I don't play HU, but I was wondering what the HU community thinks about this. Polk is releasing an advance HUNL training course for like $1k. It seems like the community views HU as mostly dead, so does this really even affect anything at all?

Figured I would jump in here and talk about the general effect on the hu system as well as a little bit about the course.

There is no doubt this is not good for the HUNL ecosystem, I am not going to lie to you. I also do think that this course will make the ecosystem more difficult, anyone that purchases this is going to have a leg up on the other people playing. This is an in depth look on how to play all the different areas of the game tree, with a lot of combo analysis and general theory. It does not use any solvers however, it is all based around my knowledge of the game and range construction. I am sorry that this will make things tougher for you guys, but I also have to create a course that gives the people real value to help them get better at HUNL.

I think that in general, all forms of poker will always get more difficult over time, as information becomes more readily available. This is particularly bad in HU formats, because they are much more solvable than 3h+ games. We will see this happen in games like HUPLO as well.

While you have to be way more careful these days about things like playing against bots, there is still money you can make in HUNL. Through game selection, starting tables, being on many different sites etc. I know a few guys that made very good six figures last year from playing, and while that does pale in comparison to the days where multiple people were making 7+, there is still some money to be made in the game type. HUNL is not completely dead, its just not nearly as great as it used to be.

Would be happy to answer any general question in here about the course or HUNL as a game type as well.

Maybe a couple high stakes bosses buy your projetc out haha?

I liked my friends the bad regs as they currently are

Is this going to include all or at least most of the advanced concepts you cover in private coaching? If I won the lottery I might get it out of sheer curiosity.

Also do you have any idea how good say mid stakes bots are across various sites? It doesn't seem conceivable that the average Joe MS Russian bot could be better than Claudico yet. Would you be able to make those bots your customers?

The Libratus analysis part seems to suggest you have at least a somewhat good idea of how the bot plays. Just out of curiosity now that you've seen the hands and went over them with the guys who played Libratus do you think you could give it a run for its money?

I'm curious how many copies of this you are thinking you will sell to make it worth giving extensive insight into your gameplay / gameplan? Not against it since I am no where near playing high stakes nor do I play much HU , but if you sold even say 50 copies for $50k total is that even worth all the time you put into making it + further making HU hard in a climate where HU is barely alive as is?

Seems similar to the libratus challenge's 50k ev that you said wasn't worth your time except in that you are playing a bot for 20 days with HH's being private instead of making videos and guides into how to play your high stakes HU game for a public release for the same amount of time or longer (probably longer hours) Just seems -ev from a random scrubs outsider perspective unless you have zero hope for the future of HU and don't see yourself ever grinding high stakes HU again, or perhaps you feel the info you are giving out isn't good enough to affect your villains play vs you in the future.


Maybe I am crazy and instead of 50x people buying this it will be in the hundreds and be super valuable for you. Especially in a video/content format instead of coaching it seems like if there are tons of mid stakes grinders interested they would just pool money with friends and all see the content for $100 ea?

obviously this is all an arguement people could bring up for any sort of poker training and obviously many poker training sites (assuming/including upswing) have been very profitable ventures for their creators, it just seems this one HU course is super niche in a specific smaller format that it's like shooting yourself and other people you have coached/friends who still play HU in the foot in order to get a negligible $$$ gain (presumably)

High Stakes biggest winners HUNL 2017

1) Doug Polk - Hands played: 0
2) Rake - Hands Played: All

A little confused by some of the questioning, but it is unlikely there are bots out there that can beat very good regs (particularly at mid stakes). The computer that beat the human players was being run by a super computer, with 15-20 seconds of tanking going on every turn. I think it would be pretty clear you are playing a bot in that scenario and not many people have access to that level of computing power.

You bring up a lot of good points here. As far as how many copies we will sell, I think that is anyone guess at the moment. I imagine we will do far better than 50 of them, but again I have never tried to launch something in this vicinity before so it is hard for me to say. If we do sell only 50, then yes, purchasing this course would be an absolute steal for the value considering how small the pool of players getting the information would be.

In terms of time commitment, this course is way different then the Brains vs AI challenge. We are talking of 20-25 hours of video, recorded over the course of several months. That is compared to 3 straight weeks of playing poker 10 hours a day. I don't even think they are in the same ballpark in terms of time invested, not to mention the fact that the challenge takes place on consecutive days, which means you cannot be doing anything else outside the challenge.

We are taking every step possible to prevent account sharing and information leaking. We have some defenses to this I don't want to share at the moment but will help out. I also understand however that in a digital age, that it is not always possible to prevent. I will say that I strongly believe at heart most people are good people, and given the people I foresee purchasing this course would be directly hurt should it become publicly available, it is also in their interest to keep its content private.

More than anything, I feel that this is the game that I am best in and I am qualified to teach this course. I would not launch a high stakes six max course, or a plo course, those are not areas that I am an expert in. This is right in my wheelhouse, and I spent the last several years as the top player in the scene. I think this will be a great course, offered at a fair price point considering all of those factors.

Pretty bad timing to release a HUNL course (especially a high-end very expensive one). You should release this 5 years ago

Ah ok, ill just do that instead then.

Hi Doug. my name is Doug also. whats your winrate in this $100-$10,000 challenge so far? i want to know how hard it is for best hunl player to build a bankroll.

Also, why don't you just sell all the hand histories of libratus vs evil empire, i think some would pay $1000 for that, i think libratus is probably a better poker player than you and we can learn a lot from it.

personally i am a breakeven nl100reg and i've never seen more than 50different regs in the zoom pool from nl100-nl2000. So how are you going to sell more than 50 copies lol.

Hi Doug, nice to meet you.

In the bankroll challenged I have turned $100 into $1030 over about 30 sessions, and there are no hand histories on the site. However, I don't really see why that is remotely relevant here.

The hand histories for Libratus are not available to be sold, or available for public download. However, an analysis of them is available in the course.

If we do end up selling less than 50 copies, I would be a bit dissapointed. However, I am going to work to make sure that what is put out is the best course that can be created in this format, and do my best to promote my content as I feel it has a lot of value.

Thanks for the feedback.

Hi Doug,

In your estimation, just how hard would Tom Dwan wreck Jungleman in the rest of the HU challenge if he got this training course?

If Daniel Negraneau spent a full 2 weeks studying your course, could he beat high stakes HUNL?

Hi Doug, will there be a Skype group or separate forum where there can be questions answered about the content?

We will have a facebook group for those in the course.

If you have any questions about the course you can feel free to ask me.

N

Thanks StraightFlooosh for posting this.

Hey Doug,

I wanted to know if you are familiar with or read Will Tipton's HUNL books. If you have read them, I was wondering your opinion of them and if you have implemented some of his principles into your own strategy. I just started reading it and think it would take me longer to extract information from his book than your course.

Since your course does not use solvers, how would you deem your lines are the best even with practice and experience without verification? I suppose it is sometimes obvious exploiting an unbalanced opponent, but what about versus a tough balanced opponent? Is it possible to become a very good HU player nowadays without solver analysis? If yes, do you think that is going to change in the future?

I was wondering if it was possible to join the course discussion without a Facebook? If you followed Jarretman's advice and went to the past to offer this course, how would your younger-self view this course? Will your younger-self view it as a time saving way to get better or find his own way?

I want to thank you for offering this course and wish you success.

Thanks Again,
Sp1nks

Thanks for the questions here Sp1nks.

Unfortunately, I don't know anything about Will Tipton's book, so I am can't make any comments concerning that.

I have always approached poker in a game theoretical way, with exploitative elements based on my opponents strategies. I think having both in your game is important, you need to have a good game to start with and then know what to add or change in order to maximize your ev. We do a good amount of both in the course.

I want to say this about the solvers, I think I was a bit too harsh on them before. I think there are good things that you can learn from solvers. The problem with them becomes, that the analysis you get can often become very different once you take into account different bet sizes or a different preflop range.

I also want to say this, the computer in the brains vs AI challenge, played nothing like the solver style I have seen a lot of in the last year or two. It's flop cbet was 51%, not 70-80%. NL is far from solved, but the fact that this is the bet flop frequency from the first bot that is publicly beating humans, is a bit of a signal to me.

The people who own the solvers want you to believe it is the end all way to play poker, because they stand to make more money if that is the belief. Dont't get me wrong either, they do offer a product that can help people learn a lot about the game of poker. But I never used solvers to get to where I am today, and it isn't like I played HUNL eons ago. I was actively playing basically everyone up until the last 6-8 months or so.

Personally, and I am obviously biased in this assessment, but being that I never used solvers, and none of my students that become very successful used solvers, I have to imagine it is still possible to become very good without them. But just because you don't use solvers, does not mean you should not be actively spending time constructing how to play your ranges in a lot of situations. In fact, what I more try to teach are the keys to a good approach. I don't want to argue your X/R value combo allocation should be 70% flop or 50%, I want to be able to teach people what factors are important when deciding these types of decisions and how to use a range of hands to create balanced strategies.

The course discussion will entirely be happening on facebook. It is the most widely used platform for discussion, you could always make a facebook for the sole purpose of joining in on the conversation.

When I was a younger player (keep in mind I didnt rise to the top until 2013 or so) I always purchased all of the main training site memberships. But this wasn't as much to learn, as to watch how my opponents think and play. The problem with most of what was being offered, was that most people near the top of their game type were not that close to the top anymore in recent years. A pretty common situation was people left poker to get into coaching because they couldn't win, I left playing hu to get into coaching because I couldn't find many matches to play.

This course isn't going to just be magic, you watch 25 hours of content and all of a sudden are a fantastic HU player. You need to put hours in on your own, understand the concepts, learn how to create different strategies. You need to understand how to navigate your strategy through the game tree to play better against certain opponents. I just want to give a fair representation of the content I am creating.

I hope that addresses your main questions.

Will the 25 hour of content be available right off the bat on monday, or along the way? What payment methods are available?

This is the important questions

Thanks for posting here Doug. I know you are mainly here to promote your course (and rightfully so) but it's still cool to get a bit of insight in the nowadays world or HUNL. It just sucks that our beloved format is deader than dead. Please hassle Galfond when you see him to offer it on RIO in a way that doesn't suck like zoom or just benefits the top 5 of each limit

Also this.

Thanks for the in depth reply doug, wish you best of luck with this

Apologies Doug, I was pushing the limits of nosiness. Thanks for the response.

Is it possible to tell us more about what the topics covered are for each video video part?

Will there be some video samples available?

We are still getting everything together for it and I have never launched something like this before, but I am fairly sure we will be bale to have to have everything and up and running on Monday. You can pay via Paypal/CC/Debit, we do not accept poker site transfers or bitcoin.

I also wish it was still as popular as back in the day, but there have been a lot of problems in the last few years that have made the game much less popular. I know that this will hurt my ability to sell courses, but as this is the game type I am best in, this is what I wanted to teach.


No problem, thanks!

All good man, no sweat.

The course ends up being broken down like this

~2-3 hours preflop strategy

~18-20 hours postflop analysis

~6 hours of $100/$200 play and explain against Ben Sulsky, Ryan Fee joins me for half of it

~The Brains vs AI analysis of how Libratus played, which is going to be a free addon during the open cart period (Mon-Friday this week), is about 4 hours of review on the bots strategy.

The postflop analysis is by far the most dense part. It is split up into the following areas.

- SB SRP - 5-6 hours of teaching

- BB SRP - 7-8 hours of teaching

- SB 3BP - 2-3 hours of teaching

- BB 3BP - 2-3 hours of teaching

- 4BP - 1-2 hours of teaching

Each of these sections involves a general progression of, overview, sample analysis, game tree analysis, and then taking indivudual hands and textures and breaking them down. There are several examples throughout where I get equilab out and show exactly how I would break down my range by combos, but there is no solver usage at any point and most hands I talk about themes and what combos I would be selecting to create my ranges.

Generally speaking, I felt SRP was the most important place to spend time as it happens by far the most frequently and is the most complex. As SPR gets smaller, it becomes less important to have a more complex strategy.

Poker is a very complex game, and there is certainly way more I could have to teach about my knowledge of how to play. But I also have to make a course in a reasonable time frame and try to cover as many hours as possible. I felt like this was the best way to do all of those things, and to include some content that people would like enjoy more like a NL 20k match and some explanation of how the bot played in Brains vs AI.

I am considering adding in some more content on just general hu theory and adjustments to round out the course, but this is the basic overview of what it currently looks like.

Nice question btw, I think a lot of people were probably interested in this.