Hey man,

I felt like his questions and statements were so farcical that I didn't need to address them. He's now sending personal emails attacking me so I think he's kind of mentally unstable and unwell. I wish him the best. For your benefit here's a few answers:

I don't think he knows what the redline and blue line mean TBH, if you look at my graph, I'm exploiting people who overfold in lines like the x/x/b (something I talk about in the book) by overbluffing. Not sure how that makes me passive. Redline/Blueline debate is a red herring though as it doesn't say anything meaningful IMO. If you don't believe me go to Sauce's AMA on RIO where he says the same.

Here's a funny piece of strategy for you. He probably watched my 5c video where I played on stars and sat with 40bb and limped a lot IP and therefore calls me passive. Well as discussed in the book, the optimal preflop IP strategy at 4c HUPLO involves lots of limping with specific parts of your range. It's logical to think that translates to 5c. He omits the fact that I was probably 3Bing 25-30% to exploit the fact my opponents don't understand this. Classic case of the Dunning Kruger Effect. He doesn't know enough to know he doesn't know.

Like I said, I actually won 15 buy ins more in that roughly the same sample (only played another 3k hands I would estimate) which puts my winrate at something like 12bb/100. I think that's pretty solid. Of course, some will just call me a liar, but then again why ever trust a graph someone posts? Anyone could delete one hand from every session and massively skew their winrate. It's a matter of trust. If someone doesn't trust me, that's fine, but I can't see that I've done anything untrustworthy, Phil Galfond is happy to keep me on for a teacher for years and sells one of my books. My 2017 book which cost roughly $1500 received wildly favorable reviews too.

I admitted to struggling with mental game. I think it's a sign of strength to admit your weaknesses and limitations. Part of that was due to not wanting to play poker any more when I felt I had a calling elsewhere. It is kind of humorous that I'm receiving criticism on that from this dude who has a) never read my book b) doesn't play PLO c) is investing a lot of time attacking someone on the internet he doesn't know. Projection? Also why are a player's mental game struggles relevant when they write a poker theory book?

I sent the book to Mason which I'm sure he'll confirm. Looking forward to his review and respect his free market approach. If the book is garbage, I expect him to tell you.

Also if there are other specific questions you'd like answered let me know. I posted the TOC already and should have the free chapter available on my website soon.

Might want to address your anger issues first, not sure if that would work out well with poker coaching.

Hi guys,

My IT person got the free chapter and the TOC up on my website. I don't think I'm supposed to link directly to it in this thread, but if you google Cory Mikesell, it should come up. Enjoy

i was doing the coaching work for one of the biggest stables on your site until i quit because it wasn't paying enough.

might wanna address your lack of skin in the game first before you open your mouth like you got something important to say

you know this isn't true. i sent you one message on your personal website yesterday evening.

your "exploit" is a check down to the river and bet? sounds great

yup

bro, the amount of money you posted in your stupid graphs, my horse won half that last month alone. i quit these games years ago because i stopped getting action. 'dunning kruger' for sure.

15 buyins, wow, write a book then why don't you

noble warrior itt

ya, scamming people with overpriced poker content.

we trolled you and got a sample. your blanket 75/40/25 rule is cute.

debatable

it's really not that much time

because it reveals how unqualified you are to be doing this

'free market' approach just means that bums like you get to mercilessly exploit the information gap between buyer and seller, that's why you 'respect' it

clearly you don't 'respect' it enough to directly address valid criticisms of your pathetic two-bit hustle



i'm not the only one who came itt and said your videos sucked, and you have exactly zero people coming in here to defend you so far.

it's not a red herring, and you're probably oversimplifying/mischaracterizing what sauce said about it. you wanna talk about 'exploits'- if you have a basic understanding of the mechanics of a proper exploit, you'll understand that they generate red line winnings without blue line losses. if your 'exploits' aren't doing that, then your strategy probably sucks.

you don't get massive trajectory swings of red and blue lines (like in your graph) from normal variance. period. it's a result of you flying by the seat of your pants and tilting your money away in a combination of hopeless bluffs (lol exploits) and having no fold button.

you're clearly in over your head here

No idea what you think is “my site”?

If you’re talking about PokerStars, I haven’t done stuff for their Poker School in ages and never had any affiliation with them beyond that.

My statement was solely based on your posting in NVG over the past and a gazillion notes on your account that all have to do with you being a very angry individual.

oh you're just gonna play dumb like this guy now too? on 2+2, genius.

idk why you're trying to make this personal about me?

call me whatever you want, my life is basically the **** and i don't have to resort to grifting to pay my bills

clearly you and the rest of the mods in this forum dislike me- that's fine, i dislike almost all of you too.

I’m interested in getting a bit more information about how you have been cheated if you’re willing to share.

It might make it less likely I face the same situation and I assume none of related details are in the book.

If you’re unwilling i’M also interested in more details around you not enjoying the game. From someone who wants to get to your skill level it seems unfathomable that you would stop enjoying the game when now you get to print $.

I'm happy to share and actually avoiding bots is one of the things I talk about in the book:

In the book, I show the reader how to play every stack size and the strategic adjustments that occur at every SPR. Most players simply ignore these differences, play the exact same preflop strat at every stack depth and don't consider the vast differences there are when cbet at say SPR 2.5 vs SPR 3.5. That may seem trivial, but I regularly played at 20bb-30bb with people who were losing from the BTN in HU.

It's quite hard to nail the preflop ranges for every stack size (though it won't be when you buy the book ) and a huge tell that someone is a bot is that they know how to adjust to all the different stack sizes. I learned this from losing to a bot on ACR who was later also banned from Party. As the information in this book gets out, this tell will become less good, but it's an extremely solid signal now.

Also avoid browser based poker sites. My then GF (absolute programming genius) showed me that the cards can be easily turned face up and without even the knowledge of the site operator.

Why don't I enjoy poker anymore despite winning? I never played poker because I liked it. I was a chess master and made a living playing and teaching that (by living I mean broke 22 year old ramen diet living). I knew poker players and knew it was the quickest way to make a living with the skills I had so I decided to turn pro without ever playing a hand and proceeded to study for months and got amazing coaching from Andrew Seidman. Moved up quickly and always planned to move on to things like writing (first love) and entrepreneurship. Basically, I never loved poker, it was just a means to an end. I do really enjoy coaching motivated people who love the game so I'll do that for a while longer while I feel I can provide value.

Hope that helps shed some light

Preflop ranges are easy to learn in PLO. How big part of the book is about preflop play with different stack sizes?

I changed my opinion based on the last paragrap of your message. Mostly because of the chess master thing because if I understand correctly, it’s very difficult thing to achieve.

But I think to become HU crusher, your chess background might have limited your poker skills since in chess every decision is logical, in poker you need to consider the other aspects also.

It is helpful so thank you Cory.

I have a follow up question and it does kind of relate to what the other guy is banging on about: I’m going to make the assumption you were v good @ chess, it helped you become good @ poker fast... you have played in some hard games, you’ve made some videos, you’ve written poker books. How good of a (HUPLO) player are you?

(And I’m not trolling )

I have an idea what you’re getting @ but what are the other aspects?

So I've taught a lot of really strong players and they consistently come back for more lessons and tell me that I'm giving them ideas that are new or surprising. I've built a database of 2000 of my strategy graphs covering every stack size and line with as many different boards as possible. Studying this, I've come up with the heuristics I teach in the book (even the troll said one is cute...swoon). I've also studied deeply parts of the game (10bb-50bb) that few players have studied which gives me a big edge there. For these reasons, I'm pretty confident that my theoretical knowledge is like top 10 in the world at least.

I think my execution in game is a bit worse and my mental game is worse still. Not sure how that all averages out. I think both of those things can be trained, but I lack the desire to train them at least with regards to poker.

When it comes to writing the book, I think my theoretical knowledge matters much more and also my ability to teach, write, synthesize, and convey information really shine.

Hey man,

I'd push back on preflop being easy since I've only seen one or two players (who weren't likely cheating) execute 20bb-40bb well.

So looking at my TOC, it seems about 14 pages are directly related to preflop. Some of this ties into how flop texture changes based on the stack size and therefore the preflop ranges input, some are just preflop charts you can study and use. Book is 256 pages long so that's about 6%ish

Could chess have hurt my poker game? I feel like it was probably the opposite because I was thinking about opponent based adjustments in chess (opening selection and finding ways to sack a pawn and get an unreasonable initiative vs greedy players). This is a total guess though, there's no way I could say objectively.

Hi Everyone:

I've got the book. I'll be getting to it slowly since I need to finish up a couple of other things first.

Best wishes,
Mason

Ok last question from me:

If there were 1 to 5 vids on runitonce that you’d made that you still feel has the most interesting strategy info in/that I could look @ in 5 years from now and it’s still good material, which 1’s are they?

(With regards to thread and few negative arguments aimed at Cory. I am a subscriber at RIO and have to say Cory always gives me a much more 3D answer to any question I put to him in the comments section than other coaches. Having said that, I’m not in a position with regards to my poker skill to judge how good the content of his books or training videos are. And it may be that Mason isn’t either.

So i’M not exactly sure where that leaves the debate.)

Great discussion on the Runchuks podcast last week, I could listen to you two talk for hours.

Hey,

First of all, thanks for the kind words. I really appreciate it.

I really learned a lot from making the x/x/b 3 handed videos where we look at how the turn cards and river cards change the ranges and benefit specific players. Just recognizing those changes and knowing when to attack adds a lot of value to our game.

Another one I did recently was showing how we adjust our cbet OOP in 6 max vs optimal and vs a whale with a wide calling range. The results are somewhat surprising and I think a lot of players are turning themselves into the fish, by trying to exploit the wide IP player.

Others I liked was the first video I did with Phil G, but I think that only counts as like 30% mine lol.

Lastly "HU approved but 6 max?" is super relevant to this book because it shows how HU knowledge can be applied throughout 6 max. It's also why I thought this book would be useful eventhough HU isn't a super widespread game. For instance realizing that 40bb BvB When SB RFI's a narrow range, plays very much like a 120bb 3B pot in HU or a 40bb limp and raise pot in HU.

Combined with graphs delivered, this is getting intresting. Just to clarify, what was your last nickname on party, before the recent changes?

(I saw you mentioned one before, but I play a lot of party on a lot of levels, somewhat HU included, and can't recall 420isaPSB. If that was the one, what kind of tables that 'winnings' are coming from?)

graphs? who needs those, sauce said there's nothing to be learned from them

lets just wait til we get this retired old boomer's take on hardcorey's book before we pass judgment

imagine giving this dude thousands of dollars for coaching when u can just get a mastermind membership for like $100, from a dude who has likely won 10x more money playing poker in tougher games than hardcorey has

or we could apply a balanced limp strategy HU @ 30bb as if those 'matches' don't end in somebody rage clicking after 20 mins

whether its the x/x/b 'exploit' or his ridiculous 75/40/25 rule, his whole thing is oversimplifying and teaching the laziest, most basic route you can go whilst still incorporating solver work and appearing knowledgable. a literal bum, getting by with the least effort possible. you can see it in his poker graphs that he shared too.

Who are these really strong players?

Maybe your account was the one he thought was the bot

Pretty golden to call out a troll for Dunning Kruger and then simultaneously claim to be top10 world in theoretical knowledge while not playing higher than 5/10 lol.

Even if you genuinly think you're top10, you can't possibly claim that in a public forum and expect people to take your seriously. Maybe have your boy TomsOn make that claim for you and it might have some more weight to it.

Would you be interested in a bet that's solely revolving around theoretical HUplo? It would not be hard to set up a game where an independent third party picks out a few hands/lines and you and your opponent both make guesses on what's the best play at equilibrium and you pay a fee for every X amount of EV that you play worse compared to monker. If so, I think I know a few takers.
Also understandable if you don't have the time for that though.