I was asked by someone to review Carrot Corner. I'm not familiar with this guy, but went over some of his material and it feels like... I hope I'm not getting this wrong and please correct me if I am, but it's aimed at low stakes players and it has a very exploitative framework, which is right up my alley. So yeah, just found this. I think he doesn't do too many live plays, but this is one with a selection of stuff.
So I'll just go through it and we'll see what comes up, and I'll leave Pete's voice on so we have his comments as well.
Hand #1:
Pete Clarke: I call the Queen-Jack suited blind versus blind. Going to mix bet and check on this flop. What sizing scheme do I want to use? You can use some small, you can use some big here. So a few things you can do. You can also check.
Bet 2bb. Gets called.
Uri Peleg: I guess I'll start with just an explanation. You can use small, you can use big, you can use check. All of those are true with Queen-Jack. And you know, the exploitative way to think about this – and this is something I talk about in my blueprint course – is which pot sizes a hand aiming at. Because Queen-Jack is aiming at clearly bigger than six big blinds but clearly not all of the money. It's like a lot of options are on the table for this hand strength, whereas if you had something like Ace-10 high or pocket fours, that wouldn't be the case. And some bet sizes would be overshooting, or if you had something like Queen-6, you wouldn't really want to check back very much, only very rarely.
Turn (10bb):
The opponent checks.
Pete: On the turn, I have a slight preference for just betting here. I want to check back. I think I just want the back here. Going to follow my instinct.
Bet 7.5bb. Gets called.
River (24.9 bb):
The opponent checks.
Pete: I think we can go for three streets on the . The five isn't ideal, but there's just so many queens that we beat, so many pocket pairs, etc. Can we go B75? Yeah, I think we can go something similar, some sizing like this.
Bet 17.7 bb.
Uri: So the idea here on the turn with Queen-Jack, and again just to kind of add because I feel like this guy... so far from the one and a half hands I'm seeing, but just hearing him talk, he has an exploitative thought process, but it's important to understand the dynamics a bit better. Where yeah, Queen-Jack can bet or check the turn, and he has a preference for betting, but why can it better check? What's the reasoning?
And the reasoning is that you know, there are a lot of fairly bad rivers for your hand, and given that it's not very often a three-street hand, so there's no rush. And the thing that checking back accomplishes is it gives you a stronger hand in your river range, and if your opponent takes a small bet, you can raise. It dodges some check-raises. Like, there's a bunch of dynamics going on here. But really, I think what he's doing so far is just being very direct.
The opponent calls with .
Pete: Ace queen plus is especially likely to be raising flop at high frequency. The five is the main thing we lose to on this river. I don't think Kings, Aces, Ace-Queen are very often going check-call on flop here against third. Had we gone bigger on flop, this might be a check back now on the river.
Hand #2:
Pete Clarke: Queens, I am going to four-bet in hijack a bit deeper. If villain jams here, it's actually really close. I'm going to keep it down a little bit 'cause I don't mind playing post-flop, but this hand, I don't want to go huge here.
4-bet 17.5bb. Opponent calls.
Flop (36.5bb):
Pete: The Jack, the Ten, not ideal cards here. We still have reasonable equity against villain's range on this node though.
Bet 8.9bb. Opponent calls.
Turn (54.3bb):
Pete: We don't have a spade. I expect people to play this quite passively. I'm probably just going to favor betting turn. The question is what sizing I want to use. I block some of the high stuff here. I think I'll use third pot. I don't hate a bigger bet on this particular texture, but I think third pot, jam river.I think jacks and this will raise fairly often at like a reasonable frequency. There's also aces to think about, right? Aces is also a part of villain range here in terms of stuff that we're beating. If they call the turn, it's like AK diamonds, King-Jack diamonds, Jack-X spades. Other reason to like off frequency there with Queen no spade is that we're blocking every combo Jack of Jack-X with a spade and there's quite a lot of that out there.
Bet 17.9bb. Opponent folds.
Uri: I mean, so just to reiterate, the guy's playing fine. His explanations, like I said, they stem from a simple framework of approaching things, which is not necessarily bad. That's not a criticism, it's just an observation. I do think the framework he's operating from, from what I'm seeing so far, would be super fine for coaching how to beat low stakes.
Hand #3:
PC: You can make a big bet here and check, I'll check.
He checks next.
Turn (13.8 bb):
The opponent bets 4.6 bb.
Pete: We have a very high EV bluffcatcher on the turn. I don't really see the utility of raise. Maybe trying to make full house or aces or something fold. I think this hand just has a ton of showdown value. Snap check-raise basically never beats Ace-x to be super unlikely to do something like that.
Calls.
River (22.9 bb):
The opponent checks.
Pete: I guess my sizing should be like 4.3 big blinds or something. My range is incredibly strong here. If I can induce some silliness from this pool that would be nice. I mean if he's capable of checking a six that quickly on river like he's going to get the raise from me here. It's just too impressive like he deserves it. He didn't call... or call depends.
Bets 4.3bb and get called by .
Hand #4:
Pete: I mean check isn't that unreasonable here. It's really not that unreasonable.
Waiting.
Turn (5.4bb):
The opponent checks.
Pete: I think we just go bet bet now. Hope he has like nut flush draw or pair. Fold equity is like a thousand billion percent. Check back again is also an option. Oh! He does have something.
Bet 4.1bb. Opponent calls and checks the river.
River (13.5bb):
Uri: I'll just pause here but just in terms of thought process. So he's saying all equity is a 100% in this spot with a delay bet with Kings. Like the way I would think about this is your opponent's not full stacked and 7-7-7 means if he has a pair he has a boat. And these boards just tend to trigger guys like trip boards. So if I would go all-in on the river it might be like 5x pot because there's a subset of recreationals who just snap call any pair because they have a full house.
Pete: I'll try to get more with an overbet from a full house.
Bet 19.3bb. Opponent quickly calls with .
Pete: Sixes. You may say optimistic call, maybe you wouldn't call, maybe you would. I don't know – but they do, right? That's the point.
UP: So this would be a place where I like the way the guy's thinking. I think he's not taking it extreme enough, but yeah, definitely very experienced. That's a very old school concept, the boat situation.
Hand #5:
Pete: Got lots of range here for pretty big sizing. Not going to deviate yet.
The opponent calls.
Turn (30.3bb):
The opponent checks.
Pete: We do that so villain has a lot of underpairs here. If I go small enough on this spot I'm going to go bet 33 here. I'm going as pure. Actually I'm going to probably just always bet the river as well hoping villain won't be able to resist but to raise me with a hand like Jack or a flush or Queen-Jack or something. And then it's a spot where we can narrow their range into being about two pair like eight with a heart, Ace-Jack heavy etc.
Bet 10.4bb. Opponent calls.
River (51.1 bb):
Pete: We've already decided. I don't care if I have a heart or not.
Opponent leads 38.3 bb.
Pete: If he donks though, he's going to save us a lot of money. Thank you. He has it here almost always. Maybe it's 10-9 like once in a blue moon
Folds.
Uri: Interesting. So I think that's a cool hand and you can hear the exploitative wheels grinding. I don't know how well the guy teaches this, but clearly he's thinking in terms of over-folded, under-folded rather than GTO, which is perfectly fine. And like he said, he's planning to shove the river and the guy donk bets and he's like "I'm sure he has it," which is interesting.
I wouldn't be sure he has it personally. I mean, maybe he has it, maybe doesn't have it, maybe has something in between. I really wouldn't know. I definitely fold Ace King, but it would be interesting from a teaching standpoint to say, well, what threshold of hand do you need to call here if you think he's not often bluffing? Like, would you call Aces? Would you call King-Queen? Like, where are you putting the stop sign there?
Hand #6:
Pete: You're probably not going to call 65 big blinds for Ace-10 suited. Just about check-jam seems right. Check quickly.
The opponent checks next.
Turn (19bb):
Pete: Uh, let's go bet and consider what to do on River. Hopefully this just gets through. I'll probably get up River with this combo. I don't really care what the blockers are that much against this player.
Bet 11.4bb. Opponent calls.
River (41.8bb, effective stack 45bb):
Checks and folds to all-in.
Uri: So this Ace-10 of hand, I guess this is the first one which I don't like. I always tried to get in ahead of the guy making the videos, and I think that Carrot Man, I guess as he's called, is clearly hand reading and he's thinking in terms of exploitative thought processes and he's giving his opponents not much credit.
So he must use terms like how elastic people are, if a card is scary or not scary, and he's playing... This is an old school way of playing poker and it's definitely still an effective way to approach the game. And he's mixing that in with some solver knowledge, like he says "I'm going to... on the Jack-high board, three-bet pot, I'm going to bet big with everything and I'm not going to deviate yet." So he's clearly aware of some theory.
This is one, the Ace-10 of clubs, in which I just feel like his thought process got kind of mixed up. This is a very dangerous turn to bet with this type of hand strength at this SPR because the board's double flush draw and you just get shoved on. So I would rate this a fairly bad bet both from a theory and an exploitative standpoint.
I think a general lesson you could add is, you know, when the board is super duper wet, be careful opening the action with draws that aren't strong enough to check-call, because you risk getting blown off of your equity. Also, Ace-10 is a bit of a hand strength that it just doesn't benefit too much from betting here in terms of getting worse hands to fold.
I think this is a bit misplayed specifically, but that doesn't mean the principles and the thought process are not okay for this guy.
Uri's Review of Pete Clarke
After reviewing a couple more hands (which you can watch on YouTube here), Uri gave his review of the Carrot Corner coach's play.
So I would say I like Carrot Corner in terms of how good he is and which stakes he would beat. I'm fairly sure his offering, whatever it is, is very legit and the way he's teaching feels very practical.
With the assumption that it's more structured than this, because here he's saying like "I would do this" or "I would do that" and not necessarily giving the reasons, but if we assume he gets more structured, I would say for the target audience that I assume he has, this seems like a fairly good product.
I would guess just by seeing this guy play, he might beat NL1K. I wouldn't be shocked if he beats NL1K online. These thought processes that he has, like folding on the river with eight, it's a very dynamic way of looking at poker. Like you can see his brain is totally dialed into "What is exactly my opponent's range?" and he's like "Oh, my blockers are bad because, you know, you block 7-8 and you block 8-9." Those are not specifically 7-8 you want to block when bluff-catching on the river.
He's like "Oh, that it's a min-raised bomb pot, so he's going to have 3-4 and 7-4 and all the heart draws, so I actually expect it to be over-bluffed, and then I'm going to call this." So I love those kind of like being able to do that on the fly. It's very, very highly correlated with crushing poker, generally speaking.
So I will say I like Carrot Man. I would guess he beats mid to high stakes.
I don't know if he beats nosebleeds necessarily. The way he's talking and analyzing poker, it doesn't sound like the way a nosebleed player would talk. So that's just the read I get from hearing him talk, but I wouldn't be shocked if he could get there if he wanted to or if he's been there in the past. Like, clearly a very sharp guy. Yeah, I would guess his products are good, whatever they are.
