An Interview With Max "Chisness" Chiswick, Prospective Isle of Man Representative

As you readers are probably acutely aware, the recent rake calculations from Poker Stars have caused quite a stir amid the poker population as they have shifted from the dealt method of rake calculation to weighted contributed, which is now the industry standard. In response to the uproar in the Two Plus Two community and the subsequent strike, Stars has confronted the issue and offered to alleviate it by selecting 4 respected members of the poker community to travel to the Isle of Man and work directly with Stars management to settle the matter. One of the volunteers is short stack legend, Max "Chisness" Chiswick. I knew him intimately from our confrontations on the felt, but thought it was best to delve further into his plans and intentions before offering my personal support to his cause.

Lorin: 20bb CAP was created as a solution to the short stacker problem in larger stack buy in games. Do you think it has solved this problem effectively?

Chisness: I think it's solved the problem of the anti-shortstackers having legitimate arguments (e.g. there shouldn't be overlap in stakes, not fair to have such a large gap in buy in sizes) against us, but feel like 20-50bb (or 20-40bb on FTP) was a fair compromise and overall better.

It involved the risk/reward of having to stick around with deeper stacks to attack a deeper recreational player. It had much more revolving of players at each table (many ss'ers leave after doubling), which led to shorter waitlists. Since full stackers had the option of deeper only tables, the 20-50bb solution should have been acceptable.

Lorin: I have heard reports that many of those strongly opposed to short stacking only gave their public support to 20bb CAP because they (falsely) believed that no one would want to play it. Now that many recreational players have flocked to this game, these very same players are once again in an uproar. Legitimate arguments aside, do you feel that their frustration is in any way justified?

Chisness: No, I think this proves that recreational players clearly like playing with shorter stacks as they've stuck with them throughout all the changes. I understand their frustration, but they're the ones who defeated the 20-100 games in the first place. If they want to be able to play with short recreational players (I remember always loving seeing the 20-40 buyin guys at the full tables) then they should accept these 20-100 games back rather than trying to attack the CAP games.

Lorin: That has been my observation as well. Before playing full time at FTP before finally ending up at Stars, I was a strong supporter of the Cake network. They were one of the very first networks to strike back against short stacking back in April of 2010, even though it never reached any "critical" level there. However, once the buy in was raised to 30bb, I noticed a massive dropoff in traffic, particularly that of the recreational player. I could only conclude that the rec players actually desired to play with small stacks. That being said, do you feel that there is room for short stack poker, mid stack poker and deep stack poker to exist side-by-side without cannibalizing each other?

Chisness: I think there will automatically be some harm done to the alternatives when multiple options are given (Wal-Mart being put in next to Target will always make things worse). Deep [100bb minimum] seems to be a fairly niche offering that isn't super popular so isn't too relevant. It makes sense for there to be a separation between short (CAP) and mid (regular) because of the uproar previously discussed so I think having 2 main levels is the best overall alternative to keep the majority happy. The only potential change that would make sense is switching back from CAP to 20-50, but that seems unlikely to happen and isn't really part of my goals in this meeting.

So I don't think they're killing each other, they're just making each offering more difficult than if there were only one.

Lorin: Ok, now that we have those things addressed, let's move to the original purpose of this discussion. Once the "natural advantage" of short stacking was essentially handicapped by the introduction of 20bb CAP, many of the players who stuck around began noticing a new problem, which is that of the rake. I noticed that your PTR graph has seemed stagnant over the past several months. Do you attribute that to the rake or is it something else?

Chisness: Well I think a lot of it was due to autopiloting and not keeping up properly with the games by studying. Also, other factors like the games generally getting tougher, fewer rec players, Black Friday, etc.

However, I do think rake is a big problem. As a percentage of rake my winrate (and everyone else's) has been getting smaller and smaller. I mentioned on 2+2 that when virtually no one can make a decent profit at a game, that the rake should be fixed (at what point that happens is unclear, but tons of graphs have flatlined lately). The rake has been essentially the same since Stars launched (I think), but it's important to put rake in the context of winrates. 8 years ago rake of 4bb/100 may have been half of a solid player's winrate, but now it's generally 2-4x or even much more.

Others have said in the forums that the structure of poker rake in general is pretty crazy and that it's got to be by far one of the most expensive games in the world (especially when compared to many games that offer monthly flat fees or hourly fees). This is unfortunately out of scope for my arguments, but seems very open for discussion now that the rake has crushed so many winrates.

Lorin: I was initially appalled by the announcement of the rakeback changes at Stars. However, after I had time to absorb the information and the public response from Stars, I came to the conclusion that they are making a genuine effort to restore balance to their overall gaming structure and thinking of what is best for their longterm goals, which are, in fact, in alignment with the goals of the players as well. Yet, even with the best of intentions, they can easily overlook flawed rake structures in existing games and potentially damage them further. I am thinking specifically of NL50-100 at 20bb CAP.

I understand that you are a midstakes player, but creating a healthy feeder system through the lower limits impacts you directly as well. Do you have any specific plans to address the rake problem at the small limit games if you are chosen to represent us at the Isle of Man?

Chisness: Firstly addressing CAP, before going I'd like to do some research into comparing CAP rake rates at same stakes with regular NLHE rake rates.

As for the stakes like NL50-100 (CAP and non), that problem is one of the biggest I've seen and seems like one of the most important to address. I wrote in my bio that Stars right now has increased VPP multipliers for the smallest limits (like NL5), but switching these to rake reductions instead and expanding the rake reductions to more stakes is crucial for, as you put it, a healthy feeder system that lets winners keep more *cash* in the system to move up through the stakes.

There's a fair chance that these sorts of indirect (to midstakes CAP) changes will be the core of what we're able to do in these meetings, so I'm going to be sure to do some rake analyses of these stakes as well in order to paint a picture of how it changes throughout the stakes. As potentially the only NLHE guy going, it's crucial for me to look at the lower stakes as well.

Lorin: I get lots of coaching requests from people who have literally never played online cash games before. Rather, they are looking to make a "soft" transition from their daily grind of SNGs or MTTs into the world of NL cash games while limiting their overall risk exposure. Looking at it from this perspective, I suppose it could be interpreted that CAP games are actually doing a service to the overall community of NLHE cash game players by, once again, creating a solid feeder system. However, I worry that if I direct them to the small limits which are, it appears, difficult to beat based on structure alone, they might become discouraged and return to the games they are familiar with. Do you think that emphasizing this idea to Stars management might sway them to apply more focus in this area?

Chisness: I think focusing on the general idea that "predatory" rake that makes games close to unbeatable (I can mention this is especially true of newer players who enter at these lower stakes) is certainly terrible for players and the health of the ecosystem, but may also be bad for PokerStars when so many players are discouraged from playing, not telling their friends about it, and generally just not enjoying the game.

Lorin: I would say that you are somewhat of a cultish figure in poker right now, well known among short stackers and 20bb CAP players, but perhaps not a recognizable name to the community at large (though I admit that I may be wrong about this). Even though you are an expert at navigating the Poker Stars rewards system, do you feel that having recently spent your career focused on short stack strategies can create too large of a stigma for you to garner support from the wider poker community? Basically, what I am asking is: why should non-CAP players support you?

Chisness: Well, there is a stigma with non-short players respecting anyone who does CAP/short which I can't do much about, but I have been playing seriously since around 2007 and spent from around 2006 to 2009 playing non-short poker, so hopefully that doesn't get completely overlooked.

More importantly, I am at the moment the main 6max NLHE representative option and pledge to do my best to support all 6max NLHE games, not just those that I play. I'm very willing to listen to advice from players at any game type or stake within 6max NLHE to consider their viewpoints.

Finally, many changes that affect my own games will also affect the wider poker community and non-CAP games, so my general analytical skills and poker experience are important to look at.

Lorin: Do you have any specific sources of information that you have planned to turn to in regards to how the WC change will affect other games? Essentially, do you have knowledgeable contacts who play other games besides 20bb CAP with whom you speak with on a regular basis?

Chisness: Unfortunately, since Black Friday and because I'm American, most of my friends aren't playing anymore. I think it's very important to get some data to compare dealt vs. WC and each indivdually across the stakes at CAP and regular NLHE 6max. If selected, I'd first make a spreadsheet listing the exact data I need to acquire. I'd then either request the data from Poker Stars directly (to be given either in advance or at their HQ) or go to 2+2 to get the data manually from [the players].

Lorin: Lastly, if no changes or improvements are made to the rake structure, do you think that Poker Stars is still the best place to play moving forward into 2012 and beyond?

Chisness: Poker Stars generally has better rake than other sites (and many other sites use WC as well), has a better rewards system, better game selection options, better software, and seems much safer (see recent botting scandals on other top networks). They've also shown much good faith in canceling the changes they made and letting this meeting convene to address them (and generally communicating well with players).

If I didn't play many tables, I might look into another top network, but would only move to that if I thought my hourly would be noticeably higher.

If you would like to lend your support to Chisness, you can cast your vote here:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/28/internet-poker/2p2-community-choose-your-reps-negotiate-pokerstars-1148227/

Thanks to you Max, and best of luck in the polls!!

Keeping a Poker Journal

(Apologies for going so long without an update - I actually have two other blog posts in the works but they both kind of turned into "bit off more than I could chew" scenarios.)

So, I don't know what's going on lately. I feel like I've been playing well, doing the same things I always do, with one significant change: I am suddenly sucking at poker.

Anyone else had that feeling?

I should say, I didn't know what was going on at first. Then, I opened up something I haven't in awhile - a MS word document titled, "Poker Journal."

My poker career maybe hasn't been as long as some others, but I've been doing this for over a year now, and I've learned a lot of things, from a lot of different people, and from myself, too. All of that learning and studying and practicing pulled me from marginal microstakes loser to significant mid stakes winner. There's just one problem: Most of what I learned just doesn't stick.

It's not my fault, really. Studies show that no matter how good people think they are at remembering things, human memory is actually pretty crappy. No matter how much they do things by feel, they're wrong as often as right. So here I am, my knowledge slowly slipping, my play slowly regressing, until that stubborn microstakes loser is piloting my mouse in a handful of 5/10 games. Whoops.

The poker journal is the fastest and most efficient way to stuff the skeleton of that microstakes loser back in the closet. For example, when I took the Short Stack Revolution course, my VPIP went up, my 3bet stat went up, and the difference between my VPIP and PFR shrunk by a lot. But over time, that stuff started slipping. Without a journal, I'm screwed. I either have to go back and learn everything from the beginning, or, even worse, I have no idea what has slipped and I have no way back. The journal turns days or weeks of hard study into a one hour refresher course.

If you're like me, you flirt with the line between profession and addiction with poker (okay, actually I do that with everything I enjoy). Even on my days off, I'm constantly thinking about past plays, new lines, math tweaks, or whatever. Now, I know you think you'll remember it and apply it later. The honest truth is, you usually won't. The poker journal serves as a quick catch-all for all the wild poker thoughts roaming around in your brain.

Usually I try to update my poker journal about twice a month, once with thoughts about whatever I am digging through (even if it's something relatively devoid of strategic content), and once with an analysis/report of how the month turned out, plus whenever the impulse strikes me or I learned something specific I don't want to forget.

It might seem like a waste of time when you're doing it, but when you need it later, it'll prove invaluable. My suggestion: Take an hour a month and give it a try.

Apocalypse Nope

WARNING: Video spoken in the international language of comedy

Pondering the Aftermath

Update: The official statement is, apparently, that Full Tilt and Pokerstars have reached an agreement with the DoJ and will return all US players money, as well as continue service outside the United States, presumably in exchange for obscene amounts of money in fines.

However, at this point, the DoJ is saying "hey, we don't want your money, we'll make sure FT gives it back" while FT says "Hey, we want to give you your money, but the DoJ has it and won't give it up.

It's probably a waiting game at this point.


Friday April 15 is certain to become a legendary date in online poker history, as the United States Department of Justice issued a scathing indictment against three major poker sites: Pokerstars, Full Tilt Poker, and Absolute/Ultimate Bet.

With the apparent removal of 20bb tables from Party Poker, Pokerstars and Full Tilt are rapidly becoming not only the best places to play, but the o

nly places, if you're a short stack player. If you're an American, then it's no choice at all.

I wish there was more that could be said on the topic, but for now it's all questions and no answers. It's unclear as to when (if) American players will be able to access their bankrolls on these sites, and these poker giants are currently blasted with epic volumes of customer e-mail, and hesitant to change customer addresses (I suspect their suspicions may be aroused by the thousands who allegedly managed to relocate outside the U.S. mere days after the announcement.)

For the record, my next blog post wasn't going to be about this at all. It was going to be about the importance of taking time off from your regular poker play. I guess I jinxed us all, because we're all getting a bit of time off. Even if you're not an American player, game quantity is shrinking and shifting considerably.

For those of you that don't know, I currently live in South Korea. My wife and I went on vacation to the port city of Busan, famed for its beautiful beaches. Yep, that means Asian swimsuit girl post-savers.

Thanks a lot, Department of Justice.

So for now, we wait.

I'm one of the "lucky" few, planning on moving to Canada in the next few months anyway to rebuild. How to rebuild is still a big question. It's a question that will likely remain unanswered in the coming weeks, as the dust on this won't settle anytime soon.

Good luck everyone, no matter how your poker is (or isn't) going. If the poker community can use their collective "one time" to find a strong way through this, I'd submit now is the time to bust it out.

Building True Loyalty in Online Poker

I read recently on Bill Rini's excellent blog which covers the online poker industry that the concept of "Loyalty" programs are a complete joke.  Poker is essentially a commodity business so most players will rationally act in their own self-interest and respond to whoever offers them the best financial incentives.  I generally agreed with this but got to thinking about ways that this could be changed.

Of course, when we are referring to loyalty programs, this generally only applies to players of the high volume nature.  While liquidity from recreational players is ranked the highest in terms of value, we still can't overlook the role played by high volume regulars whose play is necessary to run the engine that grinds recreational money down into rake for the site.

I received my Full Tilt Black Card in November.  I was fully expecting it to be just another piece of laminated card board, but was pleasantly surprised to find out that it was a credit card shaped piece of painted steel with my name inscribed on it.  I know it's kind of cheesy, but I couldn't help but feel a little bit of pride while feeling it's weight in my hand.  Kind of like a trophy, I always thought.

On the surface, this can also be said of many of the items with Full Tilt's logo that can be found littered throughout their store, but herein lies the problem: once you have items that can be exchanged for points in lieu of cash based rewards that can be purchased with the same points, you have forever tainted the symbolic value of those items.  Let me explain:

Rakeback Nation has a great rewards system that offers items that can be exchanged for points built up by generating rake.  Unlike items bought at an online poker store for points, getting these items does not deduct from your rakeback in any way.  Similarly, there are no optional bonuses or gift cards that you have to pass up.  What does this mean?  This means that I can thoroughly enjoy the Kindle that I "achieved" without having to feel like I paid for it. 


While Full Tilt can counter that they offer a special avatar or watch for those who finish first in their FTOPS or Mini-FTOPS events respectively, since everyone understands that only one winner gets to enjoy these symbolic items and that there is a certain amount of luck needed to achieve them, they are not an appropriate way to incentivize play.  In the same vein, having your handle being listed on any kind of anonymous monthly leaderboard only to have it swept away the following month doesn't feel like your accomplishments are exactly being appreciated, either.  And just how are they recognizing such achievements?  By offering cash and buy in tokens, of course!  Once again, Bill Rini is right: all the sites are doing this and again reducing their product into a commodity business.  While this might be good for future advertisements of one's coaching services, it doesn't exactly appeal to someone's emotions and sense of loyalty.

Here is my proposition:  the sites should begin mailing out actual trophies and plaques that recognize personal, stakewide, and sitewide milestones that are achievable to anyone who grinds hard enough.  Furthermore, they should offer a permanent place on the site for a "Hall of Fame" for various achievements where a player can choose to be awarded with a photo and their real name.  Here are some suggestions:

Stakewide and Sitewide (based on minimum number of hands played):

• Most hands played
• Most money earned
• Highest winrate
• Most first place finishes
• Most knockouts
• Most cashes
• Most final tables

Personal:

• $10k in career winnings
• $100k in career winnings, etc.
• $10M in total wagers, etc.  (doesn't mean much, but makes you look a total baller)
• 100k hands played in a month, etc.
• Best poker blog ;)

It is no secret in business that people have bigger needs than just wanting more money- they want full appreciation for the work that they do.  Most of the work done by poker players is never recognized in any formal way- even for those at the top of their craft.  What player do you know that wouldn't want a special trophy room dedicated to honoring his achievements in a way that his friends and family can understand?  And how do you think they would feel towards the site that finally acknowledged such performances in a tangible way?

Let me know what you think!

Introduction of a Poker Player, Part 2

Serious question time. Are you losing at this game?

Check your gut response (of course I’m not!) at the door and ponder it. How much do you make? How much time does it take you to get it? How do you feel when you’re done?

Keep in mind that in poker, the only reason anyone makes any money at all (and they do) is because there are hordes of people who don’t realize they are losing. If they did, they’d quit.

If you run far enough, there's a $20,000 bonus at the end!

Just don't overthink it.

Poker players are notorious for not being able to assess their own skill level. Well, finally in December 2010, after pushing myself to the absolute limit for three months, I was ready to really look at my poker game in the mirror, and I did not like what I saw. I was, without a doubt, a losing player. I had plenty of justifications for it (some legitimate, some... less so), but there it was. At the end of the day, it was costing me money to play poker.

A poker friend of mine told me about someone he knew, a guy named Lorin. He claimed that Lorin’s shortstack class was not only useful, it was a hell of a bargain. My first thought? Fuck that.

I’d already spent hundreds of dollars on poker related stuff. Hold’em Manager, Table Ninja, Leak Buster, coaching time, the list goes on. (Sometime, I’ll do a product review of all the crap I bought.) Any winnings I may have made were long gone to these “investments.” I was thoroughly convinced there were more people making money selling stuff to poker players, than their were poker players making money.

No matter which way I sliced it, I needed help. My “win”rate sucked, and I wasn’t really improving, despite all my study. So I made a deal with myself. I’d take a chunk of my quickly dwindling bankroll and spend it on Lorin’s training. Then, I’d dedicate the rest of my roll into learning his system. If I start winning, great. If I go broke, fine. I quit.

My first impression of Lorin was that he was a professional. A good thing, too. If I’m paying for a service, I'm looking for someone who takes the job seriously. A good poker player isn't necessarily a good coach.

With Lorin, it was clear he knew what he was doing. He had a clear system, a simple presentation method, and a no-nonsense attitude.

Every mentor is different, but despite my repeated begging,

Lorin refuses to teach me the secret to bitchin' abs or a date with

Helena Bonham Carter.

His repeated request was simple: If you want to make money from my system, just do everything I tell you to do. Fair enough. I figured, I paid him the money, no sense only going half way.

So off I went. I stopped playing at Pokerstars. I stopped mass-tabling. I started shoving more and calling less. I stopped playing at fishless tables. As each new video came out, I watched it like a religion and committed it to memory.

I can overlook the rest of it Judas,

but if you flat call with Q9o one more time,

we are going to have a fucking problem.

At first, it wasn’t easy. I immediately hit a severe downswing where my EV line made modest gains, but my actual profit line dropped like a stone. But something was happening. My EV line was heading somewhere I’m quite sure it was very confused and disoriented to be: up.

The downswing ended as they always do, and I started making money. Compared to where I was, I feel comfortable saying it was “a lot” of money. I moved from the .25/.50 game on Pokerstars, to the .25/.50 game on Full Tilt, and then very quickly to .50/1.00 and into 1/2. The best part was, because I was following Lorin’s system of table selection, the games didn’t really get much harder as I moved up. There became fewer games to play (not playing fishless tables meant more and more ineligible games as I moved up), but the games were still good.

Today, just two months later, I have the bankroll to play at 2/4 (NL400) with consistency, and I’m a winner in that game. Best of all, most of my profit comes from kicking ass (winning), not kissing it (rakeback).

I’m still learning. I’m not there yet. Right now I’m transitioning from working guy to full time pro. I expect that in the future of this blog, a lot of my posts will be about how I made and am still making that transition. But I can say with certainty that’s the direction I’m heading, and I wouldn’t be there without Lorin’s help.

Thanks man. I owe you one.

Introduction of a Poker Player, Part 1

I wish this was a story I could have told from the beginning. It's an interesting one, all told - one guys journey from a casual tournament player, to a fish on a heater, to a mass tabling low stakes grinder, until finally getting it together and finding myself short-stacking for high stakes, with enough money on the line to make my parents and most of my friends feel a bit nauseous just hearing about it.

When it comes down to it though, there's an underpinning of consistency, logic, and hard, hard work that - for all the highs and lows - lets me make a living doing something I love: playing poker.

(Trust me, if you want to win, you better really love poker, because there are plenty of days when poker does not love you back.)

So, like most trendy stories these days, let's go ahead and start from the middle.

In November of 2010, I had had enough. I knew I was a winning poker player, or at least, I had it in me to become one. I just wasn't working hard enough.

Contrary to popular belief, desire and hard work are

not always a guarantee for success.

Nevermind that I was already playing five hours a day, studying when I wasn't at the table, and just generally driving myself insane. I was playing .25/.50 and .50/1.00 20bb games on Pokerstars, about 20 tables at once, about 200,000 hands a month. I got coaching. I played better, faster, harder and smarter than I ever had.

The month sucked. I posted something like a -2bb/100 loss rate, kept afloat by the rakeback I had generated.

Okay, bad luck. Still getting my feet wet. It happens. So December rolled in, I started with a clean slate, moved back down to .25/.50, and hit the tables harder than ever.

An artists rendition of trying to play on

Pokerstars in December.

On December 22, I was still losing. Badly. (Okay, not that badly, about the same as before. All I knew is that I had a goal - to play full time - and unless I planned on playing roughly 37 hours a day, I was never going to make enough money to do that.) Again, the Pokerstars bonuses were the only money I made, and had to use them to offset the losses, too.

It was time. I'd played literally hundreds of thousands of hands of poker. Sample sizes were not an issue. Nor was tilt, lack of discipline, or any other excuse I could come up with.

I was a loser. Not the funny, good natured hollywood loser who gets the hot emo girl with his fumbling charm, either. The kind destined to leave his money behind on the poker table.

Something needed to change and soon, or my poker career would be busto before it even took off.

Rethinking Lines for Creative Short Stack Heads Up Play

In the ever elusive quest for original material, I have been away for awhile plotting my next move.  While shooting a video for my Short Stack Revolution strategy video series, I discovered some very interesting lines that can be used to combat aggressive heads up min-raisers.  The short stack tourist reader might find the idea of creative short stack play to be shocking, but the advanced player should immediately recognize the need for taking tricky lines against such opponents because they know that even frequent 3-betting or playing fit-or-fold after the flop is the perfect recipe for getting robbed blind with minimal villain effort.

The first hand isn't truly interesting when viewed outside the realm of traditional short stack strategy.  When dealt A9s heads up and facing a min-raise, the knee jerk reaction is to shove, but that will just allow him to get away unscathed far too often for my taste.  The caveat here is that this particular villain is open-raising 90%.  However, once I make this call, I am probably never folding but I will have to let the flop texture and his betting line determine my overall strategy.  In this case, the flop makes it very easy to see how to proceed.



To the naked eye, it should appear obvious that this flop is hitting few players' ranges, but just to be clear, let's see what Flopzilla, another great program by the maker of Cardrunners EV, has to say:

After accounting for card removal, we can see that villain's range has only connected 16.3% of the time.  Even more telling is precisely how villain's range has hit.  The fact that he has bet on all streets on this board texture means that his range has become more polarized with every single bet.  Essentially, there are only 6 real categories of hands that can conceivably bet both the flop and turn:

1. Flushdraws
2. PP below TP
3. Overpairs
4. 3 of a kind
5. Full houses
6. Quads

Given the tendencies to check full houses and quads, we can discount those from the range, leaving probable villain hits now at 14.24%.  Of course, since we can estimate that he will be checking a Q as well some lower PP's and overpairs on either the flop or the turn, we know that this actual range of hits is considerably less in reality.  Given the overall board texture and the bet sizing, a call down is clearly in order.  Taking this line has more benefits than just winning the pot.  It also lets your opponents know that you are patient and fearless.  Though by habit he will most likely continue to open 90%, he will be forced to give up much more frequently after the flop, which in turn will allow us to call even lighter pre-flop and swipe away more hands with pure bluffs.

You don't need to be the Rain Man to figure this out in real time, but it certainly helps if you take a little time out of your day when you aren't playing to learn exactly how to handle some various situations.

If the first hand was largely unconvincing, this next hand is sure to raise some eyebrows.  Once again, villain is opening approximately 90%.



Though this hand is more difficult to solve with Flopzilla, I can say this with some certainty: his line looks stronger than the previous villain's.  By checking the flop and betting both the turn and the river, he is representing a hand that was either very strong on the flop or one that somehow improved on the turn but yet was willing to check call the flop, and to a far lesser degree, 2nd pair or QQ that was going for pot committing thin value on the river.  So which categories of hands were most appropriate for this play and how often are they hitting the flop?

1. Top pair:  11.9%
2. Overpair:  0.63%
3. Two Pair: 2.83%
4. Set: 0.94%

Just as important as his tendencies to miss the flop entirely are the relevancy of the turn and river cards.  Even when opening 90%, there is still no guarantee that 82, 83, and 32 are in his range.  So this leaves us with a much higher probability of bluffs than strong hands.

The fate of this hand was decided ahead of time.  As soon as I flopped a straight draw, I decided that I was never folding, simply because I was aware that this flop is rarely hitting my opponent strongly and I can combine that fact with my overall equity.  The question then becomes how to maximize my overall expectation given possible outcomes.

Notice that in no point of this hand do I want to risk getting check raised.  If I had no equity or a vulnerable hand I would surely bet, but by checking along I now have increased my overall winning percentage in addition to the ability to snap off bluffs. I would like to also note that if at any point I catch a T or Q I am calling down.

I showed this hand to one of my students who was amazed that I would try to bluff any opponent who puts in half of the effective stack on the river.  In actuality, this is precisely the point.  He is only committed to the hand if he has what he is representing, which is basically Kx+.  He also probably assumes that I know he isn't willing to fold after putting in this much money and believes that this lends credibility to his bluff.  Being that I wasn't particularly familiar with this opponent, I don't necessarily know how willing he would be to bet a weak king on the river, but it is quite likely that he is looking to check call any pairs J or worse.  In this light it now is beginning to look suspiciously like a polarized range.  Given his incredibly high opening raise percentage, I am just not willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Short Stack Strategy is Now on Video!

After two weeks of blood, sweat, and tears I have 90% completed a version of my short stack strategy seminar on a video set.  All of the theoretical concepts are completed and ready for immediate download, leaving only the sweat session and HEM mastery versions to be recorded so I will be taking pre-orders at the introductory price of $295.  Starting on Valentine's Day, I will be showing my love for the world by raising the price of the video collection to $395.  The videos contain over 60 power point slides and over 60 unique, fully-visual hand examples to illustrate each post-flop concept. All purchases will also include my hand charts and a half hour consultation.  Periodic supplementary content will be available by popular demand

Here is a list of the videos and some of the contents of each:

1. Essentials

• HUD setup with explanation of both weak and strong stats
• Game selection with effective player tagging
• Seat selection
• The 4 major goals of post-flop play: maximum value, pot control, protecting your hand, and unexploitability

2. Pre-flop Concepts

• Interpreting different raise sizes by position
• Recognizing an iso-raise
• Squeezing
• Facing cold 3 and 4-bets
• Counteracting unusual 3-bet sizes such as the min 3-bet and the single re-raise

3. Single Caller OOP

• Evaluating flop texture
• Criteria for C-betting
• Playing all marginal hands, including overcards, 2nd & 3rd pair, and TPWK
• Playing draws
• Bluffing the turn
• Check raising marginal value on the turn
• Interpreting and countering the 3 different donk bets: the min-bet, the half pot bet, and the full pot bet
• Ace high flops
• Multi-way Pots

4. Single Caller IP

• Same concepts as above, with a strategy for playing draws on the turn on river
• Playing vs. a single limper by position
• Range balancing
• Going for thin value

5.  Blind Play

• Evaluating limper strength by position
• How to proceed on your free play
• Heads up strategy for the small blind
• Playing the BB when the SB limps
• Countering aggressive heads up min-raisers

Total runtime of the videos is over 5 hours.  Contact me for payment options or if you would like a short preview of them, which I can provide over Teamviewer.

The Great Fish and Pony Show

Though it is most likely that having a legal and regulated online poker market in the U.S. is good for the long-term health of our game, I am beginning to get extremely frazzled by this glowing report of how great things will be after a potential 15 month blackout period. Here is a partial list of my concerns that seems to be growing by the hour since I first learned of this a few days ago:

A NEW POKER BOOM WILL OCCUR THAT WILL DWARF THE FIRST ONE.

Though I believe this to be most likely, it is still theoretical at this point and likely to be short lived. That one was powered by forces that happened to coincide perfectly that no longer exist today.

A) The world economy was thriving on the real estate bubble.

B) Poker first entered the public consciousness through the entirely new usage of lipstick cameras to show hole cards for the first time and a Cinderella story titled "Moneymaker" won over the imagination of the masses.

C) Online poker was new and enthusiasm was at the highest point that will ever exist.


THE FISH POOL WILL BE GIGANTIC AND NEVER ENDING DUE TO THE EASE OF LIQUIDITY

Wow....where to start?!

With the possibility of states being able to opt out, it is very unclear just how many states will be contributing to this fishpool. Living in Kentucky, I am incredibly fearful that my state will not opt in due to the prior efforts of our governor whose sole interest at this point seems to be in protecting our statewide passion for primitive auto racing, aka "Horse Racing". Sure, I live right by Indiana and would be willing to make a moderate commute there to play, but with its state coffers juiced with the proceeds of riverboat gambling, can I truly rely on this?

Even after this is accounted for, the fishpool will be nothing like what we witnessed the first time around. Back then, poker knowledge at large consisted of little more than knowing that a flush beats a straight. Concepts like pot odds, blind stealing, and position were foreign and arcane to the general population and the outcome was such that if you stuck with top pair or better and drew only to the nuts, you were crushing the game. Nowadays, the quality of competition at your neighborhood bar freeroll is stronger than what you would have encountered online 6 years ago.

There was a serious information black hole that existed back then that no longer does. Training sites, forums, and high quality texts are the standard means of improvement and never again will sub-standard trash like Phil Hellmuth's Play Poker Like the Pros be so eagerly gobbled up by aspiring players. Now the pros not only play significantly better than their opponents, they play GOOD. Since the fish tend to copy the moves and tendencies of everyone else around them, they will play better by default...no question.

Where does this leave us? I believe that it is a certainty that we will eventually end up right back where we are right now. Eventually all shitty players go bust and the ones that don't will improve, and perhaps greatly so. The games will once again be tough, but hey, we can always cash out our rakeback without all the fuss!


In conclusion, it is extremely difficult to imagine a scenario that can possibly make up for over a year of productivity loss. I am not saying that it isn't necessary in the long run, but the ever-glowing reports of how great things will be seem incredibly naive at this point, especially in light of the fact that we are giving up something of great value that is currently guaranteed for something that we are only envisioning at this time. If history can help us predict anything, it shows us that people are really lousy at making predictions.

As the saying goes "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush". Are there really two in the bush? I'm just so not sure...

Tinkering With The Nash Equilibrium, Pt. III- The Short Stack Houdini

In the last post about this subject, I ended with a note of how just adding a dead small blind can seriously impact what you can get away with in terms of open shoving a 20BB stack.  This is a direct benefit of short stacking and does not have much of an effect for larger stacks, as the potential gain becomes a much smaller percentage of the total stack size while severely increasing the risk.  This week's post takes the concept of pushing complete trash to the extreme and examines what happens when you have a player who posts on the cutoff and the action passes to you in the blinds. 

Before I get into it, let's take a look at what I normally do in this situation:

Now, time for a quick quiz:

Q. What the fuck just happened there?

A) Short stack donk on tilt.

B) Idiot who thinks Q8 "double suited" is the nuts because it can make two different straight flushes.

C) Astute short stacker looking to gain a quick and easy profit against two very weak hand ranges.

Answer: C

Think about what happens after someone posts and then checks.  His range is now weaker than the big blind's.  It's simple: he had the option to make a cheap raise in a steal position and declined to do so.  Of course, he could be trapping, but this becomes very unlikely, for these reasons:

1) The button still has to act, meaning that this player is potentially acting out of position against three players whose ranges are completely undefined.  Furthermore, if he was hoping to limp-reraise against the button, even the fish know that this would be a parlay of highly unlikely events that includes having the button raising and calling the back raise, yet NOT having enough of a hand to call a single open raise.

2) Few hands can stand any real pressure against two completely random hands and expect to both win the hand WHILE ALSO generating a medium to large pot without the fear of overcards.  This includes 99-KK, and good broadway hands.  Therefore, it generally makes more sense to just raise with these hands, especially when you factor in what I pointed out in Part 1.

The bottom line is that most players will play their hand's straight up when posting in, meaning that they will raise when they have a good hand and check when they don't.  Since there are very hands that are not good enough to raise yet believe they are good enough to call a shove.....we do the shoving!

At this point in time, this should be making sense.  Of course, since I have the tools to prove my hypothesis, I will do so.  The simulation that I will run builds upon the knowledge from the other TWTNE posts, so if you have not read them already, I would go back and do so now so that your understanding of this part is complete.

Step 1- Assigning a Range to the Poster

This can never be an exact science since everyone is a little bit different, so we must figure out what a "reasonably reasonable" player would do.  Here is what I came up with:

Yes, I expect that most players will be open raising with at least 55-88 as well as many other hands in this range, but I prefer to leave them in to compensate for when the player does something completely unexpected, like check with AA or AQ.

Step 2- Assign a Calling Range for the Big Blind

Although once again this is not perfect, this is a little easier to do since I have a lot of experience with the calling ranges of heads up shoves.  Even though I expect the actual calling range to be tighter than this, I will use the optimal call of the Nash Equilibrium shove.  That range is 44+, A7o+, A3s+, KJo+. KTs+, QJs.

Step 3- Assign a Calling Range for the Poster

While I could certainly figure out a CALL, CALL range, over the hundreds of times that I have done this, I have never seen both players call.  I therefore assume that if the big blind calls, the poster will fold, especially because several of the calling hands I assign to him do not match up well in large 3-way pots.  

Instead, I give him a call range of 44-88, A5o-A9o, and A2s-A8s.  Of course, most of this is purely theoretical and assumedly tighter than what I present here, yet I still feel that this a good approximation of a worst case scenario.  

Now it's time to run the simulation.  I use a $3/6 game with 20BB effective stacks.  

It is pretty difficult to tell whether or not the 73s is a sampling size error, so during play, I prefer to err on the side of aggression in situations where the cost of being wrong is usually tiny in the long run, yet the upside is likely high, especially when you factor in metagame benefits.  

Once again, let's see what happens when the poster puts up both the big blind and a dead small blind and things get even more interesting.....

That's right, bitches!

Remember...this is the worst case scenario.  I normally shove all hands (ok, maybe not the best hands) with or without the dead small blind present.  After all, the only guys who might be keen on the fact that I am shoving everything here are the regs and they will often be too involved in their other games to know whether or not the poster had just posted or if he had limped.  Even still, they might consider the proposition too risky overall to call light since they don't understand as well as I do how often the poster is actually making the call.

This play has nothing but upsides:  

A) They fold and you pick up some easy money.  This happens about 85% of the time.

B) They call and you suck out and win.  No explanation needed here!

C) They call and you showdown a turd and lose.  Now you look like a complete spewtard and you will have no trouble getting action from that point on.

Final note: you can do this play over and over again because it is a very infrequent scenario that would allow you to do this to the same person several times.  While this could happen in full ring games, there still is nothing much that people can do about it, particularly because so few of these hands are ever getting shown down and it is consistent with how I play many high quality hands as well.  In 6-max games, the situation becomes even better as those players who are not patient enough to wait 3 hands until the big blind hits them will likely not last long enough to become a victim of this play a second time.

In conclusion, I hoped that you all have enjoyed this series and it has opened your eyes to things that you never thought possible.

 

The ShortStack Song....

Here is our little opus to our loyal shortstackers, and a little hello to our haters as well......ENJOY!!!

A very special thanks to Taylor Mayd for recording and mixing the song for us. Look for his first album out in November.....

Tinkering With The Nash Equilibrium, Pt. II- Beyond Unexploitable Shoving

In the last post, we took a look at quite a few hands that were profitable to shove when heads up in the small blind.  I had also shown the hands with which it were profitable to defend against this play.  This time around, however, we will take a different tack and assume that we know that the big blind will be defending with the proper range against the unexploitable shove range.  Once again, we will use my favorite hypothetical example of a $2/4 game with 20BB stacks and a 5% rake and a defending hand range of 44+, A7o+, A3s+, KJo+, KTs+, QJs.  The simulation was run Monte Carlo style 10000k times.

Now here is what we can push:

The rabbit hole keeps getting deeper....  Notice that even after running the simulation 10 million times, there is still a tiny sampling error with 93s and assumedly the 53s as well, as neither J3s nor T3s are profitable and the 53s shows a minuscule $.01 profit, respectively.  Our unexploitable range has now grown from 38.4% of hands to an incredible 54.7%.

But why stop here?  Most players I play against simply refuse to make calls with hands like KTs, A3s, and QJs...even guys who I play against every day.  Let's run the simulation one more time with a more "typical" calling range of 55+, A8o+, A7s+, KJo+, KJs+.

86.4% of all hands are now playable.  In other words, all but the biggest of turds.  Oh?  What is that you say?  86.4% is not enough?  Ok then, let's toss a dead small blind into the pot and run it again and see what happens.

Happy now?  Yes, it's true.  With a typical calling range aided by the compensation of a dead small blind, you can now shove every single hand.  Naturally, logic dictates that you shouldn't be doing this.  While it would work a few times, it would quickly backfire and cause otherwise nitty players to begin playing more correctly against you and would thwart future attempts with a tighter shove range.  Besides, it's hardly optimal.  Rather, this was just an intellectual primer for the third and final installment of this series, where we finally combine all this knowledge to make you the ultimate motherfuckin' shortstack Houdini. 

Tinkering With The Nash Equilibrium, Pt. I- Unexploitable Shoving

The situation:  everyone folds around to you in the small blind.  You have 20BBs.  While everyone is confident in their ability to play premium hands heads up out of position, certain hands like weak aces and suited connectors can pose a serious problem, particularly when you are lacking post-flop maneuverability due to your short stack and the inability to launch an elaborate three street bluff.  You can either raise small or limp, though each of them has their own weaknesses.  If you raise small, when you are 3-bet, you will have to lay down a majority of these hands, whether or not you believe that your opponent is bluffing.  Limping will cause a serious imbalance in your range and makes you vulnerable to an in-position opponent whose range is completely undefined.

Two other options remain, and those are folding and going all in.  Since the aggressive move is usually superior, I would opt to go all in.  But which hands are profitable to do so?  A few years back, I was in awe of the Sklansky-Chubukov numbers as outlined in No Limit Hold'Em Theory and Practice.  For those who have not heard, the SC numbers represent the upper limit of your stack size in a $1/2 game where you can move all in from the small blind and have that play be preferable to folding- if you were to flip your hand over first and allow your opponent to play perfectly against you.  

At first I thought this was magic and now I look back at it as being hilariously nitty.  I have since been taught how to use the Nash Equilibrium via StoxEV to shove the highest percentage of hands for the maximum profit.  Though I have no idea how this was solved, I don't need to know how to build a car to drive it, either.

Here are the hands that we can shove for 20BB in a $2/4 game with the rake factored in (which the SC numbers fail to account for).

Not bad, huh?  Now suppose that an astute opponent knows what you are doing and what your precise range is.  How should he defend?

Clearly, there is very little he can do...not to mention that many players are not even comfortable calling with the bottom of this range.  In fact, players can only react to this in one of two ways.  They will either start calling lighter, which is a mistake, or they can call tighter and try and wait you out, making your shoves more profitable.

Although this lesson was fairly remedial, in the next, we will move on to some more advanced related concepts and you with then really begin to see just how deep the rabbit hole goes....

Determining the Correct 3-Bet Calling Frequency

Compared to the previous examples, finding your correct 3-bet calling frequency against a specific opponent is easy, though it takes a large sample.  Unlike 3-bet shoving, however, the penalty for making the wrong decision here is quite severe, being that you are now limiting to only winning one way- showdown.  Other than your opponent's range, you have two other considerations: the rake and the effective stack size.  For this example, I will summon our old friend "KaySmash" with a 20BB effective stack size and a $2/4 setting.  The stakes are very important here and that is due to the impact of the rake, which you will soon see.  In case you don't recall, KaySmash has a 3-bet range of 18%.  For this exercise, we will treat all 3-bets as an all-in shove, particularly since the 4-bet re-shove gets called somewhere in excess of 90%, despite the size of the 3-bet.

Using NoahSD's method as discussed previously, we combine the 18% 3-bet frequency with a quick hand history review off all such hands that were shown down.  For this particular player, we have a range of approximately 22+, A7o+, A2s+, KJo+, and KTs+ (actually 18.5%).  This is a fairly strong and not uncommon re-steal range.

For the simulation, I open min-raised every hand and then called with every single hand against the 18.5% range.  Here is what we get:

Probably a little tighter that you would expect?  The good thing is that this information is not privy to all players and they frequently make mistakes in this category...even when they [think they] understand what a shortstacker is doing.  While a call with with KQs is just a marginal no-no, a call with KQo or KJs is just disastrous!  Take a look at similar calls that often seem correct to players, like 22, A7o, and KJo.  And they say that being suited is overrated?

Even when we reduce the effective stack size to 16BB, the calling range changes only slightly, with the addition that you can now also call with A9o, A8s, and KQs.

A much more dramatic thing happens when we begin begin tinkering with the stakes.  Let's now run the simulation with 20BB's in a $.50/1.00 game.  Here is what we get:

Looks like 44 is now a clear fold with the stronger impact of the rake.  The effects become much more dramatic as we increase the re-steal range, but the evidence is clear- the rake matters.  What's more is that it penalizes the calling player more, since the winning player is the one who pays it, and when you call you only have the option of winning at showdown.

Using Your Holdem Manager for Ultimate Domination, Cont.

In a previous post, I had outlined a plan on how you can sift through your HEM database to gain crushing information on your opponents.  I had offered some specific numbers on Kaysmash, and now I will show you how we can use this information against him with StoxEV.  Here is what we do:

If we assume that he is raising 2.5x 44% of the time, his range is approximately 22+, A2o+, A2s+, K9o+, K2s+, Q9o+, Q8s+, J9o+, J8s+, 76o+, 54s+, 86o+, 64s+.  This does not need to be exact, as he will be folding out the weakest part of this range virtually* every time.  The important thing is getting his raising frequency correct, which we have already determined.

Now we must figure out his calling frequency of 56% (since he is folding 44%).  This not quite exact either, but still easy to figure out, particularly when reviewing my hand histories to find specific examples of hands he has called with.  In so doing, we get a calling range of 22+, A5o+,  A2s+, KTo+, K9s+, QJo+, QTs+, JTs.  This is an admittedly broad calling range, but in so doing, he prevents getting heavily exploited by shortstackers.

By factoring in the stakes of $2/4, rake and dead money from the blinds and then running the simulation 5000k times with a 20BB stack, here is what we end up with:

Voila!  The highlighted hands are the profitable reshoving range and the number below is the exact amount in $ that we can expect to profit per trial, on average.  Depending on the stack size, we can begin to shove more or less hands, but now his calling frequency will also be affected as well.  However, if we were to deduct just 3BB from the effective stack (this will not likely change his default calling range), the grid now appears as thus:

Amazing!  Now the next time you hear someone complain about a shortstacker having a mathematical advantage you will have a true understanding of what they are talking about.

For those of you who are interested in this incredible piece of software, please contact me and I can get you a $35 discount. 

*Even good players sometimes get frustrated and go on tilt and will call with a ridiculous hand like 97s.  For players who do this consistently, you now must fold your "non-showdown" hands such as low off-suit broadways and middle suited connectors.

Finding Hidden Value in Pokerworld "Gold Chip Double Up to Cash" SNG's

At Pokerworld, there is currently a promotion offering two separate gold chip sit and goes.  The details are as follows:

12 entrants, top 6 earn cash!

Though the payouts are small at $5 and $15 respectively, the gambler in me is always looking for that freeroll hustle!  As it were, though these are a fairly easy score, they do not fill up often.  Just the other night, I had signed up for the $15 payout one, only to find that hours later, it did not even fill up.  I guess this would be understandable, as there are many gold chip satellite events that offer the potential of a significantly higher payout...if you have a few hours to spare.

However, if you plan on putting in large volume of hands and get started early in the day, you can score some extra EV, often just by sitting down!  How?  Since these take so long to fill up, it is very easy for someone to either have forgotten that they had entered (perhaps even the night before) or have gotten up to do something else and neglected them altogether.  The one I played in had just such a player.  He was "sitting" to left and we all had a field day stealing his blinds.   Having just one such player missing brings your average EV from $7.50 to $8.18.  That's an automatic increase of 9%.  Doesn't sound like much, but that ask any SNG pro if that matters, and they will all tell you that they would kill for such an extra edge!

Just remember to unregister before you leave your computer!

Using Your Holdem Manager for Ultimate Domination

I have felt it and I know you have too.  There's that one guy who you know, you just KNOW has been 3-betting you light and stealing your blinds more often than your HUD would lead you to believe.  This of course brings us to the inherent flaw of using one: it can only give us average statistics, and quite often says little, if anything, about how a foe is playing against you in particular.  But what if we could just take a little extra time to dig a little bit deeper into our database to find out the exact answers to these otherwise simple little questions?

Thus began my quest to find such answers.  Don't get me wrong.  Although I have railed against using a HUD in the past, I have since jumped this hurdle as I began to realize that using one is not something you do, but rather, something that you learn.  Helpful as they are, I was still craving these answers and knew that I could never be EXCELLENT as a shortstacker until I found it out.  Many people are reading this and surely believing that you can just tweak the filters and voila, there you have it.  Nope.  The "Vs Player" filter will only give you basic information such as total winnings and show you hands where said player is sitting at the same table as you.  Even if you try to get clever and filter it further for only hands where the action was unopened and you raised on the button and the big blind 3-bet you, the first thing that you will likely see when you replay a hand is that the villain you were looking to get a read on had already exited the hand.

I tried posting on forums, collaborating with confidants, and even writing to the actual programmers to find out how to do this.  Perhaps I was not explicit enough in that I was looking for actual percentages, but I got the same information over and over. It was simply not functional and led me to the same dead end.

Then the news broke on Pokertableratings about the 40putts/Kinetica/Littlezen shortstacker softplaying scandal.  A member of the esteemed DeucesCracked training site playing under the name NoahSD had taken extensive time to write a long and detailed report using statistical analysis to break down the 3-bet ranges of these players when playing against each other.  Aha!  So there is somebody out there who actually knows how to do this!

I thought for a while on how best to get this information from him, but then just decided to simply ask.  Lo and behold, in less than an hour's time, here is what he replied:

Hi Lorin,
Unfortunately HM isn't really designed to do this. I've been told that they plan to eventually add the stat "Player A's 3-bet % vs. Player B", but I think it's likely to be far in the future.

I used custom software to get my own answers, and frankly I have no idea how it works.  The only way I know how to do this without hiring a programmer to do it for you is with this tedious method:

To get Player A's 3-bet % vs. Player B:

1) Select player B in HM.
2) In the filter menu, go to more filters and add "PFR = True".
3) Run the report.
4) In the bottom half of HM, select the "All" radio button next to "last 500". Right click and select "export all hands to hard drive" and choose a spot to export those hands.
5) Options -> Database Management. Create a new database.
6) Import the hands that you exported into that database. This is a database of all hands where player B raised preflop.
7) Select Player A and run a report with no filter. The 3-bet % that the report shows is Player A's 3-bet % when Player B raised.

If you make a database with all the hands where you raised preflop, you should be able to quickly look at the 3-bet %s that various players have against you.

Hope that helps,
Noah


This was just awesome to me.  Though he might consider this tedious (and technically it is), I am no stranger to tedious work as I have spent countless hours running simulations using Stox EV that could often top 5 minutes for just a single, detailed run.  So what is one to do with such information?

Use it to completely dominate and control your opposition.

That statement being rather vague, I will give an example using a player whom we will term "KaySmash" to show you just how we can put this into practice.  On the HUD, it says that KaySmash opens the button 44% of the time.  I filtered out all hands where I was on the big blind.  Then I created a new database per the instructions and when I loaded it up, I set my filters to "Unopened" and "Button" and set it to run the report against KaySmash.  True to form, he actually was raising that frequency.  All that victimization was just a figment of my imagination!  More importantly, I can now see that he is folding to my 3-bet 44% of the time.  Since I am now armed with the information that he is not attempting to exploit my folding tendencies and just playing by a script, I can hereby assume that he will be treating me no differently when I am in the small blind as well.

While this information is excellent, it allows to me play a perfect shove or fold game against him, but doesn't really allow for much room for true exploitation since he is calling rather frequently.  So digging a little deeper, I then follow NoahSD's plan to find out how often KaySmash is 3-betting me by filtering out the hands where I raise the button and then running the report with KaySmash in the big blind and the small blind has declined to enter the pot.  Here is where it gets really interesting.

KaySmash is 3-betting me approximately 18% of the time, and never, ever just flat calling.  Though I was quite sure of this, since I am dealing with a rotating base of players on any single day, it is often easy to confuse them.  The fact that he is unwilling to get tricky makes him extraordinarily easy to beat.

I will give you guys a chance to digest this information for a few days and then in the next post I will show you precisely how we can use this information for an optimal strategy against this particular opponent.

Peace!