“It’s about time we get accustomed,” he says, “to the fact that fairness in poker is a relative concept. You might play well and lose and you might play badly and win. In conditions of such relative fairness, it’s hard to remain fair-minded in regard to your skill. Deep down, we’re all results-oriented because winning is cool and losing sucks.”

He tells students:

“Only hard work lets you keep up with modern tendencies and keep pace with the dynamic development of poker. Eighteen to 24 months ago, you were beating the field and now you’re grinding with zero EV or slightly -EV. You think you’re still good at the game, only you’re just a little unlucky, but actually those who you were beating a year ago have long surpassed you and labeled you as a weak reg.”

Dmitry uses a highly professional attitude:

“By coaching others, you coach yourself. If the coach starts the training with a question, “So, what are we gonna do today?” kick him down some stairs. Or, if you don’t like kicking a respectable person’s ass, ask for a 30% to 40% discount off the training price.”

Preferring grinding with little variance on medium poker sites, this summer Mozgolom26 managed to win the $320 Saturday Super Knockout ($24,000) and the Full Tilt Sunday Major ($32,000), and this past weekend, he earned $30,000 in the Bigger $109.

Especially for PocketFives readers, our 2CardsCollege coach has prepared an analysis of some hands that took place in the tournament. As you may have noticed, Mozgolom26 has a ready tongue, so the analysis bears additional interest.

***

Below are three hands from the Bigger $109 where I placed 2nd. They all took place in the stage of the Sunday major tournament when you made the money a long ago but you still have a lot of work making it to the final table.

We’ll talk about how to avoid losing all the chips in numerous situations, increasing your stack, and getting to the longed-for final table.

https://www.weaktight.com/h/565466c3d390436e2f8b4796

We’ve got Q9s in one of the stealing positions, everyone folds to us, and we, of course, make an open raise. An unknown player in the SB (19/13 @ 42 hands) calls and the BB folds. At a rough estimate, I would define his range as some broadway hands, middle Ax hands, some pocket pairs, and a minimum of hands slow-played pre-flop.

The flop of K-J-5 rainbow on the whole is a good match to the above mentioned range, but we have enough fold equity plus some equity of the hand (backdoor + gutshot). That’s why I consider a continuation bet to be a good move here.

The villain calls, which makes his range tend to the broadway hands very likely. The turn is an Ace, a perfect card to continue our pressure. Our opponent can’t have strong Ax hands from his pre-flop action and most of the middle and weak Ax hands would have folded to the c-bet. Therefore, the opponent’s range on this turn looks like 25% of nuts hands and 75% of middle-weak hands like second or third pair with a gutshot.

I agree that the fold equity of the turn bet is not really high since our opponent wasn’t born yesterday and he understands that we would double-barrel most of our bluffs. But, we’re calculating this combination one step further and it’s not necessarily the case that our opponent is capable of doing the same.

The river is a blank. Let’s revise our conclusions:

● Given such runout, we have enough combos to value bet three streets.
● Our opponent can’t have big Ax hands, while middle and weak Ax hands would have folded to the c-bet.
● Our opponent might have a lot of middle-weak hands (KQ, K10, QJ, J10) that he called two streets with, but it would be very hard for him to stand the third barrel with them.
● We’re holding the Queen that reduces the number of straights in his hand.

If our calculations are right, the river push has high fold equity, so we go all-in and see what happens next.

The small blind hesitated a while and folded, shipping the chips in our direction. It means that either our calculations were right indeed or the villain needs a prescription for a pair of testicles.

P.S.: To increase the opponent’s morals, don’t forget to press the “Show cards” button after a hand like this (*trollface*).

https://www.weaktight.com/h/565466f4d390435b068b46ee

We’ve got the best hand possible in No Limit Holdem — a good start. We have two options after a raise from the early-middle position, a call or a 3-bet. I’d prefer to 3-bet without position. The villain calls.

The flop is “too good to be true” for us. If I hadn’t been holding the Ace of diamonds, I’d make a c-bet, but having a nuts backdoor significantly reduces the number of strong draws in the opponent’s hand, so I’ll say check mostly relying on the unsupported aggression from the opponent.

We face a one-third pot bet and we call it. The turn is a third diamond. Given that the Ace and the Jack of diamonds are already in the hand, the perspective of the flush is not a phase, though this card could slow down the opponent in case he has something like top pair. Check-check.

The river is a blank. We check again, standing pat and representing a completed hand of medium strength. The opponent bets lame, 15% of the pot.

That’s the moment we should ask ourselves, “Could he be playing like that with the flush?” The answer is “No, he couldn’t.” And why is that? Because:

● Every flush he could have is not the nuts. Thus, the opponent would surely choose to protect it by betting the turn against my possible Ace of diamonds.
● Having the flush (almost the nuts here), he is likely to make a value bet of more than one-sixth of the pot.

His bet looks more like a top pair or a doper with which the opponent wants to make a marginal value bet.

So, it turns out that we definitely have a check-push value with our top set. We go all-in and the opponent scratches his head and calls with a set of sixes.

Thanks to the Ace of diamonds, we managed to make the right decision in this hand and gain maximum value.

https://www.weaktight.com/h/56546729d39043882b8b47ce

The opponent (18/15/7 @ 96 hands) opens in the middle position. We’re the SB having a beautiful hand with great post-flop potential. We don’t want to inflate the pot with it or face a 4-bet push; that’s why calling is the best option. And we won’t mind at all if the BB decides to join us.

The flop, let’s put it straight, is not bad for us. I’d guess someone in my place would check-raise this hand in an attempt to avoid unpleasant runouts (a Queen, a Jack, or a diamond). But it’s crucial that we examine this hand from the “range vs. range” point of view. On a flop like this, our opponent’s range would have much more equity than ours, so our check-raise:

● would be a face up nuts hand
● would seriously weaken our check-call range

So, I would always call with our 1.5 nuts, thus protecting our check-call range.

If the opponent holds something really big here (a set, a doper, or a flush draw), and if we lose the hand or fail to gain maximum value due to bad runouts, this is “c’est la vie”, so to say, because our main goal is to get the maximum number of barrels from his bluff part of the range into our capped range.

In this hand, the runouts were extremely fair and we made the same check-call on the turn. On the river, the opponent bet one-third of the pot (how about a push?!), we scared him with an all-in, and we took the pot.

The opponent could possibly be bluffing and he could possibly be making a marginal value bet, but it doesn’t matter at all. The only thing that matters is that due to the rightly chosen strategy we made him invest his chips in all three streets.

***

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