Your'e not alone in being murky in these situations. I don't have an equity baseline for 3-handed pots. It was an educated guess when I had a borderline hand in these spots. The most important thing in deciding is determining the opener's range (easy to do by looking at their RFI) and then determining the 3-bettors range. Based on those two things, and to a lesser extent the post-flop skill level of the opponents, I'd make a decision whether to defend or not.

That's it guys, I"m going to make one more post wrapping the Well up in the next week or so.

I'm heading to Canada tomorrow for the next 5 days so I'll be online playing a little bit. See you at the tables.

Thanks again, super worthwhile and interesting well!

Thank you Tony.

One last question:

Where does the music come from?

Hi tony! Thank you for making this well and this is probably the only thing that I could find interesting reading on online forums for a long time. Like you, my passion for flhe (and maybe poker) has died off due to years of burn out and i really missed the days where there were not so much bum hunting.
Anyway, thanks for contributing so much to the poker community and especially trying your best to voice out concerns for the welfare of the people playing in FLHE. There is no dispute that you have the best work ethics among every human being I came across alive and it's quite a pity seeing you retire from the screen. Your advice are simply inspirational and I just could not help myself posting a few questions before you warp things up here.

Some history about myself

I used to play high stakes flhe games for a long time since the golden age(06 maybe?) but pretty much lost interest in the game after everyone started the stickman sitting out nonsense. Not to blame anyone but no one wants to get abused or buttoned so I definitely understand the fact that everyone wants to protect their own interest. This caused me to lose a huge deal of passion in the game and I have to seek adrenaline by finding other forms of poker to play. Basically punted every game available on stars /ftp that earned me nothing but a mill dollar losing graph. I did printed some in plo and mixed when the action was really good but that ended pretty abruptly after black Friday.
I got utterly destroyed after black Friday as the competition got significant tougher. Marriage wasn't very helpful for my poker career and I basically spent 2 years punting big on ftp, playing on life tilt. The fact that I'm not gus that could afford millions to lose playing nosebleeds,i had to stop gambling at crazy highstakes where I think I'm just drawing dead.
Moving back to mid stakes never felt so tough like it was before. I had some setbacks in the earlier years of my FLHE career but I never felt so hopeless playing online poker where everyone was improving at an insane speed . The new era of FLHE regs punished me hard when I tried to stage a comeback and this was pretty much the same for PLO too. Finding someone that I could beat online seems impossible for me atm so I had to transit playing live poker which is slow and tilting as hell.
I have the following questions for you that would be greatly appreciated from someone of your wisdom
1)Let's say one day you have no choice and would have to play online poker again(hope that day never comes for you) while having to transit to other poker variants. How would you plan your route of advancement?
2)I understand that you are married and have family commitments as well. What's your secret over the years to be able to play so much volume and to be able to balance between work and personal life?
3)I don't think you are as delusional and as egoistic like me. Certainly you have enjoyed a lot of limelight and respect from the community and would all these hinder you from being a student again at a new form of poker where you are off your field of excellence? What would you feel are the deciding factors that abled you to surpass the ex old school crushers(like me) and would certainly keep to these set of rules when you come back into the online poker arena again?
4)What piece of advise would you think you could enlighten me (I'm quite sick of poker actually) so I could get back on feet playing and enjoying poker again?

Thank you for your time reading this Anthony and I look forward to your words of gold =)

You're welcome.

- Victim

Edges are thin, just like poker, but there are still way more successful retail traders than poker players lol. Commissions have only come down in the last 10 years while rake only goes up for things like poker and daily fantasy sports. Both, which will eventually die due to rake.

Also, high frequency traders has helped liquidity for other traders. But I think you would have done a lot better had you been shorting. Being a trader and not shorting is like not having the ability to table select.

You're a very smart guy and obviously have been very successful in poker, but your view on trading is a very generalized view. It's no different than a view that a losing poker player might have about poker.

I take it youre a 'market isnt efficient' guy?

Nah. Tony is right about a lot of the things he said, the market is very efficient, especially long term and a big reason I'm passive as an investor and try to keep the expense ratio down and stay long with a few minor hedges. Also he's right that most stocks follow the market, so you obviously can't be following your stock and completely ignoring things like cnbc, twitter news, crude oil, other indexes, europe.

But there is still edges in short term trading for income, day trading, swing trading. No different than a grinder using a hud, a trader uses a Level 2 platform watching the tape with technical charts.

I was long AAPL and it hit 120 exactly today as a high, but it was at that exact price point, millions of shares hit the ask price and big short market maker positions came in. It was obvious that was huge resistance, so I looked to get short. I started to scale in short 119.95

It's obviously still a suckers game, 90% are losing short term, no different than the poker game, dfs game. Most traders I trade with probably have less swings though than that of a poker player, but traders have to use a lot more of their bankroll/capital leveraging positions. Maybe leveraging 200k to make 3k as opposed to buying in for 3k at a 30/60 game and winning 50 bb's.

TP no doubt though, has the skills to become a successful trader.

Re: Trading.

I'm currently listening to this audio book:

http://www.amazon.com/One-Good-Trade.../dp/0470529407

I'm only half through, but so far no real information on how to trade, just a look at the prop trading industry. It's an entertaining read. I'm struck by how many paragraphs there are where you can just do a global search for "trading" and replace with "poker", and it would be perfectly valid.

The tag line on amazon is: "An inside look at what it really takes to become a better trader". The spoiler is, to the disappointment of some reviewers: constant hard work studying and practicing trading.

From what I've read, you certainly have the work ethic. I don't know if you would even be interested in trading with a firm after having the freedom that poker allows, but it's worth considering.

Trading is the perfect next step for a poker player imo. A lot of the things you learn in poker will give you a huge headstart in trading and the rest is hardly rocketscience.
Im just doing it as a hobby myself but i am often perplexed at how much "stupid money" there is out there. Ofc there is a lot of big sharks as well, but compared to highstakes LHE i think the shark to fish ratio is pretty good.
And unlike poker the sky is the limit in this game!

+1. And make sure you decent size trading accounts get a good rate and as many free trades as you can. As opposed to rake, trading commissions are negotiable, even if you don't have a huge account.

Most of my investments are with Fidelity, they have a decent retail platform, but I use TD's Think or Swim for most of my trading. But I would say most of the retail traders I know use Think/Swim or Etrade.

Good read. I started out in a prop firm out of college and there are three clear advantages if you're just starting out or don't have a lot of capital, A.) Leverage B.) Institutional software/fills/routes C.) Trading with more experienced Traders.

The biggest disadvantage for me was that you still and have a boss, so there is a lot more restrictions put on you as far as which stocks you can trade as well as your preferable trading style. Similar I guess to being staked by someone in poker.

I, like some, left because eventually you desire the freedom like I'm sure most poker pros enjoy. But to this day, even from home, I still trade with a group of 10-15 traders whether it be on skype conferencing, chat or the phone. A few even trade from open offices like here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XruhYQW6unA

The most successful traders I know today have a tpirahna type discipline and work ethic. I would say 90% of losing traders struggle with tilt and discipline, no different than poker I guess.

But there is a lot more locking in profits and sticking to stop losses than say playing through variance like you would in poker against a fish or a good table.

at what limits do you think you can have a career , I mean play for a living

first, this is a phenomenal well.

a few of the 5 guys you mentioned on stars as playing so unconventionally and being tough are the same guys that used to just plague me to the point where unless there was one *GOOD* spot, i'd just sit out. i knew it was bad for the game, but i didn't want to battle them and didn't dedicate myself to studying their games.

they reminded me of top nl players at the time, placing you in tough spots where you'd be guessing at their range (very often). i would have rather played w/ the younger versions of the standard 2p2ers by far as that would have had me opening up my game a bit whereas i'd have to shut it down vs. them. having been out of the poker world a while, it seems the most successful players are a) well balanced vs. good players, and b) much laggier (w/ purpose/cause/logic) than was standard.

DITTO VERY VERY MUCH SO.

this was a curse and a blessing though. had i spent that much time, i dont' think i'd have left poker despite the maxed out and variable earning potential.

scary indeed. i think one thing is scarier...that there was a group of players working just about as hard as you were but literally every time they took a shot, they got beat back down. and definitely not by poor play on the whole.

luck is such a huge factor that i think realistically, even if you knew then what you know now, you still may not have wanted to use a 50-100bb mini roll to take a shot at higher games. ofc, it still could have been a great decision, but dealing w/ 'being beat back down' isn't something that is fun, whether it's due to variance, not being ready, tilt, poor play, or some of all of the above. those knock on effects shouldn't be discounted.

again, thanks for doing this well.

just a few months too late

thanks for the well if you read this. as a lhe guy it was extremely enjoyable, informative, and caused a great deal of nostalgia/self reflection. thanks again!

Hi Tony, congrats on the retirement!
1)Could you tell us if you came to the point in some moment that you did it almost everything to improve your skills and mastering the game. If you did, when ?
2)What do you think about the future of limit poker?
3)Could you tell me what statistic did you find the most important(exploitable) to look for when you studied the a)opponents solid players(reg)game and b)recreational players game?And also when you were searching for you own mistakes?In HEM what statistic info pops up when you open your report.

Thanks for your time
Enjoy

Hi, i did not realize that you stopped answering the questions. Now i ve read in previous posts. If you will find some time please answer me on just first two questions.
And Are you also that successful in Fantasy Sports?
Please recommend me good reading for FS!
Good Luck

This was an amazing read, thanks for taking the time~