Hey Josh,

Hope you are well. Been really trying to actively watch videos and apply your advice to my own play. I do not play cash primarily at all, sometimes live but I enjoy watching cash videos and I feel it does give me a huge edge in tournaments over most players to be apply the concepts I learn from watching and playing cash. 

I took notes on the first half of your video. It took me about an hour to watch 30 or so minutes of it pausing and writing along the way so I will post my thoughts here. I hope my thoughts and questions will encourage others to be more actively involved in watching videos. I took these from wordpad so if they come up a bit funky on the thread I apologize. 

@ 5 mins on table 2 we get min 3 bet. You said you planned on calling on alot or rivers. What rivers are you folding on? I agree with your call and as I was watching the hand I put him on a 6x or some middle pair and he just thinking your reraise line was draw or BS, wanting to protect his hand and price your draws out.  Do you think it's a good play for villain to bomb the river here with his current holding? As played, if villain how would you play this river?

@ 10 mins table 4 you talk about raising villains cbet. I usually give up in these spots esp multiway given the low amount of equity we have and some of the cards we consider good barreling spots actualy hit our opponent who happens to be quite aggressive. So essentialy we can hit cards that are good for us and them and we can't continue if we get reraised and get into some pretty marginal river spots where we can value cut ourselves. You did fold and this is the line I would take but I am a weaker turn and river player so this is why I avoid spots like this esp against aggressive op even in position. I would just rather find a better spot where I can hang a guy with a sufficient holding than play a big pot with little equity against a violatile opponent.

@ 16 mins table 1 what is the range we are putting villain on calling our 3b? I think it's saturated with pocket pairs, even moreso after we are checked to? If we bet what can we get value from that will call our bet given the preflop action? I know you said checking was okay but I honestly think it probably has a more positive expectation than betting. I don't think we will ever get more than two streets of value here, most of the time we will only be getting one? Isn't the turn a more preferable spot since we show weakness by checking and his range seems to be showdown bound and will be more apt to call a turn bet than a flop bet given the initial strength we've shown preflop?

@ 20 mins table 2 you talk about opening K9 in the CO. I like the fold given the fact that if we open to 3 dollars we need this villain alone to fold about half the time, and we still have two opponents before him to act. We do dominate his calling range but given the other two villains and his high 3b percentage I think opening here has to be marginal at best. If we had opened and it folds to him and he 3b us here and we had a slightly stronger hand like KJ or KQ would we see a flop in position? How do you approach villains like this with high 3b percentages in position? 

There were a couple more interesting spots before the 34 min mark but I think you explained your thought process and reasons well. I look forward to watching the rest of the tomorrow night and posting my notes. 

Cheers 

BigJoe :D 

Hey Joe,

Thanks for paying attention to the videos - I will give you a warning now- Episode Four is so bad - it gives Hustlers Ambition 4 a run for worst training video of all time.

In regards to your questions:

@5 minutes 

I think betting the river with his current holding is a mistake just because he does have some showdown value against some opponents - if he had have had a missed draw that Ace is a really good card for him to pot/over bet however he has to be confident he can fold out Jx which is my most likely holding at that point.

@10 minutes

I think a raise here is pretty close and looking back at it its probably my preferred option - especially because of his half pot bet - I only need both players to fold 50% of the time to see an immediate profit which is quite reasonable - its always important to be aware of this when people make half pot or close to it bet sizes - 3x is normally the pot size which is great odds against someone who has indicated a degree of weakness with their bet sizing.

The reason a raise is good here is that even though he has lead out into two people we do have an overcard and a whole lot of backdoor draws - so we get to attach his weak bet - BB will need a very strong hand to continue with - and I actually expect to get a lot of folds here - plus I can barrel any club or broadway card (and even diamonds if I think his range is weighted towards made hands.)

@16 minutes

Good pick up. I think this one is very player dependent - given that he is an unknown full stack I think you are right in that I played this very badly.

This was any easy check, bluff catch or weak value bet turn and maybe river.

@20 minutes

With the two somewhat fishy players and an aggressive BB I agree that we need to be opening pretty tight here and K9 is probably a fold. Its important to keep in mind how dynamic our opening ranges should be however - in some spots K9 and worse is an automatic open in the CO and in spots like this even hands like JT are somewhat debatable.

In terms of dealing with opponent with high 3 bet percentages - you have it right - I will tighten my opening range and then start calling wider both pre and post with those holdings. Its important not to go to overboard - but its important to remember that his range is going to be very easy to read once you can work out what the "air" part of his 3 bet percentage is - once you see that he is doing it with all broadways for example - then you know what boards you can attack him on.

Hey Josh,

Trying to finish this video but life keeps occupying my time. I did watch a portion today and this is the one spot I wanted to talk over.

@ 31 Mins Table 3 We get double barreled on an A high paired board. His range to me would mostly consist of Ax hands. He's seems to be a standard TAG. I agree with the call and in the moment that is how I would play it. Thinking over the hand though I know the call is the right play but I can't see how it is a profitable one. We are behind now and we are calling hoping to get to showdown against an opponent who is unlikely to make it cheap for us to do so. Can you explain to me what we accomplish by calling the turn and why we take this action? It's what I would do but I am struggling with this spot and feeling like I don't have a solid understanding on why this is the action we are taking here.

I will try to finish this up tonight. I have been listening to your Poker Solved as I work and I think it's perhaps one of the most important videos you have ever done. Most poker players have the technical ability to reach their long term goals but will never achieve them because they don't have the maturity, patience and lack of ego to do so. Just wanted to give you props on the vid and I use it as a weekly reminder of what my real perspective should be.

Glad you got something out of Poker Solved, its one of my favourite videos.

I remember this spot - let me ask a question - do you think a call is better the more co-ordinated the board is?

Solid Video.