I don't even know of another solver tbh.

I'm pretty new to 2+2 and can't seem to find an option for PMing. How do I PM you?

I think you need 10 posts before you can send PMs, but a more powerful mod than me can give you the right to post PMs sooner than that in emergencies.

Hi Matthew!

I must say I dig you book and your honest and layback teaching style, very likeable.

I have a question about Table III: Button 4-Betting Range:
There seems to lack some explanation why you put, A4o-A5o, K2s-K4s in this table. I guess the hands are there to mix in some bluffing hands, but I dont grasp why these hands are the better ones to bluff with in that case. Hope you can shed some light on it.

Ok, so obviously If you were to only 4-bet the strongest six or seven hold 'em hands pre your 4-betting range would be very narrow and pretty easy to read, plus you'd be passing up opportunities to deny equity, build the pot, and make yourself more difficult to play against. This indicates that you should 4-bet some hands other than the very best, but hands like ATs play quite well in position in a 3-bet pot, so flatting these good, but not great hands is probably often the correct play. In other words there's probably more cons than pros 4 betting ATs pre in position when compared to 4-betting K4s in position. Hands like K4s and A5 have some value, but not so much value that you hate your life if you're 5-bet. Not getting to see a flop in position with ATs is a disaster. In a nutshell you want to 4-bet more than just the best hands, but the second and third tier hands play too well as a flat to regularly 4bet, so that leaves hands like K4s as the perfect candidates to widen your 4-betting range beyond the obvious best hands.

This is a good answer.

AX also blocks an ace, and K4s also has a very robust equity component (the flush draw).

If your opponent is 5-bet jamming with AK/JJ+ and a few AXs,, then blocking an ace blocks a pretty good chunk of combos.

If I would have to reraise vs. a tight non-polarized range, I wouldn't do it with Ax, although it blocks the ace, so the board more likely runs without an ace. But I am not that crazy.

This question may have already been answered but I couldn't find it. I've been playing 2-5 live cash on and off for 8 years and have decided to save up a 50BI bank roll and take it seriously with the intention of making a good hourly and perhaps move up to 5-10 in a few years. I also plan on doing a lot of studying over the next few years.

I have done some research in to this book and it seems like some concepts it teaches are useful to start thinking about now and will help correct some outdated thinking I am likely to have such as the vbet/bluff dichotomy. On the other hand, I am concerned that some of the bet sizing and ranges it recommends might be counter productive because my opponents aren't 'tough' enough.

Is my identification of the content I should focus on correct? Are there specific chapters I should avoid? Would you recommend another resource all together for increasing my profit at these stakes, and come back to this book if/when I move up?

I am a big advocate of learning as much as you can about a subject and making connections with the information.

I do not think this is a book you'll be able to read and immediately increase your winrate (mostly likely). That's because you'll likely learn new concepts and get a better understanding of concepts you already thought you knew, and then make mistakes as you try to implement them. Changing bet sizes is a great example.

Unfortunately, I don't know nearly enough about you to be able to recommend a better resource to you. I think this book would be much better for you than Applications, but haven't read most of the poker literature out there.

I'm very confident with this product though and can tell you a ton of time went into it (both on my end, Mason's, and David's). I think all the chapters are good (unlike Applications, where some aged poorly) and there is nothing I'd recommend you skip. I think you'll find this book is worth your time + money if you're looking to read a poker book. If you do purchase it and do not like it, please let me know and I'd be happy to talk to you on skype as I'd really like to hear why you do not like it (as I admittedly have little experience live).

I was going to read through this in over the next week or so, care to give examples of which parts? Or direct me where I can find this out for myself.

Pre-flop mainly.

Pre-flop doesn't model well at all, and the ranges it made using models for the most part turn out to be pretty (by today's standards) ****ty ranges.

I really like the ideas in this book so far in terms of the analytics. The one thing that seems strange to me is the emphasis on 1)small 2.5x raises and 2)Button vs Big Blind being a significant common scenario. (That's the chapter I'm on now).

For #1, I play mostly 1/3 cash games, and a standard raise would be 4x, and (to 10) with 3.3x as the lowest. Where does the emphasis on small raises come from - tournament play?

As for #2, it's a rarity to get folds to the Button, and players don't really defend widely even for a 3.3x raise OTB when it does happen. The real payoff scenario is limpers to the Button/Cutoff where you can raise them for playing so many hands.

Just curious where this emphasis comes from based on your experience.

Book is based on online (closer to GTO) play.

1/3 live is probably one of the softest, if not the softest, games on NLHE that regularly runs, which is why you see so much limping and then calling OOP, huge opening raises, etc.

The concepts in the book will still apply to live play, you just need to take a much more exploitative approach, which it sounds like you're doing.

^^

yes, makes sense - I haven't played online in so long I forget about those dynamics

If you can bluff more the bigger you bet why can you bet more hands on the flop using a small size e.g .25%

Because there are still more streets left to act.

Look at it this way -- if you know your opponent has a marginal hand, and your range consists of either nuts or air, it's much easier to punish them if you're on the flop and have access to 3 streets of betting than if you're on the river and have access to just one.

That said, if you make a big bet on the flop rather than a small bet (with a polarized range), than you can bluff even more than if you had made the smaller bet.

When making a decision of whether or not to Cbet on the flop whilst sitting at the table what are the main considerations you should make?

Hey Matthew,

In conclusion of the book you are talking about online cash game is dried up for last 5 years.
And that poker is getting tougher and tougher. I agree as well.

Do you think is poker still going to be profitable for next 5 years
For these who work hard and study the game?
I like to be an MTT player, but many people say poker is not profitable anymore.

In addition, if there is no profit, why do we have so many pros?

Gonna get really off topic from the book and long winded with this one, but I think it's a good question.

Yes. But whether or not it's worth your time from a financial perspective is harder to say.

I'm in the foot fixing business now (currently a podiatry resident) so I get a lot of exposure to really successful podiatrists and as well as less (from a financial perspective) successful podiatrists. I also get a ton of exposure to other medical specialties. There is a huge variation of salaries both within my field and other medical specialties.

Do I think most smart, hard working Americans are going to be able to earn as much money playing poker as they could in medicine? No, not at all. It depends on your specialty and a bunch of other factors, but you'll probably make between $100-$200/hr after benefits as a physician. But, that requires 4 years of undergrad, 4 years of medical school, and 3 to 8 (neurosurgery lol) years of residency.

So, if you're smart and want to maximize your earnings, then medicine > poker for almost everyone in America. But for any comparison like this you have to keep in mind:

1) There's an insane amount of delayed gratification in medicine. A good poker player can start making money at 18 whereas you'll likely be at least 30 before you make money in medicine with a tonnnnnn of debt.

2) You get INSANE freedom and have the ability for INSANE lifestyle with poker. On Tuesday, we had our first surgical case at 7:30am and our last case (an add-on trauma) ended at 11:30pm (there were breaks in between some of the cases, but I had other stuff to do as well). This doesn't really happen in poker, you basically have no boss and can do what you want. My program is awesome and my specialty is laid back, but the higher paying, more competitive specialties usually, but not always often have all the problems with residency you read about (put it this way -- if you have to pass policies to cap a resident on an average of 80 hour work week, imagine how hard the average resident had to have been working to make that policy come to fruition. And many programs who have historically worked residents for 80+ hours/week are going to be the hyper intense programs/specialties that aren't going to follow the rules anyways).

3) Most people aren't American, so talking about American medicine (or investment banking, underwater welding, etc) salaries doesn't really apply to you if you're from a less rich Eastern European or African nation (both of which I've coached people from, who were making way more money via poker than they could in a normal job, but less than a highly paid American physician or MBA)

Ok, so that was super long-winded as I warned. My point is this -- I don't think most people from rich countries are capable of making more money playing poker than they could at a typical job if they per sued lucrative careers. But not everyone is from a 1st world country. Not everyone can tolerate the delayed gratification and debt (if you're American) you need to make it in most (if not all) fields. And the most successful poker players I know just straight up really enjoy playing poker, so some people prefer that lifestyle even if it makes them more than they could have in other fields.

And lastly, keep in mind just like its super difficult to break into HSNL for most people, it's super hard to successfully become a professional in most lucrative fields (orthopedic surgery, dermatology, investment banking, etc) as well.


See above. Poker is definitely profitable if you're good. It's just whether or not it's worth your time compared to pursuing another career.

If you have fun playing poker and making $10/hour, then none of this is really relevant and it's just an awesome hobby anyways.

I could be wrong here, but probably at least partly because of the fact that most countries aren't America rich. Grinding for $8/hour is pretty damn sweet when the average wage in your country is $1/hour. And these lower stake winners make it harder for people to move up and you win their money at NL$100+, which is what you'd realistically need to be winning at to make it financially worth your time rather than just pursue a conventional career.

Small sample, but I coach a few MTT pros sporadically and I just looked at the GDP per capita of the countries they are from. For the most part I know their results and they're doing quite well by American salary standards, and absolutely KILLING IT when you look at how much they made relative to their countries average salary. So keep in mind making $50 to $150k/year for you may be much different for you than for them.

Books talk about this in major detail. Not sure a quick post on this would be helpful. But here we go:

If my hand is weak: Are they likely to fold? Do I have robust equity?

If my hand is strong: How likely is my check-raise to be successful if I check? If I risk check-calling will I likely get to pick off additional bluffs or an overbet?

Thanks a lot for your detail answer!
But if I want to make the question more
Special to my situation is going to be something like that:

I live in first-world country, I can get a full time job
And I’ll get paid around $35k a year.
But I have to work 5 days a week and work for someone else.
And probably as an engineer will not get much progress and after around 6 years I will earn $50k and now that $50k is going to be peak of my salary and will not change even after 10 years.

I thought give poker a go, as it’s my biggest hobby and can play 10 hours continually and don’t get bored, also can make more money if I be dedicated and study the game.
Buy my main concern is that poker will not be profitable after couple of years as some pros say that and read things like that on the internet!

I’m 100% sur I can make more money than a regular job, but I am not sure of MTTs or live poker still will be profitable after 6 or 7 years.
Would be grateful if you give an answer to that as well , it might be beneficial to others with same situation.
Many thanks

Regards
Amin

Before solvers some pros also talked about poker becoming not profitable but it turned out they were terrible at it.Even Negreanu(2nd all time money mtt earner)admitted that when he turned to study gto concepts.He made 30 millions playing like "clueless mug".Poker is evolving all the time.U need to give a hard work.Everything else will be variance(for an mtt player even more).

Poker likely won't be profitable online forever. It likely will be profitable live for the foreseeable future (possibly our entire lifetimes), but you need skill + massive bankroll (to play high) and the ability to travel and withstand massive swings to break $25+/hour by a wide margin.

If you are making about $18/hour right now with your full time job, and you can make $18+/hour playing poker, then I'd just do both.

Poker gets exponentially more profitable the more you play (I don't expect someone playing 20 hours a week to only make 4x as much as someone playing only 5 hours a week, because the person playing 20 plays 4x as much as hours but will get much better much quicker). But unless you've shown you have major talent or major interest in playing poker full time I'd keep it as a side gig.

Keep in mind it's hard to give life advice over a couple of paragraphs of info, so definitely ask more people who know you.

Hey Mathew,
I really appreciate your in-depth answer.

I initially thought about what you said, have my job and play
Poker at the same time. But as there is no big regular cash game close to me. I was thinking to play MTTs on my time-off. The regular cash game close to me is £ 1/2, which I assume the best case would be Winning 10bb/hour.

Last question, would be grateful if you answer that too.
When you say online poker will not be profitable forever, how long do you think going to take until same thing happens to MTTs that happened to online cash ( field is so tough and most of people are world class).


All the best!

It's not like it's a binary thing where MTT's go from being "profitable" to "not profitable" at some threshold. In all likelihood, each year games will become a bit less profitable if your skill remains stagnant. Hence my long winded post about what's "profitable enough" to make it worth your time, which really comes down to opportunity cost, how much you enjoy poker, what country you're from, how much you value immediately being able to earn and how much you can stomach delayed gratification, etc.