Entries from September 2007 ↓

This is part 2 of 3 in my 3-part poker coaching series. If you haven’t read 5 Different Ways a Good Poker Instructor Will Help You, I suggest you read it before this one (although I don’t think it matters that much). In this part I will share my experiences in a little bit more depth. What kind of experiences have I had with poker instructors then?

Nothing but good ones, although you have to look out for poker instructors who don’t really know what they are doing. The best way to avoid this is to ask around and see what other people think of their coaching. Try to find out what good players think of them, usually if good poker players think highly of a poker teacher then you are very unlikely to have a bad experience.

How Did I Get Started with Poker Instruction?

Like I said in Part 1, my first instructor was in Limit Hold’em. It was when I was playing 5/10 Fixed Limit Hold’em and had just moved to play shorthanded 6-max tables. I can’t remember how I stumbled upon poker coaching but I remember seeing someone post over at the 2+2 forums and I saw one guy consistently crank out good posts, I clicked on his name and looked at his profile. He apparently had a website and I saw that he was offering coaching, “Why not?” I thought to myself.

It was pretty expensive and one of the most expensive hours of lessons I’ve had to this date at $300/hour. It was tremendously helpful and that initial investment of $300 has paid itself back a hundred fold. I hardly ever think a good poker coach is too expensive because you have to see it as an investment. You also have to be aware of what the price is relative to the stakes you are playing. You do not want to hire a high-stakes poker coach for $300-500/hour if you’re playing low-stakes. It makes much more sense if you got a low-stakes coach that charges $50-100 instead, because you will need to learn the basics before you can understand the more advanced concepts.

How Did It Help Me?

There are so many areas it has helped me, I think I am one of the players who has taken the most coaching out of most poker players out there (although I have no evidence). I try to take some coaching every week and on top of that I have some friends on MSN, AIM and Skype with which I discuss hands that I have problems with daily.

Let me just say that if it wasn’t for poker instruction I wouldn’t be making $10,000+/month and doing it consistently. When I switched to No-Limit Hold’em last year I met someone called Jason Rosenkrantz, he is the owner of a coaching website called 3-bet.net. At the time I was playing shorthanded Limit Hold’em up to $20/40 and $30/60, I was getting sick of limit so I sought out a No-Limit coach and Jason was the one I bumped to. At the time he was charging a low $60-80/hour compared to the $500/hour he is charging today.

From about May to August I literally spammed his mailbox with hands I had trouble with and that I wanted confirmation on. We spoke daily on AIM and discussed different poker concepts and everything related to poker. This is how I learned No-Limit Hold’em and Jason is the one poker coach I’ve done the most extensive work with. So practically how he helped me was to teach me the game and help me earn what I earn today.

How Does It Work, What Does a Session Look Like?

When I take coaching I am usually flexible to what the coach prefers to do and I discuss what he thinks is best and what I think is best for me and how we could work best together. Here is a list of different things a typical poker coaching session might hold:

• Sweating - This is when the poker instructor watches you play or you watch him play. Communication can be made through an instant messenger like AIM or through Skype/Phone. I recommend you do it over phone because that way you will pack in a lot more discussion and make it easier on both of you.

• Videos - You can make videos of you playing, videos are usually made with software like Camtasia and uploaded on a site like filefront for your coach to download. He will then proceed to write down notes on your plays and send them back to you for discussion.

• Hand Histories - This format consists of you playing on your own and saving the hand histories of your session (most poker sites offer this option) and sending them to your poker coach. He will then make notes and comment on your hands and send them back to you. You can also save specific hands you had trouble with during your session and send these for review.

• Discussion - I have only had one coach offer discussion as a method of coaching and I think it is an inferior form because it will be hard for a coach to see your leaks by just discussing with you. Most players are very inconsistent between what they talk about and how they apply it. Someone might know how to play a hand in theory, but when it comes to it and they’re sitting at the table they do something entirely different. Although this form of coaching can be helpful, new players should choose one of the other three to begin with.

I still hire lots of poker instructors to this date. As I said, I try to do one coaching session per week, if I can’t manage that or don’t feel the need to then I stick to once a month for my monthly check-up to see how my poker game is doing. I don’t want to slip when this is how I make my living

This is the first part in a three part series about poker instructors and why you should get one if you’ve come to a certain point in your game. How do you know when you’re at this point? I recommend you take poker instruction as soon as you can afford it, it is anywhere from $50-100/hour if you play lower stakes so you might want to build up a bankroll first and then start investing in a poker coach.

The way to get to that point is to find people to discuss poker with and absorb anything you can get your hands on. Let’s get on to the pressing issue, the reasons why you would want a poker coach and what to look for in one.

1. Finding leaks - A good poker instructor will spot leaks you never even thought you had. This happens to me all the time, although luckily less frequently as time goes by. When I started playing poker, my first coaching experience was in Limit Hold’em, I still remember it well. I was a bit frightened because it was all so new to me but it proved to be tremendously helpful and I became addicted to having a poker coach.

I’ve probably had over 20 poker instructors over my poker career and I constantly try new ones because the more perspectives you have from good players the easier it is to see the big picture and understand poker concepts. I still keep a few of my favorite poker teachers captive in my home (joke)

2. Help you with your goals - Awesome poker instructors will ask you what you want to get out of coaching with them. They will tailor the teaching to your specific needs and goals. And if you do not know what your goals are they will help you determine your goals. Note: Most coaches wont help you with this unless you commit to working with them extensively and even then most do not focus on this area in great detail so do not pass up coaches just because they are lacking in this area but be aware of it yourself.

3. Keeping you on track - A poker coach will keep you on track and help you achieve your goals (even if they do not help you determine them). What does keeping someone on track mean? Well, for me it means helping you avoid and overcome distracting objects and unnecessary subjects which will frequently come in your way. A few things that came in my way were focusing too much on statistics, worrying about downswings just to name a few of the top of my head.

4. Help you through rough stretches - This is one of the most important aspects of poker coaching. I always improve my game a lot when I run bad, because those tend to be the times I work on my game the most. And a poker instructor really comes in handy because it is so easy to slip and start playing bad when you are very unlucky and running bad. Your judgment gets clouded and you really don’t know what to do, it happens to the best. This is where good instructors shine, they will help you both in the emotional and strategic aspects of the game.

5. Help you feel good and be realistic - It is also good to discuss what is possible with your poker coach. Are you running bad or are you just playing horribly and need to improve a lot of aspects in your game? It is crucial that you are honest with yourself and take criticism well when you take poker coaching, because you are just wasting money if you go into a coaching session with a closed mind. I know people who take coaching and try to hide all of their weaknesses and leaks, that’s horrible! I love criticism, I frequently tell coaches to just tell me straight up what I need to do and how severe the leak is because most coaches are used to being soft on their students, because most of their students are hurt when someone says they are doing something wrong. Don’t be one of these students.

That’s my list and I am very happy with it. As I said, I highly recommend you take poker coaching/instruction even if you have to save up for one session every other month. I hope I have convinced you because if you want to take your game to the next level and speed up your learning curve, coaching is the way to go.

If you’ve ever played online poker I’m sure you’ve played more than one table. I myself play up to 8 tables of No-Limit Hold’em but that is about as much as I can handle, when I play a game like Pot-Limit Omaha I naturally play less tables because I have to use more brainpower

I constantly try to weigh the pros and cons of how many tables I play. On the other hand playing less tables enables me to have a lot better reads and it is generally more fun to play, but playing more tables maximizes how much I can earn per hour, unfortunately it makes the game less fun to play and more like a job.

The Pros:

• Getting in more hands
• Maximizing hourly “wage”
• You don’t have to have as much patience since you get premium starting hands more frequently

The Cons:

• That extra table could cripple your game and be too much
• Tilting while multi-tabling will burn money fast
• You don’t have time to think through every decision completely
• Your reads on your opponents suffer

That’s my short list of the most important pros and cons of multi-tabling. A good rule of thumb is to play 1-2 tables if you’re just starting out with poker and play those 1 or 2 tables for as long as 6-12 months, because the longer you play like that the better you will get at reading your opponents and the better your “automatic/abc” game will be when you start adding those tables.

If you start playing lots of tables right away odds are that it will take a lot longer for you to learn some subtleties of the game. A final note: when you’re adding those tables and you feel like it is too much, then it probably is too much. If you’re timing out on any of your tables even once a session you’re probably playing one table too much. Be honest with yourself, your wallet will thank you for it

Have you ever heard anyone talking about that one big bluff someone made on T.V? It’s always highlighted and If it works the player is said to be a poker god. If, on the other hand it doesn’t work he is now crowned a donkey. What’s up with this?

Let me tell you something about bluffing; if you’re playing lower stakes and making a living there you never have to bluff in your life. Incorporating some bluffing will of course raise your win rate (if you do it correctly) because players will adjust incorrectly vs. you.

Why is Bluffing Overrated?

My own take is because we tend to believe it is something that is in our control. There is no luck involved if you know someone holds a specific hand and you bet them out of the pot because you “knew” they would fold. And when you succeed with a big bluff you can pat yourself on the back and feel very good because you did in fact outplay someone.

A Personal Observation

I’ve noticed that most big bluffs are foolish and –EV (negative expected value) in the long-run. And I am not talking about the great players who do calculated bluffs and are often executed well. I am talking about your average joe who is out to bluff people out of pots. You just can’t do that, I once heard Brian Townsend say that poker is 95% ABC and 5% trickery and I agree with that completely. You do not have to get fancy at all. If you do not know the proper places to bluff then my advice is to not bluff much, because you will only end up losing money.

What to Think About When Bluffing

So how do you bluff properly? When you bluff, keep in mind that you want to represent something. If you play a hand like you have nothing then people will think you have nothing. And bluff do not have to be big, the most profitable bluffs are usually in small to medium sized pots where your risk vs. reward is nice.

An example of this would be when you raise 98 on the button and get called by the big blind. You have a pretty tight image so your friend in the big blind is putting you on big cards most of the time (and correctly so).

The flop comes down 2 6 J , pretty harmless board. Big blind checks and you continuation bet because he’s going to fold enough to make it profitable. He now calls, you can suspect he doesn’t have that big of a hand because he would usually raise or lead out (here’s where personal reads come in handy).

Turn comes the A. The big blind now hesitates and checks, now this is a perfect spot to fire 2/3rds of the pot because he will have a very hard time calling with a pair below jacks or even jacks If you have a good solid image.

I was playing around a bit with some equity calculators (resource links at the bottom) and I thought about writing something on how different hands do vs. each other. Basically texas holdem flop odds in a nutshell. All these examples are of two hands getting it all-in on the flop and how much equity they have on the flop (how often a hand will win or how many % of the pot that belongs to each hand).

Pocket Aces vs. Royal Flush Draw

Starting with some of the big hitters right away. Usually when decent hold’em players get the money in on the flop they’ll both have pretty big hands like combo draws (for example; a flush draw with overcards).

Let us say you have a hand like A A vs. K J.

You raise it up to a standard 3 or 4 big blinds with your pocket aces and get a call from the blinds by the dude holding KJ of hearts.

Now the flop comes down A T 3.

You both get it all-in on the flop (as you should). What are your equities?

You with your A A are about 66.162% to win this pot. This means that you will win around 66.16% in the long run.

And by now you’ve probably figured that the guy with K J is 33.838% to win.

Did you expect to lose 1 time out of 3 with top set? Pretty interesting if you haven’t done these calculations before. It helps you cope with getting outdrawn when you know that you will lose about 34% of the time here.

Bottom Set vs. Straight Flush Draw

Lets get right to it.

You have 5 5 and you’re up against Q J.

On a flop of T 9 5 .

And again you both get it all-in. What is your equity vs. the straight flush draw? You are only 57.879% to win with your bottom set, so it is very close to a coinflip! Let us do one more and let’s make it a common one.

Big Pocket Pair vs. Flush Draw

This is a very common occurrence in the online no-limit texas hold’em games I play in. Do you know how likely you are to win when you have pocket aces all-in vs. a flush draw on the flop? Let us find out!

If you have K K vs. 6 5.

And the flop is J 2 9.

And guess what… You both get it all-in on the flop

Your equity with pocket kings is 61.62%. So the suited connector will still win 38.38% of the time, that’s over one third of the time!

Pretty crazy huh?

I hope you found this post enlightening because it really goes to show you that in some spots you really aren’t going to win as often as you think you are.

The tools I used for all the calculations can be found online for free. Here are the links:

Poker Stove – This is a free downloadable software which is specifically designed for hold’em and it helps you determine your equity in all-in pots (like I did in this post).

Two Dimes – This calculator is a free online script. It comes in handy if you play other games than hold’em. Games like Omaha, Stud, Razz and Lowball.