So the main purpose of signing up at HUSNG was to see if there were any "small ball" strategy hu sng videos and i was pretty impressed by some of the instructor's sharkscope. I've watched a bunch of them and the general strategy (except for cog's videos which i very much liked) has been to 3x raise on button and cbet which is very similar to stox and cr. I haven't seen any videos using small ball strategy. I was wondering if one of the instructors could make a video using small ball strategy. What i mean by small ball is min raise button, 1/2 cbet, keeping pots small and constantly stabbing at pots. I've been using this strategy and have had some success. So yeah, if one of the instructors could make a video using small ball, that would be great. Thanks.
Most of HUSNG instructors play usual solid poker, using most profitable lines for high stakes.
If you looking for something special, check out Skates videos. In the many videos he is raising 100% from the button and attack on any the flop. He also use many un-conventional lines, like Cbets of 1/4 pot size, light 3bets etc.
I get that, just on every video i've seen, instructors have said they'll make a video that we want, not the stakes they play. Just wondering if they would make a video using pure small ball strategy. Don't really feel like watching 25 of the videos skate has to gets parts of something.
Hi there,
I understand your request and it's something we can try to fill.
The thing is, often times we like to stress the most profitable way to play husngs, not just a particular style.
Often times we do adjust and change our bet sizing, though it's not often common (nor correct) to do so in the first level 75bb deep vs an unknown player.
Half pot sized c-bets aren't generally good without a reason, 2/3 size is just about optimal (generally speaking) so that's why you don't see it as much.
When we play shorter stacked or against specific types of opponents, you can see all of us using more of a "small ball" type strategy because it's the best type of strategy at that point. Examples of this include late game limping, minraising and half pot cbetting at short to medium effective stacks and adjustments to weak tight players. The latter (weak tight players) are generally the easiest type to play against, so you won't see a ton of those videos on here, but there are more than a handful of them.
We'll look to add more small ball type stuff and clearly label and point out the reasons why we're using the small ball strategy and the reasons why we are not. I think that is more of the problem because in reality we're really using small ball when it should be used and staying away from it when it's not the right time. We could do a better job of explaining this and clearly labeling videos where small ball is good or focused on for players such as yourself.
And one personal gripe, please don't compare us to Stox or CR, they are very general and wide ranging training sites and from all accounts their husng videos don't even compare to what we offer. I don't mean to toot our own horns (heck, I pointed out some things we could work on in the prior paragraph) but I'd like to think we are far and away ahead of CR and Stox both in quality and the range of videos we offer (end game, small ball cog, high stakes, low stakes, regualar speed, turbo speed, UB, bodog, cake, ftp, stars sites and so on).
Let us know if you have any other comments or concerns, we appreciate your post here.
Speaking of other training sites, I personally like Stoxx and CR, but imo they're both lightyears away from what DC offers for HU cash - DC is I think the best you can get for HU cash, but it's also more for higher stakes players. For instance, they have all these great videos where people like Kranz or WiltOnTilt play high-stakes, but there isn't so much for beginners.
They do have a few beginner videos, but they don't even come close to what you can find here, and learning almost exclusively from DC in the beginning went horribly wrong for me - I basically learned all these cool moves and bluffs and stuff, but not how to play against a standard calling-station. Or I "learned" that it's "standard" to valuebet let's say 2nd pair no kicker all three streets on a drawy board as long as all draws miss because any better hand raises you early - but this goes horribly wrong if you're playing against a weak-tight standard donk and not an aggressive high-stakes player.
There's also another regional training site (I don't want to piss them off, so I won't tell the name), where you basically learn that you should raise pre-flop each time you have a hand and fire a 2/3 pot-sized cbet at the flop and to get it in with any pair or two overcards if there's a flush-draw possible and I once got into a fight because I disaggreed to shoving over a c/r with I think 77 on a 954 board with a flush-draw.
Watching these excellent videos here on this site really opened me the eyes, I saw how great players like Croixdawg or Cog Dissonance exploit their opponents by properly adjusting to their style. This is what "small ball" means for me, finding the best strategy against any particular opponent - against some of them, the "standard" raise pf / cbet flop works great, but against others you need to do different things like limping, or minraising, etc. etc. etc.
Personally, I don't like the idea of making a video to demonstrate some particular style - this really contradicts this entire idea of properly adjusting to your opponent. So if you want to see a video with minraising every button and 1/2 cbet, then imo it should be against an opponent where this is the optimal strategy.
Finding such a wide variety of videos with all kinds of different styles here really helped me improve my game and learn how to properly adjust to any particular opponent. Before I came here, the game was basically raise button and cbet flop for me - and I was completely lost when my opponent didn't let me do that - because that was the only "strategy" I learned at the other training sites.
Jack