Danger, Christy Lang him as relaxed sums. Jen, it's hard to know. This will be the day
Hello, and welcome to episode 385 of the thinking poker podcast from Owings Mills, Maryland. I'm Andrew Brokos.
I'm from Las Vegas, Nevada, I'm Carlos Welch,
we will probably be joined later by a mystery guest. Yeah, know who the guest is going to be, I guess there's some chance that there won't be one that hopefully there will be. In the meantime, we have some exciting news for you. And of course, a shouldn't of course, because we haven't been doing this consistently lately. But we do have a strategy segment for you today. The exciting news, though, is that we also have a new strategy product available in the NetCast store, which is a www dot nit cast.net. And it cas t.net. Some of you know, I had a fairly deep run in the venom, which is like a kind of flagship tournament at America's cardroom 2650 Buy in $10 million prize pool, I ended up making d3 was in the top 100 players. So I got quite a lot of hands out of that. And Carlos and I ended up recording like, I think it's close to 12 hours of footage like 10 to 12 hours of of us just doing like a hand for hand review of this. And I don't want to speak for Carlos, but I had a lot of fun doing it.
Yeah, yeah, definitely had a lot of fun also learned a lot. And I expect a lot of the viewers will as well. Also, the difference between this and the first product we did, which was exploiting small sites, tournaments is that when we're talking about basically how to maximally take advantage of bad players, and this tournament, we were faced with a lot of good players. So that's a nice contrast for people to see how we handle those two different problems.
Yeah, both both known good players, and just sort of dealing with people where we weren't as comfortable making assumptions about saying, you know, this person is probably weak, given that they're playing in this, you know, $10 tournament or whatever, to try, at least thinking to take an equilibrium as a starting point. And thinking, you know, what will we do here? If we knew we were playing against someone really good? And then thinking about how much do we want to deviate from that kind of the the approach that I outlined and play optimal poker, if I had to think about being like minimally exploitative or only exploiting at the margins?
Yeah, and I will say this, and a couple of days or weeks, depending on when this is released. There will be some online bracelet events running. And that is exactly the sort of approach you want to take when you're in these events with a number of good players. So I kind of view this as a great study tool for myself, just going into the next month of bracelet events.
Yeah, and it would be great if we could get another one of these products out of you winning your second bracelet.
Oh, I'm so mad. I hope. So. Last, they just did a circuit series. Also, that did not go well at all for me. But that was the pattern last time when I did when the bracelet started off with a bat circuit series and ended up shipping the bracelet afterwards. So I'm hoping that happens again.
Yeah, I had a little ship of my own. Not nearly as big as a bracelet when But America's cardroom has this series, which I think the venom was actually not part of this, but they have the like online Super Series. And I won one of the like, $600 events on there, which is I mean, it's not a big field was 160 players or something like that. But it just felt good to win something a long time since I've had a first place in a tournament. I mostly play these tournaments with huge fields, like the venom was a good example of this. You know, it was like you make the top inside of 1% of players you're still not that close to The Final Table. I think I was like at it. There's something on that when I was eliminated. And that's gonna happen a lot when you're playing like my average field size when I'm playing right now. It's probably like 1000 or something. I don't make a lot of final tables. I don't get a lot of wins. And so it was pretty pretty damn excited to anyone.
Yeah, yeah, this is saying well, you will you kind of step back and really look at it. It's insane how hard it is to win a poker tournament.
Other strategy news, of course, not really news. We've been doing this for a while now. But the best place to IT strategy from us is that www.patreon.com/thinking Poker daily, and you will get a daily strategy segment from us ended helps to support this regular show as well. Anything else you want to tell the people before we talk strategy?
Let's jump right in. All
right. So we've got a strategy question coming to us from Hussein, there may be mispronouncing that, but somewhere in that neighborhood, he said played this in a one to no limit game in Ontario. It's been playing with these people for about four hours has a little bit of history with this person that I'll bring in if it's relevant. But the hand begins with our hero opening with ace deuce of spades on the button, a whimper in so I guess not opening.
Sorry, we should say sorry, shot and I really shots not the one editing.
Sorry, right. So this hand begins with a limpar, our hero has ace deuce of spades on the button, around $375. My general advice to people when it comes to raising limpers is that you want to have two big cards in your hand, I think those are like the best hands for raising limpers with and then I'll say and you can like lower your standards for that a little bit if you're suited if you're connected. So I know ace deuce doesn't quite meet that standard of two big cards, it is suited it does have straight potential. I think the ace in particular is like doing a lot of work. So I think I am actually on brand new being being deeper and having exactly the button as opposed to like the cut off for the hijack. I think I am on board raising this versus, versus a limpar. Does that seem controversial? Do
you know and fat fact, in tournaments, I raise these all the time just as an exploit because I do know these sorts of passive players will primarily limp hands that are trying to hit particular flops. So basically, like they're trying to draw, and if they make a draw, what I like to do is just bet small twice on a draw heavy board, and then just take back and when we ace high when the drawers break. And but that's obviously an exploit that's not going to be solver approved. But you can assume most limpers are passive players, you get it you get to explore it in that way. So I was a little bit surprised to hear you say that. Initially, you start to say that this wasn't Hana, you were raised all the time, by not only what I raised this, this is an ignition concept, I guess, is when I have these people that play exactly the way I described, I would even raise these two stops here by just any as high hand that I can easily check back and win as showdown with when I have position against people who chase drawers as opposed to bluffing with them.
Interesting. Yeah. I'm not totally opposed to that. I think the ACE is a very big deal. Yeah, I think that like, yeah, King eight off suit. I mean, that's not the worst raging in the world, I guess King five offsuit I wouldn't really like I wouldn't maybe King five suited. I certainly the weaker these players are, the more you can get away with having the button there's a huge advantage even just like the difference between the button versus the cut off, I don't think you want to do nearly as much raising versus lumpers when you're on the cut off. But when you have exactly the button, the your position, especially when you're 200 big blinds deep, your position is doing so much work for you that you kind of only need half a hand if you're not really worried about getting bad people are gonna play badly after the flop, you know, they're starting ranges that are way too wide. You're a lot of what you're doing is raising the value of your position and the value of your skill. And I don't think you can do this. Honestly, there probably are situations you could do that to do cards. I don't generally encourage that. But I think literally what we have here is half a hand like we have an ace and the the deuce is like doing some work but not a lot.
Yeah, that's exactly how I view it.
Okay, so ends up getting called I guess there are two limpers because he's called by a lawyer middle position, and also by this person who refers to as an older gentleman that he has some history with both of them call and his general read on this player who ends up being the main villain is that this person tends to bet larger when they want you to fold and that smaller when they're like value betting. I don't know what exactly larger and smaller mean, but we can just keep that in mind going forwards. Okay, so we're three ways to the flop with about $36 $35 in the pot still 350 or so in the effective stacks SPR is quite high like 10 or higher. And the flop is six of spades, four of hearts three of spades, our hero has a suspense. The two players who limped check. I think we probably just want to bet this. I think when you have these players with really high V pips, you can err on the side of betting. But I mean, this is not the worst checking candidate either. It is a case where I don't think you making very many better hands fold. A lot of the hands that are folding don't have a great chance of drawing out on you. So even though it's like a great flop for us, I wouldn't consider it a disaster to check. But I'd be pretty inclined to just go ahead and bet.
Yeah, I like a small bit here. But you do make a good case where we can probably make sense from checking sometimes. But you know, I wouldn't need to get, you know, queen jack of diamonds to fall here.
Yeah. And I do think it kind of to your point about what was the original plan raising with us if we hadn't gotten such a nice flop. Even though we're not gonna make better hands full do a flop bet it is possible that we make better hands fold eventually. And this is a nice candidate for at least barreling on the turn whether or not we borrow the river will be a separate question. But I think it is very plausible that when you're dealing with these really loose players, you can have stuff like King three of diamonds or something, you know, that is the sort of hand the bottom pair you can often get that off with with a second barrel on the turn. So even though you're not gonna make a better hand fold immediately you are starting to set up making better hands fold later. And of course, you also might turn the nuts and then you're happy that you grew the pot are here but $17, which is about half the pot. I know you mentioned a small bet maybe you'd want to go a little smaller than this. I think this is not a big deal. I think we're in the right neighborhood. I think potting it would be a mistake. The first limper called and then the villain. The main villain, the older gentleman check raised to $45. So we've got check check half pot from our preflop raiser the hero one call. And then this this person who originally lived is now raising to $45.
I'm curious where our correspondent would how our correspondent would categorize this array size. Like to me this is a small actually we went half pot. So this is probably a decent size raise for a multi way pot. But based on my read he gave me I really would like to know how he categorizes I do know when never folding. So obviously this is a decision between calling or raising, I guess I would just boil it down to some wisdom I got from you back in the day, which is don't raise a draw where you'd have no fold equity. So if you don't think this guy's ever folding, just call otherwise, you can definitely consider raising this.
Yeah, I think there's a lot to be said for calling. I mean, your hand is strong enough that you could just get all the money out on the flop. And it's not going to be the end of the world like you've even against a set or something your equity is not terrible. You have you have a lot of outs. But that doesn't mean that you want to your I think that the range that's going to continue to your three that is not arranged that you're doing all that well against. And I also don't know that you're making I mean, so if we were to three that here would be trying to make them fold. So you mentioned before, like it'd be nice to get queen jack of diamonds to fall. But I don't think we expect that that's check raising. So I think your your point about not having fold equity is well taken. And I don't think we can really even represent that much in terms I guess we can represent like aces, I wouldn't be really inclined to three that Aces here. I would not really be showing up with seven, five, or I guess I could have like pocket sixes. Yeah, I just I don't think there's really a whole lot that we can represent. I think that this squeeze check raise tends to be pretty strong. Obviously, I don't know this exact opponent. But I just think if you didn't give me any kind of read on this player, and I just saw this action of you know, continuation that call not particularly large check raise, I would tend to think that's that's a strong default assumption.
Yes, so much so that if you show me this action without telling me my whole cards, I would say full almost regardless of what you have.
Or not excited.
Yeah, yeah. So if unfolded with 90% of my range. I probably don't want to be raising with much anyway. So yeah, that makes us a call.
Our correspondents says this villain is not a good player. I did not think he had a very strong hand probably just an over pair or a strong draw. And I will say it again your equity against another pair is fine. You're probably even a small favor against like pocket queens or something. But I don't think we insist folding And I don't think you're doing yourself any favor, like, even if you could get it in right now and have 55% equity, you probably do better than that by calling, getting to use your position on later streets. And you mentioned a strong draw. But I think you're not that likely to be up against spades. I guess like six, five or something again, like you're doing fine against it. But you're not. I don't think you're I don't think it's accomplishing anything for you to raise again. And I think it's telling that Hussein does not tell us the what he's trying to accomplish with this race. He sort of mentioned what he thinks the other person has, but not what he expects that person to do as a result of this race, which and I think there's not a good answer to that. Right, right. The third limper, that third players in the pot folded, and now the villain raises again, the person who initially check raised now raises 260. So we have that 17, check, raise the 45. Raise the 105. And this is literal literal memory raise Now, raise to 165. That the smallest amount that he's allowed to raise?
Yeah, so that look at our results, I can tell you what this feels like to me is seven, five of spades. This feels so damn strong. Obviously, we aren't going anywhere. But our, our situation is a lot worse than it was before we raise the flop.
Yeah, so again, I'm not real tempted to shove. Now, I think we're just I don't think he whatever he has, it seems very strong, I don't think he's folding it, I kind of want to just play this as a flush draw. I don't even I mean, so if it is seven, five, even our straight outs aren't live. The ACE is not going to be live, it just live against an overpair. But it's not live against sad or something. So it may be that, you know, our equity has started to diminish, we can't really treat this as a strong draw anymore, we have to treat it as just a flush draw. And I would say take advantage of the price that he's offering an in call. Yep. Which is what you send us. And we go to the turn with about $390 in the pot, and 200 in the effective stack. So SPR is about point five. And the turn is the 10 of clubs. So the board is now 10 of clubs, six of spades, four of hearts, three of spades. And the villain bets just $100. So even though there's $200 remaining in the stacks done on the bets half of that. I think we can call again, we're getting at this point five to one.
Yeah, it's one of these spots where we're getting a good price to call so and we have a pretty good ham. So we should call for those those reasons. But I'm also thinking back to the read we have earlier where he says if the guy bet small, he's doing so because he wants us to call. And when I think about the sort of hands that would want us to call here. We're not in great shape versus those with one car to come. But for this price, we would definitely go into call.
Yeah, but I think there's no question of shoving and you say it's not quite saying this, but I just want to address it for people who I know that this idea is floating around out there. I've just like, once it's such a big chunk of my stack, shouldn't I just put the rest in? No, it would be nice, like most of the most rivers are not going to help you. And the way you can think about this is you're gonna save $100 on the rivers that don't help you. And if the river does help you it's not gonna be hard to get that $100. And so really, I think this is just this is a mistake on the villains by the villain should not be giving you this opportunity. And you don't want to then look a gift horse in the mouth and just stick the rest in anyway and do what he should have done. He should just be shuffling here so that you can't call and call cheaply and just find out whether you get there on the river. He ought to force you to put more and he could he could blow you off of this equity and he should want to but he's not doing that and you can take advantage of his not doing that by just calling and getting to see the river cheaply and realize your equity. Yep, our hero does cough and the river is a read deuce. So the final board is 10 of clubs, six of spades Four of hearts three of spades. Dis of diamonds I guess does make our hero a pair of two's but I think he's a correctly identifies there's no way I'm ahead. So the player goes on when the opponent goes on for the last $100 And you say unfolds. I think that's uncontroversial. You're despite the fact that you're getting very good odds are read is that this buyer is very strong. I see no reason to doubt that and you would even even if it's true, no. Okay, so you're getting a Dwyane. That's don't mean you need to be bluffing you You need him to be bluffing at least one time at a nine and that does not seem at all plausible to me. So I think the folding errs clue the correct yes. Results, the villain actually just had Queens which I mean, is weird for any number of reasons I'm surprised that he didn't quite so many raises on the flop. I'm surprised he didn't raise preflop. It makes me feel better about you know, we were never in bad shape here. Not nearly as bad shape as I think you and I feared that we were. So most of you just got unlucky, you lost the flip, you had better than 50% equity, I think on the flop, the villain did you a favor by allowing you to save $100 I think you did the villain a favor by allowing him to get in so much on the flop. When the equities were close, even though he was actually losing a little bit of money on every dollar that went in on the flop, I think that you would have had opportunities to make more Plessy v decisions by just calling and then you know, not paying off on the run outs that are bad for you. And probably getting paid on the run outs that are good for you. Like I think another way you can think about this is on the river, you're making perfect decisions, like your your river decisions are really high value. I know it I mean, in this case, you are folding, and that was unfortunate. But still like that was a very clearly correct fold that you made $100 as a result of not getting all in on the flop. And that number could be even larger had you put less money in, you could have saved even more money than then you did. And likewise, if you actually make the nuts, then the money that goes in on the river is really, really good for you. Like he went 100% of that money. So if you think of it as a trade off of like, okay, I can either get three cents on the dollar, by investing money in like a very close situation on the flop. Or because you only have so much money, you know, and this is going to be a big fight it easily could have been all in before the river. So you can either take that really tiny edge out on the flop, and that's just your edge against Queens against many and you don't have an edge at all, if you had seven, five, you don't have an edge at all. But even even if you knew he had queens, you can either get your three cents on the dollar on the flop. Or you can wait until the river where you're potentially getting 100 cents on the dollar by having the Knights or you're you know, essentially your your folds are also making you you know, you're you're saving 100% of the money that you fold. And that's also an advantage relative to not having that opportunity because you put it in on the flop when you didn't really have that clarity.
Yeah, yeah, I never thought about it that way. But I love the way you put it. Yeah, this makes a lot of sense.
Thank you for saying hopefully you found that helpful. I do appreciate you listening and writing into the show. I appreciate all of you who are listening, and I hope you will enjoy whoever this guest is of course they're gonna be fantastic. So thank you for listening. And please enjoy. Well, that's what we get for trying to be responsible. As you heard, we recorded this introduction in advance. And it turns out our guest for this episode needs a little extra introduction. Josh Nixon is a program director for the Boston Debate League, which is a nonprofit organization I founded way back in 2004. At the time, the focus was on providing interscholastic competitive debate opportunities for Boston public school students, though, as you'll hear, they do somewhat more than that. Now. The reason I know Josh is that he was once a competitor in the Boston Debate League when he was in high school. He's since as an adult, become a friend and because he's interested in poker, he's been on this podcast before most notably on episode 252. And he came to Las Vegas during the 2018 World Series of Poker to hang out for a bit with Carlos in May. Josh is also a Twitch streamer and a producer of music and you'll hear us reference all these things during the interview. So I figured I'd better explain them now. Joy Welcome back to the show. Thanks for making time for us.
Thanks for having me. You got time just happened to be like right there for you too.
Yeah, what's um I don't know what's what's the Josh Nixon story these days? I know you're playing some poker but what else are you up to? Or I guess what, I guess both of the poker and the non poker side of things what is what does your life look like right now?
So I now work for the bottom of the league as a program manager at school debate LEAD program manager slash
resolve to congratulations on that I don't think I've actually spoken to you since you told me that you're going to but I don't think we've spoken since you started.
Oh yeah, yeah, cuz it's been busy. Camp was August and also coach camp is August was just really busy. So
so what what is it what is it for Okay manager do
Oh, just I'm working with the coaches to get their their schools either off the ground recruitment. Or just hosting a practice, maybe the kids aren't learning something or whatever the case may be just assisting the coaches in any way that we possibly can even logistically to like help get them the students to tune in from tournaments, swag, all that stuff. We just helped with that. And the result, part of it is working with some schools, we work with two schools for the result effort. But it's just a way in attempt to try and teach young, black and brown men debate skills without quite the debate rigor.
And are you assigned to like a particular region of the city? Like, are there multiple program managers, and you're responsible for like one one part of the city? Are you like the the one person doing all of this?
Oh, no. So it's me. And, well, I think the four of us are program managers, per se. So it's like me, Roger, Reiner, and Douglas. But we go by school. So like, we've been assigned, I have six schools that I'm assigned. And they have a number of schools that they're assigned, and we go like that.
It's not, you're not just like concentrated. It's not just like you're covering Dorchester and someone else's cover no Roxbury or something. And poker wise, are you I know you played some this morning. What's cool?
Oh, this morning at her. So honestly, what my poker life I've been in, even in life, my life in general, flows, as accomplished as I am, like, I had to be very honest, that like, sometimes I overestimate myself. And because I overestimate myself too much when things don't go right, or things go the way they should go. I'm very disappointed. And I get very moody. So I've been learning to be better about my expectations, and what I feel like, like my poker, life has been a lot better.
Yeah, I will say that's a very familiar story. In the poker world. The term I've heard for that, or that I liked for that is one term for entitlement tilde, right? Like, I'm sure imagine, you're familiar with the idea of tilt. But you know, in particular, that idea of like, I deserve this, and I didn't get it. And that can take so many different forms. You know, sometimes it's feeling like, just you have the best hand and you get all in, you know, when and you feel like you deserve to win it. And sometimes it's, you know, I'm better than this other person, but that person won. And that makes you mad, and you know, that just being the better player entitles you to win, or I think ideally, poker helps you it's an impetus to like, deal with that, which obviously can manifest itself and other ways in your life as well.
Oh, for sure, for sure. And once I realized that, like, I'm like, Man, I'm just not entitled to anything. Like, it forced me to, like, realize that I had to study more, for example, like no, no, no amount of like, being able to figure things out on the fly, can substitute for studying? And it's like, oh, yeah, right, that makes a lot of sense, Josh, like you should study. And not to say that I don't study but I mean, like, something I've been thinking about more, which is why I've been wanting to play more. It's like, I want to study my hands, I want to review my hands, and just go through the cringe of watching my mistakes and things figuring out how to get better, because for as intuitively I think I'm doing okay, you know, not being able to not looking back at those hands is a mistake, in my opinion. For me?
Yeah, I think so I putting in volume is important, but it's not, I think just like playing a lot of hands by itself is not gonna you're not gonna get better as quickly as if you were kind of studying the specific things and then try and implement that study when you play as opposed to just like purely putting in volume. I mean, you will get better if you play, you know, 50,000 hands or whatever. But like, I think you can also you probably get more better if you play 20,000 Hands plus study or something like that. I mean, you're also in a tricky spot of. I mean, when you're playing the very low stakes, you are dealing with opponents who are not very good, which is helpful. And it's easier, of course, to beat people who are not very good, but you're also paying very high rake. And so it is difficult to it's harder, I think, than people realize to be a winner in the very small stakes games. I think people sometimes just look into these other players are terrible, you know, you should be able to beat the pants off of them. And in some sense, you are like you are you're taking a lot of money from them. It's just that the site is taking a lot of money from all of you. They're really the ones vacuuming up most of the money off that table.
Yeah, Honestly, I try not even. Because I'm just like, I know, I know I should, especially when it comes to like making decisions. But in terms of like, I just want to get the reps in, you know, get better. I'm just like, oh, I can't think about that so much, because that would like be kind of sad. Yeah, I
