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John Wray, co-creator, director, and co-writer of The Micros, talks about the origins of the show and his early vision for it. We also delve into John’s own origin story, from his studies at film school to his stint at Disney Studios to his plans for introducing Star Wars to his kids.
You can follow John on Twitter at @JohnAWray. If and when there’s news about the Micros, you can get it @TheMicros and on Facebook. More of John’s work, including , is available from his YouTube channel. I especially recommend The R4v3n and Seiborg. John recommends watching the Stars Wars films in Machete Order.
In this week’s strategy segment, we continue a discussion of two hands that began on my blog.
00:38 Hello and welcome
01:36 Mailbag: follow-up e-mails concerning Jesse Sylvia’s sponsorship and cheating dealers
07:32 Strategy: stacking off with bottom set, getting it in with 500 BBs preflop with 88
55:00 Interview: John Wray
1:45:03 Other great stuff by John; rate and review us on iTunes; have a great week!
In the first hand, did you consider leading with your TT on AQTr? You don’t want to see this board checked through and there are a lot of PF calling hands that are going to give you a good amount of action. Because most people are going to play their pair plus draw passively at the 5/5 level, you can be even more confident in a fold vs heavy action, rather than guessing vs a range that may include some hands that are being bet for “protection”.
I’d rather see the turn than fold against KJ, provided I don’t have to put too much money into the pot. I have, after all, a 10-out draw. If I can get Villain to bet both KJ and a number of hands that I beat, such that I can profitably call a flop bet, that’s a much better outcome for me than betting and folding to a raise, or calling a raise and putting a lot more money into the pot. I’d consider either of those outcomes worse than giving a free card, which with so many people in the pot and everyone having a bias toward protecting hands I didn’t necessarily consider all that likely anyway.
How bad is a free card really? There are 8 cards I’d rather not see, but checking around will also convince me that higher sets and KJ probably aren’t out there and probably make my opponents more likely to pay off bets with worse on blank turns and rivers.
Interesting. On the surface it seems like we are checking to not get raised, which seems bad. If we can reasonably assume that most, if not all, of the players at the table are going to play non-nutted hands passively, then aren’t we losing a lot of value by not betting here? The opponents that are going to pay off blank turns and rivers will give you flop action as well.
I think AK/AQ/AJ/AT/QT are all going to bet the flop (actually the PFR said he checked AK and ended up folding when it went pot-call, but he was a lot better than anyone else in the hand and even so that was a little surprising to me). If people have weaker hands than that, letting the flop check through isn’t such a disaster since I wasn’t going to get three streets paid off anyway.
Very interesting. Thanks for the alternate perspective. I’m excited to see how I actually approach this, in practice, next time similar situation arises.
Just got around to listening. Nate – were you really suggesting The Cincinnati Kid was a good poker movie? It may be a good movie, but the poker is horrible. “Pick a card and I’ll tell you what you have by looking into your soul” – it may make a compelling story but it’s not something poker players can really relate to. And don’t even get me started on the final hand. I guess in a world without Rounders I could see how that might be considered one of the top poker movies out there.
When you talk about good poker movies/shows there are only 3 worthwhile: Rounders, Tilt, and The Micros.
The most disappointing poker movie is the one about Stu Ungar called High Roller. I’d say it gets the award for least interesting movie about about one of poker’s most interesting characters. There is one interesting scene which you can see half of on the trailer on Youtube where he tears Mr. Miyagi apart in gin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne941kSay3Q