Book Review!

Posted on November 21, 2014 by Jason Schlachter

I have read almost everything that was on my book list and am looking for new books to read.  Please let me know if you have any recommendations!  My favorites of this round were Brain on Fire, The Invention of Wings and The Elegance of the Hedgehog and Expert No Limit Hold’em 1 and 2.

Non-Fiction

(=)Not That Kind of Girl by Lena Dunham.   I enjoyed some of the stories in the book, but a lot of it was filler such as the reprinting of her food diary.  She doesn’t speak to me, but her voice came through in the book and I would certainly recommend it to her fans.

(+)Brain on Fire by Susannah Cahalan.  The author’s personal tale of the effects of a rare type of brain encephalitis.  It was very interesting to read her struggles and descriptive without being graphic.

(-)The Art of Mental Training by DC Gonzalez.  Another in the genre of self training books that repeat standard advice without expanding on it further.  Painfully beginning each chapter by reading how the author’s mentor treated him like the Karate Kid made me wonder if the author even had an editor.

(-)Daring Greatly by Brene Brown.  This book on vulnerability was written in the same mold as Lean In, that is to say it is semi-autobiographical and attempts to apply those lessons to the world.  I want to give an example, but I can’t bear to open the book again.

Fiction

(=)Girl by Blake Nelson.  A teenage novel my wife was recommended.  It was a little silly, but not too bad considering the genre.

(+)An Abundance of Katherines by John Green.  I enjoyed this story about an OCD boy who only dates girls named Katherine(19 of them).  It was lighthearted and funny and it was very easy to root for the main character.

(+)Looking for Alaska by John Green.  This novel by the same author as above was more suspenseful as a boy goes in search of his friend who has disappeared.  It’s told in the same enjoyable voice that An Abundance of Katherines was told.

(=)Paper Towns by John Green.  This book was a little more preachy than the previous 2 books by John Green and the story was not nearly as entertaining.  It was certainly the worst of the 4 books by John Green I have read, but luckily it was short.

(+)The Husbands Secret by Liane Moriarty.  This story about a woman who finds a letter from her husband weaves together 3 stories in a thrilling way.

(+)And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini.  One of the many books I have read lately that weaved together different stories and viewpoints across time periods.  It was really captivating, though the names were a bit hard to keep straight.

(-)The Dog Stars by Peter Heller.  This book about a post apocalyptic man and his dog was barely readable.  The short sentences and thoughts were a different writing style, but ultimately didn’t work.

(+)The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith.  The second in the series by J.K. Rowling about a private detective was better than the first.  I am probably going to read the rest of the series as she writes them.

(+)Act of War by Brad Thor.  It was a spy novel that did a good job of keeping me on the edge of my seat.  Not as good as some of the others I have read lately, like I am Pilgrim, but good nonetheless.

(=)The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson.  The author’s narrative from 3 different points of view was well written but there were some very boring parts and chapters mixed in.

(+)Gray Mountain by John Grisham.  It’s John Grisham doing lawyerly fiction.  Not one of his greatest, but pretty good nonetheless.

(+)The Son by Philip Meyer.  Another novel with 3 different narrators that occurs over many years about a family in Texas and its struggles.  It was very dense, and slowed towards the end, but I enjoyed it.

(+)All the Light we Cannot See.  Yet another novel with multiple narrators over time set during World War II.  This book won many awards and was a good read, but I don’t understand what all the hype is about.

(+)The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd.  Probably the best of the multi-narrator over time books I have read.  The author made me feel for both the slave and the slave owner in this story about a slave’s life.

(+)The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery. This book was beautifully written, had a lot of intellectual references and was very funny.  I didn’t even hold against it that it had 2 different narrators.

Poker

(-)Harrington on Cash Games 1 and 2 by Dan Harrington and Bill Robertie.  It covers some basic, necessary material at first, then some outdated tactics that might be good for the lower limits.  I feel that if you are going to write a strategy book aimed at lower stakes players, all of the information should be correct, because they cannot differentiate when it is not.

(-)Harrington on Online Cash Games by Dan Harrington and Bill Robertie.  Same as above, except with the evolution of online cash games, this book is even further behind the times.

(=)Straight Flush by Ben Mezrich.  This was a good fast read about the creators of Absolute Poker.  However, knowing the story, the author took a bit too much license on the facts and skipped over the scandal, without doing much research.

(+)The Mersennary E-Book.  This was an excellent book about playing heads up, and heads up sit-n-go’s which gave applicable advice that was spot on.

(+)Expert No Limit Holdem 1 and 2 by Will Tipton.  These books really delve into the nitty gritty of playing poker from a mathematical point of view.  Playing exploitable and unexploiteable are discussed in great depth and the book is very dense with information.

(+)Applications of No Limit Holdem by Matthew Janda.  A book similar to the one above, with more examples.  It had more practical advice without being as dense, but was also excellent.

(-)The Poker Blueprint by Tri Ngyuen.  Same crap by the same author.  General advice that is often wrong without any way to implement it.

 

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Thinking About What Your Opponent Has Matters (Sometimes)

Posted on November 17, 2014 by Jason Schlachter

I’d like to use this hand to relate how it is important to think about what your opponent has and not just how strong your own hand is.  Thinking about what your opponent has and how to win the most against all of his possible hands is an extremely important skill and one that is necessary to being a big winner.  Losing hands that your opponents have misplayed, yet still won, is part of the short term variance in poker and some players find it very difficult not to get frustrated when it happens.

Playing $1/2 6max no limit.  I raise 99 in first position to $6 and get called on the button by a very weak recreational player(60/20 for those interested in stats) and a poor playing regular(27/12) in the small blind.

The flop comes 9h9s6c giving me four 9′s.  The small blind checks. Since neither of the two players were likely to have anything or to call with nothing(float), and the button was likely to bet when checked to, I elected to check.  Unfortunately the button checked behind.

The turn is the 6h.  The small blind checked and I bet $6 into $19 hoping that my opponents would either call me with Ace high or a pair, or try to bluff me, since it doesn’t look like I have too much.  The button folds and the small blind calls.

The river is the 5h, so the final board is 9h9s6c6h5h and the small blind open shoves for $190 into the $31 pot.  I call, he shows a 8h7h for a straight flush and I lose.

The point of the story isn’t to complain about how unlucky and rare it is to lose with four 9′s, but is to wonder what the heck the small blind was thinking and how we can use his mistakes to better our play in the future.  Here is the way he should be thinking about the hand on the river from his point of view (forgetting about ways to take alternative actions previously):

“It looks like my opponent doesn’t have much, so betting a large amount is likely to make him fold the vast majority of his hands.  If he did have something like AA that checked behind the flop or a flush, there is no way he can call a huge amount(6 times the pot) on the river with so many hands that he loses to.  My best bet is to bet something small in the hopes that he thinks I am bluffing either with something like T8, a pair under 6′s that got counterfeited or ace high.  If I bet a small amount and he does have a 9 or maybe even a 6, he is likely to raise and I can reraise and get all the money in, the same as if I had shoved.  Plus, if I bet small, there is a chance he might decide to bluff me.  If I shove all in, I take away all chance for him to call me with weak hands (since he knows I would never do this with a bluff) and he also cannot bluff me.  Clearly, the best play is to bet small, pray to be raised and expect to be called sometimes.”

His actual thinking went something like this:  ”I made a straight flush!  I am going to push all in and hope to get called because I cannot be beaten.  Wow, I can’t believe someone called me, didn’t he realize I had a straight flush?  What an idiot!”

Before I called, I remember wondering what he possibly could have(given that I had all the 9′s, his most likely shoving hand) and that whatever hand he had, he misplayed it.  For instance, if he had four 6′s, he should use the same logic I outlined above for when he had a straight flush and he should never be bluffing all in when a smaller amount would have done the job done with a similar frequency.  Fortunately for me, this short term variance where people grossly misplay their hands and still win occurs frequently.  Over time though, playing my hands more correctly than my opponents leads to better outcomes for me and is the reason I have been a successful professional.

For the record, on the river it’s still a good call by me because he would do this with one combination of four 6′s and one combination of 8h7h.  This means I win 50% of the time, and need to call $190 into $411, which only requires me to win 46% of the time to break even.

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Poker Tells vs. Math

Posted on November 10, 2014 by Jason Schlachter

Most people believe that poker is all about reading facial expressions and using tells.  As a result, when people find out that I am primarily an internet poker player, I am often asked if playing poker on the internet is harder because I cannot see the people and judge their reactions.  I’d like to expand on the answer that I normally give in response.

Poker is mainly about math, not reading people or tells.  At the primary level, it is about odds, such as am I getting the right odds to call with my flush draw? how often will I flop a set?  or how big a favorite is AA over KK?  Basic poker math and memorizing some odds can help you get right answers to these common questions and knowing these numbers are necessary to becoming a winner.  Those are the easy questions to ask and answer and they have nothing to do with tells.

The secondary level is about ranges.  In poker, a range considers all the possible hands someone would take a particular action with.  For example, if you have KK, but your opponents range is AA(meaning he only does something with AA), you had better be getting great odds, because you are about a 4-1 underdog.  If you have KK and your opponents range is AA, KK, and QQ, you are 50/50 against his range.  Getting an opponents exact range down is difficult and takes a lot of practice.  Determining a range is mostly math and how your hand fares against someone else’s range is strictly math as well.  This is also necessary to becoming a winner at poker and it comes up in every single hand and affects the outcome of every decision.  In live poker, tells might have a small impact in determining how wide someones range is, but because most decisions are clear cut mathematically and having a tell doesn’t help change them, it therefore only has a small impact on your bottom line.

The tertiary level of poker thinking is to take things like how often someone folds and other tendencies and to put that together with an opponents range to determine what the correct play is.  Again, the vast majority of the time, the answer is so clear cut that it can not and should not be overridden by tells, unless your opponent were to actually say what he had and you were to believe them.

Playing poker on the internet provides me with an enormous amount of statistics for analysis and allows me to go in further in depth in the three levels mentioned above. Having worked on poker for so long, I have a base of knowledge that allows me to adjust my play based on whether my opponent opens 35% on the button or 40% and whether they bet the flop 50% or 60% thereafter.  I have done analysis on a broad array of players with varying and specific tendencies.  Creating this  base of knowledge is virtually impossible in live poker and the translation of that skill is the reason that players who have been successful playing poker on the internet have had little trouble translating that success to live poker despite their lack of practice reading people.  Most successful live poker players who cannot transition to internet play blame it on the lack of live tells, when in actuality it is analysis of situations mathematically that needs to be improved.

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Meeting With PokerStars Management

Posted on October 13, 2014 by Jason Schlachter

A few weeks ago I met with two PokerStars managers to discuss the New Jersey poker scene.  The first meeting was over drinks in Jersey City and the second was a dinner in Southern New Jersey.  One of the managers was a player that I played with extensively on PokerStars a few years ago, and the other was a long time New York City poker player.  I thoroughly enjoyed discussing how New Jersey has done in implementing online poker and telling them what I thought could be improved.  I have always been impressed by the way PokerStars is run and I left the meeting having solidified those feelings.  They not only want to be a profitable company, but they want to provide their players with a good and enjoyable experience.

They could not give a time frame for PokerStars coming to New Jersey, since their licensing is still being processed, but as  soon as it is (I have read sometime in October) they expect to hit the ground running.  They have experience in implementing single country PokerStars brands and they expect to be able to improve on many of the areas which the current sites lack, namely depositing problems, software malfunctions, customer service and the rewards programs.

With so many of the major problems improved, I believe that they will be are able to pick up significant market share and I look forward to playing on PokerStars New Jersey as soon as it becomes available.  I hope that they can show other states what is possible when internet gaming is run the right way and thereby encourage internet poker to be more accepted in the United States.

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Books, Books, Books

Posted on August 19, 2014 by Jason Schlachter

I have enjoyed most of the books I have read lately.  The best (non poker) books were The Goldfinch, The Rosie Project and I am Pilgrim.  Happy readings!

Non Fiction

(+)The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown.  The story about a gold medal winning 1936 Olympic crew team was good and the writing was excellent.  The author did a superb job of weaving together the characters stories so that it was exciting, even when I knew the ending.

(=)Becoming a Supple Leopard by Dr. Kelly Starrett.  This book is about how to become a better athlete by a doctor who owns Crossfit gyms.  I founds it interesting and the illustrations were helpful, but the book was a bit repetitive.

(+)How Not to Be Wrong by Jordan Ellenberg.  This is a math focused book that taught daily applications of mathematical principles.  It was interesting for such a dry subject matter and could be helpful to a lot of people.

(+)Fading Hearts on the River by Brooks Haxton.  I read this book because author’s son is a well known high stakes poker player.  However the book was very well written and engaging(even for people not in the poker scene) and Haxton, who is a poet, should really write more nonfiction.

(+)The Sports Gene by David Epstein.  Epstein discussed what makes elite athletes perform better than regular people and the possible reasons for excellence by groups in specific sports.  He touched on a lot of subjects and made them come together in a cohesive way.

(+)The Art of Choosing by Sheena Iyengar.  I was engaged from start to finish as the authors storytelling is excellent and she made what could have been a very boring book extremely informative and entertaining.

(+)No Place to Hide by Glenn Greenwald.  I didn’t know much about Edward Snowden and his reasons for revealing classified information before reading this book.  Greenwald, who wrote the original stories, makes a case for why we need more transparency.

(-)Uganda Be Kidding Me by Chelsea Handler.   Not sure why I keep reading comics literary attempts to be funny that alwasy seem to fall flat.  No more of her books for me.

(+)Guts by Kristen Johnston.  She skipped over most of the boring parts that encompass many memoirs and included only the funny childhood stories and dealing with her addiction which made the book a short, but good read.

Fiction

(+)The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt.  I shied away from reading this book because it was so long, but it was worth every minute I spent reading it.  A superb story and very well told from start to finish.

(+)The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion.  I loved this book about a man with Asperger’s and his quest to find love.  His observations and musings made me laugh and it was one of the most enjoyable books I have read in a long time.

(=)The Cairo Affair by Olen Steinhauer.  This spy thriller started out strong but got a little convoluted and boring in the last 1/3.

(-)The Fever by Megan Abbott.  It was absolutely terrible from start to finish in every respect.  Will probably never read another book she writes again.

(=)The Son by Jo Nesbo.  The story about a boy avenging his fathers death was good, but uneven, as some parts were really exciting and other parts extremely boring.

(+)I Am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes.  This is the way a thriller should be written.  It was engaging from start to finish and definitely worth a read.

(+)Where’d You Go Bernadette by Maria Semple.  Written through emails and letters from Bernadette’s life as her daughter searches for her when she goes missing.  It is lighthearted and funny.

(=)Missing You by Harlan Coben.  I liked the author’s writing style, but the plot wasn’t that great and the characters a bit blase.

(=)To Rise Again at a Decent Hour by Joshua Ferris.  The first part of this novel was so good, that it almost overtook the long biblical quotations that made the second part so brutal.

(+)Those Who Wish Me Dead by Michael Kory ta.  This suspense story was a good page turner.  The author did a great job of making me feel connected to the characters and made me root for them.

Poker

(+)Secrets of Professional Tournament Poker by Jonathan Little.  The author did a great job of explaining medium advanced concepts in an understandable way and covered a lot of ground.  I am interested to read his cash game book.

(-)The Pot Limit Omaha Book by Tri Ngyuen.  The book was very basic and poorly written, especially for such a high price.  There is similar material available cheaper and better explained.

(-)How I Made My First Million from Poker by Tri Ngyuen.  Another poorly written book with some basic advice, but also some terrible advice thrown in.  I dislike these types of books immensely because it will be difficult for a novice to be able to tell the good advice from the bad.

(+)Expert Heads Up No Limit Hold’em by Will Tipton.  This book goes in depth on heads up theory using complex math, ranges, and graphs.  It is superb for people looking to play game theoretically optimally and will probably require additional readings to understand it all.  A fantastic work.

(+)Analytical No Limit Holdem by Thomas Bakker.  This is also an excellent book that talks more about optimal ranges for 6-max no limit.  It should be mandatory reading for anyone playing those games.

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