How He Won MILLIONS Playing Mixed Games

Today we're talking to Jake Abdalla, also known as Jllama, our instructor for the Mixed Games Course at Upswing Poker. Jake has crushed mixed games for years, winning millions of dollars and becoming one of the most feared players around. Now you can learn from him directly.
The 50%-off open cart period ends on Monday. Get the course now: www.upswingpok...
Subscribe for more wsop vlog, news, comedy, and hand breakdowns. Poker Hands is the show where Doug analyzes live poker hands from tv poker shows such as Poker After Dark, EPT (European Poker Tour), High Stakes Poker, the World Series of Poker (WSOP), the Aussie Millions, WPT (World Poker Tour) the Big One For One Drop, and the PCA (Pokerstars Carribean Adventure). He especially enjoys reviewing hands by popular high stakes pros like Viktor "Isildur" Blom, Fedor Holz, Dan Cates (Jungleman), Tom "Durrrr" Dwan, Phil Hellmuth, Phil Ivey, and Daniel Negreanu.

[@DougPolkPoker]

This course goes back to full price on January 8. Get 50% off NOW: www.upswingpoker.com/mixed-games-poker/

[@johntitor7886]

Ill give you 1200 TRON for the course.

[@gman4699]

Doug Polk Poker people can open with 999 and fold on the river

[@NilleMr20]

Logical to teach others to be better in poker and make it harder to win money long term? I really dont understand this. In no other "sport" will you find people wanting their opponents to get better. The compensation you receive for teaching will be pennies compared to the lower winrate long term..

[@tammykellam1208]

they have came to the conclusion that these are the best, NL Irish is another game you might enjoy

[@theFINNISHmonster1]

Whats up Doug, guys here!

[@PfatPface]

Homeboy has a money counting machine in the background. mbn. LOL.

[@DougPolkPoker]

lol amazing how did I not see that before

[@piratelute8934]

Not that surprising especially if he is playing mixed games. Prob stumbles up with a couple thousand stuffed in his pocket every night

[@bobbob-kf8yw]

love your work Doug but 1k is just to much for me, that's two weeks work. keep up the great vids

[@jared_grey]

You guys were playing FullFlush on the side while filming this weren't you? :)

[@jakeabdalla275]

shhhhh

[@taylorshannon7358]

...Is that the Casting Couch room?

[@ChinchillaisGod]

Doug can you make a comparison between Upswing Tournament Masterclass and Raise Your Edge Tournament Masterclass? I’m borderline between them both and simply don’t know which one I should purchase. Anyway you could present an unbiased comparison without, ya know, infringing copyright laws. Or link me to someone else’s comparison online? Thanks love u Doug

[@ligafftheindifferent3495]

This first hand shows that once the level of play gets really high and aggressive, you really can't fold anything decent on the river. His turn raise is at least decent since he should get some folds from better hands like medium flushes and non-nut low draws.

[@DilipDas-ow9nb]

Hey Doug. The craziest hand I've seen recently is Nguyen vs Bicknell on Poker After Dark last week. Bicknell turns black AQo into a bluff raise on the river on Qh9d2h 8h 2c! At first I thought this was just bad, but now I'm not sure. Would LOVE to see a hand analysis on this. PLEASE from a big fan of yours.

[@blank5210]

Doug, you are my hero.

[@criplexxx]

Happy newyear Douglas. Wish you all the best and goodluck at the tables in 2018.

[@daveyfadess]

Currently the biggest game for the last few months at Foxwoods casino is Badugi and it's a short list of players for 150/300. I've been studying it. Can you make a video on Badugi ?

[@jakeabdalla275]

whitesmoke hiding unfortunately I didnt get to cover badugi. A lot of the ideal framework behind Triple Draw is applicable to badugi and other draw games too

[@daveyfadess]

Jake Abdalla Thanks for replying! I'll definitely look into that I see the correlation for sure, im sure it will pay off, thank you.

[@11heroes.gregor75]

are there going to be videos added to the course in the future or are the 30hours +fb groupe all you get? thanks in advance

[@DougPolkPoker]

There may be some small updates but the 30 hours + FB group is the vast majority of the value you'll get

[@stanime3065]

conclusion: Bet. Raise. Bet. Raise. Bet. Raise. Bet. Raise.

[@gabb5483]

would you say this course is useful for improving at any form of Limit game? can the content also be somewhat applied to other halfway comparable games you typically find in live mix games. For example Badugi, Badacey, Razzdugi, Super Stud, PLO8, NL27SD ...

[@jakeabdalla275]

I think it's a good starting place. It gets easier to pick up new games after you have a handful under your belt. The limit games especially relate to each other. It may take longer to get proficient at some of the more unusual games that you listed, but as they are primarily played live, the competition is also evolving slower in many of those variants.

[@baska-]

Holy shit, he's back.

[@rc5989]

Upswing is more expensive but is guaranteed to be worth every penny. Super high quality.

[@DougPolkPoker]

Thanks RC! Appreciate the comment here and glad you enjoy our courses.

[@michaljugo660]

Heard that upswing poker looking for a new plo-coach. What about “Victor Blom” aka Isildur1?

[@johnwalker7225]

love the money counter on the desk behind Jake.... those $100's can be tough to count correct

[@jakeabdalla275]

The struggle is real

[@IceyFlame500]

Have you ever been told that you kinda look like Mark Hoppus from Blink182?

[@MrZaetiggy]

Have a question I need answered. Playing 2-5 PLO and three players limp and I limp with jj98 one suit. I’m sitting with about $1800 effective. Flop comes JQ5 rainbow. Small blind leads for 20, player behind him folds, I flat and the button raises to 120. Original raiser flats. I think about raising but end up just calling. Turn is a 5. It checks through and the river is a 2. player one checks and I bet 300. Button folds and the other player raises to 900. I called and he shows Q553. 🤬🤬🤬. I think I should’ve raises on the flip. Any feedback would be appreciated.

[@nardinit]

MrZaetiggy you played it fine. To play balanced youahould mix in some raises on the flp but flatting is also a fine line.

[@ligafftheindifferent3495]

I like a flop raise because I want gutshots with backdoor outs to fold. Slowplaying is rarely correct in PLO, especially when you have position. There are simply too many cards that hit the turn that can give a thin flop call a ton of equity on the turn.. The real question is how to play a variety of turn cards and player actions. Pots in PLO get so large because there are often 2 players who want to get all the chips in before the turn might harm their equity. For the actual hand.... Q553 is pretty awful and and should be folded, even in the small blind. But most folks are thinking like holdem and would never dream of discarding these rags due to the set draw. They don't realize how awful bottom set is in this game. You win small pots and lose big ones to higher boats. Once in a great while, a set is the nuts and in that case alone a small set have value, but even then it will get beat enough to be a problem. Drawing dead to 1 card sucks. Once these folks make a set, they probably won't lay it down if you do raise. Hell, most would not fold to a bet and raise on a flop of A95 rainbow. So if you raise, he puts you on a wrap or top 2 (cause fish always put opponents on hands that justify a call) and calls. Then he hits the 1 outer and laughs at your corpse. And sure, you can run into top set, but unless the SPR is very, very deep, middle set is a hand you want to go with because in the long run, your EV is good enough even if you do face an overset from time to time.

[@teedee463]

What's this I hear about you retiring?

[@piratelute8934]

Tee Dee makes sense but he doesn't seem to be beating games anymore. If he was why wouldn't he be online anymore? Then again he might play on alts or some shit idk

[@bobbob6472]

How much is the giveaway?

[@gruna288]

After checking his graph at hsdb it looks like he is really a beast. So 500$ is really cheap, but you can not play online anywhere beside Pokerstars, and I'm not coming back there.

[@AT-qm8gv]

Doug, do you have any interest, or plan on having a course on masterclass.com?

[@jessewillett6785]

Check out the course people. This is a winning strategy as are all his courses. I'll be doing this mixed games course in two weeks and am excited to better the understanding of something other that hold'em. If you're looking to expand your winnings, upswing poker is well worth the money.

[@jessewillett6785]

Btw it amazes me the amount of stupid irrelevant comments a video post receives.

[@jessewillett6785]

Adam R that's funny man

[@jessewillett6785]

Adam R I wonder if Doug is reading this like wtf is Adam talking about. Hey click on my name and watch the one pitiful video I've uploaded just so you know that I'm not Doug

[@Tsiphon]

On the 2nd hand, with the board 42AJ5 and TT23 in the hole, how does he have the wheel? I thought you always had to use 2 hole cards in omaha. So basically his opponent has a flush for the high and A2346 for the low.

[@jakeabdalla275]

Tsiphon 23 in the hand, A45 from the board. Made the wheel on the river.

[@Tsiphon]

Jake Abdalla that would only be the high hand correct, and therefore no chop

[@jakeabdalla275]

A-2-3-4-5 is the wheel in O8, straights/flushes don't count against the low here, unlike in 2-7 Triple Draw. Does that clear it up?

[@Tsiphon]

Jake Abdalla yeah that's good. I saw the straight but had the assumption that if you paired a card it was removed from counting, but I see it's only if it you required the two cards for the pair to make the low, as in A 2 4 wouldn't give you a low, but because there are 4 low cards and you're not playing the pair it's good. I think I got it now, thanks.

[@veekay3158]

_"He needs to be worried about A3, A4..."_ Isn't A3 *behind* A5?

[@stevelavigne619]

Yay for Doug

[@joeypham9237]

You also have a live 3

[@liebesaenliebeernten9418]

What's up coins!? Alt guys here!

[@ts4gv]

limit games feel so weird to me

[@mrsalt548]

5 games ??? when everyone Plays 8 game , why not all of them?

[@chizick14]

multi level marketing, already has NL and PLO courses

[@jd9d8f9dsf98dsuf8sdf]

Hey, I just wanted the community to know not to deposit on Tiger Gaming network, I've now been waiting for more than 3 months on a wired transfer withdraw and all they're replying to me is that they are following this issue with their financial department but never actually get back to me. Let me know if someone else is having similar issues with them. Thanks

[@beatthebieber8449]

he got crushed from ALL german FL players and now we should buy a course from him? really???

[@tjhoo4758]

wait what? aren't you both supposedly wizards?

[@danielworthen3332]

Ok flop middle set and a low draw then click buttons got it! ME SMRT

[@dochmbi]

How can anyone ever fold in O8 when you are constantly getting and offering 10:1 15:1 20:1 odds?

[@caseyfoster7948]

dochmbi that's why I don't play 08 because it's like NL on promotion night

[@DougPolkPoker]

There is an art to folding a small amount of the time. If you never folded, then your opponent could exploit you by never bluffing you on high only boards. In general you should be folding a small amount of the time.

[@jakeabdalla275]

Just like in NL and PLO, folding too much or too little is exploitable. That being said, we're def looking to do a lot more calling in the limit games, but 100% will usually still be too much!

[@ligafftheindifferent3495]

It is player dependent. A game like PLO presents a paradox. Since so many decent hands are out, bluffing is going to rarely work. At best it might get you more action on future pots, but on this pot, bluffing is almost certainly setting your chips on fire. But a player who understands this and only bets the nuts or close is never bluffing, so you should never call him. But if everyone thinks this way, bluffing becomes extremely profitable. On the other hand, GTO will not really help. Suppose you turn a straight and a flush falls on the river and a player who never bluffs decides to bet, any strategy that has you calling with less than a flush is not your best strategy from the point of view. of exploitation. In an extreme case, you simply fold to any bet in this spot. The best course in a limit game is to go ahead and call until you decide that this player simply does not bluff on the river. There are also a lot of spots where you can be damn sure you are facing the hand they are representing. If there is a bet and raise on a board of A456J, your set of aces simply cannot be good. Maybe somebody got cute with A2Jx, but not both players.

[@superpasi7315]

When will we see more of Crypto Doug?

[@tarmogoyf3332]

44 minutes yesterday wasn't enough?

[@tarmogoyf3332]

NOPE! NEVER ENOUGH MORE CRYPTODOUG OR RIOT!!!

[@ian_y]

The trouble is, I'm not sure how effective the info in this course would be when playing low stakes on Stars. Players are V E R Y reluctant to fold, so any attempt to get them to fold usually fails. I suppose it would help with evaluating river/7th street decisions, thin value, etc. Low stakes are such a mad environment where people are looking to play a lot of hands and have fun, & go to showdown. The variance is high. In triple draw opponents will keep drawing so if you pat with an 87, 96 etc they seem to get there often, magically making a better 8 or 7. Would like to hear from Doug, Jake and others as to what help this course would be in the crazy low stakes environment. Also, I'm surprised NLH and PLO are left out altogether as these games can play differently when included as part of the 8-game mix.

[@stanime3065]

i get the impression the lab is aimed at mid-high stakes.

[@2011blueman]

What I learned is that Doug Polk lacks a fundamental understanding of limit games.

[@spikenn616]

Doug.... Why did you retire to go work at a hedge fund? I don't understand!?!?

[@wolfgangbrugger3509]

Who said he retired and is working at a hedge fund? As I understand he is just diversifying into Crypto News from his Pokernews Channel (a big part of his 160k Poker subscribers are also into Crypto => great viewer basis to start from) and into Crypto-Education based on his Poker-Education expertise (he proved his consistency and professionalism, and - most importantly - staying unbiased by not taking a sponsor deal with his Poker coaching site and there is so much bs in crypto news as most sites are only trying to sell you something they have deals on.....)

[@johnnyhartley4330]

Wolfgang you silly boy, you have got your poker players mixed up. As William Stickroe correctly says, Doug has announced his retirement from poker to focus on trading. While lookalike Manessa Selbst has moved into advising how to invest in a totally speculative financial bubble before it bursts.

[@wolfgangbrugger3509]

nice trolling :D

[@NriapiaTV]

Loving the tshirt...

[@pugnatumterram7452]

So lets see a sample of this course. Doug asking questions throughout? The "expert" is pretty dry and not super informative in describing the thought processes. I'm sure he is super knowledgeable, but transferring the knowledge is key.

[@DougPolkPoker]

I think Jake is a great coach fwiw, but its also always been more of an upswing stance to get people who actually win money out there coaching the courses over people that sound smart when they talk but don't have the results.

[@mju34]

if you're paying that much money for a course you will get a lot more out of it than a casual viewer would. your incentive to fully understand the expert is quite low, whereas the motivated student's incentive is much higher

[@pugnatumterram7452]

@doug no doubt he is a beast but if he can’t articulate what he is thinking, why he is thinking, and how we should be think it then it doesn’t matter from a coaching perspective. FWIW. The actual course may be amazing who knows. Why I said a short clip/sample of say 5 mins might be helpful. Your biz do as you please.

[@pugnatumterram7452]

mju34 maybe you are maybe you aren’t. Even drug dealers, Hollywood, and video game makers know you give out samples. Not the whole video, but a short clip. As I said his biz, do what you want. My 2 cents. This video worked because Doug asked the questions the audience needed to hear. His answers were great and made sense...but you gotta discuss it.

[@OnStageLighting]

While people 'who sound smart' aren't a good bet in any subject, teaching doesn't come naturally just because someone is crusher in their field. The ideal combination is someone who has 'done' AND a natural communicator. It seems to me that the real beasts in poker are often unable to easily externalise their own application to their craft, let alone interpret things for someone who is at a lower level of understanding. Being good at something doesn't make just anyone a good educator. Good luck with the new ventures. :-)

[@pasi59]

I coudn't watch that more than 8 minutes. FLO8 IS a WAY of LIFE, eh

[@joeypham9237]

Wow, you got bailout twice, lol

[@joeypham9237]

Horrible three bet playing limit O8

[@ununseptium7961]

See, NLH isn't life.

[@jakeabdalla275]

confirmed, tops 1/8th of life

[@cassidyblank3498]

Hey Doug love the channel, let me get a free course and I'll give a honest review, I need a good subject for my first video, help a Bad Reg brother out, ehhh???

[@chadweizer897]

Watched the first two hands, he gets extremely lucky...lucky enough to only win half the pot. Not sure how anyone can learn from what I just watched. Maybe the last 20 mins changed

[@jakeabdalla275]

Chad Weizer went for more eventful hands than usual for this video, but you do get lucky a lot in 4 card limit games! When no one folds much, the best hand holds up less often and your edges tend to come from forcing folds or winning an extra bet rather than having the better hand.

[@NilleMr20]

why would you teach people to get better in poker lol. makes it harder for pros to win big. Makes no sence. Its like wanting your opponents on a soccer team to get better so they can kick you out of the team..

[@joshgreen3308]

NilleMr20 ego

[@NilleMr20]

yes it has to be that because theres no other reason. Look at the poker online world. Even people who taught small stakes poker to others years ago can no longer win money. I really do not understand why you have to give away your edge if that hurts your longrun winrate. And for high stakes players to teach other pros is just insane if you ask me. IT MUST BE AN EGO THING!

[@themaharishi8160]

Knowing how to player poker is pretty basic. Not losing your shit when your nuts are out drawn for the 10th time in a row is the advanced part. It doesn't matter if you teach people how to play. They'll never learn how to live to be able to implement it anyway.

[@Pokarface7]

Why would college professors teach you how to get a career doing what they used to do (or still do) for a living before they became professors?

[@itsnick37]

Or I can buy a book that covers all that and then a few extra games for 40$.... just saying

[@stuartkeating6508]

Oh great. He's become one of those scammy KZbinrs selling dumb courses while interviewing owners and testimonials

[@MaxsCognacReview]

Doug Woke

[@Master-vx3qh]

I have this guy labeled as bad reg losing player at mixed games.

[@timb4248]

Im sure you play high stakes mixed games.

[@ダニエル-x5d]

The constant noises this guy makes with his mouth is annoying as hell. I'm sorry, but he has to fix that habit if has any hope of anyone subscribing to this.

[@madderall_dot_com]

He literally misplayed every hand. Too bad Doug is so bad at limit that he can't even tell this guy is no O8 expert.

[@chizick14]

3 handed seems ok

[@01samuelc]

Thought I was the only one to notice this!

[@damianplasencia2708]

@ialwaysreply what are you smoking? JLlama used to regularly play with other O8 crushers from what i recall on the rails years ago..people like Kyle 'KPR16' Ray and Kagome/Hasu/JesusLebtNot...Even Viktor Blom seemed to do well in this format..he used to regularly play 1k/3k O8.

[@mikeross6589]

first :o

[@ryanbrown8920]

Pretty dumb hand selection