Poker Out Loud: Episode 8

The final Poker Out Loud Student Edition episode was released last Friday on YouTube. I’ve been recapping my experience filming this season. To read those from the prior episodes, you can visit the links below:

• Episode 1

• Episode 2

• Episode 3

• Episode 4

• Episode 5

• Episode 6

• Episode 7

Reliving my filming experience over the past few months has been awesome. I’ve been playing poker for 15+ years. As I began playing seriously in my twenties, I spent hours watching shows like Poker After Dark or High Stakes Poker. While playing small to mid-stakes online and in casinos, I always imagined playing in a televised game with professionals.

As I have grown older, that dream has somewhat faded. I’ve established a successful “non-poker” career in business analytics, and I’m now married with two energetic young daughters. So, while I love the game as much as ever, I have competing priorities that take up a significant amount of my time. I cannot devote most of my energy to poker, which limits my upward growth potential to some extent. While I would love opportunities to play in games with more exposure, I am also a realist and understand that I may not get the same chances if I try to play full-time.

With all that said, there will always be a part of me that fantasizes about playing on TV against the top players in the world. So, in September (which feels like five years ago at this point), when Berkey asked me if I wanted to play on Poker Out Loud, I jumped at the chance. While I realized that a student season of Poker Out Loud on YouTube wasn’t the same level as playing on High Stakes Poker with millions on the table, I also understood this would be an opportunity to challenge myself against some amazing players and get more exposure.

I’ve learned a ton from these eight episodes. That’s amazing, given that the entire season consisted of only 50-60 hands of actual poker. I’m a much better player now than when we filmed the season or even when the first episode dropped in January. I don’t think improvement has come from better range construction or mechanics. While I continue to work and improve in those areas, my experience on Poker Out Loud hasn’t contributed to growth there.

The real value I’ve seen has been in identifying mental game struggles and developing a more structured thought process for working through situations. I’ve covered both of these topics throughout these recaps. I appreciate this experience, though, because it’s helped me identify these leaks so that I can develop ways to improve upon them. I’ve got a long way to go, and it’s a constant struggle on which I’m continuing to focus, but I’m seeing progress and am happy about that.

Below is the full final episode. You can also watch it on the S4Y channel on YouTube.

I played one hand in the episode. As with the rest of the season, it was another marginal hand as I opened Q7s from the hijack. A commenter on the YouTube video accurately pointed out that this is a bit wide to open. Even though he’s 100% right, I’m less concerned with my width. As I mentioned above, I don’t believe this highlights a problem with range construction. Instead, this demonstrates another example of me pressing under a stretch of unfavorable card distribution.

Looking back, that card distribution was poor throughout the season. Here are the hands that I put money into the pot with this season in relative order of strength: 99, AKo, A9s, A9o, KTs, K6o, Q7s, 53s. That’s not exactly a murderer’s row of hands. For those instances where I did see a flop, I did not flop top pair or better once throughout the session. By the time the end of the session rolled around, Q7s looked much better than it is

While I can’t say for certain, below is my best guess for what my opening range was at the time. The orange represents the range of hands in my baseline strategy that I entered the session with, and the green represents the additional hands I think I likely would have loosened up and opened at the time.

Chris Price chose to call me in the SB with J9s. The small blind is one of the most challenging positions to play. You could easily make a good argument for calling or 3-betting here. You could probably also make a decent argument for folding with the big blind still yet to act preflop and the disadvantage of playing the entire hand out-of-position; we can say that Chris can’t continue with a wide range, regardless of how he chooses to play the hand.

Many players — myself included at the time of filming — only employ a 3-bet or fold strategy from the small blind, particularly against a mid-to-late position opener. When people do flat, they are generally condensed to medium pairs, suited connectors, suited one-gappers, and weaker suited-broadways and Ax. I clearly can’t accurately estimate Chris’s complete small-blind strategy. My best guess for his range is below:

The hardest part is figuring out the part of Chris’s range that he’ll choose to flat vs 3-bet. When faced with this uncertainty, it’s best to hedge and put a portion of these cusp hands in both ranges. In the range above, the green represents hands that I think Chris will flat most of the time but sometimes raise. The orange represents the hands I think he’ll mostly 3-bet. The blue represents those hands that I think he’ll call or fold.

The flop was a monotone J85. In theory, Chris should have a lot of hands in his range that touch the cards on this board. Besides flushes (which he’ll have a decent amount of, depending on how many AsXs he decides to flat), he will have no shortage of Jx and 8x coverage and plenty of straight draw hands.

Despite all of this, I chose to continuation bet my hand. I think that there’s a huge difference between facing the small blind vs facing a big blind range. Typically, I’d rather face a big blind range. It’s wider and will usually contain a lot of give-ups. However, I think this is one of the few boards that’s an exception to that in practice.

While Chris will have good pair and straight draw coverage on this board, none of those hands feel good facing pressure if they don’t contain at least one spade. This is where the small blind continuance range is at a disadvantage. Chris really shouldn’t have that many hands with a single spade. This is significant as his Jx and 8x hands can’t handle as much pressure.

The big blind would likely retain hands like AsJx, KsJx, As8x, As5x, etc. in its range. It would also contain plenty of bare As hands that can play back. Chris will likely not have nearly as many of those in the small blind. AsJx and KsJx are likelier to 3-bet, and As8x and As5x hands are likelier to fold in the small blind than in the big blind.

With Chris condensed to suited hands, his range will consist of nut hands, like sets and flushes, and many marginal hands with little chance to improve. While I’m not faring well against the top end of his range, there are enough weaker hands that will have difficulty navigating three streets out of position. Even the Jx hands are susceptible to overcards or spade runouts, making it tough to play. Because of all of this, I think my continuation bet is good.

I had planned to shut down on most turns, but this particular one was one of the best cards in the deck for me. Chris shouldn’t have too many kings other than KQ with a spade or KJ in his range. He should also have fewer flushes and sets in his range, as some of those will check-raise the flop. As a result, he will be dense to 1-pair hands like Jx, 99 with a spade, or 8x.

The king hits me hard as I will continuation bet many Kx hands with a spade, such as AKo, KQo, KJo, and KTo. As a result, I can continue betting with a large portion of my range. While one can argue that Q7hh is not a hand that I should continue with — I am not particularly a fan of betting zero-equity bluffs on turns — I think putting in a two-barrel range is fine. I block hands that might call to a 2nd barrel, like KQ and QJ.

I decided to put in the 2nd barrel and got Chris to fold his J9s. While he has a good 1-pair hand, it’s just hard for him to navigate to showdown out-of-position. This lets me bet a lot more in this situation.

If I have to nitpick my play, I think I sized too large on both streets. While there is a portion of my range that I do want to polarize with, it should be contained to flushes and hands that contain the As or Ks. My particular hand can likely get as much accomplished by betting a smaller, catch-all 50% pot sizing.

Now that the season is over, I already miss the excited feeling I’d get on Friday evenings as new episodes dropped. I’m already starting to get the itch for “what’s next.” The live poker environment is on pause for a while. But as soon as everything returns to normal, I’d like to play in a produced environment more frequently. I want to continue to push myself, and playing under the scrutiny of an audience against tough competition is a great way to do so. When these live streams do start again, sign me up to play.

I want to thank the entire Solve For Why crew for this opportunity. I’ve said this before, but the S4Y team helped to reinvigorate my love for the game. When I was first exposed to S4Y in late 2018, I was in a weird place in my poker career. I was amid an extended downswing and was losing confidence. In addition, I was losing the motivation to study the game seriously. I always thought I had the talent to play at higher levels, but I was beginning to wonder if my ceiling would be the $2/$5 and $5/$10 games in my local casino.

The S4Y approach immediately resonated with me more than any other training site I had previously tried. Throughout 2019, I immersed myself in their content and attended both live academies. I felt myself break through knowledge plateaus, connecting concepts and translating them into actionable strategies. The results were nothing short of amazing. In January 2019, I was a modest winner at $2/$5. By the end of the year, I moved up in stakes to $5/$10 and $10/$25 games, and I also increased my win rate along the way.

I firmly believe that no coach or teacher can replace hard work. There is no single answer that S4Y or anyone else can provide that will solve everything. Success is ultimately created through hard work and self-accountability toward improvement. But S4Y has helped provide an amazing framework that has helped to connect the dots. They’ve helped guide me so that I could confidently walk the path in my direction. I owe a lot to Berkey, Chin, Matt, and Jack. I’ll forever sing their praises and can’t recommend them highly enough. I’m just looking forward to the next chance I get to work with them on something exciting, whenever that may be.

While this is the final episode of this season’s Poker Out Loud, the S4Y team continues to pump out awesome content. To catch up with all of the free content they produce, subscribe to their YouTube channel. They’ve also temporarily dropped pricing on the website to $9.99 a month. It’s a steal and the best value in a training site. If you haven’t already, do yourself a favor and sign up. I don’t have a financial interest in S4Y or get any money from referrals. I believe in their approach and products that much. You can thank me for the recommendation later.

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