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.