September 10, 2025 • 20 mins
Gain instant access to the new Lab 2.0 now.
Discover when playing tight is profitable and when it actually costs you money with elite coach Uri Peleg. You’ll gain practical strategies, mindset shifts, and real-world examples that will help you balance your ranges, stay unpredictable, and maximize long-term profits at the poker table.
00:00 Expected Value of Strong vs. Marginal Hands
03:42 Why Play Weaker Hands
05:56 Reasons Not to Play Like a Nit
06:53 Importance of Balance and Unpredictability
08:40 Lab 2.0 Overview
11:12 When to Tighten Up Strategically
13:21 Real-World Examples of Adjusting Ranges
16:13 Flexibility with Bet Sizing
19:16 Managing Stack-to-Pot Ratios
In this poker strategy podcast, Mike Brady teams up with elite coach Uri Peleg to answer a classic question: should you play like a nit preflop? While it may seem logical to stick to only the very best hands, the discussion reveals why doing so actually limits your profits. Uri explains that although hands like Aces, Kings, and Queens generate the majority of your expected value, marginal hands such as suited connectors and weaker .css-j9qmi7{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:row;-ms-flex-direction:row;flex-direction:row;font-weight:700;margin-bottom:1rem;margin-top:2.8rem;width:100%;-webkit-box-pack:start;-ms-flex-pack:start;-webkit-justify-content:start;justify-content:start;padding-left:5rem;}@media only screen and (max-width: 599px){.css-j9qmi7{padding-left:0;-webkit-box-pack:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;justify-content:center;}}.css-j9qmi7 svg{fill:#27292D;}.css-j9qmi7 .eagfbvw0{-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;color:#27292D;}Mark as PlayedTranscript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Mike (00:00):
Let's level up your poker knowledge by answering a key question.
Would you be better off playing likea super tight nit before the flop?
Uri Peleg has coached up some of theworld's best high stakes players on their
way to winning millions, and he'sjoining us today to answer this question.
Uri (00:16):
Hey Mike, what's up? Thanks for having me.
Mike:
Uri just released an absolutely incredibleproduct over on Upswing Poker called
Lab 2.0. This course allowsyou to follow a clear path,
improve consistently,and build real skills.
And the entire learning trackwas built by proven live cash,
online cash and tournament pros.
(00:37):
Uri was truly on a mission to put togetherthe best possible team of coaches.
He tapped into every corner of his networkto find guys who aren't just amazing
players but also effective teachers.
Today's episode is going to be a littlebit of a preview into what Lab 2.0 is
like while giving yousome nice value. So again,
the question we're answering today is,should you play like a nit preflop?
(00:57):
But let's back up. Why is this evena question? You might be wondering.
Let's look at an under the gun openingrange at a six-handed table and observe
the expected value of severalhands. So the top end hands,
we're going to look at their EV. We'retalking about Aces, Kings, Queen,
Ace King suited.
Pocket Aces by raising makes a littleover nine big blinds on average
(01:21):
every time you get to raise with it.
Pocket Kings makes a little over fivebig blinds every time you raise with it.
Pocket Queens makes a little over twobig blinds and Ace Kings suited makes one
point five three big blinds.
That's some really nice expectedvalue with each of these hands.
Now let's look at the other end ofthe spectrum and compare that to
bottom-of-range EVs. We're lookingat hands like Ace Three suited,
(01:45):
Ten Nine suited and Queen Jack offsuit.
Ace Three suited makes one fiftieth ofa big blind. That's zero point zero two
big blinds when you racewith it under the gun.
Ten Nine suited makes one one hundredthof a big blind, zero point zero one
every time you raise withit. Queen Jack offsuit,
it's actually a mixed frequency raiseand it on average makes zero big blinds
(02:07):
every time you raise with it.
Uri:
I guess one thing I would add is thatwe're talking about being a nit preflop,
but everything we'resaying kind of goes for.
You can think of this as postflopas well because after the flop,
if you would look at the EVs of your hand,
you would see that a tonof it is concentrated on when you make a set or when
you make two pair or whenyou have an overpair.
(02:29):
So the structure of poker is alwaysthe top hands capture the majority
of the value.
Mike (02:35):
And to get specific with that,
if you add up all the EVof these preflop hands,
Aces, Kings and Queens accounts forover seventy percent of your expected
value when you're raisingunder the gun. Add in Jacks,
Ace King and Ace Queen,
so now we're talking about the toproughly three to five percent of hands.
Those make ninety-threepercent of the money.
(02:56):
The rest is basically filler. When youlook at all those suited connectors,
low pocket pairs,
weaker offsuit hands like KingTen offsuit or King Jack offsuit,
the suited hands that just barely maketheir way into the range like Queen Nine
suited, King Eight, suited King Ninesuited... All of these hands make very,
very little money on average.
(03:18):
This is what begs thequestion posed in the title.
Should you even playthese marginal EV hands?
If you're watching the video,
they are the hands that are inthe blue box on your screen.
Now that you have the context forwhy we're even asking this question,
let's cut to one of Uri's videosstraight from Lab 2.0 which answers this
(03:39):
question in just twominutes. Listen closely.
Uri (03:42):
Okay, so I was asked the question,
if a few hands make the majorityof the money, why play the rest?
And very, very straightforwardanswer. First of all,
the rest of the hands do makemoney, so why not play them, right?
And poker is a game of small incrementaledges. You don't have to play them,
you can fold them in certain tableconditions. Don't get married to them.
(04:04):
If you really have to go to the bathroomand it's a live game, fold the hand,
right? Like recognize how importantor not important they are.
But second reason is that if youonly play the very best hands,
people in poker pay attentionto what you're doing,
whether it's online or in a live setting,
people are going torecognize you're in it.
(04:24):
Then your good hands aregoing to make less money.
So the reason that we play the rest ofthe hands isn't so that our good hands
can make money. The reason isbecause these hands make money.
We play them because they make money.
A side effect of playing them isyour range of hands becomes looser,
and so your strongest handsactually start making more money,
(04:48):
which means if I only ever play Aces,
I'm not going to getaction from anyone ever.
But if I start playing Aces andKings and Queens and Ace King,
I'm still not going to getaction from anyone ever.
But when you start widening this,
more and more people dostart giving you action.
And so your good hands start saywinning more than the blinds,
(05:08):
you're tougher to read. Not tomention it's more fun, it is more fun.
But I'm here to teachyou guys to make money,
not necessarily the focus on having fun,although winning money is fun. So yeah,
these hands are important to play.
It's just despite thesehands being correct to play,
they're the sort of handsthat you can mix around with,
(05:29):
don't feel like you have to play them.If you're tired, if you're tilted,
if you got a read from someone,
if it's the best player in theworld sitting to your left,
feel free to play much tighter thanthe game theory ranges and vice
versa, if all the people behind you areterrible and you have reads on them,
(05:50):
you can play looser.
These ranges are just a guidelineand it's fine to deviate from them.
Mike (05:56):
To recap, you should generally not play like a nit because,
number one, the weakerhands still do make money.
So we talked about that Ten Nine suitedthat makes one one hundredth of a big
blind on average when you raise it,
that's still money and some moneyis better than no money. Number two,
people will catch on andgive you less action.
(06:18):
Think about how you playagainst very tight players.
When you've identified that stereotypicalold man coffee at the table and they
decide to put in a re-raise overyour open, aren't you playing very,
very tight against that player?
You don't want to allow people who arepaying attention to do the same to you.
So that's why it's importantto mix in these hands.
(06:40):
And then number Three kind ofgoes along with number two,
playing a looser range helps yourstrong hands make more money.
Your range becomes tougher to read.
You might have Six Five suited or youmight have Aces and that makes you tougher
to play against.
Uri (06:53):
Let me add just a few simple ideas on top of that.
So when we say it's justseven percent of the money...
Imagine if I said the rakeit's just seven percent extra
in this game. Seven percent in pokeris a lot. And the way poker works is...
Beating the rake is tough. Beatingthe rake by five percent is amazing.
(07:15):
There's a ton of back and forth,
so you can't really be giving awayany edges in general as an approach.
And yeah,
this kind of testifies to somethingthat I think we talk about a lot
where if everyone was a GTO bot,
you could be a nit and everyone wouldstill play their GTO ranges and there are
(07:36):
a ton of nits. We want you guys...
Everything we talk about alwaysthink about it from both directions.
So you shouldn't play like a nit,
but also you should recognize what youwant to do if someone else does play like
a nit.
There's a live game I played in recentlywhere a guy who would never ever
bluff... I watched apodcast with Eli Elezra.
(07:59):
And then he sat down one day and hesaid, "I've been inspired by Eli Elezra".
And he made some crazy bluff and showedit down and I was suddenly, "shit,
I can't just auto-foldto this guy anymore".
And I paid off a stack and he had it.
Those kinds of things onall levels of the game.
You want to be the guy who'sunpredictable. And in order to do that,
(08:23):
you need to learn how to bluff, youneed to learn how to play loose,
you need to learn how tothree bet and how to four bet.
And one of the things in pokeris you always see showdowns,
but you never know how many people arejust making insane folds against you.
You're never going to know thatbecause they're not going to show you.
Mike (08:40):
In a moment I'm going to ask Uri when you actually should play like a nit,
because there are scenarios whereyou should tighten up considerably.
But first I want to talk about Uri'snew course that he's been working
incredibly hard on for thebetter part of the last year,
Lab 2.0. Lab 2.0 allowsyou to follow a clear path,
improve consistently,
(09:01):
and build real skills that youcan take to the poker table.
Most poker training sites dump you intoa sea of content and make you work to
get better. And frankly,
this was true for the first iterationof the lab for at least the last few
years. But Lab 2.0 is different.We were on a mission to fix that.
It's poker strategy made simple.
(09:21):
You follow a structured interactivepath that adapts to your skill level.
Learning happens through video lessons,quizzes, live interactive webinars,
study tools like charts and of courseour private community with coaches and
members. Lab 2.0 is available now.
Head over to upswingpoker.com and sign up.
It is going to be a fantasticdecision for your poker game.
Uri (09:44):
It's important to me to mention that Lab 2.0 is not only for beginners,
it's basically designed so that at anylevel you're at including a full-time
pro, we know how to moveyou forward. So it's a very,
very comprehensive program and what youguys saw on the screen is just the very
beginning of it. There is avery deep, very advanced theory,
(10:05):
but we also start from the basics.
So there is a complete structure A to Z.
I think that's somethingthat's important to me to add.
Mike (10:14):
Yeah, and the idea here is that no matter what skill level you are at,
that's where you start in Lab2.0. If you are a beginner,
you're going to take this personalityquiz at the beginning of the course,
you're going to be identifiedas a beginner and you're going to be dropped right
at the beginning of the path.
You might be identified moreas an intermediate player,
in which case you'll be droppeda few nodes down the path.
(10:35):
So you get to skip all that contentthat would just be refresher for you.
You get to save that time andthen if you are an advanced pro,
you're going to skip a lot of stuff andyou're going to get dropped right into
what we're calling the mastery path,
which is where you really start to addhigh level skills to your game that
can take an already goodwin rate and make it great.
Uri (10:56):
Yeah,
and I think one of the things thatdifferentiates this is that all of the
content for beginners was createdby extremely proficient players.
So we don't have low stakescoaches making low stakes content.
This is only the very bestcoaches making all the content.
Mike (11:12):
Alright, so back to our last question today, Uri,
can you speak to situations in which youactually would want to nit it up at the
poker table?
Uri (11:21):
Yeah,
I think these are actuallyquite common and one of the
real life examples that we had foryears playing in PokerStars is there was
a group of Spanishprofessionals who would...
they would three bet with something liketop twenty percent of hands when they
were in position to you. Sosay you opened under the gun,
(11:43):
they're on the cutoff they'd threebet you with twenty percent of hands.
And we tried to...
I think this was a good playby them against how people were playing back in the
day. These guys were doing very well,but we're playing in the pool with them.
We want to know how do we optimallyadjust. And when we try to figure it out,
the answer was, your Aces make more money.
(12:06):
But when you have Ace Threesuited that can't in any
way make money when you just get threebet a ton because there's no way around
it. And this is important,
if I raise Ace Three suited and you three bet and I call,
that's not a situation inwhich I'm making money.
That's the situation in which the secondyou three bet the money that my Ace
(12:28):
Three suited was supposed to be makingis gone. I can call or fold, it's close.
That's why those hands are indifferent.
And kind of what ended up happening
is that we'd want to be nits,
but you can't be a nit becauseeveryone knows you're a nit.
But if you're a nit inthe correct circumstances,
so I generally play a normal rangeand if there are nits at the table,
(12:52):
I'll play a wide range and thenif there's a crazy guy behind me,
I'll play a tight range. So over thecourse of a while of looking at me,
I don't look like a nit and this guywho's three betting me with a twenty
percent range is never going to knowI'm a nit when he's at the table.
There is no way for him to recognize that.
So this is just one example that bycherry-picking the spots to be a nit,
(13:18):
it's actually an extremelyeffective tool in your arsenal.
Mike (13:21):
To bring up an example that comes up in my poker playing career,
I try to play the World SeriesPoker main event every year.
And that tournament's very interestingbecause you run into a lot of weak
players, that's whatmakes it worth playing.
But the best players in theworld are also in there.
I'll find myself seated at table setupswhere I'll look to my left and the two
guys directly next to me havesomething like combined twenty-five
(13:44):
million dollars in liveearnings. Meanwhile,
I'm a player who essentially playsrecreational tournaments these days.
I'm a knowledgeable player, but I'mcertainly nowhere near their level.
I am going to immediately change howI'm approaching preflop when those
players are to my left.
All of those marginal opens areabsolutely being cut out of my range.
(14:07):
Now, on the other side of the coin,maybe day one of that same tournament,
there's a lot of weak players still inand oftentimes I'll find myself at a
table with eight players all of whomaren't particularly good at poker.
And then all of a sudden I find myselfplaying incredibly loose myself.
I'm raising hands like Ace Fiveoffsuit from early, middle position.
(14:28):
A hand that I wouldn't even raise fromthe cutoff if I had those two really
strong players to my left. So,the differences can be really,
really stark and it's always goingto depend on the exact setup and
the exact conditions.
We could probably make a forty-five-minutepodcast talking about all the
different possible setups and scenarioswhere playing like a nit would be good
(14:51):
or playing loose would be better.
But the overall takeawayto keep this concise is
analyze the conditions of your situation,
think critically and try to decide.
Is this a situation where I should tightenup a little bit and set myself up for
postflop success?
Is this a situation where I should jackup my opening percentage and really try
(15:15):
to go after it and make some extramoney with all these marginal hands?
Or is this just a pretty neutral situationand the best move is just to kind of
play your normal strategy?
Uri (15:26):
Yeah, and I think one of the things in poker is there are a lot of guys...
I think everyone knows when there's aweaker player behind you or in the blinds
you open wider, I think that'skind of general knowledge.
But the counterpoint to that of sayingwhen there's a strong player in the
blinds, open tighter because nowyou're the weaker player. Now,
if we imagine the graph of howmuch EV your hands are making,
(15:47):
all the marginal stuff is nowlosing. It does cut both ways,
it's a bit tough to swallow. But weoften... If you're sitting at a table,
like you said at an international event,
they're often going to be guys who youcan, without hurting your ego, say this,
"I'm outclassed by these guys".So just be careful, be in it.
Don't feel like let them run you over.
(16:10):
I mean that's one part of the game.So to your Ace Five offsuit example,
I think something that not a lotof people know is that you can
open looser but you can also open larger.
And those are in a way twosides of the same coin.
So when you tell me "sometimes I'll openAce Five offsuit from under the gun",
(16:32):
I'd say generally speakingthat just doesn't work.
There are five people behind you,
so it's very hard to mebeing loose beyond a certain
point work.
But what you could do is open to fivebig blinds under the gun with the
range that you're playing if you thinkpeople are going to react in the same way
(16:55):
or react in a very looseway. And what we found,
and this was actually found by a friendof mine who I worked with for a long
time, is that if you're thinkingabout opening the button,
there's a certain threshold, let's saythe big blind is calling everything,
there is a threshold where you sayadding more hands actually doesn't make
(17:15):
sense.
You'd rather just increase the size andmake more money with the existing hands.
Mike (17:20):
Yeah,
that's fascinating and maybe I'll cutout that Ace Five offsuit and just raise
bigger with the Ace Eightsuited next time instead.
Uri (17:27):
And it can go really wide once you open your mind in terms of
sizes. And this tiesinto playing soft games
and playing in international tournaments.
There are guys who we know thatthere's a certain three bet size that
makes sense, but there are alot of guys who don't know this.
So if you three bet them to... If
(17:50):
you ask me what's the biggest three betsize you've ever made against someone
in an online game?
I'd say the biggest is probablyninety-eight big blinds where someone
limped and I iso to ninety-eight bigblinds because there was a guy who was
just seeing flops, he didn't care.
(18:11):
And we'd actually iso him to ninety-eight,
there'd be two big blinds behind and he'dfit or fold the flop, which was crazy.
But you really need todevelop flexibility.
So when I see someone playingeighty percent of hands,
I'm immediately in thisexploratory mode of "let's 5x,
let's see what happens".
Or if you see someone cold call a threebet and he shows down Nine Seven suited,
(18:36):
do you think he's folding if you open tonine big blinds with Nine Seven suited?
I'd wager probably not.I don't think he cares.
And that opens up a whole world of howmuch more money you can make once you
start getting flexible inthese kinds of situations.
Mike (18:53):
What a dream scenario to just open to ten big blinds,
get called and then now all of a suddenyou've got Ace King going into the flop
with twenty-one big blindsin the middle for no reason.
It's like you're getting to play athree bet pot but against a player who's
got hands that you might see in asmall single-raised pot. It's really,
(19:14):
really favorable for you.
Uri (19:16):
And then the art of it is with Ace King which SPR you going for.
Once you have someone who's not flexible,
you're Ace King is goingto miss most of the time.
There are some stack topot ratios that are very,
very awkward for Ace Kingthat you want to be avoiding.
Because when you miss you havetwenty-five percent equity.
(19:37):
So don't make it that when he flops apair and shoves if you need thirty percent
to call. That would be avery awkward situation.
And similar to maneuvering stackto pot ratios with Ace King,
you're going to have to learn how to playwith wide ranges when you miss and how
to give people rope.
There's a ton of stuff that's goingon once you enter the rabbit hole of
(20:02):
being very, very creative with your game.
Mike (20:05):
I think that's a good place to leave it.
Now you know the answer to the question"should you play like a nit preflop?"
And it's one of thoseslightly unsatisfying maybes.
Thanks for joining us for thisepisode of Upswing Poker Level Up.
Hit that like button and rate the podcastfive stars if you enjoyed this one and
if you want to see more and getnotified when we drop future episodes,
hit the follow or subscribe button.
It's different verbiage on everyplatform and I just can't keep up.
(20:28):
Thanks again. Take care.
Uri (20:30):
Thank you guys.
Let's level up your poker knowledge by answering a key question.
Would you be better off playing likea super tight nit before the flop?
Uri Peleg has coached up some of theworld's best high stakes players on their
way to winning millions, and he'sjoining us today to answer this question.
Uri (00:16):
Hey Mike, what's up? Thanks for having me.
Mike:
Uri just released an absolutely incredibleproduct over on Upswing Poker called
Lab 2.0. This course allowsyou to follow a clear path,
improve consistently,and build real skills.
And the entire learning trackwas built by proven live cash,
online cash and tournament pros.
(00:37):
Uri was truly on a mission to put togetherthe best possible team of coaches.
He tapped into every corner of his networkto find guys who aren't just amazing
players but also effective teachers.
Today's episode is going to be a littlebit of a preview into what Lab 2.0 is
like while giving yousome nice value. So again,
the question we're answering today is,should you play like a nit preflop?
(00:57):
But let's back up. Why is this evena question? You might be wondering.
Let's look at an under the gun openingrange at a six-handed table and observe
the expected value of severalhands. So the top end hands,
we're going to look at their EV. We'retalking about Aces, Kings, Queen,
Ace King suited.
Pocket Aces by raising makes a littleover nine big blinds on average
(01:21):
every time you get to raise with it.
Pocket Kings makes a little over fivebig blinds every time you raise with it.
Pocket Queens makes a little over twobig blinds and Ace Kings suited makes one
point five three big blinds.
That's some really nice expectedvalue with each of these hands.
Now let's look at the other end ofthe spectrum and compare that to
bottom-of-range EVs. We're lookingat hands like Ace Three suited,
(01:45):
Ten Nine suited and Queen Jack offsuit.
Ace Three suited makes one fiftieth ofa big blind. That's zero point zero two
big blinds when you racewith it under the gun.
Ten Nine suited makes one one hundredthof a big blind, zero point zero one
every time you raise withit. Queen Jack offsuit,
it's actually a mixed frequency raiseand it on average makes zero big blinds
(02:07):
every time you raise with it.
Uri:
I guess one thing I would add is thatwe're talking about being a nit preflop,
but everything we'resaying kind of goes for.
You can think of this as postflopas well because after the flop,
if you would look at the EVs of your hand,
you would see that a tonof it is concentrated on when you make a set or when
you make two pair or whenyou have an overpair.
(02:29):
So the structure of poker is alwaysthe top hands capture the majority
of the value.
Mike (02:35):
And to get specific with that,
if you add up all the EVof these preflop hands,
Aces, Kings and Queens accounts forover seventy percent of your expected
value when you're raisingunder the gun. Add in Jacks,
Ace King and Ace Queen,
so now we're talking about the toproughly three to five percent of hands.
Those make ninety-threepercent of the money.
(02:56):
The rest is basically filler. When youlook at all those suited connectors,
low pocket pairs,
weaker offsuit hands like KingTen offsuit or King Jack offsuit,
the suited hands that just barely maketheir way into the range like Queen Nine
suited, King Eight, suited King Ninesuited... All of these hands make very,
very little money on average.
(03:18):
This is what begs thequestion posed in the title.
Should you even playthese marginal EV hands?
If you're watching the video,
they are the hands that are inthe blue box on your screen.
Now that you have the context forwhy we're even asking this question,
let's cut to one of Uri's videosstraight from Lab 2.0 which answers this
(03:39):
question in just twominutes. Listen closely.
Uri (03:42):
Okay, so I was asked the question,
if a few hands make the majorityof the money, why play the rest?
And very, very straightforwardanswer. First of all,
the rest of the hands do makemoney, so why not play them, right?
And poker is a game of small incrementaledges. You don't have to play them,
you can fold them in certain tableconditions. Don't get married to them.
(04:04):
If you really have to go to the bathroomand it's a live game, fold the hand,
right? Like recognize how importantor not important they are.
But second reason is that if youonly play the very best hands,
people in poker pay attentionto what you're doing,
whether it's online or in a live setting,
people are going torecognize you're in it.
(04:24):
Then your good hands aregoing to make less money.
So the reason that we play the rest ofthe hands isn't so that our good hands
can make money. The reason isbecause these hands make money.
We play them because they make money.
A side effect of playing them isyour range of hands becomes looser,
and so your strongest handsactually start making more money,
(04:48):
which means if I only ever play Aces,
I'm not going to getaction from anyone ever.
But if I start playing Aces andKings and Queens and Ace King,
I'm still not going to getaction from anyone ever.
But when you start widening this,
more and more people dostart giving you action.
And so your good hands start saywinning more than the blinds,
(05:08):
you're tougher to read. Not tomention it's more fun, it is more fun.
But I'm here to teachyou guys to make money,
not necessarily the focus on having fun,although winning money is fun. So yeah,
these hands are important to play.
It's just despite thesehands being correct to play,
they're the sort of handsthat you can mix around with,
(05:29):
don't feel like you have to play them.If you're tired, if you're tilted,
if you got a read from someone,
if it's the best player in theworld sitting to your left,
feel free to play much tighter thanthe game theory ranges and vice
versa, if all the people behind you areterrible and you have reads on them,
(05:50):
you can play looser.
These ranges are just a guidelineand it's fine to deviate from them.
Mike (05:56):
To recap, you should generally not play like a nit because,
number one, the weakerhands still do make money.
So we talked about that Ten Nine suitedthat makes one one hundredth of a big
blind on average when you raise it,
that's still money and some moneyis better than no money. Number two,
people will catch on andgive you less action.
(06:18):
Think about how you playagainst very tight players.
When you've identified that stereotypicalold man coffee at the table and they
decide to put in a re-raise overyour open, aren't you playing very,
very tight against that player?
You don't want to allow people who arepaying attention to do the same to you.
So that's why it's importantto mix in these hands.
(06:40):
And then number Three kind ofgoes along with number two,
playing a looser range helps yourstrong hands make more money.
Your range becomes tougher to read.
You might have Six Five suited or youmight have Aces and that makes you tougher
to play against.
Uri (06:53):
Let me add just a few simple ideas on top of that.
So when we say it's justseven percent of the money...
Imagine if I said the rakeit's just seven percent extra
in this game. Seven percent in pokeris a lot. And the way poker works is...
Beating the rake is tough. Beatingthe rake by five percent is amazing.
(07:15):
There's a ton of back and forth,
so you can't really be giving awayany edges in general as an approach.
And yeah,
this kind of testifies to somethingthat I think we talk about a lot
where if everyone was a GTO bot,
you could be a nit and everyone wouldstill play their GTO ranges and there are
(07:36):
a ton of nits. We want you guys...
Everything we talk about alwaysthink about it from both directions.
So you shouldn't play like a nit,
but also you should recognize what youwant to do if someone else does play like
a nit.
There's a live game I played in recentlywhere a guy who would never ever
bluff... I watched apodcast with Eli Elezra.
(07:59):
And then he sat down one day and hesaid, "I've been inspired by Eli Elezra".
And he made some crazy bluff and showedit down and I was suddenly, "shit,
I can't just auto-foldto this guy anymore".
And I paid off a stack and he had it.
Those kinds of things onall levels of the game.
You want to be the guy who'sunpredictable. And in order to do that,
(08:23):
you need to learn how to bluff, youneed to learn how to play loose,
you need to learn how tothree bet and how to four bet.
And one of the things in pokeris you always see showdowns,
but you never know how many people arejust making insane folds against you.
You're never going to know thatbecause they're not going to show you.
Mike (08:40):
In a moment I'm going to ask Uri when you actually should play like a nit,
because there are scenarios whereyou should tighten up considerably.
But first I want to talk about Uri'snew course that he's been working
incredibly hard on for thebetter part of the last year,
Lab 2.0. Lab 2.0 allowsyou to follow a clear path,
improve consistently,
(09:01):
and build real skills that youcan take to the poker table.
Most poker training sites dump you intoa sea of content and make you work to
get better. And frankly,
this was true for the first iterationof the lab for at least the last few
years. But Lab 2.0 is different.We were on a mission to fix that.
It's poker strategy made simple.
(09:21):
You follow a structured interactivepath that adapts to your skill level.
Learning happens through video lessons,quizzes, live interactive webinars,
study tools like charts and of courseour private community with coaches and
members. Lab 2.0 is available now.
Head over to upswingpoker.com and sign up.
It is going to be a fantasticdecision for your poker game.
Uri (09:44):
It's important to me to mention that Lab 2.0 is not only for beginners,
it's basically designed so that at anylevel you're at including a full-time
pro, we know how to moveyou forward. So it's a very,
very comprehensive program and what youguys saw on the screen is just the very
beginning of it. There is avery deep, very advanced theory,
(10:05):
but we also start from the basics.
So there is a complete structure A to Z.
I think that's somethingthat's important to me to add.
Mike (10:14):
Yeah, and the idea here is that no matter what skill level you are at,
that's where you start in Lab2.0. If you are a beginner,
you're going to take this personalityquiz at the beginning of the course,
you're going to be identifiedas a beginner and you're going to be dropped right
at the beginning of the path.
You might be identified moreas an intermediate player,
in which case you'll be droppeda few nodes down the path.
(10:35):
So you get to skip all that contentthat would just be refresher for you.
You get to save that time andthen if you are an advanced pro,
you're going to skip a lot of stuff andyou're going to get dropped right into
what we're calling the mastery path,
which is where you really start to addhigh level skills to your game that
can take an already goodwin rate and make it great.
Uri (10:56):
Yeah,
and I think one of the things thatdifferentiates this is that all of the
content for beginners was createdby extremely proficient players.
So we don't have low stakescoaches making low stakes content.
This is only the very bestcoaches making all the content.
Mike (11:12):
Alright, so back to our last question today, Uri,
can you speak to situations in which youactually would want to nit it up at the
poker table?
Uri (11:21):
Yeah,
I think these are actuallyquite common and one of the
real life examples that we had foryears playing in PokerStars is there was
a group of Spanishprofessionals who would...
they would three bet with something liketop twenty percent of hands when they
were in position to you. Sosay you opened under the gun,
(11:43):
they're on the cutoff they'd threebet you with twenty percent of hands.
And we tried to...
I think this was a good playby them against how people were playing back in the
day. These guys were doing very well,but we're playing in the pool with them.
We want to know how do we optimallyadjust. And when we try to figure it out,
the answer was, your Aces make more money.
(12:06):
But when you have Ace Threesuited that can't in any
way make money when you just get threebet a ton because there's no way around
it. And this is important,
if I raise Ace Three suited and you three bet and I call,
that's not a situation inwhich I'm making money.
That's the situation in which the secondyou three bet the money that my Ace
(12:28):
Three suited was supposed to be makingis gone. I can call or fold, it's close.
That's why those hands are indifferent.
And kind of what ended up happening
is that we'd want to be nits,
but you can't be a nit becauseeveryone knows you're a nit.
But if you're a nit inthe correct circumstances,
so I generally play a normal rangeand if there are nits at the table,
(12:52):
I'll play a wide range and thenif there's a crazy guy behind me,
I'll play a tight range. So over thecourse of a while of looking at me,
I don't look like a nit and this guywho's three betting me with a twenty
percent range is never going to knowI'm a nit when he's at the table.
There is no way for him to recognize that.
So this is just one example that bycherry-picking the spots to be a nit,
(13:18):
it's actually an extremelyeffective tool in your arsenal.
Mike (13:21):
To bring up an example that comes up in my poker playing career,
I try to play the World SeriesPoker main event every year.
And that tournament's very interestingbecause you run into a lot of weak
players, that's whatmakes it worth playing.
But the best players in theworld are also in there.
I'll find myself seated at table setupswhere I'll look to my left and the two
guys directly next to me havesomething like combined twenty-five
(13:44):
million dollars in liveearnings. Meanwhile,
I'm a player who essentially playsrecreational tournaments these days.
I'm a knowledgeable player, but I'mcertainly nowhere near their level.
I am going to immediately change howI'm approaching preflop when those
players are to my left.
All of those marginal opens areabsolutely being cut out of my range.
(14:07):
Now, on the other side of the coin,maybe day one of that same tournament,
there's a lot of weak players still inand oftentimes I'll find myself at a
table with eight players all of whomaren't particularly good at poker.
And then all of a sudden I find myselfplaying incredibly loose myself.
I'm raising hands like Ace Fiveoffsuit from early, middle position.
(14:28):
A hand that I wouldn't even raise fromthe cutoff if I had those two really
strong players to my left. So,the differences can be really,
really stark and it's always goingto depend on the exact setup and
the exact conditions.
We could probably make a forty-five-minutepodcast talking about all the
different possible setups and scenarioswhere playing like a nit would be good
(14:51):
or playing loose would be better.
But the overall takeawayto keep this concise is
analyze the conditions of your situation,
think critically and try to decide.
Is this a situation where I should tightenup a little bit and set myself up for
postflop success?
Is this a situation where I should jackup my opening percentage and really try
(15:15):
to go after it and make some extramoney with all these marginal hands?
Or is this just a pretty neutral situationand the best move is just to kind of
play your normal strategy?
Uri (15:26):
Yeah, and I think one of the things in poker is there are a lot of guys...
I think everyone knows when there's aweaker player behind you or in the blinds
you open wider, I think that'skind of general knowledge.
But the counterpoint to that of sayingwhen there's a strong player in the
blinds, open tighter because nowyou're the weaker player. Now,
if we imagine the graph of howmuch EV your hands are making,
(15:47):
all the marginal stuff is nowlosing. It does cut both ways,
it's a bit tough to swallow. But weoften... If you're sitting at a table,
like you said at an international event,
they're often going to be guys who youcan, without hurting your ego, say this,
"I'm outclassed by these guys".So just be careful, be in it.
Don't feel like let them run you over.
(16:10):
I mean that's one part of the game.So to your Ace Five offsuit example,
I think something that not a lotof people know is that you can
open looser but you can also open larger.
And those are in a way twosides of the same coin.
So when you tell me "sometimes I'll openAce Five offsuit from under the gun",
(16:32):
I'd say generally speakingthat just doesn't work.
There are five people behind you,
so it's very hard to mebeing loose beyond a certain
point work.
But what you could do is open to fivebig blinds under the gun with the
range that you're playing if you thinkpeople are going to react in the same way
(16:55):
or react in a very looseway. And what we found,
and this was actually found by a friendof mine who I worked with for a long
time, is that if you're thinkingabout opening the button,
there's a certain threshold, let's saythe big blind is calling everything,
there is a threshold where you sayadding more hands actually doesn't make
(17:15):
sense.
You'd rather just increase the size andmake more money with the existing hands.
Mike (17:20):
Yeah,
that's fascinating and maybe I'll cutout that Ace Five offsuit and just raise
bigger with the Ace Eightsuited next time instead.
Uri (17:27):
And it can go really wide once you open your mind in terms of
sizes. And this tiesinto playing soft games
and playing in international tournaments.
There are guys who we know thatthere's a certain three bet size that
makes sense, but there are alot of guys who don't know this.
So if you three bet them to... If
(17:50):
you ask me what's the biggest three betsize you've ever made against someone
in an online game?
I'd say the biggest is probablyninety-eight big blinds where someone
limped and I iso to ninety-eight bigblinds because there was a guy who was
just seeing flops, he didn't care.
(18:11):
And we'd actually iso him to ninety-eight,
there'd be two big blinds behind and he'dfit or fold the flop, which was crazy.
But you really need todevelop flexibility.
So when I see someone playingeighty percent of hands,
I'm immediately in thisexploratory mode of "let's 5x,
let's see what happens".
Or if you see someone cold call a threebet and he shows down Nine Seven suited,
(18:36):
do you think he's folding if you open tonine big blinds with Nine Seven suited?
I'd wager probably not.I don't think he cares.
And that opens up a whole world of howmuch more money you can make once you
start getting flexible inthese kinds of situations.
Mike (18:53):
What a dream scenario to just open to ten big blinds,
get called and then now all of a suddenyou've got Ace King going into the flop
with twenty-one big blindsin the middle for no reason.
It's like you're getting to play athree bet pot but against a player who's
got hands that you might see in asmall single-raised pot. It's really,
(19:14):
really favorable for you.
Uri (19:16):
And then the art of it is with Ace King which SPR you going for.
Once you have someone who's not flexible,
you're Ace King is goingto miss most of the time.
There are some stack topot ratios that are very,
very awkward for Ace Kingthat you want to be avoiding.
Because when you miss you havetwenty-five percent equity.
(19:37):
So don't make it that when he flops apair and shoves if you need thirty percent
to call. That would be avery awkward situation.
And similar to maneuvering stackto pot ratios with Ace King,
you're going to have to learn how to playwith wide ranges when you miss and how
to give people rope.
There's a ton of stuff that's goingon once you enter the rabbit hole of
(20:02):
being very, very creative with your game.
Mike (20:05):
I think that's a good place to leave it.
Now you know the answer to the question"should you play like a nit preflop?"
And it's one of thoseslightly unsatisfying maybes.
Thanks for joining us for thisepisode of Upswing Poker Level Up.
Hit that like button and rate the podcastfive stars if you enjoyed this one and
if you want to see more and getnotified when we drop future episodes,
hit the follow or subscribe button.
It's different verbiage on everyplatform and I just can't keep up.
(20:28):
Thanks again. Take care.
Uri (20:30):
Thank you guys.
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