— Secrets of the best poker players with Owen Prodigy Messier. The best No-Limit Texas cash game players collide at $40,000 tables with an ante. Linus "LLinusLL0ve" Loeliger and Bjorn "AsianFlushie" Li continue their epic high-stakes battle. Owen "PR0DIGY" Messier himself joins me to share his elite-level strategy and a special announcement.
We don't want to give too much away, but we were talking before about the limits these guys are playing. So we see the $200/$400 with the ante. Can you tell the people why you like this format so much?
"Yeah. I mean, heads-up you're already playing a lot of hands, but then with the ante, you're playing... Well, yeah. If you include limping, technically both players should be playing every hand, almost.
I think a lot of people tend to make a gentleman's agreement not to have limping. But even then, it just makes the game so aggressive. You can go so thin for value because ranges are so wide. It's really a game where you can't hide behind a strong range at all. You’ve got to get in the mix with some uncomfortable hands and see what you can make happen."
— So we see these two guys, and it seems like no one wants to quit this match. Flushie versus Linus. Like, neither wants to be the one who taps out first. Would you agree with that assessment?
"Yeah. I mean, I think they've taken breaks, but I heard that lifetime, they've played at least 80,000 hands against each other. Someone told me that. I don't know how many they've played since, but yeah, these guys have played a lot against each other. There's a lot of meta game going on."
— And in this hand, would you say this is a pretty standard defend? You're never folding against a 2.5x open?
"Yeah. You wouldn't even fold this without the ante. Well, technically, without the ante it’s a mix, but I feel like these guys would just defend it every time anyway. You don’t get to these stakes without that belief in your ability to make things happen with hands like this. A lot of these guys are probably going to be defending all those mixes for sure."
— And then Flushie comes over the top. Pretty small, but not ridiculously small either. Kind of medium.
"Yeah. This is what's fun about watching these guys. I’ve looked at some of their hands before. And I guess it makes sense that they're the ones who make it to the highlight reel. But there's a lot of raising and re-raising. Linus doesn't want to just call and let you realize equity, but then Flushie wants to punish that. If you're raising too much, he gets to re-raise. They’ve got this really aggressive dynamic."
– And then Linus... raises. It never stops. Proves your point.
"Yeah. Linus doesn’t want to give back the initiative. He can have plenty of value hands here, and he has a very nice hand to keep putting money in. He's got the open-ender. He’s got the heart blocker and also the backdoor draw. You do want to be doing this sometimes. You don’t want to just freeze up and get scared because the other guy three-bets you. You need to do some playback."
— So Flushie’s not going anywhere. He peels, and we see the king of spades on the turn. Linus is going to go for the half pot here?
"Yeah. I mean, that’s probably the most standard play. I imagine there are some other options open with this hand.
I think you could even consider, even though it’s only six high, you could probably check-call. You could also check-raise. I just say check-call because Flushie will probably stab pretty small, so you’ll probably get a good enough price to hope you hit on the river. But this is the standard play. I just wanted to highlight that he’s not forced into this line — he has a few other options open. But yeah, he does decide to keep barreling."
– So Flushie is going to call, and then Linus is going to hit his straight.
"Yeah, I mean, obviously really nice to see this. One of the nice things about him playing back with earlier was now — I mean, obviously he could lose to a boat, but it’s like Flushie can’t have . He’d only be able to have it if he had , and obviously Linus has the , so that’s not going to happen. So because so much money went in earlier, it’s almost like your hand is stronger than it should be. One of the main combos you’d get cooler’d by folded many streets ago, which is quite nice and might have been playing into his thoughts with the flop decision to go for this one.
But yeah, I mean Flushie can still have a lot of boats. So while you’re obviously feeling pretty good to hit, you’re hoping you don’t get snap-called."
– Would you say the standard play is to just jam it all in here if you’re Linus, or would he ever check?
"Yeah, I mean, if you were going to check-call with this sort of hand strength, you’d probably want to not have a heart. You just want to unblock a few more bluffs from Flushie. Like, he could have or something that’s probably just getting the price to continue on both streets.
So I think having the probably blocks just enough bluffs. Although that being said, you’re probably a bit more likely to get here when you have six of hearts. But I don’t think this hand — this doesn’t seem like a very intuitive trapping hand. If I saw Linus go for the check-call here, I’d imagine it would be a more exploitative decision than him doing it because the combo screamed out to him as being perfect for it.
That said, we’re way out in the wild west here. It’s going to be pretty hard to know exactly what’s going on with the solver’s combo selection. I could be missing some subtle effect that changes these things."
— So we’re going to see Linus — he does go for the jam, and Flushie goes for the snap-call like you discussed earlier.
"That’s kind of an unfortunate spot for Linus, but not much he can do once he gets there on the river. Maybe a few things he could have done earlier, but yeah, fun hand nonetheless."
— So now we see Flushie on the button again, Linus with the ace-nine. Is this mixing in terms of preflop, like getting in there for three-bets as well?
"Yeah, you can throw in this as a three-bet sometimes. Pretty reasonable hand to go with.
One of the things about a hand like ace-nine offsuit is it often makes strong hands but not nuttish hands. You can’t really make a straight. If you do, it’s going to be like a four-straight, which isn’t very nuttish. But you can make some good top pairs.
One of the nice reasons for three-betting hands like this is the SPR gets shorter. At shorter SPRs, a lot more of the stack-off hands are just good top pairs. If you three-bet and then hit an ace or a nine, you just say forget it, let’s go, let’s get all the money in.
Whereas if you flat and you hit an ace or a nine, obviously you’ve got a good hand, but you’re not going to try and get all the money in at like a 20 SPR. So yeah, that can be one of the reasons why these hands might get in there and bump it up pre, even though they’re not the prettiest hands."
— Well, that makes sense. So we see Linus just call this time and he flops top pair against Flushie. He goes for the size that we saw in our first hand and Linus just calls.
Anything to say about this flop action?
"You could mix this in as a raise very occasionally. It’s going to depend what sizes you’re using. If he’s using quite a polar size, you don’t really want to check-raise this hand strength often. But if you use more of a half-pot raise size, then throwing in some of these top pairs is quite good.
Also because we’re playing with an ante, this hand is a bit stronger than it usually would be. You know, it's a more premium hand in this format. So raising up and barreling the turn would be a bit more normal in this format than it would be in non-ante."
— Interesting. So he does just call. We see the king of diamonds on the turn. Linus checks it over to Flushie, and he sizes up here.
"Oh, I've seen this hand. Linus raises, doesn't he?"
"There were a lot of people that sent me this hand, asking me what was going on. This one's fun.
Yeah, this is okay. I mean, Flushie goes for a size which is a bit small. I think Linus is just soul reading him and saying, you're literally just going, you have , I have beat. I'm raising that. That’s basically what's going on here.
The problem against a guy like Flushie is, this is not a live reg playing $2/$5 at the Wynn. Flushie knows what he's signaling. These guys have played so much. I mean, undoubtedly, there must have been times where he did this and it just was the face-up hand he represented. Maybe not specifically, maybe like or something makes sense.
One thing I don't like about Linus's hand is if you were going to go sort of thinner to check back river with a hand from Flushie, you'd probably want to do it with stuff like the with the nut flush draw. Those hands where it's kind of nice to keep betting them because if we miss, we check back river, and then if we hit, obviously we have the nuts.
But Linus has the . And so if a lot of the hands you'd be potentially owning with this are like , , , , with diamonds specifically, because those are the ones where it's the most tempting to carve out this bet size for, I think Linus having the actually kind of makes this play a bit messy at the edges.
It feels much more like when you have the , there's a much higher chance that you run into an induce. It's funny to call a B75 an induce, but this is so clearly a spot where you could go bigger if you wanted to. They know what this communicates. Using a block would be absurd. B75 is just on the smaller end of what's reasonable."
— So we see Flushie not going anywhere. We go to a river . Linus shoves and gets shown .
"I think this shows — because it's not even the full-on trap. It's like the exact hand where obviously he's ahead of a polar raising range on the turn. But if Linus’s raising range starts depolarizing and starts having , , , and having these hands to try and own the , then bet-calling starts printing.
Usually when you think of a trap, you'd want something more secure than this. You’d want a set or two pair or something. But I think this is so sharp, that he induces this much action with a hand that's just ahead of the hands Linus was trying to get him with.
I wonder if he just turbo-snapped off the river. That’s the kind of thing where if he piled immediately, it means he knows exactly why he did it and he got him good. Whereas if he tanked on the river, it kind of means he actually thought he was bluff-catching.
I really wish I knew the timing on the river — whether Flushie maybe took a couple of seconds just to make sure everything's all right. But if you go deep into the tank here and then call, then it would have meant he didn’t realize he was getting this response from .
But I really suspect he did. And I think it kind of shows that Linus was pretty... I mean, just going back to — to me, that communicates that Linus was really going hard after this. I think this is him saying more than just Flushie having top pair plus nut flush draw."
— So we see Flushie open again, and Linus puts in the three-bet here with the six-five of spades. Anything noteworthy to say about this three-bet, Owen?
"No, I mean, it’s pretty standard. Honestly, it’s probably—it's been a while since I’ve looked at these ante sims, but it might just be pure here. Probably a mistake not to. Or if not, it’s very high frequency, and then you’ve always got to call the four-bet."
– So Linus does call. We go to the flop. He hits bottom pair here, and Flushie goes pretty small. There’s no reason to ever raise this, would you say?
"Yeah. It’s just the kind of hand that gets a bit messy if you raise. I wouldn’t put it past Linus to find the raise sometimes, but these hands can get messy. If you raise and get jammed on—that might sound weird to some people, like "whatever, we have bottom pair"—but you’ve got five outs to trips and two pair. You’ve also got some backdoor straight draw potential.
It doesn’t sound like a lot, but at these stakes, folding that much equity for not much money behind kind of sucks. And then the alternative is calling off, hoping they just rip a hand like or or something, which is possible. But you’re also in pretty bad shape if they do have the pair.
There are a lot of ways that check-raising this hand can go wrong. You’d want something either weaker or stronger to raise. If you have something stronger, you can raise-call off pretty comfortably. If you have something weaker, you can raise-fold. And this is in that horrible spot where if you raise and get shoved on, you just got max pain — and the only person to blame is yourself."
— So we go to a turn and it’s the ten of diamonds. Flushie just has around a pot-sized bet. A little more.
"Yeah. I wonder if this turn ever has leads?
Sometimes when stuff gets there on the turn in these spots, out-of-position gets to lead. They’ll just check-call draws and, even when they don’t have a draw, they’ll have improved. Like, they can have for the nuts, but they can also have a hand like or , which has improved to pair plus open-ender.
So yeah, I mean obviously I haven’t looked at this specific spot — like, four-bet pot with an ante and also with their open sizes or whatever — but it wouldn’t surprise me if Linus gets to do a little bit of leading here."
— Interesting. So he doesn’t this time, and Flushie bets really small here on this card. Anything to say about Linus’s response?
"Yeah, this is quite interesting because when Flushie uses this size, he’s kind of giving a nice price to a lot of hands. But then, because he’s going so cheap, it means Linus probably has to defend wider than those hands which are actually quite good on this board.
This is a very friendly price to get a hand like 8-7 to continue, which would really struggle versus bigger sizes. It’s not drawing to the nuts — I mean, not super struggling, but yeah, if they jam, 8-7 is kind of sad.
But then what this sort of does is, it actually means 8-7 can call very easily, but a hand like 6-5 is in a weird spot. It’s getting a really good price to continue, but you’re drawing very thin, and you might be drawing dead here. This price might be kind of saying, “I can give you this really good price because I mostly have like jacks and tens in this range.”
But yeah, you can’t just go folding tons to a quarter-pot bet. So I can see why Linus comes along."
— So when Flushie roughly has $24k behind on this river, are you worried about him having a lot of here? Or he can’t really have many ?
"It wouldn’t be unreasonable for him to bet a ten like this. He could have a hand like queen-ten and just barrel the turn. A bunch of ten-x could just bet the ten."
— For bluffs, what would you expect to see? These kind of weird four-bets, queen-highs?
"Yeah, I mean, anything which just completely misses the board is a pretty good punt. Like, if you four-bet a hand like king-deuce, it’s just pretty nice to blast that stuff.
He has plenty of these high-low hands. You don’t really need to have a good draw to bluff in a four-bet pot. Like, he could just take and blast it in over three streets — although I think would always wish to take the river because it can beat Linus’s .
So no, I don’t think he’s going to actually use those. Mostly just any of those high-card, low-rank suited hands that miss the board — those are going to be the main things we look for."
— So how are you feeling as Linus? Are you calling this river? Once you get here?
"I don’t think there’s a super clear decision here. I don’t think there’s meant to be."
— Let's watch the showdown.
"Queens. That makes sense, along with—well, I was talking about jacks and tens as invulnerable hands. But if you think about one of the main hands I mentioned giving a good price to, maybe that was too generous"
— You were describing so many combos that he could be four-betting and just triple barreling there.
"Yeah, they’re all kind of mixed, though. They’re not going to be pure in the range. Whereas queens is always in the range. So that’s why we don’t know, right?"
