From now on I'm gong to update my blog whenever anyone correctly points out a mistake I made in the videos so people get updated. Please feel free to post mistakes you think I made in videos directly in threads, whether it be a mathematical mistake or if you just think I forgot to put a hand into a range (I actually get a good amount of PM's where people think I've made a mistake when I haven't, so posting in threads first helps).

The first mistake was the one that was theory patched, so here is mistake #2. It resulted in defending ranges being a few % too tight in multiway pots in this specific video.

http://www.cardrunners.com/cr_forums/showthread.php?144332-Matthew-Janda-Classroom-Flopzilla-Part-3-Released-08-31-2011

Just wanted to let people know I'm really busy this semester and not currently taking any students for coaching. I have a few videos already in store for CR that fit into the "odyssey" thing, and will look forward to making some theory intensive videos for my next series.

So after two really big poker blog posts I wanted to write about some stuff much more important to me that will probably appeal to a much smaller % of the people who read this.

I actually remember the first time I thought to myself "holy shit I exist." I think I was 6 or 7 or something and just watching TV, and I more or less thought to myself "the fact I exist, much less anything exist, is pretty damn mind blowing." I imagine most people have had a similar experience where they realize for just a glimpse how awesome life/existence is and there mind just fills up with excitement and awe. It still happens to me every once in a while when I'm trying to do something or learn something and I think "Wow I exist and I'm young and healthy and I have the freedom to do whatever I want. Why do I even think or care so much if I get some grade on some test or I win some pot playing poker?"

Now when I am thinking this way, I really like the way I look at the world and how I react to different situations. I call this being "conscious" in the sense that I am currently aware and thinking "I am Matthew Janda, I am healthy, and I have the free will to choose what decisions I make and what I do with my life." I compare this to how I usually auto-pilot through the day and more or less react how I feel I should react. If I run into traffic and I'm not "conscious" I will get annoyed like most people do and think "wow I run so bad figures there is traffic hot damn the government sucks at like everything nice job USA lets keep getting more and more into debt and destroy industries like poker while continuing to suck ass at things like transportation where if we had better roads our GDP would higher but blah blah blah." Nope, if I'm conscious, it's more or less "Alright well no big deal, this gives me 30 minutes to think about concept X which has been on my mind and a bit of traffic won't affect my life negatively in any meaningful way."

So where is the happy ending to me becoming self-aware and reaching enlightenment and no longer autopiloting my life? When did I start to embrace how lucky I am and how I have my health and live at a time with no wars so if a war does erupt in 40 years I won't be the guy saying "wow I took it all for granted when things were so good" like 99% of the population will be? Well, it hasn't happened, at least not yet. Staying conscious seems to burn an incredibly lot of energy for me. I cannot constantly think about how awesome my life is, how I have thousands of choices I can make which impact my life every day, etc. without becoming exhausted. It's gotten to the point where I'm able to do it a lot better now than I used to be, but it's still basically exhausting to constantly have your mind working. Instead it still feels like I get quick episodes where I'm more aware, thinking more clearly, and realizing things I take for granted the rest of the day. Those episodes happen more often now, but I still auto-pilot most of the day.

Now lets fast forward to how most of us actually live our lives. I am a huge, huge believer that the brain normalizes just about everything and it has to. Oddly enough I think the best example of this is seen just with our everyday entertaininment. I'm currently writing this on a new $1000 computer which runs insanely fast (built it last week) on a 27" 1920x1200 monitor. I've played a few matches of starcraft 2 since I got this thing, and the first game was amazing. I went from the lowest graphic settings to seeing super sharp super crisp images on the "ultra" setting and the computer running amazingly smooth. How many games did it take before my brain normalized that "this is how starcraft 2 is supposed to look?" About 3 games. Now if I'm not forcing myself to say "wow, look at how awesome this is and how cool it is that when I do have free time I get to play on such an awesome PC" then I forget how cool this new computer is and I'm back to thinking this is "default."

Look at how most super rich celebrities live and how screwed up some of their lives are. They basically can have whatever they want, and they've normalized everything (sex, good food, being able to travel wherever you want) so now they turn to drugs. Granted, sometimes that results in awesome songs like this, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLvohMXgcBo&ob=av3e, but more frequently it results in them being extremely unhappy and often even suicide. These are the richest and most beautiful people in the world normalizing everything and ending up much less happy than when they started and that's insane.

Basically, I've come to the point where I think the key to happiness is walking the fine line where you allow your brain to normalize things the right amount. If you never normalize anything, you won't push yourself further and further. You'll be too happy making $40/hr at a pretty good job rather than trying to make $80/hr at a job you really like. You'll be too happy with the techonology of today and not push for the technology of tomorrow. When you're unsatisfied you'll try to fix what isn't making you happy and hopefully improve your current situation, which just isn't possible if you're always happy. If one knew for sure they'd stay happy with their current situation this would not be a problem, but unfortunately random variables (whether, diseases, aging etc) don't really make this possible.

Yet if your normalize everything your life starts to suck. Imagine the world without internet, running water, easy access to good food, safety, etc. We take all of that for granted and we keep wanting more and more. I get so pissed off when I see poor people whine about how shitty they have it when they have it much better right now than my grandparents did. My great grandfather was probably fist pumping when he first bought a refrigerator and I know my dad did a double fist pump when he got his first color TV, but nowadays people who have it way better just whine and whine. People in America love to whine about the "1%" of rich Americans, yet they don't give two shits about that fact that many of them are in the top 1% in the world. It is insane that they've normalized their lives and the technology around them so much that they have a huge sense of entitlement.

Cliffnotes: While it takes a ton of mental energy to focus on the bigger things and life and not just react from one situation to another, it is probably worth it to try to really appreciate how great many things are rather than just letting your brain normalize it. Pushing yourself to become better while still enjoying what you have is probably the closest recipe to happiness I've seen so far in my young life.

Not on my desktop atm but reminder to myself to make a blog entry about normalizing stuff, happiness, and staying conscious. Should be an interesting one.

So as I've said before, 2011 was the best year of my life but I'm hoping 2012 will be even better by a pretty wide margin. Something about me just clicked in 2012 when I turned 24 and I thought to myself "Wow, 24 is old, I better start getting stuff done" and it has worked out really well. So lets talk a bit about poker theory over the past few years and where I think theory is going for 2012...

Poker Theory In 2010 and Before

Prior to Black Friday, I was able to understand a lot of poker theory concepts in isolation but was not able to connect most of the dots. For example, if you watch my oldest poker series video ever on facing continuation bets in position, I talked about designing flop raising ranges with the right ratio of value bets to bluffs so that we get to the river with a balanced range. I still think this was very good for its time especially since almost no one else makes content like this, but at the end of the day I made no mention of....

1. When the opponent is continuation betting how strong his value betting range should be.

2. What ratio of value bets to bluffs should be in the opponent's range.

3. How to handle a 3-bet from the opponent properly and what boards we should expect this on.

4. How raising ranges should change based on whether we're in position and out of position and what hands we can bluff raise IP that we can't CR bluff OOP since the hand would already be donked.

As you can see, there was very, very little connection to anything other than simply facing a bet in position and using some basic math and theory to design a reasonably balanced range. I didn't understand how polarized ranges work very well and the signficance of re-re-re-polarizing by 4-betting the flop (just writing it out like that somewhat showcases how silly mostly 4-betting vs 3-bets are), the theoretical differences between being IP and OOP, how to defend air in the right manner vs a 3-bet by floating and sizing to use on the turn, etc. All those concepts are much more complicated than just quickly thinking "how often do I need to be betting on the turn and river, and how often do I need to be value betting once I bet the river?" which is pretty much what I did.

Poker Theory In 2011

Black Friday is what really changed the game for me. Moving out of the country was no longer an option, since 18-23 were my "thinking" years and one thing I finally decided on for a variety of reasons was I'm going to go to medical and become a doctor who uses the catch phrase "I'm sick, so you don't have to be." Yet since moving wasn't an option, I was stuck with a few remaining choices.

1. Quit poker entirely and move on.

2. Join online poker at an unknown site. Remember, sites actually probably seem safer online now than they did immediately after Black Friday where there were talks of more sites getting their money frozen by the government and our money stolen, so don't be results oriented and think this was a great option since it didn't happen.

3. Keep coaching part time and hope to get a few more students.

After weighing all the options, option #3 seemed best to me since I enjoy coaching much more than grinding and usually if I make a good CardRunners video I get several PM's for coaching and word of mouth has been pretty good to me. I've always thought it's a bit rediculous how some people charge like $135/hr for NL$200+ coaching and $40/hr for NL$50 coaching, so I decided I was going to use a fixed rate as I always had. If someone wants coaching at MSNL or theory coaching because they play high stakes limit or SNG's, it's the same rate as someone who plays uNL. I'm not going to design custom prices to try to maximize how much money I get off each individual person, especially since some people just want theory coaching for flopzilla or on a specific topic so it seems dumb to ask them "Wait, what stakes do you play?" so I can charge them a certain rate.
This resulted in me getting a HUGE spread of players accross limits and games given how few students I overall have (I pretty much never have more than 10 at a time). Some uNL guys would pay my rate and do a ton of work between our lessons to maximize what they learned, while other MSNL guys just didn't seem to care all that much figuring I was cheap enough that my hourly rate was irrelevant and they'd just like to hear my thoughts as they review their own play. Nevertheless, this allowed me to see how players think and approach spots throughout the limits a bit better, and when coaching MSNL players especially they are much better at asking tough questions and demanding you really figure out theory. When I coach someone at NL$50, I pretty much do a leakfinder and know exactly what I'm going to do and how I'm going to explain it to them. When I coach someone playing a different game or much higher, I can expect to get asked much more difficult questions and expect to get called out if some of the theory doesn't appear to work perfectly.
As usual, when life makes a certain requirement of you or puts you in a certain position you tend to adapt and tough circumstances make you stronger. So if my poker situation required me to try to get really, really good at theory, that's what I was going to do. In addition, I no longer was playing myself, so the odds of me becoming bias based on my play decreased significantly. While I would be the first to admit I think I would have been skeptical to hire a coach who no longer plays (and I have had people no hire me for this reason which is totally fine by me), I honestly believe not playing poker when focusing mainly on theory is a huge, huge advantage. Once you stop playing, you begin asking yourself a few questions...

1. Why do people continuation bet the flop so much as the PFR when they are OOP, but almost never donk bet?
2. Why is everyone betting around the same amount of 60-70% of the pot all of the time? Why don't 15% or 115% pot sized bets make sense (Spoiler alert: they do)?
3. Why can some hands with so much equity be so bad, and others with so little equity be so good? What exactly are all that factors which make a hand better than its equity suggest, and what factors make it worse? (there are like 10)
4. How can you quantatively calculate the value of position? What variables change its value? Why are so few people flatting 3-bets and 4-bets OOP preflop and does that mathematically make any sense?

Answering these questions was tough, but ultimately for the most part doable (I'm sure I'll learn more in 2012 but the amount learned in 2011 was huge). It was awesome to have so many students asking tough questions which really got me thinking, and I think my policy of "In general, if I learn something exploitative from you I will not talk about that with other players or put it in a video since that's your knowledge and it may not even work for other players who play differently at other stakes. Nevertheless, most people want theory coaching, and everyone has access to all the thoery I know now, and the theory I'm working on currently is ___________ but I don't have ___________ completely figured out yet but will let you know as I learn more about it." While the majority of my students actually told me they didn't care what information I shared with other students and some of my students even knew each other, I think for the few that did respected this policy as it kept everything extremely fair while still allowing theory to continue to be improved.

Poker Theory in 2012

I believe 2012 will be the year I make the best videos on the toughest subjects and it will not be close. Several of the subjects I've already discussed need to improved a bit, but I'm especially excited to feel comfortable on making videos on the following concepts at some time in 2012...

1. Out of position play in general with a very heavy emphasis on flopzilla. This was not possible before 2012 since out of position play is so much harder than positional play as ranges are usually extremely wide and multiple ranges need to be balanced at the same time. Hopefully the donk betting series showed why it's silly to assign value to initiative, and in 2012 I'll show how to play OOP theoretically well regardless of whether or not we're the PFR or cold caller.

2. The significance of having a polarized range. This determines whether to check-call with a hand or bet it and turn it into a bluff, whether to raise when facing a bet or call and on what types of board textures, and how to decide whether or not to flat 3-bet and 4-bets preflop. This concept is huge and extremely broad, and arguably more important than any other concept other than understanding how equity and EV relate and what variables determine how valuable the equity in a given spot. Either way expect this to be a huge focus in 2012.

3. Advanced bet sizing videos, showcasing opportunities where betting very small or very large makes a ton of sense. This is not possible without understanding whether or not the opponent's range is polarized and the signifcance of giving the opponent's range additional cards. Basically, betting 60-70% of the pot in spots where both players have ranges which include monsters, draws, marginal hands, etc like on the flop is usually fine, but in other spots its awful/silly yet people are just used to auto-betting that amount without thinking. A few videos on betsizing will probably be quite simple and practical immedietly and should give viewers plenty of "ah-hah" moments with little work, while others will be much more difficult and much more abstract and likely only useful for players already reallyreally good.

By the end of 2012, I pretty much want to be considered the best guy at explaining practical no limit hold'em poker theory. I'm sure there are others who are much better at math than I am and abstract theoretical games (Hence the book "Mathematics of Poker"), but I want to understand actual applied theory and how equity, position, polarized ranges, etc better than anyone and be able to explain it better than anyone. We'll see how 2012 goes for me, but this is pretty clearly my poker goal for now and I think it's one that is doable despite being extremely busy with school. We'll just have to wait and see how 2012 goes but I'm pretty excited about this year.

Hey everyone,

Been incredibly busy and it's been a very long time since I've made a new blog post. In fact, I haven't even made a new video in over a month I believe despite wanting to finish my important theory concepts series and donking series. School has kept me very busy (as well as a few other various projects/activities), but now that finals have ended I'm ready to start making videos/blogging/etc. Look for a post about me summarizing 2011 and where I want to go with poker videos/theory in 2012 pretty soon.

Today I want to write briefly about how I would approach climbing up the limits if I were to start poker now, and how I would recommend others approach poker if they are still playing very low stakes. This is especially important due to a big project CardRunners plans on releasing in 2012 which I'm say I'll be able be a part of and be able to discuss breifly at the end of the post.

Lastly, I want to explicitly mention that I think no one really has a great idea of how all stakes play. I don't even play poker anymore, but I played a reasonable amount the last few years and have coached a lot of people since Black Friday accross a huge spread of stakes. That's probably one of the neat things about being a theory coach, that I have actually coached and gotten to discuss spots with micro stakes players, small stake players, medium stakes players, and even limit and HU SNG players all at the same time. I learn a lot from them and get to see how games play at different stakes and how different players approach different situations. While I haven't played 500,000 hands at every single stake in the last year and I am sure games have changed since I remember playing lower limits, hopefully I can still provide some good input for what you should be focusing on as you climb up limits. One mistake I know a lot of older MSNL/HSNL players make is they remember games like NL$100 and NL$200 being an absolute joke where you had donks donating full stacks non-stop, and while games did play that way 6 years ago they don't now so thinking NL$200 is incredibly soft and you can easily stake a smart guy who will quickly make $75+/hr is rediculous. All these limits focus mainly on 6-max but I imagine most of the concepts apply to full ring as well.

No Limit $25

This is the first limit where you start seeing a lot of people play for actual "real" money, and I remember grinding around $15-$20 an hour while learning at this limit several years ago. In general, this limit is Here is what I'd want from someone I was staking (I do not stake people at this time) before I'd allow him to move up, even if he was doing well.

#1) Have every preflop opening range memorized.

#2) Be able to 3-bet bluff with the right types of hands (AXs/KXs in position, suited connectors and pocket pairs too weak to call OOP).

#3) Understand what board textures can be continuation bet and will get too many folds, and what board textures we should avoid continuation betting.

#4) Be able to calculate basic pot odds, both the odds he lays to his opponent when he bets as well as how often he needs to be good when facing a river bet to make a call +EV.

#5) Understand the value of position and how ranges should change both preflop and postflop based on whether or not we have position.

#6) Very trivial understanding of how the remaining streets left to act change value betting to bluffing ratios. Bluff a lot on the flop, a medium amount on the turn, and a little on the river is fine, I don't expect him to know the actual frequencies well.

#7) Understand how to check is you have mutually contradicting thoughts. In other words, understand why it can't make sense to say "I think my opponent folds to a PSB river bet 60% of the time, but I don't think I can profitably bluff." I do not expect a NL$25 player to be good at recognizing contradicting thoughts at all, but I expect him to understand that concept before moving up so he can slowly start realizing when his lines don't make sense. He should also understand why things which look like contradicting thoughts are not. "If you think it's bad to bluff raise here, then it must be good to value raise here!" for example is a very common one.

So that's a pretty big list, and I'll add more if I think of more. Notice again how rediculous this list probably sounds to someone who played many years ago when the smallest stakes were NL$50 or NL$100. People have gotten better, and it's important a player knows what he's doing as he approaches NL$50 and isn't completely clueless. Variance is a bitch and most people who want to move up very fast have run very well, and it's best you learn what you're doing now before moving up before you *gasp* lose 15 BI at NL$50 (which is 30BI at NL$25!) and get emo.


No Limit $50
Now we come to the limit where we actually start seeing professional players. Good NL$50 players can make $25-$30 an hour after rakeback, which is a really good salary for most people in most countries, and even a very respectable salary for most young people in America now as times have gotten tough. At this limit you will be playing against players who make their living playing many tables at once hoping to grind a reasonable winrate and get rakeback, and while they are not very good players they do at least have a basic understanding of the game and try to minimize how many "big" mistakes they make. Here is what I want from a NL$50 player before I allow him to move up to NL$100 if he's playing on my stake.

#1) Every 3-bet defending range, 3-betting range, and cold calling range memorized. I do not want you thinking "Wait, what am I supposed to do with AJo in the CO when a good SB player 3-bets?" You should know what to do there as your "default" plan and be able to adjust it as necessary. I don't care if you can't write down all your ranges to the exact combo, but it should be pretty damn close just like you should know your PFR opening ranges and be able to adjust them as needed at NL$25.

#2) Knowledge of how to play in 3-bet pots. I don't expect you to be good at them, but you should know why you should CB smaller on the flop, why you should consider small turn bets on boards where your opponent is likely to jam or fold.

#3) A real understanding of equity, and why equity does not imply expected value. Why does 9h8h work well as a float on a Kh 7c 4d board despite having garbage equity, yet 88 sucks despite having a lot more equity? You should be aware of what variables alter the expected value of a hand other than equity (streets left to act, position, stack depth, and many more) even if you do not have an excellent understanding of them.

#4) Be able to tell me the common sense way to exploit any player who has a huge leak. If someone 3-bets the top 20% of his range against a button open rather than polarizes his 3-bets, how does that affect our opening range? What about our defending frequency? What about an opponent who 4-bets very aggressively? If you see an obvious leak your opponent has, you should be able to exploit it pretty easily.

#5) Be able to defend an adequate amount when facing bets in position. If your opponent CB on the flop, what hands should you be defending with? What hands work best as calls and what hands work best as raises? You don't need to be incredibly accurate, but you should have a reasonable idea for how strong a hand needs to be to call, at least when in position for heads up pots.

#6) Understanding of your opponent's felting range in various spots. If your opponent CB in MP on a AT4r board, what is the worst hand you expect him to call down with. If a player CB in MP vs our button flat on a AT4r board, what is the worst hand that calls down with on most turn and river cards? What does that say about our raising range? If we continuation bet in the CO vs button on a Qh Th 5c board, what is the worst hand he's realistically going to call down with?

#7) Know your HUD stats incredibly well, and know what frequencies you use so you can compare them to your opponnent's. It's hard to pick out your opponents leaks if you don't have any point of reference.

#8) Understand how the ability to bet only two streets is more or less lost on the flop when OOP (since going bet, bet, check with a marginal hand doesn't accomplish much). Realize how betting ranges change on the flop based on whether you're in or out of position.

No Limit $100

No limit $100 holds a special place in my heart as I always ran really well at this stake and I think it's the stake where you see the most nits. Usually, if you run pretty well you can play an extremely tight/nitty game at NL$25/NL$50 and win enough money from the total fish/spewtards and lose only a little bit to better regs and still move up in stakes. People are used to playing very tight to win at NL$25 and NL$50 (though not winning as much as they could), and expect to cointinue the same ABC "Well, I should always fold TPTK here because no one ever bluffs" style that you can exploit. Playing extremely tight and making hero folds won't let you win at NL$100.
It's also the stake where you start winning big money in real life terms. Very few people in the real world make over $50/hr, and this is possible at NL$100. It might not seem like much in poker where you can win or lose so much in a day and higher stakes players are winning so much more, but it's definitely a very respectable amount of money. It's enough money that most people who are beating NL$100 strongly consider going "pro" because the money is so often much better than the other options. Here is how I'd approach NL$100.

#1) Be able to start pulling big bluffs. People are used to regulars NEVER bluffing at lower stakes, so it's time to start spoon feeding people folds. You need to be willing to randomize bluffs with the right types of hands vs the right types of players even if that involves you occassionally bluffing away 200-300BB in a session where they don't work.

#2) Exploit and understand general trends of the limit. Since regulars don't bluff raise enough, people aren't going to slowplay strong hands against you when you raise. For example, if I raise the turn on a Qh Th 7c 5d board and my opponent calls, he's almost NEVER nutted on a river blank. If he was strong, he'd jam the turn thinking "I better jam here so the river doesn't scare him, and I don't want to get outdrawn." This thought process even makes sense for the opponent, but it will be awful against good players who can actually bluff (by raising the turn we're insanely polarized and him 3-betting usually accomplishes nothing. Why do I care if you jam if my range is sets/two pair or air?)

#3) Be more accurate with frequencies. If you bluff raise a flop CB, what fraction of the time should you bet following through on a blank turn? What fraction of your turn raises should be bluffs?

#4) Stop caring about initiative. Be able to start donk betting in the right spots and stop automatically betting when you're the preflop raiser.



No Limit $200

This is the limit a lot of good players get stuck on because the money is very good and it's extremely hard for some players to swallow downswings at higher limits (I ran over $10,000 below in my first 60k hands at NL$400 for example). The best regulars will win over $100/hr at this limit and it's the last limit where it's easy to play as many tables as you'd like, as NL$400+ doesn't always run a bunch of tables on many sites and sometimes the tables are quite bad.
If you're a reasonable winner at NL$200, it's extremely unlikely you have other opportunities in life nearly as profitable as just grinding. Many if not most of the regulars you encounter at this limit will be playing professionally, and since upswings and downswings can hit almost five figures you should be willing to work hard to beat this limit even if getting better may not always be fun (paying money for a coach, studying your own play, grinding flopzilla, etc). This is what I'd want you to know if I were staking you for NL$200 before you move up to NL$400.
1) Understand how big of a deal polarizing a range is. Be willing to take lines which are slightly more +EV but make the hand much, much more difficult to play. Don't be afraid to make a small raise on the turn even though it may put you in a very tough river situation on some turn cards if the small turn raise is more +EV than just jamming.

2) Acknowledge the entire spectrum of bet sizes. Stop thinking every spot has one specific bet size. If your thought process is "Would I rather bet 60% here, or would I rather check" you're almost certainly doing it wrong. It's possible to balance multiple ranges with multiple bet sizes in the same spot, and even if you're not balanced it usually won't matter. Take the obvious line with the obvious hand if you can get away with it and only balance it if you need to.
3) Able to constantly check to make sure you're not contradicting yourself with your thought process. Can you overbet bluff the river with the nuts for 1.5 PSB? No? Ok, that means the opponnet must call your river bet at least 40% of the time, so the EV of overbetting must be at least 1.5 x 0.4 = 0.6 PSB. Now why are you betting 0.5 PSB on the river then? Do you think the EV of a 0.5 PSB river bet is greater than 0.6 PSB? If so, your opponent better be raising that river bet a LOT!

4) Extremely comfortable in 3-bet pots. Stack depth is much lower in 3-bet pots so they should be easier after all, and they occur very frequently at NL$200+ and you should be very comfortable in how to play them.

5) Defend from the blinds like a boss. Three bet aggressively, flat aggressively, donk bet aggressively, etc. The blind defending ranges are usually much stronger than the button opening ranges, so the button can go get a real job if he thinks he's going to keep getting to open 50%+ when you're in the blinds. Take that shit back to NL$100 where everyone folds.

6) Be able to mix in check-raises and check-calls after betting the previous street or on the flop as the PFR when the situation calls for it, and be able to balance both ranges when the situation calls for it. Understand the significance of a check-raise vs a bet and how each line affects the opponents felting range.


No Limit $400+

I don't have enough experience at these limits to feel comfortable providing advice. I do think to be a good NL$400 player it requires most of the concepts we've already talked about, as well as being able to really exploit specific opponents very well since you play against the same players so much (keep in mind I'm not talking about someone with a 0.5 PTBB winrate at NL$400, I mean someone who wins $150+/hr. Any good NL$200 can still win a bit at NL$400, he just wins less than at NL$200). Chances are if you're at this point, you aren't reading forums/watching too many videos and already have a good enough sense of your game to know what you need to be doing without needing to get advice from someone else.

Cardrunners Series for 2012
The reason why I wrote that super long post is twofold. Firstly, I hadn't written a poker related post in a while so I wanted to write a useful poker related post before I start using this blog for mostly non-poker stuff and talking about other issues that people who come here just for poker aren't going to be as interested in. The other reason is Cardrunners is planning on launching a more complete and very large series that deals a wide range of NLHE concepts next year.
One thing I dislike quite a lot about the way I released my old videos is they are not incredibly structured. Granted, when I started making them I was a lot, lot worse at theory than I am now so I wasn't able to plan the series out as well as I'd now be able to, but I constantly get questions like "Where should I go to learn about ______" in the threads regarding my new videos. It'd be great if rather than having 8 or so 3 part series (for 24 videos total) I instead had 24 videos which could be watched in order and get points accross much more clearly. This way I spend less time rehashing old ideas an can more quickly move onto new concepts which are much harder to discuss.
This is what CardRunners is going to try to do next year. We're going to try to connect series and videos together in a better way than we've done in the past, so you can see how videos and series are connected rather than having all series independent from one another. Granted, the current plans for right now is just to have one big "giant hold em package" of 30 or so videos at the beginning of the year, but there's no reason why this couldn't be done more frequently if this is successful. I wanted to write out I think each player should learn at each limit so it gives some guidance to new players so they're not completely lost in how they should go about learning. Connecting so many videos is without a doubt going to be a huge challenge since we don't have one person making them all, but methodically approaching certain concepts so we touch upon more aspects of poker with less repetition I think is a huge step in the right direction.

First off, I'm finally done with school, so I will start making videos again soon. I'm going to make what I hope will be some very good videos within the next few days and hopfully they'll come out relatively soon, I already started a flopzilla video on multiway pots and will likely make one on 3-bet pots as well. I of course haven't forgotten about the theory series and will continue to make leakfinders/replayers as well, so feel free to send me content.

Now on to the main focus on this blog: I'm starting to think there are more several more variables that go into success than I originally thought, and that natural intelligence is pretty overrated. Like most people, I used to think success was some combination of natural talent, hard work, and luck, with some other variables being relevent very niche jobs (such as looks being the most important factor for modeling). I've thought about this a lot in the past, and one of my friends who I think is very intelligent has told me several times he thinks intelligence is very, very overrated despite the fact that he knew many people who thought he was smart enough that he could accomplish almost anything. I've been told a similar thing throughout my life, and remember one of the biggest compliments I've ever had coming from my high school biology teacher in letter of recommendation to get a scholorship in science saying "Matt is smart enough to do just about anything he wants to do. I'd like him to get this scholarship, because I'd like him to go into science."

I don't think I ever became arrogant, as I actually hate the amount of variance which naturally occurs in the world whether it be in the form of some people being born super smart while others are very stupid, some people gorgeous while others very ugly, and worst of all on a totally seperate issue which I'm not going to touch here some people incredibly rich and healthy and others incredibly poor or sick. I dislike variance in general despite running incredibly good with it so far in life, and I always thought if you were dealt a bad hand in intelligence/looks/athleticism you were just about always going to be outclassed by someone who is more naturally talented than you. After a lot of thought and just taking some very intensive classes the last two months, I now think there's a lot more variables that go into success than I orginally thought which are incredibly important and easy to overlook. The first one I want to talk blog about today is pride.

Pride is an incredibly interesting emotion to me because most people don't expect it to be nearly as self-destructive of an emotion as it is and it's very hard to detect. Most people have a huge sense of entitlement and self-importance, and hate to be proven wrong. One of the reasons why I actually love math/theory/binary logic so much in general is I made the following realization over the last few years- "I either believe what I've always believed about this certain subject, and am likely incredibly biased, or I no longer believe what I used to believe about this certain subject and have experienced being confident when I now think I was likely wrong." I don't know a better way to describe it other than the fact that it somewhat made me "life agnostic," which doens't mean I don't have strong feelings or beliefs about certain subjects or areas, but rather I now try even harder to entertain the idea that I might be wrong and no matter what I believe their are other intelligent people who disagree with me. Math and theory somewhat avoid this problem, since by expressing your beliefs in mathematical terms you're able to see if their contradictions and even if it doesn't tell you exactly where you are wrong, you at least know you are wrong somewhere and you can futher investigate it.

Most people unfortunately do not think this way. I realize the irony in the previous sentence right after the previous paragraph, but just like in my theory videos where people sometimes love to point out I didn't "technically" prove something, it's annoying to go way out of my way to showcase that I understand the need to be "open to the idea of not being open to ideas" or whatever when people start becoming philosophy nits. My point is simply this: most people are often too confident about what they think (they overestimate their ability to accurately anlalyze data and make predictions about the future), and rather than simply saying "oh wow, I've sucked a lot at analyzing data in the past, I probably should just be less certatin of things in the future and more open to the idea of being wrong" they get incredibly defensive and refuse to learn and grow as a person. This is bad and will prevent you from getting places in life.

Acknowledging you are wrong and being willing to listen to others who disagree with you is an absolutely hugely important quality for getting faster/smarter/better/stronger/etc. Some of the worst two traits many people have, whether they're smart or not, is...

1) They define intelligence based on how much someone else agrees with them. "I can tell if someone is smart or not after talking with them a few minutes" often means "I define how smart someone is based on how much they agree with me. And since I agree with myself 100% of the time, I must be super smart!

2) "I'm awesome at everything which can't be tested quantitatively." How often do you see someone say they're awesome at running the 100 yard dash? Probably not very often, because you just respond "really? how fast are you? why don't you go try it right now and see how quick you are?" Yet how often do people say they're really, really good at stuff that you can't test for directly, such as driving, being funny, or just being smart (most people don't know their IQ score, and an IQ test itself probably isn't the best indicator)? Probably close to nonstop.

Rather than focusing on just working harder (since you can't control how talented you are), a better way to get better at something and increase your chance at success is likely to be more willing to admit you're wrong. I'm going to work hard in the next few years about not being afraid to just "go for it," and not be too prideful to fail at something while being open to ways that I can improve.

Anyways GL everyone and take care,

Matt

Hey if anyone wants some footage of them playing analyzed from a theoretical approach please PM me or post here, I need some footage for my next non-theory related video. I would prefer if you are playing NL$200 or NL$400.

Thanks,

Matt

Working much harder than I ever have and I think it's safe to say I spread myself too thin. I'm happy I did this, since it's good to push yourself, but I can't wait for my classes to end in a month and to finally get some time off and take on a lighter work load. I basically took the equivalent of around 5 classes since summer classes go at 2.33 times the usual rate and I have 2, and when you add on poker students and other stuff I'm working on (and I need to start volunteering) that's simply a bit too much.

I'm pretty excited about poker theory, it seems like it's becoming a more popular area of focus from what I've seen. That's pretty cool since there are some neat things you can do with it, and I think it will become even more popular over the next few years. I've gotten quite a few PM's and students have recommended me to other students, so I need to raise my rates back to $100/hr for new students, which was my original rate before April 15. Older students will be grandfathered in at a cheaper rate, at least for a while. On the same I'm really busy note I was still able to make a mini-theory quickie regarding 4-bet pots, and the results I got after doing some math were kinda surprising to me. So at least they'll be one little theory video coming out before I go back to completing my donking series, which I do really want to finish but there are other things I need to take care of first and theory series especially I hold to a super high standard because it's pretty hard to argue math.

There's also some non-poker projects I really want to eventually do, one I'm super pumped on especially. Really hard to find the time to work on stuff though, or read non-school related stuff. Really want to get back into reading about different philosophies and religions especially, I find that stuff really interesting and I hate the fact that stuff like that always seems to be the first thing to go when you're busy and trying to cram a bunch of stuff in. I remember reading in economics about how every society always looks back at the past and thinks "LOL, we were so silly back then, good thing we're smart now and know the correct answers to ______" (in this case it was economics), and it's extremely interesting to see how people thought and viewed the world throughout history. I think it also will make me a much better thinker now, so it's not really wasted time. Alas, I'm not doing any of that now but need to get back on it.

Right now I'm trying to focus on "Present society tells you your goal should in life should be to acquire more and more things. Past socities thought your goal in life should be to acquire the qualities you desire." I'm paraphrasing of course, and I can't remember if I heard this and I have no idea if it's true since it's so vague. Yet for some reason this quote really stood out to me and I'm trying really hard to focus on this right now. Glad I'm working really hard because I think I should be doing it now while I'm young, and I'm pretty sure I'd live my life pretty much the same way if I won $50 million tomorrow (at least keep busting my ass and trying to get into medschool and still trying to keep myself working all day), so I think that's a pretty good sign. So far 2011 has been pretty good despite the whole government screwing poker players thing.