12-04-2015
, 05:33 PM
12-05-2015
, 09:44 AM
12-05-2015
, 01:59 PM
12-05-2015
, 09:15 PM
12-05-2015
, 10:35 PM
I’ve never written a poker strategy article and am often called a nebulous thinker. So the way I think and write about poker will be very “kaliedoscopic” instead of orderly. I think if you read my whole post , you’ll find something to like and hope someone finds it helpful.
When I first learned to play cards I lived in a small house oddly located basically in the woods about 10 miles outside of a city. It was like living in the blair witch woods without any demons or ghosts of course but with the occasional backpacker, bmx-er, and odd drug user. The closest shopping area to my house about 5 miles away had a non descript little store called enchanted gifts near a mcdonalds. It was owned by an odd man who sold swords, and little plastic dragons and stuff. Me and my friend Pete would go there to play pokemon cards because pokemon was hugely popular at the time and eventually magic the gathering another card game that they sold there. They held mtg and pokemon tournaments but there was not a single good player of either of those games at this store and so despite being played for ante and very small amounts of money mtg and pokemon was not played by the actual rules but instead by “enchanted gifts” rules. Since the same group of 10 or so kids were basically playing by there own rules occasionally an argument would break out and the shop owner would call his friend named mike to find out the real rules unless he felt he knew them. His friend was a very serious mtg player who traveled around to play card games on a pro tour that no one knew existed at our store.
For example the following thing happened. One day in one of our tournaments- in the finals!, a guy tried to use “counter spell" on a shivan dragon. Since that had never happened before an argument broke out and the store owner had to call his friend mike. The general consensus was that you couldn't use a counter spell on a dragon because a dragon was a dragon and not a spell. But Mike said no all non land cards are spells; creatures, enchantments, artifacts, instants , interrupts were all spells and you could indeed use counterspell. The guy who didn't know this won the tournament with a first prize of black lotus , a card worth about $100 dollars at that time.
An exact poker analogy would be: if you went to some odd casino and were heads up in a $50 dollar tournament with first prize being $900 and second being $500. A small crowd of 6 people is watching the action. Two players went to show down and one had a full house and one had a straight and no one was quite sure who wins the hand. Floor! is called and a man walks over and asks “ What’s the problem?” . at the dealer explains “well one guy has a flush and the other guy has a straight, who wins the pot?” and the man says “I’ll have to get the tournament director because I have no idea, Im not a genius”
Then the tournament director says he has no idea but he has a friend who is a professional poker player who would know and hes going to call him. After 15 minutes, his friend Eric Seidel explains to everyone that in no limit holdem the player with the full house is awarded the pot. The crowd laments that if they knew a full house beat a straight they would play full houses all the time.
A good lesson is that there will always be games and places where people don’t even know how to play. If you think there aren’t any good games you’re wrong.
Later on I moved to kansas and played at a store with much better players including well known geniuses Scott Lipp and Matt Place where I actually learned how to play magic. My favorite decks were tempo-ish; green white trash(blastoderm/parralax wave) that i won a jss qualifier with, blue green madness, affinity. It wasn't really because I was a nerd it was because I was just the kind of person who lived in my own world that had nothing in common with normal peoples world ; On scale I was probably odder than most weirdos or nerds.
Nowadays I mainly play 1/3 nl live and 2/5 nl live. I am unbeknownst to anyone on twoplustwo a winner in those games. The reason I play 1/3 nl and 2/5 nl is that Im a much better live player than I am an online player and those are the most profitable games. I dont play much 5/10 nl because people are really good at poker at higher limits and Im not that great of a player. Theres more money in 1/3nl and 2/5 nl than a lot of people think. Yes there is a cap on your win rates and if you want to be super rich you'll need to beat higher limits but this guide is more about being a poker tourist than the worlds best player. Being a poker tourist is a great thing to be; playing poker semi professionally is fun, way more fun than being a pro in my opinion.
Resources
I think its important that everyone have there own enchanted gifts store so I think when you're first starting out a good way to learn is to run home games, play in small buy in tournaments and watch tv tournaments. Eventually you’ll realize that TV tournaments are a bad way to learn poker because they don’t show enough hands and you wont actually know why people play the way they do and the blinds are probably really high. But you have to learn this on your own rather than be told. You should also have some experience with strategy games or be a trader so you'll have something to contrast poker to and because if you hate strategy games you probably shouldn't play poker
After you've played a bit its important to realize you cant know everything about poker right away. It’s also really important to realize that poker is a gambling game and that even more than
a strategy game poker is gambling. Gambling is primarily about psychology and also about math and statistics. When starting out you should be playing for as high as you’re comfortable with. You should learn about risk first hand and lose enough for it to hurt and win enough for it to change your week. but dont bet what you aren’t comfortable losing. If you're uncomfortable betting 15 dollars then dont bet 15 dollars. If you're comfortable buying in for a $1000 with only $10000 to your name great you're a gambler.
Somethings I recommend:
The theory of poker by David Sklansky
The mathematics of poker by Bill chen
Coursera stanford courses on statistics
A program called card runners ev and a number cruncher for your phone.
Google
For study I recommend constantly messing around with hand ranges on card runners ev, like just do it a lot for hours. Try to find new ways to mess with your opponents ranges that you play at the casino. Also very important is to use google because google is the standard by which people get their information. google things like “implied odds” and “good starting hands in limit”
to find out what other people are learning. Most people dont realize that if they're learning public information they are learning information lots of people already know.
Law of the land
Theres one really important law of poker and that is position. It is the principle that the later you act the more information you will have. You can and should of course spend hours thinking about button steal ranges, late position ranges etc but the important thing is to not get lazy and forget about position, most people do after they have been playing for hours.
The most important principle in poker is position. The specifics can be changed based on your needs.
Banroll management
You should have aggressive bankroll management. If you win 700 lose 500 the next day then win 400 and then lose 400, if you actually have 200 extra dollars after this you're too nitty to enjoy your own wins. this should cause you to have less money than 4 days ago. You should adjust your play based on how much money you have. If you have like 200 dollars waiting for the aces cracked promotion and waiting for aces kings and queens at a loose table is not a bad idea. The less money you have the more important playing into promotions is.
Actually playing poker
The first thing to know about actually playing poker is it’s very important to spend most of your time(90%) in a full ring game thinking about how the 8th, 7th, and 6th best players at the table play. The 9th best player will be bad enough to where you just need to value bet him and the better players are negative ev to think about too much because most of your money will not come from those players and the worse a player is the more advantages you can find over them by spending time thinking about their play. You could spend 10 hours thinking about the best players play and come up with “hmm I think he semi bluffs his flush draws 10% too much, Im going to start three betting pairs in position on flush draw boards. “ while thinking about a bad players play could result in finding 30 things wrong with their game over the same time period.
What feeds into this is that tells are way more reliable with bad players. If you’re playing against a bad player who calls a lot “I guess Im going home “ is a bluff 100% of the time. The quick call on a wet board is a drawing hand 100% of the time.
BY far the most important life decision in poker(besides not getting a face tattoo) is deciding what game to play. Its wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy more important than actually knowing how to play poker. Some idiot is making millions of dollars a year and your break-even at 10nl because he knows the most important skill in poker : game selection. If you get a face tattoo I recommend a face tattoo that says game selection is the most important skill in poker. Except for enjoying thinking about strategy 99% of poker is playing the right game, not 90%
It cant be overemphasized so ill tell you again game selection is the most important skill in poker.
There are 3 types of poker games broadly speaking
Type A: We are poker scientist balancing our ranges
Type B: The poker game is controlled by perceived ranges
Type C: What is a range?
Unless you're super rich you should only be playing in type b and type c games. They are everywhere.
Its very very important to know yourself. Im bipolar and some weeks every little thing is freaking me out. I literally feel weak, I feel like everyone I know is out to get me. I have a small lipoma on my chest that I would like to hire a plastic surgeon to cut out but never quite get around to it. On weeks when I’m depressive I constantly think about if the lipoma is cancerous, why no one will send me to new york to have it removed without any marks, did someone put it inside me to make my life a living hell. When im happy It never even crosses my mind that its there.
Its so important to play when you're feeling right which I usually do. Even the hardest people on the planet play worse when they are losing so it is important to not play too much when losing and play a lot when you're winning. The better you feel should change about what way you pay games. If you feel you're on top of your game you can play 2/5 nl and chase very thin edge with aggressive play and put your opponents into tough spots to get a small amount of equity. If you feel bad maybe you should just play 17% of your hands at 1/2 nl. All of the great rules like position is good are general because its like phil Ivey says “everyone has a strategy until the get hit.
Thinkspots
Ok thinkspots is very important. You’ll be able to see it on players faces and hands after they play a lot. This mainly plays to rote players who seem to mechanically be playing confident in whatever system is in their head. Like a zombie turning into a deer occasionally these players will get a weird look in their eyes and there hands or body will shift. If they are a decent player this is a thinkspot. It means that player X had to break his rote rules to remember or think about something. Its very important to remember that thinkspots are real. So whenever you see a thinkspot its very important to try to guess why your opponent suddenly started thinking. It depends on how good they are. A very common thinkspot for young players is they have been insta betting confident they are better than you because they read card player magazine , and then on the river for once they pause and think. This often means they dont have anything and remembered that since there hand is worthless at showdown and at the bottom of their range they need to bet because equity. You should bet hands on the bottom of your range with no showdown value but for players with a lot of new theories in their head this is counter intuitive so they have a think before doing it.
Dis interested Story telling
Story telling is a lost poker artform that needs to come back . Here are the true tips about telling a story at the poker table: The first thing to realize is no one wants to hear your story or will be that interested in it. 9 out of 10 players will only be interested in your money. SO there is a rare appropriate time to tell a story. You have to not be at a table where people are switching in and out a lot. It has to be a table where everyone has been playing for hours. When you tell a story you have to make sure its a story you can tell without actually thinking about your own story and only focus on poker. Its important to say it disinterestedly and confidently ; dont tell a story as if its great or you're so cool that it happened no matter how great your story is most people wont care about you're story and if you act like its super awesome people will be mad. secretly.
Aggressive plans that are stupid are great in tournaments
[IMG]
[/IMG]
I pretty recently had fun at a tournament and will for sure be in vegas this summer. If things go bad 200 dollar tournaments and satellites if things go good who knows. But in this local tournament I won 3000 dollars after busting mig.com and grant hinkle. Its my 4th or 5ht biggest live tourney score( I mainly play small tournaments and have a bazillion live scores in the 1000 isn range. this is all play money of course. and super fun tournament for me. There were a lot of good players in this tournament but i mostly outplayed them except on the following hand:
At the final table me and Grant Hinkle were the chip leaders. We each had like a bazillion chips and about 65% of the chips in play. I decided to call in late position with the intention of knowing sayeed and grant would put me to the test and i was going to reraise them all in and then get lots of chips. Tournaments suck because you have to make plans against good players but when you do play really strong guys like sayeed (total secret monster) or grant you need to come up with plans anyway even if you suspect they are sub par and those plans need to be aggressive. What happened was Grant 3 bet me I shoved and after thinking (since this was basically the tournaments) he called for a massive pot. he had AT and I had J9 suited and the flop came jj9. That sounds ******ed but Im kind of stupid and so you have to know yourself - thats the best way for me to beat grant hinkle and sayeed. sayeed told me “Young man you play very well how come I dont see you around?” then I explained that I have mental problems so I only play local games Then he did a thinkspot where he was thinking something like “umm…ok? thats not that weird i guess…”
Only one person can be the best player in the world but anyone can be a poker tourist. This is actually a solid outline about how to get better and im secretly super passionate about card games I just dont write a lot of strategy because of the way i think about things.
When I first learned to play cards I lived in a small house oddly located basically in the woods about 10 miles outside of a city. It was like living in the blair witch woods without any demons or ghosts of course but with the occasional backpacker, bmx-er, and odd drug user. The closest shopping area to my house about 5 miles away had a non descript little store called enchanted gifts near a mcdonalds. It was owned by an odd man who sold swords, and little plastic dragons and stuff. Me and my friend Pete would go there to play pokemon cards because pokemon was hugely popular at the time and eventually magic the gathering another card game that they sold there. They held mtg and pokemon tournaments but there was not a single good player of either of those games at this store and so despite being played for ante and very small amounts of money mtg and pokemon was not played by the actual rules but instead by “enchanted gifts” rules. Since the same group of 10 or so kids were basically playing by there own rules occasionally an argument would break out and the shop owner would call his friend named mike to find out the real rules unless he felt he knew them. His friend was a very serious mtg player who traveled around to play card games on a pro tour that no one knew existed at our store.
For example the following thing happened. One day in one of our tournaments- in the finals!, a guy tried to use “counter spell" on a shivan dragon. Since that had never happened before an argument broke out and the store owner had to call his friend mike. The general consensus was that you couldn't use a counter spell on a dragon because a dragon was a dragon and not a spell. But Mike said no all non land cards are spells; creatures, enchantments, artifacts, instants , interrupts were all spells and you could indeed use counterspell. The guy who didn't know this won the tournament with a first prize of black lotus , a card worth about $100 dollars at that time.
An exact poker analogy would be: if you went to some odd casino and were heads up in a $50 dollar tournament with first prize being $900 and second being $500. A small crowd of 6 people is watching the action. Two players went to show down and one had a full house and one had a straight and no one was quite sure who wins the hand. Floor! is called and a man walks over and asks “ What’s the problem?” . at the dealer explains “well one guy has a flush and the other guy has a straight, who wins the pot?” and the man says “I’ll have to get the tournament director because I have no idea, Im not a genius”
Then the tournament director says he has no idea but he has a friend who is a professional poker player who would know and hes going to call him. After 15 minutes, his friend Eric Seidel explains to everyone that in no limit holdem the player with the full house is awarded the pot. The crowd laments that if they knew a full house beat a straight they would play full houses all the time.
A good lesson is that there will always be games and places where people don’t even know how to play. If you think there aren’t any good games you’re wrong.
Later on I moved to kansas and played at a store with much better players including well known geniuses Scott Lipp and Matt Place where I actually learned how to play magic. My favorite decks were tempo-ish; green white trash(blastoderm/parralax wave) that i won a jss qualifier with, blue green madness, affinity. It wasn't really because I was a nerd it was because I was just the kind of person who lived in my own world that had nothing in common with normal peoples world ; On scale I was probably odder than most weirdos or nerds.
Nowadays I mainly play 1/3 nl live and 2/5 nl live. I am unbeknownst to anyone on twoplustwo a winner in those games. The reason I play 1/3 nl and 2/5 nl is that Im a much better live player than I am an online player and those are the most profitable games. I dont play much 5/10 nl because people are really good at poker at higher limits and Im not that great of a player. Theres more money in 1/3nl and 2/5 nl than a lot of people think. Yes there is a cap on your win rates and if you want to be super rich you'll need to beat higher limits but this guide is more about being a poker tourist than the worlds best player. Being a poker tourist is a great thing to be; playing poker semi professionally is fun, way more fun than being a pro in my opinion.
Resources
I think its important that everyone have there own enchanted gifts store so I think when you're first starting out a good way to learn is to run home games, play in small buy in tournaments and watch tv tournaments. Eventually you’ll realize that TV tournaments are a bad way to learn poker because they don’t show enough hands and you wont actually know why people play the way they do and the blinds are probably really high. But you have to learn this on your own rather than be told. You should also have some experience with strategy games or be a trader so you'll have something to contrast poker to and because if you hate strategy games you probably shouldn't play poker
After you've played a bit its important to realize you cant know everything about poker right away. It’s also really important to realize that poker is a gambling game and that even more than
a strategy game poker is gambling. Gambling is primarily about psychology and also about math and statistics. When starting out you should be playing for as high as you’re comfortable with. You should learn about risk first hand and lose enough for it to hurt and win enough for it to change your week. but dont bet what you aren’t comfortable losing. If you're uncomfortable betting 15 dollars then dont bet 15 dollars. If you're comfortable buying in for a $1000 with only $10000 to your name great you're a gambler.
Somethings I recommend:
The theory of poker by David Sklansky
The mathematics of poker by Bill chen
Coursera stanford courses on statistics
A program called card runners ev and a number cruncher for your phone.
For study I recommend constantly messing around with hand ranges on card runners ev, like just do it a lot for hours. Try to find new ways to mess with your opponents ranges that you play at the casino. Also very important is to use google because google is the standard by which people get their information. google things like “implied odds” and “good starting hands in limit”
to find out what other people are learning. Most people dont realize that if they're learning public information they are learning information lots of people already know.
Law of the land
Theres one really important law of poker and that is position. It is the principle that the later you act the more information you will have. You can and should of course spend hours thinking about button steal ranges, late position ranges etc but the important thing is to not get lazy and forget about position, most people do after they have been playing for hours.
The most important principle in poker is position. The specifics can be changed based on your needs.
Banroll management
You should have aggressive bankroll management. If you win 700 lose 500 the next day then win 400 and then lose 400, if you actually have 200 extra dollars after this you're too nitty to enjoy your own wins. this should cause you to have less money than 4 days ago. You should adjust your play based on how much money you have. If you have like 200 dollars waiting for the aces cracked promotion and waiting for aces kings and queens at a loose table is not a bad idea. The less money you have the more important playing into promotions is.
Actually playing poker
The first thing to know about actually playing poker is it’s very important to spend most of your time(90%) in a full ring game thinking about how the 8th, 7th, and 6th best players at the table play. The 9th best player will be bad enough to where you just need to value bet him and the better players are negative ev to think about too much because most of your money will not come from those players and the worse a player is the more advantages you can find over them by spending time thinking about their play. You could spend 10 hours thinking about the best players play and come up with “hmm I think he semi bluffs his flush draws 10% too much, Im going to start three betting pairs in position on flush draw boards. “ while thinking about a bad players play could result in finding 30 things wrong with their game over the same time period.
What feeds into this is that tells are way more reliable with bad players. If you’re playing against a bad player who calls a lot “I guess Im going home “ is a bluff 100% of the time. The quick call on a wet board is a drawing hand 100% of the time.
BY far the most important life decision in poker(besides not getting a face tattoo) is deciding what game to play. Its wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy more important than actually knowing how to play poker. Some idiot is making millions of dollars a year and your break-even at 10nl because he knows the most important skill in poker : game selection. If you get a face tattoo I recommend a face tattoo that says game selection is the most important skill in poker. Except for enjoying thinking about strategy 99% of poker is playing the right game, not 90%
It cant be overemphasized so ill tell you again game selection is the most important skill in poker.
There are 3 types of poker games broadly speaking
Type A: We are poker scientist balancing our ranges
Type B: The poker game is controlled by perceived ranges
Type C: What is a range?
Unless you're super rich you should only be playing in type b and type c games. They are everywhere.
Its very very important to know yourself. Im bipolar and some weeks every little thing is freaking me out. I literally feel weak, I feel like everyone I know is out to get me. I have a small lipoma on my chest that I would like to hire a plastic surgeon to cut out but never quite get around to it. On weeks when I’m depressive I constantly think about if the lipoma is cancerous, why no one will send me to new york to have it removed without any marks, did someone put it inside me to make my life a living hell. When im happy It never even crosses my mind that its there.
Its so important to play when you're feeling right which I usually do. Even the hardest people on the planet play worse when they are losing so it is important to not play too much when losing and play a lot when you're winning. The better you feel should change about what way you pay games. If you feel you're on top of your game you can play 2/5 nl and chase very thin edge with aggressive play and put your opponents into tough spots to get a small amount of equity. If you feel bad maybe you should just play 17% of your hands at 1/2 nl. All of the great rules like position is good are general because its like phil Ivey says “everyone has a strategy until the get hit.
Thinkspots
Ok thinkspots is very important. You’ll be able to see it on players faces and hands after they play a lot. This mainly plays to rote players who seem to mechanically be playing confident in whatever system is in their head. Like a zombie turning into a deer occasionally these players will get a weird look in their eyes and there hands or body will shift. If they are a decent player this is a thinkspot. It means that player X had to break his rote rules to remember or think about something. Its very important to remember that thinkspots are real. So whenever you see a thinkspot its very important to try to guess why your opponent suddenly started thinking. It depends on how good they are. A very common thinkspot for young players is they have been insta betting confident they are better than you because they read card player magazine , and then on the river for once they pause and think. This often means they dont have anything and remembered that since there hand is worthless at showdown and at the bottom of their range they need to bet because equity. You should bet hands on the bottom of your range with no showdown value but for players with a lot of new theories in their head this is counter intuitive so they have a think before doing it.
Dis interested Story telling
Story telling is a lost poker artform that needs to come back . Here are the true tips about telling a story at the poker table: The first thing to realize is no one wants to hear your story or will be that interested in it. 9 out of 10 players will only be interested in your money. SO there is a rare appropriate time to tell a story. You have to not be at a table where people are switching in and out a lot. It has to be a table where everyone has been playing for hours. When you tell a story you have to make sure its a story you can tell without actually thinking about your own story and only focus on poker. Its important to say it disinterestedly and confidently ; dont tell a story as if its great or you're so cool that it happened no matter how great your story is most people wont care about you're story and if you act like its super awesome people will be mad. secretly.
Aggressive plans that are stupid are great in tournaments
[IMG]
[/IMG]I pretty recently had fun at a tournament and will for sure be in vegas this summer. If things go bad 200 dollar tournaments and satellites if things go good who knows. But in this local tournament I won 3000 dollars after busting mig.com and grant hinkle. Its my 4th or 5ht biggest live tourney score( I mainly play small tournaments and have a bazillion live scores in the 1000 isn range. this is all play money of course. and super fun tournament for me. There were a lot of good players in this tournament but i mostly outplayed them except on the following hand:
At the final table me and Grant Hinkle were the chip leaders. We each had like a bazillion chips and about 65% of the chips in play. I decided to call in late position with the intention of knowing sayeed and grant would put me to the test and i was going to reraise them all in and then get lots of chips. Tournaments suck because you have to make plans against good players but when you do play really strong guys like sayeed (total secret monster) or grant you need to come up with plans anyway even if you suspect they are sub par and those plans need to be aggressive. What happened was Grant 3 bet me I shoved and after thinking (since this was basically the tournaments) he called for a massive pot. he had AT and I had J9 suited and the flop came jj9. That sounds ******ed but Im kind of stupid and so you have to know yourself - thats the best way for me to beat grant hinkle and sayeed. sayeed told me “Young man you play very well how come I dont see you around?” then I explained that I have mental problems so I only play local games Then he did a thinkspot where he was thinking something like “umm…ok? thats not that weird i guess…”
Only one person can be the best player in the world but anyone can be a poker tourist. This is actually a solid outline about how to get better and im secretly super passionate about card games I just dont write a lot of strategy because of the way i think about things.
12-05-2015
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