5 Aaa Ys \ i y > , ‘" @ HOW I MADE MY FIRST M!L.L!CON FROM POKER BY TRI SLOWHABIT NGUYEN Foreword by DNAs BARRY GREENSTEINCopyright © 2011 DailyVariance Publishing, LLC Published by DailyVariance Publishing, LLC All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. To request permission to use any part of this book in any way, write to: support@dailyvariance.com ISBN-10: 1-937101-11-8 ISBN-13: 978-1-937101-11-4 To order additional copies, visit www.DailyVariance.comTo my parents, Huong and Robert NguyenAcknowledgments In no particular order, | want to thank Martin Harris, Greg Lilley, Chau Nguyen, and Misha Zagorski for their help on my writing. Their work is amazing. Without them, the book wouldn't be as readable. I want to thank Galina Ladyka for her visually stunning interior design I want to thank Alexander Seibt for his beautiful cover. I want to thank Julia Nguyen for taking me to my first wine tasting and showering me with love and patience.About The Author Highly successiul online poker professional Tri ‘S/lowHabit’ Nguyen turned his loves of poker and education into a notable coaching career, drawing praise for his ability to explain complex poker concepts in simple, easy to understand terms. These skills transitioned well into writing and he soon found himself teamed up with fellow online star Cole South — a collaboration that resulted in the high-level no limit Hold'em breakthrough, Let There Be Range. Nguyen is also the author or co-author of The Poker Blueprint and The No Limit Holdem Workbook: Exploiting Regulars. Additionally, Nguyen has written extensively on Omaha and his The Pot-Limit Omaha Book: Transitioning from NLHE to PLO is frequently prescribed to Hold'em players looking to crush small- and mid-stakes PLO. A graduate in computer science and education from UC-Berkeley, Nguyen is a regular strategy column contributor to Card Player magazine and a prolific blogger at www.DailyVariance.comTable of Contents 7 Table of Contents Foreword by Barry Greenstein ... Introduction... Preparation... ceceecceeeeceee eee eceeeeeceeeeeceeeesensenereseeeseseneeeees LZ A Poker Journal... Balance Between Life and Poker .........2...00.ccccceceeeeeeeereeereee 27 The Learner ... The Happiness Scale ........scscccsseccssseceseeseceeeeeeeseeeseeesseeessesereeeseeees BB Mindiulness.... What's Your Edge?.... The Routine... Working on My Game... Working on Your Game... Poker Coaching .... 147 Side Income .... The Downswing.. Building a Bankroll Bankroll Management... Why Do You Play Poker?.....cccccccsssssssesesseesessseseseeseeueseeeeveeesee 228 The Command Center... You Don't Choose The Game .....2...0.0.00.0 0c ceccece escent 289 A-ha Moment Recommended Video Series. 251 Recommended Soitware .. 252 Recommended Reading. 253Foreword by Barry Greenstein I wrote Ace on the River in 2005 as an instruction manual on how to succeed as a professional poker player. Most live cash game players liked it,but | had several negative reviews from the online poker community. They didn't see the relevance in my discussions regarding interacting with people as well as other issues that arise in a live setting. Also, my methods for learning were very different from theirs in that they used tracking tools, simulations, and poker forums. Tri has taken my idea and made it relevant for today's online players. He has an easy-to-read style and he speaks in the vernacular of the modern player. If you are interested in playing poker professionally, you will greatly benelit [rom the knowledge Tri has attained in his career. I want to add that I was glad to hear that Tri put his poker career on hold while he completed his college education. The maturity he gained from doing that shows through in his perspective on what it means to be successful in poker and in life.CHAPTER 1: Introduction12 Introduction A lot of people have asked me how I made my first million. I said | played poker. They asked me if it was hard. I explained that it wasn't as hard as | thought it would be. It wasn't as easy as 1 thought it would be either. There was certainly work involved. But can you call it work if you're having a good time? They asked me if I have a high IQ. I explained to them that while 1 did well in school, my intelligence is average and I'm nowhere near the top students in my graduating class. People naturally assume I'm a poker genius because I've made over a million dollars from poker. And while I wish I could say I'm a poker genius, I'm not. My friends don't believe me when I said that to crush poker, the mental side is more important than the technical side. They think I'm holding back secrets. I guess writing five best-selling poker books is not enough. They feel they have great discipline yet they cannot win. Well, I said the mental side is more important. | didn't say that you don't need to know how to play poker. However, it's easier to overcome a lack of technical game with a great mental game than it is to overcome a lack of mental game with a great technical game. In this book, I will lay out the processes that allowed me to make my first million from poker before turning 25. And if you put work into it, I don't see you failing either.Introduction 13 The Misconception Most people assume that in order to crush poker, you need advanced math or a high IQ. Or perhaps a pair ol giant testicles. That isn't true at all. Anyone who tells you as much either doesn't know what he's talking about or he's praising himself. Imagine that you know basic poker strategies and get to play with wealthy men who love to gamble and are clearly worse than you. If the stakes are high, you can win enough to be considered one of the world's most successful players. But are you really in the top echelon of poker players? For better or worse, in poker, how much you win usually determines how good you are perceived to be. Is this a good system? No, but it's the best one we can come up with. And this is what makes poker amazing. A supposedly weak poker player can win a lot of money if he is great at being a professional poker player. The question is, what does it mean to be a professional?14 Introduction The Professional Quick, what do you think is the greatest compliment high- stakes and nosebleed players give to opponents whom they hold in high regard? It's not “he's fearless.” Tons of players playing those stakes are learless. I's not “he's smart.” Tons of them are smart I's not “Ais game is so balanced.” Tons of them balance their ranges very well. Rather, it's “he's such a professional.” What exactly does that mean? To say a player is a professional means the player views poker as a job in which he excels at variables over which he can exert control. For example, the player rarely, il ever, spews or randomly spazzes in a pot. He has logical reasons for his plays. The player knows it's time to quit when things aren't going his way and he's having a bad day. He also knows to keep playing when everything is going well at his table. He keeps his emotions in control and the moment he recognizes there's a hint of tilt, he stops playing. He also “game selects” well. All of these characteristics that earn respect and praise [rom world-class players, you, too, can possess. When it comes to having these characteristics, there's no variance. They comprise a skill set that is required if you want to keep playing poker at a high level for years to come.Introduction 15 I was talking to a friend who had played high-stakes for the past couple of years. We noticed how, over time, we recognized fewer and fewer of those sitting around us at the tables. The reason is because it is tough to last long in poker. Although most of our friends are very talented at playing poker, their demons got the best of them. They thought they could play in the most difficult conditions. They thought their C-game could beat someone else's A-game. Sometimes they were probably right. However, why fight someone with one hand when you can do it with two? They became lazy and didn't work on their poker game as much. They got down on themselves. They chased losses. They developed the same negative mindsets that their inlerior opponents had. They got sloppy and prepared less. And soon enough, they were out of the game. So, what can you do to decrease your chances of becoming a has-been and living a life full of what-ifs? How can you become the sort of player others praise as a professional?16 Introduction Exercises Exercise 1.1: From I to 10, with 10 being the highest, how would you rate yourself as a professional? oO. Oe O03 O4 5 O6 O7 O8 Og 110 Exercise 1.2: /f you did not give yourself a 10 for Exercise 1.1, write down the leaks that are preventing you from becoming a 10. Additionally write down the steps that you think are necessary to fix these leaks.CHAPTER 2: PreparationPreparation 19 “By failing to prepare you're preparing to fail.” — Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) Phil Ivey once said, “Poker is everything but the cards.” | thought this statement was profound when I started playing poker. It helped me realize that I didn't always need a good hand to win a pot. I could bluif and win the pot without a showdown. However, after playing poker professionally for a lew years, | finally realized what Ivey really meant. Poker requires a lot of preparation away from the table. You have to go over the hands you played. You have to go over the hands your opponents have played against you. What is often lost in the discussion is you have to prepare yourself physically and mentally as well. In other words, Ivey's observation wasn't just about winning hands with well-timed bluffs. It was about understanding that there's more to poker than what happens at the tables. The common advice professional poker players give to novices is to treat poker as a job or as a business. Only then will you be able to succeed. While I agree with this advice, | have another suggestion. Treat poker like a sport and treat yourself like an athlete. Whenever we see a basketball game on TV, all we see is the final product. The monster dunks, the long 3-pointers, the sweet fadeaways, and the fancy passing. What we don't see is the intense conditioning and the repetitive execution athletes practice behind the scenes. Most athletes are workaholics and are very competitive. After all, to play professional sports, you have to defeat a lot of competitors along the way. You must also have great talent and a great work ethic. If you lack either20 Preparation of the two, you had better excel to a high degree in the one you have. Or you can take the easy route and find whatever basketball team Isiah Thomas* is managing and tell him you deserve $50 million for sitting on the bench How is this similar to poker? When you watch high-level pros at the poker tables, it might seem that all you see are monster bluffs and huge pots. But you don't see the behind-the-scene preparation. That is, you don't see the endless instant message conversations, the forum postings, the Poker Stove analyses, the personal coaching sessions, the downswings, the depressions, the anxiety attacks, the broken keyboards, the smashed screens, or the flying mice. All you see is the performance when you are the table. A common misconception is that big winners such as Phil Galfond and Cole South just sit down at the poker tables and rake in the money without breaking a sweat. People assume they were born with this innate ability to dominate their opponents. Somehow they just always know what the right play is and the expected value of any poker situation. What people don't realize is that whatever decisions Galfond and South make at the table, they have already thought about them repeatedly away from the table. Then, when they're at the poker table, they perform. And they perform beautifully. What is their secret to this high performance? Preparation. * Isiah Thomas was President of Basketball Operations for the New York Knicks irom December 22, 2003 to April 2, 2008. He vastly overpaid mediocre players such as Eddy Curry and Jerome James.Preparation 21 Preparing Yourself Poker players often ask others whose opinions they respect to help identify what their leaks are. Leaks are difficult to spot on your own, so it makes sense to ask for others’ help. Good players then try hard to fix these leaks so they can become better. But if becoming a better player is the ultimate goal, then why don't more players try harder to fix their more obvious leaks in life? I often ask my friends how they are doing and sometimes they say things are rough. They need to tilt less. But I rarely see them actually working hard to overcome this tilt. I believe that if you are happy away from the table, your positive mindset will carry over to the poker table. And if you are happy at the poker table, you will play well. If you play well, you will win. Then you will be happy away from the table. It's a cycle that doesn't stop until you break one of its elements. So to play well at the table, you must take care of your living situation first Is there anything you can do in your life to put yourself in a better mood? Does running around the park help? What about weight-lifting? Have you thought of owning a pet? How about taking a long break away from the game? | use all of these activities to improve my quality of life away from the table. And no one is going to disagree with me when I say that if my quality of life is high, then I will play better poker. Improving your life is a relatively easy way to improve your poker game. If you feel that your life is in order, then more power to you. Now you can work on the technical side of your game. However, don't underestimate how much owning a dog2 Preparation or the Irequency of your smiling might allect your mood when playing. Online poker is a relatively young profession. However, those who lirst started playing the games live years ago are beginning to feel the grind. It is truly a tough profession. It's easy to start but very difficult to maintain, especially for those playing at the top levels. Smarter and more talented players come in every year. Not only that, the poker profession breeds a lot of bad behavior such as an unstructured life or unhealthy eating. Those factors are detrimental to your poker game and the sooner you recognize it, the better. Like athletes, we have to protect our bodies and our minds. Poker is very tough on both, and if you aren't prepared to counter that, you will get crushed.CHAPTER 3: A Poker JournalA Poker Journal 25 When | was in high school, my English teacher forced us to write a daily entry in a personal journal. She didn't care about the topic on which we chose to write. All she wanted was for us to write. I didn't like writing. Even though we were free to write about anything we liked, it didn't come naturally to me. I ended up with a lot of random ramblings to fill up the page each day. But after a few weeks, the assignment grew on me. | was a teenager so I had all kind of emotions boiling inside. It felt pretty good to let all of those feelings out onto the page. It was also helpful to look back later and see my thought process. The other day, I flipped to a random entry and was laughed when I saw that I wrote that if 1 had $10,000 dollars, my life would be set. In poker, it's profitable and good for us to be honest with ourselves and our playing abilities. But our minds aren't built that way. Our minds put up obstacles to protect our egos [rom getting bruised. Thus, sometimes it's tough to recognize our mistakes. It's much easier to blame luck and say that the cards aren't falling our way. However, if you keep track of your play in writing, as you become a better player you can look back and realize what mistakes you made. I know | have thought there were times when | was very unlucky. Then I looked over the hands | played and wondered what I was doing getting involved with those hands in the first place. Another good thing about keeping a poker journal is that it forces self-reflection. Before you start your day, look at your previous entry and read what you wrote. At the end of each26 A Poker Journal entry, I like to list one or two goals to try to accomplish the next time | play. These goals can be as simple as looking over a hand history or as complicated as creating a profile for a particular player detailing how I can punish him the next time I encounter him at the table. Having a goal also helps me focus and reminds me what | need to do to stay on top. I have a few high-stakes friends who keep poker journals and in every case they find them very helpful. In this highly competitive profession, it's easy to become a has-been. I love poker too much to let that happen. Keeping a journal is one important way to help stay in tune with your own game as well as what your opponents are doing. Not only does doing so keep you honest, but like that journal I kept as a teenager, it can be a great outlet for coping with the stress the game sometimes causes. Recommendations Recommendation 3.1: Go buy a notebook and use it as a poker journal. I find self-reflection is more effective when you write by hand and read your handwritten pages later rather than write and read on a computer.CHAPTER 4: Balance Between Life and PokerBalance Between Life and Poker 29 If you ask a group of success/ul professional poker players how they manage to remain successful year after year, the most popular answer will be having learned how to balance their non-poker life with their poker life. And they are right. Playing poker professionally takes a toll on you after a while, especially during downswings and tax deadlines. After grinding many hands, you'll realize that winning doesn't have the same high it used to when you first learned how to play poker. Not only that, losing will have an even more negative impact on your life than when you first began. Stress builds up over time and you won't notice it until it hits you all at once. It's like that kid who keeps everything inside and one day has a mental breakdown. So how do you avoid getting burnt out playing this highly competitive game? Keep your life as fresh as possible. While that sounds difficult, it's easier than you think.30 Balance Between Life and Poker Vacations What do you think of when you hear the word vacation? For me, the word brings up images of Paradise Island with beautiful, white sand and clear, quiet beaches. However, the word also makes me think of all the planning involved to make it to Paradise Island. It requires booking airplane tickets and hotels. It's cumbersome and time-consuming. And I'm either too busy or too lazy at the moment to do it. Or I'll do it later, which basically means never. Luckily, I have come to realize vacations don't have to be like that. They don't have to be long, drawn-out affairs. You can take a mini-break to explore whatever tourist place you have in your area. Just getting away for two or three days can be considered a vacation. If you aren't the type to want to go anywhere, force yourself out of the house. View it as a requirement to be a successful poker player. Maybe that will encourage you. If you are not good at figuring out things to do, lind a Iriend who is. I'm probably the worst planner I know, but I'm always ready to say yes to an excursion somewhere because | know | always have a good time when I'm away from home Although poker is fun, it is a stressful activity. You need to take time off away Irom the tables to recharge. You'll play better when your mind is fresh. That's why players such as Cole South are always off somewhere in the world exploring new places, such as Africa, South America, and Europe. One reason he goes on these trips is that he wants his mind to be constantly fresh and to keep poker interesting. I know what some of you are saying. | can't afford to do what Cole is doing. He plays nosebleeds and he's rich. He also runsBalance Between Life and Poker 31 very well at the tables and | don't. He can go places while I have to keep grinding. That is just making excuses If you can afford to lose a few buy-ins at your stakes due to tilt, you can alford to go somewhere for fun. The destination doesn't have to be in another country. Go to Google and figure out what is interesting about your country or even your area and go there. I know it might sound boring but force yourself to do it. You won't regret it. If the activity doesn't work out, at least you figured out one thing you don't like to do. But give it a chance. Don't just say something is boring without trying it first. I remember when I first learned about wine tasting. I was very intimidated by wine tasting because I thought that was what rich old people did. 1 worried about people using complicated terms to describe the wine and about looking like an idiot, especially when my pinky isn't pointing out correctly when holding a wine glass. I won't enjoy it, | told myself. One day, my special lady friend surprised me on my birthday and took me wine tasting. The experience was nothing like I imagined. Everyone was nice and down-to-earth. There were a lot of young people. It cost around $10 to $50 per tasting. It was nothing like it's portrayed in the media. To this day, wine tasting is my favorite activity. And for more reasons than just getting wasted with no hangover the next day!32. Balance Between Life and Poker When you come back from whatever your activity is, you will feel refreshed and will find your love for poker once again. | have talked to many poker players and I can't recall one single conversation when a person comes back after a break of a few days (or weeks) and doesn't play his A-game. The reason is that when we keep playing every day, it's tough to think of new ideas or creative lines. We are repeating whatever we did the day before, so it's easy for our minds operate in a robotic manner. Taking a break just makes your mind work diilerently. It gives your brain time to rest while subconsciously piecing everything together. It has been during these breaks that I have gotten my best a-ha moments in poker. I wish I had planned for these breaks and the benefits that came [rom them, but really the discovery was mostly accidental.Balance Between Lijle and Poker 33 Exercises Exercise 4.1: When was the last time you had a vacation? If the answer is more than six months, create a list of places around your area that you think are interesting and make a plan to visit one.34 Balance Between Life and Poker The Breaks In the summer of 2006, | visited my grandparents in Vietnam for a month. At the time, the main thing concerning me was figuring out how to beat Samoleus and B_Buddy, two of the best players during the Party Poker era. They played a style that was very tough to counter. Samoleus never seemed to fold. B_Buddy seemed to bet and raise all the time. | didn't know how to counter the strategies employed by these two and it was bothering me. I tried to figure out the reasoning behind their play and the only thing I could come up with was that it was tough to play against them. Finally I decided that since I couldn't beat them, I would join them (so to speak). That is, I would start to do what they did and see if it worked for me When I came back to the states, I proceeded to raise a lot of continuation-bets. I didn't know why I was doing it. I just knew my opponents were folding a lot. Looking back, it makes sense since my opponents were continuation-betting with such a high frequency that they were going to have air or a marginal hand a majority of the time. But I didn't know that. I just raised and they folded. Although it was such a simple strategy, | don't think I could've learned it that quickly if 1 had stayed in the states. Because the games were amazing, | would just play all the time instead of spending time trying to figure out how to beat the tough players. When I was in Vietnam with no computers, all I could think of was Samoleus and B_Buddy's game. The second a-ha moment I had was in summer of 2009 while 1 was in Vietnam for a one-month missionary trip. (MaybeBalance Between Liie and Poker 35 I should take more trips to Vietnam.) Before my trip, I was playing about 25% VPIP. I think this is the best number of hands to play with when first learning PLO because you have fewer dominated hands in your range. When I came back, I began playing 40% VPIP without knowing | was playing so many more hands until I looked over PLO Manager. I was crushing with this new style as well. Somewhere during the trip, I un-nit myself, thereby figuring out how to succeed at mid-stakes PLO. And to this day, I don't have an answer for how I did it. The interesting part is I was in the village the majority of the time I was in Vietnam, so I had no access to internet. I didn't talk about poker. In fact, I was with a Buddhist group, so any time the word gambling was mentioned, only negative comments would follow. I didn't play a single hand of poker. | didn't write about poker. But it just came together perhaps because I could think clearly, actually visualizing what the turn and river action would be during my down time. I would do this over and over again with different board textures. Such was the ireedom afforded me while taking a break from the game.36 Balance Between Life and Poker Time Away From The Table Being away from the table causes me to miss poker a lot. | remember having withdrawal from not playing PLO when 1 was writing this book. In fact, there was a span of a few weeks where | couldn't stop winning at PLO because I was hitting every draw and coolering everyone even though I wanted to finish this book. But since I'm a believer in running with your luck when it's on your side, I kept playing. After a while though, I realized in the back of my mind, I was actually playing subpar because 1 wanted to continue writing. The only problem was I was still running hot. | wouldn't forgive myself if I didn't log more hands. So I kept logging hands even though I wasn't really into it. Then, when I finally had a losing session, I didn't even try to make it back. | just closed the poker client and opened up my files so I could write. When I was done, I went back to the tables but the luck train had run its course. I couldn't win a single flip and went into a mini-downswing. It sucks but sometimes, that's how it works.Balance Between Life and Poker 37 Own a Pet Owning a pet does wonders for your mindset. You will have such a wonderful time playing with your pet that you won't even notice you're simultaneously relieving stress. Smiling and talking cheerfully enhances one’s life, and when you have a pet, you will find yourself doing this a lot. Trust me. I'm starting to understand why every parent thinks his or her kid is the best and cutest. Having a pet will also likely force you to go outside and enjoy the sunshine. It's easy to sit at the computer all day without realizing it. Next thing you know, you have been sitting there for a few hours and it's night time. I still do that sometimes, but since | have a dog, I'm much more likely to interrupt those long sessions with a refreshing walk outdoors. I admit having a pet is time-consuming at times. Nevertheless, even knowing that, | wish | would've owned a dog sooner. I'm positive if you ask any poker players who own a dog (or cat), they will tell you they love it and how much having a pet enhances their quality of life. Pets also put you in a better mood and train your patience. Sometimes I get really frustrated with my dog. Why can't he listen to simple commands? I know he has made me madder than I ever am at the poker table. But on many occasions, | just chuckle when he does. I'm a professional poker player and here | am mad at a dog because he doesn't know how to sit. It gives me some perspective and reminds me to take it easy. I'm tuming over a dog. The idea is kind of silly to me a little later. If you don't believe in owning a pet, don't worry, you're not alone. | never believed in owning a pet until | finally got one.38 Balance Between Life and Poker And when you have a pet, you will wonder why you didn't get one sooner. The pet will make you feel more positive. You will smile. You will be in a better mood more often. And how does this help your poker game? For one thing, you will be in a better mood to learn.CHAPTER 5: The LearnerThe Learner 41 I don't think I have any embarrassing poker moments. But that's not because I make all the perfect plays. It's because | don't like to get embarrassed so I try my best to avoid such situations, which in truth indirectly hinders my learning curve. Now that I think about it, I am a little embarrassed to be writing this. In fact, | wish I had more embarrassing moments to write about! lused to keep a lot of poker thoughts to myself because I feared they might not be correct and that people would laugh at me. What ended up happening, of course, is that I didn't share much information with anyone. At least that way, no one could challenge me and I couldn't be told 1 was wrong. However, once | started coaching other players, | was forced to accept the possibility that I could be wrong. Before, I could just brush it off and not worry about the negative outcome. But having the responsibility to help my students forced me to face my insecurities and, indirectly, made me a better player. Every time | finish writing a poker book, | become a much better player. I have to make sure the information I present helps readers become better players. But the best part of the learning process is when I write a rough draft and send it off to another player to read it and receive disagreements in return. If someone were to ask me what is the diflerence between a high-stakes player and a nosebleed player, | don't know the answer because I'm not a nosebleed player. | honestly don't know why they are better than me. I just know they are better than me. So when I'm putting my ideas on paper about how I think poker should be played, it's invaluable to have a nosebleed player say to me “/ don't agree with this.” Just him saying that activates something in my brain that helps me become a42 The Learner better player. Only then do I realize that it's not that bad to be corrected by others. It took me a while, but I finally got around to figuring that out. I never had a poker coach but if there is anyone 1 would like to thank the most for my poker development, it would be Cole South and Tom Marchese. | didn't know what | didn't know but because they disagreed with some of the advice I wrote, I was able to recognize my mistakes. I should note that these mistakes weren't huge mistakes. Rather, they were small ones that | didn't know one should consider taking into account when analyzing a hand. A simple example once came up when | was sweating Cole at a live game. He had K5o in a 4-way limped pot, and the flop came K-7-2 rainbow. Cole was first to act and he checked with the intention of check- folding. It was checked to the button who bet, and as planned Cole folded. He said it was because the hand had bad reverse- implied odds. I would have never thought top pair with medium kicker had bad reverse-implied odds, but it made total sense when Cole pointed it out. I was able to branch off from this and apply the same idea to my PLO game, e.g., realizing that low straight and flush draws in fact have very bad implied odds. Tom is the master of the small details. One thing he told me that was very profound was that it's better to make a small mistake and give up a little EV than to fight for that small EV and chance committing a big mistake that could cost you your stack, I have always been advocate of pressing small edges, but sometimes when you don't have a clear read, it's better to fold a hand in a close situation than to continue the hand and risk making a bigger mistake.The Learner 43 These two concepts improved my thinking process greatly and I was fortunate to come across them. But I didn't know these concepts would help me until they were pointed out to me by someone else. For this reason, | think poker coaching is most valuable if you take a tough hand that you recently played and write your own analysis of it. Write everything about the hand until you no longer have anything to say. Then present the hand and your analysis to your coach and see what he thinks. From my experience, the reader most often will point out something that you have missed, or show something as mistaken that you thought to be correct To this day, I'm working on how to deal with embarrassing moments. Sometimes, I look forward to it. I know that if I get embarrassed enough, I'll have less situations to get embarrassed about! This means I'm making less mistakes when playing poker. I look forward to that day. Until that day comes along, I have to keep working because the competition is getting liercer.44 The Learner Staying Ahead Before you and I were here, someone else occupied our respective position in the poker hierarchy. Our taking on the roles of professional poker players necessarily means someone else is earning less money. Or worse, is out of a jab. Make no mistake, there's a new crop of players coming in next year, and another group coming the year after that. They will be more hungry, they will have more gamble, and probably will have more fun playing poker than we do. Not to mention some of them will be very talented and smart. That isn't a group of people I want to bet against. But 1 want to maintain my position in the poker community. Actually, | want to move up a few spots in the poker hierarchy. The question is how. From my experience, playing other games will help your main game tremendously. While I was working on my PLO game, I noticed my thinking process in no-limit holdem improved dramatically. And I didn't even play no-limit holdem during this time. The reason is with PLO, | get to play the river much more often. Because river decisions are much more complex and require me to constantly go over the hand from pre-flop all the way to the river, my overall hand reading improved. Playing PLO also improved my reads on human emotions because I became better at differentiating between players. I knew that not all tight-aggressive nor loose-aggressive players are created equal but I didn't notice the small details, mainly because such differences are not as obvious in NL since it is a much tighter game and you can better mask the nit scale. In PLO, such characteristics are amplified because, really, PLO amplifies any no-limit concept. Players who are nits are really nitty in PLO and you get to see that. I run over these players almost all the time. Of course, that doesn't mean it's incorrectThe Learner 45 to play a nitty style in PLO, as you can still win. 1 was just using being nitty as an example. Up to this day, I haven't found a professional who regrets learning another game. Knowing how to play another game helps with table selection, increases the number of fish you play against, and increases your overall understanding of poker. For players who are currently playing micro- and small-stakes NL, if you can afford it, switch games. In the current gaming environment, most players who are competent at NL and PLO think PLO is much easier to make money at than NL. 1 often hear people say that those who played during the Party Poker-era were so lucky because everyone was so bad. These same people usually say that if they were to go back in time, they would make a killing. I usually go on tilt upon hearing this. Then I can't help but chuckle because 1 know why they aren't making as much now as they would like. The reason is simple. If they were so good at poker, they could have made the same killing playing PLO over the past year. And today and tomorrow, too. But instead of learning a new game, they choose to sit and whine about the past and blame their bad luck. PLO in 2009 was still soft. And in many ways, it still is today. The situation is comparable to NL in 2006 in terms of competition and relative knowledge of the game. You don't have to know how to play that well. You just have to be better than your competition. That's exactly what happened in 2004-2006. I wasn't that good at poker. It was just that a lot of people were bad. The same exact situation is happening in PLO. Of course, people come up with excuses. It's tough to learn a new game,46 The Learner they say. Or I'm passing up EV because I'm not playing NL. What they mean is they can't figure out the game on their own. There's not a lot of information available on it. They will wait until more material is available so they don't have to endure growing pains. By the year 2012, I'm positive the same players will complain how PLO is solved and those who got to play PLO from 2008-present are so lucky. Of course, 1 should be fair to some NL players who don't want to learn PLO. They can't handle the variance. They are satislied with their NL winnings. They have bills to pay. They can't move down and learn from scratch. Whatever the reason is, if you are a professional poker player, you should figure out one way or another to learn a new poker game. Doing so will increase your profits and also allow you to play in mixed games. Alter all, isn't that what a business does as time passes by, offer new ideas and products to stay in business?The Learner 47 Exercises Exercise 5.1: Ali businesses have a mission statement and a plan for how to improve their competitive edge and earnings. What is your plan to maintain your competitive edge in the poker industry? Write down this plan and keep it accessible somewhere because you will surely need it down the road.48 The Learner Yo Kiddo If you gave another game such as PLO a try and it didn't work out, be proud of yourself. At least you gave it a shot. Just don't give up. Keep on trying. In other words, remember to be a kid. Don't be alraid to try new things. When you were a kid, you learned so much in part because you weren't afraid to get in trouble. You would get your hands on anything that was available. You would even touch a hot stove to see what it felt like. | know no matter how hard my parents told me not to touch that stove, I did it anyway when I was tall enough. I got burned but J learned my lesson and moved on to other things. It's the same with poker. Everyone has wild ideas about how to play cards. Everyone has a creative side in him or her. But lor some reason, not everyone shows it. My guess is they are afraid of being ridiculed by other players. But that's how you learn. If everyone compliments you on everything you do, you aren't going to get better. I know sometimes | don't take criticism well. | have an ego and I want to protect it. Nevertheless, I know it's good for me to get that ego punched once in a while so | can improve. | remember when Let There Be Range first came out. I was devastated every time I saw a critical review because | had put my heart and soul in that book. However, looking back, many of those criticisms were fair and instead of tilting, | should have spent more time asking questions about how to make it a better book. The same goes for poker. When we first play, we learn so much. We have so much Jun with the process because we don't know anything and we like to try everything. After a while, we know what the standard plays are and how to avoid making bad ones. This is obviously good because we're not making mistakes.The Learner 49 But constantly trying to make the standard play inhibits our ability to improve because we aren't thinking like we used to. ‘We aren't curious if there's a better play. Our brain isn't getting exercised enough. We aren't having as much fun. That's the main reason why mass tabling online poker is a good way to make yourself hate poker. Every day, it's the thing same over and over again. O[ course, it works for some people and more power to them. That is just not how I want to live my life. I'm sure there are a lot of players who don't want to go through the stock exchange swings that I go through in my sessions. Exercises Exercise 5.2: When was the tast time you experimented with a play? es . 7 hypothesis in your upcoming session. Whether it works or not, you will learn something.50 The Learner Number of Tables The struggle to choose between mass tabling versus a few tables always occurs. | would suggest it isn't necessarily an either/or question. Why not do both? Play one week with mass tables to make money to ieel good about yoursell. Then play the next week with fewer tables so you can concentrate and improve your game. After all, you do want to move up and make more money, right? II it's not about the money for you, beating good players always feels better than beating morons. | have to admit that as for me, I have the same great feeling whenever I win a stack from anybody. Another strategy is when you sense the games are good, that's the time to mass table. When the games are only decent, play a selected few and don't try to fire up nine tables. | know some players pride themselves on 12-tabling but it's nothing to be proud of when you're sitting with mostly regulars at all of the tables. If you really want to challenge yourseli, cut down tables and start tangling with them and annoy them. Now that's a challenge worth mentioning. Lastly, playing fewer tables helps your game tremendously. You can get more accurate reads and can feel the game flow better. It's also easier to avoid playing an ABC style that stunts your learning.The Learner 51 Exercises Exercise 5.3: Are you playing too many tables and auto- piloting too much? Write down the days when you only play a small number of tables to focus more on reads. Choose a day during the week when the games aren't as good so you don't feel you are leaving tons of money on the table by not playing a lot of tables. Exercise 5.4: Write down the number of tables you think you allows you to play your best. Only play this number of tables jor a week and add only one more table the following week.52 The Learner To Study or To Play That is the question. What percentage of my time should I allocate for each? 50/50? 60/40? My advice is to play a lot when you are running well and playing well, and study a lot when you are running bad and playing bad. Although it’s not the most optimal strategy, it's the best strategy for most people. When I run well and play well, I just want to log hands. I love coolering people. | love sucking out on people when | get it in bad. I love hitting every draw and knowing that my opponents are tilting. During this period, l'm loving poker and enjoying life. So why on earth should I spend my time studying my poker game? Well, I should study because there are always benefits to doing so. Studying is the thing to do because you can always learn more. But let's be honest here. Even if | allocate some time to study, I'm thinking of the donks and regulars I could be abusing instead. There's no way I can concentrate. So I might as well play until | start running bad or until I lose a little back. Then I can study. Using this strategy also forces me to be away from the poker table when I'm running bad and playing bad. My mindset is not good during those moments. My confidence isn't very high. I feel as if I'm getting sucked out in every pot. And why can't I win a flip? Is it really 50/50? Why do I feel my opponent's percentage for hitting ilush draws is 85%? If they don't hit a flush draw, they get runner-runner trips or straights or two pairs to beat me. Of course, if you have great emotional control and can go through with your schedule, then I suggest a 75/25 allocation — 75% for playing and 25% for studying. Poker is a type of activity where you have to practice what you learn to makeThe Learner 53 sure that you learn it. 1 can tell you to bluff the river at least 10% of the time and give you all the facts and proofs for why you should, but if you don't go out and do so, it doesn't amount to much. At the same time, if all you do is play and don't spend much time looking over hand histories, you won't notice how you play and how other regulars play. | know that you think you are observant during the games and that you pay close attention. I do, too. But we always learn more alter the session is done I always tell my students it is imperative to keep learning. How does one keep learning? Read everything you get your hands on. Know that your opponents are doing the same thing. You can get coaching, but anyone with money can alford a coach. So the best edge you can get is to work on improving your game away from the tables. No matter how smart or hungry a player is, he doesn't have the same experience regarding the profession. He hasn't been through the downswings. He hasn't dealt with disastrous sessions. In the words of famous TV pros, “he hasn't withstood the test of time.” When | first heard this statement, I giggled like a little girl. Because it sounds like a statement a person would make who is past his prime, with nothing more to learn. In other words, a statement made by someone who is bad compared to his competition. But the more days I spent as a professional poker player, the more I realized how signilicant that sentence is. Because in the end, it's how you manage yourself that allows you to stay in this game. I have seen many players who at one time were top players at their respective stakes. No one would think they would be54 The Learner out of the game a year or two later. Next thing you know, they're out. Suddenly, they cannot win anymore. They don't know why. And no one else knows why, either. Not really. The only conclusion we can come up with is to say “the game has changed.” Surely, these people might still be able to play a lot of tables at lower stakes and grind out a decent income. The truth is, although they have the poker ability to do so, they probably don't have the mental attitude to do it. The pots aren't big enough. They get bored. They get jealous of players who were once worse than them and who are now winning at higher stakes and making money. Somewhere along the way, something changed and they don't know what. Whatever the situation regarding the way poker is played, there are things you can control or at least improve. And that has to be your mindset. Imagine how much money you would make if you didn't tilt. Imagine how successful you could be if you had a relentless work ethic. | can't teach you how to have a great work ethic, but I can show you that you really can improve your mental strength. And doing that can help with everything else. Exercises Exercise 5.5: When was the last time you took notes while watching a poker video or reading a poker book? If it has been more than a month, make it a goal to start doing so once a month. Write down the date you are planning to watch a video or read a bookCHAPTER 6: The Happiness ScaleThe Happiness Scale 57 I don't know how to measure happiness, but I know it when I feel it. People have different goals in life. My goal is to be as happy as I can be. So how do | put myself in a position to be happy more often than not? One method I employ to ensure I am as happy as I can be is to use what I call the Happiness Scale. Basically, when I wake up in the morning, my Happiness Scale is neutral. Throughout the day, events will occur that will either raise or decrease my Happiness Scale. For example, let's say I wake up and I'm hungover. My Happiness Scale is definitely down. Or perhaps I wake up and I go to the gym. My Happiness Scale is higher alter | exercise. That's what I try to do every day. I engage in activities that increase my Happiness Scale and avoid activities that lower it. I know that if I repeat this same process over and over again, I will encounter fewer things that annoy me and thus fewer things that make me unhappy. The Happiness Scale also helps me surround myself with the right people. It's not a coincidence that your energy is drained when you're around people who are negative. Meanwhile, you are motivated and full of lile when you are around people who live life to the fullest. And that's not even the best result of using the Happiness Scale. The best result is that I tilt less. After each day I have fewer things with which to be annoyed and consequently my mindset is better and allows me to be in a better mood. Then I play better poker and win more.58 The Happiness Scale Exercises Exercise 6.1: Write down a list of people and/or things that annoy you. Proceed to avoid these people and things like the plague. Your life and poker game will be better than yesterday. Exercise 6.2: Write down a list of people and/or things that bring joy to your life. Proceed to engage with these people and activities more than you did yesterday. Your life and poker game will be better than yesterday.CHAPTER 7: MindfulnessMindfulness 61 Being mindful of your thoughts is very important to succeed as a poker player. You hear that the more you are conscious of your thoughts, the better your decisions will be. You also hear that if you play better poker, you will win more money. The question is how? Like playing poker, you don't suddenly wake up tomorrow and become good at being mindiul of your thoughts. You have to work on it every day. It sounds tiresome and tedious, but it's really not. Earlier today, alter spending some time on the computer, | wanted to take a break and had three choices of what to do next. I could take a nap for a few hours and rest my eyes. | could go hang out with my friends and play some cards. Or I could go to the gym and work out. Any choice | made would be reasonable and would have its benefits. Taking a nap would feel good and would have made me more alert when I woke up. 1 would be more productive. Hanging out with my friends is also always a joy. We play random card games for an insignilicant amount and | have tons of fun. It's also a good opportunity to keep in touch with my non-poker Iriends and live a more balanced life. Or going to the gym to exercise and get healthier would be good, too. It would be tiring, but | would actually be more energetic alterward. It doesn't matter which choice I ended up making. The point is I know which decision | SHOULD make if I want to finish up my projects in time. I can justily any decision I make and I would be right, but deep down inside there's only one perfect choice. The key is to recognize at any point during your day that a lot of choices are up to you. No matter how simple or small the62 Mindfulness choice is, how you make these choices will affect the path your life is headed because they add up. Let's assume | take a nap. I'm going to feel good resting my eyes. I'm going to be refreshed when | wake up later. However, when I do wake up, it's going to take me some time to get revved up to continue working on my project. It's tough to wake up and instantly get to work. So there's time wasted. Right now, I just got back from the gym and my eyes are fine. I'm writing this paragraph instead of napping. If I can get this part done in time, I will meet up with my friends. I don't need that nap that I thought I did. This is what being mindful is about. You make a conscious effort to go over your choices and how they will affect you. As we grow older, we likely have fewer people criticizing our decision- making. As a result, our decision-making ability improves at a lesser rate. No one is there to remind us that what we did was not optimal. This is one of the many benefits of having a poker coach. But how does going over simple decisions help you at the poker table? The fact is, if you do something over and over again, you're going to become good at it. It's a simple process that produces extraordinary results. If you make the right choices away from the table, it's more likely that you will make the right choices at the table. Is this a guarantee? No. But the key is to recognize that you are thinking. You are going over the consequences o/ each decision. If you follow such a process with your every action, it's going to be easy for you to think through a hand when you're at a poker table. There's a saying that once you learn how to makeMindiulness 63 money, you will always know how to make money. Similarly, once you learn how to make good decisions, you will always know the process required to reach a good decision. Of course, knowing this will not instantly make you a winner. However, it will make it easier for you to improve your game. 1 know some people might think this is not the way to live because it seems tedious. Some people like to be spontaneous. Some want to live in the moment. Who says you can't do it all? I process my thoughts a lot but it's not like I do it all the time. I probably do it more often than most. There are times when I just go with the [low because I'm tired or I'm burnt out and just want to be lazy. That's okay. Sometimes we need a break from the daily grind. But being mindjul is a process that you must practice every day. In fact, you won't even realize how much you have changed until someone mentions it to you.64 Mindfulness A Disciplinarian Story Recently, | went to eat pizza with my friend and he couldn't believe the fact that I don't like drinking soda. He wondered aloud who doesn't like drinking soda? It tastes great. I agree. I used to love soda as recently as a lew years ago. | had to have it with every meal or else I couldn't finish. Any sip was like tasting heaven. The taste was great. I heard that some people don't like drinking soda and I said, no way, I can't do that. I love my soda. | couldn't imagine myself not drinking soda. Well, during college, whenever I bought soda, I also bought orange juice. So now, in my fridge, 1 have two choices. Of course, I didn't drink any of the orange juice I bought because my beloved soda was there. However, when the soda ran out, I was too lazy to go to the store to buy it right away so I had to settle for the orange juice. Slowly, I started liking orange juice. It's not that bad. The next thing 1 know, soda was gone from my diet. And now, whenever I do drink soda, I get a stomachache from the acid and syrup. I accidentally gave up soda without realizing it So if you feel you can't accomplish a goal right away, place things around you to help you overcome your obstacles. 1 know T have a tough time quitting live games when I'm down so what I do is only bring two buy-ins to the casino. Alter 1 lose my two buy-ins, no matter how many bad beats caused that to happen, I get up and I leave. | have to since I have no more money to play. Then, by the time I get home, I'm too lazy to drive back to play. Of course, there are times when the game is really good and there's a really bad player spewing money, yet I still have to leave if my money runs out. Is this the most optimal decision?Mindfulness 65 No, of course not. However, over the long run, it is for me because I get to keep my routine and my word. It's easy to break a good habit if you start making exceptions. The next thing you know, the exception list grows and you're back to square one. Sometimes when you don't have the discipline to control yourself, it's okay to set up artificial parameters to prevent yourself [rom doing things you might regret later. A few of my friends like to play while drunk. Unsurprisingly, it's usually very costly for them when they do. So what they do before they go out is email their poker sites and ask the poker site to ban them for the next 24 hours no matter what. So when they come home from a party, drunk and wanting to play, they can't. And invariably they are thankful they could not. I have a software set up so that whenever I'm at a certain site for X minutes, it will block me from that site. Are there ways around it? Sure. But it's a good reminder to myself how much time I've wasted on a site. Although sometimes I do go around it to finish watching a video, | know the time I spend on these useless sites are way less than before. Lastly, if you feel you can't do this on your own, don't worry — there are tons of people out there who are in similar situations. You can develop a buddy system with another. Or you can hire a personal coach to keep you accountable for your actions. Tony Robbins, a world-renowned peak performance teacher, tells a story in which he was paid millions to coach his friend. After a few years, Robbins felt his friend could manage his life by himself and suggested that his coaching was no longer needed, especially when it costs millions per year. Robbins’ friend asked him if he was insane. The reason why he asked is that without66 Mindfulness Robbins, he wouldn't be able to make these millions in the first place. So set up parameters or find someone to set them up for you to help you accomplish your goals. Great things are often accomplished in partnership. You can do even better working with someone else than you are now. Aiter all, Tom Dwan has Phil Galfond and Di Dang has Hac Dang.Mindfulness 67 A Buddy System One of the perks of being a poker player is you don't have to answer to anyone. You don't have to listen to a boss. No one tells you what to do. You are in contro! of your lile. For some, this lack of restraint is both a gift and a curse. You have all the freedom at your job but without discipline, you might not get anything done. It's easy to say I'[l do it tomorrow if you don't have a deadline to meet. It's easy to say I'll review my hand histories later if there's no one to tell you to do it now. Frankly, some of us need to be told what to do. However, as poker players we don't have a boss to tell us what to do. For this reason, I suggest an Accountability Buddy. What this means is to have a Iriend who keeps you accountable for working on your game. Make a deal with this person that you will each review one interesting hand history per day so the two of you can discuss poker theory. You can also agree with your friend to read a poker book or watch a poker video and discuss the content afterward. Another task you can do with your accountability buddy is to have a small bet where you play X number of hands this month. This is for those who are too lazy to log hands at the poker tables and enjoy watching movies or reading random topics on the internet instead. Having an accountability buddy will make it much easier to lorce yourself to work on your game, il only because it's much harder to let others down than to let yourself down. And in addition to helping with discipline, it also is of great benelit to68 Mindiulness talk with others about your game. It's an understatement to say talking to other people about poker helped me improve a lot. Exercises Exercise 7.1: Write down a list of names of people with whom you would like to create a ‘buddy system’ jor helping you keep accountable and vice-versa. Find one person who will agree to keep you on track and for whom you'll do the sameMindiulness 69 Dealing with Tilt A student once asked me how I solve tilt. I told him I don't know how and if he ever finds the person who does, to please give me the contact information. One common misconception about tilt is that the best way to deal with it is simply to quit the session. But most people realize that when you're on tilt, you're not thinking clearly. You won't have the discipline to quit. What usually happens is you'll lose a lew more buy-ins alter you recognized you were on tilt and then finally, once you can't take it anymore, you angrily quit. That doesn't mean, however, that you can't do anything to help with your tilt problem. The key is to recognize patterns that will lead to tilt. Tilt is when you reach a point where you can't handle it anymore and you blow up. Prior to this boiling point, there is usually a series of actions or occurrences that lead to this negative behavior. Whether you made the wrong call or you were shown a bluff, it adds up. That's where the random spaz and the illogical decisions come from. To deal with your tilt problem, keep a notepad next to your desk and write down things that lower your level of happiness at the table. If someone shows you a bluff and that pisses you off, write it down. If you make a bad call and being wrong angers you, write that down. Next time when one of these things happen again, you will be more aware that you are about to enter tilt. It's a lot easier to quit the session when your mind is still somewhat clear. You aren't going to quit when your head is boiling, your heart is thumping, and you're tilting out of your damn mind. It's also difficult to quit when all you want to do is get back to even for the day.70 Mindfulness To draw an analogy, lor me to suggest that you quit while you're on tilt is akin to someone asking you how to make good decisions when you're intoxicated in a strip club. You won't. What you should do while you're sober is leave your credit card and wallet at home. Take only your identification card and whatever cash you are willing to spend, as determined during a time when you are thinking clearly. You aren't going to remember this advice while you are drunk out of your mind and the smell of sex is flowing in the air. You just have to trust me on this You need to take similar precautions to help avoid going on tilt. Besides recognizing patterns of tilt to avoid disaster, there are two exercises that my friends and family members use with great success to develop discipline. After any session during which you think you have tilted, in addition to taking notes in a notepad leading up to your tilt, write a check and donate it to a charity. The donation doesn't have to be for a large amount. It can be $5. The next time you have a massive tilt session, double the previous amount. | promise you that your tilt problem will decrease tremendously. However, you must go ahead and write that check. You must put yourself in a position to pay if you tilt during a poker session. The reason why such a procedure has been so successful is because we are more mindiul of our action if the result of our action causes pain to us. The question is which action causes more pain? Tilting or writing a check? If you think writing a check doesn't pain you, you haven't arrived at a big enough number yet.Mindfulness 71 Imagine if any time you have a choice between being productive or sitting around on a couch, you have a gun pointed to your head. Ii you can't come up with an activity that is stimulating to the brain, you're going to get shot. I assure you your day is going to be much more active and meaningiul. I know some of you are going to think you can't do these things because you have no discipline. Well, | wasn't born with discipline, either. | have had to work at it. | have had to keep a conscious effort to keep what I do before me. It doesn't happen overnight. It takes time. There is literally no shortcut. Im sure some of you have conversations where you told others you play poker for a living and the first thing they said was, “/ got a game tonight. Do you have any tips for me?” That's like someone asking me if there are any tips for having more discipline. The only real answer to the question is to practice. You are the poker player you are today because you put in the hours to practice and study. You didn't just touch a deck oj cards and instantly become a winner. You practiced. You grinded. You studied. You went through the growing pains. There were no tips that made you a good player overnight. If there were, please contact me so that we can do a project together.72 Mindfulness Exercises Exercise 7.2: Write down a list of actions that annoy you and/or put you in a bad mood. Make sure to number each item so you know how much pain you can endure before these actions start to cause you to lose money. Exercise 7.3: During the next session you play, quit the session before the item number that will set you off into berserk tilt mode.CHAPTER 8: What's Your Edge?What’s Your Edge? = 75 The Simple Edge Test My students often ask me how many hands do they need to have under their belts before they can be sure that they have an edge in a game. My answer is that there is no arbitrary number that ensures you've put in enough hands to know. [find it amazing that some people think you need to get 100,000 hands in a given game/stakes to figure whether you have an edge or not. Sure, sometimes a person can run hot during a given period, which means we do need a relatively large sample size to determine whether it is luck or skill that is responsible for our winning. However, I shouldn't need 100,000 hands to determine whether I have an edge or not in a game. If | cannot spot my opponents’ mistakes, | don't have an edge in the game. If I can spot their mistakes and know how to exploit these mistakes to win money, I have an edge. The fact is, if you play over 100,000 hands and don't know whether you have an edge or not after playing a few orbits at a table, you have some soul searching to do. Similarly, if I put you up against a random player and after playing with him for 30 minutes you cannot spot any leaks in his game that you can exploit, you are likely outclassed. For example, let's say you're playing heads-up against a friend who doesn't know anything about poker. You don't need a huge sample size to figure out if you have an edge because he's quickly going to make tons of obvious mistakes that indicate he's a bad player. The next time you're at a table, make it a goal to spot a mistake a regular opponent is making. | promise you he's making76 ~~ What’s Your Edge? mistakes. You know why I'm so confident? Phil Ivey, widely considered to be the best poker player in the world, makes mistakes. However, his opponents make more mistakes than he does so he wins all the money. It's mind-blowing when someone brings up a sample size of 100,000 hands and wonders if they have an edge or not. The first assumption that I make about this particular player is that he’s playing nine tables at a time and is on auto-pilot collecting rakeback. Then after 100,000 hands pass, he looks at his winrate and wonders if he has an edge. The fact is, if he's wondering after that many hands, he probably doesn't. Tunderstand there are exceptions, most likely during downswings where you have less confidence about your game and are not sure if your plays are correct. When this happens, take a break from poker. You will be amazed what a few days away from poker will do for your ability to analyze your own play and that of others. Then you will be able to evaluate more effectively whether you have an edge or not. Because if you don't know what factors give you an edge, you likely don't have oneWhat's Your Edge? 77 Exercises Exercise 8.1: Write down the names of the regulars at your stakes. List the mistakes they are making and write down your plan for how to exploit them. If you think a player is making a mistake but you're not doing anything about it, does it really matter?78 What's Your Edge? 1 Play Solid, But I Can't Win I hear a lot of players say this and it gets funnier every time I hear it. The reason is, they really don't play solid. What they mean is they play in a robotic manner and hope to cooler someone. So when they win these big cooler pots, they believe they are playing well, though really they are just running well. And if they lose these cooler pots, they attribute it primarily to running bad — which is true, but there's more to the story than this. The fact is, poker is much more than those big cooler pots. Poker is a game that is defined by better players accumulating small edges here and there. When you sit and play a solid game, better players are taking a more active role in maximizing their EV. For example, they play with a little more aggression. They fight extra hard Jor pots. They think of opponents’ ranges before betting. They dictate the flow of the game and are always aware of their images. People usually say they play a good game and they are just running bad. But there are often small things they fail to acknowledge. Three notable examples are c-betting too much, neglecting the small pots, and passive pre-flop play. It's hard to detect these problems because il you were aware oi them, you probably would have fixed them already. When we look over our sessions, we usually focus on the big pots that we win or lose, but we neglect to think about our overall game and what we can do to improve it. As Doyle Brunson pointed out long ago, a player who is active pre-flop will take down a lot of uncontested pots and thus doesn't necessarily have to win those big cooler pots to have a winning session. It's amazing how Doyle was so much ahead of his time.