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.

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.

http://www.wnyc.org/story/online-gambling-in-the-garden-state-gets-off-to-a-slow-start/

While watching NFL Countdown today, which was previewing the games, the commentators were discussing how to beat the Denver Broncos.  They unanimously agreed  that what the opposing team (Dallas in this case) needed to do was to score more quickly and speed up the pace of the game.  I believe this is the decidedly wrong answer for two reasons.

Firstly, assuming that Denver is the better team, which the commentators agreed on, Dallas would want each team to have fewer possessions(not more) in the hopes that one outlier (fumble, interception return or 90 yard play) for them would be the difference in the game. Dallas would not want to score quickly and allow each team to have more possessions, which would enable Denver’s (and Peyton Manning’s) skill advantage to have more opportunities to shine through.  To use another sports analogy, in baseball, anyone can win a one game playoff, but over the course of 162 games, the best team usually wins its division.

The second reason why this might not be an optimal strategy for Dallas(and other Denver opponents) is that they are not accustomed to playing at a faster pace and taking more chances on offense.  Attempting to run plays that have little chance of success (though may go for huge yardage once in a while) means the chances of overall success(touchdowns) go down, and then the chance of success(winning the game) goes down even faster when you increase the number of possessions.

There are two definitions of variance.  The first is the statistical definition of how far a set of numbers is from their mean.  For example, if you were a conservative player(tending to play less hands) winning $100 an hour playing poker, your variance would be lower than someone who was a more aggressive player (tending to play more hands and be involved in more pots).  The reason is that there are more opportunities for your stack to go up and down as you are involved in more pots.  The other definition of variance used in the poker world is the idea that all situations will even out in the end, so that being on the wrong end of a bad situation is just “variance,” or a statistical anomaly taking focus away from what is really important aka. your winrate.  So when you have KK and the other person has AA, you can usually chalk it up to “bad variance” meaning that it was unlucky and that if the situation was reversed, the outcome would be the same.

In theory, if your winrate was high enough and your variance low enough, you would never(or at least very, very rarely lose).  For example, if your standard deviation(the square root of variance) was $20 an hour, your winrate was $100 and your results were normally distributed, you would only lose when you had a result that was 5 standard deviations away from the mean(which is about 1 in 1.7 million).  The reality is no one has a high enough winrate and low enough variance to never lose(or come close to it)  and that results are not normally distributed.  I was one of the most successful players in midstakes no limit and my winrate was approximately 5.5 big blinds per hundred hands and my standard deviation was approximately 65 big blinds per hundred hands.  Although I frequently lost during an individual hour, I won approximately 70% of the days that I played and 100% of the weeks.

When I hear other players talking about going through a prolonged losing streak(aka a “downswing”) they are often focused on the second kind of variance, instead of the first kind.   They often fail to realize that the main culprit for their losing money is not having a high enough winrate(or too high a variance).  For example, if two players have the same standard deviation (the square root of variance), say $70 an hour, and one wins at $100 an hour and one wins at $30 an hour.  When they both experience a rough patch and are one standard deviation away from their results, the player winning at $30 per hour loses $40 an hour during this period and experiences a “downswing,” while the the player winning $100 wins only $30 an hour during this period.  However, they are both the same dollar amount and standard deviation from their true results!

Why should I care about all of these statistics and numbers you ask?  The answer is simple, poker is an emotional, thought driven game and results and emotions can affect the way you make decisions .  I assure you that the player who has undergone a “losing streak” takes it much harder mentally and emotionally than the player who is still winning, albeit at a lower rate.  If you feel like you have been losing and that the plays you have been making have not been working, you are less likely to make the optimal play when the opportunity arises.

It has been proven that losses hurt twice as much as wins thrill.  This idea is very important when comparing more conservative and aggressive playing styles.  As a looser player it is much tougher to maintain your winrate because when you are losing it is tougher to play your A game AND you are involved in more situations.  Not only does losing cause you to play your B or even C game, where your decision making is worse, as a looser player, you are now making more of those bad decisions.

When playing poker in person, you get the opportunity to observe people for large amounts of time and you can see there are many players(often of the loose aggressive variety) who do very well when winning, but who, when losing, play the same way despite the fact that their edge is no longer there.  For example, let’s say it is profitable to open T3s on the button when everyone has folded.  Doing so requires that you value bet 2nd pair well, fold when someone has a bigger flush, call at the right time with draws and a host of other things.  When a loose aggressive player is playing well and winning, he might be able to do all of these things and to turn a profit.  However when he is not playing well, playing this hand might get him into situations where his errors compound and he is no longer able to make all of the correct decisions necessary to make this hand profitable.  If he continues to lose, his winrate will drop, he will win less frequently and play less than his A game more frequently, all of which will contribute to less winning and more frustration.

There are many reasons that it might be beneficial to play tighter, but I believe that the most important one is the reduction of your variance.  Since many players do not have an adequate bankroll to play in the stakes they normally play, increasing variance and lowering their winrate increases the risk of ruin if they happen to encounter a run of bad variance.  This will prevent otherwise winning players from being able to play(and therefore win) assuming they could always play their A game, which is a near impossibility when they are losing and low on funds.  Playing more conservatively will allow you to play your A game longer, since you will be winning more instead of losing.  In addition, playing tighter has the huge benefit of helping you to avoid situations that are close that will tend to become unprofitable if you are not playing your A game.

The end result is that reducing your variance and keeping your winrate high has important additional benefits like keeping your mind sharp and being in the positive frame of mind that will allow you to win even more money.

Firstly, live play is usually significantly deeper than on the internet.  This means that the river bet is going to be more significant amount live and you often will have had to announce your strength to your opponents earlier in order to be betting that amount.  The combination of these two effects means that your opponent will more often fold when a lot of money goes into the pot.  While this was not always the way people reacted in the past, I believe it is the way that the games are trending.

Secondly, on the internet the pot size is right in front of you, whereas in live play, you must make an effort to count it.  This means that while people have a general idea of the pot size being small, medium or large, they don’t know it exactly and thus a 2/3 pot size bet to them means less than it would online.  In addition, live opponents (especially the poorer playing ones) are more influenced by the amount you bet (also being small, medium or large) then the amount relative to the pot.  So, if the pot is “big” to them you will be called with roughly the same range for anything they perceive to be “big” bet.

So how should this affect your strategy?  I think that when value betting, you should be betting the most your opponent will call and that in live poker, the amount is inelastic once it has become “big.”  When value betting against certain opponents, you will have to be content with not getting their entire stack.  For an extreme example, if your opponent will not call more than $500 on the turn or river, then you are often best off betting $500 on both streets, instead of trying to set him up for a 2/3 pot size bet on the river(which he won’t call if it is more than $500).

Also, I think that you can push your opponents off hands by betting amounts that push them out of their comfort zones.  For example, in a limped 4 way pot, if the flop comes 922 and I lead out from the big blind and get called by one player.  I check the turn 4 and he checks too.  I can make a “big” bet on the river and win the pot most of the time, since when my opponent does not bet the turn, he doesn’t have a “big” hand and thus won’t call a “big bet” with it.

I hope this stirred up some thoughts on bet sizing, and I would love to hear what others think about the differences between live and online.

1.  ”Poker is not a job.”  Dictionary.com defines a job as “a paid position of regular employment.”  While playing poker online, I worked 50+ hours a week playing and working on improving my game and won nearly every week and every month.  The IRS considers professional gambling an acceptable occupation and I pay taxes as I would at any other job.  Just about anything that would make it “not a job” could be applied to things like professional athletes, stock traders, artists and a whole host of other professions.

2.  ”You wasted your time and education.”  My education provided me with the skills and ability to hone my poker game and anything else I do in the future.  I strongly believe that it is not for people to decide how others live their lives and what is best for them.  There are plenty of doctors who choose to administer botox and do plastic surgery instead of performing heart transplants and saving sick children in Africa.  They have chosen something that they are happy with and I do not think they have wasted their education.  Being challenged daily, working for myself and having my time be flexible were important to me and thus poker was a good choice for me, whereas it might not have been for others.  While I could have chosen to pursue other occupations (and still might), I do not consider my education a waste and it is a foundation I can always build on in the future.

3.  ”You should have chosen a more productive career path.”  There are so many jobs that could fall into the “unproductive” category that makes this argument almost laughable.  Is making a movie productive?  Does it make the world a better place?  No and no.  I don’t believe it is right for other people to judge and apply their values to others.  People enjoy watching movies and they enjoy playing poker, how big would the uproar be if the government told Steven Spielberg and other directors to “do something more productive” because movies don’t help anyone?  When I think of countries that tell people to do jobs that serve the public good, I think of North Korea, not the United States.

4.  ”You should have forseen the end of online poker when determining your career choice.”  I don’t believe that it was possible to see this outcome when I started playing poker in 2003.  Moreover, there are thousands of examples of jobs that were solid and safe, until technology changed and they were no longer viable.  Someone posted in the 2+2 thread that he had a secure job in the newspaper industry, which was a fantastic and stable job until people stopped buying newspapers.  Even if I could have seen what might have occurred in the online poker realm, that does not make what has occurred acceptable.

5. “You were not fired.”  I admit that I was not actually fired, since I was self employed, but frankly, it makes for a better headline.

My name is Jason Schlachter and I used to have the greatest job in the world until I was fired by the government 2 years ago.  I was an internet poker player.  Playing poker on the internet challenged me and pushed my limits.  Each day I woke up excited at the prospect of being the best I could be and through my hard work, I was one of the most successful internet players.  Not only was I successful in my job, but I took pride in the fact that I could provide for my family, and I loved the flexibility that allowed me to never miss spending time with them.  It has been 2 years since the government has prevented me, as well as my colleagues and other aficionados from playing poker on the internet.  Now, despite the fact that the law that was passed in 2006 making internet poker illegal has since been ruled NOT to apply to games of skill (like poker), and the proliferation of casinos everyplace in the US (including lottery and horse racing on the internet)the government continues to prevent internet poker sites from operating in the US and no longer allows me to pursue my chosen profession.

It took me a very long time to be able to admit to people that I played internet poker professionally, because some people did not understand the skill involved and therefore looked down on me, asked me when I was going to do something real with my life and called it gambling.  In reality, playing poker professionally is actually a bit like being a professional chess player and a bit like being a stock trader.  Like playing chess, it requires  thousands of hours of study to determine what the best moves are in different situations and when to use them.  You must be able to consider what your opponents are thinking and their thought processes as well as to remain in complete control of your emotions at all times.  As in stock trading, it is necessary to analyze situations in real time and to have the ability to make quick, calculated and rational decisions, often for a lot of money.  Despite what many people believe, it is in fact nothing like playing craps or the lottery.  You are competing against other players, not the casino, and your skill has a large effect on the outcome.  In fact, as someone who has played nearly 8 million hands in his lifetime, an amount which would take more than 300,000 hours in the casino, I can assure you, there is little gambling involved.

I began to take poker more seriously in 2003, when I was senior at the University of Pennsylvania.  I had played poker with friends on occasion and realized that there was a lot of skill and that I could get better by studying the mathematics of the game.  As a former runner and tennis player, I enjoyed the competition inherent in poker, was looking to improve and was willing to work at it.  I went to Atlantic City once or twice, but between taking 5 classes and writing my thesis, I did not have time to make the trip, so I decided to deposit a few dollars in an online poker site.  I began playing for pennies and soon I was trying to learn the best way to beat my online opponents too.  Often this required working out solutions away from the table and my geeky, math loving, solution based self loved it.  When I graduated, I moved back home and was looking for jobs during the day, and playing poker at night.  Before too long, I was making far more money playing poker then I could if I had gotten the jobs I was seeking, so I decided to continue.

In September of 2006, on the last day before Congress would break for the election, Bill Frist and John Kyl, two extremely conservative Republicans tacked on the Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act(UIGEA) to The SAFE Port Act.  This bill made it a crime to process payments to online poker sites according to the 1961 Wire Act.  Despite the fact that no one on the Senate-House Committee had seen the final language in the UIGEA, it did not matter, because it was attached to The SAFE Port Act, which had to pass.  After this bill was passed, the European Union and Antigua filed lawsuits and won damages against the United States as a result of this law violating free trade agreements.

In 2009, New York and Illinois requested clarification of the UIGEA from the Department of Justice(DOJ).  In April of 2011, the DOJ took action to shut down the sites that were still operating in the US, ignoring the request for clarification over whether operating a site was actually illegal.  It was not until December 2011 when the DOJ finally admitted that the 1961 Wire Act did not apply to poker, which made their attempts to close the internet poker market in 2006 and 2011 wrong.

In fact, before the UIGEA, the internet poker market in the US was operating well and in the open.  Since 2006, poker has moved into a grey market and players who want to play have been forced to deal with disreputable companies, delays in payment and even the possibility of not getting paid.  When the US government shut down the poker sites in 2011, the reputable site that I played on, paid me, as well as everyone else immediately, but the players on Full Tilt Poker and Absolute Poker were not so lucky.  The government has sold the company and has said that they will pay the players the money that is owed but to date has not done so and has shown no plans to.  This is very unfortunate for many people who needed these funds for living and working expenses, who were not only fired by the government, but have also had their money trapped by them.

Since 2011, I have been forced to travel to Atlantic City and Pennsylvania in order to support myself and my family.  Not only has my income been reduced substantially but my expenses have also risen. In addition, since I live in New York City, nearly a 2.5 hour drive from there, I cannot commute and must stay over and be away from my wife for extended periods of time.  While many of my colleagues opted to move out of the country to work playing internet poker, I did not feel as though this was a reasonable option for me.

The government has admitted that they have erred in this matter and have lost in the WTO regarding internet gambling.  I believe they are hypocrites for continuing to push the lottery, horse racing and for allowing casinos to be built everyplace, while denying people the ability to gamble in their own homes.  I am asking that the government finally do what is right and just and to restore internet poker to people who want to play.

Sincerely,

Jason Schlachter

In reality, tournaments  appear more different than they are.  Yes, they have different structures, buyins, etc. but for the vast majority of the tournament, your goal and your method of getting there is the exact same as in cash games, namely to win the most chips by outplaying your opponents.  On the bubble(just before the money) and during the payout stage(at the various steps) there are subtle differences in strategy, but for the most part you are simply adapting to your opponents and knowing the odds vs. a range when someone shoves allin.

When someone doesn’t understand the fundamentals of the game, it is nearly impossible that they are a “good tournament player,” because being a tournament player necessarily means understanding the fundamentals.  It is akin to someone telling me that they are a good basketball player because they once made 2/4 3 pointers, and when they go to the basketball court, they can’t dribble.

There are so many tournaments, probably 2 tournament series a week in the US, that someone is always “hot,” having won 2 in a month, final tabled a 3 in a series and who believe that they are a great tournament player.  To them, it is impossible that there is luck involved and that they are in a similar boat to those people who have a “system” that beats roulette.

1. Winning the Sunday Million on Pokerstars.
2. Being SuperNova Elite 2x.
3. Going to Monte Carlo for the European Poker Tour Championship.
4. My first big loss playing limit hold’em and what I learned about playing my A game always.
5. The first time I won a seat to the World Series Main Event.
6. Winning 33 consecutive days at 6-max no limit.
7. Playing 26 hours in a row of tournaments to get the most elite status on Empire Poker
8. Winning a 6 way allin pot for $26k at a private $10/$25 game.
9. Playing $5/$10 limit all night to earn a bonus and winning a ton of money in the process.  This was the first time I realized I could make it as a professional.
10. Black Friday and the UIGEA.
11. Playing $25/$50 vs. Prahlad Friedman, Freddy Deeb and Mike Matusow at Ultimate Bet when it was the biggest game around.
12. Capping every street vs. Michael Mizrahi with QQ at $100/$200 on J737q because he was a nut and getting there vs K7.
13. The NYC poker clubs where I played for a while.
14. Chatting with poker friends on Skype while multitabling on my way to Supernova elite.
15. My first coaching session ever with Barry Tannenbaum in Las Vegas.
16. Making a terrible fold in my first World Series with a straight after getting raised on the turn.
17. Playing $10/$20 on Empire Poker with my friend Mike as he was learning the game.
18. Playing poker between ballperson shifts at the US Open.