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Patrick Leonard (pads1161 on PokerStars, plenopads on Twitter) is one of the most respected MTT players in the world and one of the head coaches at bitB staking. It’s too bad we lost some of the audio from our interview with him! Hopefully you’ll still enjoy what we have.
Timestamps
0:30 – hello and welcome
2:52 – hello and welcome again
9:34 – strategy
35:38 – Patrick Leonard
I’m confused with the strategy hand. I think it’s a pretty clear check fold on the flop and I wouldn’t try and squeeze with it as it is pretty much always a dog against any hand (Ax or pairs) that will call your raise. Not a hand that will paly well in an isolated pot. But mostly, from the descriptions of the players, that sounds like the worst 2/5 game in Vegas. I would be playing in a different game unless you are trying to lose money or something,
The bluffy part of a 3-betting range will standardly contain hands that are underdogs against the hands that will call you. That’s not a reason not to raise with them (unless your opponents will be calling too often).
We can’t check-fold the flop if we’re in position!
I think you might chalk this one up to FPS (Fancy Play Syndrome).
I loved this one. I know the name but had never heard his story. Almost everything he said resonated with me. I hope he comes back some time.
About the hand. I agree we have a good spot to squeeze given the tabe dynamics and also that we should go to 100. I’m not sure having an A blocker is particularly useful against Mini-Fedor’s UTG opening range. I did a quick count using the UTG opening range from Carroter’s new book (which is for 6 handed – one of my pet hates btw is saying “UTG” without saying how many players, but mini-Fedor might be looser so it’s probably ok at a full table) of 77+, ATs+, AJo+ KTs+, KQo, QTs+, JTs, T9s and a range to jam all-in over our 3-bet of JJ+, AQs+, AKo. The thing is that an Ace blocks 11% of both his opening range and his jamming range so relatively it doesn’t work as a blocker at all. It changes a bit in one direction if you make Mini-Fedor also jam AQo, or in in the other direction if you make him raise-fold things like suited wheel aces. In general Aces block strong ranges relative to e.g. completely undefined ranges of players yet to act, but they don’t much block very strong ranges relative to quite strong ranges. I’d much rather have something like a 86s type of hand that is pretty neutral regarding blockers and at least playable if we get flatted rather than this kind of hand that just flops bluff-catchers all the time.
About the interview: Nice to hear a familiar accent – it seems like a lot of us from northern England end up out here in the former East. Nate and Andrew are younger than I am, but in some ways more mature – I was immediately expecting the next question to be “So what are the girls like in Budapest?” but they didn’t ask it 🙂
About Nate’s request: This probably isn’t what you’re looking for exactly but I think a lot of the differences in daily software work come down to some of the following dichotomies:
Working for a software company selling a product to multiple clients versus making in house software for company in another industry (selling bespoke software to one company being in the middle).
Working in a large place where you have a narrow specialization versus working in a small team where you need (or develop) a wider skill set. (if you get the chance I recommend going to a small company and saying at the interview “my current skillset is XYZ but I can learn anything”) My first job was with such a company and on the first day they put me in a room with some components and made me build my own machine. On the second day they gave me my task of writing them a code generation tool (i.e. program to write programs) – I obviously learnt far more working there than I would have in a larger company.
Working under another IT person versus working under someone from another profession. (Either can be good or bad – in my own case it was when working under an older IT person that I had the most problems with him overreaching his knowledge but it could happen the other way round).
Being employed versus contracting.
Desktop applications versus mobile versus embeded systems.
Finally, doing it full time versus doing it as a hobby or to support projects or business activities in other areas (in the modern world businesses are not built of brick but of systems, so knowledge of software gives you the basis to build businesses).