4:54am: I found this article on P5s, written by Jack Welch. I think sometimes in poker we have to think outside the box for the solutions to our problems. This includes examining things outside of the game itself. This article makes a suggestion ten books that would make you a better poker playing, having read them.

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I have a theory.  Maybe just a hunch.  Call it wishful thinking even.  But I believe better people make better poker players.  Certainly, a sociopath might have an advantage where aggression is concerned.  However, when we think about long-term success across a decades-long career, poker longevity can only truly be achieved by those individuals who have their acts together.

Every poker book written by every poker expert will archly discuss the importance of such personal attributes as patience, self-discipline, psychological control.  Yet, few, if any, teach you how to acquire those traits.

The books listed here will provide an excellent base to improve your life-roll management.

1. Blink - Malcolm Gladwell

Gladwell maintains that we “blink” when we think without thinking. We do that by “thin-slicing,” using limited information to come to a conclusion. In what Gladwell contends is an age of information overload, he finds experts often make better decisions with snap judgments than they do with reams of analysis.

Sometimes we over-think things. Sometimes you just have to go with your read.

2. A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose - Eckhart Tolle

“Be aware that what you think, to a large extent, creates the emotions that you feel.  See the link between your thinking and your emotions.  Rather than being your thoughts and emotions, be the awareness behind them.”

3. Zen In the Art of Archery - Eugen Herrigel

Through years of practice, an activity becomes effortless both mentally and physically. The body becomes capable of executing often complex, often difficult movements without conscious control by the mind.

“The archer ceases to be conscious of himself as the one who is engaged in hitting the bull’s-eye which confronts him. This state of unconscious is realized only when, completely empty and rid of the self, he becomes one with the perfecting of his technical skill, though there is in it something of a quite different order which cannot be attained by any progressive study of the art…”

4. If - Rudyard Kipling

The first few lines of the title poem say it all.

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting…

5. The Bible

The Main Event of literature as far as I am concerned.

Good for bankroll management.  “Covet not thy neighbor’s ass.”

The 23rd Psalm is always excellent to keep in mind when shoving all your chips into the middle of the table.

6. WOODEN: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off The Court
- John Wooden

ESPN’s show “Who’s Number 1?” ranked Mr. Wooden as the greatest coach of all time in any sport. “Intensity makes you stronger. Emotionalism makes you weaker.”

7. Personal Best - George Sheehan, M.D.

I knew George Sheehan.  He was either the most normal great man I have ever encountered or the greatest normal man.  I wish I had thought to tell him that.  He would have laughed.  Modestly, of course…

“The memorable thing is not to excel against others but to excel against yourself…The real trophy is within.  The real trophy is the self.”

8. The Last Lecture - Randy Pausch

“We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.”

Many professors give talks entitled “The Last Lecture.” Professors are asked to consider their demise and to reflect on what matters most to them. While they speak, each member of the audience can’t help but ponder the same question: What wisdom would I share with the world if I knew it was my last opportunity? If I dropped dead tomorrow, what would I want as my legacy?

Randy Pausch, a professor at Carnegie Mellon, was asked to give such a lecture. He didn’t have to imagine it as his last, as he had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer. But the lecture he gave—“Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams”—wasn’t about dying. It was about the importance of overcoming obstacles, of enabling the dreams of others, of seizing every moment (“time is all you have…and you may find one day that you have less than you think”). The Last Lecture is a summation of everything Pausch had come to believe. It is about living.

9. The Secret - Rhonda Byrne

Laugh if you will.  Come to think about it, those chortling the loudest probably have the greatest need to study these concepts.

According to James Arthur Ray, there is scientific evidence to back up the spiritual practices and laws defined in The Secret. “Science tells us that everything is energy, and so your thoughts are energy. Your body, your cash, your car—everything you think is solid, if you put it under a high-powered microscope, it’s just a field of energy and a rate of vibration,” he says. “And so are we. So if you think you’re this meat suit running around, you have to think again.”

One way to describe this energy is by comparing it to radio waves, “The frequency you give out through your thoughts and your emotions is what you have a tendency to manifest in your life,” Re. Dr. Michael Beckwith adds. “Whether those thoughts and emotions are conscious or unconscious, it doesn’t matter.”

If you are sending out the same negative energy over and over—whether thoughts or feelings—you will attract similar energy back to you. Ray explains, when bad things happen people might ask, “Oh, God, why me?”

“Because it is you,” he says.

10. Collected Essays - Ralph Waldo Emerson

“What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”

BONUS PICK!!!!

11. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People - Dr. Stephen Covey

Habit 7.  Sharpen the Saw.

This is the habit of self-renewal, says Covey.  Self-renewal necessarily surrounds all the other habits, enabling and encouraging them to happen and grow. Covey interprets the self into four parts: the spiritual, mental, physical and the social/emotional, which all need feeding and developing.

These books - any one of them - can provide the breakthrough to move you to the next level.  In poker and in life.

Sharpen your edge.

Start a Clean Slate at a New Room, a New Sharkscope, and Keep HFL Free in the Process

4:44am: Everyone can agree that there’s a specific course of events in poker that would cause them to “tilt”. For each person, that course of events and the threshold for tilting are different but the lowest common denominator is that we all tilt in some, way shape or form. Let’s be honest, we’d all be winning players if we could learn to control our emotions and not tilt, right? It’s a good thing I don’t have to answer that question because tilt will always exist for a couple of reasons (a) losing money never feels good, and (b) there is so much injustice in poker.

“How on earth can I stop from tilting?” That’s the magic question to which we’d all like a magic bullet. What is the secret to not getting angry after a bad beat? How can one reasonably be expected to control his/her emotions after a runner runner disaster for a large chunk of their bankroll?

If I could answer that question with 100% confidence, I wouldn’t need to play poker because I’d set up shop in a nice little office and play counselor all day long. My client list would be nearly infinite, as you could imagine. But seriously, I will do the best I can to put it into perspective for you and help you avoid the downward spiral, mind consuming seige that is tilt.

First off, in order to answer the questions above, we need to establish a concrete definition of tilt. For all intents and purposes, we will define tilt as “a state of mental confusion or frustration in which a player adopts a less than optimal strategy.” In fact, it almost helps if you define tilt as a temporary illness. Much the same way doctors diagnose a disease, we must diagnose the symptoms of tilt. The key here, however, is to diagnose these symptoms in the early stages so that these feelings don’t permeate into your game. This involves you being brutally honest with yourself and identify when you’re in a state of tilt. If you find yourself checking just three of these ten symptoms, then you’re probably tilting:

- An immense feeling of frustration and anger towards both the player and the game itself
- Strong desire to exact revenge or spite your opponent
- Complete loss of patience in the game you’re playing
- Trying too hard to win each hand dealt
- Second guessing every single decision made
- The concepts of table image and logic have gone totally out the door
- Chasing draws without proper odds
- Sudden bursts of unexplained and illogical aggression
- Overvaluing marginal hands
- The inability to press the fold button

All of these things can be detrimental to your game, or even worse: destroy your bankroll, or even — depending on the situation — ruin lives.

So let’s put a stop to it already, or at least try. Here are five simple suggestions from me to you that will help you stay off tilt:

1. Always, always think long term. Poker isn’t about winning the battle. It’s about winning the war. If you’re a winning player, there’s absolutely no question your results will return to form over time. Why is this so hard for people to see at the time? If that is the million dollar question, then the million dollar solution is: TRUST THE MATH. A good example of this is the swingy phenomenon of coin flips. Literal coin flips, that is. If we flip a coin 100 times, it’s completely within reason that it lands on heads 75 times out of 100 when of course the odds are exactly 50%. Let’s take that same coin and flip it 900 more times, totaling 1,000 flips. This time, heads is only slightly ahead of tails (513 to 487 - 51.3% to 48.7%).  Going even further, let’s flip the coin 10,000 times. This time, the number of heads outcomes are eerily close to the number of tails outcomes — (5,023 to 4,977 - 50.23% to 49.77%). Point being, as the number of flips increases infinitely, the closer the percentages will gravitate towards either other, eventually totally leveling out at 50 percent within fractions of decimal points.

It’s important to just recognize that when you’re running bad you are just caught in one of these deviations (see the first 100 flips), and that it will eventually come to an end. Like we’ve discussed before, the best solution is volume. But equally as important as volume is maintaining your composure during these times and realize that mathematics doesn’t always take the same path, but it always, always leads to the same point — no matter how you slice the pie. Put every single ounce of trust left in your body on the mathematics of poker. I promise it will even out for you over time. When? It could take a while, but hang in there. That’s why long term thinking is the key to success.

2. Learn to let go. You need a break. It’s extremely important to recognize when you’re in the beginning stages of tilt so to avoid anything totally devastating happening. I can’t tell you how many times (in my past) that I ignored this advice, and found myself thinking “things can’t get worse”. Things can always get worse, and I cannot stress that enough. A good friend of mine once told me (and it’s so true): “when you play to get even, you get even worse”. It’s time to let go and swallow your pride when you feel even three of those ten symptoms creeping in. You’ve lost, get over it. It’s perfectly normal to lose.

3. Find a healthy way to express your anger. Some of this might sound a little crass, but that’s only because we all have different ways of expressing anger. Get a punching bag. Masturbate. Go punt a football 40 yards outside. Cry, if you have to. The idea here is to not keep the anger bottled up and to express it in a way that’s not going to hurt anybody physically or mentally. If you keep these hostile feelings inside, you’re going to feel a permanent resentment towards poker (which is where I believe the term “perma-tilt” came from.)

4. Be happy you got the money in good (if bad beats are causing you to tilt). Fish pay your bills. I know that it’s a very pride swallowing thing on nights where you constantly get the money in good, only to lose to runner runner and miracle cards over and over and over again — only to have your -35% roi opponent (who think he’s a genius) taunt you in the chat. Rejoice during times like these. Don’t get angry. Be happy that (a) poker is still a very beatable game because (b) people keep putting their money in bad. And for re-assurance about when that will turn around, see point #1.

5. Remember that it happens to everyone. You lost $300 tonight, and it seems like the complete end of the world, right? To that, I say: no it’s not, and misery loves company. Open up a $200/$400 NL cash game table and watch people lose Plasma TVs, Cars, and even HOMES in these games. Seeing someone lose a $140,000 pot on a two outer on the river suddenly puts things into perspective for you. Maybe things aren’t that bad? Like I said before, it can always get worse. Always.

6. Detach yourself from the results. This is perhaps the hardest of the six suggestions, but it’s completely necessary in order to avoid going on tilt. Everyone likes to win, and most poker players are very competitive people, but there comes a point where winning can mean TOO much to you. We hear the term “results oriented” a lot, and this is where that phrase comes into play. Don’t worry about the outcome of one particular hand. Worry about the outcome of the same hand ran 100, 1000, and 10,000 times, which ties back into long term thinking. Complete emotional attachment might be asking too much, but I definitely think it’s completely reasonable for you to not care AS much when you happen to get unlucky. It’s just a game.

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Another suggestion is to look up some bad beat videos on youtube (there’s tons). One of the most important things to remember when you’re on tilt is that you’re not alone — thousands of people are having the exact SAME problem as you at the exact same moment. Yes, they are getting two outed. Yes, they took a runner runner beat tonight. And yes, they keep getting counterfeited when they flop two pair and their opponent calls them down. Watching videos of this happening to other people re-assures that it’s not just some conspiracy against you and your account. Variance in poker is real, and it happens to everyone. No exceptions.

Someone once told me that it’s the little things that count so here are a few small suggestions in order to avoid falling into the downward spiral: (a) if you have a gym membership, go work out. Kill two birds with one stone: improve your body and get the pent up frustration out of your system. (b) a very cold/hot shower — very underrated as a means of refreshing your mind set. (c) surround yourself with people who ground you and are a calming force in your life. It’s important not to be alone during these times, because when this happens sometimes you spend too much time in your head instead of in the presence of other human beings.

I could literally go on all night, as this is a topic that I’m very familiar with. While these suggestions aren’t for everyone, hopefully I’ve put a creative spin on at least one thing that you will take from this article that will take you one step closer to solving this huge problem that many people have.

Start a Clean Slate at a New Room, a New Sharkscope, and Keep HFL Free in the Process

5:23am: Poker can be an impulsive game at times, but if you truly treat poker as a business, you have to make the smartest business decisions possible in order to optimize your bottom line. Part of being a smart businessman in this case would include two steps (a) collecting data and (b) mining it effectively.

Collecting meaningful data could and should take a very long time. Statistics deviate from the norm more often than we’d like, and a lot of the time makes things that are irrelevant seem relevant, and vice versa. At what point does data become “valid”, you ask? If you have less than 1,000 heads up sit n gos under your belt, you have a long way to go. Just let the statistics fall into place and continue to put in more volume, and then see where you stand after 1,500 games. When you start to get around 2,000 games, that’s probably the point where you can start circling trends and label them meaningful.

Mining the data is easy. All you have to do is read it, interpret it, and pick out the statistically relevant information. Using this information effectively will, without a doubt, increase your hourly wage, roi, and win %. Paying attention to details such as these is what separates a person who wins 55% of their games from someone who wins 57% of their games. And you better believe it: two percentage points make all the difference in the world.

One example of this is how I made my heads up sng “work schedule” based on my most profitable days, and even during my most profitable hours. Take a look at my data below:

Looking at the days of the week chart, one thing sticks out like a sore thumb: Mondays are not profitable AT ALL for me. Therefore, right off the bat I know that if I’m working a five day week, this is the first day I need to stay away from. We now have my first day off. Choosing the second day off is slightly more complicated ONLY because of my living situation. Based on my graph, the next day that I should throw out the window is Saturday. However, my GF is off on Tuesdays, which is the next least-profitable day. All things considered, I decided that it’s better for me to choose Tuesday as an off day. Point being, I have chosen two of the three least profitable days as my days off, which in turn should optimize my winning percentage on the days that I have decided to work.

Whenever changes need to be made, always make the next best decision. For example, now that football season is here and I run a fantasy football league, I have no choice but to take off on Sunday rather than Tuesday (GFs schedule changes to off on Sundays as well during football season). Sunday is somewhere in the middle from a profit standpoint, so it’s not big deal that I’d be missing this day. Thankfully, I can still include Monday (and probably always will) in my days off.

Another profitable idea is to take a look at the most profitable hours of the day to play. Upon looking at my data, a few things stand out:

1. I should always be in front of a computer with games loaded from 1am-3am CST. 3am is my most profitable hour, and it’s not even really close. This is pretty much the irrefutable evidence I need to know that late night poker is +EV for me.

2. For whatever reason, 4am has given me some problems, however I don’t believe this to be anything more than a statistical deviation (it probably takes 10,000+ games for this particular data to be completely meaningful).

3. 9pm-12am are also pretty solid times to play, as I’ve shown a pretty consistent profit and ROI during those times.

4. The mid morning hours have abnormally large ROI’s, however the data is over a small sample size - and therefore I don’t have enough tangible evidence to suggest that I should alter my sleep schedule in such a drastic way. However, 3,000 games later if I have many more games registered at these times, I wouldn’t be adverse to putting some thought into it.

All things considered, whenever possible I try to put my best efforts into playing the most profitable hours. However, I value the “profit by day” data a little more, so if I deviate slightly from the most profitable hour chart, it’s perfectly fine as long as I’m playing within a profitable day itself.

So to all this, I say take an hour or two and evaluate your data. If your data is meaningful, choosing the optimal days/times to play will go a long way into making your business a thriving one. If your data isn’t meaningful yet, now’s the time to collect the data, and what better day to start than today?

Start a Clean Slate at a New Room, a New Sharkscope, and Keep HFL Free in the Process

4:59am: Poker can be a crazy game. No, scratch that, poker IS a crazy game, and there’s really nothing we can ever do to change that, especially being no limit players. Take for example, my last match of the night, which would have put me up nearly $500 (if the hand holds):

PokerStars Game #19267291875: Tournament #99347957, $100+$5 Hold’em No Limit - Match Round I, Level II (15/30) - 2008/08/01 - 05:51:24 (ET)
Table ‘99347957 1′ 2-max Seat #1 is the button
Seat 1: trujm (1695 in chips)
Seat 2: TDiddy75 (1305 in chips)
trujm: posts small blind 15
TDiddy75: posts big blind 30
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to trujm [Ad Qd]
trujm is disconnected
trujm is connected
trujm: raises 60 to 90
TDiddy75: raises 270 to 360
trujm: raises 1335 to 1695 and is all-in
TDiddy75: calls 945 and is all-in
Uncalled bet (390) returned to trujm
*** FLOP *** [Jh Js Kh]
*** TURN *** [Jh Js Kh] [4h]
*** RIVER *** [Jh Js Kh 4h] [Jd]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
TDiddy75: shows [Kc Qc] (a full house, Jacks full of Kings)
trujm: shows [Ad Qd] (three of a kind, Jacks)
TDiddy75 collected 2610 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 2610 | Rake 0
Board [Jh Js Kh 4h Jd]
Seat 1: trujm (button) (small blind) showed [Ad Qd] and lost with three of a kind, Jacks
Seat 2: TDiddy75 (big blind) showed [Kc Qc] and won (2610) with a full house, Jacks full of Kings

Should I be mad that he had three outs preflop, and I was nearly a 3:1 favorite to win the hand? Maybe, but the point is that playing heads up sngs for a living takes some really, really thick skin and you have to be able to forget about this kind of stuff. You play so many games, that it almost becomes like a given that things like this are going to happen, so just take them in stride, and don’t look back.

My overall record tonight finished at 14-10, and although I got unlucky in quite a few matches, I’ll take it. Where else can you go and sit on your ass all day and make $300? If the agony of taking bad beats is the only thing that makes my job unpleasant, then I welcome all bad beats with open arms.

Here is how I finished the night:

Set 1: 3-0
Set 2: 2-1
Set 3: 0-3
Set 4: 2-1
Set 5: 1-2
Set 6: 2-1
Set 7: 2-1
Set 8: 2-1

By the looks of things, tonight was an incredibly consistent performance, and instead of cursing the “poker gods” about how I should have actually finished 17-7, rather than 14-10 (if hands that should have held up would have), I need to be really thankful that people are willing to put their money in behind at this level. Until then, I’ll take $280 profit all day long. Wouldn’t you?

5:30am: We will call this hand “how to extract chips with the stone cold nuts”.

Enjoy, everyone!

I also wanted to add that I am 6-3 so far today in $100 heads up matches, so I’m off to quite a good start. Good luck to anyone playing a session today.

3:28am: Most players would readily admit that playing small pocket pairs isn’t their favorite thing in the world to do. Some would sooner enjoy mowing the lawn, or scrubbing dirty pots and pans. That’s because small pocket pairs are not easy to play, as even I will admit.

There’s gotta be some kind of rule book or chart somewhere telling us what to do when dealt pocket fours, right?

Not even close. Playing small pocket pairs is much more a balancing act than anything else. First off, you must recognize your hand for what it is: it’s just a pair. Of course there’s the slightly optimistic anticipation of the possibility that you will flop a set with that bad boy and felt your opponent, but 19 times out of 20 that’s not going to happen.

Let’s take a look at how I usually approach the situation, according to “type of board” and for each opponent type (TAG and LAG). For example’s sake, let’s assume we’re holding pocket fives (5c5s) in this case. Let’s also assumed that you and your opponent are fairly equally stacked at 1500 a piece. Let’s also assume that your opponent has raised on the button (60) and you elect to just call in the 10/20 blinds:

1. Nondescript board - 9d 7s 2c. Against a LAG opponent, I would recommend check raising this flop pretty hard, and then folding to a shove or any kind of bet on the turn/river. You need to make a bold statement with your hand on the flop in order to find out where you’re at. Let’s say you check, and your opponent bets 2/3 the pot (90). Check raising to, say, 350 right here should tell you fairly quickly where you are at. Every now and then someone will float you with AJ, AQ, AK in this spot, but nearly all other hands that have not connected with this board are going into the muck. If you get called, I would say it’s pretty safe to put on the brakes. Your opponent will likely be a little timid as well, and you may even get to a showdown that you normally may not have seen — with the best hand.

Against a TAG opponent, I probably lead out for the pot. The reason I suggest this line is because a TAG opponent is going to play relatively more straight forward, and those who are playing tight will usually have the discipline to lay down over cards in this situation. If you get called, I would say theres an 80% chance you are already beat, in which case you saved yourself from being curious later on if you had just check/called the whole way through.

2. Board with at least two paints - As Qc 3c. While this is a less-than-desirable board for your hand, it’s fairly cut and dry and actually a little easier to play than on a nondescript board. In my honest opinion, after having played 7,000+ heads up sngs lifetime, that there’s no significant value in betting in this spot - no matter if your opponent is LAG or TAG. LAG opponents are a little harder to put on hands than TAG opponents, and could have been raising with any two, so your hand is more likely to be good against someone who is LAG in this spot. However, you could get into some trouble betting this hand because a good LAG is going to put you to a decision on this flop, and that’s a decision you’re not going to want to have to make. The TAG opponent almost certainly has you beat in this spot because tight players like to play paint cards, so betting usually isn’t a good idea in this spot either. I always tell people to keep your decisions as easy as possible, because it keeps your mind fresh and playing balanced. Having to decipher 3-4 levels of thought to determine whether a mediocre pair is good in this spot is too tall a task in these blind levels, and therefore not worth the brain power in chips. So to that, I say suck up the pride and check/fold.

3. “Drawy” board - 7h 9h Jh. There’s a number of ways you could go about doing this. Surprisingly, players in this day and age have progressed to the point where if you lead out strong here, they usually won’t just call. Whether or not they are on a draw, you will usually be faced with either a fold or a raise. I find this to hold true for both TAG and LAG players. Your hand may or may not be good, but I think the play regardless of whether your opponent is TAG or LAG is to lead out pretty strong (120), and then check/fold if you feel any sort of resistance whatsoever. If you get called, odds are your opponent either has (a) a heart, (b) one or more of the cards on the board, or (c) over cards and (a) combined. In any of those three cases, you aren’t far enough ahead to invest a lot of money in this pot, so it’s safe to put the breaks on after the initial information-seeking bet.

4. A paired board with an over card - 9c 9s Kd. A LAG player is probably going to make a continuation bet on this flop, so you can make a strong argument for check raising here. However, this time if you get called, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re beat. If you check to your opponent, and he bets 90 in this spot, a check raise to 240 will take it down roughly 55% of the time. From the other 45% that you get called, I would venture to say that against a LAG opponent you are ahead 40% of the time. A good portion of the time what you’re looking at in this spot is someone who has a pair higher than yours, but also didn’t connect with the board (see: pocket nines). However, more than likely you’re looking at someone who is just floating you with a strong ace. From here, the best line is to take, in my opinion, is that if the turn is lower than your card (2, 3, 4) then I would bet hard, and fold to a raise. If the turn is higher than my pair, then I would probably bet small and fold to a raise. The river should usually be checked in either case, to which you should use pot odds accordingly when faced with a bet from a LAG player.

The TAG is probably going to let you know where they are at, but there’s a good chance that they connected with the high card on the board. A solid TAG would probably still make a continuation on this flop, so my advice to you would be to make one hard check raise, see what happens, and then shut it down if you get called because you’re almost certainly beat.

5. Paired board with an under card - 10s 10c 3d. You’re almost always good in this spot, no matter if your opponent is TAG or LAG. The correct play here is to trust that your hand is good now, and will stay good because your opponent simply has over cards. I would bet each street for value in this situation.

6. Low board with one over card - 6s 4d 2c. Did your opponent really call you with a 6? That’s the question you need to ask yourself, and decide quickly because if you believe that they do not hold a 6, you have to play this hand like you have top pair, and bet out accordingly. Against a LAG, I would probably recommend check raising the flop and then betting out (if you believe they don’t hold a 6) with medium sized bets. Against a TAG player, I would just lead out and call a small raise, but fold to a large one. In either case, if you’re already beat you have a pretty solid backup plan in case a 5 or a 3 hits, and it’s going to be really hard for your opponent to put you on a gut shot draw if your straight does fill up. It get’s slightly complicated if you make your set, but you’re usually still good in that case. Just make sure to keep the pot small until you’re sure where you stand.

7. Low board with no over cards - 2s 3c 4c. In this case, even against pocket Kings, your hand is still around 40% to win so it’s justifiable to felt this hand against even a TAG. I’m almost never folding this hand against and LAG player, so you should play it as aggressively as possible. Against a TAG, I would probably bet out, and/or call all raises, and only fold if I believe my opponent has a set.

8. Flopping a set - 5s Jc Kd. I saved the best for last, for two reasons. (1) because this is the situation we all dream of, right? and (2) because it’s the least likely to happen. I actually compare this situation to sitting in the weeds for 2 days straight with a sniper rifle, waiting for something to cross your path and then finally, something slowly drifts in front of your cross hairs. All analogies aside, I would say that the main thing you need to do is just make sure that your opponent doesn’t fold. That being said, I think it actually depends on what you perceive your opponent’s opinion of you to be. If you feel that your opponent thinks you’re a tight player, I would probably make small bets or check the flop and set the trap for later. If your opponent considers you loose and reckless, then I would probably just bet out with the hand, and hope to get raised. Either way, I truly believe betting out with monster hands is the new “slowplaying”, because people sniff out slowplays way better than they used to, in general.

So there you have it. Whether you agree or disagree with my advice, one thing is certain: there’s more than one way to skin a cat. This is far from a “guide” on how to play small pocket pairs in heads up sngs, but if you have taken at least one or two small “pointers” from this very subjective article, then my work here is finished.

10:03pm: With me finally getting completely settled into my brand new home, with my brand new office, I have finally been able to dedicate the time necessary into putting in some serious volume heads up. Join me, why don’t you? — in becoming a complete heads up machine (that is, if your desire is to do this for a living). We’ve been preaching volume, volume, and more volume for quite some time, but it feels like the weight of the world on your shoulders everyday when you feel like you have to play 20+ games. Being as such, it would be beneficial if we invented some sort of routine/program to follow in order to break it down and seem like less of a burden.

So let’s do this: committ to playing 24 heads up sit n gos a day, 5 days a week. Break each day into eight segments consisting of three games a piece. Play each segment however you’d like. Take as many breaks in between each segment as you need, and play them whenever you’d like. The only catch is that you must play the required eight segments each day. This includes times when you go 6-0 in your first two segments and you don’t want to “ruin” your unblemished record by continuing, so you decide to stop for the day. No, you are not allowed to do that. No matter how you cut it, you are going to play eight segments of three games per day.

Here is a link to a sample spreadsheet I am using to keep track of these segments.

So why this method? What does it change? How does it help you?

Well, it does a few things:

• Keeps your thoughts/mindset encapsulated, meaning you only worry about the present, and not the past or the future
• It prevents the player from taking a results-oriented approach
• It keeps things in perspective because it gives variance a fighting chance of evening out
• It’s a completely organized, streamlined approach and is much more business-like than just randomly playing games whenever one feels like it.
• It will allow you to follow a regulated schedule, which makes the process seem much more like a job and less like gambling.
• Each segment is a fresh start. When you go 0-3 in one segment, the next is a new chapter in which you are entitled to forget that the chapter before it even existed.

The three game segment approach also yields a forced result. There are no ties. There are four different outcomes:

• 3-0
• 2-1
• 1-2
• 0-3

If you’re anything like me, you’d consider 75% of those results “managable”. The only one of the four you REALLY don’t want to see is 0-3. Anything else should be considered acceptable results. Even if you finish 0-3 in any of your segments, that’s ok — that’s why you play eight of them.

Another thing you should note is that I have chosen Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday as the days dedicated to playing my sessions. These days were specifically chosen and hand-picked, based on the days of the week which were most profitable, as determined by Sharkscope. If you’d like to find out which days of the week are most profitable for you, simply click your name and then “More Options” and then “Graph Results By..” and then “Day of the Week”. Choose your days wisely, as I have. You can even choose to play the hours of the day which are also most profitable for you. Relying on this data also assumes that you have a relatively large sample size, or else the data is meaningless. 1000 heads up matches should be a large enough sample size to yield the information you need in regards to this.

Remember, heads up sngs are nothing more than mindset tweaks and making self-psychological manipulations in order to keep yourself grounded, and to keep the results steady, upward, and consistent. Implementing this organized approach is a big step into getting serious about heads up sngs for some serious extra cash, if not for a living.

10:30pm: You hear it all the time: be aggressive. Aggression, aggression, aggression is supposed to be the key to winning poker, right? No doubt there’s some truth to that. So what makes you or anyone an aggressive player? Are you classified as an aggressive player if you bluff a lot? To answer this question, let’s backtrack and define the different types of aggression. There are two forms: (a) wreckless and (b) well timed.

Wreckless aggression is pretty much an illogical, alpha-male sort of aggression for those with bigger egos than IQs. People who are wrecklessly aggressive bluff in spots where:

• There is no value in doing so.
• Fold equity doesn’t justify the push
• Their table image has been established such that the whole purpose of bluffing has been negated
• They have no regard for the range of cards they will get called with in spots they choose to push

On the other hand, well timed aggression is aggression that is completely deliberate and well thought out. If bluffing is “madness” then well timed aggression is definitely the method behind the madness. Well timed aggression may consist of times where:

• The estimated odds of your opponent folding offset the smaller chance you will get called
• You have established a level of trust with your opponent such that the move is well disguised
• The board is such that your opponent has more cards that could beat them than cards that cannot
• Your opponent cannot logically call without one or two exact cards in their hand

Either way, obviously the result we are trying to acheive is to get our opponent to fold, which is why we call this technique bluffing. We don’t have a hand, and we would like to win the pot without having to show our cards.

Now that we’ve established the two kinds of aggression (that consequently lead to bluffing), let’s decide which kind is a more suitable choice for the winning heads up sit n go player. While I award brownie points for courage for those who practice wreckless aggression, the path to true heads up sng success is paved with well timed aggression. There are simply times when it makes absolutely no sense to bluff. Let’s examine these times:

• In the 10/20 blinds, and you only have 20 invested in the pot. Your opponent has bet the pot, and you have absolutely nothing. Let it go, there is no value in protecting what little you have in the pot at this point. Wait until the blinds mean something to start stealing.
• When you suspect that your opponent has caught on to the fact that you’ve been stealing quite a few pots. The more pots you drag, even if they are small, the more likely you are going to be forced at some point to prove you’ve got the goods. People catch on. This is why I suggest waiting until later to start firing with air, because establishing a tight image early on is worth more later on when the blinds actually hurt to lose.
• When you’ve just shown a bluff. I can’t tell you how many times I see people show a bluff, and then try the same move again no more than 10 seconds later. I’m well aware that some people would think that I would think that there’s no way someone would do it twice in a row without having the goods, therefore I might give them the benefit of the doubt and fold the second time. Problem with that thinking is that most people aren’t on that 2nd-3rd level of thinking, and will simply call you the next time you bet big — as they should, because you have betrayed their trust.
• When pride is starting to get in the way. We’ve seen this situation before: you’re trying to bluff someone, and they keep calling you with bottom pair — and frankly, it’s pissing you off. First off, STOP. This is not about pride, or bragging rights, or who’s got the biggest kahunas. This is about money, and it’s clear that your opponent doesn’t trust you. To counter balance this, you should probably take him to a place I like to call “value city”. It’s nice up there.
• When the risk/reward ratio is too low. Way too often, I see people fire 400 on the river into a pot with 80 chips in it, I fold, and then they show me 9 3 offsuit. Ok, so what? You risked 400 chips to get 40 of your own back? Even if I fold 9 times out of 10, that’s only a net profit of [40 x 9] = 360 chips. The one time you get called you lose 440 chips. Does that sound like a winning proposition to you? I would sure hope not.

After everything I’ve just presented you with, the main thing you need to know is that wreckless aggression is -EV, while well timed aggression is +EV. There has to be some kind of deliberacy within your system of bluffing for it to be effective. Just because something is deliberate and premeditated doesn’t mean it is dechipherable. The trick to effective bluffing is coming up with your own undechiperable method of aggression.

The key to successful bluffing is to be a good storyteller, because when you bluff, you are attempting to tell a story — even if false. The story has to be believable, or else the whole purpose of such a move is null and void. When your opponent is faced with a tough call in the later stages of the hand, they will probably try to piece together the fragments of the story to see if everything “fits”, and then come to a conclusion on whether or not your story is believable to them. Wreckless aggression and well timed aggression aside, there is a such thing as a good bluff and a bad bluff. Let’s try to pick them apart.

• The bad: You’ve played pretty tight the whole match. Whenever you’ve raised, you usually held two cards 10 or higher (KQ, AK, QJ, etc), and your opponent knows this. This time you’ve raised to 90 (from 30) preflop with AsKd - and the flop comes: 5d 6c 9h. You make a pot-sized continuation bet, and your opponent calls. The pot is now 540.The turn is 7h. Your opponent checks to you, and you decide to check behind, hoping to hit one of your overcards. The river is a total brick: 2s, and your opponent once again checks to you.

  Being perfectly honest with yourself, you’re probably a little upset that you have so much money invested in this pot with such a premium hand, and you’ve totally missed the board. You’re almost 100% sure you’re beat but you feel your opponent can’t call unless they hold an 8, so you decide that you want to throw a temper tantrum (because you missed) and steal this pot by betting 500 on the river. You do so, and your opponent goes into the tank.It is at this moment that your opponent is piecing together the story you have just told them to see if it makes any sense. Every time you’ve raised preflop, you’ve held two high cards. Therefore, there’s really no scenario with you raising preflop that involves you holding an 8 in your hand, unless you raised with 88, but that’s not entirely likely. You checked the turn when the straight hit the board, which means that you were either scared of the card, or you totally loved it. If you had an overpair, you would have probably bet the turn to see where you were at with the intention of folding to a raise.

  In addition to this, if you had an overpair, the river bet is entirely too large for this holding to make sense. With an overpair, you would want a call. 500 screams, “please don’t call me”. Therefore, a logical mindset would deduce that you’d either have the straight or nothing at all in this spot.Given your normal preflop raising range, and your betting patterns on this board, it now starts to make sense that the story you are trying to tell is false. Your opponent calls with A9, and you were caught in a fairly non well-thought-out bluff.

• The good: Good bluffs involve manipulating “sure fire” information. That is, the rare times when you are able to put your opponent on a VERY specific range of hands. This will enable you to represent cards that you know are scary for your opponents hand. For example, as stated before in one of my articles (on Tells, I believe) most opponents who raise 4x preflop are holding mid pocket pairs almost all day. Your opponent believes you to be a relatively loose player, but knows that your calling range is a lot more narrow than your raising range. Therefore, when they make a 4x raise preflop and you call, it is reasonable to assume that they are thinking that you are holding overcards to their middle pair preflop.Let’s say that your opponent makes it 80 to go in the 10/20 blinds preflop on the button, and you call not even looking at your cards. In fact, it would be a good exercise in this hand to stick a post it note on where your cards are just to emphasize that cards aren’t as important as the storytelling is.

  The pot is now 160, and the flop comes 2c 3c 9s. You believe your opponent to be holding 44-88. They make a bet of half the pot (80 - which, by the way screams “I’m leaving myself room to fold this weak hand”), and you decide to call with the intention of bluffing the turn if (a) the flush completes or (b) an overcard hits. The pot is now 320, which means you have 160 chips invested into the hand.

  The turn is an excellent card to pull this move off (Kc). Your opponent bets half the pot once again (160), but this time, you decide to raise and represent either/or the club or the king. You decide to raise to 460, making it another 300 to call for your opponent. Once again, as we discussed before, this is the moment where your opponent goes into the tank and pieces together the story. Here are some of the facts that add up to your raising seeming truthful:

  1. You are sure your opponent perceives you as tight, and you called a 4x raise preflop

  2. You just called the flop, which is often what someone with overcards and more frequently, a flush draw would do.

  3. Your opponent doesn’t know that you know that their 4x raise means “middle pocket pair”, and as a tight player, you’ve shown a tendency to at least have the highest card on the board in raising situations

  4. A flush draw just completed, which is yet another way their hand could be beat.When you add up all the facts, the benefits of folding outweigh the risks of calling, and since your story seems believable, your opponent decides to lay his hand down, and you drag the pot.

So to summarize, equally as imporant as how you bluff is the times you choose to do so. Think about these things, and whether or not the bluffs you tend to make do, in fact, make any sense at all. Before you think about pulling the trigger, make sure all the facts line up. Then and only then will you begin to see the true value in storytelling.

6:04am: This is a very informative article written by Corey (aka “DntCaltACmBk”) regarding note taking in heads up sit n gos. While I personally don’t take advantage of the luxury of being able to take notes as much as I probably should, this article explains why it’s important.

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Throughout the grind of heads up sit & go’s I have picked up a lot of useful skills that aided me in my Sharkscope graph exploding. Note taking was one of them. I do get the opportunity to play the same people multiple times so of course the notes help in that respect – but for me, note taking is mostly about helping me to focus and observe my opponent’s tendencies.

The number one piece of advice that I could share – the one thing that I absolutely know to be true and useful, that I’ve known even before I was a winning player – is that you should be looking to put your opponent into a category as soon as possible. Even if it’s in the first two hands, identify him or her – TAG, LAG, weak-tight, weak-loose, whatever… just categorize him/her! You might not be correct, but much like the testing follows the hypothesis in the scientific method, as does you trying out your opponent. Adjust your play to match the type of player you THINK you are dealing with. If you’re running over the guy, you know you’re right. If it’s not working, reconsider your note. By five minutes in you will probably know what type of opponent you have, then you can lock in your note and you’ll have a head start next time you meet as a bonus.

So what should your notes say? I don’t have a formula, in fact most of my notes are kind of goofy. “Calling McCallington from Callville”. “Loose goose”. But mostly I just write “weak-tight”, “LAG, “TAG”. I do get more specific, which I will get to in a second, but I’ve got to tell you the number one note I make…

The number one, most common, probably happens every day note is…. “weak for weak”. What I’m telling myself is that my opponent bets weak with his weak hands. Think about how beneficial that information is. It almost always holds true too. Most opponents marked with “weak for weak” are accompanied by a note right next to it that says “strong for strong”.

Beyond the one word, one line notes I do sometimes get more specific. This often happens if I am having difficulty categorizing my opponent but I need to keep observing and keep giving myself information. It can also be if I just feel like giving myself as much information as possible. Sometimes a “LAG” note is not enough, if this guy is just a maniac the more ways I can express that in my notes the more I will be prepared next time and know how to close the deal this time. So if a note worthy hand takes place I’ll take it down. Just before I wrote this article, for example, I had to write “Overbet pot huge with bottom pair when I raised pre”. That tells me what kind of player he is, doesn’t it?

Finally, a common note for me is writing down how my opponent likely views me. If I keep getting caught making bad plays or bluffs, maybe my opponent thinks I’m a LAG donk – hey, maybe that’s the note he has on me! So I make a note of it. Another match I had just before this article: I put myself in my opponent’s shoes and it appeared that I was a fairly ABC obvious poker player. This allowed me to steal some nice pots and probably forced him to make some big folds.

Note taking really isn’t about the next time – the next time is good, but you want to win now. Taking good notes means that you are observing, that you are thinking – and especially if you can take notes on how your opponent views you, that kind of critical thinking is bound to improve your game. So take your notes and remember, for when those rematches do come up, it is nice to leave little notes for yourself. I like to write “Dear Corey of the Future, This is the easiest donk in the world. If you lose you should quit at life. Your pal, Corey of the Past.”

1:09pm: Flopping two pair — namely, bottom two — can be a great thing, or disaster for some. If you’re among the many who love to play hands with “possibilities” (that is, connected and/or suited cards), you will sometimes hit the flop by flopping two pair. The problem with this is that sometimes this becomes a really hard hand to play. This is because since your hand is usually well disguised, you will often have to play a hand like this in large pots with people who have caught top pair with a decent kicker. How well you handle situations like this goes a long way in determining your profitability long term.

Perhaps the hardest part of this situation is the speed and force with which you should play the hand. Some people preach pushing hard with bottom two to protect the hand. Some people view the hand as an absolute monster and prefer to slowplay until the river. In contrast, some people view bottom two pair as a very weak holding and prefer to keep the pot small until they are sure it’s the best hand. So which is the right way?

That all depends on how well you can handle the swings and variance in no limit holdem. Anytime you are in a hand, you should always be thinking equally as hard about the cards that could kill your hand as you are about the cards that could improve it.

Let’s face the facts: bottom two pair is a strong hand at the moment, but is extremely vulnerable to being counterfeited by the board. How many times have you played 78 suited, flopped two pair on a board such as 7 8 J - and lost to someone who put it all in with J10, only to get killed by running Kings? It happens more often than you might think. Let’s take a look at all the ways you could lose this hand:

• Running Queens
• Running Kings
• Running Aces
• Running Deuces, Threes, Fours, Fives, and Sixes
• Opponent hitting trips
• Opponent pairing his 10
• Opponent hitting a gutshot 9
• Opponent completing a flush (depending on what suits they hold, and how the board fell)

Suddenly, when you put it in that perpsective, it almost seems like there are more ways to lose the hand than there are for it to hold. That’s because while you are usually favored to win the hand at this point, it isn’t by so much that you should ever feel like the hand is a lock to hold, nor should you really be upset if it doesn’t. Add this to the fact that you could already be beat, and there’s very little to feel comfortable about in this type of situation.

My advice to you is that it’s simply a matter of taste. Bottom two pair on the flop is usually good in a heads up sit n go, however as we discussed above it often doesn’t stay that way. If you can stomach all the sick ways that you could possibly lose the hand, then I would recommend protecting your hand and pushing hard. However, if you’re like me and prefer to keep your variance to a minimum, then I would keep the pot at a medium size, until I’m relatively sure that the turn and river didn’t kill my hand, and then value bet the river with the intention of folding to to a shove.