4. If you're strictly limiting it to game play and not things like game selection, seat selection, tilt, etc. I'm going to say preflop play again. PreFlop play varies quite a bit among the regs and more so among the weaker regs.

For a postflop tendency, I think many of the weaker regulars are at the extreme of either going to SD way too much or way too little. This often relates to hand reading. The worse of hand reader that you are, the more you're going to be thinking about the strength of your own hand vs. thinking about the range of your opponent's hands and the pot odds being offered. In other words, a poor hand reader might be in a situation on the river where they have top pair and as a result say I can't fold top pair getting 6-1. A very good hand reader may have deduced through their opponent's tendencies, actions through the hand, and the board texture that not enough of their range is worse than top pair to justify calling getting 6-1.

5. I've played as many as 11 tables in the past but always confined sessions with more than 6 tables to low limits. There have been a number of times over the last couple years where I've needed VPPs and just fired up as many 5/10 and 10/20 tables as I could fit on my screen.

I believe PT has a report you can run where it breaks down your win rate by number of tables. I looked at this a few years back and unsurprisingly there was a dropoff in my win rate for each additional table I was playing.

It's a delicate balancing act trying to find that optimal number of tables without sacrificing too much win rate. One of the biggest issues I ran into over the years was being forced to play when I knew I was off my game. It would drive me crazy to play knowing that I was playing worse than I was capable of. This mentality always carried over to multi-tabling where I just didn't feel comfortable forcing extra tables on myself knowing that there'd be a drop off in my play. The exception being those low limit sessions I'd play for VPPs.

6. Just one recreational player is enough. These days it's rare to find a game at high stakes with more than one rec. player so there isn't really a choice.

7. I am a firm believer in playing an exploitative style unless you're faced with an opponent or a situation where you don't think you can exploit the player.

Ideally you want to be playing an exploitative style against bad players and a more balanced style against better players. The better your opponent, the more important it is to be balanced. The idea being that the better players are going to be able to pick up in the areas you're unbalanced and exploit you.

Some people go overboard with being balanced though and as a result leave a lot of money on the table. To give you a quick example:

Let's say we're on the river with 78s and the board has run out 9TQAK so we have air. And let's say the pot has 5 BB's at that point. Let's also assume your opponent has a WTSD of 52 and never folds a pair regardless of the board.

The exploitive player is going to think to himself well this opponent has a pair 90+% of the time and will never fold therefore I'm not going to bluff.

The balanced player will think one of two things:

-I have one of the worst hands in my range, therefore I have to bluff.

-I'm getting 5-1 on a bluff which means I need to be bluffing with roughly 17% of my range to make this an EV neutral situation and 78s falls into this range so I have to bluff.

8. I actually played a fair amount of 1/2 and 2/4 NL several years back, around 250K hands and managed a win rate of about 1 BB/100. I think you need a little more creativity to play NL and that's one of my weaknesses. I'm a very analytical and logical thinker and had a very tough time wrapping my brain around NL or any NL/PL game for that matter. I do think I could become proficient in NL but I think it would take me much, much longer than it took most the successful NL regs playing today.

For me, things have to make sense. I need to know exactly why I'm making a play and the math behind the play that justifies it. When I don't know why or don't know the math, I tend to resort to playing passively and always take the "easy" option like calling or folding instead of raising.

I did try to learn PLO at one point but with little success. I think if I were to try a different game at this point it would be 2/7 TD or one of the fixed limit stud games.

Just wanted to subscribe to this. Thanks for doing the well and bringing me back to the forums for the first time in years.

Thank you for doing this, very interesting reading!

Don't know if anyone asked that, or if you talked about this before.

Have you ever consider playing live poker? This could have you stay in the USA and enjoy the stuff you like, maybe save some money and time traveling?

Did your family went with you abroad? How did you balance life and poker?
What reactions do you get from family and friends about the new direction, and how do you deal with it?

Best of luck!
Merry.

Hmm, this varied a lot throughout my career. Early on when I wasn't chasing SNE I spent quite a bit of time studying. If I had to guess, I'd say about 20 hours a week. This probably went down to about 10-15 hours a week once I started chasing SNE. And after BF hit, almost all my studying was done from October-December when I was back home.

Here's some of what my studying consisted of:

Early on I read every book I could get my hands on. Literally everything. As fast as they were making poker books was as fast as I was reading them. I think I mentioned earlier, I still have a bookshelf full of them. At some point the poker book market became so over-saturated that I became more selective in what I was buying and reading.

When training sites came around, I would watch as many videos as possible and was doing this up until a few years ago. It wasn't just limit videos I'd watch, for example I tried to watch as many Phil Galfond videos as I could. Just to hear the level of thought that goes into each decision he made was really eye-opening and motivating in a sense.

Over the years I was always discussing strategy with different people. It wasn't an official study group or anything but just people that I'd send hands to and ask questions of or vice versa. If I had to guess there's probably been about twenty different people over the years that I've done that with.

I also did a lot of analysis in HEM and PT. At least once a year, and sometimes two or three, I'd go back and look at how all my opening, defending, and 3-betting hands were doing in all the different situations. I often would ask friends to send me their data to compare.

Something else I would do in HEM was to run reports on different situations and then make a spreadsheet with all the regulars names and record the results. For example, I looked at how often my opponents were bluffing when I defended from the big blind against an UTG-But open where the hand went bet/bet/bet.

Another example of something I looked in HEM was the ratio of different actions my opponent took on the turn when 3-betting out of position. How often they were check/folding, check/raising, or betting.

Basically anything I thought that would be useful that I couldn't immediately ascertain from my HUD was a candidate for running a report on.

I also spent a lot of time reviewing hands and sessions in HEM. This is a great way to not only study your own play but to study your opponents play. Many of the notes I took on players came from these session reviews. I'm not sure about PT but with HEM you can have your HUD running as you're watching with ability to take notes just as you would when playing.

As far as reviewing my own hands, I'd pause anytime I came to a decision that I thought was questionable and I'd take as much time as I needed to determine the best course of action. Sometimes I'd spend over an hour on one decision using PokerStove/ProPokerTools and a pen and paper.

The last thing I did a lot of in HEM was to study the games of specific players in detail. For the most part I tried to stick with recreational players when doing this. The recreational players are the ones that have the most room for exploitation and often are the most difficult to understand. So there's a lot of value in getting inside a rec players head especially because their play doesn't tend to deviate much and they're poor at adjusting.

I don't know if this would fall into the studying category but something else I was doing throughout most of my years playing was either tutoring or mentoring someone and I'm still doing that to this day. I really can't stress how beneficial this is especially if you have someone that asks a lot of good questions. Having to verbalize your thoughts really forces you to think and also serves to reinforce ideas.

He's not a Bear, he's an Elephant Babar, that is.

Other than that, what a fantastic thread. Thanks for doing this. Quite remarkable how 99.9% of content (except specific ranges etc') is applicable to other forms of poker as well. Subbed.

Hey PJ,

I'm probably going to dance around a lot of these questions due to the legality of sports betting in the US.

I did bet a lot of sports while I was playing poker especially after BF. I bet on anything I thought I had an edge in. My bets could range from World Cup Friendlies to NHL player props and everything in between.

Up until I discovered DFS my intention was to gradually transition into sports betting and do that full time. Sometime last year I decided I didn't want to follow other peoples picks and wanted to learn how to handicap myself. I read a bunch of books on statistical analysis, Excel, database management, and even took an online course in sabremetrics.

Up until about three months ago I was strongly considering buying an apartment in Costa Rica to have a base of operations for poker and sports betting with the idea that I'd transition more and more into sports betting as time went on. This was far from ideal but with all the travelling I'd been doing along with the expenses, I wanted to settle in one place instead of living out of a suitcase all the time.

There are a lot of issues with sports betting just like poker as you know. Skrill being shut down was definitely a blow. I was fortunate that I was in Mexico at the time and was able to open a Neteller account using my address there.

I stayed in several places in Mexico including Cancun, Cozumel, Playa Del Carmen, and Cabo San Lucas. Of all the places I've been in the world, Playa Del Carmen was probably my favorite.

At this point sports betting is on the back burner. It's not worth the hassle when I can play DFS which is totally legal and less of a headache in so many regards. As you mentioned with sports betting, very few books like "sharp" bettors and are quick to limit you or close your accounts so that's another big drawback.

It's hard for me to comment on the money making potential of DFS because I only started less than three months ago. I have done well enough that I think it's worth pursuing though. There are definitely long-term concerns I have with DFS though like the 10% rake that seems to be the industry norm. Grinders are able to overcome the rake now because of the huge influx of recreational players but in time as knowledge becomes more readily available and the overall skill level improves, I think the game could become difficult to beat.

I see I missed a question..

In terms of leaving a large amount of money with one of the online sports books, my advice would be to never leave an amount of money that's going to be life changing if you lose it. I'd be very surprised if you ever had any problems with the major books like BM, 5D, or BoDog. But I also would of never thought there would of been a problem with FullTilt if you asked me five years ago so it definitely warrants at least some caution.

Thanks Jambony.


1. I don't really want to post my preflop ranges here because of the amount of time I spent learning them. There's also a chance I could play poker again if DFS doesn't work out so that's not information I want to give out at this point. If you ask me again in a year and DFS is still going really well, I may be happy to answer

I will say that the two ranges you're asking about are the ones you should have the most data on. Any game you're playing 3-handed+ in will have data from those situations so I'd recommend filtering your HEM or PT for that and examining your results. Also what might be right for me to open and defend might not be right for you depending on the games you're playing in, your opponents postflop skill level and your own skill level.

Essentially what you're trying to do is find a default range that you'd be using under normal conditions. When you look at the results of all your hands, it should be returning the results of typical or average game conditions provided you have enough data. So the idea is to take those base ranges and then adjust for the game you're playing in. Specifically in the instances you asked about, you'd be looking at the SB's 3-bet % and BB's defending % along with BB's postflop skill level when deciding what to open from the button. And with defending from the BB you'd be looking at the Buttons RFI along with their postflop skill level.

2. I have played over nine thousand MLB tournaments in DFS over the last ten plus weeks so I'm confident I have an edge there. The other sports are still a work in progress and I don't have nearly enough data to know yet. I'm very optimistic about NFL though, I'm learning quickly.

MLB is much more of a tournament sport in DFS than others. I strongly suggest getting more into cash games (h2h, 50/50) for NFL and NBA.

I would think NCAA football is the "least efficient", in that not everyone knows everything about what's going on.

Thanks for the kind words. I'm not here often these days but it certainly seems as if online poker has become a lower-margin business. Specifically, sites (e.g. Stars and Full Tilt ) seem to be taking a higher proportion of losing players' money. It's much more efficient to bleed the fish dry at roulette than to give a proportion of their deposits to grinders.

Some people moaned about my books giving away the strategic special sauce, but the online poker economy that we've had for the last 10+ years was a unique thing.

Hey DJ,

I think the beginning of your mid/high play sort of overlapped with the end of mine. I think you have potential to be an excellent player. You remind me of Heisenberg in the sense that you're one of those guys that makes a lot of unorthodox plays. The result of that is that it's very difficult to peg an exact range down on you in a lot of spots which is always a plus. I think if you get that proper ratio of solid/unorthodox play down in the different common spots/scenarios, you're going to be dangerous.

It's refreshing to see someone that's not afraid to take different lines and really mix it up, often going against conventional wisdom. That's a great way to learn because it puts you and your opponents in a lot of unfamiliar spots. I wish you the best of luck on your way up the ladder.

To answer your question, it's definitely more important to be skillful than lucky. Luck will only carry you so far at highstakes, that inevitable run of bad luck will come and when it does it'll be that much worse for a less skillful player.

I think I kind of understand what you're getting at though. There are handful of guys playing stakes as high as 200/400 that wouldn't be winners in the average 10/20 games that run. Some of them take their shots at the highest limits when they're running bad which is a recipe for disaster. You can only get away with that for so long before variance catches up to you.

All that said, there's very little difference these days between a 10/20 and 200/400 game. In fact, I'd argue the two main recreational players playing the highest stakes are as bad or worse than the average recreational player at mid stakes. So if you consider today's environment where the majority of tables between 10/20 and 200/400 are 5 regulars and 1 rec player, there's little difference between the games. Sure the regulars on a whole are a bit better than the regulars playing 10/20 but there's also significantly less rake at the highest limits which in my opinion more than offsets the skill level difference between regulars.

I wonder if the DFS player you're referring to is Condia. He's widely regarded as the best DFS HU player. Many of the top DFS players are using projection and optimizing tools to create their lineups.

Both answers sound perfectly reasonable. Thanks for the reply.

Hallo TP,

I think you skipped my Questions

It appears he doesn't like questions regarding specific ranges or strategies in specific spots.

1. Biggest BB Downswing?

2. Whats the longest length in terms of hands over a stretch while breaking even or losing?

3. Longest stretch losing or breaking even in terms of weeks/months?

4. Favorite Pizza Topping Combo? Italian or Pan?

oh and sick brag

Don't have a question right now, just wanted to thank you for doing this.

TPirahna ive written to you a few times in your blog you have been a huge idol of mine. one of the reasons why i started with FL .. Im still a micro stakes player but working my ass off to get higher..

If you were to start all over in todays games how would you proceed to move up stakes? basically any tips for me. What BRM would you do and what kind of approach to the game would you have etc.

(note todays 25/50c games are 2 fish and 4 regulars(albeit bad ones most of them)) So the games are not as pretty as they was was before BF.


Again thanks for doing this and im both sad and happy that you are retiring. sad because i won't be able to rail you anymore but also happy for you because you want to move on and gl with all what you are going to do.

Thanks for doing a well. It is always fun to hear stories from successful players. A few random questions.

1) What was your favorite well to read on 2+2?
2) Which other player would you most like to see do a well at some point in the future?
3) Will alien intelligence be found in our lifetime?
4) The agency problem, can it be solved? As someone who invests in the stock market, are you concerned that corporate profits are not benefiting shareholders, but rather being paid out to the people running the companies in amounts disproportionate to their value?
5) Bots. Stories now on internet poker claiming that multiple Party Poker accounts that were crushing NL up to 5/T are actually bots playing in 6mNL games. We're talking 12bb/100 winning accounts, each with nearly million hand samples on PTR. Are you concerned for poker in the long term, if bots are crushing a game where conventional wisdom was that bots couldn't be written for non HU games?
6) You're king for the day at Stars, what do you do to help LHE?

first of all, I consider you the best shorthanded player I have ever played.

any tips for a former HU player like me to improve? I've been learning this game all by my self, and its not easy!

gl on your future projects

~Beeeehto

That's a good question because suited hands are the least reliable when looking at results. They make up the least amount of combos of all the hand types. And then if you're defining UTG as specifically three seats off the button, the data you're drawing from is going to be further limited.

I mentioned earlier in the thread that it's tough and sometimes not even necessary to balance in some preflop situations but this is an exception.

UTG ranges are generally so high card heavy that it's important to balance. Suited connectors and suited two gappers are the ideal hands for this. Put another way, if you're not opening these types of hands, you're making it easier on your opponents to play against the rest of your range which detracts from the EV of that part of your range.

To answer your question, I'm positive those hands are profitable to open from UTG in a typical 6-max game. Profitable both in isolation and profitable within the context of the range. In other words they'd be profitable if you just looked as those hands individually and profitable in terms of increasing the overall value of your range.

I do think there could be some exceptions like if you were playing in a game with one maniac that 3-bet every hand and four other people that were incredibly passive and the maniac was sitting HJ-BUT. Basically the worst that can happen with this hand is that we get 3-bet and the pot ends up being heads up with us out of position . But there are so many other great situations that can result, most of all stealing the blinds.

Initially my logic was that if your average Joe logs on, he's going to want to take a shot at ten thousand, a hundred thousand, or one of those huge cash prizes. So I felt like on average, there's going to be more rec. players in the GPPs.

Once I got a little more into it and saw how much overlay there was in some of these big tournaments, the more convinced I was that GPPs were the way to go.

I certainly am accustomed to variance and understand it well so I have no issues with going extended periods without making a big score. So that's not an obstacle for me with GPPs as it might be for others.

I don't think it would be smart for me to ignore 50/50's and H2H's or for a H2H player to ignore GPPs. There's obviously a great deal of money to be made at both. It wouldn't shock me if H2H's and 50/50's were potentially more profitable than GPPs for certain sports. I really don't know at this point, I'm still in the figuring things out stage. NFL seems to have a ton of variance though and it seems possible that some of that could be mitigated through 50/50's so I'm going to give those a go this week and see how I do.

Regardless of which tournament type is more profitable, it makes sense to do both so that's my long-term intention.

Hey thanks a lot for this long detailed response. I have a few more questions to your responses.


You mentioned you bet quite a bit while playing online poker at this time. Would you be willing to share how much $ you were betting on the stuff you were betting on average? Such as what amount range and average bet? I figure for someone like you, lowest bet size would probably be $500 and highest might be like $3000 with your average bet being around
$1000-$1500 or so? I would figure it has to fall between somewhere around that amount plus or minus a few hundred? Reason is b/c i can't imagine you betting any smaller than say $750 on a bet considering what stakes you play with in online poker.


Would you say skrill was a huge blow as oppose to just a blow? To me, that is one of the biggest blows to either be or continue being a sportsbetting pro in Canada as you can't really move funds around. I believe Canadians can still deposit and withdraw without problems using bank wire to pinnacle, betcris but for an american thats there, its really tough as they only seem to do canadian and not usd anymore.


What books did you play at besides pinnacle for sportsbetting? I assume betcris as well? Did you play at matchbook too? I'm sure you are aware they left Canada as well right? That was another huge blow to canada as they left as well and most pros play at pinnacle/betcris/matchbook.
Did you bother keep funds at usa books like 5d or bovada? I know bodog is the canadian book but basically they are the same company.


Another thing i wanted to ask you is what bank acct did you use? I read a blog you wrote a while back i think it was right after you relocated and you mentioned u got a hsbc acct in canada that offered online wires. In canada, i got a bmo bank acct but u have to physically go to the bank each time if u want to do a wire. I also recalled you mentioned hsbc was one of the very few banks that does online wires. Is that true? The thing is if you are not in canada, then u cant wire funds from canadian bank to american bank acct if you dont go there physically. Were you able to do online wires whereever you were in mexico?


Is there a reason why you didn't bother going to Rosarito Beach? The 2 most popular options in mexico for poker players seem to be rosarito and playa del carmen. Is it b/c rosarito beach is boring and basically nothing to do and thats why you choose playa? Another thing i wanted to ask is how did you wire money from playa del carmen to eventually your usa bank account b/c from what i read, its impossible to get a usd bank acct in playa. So either you have to pay heavy fees and do a wire from stars or skrill usd to playa del carmen peso acct then eventually get it to your american acct? Because one is going to pay around 8 percent in vig if im not mistaken? I know ppl on the forum trade for funds such as pokerstars or skrill for bank of america for a few percent vig and with skrill and usd bank acct, you pay like 1-2 percent max in vig to get from stars/skrill usd to non-usa bank acct to american bank account.


But if you were to decide to only do sportsbetting instead of DFS, you still go to Costa rica right? What would be your 2nd or 3rd location option or there isn't? Playa you can't because u can't get a usd bank account unless im missing something? I assume you wouldn't want to go to another continent like europe or something b/c the time zone would be completely different for sports right and probably farthest from usa u would go is costa rica?


About the amount of funds one have in risk. I do agree with what you say don't leave an amount that is too much for you. But for someone like you, would you even bother keeping any funds there? Obviously for someone like you, keeping even 10k there is probably small potatoes for you b/c you bet a lot more and thats only a few bets. But would you bother keeping even 1/2 a normal bankroll size in the usa facing sites though?

Mr. Pirahha,

I don't have any intelligent questions to ask, so I'll just say it was great sitting with you at the San Jose donkfest meetup last year. I'm hoping DFS goes well for you and that you are happy and better rested, I remember how you still looked exhausted from your SNE sprint.

thanks for the well,
Randy

PS: based on my experience, you are way better than Cosi. I have at least 30 live hands vs. him and he has been powerless to stop me from getting there, while you seemed to carry the force with you in SJ. Don't quit playing live holdem, at least occasionally, nothing was more hilarious than playing 40 with Cosi and 6 donks who thought he was the live one. I still remember one saying "He called but couldn't even beat King high!"

Does the click clunk sound of pool ever lure you back to Efren? :-) ( or anyone)

*edit... crap..read the blog..you mention Efren already.

any chance you'll play more pool?

1) Did you study enough to have a GTO game that you can fall back on or just a "balanced" game that you fall back on vs good regs?

2) Naturally less tilt proof than others or did you actively work on your tilt resistance?