Hello, and welcome into another episode of the Lowland Cash Games podcast. Glad
to have you here. Today's podcast will be answering questions that you guys,
the listeners, asked me over on social media. So a reminder if you
guys aren't following me yet on social media, it's Lowlanman Cash Games podcast over
on Instagram and Facebook. Of course, you can shoot me direct messages there.
I try to answer those as quickly as possible, and I do try
to answer every single one. One may occasionally slip through, and then from
time to time, you know, I'll post various things on there and here.
Recently I posted a graphic telling you to send me questions that you wanted
answered on future episodes of the podcast, and that's what we're going to be
doing today. So the first question is from Ben Thorough the raught. I
think it's the row. I know it's low limits, so bluff should be
very limited. But what questions should we be asking ourselves before trying a bluff
on the turn or later? So there's a few I can think of.
You certainly will be bluffing in low limits. The better you get it bluffing,
of course, you add to the bottom line. That being said,
I've stated repeatedly you do not have to ever bluff to win at the lowestakes.
You just don't. You can win more if you learn how to do
it effectively. But I just want to caution you if you are currently a
losing player and you're trying to become a profitable player, you do not need
to be trying to learn how to bluff now. You need to be learning
fundamentals, just basic fundamentals of good hand selection ranges, raising three betting BT
sizing those type things. And then after you do that and you become a
winning player, then you can start bluffing. That being said, you need
to ask yourself some questions. Ben, here's just a few i'll throw out
there at you. Number one, does this player ever fold turns? Or
are they a calling station that goes to the river with bottom pair? This
is my player. Reads are important. This is what changes. It doesn't
necessarily change from live poker to online poker, but you just find a lot
less of this stuff online and you find a lot more of it live.
So, like, off the top of my head, I could probably name
five players that I know right now that if they catch a piece of it,
they just doren't fold them to the river, and they may not fold
the river. If you run across a player like this, trying to bluff
them on the turn would be just suicide. Generally speaking. If they have
called a flop bet and they make it to a turn, that means they
either have a pair they like or they have a draw they like and they
are not folding on the turn. Ever, you may get them to fold
on the river, but you for sure aren't getting them to fold on the
turn. So if you can identify these players, you need to be paying
attention at the table. It will save you a lot of money. Likewise,
with that same player, you may be able to bluff them on the
river, but you need to try to identify what they're holding. What's most
likely, you know, is it a pretty ragged board with no draws and
they made it to the river, Well, then they probably have a pa
they like and they're not folding. Is it a board would do quite a
few draws, so that they could be drawing at something and all the draws
blanked, Well, then you might stand a decent chance of bluffing them on
the river. Kind of goes hand in hand with that. But question number
two are they capped at having a very weak range. So there's several things
that go into this. Part of it is obviously is pre flop action.
If they're a just called pre flop, they's called a raise. They can't
have big hands, so if the board is very big cards, they just
can't really have a monster hand. If it's middling type straightening cards, they
actually could have a very big hand. And then you need to be able
to read flop turn river textures right. You need to be able to understand
the type flops where if they did have a monster, they would raise you.
So there's many flop textures that are so heavy with draws and scary turns
that somebody who has a monster will raise you. And if you did not
get raised on the flop, then you know they just don't have anything on
the turn, so they are very capped in their ranges. These are just
a couple of little tips that you need to be keeping in mind while you're
trying to determine how strong or weak your opponent is and thereby how successful a
bluff attempt on the turn or river might be. And then I would say
the last thing is about price I've talked about this many times, but poker
is all about math, and so anything you need you do needs to be
mathematically sound. And so you need to ask yourself this question, can I
get a fold cheaply enough to make it a profitable bet over the long term?
And so when we think about long term, you know you're not always
going to get the fold right. Sometimes you're gonna bet and they're gonna call.
But if you can get them to fold one out of every three times,
like if you try this same bet with a similar spot with a similar
villain, for similar amounts of money, you know, three different times this
month, if you can get them to fold just one out of the three
times, then it will break even. And if you're pricing it right,
so you know, you get to you need to really study, you know,
bet sizings and what price you are laying your opponent. I find that
a lot of players understand what price the pot is laying them when they want
to call to hit a draw, but they don't understand what price they're laying
an opponent when they make in a bet. So, for example, if
you bet half pot to bluff, you need them to fold about a third
of the time for it to be break even for you, and if it's
any more than that, you're going to be profitable. If you bet two
thirds pot, you want them to fold about forty percent of the time for
it to be break even. Anything more as profitable and then you know full
pot by it. You want to make a big pot sized bet, you
need your opponent fold about fifty percent of the time. So these are some
things to keep in mind. Thank you so much for that question. Man
Carson K wrote me this question A difference in deep stack and normal poker.
Okay, let's get into it. Carson, I just want to warn you
up front this is not going to be very detailed because deep stack poker is
crazy hard. It's crazy hard to be good at it, and so if
you are having problems understanding deep stack poker, I would advise you to not
play deep stacked. You need to play one hundred big blinds. A hundred
big blinds is the most studied, most well known, most solved, most
explained, most taught form of no limit holding. There is one hundred big
blinds, so you can find numerous people to help you and tons of resources
to teach you how to play hundred big blind stack poker, and so I
would say, get really good at that, and once you get really good
at that, you know you can move to play in deeper stacks. Now,
of course I understand. Sometimes you start out one hundred big blinds in
a game, and three hours later, stacks have just multiplied, and now
everybody at the table has three hundred big blinds. There are four hundred big
blinds, and you're playing deep stack poker. I would say, if you
find yourself in that spot and you're not good at playing deep stack, I
would say, color up and leaf. Now A lot of people would say,
oh, I don't do that, that's crazy, Well is it?
I mean, if you are now playing a game you're bad at. You
know, when the game started, you were playing a game that you're good
at, and now you're four or five hundred big minds deep and you're not
good at that game and you don't understand it, you shouldn't be playing it.
That'd be like that'd be if somebody says it's okay. That'd be like
somebody saying, well, sure you can play hold them what you've studied and
are good at. And then if you want to move over, to the
ras. They won't play ras for a while. That's fine too. I
mean, I know you don't know anything about it, and it's still poker,
same thing, deep stack, No hold them it. It looks like
the same game, but it's very different in a lot of ways. So
deep tack poker played well involves every aspect of poker, like every single tool
you can imagine and poker is available to you. This includes value, you
get odds to call. A lot of times, you run bluff, sometimes
big bluffs. You are allowed to put tons of pressure on capped ranges,
which is one of the hallmarks of deep stack poker. If you are a
poker player, they can identify when another planer a hand with you has a
very capped range, you can just put immense pressure on them to fold because
stacks are so deep. That's one of the big differences between people that play
deep sack poker well and people who don't. And finally, the biggest thing
is that mistakes you make, the bigger they are, the more they cost
you, so you can afford If you're playing one hundred big blind poker and
you make an error for your stack, it's not really catastrophic. It's a
hundred big blinds, you lost it. You don't like losing it, but
it's not catastrophic. You know. Compare that to playing six hundred big blinds
deep and you make that same mistake and it costs you your stack. Well,
I mean, now you know you've lost six times as much money you've
lost. But let's say you play a hundred big blind by ins, You've
now lost six buy ins in one hand and one game in one hand,
and so mistakes are just catastrophic. So you have to be pretty good at
play in deep stagged if you don't want to make bad errors. This is
a generalization, but large pocket pairs go down in value a bit, and
then hands that can crack big pocket pairs of people who can't really fold,
you know, big pucket pairs, well, those type hands go up in
value. So if you're in games with you know, people that are going
to make five hundred big blind mistakes with pocket aces, and you can get
in there with the five seven suited on the button or something, or you're
making a play and you get involved and you take them down, then you
can maximumally exploit villains. So the largest pot that I've ever won at one
two no limit was maybe a couple of years ago, something like that.
I'm playing in a game with a person I played with a ton and this
game just gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, and the next thing,
you know, we're just, you know, crazy deep, and me
and this particular villain are forty five hundred dollars deep at this point, forty
five hundred dollars deep. And I raise. He three bets me, and
he's very aggressive, and I had positioned on him. I think he three
from the big line. He's a very aggressive player. I four bet him,
he five bet me, and we're so deep that I called in position
and I had five seven suited hand I just mentioned, and we flopped a
gutter and a back door flushtraw and I forget his bet size amount, but
we were infinitely deep, and I peeled one on the flop and we banked
the gutter on the turn and he was not able to get away from aces
and he put all forty five hundred dollars in the middle and we one a
nine thousand dollars pot playing one two no limit hold them. So that's a
great example of how you know if you were a hundred big minds deep.
First of all, any reasonably smart player would not be committing that much money
with five seven suited, So there's less odds you get cracked. You're laying
your opponent's less odds to try to crack you when your hundred bigs minds deep.
So there's lots of nuances to it. But that's a general overview.
It's just far too involved and far too complicated for me to cover in any
kind of a depth in an episode of the podcast. But I hope that
gives you some pointers and things to think about. All Right, we'll do
one more for this episode. We'll do another episode of these, because I
got a bunch of them, but we'll just do one more for this episode.
It's from Tyler westra when to call it a day, run, bad,
et cetera, minimizing down draws. It's funny you should mention this.
This is something I actually have went through in just a previous month, and
we were on a pre already bad downswing and I stopped and took a little
break and came up with a game plan. And I'll tell you what my
game plan was specifically, and then i'll address your question and generally, but
my game plan was, we're going to go to three hour sessions. We're
going to limit ourselves to to buying down swings. When it's three hours,
we will leave, whether we're up or whether we down. We will take
at least a one hour break after a three hour session. We may break
the whole day, we may break for an hour, but we will at
least break for an hour, and we will do something non poker related.
We won't think about poker, we won't review hands, we'll listen to music,
we'll go for a drive, we'll go buy something at the store,
we'll go for a walk around the parking lot. You know, there's any
number of things we can do to just live in a different type headspace.
And then if after that we're feeling good and we're ready to attack the game
again, we will come back and do another three hour session. And so
I had these little plans going and it worked very well, and you know,
we wanted a massive rebound and wound up running it up for the month,
Like the first twelve days of the month. I was so deep,
so stuck, so bad, and we went I came up with the game
plan. We wound up turning around and we finished the month up pretty big.
Not nearly as because it could have been without the downcling, but I
was very pleased with it. So, look, you should leave anytime that
you're tilted and making bad decisions, even if you just lost one buy in.
And this is what you know we talk about, you know, only
taking two or three buy ins. A lot of players will go, well,
don't do that. As long as you're playing good in the game as
good you should keep playing that. I mean, I don't necessarily agree with
that. I don't care how good the game is. The longer you play,
the more fatigue you'll get, the more mistakes you'll make. And there's
very few people in the world that can play really long sessions and be at
the top of their game. So you know, limit your losses. Try
to have a buy in lost rule. I think somewhere two or three buy
ins is probably reasonable. But my most important thought here is that even if
you lose one buy in, if it's something that's tilted you or got you
so mentally out of whack from just losing that one buy in, just walk
away at the one buy in because you're gonna be playing bad you're not gonna
be thinking straight and things are going to deteriorate quickly from there. So me
personally, I like a three buying loss rule, but I will adjust it
from time to time based on different scenarios. But during that bad down swings,
as I just mentioned, I may make it two buy ins. The
main thing is just knowing when to leave. Playing shorter sessions is huge.
As soon as you have lost a couple of sessions, you need to be
on it immediately, recognizing that a downswing has begun, and one of the
first and I find that this is usually the last thing people do, but
this needs to be the first thing you do. You need to be immediately
asking is it me? Am I the problem? And if I'm not one
hundred percent of the problem, what percentage of the problem am I? What
am I leaking here? Sure? I mean we ran bad, We got
two outed, this happened, that happened, the other happened. But I
want to go back and look at these hands and I will see what percentage
of this leak was me. Because we're human, then we're invariably we contribute
to it. Always, we could be contributing to the whole thing. Never
be so arrogant or cocky or confident that you don't first look at yourself.
I don't care that you got two outed. You go back and see what
happened pre flop. Was it optimal? Did you do it the best it
should have been done? Did you play the most optimal way possible on the
flop? Did you make the best decisions possible on the turn? And did
you make the best decisions possible on the river? And if at any point
you can identify where you didn't make the most optimal decision, sure you may
still have lost the hand, but you can find something that you can fix
and you can be better prepared next time. So that's hugely important. So
take hands like you should always be taking hands during notes during session. Always
your hands. Where you feel lost on the turn, take a note on
it, hands where you felt lost on the river, Take a note on
it. Hands where you won the biggest pot, Take a note on it.
Hands where you lost the biggest pot. Take a note on it and
then review them later. And then more importantly, have somebody who is a
winning poker player who can look at these hands with an independent third party I
objectively and go, you know what, you're playing really bad right now.
I know you're a great player, but it's obviously you're on it, like
two to three session downswing. It's affecting your confidence. You're not three betting
in spots you would normally be three betting, or you didn't take this spot
on the turn that you would normally take, or you're much more passive now,
or you know they'll find something in there, and you need to constantly
be on yourself to make sure you are not contributing to the problem. This
is a one hundred percent verifiable fact of poker. The more we lose,
the worst we play. And I don't care who you are. I don't
care who you are. The more you lose, the worst you play.
And then finally, just take a break, man, if you are,
if you're on a you know, three session, four session, five sessions,
at some point, just say, you know what, I'm just taking
a break from poker. I'll take a week. I'll take two weeks.
I'll do some stuff fun, and then, you know, three or four
days before I decide to hop back in the mix, I'll start doing some
studying, I'll start preparing, I'll start getting back in that frame of mind
and we will just go kill it all right. That'll wrap it up for
this episode. Here. If you would love to get high quality, helpful
episodes on how to crush low stakes poker every single Sunday instead of just once
a month, listen up. If you're wondering where the podcast Every Sunday went,
well, that is now reserved for fans of the pod. They get
an advertisement, free, fluff, free intro, free, free of everything,
but just hardcore lol liment training free every single Sunday. You can become
a fan of the pod by going to Lolamit cash games dot com and you'll
save ten percent if you choose the annual option. Perhaps you're looking for targeted
low stakes poker training with hundreds of hours of audio and video teaching you exclusively
how to crush one, two and one three zero limit. You can sign
up for that tier at lowlimitcashgames dot Com and as always, you get a
ten percent discount when you choose the annual option. And if you are of
those people that hate Aceking, you just despise Aceking. I've created a Aceking
master class you want to know how to crush poker playing Ace King only forty
nine bucks gets you this eighty eight minute video me showing you exactly how to
play ace King, particularly out of position, which is the toughest spot to
play. The link to that is down in the description below this podcast,
or you can just go to Lowlimitcashgames dot Com and you'll scroll down to products
and you will see it and you can click it there. The only product
that I recommend anybody by is the Advanced Poker Training Play. I bought a
lifetime subscription to it out of my own pocket. I drill suited connectors on
it. I drill suited aces on it, I drill aceking on it.
It's how I've become proficient at playing every kind of hand class from every kind
of position. You combine this with my training at lowlomitcashgames dot Com and you
will just improve your game dramatically in short order. If you want to check
that out, Advance Poker Training dot Com slash low Limit, and when you
check out, if you'll use the discount code to Low Limit, you will
get a twenty five percent discount. All these links are down in the information
portion of this podcast in your podcasting app, so you can check that out
so you don't forget anything, and we would love to have you over at
lowlimitcashgames dot Com, where we are helping one two players absolutely crush