Three Poker Books to Cram for the Summer
Sometimes its hard to find the time or the will to study poker, playing is more fun. But as the WSOP approaches I always feel a sudden urgency to prepare. There's lots of ways to study and reading books is far from the only way. But if I was to grab three books to...
Where to Play Poker in the Seattle Area in 2023
The Seattle area has seen a lot of changes in the poker scene in the last few years. The trend has been the increased dominance of the smaller, non-tribal rooms at the expense of the tribal poker rooms. A few factors have conspired to make it this way....
Card Talk on Milestone Satellites
Testing out a new format with you guys. I want to be able to share more thoughts and ideas with you in a more personal way through video but in order to be able to do so at a frequency that is useful to you guys it kind of necessitates it being more quick and dirty...
Poker justice and Goha the “wise fool”
Your current psychological state in poker is often influenced by your recent run of fortune or misfortune. Everyone knows about the normal version of tilt but sometimes being notably fortunate can negatively impact how you are playing. I experience this most in...
Combating Ghosting
You may have noticed in the last couple years a dramatic increase in WSOP bracelets being given out for online events. These existed prepandemic but the last couple years have seen an explosion of them. Not just the collaboration with GGPoker to bring online bracelet...
Marginal spots at the WPT Prime event at the Wynn
Sometimes I like to share hands with you guys where I'm not sure I made the right play, hands I'm conflicted about. Often these hands resurface in my mind days, weeks or even months after playing them. Here are two from day 2 of the WPT Prime event. I enter day 2 on a...
The Summer Poker Venues Compared
I've been here a couple weeks, covered a lot of ground and will share some thoughts. More than any summer I can remember there are so many tournament poker options this year. The venues are not all created equal though. Ballys/Paris: A lot of people are saying its a...
We Can’t Stop Talking About Phil Hellmuth
I'm no exception, I can't stop talking about Phil Hellmuth. That, in a nutshell, is his superpower. I'll tell you the thing that infuriates me about Phil Hellmuth. It's not the whole poker brat shtick, though I am particular about good behavior at the table. The thing...
We Can’t Stop Talking About Phil Hellmuth, Part 2
Maybe Phil Hellmuth crushing is just what we didn't realize we needed right now. I was as skeptical as everyone else when he beat Negreanu heads up in the first challenge. When he won the second and the third I still assumed it had to be a fluke somehow. Phil pretty...
Reflections on the 2021 WSOP schedule
As you probably are aware the full schedule is now available. If you recall I had sent out a link to Kenny Hallaert's spreadsheet, you can find it here and he has already filled in all the WSOP details. As I explained before this is a live document and he updates it...
Poker in the Time of Cholera
Imagine you were part of a management team charged with planning for live poker in the coming year. Imagine your range of possibilities is on a scale of "shut it down till a vaccine" to "lets go ahead with the super seniors event". What would you do?...
Elasticity in Poker
My dad was an economics professor and I have the happy memory of taking a microeconomics class with him probably about thirty years ago. He taught me classic micro concepts like supply and demand, and diminishing marginal utility. But I also remember a concept called...
How to Win a WSOP Bracelet (a book review)
That grandiose title is going to need some quick clarifications for an understandably skeptical reader. First and foremost, this blog post is a book review of poker pro Dylan Linde’s new book, 'Mastering Mixed Games: Winning Strategies for Draw, Stud and...
Do You Smell Something Burning? Someone just busted a tournament and sat down in a cash game
You know what I'm talking about right? Players coming to a cash game straight from a recent bust out of a tournament often don't have their head in the right place. Even if they aren't tilted it is hard to make the adjustments necessary. Here's a few things...
GTO Like a Six Year Old
Not to brag but I crush my wife at rock paper scissors. Somehow I pick up on her patterns and can employ an exploitative strategy that is +EV. So when my six year old wanted to play I imagined I would have similar success. I mean he's six, wtf does he know? To...
Poker Satellite Strategy
Dara O'Kearney's strategy book devoted to poker satellites is a great bang for the buck. The kindle version is only $9.99. If you are someone who plays satellites, particularly the larger super satellites to bigger events like the WSOP it is not unreasonable to...
You Belong at the WSOP
The 50th World Series of Poker is around the corner so it's time to start planning. I know some of you are regular attendees but some of you may think it's not for you. You are wrong. If you love poker then you should go, it's as simple as that. I think the...
“That Pot is Worth a Nice House”, A Tale of Two Flush Draws at the WSOP Main Event
This is going to be the most surreal blog post I've ever written (even more than the one about the guy who stuck his finger in my mouth). The two biggest pots of my life both involved getting it in with a flush draw deep into the WSOP main event. Bizarrely,...