Dog or cat?

Best artist/group/music for major TILT ?

Leatherass,

You rock.

I think in one of your videos you said you liked to be sticky to the pot. How showdown bound are you and what sort of techniques do you use to get to hands shown down?

When you played NL200/NL400, were you more likely to defend 3-bets by calling in position or 4-betting. Or, more to the point, some thoughts on balancing the two would be great.

I know you love to game select. What does a good table look like to you? Would you prefer 3 x 35 vpip or 1 x 70 vpip?

Hi Dusty,
here are my questions:

How do you counter opponents with AF greater than 5? I mean those TAG or LAG players who raise each and every pot in each and every position, not a drunken 85/54/12 maniac.

How is the best play against opponents who can't fold their blinds? Simply stop stealing?

What is your line against Mr. Call-Steal-Raise-And-Check-Raise-Flop? Make a note and stop c-betting a missed flop? Or stop stealing against him?

Is AKo or AKs a preflop auto all-in on NL50?

Thanks for your time!

1. You realised it's very important to put people on ranges rather than a specific hand. How did you practice improving your skills in putting people on hand ranges. Was it mostly experience, or did you specifically try some things to help improve that skill.
2. Those are pretty tight 6 max stats. How do you keep yourself from being predictable to better players? Is it mostly with some tricky post flop play, or do you even mix it up a lot preflop?
3. Do you instantly leave a table where the guy to your left is 3 betting you a lot, or do you find that a profitable situation?
4. Do you like a looser table or a tighter one?
5. What technical part of your game are you currently working on?

PS, I noticed your blog a couple of months ago, and now visit it frequently, it's a very honest view into your life as well as poker at the higher stakes, keep it up.

people are always saying that while improving at playing poker you should just play a table and focus your decisions. you moved through the ranks pretty quick while mulitabling what would you recommend to someone whos main goal is to move up in stakes?

1. How many tables are you usually playing and for how long?
2. I want to be better than you, what does it take?

1. You realised it's very important to put people on ranges rather than a specific hand. How did you practice improving your skills in putting people on hand ranges. Was it mostly experience, or did you specifically try some things to help improve that skill.

ditto

Hey Leatherass, Thanks for doing the well

1)Top 3 25/50ers at FTP
2)Top 3 25/50ers at Stars ( exclude yourself from both lists if you want)
3)Do you Game select 6max at all, or is any game beatable at 25/50 for you ?
4)if you could pick one, FTP or Stars
5) any interst in limit holdem ( HU, 6max etc ?)

6) Genius28 vs Muckemsayuhh HU over 500k hands winner= ???

Sorry for the amount of questions, but I wrote in 3 wells never got responded to once.

GGOOOODD LLUUCCKK

1. For me I always felt like I should be a "sizeable" winner over tons of hands before I felt good about moving up in limits. I would also like to generally feel like I play well enough to move up in relation to the competition.
2. I would like to be a winner for like 100k + hands to be confident
3. I still do and am working on that not being the case in my sessions with Jared Tendler my (and now Stoxpoker's) mental game coach. It really only happens when I am deep at a 10/20 or playing a pot for stacks at 25/50 and above. 5/10 doesn't even register on the scale anymore for me.

Hey Leatherass,

I play 50NL on Party Poker and am pretty sure I can beat this limit. But for some reason I can not make money there. I know I have some huge flaws (one of the reasons I have problems making money there) and always try to keep my mind clean to avoid this kind of mistake, but I know that I have a lot to improve. So, my questions are:

1 - What did you do to start crushing SSNL and MSNL the way you do playing so many tables? (I play 12 tables.)

2- In what characteristics of your game did you focus when you where grinding uNL and SSNL? (Pretty much I NEED to play 100k+ hands/month for the next 4-5 months and make at least 3ptbb on 100NL to reach my goal of buying my own place here in Brazil)

3- Did something click in your mind when you were playing these limits that changed you from a marginal winning player (if you have ever been that kind of winner) into a big winning player? What?

4- How is your routine of playing (how many hours and how many cores)? And studying?

5- Do you want me as your pupil? (kidding... certainly not )

You rock, man.

Thanks,
Leonardo "Tucanjo" Santos

Can you give your poker background story (how you moved up and when, etc). or repeat it if you've done it elsewhere?

Who are the toughest players you face in your games? What makes them the toughest -- What specifically do they do, not just "hand reading"? value bet more, thin call -- what exactly?

How close are you to moving up to the next level? what will it take in improvements to your game to get there?

-g

Hey LA, thanks for all man, you've truly been an expiration to me and many players that i know.

Now some questions:
- What do you think when you are going to sit and play? For example, most people that procrastinate think "I need to sit down and play right now... but i don't feel like it"

- You usually do short sessions of 2-3 hours right? What do you usually do between sessions?

- How was a normal day while you were chasing elite? Example: wake up, eat breakfast, play, lunch, play, dinner, play, spend time with my wife (watch a movie), sleep.

Hi Leatherass, thanks for doing the well.

I'm grinding out a roll at 10NL right now, and I feel like I have the basics down. Preflop strategy, when to continuation bet, pot odds, etc. I also try to stay off autopilot and think about what my opponents might have. Do you have any strategy advice past this that will improve my winrate and help me succeed when I move up? I'm playing very straightforward and don't really check-raise, double barrel, bluff, etc.

I would say that a stretch like that occurs 5-6 times every 1 million hands. I think this is high though. I think during my past 1 million hands I have had way more bad runs than I should from a mathmatical perspective. I know among all of my buddies who play 500k to 1M hands a year they collectively have had maybe 1 "bad run." So I guess that while I may have been luckier in during my upswings I have certainly had a high number of bad runs in there.

As far as how to handle it goes, I think you just ahve to be tough mentally and maintain faith in your ability to play poker well. It is very easy to lose confidence and it used to affect my confidence big time when I would lose for 50k hands. Now I have a lot more faith in my ability and bad runs piss me off but I still maintain 100% confidence in my play.

I do agree that the biggest jump is from 1/2 to 2/4. Although the jump from 5/10 to 10/20 I noticed to be pretty tough as well.

I probably play about 12-15 different sessions that last 2-5 hours each. I usually spend 4-7 hours a week studying, but lately I have been so busy with Stoxpoker and my new golf website that I am in the process of working on that I have had little time to practice poker. As a result my improvement has slowed some, but simply through playing and thinking about the game I still think I havwe gotten better this year.

I think the biggest way to improve for me right now is to really analyize the tendencies of specific opponents and work on exploiting them. RIght now I am not doing as good a job of that as I should just due to lack of time to study. I think in general people would be best served simply analyzing their opponents OVERALL tendencies and how they tend to play common situations.

Don't ask me how I manage all of this while 10 tabling...hahah. I have no clue. I think I am a bit of a freak. In fact I have seen my opponents comment that they don't think I will put too many moves on them because I play so many tables. I think I'll just let them keep thinking that

1. Without question Stoxpoker.com. That sounds like I am full of **** of course but it's the truth.

2. Focus on the ranges of hands you think your opponents have in common situations and develop strategies to counter that.

It depends on the opponent but the options for me would be to bet and give up if called. The other option would be since there are no scare cards you could just check and call one street and make that the last $ that goes in.

With QQ-88 I like bet/give up

I raise a wide range versus these opponents and just bank on extracting huge value when you flop well and not wasting time trying to bluff them

At these limits I play a 33/30/10 style. Their problem is that they fold too much and I simply just chew them up and spit them out. Relentless aggression is key imo.

In a day I think that would be 15k hands. In a week I once played 100k hands. In a month I think it was around 1/4 of a million but I don't have PT to back that up. I know it had to be close to that though.

I woke up the nieghbors by going into a tirade in the middle of the night in the middle of a 70k hand losing stretch on a particularly bad night. I even raised my fist and told the poker gods to be a man and come down and do it to my face....OMG....I lost it that night....lol.

1. It's currently a scratch but was as low as +6 at my best about 4 yrs ago.
2. Cash or concierge. I would save up for a car as that is the best deal but I am scared to leave that many points and then have the govt. legalize poker or soemthing else unforseen happen and have to abandon points that I could've turned into cash.
3. The biggest pot I have ever played was around $21k
4. 100-200 yes but not any higher. 50/100 already almost gived me a heart attack....lol. I just don't see any reason to lose 6 figures in one session when you are essentially just gambling when playing one quick session.

1.The "talent" to simply just want something bad enough and then take the stes to achieve it. It seems easy to me, but few people follow through with things I have noticed.

2. The hardest thing I had to work on was probably to stop playing like a mouse and get in there and play aggressive. it's more of a mindse than anything I believe.

3. Working on how to combat the tough players at the table. I think one of the biggest things holding people back is their own ego. At small to mid stakes and even at the 5/10 and above, people always want to try and outplay the best players. Imo it's best to simply avoid them. If you try and consistently tangle with the best players it's not going to end well for you. I dealt with this a ton last year when my screen name started getting some noterity and I was still playing some 2/4 and 3/6. Everyone wanted to **** with me. It was fine by me because like I said, when you start doing that with the better players at the table, it isn't going to end well.

4. Not really

5. lots of little ones

6. No

7. My opponents range

8. I would of tried to approach poker from a more aggressive standpoint and then refine it. Most people start from tight and move towards aggression. Now if I were just beginning to play poker then I think tight is right. But if I were to go back to my 1/2 days I would like to just go from crazy stupid agressive and look for ways to tone it down. One other very important thing I sort of had an epihany about one day was that it is hardly ever a bad thing to simply bet. SOmetimes I lose track of the action while ten tabling and I am not sure who's turn it is or who raised etc. So you know what I do? I bet

Am I the one and only person on earth who runs good vs. you?

I would play 6 max because I think it is the fast track to getting better.

I won more than the amount of my car in the past 6 days so I'm not too worried about it

My wife is my best friend and I'd rather be flipping burgers at McDonalds than doing what I am doing now with any of the other nightmares I dated in the past. She's the best and is definitely +EV for my life and my poker game.

A good trick to get to showdown is to try and play most of your pots in position and don't bet the flop very often.

I like to 4 bet bluff and call and I think a balance is the best.

At the games I play now any table with even a slightly weak player at it is good enough for me. I would prefer to ahve three 35 vpips by far just as long as they are guys like CTS