What do you feel your edge is at the poker table?

Favorite sports moment?

Most satisfying hand of poker you have ever played?

Worst cooler you've ever experienced?

Worst downwing?

Best day?

Who are some of your poker mentors?

1. I think you told me you used to live in southie, did you ever meet whitey bulger back in the day? If so did he get a cut in the underground 100nl+200nl underground poker games?

2. pats game yesterday was sick

3. when evaluating on your own play, how did u figure out all of your leaks+plug em?

Do you think more fish play full ring games or 6 max, or is it pretty even?

Perception of my opponents frustration levels. I can usually get a good grip when someone is liable to be making a move or a hero call and adjust my play accordingly. I play a very loose game and it is clear that because of that some of my opponents get very frustrated, my ability to recognize and adapt to this frustration is probably what puts me 1-2ptbb over the standard regs long term winrate imo.

Personally or Televised? Televised has to be the 2004 ALCS. I was a freshman here at Uni and the Sox have just been the hardest team to be a fan of for so long, dropping just about every huge game they ever played, so to see the four game comeback was just unreal. I recently went to Montreal and when these two old french guys found out I was from Boston they started telling me how they don't know much about baseball but that 4 game comeback was the most impressive thing they've ever seen etc. and it sort of added to the scope of the whole thing.

Wow, this is a tough one. I actually think it came in a tournament, where I got A7o aipf deepstacked in a blind on blind situation with a really, really good tournament player who had KQ. I can't recall who the guy is but he's a very well known tournament player and it was at TS. I thought I was a big dog in the tournaments, I went for a limp/reraise knowing he'd raise any two given his play, and he shoved. It was the first time I think I made a real solid live read for big money (I think it was a 5k buy in?).

I'm not sure this is actually the worst since I've played so many hands, but I did recently have a two-card Ace high flush vs a Straight Flush for 2bi in a 2/4 full ring game. The guy had like J9 hearts (he limp called from EP too making this combo even less likely) on a board that had KQT hearts come the river. I gave out the worst cooler to Lionel whatever (stars 2/4 reg) when I flopped Quad J's on an AJJ board to his AA.

I think 20bi at 100nl, and 15bi at 400nl. Might have been a ~18bi downswing at 200nl as well in there. I've had a lot of pretty big swings, but again this is mostly due to playing 20+ vpip, as I frankly think my tilt control is one of my biggest poker strengths.

In terms of buyins, I believe it's 12bi in ~1.5k hands, which was very recently at 2/4 full ring. There were a few days where I've won 10ish bi but over 3k+ hands. Biggest in terms of $ was back when I was playing higher stakes six max games and I cashed big in a 20r, something like 15k or so.

It sounds corny, but the community as a whole is my biggest. I think another area that I excel in is taking things in not just from good players but from bad. When I read forums I analyze the information that players I consider bad put out there, and try and get in touch with their thought process so that I can manipulate it when I'm at the tables with other bad players. As far as good players are concerned, there's been guys I've talked to extensively about poker who have really helped me along the way. Tecknowledgy, JonnyCosmo, DoomerFD and ActionDJ on stars were some of the first people I really talked online poker with on a regular basis that helped me get into shape. There were some guys in the local Boston games I played with from diverse backgrounds/poker experience who used to sit with me after a game broke and talk poker after all the losers left, and we learned a lot from each other. Guys like PoorUser, Rekrul and PeachyKeen tended to post some mind-blowing [censored] that helped me reconsider things I had previously considered fact.


Sheesh, nice questions Mike. Had to use my brain there.

Around here, we don't talk about those types of things. Although I will say that I do believe the city was better when he was around.

So sick.

This is probably an area where I am lacking. I think the most progress I've made in this regard has come from posting hands, and sending out tons of PM's/IM's on hands I found troubling or even remotely interesting. Usually I would send a hand looking for say... river advice, and get a comment about preflop or flop play in return that really helped me realize areas where I was slipping. I also do pretty extensive PT review compared to the typical player I believe, which can help at times. Being in communication with other serious players is key in this regard.

My personal belief is that more fish are in six max games. But there are some reasons for this that I think the full ring hustler community can and should address.

We can call this the Too Eazy theorem, although it's really common sense. Basically the typical fish is a recreational gamer/action fiend. They will not table select, they will merely sit at the first open seat. Most of these players come from some form of live game that is a full table (9-10 people) and therefore are actually naturally inclined to sit at these tables online, however due to the nature of the games tables in full ring are generally waitlisted and thus always full. I think regs should suck it up and start more new tables with 4-5 of them playing a few hands so that fish will sit in these open seats. If more regs did this then I think we would see an immediate impact and fishier full ring tables. That being said, the average full ring regular is generally much worse post flop than the average six max player, so you can pick up the slack coming from lack of blatant megafish by exploiting these tendencies if you're decent. Personally I feel that my edge over regulars combined with the added hands/hr I get playing 12+ tables means full ring is more beneficial for me short term. (It is bad long term because I am not improving my own play at nearly the same rate I would playing in the six handed games).

And I really believe the winners need to start forming more tables on their own when there's say only 6 3/6 tables running and theyre all full + waitlisted 4 deep. It's just common sense that the fish will sit at the first available seat.

I'm glad you brought this up newb cause this is something I've wanted to discuss at length in this forum in the past.

ur graduating in May? me too...wanna get a few 2p2rs and get a house out in Vegas ? (serious, cuz im moving out to Vegas in June)

too easy ur my hero.

-DooMeR

ur a hero

How fast/slow do you think the learning curve is for a new player at micro stakes now, but puts in about 3 hours/day on average playing/studying the game?

How would you rate the mid-stakes games in terms of toughness these days? Are there plenty of poor players or are the midstake games primarily filled with regulars?

Well as far as the learning curve goes, I think that is up to you. People "get it" at different rates. It's about discipline and focus as well as being honest with yourself. This isn't for everyone. 3-4/hrs a day should get you 100k a year if you start at 25nl and you really study hard in my opinion. Barring some mega horrible run. The mid stakes games are easy. I don't think games get greatly difficult if you're properly bankrolled until 10/20+. There are plenty of breakeven players and donators at 2/4-5/10 to pick on. I don't expect this to ever change either. A big realization I think a lot of players don't really come across is how bad a "good" .5/1 player really is. I know that might sound funny but it's pretty fascinating how bad a lot of regulars are. I honestly believe this game is easy, it's just about discipline and common sense. Obviously you need to table select at 2/4+ more than 1/2 and below, but if you have basic common sense (don't sit with 8 regs even if you have a slight edge), there's no reason to declare 2/4-5/10 difficult.

1) Lifetime earnings from poker?
2) What is your favorite starting hand (not counting premiums)?

1. Six figures.

2. I like the 89o type hands when I'm feeling frisky. AQ suited is an abnormally high winner for me in my long term DB so I got love for that maybe more than I should.

How do you deal with having a Laggy type player to your left? I mean assuming it's a good table and you really don't want to leave?

Graph ?

why do you flat call reraises from utg vs utg+1 with 22 and 100bb?

(srs question)

Biggest exploitable weakness(es) you see from TAGs?

how do u adjust to floater?

Fight fire with fire brother.

It's situational. Generally I do it because if I raise UTG and someone raises UTG+1 I assign them a range of AK QQ KK AA more often than not no matter what they're stats unless they're mega spewtard. Therefore, I think I have more than the 8:1 to hit a set for stacks because I think I get paid off here almost every time by a regular and most of the time by a tightfish. If you feel this is flawed I'm open to discussion, and in fact hoping for discussion .

What school you go?

Assuming 100BB stacks, I don't think you have set-odds here unless villain makes a really tiny 3-bet. Basically, you won't always win a stack (cause AK often gives up unimproved) plus the odds of getting oversetted are higher than you might think.

I disagree. Also, fwiw, I think Renton has the wrong person because I only raise 22 utg on tables with very specific criteria, but basically if the situation did arise it would be in the situation I described. I'm not sure AK is actually in the range of a player I'd be calling w/22 either. Also keep in mind any gutshot/A-high board and OESD's are getting c/shoved by me as well, so I do have some form of fold equity as well to offset set odds in certain situations.

Edit: And I'm not getting overset if their range only has 3 pocket pairs max which I think is generally the case in the situation described.

What is your ptbb/100 for NL400 and above?

4.2ish probably long term. i don't have a PT ss because I recently switched computers and didn't backup the databases, but i made 7ptbb on the last month over 40k hands and I posted the ss.