Poker Out Loud: Episode 6

This post was originally published on April 6, 2020, on my personal website, Lukich.io. I have since consolidated all of my poker-related content by reposting it onto Solver School.

Episode 6 of Poker Out Loud was released last Friday. I was lucky to don the YouTube title page below this time. I've recapped every episode this season if you haven’t visited my site before. Below are my previous recaps:

• Episode 1

• Episode 2

• Episode 3

• Episode 4

• Episode 5

In my other posts, I discussed my experience as a part-time player, sitting down with many pros. I then examined a hand I played or a decision I made in more detail, using solvers to help identify areas in which I might have been able to improve.

This week, I’m taking a different approach. I played a couple of hands this week, but I don’t think neither was interesting enough to warrant a deeper analysis. There was one hand, however, that I did want to explore. In the last hand of the episode, Chris Konvalinka was placed in a tricky BB defense spot against Christian Soto. I decided to look at the hand within GTO+ and create a video below.

As for my actions, I put money into the pot with two hands this week. Keeping with the theme from last week, both are hands that I probably should have folded preflop:

Hand 1 — A5o

• In the first hand of the episode, I open A5o from the CO. Chris Konvalinka flatted me from the Button with 44, and Berkey 3-bet from the SB with J8s. I correctly assessed in the game that Berkey would likely be squeezing in this spot widely. That said, I have a clear fold to the 3-bet.

Hand 2 — 75o

• Later in the episode, I defended an open from Chris Price with 75o vs his AKs. I think I should also be folding this hand pre, but it’s a bit closer. I can certainly widen my defense range considerably. Chris opened to $30, so I’m getting over 2 to 1 on a call. I flopped the bottom pair and navigated my way to a showdown.

• I think Chris and I played the hand fairly well, for what it's worth. It’s a neutral, dynamic board that will hit some of my BB defense range. As a result, Chris is going to have some flop check-backs. AK plays well in that range.

• I realize that he weakened his range by checking back the flop and decided to bet to deny equity to unpaired overcards. Chris recognizes that I’ll have plenty of bluffs, and A-high will still be good there at some frequency and makes a call.

• On the river, I decided to check with a plan to call a bet. I recognize that Chris is capped, doesn’t have much value as played, and wants to bet the river. If he does bet, avoiding becoming imbalanced toward bluffs will be challenging. Chris also gets this and checks back AK, expecting to beat some of the hands in my range.

If you’ve followed along over the past few weeks, you’ll notice I’ve become somewhat more emboldened each time I deviate and open my range preflop. I haven’t been punished for it yet, but we’ll see how that works out for me in upcoming episodes.

You can catch the latest episode every other Friday by subscribing to the S4Y channel on YouTube. Here is last week’s full video:

As I mentioned, I will do something a bit different this week. I am in the process of examining formations within my research. I’ve written 3 posts (one, two, and three) examining different formations. I’m working on the last one, which I plan to post next week, about out-of-position, defensive formations. I’m finding these spots interesting, mainly because they are challenging to navigate.

While my 75o hand from above definitely falls into this camp, I think the hand that Chris Konvalinka and Christian Soto played at the end of the episode was a more interesting spot to examine. Occasionally, I have a Zoom chat with some S4Y guys, including Chris, Gerard, Fausto, and Nate. We discussed this hand in detail. I was amazed at how much my opinion about the hand had changed from the beginning to the end of the call.

I’m paraphrasing Gerard, but at some point, he commented on how challenging these wide-range situations can be due to the complexity. It’s true and highlights the opportunity within these situations to gain EV by taking advantage of our opponent’s errors.

Rather than analyze this hand textually, I created a video that broke this down using GTO+. You can check out the rest of my videos on my YouTube channel or through the links above.

Here’s the analysis of the Chris vs Chin hand:

To catch the latest episodes, subscribe to the S4Y channel. Stay tuned for the next one, dropping on Friday, April 10. I’ll have a recap of that episode on here the following week.

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.

-Lukich