This week, listeners of the PocketFives Podcastare in for a treat. We’re taking a break from one-on-one interviews to bring you an in-depth roundtable discussion of poker strategy. Joining us are Jamie pokerjamersArmstrong, Jordan Jymaster0011Young, Nick agriffrodMitchell (pictured), and Bjorn kleathKleathersson, who are some of the top minds in the poker business. In fact, all four are in the top 50 of the PocketFives Rankings and two are in the top 10. Let’s hear what they had to say.

The discussion began with a debate over bet sizing. Mitchell opined, “Min-raising is in right now and smaller 3bets are more popular… That just relatively plays stacks a lot smaller. You have to be willing to raise-fold [20 big blind] stacks because you have to maneuver those stacks as well as your opponents.” Mitchell has over $4 million in cashes from tournaments that count for the Rankings.

One poster in a thread in Poker Discussionasked Kleathersson (pictured) when he should tighten up his range in late position if there are perfect re-steal stacks behind him. The 10th player in the Rankings responded, “That’s completely player-dependent. Some people don’t ever utilize their re-shove stacks like that. They are still just shoving value hands and not shoving too light on you… If you know someone is ready to attack you, you have to pull back your ranges a bit and can’t open certain things.”

Mitchell explained how he plays hands like K-10 suited from middle position in the late stages of tournaments with 15 big blinds behind him and no action in the pot. Mitchell noted, “It depends on the players behind you because generally you aren’t going to see flops, which is why those hands are really so valuable. They flop a lot of combo draws and things like that where you win a lot of chips without even hitting your draws just by playing them aggressively. But, with 15 big blinds, you’re not going to see much of the board to do anything besides open-shove.”

Armstrong (pictured) is one of the veterans of the game and is camped out at #15 in the Rankings. On his schedule, Armstrong told listeners of the special PocketFives Podcast, “Sunday is a pretty heavy day. I usually wake up around 10:30am so I can late register for the Warm-Up… I usually just play nights on Monday and Tuesday and then on Wednesday, I’ll play a full day… Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, I’ll usually take off.”

Despite their rash of success, each of our guests openly shared their strengths and weaknesses. “My biggest strength, which I’ve developed over the last couple of months, is playing post-flop and getting multiple streets of value when most people only get value out of one street or two streets,” Armstrong divulged. “A weakness is probably playing too tight on a short stack when I should be profitably shoving hands in spots where I just want to preserve my tournament life… I need to be shoving lighter.”

“One of my strengths is pre-flop 3betting and keeping control of the pot,” Young (pictured) informed listeners. “One of my weaknesses is not noticing when someone has been folding and waiting to trap me because they know that I have a tendency to spaz out when I get 3bet.”

There will be another roundtable discussion next week on the PocketFives Podcast. In the meantime, check out this week’s version by tuning into the PocketFives Poker Podcast. We’d like to thank Armstrong, Young, Mitchell, and Kleathersson for joining us.