Carpal \'Tunnel Post: reviewing HH videos - general advice

Soulman · #1 05-06-2007, 02:41 PM

For my Carpal \’Tunnel post, I'm not going to post some profound and revolutionary piece of theory. Although I've been fairly successful at MTTs and have a theoretically-inclined mind, I haven't spent nearly the time a lot of the other posters here have discussing and studying poker. Even so, this will probably be tl;dr for a lot, so consider yourselves warned [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img].

I talked about my poker background in my 1000th post (found here if you’re interested), so won’t bring that up again…to make a long story short, I’ve been on a hot streak since I made that post in November last year – from operating on a $7k roll, I’m up around $40k in various events, most of it after New Year’s. I’m very confident in my game with shortish (30 BBs or less) stacks, but like most tourney donks I’m not too good deep. With my current poker bankroll ($25k), I can and do play in events $100 and up (not much above $200 though, I’m a BR nit). Anyway, enough about that…

I've seen some posters in the
PXF directory thread and in other MTTc threads (like this one) ask what they should look for when reviewing a video. I think a lot of players don’t go about doing this in a serious way. I’d like to help with this in two ways:
a) giving general advice on how to review a video
b) Show a concrete example of a review I and registrar did of a 2nd place finish of mine in a $100 $50kg on FTP.

Since this will be fairly long to say the least, I’m going to split it up into two different threads. This will be the general advice thread, see here for the concrete example.

This is a long post, but I do think it is solid advice for getting a lot out of a video review (and by proxy, also useful for some areas of studying/thinking about poker in general). After all, you’re not studying because it’s super-super fun; you’re trying to get better, and study can be hard. Put effort into it, or don’t do it all. The advice is applicable both to watching other people’s videos and your own; where I say “you”, take it to mean Hero in the hand as appropriate.

Reviewing a HH video

View the entire video:
This may seem obvious, but I do think a lot of people only view the action hands. This basically makes the entire effort close to useless. You don’t pick up reads, you don’t notice table dynamics, you can’t identify missed opportunities etc. Do yourself a favor and watch the whole video, even if takes three times longer. Knowledge doesn’t come cheap.

Missed opportunities: 
Probably the most important element to notice when reviewing a video is to find opportunities where you should have been involved but weren't. These may not by themselves be your biggest mistakes in a tourney, but added together will often amount to a huge amount of missed +EV opportunities. Did you miss any steal opportunities? Resteals? Why didn’t you get involved in the pot early vs the giant calling station with T8s in position?

Hand ranges
Put villains in a hand on a range, both the ones you’re involved in and not. Did you take the correct action based on this range? Did you adjust the range based on villain’s later actions? If the hand gets to showdown, work your way backwards and see if your read was correct and/or reasonable. DON’T make the mistake of giving villain a range of hands based on how you would play it; a donkey might play completely different, as may an advanced player.

Keep an open mind
Don’t be so quick to judge your opponents (or the player whose video you’re watching). I’m very much guilty of this myself; if I see a minraise, it’s so easy to label the raiser a donkey. Likewise, if you see someone play a hand you’re not involved in very strangely, ask yourself if they did it for a reason. It might have been wrong to play the hand that way if you were the villain, but it’s possible the “Hero” adjusted correctly to villain’s thinking.

Do yourself a favor and don’t automatically label a play bad by your own criteria. Just because you wouldn’t raise 74s UTG, doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

Bet sizing
Did you size your bets correctly, based on the pot and stack sizes? Did you consider this at all, or did you bet a default 2/3 amount? If it’s NL, why didn’t you try to manipulate the pot size? Could you have had a different outcome if you had? See this thread by Bond18 for an example of how to manipulate the pot size.

Table dynamics: 
Pay attention to table dynamics. Did you adjust? Did you not notice the table was very tight on the bubble? Did a complete maniac come in and change the dynamics completely? Did you continue to try to steal with crap when every raise was reraised? This is so critical for a lot of play! The more I play, the more I hesitate to comment on a specific situation due to “not being in the moment”. There are the factors I mentioned above, as well as something intangible that’s hard to express in words. It’s certainly one of the bigger factors for missing opportunities when you’re not paying attention.

Identifying where your value will come from: 
This is one of Rizen’s strongest points I think, from watching his PXF videos. A lot of players blindly raise in the CO/button when folded to them, oblivious to table conditions. This will frequently be wrong.

An example: take a fairly common situation where your stack is around 13-15 BBs. Stealing from LP might very well not be the correct strategy here. If the players directly to your left are aggressive and prone to restealing, and themselves have stacks that are perfect for resteals, stealing from the button or CO will frequently lead to a push in your face, and you just lost 20% of your stack. When you’re in MP2 however, there’s a very tight big stack in the BB. His big stack will often protect you from reraises from the aggros to your left, and the fact that you’re raising from MP gives you more credit for a hand. This might be a better place for a steal than from the CO/button.

A concrete example: in one of Rizen's HHs on PXF, he identified the only player he could steal from as the weak-tight short stack directly to his right. Even if the table was 7-handed, this can be a risky strategy. However, the rest of the table was aggressive enough that he risked getting reraised a lot, which he couldn't really stand too much. In addition, raising UTG portrays a lot of strength, decreasing the chances of a resteal.

In short, try to identify how you can grow your stack, ignoring the obvious situations where you get KK vs another guy’s QQ. I think this is very key, and often overlooked by a lot of players. I know I’m guilty of this myself a lot when I multitable too much.

Reads: gaining and adjusting them
Humans love to categorize information. This makes the world an easier place to live in, and is a positive ability in general. As poker players, categorizing other players will often be beneficial as well. However, it’s also very easy to get trapped by this. This goes especially for good players, who will frequently change gears and play LAG at times, TAG at other times and so forth.

After getting reads on the players, try to take notice if you adjusted to these reads. I’m willing to bet that a lot of the time, you didn’t. There are tons of reasons for this (outside influences, boredom, multitabling etc), but identifying situations where you didn’t adjust for the player is a valuable lesson.

When reviewing a video, try to establish reads on the other players. At the same time, try to be extra aware of these reads, and adjust them if necessary. This will frequently be hard, especially since you can’t actually label players yourself on PXF, but is a very fruitful exercise.

A final comment: while the PXF video thread (found here) contains a lot of videos by some of the finest MTT minds 2+2 has to offer, viewing it without a chance for discussion isn’t nearly as useful. I urge anyone looking at these to look up the discussion threads started by Bond18 – a wonderful initiative. Although the OP of the video might not respond anymore, you’ll see a lot of useful discussion there.

That’s it for my general advice, hope you found it useful! [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

degeneratedonk · #2 06-29-2007, 12:16 PM

Just wanted to say thanks for this post.

coatsie · #3 06-29-2007, 12:26 PM

this is defo something i havnt thought about before but this is actually awsome. gg sir

raju · #4 06-29-2007, 03:27 PM

first class. Man, I`m glad i chose today to come back to MTT STRAT otherwise id have missed this

RonFezBuddy · #5 08-07-2007, 04:32 PM

Belated thanks for this. Was traveling for work when you posted but this is gold.

AC-Cobra · #6 08-07-2007, 04:54 PM

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Belated thanks for this. This is gold.

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