Yo guys, it's been forever. My Blog posts slowed a lot when I moved to live poker and didn't have much to talk about.

Over the past few months I have been working on a book and it is finally available for sale:




I think I finally cracked the code in defining exactly how to play poker. In this book, I go in depth on how to make your own "most +EV decisions," instead of copy someone else's, and why it is important to use math on a daily basis in order to back up your assumptions. I use terms that should be in every poker book (but somehow aren't), like: enumeration, equity, and combinatorics, and I help explain why these are the root concepts of poker. I create "The Unified Theory of Poker" to show people that there is a finite answer to every decision in poker, and the better you define each variable (like hand in an opponent's range, opponent folding frequency, etc.) the more clear of a solution you will have when looking for your most +EV decision. I give some of my own thoughts and experiences on how to better prepare yourself for your next session, and I discuss a lot of my thoughts on live poker.

The book is so new I am still looking to get reviews on it and put them up as soon as possible. Also, I am still working on getting the advertising and marketting going for it, so be patient. But I honestly cannot see how this book can be a bad investment, for only $50 I cover all the important concepts on poker that not many other books don't even acknowledge! Take a look, I hope you enjoy, and feel free to give me feedback!

Just gave my first 2-7NL lesson today. I gotta say for $200/hr I think I am a steal. My student is basically preparing himself for the 2 WSOP events as well as any mix games that may have 2-7NL. It was a great lesson and I think in just one hour I turned him from a mediocre reg into a winning pro.

Yesterday I played the majors and for the first time in a while actually won money in tournaments. That is how tournies go, but usually its lose a little win a lot, I actually just won a little with a couple middle of the run cash's in the Sunday Brawl and the 100R. Overall I have been working about 250% longer than I was just a couple months ago and feel really good about my game and the amount of time I am putting in. Soon I will move up from 2/4 NL 6max to 3/6 NL 6max. I am not sure if I will stay at 3/6, I just can't see there being an equal amount of fish to 2/4, and I imagine the regulars aren't nearly as bad. Maybe just game selecting between 2/4 and 5/10 should be my end goal, we will see.


I got in a little online verbal war with king10clubs, one of the better SuperNova Elites on PokerStars. Basically I was continuously owning him at one or two tables where I had position and finally after pushing him out of another pot I said in chat "get owned harder plz" and he came back with some trash, something like "you are a worthless bumhunting nit." After thinking about what he said for a while I realized its kind of a compliment. I know I am not a true nit in the sense that I suck at poker or play ridiculously tight (maybe slightly tight but not ridiculous). And bumhunting nowadays is so important. You don't want to waste your time pushing chips back and forth and paying rake with regulars. Go out, find the fish, play with them, your winrates will not regret it. At 2/4 there are so many games that you should pretty much always be able to get on a few tables with some fish on them, and if there aren't any others that are good enough for your standards, then just play fewer tables, focus on your opponents, and pwn. Not bumhunting (6max) when mass tabling is a mistake and will turn ya into a rakeback pro real fast. As far as king10 is concerned I think he just PTR's me and sees my full ring stats and thinks I actually play 19/16 at 6max. After he called me a nit I realized that I can get more folds out of him and so far its working pretty nicely. Just goes to show that you can give away too much info right quick in the chat box especially when you mass table and don't adjust to good players correctly.

As far as PZ goes, we are working hard to create a new seeds course and will keep growing and incorporating new ideas to the site as the come along. We are planning on making some nice changes soon, so stay tuned.

See ya at the tables.

So I just got done spending a week in Miami. I had a blast at WMC going to many pool parties and drinking all night. Unfortunately it seems like every day we started the party too early and never made it late into the night for the best nightclub experience. I also drank too much and crashed right at what was suppose to be the highlight of our trip. That was Friday night. I have spent the last few days recovering inside our hotel room and now out at Shana's parents house north of Ft Lauderdale. Overall had a great time and am looking forward to getting back on the grind when I get home on Wednesday.

Til then.

Find the book here: http://plotheory.nutblocker.com/home

I'm sorry for the delay and thank you to Tom for making these books. It took quite some time to conquer all 500 pages of Volume's One and Two of Advanced PLO Theory, but it was well worth it. These books contain some of the hardest to obtain information the poker world has ever sought to understand, especially when dealing with combinatorics and the complete breakdown of hand and board texture. The structure of these books reminds me of a math or statistics book. Its very dense material that can be somewhat boring at times, but the knowledge you get from reading it can easily make you a small fortune.

About half of each book is filled with charts with information on hands or boards that help breakdown what exactly is going on in literally each and every possible way that hands or boards can be created. This information is simultaneously pertinent and irrelevant. You don't need to remember exactly what the chart says, but you can use the trends that you see in these charts to form concepts about board textures, hand strength, and from there you become a better player. Tom does a great job breaking down board textures using a logical system that helps the reader identify straight and straight draw possibilities, the strength of flush's, flush draws, and sets, as well as how many turn and river cards change what the nuts will be and how that affects any hand you can have and the range that you have assigned your opponent.


While the books are structured around PLO I quickly found the information on board textures helping me in my NLHE game.



What would you get out of these books?

You will learn about the 5 key tools a poker player uses - Mathematics, Psychology, Adaptability, Memory, and Logic. You will learn about the 7 parameteres of a postflop situation - Number of Opponents, Position, Stack to Pot Ratio (this book is the first place where I see this term used to its full extent), Initiative, Board texture, Opponent Tendencies, and Image. You will be shown why and how you should create a balanced strategy to fend off opponent adjustments. You will learn how to correctly estimate an opponents range, plug it in to propokertools.com and analyze decisions on any given street. You will learn true hand value vs range on multiple different board textures and streets, and when you combine that with thousands of hands of experience, you will start to see a huge improvement in your game (you must still put in the hours at the table, this gives no shortcuts, in fact it gives you so much to think about its more of the longcut) . You will be given a plethera of examples that will relate to experiences you will have at the table.



These books are pricey, $2500, but if you have a desire to get substantially better at PLO, or if you are a winning NLHE player looking to move over to PLO, this book is THE BIBLE. Get ready to spend a lot of time reading and rereading it; just like any true professional has books about their field that they occasionally reference, you will have these books by your computer to help analyze your game. You will still have to put in tons of hard work to truly prosper, but this book provides all the framework for how to focus your attention and get better.

Find the book here: http://plotheory.nutblocker.com/home

Here are a few pics from the wedding. We just got the digital negatives from our photographer a while ago. Also when I get my new computer I will be able to put up Nick Nelson's best man speech, which is pretty epic.











Shana and BridesMaids Miero on left, my sister Katrina in the middle, and Shana's cousin Sasha on the right.



Me and my family.





The epic dance party

What is up, just got back from an epic houseboating trip in Northern California. Basically just a bunch of friends drinking and wakeboarding for 3 days. I managed not to get too dehydrated, sick, or hungover, which is great news. I am looking to be back on the grind for the next few weeks, hopefully increasing my time spent at the tables to the maximum possible. Since my last post things have been going fairly well, I have made some more monies playing poker and have been pretty active socially. On top of all that I have been grinding Starcraft 2 nonstop, just trying to get better. It's a great game with many similarities to poker, and I feel like it helps keep me ready for pokers. Other than that I am thinking of getting a new computer: http://www.falcon-nw.com/desktops/talon and my assistant officially has her own desk in my office, which is improving productivity tremendously. Sorry for the big hiatus, its probably directly related to SC2 which is all I do when I am not playing poker but still near my computer. Over the next few weeks I intend to get things in order and probably pump out a few videos. Also I am still reading the PLO books written by Tom "LearnedFromTV" Chambers, they are amazing but dense, and I haven't been spending much time on "the dark side." That should all change soon though.

Next blog post I will put up some pics and videos from the last few weeks and our wedding.

After winning 2 10 person sngs, I got down to the final 14 and then the final 9 in the 1500 shootout yesterday. I was fortunate enough to hold with TT vs Annette_15's a7o and another overshovers AQo to move us to the final table as chip leader. From there I played pretty tight solid and ended up kinda being card dead for a while, still managing to stay about even in chips from steals and playing some marginal hands. I made a bad call down 3 handed that 1) I didn't need to make to win the tourny, and 2) was probably based on playing so long all day, and I am just not happy about it. I basically went with the read that my opponent is good and will 3barrel bluff K high boards, little did I know my opponent just instabets 2 pair even on scary rivers (I also missed a good check raise bluff allin spot rather than a hero call). Making the bad call down put me at 20 BBs 3handed and I never recovered, losing a flip QJs to 88. I played pretty well and am happy with the 3rd place cash for 161k, but more importantly the final table experience is teaching me alot about my endgame tourny play and how I should be thinking about opponents who maybe haven't EVER made a big cash and are much less likely to make a "move." There is something to be said about live poker reads, which is generally just you can get more information on your opponent than you usually can online, and they are less likely to bluff if they aren't comfortable with the stakes, because of the pressure of their surroundings. Oh well, I will take third and continue improving my game. Soon I will be reading and reviewing LearnedfromTV's extremely extensive books on PLO, and I intend to switch over from playing 10/25 at the rio to playing 5/5/10 PLO. This has been a good month and a few months coming, I will try to final table something again soon!