Haha yeah, I like to talk strat. And as a matter of fact I still have to do some vid for HUSNG.com, which I was supposed to do like 5 months ago.. this should give you an idea of how lazy I am

What kind of vids if you dont mind asking?

That's a good question, originally I wanted to do some leakfinder but I wonder if I can do something better or more helpful for others.

Do you have any idea/suggestions?

A video where you try and implement a very unorthodox strategy v a reg I think would be interesting. Something that forces you to change your ranges completely and really have to think about how you're going to play these new ranges. I remember Sauce writing in his blog he was considering doing a video of a similar ilk. Or playing a reg with some set rules in place (that apply to both of you) like you can't 3-bet pre or something and talking about how you would adjust your ranges to such a scenario.
From Sauces blog:

Why dont you transition to omaha hypers? They seems to be quite popular and no one has a clue how it should be played (yet).

I think playing the standard game he plays would be more interesting that these experiments.
If you're watching them for educational purposes, at least.
This would be more entertainment value (which, to me, is worthless; when I want entertainment I sure am not watching poker vids).


Although I'd be fine with Mela never doing any of that and sticking to other things, for several reasons.

zZztilts pack already offer the most up to date educational material available and any material people need to beat the games is already out there. I think being able to see how good players decide to construct their ranges in game facing some new conditions has far more educational value. It allows you to realise how you should be thinking v opponents playing an unorthodox strategy and what to do to counter them. Also forcing both regs to play a strategy they are unfamiliar with should force pure poker skill to come to the forefront (having to quickly work out a good strategy) so you are getting original thinking and not just 90% std spots where everyone knows what to do anyway. Having them play and commentating whilst noticing possible weaknesses and say what they are going to do with their range to counter that is going to be better than just saying oh you have A5 v wide opener, just jam.

good question, I find most leak finders only so-so tbh, maybe a live sweat or some theory vid?

Sounds like a cool idea, thanks for your suggestions.

On top off my head, I think I can do one of the following:

- No fold preflop
- No call postflop (only raise or fold)
- No cbet postflop

Not sure how much they can learn from this vid though, that's something I have to put some thoughts on.

Yeah that's a good point and thanks for your input. It's just that short stacked PLO frustrates me to no end, at least for now. Or short stacked poker in general, I played it too much already

PLO isn't a game that suits hyper format very well, and I don't think I can achieve a better hourly at PLO hyper than at cash.

Haha, tbh I didn't play much HUSNG's the last few weeks and might be a bit rusty, but yeah, I can do that as well. Thanks for your input.


Oh I forgot to mention this, but I won't be doing much hypers for my vid. It will most likely be turbos or reg speeds (most likely the former). I agree with what you said, except that I'm not a huge fan of playing unorthodox for the sake of playing unorthodox.. but I have no problems doing that just for vids

Thanks for your input. I'm not quite sure how I can turn live sweat into a vid though.. maybe I can find a volunteer and take it from there, but in general I don't think live sweat is the *most* efficient way of teaching/learning. This is something I have avoided as much as possible when coaching other students.

Theory vid sounds a cool idea. I haven't watched many NL vids, so I'll have to watch some theory vids to figure out what's been touched on and what's not.

Quad aces, finally! 4 NF blockers ftw

I won the hand without seeing the flop though, which was a bit disappointing.

sure np, tho I mreant you recording a session while playing. but happy to hear that it would be prolly turbo content. btw are you still coaching?

Oh I see, haha. Anyone who railed me even once would know that I suck at playing and talking at the same time, so I'll have to improve on that first..

Yes, I am still coaching but not as often as before. Btw, your SN seems familiar but I don't think I've seen you much on HUSNG forum - do you happen to be a MTT reg by any chance? I'm thinking I might have seen you there a few years ago. :O

play a session, and than go over it in the replayer... ez game

ok cool, mind to PM me details / your skype for further discussion?

ya, I am not that active in the HUSNG forum (yet) as I suck at HUSNGs hehe,I played MTTs as my main game indeed a long time... now that you said it thats prolly why your SN was so familiar to me

I see, that makes sense. Make sure you see the HH I posted in my first post ITT where I thought of folding top boat. Oh dear, I was a huge MTT donk.

Playing a session + replaying it can work, although that won't be a "live session" by definition :P

Sent you a PM.

So today it just occurred to me that there's still a ton in this game that I can learn and improve on. Then it also came to my mind that I haven't really worked much on trying out new stuff or developing a theory. All I have been doing so far was trying to figure out the existing theory and understand the reasoning behind so that I can apply it to many other spots.

And whilst that has helped me reach where I am now, I realised it probably won't get me anywhere further. It's just like musicians. You can do lots of cover and become famous, but in the end you really have to write your own music and keep improving. You can't have a recital at Carnegie Hall if you just copy other's stuff, no matter how well you do.

At the same time, it makes me laugh to think that most regs are pretty much in the same boat in this sense. Most mediocre regs like me, I should say. I just can't help laughing for some reason. We are a spoonfed generation. There were always tons of poker material out there, and all we had to do was watch those vids, read articles and incorporate them into our game. Maybe bug the vid makers or posters by asking some questions, or talk about them with other poker friends sometimes. And yeah, that allowed us to make more money. But once again, was that our best bet? Is this what the top notch players do too, or do they try out something different? If so, aren't we missing something out? I'm not gonna spoon feed you with the answer here, so feel free to come up with your own conclusion.

That said, from now on I'll try to try new things out in my game (out in? weird image). More exactly, I'll try to be willing to try new things out, because I think it's more about attitude (confidence, for example) and mannerism in the end, and less about skills. I remember trying a couple of new lines in NL, although those weren't really brand new. And considering my PLO game is lot weaker than NL, it probably won't make much sense for me to try out new things. However, I still will, because I firmly believe that it can considerably expedite my learning procedure and keep it fun.

Also, whilst this really is a long shot, I want to be one of the best PLO players in the world, which was not something I even dreamt of during my NL days. I was content with making enough $$ and playing decent poker. Nothing was more exciting when things started to make sense and I could clearly see myself improving. But in retrospect, I gotta admit that I never thought of becoming the best player or anything remotely close to it. I just didn't have that kind of aspiration or aim. And this lack of ambition, or whatever you call it, seems to be one of the reasons I sort of "hit the ceiling" and got bored of the game, if not the biggest reason.

It's simple. Just because you want to be the best player doesn't necessarily mean you will get there. If you don't even have that aim, however, you are guaranteed not to make it altogether, and won't get too far. And this seems to be the situation for most of us. Well, if that sounded too condescending, let me rephrase it, it clearly was the situation for me at least. And I guess that's the reason why I never bothered trying out new stuff or thinking about poker in great depth. I mean, if I did want to become the best, how could I possibly have been content with being spoonfed all the time? Wouldn't I have been doing something that most others are not doing, in order to stay ahead of the curve?

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying we should all dream of becoming the next Tom Dwan (or Phil Ivey, just pick your poker hero). As a poker player, it's very important to do the reality check routinely and make plans accordingly. And if you're a pro, you might not be too keen on becoming the best in the world, when making $$ is your first priority (and quite rightfully so). Joey Knish put this very well in Rounders:

Although I always had an impression that he's passing up on some +EV spots due to BRM issues, I think he makes a good point here. Look, I'm 27 y/o now, and won't be able to fully concentrate on poker until I get a PhD degree in the next year. Turning into a full-time poker player at 28 might not be the smartest choice in the world, nor will I be on the younger side among pros. And yeah, I might not get anywhere close to the top PLO players despite my high aspiration and aloft goals.

But hey, come to think of it, having an aspiration is basically a freeroll, it doesn't need to conflict with making money in poker. I mean, it can hurt your volume or hourly in short term, but it shouldn't really do any harm in long term. If "becoming the top PLO player" sounds too cheesy or "stony" to you, "becoming the top reg at my stakes" will do the trick as well. Or "beating this reg who's owning me" too. They say aim high, but those are details anyway. Point is, having an aspiration or goal is vitally important. It presents us the overall scheme and allows us to see the forest for the trees, thereby motivating us to improve as poker players. And we all know we have to keep improving in order to make $$ in this game, right?

For example, "I wanna be the best at $100 hypers" almost certainly seems a better goal to me than "I'm gonna check raise bluff more often." If you shoot for the former, you will see what needs to be done to achieve that (assuming you actually go for it, not just blindly make goals), and check raise bluffing more often can be just one of them. If you just shoot for the latter though, you can easily get bored or worn out of poker, as you might have to set new goals too often, or something not know what to shoot for. It is possible that we subconsciously have the former in mind when shooting for the latter; but we have to take it to the conscious level imo.

In poker, both generality and specificity are important; when we acquire poker skills, we usually learn the general principles from specific examples, and that's pretty much the way it should be. Like, Q8s looked like a monster hand to me when I first started playing poker. I overplayed hands like that so much, lost bunch of money, and only then could I learn the importance of hand selection and position. When it comes to aspirations or mindset though, I think it's the other way around. You establish a broad/general goal first, and break it down to aim for specific things. That way you can make sure you are moving forward and not getting caught up in details.

So yeah, think about what you really want to be in poker, and set a goal accordingly today. For me, like I said above, I want to make it to the best PLO players, and that's my eventual goal. And since this won't happen overnight, I'll have to take many steps towards it. I have two steps in mind now: a) make it to 1/2 and crush there, and b) always be eager to try out new things and learn the game; be an active learner. It might sound pretty much the same as before, but I know they aren't - I am much, much more motivated now and can't wait for grinding when I wake up in the morning

Thanks for reading this, and I wish you the best at the tables.

- mela

By the end of this year, I want to achieve the following in PLO:

- play solid
- study 1 hour everyday
- 8.5k rake (~$200/day)
- move up to 1/2, possibly 2/4

I think transitioning into PLO was a wise decision. After all, poker is fun again.

I thought of posting some PLO graph, but I have played only 103k hands so far and that's probably not a meaningful sample size, so I'll just wait a bit.

What about posting some interesting hands instead?

Just wante to say that you have made some amazing points in your posts. I look forward to hearing more wise words from you. Gl and see you at the high stakes

Also I think it would be nice to see graph if you don't mind sharing

quoting an older post, your thread in the HUSNG forum made me come read this I take it you don't think hypers can be helped anymore? Battlenet is obviously a bad longterm option, but imo it's pretty hard to come up with something organic that works, and yeah I agree that HUSNG right now has a kind of bleak future. We would be probably better off today if hypers were never invented, although we would definitely have made less money in past few years

also re: car, if you're gonna buy a car, think about what you want from a car, what you're gonna use it for, don't just go for the flashiest Rolex I really doubt A4/TT are best cars for most people who have the income to buy them

Haha sure, like this?

BTN: $40.75
SB: $112.92
BB: $10.19
UTG: $60.27
Hero (CO): $152.31

SB posts SB $0.25, BB posts BB $0.50

Pre Flop: (pot: $0.75) Hero has 8 K A 9

fold, Hero raises to $1.50, BTN calls $1.50, fold, fold

Flop: ($3.75, 2 players) 9 6 Q
Hero checks, fold

Hero wins $3.58


Or better yet:

BTN: $67.03
SB: $40.57
BB: $50.00
UTG: $16.85
MP: $86.63
Hero (CO): $109.40

SB posts SB $0.25, BB posts BB $0.50

Pre Flop: (pot: $0.75) Hero has K A J J

UTG calls $0.50, MP raises to $2.25, Hero calls $2.25, fold, fold, fold, UTG calls $1.75

Flop: ($7.50, 3 players) K Q J
UTG checks, MP bets $5.00, Hero calls $5.00, fold

Turn: ($17.50, 2 players) 2
MP bets $16.71, Hero calls $16.71

River: ($50.92, 2 players) T
MP bets $34.00, Hero raises to $85.44 and is all-in, fold

Hero wins $116.42

Thanks for your words. Yeah, I'll post a graph in the near future

Welcome man, glad to see you here!

As for hypers, well I don't think it can go back to its prime time (good old days, sigh). I haven't really thought about it, but it's possible that the Battlenet thing might be the best of all bad options. I totally agree that we woulda been better off if hypers were never invented. On one hand it gave HUSNG a new life, but otoh it also killed the game.

Good point about the car. I'm not a car guy, it's just that I always wanted to buy an Audi car since forever ago. So yeah if I choose to buy this it might not be the best ~40k ever spent, and I also realised I don't really like driving all that much.. so that money is just sitting on my account and I just can't make up my mind yet. Sounds silly, I know haha.

Oh wait, I also realised TT might be a better choice because it has ~70% equity vs A4!

s8 is in a totally different game than either A4 or TT though

Good point. I am underrolled to play that game though

Also, welcome back to the thread! Have you been able to get some coaching since your last post?

Not quite yet, I'm in the USA until January 15th so I won't be taking any actual coaching until I'm across the border. I might start "shopping" in the beginning of February though, just have to give myself some time to get settled into my new homeland.

GL as usual

and just think in 5 years if you meet your goals you'll be rolled for the Audi R8

Oh I see, where are you gonna settle into if you wouldn't mind me asking?

Gl to you as always, and yeah, I'll be rolled for R8 in 5 years, that's the goal right?