The most valuable thing about being coached by a better player is, strangely, developing confidence in your own abilities. While I assumed that he would drop bits of wisdom that would profoundly change my NL game, that wasn’t really how it worked. What helped me most was seeing that we were thinking about things pretty similarly most of the time, but that he was a bit better at reacting to gameflow and planning future actions. But it wasn’t as if he thought about poker completely differently. The same basic questions – should I bet here? what am I representing? what range do I put him on? – apply at every stake. It really is the same game even at 25/50, you just have to give your opponents much more credit for responding quickly to you.

From a purely entertainment perspective, it was interesting to watch him play against some of the mid-stakes heroes like nanonoko. A lot of these players play a fairly straightforward game but play almost tiltless poker that makes it very hard to win big pots off of them except in cooler situations. I was surprised to find that the big winners were not playing a particularly unusual style – the stats and post-flop game seemed pretty standard. I think I somehow expected they would wildly deviate from the norm in some area – preflop stats, c-betting, check-raising – but they are just a bit better at all areas of the game it seems.

Now, about coaching more generally. There has been a little furor on 2p2 lately where people have been questioning the value of poker coaching, and even suggesting that coaching is a bit of a scam. Given the extremely high cost of most poker coaching – I only play 1/2 NL and I would probably be looking at $150+/hour for a coach – I think it’s correct to be a little skeptical of how much value you can receive from coaching.

I would be willing to guess that a lot of the benefits ascribed to coaching are psychological. I used to tutor students in statistics, a subject many people feel uncomfortable in. Half of my job was just reassuring them that statistics was not an intentionally tricky, obscure field of study, and that most of the basic concepts were actually pretty simple. I communicated real information as well, but what a lot of people needed was reassurance that statistics could be understood by anyone (and it can be, you don’t even really need college-level math to understand the core concepts of statistics like the central limit theorem).

Because poker is so dependent on confidence, I think the value of being coached is just validation: having a better more successful player tell you you’re not crazy. Of course players learn new things as well – I saw the high stakes player make a river bluff-shove that I never would have considered but his reasoning made perfect sense given the board and opponent. But players get coached because poker is a lonely business and it helps to have someone on your side (even if you have to pay them to be there).

In other news, this site appears to be pretty dead. I’m the only person who has posted in the past three months and I’m thinking of just moving along and starting my own blog. I am a bit more tech-savvy than when I started here and feel a bit more comfortable with WordPress and hosting my own site. I appreciate the opportunity I was given here but it seems like pokersift.com is kind of closing up shop. Best to all of you and keep at it. – Adam

Tri is the author of two other well-regarded ebooks on poker strategy, “Let there be range!” and “The Pot Limit Omaha Book: Transitioning from NLHE to PLO.” Tri is a successful mid- and high-stakes player whose books are well received in the online poker community, garnering praise from forum readers and the coaches at major training sites.

The co-author of The Workbook is the well-known high-stakes player “Kingsofcards,” who has been involved in some of the 100K NL action on full tilt recently, including an extremely memorable hand against Antonius that lit the forums on fire.

As I consider myself the target market for this book – the small stakes online cash game player who understands the basics but has trouble moving up – I’m quite curious to see what’s included. I often feel like I’m missing good bluffing spots, especially on the river, so hopefully this book can provide some insight into mixing up my play more and putting my opponents in difficult spots.

Thanks again to Tri for providing the review copy. The review should be up in a week or two.

Check out the pokerstrategy link…..After reading many of their articles, and getting the FREE 50$ – I’ve managed to turn it in to a nice profit and continue to grow my roll.

http://www.pokerstrategy.com/u99933

I am happy to say that something has finally clicked here on my end and I am starting to play better, probably better than I ever have before. I have turned into “that player.” You know the one, it’s the player that you really don’t want at your table. I have been playing a semi-LAG style now and I think I have finally gotten the hang of it. My VPIP has climbed up to about 30% and my PFR has been about 25% (6max NL cash.) I have become much more aggressive after the flop, raising my AF from 1.8 to about 3.5 or so. I am playing a style that is hard to counter. I am raising enough that you know I can’t have it every time, but not enough to know if this is the time to come after me or not.

How has this change come about? Well, I have really decided to work hard on my game. I have been reading a lot of posts over at the 2+2 forums, seeing how other people play their hands and just getting other people thoughts. This has helped me with the “standard line” type of play quite a bit. I was also contacted on the stox poker forums by Paul, another member who was looking for a study buddy. We now IM each other a couple times a week to talk about hands we have played and poker theory in general. It is a little difficult catching each other because he live in Australia and there is a 14 hour time difference so it seems like every time we chat one of us is eating breakfast and the other is getting ready for bed. It did feel pretty cool to get my first authentic “gday” though.

I have also been studying more videos over at Stoxpoker.com, really paying attention to how the instructors were playing. The thing I tried to work on most is reading hands. If I can put my opponent on a hand I can make a better guess about how hard it will be to make them fold. The videos have also helped me sell my bluffs better and identify boards where I should just give up. I am getting a much better read on my opponents and why I am getting called. This has really helped me on the river. I have been able to steal a lot of pots with hands like eight-high when I can put my opponent on something like a busted straight draw that might have me out high-carded. I am also getting better at bluffing scare cards on the river and sizing my bets to get my opponent to believe me. In general I have just been doing better at picking up on my opponents and what they are most likely to do.

The third thing that has helped me is Cash Plays with Bart Hanson. It is a podcast over on Pokerroad.com that is all about cash games (Short-Stacked Shamus’s review can be found here.) The thing that I have really gotten from this show is mixing up my play against opponents. I have been able to get reads on my opponents thoughts about my play and use it against them. Here is a good example of what I mean-

Poker Stars, $0.10/$0.25 NL Hold’em Cash Game, 4 Players
Hand History Converter by Stoxpoker

BB: $4.75 (19 bb)
Hero (CO): $25 (100 bb)
BTN: $18.90 (75.6 bb)
SB: $23.40 (93.6 bb)

Pre-Flop: Hero is CO with 6d 3d
Hero raises to $0.75, BTN folds, SB calls $0.65, BB calls $0.50

Flop: ($2.25) 7h 7d 5h (3 players)
SB bets $1.50, BB folds, Hero calls $1.50

Turn: ($5.25) Qd (2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $4, SB calls $4

River: ($13.25) 9c (2 players)
SB checks, Hero checks

Results: $13.25 pot ($0.65 rake)
SB showed Kc 5d (two pairs, Sevens and Fives) and won $12.60 ($6.35 net)
Hero mucked 6d 3d (a pair of Sevens) and lost (-$6.25 net)

OK, here I was just kinda lost so I shut down on the river. I don’t know if he was going to call me down with the 5′s or not if I fired the third barrel but I decided not to push it. Anyway, that hand led up to this one-
——————–
HAND #2
——————–

Poker Stars, $0.10/$0.25 NL Hold’em Cash Game, 6 Players
Hand History Converter by Stoxpoker

CO: $18.45 (73.8 bb)
BTN: $16.75 (67 bb)
SB: $26.15 (104.6 bb)
Hero (BB): $25 (100 bb)
UTG: $17.05 (68.2 bb)
MP: $24.65 (98.6 bb)

Pre-Flop: Hero is BB with Jh As
UTG folds, MP calls $0.25, CO folds, BTN calls $0.25, SB folds, Hero raises to $1.50, MP calls $1.25, BTN calls $1.25

Flop: ($4.60) Ah 4h 8d (3 players)
Hero bets $2.25, MP calls $2.25, BTN folds

Turn: ($9.10) 9s (2 players)
Hero checks, MP checks

River: ($9.10) 9c (2 players)
Hero bets $7.50, MP calls $7.50

Results: $24.10 pot ($1.15 rake)
Hero showed Jh As (two pairs, Aces and Nines) and won $22.95 ($11.70 net)
MP mucked Js 8s (two pairs, Nines and Eights) and lost (-$11.25 net)

I was trying to go for a check-raise on the turn but he didn’t bet for me. I decided to make a good size value bet on the river and he snap-called me with a pair of eights. I knew he thought I was full of crap and I used that to take him to valuetown. Overall I am just much more aware of the flow of the table and I am playing much better. I am hoping this swing is really over and I have learned my lesson. Only time will tell.

The book gives very few strategic comments. In fact, most of the book can be described as Zen-like mumbo jumbo, with Tommy spending many pages on breathing techniques and Yoga. But guess what? It WORKS. Not because I have tried the breathing or other stuff he says in his “elements”. It works, because Tommy is a professional, who knows how to talk about poker. He’s been there, playing his C-game, chasing losses, lamenting bad beats. Every single one of us has been there…

But he has some techniques that make the hurting stop. This book is totally about tilt-management and how to play the game professionally. How you will not anger fish, how you are at easy with yourself, with your poker lifestyle and choices. In his dedication he wrote: “Bellatrix, remember, to win at poker, you have to be good at losing.” And this is what this book boils down to. It gives you some strategic insight, but that was not as strong as the emotional aspects of the game. Especially the tournament section was sometimes filled with questionable advice. However, in the live game cash section, this book is tops. Reading “elements” will make you a good loser, if you understand where I’m coming from…

Everybody has had bad beats. I can still recall 3 years later every second of that pot where I lost with quads to a runner runner straight flush and the opponent laughed in my face, because he only had one card of the straight flush, so it didn’t even qualify for a bad beat. So what? I can laugh it off now. This book will help you look at the game in a professional matter and will make you ask yourself some serious questions.

So, IMO, bar some New Age stuff, which I can’t really qualify, I can only recommend this book to any poker player that plays high volume, especially for the live player! Much better than “Your worst poker enemy”. I can’t really compare it to “Inside the Poker Mind”, because I haven’t heard that one, but right now it is definitely among my favorites regarding tilt management and my own poker psychology.

This week I was helping another player get started playing Omaha hi/lo split. He wanted to know what kind of starting hands you can play. I gave him the normal “stick with A2 and A3 and maybe some 23 hands” advice to keep him out of trouble while he learns. I also warned him how tricky high only hands can be to play. I used this hand as an example-

Let’s say you have ♣ar♦♠ K♦ K♥ Q♦ J♣ /♣ar♦♠ on t♥e button in a pot-limit Oma♥a ♥i/lo game. It get♠ limpe♦ aroun♦ to you ♠o you ♣all. Even if you flop a King ♥ere you may not want to put a lot of money in t♥e pot. If t♥e flop ♣ome♠ ♣ar♦♠ K♠ 4♠ 5♥ /♣ar♦♠ an♦ ♠omebo♦y bet♠ pot in front of you, you ♣oul♦ be in big trouble. If you re-pot it wit♥ your top ♠et to “♣♥arge t♥e ♦raw♠” your opponent ♣oul♦ move all-in on you an♦ you woul♦ ♥ave to ♣all. Now ♥e turn♠ over ♣ar♦♠ A♠ 2♦ 3♠ 6♥ /♣ar♦♠ an♦ even t♥oug♥ you ♥ave t♥e be♠t ♥an♦, you are way be♥in♦. He ♥a♠ t♥e 16 ♣ar♦ wrap ♦raw plu♠ t♥e ♣ar♦♠ Q♠ J♠ T♠ 9♠ /♣ar♦♠ an♦ t♥e ♣ar♦♠ 8♠ /♣ar♦♠ for the flush which gives him 21 outs twice to beat your high AND if he hits one of the 17 cards that also give him a low your full house redraw will only be good for a chop.

Of course his response was “What’s a wrap?” Well, a wrap is one of the coolest parts of playing Omaha. In Hold’em you have gutshot straight draws, double gutshot straight draws, and open ended straight draws, and you will either have four outs or eight outs to make your straight. With the two extra hole cards you get in Omaha the straight draws can get huge and are often referred to as “wraps.”

In the example hand the villain holds A236 on a K45 flop. He has 16 cards he can catch that will complete his straight. Specifically he has three Aces, three Deuces, three Treys, three Sixes, and four Sevens here to make his straight. Once you add in the flush possibilities the “drawing hand” actually has a slight equity edge (about 53% to 47%) over the set of Kings for the high half of the pot. This is what you will see a lot in PLO when the money goes in on the flop, a monster draw vs a made hand. Once you add in the fact that the low will come in about 75% of the time as well you can see just how bad the Kings got their money in on this one.

All wraps are not created equal. Even though some wraps have more cards that can complete them, sometimes you are better off with less cards to draw to. I know it sounds counterintuitive to say you would want less outs, but you have to look at the situation and remember this is Omaha. Let’s look at a specific Omaha Hi only hand. Player one has ♣ar♦♠ 4♣ 5♥ 8♠ 9♦ /♣ar♦♠ on a flop of ♣ar♦♠ 6♠ 7♥ K♦ /♣ar♦♠ . T♥i♠ i♠ t♥e “Maine to Spain” wrap ♦raw. T♥ere are 20 ♣ar♦♠ t♥at will ♣omplete player one’♠ ♠traig♥t ♦raw. He ♥a♠ four ea♣♥ of t♥e Trey♠ an♦ Ten♠, an♦ t♥ree ea♣♥ of t♥e Four♠, Five♠, Eig♥t♠, an♦ Nine♠ ♠o t♥at i♠ 20 out♠, rig♥t? Well, it ♦epen♦♠. T♥i♠ i♠ Oma♥a, an♦ t♥e ♠e♣on♦ be♠t ♥an♦ ♣an lo♠e a lot of money. Let’♠ ♠ay player two ♥a♠ ♣ar♦♠ 8♦ 9♦ T♠ A♠ /♣ar♦♠ which would give him a 13 card straight draw and a couple of back door flush draws. So would you rather have 20 outs or 13?

Player two is in a dominating position here. Even though he has less “outs”, all of them are to the nuts. Player one can only win this pot outright with a Trey or a Four, which is only seven cards. He will tie player two with a Five or a Ten, and he will make a straight and lose if he hits an Eight or Nine. Player two will also win with a Jack or running diamonds or spades. If you run this hand through a card calculator, player one with his 20 card wrap will only win about 20% of the time and he will tie about 23% of the time. Player two will win the entire pot almost 56% of the time here, even though he has less outs. You have to remember that Omaha is a game of the nuts, and the more draws you have to them, the better. In this case 13 is indeed greater than 20.

PLO is a fasintating game and a nice change of pace from Hold’em, but you really have to pay attention to what you are doing. It can be tough to keep up with everything going on and all the possible hands you could be up against. Wraps are one of the things new players often miss and it can really get expensive to learn while you are playing. If you would like to get a head start I would recomend Jeff Hwang’s book- Pot-Limit Omaha Poker. He really does a good job of explaining wraps and what hands to look for when you are considering playing a big pot and which hands might look good but are better off in the muck.

Well, that is it for now. Good luck at the tables, and don’t forget the Chipotle

The leak I speak of deals with betting on the end when I miss a draw. Apparently, it’s pretty transparent when I miss a draw and am betting at the pot because it’s the only way I can win it. I do a pretty decent job of mixing up how I play my draws, sometimes playing them slow and straight forward while other times playing them extremely fast. This allows me to represent draws when I have monsters and get paid off when I normally would not have. However, I don’t do a good enough job of mixing up my play if my draws don’t connect. Recently, I have routinely been getting called down on the river pretty light when I bet a busted draw. It’s almost as if my opponents know when I’ve missed my draw (insert super-user joke here).

I think my problem is I am never willing to give up on a hand. Sometimes, the right play is to not bluff the river. I have to be aware of when my opponent puts me on a draw. If he tries to price me out at some point, he probably has a made hand. If I continue with the hand but the draws don’t come home and I bet a dry river, he’s probably calling me with any decent hand. I don’t know if any of that made sense but it’s pretty much how I have been analyzing these situations. It’s really an issue of what I have been representing the entire time, what my opponent puts me on, and whether or not I can get away with betting a missed draw when I need to be to win the pot.

The sick thing is I am pretty good about being on the opposite end of these situations. I can put a guy on a draw and if he bets on the end when he doesn’t connect, I can make the “hero” call with one pair or maybe a weak two pair. I have that part down. Now I need to work on not being the guy who gets hero called. How do I avoid making these bets so transparent? When is it correct to give up on a hand? When can I play a huge hand like a missed draw and get paid off light? So many questions! Hopefully it will clear itself up as time goes by.

By the way, spring break is fantastic. Not because I am on a beach or partying or anything like that. It’s because I don’t have to worry about classes. We are transitioning to Spring quarter at the U of O. Hence, no homework. I have been able to play a ton of hands. It was only in the last couple of days that I came to this revelation about betting missed draws on the river and how much I suck at it. So, thanks spring break! Thanks for helping me identify a serious issue with my game!

So before you read on click here and take the test and then come back and read the rest of this post.

Interesting isn’t it? I have been doing a lot of work around focus, and focusing on certain things at the poker table. Well I decided to play a little PLO the other day on Cake. (BTW, Cake is full of really good players so if you fancy yourself a good poker player then don’t bother cause there aren’t any fish there. If you suck then this is the spot for you. If you need an account with 33% rakeback then click here and maybe I make an extra penny in rake back this month.)

So anyway my focus in this session was to put other players on hands the best that I could. I was actually doing really well. Up about $120 at a $1-$2 table and then the following hand took place….

I had AAJT or something in that neighborhood and the jackass($120) at the table who was raising every hand raises, the tighest guy at the table($260) re-raises and I($365) re-raise. The jackass folds, the tightest guy re-raises and I just call. The pot now is about $140 as I recall. So I think that tighty-mc-tight-tight has KK or AA, and I am probably pretty good. I have noticed that really tight players tend to get married to big pairs, not just in PLO but holdem too. So the flop comes 4-7-9 rainbow. He checks and I check behind, I think I probably should have bet here. The turn is some crap card like a 2, and tighty-mc-tight-tight pushes. I really think that he has KK or some AA variant and based on this read, which is what I was focused on, I call. He shows AA44 and flopped a set of fours. I didn’t river the straight and lost a big hand.

Well ok, it’s not a big deal, this didn’t set me on tilt like the FullTilt bonus offer did. But I like to look at this stuff and figure out where I could have made a mistake and then get to the point where I can unconsciously make the right decision. Here is where I screwed up…

Focus…. I screwed up by focusing on putting this guy on a hand. Now this is certainly a HUGE part of the game but that night I made it the whole game. This is a mistake. I focused on one thing and developed inattentional blindness . This is the condition where you are so focused on one thing that you don’t see other obvious things that are in the way. In this case I was so focused on putting him on a hand that I discounted the fact that he may have actually hit a big hand.

Now is this really a mistake? No not really. Do you remember in “Caddy Shack” where Ty was instructing Danny to “Be the Ball?” What he is doing is trying to get Danny to trust his unconscious mind to take over implement all of the facets that he has practiced and focused on. So I needed to have this focused practice session where I locked in the skill of reading other players. In the future I can trust that my unconscious mind is taking care of this for me. This is all part of mastering something, where you get to develop unconscious competence.

These are Daniel Negreanu’s words, not mine, and he is talking about levels as high as $25/50.  I read this many years ago and had no idea what DN was talking about; However, I see now that his principles are definitely valid and can apply to any level in live play.

Examples of squeezing/3 betting:

I am playing a $2/5 full ring game.  There are two limpers and a very inexperienced player makes it $15 to go.  The hijack, cutoff, button, and small blind all call.  It comes down to me and I see 8 5 offsuit in the big blind.  While this isn’t a traditional squeeze play, it is a great spot to put in a sizeable raise.  As long as the first limper in isn’t the type of person to limp/reraise with AA/KK/AK and there are no shortstacks, there is no hand whatsoever that anyone in the hand can call with.

Live games play extremely loose passive and 3 bets get a lot more credit than they should/do online, so the range of calling a big reraise from the big blind is something like AA/KK/QQ/AK, which, coincidentally, is about the range I’m repping.  Raising to about $70 will take down the pot easily enough to show a profit.

3-betting light is pretty common in online 6-max games, but live games are still very far behind.  A lot of people dissuade 3-betting because you will get called with a higher frequency since live games are so loose-passive, but this is all the more reason to stick in the occasional air 3-bet preflop.

Utilizing plays like this makes your sessions way less about running good/catching cards and more about making steady profit no matter your cards.   It will also get you some action when you do have a hand.

Per suggestion of DN, I used to play totally blind online for short sessions just to see if I could pick up spots that would be excellent candidates for 3-betting/squeezing.  I would just wait for a guy with a high VPIP/PFR to open, wait for a few smoothcallers, and pop it up and usually take it down.  It’s an excellent practice tool and really helps your game, although you might lose money learning.  Anyone that has problems 3-betting, I suggest trying this at a lower limit that you’re comfortable with; It will markedly improve your game in the long run.

I also try to look for places to block the last position steal move by stealing myself one seat before the last spot. These little pots add up and make it look like you are playing loosely, which will cheaply buy you some action when you really do have a big hand.

Some people might argue that these tiny pots aren’t worth a resteal attempt, but my success rate tells me that they absolutely are.