Posts Tagged ‘Poker Savvy’

I’ve now got three Thinking Poker Tournament Seminars under the belt, and they keep getting better every time. The next seminar will be held at 11AM Eastern time on Monday, December 19. The topic will be Advanced Flop Fundamentals, and it will take one of my most popular PokerSavvy Plus video series as a starting point on which to build more advanced skills. This seminar will include a free one-month subscription to PokerSavvy Plus.

Thinking Poker Tournament Seminars are pre-scheduled, small-group discussions focused on the most common mistakes and skills gaps that I see in my NLHE tournament students. Each two-hour seminar costs $150 per person and is capped at five participants, to enable individualized attention and opportunities for everyone to ask questions and participate in discussions. The content is prepared and the discussion facilitated by me- it’s like an interactive poker video!

Participants will learn how about alternatives to the continuation bet, how to deal with donk bets, when to slowplay, and how correct flop play varies with stack and pot size. My Flop Fundamentals video series will be required viewing in advance of the seminar, because everything we discuss will build on those concepts while getting more in-depth and sophisticated. Playing common flop spots well is essential to tournament success, so you don’t want to miss this seminar!  Read the complete post...

Q: I’m a member of Poker Savvy Plus and have been watching your High Stakes Review series videos. I enjoy them and find them helpful. One stupid question I have is when you say a particular hand “plays very well” in a particular spot or “doesn’t play very well” what exactly does that mean. I know it’s situational, but does “play very well” simply mean you’ll know where you stand pretty accurately where as “not playing very well” means you’ll often be in the dark as to the strength of your hand? Thanks in advance!

A: You’re on the right track. The question I’m asking myself is “What kind of hand will I be looking to make on a future street?” and that’s a function of a few things: stack depth, position, opponent type, etc. With 30BB, KTo is generally a better hand than T7s. This is because in a raised pot, top pair with a good kicker is usually a good enough hand to get all in. With 200BB, I’ll take the T7s. When I play for stacks I’m mostly going to have straights, flushes, or draws to these hands. The T7s does a better job of making those kinds of hands than does KTo.  Read the complete post...

Edit: The buy-in for the tournament will be $5+$.50.

Second edit: The invite code is “foucault”, I’m told you need that join. Sorry for the confusion.

Third edit: Invite code is all lowercase.

I’m pleased to announce that I’m starting a Thinking Poker League on the new PokerStars Home Game feature. We’ll have a tournament every Sunday at 16:30 ET, coinciding with the start of the Sunday Million. Whomever is at the top of the leaderboard after 10 tournaments (unless it’s I, in which case we’ll go to the second place finisher) will receive a three-month subscription to Poker Savvy Plus and a free, hand-by-hand “leakfinder” analysis of a NLHE tournament or cash game session of his/her choosing recorded by me and posted on Poker Savvy Plus.

The first event will be this Sunday, February 28, at 16:30 ET. The format for this week is 6-handed NLHE with deep stacks and a slow structure. I’m very open to feedback on this, though, so if you join the league, you’ll have an opportunity to offer your thoughts and suggest alternative formats for future weeks. I’m also open to scheduling separate set of tournaments at another time if a number of people tell me they are interested in playing but can’t make the Sunday time. So please leave me a comment if you have any requests or suggestions about the Thinking Poker League, and hopefully I can accommodate everyone who’s interested in playing.  Read the complete post...

This is the third part of my Setting Effective New Year’s Resolutions for Poker Success series. If you haven’t already, please check out Part 1 and Part 2.

Goal 3: Make a Name For Myself

I feel like I am right on the threshhold of becoming a minor poker celebrity. That’s not something that’s intrinsically valuable to me, but it does seem to come with some nice perks: sponsorship deals, invites to juicy televised games, better book sales, etc. It’s something that I feel I ought to make a bit more of an effort at and see what happens.

Post Once a Day on the Blog

If I fall behind, I’ll settle for a one/day average, but I’m sure it’s a lot better for you all if they are evenly spaced. Plus I’m more likely to do quality work this way .

Even without any advertising revenue, I get so much out of the blog. It’s a nice impetus to review my own play, I enjoy interacting with the intelligent and diverse community of readers we have here (That’s you! Post more comments. I respond to nearly all of them), and virtually every opportunity I’ve had away from the tables has been at least indirectly a product of the blog. I’m never going to be the hammiest guy on camera, but I do write purdy, so that’s going to have to be my entree to poker notoriety.  Read the complete post...

I recently posted about Setting Effective New Year’s Resolutions for Poker Success. Today, I’m going to start sharing my poker-related resolutions.

Goal 1: Make Some Money

Dolla dolla bills, y’all.

Average At Least 20 Hours of Poker Each Week

This is a step up from last year, but I can do it. I’m going to cut myself some slack on a few other fronts (not that I hit those goals last year) to hopefully free up some more time for actually playing this silly game.

I’m also going to be more flexible about the types of games I can play. One thing I want to do is learn some new games, so as long as I’m playing, I’m not going to worry about which game or how big. There’s really no danger of me not playing enough NLHE to earn a solid living.

Average At Least 5 Hours of Coaching Each Week

I didn’t do it last year, but I want to try again. I make more money playing than I do coaching, but it’s something I enjoy. I’ve made some friends through coaching (hi guys), and it’s nice to occasionally be in a cooperative relationship with another poker player rather than always being out to take everyone’s money. I guess I could go the Stoxtrader route and do both, but that’s not my style.  Read the complete post...

It’s been a while, but with only one month left in the year, it’s time to assess my progress on my goals for the year and consider how I should allocate my remaining time.

Goal 1: Average 15 Hours/Week Playing My “Regular” Games

Goal 2: Earn $X in NLHE Cash Games

I’m nowhere near my cash games goal, and I’ve given up trying. Basically tournaments were going so well for me that I started putting more time into those and when I did grind cash games it was usually easier stuff that wasn’t quite as lucrative. Thankfully tournaments have gone so well that I don’t really need cash games to contribute to the year’s income.

Goal 3: Earn Supernova status on PokerStars

This is still within my grasp, but I need nearly 9000 points, which is more than I’ve earned in any one month this year. When I do play, it’s going to be with a focus on picking up FPP’s so that I can be sure of making Supernova.  Read the complete post...

After 14.5 hours, I managed to take 3rd out of 1066 runners in the $500 1 Rebuy 1 Add-on. It was a very very tough tournament from start to finish. I at least felt like I had a much more difficult time than in the FTOPS that I won. Of my 8 opponents at the final table, 4 were players I was familiar with, which I guess isn’t so bad for the final table of a big buy-in event.

I came to the table with 6th place chips but got down to 3-handed with g0lfa and govshark, who incidentally is the player who put me out of the $200 heads up FTOPS. I got my money in for about 1/3 of the chips in play with TT vs. g0lfa’s A6, but it couldn’t hold. I guess that makes it the worst bad beat of my career, but I can’t complain, as I obviously had my share of luck to make it that far. Oh and I won at 13 BB/100 in the cash games I was playing on the side.

I suppose I’ll have to stop complaining about how long these things take. After sinking nearly 100 hours into this WCOOP, I finally have a respectable hourly rate . Come to think of it, I guess this is the best single day of my poker career, as my other big wins have come in multi-day tournaments.  Read the complete post...

UTG and I have been together for a few orbits now. This is the third time he’s raised from this position, and he once showed down A8s (for the nut flush vs. my second nut flush, which amazingly didn’t cost me my stack), so I’m assuming his range is relatively wide for UTG. The other two Villains in the hand are both new to the table and so have not had the chance to make this same observation:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, 320 Tournament, 600/1200 Blinds 150 Ante (9 handed) – Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

SB (t61814)
Hero (BB) (t113459)
UTG (t86336)
UTG+1 (t34997)
MP1 (t16550)
MP2 (t13948)
MP3 (t108224)
CO (t52089)
Button (t10069)

Hero’s M: 36.02

Preflop: Hero is BB with J, 4
UTG bets t2788, 3 folds, MP3 calls t2788, CO calls t2788, 2 folds, Hero raises to t11111, 2 folds, CO calls t8323

Flop: (t29748) 7, 2, A (2 players)
Hero bets t12345, 1 fold

Total pot: t29748

Results:
Hero didn’t show J, 4.
Outcome: Hero won t29748

MP3 in particular is a very smart guy and good tournament player (Siola from Poker Savvy Plus, in fact), and I believe he will have to give me credit for 3-betting an UTG raiser, not realizing that this guy’s range is wider than the average UTG range of an unknown in a WCOOP event. As for CO, he may not have been thinking quite so deeply, but that’s OK. He probably shoves any Ax he wants to play pre-flop.