John Apestyles: 63s is Underrated & People Study Spots That Don't Matter

– Hello, and welcome back to the grid. Today, I have a man who has stood the test of time in the poker world and been involved in every aspect of it from authoring books to streaming to coaching, to, of course, winning over $23,000,000 in poker winnings and over 4,000,000 in profit. It is Jon Van Fleet (Apestyles). He's a coach for BBZ and Apestyles Poker and has an upcoming course coming up. We're gonna talk to you a little bit about that. Side note, he's a heck of an amateur chess player as well, so we'll talk about that too. But before that, we gotta get our grid hand in (King eight offsuit).
– Hey. Thank you. And I appreciate that that introduction. It makes me sound like a like a badass or something.

Yeah. Let's get into the hand. You got the cards. It's crazy because, you know, we we had a few lessons maybe a couple years ago. John and I have this crazy memory that you were opening king eight offsuit maybe from, like, the cutoff. And I was like, oh, man. I wouldn't do that there. For me, it's like king nine plus. And it got cut to the There's a little sliver of king eight. Yes. But it's not it's not a pure open now. It's funny that we had that conversation because it it comes up in my head every time, like, I get king eight and and then the cutoff. But in this spot, we were in the big blind and and we faced the three x. I did consider three betting, but, actually, I think that your your three bet range needs to be more garbage y with relatively shallow stacks. So if I had, like, a king deuce, I would be more likely to three bet in this spot.

King eight actually dominates some kings. Big blind versus small blind.

– And this was an online 6-max?
– Yes. I love six max. This was on stream, and I knew I was gonna be on the show, so I was kinda looking for spots to put on the show. It might have it might have contributed to my fancy play syndrome in the hand, in fact.

It was within five minutes to starting playing, and we called the 3x with a king in the big one. And, honestly, it's it's a very trivial call. I mean, you can call all kings here. I think you can call, like, queen five in this spot versus a 3x, maybe even wider. It is it's a spot where I think people under defend overall, actually, even good players.

– Do you like the 3x sizing because you feel like people under defend versus that??
– I start with the round of 3x and see if it gets any folds ever. When you look at GTO sims, they like, like, a 5x with 50 big blinds affected, but nobody does that. Essentially, like, I've done some work on it, and population over folds to a 3x in this spot. They fold, like, 40%.

I think GTO's around, like, 29%, 28% or something. And what the counter strategy to that overfold is is pretty much opening everything. It's not a bad thing to try to see if you can get away with 3x'ing and and kind of pushing it a bit too. And so you called the three acts with the king eight off, and the flap came four six six rainbow. You have the king of spades and the eight of clubs, and the flop was the four of hearts, the six of clubs, and the six of diamonds.

– Okay, you call the raise and see the flop. . At your place And . Your opponent makes a continuation bet of 20% of the pot. What are you thinking at this point?
– Fairly trivial spot. I mean, four six six is is a board that's unlikely to hit his raising range, and king high is is gonna be well ahead of at least a lot of the the bluff portions of their range. 20% of pot in position, it's it's gonna be tough to fold this. I would I would call most king highs here

– Are there any hands that you fold here?
– It's a good question. Not not a whole lot, actually. I'm really not folding much to a 20% of pot bet because I shouldn't. Some of the weakest hands somehow, like, interact with and make, like, a straight draw. A three two suited or a seven three suited, like, they they can't fold either. Then if you obviously have a suited hand that has a backdoor, you're probably not folding that.

– Turn - . The small blind makes another small bet, 30% of the pot.
– So we bet, like, 7,800 into a little under 6k. Maybe they could still have, some sixes and and fours or whatever, but, it doesn't feel like a jack sizing to me. I feel like they would probably size up a bit. The sizing itself actually felt, to me in the moment, possibly a little weak. Like, it was just kinda ace high. They definitely still can have some stuff like jack x, four x, even pairs. It's not like a pure call at all. It's very funny, though, that you mentioned that the only hand that you would fold to the flop bet on six six four rainbow was, like, jack nine, and then the turn hits the freaking jack.

He's like, now he can really attack you. I'm actually looking at the sim at the moment because I didn't fully go through it. My hand can call, but it actually mostly prefers folds unless I have a club in hand.

– So we've got the 20% bet on the flop, 30% bet on the turn, and then the 10% on the river. How do you feel about this bet?
– I just feel like this bet is very, very firmly, like, around ace high, and this line is almost never going to be a four or a six. It could be something like pocket eights maybe.

I don't know. The bet's so small that they've kind of told me that they have ace high. Again, I was kinda looking for spots, and I was feeling a little bit, froggy, I guess. And I decided I was like, I'm gonna make you fold. I pretty much slammed in little less than 3x pot, and they folded, and I felt all smug about it.

– When you think about bluffs, how do you prevent yourself from overbluffing here? You're going in with the king eight off, but what other type of hands are you slam dunk bluffing, and how does that affect your range?
– I mean, the slam dunk bluffs, I suppose, would be stuff like seven five suited, eight five suited. Like, the stuff that just has, like, no showdown value. The reason why my hand might not be a bluff is because it's actually a pure call.

– You have this desire to squeeze your opponent out of the bank at any cost. How do you reconcile this with theoretical knowledge?
– I don’t play according to GTO. By default, I think that my opponents play incorrectly, and I try to exploit them as harshly as possible.

I see little slivers of bluffs in here and had more to do with, like, you're a human being. I basically know what hand you have, and I'm gonna try to make you fold it. I love the way you say that because it's certainly a gear that you have, and everybody who plays against you knows it. This kind of like, I'm gonna make you fold gear, and it kind of goes beyond the solvers in the theory. And, clearly, you tap into this a lot.

When working on the game, I regularly work with exploit simulations. But we need not only knowledge, but also intuition. When you feel that the opponent is showing weakness, it does not matter what you pretend – if you press, he is ready to give in. I suspect that it is not so easy to teach this. Intuition is based on experience. One of the greatest strengths of those who play by intuition is the ability to sense strength and weakness. This is a good alternative to counting the number of combinations and home analysis with a solver. As for me, I can do both a little. Although I am more inclined to work with software.

– How do you combine this with your theoretical study?
– I am not a GTO player. My assumptions are actually that my opponents are playing wrong, and I'm trying to push the exploit until I find that I can't. In some ways, also think that you have to have a deeper understanding of GTO to be able to push things like this because you have to have run lots of node locks, and there's precision to exploitation. It's not just exactly like I'm just gonna make you fold it.

Knowing nodes and where the population's overfolding and underfolding and attacking those. Also, I definitely have run a lot of exploit Sims away from the table. And then there also is that intuition aspect where somebody has shown weakness in some way, shape, or form with their line. It doesn't really matter what I'm repping. I'm repping.

I'm gonna make you fold. And that's a little harder to teach, I think. Like, a lot of that comes from experience. And I think that that's also where a lot of field players or so called field players, like, that's their strength is – the ability to sense strength and weakness rather than doing a whole bunch of combo work in their head and and checking the sims afterwards. I believe that I have a little bit of both.

– As a coach, what do you find the most challenging between all of those different skill sets? So is it easier to teach people to sense strength and make big folds or to sense weakness and make big bluffs?
– That kind of stuff, I don't spend a whole lot of time on as a coach because, essentially, what I'm doing with my with my upcoming course, Apex Systems, is or with me and Tombos, I try to get people to study in a systematic way based on how often spots come up.

So we have, MTT, you know, the spots that come up the most, and we have, like, study sheets and drills for that. And then we also have, like, the lines that come up the most, and we study those. My nature is to study all the weird donk lines and things like that, but those don't even come up the most. It's bet, bet, bet that comes up the most. You know?

So what I teach students is how to efficiently study and leak find. I actually kinda stay away from things like where to to bluff raise rivers. It doesn't happen that much, and it it's not where a lot of your EP comes from.

– By the way, your opponent did fold in his hand. So you, you scooped that pot, and your intuition in your play turned out to net you the win with the king high.

Did you find out what he had by any chance?
– No. Nothing like that. What I liked about the hand is that it's even me, like, I wanna bring in a hand where I'm the hero, and I bluff raised this river, and I'm a sicko. But, actually, the bluff raise was bad because of the sizing, not because it was a bluff raise.

– I wanted to ask, what is that spot that does come up a lot that you feel like people really understudied? Is there something that you really identified that is quite frequent but people aren't giving enough attention to?
– It's more about moving through them systematically. But the spots that come up the most, you probably should know, are just is gonna be late position versus big blind. Well, we have, like, a sheet where you drill that spot. Once you have a good enough score, you move on to the next. I would say that people focus a little too much on things like, what do I do versus river raise?

How much do I call versus this over bet? And the answer is is usually call sometimes. And the thing is these spots aren't really the ones that come up the most. I think people don't spend enough time actually on small blind versus, the other positions, and they're not spending enough time on the lines that come up the most. Bet bet bet is the main one.

Three barrel lines are are the ones that come up the most and are worth the most money. Essentially, people are are are spending a lot of time on spots that don't matter that much or interesting hands that aren't actually about the fundamentals. I find that people are really fascinated by what they should bluff with, and sometimes I feel like they're not quite as interested in what their main value bet should be.

– You have a degree in psychology as well. Does that come into play a lot when you're coaching your students?
– Even with your students who have mental game issues, you kinda let them deal with that as they get better technically, would you say? I can only really approach the technical stuff, and I and I can do it pretty well and quickly. I do think that you can have all of the knowledge, but if you're not feeling it in game, you're not gonna be able to execute. So I do actually approach holistically and have mental game coaches. I've worked, you know, a lot with different therapists and guys like Elliot Roe in the past.

– It's better to just stay in the moment. Try to avoid your emotions. You and I also know each other from chess. I gave you a couple of chess lessons, and I was shocked at how good you were. I've done a lot of chess lessons over the years with poker players, and usually they're in the 600 to 1,200, 1,500 range.

And you're quite a lot better than that. I think you were approaching 2,000 on some of the online blitz sites. Right?
– If I had, like, a FIDE rating, it would probably be class a. I'd probably be, like, 1,900, 1,800.

– How quickly did you get to level 2000 in blitz?
– Took me about two years.

– That's incredible, though, really unusual. So, like, maybe if you started when you were a kid, you could have been, like, a grand master. Maybe there's something with the visualizing. Do you find that you're you have a really good visual memory and that, like, when you think of poker, it's sometimes visual?
– Not really, actually. In fact, I even think of chess more in terms of, like, mental patterns. I don't necessarily see it. I don't know what it is. I just really, really like chess and tactics problems.

Got into the chess club and was, you know, really enjoying that. And then I found poker right around that same time. My my friends, they played fun poker on Friday nights, and I sucked, actually. I was just missing my turn, and I was trying to bluff. And they knew I was bluffing.

And my friends made fun of me a lot the first time I played. And and that actually kinda lit a fire under my ass, and I went and I bought, like, all these poker books. My first one was, Phil Helmuth, who played poker like the pros. I knew from chess. I was like, I can study, and I can get better than you guys at this game.

Maybe that's not the most wholesome desire just to beat my my buddies because they piss me off, but it's what started me. And then when I found poker, I was like, okay. Now here's a game that I can actually make money at. So I really threw myself into that. Probably like playing chess more, to be honest.

I really love chess. I mean, chess is a beautiful game, but, you know, it is a little bit less social. It's always one v one. I feel like there's a lot of beauty in poker that it has all these different possibilities of how many players you can play with at the same time. It's really valuable.

– You've been relevant and on the top of the game for so many years. Seems like the secret is a lot of passion.
– I think that is the secret. I think that when I start getting worried is when I'm when I'm not enjoying myself when I play, then I'm like, oh, no.

Because what's kept me in the game is that, like, I'm excited to play on a Sunday. And I'm not looking forward to the money necessarily. I'm looking forward to out puzzling people. Also, the feeling of just, of winning and crushing. It's fine.

– That makes sense.
– You wanna show your edge. Sometimes beating someone, especially someone that I like, I actually feel a little bad about it. I also know that, you know, this is a consensual game. They're here to take my money.

I'm there to take their money. It just it is what it is. I think I actually enjoy it more online when I'm, like, beating JoeCheddar69 or whatever. Like, some some random guy.

– And with that in mind, what is the most underrated poker hand on the grid?
– My old favorite hand from, like, twenty years ago was three six suited, but that's because I misclick called off, like, two all ins in a $10.20 cash game with it and sucked out. I wasn't and so I was like, new favorite hand. I would say that that people are generally not giving enough love to, like, jack six suited, ten six suited, those hands because they get to raise from the cutoff. Right? People aren't raising them from the cutoff.