Jman,

For the 100th time this thread, thanks for doing a well! Now for the questions:

Do you travel much? Both for poker and to relax?
Where do you c/r the turn/river as a bluff in terms of board texture/villain line and villain tenancies?
Do you think 3 pair should beat 2 pair?

Everyone else keeps coming up with pretty solid questions, so I'll refrain from asking any mediocre ones. But I just want to echo everyone else and thank you for doing this Jman. As others have mentioned, your clear and detailed writing style makes this an amazing read. Even if it takes you several days to respond to some of these questions, the longer this thread goes on, the better.

Whats your attitude about your mistakes?

can you talk about the hand you just played where the third 7 came on the river against mrcall? what you had? your thought process? my guess is QQ. board was 77KJ7

Can you give examples of "durrrs rivershove w/ weak TP" and explain? ty

Jman,

First, it was cool meeting you throughout the WSOP, and I'm glad you ate the 500 balance at RBKs celebration dinner, I was sweating the flip when I realized you and I were the only ones with maryland bank cards at the end You're a stand up guy and it was a good time.

I was wondering if you had any thoughts on the pros and cons of playing online vs live. I assume most of your experience is online but I've often struggled with the idea of trying to get more live volume in. I've spoken to many 2p2ers, both those that play mainly live and obviously those mainly online, and was wondering if you felt there were any clear benefits/disadvantages to one vs the other that were worth discussing (other than the ability to multi table online I guess). Sorry if that question sucks, this thread kept me up an extra couple hours. Thanks.

edit: thought of another question. I know cash games are generally the way to go in terms of really "learning how to play poker" and attainable earns long term, but, having experience with tournaments, can you tell me why you still play them given that cash is generally "the way to go" at this point in your career I would imagine? Or more broadly, why a good cash game player should play tournaments if at all (even if in low volume)?

i assume it has a lot to do with h@lls calling range.

Ivey is slightly more annoying to play against, but Brian is usually tougher.

I'm much more of a TV guy than movie guy. I watch a ton of TV. I dunno. I liked Eternal Sunshine, V for Vendetta, ummm, I don't think either are my fave though. Just first thing that popped into my head. I forget about a lot of movies. I probably will think of my fave later.

Nothing super awesome, or that can be appreciated if you weren't there. Most of my favorite poker memories come from playing drunk 2/5nl live with friends.

One time a few of us were playing at the Wynn. I staked my friend, Mikey for the game. He's one of the funniest people I know. Everyone thinks their friends are really funny, but I'm serious about this. Most posters who know me can vouch for this.

Anyways it was a really fun night, but the highlights started when these two dbags came and sat at the table. They were more drunk than us, and they used the word 'brah' non stop. "Hey you want another drink brah?" "Nice bet brah" etc.

When the cocktail waitress was taking orders, one of them ordered "a vodka cranbarry... and your phone number"

We all laughed at him, but Mikey went on for probably 5 minutes straight making fun of him. I'm not gonna try to recreate it.

Anyways, later in the session, the vodka cranbarry brah is down to about $90. He's been suuuuper nitty and very chatty. Folded to Mikey, who's right next to me in the HJ. He opens to $20. Folds to the SB brah who shoves for $90. Folded to Mikey who has a pained look on his face.

Mikey is a very smart guy and he totally understands the game. However, he's a self proclaimed 'feel player'. He looks at me and says "I know you're not gonna like this, but I have a good feeling." And calls the last $70. I figure he has something like 44 and knows that this guy has been a huge nit, but just wanted to call.

Flop comes T57. Brah flips up KK and starts to dance and sing "make it rain"

Mikey says to me "Well, I guess I need a five or a duece." wtf?

Turn 2 river J. Mikey tables 52dd and rakes in the pot. Brah is completely stunned. So is other Brah. "That's so ****ed up brah"

They both leave while Mikey does an impression of them.

--

Another cool poker story was when Tom Dwan and I couldn't sleep one night. We invented poker games and played them HU until like 9am. We bet in 'units'. Every game we invented, we played 1-3 freezouts and the winner won a certain amount of units. We'd bet on each match. One unit was redeemable for the other person doing something stupid/embarrassing. I completely owned him and ended up like 18 units. At 10am we went to breakfast with this girl Kaitlin who was staying with us. (I had to mention she was a girl bc me going to breakfast with Tom after staying up all night with him wouldn't help all the rumors about him being gay (I love you Tom))

We made him do 20 pushups on the floor of a crowded Denny's. He had to high five our waitress 3x, and use some words we said in a sentence to her. I remember one was 'girdle' but I don't remember the others.

Afterwards we went to Best Buy, where he performed a quadrouple pump fake. That means he asked a guy for a high five, pulled his hand back when he went for it and said "pump fake", got him to go for it again 3 more times, saying "pump fake" each time, and then actually high fiving him on the 5th. It was awesome to see.

The best part was owning him in hu poker though.

**** sorry. Too late.

I've thought about this a lot. Most people have dreams/aspirations...things they'd really like to pursue. Being an actor, writing a book, traveling the world. Most of them can't pursue their dreams because of their real jobs or families or financial situation. I'm lucky that I have the freedom to pursue a dream.

I've had some from time to time but none that have really stuck with me and made me think 'man, I really wanna do this.'

I've decided that poker is too good of an opportunity for me to pass up right now. So I'll play for now. That's all I should really worry about, imo. Hopefully I'll make enough money so that when I do figure something out that I really want to pursue, I'll be able to do it.

The short answer though, is that I don't want to play poker my whole life, no. It's okay for a job, but I don't really enjoy it usually.

Well, you are a very good poster.

I've always liked strassa's posts. I didn't read as much back in the olden days of 2+2 NL forums, so I'll probably leave out some legends.

I learned a ton from Bld, though probably more just from observing and studying his game than reading his posts.

Samo was an amazing poster before everyone ran him out of town.

Bobbo always brings up interesting things.

Back in my SNG days, I learned a lot from Daliman and Raptor. Strassa there too actually. Oh, and Irieguy. He's a cool /smart mfer.

I don't read 2+2 as much as I used to. There are lots of good posters/players. I feel bad that I'm prolly leaving a bunch out, but it's just bc I don't read that much anymore, I'm tired, and I have 10000 questions to answer.

PMing you.

Jman, if you're tired and not in the mood to answer questions as well as you could, just go to sleep / get to it at another time. Maybe you don't want to dedicate too much time to the thread which is totally understandable, but don't feel as though you have to run through questions as quickly as possible. I think most people would prefer quality answers even if you only gave two or three a day over a few weeks.

Hey Jman,

I'm mainly a 200 and 400 NL player and lately I've been thinking a lot about the concept of turning a "made" hand into a bluff.

Example:

I call a raise OTB with QThh vs. a 24/17/3 solidish player who raised UTG (I figured blinds would come along because they were extremely donkish). It got HU and I called a bet on a Q93r board. Turn was a T, putting out a FD. He led 25 into 39. Is a raise here for value or a bluff? Normal stacks, 200NL. He should see me as a winning TAG, and I believe he does because he doesnt play me HU.

The above might not be the best example, but maybe you can elaborate on the whole idea of where and where not you should turn a made hand into a bluff? Or do we think too early that we are turning a made hand into a bluff? I think there is a lot of confusion surrounding this idea, especially within SSNL.

Thnx for doing this well, really appreciated and its full of gold in my eyes.

jman will you coach me i've been using your avatar for like 25 years