Poker Out Loud Season 1, Episode 8 Recap

Episode link: https://solveforwhy.io/programs/poker-out-loud?cid=1990981

Poker Out Loud was created by Solve For Why, an advanced poker training company. Solve For Why’s founder and lead instructor is Matt Berkey, a long-time high-stakes poker professional in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Poker Out Loud is a unique approach to poker training and entertainment. Top poker professionals play a cash game format, while all wearing noise-cancelling headphones. Before their actions, they speak their thoughts out loud, revealing to the audience their thought process and reasoning behind each poker decision.

In addition to the noise-cancelling function on everyone’s headphones, they are also listening to high-volume music when the action is not on them, to ensure they can’t hear anything being spoken by their opponents. While none of the players are proficient lip-readers, they are also told to not look at the player who is currently speaking, just to avoid picking up on any information.

Episode 8 is unique in that it picks up in the middle of a hand that started in the previous episode. Five players saw a flop of 9-7-4 with two diamonds. Berkey led out with his top pair, Nick Howard raised with his overpair of Queens, and Christian Soto elected to cold call with his middle pair and backdoor straight draws. Chin gets lucky on the turn 6 and makes two-pair. Nick continues the betting lead and is then committed against Chin’s all-in raise on the turn. Chin’s two-pair hold up, to give him his first big pot win of the session.

Chaos starts to ensue, as the metagame continues to escalate, forcing players to make unorthodox plays against the emotionally driven actions of their opponents. Limps lead to large raise sizes, which leads to large 3-Bet sizes. The result in this particular case is that Berkey wins a large pot with his unimproved Ace-Jack offsuit.

Christian finally wakes up with a real hand, pocket Queens, and he appropriately 3-Bets Berkey’s J9s open. The board runs out pretty scary for both ranges, but Chin manages to win a decent pot.

At this stage in the season, the profit leaderboard is pretty polarized, with three big winners and three big losers in the session.

Zach Resnick makes a well-timed 3-Bet squeeze, creating a large multi-way pot with several marginal holdings. Zach is able to maintain his aggression through a flop check-raise all-in, taking down a nice pot.

Later on, Christian incorporates limping into his preflop strategy. He gets into a tricky hand against Jordan Young, where he has to navigate some large bet sizes from Jordan, which Christian views as suboptimal. Jordan ends up making a crying call on the river against Christian’s bluff to win the pot.

You can watch this episode in full, along with every other episode from all seasons of Poker Out Loud, at solveforwhy.io, Be sure to use promo code POLBLOG for 25% OFF your first month!