead of 0%. He still needs 33% but he is winning only 25% so he still folds. We continue to win $100 per bet, but now we bet when we have value (like before) but also in these instances where we bluff! We still win the same amount per bet, but we bet more and therefore win those $100 more often.

If we continue to increase our bluffing frequency, we continue to win those $100 more and more times UNTIL we bluff so much that our villain can start calling us. For an instance if we bluff 40%, the villain will call us every time he can and make money (he needs to win 33% and is winning 40%)

So in a way the goal is to bluff as much as we can (to maximize the amount of times we take the pot down) as long as we don't go above the line where our opponent can start calling us off. In Doug's example that's 33%.

BTW, I posted this in your YT comments section, but now I realized you have like 1k comments and is never gonna see it, lol.

It's an example of a "he is never bluffing" gone wrong that you could use in a poker hands to see how people is gonna react.

The video is in portuguese (it's from 2016 WSOP Circuit Brazil), so I will try to translate the background and details but the action in general is straight forward.

Blinds are 100k/200k ante 30k, they are 4 handed. There is one player with 5 BBs (the one who open folded the CO), the guy that open has over 10 MM, the SB has almost 7 MM and the BB who is a very good Brazilian pro has around 10 MM (I counted those by myself, so please check! ). The important part is the fact that the player who is not in the hand is super short compared to the other 3.

I'm not good with ICM (and I don't have the pay jumps here, but I assume they are similar to other WSOP circuit events), so I don't know how much harder it makes it to call there with a super short stack on the table. But I think it's a good example of the "lol, he is never bluffing" logic coming to bite you in the ass.

The info is stuff that was already out there for anyone who wanted it. Regs already know it and I would suggest that pretty much all losing players don't quite get that stuff yet.

It's the overall broad concepts that he explains that I believe will cause most flash moments for people learning to beat the games i.e. getting away from the presumptive fixed strategy mindset (e.g. "that is always a fold") and realising that there are many options for both you and your opponent. Also the bit at the end re: always thinking in terms of an infinite sequence of hands, meaning just because you won an individual hand doesn't mean you made a good decision in that hand. A losing player can learn more from realising things like these than already trying to get their head around on the fly percentage approximations for river bluff/value frequencies.

I used to be a bit like that horse riding guy and just see Doug and think "i hate people who look like that" but actually he seems alright and that last video was really good, often poker players trying to explain concepts manage to make it more confusing than it actually is and he avoided that well.

Great help, thanks.

Thanks mate.

Also, for the people in this thread thinking he's taught us losers how to play, he hasn't really. I honestly wouldn't have a clue how to put this into practice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-X3-qK9x5A8

There is a nice hand to the Poker hands, maybe Doug from 2017 can comment what you may be doing different now, if any. Ty

We have a Poker Hands episode from one of the classic High Stakes Poker Seasons.

Yes, let's see if he calls the river, as the title of the video is $575k pot. Spoiler alert!

Hi Doug Nice Review as always, I came across a Really Interesting hand I thought You could do a Episode on, Look forward to seeing You again soon on the live Stream Miss throwing My Dongers Up, as always wish You the best . . .

^^ somewhat interesting spot in the video above. If im Connor idk if i can ever find a fold here. What is David repping? Does he ever play a set like this (dont think so)? A9, probably more likely maybe. Dont think we can fold here though, maybe its just me.

Daniel Negreanu being in the hand is enough spoiler that there will be a call.