Episode 104: The Nate and Andrew Fun Time Strategy Hour

10 thoughts on “Episode 104: The Nate and Andrew Fun Time Strategy Hour”

1. One of your more interesting podcasts — thank you!

   • Thank YOU, glad you enjoyed it!

2. Hi just thought I’d comment on David’s question about strategies to prevent villians from folding when you’ve flopped a strong hand. I think a very important concept as a default position is to plan your lines and bet sizing to be all in by the river with your big hands. If you have effectively deep stacks this will mean building a pot from the flop. You have to give your opponents the opportunity to maximise their calling mistakes, which means stacking off when you’ve finally flopped a monster. I see a lot of live players losing massive value over time who don’t employ this strategy. If David’s getting snap folded too often I suspect he might be playing unbalanced/too tight.

   • Thanks for the comment, Kev. Two quick thoughts:

     (1) If stacks are truly deep, you often won’t be able to control whether stacks are going to get in by the river (without extreme overbetting). That said, it’s usually *more* important to inflate the pot with your best hands in these scenarios, just because the potential payoff is so large.

     (2) One clear downside to the strategy you sketch–inflate the pot with your best hands and be aggressive enough that you get paid sometimes–is that for balance reasons you’ll (against any sort of observant player) need to make larger c-bets and other standard bets with your worse hands. But giving yourself a good price on such bets is an important part of winning strategy. It’s not as important as getting paid with your best hands, but there is a big cost to taking $25 flop bets into $50 pots out of your arsenal.

     Those are really cursory points (that you probably already understand), but I thought I’d expand on your notes a little.

3. Great podcast. I’ve thought about joining the spread-limit game at the Oaks in Emeryville many times, and have always concluded that I simply don’t understand the format well enough to feel comfortable playing. So I stick to their fixed-limit games.

4. Another very interesting episode guys, thanks! With relation to keeping opponents from folding when you have a strong hand, I think one of the best areas of advice I’ve heard from the show (both related to this example and more generally) is when Andrew talks about – forgive me if I have the terminology incorrect – value targeting and by extension, bluff targeting. Thinking / acting along these lines is helping me fold out better hands and get calls from worse at the appropriate times. Not always obv, but you get the idea.

   Perhaps another point related to Kev’s comment: I remember reading recently some words by Ed Miller in relation to maximising value with strong hands on the flop onwards. (This could be in the ‘Small Stakes No-Limit Hold’em’, can’t quite recall! Or possibly in ‘Playing the Player’)… Anyways – the point is about sizing up your opponents stack size and then as he says “chunking it up”, breaking your betting lines into 2 or 3 pieces in ascending size so you’ll be all in by the river if that is your goal. Combining that with the aforementioned ‘value and bluff targeting’ thinking which Andrew advocates seems like a pretty solid approach.

   • I agree! I have a series on Tournament Poker Edge called “Getting Paid” where I do pretty much this.

5. A little bit about TPE. I was a member but I dropped out cause they didnt address Alternative games. No PLO. No O8. No Horse. I hate it that I cant get your, AB’s, vids without having to join. I will join as soon as they add other games. But until then is their any other way I can get your vids?

   • They have a few non HE vids I can point you to and rumor has it that our very own Nate will be making some non HE vids for them.

     • If Nate puts up some vids Im back in.

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