Thoughts on HungryHorse? His bootcamp?

The main guy from the Hungry Horse videos, Marc Goone, has a series of coaching videos available on CLP. I think at one point he was releasing a video a week on that platform, not sure if he still does. Since you already subscribe to CLP, I would recommend watching those videos and deciding for yourself if it makes sense to pay for more. I enjoy his content myself but not sure that I would pay $4k+ for the group coaching sessions.

Thank you. I agree his content is enjoyable but $4k is a steep hill. I'll definitely check out his videos on CLP first.

I am a recreational player, but with over 10 years of experience, slowly moving up live stakes. Currently, I am a profitable $5/$10 player with lifetime over 10 BB per hour in all games below $5/$10.

I've watched quite a bit of the HungryHorse videos. I believe:

1. He should be a winning player.
2. He may be a more winning playing purely exploitatively against the LA Hustler $2/$5 population compared to the GTO nerds.
3. He is more intelligent and thinks more deeply about the game than the $2/$5 population (hence why I believe #1).

However,

4. Being a theory oriented player, I disagree with many of the lines he takes and don't believe his explanations for them. I am not sure if he truly believes everything he says either, or is just trying to maximize engagement.
5. Some of his explanations feel contradictory and he, himself, doesn't apply them in the same spots across videos. They feel like clickbait, but they definitely drive views, so good for him.
6. His entire strategy revolves around exploiting incredibly unbalanced, bad live players. This is fine if your only goal is to maximize hourly against such players, never play better ones, and also assume the population also doesn't improve over time.
7. Personally, I strongly prefer to learning the intricacies within the game and adjusting the exploitations myself over paying a huge sum to have someone else tell me what works, from his experience, on a certain population, over his own sample set.

i played with marc goone a lot when he first came to LA
he's a good player although I initially had him pegged as a fish because of the tattoos and he would buy in weird (all $25 chips, something pit gamblers do)
he for sure has a solid winrate he plays in butter soft games
if you play in LA he's probably a good coach
i don't watch his content so idk how good it is but he does win

I don't know the guy, I have no financial interest in his boot camp and I've never taken it. But I have done a very deep dive into his videos and the way he teaches thought process & hand reading has been more valuable to me than all the time I've spent on Run It Once, GTO WIzard, or any other coaching site--and I've spent a lot of time studying them all. Implementing his strategies has made a massive difference in my win rate, and I'm still improving. It's pure exploit poker, based on the FACT that live players have massive and predictable leaks, even the try-hards.

Is his boot camp worth it? I don't know. You learn a lot if you do a thorough watch through and study of his videos and have a good fundamental strategy. He has a couple videos in particular that have a game tree built out of how to think about each hand that is very useful. And some videos on how to play tougher players and pros. If you are planning on moving beyond 5/10 and find the content he already has out there as useful as I do, the boot camp might be worth a consideration. But if you just need to refine your thought process and improve your hand reading skills so you can exploit the typical 5/5 or 5/10 rec player relentlessly, then dig in to the vids.

A lot of his "agro exploit lines" like raising big with the nuts advantage and some combo draws are GTO approved, so are most of his agro lines. His exploits of opening too wide and opening every BTN blind probably hurt his win rate. And in the 5/5 YouTube series he did a lot of really bad flats in position against winning players because they were winning? But if they're winning regs he should be playing closer to GTO not flatting behind AKo or playing like a passive fish. Having said that I really enjoyed the $100/hr YouTube series and there are probably worse coaches out there but if you mimic his play style without his image and post flop edge and live player reads and super soft pool you are probably going to get wrecked.

these two things might be LA/california specific but I do them too.
you get exploited opening too wide by being 3bet light wide. almost nobody will actually do this vs you. if you're at a table with a sicko who starts 3betting your opens wide you can just table change, which is the appropriate exploit here. the "poker theory" counter would be to also widen your 4bets but you don't do this because it violates the second thing.

the second thing is winning regs usually play pot control and small ball vs each other. it's basically a form of soft play collusion. nobody actually ever says it out right like meet up with each other at the bar and say hey let's soft play each other you just start doing it if you're a good player because the incentive is there. why would i bash my head against the wall trying to play balls out vs the best players in the casino who are there all day every day, they're bankrolled so even if i stack them 5 times in the session they'll still be there tomorrow, etc, when i can just take money from the weak players? it makes life a lot simpler and smoothes out the variance.

the alternative is getting put in the blender multiple times a session in huge pots against a player where your whole hand history is basically just contributing to the rake and neither of your bankrolls. forget that.

I've got a good friend who spent the $4k. Moved from 2/5 to 10/20 in about 8 months. These exploits are working live in Belgium. He'll post his HH's in the group chat we're in and it's a riot. "Why TF did you size turn like that, it makes no sense..."

"I wanted to set up the river for a 2xp jam"

Seems a bit much to me, a 200nl reg, but if the pool allows the abuse than pay your bills with it.

Like pugs response don’t fight each other, when the fun ones come & go. One guy (we avoid each other) has so much variance in his game with big swings. Personally, I’m steady, not swingy. There is no one way.

I was surprised Marc is older than I thought. His style and videos are great. I don’t think you have to agree with everything he says to know he’s a serious teacher.

Poker coach = competitive industry
Guess it’s kinda like I’d probably have been a better golfer with a coach, but it is what it is.
But for those that can afford it, I would certainly talk to hungry.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Personally I think Marc's strategy (which he mentioned somewhere he mostly got from Gethen) is superior in many ways to Bart Hanson's (which I've been studying/applying over the last four years or so.) Apparently when he was playing for a living he was seen as tight and nitty, but seems to have changed his image radically (“My image is that of a guy who’s crazy and spewy” ) during his '$100 Challenge', which is great for getting calls for his value hands, not so much for getting folds when he's bluffing. As a matter of curiosity I noted down all his wins/losses from bluffs during his $100 Challenge - anyone care to guess the final total? (I'll post it tomorrow.)

The final total of all the bluffs Marc made in his '$100 Challenge' was a loss of $7238. I'm pretty sure his wild image was great for getting called on his value hands, not so much for running big bluffs. I gather he used to be viewed as a tight nit, but as he said in Ep. 18, “My image is that of a guy who’s crazy and spewy.”

Marc is a great player. How you look and are perceived matter a lot though and more than people seem to realize.

That is true, and I got the strong impression that Marc expected people to fold to his bluffs about as often as when he was playing for profit in prior years (with his tight nit image.)