Why make a blog

I have given a bit of consideration as to whether starting a blog or posting on the Poker Goals & Challenges section instead. Although this section doesn't really look like a typical blog - where the author has their own subdomain while here the "blog" is another thread in the forum, I will nevertheless write here anyway.

Why a blog on 2+2?

I am also a bit concerned as to whether 2+2 is the best place to write a blog. The reason is that despite the fact that it is new for me, it is not new to the world. A recent watch of a video by Natah Williams (Blackrain79) woke me up to the reality of the poker world today. 2+2 is way too popular today, filled with all sorts of players from different levels, as well as enthusiasts who perhaps have the "social network" mentality, and this is not how I would imagine my blog to be. The alternative is to start a blog or post at a smaller site which is currently succesful but not so popular. But I decided to take the chance to start from here.

The reasons for starting a blog

I don't actually know what good a blog is for. If it is meant to be a record for my own progress and writing my own thoughts, why does it have to be on the internet? I have had this question for a while now about all kinds of blogs. Why would anyone ever want to write their thoughts and post them out on the web for free for everyone on the planet to be able to see? More specifically, what is it for me to gain by writing a blog as opposed to keeping my own notes happily on my computer? I am neither a famous personality, nor do I aspire to be one at this stage, and I am not looking to receive "likes" or pats on the back from unkown people over the internet for speaking my mind. The idea of writing a blog and spilling my thoughts on the web just because this is what people do today is not a sufficiently justifying reason for doing so.

Nevertheless, I decided that I will write a blog anyway. I suppose the main reasons are:
1) If I am pondering about it, I might as well do it.
2) Hopefully I may indeed receive some helpful comments from other users.
3) I will do so and see how it feels. I can always quit later.
4) Hopefully writing a blog may keep me motivated towards my target.
5) I may get the chance to become more popular in the community and hopefully make some good buddies.
6) Hopefully, writing will be a form of therapy to keep me calm after spending all this time in front of the computer.

So here it is... my poker blog. The reason for this blog is to keep track of my progress into becoming a poker pro. This is something I have decided over the last 2 months and I have already worked hard for.


Starting out as a pro

Reading through the threads of this forum, I realise this is not a new idea at all. Lots of players, perhaps a big majority of them, dream to find a way to make money by playing a game, having fun, and not having to go to work for a day. The reality is I currently need to make money from poker and I am not doing it for fun. Things change dramatically when you do something as a hobby and when you do something as a living, and have to always perform because you need to pay your bills from your income.

I have sofar played poker mostly on MTTs and SNGs, where I have been a winning player. I had never been playing cash games, and the reason is that they are a lot more volatile and risky. The choice between the 3 is something that I actually still am pondering a little bit about. I think in my head the choice is between MTT and cash - the reason being is that MTTs have sofar been easy to play and are a little more relaxed, whereas cash was new to me. I would naturally choose the game where I am more profitable, knowledgeable of, and find more comfortable.

However, having studied and improved a lot over the last few weeks on cash, I am seeing that I am also becoming more comfortable on cash games too, so I am turning much towards cash at the moment.

My poker vision

One of the things I found very interested early was a post blog by Daniel Negreanu: "A Foolproof plan to becoming a professional poker player"

I have made my own Poker Vision statement already, which frankly I will keep for myself at the moment. But it was very inspiring to make one.

I keep my poker vision posted on my desktop using a software called Evernote Sticky notes so I will always have it on my mind.

Choosing a playing strategy

This post is a copy-paste of something I wrote in a thread today. I thought it is a good piece of text to put in this blog. It refers to how to choose a good strategy to play on Microstakes, and how to avoid listening to advice given from various sources, including the internet, friends, forums and groups.

I assume that a total beginner who would want to learn poker, would be willing to put in the hours of study, and had the internet and and an amount of resources to learn from would basically be facing both of these problems:
1) Which strategy to follow
2) Which strategies not to follow
3) Once finding which strategy to follow, reading and understanding it
4) Once understanding it, actually follow as described in all different situations.
5) Learn it good enough so as to not make occasional mistakes.
6) Control tilt and other factors which may also lead to not following the strategy.

When I speak about a strategy, I am speaking of any complete strategy, which would cover what to do in every possible scenario. If villain plays A, you play B, if they play C you play D etc. A complete strategy would not need any extra input from any other source, as it would be sufficient in itself to help someone play poker.

Most strategies today fall under 3 categories:
1) Population tendencies
2) Exploitative play
3) GTO

Also, when picking partial advice from the internet or other players, they would generally be part of a strategy which falls under these 3 categories.

Adding to this, an advanced player under specific circumstances may make custom plays against specific pponents for which they have gathered enough information and worked through them off the table. An experienced player may also be able to make such adjustments on the spot without too much off-the-table study.

This would primarily involve taking notes on opponents either on the spot, or by analyzing hands by specific opponents off the table and again keeping notes.

Lots of different complete strategies are available for each category as well. Through filtering of different sources and books, I came up with a list of the best ones, which were written by the best authors, and were also up to date. The question is, which one is best - and why?

Specifically, since I play on the Microstakes, and perhaps not surprisingly, the books that caught my interest the most were "Building a bankroll" by Pawel Nazarewicz, and "Crushing the Microstakes" by Nathan Williams. Among them came a book called "No bull**** 6-max". Along with these came some suggestions about how to play which looked like they were aimed at ultimately creating the strategies myself by studying my opponents.

After a lot of thinking through each of the available material, I finally worked out the basic differences in each of these complete strategies in terms of preflop ranges, calling ranges and 3-betting ranges.

1) Nathan Williams is primarily focusing on playing against fish. Those are players with 30%+ VPIP who make tragic mistakes in their play. He does not like to play much against other regulars. All his stratregy assumes playing against the fish. Before getting there, Nathan spends a lot of time table selecting and seat selecting. So, when reading Nathan's strategies, it is no wonder that the calling and 3-betting advice is given the way it is - he assumes that the villain is a fish for the majority of the time, and in many cases their position doesn't even matter as much. Nathan avoids playing with regulars, as he says that all that happens there is fighting for the blinds.

Keep in mind that Nathan Williams is a crushing winner at 2NL and 5NL but this system does not work well on higher levels, neither did Williams have particular success much higher.

2) Pawel Nazarewicz in "Building a bankroll" is using Exploitative play - which is based on interpreting opponent stats from the HUD in more depth, such as F3B, CB, FCB, 4B etc. and adjust calling ranges, 3-betting ranges and the whole play according to them for a big part of the strategy. Pawel does not focus on table selection and seat selection. In terms of dealing with fish, the main adjustment in the strategy is to 3-bet so as to isolate against them. However, the rest of the strategy mostly applies to playing with regulars, split as TAGs, SLAGs and LAGs.

Pawel applied the system he teaches on Microstakes from 10NL up to 100NL. Also, this book was written for FR games, and tested with Rush poker (=Zoom). The latter is the reason why Pawel's strategy does not include table and seat selection: You cannot do these things when playing Rush / Zoom!

3) "No bull**** 6-max" is another good book which presents a GTO strategy specifically for 6-max. This GTO strategy does not focus specifically on every villain. Instead it is a fixed system of playing which is based on math and is meant to win money in the long run against all types of opponents.

This book uses fixed ranges for PFR, calling, 3-betting and 4-betting against each villain position. However, it treats all villains as one and the same. It does not care if they are TAGs, LAGs, SLAGs, fish etc. This is what GTO is mostly about.

4) Another strategy is to construct ranges is to use some starting preflop ranges, and adjust the calling, 3-betting and 4-betting ranges based on assumed ranges that other villain types play from each position in general or from experience, or against those ranges. Elements of Exploitative play may come about later in this trategy, however this is not Exploitative play per se.

Another similar strategy to the above, which one other player I spoke to was using was to have different ranges based on villain VPIP. Eg one set of calling, 3-betting and 4-betting ranges against 10% VPIP, one against 15% VPIP, one against 20% VPIP etc. Some Exploitative play comes mostly preflop.

It took a very long time just to be able to tell between how each system works and how it is different from the other.

So now to the main question: which one of those approaches is best, and why? If a player could systematically and correctly fully follow and apply any of these 4 (or 5) strategies, which one would be best? And how can one tell?

No 1 would be a great approach for 2NL and 5NL, however, it doesn't cover well someone who wants to move up the stakes.

No 4 can lead to a working system. However, why even bother to get into all this work when there are already proven complete strategies which work, and with proven winrates? Too much work with results not guaranteed. Also, approaches based mostly on population tendencies such as 4 are probably less profitable than Exploitative play and GTO.

Between No 2 and No 3, it domes down to comparing GTO and Exploitative play. This has already been discussed on 2+2 as well. GTO is probably not so good for Microstakes. Exploitative play is probably the most advantageous one. It can have the biggest returns because people on Microstakes are very exploitable.

Clearly now, from these strategies, No 2 is the best one for me. Not only does it use the best approach to playing poker today, but it also allows moving up the stakes.

Frankly, not one of the people I was discussing in my Study group could actually tell the differences between those. One of the players had been instructed to play GTO but did not know it. The other was using No 4. On various internet sources I was reading about strategies similar to No 4 ie Population tendencies, also with unproven success rate.

But clearly I have sofar been using the right one.

Now it is easy to explain what to do and what not to do, why I should and why I shouldn't listen to what everyone else is doing, which parts I would keep and which not.

Those who are using strategies under category No 4 and are profitable players may still believe their strategy is good. Here is the thing: when playing 5NL, anyone following a system well, and most of all being disciplined in their system and managing to control their tilt will beat those stakes. No 4 could be a winning strategy at 5NL, because the field is already very weak anyway.

But if that player was to move up stakes, they would not know what they need to do to adust. Their system may or may not work. Players may start playing a lot different. Using fixed calling and 3-betting ranges which worked on 5NL may not work well on 10 or 25NL.

However, using Exploitative play such as Nazarewicz's approach can work at those levels, because it is not fixed, and it has been tested there. And this is why it is better.

Now to come back to my original question about visualising ranges etc. Simply, following No 2, I don't have to do any of this. The whole reason why this question arose was because I was trying to follow an approach as No 4. When using Pawel's Exploitative play, I don't need to plug in numbers on Pokerstove, and all this process would be a waste of time. But I considered it because I was being told all sorts of things about changing ranges by people who did not even know WHY they were doing whatever they were doing and WHY what they were doing would be profitable or not and suitable for the stakes they play and their overall poker goals. And I thought that maybe the way to do it would be such.

Hopefully someone else who is playing Microstakes and is trying to work on their ranges ,and is between different books, sources and conflicting pieces of advice will also be able to tell the differences as well.

A review of play sofar

Ok, so let's get to the chase. What everyone likes to see: graphs. This is my play sofar. It is split in 4 phases, just as they happened.

Here are all phases together.


Phase 1: A shot in the dark

30/04/2015 - 29/05/2015
Hands: 20,396
Net profit: -$79.26
bb/100: -3.66

I am excited about the prospect of playing cash games. Still trying to sort out what material to study. Looking through different books and approaches. Sofar, my best piece of advice is an application called InstaPoker. It inspires me about general poker thinking, but is nowehere near anything about cash game thinking. The main thing I pick up from it is to put a lot of bets in. I play about 2 tables at a time, and I am generally clueless in most areas of cash play.

I easily win on 2NL using common sense and whatever knowledge I had in poker in the past. In the meantime I come across the book "Building a bankroll" by Pawel Nazarewicz. I browse through it as well as a few other books. I am reading through parts of different books every day, trying to understand what is going on.

After reading a part from the book "The Poker Blueprint", I get motivated by lines such as "The point of every poker player is to move up stakes as fast as possible", and that "when most top players were asked what they would do different if they started all over again, they say that they would play more aggressively". Most of my play is just blindly aggressive. I pick up some basic ideas from "Building a bankroll" and start doing ok on 5NL.

I make a bankroll management plan, however I do not want to follow it. I really want to move up limits to try my luck on 10NL, as Pawel also started at 10NL. I convince myself that even if I am not ready yet, the 2 bottom levels may not be worth it. I am very nervous because I am stretching my bankroll and I am scared money. I am suddenly facing some very aggressive opponents who I do not know how to face. My blind aggression simply doesn't work. I get crushed in 2 days, lose about $50. I eventually realise I should move down a level. I play on 5NL but I am still playing all over the place. I have ups and downs, but mostly downs. I eventually realise that it isn't as easy as originally considered. I am very shocked for being so beaten and stop playing poker.

Phase 2: Working out a solution

30/05/2015 - 02/06/2015
Hands: 0
Net profit: $0
bb/100: 0

I am very shocked from the loss. I feel that there is no future for me in cash games and all my plan is going down. I start looking for solutions. I keep reading Pawel's book and slowly start realizing what I have been doing wrong. I am slowly but steadily working through the book.I play no poker for 3 days and I am constantly studying and reconsidering.

Phase 3: 10 days of sticking to the new system

03/06/2015 - 13/06/2015
Hands: 6,776
Net profit: $66.67
bb/100: 18.8

I am following the system in Pawel Nazarewicz's book to the letter. I am still halfway in the book but I have put everything I read systematically into play. I make a poker schedule, which includes study, play and review. I am playing 2 hour sessions on 2 tables for the first few days, and 2 hours sessions of 4 tables towards the latter days. I play strictly 5NL stakes. I review my plays after each session.

The results are immediate. I am super-crushing 5NL consistently. I am still quite nervous in many situations, and I really have to be focused and disciplined, but when I do, I am a consistent winner.I also start a Microstakes study group and have some new members, hoping that this will help my progress. Little did I know.

This is this phase in detail:


This is what crushing 5NL looks like. This is perfect.

Phase 3: Losing discipline

14/06/2015 - 19/06/2015
Hands: 5,359
Net profit: -$41.36
bb/100: -17.96

I spend a few days discussing in the group. I am constantly getting sidetracked by different players. I am annoyed by everyone's ego and random pieces of advice that everyone throws around. I am already following the best system possible but don't know it.

I tell the group what I do but there seems to not be a reason for it. Everyone is suggesting their own ideas and insist on them. I am a little tired from such focused play over the previous days. I eventually get affected and lose my discipline. I also start reading various other articles which suggest other ways to play.

I don't do 2-hour sessions as before. I don't revise before each session as before. I don't review my plays. Suddenly my results are not consistent. A couple of big suckouts give me my first big losing session, where I get another shock. I turn to the group for questions but I receive more sidetracking. A really bad influence speaking to them.

Eventually I manage to have breakeven sessions, but I know I am very sidetracked. I am really looking for a way to get back into my schedule.

Sweet Sunday

Right when it looks like there is no hope, comes Sunday! I made over $40 just today! I wouldn't usually brag about a daily session, but this one was just extraordinary!

4 sessions, 2,036 hands, and an insane 39.4 bb/100

Loving Sunday!

Questions
Last week my head was filed with many different questions regarding how to continue playing. These questions are not the typical theoretical poker questions, but more functional questions, such as "Should I add more tables?", or "Should I play Zoom?". As I study alone, I had to come up with a way to answer them in order to get my plan together.

So I wrote down all my questions and tried and answer them one by one. The point is not only to have answers, but to fit with my overall plan and work at this stage.



Answers

1) Should I play 6-max?

Short answer: No

6-max can be more profitable, has a higher upper cap limit, and I can make more hands/hour. It seems that 6-max is where I will be heading to eventually. There are 2 reasons for holding me back:
- My current book is about FR. I have dedicated already a lot of time adjusting to FR. The new changes on 6-max at this tage may affect my play very badly, which is something I wouldn't like.
- I have currently just about found a way to be profitable on FR. I would rather stick to this and let my current strategy sink in for good.
- I can always switch anytime in the future when I am more comfortable.

Decision: Wait until making a bankroll of at least $500 and rethink.

2) Should I play Zoom?

Short answer: Revise strategy first on regular tables. Then take shots.

With Zoom I can do more hands/hour = more rake. I can also focus only on the key hands that I want to play. Most importantly, the book I am reading was written based on Rush (=Zoom). Zoom is also currently promoted heavily by Pokerstars.

On the other hand, it is much harder to collect opponent stats on Zoom. No stats = not possible to play exploitative play well. I have already collected a good amount of stats from FR, which will potentially go wasted. The rake difference is not significant either, and in fact I may have lower winrates on Zoom.

Decision: Make an attempt.

3) Should I add more tables?

Short answer: No

This question has been running in my head since the start. How many tables should I be playing? I am currently focusing on learning the strategy as best as possible. Adding more tables has potential for more hands/hour = better rakeback, but skill may decrease, meaning worse returns. At this level of stakes and according to my approach, rakeback is not as important anyway. Nazarewicz himself only tried 4 tables at a time as well.

Decision: Play up to 4, as now.

4) Should I move up stakes?

The argument for this was that perhaps starting from the bottom 2 levels, I am potentially wasting too much time.

Starting from 10NL isn't too bad, it is just more financially risky, as I would need a bigger bankroll. I have that bankroll, but I do not wish to spend it.

The second problem here is my sudden moving up stakes to 10NL during Phase 1. As I moved up without having already earned the required bankroll, when I lost and went back down, I found myself overall at a loss. According to my bankroll management plan, I would have to normally only make $50 to move up to 10NL. But as I already lost $50 which I didn't have, what should I do now? Move up when I reach $50, or when I cover the previous loss as well? Covering the loss may mean a whole month more of playing 5NL.

Decision: Play it safe. Stay on 5NL until I reach $100.

5) Should I practice hand ranges with Equilab?

Short answer: No

There is a lot of discussion about analysing how ranges fair on certain boards using Equilab and Flopzilla going on in the forum and various coaching sites. It looks like a good practice which may help advance my poker skills. However, there are a few arguments here:
- I have no material on how exactly to start other than sparse advice from the 2+2 forum.
- My current book does not speak about doing such work. It will be difficult to fit my current learnings with whatever I may learn from this practice.
- The book guarantess that I can reach 100NL without doing this work.
- I have currently managed to prove that I can do really well on 5NL without any of this kind of work.
- More extra work may confuse me and get me off my game. Why study extra when what I am doing works well?
- A lot of this work cannot find any application at the stakes I am playing now.

Decision: Stick to the book guidelines and do not practice with hand ranges for now. Leave it for higher levels where it will probably be more important.

6) Should I fish hunt?

Short answer: Revise main strategy first. Then attempt.

This idea got in my head after reading parts from "Crushing the Microstakes". I have already spent a lot of time working on how to fish hunt, and I have already done it many times. It has been profitable every time. I may have a chance to practice more how to play against fish, and make some extra money for my bankroll which I need now.

Decision: It is a good way to go. The techniques involved do not conflict with my current strategy. However, I need to revise my main game first before chasing easy money.

7) Should I play MTTs?

Short answer: Yes, as second priority to cash.

I have been doing relatively well on MTTs before starting to play cash. I am overall quite profitable for the stakes I play on MTTs. A good cash on an MTT a month ago gave me a nice bankroll to use now. The problem is that MTTs are significantly different from cash games. The more I study cash games, the more I forget how to play MTTs. Mixing 2 different games is not good. But I don't want to give up on something which sofar has been profitable.

Decision: There is no harm playing, but cash games are my top priority. Given that my MTT game deteriorates when I study cash, I may have to dedicate some time to revise MTTs a little as well. Given the level of low stakes MTTs, it shouldn't be too hard to get back in the game.

8) Should I make calling & 3-betting ranges?

Short answer: No.

Most cash player usually have default preflop open-raising, calling and 3-betting rainges in their head. The reason why I was confused aboutdoing this was actually because I was misidrected by other people speaking about their ranges, whereas my book does not speak about specific ranges. Having read further and understood what my book is about, I know now that I do not need fixed ranges.

Decision: Work on the calling and 3-betting approach as suggested in my book more. Fixed ranges are not part of this system.

9) Should I switch poker sites?

Short answer: ASAP

A number of readings have recently convinced me that Pokerstars is not a good place to play at this stage, for these reasons
- Pokerstars does not offer good rakeback for low/mid volume players. The rakeback at the low levels is very bad.
- Pokerstars increased its rake in 2014
- The field of play at Microstakes in Pokerstars is tough relatively to other sites
- All the popular software works on Pokerstars. The majority of people are heavily equipped with all kinds of helping software.
- A new site can give me not only better rakeback, but also a sign-up bonus

Pokerstars has good software and a huge variety of games, and the counter-argument is that fish are everywhere. But clearly, the above reasons show that it is not the best site for me right now.

Decision: I can keep some money in to play some of the good value MTTs offered. Other than that, all signs point to a new site as soon as possible.

10) Should I read other material?

Short answer: No

I have recently come across a lot of great books and videos. I have certainly been impressed by ideas from Ed Miller from either videos or books such as "Poker's 1%" and "How to read a hand", as well as articles about how he analyzes the texture of the board. As much as I like Ed Miller, and what I read in other books, deviating from my strategy has been a major factor for my progress dropping. As a matter of fact, NOT TRYING ANYTHING ELSE other than my current approach is what I should be doing. I have already explored enough material, and I have more than I need to work with.

Decision: This is key to my success. Do not put anything else in the current strategy.

Summary
I will keep reading my current book and practicing my current strategy. I will be playing on 5NL FR games until my bankroll reaches $100 net, covering the losses of last time’s step up at 10NL. I won’t play 6-max and won’t consider it till my bankroll is much bigger. I will keep playing 4 tables at a time as I do where I make decisions more comfortably and I am more profitable. I will fish hunt. I won’t practice range analysis with Equilab, and I don’t need to make calling and 3-betting ranges.

What I do need to do is study more about Exploitative play. I will also continue playing MTTs as a second option and study a little about them.

I will also look to switch to a new Poker site ASAP, but leave some money to play good value MTTs on Pokerstars. As Zoom is mostly available on PS, I probably won't get the chance to play it, but that doesn't matter anyway.

I love fish

Learning to play poker



I recently watched some coaching videos and would like to transfer some of the things I learnt. As the American poet Maya Angelou quoted “When you learn, teach, when you get, give”. Or, in the words of the Roman philosopher Seneca, “While we teach, we learn”. Some analysis on the effects of teaching is also provided on this article. "Above all, it’s the emotions elicited by teaching that make it such a powerful vehicle for learning."
http://ideas.time.com/2011/11/30/the-protege-effect/

The main reasons for holding beginning players back from Microstakes are:
1) Tilt
2) FPS (Fancy play syndrome)
3) Dealing with variance

Tilt
Tilt happens to everyone. The best thing one can do is to learn to control it. At the basic level, this is to understand that it happens, and stop playing when it does. As a better strategy, one can identify the signs that they are about to go on tilt and stop in advance.

FPS
Fancy Play Syndrome is something that happens all the time on Microstakes. The thing is that poker, for the most time, is boring. It is not like TV poker where the top hands from multiple hours of play are shown. There is a lot of folding involved. For the majority of time, playing involves getting in a pot, a c-bet and done.

Microstakes players are mostly passive players who are simply playing their hands. Most of the time, they overbet marginal hands. When they see that the opponent is not taking the initiative, they overbet a lot more, or even run insane bluffs. By taking the initiative, this doesn’t happen. When having the initiative, if a passive player bets into you, they are not trying to run a sophisticated bluff. They simply are betting their hand, and they usually have it. Also, most Microstakes players are multitabling and are not paying attention to you. Particularly nitty regs are playing ABC poker. They are not bluffing you. They are just betting their hands.

Winning players rely a lot on initiative and position. They take the initiative, they are aggressive, they c-bet a lot, and fold to resistance.

Dealing with variance
To deal with variance one must understand how money is made in poker. You win some big pots, you also lose some, but overall you win. Also, you win from all those little spots where you play more profitably. For example, by having a good starting range, playing suitably against each type of opponent, and eventually working out those spots where you are playing theoretically ok but you will lose more money than when you will win even when the plays will work.

Second, one must understand that there is variance in poker anyway. There are times when all hands hit, and times when nothing will be hitting for long periods of time. Keep in mind the cases where leaks will cost a lot, as well as the inevitable tilt moments. A more solid and mathematical way to understand variance is to use a Poker Variance calculator. This requires having played at least some tens of thousands of hands, and plugging in some numbers. The results can give an idea of how bad one can run, and what is the maximum they may win or lose, and what is the likelihood of those scenarios occurring, given the variance in their current play.

The method for learning poker
For a beginning player, these are the steps to start becoming a winner:

1. Learn a complete strategy that can cover them for every possible scenario on the table.
2. Systematically and consistently apply that strategy on the tables. That is all they have to do. Never improvise. Simply apply the strategy.

Only one complete strategy is required at the start when someone is learning to play. If you mix up different strategies, it is not only confusing but it is impossible to tell where the problem is, and tell whether that strategy works or not. That is why it is important to skip all sorts of different websites, and random advice from the internet. Only learn the main strategy, and only seek to fill in questions that emerge from that strategy and are not answered within the material provided.

3. Review their hands after the sessions. At the beginning, while learning the strategy, one should review their hands to find where they are applying the strategy correctly and where not.
For the spots where they are not applying it correctly, learn the right moves to ensure they will do this next time.

When they are applying it correctly, check if they are being lucky or unlucky to get an understanding of variance and confirm that they are playing according to the strategy.

When eventually they are applying that strategy consistently and to the letter, then check to find which spots are most and least profitable ie leaks, and start adjusting. For example, one may find that calling 3-bets from EP with small pairs is not profitable in some situations. The one can adjust their strategy to avoid them. But not before they have already been applying their strategy fully.

Learning from a book
All that a beginning player has to do is pick up a book, read it, and apply the tactics to the letter. Some people think that learning from a book is not a good way to go, because it hinders the players’ creativity and limits their own curiosity to discover different aspects of the game. However, this is not true.

As with anything, when someone is a complete beginner, it is perfectly sensible to start with a set strategy which covers all they need to know. That becomes at the least a standpoint in their learning, and something to compare to. When that is mastered, one can either adjust it or discard it completely. But mastering one strategy will at least get someone thinking in poker terms, and having the tools and methods to analyse the game in a way which is in line with it. They will see the different aspects of poker later anyway and can change their ways when they have the basics right.

Poker strategy books are not like novels. They are slow reads. They are like maths books. You can’t breeze through them. You need to study the concepts thoroughly, examine them, practice them, and go back to them multiple times. Quantity in reading books and articles is less important than quality.

In terms of material to read, I have sofar identified 3 books which are up-to-date, by well respected, successful authors, and seem to provide complete strategies on how to play on the Microstakes
1. Building a bankroll, by Pawel ‘Verneer’ Nazarewicz
2. Crushing the Microstakes, by Nathan ‘Blackrain79’ Williams
3. Dynamic Full Ring Poker, by James ‘SplitSuit’ Sweeney

Following a systematic method as above will, at the very least, make a winning player at Microstakes with a solid theoretical basis, who can move on further in poker.

3 HUD settings on HM2 for precision and ease of use

1. Set HUD filter according to number of players

This setting will tell the HUD to only show stats from each player only from the times where they played against a set number of opponents. This is very important as, for example, trying to use stats from a player playing heads-up when they are on a full-ring table is suicide, since the numbers will vary tremendously.

To configure this setting on HM2
- HUD settings -> HUD filters -> Filter by number of players

This is the recommended configuration


(Tip from Andrew 'Foucault' Brokos's "Exploitive HUD" video)

2. Set min sample size per statistic

Each statistic shows a frequency at which a player performs certain actions eg 3-bet, Fold to 3-bet etc. Clearly, the player must repeat this same action a number of times before the number becomes meaningful. A minimum of 10 for each action is a good guideline.

To configure this setting on HM2
- HUD settings -> Stat Appearance -> Selected Stat -> Set Min samples and tick Dim for sample size.



(Tip from Nathan 'Blackrain79' Williams' online guide "Beating the Regs")

3. Disable popups on mouse-over

I have always found it annoying that when my mouse runs over the HUD, popups appear and cover the screen when I don't need them. A much better approach is to configure the HUD to only show popups on demand ie only when clicking on the stats window.

To configure this setting on HM2
- HUD Settings -> General settings -> Advanced settings -> Click for stat popup



(This tip is from personal experience)

Profitability at the Micro MTTs Part 1

The Poker world in 2015
The year is 2015 and Poker has declined a lot in the last few years. Professionals have seen the game becoming harder even at the lowest levels, the levels of recreational players dropping, the ratio of fish/regulars in cash games to be decreasing, and the rakes to be going up. These factors affected particularly cash games, and with this in mind, many professional have looked for ways to maintain their profitability.

New games in 2015
In terms of changes in the games offered by operators, there has been an increase in unknowns games such as Zoom, and the invention of high skill-involving games such as Spin & Gos. Some professionals have already turned to those games to increase their hourly rate.

Switching to Omaha
Other professionals have already turned to less popular cash games such as Omaha, which was considered the future of poker a few years ago. Today, Omaha itself is rumoured to not be “the next big thing” as speculated previously.

Playing lower stakes
Some of those who did not completely leave poker or switch games, moved down stakes in cash games.

Switching to DFS
Amore pessimistic part of the community big part rumours that Poker has no future. This is fuelled by the advancement of software available to players, the abundance of data mining capabilities, as well as the development of the GTO play, all of which seem to be making the game more beatable with less effort. Such professionals are turning to games like Dream Fantasy Sports, which are currently booming in the US market.

The basic source of profit in poker
Whatever the situation, the reality is that poker is still not dead at the moment, and there is still some money in there up for grabs. As usual, the majority of the money comes from 2 main sources: recreational players, and bad regulars, with the majority being from recreational players.

Micro stakes MTTs are still quite unaffected
What is not frequently noted is that, whereas recreational players in cash games are slowly becoming scarcer, this declined has not happened in Micro stakes MTTs in 2015. MTTs are a favourite game of the recreational players. In Micro stakes MTTs, the number of recreational players has declined less, and the ratio of fish/regulars is still high. Another benefit about those games is that there is not much material available such as books about how to beat them.

Professionals are not yet involved
It has been interesting in a few discussions on the 2+2 forum is that a lot of players claim that the micro stakes tournament levels are so easy that anyone in the forum could beat them. Strangely, no professional has moved into that area. They main argument brought up is that they are claimed to be “very high variance”. That argument is false. It is illogical to claim that players at those levels play really bad, and at the same time not play them because they are “high variance”.

In this article I will seek for the highest profitability in the Micro stakes MTTs.

End of Part 1

Profitability at the Micro MTTs Part 2

Which are the Micro tournaments?
Micro stakes are tournaments with an entry fee of at least $1 and less than $5. Aside of their entry fee they differ in:
- Speed: essentially relating to the blind structure and stack size. Different tournament speeds are Slow, Regular, Turbo, Hyper-Turbo
- Rebuy option: Rebuy tournaments may offer re-buying after eliminaton, either for an unlimited number of times during a set periof of time, or 1R1A (1 Rebuy and 1 Add-on in total), or no rebuys at all.
- Knockout feature: Knockout tournaments offer a standard bounty for every time a player eliminates someone else. The bounty comes from the entry fee. Another subtype is progressive knockouts, for which the bounty for every player increases as that player eliminates others.
- Guaranteed prize pool: Those tournaments offer a guarantee that the prize pool will be at least equal to the guaranteed amount. This means tha even if few players register and create a small prize pool, the casino will provide the rest of the prize pool up to the Guaranteed amount. If, however, the total prize pool from the players surpasses the Guaranteed amount, then the prize pool will be as it stands. In other words, the Guaranteed amount is the minimum prize pool possible, but not an extra amount added to the pool.

On Pokerstars, most tournaments run a schedule which is the same very day, whereas some Micro tournaments are available only once / week. Below I have provided a full schedule of the Micro stakes tournaments of interest on Pokerstars sorted by time (including few interesting tournaments at slightly higher stakes).

Note that "The Bigger" tournaments replace the equivalent "The Big" tournaments during certain days.

Schedule of Micro tournaments on Pokerstars


What are the factors for assessing value in Micro stakes tournaments?
Some MTT players today are "grinding" tournaments, playing many at the same time. My approach is to play tournaments selectively. Some of my factors for gaining value are:
1) Increasing ROI: Higher prize tournaments for the same or similar entry fee.
2) Decreasing play time: Same or similar prizes for the same or similar entry fee but for shorter duration.
3) Increasing winning chances: Smaller field means potentially higher chance to win.
4) Decreasing variance: Slower blind structures allow for more skill to be applied.

Guaranteed tournament fill up
The fact that there are is a Guaranteed prize pool makes tournaments attractive. However, if those tournaments create a prize pool equal to the Guaranteed amount, then there is no value gained in playing those specific tours. For a tournament to complete its Guaranteed prize pool, there is a certain number of players that need to register. This can easily be calculated.

For example, in a $2.20 tour with a $2k Guaranteed prize, the entry fee is $2 and the rake is $0.20. By dividing the Guaranteed prize pool by the entry fee ($2000 / $2) one can see that the tournament needs 1,000 to register to fill-up.

Here is a complete list of the required number of players to fill up all the above tours on Pokerstars



End of Part 2

I have not been happy with the 2+2 forum and I have been considering leaving as I find that this is not a good place to learn poker. However, in the meantime I am still going to write on this blog.

I am not a poker coach, but some poker concepts are very similar with other concepts in life and easily transferrable. Some are common sense. Others are easily available on books and online sites and discussion forums.

These are some of my thoughts today.

Skills of poker
Poker is a game of skill. This debate has concluded many times before. However, what has not been said is what skill really means in poker. Despitepopular belief, skill is not all about poker theory and in-game strategy.

I believe that these are all the factors that together comprise make up the "skill" in profitable poker, or all the individual skills relating to succesful poker:
1. Tilt control
2. Bankroll management
3. Rake
4. Field selection
5. Table selection
6. Seat selection
7. Opponent profiling
8. Gameplay
9. Persistence
10. Recovery

Tilt Control
A lot of loss in poker is associated with playing when driven by emotional, tiredness or even drunkness.
Anyone who plays rested and with a clear head, relaxed, who can handle the emotional ups and downs associated with winning and losing, who starts and stops playing at the right times, will simply be performing better.

Bankroll management
Poker does not return money at a steady rate. It involves managing money taking certain risks. Generally speaking, managing the amount one puts at risk according to a studied financial risk assessment plan gives them an advantage.

Financial models related to risk, such as Kelly betting criterion, as well as simple game-applied mathematical models suggest that you need a certain amount of chips in order to be able to play in games given the fact that it has variance.

Bankroll management is about having the right bankroll in relation to the stake level and variance of the game, and using one provides more financial control and stability.

Field selection
A simple bankroll management plan would suggest that you should move up and down stakes according to your bankroll alone, assuming that eventually they can beat all levels. This assumption takes for granted that at some point you will beat all stakes, as well as that all stake levels are of the same difficulty. Bankroll management fails to cover this area.

Field selection is about site selection, tournament selection, and about selecting the appropriate stake level where one’s profitability and winrate is best.

If you sit at a table with the world’s top players, you should expect to lose at a high rate. If you play at a table with the world’s worst players, you should expect to win at a high rate. So, if you play in the world’s hardest site – where the hardest players are - you should expect your winrate to be low, and if you play at the world’s softest site – where the worst players are - you should expect your winrate to be high. The same is true for tournaments. You would rather enter a tournament full of amateurs than one full of tough professionals.

Also, in cash games, each stakes level does not have the same level of difficulty on the same site, nor does the difficulty escalate at the same rate in all sites. A certain stakes level may be significantly harder than the previous one. Also, moving up stakes on one site might be easier than in another.

Table selection
The same idea as with field selection applies to each table. If you sit on a table with the site’s hardest players, you should expect a low winrate. If you sit at a table with the site’s worst players, you should expect a high winrate.

Seat selection
Position is power in poker. It is one of the key factors in determining profitability. Sitting to the left of loose players and with nitty players to the right, with any hard players sitting as far across as possible is an ideal scenario for winning.

Opponent profiling
This is further from knowing if a player is tough or easy, but specifically about how they play. This is achieved by looking back at hand histories and taking notes. When you know how your opponent plays, you c and adjust your game accordingly and put yourself in positions of having an edge against them. This would apply particularly when playing with the same players again and again, and when playing with regulars.

Gameplay
This is all about one’s strategy, decisions and all the game-related theory that is continuously discussed in poker books and forums everywhere. Although key to playing, it is clearly only one of the skill factors in the fame.

Rake
The poker operator takes a small percent of every amount of money played as a fee. The smaller this amount, the better the profits for the player. Some of this can be claimed back as rakeback. Rake and rakeback can be critical for a player's profitability.

Persistence
Just like with anything in life, you need to do a lot of something in order to succeed. Play lots and lots and lots of poker and keep going up for more profit.

Even more, poker is not a one-off thing. Small time players think that money is made by going on a high stakes cash table, going all-in on one hand like AA, getting paid off and leaving with all the money in their hand. Others think that they simple have to enter a high stakes tournament such as the WSOP main event, win the first prize, and then leave with all their riches. This is not how money is made in poker. It is not a one-off thing. Although one can stop if they make good profits, they don’t plan to stop there when they start, and this doesn’t get anyone there.

As a matter of fact, when playing cash, money is made little by little on a daily basis, and not in one big scoop. In tournaments, the variance is high, and big cashes don’t come as often.

To get to win money someone must keep being persistent, playing more and more and more, learning, adjusting, and doing it some more. Anyone who plays only a few hours per week cannot have the same shot at profitability as someone who is doing that full time. Anyone who gives up in the long term cannot expect to have the same shots with someone who continues playing long term.

Also, a critical factor to continuing is set goals so as to keep playing.

Recovery
Some people lose some money and give up on poker. The key is to be able to make comebacks from the inevitable downswings. Giving up on a loss is just overkill.

Stakes and level of difficulty

A lot of players move up stakes thinking that they will just win more money. Even more players get stuck playing on very tough sites or games.

I wanted to show how the stakes and the difficulty of the competition relate to profitability, so I made this little diagram. The stakes and difficulty are of course relative also to the player's bankroll and skill, but this is the general idea.

When you turn pro do you plan on playing online or will you make the move to Las Vegas for the live game?

Hi FlushDraw.

Thanks for the comment.

Online play is still good.

Profitability at the Micro MTTs Part 3

Why is the Guaranteed prize fill up important?

If the number of players in a tournament is significantly below the fill up number, then the value of the tournament increases. In that case, there may be tournaments that are more worth playing than others.

For example, the Big $4.40 tournament has a guaranteed prize of $10,000, which requires 2,500 players to enter in order to fill-up the guaranteed prize. If for some reason only 1,000 entered the tournament, they would create a prize pool of $4,000. This means that Pokerstars would have to add $6,000 of its own in the prize pool. As a result, the prize pool would be $6,000/$4,000 = 150% bigger than the prize pool created solely from the entrants. This is rather attractive, given that the number of entrants has not changed.

In reality, the Pokerstars tournament directors seem to have worked out the numbers correctly so that they correspond to the volume of the players, and therefore the above scenario would not happen frequently or ever (or Pokerstars would be giving away a lot of freemoney). That said, I have not tested this fully on Pokerstars, so I would still keep checking the tournament entrants against the chart.

However, there is always the chance such opportunities exist in sites OTHER than Pokerstars, so this is something to always keep in mind.

If – like in Pokerstars - the number of players in the tournaments never fall below the fill up number (and in fact always fall about at the required amount), then the fill up number is still useful as an estimate of the number of players that will join each tournament. I can set a rule and trust the foresight of the tournament directors that the number of players will always be around the Guaranteed prize, so whenever I see any tournament with a Guaranteed prize on any site, I can always estimate in advance the expected number of players by dividing it by the entry fee.

The idea about extra money in the pool is known in the gambling world, and it is called an "overlay".

Note for rebuys: This calculation does not work for rebuy tournaments, because the prize pool gets inflated by the rebuys and add-ons. Rebuy tournaments will typically have half or less the amount of players that would fill up the Gtd prize pool with 1 buy-in.

Unfilled Guaranteed tours in action
Here is an example of unfilled tours offering better prize pools from Full tilt.

List of tournaments on Full tilt on 08/07/2015


2 tours stand out:
- The $750 Guarantee with a $5 Buy-in has 77 players. There is still a Late registration but not that many players are expected to sign up at this time. The entrants prize pool is currently $385. The Guarantee adds an extra $315. That is $315/$385 = 81% extra money in the prize pool! A great deal for a small field $5 MTT where there is a good chance to win a top prize.

- The $800 Guarantee with a $10 Buy-in has 36 players.The entrants prize pool is $360. The Guarantee adds in $440. That is $440/$360 = 122% extra money in the prize pool! Another great deal for a small $10 MTT.

End of Part 3

When you turn this into a full time pro career what stakes will you be playing and how many tables? How much are you looking to earn per month as a full time player to start out with?

I am the best

I am a little shocked from the reactions of some people when it comes to poker. I just laugh at them. This is for the big-headed people. All lines are mine.


I am so good that I win tournaments before they start.

I am so good that I crack the nuts with 72o.

I am so good that my level is so high that levels don't even matter any more.

I am so good that the casinos pay me a rake for every hand I play.

I am so good that my profit graph line once jumped out of the screen and hit the ceiling.

I am so good that Pokertracker doesn't have enough space to display the amount of my profits.

I am so good that I beat you even when we don't play poker.

I am so good that when I talk poker, people around me suddenly start jumping on trees eating bananas.

I am so good I don't know what a bad beat story is.

I am so good that casinos owe me money. They are paying me back in instalments.

I am so good that action on Black Friday was actually taken to protect other players from losing their money against me.

I am so good that my EV is measured in powers of Graham's number.

I am so good that my profit graph is just an upward vertical line. This is it:


I am so good that people lose money when I talk about their hands to them.

I am so good that I win money when I replay hands in my head.

I am so good that I once knocked someone out at the poker table. The table tilted upwards against his face cos my chip stack was so heavy.

I am so good that I win even when I am sitting out.

I am so good that people instantly close my threads when I post because they lose when I talk about poker.

I am so good that I always have at least 9 10 diamonds in my pocket. Daily winnings.

I am so good that people pay me in advance before we play.

I am so good that I have to buy a new monitor every month, because the pixels on my screen die. It is at the spot where that animation shows the chips dragged to my stacked.

I am so good I give pot discounts to my opponents as a gesture of good will.

I am so good the casino made higher denomination chips just for me.

I am so good I need to text the dealer my actions because he can't hear me behind my wall of chips.

I am so good that I play with cheques on some casinos because there aren't enough chips and cash.

I am so good that bots are configured to fold to me.

I am so good that casinos always think I am laundering money because I cash out so much.

I am so good that I always buy my opponents ice cream. It is Ben & Jerry's "Fish food".


I am so good I only have a raise button on my poker client.

I am so good that I can't bluff. All my bets are technically value bets.

I am so good that when people raise me I give them their chips back to minimize their losses.

I am so good that when people collude against me they lose more than when they play against me individually.

I am so good that people tape record me when I talk poker so they can write best selling poker books.

I am so good that every poker tournament is a freeroll to me.

I am so good I have to play 10-handed games because my opponents bust out so quickly and the table empties.

I am so good that everyone on the table looks like they are shortstacked with a full buy-in.

I am so good that some opponents hired a hacker to penetrate my PC and see my hole cards and the hacker went broke too.

I am so good that I had to stop giving 50% of my profits to Unicef because Ethiopia became so strong that they started developing nuclear weapons.

I am so good that when I change my bankroll to another currency, the exchange rates change so rapidly that the world economy becomes unstable.

I am so good that once this guy said "If I don't beat you this time I am going to die", and I sent my winnings back to his family with a commiseration card.

I am so good that Doyle Brunson asked me to sign his "Super System"" book, but I declined because he still hadn't repaid me all his losses.

I am so good that once I folded and my opponent thought I was bluffing and gave me the pot.

I am so good that I beat Tom Dwan without looking at my hands.

I am so good that I multi-table all the stakes level tables at the same time. And beat them all.

I am so good that I once said "I don't feel like taking your money again today. Let's play strip poker", and my opponents immediately took their clothes off.

I am so good that when I am on the button I just limp because the blinds auto-fold to me.

I am so good that I once played against an AI bot and it formatted its own hard drive.

I am so good that I was asked to write a strategy book but the FBI banned me from publishing it because they said it is a threat to the world economy.

I am so good that people don't even challenge me any more. THey can't afford to even pay back their losses in instalments.

I am so good that only stupid tourists play me when they are drunk. They give me their stack and then we throw some cards on the table for the typical part.

I am so good I can shuffle 40 chips at once. With my toes.

I am so good they pay me the 1st place prize at WSOP so as not to take part.

I am so good that people ask me if I am British because I always have all the fish and chips at the table.

I am so good that I once dropped one of my chip towers and it drew a line across the casino.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GC5E8ie2pdM

Nathan Williams wrote an article about making money as a cash game player with some analysis. I would be happy with $2,000 / month at the moment. But obviously, as one improves they are always looking for more.

http://www.blackrain79.com/2014/10/h...yers-make.html

The other sources of income from poker

Although the income from net winnings is what most people focus on when it comes to poker, there are actually many other ways / jobs that a poker player can make money from. I have listed some of these below:

1. TV appearance fees
2. Sponsorship
3. Coaching
4. Authoring
5. Donations
6. Software development
7. Rakeback affiliation
8. Prop bets
9. Trading T$/W$
10. Staking

TV appearance fees
This is for the top of the top, the ones who appear on TV. Some shows pay the famous poker players an huorly rate just to appear on TV. This income comes as an extra to whatever they may make by playing.

Sponsorship
Players who become popular or appear on TV are sometimes sponsored by poker sites. They are paid to either advertise the site as their own site to play, or write reviews about the site, or when on TV, to wear the site's logo such as hats, T-shirts etc.

Coaching
A typical stage in many poker player's careers. Not everyone likes to coach others of course, and not everyone is a good player and teacher at the same time. Some people decide to spend some time transferring their knowledge to others for a fee. Typically rates start at $50/hour.

Authoring
People don't usually write books with the intention to make money from them, but because they have a lot to say about the game, or even for fame. A popular book can however provide a small but steady source of income. Although there are a few on the poker world, there is still space for new books to come out. Plus, as the game constantly develops, up to date books are always in demand from players who keep up with the changes.

Donations
Some people today connect to Twitch TV to show their play and offer strategy tips, and ask for Donations from their fans in return. Others make websites with advice where they ask for Donations. Not a reliable source of income, but money is money.

Software development
Poker players and software developers have a lot in common. Many players are sometimes developers. Also, as the game has become increasingly mathematical and electronical, a whole new market for developing poker software opened. Some developers with a small income may choose to make some software for poker to grab a slice of this market. Typically software today also come with a monthly fee instead of a one-off fee.

Rakeback affiliation
o Marketing code for poker sites
o Individual affiliate

Becoming an affiliate for a rakeback site means you getting a cut of the rakeback offered to other players. An affiliate can sometimes offer better rates than the ones offered on the site, or the same but having had a cut for themselves. The good thing about the rake is that it is long term, so once someone is an affiliate, they can just have free money coming in for them every month without having to do anything else. Rakeback affiliates usually advertise on webpages, or poker study groups.

Prop bets
This is not exacty a job although someone could potentially do it as a job. Prop bets or "propositional bets" are bets arranged between the players which are outside of the normal game betting. Sometimes they might be ridiculously silly and not even related to poker. They can give an opportunity for people who want to take challenges or are good at risk calculation to increase their bankroll.

Trading T$/W$
This involves buying T$ or W$ won at Pokerstars or Full tilt and seeling them at a higher price. This is a congested market and there is little space for profitability. However, good trades give free money with no risk, so if opportunities are available at all they are always good to take.

Staking
Staking involves someone else paying for someone's entry fee in a tournament, or providing a part of their bankroll for them to play in a cash game, and getting a cut of any profits in return. The exact details are agreed between the player and the staker. This offers an option to a good player to minimize their risk - as well as their profits of course. It is an option for those who perhaps don't want to carry the whole risk themselves. Someone can become a professional staker themselves, picking good players and providing bankrolls for them without having to play poker themselves, and earn profit simply by taking some of the player's risk.

Play the Europeans?

Switching to a poker site away from Pokerstars is definitely a good option for many players, to avoid the high rake at low-mid levels, as well as to seek for softer fields.

However, today I have been considering whether it is possible to find edges while still playing at Pokerstars. One thought was to play in another currency. The idea is to switch currency to playing with GBP or EUR. The purpose is, of course, to look for softer players. In other words, "Play the Europeans". Here are the arguments for doing this:

a. Europeans suck more at poker
b. Europeans don’t read the 2+2 forums and popular forums as much
c. Europeans don’t train on coaching sites as much
d. Europeans are less up-to-date with all the software
e. EUR and GBP wallets were introduced in 2009.
i. Players on EUR and GBP are new
ii. Older players already had USD accounts
f. Countries using the EUR: Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Greece
g. EUR games are said to be weak, GBP games even weaker

An actual investigation of the GBP/EUR tables on Pokerstars shows that there are too few available. This idea is however something to keep in mind for the future amd further investigations.

Beating Neopokerbot

For anyone not very versed with poker bots, they exist and as a matter of fact there is even a yearly poker bot competition, where different bots from different authors compete against each other. Details of an official competition are here: http://www.computerpokercompetition.org/

With the increasing development of the computer software field, the development of AI, and the new GTO theory about poker, there is also an increasing focus on the development of poker bots, as some believe that they will affect the future of No limit holdem.

Some people also find bots as a cheap way to train in poker without playing for real money. I was introduced to NeoPokerBot randomly by a poker friend in my Study group, as he claimed he was using this bot to train or play for fun to de-tilt. The NeoPokerBot is in fact one of the bots that took part in the above competition. I decided to give this piece of software a try for fun.

Playing the bot
When it comes to bots, a lot of players, even pros, seem to have an approach to them which I find very ridiculous. Basically, they take a priori that the poker bot plays better poker than them and try to learn from it. Other times, they don't know how to adjust to the poker bot so they try to play a +EV game involving advanced poker strategies. I have already written on this forum about Pokersnowie and Neopokerbot, but I received strange reactions from players for something which looks really simple to me.

If an opponent sat at your table, how would you beat them? You would identify the style they play with, mark them into a known category of players, and play them accordingly. The idea is that you want to play in a way which gives you an edge against that player. So you would mark them as a Nit, a TAG, a LAG, a non-believer, a fish etc.

Equally, if a bot sat at your table, it makes sense to simply do the same. As there is no one single way to play against a single bot, one would simply have to experiment. One needs to again think of what the weak sides of the program are and try to exploit those. The edge might come from things irrelevant to poker theory. Just like one could take advantage of a player's tilt, they could find different tricks to exploit a bot. A simple one is exactly that the bot does not tilt! It also never makes wrong calculations. It plays just as it has been programmed to do. Usually, bots that are available never adjust to their opponents. They just play their strategy. So if someone finds ONE way to exploit a bot, it will work always, 100% of the time, no matter what monetary amount is required to invest.

How to beat the Neopokerbot
Without getting in too much detail about this, I will simply speak about Neopokerbot. Neopokerbot is available to play with heads-up for free without registration, and also for free with registration for bigger tables. It is available on this website www.neopokerbot.com.

It seems that every time someone sits on a table, the bot has a different name, so I am not sure if this is actually a version of the same code configured to play different. However, I have tried playing with Neopokerbots with different names and this strategy beat them all with 100% certainty. Funnily, the strategy is really really simple:

1. Always raise or re-raise once 3x preflop - but fold if the bot goes all-in. Simply click 3x preflop every time.
2. If called, just check-fold all the way unless you hit a really strong hand. If you hit the nuts on the river, go all in
3. When the bot gets really short-stacked, say once it has lost 50% of its stack or more, it may try to re-raise all-in preflop. If so, you can simply call it with a hand that has good odds for a showdown. If you lose, keep following the above steps until the bot goes broke.

So basically, you don't even have to play a single hand on the flop with the bot apart from an all-in when it is short-stacked.

You see, some poker players will think "this is not correct, this is bad play etc". They are so wrong it is ridiculously funny. These people are addicted to complicated theories and calculations and ignore the basic fundamentals of poker. This is a 100% succesful strategy and requires hardly any effort. It makes me laugh that such poker bots are what make people worry about the future of poker. I also find it funny that this bot competes in competitions when it is so easy to exploit.

This is today's result, and it took less than 5 minutes and hardly any thinking to beat this bot, but simply following the above strategy. I grinded the bot's blinds until it had $150 left. I then called it's all-in and busted it with the first attempt.



Is this really the fearful bot that will destroy online poker?