Xuan768. I crushed for like 100k hands, stopped playing for a year, came back and now I don't. We didn't play all that much but when we did you pwned my soul. Heads up has been treating me pretty well though

was I the only one that had problems playing the video from the megaupload link in this tread, after I dled it it said realplayer couldnt play it?? any other place to find it

That^^^. Thanks for doing this Shpanko. I always respected your posts and ive been enjoying reading this thread the last two days.

Awesome read, thanks for doing this!

1. Just watching your vid.. at pretty early on you made a c/r bluff w/ AJo on a Q93r board after having called BTNs pf open from BB and said "depending on the speed of which he calls, that's gonna dictate whether I'm going to continue with my bluff on the turn or not..". On that particular flop, how would you assess his hand range when he calls quickly <> when he thinks about calling for some time? Do different boards affect on this 'thinking time'? On this hand, if you felt the opponent was weak, which turn cards you'd prefer to turn for you to barrel?

2. What do you think (in general) to make c/r bluffs on very dry boards like that? For example, btn vs bb, flop K73r chk-b-r or btn vs bb, flop A92r chk-b-r? Obv I understand that this is very much opponent dependant, but let's assume a situation where villain seems to be a reg, but you and him haven't played together before, do you like doing these kind of c/rs? Why/why not?

3. Something that I've been thinking a fair bit recently: river c/r sizing.. how much do you vary it depending on whether your on a bluff/value c/r? Depending on the opponent (fish/reg)? Do you use c/minraises on the river a lot when you absolutely feel that villain wouldn't pay you off if you made a bigger c/r?

Hope my Q's made atleast some sense; been awake waaaay too long, so off to bed now

Thanks again!

Shpanko,

This is going to border on homosexual. I wish I could equal 50% of your work ethic. Your contributions to this forum are probably unequaled. I think this is where the gayness ends, but your success is devoid of variance (almost entirely) and I wish you the absolute best in life.

1. As I recall I made that bluff mostly because I was new to the table and because I thought villain was a weak tag. Furthermore we had some backdoor draws to accompany the bluff.

2. in terms of making c/r'es on dry boards there are basically only two kinds of TAG's, those that assume you'd never bluff on such a dry board where you rep very little and thus fold, and the second kind who think you're stealing and thus are willing to float your c/r extremely light or even with absolute air. Your history with a given opponent should tell you which category they'll fall into with regards to their reaction to your c/r.

For both fish and regs, when you raise them on the flop or turn and they call quickly, they usually have a good but not great hand. Thus usually when a fish quickly calls a raise he's completely gone into c/c mode and won't fold. When a TAG makes the quick call they also usually have a decent but not great made hand, and depending on your history and how the board runs out you can find a lot of situations where you can get them to lay it down. Psychologically they know that they're not going to raise bcause they have a decent hand but not one that wants to reraise, they think you're bluffing a decent amount of the time and so they call quickly to see what you're going to do on the turn. There are a lot of nuances to this but those have been my general findings.

3. I don't know if I've ever made a river c/minraise. usually when I c/r the river I make it like 4x-5x their bet and I do this with bluffs and for value.

Thanks Fonkey. Those are very nice compliments and I appreciate them man. I wish you the best as well.

shpanko,

Assuming you could lay out your complete understanding of poker in a reasonable length manual. If you did this, what do you think would be the impact on the games? I guess in other words, do agree that you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink? Alot of people seem to be extremely concerned about giving out good information making the games worse, hurting their bottom lines. But in other games, like chess, people have been laying out their most intimate thoughts on the games for hundreds of years and it's not exactly like the world is overpopulated with grandmasters.

ugliest chick you slept with? picture is essential.

If you had a horse what would you name it?

Thanks once again shpanko for doing this your the man.

To be honest I've found it hard to stay disciplined and follow BR management at points in my life. What would you suggest to do in terms of staying disciplined and following your BR management? If you feel tilted/the urge to jump up close the program I guess?

Also, you suggested I put in 50k-100k hands volume, thats a substantial amount of volume. I typically play 4 tables do you suggest that I up that to 6 or so?

Lastly, what do you think the 3 best ways to improve your game are?

Thanks again buddy!

thoughts on princeton? most popular graduate program? strongest graduate program?
how often do you find yourself going to ny (if ever)? curve-heaven like harvard?

anything else that you'd think is worth mentioning?

Post your royals!!!

Should i want to sex you???

At least how many hands/day should someone play (200NL) to concider themselves a professional player.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Str...ic_Revolutions

String theory is all the rage these days, gg QM.

Any good vegas stories?

Acceptable roll for a 1/2 regular that 12 tables?

ARE YOU GONNA RUN IT TWICE?!?!?

this, and is insurance next?

If someone coming from uNL (or some struggling/average SSNL reg) could subscribe to 10 SSNL posters and only read their posts, who would you have them subscribe too to become better players.
Alternatively you can name the top 10 strat posters (if it's too tought to juggle quantity/quality issues).
Would your answer change if the person in question that could only read these 10 posters was a decent SSNL reg?

how do you interpret WTSD% and W$SD

I doubt it'd impact them much. Fees did essentially this and it hasn't impacted games that much as far as I can tell. When push comes to shove people are lazy and they don't want to have to "read" or "think" or "study" they just want to be instantly better and win monbies. The players who are actually motivated to get better will as there are tons of study materials out there today, and the players who aren't will continue to lose or break even. That's just my two cents.



Crazy Glue

I've really never had a problem with BR management (maybe really early on in my poker career but that's when I didn't really understand the basic concepts of BR management). The second I started playing for a living it just sort of made sense to have 50 BI's+ for the limit I was playing and to drop down if I got to 25 BI's for that limit. When you're playing for a living it's sort of just a necessity to be responsible about BR management and the games you play in. If you can't do that then you shouldn't be playing poker for a living imo. So if you're really having trouble then honestly maybe poker isn't for you (I don't mean this in an offensive way it's just that when I was playing for a living I would never ever ever have considered putting a substantial portion of my BR at risk at one time, it just seemed reckless and ******ed).

When I said you should be putting in 50k+ hands per month I was assuming you were playing around 10 tables at once. Obviously if you're unable to play this many tables at once then don't to it. Just play how many you're comfortable with but you should try and put in at least 100 hrs of play per month and preferably more (and I don't mean table hours I mean real life hours of actual play).

3 Best Ways to Improve Your Play:
-Talk to other reg's at your limit about hands and sweat them or have them sweat you
-Subscribe to a good video website like card runners or leggo and watch a bunch of videos from your limit and the few limits above your limit
-Post a lot of hands and respond to a lot of strat posts here on 2p2, this was how I improved my game the most

Not 100% sure about graduate programs for Princeton since I went there for undergrad but I'd say the best programs are for Public Policy, economics, and physics with the most popular (I think) being the public policy program. Their physics and astrophysics programs are incredibly strong though.

When I was at Princeton I went to NY like once every month or two.

"curve-heaven like harvard?" , not sure what this means.

Anything else worth mentioning: Yeah I guess I have some general life advice that might be worth relating.

1. Always be straight-forward and honest with people even if it's something they don't want to hear.
2. Try to be polite and kind toward everyone until they give you good reason that they don't deserve it, even though it's usually counterproductive to be an *******.
3. Always be mindful of whether or not you're happy with your life. If you're not content with what you're doing or where your life is headed then think long and hard about how you can go about changing it. Life is too short to waste it being unhappy or unfulfilled.
4. Family and friends should almost always come first, cherish the time you have with your loved ones even if sometimes they bug you
5. Your impact on the lives of others will (for the most part) be how you are remembered, so make a good one.

I'm getting a bit didactic so I'll stop here, but I'd say these are a few things that I've learned in my few 24 years of life so it couldn't hurt to share them.

I think it's more about hours you play per day than how many hands you play since some people can 16 table and some can only 3-4 table. But I'd say if you're going to be playing professionally you need to put in at least 5 hours of play per day that you play (which should be at least 4 days per week). This doesn't sound like a lot (and it isn't) but it's still more than most "pro" players put in in terms of time.

String theory is very popular but like I said my money is on super-symmetry.

No less than 40 BI's and preferably 75-100.

I doubt it. Where's the gamboooool?!?

Bilbo
Clowntable
Me (Shpanko)
Terp (when he does actually post strat)
Arnz
Jaysu
mdom
ikestoys
n4rf
bubaloo

(I'm forgetting a lot but there are actually a lot of good posters in the ssnl forums).

Not really sure how to answer this. But people that are winning at showdown more than like 53% are not calling down light enough (same thing for people that are going to showdown less than 40%).

I think a much better stat to pay attention to is W$WSF, if you can get this up to 45% or higher than you're on the right track with your aggression.

"(same thing for people that are going to showdown less than 40%)"


Are you saying that good players should be going to showdown 40-45% or so, or was that a misprint?

tbh i kind of forget what a good WTSD stat should be so I'll let someone else chime in on that. I think I was probably confusing it a bit with W$WSF which should be above 40 and the higher the better. If you can get it up near 50 then you're doing well. That said it'l be lower in lower stakes games where people just don't fold. But once you get up to 1-2 and 2-4 I think having a W$WSF of 45-50 is pretty good and ideal for a lot of styles of play.

I got ya, thanks shpanko.

ROFL@pic of Alex.

got ya.

appreciate the life-wisdom/tips. those things are so important and not that hard to do, but so huge. was actually referring to princeton as a school, not your outlook on life, but thats cool too. i guess you dont have a ton of insight into grad/mba programs - at least i dont about the ones in my school.

curve-heaven = everything is curved, especially qualitative classes are big on that at harvard. a ton of people graduate with honors which devalues your grades/honors/cum laude etc. distinctions and puts your gpa in question relative to other schools. in other words, a 4.0 from harvard (one of the easier undergrads i guess) < 4.0 from u of chicago (notoriously hard).