Just finished watching the NL video. I'm wondering how the hell you get 47 wwsf when you basically never cbet? You raise KQo in CO and check AJxr flop
you raise A3s and check QQ8 flop (vs 2 players tho. but even so). You raise QTo and check Kxx

Frankly, I don't really care about W$WSF, it just comes out that way.

My flop c-bet % is 56%, which is maybe low compared with others, but not zero. Maybe on these tables I just happened to never c-bet. One factor I also consider is my opponent's fold to c-bet stat.

I think by betting the QQ8 flop, you do not represent a Q in the eyes of most opponents, so your bet is often check-raise fodder. The AJx flop can certainly be bet, but making the surprise gutshot straight is so nice I guess I went for that possibility.

Maybe my high W$WSF stat has to do with playing actively in the blinds. I often fold / 3 bet blinds, which avoids seeing flops that are then check-folded. Fold/raising the SB in blind battles rather than limp/fold or reraise also leads to higher W$WSF, but might not be better in terms of ev - for instance Raptor's approach seems to have merit.

Also, keeping your eyes open for little moves, like for instance betting an 8424 turn from the BB after the flop is checked with 2 people, might play a role. Betting hands that have no showdown value on the end when the bluff has a chance to succeed too etc.

An interesting experiment would be to find out if you lower your W$WSF stat when you play more tables at the same time, because you are forced to play more on auto-pilot and do not necessarily fight for pots as much as you could if you were thinking actively about each table.

from pokernerdz.com

"Since then, I have :

played with jesus80 in the irc #tourney channel
played pot limit dealer's choice with Mike Sexton
played plo8 with Brad Booth on Paradise Poker
played limit holdem with Chris Moneymaker on Pokerstars
played no limit with Nenad Medic and Prahlad Friedman on UB
I now mostly play with people who are not yet famous in the Party Poker NL 6 max games. "

This made me lol

But in all seriousness, best of luck with the coaching, and congrats on your playing success, you seem to really have it together!

I was probably one of the first students Alix got and have to say he did an awesome job. Although I'm kinda laggy and love to make moves, I was interested in tuning a taggier approach to have more gears to work with.

I know most of the people can think: oh, well, just play tight, nothing to learn about that. But if it's as simple as that, get your *** in a 25/50 game and make tons of money.

Alix has A LOT of experience in HSNL and if you are willing to put what he preaches into practice (aka, tighten up) I'm sure he can teach the adjustments necessary to beat those levels.

Agreed. Hope someone takes him up on the one week in Paris course and provides a TR as it actually sounds like a bit of fun.

I did an empirical study on how will I did on the 280000 holdem hands or so that are in my computer. The results give an indication of how reliable the profitability (or lack of) of each hand in each position.



You can see the full results in ugly html generated by excel here.

alix..... what about FR. has everything or most of what you have said or been showing been for full ring or just shorthanded? I have been a consitent winner at FR for years now. But last couple months, been getting my ass kicked. Granted, I have never run this bad in my life, but that cant be all of it. I dont know whats been going on.

Good luck with the coaching business.

I would be interested to know whether you are serious about implementing a 1 week coaching course in Paris, and if so what kind of pricing structure would you be setting?

One day, I checked my stats for full ring games, and I didn't make money in any of the non 6-max positions. So I stopped playing FR. Sorry, but I'm not qualified to talk about FR...

Your opening hand charts seem very odd. It appears as though you are playing purely tp value hands and no deception hands. I wonder if this works well at a limit where people assume you at the point in your game where you play a whole lot of deception hands, and thus allows you much more showdown value.

Being positionally aware means also calling a wide range pre-flop to outplay your opponent often somewhat regardless of your hand. Playing A4o and not 56s there seems like either you just didnt get to this point, or else you overtook this point and now find the game at that level has come full circle and people adapt to that so much so that playing 56s there is barely or not even a breakeven play. It seems extremely unlikely though.

Your calling range is similarly odd to me. Not calling low pairs or suited stuff in position. Again, maybe the games you are in have adapted to that point, but it seems unlikely to me.

On top of that, 3betting A4o instead of 56s seems very primitive and possibly a huge lack of understanding of some concepts. If we 3bet and are called, we are in horrible shape with A4 basically pure bluffing alot or in severe reverse implied odds situation. At least with 56s we can semi-bluff and represent a big hand the whole way through on a number of boards, and if it doesnt hit, can fold it easily, unlike if A4o hits an A and we are in a tough spot when we face aggression on an A-high flop.


I wonder if you have done so well by being so tight and thus people are nervous to play back too much. Or else you bluff basically 0% and people expect you to bluff more often than 0, expecially at a level where people are extremely agressive, including with draws, and so they never really appreciate that you never bluff and never have a draw. In any case, well done. Something seems out of kilter to me though (not implying that your results are altered, just your strategy seems almost primative and possibly created by computer simulations almost)

Here is the current pricing :

3 days : 999$
4 days : 1299$
5 days : 1599$
hotel / travel / sightseeing costs are not included.

Each day, you would get at least 2 hours of coaching / sweating / data analysis on your hands, plus some side by side play (2 hours on average), with more informal mentoring.

I can't offer full day internet access at my appartment, as I might have some work commitments to take care of. So this would work best combined with some sightseeing in Paris, like poker in the morning, the Louvre in the afternoon etc.

I would need two weeks advance notice to make room in my schedule for such a course.

Of course you can always start working with me by taking my starter package to get a feel of what you would be getting out of this.

pokernerdz.com

Can you respond to this? You seem like an intelligent guy and I'm sure a few people would love to hear the answers to some of the questions in this post. Congrats on your success

Well, it's good that people have differing ideas about this game, otherwise everybody would play the same and nobody would be making money !

If you look closely at the starting hand heatmap I posted, you'll see that I am not above occasionally playing suited connectors, and that I make a little money doing it (although not very consistently). However, this is often not the case of my students that use the "lag style" as an excuse for spewy play.

So I think developing players should err on the side of caution, and start by adopting a stable, tight game, and then, maybe, open up a little.

In chess, I read that some coaches tell their students that a minor piece is worth 8 pawns, so the little Shirov wannabees stop making fancy but ill-advised sacrifices in their games.

The parallel in poker would be to stick to solid hands until your game is solid enough that you can start experimenting with a more diversified approach.

Another benefit is that often you opponents will only see you through your stats, and when they see tight ones, they will let you steal their blinds or fold to your 3-bets with a higher frequency.

The quality of the video is pretty bad so you cannot read the bet sizes correctly. So it would be a great help if you could either comment on the bet size as well (like "he open raised 4bb and I 3bet $xx, etc) or to try to increase the quality somehow. I am not an expert but I am sure here are some threads on screen capture software.

For the rest, I think it is a nice idea to play two tables and to explain a lot of things instead of playing 4-6 tables and to have no time for explanations!

Good Job!

It's not an excuse to spew. It is for balance.
Having said that, what others think of you is far more important than what you actually have. Another reason to add in speculative hands as a tight player...

Agree, but I think that as a tight player, we get alot of respect, and playing some speculative stuff in late position is basically mandatory. Being positionally aware is one of the biggest factors in poker.

I like that analogy. Nicely said.
However, playing speculative hands in position is part of a 'solid' and balanced hand range. It is not about becoming LAGy and spewing around chips.

Perfect reason to open up to a wide range on the button including at absolute bare bare minimum of A2s+/45s+, and a bunch of others are also very good for stealing with.

I just put up a new video of me playing two tables of 10-20 NL 6-max on my site

Comments welcome !

Am I totally off, or is it normal I m not impressed by 5bb/100 over a 90k hands sample?

Read the articles on your site, from the little i read I d say you got very interresting approach to the game. Would like to see some longer articles from you. Btw is Alix a nick or you're a female, maybe post a pic in bikini, it's always +EV

I would be happy to be making over $400/hr playing 2-3 tables at a time. You wouldn't?

Re: the bikini, something tells me your read on OP's name is a bit out of focus. Either that, or OP is one of the more analytical and calculating females I've seen in the ether.

it s a mostly female name in france.

Please, No Bikini Pics.

hey sounds like a good program. started watching ur NL vid.

At the beginning u checkraise w/ A8s after flopping top pair and defending your big blind (two toned board). Why the check raise? I usually am passive w/ my weak aces, just check calling seems more standard.

Then why do you decide to check the turn there? River you make a value bet (i think board is now A23x4 or something like that). Flush draw missed, and he checked behind, looking weak. What are u hoping to get value from there? I kind of think checking to induce from busted draws seems better.

So basically, checkraise, then check on a turn blank seems inconsistent to me, and im curious if betting riv is best there.

he thinks the guys thinks he checkraised a draw that missed and now bluffs the river which villain might call with a medium pp.

the hand is this one

machina999 is very aggressive, and opens 50% of his starting hands in steal position. My suited ace is ahead of his range and I could 3-bet, but seeing that he tends to call 3-bets often, I keep the pot small by calling. I will be out of position for the rest of the hand, so inflating the pot there is not necessarily good.

I hit my ace on the flop, and he bets small. I'm not sure I had picked up on this at that point of the session, but he does that with a very large portion of his hands, except some of his top pairs that he checks. So I figure to be miles ahead of his range. Since calling would also send the message that I have something, I raise to make him pay for the next card.

Once he calls my raise, I figure he has something too. If we assume that of his top 50% starting hands, he keeps aces, pairs, and heart flush draws, my hand is no longer a favorite against his range, Pokerstove says it's now 53/47 in his favor. Actually, it's probably still better for me because of his tendency to check his top pairs, but I did not know that during the hand. So I exercise some pot control and check.

He checks back, which I interpret as a sign of weakness (I now know it is not necessarily the case with this player, who will often act "opposite" to the strength of his cards.)

So I value bet my ace. He's a loose player, and loose players typically call too much, so I give him an opportunity. Plus after my turn check, my hand could also be a busted flush draw. And he raises big.

At this point he can have a 5, for instance the 5h with another h, 2 pair, or making a play because he knows I'm unlikely to have a 5, and my line looks a bit strange. Maybe he thinks I'm bluffing but doesn't have a hand he can show down, that could be a reason for his raise.

At this point I'm conflicted, between reading his large bet as strong (large bets from almost all except the very best players typically mean strength), and the feeling that I might have induced a play with my turn check. Also, typical opponents do not river raise bluff much, even in 10-02 games.

As legit raising hands are a not prevalent in his range, if I want to play optimally, I need to make him indifferent to bluffing by calling a bit more than with 50% of my range as the bet is 798 in a 800 pot. My hand is clearly in the upper half of what I could have at this point (I could be bluffing with a busted flush draw, and if I had had a better kicker I probably would have bet the turn).

I think having seen him play a bit more now, I would tend to make the call in the same spot, giving him credit for being capable of making a river raise bluff.

Lock by OP's request.