Currently playing $15s doing quite well so far, have previously purchased standard video pack. Am considering either getting Masters Pack or the premium videos. Which would you recommend? Thanks

At your level without having seen Premium Pack videos, I would suggest starting there.

Watch Mersenneary, Sa1251, Coffeeyay, Chadders0 and HokieGreg in particular, but you'll also want to watch a few videos from many of the other instructors to get a feel for who you like best.

Can anyone help explain the reasoning behind certain plays in the first video. I watched them and liked his play except certain things seemed weird to me. Wanted to know why he did certain things which I mentioned below:

Why is the guy in the video checking his 3 of a kinds. Maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like there is better value in betting them instead of slow playing.

Also he ridicules the other guy for bluffing him with K8o which I think was actually a pretty good play since most of the time that bluff is successful.

He also 3bets with Q3s? Was this suppose to be some blocker bet? That just seemed like a bad spot for it given that he has been 3betting so frequently throughout the match. Is there value in it that I'm missing?

Another thing he folded 53s in the BB to a min-raise. Anyone else think this is a good spot to call?

I just re-read what I typed above and it might appear like I am bashing on the guy's play. I'm sorry if it looks that way, but that was not my intent and I by no means think that he is a bad player. I just wanted to openly discuss strategy and the reasoning behind it.

Which video was this?

The first one obv.

Dont act like you dont know what te first video is we all know it

I'm hoping it's not the actual first video, because it would be one of those 5 minute free clips from February 2009 and I'm afraid of seeing my own thoughts in that one lol.

first in this thread I assume - the discussion thread mentions Q3s hand
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/18...-video-912501/

Hi, I made this video. It was fun re-watching it and being terrified of what I might say given the age.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPBXCZBY3gc (I'll include timestamps and details so that others might get value of following along)

We have a some reads that our opponent might be a bit passive, but nothing severe.

6:50: We c-bet JT on 773cc, and get called. Turn is a blank 2 that's checked through. River is Tc, and villain leads 160 into 320 with K8 (which we call). I say his play is "spazzy" and doesn't make sense, you question this and say it's a good bluff.

It definitely still strikes me as a spazzy/bad play. The reason why is that his K8 actually just has too much showdown value, and villain not getting enough folds from better hands. I'll fold some ace high/better Kx, maybe some 2x or some hero folds with 3x, but that's a narrow range in the first place and plenty of it is still calling. In order for bluffing to be good there, it needs to be better than the other option - checking - and checking's equity is actually quite good because of the showdown value. His bet size also doesn't represent the value hands in his range very well (bigger more consistently represents flush/slowplayed 7x) which will make it even less likely for thinking buttons to fold pieces.

Hand immediately following: Q3s in the big blind, 33bb deep. We 3bet t80->t210. You question 3-betting this sort of hand, noting my 3-bet frequency, and the hand itself, wondering if it's a weird attempt at a blocker bet.

Suited hands like Q-rag, J-rag, T-rag tend to actually play really well in your 3betting range. A good general rule is that hands that are at the bottom of your preflop calling range or the best hands you'd fold are often good candidates to 3-bet instead. Our 3bet frequency hasn't actually been particularly high in the match so far, and I'd caution against over-adjusting for gameflow things like this anyway. The main thing that makes me hesitant in on rewind is his limp % and the fact that he hasn't raised a lot of buttons, but I still think a 3bet here is a solid play. Against a tighter, passive player, you'll fold out a lot preflop and rarely get 4bet, putting yourself in a good position to win often on the flop. For example, the hand he had - A6s - is a good candidate to 4bet jam against an aggressive 3bettor, but he didn't do it. You should be 3betting fairly aggressively against these type of opponents, especially if they don't have crazy tight button opening ranges.

9:15: I assume this is the three of a kind hand you're talking about. We have T9o in the big blind, and check behind 23bb deep. First of all, timeout, not raising that limp is terrible against this opponent. T9o is easily strong enough to raise. But once we get to the flop - K99, we check OOP, and villain checks behind, then we lead the turn. Your comment is that you wouldn't think we should be slowplaying on the flop (if I have the right hand).

In general, leading this flop is atrocious. The reason why is that if you check, you're going to get a bet from your opponent's air the vast majority of the time. Air really should bet this flop when checked to. So by leading out instead, you're going to lose a lot from those air hands, which are the vast majority of your opponent's range on a paired flop.

Leading becomes a little better when your opponent is more passive - which this opponent is on that side of the spectrum. But it takes much more severe reads to lead out instead of checking and letting our opponent bet a big percentage of the time.

10:58: We call a minraise with 98s OOP, and the flop comes 885. Again we check to the raiser, and again he doesn't follow through with a c-bet, and we lead turn. You can hear on the tape that I do briefly agonize that his c-bet frequency hasn't been particularly large, but I still think checking is better than leading out because he hasn't bluff raise contested pots and I expect to get a lot of folds if I lead out.

As the video goes on, we get some hands that go to showdown that shows no c-bets with complete air - and that makes us a lot more likely just to lead out in those flop the nizzles situations. Still, though, you're going to need extreme reads, and checking should be your standard - let's talk about it more if you're not convinced.

At 13:30, we see some of those type of adjustments - checking back K3 on K88. This should be a very standard c-bet, but it's a very standard checkback given the evidence we've now seen.



Hope this helps!
mers

Wow, I'd like to say thank you for your long and insightful post. I see that there is a lot of things that I am not doing that I could be doing in my game. I especially appreciate the information you gave on 3betting, because I pretty much only do that with a narrow range filled with premium hands. Every once in a while I'll bluff if I feel like it is a good spot, but I haven't really considered the stuff about certain type of bluff hands being good. such as J4s. At the stakes I play at, sometimes there are opponents who aren't right to 3bet bluff at all, but I can defiantly see the value vs. opponents capable of folding.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems suited high card rag hands are good for 3betting due to the fact that they play better with a lower SPR. Or am I totally off? You mentioned that the hands at the bottom of your calling range and top of your folding range are good to 3bet. Is this because you have backup equity if your hand fails? Like for me, in the past, I've always had this weird liking for 3betting 54s as a bluff. I always think that it is pretty hard for my opponent to put me on a str8 if a miracle flop like 632 falls. I can also get some other powerful hand or some other spiffy draw. Would a hand like 54s be better to call a bet with or 3bet? I don't think 54s is a folding hand, but maybe I'm wrong.

My mentality with betting 3 of a kinds is that they won't believe that I have a 3 of a kind, because the other person sees me bet paired flops all the time. That way I get paid off on three streets instead of two. I also see that by following your way and getting my opponent to bet into me with air will be more profitable in the situation where my opponent keeps folding to my flop bets. However does this change when there is a flush draw on the board, because I don't want to give my opponent free cards. As a rule of thumb, should I check 3-of-a-kind-dry-boards and bet drawish 3-of-a-kind-boards or should I check both?

Also, if they bet into me after I check, should I re-raise right then and there, call and lead out on the turn, or call the flop and call the turn. I think on 3-of-a-kind-dry-flops I like to call and lead turn, and on 3-of-a-kind-drawish-flops I like to re-raise. Is this a good strategy or is it too transparent?

I have one more question about having 53s on the BB facing a min-raise. Is folding or calling there standard? I have a feeling that there isn't a clear answer and it is somewhere in between. 54s seems significantly stronger than 53s, but i also feel like 53s has some good potential. maybe the cards are too low though and aren't good to play OOP. Thoughts?

Sorry if my questions seem bombarding, but I have lots of them.

I don't think J3s type hands play better with a lower stack to pot ratio, or anything like that.

If you 3-bet bluff, it's generally better to do it with hands that have some decent equity, but also not great expectation calling. You'd rather 3-bet bluff T4o than 72o just because if you're only going to bluff some of your trash, you might as well do it with the good trash. And 3-bet "bluffing" a very middling hand like Q9 doesn't usually make a lot of sense, because it has good expectation just flatting and doesn't actually do that much better than T4o in a 3-bet pot. 54s is one of those hands where you have pretty good expectation just calling, but can be good to 3-bet against the right opponents, especially deeper stacked. In general, suited connector type hands get better and better to 3bet as you get up to 100bb and beyond.

It's best to hone in on the frequencies of your opponents. Sure, a lot of lower stakes players are fish who can't find the fold button, and it's tempting to just go all valuetown all the time. However, there are plenty of weak passive fish as well. If you don't appropriately attack those players, you'll probably still win, but not nearly as much.

I'd play 53s readless. In general, with the three of a kind, check/raising is the best play.

I'm a bit confused.

The basic video pack has over 400 videos for $50.

The Greenbast beginner's pack has 8 videos for $60.

Does this mean that the Greenbast pack is insanely good or that the 400 video pack is pretty much garbage? It almost has to mean both, doesn't it? I mean, it doesn't really make sense. And I don't really know what would be better for me.

I'm new to HUSNG's, playing turbos, although I'm solidly winning so far at small stakes up to $25 over 150 games. I don't know the nitty gritty of HUSNG, but I'm a pro with lots of experiences with HU limit, SNGs, MTTs and live NL which translates pretty well. I figure there's a lot wrong with my game though and I'm misapplying concepts I've learned for other games, so it seems like a "beginner's pack" would be ideal to check in and make sure I'm not screwing up a lot of the basics. But is it really possible that it's worth more for those 8 videos than to buy the entire 50 video pack?

Hi Alex,

There are a few variables that make up the prices.

- The 400 pack contains videos from 2009 to late 2012, while the new turbo pack is brand new videos from this year.

- The 400 pack contains hypers, regular speeds and turbo videos, and is more of a group of individual videos.

- The previous price of the standard pack as a membership is a factor that keeps the current price lower than it would otherwise be. For example, if we never released those 400 videos and had them all come out now, they would comprise multiple packs and cost a lot more each.

- The turbo pack is more coherent/guide like.

In short, we used to use the standard membership as sort of a loss leader. We deliberately priced it low to gain new customers and get more non HUSNG players interested in HUSNGs at a very low entry cost. We saw traffic and new players join the site in increased numbers, which is good for us in many ways. Since it was promoted that way for years prior, we still sort of use the standard pack that way. It's a huge pack that covers all sorts of games with many instructors for a very reasonable price. I still think it beats anything any other training site puts out for HUSNGs, both in quality and certainly in price.

As for what you should start with, if you want a greater amount of videos, slightly older on average, from a variety of instructors, the standard pack does well. If you want more of a focused guide and you enjoy Greenbast (check out his free videos in our free poker videos forum), then the Greenbast pack is probably a better bet. I don't think you'll go wrong with either, but if you don't specifically like Greenbast you'll want the Standard Pack and if you want the newest material, a more focused sort of "guide" type pack and you enjoy Greenbast, then his pack is the right choice.

Let me know if that helps.

suggestion:

It would be nice if yaqh made a video on river play as there is a big very interesting chapter about it in his book.

Which book?

Expert Heads Up No Limit Hold`em

Thanks!

Hey genher, not sure that I have too much to say about river play that I didn't cover in the book or vidpack. Did you have anything in particular in mind?

As you know I really like the book and I am yet to see a bad comment about it anywhere. However, comments I see a lot are people saying something along the lines of "I don't pretend to understand half of it and I am on my second reading".

Clearly, the book suffers from being very theorycal (is there such a word?) I am sure you are aware of that. The chapter on river play is a major part of the book. There are examples, but I think the principles discussed in it would be clearer if we saw them applied to real play.

Obviously, a live play video wouldn't work here, but may be some HH replays with explanations and the use of your equity distribution visualiser would help?

Sometimes when you see theory at work, it all clicks in.

Anyways it’s just a suggestion

+1

Ah ok, yea that makes sense. I could definitely just do more of what I did in the book:
- do some hand reading to come up w/ players ranges at the beginning of river play
- solve for GTO river play given those ranges and a river betting model
and then talk about why things turn out the way they did considering the equity distributions, w/ a focus on bet-sizing, and then go over some exploitative issues as well.

I could also imagine doing something a little more participatory, such as
- a couple players come up w/ river starting ranges and we see how much the different assumptions about early-street play changes the equilibrium river strategies
or
- players give their own readless ranges in a river spot, and then we generate the maximally exploitative response and take a look (i.e. think about how they could be exploited, whether any opponents actually play that way, what they might notice at showdowns or in stats if opponent were playing that way...)

Whatcha think? Do those sound interesting enough that ppl would want to participate?

I think that would be very helpful for me. I am looking forward to if this happens.

sounds really good!

+1

I like the group like event. Make it something like group coaching. Compile docs & record and sell as package imo.

my 2nd read of the book resulted in me:
- getting comparable equity distributions right 1st time w/o book 2/5
-getting comparable equity distributions after 2nd 3rd try w/o book 1/5
-getting comparable equity dist after 4 a 6th with book 1/5
- not even close after 7 a 8th try with book & gave up 1/5

So, given the likely wideness of people creating river starting distributions.
Given the predictable wideness in peeps math for GTO river math.
Given the predictable wideness in peeps math for max exploi river math;
I would suggest you create some 'nice cases' like you did in book, vid pack.
Let peeps send their river equity distributions solutions.
Discuss in group session or in summary doc by you.
New starting point.
Let peeps send their river GTO math solutions.
Discuss in group session or in summary doc by you.
New starting point.
Let peeps send their max exploit math solutions.
Discuss in group session or in summary doc by you.

Thing is, getting enough people & even then the amount of time you have to invest does likely do not come close to your coaching hourly or grinding. Either making it a waste of time for you or too pricy for us ...

Not quite sure what this means, but if it's something I can help you with, let me know.

Sounds good -- I'll give it some thought and maybe set something up. No promises, though, since I expect to be super busy over the next couple months finishing up the manuscript for Vol 2.

Cheers