Ed Miller outlines two different scenarios where hero:
Has KdQd on the button
Has opened to 15 and gotten 4 callers
Has cbet to 70 and gotten 2 callers on QcTc7d flop
Is deciding what to do on 2c turn where action is now threeway with 288 in middle and 215 effective behind.

In one scenario the first to act donk shoves and the hero is advised to fold and fold fast. The point is that llsnl players dont bluff for big money even close to enough to ever justify a call here. Cool. Makes sense.

In the other scenario, which makes much less sense to me, it is checked to hero and Miller advises hero shove. He doesn't just suggest shoving as a possible option, he says "This (shove) is very straightforward". But is it though?

His rationale for shove: Villains could've checked or bet their flushes but flushes are uncommon and these villains definitely check every non flush hand. "In a loose game hero should just bet bet bet their top pairs, as players make money by betting good hands into opponents who play too many hands preflop and who call too much post flop".


My concerns with his rationale for the shove: What's the point? This is not a bluff or equity denial but strictly value?? Is there much value to be had? Somehow this just seems a bit spewy. Multiway pots in llsnl games are scary. That board is scary. Im not sure hero can get worse hands to call and I'm not sure what the point of the bet is. Yes the bet is likely to win the pot but it does so with high variance because folks can also show up with flushes and sets and 2 pairs. And I'm pretty sure llsnl opps aren't just calling off with worse unless its exactly KcTx, QxJc, AcTx or maybe AcXx. Maybe instead of shoving, hero should check this back some of the time since he is at an information disadvantage? If hero did check back he could have a challenging river spot either deciding whether or not to value bet thin or deciding whether or not to bluff catch with their slightly underrepped hand. But that is still a much better situation than just shoving and hoping to get called by garbage. Maybe llsnl games have changed a bit and calling mistakes are no longer as extreme as Miller portrays them to be. Yes it's bad to leave value on the table but better spots come along frequently in these games don't they? So what is a default play here when checked to on turn? Any thoughts on my thoughts? What do yall think about my thinking?
Thanks a bunch!

I think it really depends on the game.

I've read quite a bit of Ed's stuff and he very frequently tailors his advice for beating very weak games where opponents play very loose-passive and make way more calling errors than any other errors.

In my game, facing most regs, I concur with you - Ed's generalized advice doesn't work so well. I have to be really cognisant of who is in the hand. Often Ed would be surprised at my low stakes opponents' observation skills, disciplined folding and propensity to bluff. Greater respect is due to a lot of the regs in my game than the stakes would have you believe.

However, there are certainly times when my game does play loose/passive enough that I can imagine being entirely happy with taking his lines with TPGK as described above.

Basically you can't take cookie-cutter advice to the tables and just play it like a robot. You've got to pay attention, remember action from previous hands - even keep notes on opponents you play against frequently. You'll only have a chance of decent success if you develop the ability to hand read well and that means knowing who you're playing against.

There are no default plays.

Ed Miller can do whatever he wants. Its his money, but in my games, he will get killed jamming that turn into multiple people.

This is true, imo. There is something to be said for charging draws and for the huge number of river cards that kill our hand or our action with less than a PSB behind, but how did we get here and who are the Vs? This matters a lot.

On first look I was like "wat", it looks a bit scary, but having thought about it I think he's correct. Maybe not that it's an easy shove, but it should generally be a shove. This is one of those spots with more than one opponent and pot large relative to stacks, where equity denial starts to loom unusually large in calculations.

So first of all, with such a wet flop, we can be pretty confident we're winning here unless someone does have a flush. Nobody is going to have flatted two pair or a set in a multiway pot on a soaking wet board like this, and that deuce didn't help anyone unless it made them a flush. But then a ton of flush combos are combo draws which also would have raised - and a lot of the ones that aren't are small flushes that might be inclined to jam turn here for protection. It's not impossible someone has a flush obviously, but it's not what the evidence suggests they probably have, because they could have acted differently in a couple spots, and because there are so many other hands in a preflop flatting range that have enough of a piece of this flop to call.

If an opponent has something like JcT, they have $96 in equity in the pot, heads up, which you can deny them by jamming. In fact, they have so much equity that if you jammed and showed them your hand, they should call (in which case the jam wins $78). Those are pretty big numbers when the maximum amount we, well, flush, when we run into a flush, is $215, and we have two opponents who might have hands of this type that have a bunch of equity. Note also that by saying "jamming into a flush loses $215", I'm assuming that we can get away from the hand on the river and never get bluffed in the process, which might not be a great assumption.

Definitely depends on the opponents etc but I think in a vacuum, against two total unknowns, shove is correct here.

As an example of what might happen, imagine you check and the river is a brick, like the 5 of spades say. First villain checks and the second one jams. Folding? I don't know about you but I'm not thrilled about mucking my hand. We're a bit underrepped and that could easily be an opportunistic bluff with a zero showdown value hand like KJ or 98. So it's not so easy to say that if you check, you can just get away from the hand after that without any issues.

FWIW - I've found his books by far the best books for Live Low Stakes NL. Definitely helped improve my game. Obviously so much in Poker is "it depends" so YMMV.

I havent read any of his books, so I really cant say if they are good or not, but I wouldnt have a lot of trust in any book written more than just a few years ago. The games have changed dramatically and most of these guys writing these books havent played 2/5 or lower in a long time.

If hero bets ott, V2 cannot be priced out of the hand, given remaining stacks effective, if V1 calls.

Since it's not even an overbet, it's really not even much of a stretch for only one caller to justify to himself.

Based on the HH, we expect to have the best 1p hand almost all the time (nobody should have AQ here very often as played, tho possible).

Can't really justify a b/f line ott, or a check turn, b/f river line, since we'll be priced in either way.

Doesn't seem controversial at all.

Something else Ed Miller talks about quite a lot is avoiding ending up as any kind of passive player yourself. He recommends finding ways to keep betting your good top pairs across three streets as often as possible.

Reason being is that if you check too many of your top pairs on turn or river then your bet/bet/bet line or bet/shove line becomes either very tight and easily exploited (if your opponent's start overfolding) or too bluffy (easily exploited by opponents overcalling).

Ed's point is that the more of your strong hands you're happy betting across three streets the more you can bluff and the harder you'll be to play against.

So it may be that some of the purpose of this example is simply to instill in readers the idea that although some situations look quite scary for top pair the reality is you're going to be well ahead a decent % of the time so just go ahead and keep betting. Yes you'll lose a few extra big pots with top pair BUT if you consistently bet a wider but balanced range you'll come out so far ahead overall that you can just shrug off the occasions you look like a fool for value owning yourself against the nuts.

Certainly Ed has a mixture of advice geared for different games. He advises a tremendously exploitative style for very weak games but he also builds up to a more balanced GTOish style for higher stakes and tougher games. It's therefore worth looking at precisely where this hand example is in the context of the whole book in order to fully understand what he's trying to communicate here.

In fact why not work out what range you're likely to find yourselves in this spot with. Consider which hands you're always shoving this turn with and imagine you somehow end up checking everything that you feel even moderately nervous about. I pretty much guarantee you're going to end up with a tiny turn betting range that's polarised and very nut heavy OR you're going to end up with far too many bluffs.

Now look what happens if you just go ahead and shove a bunch of top pairs. What does that do for your betting range on the turn?