Weekly Feature 10: Lessons Learned From Black Friday

Hey guys. I hope you are all having a successful year so far. 

My year has been going pretty well. I've spent most of my time learning how to use social media to build my coaching brand, running the FastTrack program the last 2 weeks, coaching a lot, working on strategy, and improving my efficiency/effectiveness when working. I feel like I've improved a lot this year...I just generally really enjoy everything I'm doing with poker right now. 

Black Friday sucked obviously, but having to come up with creative ways to maintain my income over the past year has led me to a lot of opportunities that I wouldn't have experienced otherwise (I mainly just focused on playing pre-BF). So as tilting as BF was initially, it's actually turned out to be a blessing in disguise for me. 

Throughout my next few Weekly Features, I am going to review some of the major lessons that dealing with a post-Black Friday poker world has taught me:

LESSON 1: ADAPT OR DIE 

I didn't really play hypers before Black Friday. I was in my turbo comfort zone on PokerStars and, being quite the creature-of-habit, I failed to recognize the fact that hypers were where the most money was at. This was pretty obvious if you look at SS leaderboards around that time (dominated by FT hyper players). In hindsight, it seems so obvious that I should have switched to hypers so much sooner.

Working with Primo during the Austin camp, I realized quickly through him just how far behind the curve in hypers I was. All the math, range calcs, raise/call and raise/folding ranges that made little sense to me...it was all so confusing. I knew I had a lot to offer the students at the camp, I was doing well at 550-2200 on Stars pre-BF...but <25 deep I was definitely far behind the curve. Despite having a solid understanding of the learning process ('the mental game of poker'), this realization was pretty overwhelming and I spent some time that month seriously evaluating the course my poker career was going to take over the coming months. 

I guess I felt a bit hypocritical at the time, since I'm usually the guy telling players "study hard, don't fall behind the curve"...and while I felt I WAS the curve in turbos at the time, I was completely unaware that I was falling behind the curve in a form of poker that had already become the most profitable form of HUSNG to play. This was a humbling realization, but not the first big mistake I've made in my career and it won't be my last. 

I started watching Mersenneary hyper vids early on in the Austin camp during my free time. I had a few coaching sessions with him during May too (Austin camp = May). While in Mexico in June, I spent a bunch of time reading the FastTrack Forum. Having spent so much time studying turbo strat over the previous 2 years, I had developed a strong enough poker mind that I was able to absorb the material very quickly - definitely a combo of my own skill, but also Mers' teaching style too. As confusing as <25 strat was just 2 months before, it was starting to make a ton of sense very quickly.

I decided to throw myself in the fire in July, and asked Mers if he was interested in hiring me as an assistant coach in the FastTrack Forum. Fortunately for me, Mers had recently accepted a job in the real-world :), so it just happened that he was looking for someone to take over the forum or was going to just stop running it completely. So my first month in FT in July was basically a trial run. I really wanted to take over the forum in August bc I saw it as a great opportunity to improve my game, while making some money and diversifying my income sources in a tough post-BF poker world. 

At first, it was intimidating joining the FT forum and coaching hypers alongside Mers. At that point, I just couldn't compete with him couldn't compete with him theoretically, but I didn't try to. I felt I had a lot to offer the students in the forum already...postflop play, mental game, and improving skills like volume and focus. 

July went well, and I took over the forum in August and have run it off and on since then. When I look back through my strategy posts over the past 6 months, it's pretty obvious to me how much I have improved over that time. Thinking in terms of expectation, a lot math/range calc type stuff, etc. I feel strongly that I was able to provide my students quality value from the start, but the cool thing about the FT forum for me has been that while helping my students improve, I have been a student of the game myself. It's made me a better player, a better teacher, and a more efficient worker (posting that much strategy and maintaining other responsibilities was really hard at first). 

In hindsight, it would have been a lot easier to be aware of the EV I was missing out on by not playing hypers if I didn't have my pre-BF turbo-crushing blinders on. The transition to hypers post-BF was also infinitely tougher bc I wasn't able to grind on Stars and gain experience that way. I saw learning hypers as going backwards in my career, but in reality it was going forwards bc turbos were clearly dying and hypers were clearly thriving. 

Through these experiences, I learned to try to see things from an unbiased perspective. To question choices I am making in my life even when they are going well. To see mistakes as learning opportunities. And to think long term, while still finding a balance with short term priorities.

And, most importantly, to see the absolute necessity in adaptation. Life is unpredictable, things aren't always what they seem, and those who adapt to life's variables faster, smarter, and more positively are those that will come out on top in the long run. 


I didn't handle things perfectly, but I'm happy with where I've ended up and I learned a hell of a lot from the experience.

Adapt or die.

Weekly Feature 9: FastTrack Strategy Excerpts

For this week's WF, I decided to post a few excerpts of strategy Q & A from the FastTrack Forum on HUSNG.com.

The FT Forum is a private strategy message board. Students can participate in the forum with a full access membership (ask unlimited questions, start a personal thread, post in other threads) or read-only access (no posting, read only). The FT forum was originally run by Mersenneary - I took over in July 2011 and have been running it since. The forum is archived (the same as 2p2), so there is a lot of value in reading through all the posts over the past year or so.

More info on FT program: http://www.husng.com/content/fast-track-2012-open-thread#comment-27865

***Students questions bolded

DONKBETTING:

 one more thing that Ive noticed is that good regs seems to fold alot when I DB my value/semibluff hands on semiwet boards that I dont expect them to CB wide. Have they come to unserstand that a DB there is strong so do you think its better to check and hope they CB it? 

i would only donk if i know they are checking back their air along with marginal sd value/draws that will likely continue vs a donkbet. there isn't much value in donkbetting if they are going to cbet most of their sd value/draws when checked to, it's not like you are giving up a ton of free equity when they check back their air. 

i think this is a key thing that people aren't getting with donkbetting. basically, if you donkbet on a wet board that villain doesnt cbet wide and he folds his air...what did you accomplish really? you only did better than checking to c/r when you start getting value from a decent amount of hands that call your donkbet that would have checked back if checked to.

so if i start seeing villain check back flops instead of cbetting and showing down hands like:

QX on JT8

T7 on JT8

AQ on JT8

etc

then it's v likely a donkbet is going to fair better than a c/r, since their are clearly quite a bit of hands that villain will continue vs a donk with.

cbet frequency is really important when considering donking, but so is the range that villain is cbetting. we won't always have enough info to know the range, so i'd go with pop tends (i think the pop tend is to cbet most marginal sd value still...tho i'd expect villain to check back some 8X hands on average prob)

i wouldn't donk these boards as a standard for value.

most importantly, donking this board as a bluff is really bad imo.

if the avg villain is checking back most of his air, then we can lead pretty wide into a really weak checkback range on the turn profitably. when we donk, we are leading into an undefined range...we should check and let villain define his range by checking back, and just lead the turn a lot on average (some kind of equity tho).

CBETTING:

You said you would CB  [Kx on QJT], [Tx on QT9ss], [K8 on T97]. But doesnt these board hit villains calling range really hard? Do we have enoughEQ/FE? Would you ever consider a smaller CB size vs fish with these hand?  I think these spots are better to CB then the above::  [A8 on K76ss], [K8 on A53], [Kx on AK5] but you recomended checking behind and stabbing turn. Arent they dryer and better to CB?

villain still has air in his range on those examples, and you aren't getting c/r'd that much! think about his whole range like i said, how many hands are really c/r'ing us? we have good barrel opps on turn/river. it's not like i'd tell you to cbet total air on these boards, but we have an oesd/2nd pair/oesd respectively (good equity). if villain was c/ring us with a wide range, all of these hands would be checkbacks.

where are you getting the last 3 examples from? i would check that back vs someone who is c/ring a wide range (polarized cbet range). we do not need to polarize our cbet range vs the avg player tho bc they are too passive and fold to cbets/barrels too much. 

vs fish, weak KX on AK5 can be good to check back tho just bc its hard to get value on the flop and it's a board where you aren't giving up free equity a ton with  a check.

the only boards that i'm checking back readless are boards where i simply don't think cbetting is profitable bc villains range hits it too hard and we don't have enough equity to cbet. i don't worry about how often i'm getting c/r'd at all, bc the avg player cr's a really fit or fold range a lot of the time.

SOME MENTAL GAME ADVICE:

Basically, in my current job, I have to constantly give my absolute very best - but the challenge is not beating other people, I merely get extremely complicated computer problems that I have to solve in the best way possible - and I do not only seek to just solve the problem, but to find the best solution possible.

And I think that sometimes translates to the tables a little bit.

So often, I find myself playing against some other reg of about the same skill-set and I strive to find a way of beating him.

why don't you just forget about the fact that their is a human being on the other end of the game, and just pretend it's a smart/adaptive computer program that he have to learn to beat (obv it has human nature elements you need to consider)? if you look at it this way, what is the difference between this approach to poker and what you do in real life? frequencies, ranges, etc...it's all a big math/strategy problem. this is mainly how i approach it tbh.

there is now limit on how much time it will take for me to master this game 

there is no such thing as mastering poker. you should always be in the learning process. - i'm being nitpicky though :)

Of course, the downside is that I'll have a lot less time for poker, so variance could actually become a problem for me again - running bad over 1k games, that isn't over after just a few days anymore

definitely! just remember that you can't think about poker in terms of "time", only in terms of "games played". it sounds like you know this though - it's definitely a huge leak of the avg player i have found.

THEORY TANGENT:

we 3bet someone at any stacks with any range, range villain calls with doesnt matter to us, flop is 987 and we have a very accurate read that villain perceives our check on this board as overs/air giving up and will bet at this board with any pair or decent equity. we should not have a cbetting range vs this player. we should just be check/raising or check/folding. we allow villain to have bluffs in his range, noone seems to respect check/shoves on these type boards much (and hes pretty commited once he stabs at the pot) so he wont make any hero folds hardly ever. it maximizes our value. allows us to much more comfortably check our AK/AQ type stuff in this spot in the future and actually see a turn bc villain will perceive our range then as having more value in it (we should cbet our value then if we think villain has adjusted, as having seen us check/shove value will make our cbetting range appear weaker). we aren't worried about giving free equity to villain because we know he stabs such a huge amoutn of hands on a board he perceives us as missing. so basically having a leading range with this dynamic is not max EV. 

you need pretty specific reads for this though. cbetting your AA as a standard is obv best here,b ut if you find that every time you check a board like this with your air/AK/AQ type stuff that your opponent is betting/overbetting, then it's def going to be good to adjust to checking your value as well. 

Weekly Feature 8: Card/Situation-Dead Continued (WF7 cont., live hypers)

2nd half of the last video I posted.

Let me know what you think!

Good luck

**I really don't know why the resolution on this recording came out so poor. Thought I recorded the same way I usually do. Will get it sorted out before the next WF though.

Weekly Feature 7: Card-dead/Situation-dead - Don't Spew!

**Sorry, trying to figure out what went wrong with recording this video. Screen is smaller/more blurry than usual. Should be fixed in a bit.

Hey guys. I hope you are all having a successful month.

I recorded this video a few days ago. At first I was like, meh, boring video...not a lot of interesting spots. After some review, it hit me that it might actually be interesting to some of you bc of how card-dead/situationally-dead I am in these games.

So many players I coach, when they are situation/card-dead, start to spew bc they feel "not in control of the flow of the match" or "no momentum" (or some similar suboptimal reason...planning to do a blog post on this topic soon). When situationally dead, the answer is not to make suboptimal plays at random just to regain "momentum"...the answer is to use the dynamic created from the gameflow (likely a nitty image), and if you can assume your opponent is paying attention to your image...use the dynamic and image created through the natural progression of the game optimally (we can likely bluff in a lot more spots than usual).

Basically, you shouldn't only know how to use an aggressive image/dynamic optimally (or as close to optimal as you can play, it's not like I play perfect poker obv). A great poker player makes optimal decisions and adjusts to the different dynamics that are created from those decisions optimally.

Since it's a live video, I don't really address this main point directly in the video...so just keep it in mind when watching it. It might be a boring video for some of you, but if you find yourself getting spewy when carddead I think it might help to put some things in perspective for you.

Let me know what you think!

**Will be posting a 2nd part to this video in a couple days.

Also, what do you guys think of my new blog layout/design? More readable, I hope?

WF6: QuadJacks 'Mental Game Show' Interview

Hey guys. I did this interview today on Jared Tendler's show 'The Mental Game' on QuadJacks Radio.



Let me know what you think!

**just going to make this WF6. I missed last weekend bc I was out of town. way more value in this interview than most weekly features anyways imo, so hope you enjoy it. will be doing some kind of strat vid this weekend for WF7.

Winner of Video Contest: HappyHam

HappyHam shipped the parody video contest today - he wins a free hour of private coaching w me.

It was a no-holds-barred 2 horse race between dhcg86 and happyham. I'm pretty sure both of them spammed their facebooks and twitters the past 2 or 3 days begging for votes. It seemed like happyham was posting something every hour. That's dedication, imo. Congrats, sir.

Fwiw, I voted for Kierk - though IheardJoeBlows was a close second imo. Kierk's vid really got the ball rolling on this. It was great form...going to the gym at his desk, sunglasses on, taking himself way too seriously - perfection. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, for Kierk, he simply isn't willing to whore himself out to the social media world for one measly hour of coaching - HappyHam and dhcg, on the other hand...

Also, I think calling HappyHam's video a "parody" is a bit of a stretch. When I started the contest though, it was for any type video - parody, serious video, joke, i-hate-you-hokie-die vids, anything... So this def works imo.

Final Results

HappyHam: 249 

Dhcg: 177

Kierk: 13

Borg: 10

IHeard: 7 (what a fish)

The Winning Video:

Weekly Feature 5 - Hyper Leakfinder

Retweet button:

This video is a hyper turbo leakfinder for Stars reg and former Austin camp student, Braminc. 

You can watch the first part to this video (43 mins) if you are a premium member on HUSNG.com. It is my most recent leakfinder, "HokieGreg Leakfinder: Theory Tangents and Hyper Turbos".

I haven't decided what I'm doing for WF6 yet. Let me know if there is anything you would like me to focus on specifically.