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Matthew “theginger45” Hunt is one of the newest video producers at Tournament Poker Edge. After several years of traveling and living abroad, he’s returned to his native England to focus on poker and writing. He talks to us about why he gave up his nomadic life for poker, how he’s using poker to support his aspirations as a writer, and how many poker players could benefit from some life coaching. We also discuss a strategy hand from the Tournament Poker Edge forums.
Members of TPE can watch Matthew Hunt’s videos, including his latest series, Life Coaching for Poker Players. If you’re not a TPE member, you can still read Matt’s articles, but you really should consider signing up!
You should also consider picking up our WSOP Premium Podcasts. Nineteen dollars gets you more than five hours of strategy as Nate and Andrew discuss key hands from the 2013 WSOP Main Event as well as important concepts in any poker tournament.
Timestamps
0:30 – Hello, welcome, & thank you
4:53 – Interview: Matthew Hunt
52:20 – Strategy: Playing nines when a ten flops
I like a check fold on the flop in the hand. I think we can enter good situations when it checks through, but if that doesnt happen, we arent well suited by betting or continuing facing a bet.
I think the assumption that we have to justify cbetting here is basically the inertia of the cbet monkeys.
I take it as a bit of a failure of flop planning that we continuation bet, get the ideal number of callers, and then have no real clue what to do when the mother of all blanks rolls off. Surely we should be trying to think more than one street at a time?
Fair point. Some commenters have made a good case for check-folding the flop for this reason.
Also, didn’t that tiny turn bet scream nut flush? I feel like this is not uncommon for bad players, thinking they want to make a little something from hands that have a single diamond but not scare anyone away. I just can’t think of any other hands that would make such a tiny bet. I guess it could be a bluff but I feel like when bluffing most players (especially bad ones) will bet a least a little bit more to give themselves some perceived fold equity. I think any kind of moderate made hand would bet more to discourage flush draws from calling (or check). Only other hand I could really think of is AK with the A of diamonds (or similar), but that hand has us crushed too.
I caution strongly against trying to do this sort of soul reading without any actual evidence. In other words, if you’ve seen this player use different bet sizes with different types of hands in the past, there’s a little more room to act on a read here. But considering that you should be calling something like 80% of the time with the odds you’re getting, if you instead fold 80%+ of your range on nothing more than a hunch, you’re making a huge mistake if your hunch is wrong.
Pot odds should determine your baseline play, and the level of certainty you have in a read should determine the extent to which you deviate from that baseline.
BTW, I’m just looking at the WRGPT hand you sent into the podcast, and it looks like you did something similar in the opposite direction (he bet huge it must be a bluff). In theory, you should fold more often to big bets than to small bets. If you choose to do the opposite, you are making life really really easy on your opponents, because they can bluff you cheaply and win huge pots with their bets hands, so you better be damn sure about your read before you go down this road.
Agreed, this is definitely a leak of mine. In this case, I wasn’t necessarily arguing to fold to the turn bet, just that our spidey sense should be going off as we go into the river (so as not to open-ship for example:) Thanks for the comment/advice!
About the nines hand: I’m fine with check/folding the flop (although I’d probably usually bet the flop). But once we bet the flop and this utter brick rolls off OTT, I’m going to be betting the turn against all but the most passive of villains. The reason being that villain will often bet with a king if we check to him, and we’ll often end up calling, so we might as well bet for value/protection: It’s true that villain will often fold draws, but I feel that in the discussion Matthew doesn’t give enough attention to the profit we get from getting villain to fold his draws: it’s worth a lot to us, EV wise, to just win the pot.
If having one Brit on your show has made you eager for a second, can I suggest Sam Grafton? A really interesting and charismatic guy with an interesting story and much to say on many subjects other than poker. Not only that, he’s also an extremely good tournament pro, with something like $2.5 million in online cashes, and a nice chunk in live cashes too.
I think he’d make for an excellent podcast guest.
Thanks for the suggestion. As it happens, we recorded an interview with Sam earlier this week. We had a great time, and it will likely air on April 14th. Well worth looking forward to IMO!
Wow, that’s almost spooky. In that case, I can’t wait to hear it.
As a long time listener I was pretty disappointed with this episode.
Although matt is clearly a nice guy and has had a interesting life. The quality of the analysis left a lot to be desired. I agree with the comments here that the 99 hand seems like a pretty clear check fold OOP 3 way with a hand toward the bottom of our range (for this flop).
A c bet could be correct but the case made for it was incoherent, muddling at best and at worst outright wrong.
I would have serious issues with taking advice/coaching from someone such as matt who very clearly doesn’t have the right skill set for coaching.
I am sure he is a fine player (though i question his fundamentals given this hand) but clearly cannot coach.
As a brit I am massively disappointed that the 1st brit you have had on the show is this one especially when there are so many really top quality brit players out there.
This feedback may seem overly harsh but as a listener to every episode you guys have made. Literally every other podcast has been top quality with varied and interesting guests in conjunction with high level analysis.
This episode for me fell so far from the high bar you have set I felt compelled to post.
Thanks for the otherwise great podcast and please look to some UK guys such as moorman, Toby lewis, firaldo, the claimer, nigdawg all top top online players as potential future guests.
Thanks for listening and writing, and sorry that you didn’t care for this episode. I’ll agree that this was among our weaker strategy segments, though I think the fault for that is at least as much Nate’s and mine as it is Matt’s. I also think it’s a bit much to conclude from a single hand discussion that he “very clearly doesn’t have the right skill set for coaching”.
We don’t necessarily choose our guests based primarily on how good we think they are at poker but rather on how interesting of a conversation we expect them to produce. That said, if you’re looking for an interview with an elite British MTT player, I trust you’ve heard the Sam Grafton episode by now? It’s certainly possible we’ll have someone else of his ilk on the show in the not too distant future as well.
Thanks again for the feedback!
Andrew
Hey andrew thanks for the reply.
Perhaps clearly cannot coach seems a bit harsh based off one hand. But coaching as you know requires clear succinct communication which seems pretty lacking.
Also yes I have heard the sam grafton podcast and wow that was a special episode. There is a person I think you should get back on. Clearly a fascinating and engaging guy who has had a remarkably interesting life.
Well done on the great podcast and thanks for the dignified response to the harsh criticism left. Its only because all the other episodes are so fantastic in content.