How To Improve At Poker RIGHT NOW 

Here's the video I mentioned today in which I break down some math and game theory: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-XlN2I4wLQ-w.html

12:24 " i dont want this to be a 30 min video" ends up being 29:25 long mission accomplished

Wow I already won 6 tournaments since this video you really weren’t joking when you said “RIGHT NOW” Thanks Doug!

I'm 61 and your videos make my head explode. That being said if someone wants to play in today's era then this is the kind of disciplined study it takes. Looking back at some of the books I use to read it almost sounds like they were written for the purpose of selling books more than giving anything more than the most basic advice. Some of the old school approach sounds today almost like superstition and folklore. I'm curious when the concept of ranges took hold . Certainly the internet era and it's associated tech aspect along with the poker boom in general has caused a complete rethinking of this crazy game we play.

I miss online poker so goddamn much. Feel bad for anyone getting into it now because 10+ years ago it used to be a f'ing goldmine. Sundays have never been the same lol

Doug, I don't know if you know this; but this is, hands down, the best strat vid you've kindly posted free to air. You manage to illustrate some very complex theoretical ideas that, if studied properly, will have massive long term benefits for us part-timers. Respect.

A fellow poker player recently referred me to your videos to help me improve my game. I'm super appreciative and have a long way to go to improve, but I hold my own and do ok most often in small stakes games. However, I'm working on strategy and nowhere near where I want to be. One thing to keep in mind (and maybe I'm delusional) but 50 is the new 30. I'm the 51-year-old "old lady" who might be at your table and I'm studying. I don't get offended about age, I actually feel fine about it, but just know that one day you'll all get to 50 (if you're lucky) and when you do you'll wonder how the time went so fast. LOL! This is written in good humor, but as the perceived "old lady" at the table (who doesn't feel old), and most often the ONLY lady at the table, some of the guys who are sure they know what I'm doing and how I'm playing don't have a clue (some I'm sure do). I'm not that good yet but just watch out, this old lady might learn to stack you more frequently than you expect!

I'm still learning hand rankings

Can't wait to use this new knowledge about balancing your bluff/ give up range on the turn in the next Hot 2,20. Thx Doug.

Doug I appreciate all that you do for the poker world. I love the game more than most and i'm trying to finally improve after years of just being entertained im working hard for an upswing. You are an amazing teacher and approach things in a very comprehensible way. Poker keeps going deep and deeper and now i feel like ( after i watch this a few more times ) i will finally be able to study or understand the study to improve my play in spots. So glad you laid that out so clearly, i'm a hands on learner, and its like we are speaking 1 v 1 in these videos. thanks

Thank you for providing this video for free. Some of this knowledge could cost you thousands at the tables to gain the same information. Polk really likes to help. Great guy!

Doug, despite the fact that this is a very blatant ad for your training site, this is a really great video. You provide some really fantastic poker theory content here free of charge. But, here's the irony, it will get players to sign up for Upswing, including (probably) me! Well done, papi!

Since tuning watching your vids I’ve won 1 tourney (60 Entrants), cashed in 3 of my last 5 and made it to the final table 4 of my last 5 tourneys. #LifeChanging!!! #NLHisthewayoflife

I’m definitely dumbed down! Gotta luv spreadsheets, but I am new to poker and have no idea what you are talking about most of this video. I’m not gonna play irl until I understand this stuff. I will come back to you when I know more of the basics. You talk so fast I’m gonna drink a lot of coffee when I watch u again 😵‍💫

thanks doug, im a confident poker player, but I find your small bits of help invaluable , and notice the difference in my win/ lose ratio almost instantly... I want to be able to afford to do some work against some world class players one day, hopefully by that time, you might be playing more.

Learning to adjust and alter my playstyle and ranges during play in tons of online MTT freerolls when I was 18 y.o. was huge for me (as well as watching tons of poker during the 00s poker boom). Recently began playing online again and I've increased my initial $50 bankroll by about 1100% in 3 weeks. Had some coolers this weekend and lost about 10% of my total, so I'm taking a break this week (deleting the pokerstars app from my computer so Im not even tempted) to study and hopefully come back again in a week or maybe two refreshed. Sucks but I have to remember that this weekend's loss isn't the end of the world and I'm still up significantly from where I was a week ago. I have a private (remote) $20 game with some friends tonight though where I can play more relaxed, which will be nice. Sometimes you just gotta step away and take a look at what you can be doing better. I thoroughly enjoy and appreciate your content, Doug

This old video is a golden nugget in a sea of coaching chaos that's going on today. Saved for later review and study. @DoughPolk the poker community owes you a lot

that's actually quite brilliant Doug, regarding watching unedited hands over the course of time. Then analyse the "why"

Man I’ve got a lot to learn.... didn’t fully get the Equilab calculation part but you did open a new world to me. Thank you!

thx doug, love the video, especially the part where you give an example, which make it way more concrete, cause i always don't get it when people are only talking strategically without example, so this video helps a lot, btw, just got back into the poker , so don't really get the solver software part, hope you can make a similar video about solver with examples, thx

I like that he is standing up and not sit down, dont know why

I don't think NL holdem will ever be solved in the way a more mathematical game like limit can be solved. The right move at any time will be so strongly dependent on your opponent that there will always be a balance between GTO and Exploitive play depending on what players you are playing. Against really good players GTO dominates and against not so good players exploitative play dominates, but even then if you know you are up against a player that is better than you there are things you can do to limit their skill edge. However the fact remains as long as there is a skill disparity between two players even if only minimally there will be a means by which one player can be exploited over another.

Think a solver-ish update of this would be super awesome and much appreciated ;-)! Congrats for taking down the challenge!

"Back in my day ... you kids ..." 😂 Revisiting so many of these DKP/Upswing vids is gold.

Just an incredible video. I can't find anything else to describe it. I was looking for the step-up in my mindset to move from a totally recreational poker player to one who has the will to improve. I didn't know what to do, where to look for a guide into really "how to study to improve your game" kinda thing, and this video did the job incredibly well. I will watch this video couple more times just to understand it better and then start doing the job myself. Thanks Doug!

I like your videos where your breaking it down without any sugar coating. Good job. With that said, most people watching this play in limits where people are massively unbalanced, and getting really good at exploiting them is the fastest way to make money - however the problem is if they don't move towards this study, they will get spanked everytime they try and move up. I guess there's a reason you made a good amount playing ..... maybe you know what your talking about hmmmmm

Most of the stuff i learned in poker i learned in the pass few months i knew nothing about the concept of 3 bet pot size bet , bluffing with suited connectors in late position

Thank so much. I'm literally a few days into playing and this couldn't have come at a better time. I hope to get to thank you in person (preferably at a poker table) but I appreciate your insight and reiterating what you have to do to get good!!

Huge value here for aspiring poker players. Thanks as always for sharing, Doug!

hey doug good video, take it easy on us dummies who watch your videos and have a difficult time shifting their thinking towards thinking about poker correctly instead of thinking in terms of always and never. cheers.

Hey Doug, Good to be back. I took a long break from online cash games to evaluate... I returned recently, having made some huge adjustments and have found success, at least in the short term. When i am not at the table, I am watching The Big Game. It is one of the best teaching tools for me, because I get to study some of the very best players on the planet. Thanks for all of your hard work, teaching us all to be better poker players.

My Polker game is improving. thanks

Thanks doug polk i think my biggest leaks are figuring out betting ranges on turn & riv with my nutted hands to extract max val I'm still playing with that scared of getting rivered mentality

damn ryan fee. I remember his 6-max guide from way back. Pretty much changed my life.

Awesome video as usual, not even mad that it's helping the people who play against me, it was too well made

The ONLY way to watch a Douggy vid is on an iPad where you can tap 10 seconds forward at a time - this guy LOVES to hear himself talk 😂😂😂

oh my god dude stop helping the plebs D: Im joking bro, I am one of the plebs

Great video Doug! I've got a question: in the example that starts at 12:08 why do you choose to raise exactly 10 combinations for value? Where does that number come from? Can it be a different number? Would appreciate the answer either from you or the community. Thanks.

Amazing video, the only issue is that it might get the button clickers to actually start thinking before they perform an action.

Thanks Doug - this is great info! I've been sharing your knowledge to my crew over the last six months and I've noticed their play quality has increased a lot. I'm joining upswing soon!

Doug is the man. Definitely using the Lab to get better.

Hi Doug. So which one of your offererd Courses is the best to learn basic game theory/content from the start and helps you to develop a deep understanding of the game of poker(not specific for a special variant) which then you can apply to any form of poker and opponent?

great video. is there a good beginner resource for creating ranges? was hard to understand fully in the vid.could you then use poker tracker to see if your raising folding too much in spots?

Video presents a lot of valuable information. However, I don’t think it emphasizes enough playing style or patterns of your opponent/opponents. To me that is very important information that influences what you do and how you play.

Nice Message with the questions! Same with life: The quality of the questions you ask yourself determines the quality of life

Hi Doug, thx for the great vid, I pretty much took it appart xD but i get stuck when trying to understand why you would need a ratio of 2:1 for shoving the pot size bet (at arround 16:36). if i had to give an answer i'd say that the ratio was 1:1 since i have to win every second bet in order to make up for the lost one. where is my error? thanks in advance and keep the good stuff comming it's much appreciated ;)

So I am fairly new to your RU-vid channel. Not only do I enjoy your in-depth analysis, logic, and strategy, your comedy is hilarious! Many times I’ve had to pause the broadcast to wipe the tears from my eyes! Just this morning my wife asked me “what the hell are you laughing at?” Thank you putting these out there! You’ve gained a new fan!

good vid doug. you giant gay hamburger

Very interesting. I understand why he bets the pot on the river with a bluff 1 time out of 3, but I'm left wondering how he knows that he should bluff checkraise the turn with slightly more combos than than his value checkraises. Is that always the case for turn bluffs? What's the theory that leads to this particular bluff frequency on the turn? Hmmm...

So here is an honest question! And I'm just trying to get relevant insight is all...if I watch highstakes 2+2 forum hand break downs, and I play 1-2 no limit holdem in my local casino. Are the tips and strategies relevant against recreational players when I feel a lot of the times the lines the high stakes players are just that, lines you would take against more intelligent players. Lets be honest your average 1-2 rec player isn't going to have the same thought process as the highstakes players, not even close.

Hey Doug, firstly i'd like to say that i love your videos. I'd like to as ask, though, in relation to this video; you frequently mention having ranges and having different things you'd do in the same spots to prevent your opponents beating you too easily. However, is this still as relevant for people playing in, say, MTT's with thousands of different players that you might never see again? I apolagise if im misunderstanding you completely, but is this top level stuff really only important if im frequently playing with the same players? Thanks!

take this all with a grain of salt if you're a live player. Doug has admitted he was never profitable in full ring games. At a full table with 9 players, where 35% of the deck is in player's hands, ranges are just much stronger. I think Doug developed his system for HU play, where ranges will naturally be much weaker, players will adjust to YOU much more since you're the only one they're playing, and so you had to have much more bluffs/balance. Unless you play with different player pools constantly in live games, just play with the same bunch of people, figure out their tendencies, and exploit the s--- out of them.

I have a range question, how does 9,8 offsuit do against Matt Berkey’s Ace King offsuit when I’m bluffing but somehow magically get there? 😀

If Q3s and K9o are in your turn check/raise range doesnt that mean youre opening or calling preflop over 50% of your hands?

You and me Doug. Heads up. Let me know where and I’ll be there. 🤘💥

Great job bro! You are by far the best thing in poker right now. Thanks for staying true to your values and not selling out:) R.I.P Dnegs....

An eye-opener. Poker is tough man. Great video Doug, thanks for the tips!

Doug, we need to talk. You can't be putting this sort of thing online as it is considered legitimate information. RU-vid is about entertainment, not FACTS. Delete this.

Hey Doug Polk Poker this video really motivated me to figuring out what the pros are doing. But wich pro's strategy for full ring NL should I study.

Dougie, you are true master. If you do decide to coach again you know where to find me. Thank You for all the value you bring to poker community!

You should probably call this polker hands

hitting upswing tommorow. I appreciate you pops. =)

Hey Doug I've been watching your vids for a while and was wondering if you could make a video about bluffing, and in what spots should a player generally bluff in in order to be at least 51% of the time be profitable with it in the long run?

Hi @Doug Polk Poker I have watched many of your videos. This is by length the best i have seen so far. Thank your for actually a very good strategy, and to inform how to build up a range, peace by peace. Can you point out for me why we need double value bets combinations on river compared to bluff? 1/2 = 50% What does this number tell me? regards rekib

Thanks Doug. I'm a microstakes player that can't afford upswing. I will work hard and won't stop until I conquer 1c/2c!!!!

Great video. Nice to see you back on the poker content.

Thanks a lot for this awesome video!!! I Have one question still, lets say the last hand: we call a 3bet but this time flop comes AK2 rainbow instead massive range advantage for the preflop raiser , now how do we construct our calling range vs a pot size bet and how do we plan on calling down on later streets do we still need to call 50% of hands on the flop vs potsize bet? Thanks again for all the awesome strategy advice!!

Love the "high tech document" aka notepad from 1996

I understand that we want to make our opponent indifferent to calling on the river by balancing our bluff-to-value ratio according to the pot odds, but surely that doesn't apply to earlier streets. For example, I play mostly HUSNG’s and a commonly employed tactic is to c-bet very small in position on dry flops such as K72 rainbow. Here, it’s an automatic bet against most people with 100% of our range, yet there are very few strong value hands we can bet here and yet we’re giving villain a super good price. For example, say I bet 30 on that board into 80, giving villain 3.6 to 1 on a call. Well, there’s no way anyone here is going to have 3.6 value bets for every one bluff; maybe 4 bluffs for every value bet, actually. In the example in the video here, I understand that the check-rise turn range is balanced one to one, but it’s not possible to give villain that same ratio of pot odds. Say there’s $6 in the pot on the turn, he bets 2/3 so $4, and so the pot is $10. There’s no raise size to give him 1-to-1 on a call since he’s already put money in the pot. So on the flop and turn is it just important to always have a decently balanced 1-to-1’ish range despite the pot odds?

I know this is an old video so I might not get any replies. But I’m fairly new to poker. ive been watching some courses and I do understand the concept of dividing your range up post flop into betting, check calling, check raising, check folding (and the different bet sizes etc) in _theory_ what I don’t get is how that’s useful in practice. If I raise as the LJ and get called by the button and the flop comes Jh-6s-2s I can pull up my range and pick each combo and bucket them into made hands, high equity draws, low equity draws, marginal hands, and junk then figure out how to allocate my different possible actions against that range, but I don’t necessarily see how I can do that in game? Am I aiming to get to a point where I can look at a flop, know my approx range equity based off positions and pre-flop action, think of every distinct combo in my range separately, split my range into different buckets, come up with a balanced strategy for every combo in my range, and decide on bet sizing etc in 15 seconds? I could see that being something players at high stakes are capable of, I mean if people can play chess blindfolded I can totally imagine that being possible, but what am I supposed to be doing in the meantime? Building intuition through constant exposure?

By far the best video I have watched. Your content is unbelievable! Thanks!

One of the best videos you have made. Thanks Doug.

I hope the day will finally come when I understand this!

What was the name of the free program to figure out how many combos u can have with value/bluffs

Doug, here is a hand I'd like you to look at as I think it is a good one for learning from. I know what I did wrong...That was playing J7 suited...I know better than that HAHAHA. Anywhere, here goes: So...was this the right call? Blinds were 200/400 in a tournament Everyone folds to the guy on my right who has AK, he limps I have J7 suited (H) in the high jack position and I limp K(S)Q(C) off is on my left in the cut off position and he limps Pocket 10s(H)(D) is the button and he limps That flop comes out, and A(D)K(H) makes it 2600 I call (with about 10k behind after the $2600) Cutoff calls Button goes all in for 5600 BB folds AK snap calls I tank, but I noticed the cutoff guy already has the 5600 in his hand ready to throw it in Finally I decided to call... Was that the right call for me and why? FYI the turn was a jack, river was a blank and AK took it down

Enjoy your vacations Doug, i hope you'll be back with more infos like this one. Very instructive stuff.

What a great video! Thanks Doug! Enjoy the vaca

The man is so fresh. The swag is unreal!

On 12:44 did you mean check-raise the *flop*?

This is such good advice, thank you Doug. Imagine how good the 100+ hours of Upswing Lab content must be if this is the level of the free advice!

Hey just wondering something. Could an addiction to poker be considered a passion as well? Or am I confusing the two?

So ive been trying to find the right video to start to find out if i got what it takes to take poker a bit more seriously. Beats slots and i actually love all sorts of card games. Anyway so we get 3mins into your video and im thinking are these questions the ones i need answered or am i looking for the answer to something else im not getting. When i notice that ive been given the sign of all signs... What song is randomly busting out on my tv.... Kenny rogers "the gambler" of course.. Wtf, buzziest coincidence ive had in a while. So im a continue learning how to improve my play. Heres hoping u have the video with the answer to my burning question 😎

Want to buy 1 of your programs, what site do u recommend?

One of your best videos to date!

Can someone explain to me why he says "2 value hands for 1 bluff" at 16:36 ? If we're shoving for a pot-sized bet we only need a 1:1 value to bluff ratio to break even right?

this is more of a heads up strategy. We are not robots are we? selecting various ranges 1/3 of a time based on this or that is too random over time on full table. This may help be more selective but remember he's selling a program. He even admits the game can't be solved

Thank you for this Doug. You have rekindled my passion for Poker and I really appreciate you for that! I will be investing in the Upswing Lab in the near future. I feel that that is the next step I must take in order to take my game to the next level.

Hey guys, I generally understand the maths, however I'm not sure I understand why at 16:31-16:47 betting pot on the river means we should balance our value bets with bluffs in the ratio 2:1 (i.e. 2 value bets for every 1 bluff)?? Thank you for any help (you can like the comment to help more people see it and get an answer).

Can someone explain to me how he gets to folding 50% of your range when there is a potsize bet? (See last hand) why is it not more or less?

I play low stakes, recreationally. Does it help to be a thinking player at a table filled with non-thinking players? Besides playing abc poker and using the 3 P's (patience, position, pressure) is there much more you can do against players who will call any amount, on any street, from any position and will call/bet with any two cards?

i see doug got pissed more and more advancing into this video well i can tell you one thing people asking in forum ''what should i do with JJ here? '' , things like ''where are JJ in my range ? '' , they are not even on that level, this second question isn't into their mind, ever 21:18 was hilarious ''although i bet that he loses'' HAHAHAHHA

Have fun on vacation Doug! I really enjoyed this video. Thank you.

Great content mate. Giving back to the community and always willibg to be outspoken and challenge people

Dont mind me, I'm tryna get better on Red Dead Redemption 2 Online poker

Thx doug, big fan here, you're talking about what i'm fighting for everyday

I was about to go bed... But clocked the poker vid so had to watch! Great vid, appreciated! Going to construct some ranges in my dreams now! =P

I best everything tho,,,, but suppose I can learn a little bit from u. Thats why I downloaded this video before u come to your senses and take it down. Thanks for this, It really helped me to clarify my study process. When will Upswing accept TRON so I can join the empire?

Is it just me or do other get the ad with Daniel when watch Doug's vids

“Yo Doug I love you and your RU-vid vids! “ then value bets you

17:04 how the fuck do I even get to the point where I even know what you’re talking about?