The problem with pocket aces is that a lot of things still beat it, sure you should play with that hand, but what if the flop shows three suited cards and you get aggressively raised. You gotta consider the flush draw and respect it enough to consider folding. The hardest part of poker is knowing when you are beat and minimizing your loses when you think it has happened.
It amazes me how some people will almost never fold an over pair. I once saw a guy with KK bet a flop of 987. next player raised 3x and a guy after that went all in for over 100BB. The KK insta called and he was against a straight and a set.
@@rudistorm3348 when I watch high-level poker players what amazes me most is how well the pros fold. Not enough is said about folding and how it can save you in the long term.
And don’t realize it’s only a pair. Most can’t take it street by street. Pre a pair is good, aa is nuts but flops like 987 is sooo many 2 pair, set, straight, straight flush draws. Maybe it’s the nuts part. Kk on aj2 flop over fold, but floppping a set on 9s8s7h qh js don’t fold enough on river when every draw got their and 2 over pairs out drew sets and there’s really no bluffs left
@@Alec____ I think you missed the point. Even with your example, AA actually only beats A8 ~17.4 times out of 20. Is saying preflop hands are a "draw" the problem? How about there are no made hands preflop? GL @ the tables.
Wow this was such an eye-opening perspective on poker. It really makes those "two-outters" on the river not as heartbreaking, because I have always been looking at it the wrong way. Great video!!!
@@Hotobu I was responding to the subtle flex comment but forgot to tag the commenter. The reason I used the modifier "probably" is that I don't know with absolute certainty if Little misspoke or knows. But thank your for explaining to me how Net Worth works...Would u mind telling me if it includes his equities and crypto portfolio?
I really like when you said that variance is what makes this game profitable. That is all to often forgotten when we take bad beats. If it wasn’t for the fish getting lucky they would quit. Then you would be playing against nothing but good players and have a smaller edge. Control what you can control by making correct decisions, leaving your emotions at the door and being financially responsible with your bankroll and life roll. The results will come with consistent studying and grinding. Poker is a long game, short term results are irrelevant. Thanks for the video Mr. Little!
Such a good point about the long term view. Also accepting that if you're grinding and putting in the hours you will get bad beats hopefully at the proper percentages. As long as you get your money in good you make money.
your ONLY "job" in poker is to make good decisions ALL the time. when you get your money in "good", you have DONE your job. the result is NOT up to you.
I wish it was that easy... I always get my money in good but lose seemingly every huge Allin deep in tourneys Last night on bubble of FInal Table the same player got me twice in 5 minutes AK < AQ and AQ < AJ How can I ever win when thay always happens
HighAFoldman I hear ya, but you can’t be results oriented. That’s poker, as long as you make correct decisions you will win over the long run. Don’t worry about the short term. Good luck at the tables
Not really well said in my opinion. If you get your money all in preflop with KK into AA You got your money in bad but it’s a spot where you are supposed you go all in. If your opponent jams and you have top boat and call and they have quads you got your money in bad but once again it’s fine. People often forget about that side of variance. It’s not about “getting your money in good” it’s about getting in your money in spots where you are supposed to. Or where you do well against villains range as a whole. If you bluff and you run into the small percentage of villains range that snap calls you did you make a bad play? Not if you had the correct hand to bluff with.. for all the new players it’s not about getting it in good. It’s about playing good poker overall.
You’ve gotta unique approach that rivals that of Doug, Alex and helmouth though he was more tells orientated; I relate to your blunt personality. Everyone learns differently, hence why so many pros can successfully teach others and profit from it. Are your books available in chapters?
I know this is an old video but thank you for the content. I've been grinding small stake poker with okay profit, but whenever I think I have enough bankroll and decided to move up, I always get crushed until I have to move down again. This had been repeating for years..
Always good information. Thanks. I pride myself on bankroll management. The one thing most players over look the most. It’s a long game and a tough grind!!
There is something that Little missed here, which I'll explain via my own anecdote. I read and study constantly in between my sessions, and thinking about equity is specifically what is driving me crazy. I have lost 13 BI's in a row, and the vast majority of them I have had >90% equity. Flopping top set and getting it in and losing. Turning the nut straight and getting it in, denying equity to any draws, getting called on those bad equity draws by V anyways, and losing. It's not just 13 times either; I'll patiently grind up my stack and it'll happen 2-4x per session, sometimes more. Doing some napkin math has told me that the chances of this happening are roughly 1 in 81,500. So this is a big way in which thinking about equity will do the opposite of calm you down. I know the response to this is to simply play more hands and the variance will/should/may hopefully decline, but people's careers hinge on high variance moments, and each session and hand is independent of the others in terms of statistical probability, so unfortunately it doesn't always 'even out'. There are pros who recorded >100,000 hands and still have run-bad due to this. Once you're making close to the best decisions you could be making and are just losing consistently, it really does come down to isolated luck. You can only get it in good, and you can not and should not rely on some over-arching bell curve of probability to start making your statistically independent future hands win to pull you back to center, because that's not how that works. Many pros simply got lucky at crucial moments which made or broke their careers, and some of those have lost perspective on it. I hate to use the word privilege but it's almost like speaking as a pro basketball player and encouraging others to chase their dreams. It just doesn't always work out regardless of you having everything it takes.
100,000 hands is nothing. That is 20 days of play for an online pro. Every online pro will experience losing months, essentially meaning it is common and expected to run poorly for 150,000 hands or more. Perhaps you think the long run is actually quite short whereas in reality, it is 500,000 or more hands.
@@PokerCoaching NO ONE will EVER play enough hands to be in the Make believe realm of "the long run". That's the point most people will never understand. You can play a hand a minute for the rest of your life and still not be in the long run. The run out is ALL that matters.
This is why I laugh when someone calls my all in with AQ off and I have 44 and I lose. I'm like thanks for the call. I hope we can do that 1000 times lol.
Although there was nothing here that I didn't already know...it's always good to have the concepts reinforced and also to hear them from a slightly different point of view. Thx.
Having also spent the last two years studying Forex and general investment, and now moving into poker, I'm so glad I learned about risk management and emotional control before coming here.
I noticed this as well, like when people ask to see the runout after they fold a hand (often a draw), even paying a big blind to see if they 'made a mistake' by folding a hand that was going to get there. The unstated premise here is that the way you win is by somehow divining when your hands will improve and when they wont, and then folding the ones that won't get there while continuing with the ones that will get there. I've actually tried explaining to people at the table before that the only thing of consequence is the equity when the money goes in, they tend to react as if i'm ruining the fun of the game. I guess that is because, as you say, they are gambling. I mean, ultimately, if you think you can predict the outcome of random events at better accuracy than a guess, on a consistent basis, why bother with all the hassle of poker? Just go play Roulette and place huge straight bets, as long as you're right more than 1 time in 36 you're in the money.
I always enjoy your videos. I appreciate and thank you for the philosophical approach it goes beyond the felt. One thought thought, the table may have reacted that way to the ace king hand because the percentages were different in terms of equity right before the river card was dealt. When the hand started you were a 46% dog, in essence a coin flip, but your odds improved dramatically until the river hit. So it was not only the psychology of the table you talk about not fully understanding the equity in hand but as in most things there was evolving equity with each card, and moment the past. Love your approach to the game and in life. your son is your clone, so cute enjoy him each day. , all the best.
Sounds like my online PLO sessions on PokerStars the last few days. 10 bad beats on the river pretty much explains. I should be up $400 instead of down $300.
I try to look at it like .... well I set this guy up and he fell for it.... cards didnt go my way... More like be happy with your good play than sad at the poor luck.
Great advice! It is hard to control emotions tho. I have good bankroll management and can afford to lose hundreds of buy-ins at stakes that I play, it will not get me broke. But I still get pissed off when I lose but I played "correctly". I don't know why, I just feel tilt right away. I can cool off quickly but still it stings for a while. Also I am profitable but if my winnings are not at all time high I am getting anxious. I just hate losing not sure how to manage this. I am aware of variance I just don't know how to control my emotions.
im feeling exact same way. started playing from micro stakes even if i can afford way more. Didn't want to start high, decided to go the hard way from the start. Im clearly a winning player and building my bankroll, but every Aces lost into kings or queens or other just makes me tilt af. I just can't accept the fact that i lost with better hand, still can't get used to it. I also started to cashout my all ins (for a 1%fee on pokerstars) before the cards hit the table, cuz i just can't imagine a situation where i lose another one just because of bad luck or variance or how do you want to call it. Im trying to work on my mental game, but still hard for me
bad beats are part and parcel of this sport, there is no escaping it. What you should aim is to provide the bad beats more often than receiving it, but believe you me, your opponents will also at times draw the nuts
I've just started watching a few of your videos. Great commentary and very articulate. I play a lot of craps which is highly mathematical. I wonder if you advise players to set a stop loss for a session? I know some days it just won't matter, losing days are inevitable. How much you lose can greatly impact your bankroll long term. I'm going to watch some more. Thanks again.
Really enjoyed this vid and appreciate all the training aids you put up to help people get more from their time at the poker table. I did notice a discrepancy in the AA vs 76s stat. When I have AA, I'm the damn one who wins 22.5% of the time. lol :P
And that happens to me with pocket Kings... I always isolate my opponent, but still lose the majority of the time! This is so weird because I have played so many pocket kings, so it shouldn’t be like this. ...I am traumatized. Everytime I play pocket kings, I feel nervous!
pocket 10s is my favorite hand of all time. i don't know what it is about that hand, but i hit a set 90% of the time i have 10s. its just a crazy anomaly about poker that happens to me. thanks for the videos!
I would say their number one mindset flaw is wanting to see the flop, thinking they can outplay each other postflop with 46s, when the SPR is 2. But you know, they have a lot of mindset flaws. We're kind of spoiled for choice here. There could be the fact that they respond to a 3-bet the same whether it comes from 22-year old Euro Thanos hoodie sunglasses dude or Asian 98-year old prop player. Or how they raise exactly JJ and AK to a massive size out of confusion. Or even worse, how they SHOW when they do it. Or how they flat for half their stack. Bankroll mindset is atrocious, yes. Then you have the gambler's fallacy. The sunk costs fallacy. Blaming the dealer. Putting a guy on a specific hand (sorry Doyle.) Lest I seem too condescending, I used to be that dude who would get brutalized for $600 at a tough table, staying at it way too long "to get unstuck" and then the next session when I was at a soft, fishy table, win $100 and stop after two hours to "book the win" so that during the time between the end of that session and the beginning of the next one, I could feel like a winner. So I would play longer the worse the table was! I had a chip on my should like James Bond : "Look in my eyes! I can beat this man!" I didn't like the idea of avoiding tough regs out of cowardice. I would stay at the table to prove I could beat them. But I couldn't! Now I like cowardice. And I'm getting PAID.
If you get it in with a 70% equity preflop, just be happy, you played it well, thats all you can do. Like it says in the video, i will just be thinking, nice i made an overall winning play, this play made me money in the long run, even if i lose. Still i get nervous in these all-in situations, but that is probably just because im relatively new to Poker still.
I just did the $50 thing. At this stage in life $50 is a ton to me. However I will never play for more than 1/10th of my bank roll. I started down this path because playing Zenga type “non gambling” “free” games lead to me becoming suspicious of their fairness as it seemed that you start off strong then mysteriously crazy outcomes like multiple straight flushes by opponents beat you down trying to make you psychologically disposed to buying chips. I suspected that $50 would last for a long time if I was disciplined and played $1.50 buy in MAX Now I am fascinated by GTO and ICM math. While I doubt I can ever become a soul reader like Doyle Brunson or Negranu I can do basic Calculus so sure GTO will be understandable. So I just bought some of your books and a few others. Not expecting to ever get rich (I would probably play Baccarat if so) but I have a ton of free time due to health issues and poker is something I can learn to pass the time.plus I love to read.
It sort of does matter. Yesterday I got my whole stack allin with KDKC on 334 flop with 2 clubs, no clue opp called with Q9 C after having called my 3 bet pre flop OOP. River club, of course. Later (on my 3rd and last buyin) I got the dream setup in my favour. Holding 88 on a board of T828T I got allin v two opps, each holding a T. I tripled up, but not for nearly as much as I would have if I had won the earlier 3 buyin pot. (for those wondering... my 2nd buyin was AA v TT allin pf, river T, but for just 1 buyin each, so still would have made a difference, and of course I would have had an even bigger stack had I won that 80/20.)
I really enjoy your videos. I have never thought about equity (consciously anyway). I'm a good player who love's making great plays at people even though it doesn't always work out. I'm still afraid of cash games and only play online mtt's because of a disability. I know the 2/4 system and use it but now with everyone playing poker I see how important every math situation is so much of the game. Thank you for your video's and reminding me of my missing parts of the game. KEEP THEM REMINDERS COMING!
If you believe in +EV and play accordingly, then never play above your Bankroll, poker becomes much more relaxing and enjoyable. The "bad beats" become much more palatable.
I have trouble with this in "remembering" all the data and math. Two books I have that I read and reread - Jonathan's "Excelling at No Limit Holden and Texas Holdem Odds and Probabilities by Matthew Hilger - which I like because it has many charts and data on all kinds of odds with starting hands, drawing hands, etc.
Excelling at NLH! I forgot about that book! It is definitely in my top 10 poker books! Very well done on that book Johnathan! (Very good read) I'm going to read some of that later, it is on my shelf.
I think you are making way more out of this than you should. I think it is nothing more than on the last card, seeing you getting beat by 1 of 3 cards, and consequently, "rivered." It's the poker version of hitting a buzzer beater, walk off home run, or a Hail Mary touchdown pass. I'm letting you know what I think, per your instructions.
Good video. I must say though that in my area it’s just good poker etiquette to tell someone good luck on an all-in. Doesn’t really reflect how the feel about the game
@@PokerCoaching first of all I’ve really been enjoying your videos since I found them earlier so thanks for that. I am by no means a pro but I do play frequently in my area and I was really just remarking that here it’s something that is said out of courtesy more than anything. I actually say it to the all-in if they are running against me as well. Lol
It never bothers me in cash games but it still hurts when its in a tournament. I think I need to go over my push/fold strategy because people are calling super-wide lately. Its totally the opposite of how games were going just 6 months ago, where people were calling too tight. Arggghhh! Bring back my fold equity! :)
Great video! I try to follow this regiment but when you've been playing a MTT for 6 hours and get KK vs. A9s and lose and get the lovely min cash, it HURTS
Good video...I am exclusively a low to medium limit hold'em player and all of this is magnified in a low to medium stakes limit game. That's why those games are my personal ATM. I may get sucked out on by a lot of calling stations a few times every session but in the long run, I trust the math. I see horrible play at these games: no consideration for position, no respect for raises from late position players, no range of starting hands, etc. I see people call $8.00 with a marginal hand just to win a $10 or even $8.00 pot! But the offense I find most egregious of all is people who buy in for 20 big blinds or less. They handicap themselves before they even start playing. I started noticing that once I started buying in for a minimum of 50 big blinds, I started winning more consistently.
This is obviously correct technically, but one thing I think you are not getting because you're a pro, is that even decent players who do "get it" mostly don't play anywhere near enough to think about long term equity. So even if I'm playing for an amount of money that doesn't really matter to me (which is all I ever would play for) and know that any individual board runout is arbitrary and my AKs is barely favored vs TT, I play rarely and get (a little) worked up about the hands. And that emotion is the only reason to play at all if you're not grinding it out for profit, which I certainly don't have the time or inclination to do.
Hey Jonathan, Really great videos, many thanks for that! I think it would be really great if you could make two changes to the recording background. i. if it could be of a darker colour it would be easier to see you. ii. If it would be a plain background without a lot of objects, it will again increase the clarity. Your videos are great and I appreciate you very much. Ill post this comment on some of your more recent videos also just in case you miss this one.
It is good advice and I try to follow it and have gotten much better, but it is really hard at times. I had a stretch where I lost 12 of 13 times over 5 sessions, including all 6 all-ins, where in every case it was after the flop and I had 92% equity (4 outs) or better including THREE 99.5% equity situations (e.g. a double gapper, runner, runner inside straight where A2 caught running 3, 4 on an A59 rainbow board vs. my AA set when trying to make a move on my lead bet into him thinking I didn't have even one A, nevertheless two, even though I was the pre-flop raiser in early position). After that last one, I had to take a couple weeks off before getting back at it.
It's crazy. Even though I'm just playing fake money on PokerStars VR (which people play way looser, obviously, because it's just pretend), the higher stakes I'm starting to actually do decent at from watching your videos. I don't think I'm suddenly an expert or anything, but applying and absorbing this knowledge has been making me think about my position, value, ratios and stuff and I'm starting to surprise myself with my overall successes. Thanks for all the videos!
Alot of poker players take shots at bigger games most of the time it's Teddy KGB eating cookies as you leave the big game broke ...what happens when taking a shot goes well in a much bigger game ? Is it better to go back to the lower stakes with a much bigger roll or keep playing in the bigger game until ..
You can make money at a casino, but nobody has ever done it by being compulsive. You can have a really stellar experience at the casino, bu you need to be real smart when doing so. No gambler has made any money at a casino. The first thing you need to learn when trying to make it as a poker player is that this is a sport, it is not gambling, not if you want to do it successfully at least.
They were thinking in terms of equity. You had 95.45% to win until the last card. This wasn't about bankroll this was about psychology. They were empathizing with the river "bad beat" and not the $60 because everyone has been there.
Thank you. I needed to hear some of the "who cares" when it comes to variance of poker. Got in my own head a little too much after the last session. It's not the money, bankroll is fine. I just needed some of that piece about separating emotion and logic. Appreciate all of your work, and I enjoy following you on Instagram.
It was a bad beat because the guy got a 2-outer on the river...preflop it’s nearly a coin flip, sure, but before the river comes you are a massive favourite. When someone hits runner-runner to win a hand, it’s always gonna sting, simply because the odds are so low. At least for me, my level of annoyance is proportionate to the odds I’m facing. I don’t care who you are, when you lose to someone with a 1% chance of beating you, you’re gonna get annoyed.
I enjoyed or better i enjoy this video. I see your work, massive productivity and drive. You bring value daily, give us opportunity to ask questions and learn for free. On top of that a money back guarantee and added value on purchase. Game winning slam dunk and one in my terminology. Ofc i signed up for max value. Thank you. Ps. Love seeing the boys. You are amusing enough in my mind. That why vlogs from your trips are for. I listenen to you casino commentary you were on fire, teaching joking enjoying yourself... a treat to see. I dont need twitch nonsense,bells and whistles. And ty for your time and attention.
I get what you are saying preflop but when the ace rolls off by the turn the villian has less than 10% equity, so ya I can easily see how people thought it was a bad beat, dude had two cards in the entire deck.
There are hands one could go all in with and there are hands are one could call all in with. Not so many people understand that the quanity of the first ones is significantly higher than the second. Please, explain how to stop paying attention to the idiots who win buy luck playing really badly but somehow they are certain they play right. I honestly can't control my feelings towards such people, I know it is bad for the game and affects the play but there is simply nothing I can do about it. Rage is a hormonal thigh and it's difficult to control just by a mindset. People who call all in with a gut shot and catch their card on the river are sure they made a right call when they obviously have 8% chance to win after the turn, or worse - who need two cards to complete their straight, or 3 over cards on the flop and they still catch their set. I'm sure you have more examples of that. I know old guys who play for decades, they are as calm as a toad in the sun. I don't know how many decades it will take for me to learn to be indiffirenet to the idiots at the table.
when i played live i would always only bring one buy in trying to run it up and leave when i got to 2.5 times my buy in.. that was my plan. inevitably i would get a bad beat and lose my stack flopped flush against two pair where two pair turned into boat on river. aces cracked etc.. bad beats happen and they happen a lot. so goes the game. one thing i know for sure. whether i get beat or not.. i can get people to call me with the worst hand. that actually happens a lot. sure they beat me at inopportune times it happens. another part of this is you play too many hands since i have been taking advice and subscribing to coaching sites because i was driving myself mad trying to figure game out, which btw, is the hardest thing i have ever done and i have done a lot of things. i find my mindset changing on all sorts of matters. if you say you know all of this and are still losing. i put it to you that maybe you are not as good as you think you are. i know i used to place in tournaments 50 percent of the time. we always made a deal even when i thought i was better than the others at the table. then i moved to a different area and only place in 2 tournaments out of about 50 i played. what a blow to my ego i was questioning everything at that point. figured out i was horrible bought more books got a subscription to pokercoaching.com i play .05/.10 nl now and dont play live. i know i need more hands and more practice and let the concepts im learning sink in. i know i need help to get good at this game and getting that help from someone i think is a great player definitely better than me to go to the next level and beyond. i thank you Mr. Little and all your work you do to help the unlearned learn this great game
by this same "feeling that they would say approaches logic" if you rivered an ace (after no pair before river) they'd be consoling the other guy for having lost in such an "ugly, heartbreaking" fashion.
this also proves that VERY many people playing 1-2 or 1-3 and certainly 2-5 can't at ALL afford these stakes, which i say all the time to those who think otherwise. no small part of live NL cash games cannot afford these games.
generally these games will have no small amount of people talk about which seat is "lucky" that day/few days or dealer is, or which dealer always "screws" them, they'll lament having folded that garbage hand that boated recently (and probably likely play similar in the future), if a person is winning over a very small sample they'll be worried (actually worried) that they'll lose to that person if they play him etc. lots of other "logics" going on with these guys.
This is why we should NOT be using the Stars Cash Out feature. I'm trying not to as I'm giving up equity simply to avoid tilting a bit, which I should work on.
Of course the equities change after the flop, but if all the money is in, it means nothing. No matter what the flop is, all five cards are coming. What order they come in doesn't matter.
So for the bankroll if you make let’s say a 100$ a week what casinos can you find for 20$ cash games? Or like is acceptable to do 200$ buy in once every couple months?
I'm under the impression that small stakes games in the Los Angeles area are unbeatable because the rake is to high. Bad players go broke faster than good players but everyone goes broke eventually. In Sklansky's limit book David said a good player would probably beat the game for 1 big bet an hour. So with the L.A. rake you would have to play an 8-16 just to break even. I'm not sure how you would calculate it in no-limit but my guess is that a 1-2 game is to small. My guess is that the blinds would have to be 5-10 or more likely 10-20 to cover the rake.
I’ve played at the commerce, Hollywood park casino and the bike. I can tell you that the 5-5 games are pretty beatable. I think HPC has a 1-3 game if i recall correctly, you should be able to beat these games at around 8-10 bb per hour
Thanks for video! Question to you and everyone here: I play on PokerStars, cash games. They have the "cash-out" option when it's an all-in situation. Honestly I never click it because my logic is that, if I'm ahead, it denies me of winning the entire pot. And if I'm behind, i lose out when i do suck out and win. What is your opinion on this "cash-out", Jonathan? and also to anyone else reading this that wants to weigh in.
Nice video. I'm kind of proud of myself cuz I thought about it myself xd. Thanks for your content, Jonathan! Where can we see how you play poker? Any live videos?:)
