Poker Out Loud: Episode 2

This post was originally published on February 3, 2020, on my personal website, Lukich.io. I have since consolidated all of my poker-related content by reposting it onto Solver School.

I haven’t yet discussed the experience of watching this with the other guys that filmed with me. As excited as I am to relive this experience on YouTube, I’m also my toughest critic. This makes it difficult for me to watch this objectively. At some points, I think my reasoning is well articulated. I see gaps in logic and poor rationale for my decisions at others. I said this in my recap of episode 1 — eloquently articulating one’s thought process in real time is incredibly difficult. As Berkey once said, it’s a Herculean task. Even if I arrived at a “correct decision,” I cringe at some of my explanations. After this experience, I can’t emphasize how impressed I am with Berkey, Chin, and the others who filmed seasons 1-4 on the S4Y site. Even if they come to the wrong conclusion, everyone is usually composed in analyzing a situation. It’s ridiculously hard, and I respect those who can do it well.

The 2nd episode of the season dropped on Friday night. You can catch the latest episode every other Friday by subscribing to the S4Y channel on YouTube. Here’s the episode in full:

Through 2 orbits (episodes), I still haven’t seen a flop. That said, I did have two opportunities to provide a more in-depth analysis of the episode. I also inserted myself in one pot.

My first opportunity to analyze a situation happened in the very first hand. We are coming off the last hand from episode 1 — Fausto utilized his positional advantage and some weak backdoor equity with T9cc to take a 3-bet pot from Chris Price and Chris Konvalinka on a fairly dry board. On this hand, he opened from the CO with AJo. The action then folds around to me in the SB with KTo.

To start, I arrived at a good decision. KTo is not a hand that I want to play out of position against an opener. It’s offsuit and not very connected. Because of this, most of its value will come from its ability to make pairs. However, it’s also often dominated. This can make it challenging to play this hand and face multiple streets of pressure out of position. Raising the hand can also be problematic since hands that dominate me (e.g. AT, KJ, KQ) will likely not fold to my preflop 3-bet.

During the analysis, I said I wasn’t ready to implement a calling range. I wish I had elaborated on this a bit more. By default, I don’t call from the SB against a late position open from the CO or Button. Flatting incentivizes the BB to squeeze with more dead money in the pot. This won’t happen as often in live $2/$5 games, but it is a concern in tougher environments like this one. Additionally, my overall SB continuance range will be significantly tighter than in any other formation due to my positional disadvantage throughout the hand. Flatting some hands within a narrow range is difficult to balance without capping myself. As such, I believe I am better equipped to 3-betting all hands I continue.

Here is my default 3-betting range from the SB against a typical CO open. It’s a fairly strong range that will position me well if Fausto does decide to continue through a call or a 4-bet.

While this is my default range, I will always make adjustments based on the game I play. In this particular game, I approached it with a plan to slightly widen my ranges. I did this for a few reasons:

1. I believed that everyone would also play wider ranges. The table is full of talented players. While I think we all had respect for one another, there’s always going to be a sense of confidence and/or arrogance that strong players have. I think most players in this game — particularly Berkey, Chin, and Fausto — believed they could play wider ranges than they typically should.

2. As I mentioned last week, we had a lot of downtime between hands. Playing normal ranges could mean that several hours of actual time passed without participating in a pot. By widening ranges somewhat, I created the ability to insert myself into more hands.

3. While we did play for real money, I didn’t care about the financial aspect of this game. If I were truly trying to put myself in +EV scenarios, my first decision would have been to find an easier game. While I tried my best to win, I also treated it like a learning environment and looked for challenges. As a result, I was okay getting into slightly -EV situations to push myself.

Given my default ranges listed, I think my actual in-game range was slightly wider. The additional hands I would add in this spot would include ATo, KJo, QJo, the rest of my suited aces, and a few more suited hands. That said, KTo is still on the outside looking in. While I was accurate in saying that KJo would be in my 3-bet range, KTo was a fold.

My second opportunity was in the final hand of the episode. Berkey opened to $50 from UTG and was flatted by Fausto from the CO and Chin from the Button. I looked down at KThh from the SB.

This is a more complicated spot than the one above. Unlike the heads-up scenario above, I haven’t built out preflop squeezing ranges for an open and two calls. This scenario doesn’t happen often, especially in 6-handed games. It’s also very situation-dependent. The course of action depends greatly on other factors, like table dynamics and player profiles. As a result, I think it’s better to rely on concepts and address these on a case-by-case basis.

I’ll start with the good — I correctly identified the challenges KTs face now. Folding the hand was never an option. Suited broadway cards can likely be played profitably for a single raise from all positions. However, this hand plays poorly multi-way when out-of-position. If I decide to flat, I will struggle to play on most boards, even if I flop a pair. I am fairly confident I’ll under-realize my equity with most of my hands from that formation.

Flatting brings up another potential problem. If I were in the BB, I could call knowing that I am guaranteed to see a flop. From the SB, I do not close the action — Chris K is in the BB and is yet to act. He’s incentivized to play a wide range, given his pot odds. If I call, he’ll likely come along, and we’ll go 5-ways to a flop. However, my call would bring the total dead money in the pot to $210. This lets Chris squeeze profitably with a wider range. KTs would not be able to defend out-of-position against a 3-bet from him, so at some frequency, I’ll call and then fold to a big squeeze by Chris.

At the moment, I elected to squeeze. I’m comfortable with this decision. For the reasons above, calling is challenging. My clarity increases significantly by thinning the field. I can also clean up a lot of potential equity from hands like pocket pairs, offsuit broadways, and suited connectors that will struggle to continue for a large 3-bet here. As a result, when I am called, I can often play in a heads-up scenario against a capped range with initiative. My hand has double broadway blockers that reduce some of my opponents’ progress. Finally, some of my opponents will continue with Tx hands that I dominate, such as QTs, JTs, T9s, etc.

Berkey brought up an interesting point after I put in the raise. He said that it’s hard for me not to over-bluff this spot. I think this is an insightful observation. I am tempted to squeeze widely here with this much dead money in the pot. That’s something I will monitor in the future as I further develop squeeze ranges.

That comment made me more curious to understand what a good continue range would look like here, so I decided to build one out. Because of all the extra money in the pot, I think I can continue more widely than I documented in the SB vs CO range above. I expect Fausto and Chin to be fairly capped. I didn’t know Fausto as well at this time, but he had a reputation as an aggressive player. I expected him to 3-bet linearly in position. If this is accurate, I would be surprised if his flat call range ever contains TT+ or AQ+. Given that he is on the button, Chin can retain some additional strong hands, and a raise from that position is more polarizing. Even still, he should be somewhat capped as well.

Ultimately, I think my range construction depends on how widely I think Berkey is opening. He is the only one with a truly uncapped range. If he opens a 15-20% range from this position, My squeeze is likely very poor. Within that tighter range, Berkey would have too many strong hands to continue, putting me in a challenging spot. In addition, any time Berkey continues through a call, Fausto and/or Chin are more likely to continue. I didn’t say this out loud, but I anticipate Berkey’s range to be much wider than 15-20%. Given his talent and style, I estimate he’ll open more than 30% of his hands. After including these additional offsuit broadways and lower-suited connectors/gappers to fill out a wider open range for Berkey, I think KTs functions well as a squeeze.

I developed a potential squeezing range I could have used in this situation. I built a top-heavy polarized range that I think would function well. I’ve added some cusp hands — KTs being one of them — that can potentially take multiple options. Some better pairs and suited hands can function as a squeeze or call. Some weaker hands, like ATo or the lower suited connectors, can be a squeeze or fold.

It was an interesting spot. I chose to squeeze the KTs and pushed through everyone else’s ranges. I’ll take the $160.

I enjoyed watching the rest of the episode. I did have a few additional thoughts while watching:

1. The AT vs KQ hand that Berkey played against Chris was interesting. I plan to dig into this more. My instinct in Berkey’s position is to c-bet flop. He flops significant range advantage and can likely bet most of his 3-bet range against Chris. Berkey instead chose to play the hand through the realization game tree. His logic was well-reasoned, but I’m curious how a solver would see this spot. My next post will be a video where I look into this more.

2. I was very impressed with Chris Konvalinka. I already knew Berkey and Chin would come across well. They have filmed 5+ seasons of POL, coached others daily, and teach professionally. The two of them have a ton of practice, which clearly shows. Chris was still very articulate. His reasoning was sound, and his logical arguments were well-structured. It’s a testament to his talent at this game and how much the kid works. I’m excited to watch him do big things in poker as he gets more reps.

3. This gets lost sometimes, but the production quality of these videos is awesome. Pigtails Productions (S4Y’s production crew) does an amazing job in the filming and editing process to turn this into a complete show. These guys are a major reason why S4Y content ranks up as some of the best in the industry.

To catch the latest episodes, subscribe to the S4Y channel. Stay tuned for the next one, dropping on Friday, February 14. I’ll have a recap of that episode on here a couple of days afterward.

If you have any comments or thoughts, please feel free to leave any comments below. You can also contact me at [email protected] or on Twitter or YouTube through the links in the footer below. Thanks for watching.

-Lukich