Me And My Big Mike "The Mouth" Matusow

Date: Thu, May 22, 2008 Professional Live Tournament

Few things are harder to put up with than a good example--that's what makes Mike Matusow so charming. Ask Kathy Griffin. “I guess Mike and I aren’t going all in on love.” No, not quite -- let’s try another one: “Mike made me fold the pocket aces in my heart.”

Over his career, Matusow cashed in 15 World Series of Poker events and earned two WSOP bracelets.

Just when Poker was getting a makeover thanks to double chinned Fred Flinstone look alike Greg Raymer, and the usual suspects--Chris Moneymaker and Joe Hachem--Mike gets to de-generate things.

How Big a Bite To Take From The Poker Apple

Date: Mon, May 12, 2008 Professional Live Tournament

Suited Connectors and the tree of knowledge...



PART 2: The surest way to win a huge pot in NLH is to spot 'em the nuts and suck out! This is the "forbidden fruit" of the ABC by the book player. It's the in to your sane game.

Poker Heads Up, AA to suited connectors--It plays, not like a sport, but a concussion. In a New York minute, an ACME anvil pancakes you, and then a split second later, you’re expanded - accordion-style - back to normal, like some tempurpedic mattress. It’s a formula of ins and outs, need and speed, aggravation and acceleration.

When you think of it--Pocket Aces, winning---getting what you expect is boring.The TABLE is the green felt jungle-- and it loves home runs, slam dunks, touchdowns and holes-in-one and putting a bad beat on someone. opening up a can of whoop ass, raining down on Charlie. Preflop, a pocket pair only has 2 outs to improve, overcards have 6 to draw to the nuts.This is not even taking into account straight and flush draws! That means over cards are at least a 3:1 favorite to improve and win the hand.

In the end, you don't get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate---When I hit my perfect card on the river for the nut straight, Pocket Aces checked, I went all in. He payed me off.

Getting Others To Play With The Cards You Menally Deal Them. I like to call this style of play, "Boiling the frog" In this case, infinite patience brought immediate results.

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The number #1 thing I hate about the game I love

Date: Sat, May 3, 2008 Professional Live Tournament

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Corporation Ed Has A Big Night At Harrah's

Date: Thu, May 1, 2008 Professional Live Tournament

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One Wild Ride On The River, Wish You Were Here

Date: Mon, Apr 28, 2008 Professional Live Tournament

Poker Bloggers are the sharpshooters that come down from the hill after the battle to shoot the wounded, in this case, the dead. I'll give it my best shot.

I'm talking about Gus Hansen blowing a huge chip stack in heads up play against David Chiu who won the $3.38 million first-place prize.

I am stunned.Oh well, That's Poker!

Gus, you learned English by listening to Pink Floyd albums. Gus, you were voted one of People magazine's sexiest men alive in 2004, Gus, you hold the record for winning the biggest pot on High Stakes Poker against Daniel Negreanu.

In your own words Gus, "If nothing is at stake, what's the point?" You have three WPT titles anyway. You couldn't pick up another WPT title, but still snagged the biggest payday of your "career" as a Pro Gambler.

Buying into a WPT event , unlike buying a car is a gamble that the future will represent an improved version of the past. And who knows whether that will be true? The cards don't have memory, and poker doesn't think.

It's not so much about "counting your outs" and "folding AK in a raise, re-raised pot"-- that cause-effect relationship stuff. It's more about the anti-poker game--situations. A collection of situations you haven't played yet; of the things you don't know.

There is a massive collection of unknowledge,the anti-hands that contain all the hands that may still change your poker life. That's what we mean by saying, I "pulled a Gus".

Gus Hansen's logic makes what you don't know far more relevant than what you do know. I considered that many of my Jackpots and big hands were caused and accelerated by their being unexpected.---of me being an anti-gambler. The upshot is that:Knowledge leads to action but lack of knowledge can also lead to action. At least, that was the case when Gus got rivered:

It took just 22 hands for Hansen to clear the final table. Chiu would need another 56 hands to take the chip lead and two more to close the deal. In the final hand, Hansen flopped bottom two pair and got the rest of his stack in on the turn. Chiu held As-9s and picked up a flush draw to go with his top pair on the Ac-10c-8s-5s board. The three-time bracelet winner would eventually make the call, finding out his hand was behind, but live. After the river Ah gave Chiu trips, the hand and ultimately, the title.

HOLDEM-Too Random to Be Left up to Chance

When it comes to NLH, what you don’t know is far more relevant than what you do know. Consider that many huge hands can be caused and sped up by their being unexpected, that case eight on the river for a suck out, a four card flush orinChiu's case, trips on the river.

9/11 or Virginia Tech,... we retrofit a narrative to tell ourselves that someone should have seen it coming because we ourselves could not have been that stupid. And yet, we are no better prepared for the next one. Likewise, Gus played like Gus, and was on heavy steam throughout the tournament. Top two pair heads up, was good enough to shove all-in. It's when what is right is wrong with your game---the turn and river---changing things up that takes you from hero to zero.

Economically important things are consistently unexpected, in that people underestimate, on average, the probability and impact of improbable events We are chronic explainers-one an event happens we try our hardest to say I told you so and explain it...but that's poker-It is an infinite game;the overall phenomenon of NLH has no end. It is always a frontier, always on the edge. AND Gus is defintely one of the edgiest!

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Poker’s Chemical Romance- DOPE-amine, The neuroeconomics of a good buzz

Date: Tue, Apr 22, 2008 Professional Live Tournament

AND

This is your brain on poker..

Know Thy Synaptic Self
Neurons that wire together fire together---Making money and then making money again is our chemical romance; the love drug Dopamine. It produces a “desire to continue”. Congratulations, you are wired to play poker. Happy Valentine’s Day.

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What happens in your brain when your expectations are confirmed — or shattered by surprise. It's a steady flow of dopamine that makes the anticipation such a pleasure. Walking the painted line, tolerating low calculated risks, the safe choices,---it is impossible to settle for what everyone else gets---no matter how comfortable that would make you. The extraordinary opportunities lie in the leaps of faith, the uncalculating risks.

We might not realize it, but dopamine is our favorite neurotransmitter. The Sex of Poker reward circuit runs on Dopamine. It makes us pursue whatever we think will be rewarding. Life, liberty and the pursuit of a fast buck. "fits like a glove" with neuroimaging findings of alcoholics, and drug addicts. Let's cast a nice halo around poker, call it Yuppie bulemia, for the three C's: guys with Cash, Condos and Cars.

The Dopamine Power Diet—In Search of the “All-In” Button

NLH has the short-term effect of windfalls of buckets of luck. That generates a roller coaster ride of greed, invincibility and fantasy ---a flood of dopamine that signals to our bodies that something good has happened. It’s not the win, but the suggestion of it that generates pleasure in the brain, rewards anticipation. Now, for the first time, you can actually get inside the black box, when your game crashes with Neuroeconomics--making "emotional" decisions and their economic sigificance. Brain scientists , who with Hotel Anyware's help, will be the writing the new Super System and (behavioral)Theory of Poker.

Shift Happens

When your third eye and your turd eye are at one—you start to believe your own sh*t, hooked on the belief that you are about to make mo’ money. This creates a midbrain mutiny between dopamine and serotonin. Like any addict, when the bad beat comes, you will go into a painful withdrawal. I think therefore I am—might need a re-write- I don’t know so maybe I’m not. It’s all chemical!

Thinking and feeling differently about lose-Whatever is going on in you is chemical. What could your neurons "want"? It's enigmatic, but basically they wants a jolt of serotonin, norepinephrine (adrenaline) and dopamine. If you can remember--you are never know how you have been, and maintain a malignent optimism, you can live to play another day. The hard thing about this is that it is so easy to do, because feelings are not true, they're feelings...nothing more than feelings.

Poker= f(dopamine flow); Money= happiness

"Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy chips, which is kinda the same thing" Ed Reif, Wise and Otherwise,2007

Money is a means to an end. When you get money, you shouldn't experience immediate happiness. Brain research shows, however, that people get immediate pleasure and pain from winning and losing money.
Keep Dope alive. Play Poker. Go with the flow. Why do you think they call it DOPE-amine?

"I' ll take things that I know for $1,000 Alex!"

Dopamine is a swiss army knife that does a lot of jobs, but the thing Mr. Science notices most is that it regulates reward. When you win a hand of poker, it's a dopamine spike that's responsible for the thrill that follows. Drugs, legal and illegal-mimic the actions of dopamine in the brain. Dopamine is a chemical which makes us feel elated; crystal meth is so addictive because it releases dopamine. More than that, The brain images of drug addicts who are about to take another hit are indistinguishable from those of poker players who are making money and about to play another showdown hand.

The Power Of Impossible Thinking

Getting what you deserve is boring. Having pocket AA, and raking a small pot, just won’t do it. There has to be risk and ambiguity. Don’t you feel more energized when you’re uncertain of the outcome of a hand. When you do a three barrel bluff, don’t you feel more alive, your heart jumping out of your chest, you sweat, your take that dry mouth swallow. I think that a subconscious desire to return to this state affects my game. I bluff too much because I want to experience the feeling I get at these moments…. when you get him to fold top pair, when a scare card is on the turn..This is poker at its finest: If you can think impossible thoughts, you can do impossible things.

If you had a normal “addiction” to, say, crack or sex-there are group therapies for that-but being addicted to “risk” in the poker culture just makes makes you a gambler. Is that so bad, you are wired to invest? Don't they call that arbitrage on Wall Street? Isn't gambling a fundamental brick in the foundation of economic and investment thinking.

Poker points to gambling. Gambling points to math. Math points to risk. Risk points to investing. Investing points to finance; and finance points to economics, and economics points back to gambling.

Cognitive-Enhancing SMART drugs and Poker--the Next Steroids Scandal

So all this stuff about Steroids and baseball, what about brain boosting drugs and poker! I wrote about holdem’s off the wall player, me and my Big (Mike the) Mouth. Mike is America's first self confessed bipolar poker champ – a former speed addict, currently diagnosed with attention deficit disorder, Mike The Corporation is a black market wheeler-dealer, living in the underground economy of CASH. His street cred is good in Vegas--the money faucet runs on tap. He's bankable. Why, because he's now (legally)medicated (zoloft, depakote and ritalin)!

It's one thing to get a natural "runner's high" from the game; but actually ingesting brain-boosting performance inhancing substances to improve your mental focus, memory, recall and reduce fatigue? Wait a minute, where can I get some of those happy pills? It's all legal! Doping in cash and online poker, what's so ethical about this work ethic?

We are all aware that caffine is not a drug, but a vitamin for the long grueling tournament scene. Yet, we would all fail a WADA/IOC-administered drug test based on drinking as little as three cups! Congress is already hearing testimony about the Unlawful Internet Gambling Act. I can see a day when the great poker doping scadal is exposed too!

No worries, they'll be a lot of Doctor's notes, with the ADD boutique diagnoisis, just like getting extra time on your SAT! to "accomodate" your poker (L)earning differences.


Drugs, they're not just for athletes!

And now a PSA: If you're gonna get high, play cards-

"There isn't any question about it -- they made me a much better player," Paul Phillips, 35, who credited the attention deficit drug Adderall and the narcolepsy pill Provigil with helping him earn more than $2.3 million as a poker player. See LATimes article

Mike “The Mouth” Matusow from Stuff Magazine; May, 2006 Life or Meth-
" I began playing at a level I had never played at before. Every time someone played a hand differently than their norm, I sensed it. Every time someone showed a tell, I saw it.” see USA Today article

Mike is Mike, working his mac, a whore with a heart of gold, so no judgments here.

Paul on the other hand, is a GUO, a great unlucky one: in order for Mr Phillips to make a small fortune in poker he needed to have a big one---and Paul is a dotcom gazillionaire to begin with. Too much respect for money makes you a bad poker player-That a makes Phillips a great one: He payed 10K x 26 WPT events-Of course eventually he cashed in some---even a broken clock is right twice. What is it about these faloney's who think they can play poker? Ka-ching.

Read my post on The Godfather of Poker-Doyle did "that thing with the thing bada bing-all-in" to Guy aka Moe Greene:

Doyle Brunson took Cirque du Soleil billionaire Guy Laliberté to clown college on High Stakes Poker---to say it was a circus, would be an insult to the bearded ladies, mimes and interpretive dancers. A moment of silence was in order as Guy was nearly drawing dead.


FREE Roger Clemens...His Own Private Durham


"As Major League Baseball struggles to rid itself of performance-enhancing drugs, people in a range of other fields are reaching for a variety of prescription pills to enhance what counts most in modern life." It begs the question--why is there no stigma attached to these other pursuits.

A Dose Of Genius-No Brain Is An Island

Poker players drug du jour is Adderall , the active ingredient being dextroamphetamine saccharate. You might recognize the root, amphetamine which is closely related to methamphetamine more commonly known as crystal meth, or speed!

Propanolol is a beta blocker, and epinephrine is a beta agonist. LSAT school test takers, concert musicians are eating them like Gummy Bears to bypass stress and butterflies. Why, to get an edge, a competitive edge. If somebody gave you a designer drug to improve your memory, would you try it? What are neuroethical consequences of brain doping?






Steroid Scandal Poker Roger Clemens Baseball Steroid Scandal Steroids Poker Drug Scandal

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Poker WIthout Cards (Bluffing) Is Hard With Free Rolls

Date: Sun, Apr 20, 2008 Professional Live Tournament

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Poker is, after all, anything you can get away with--and when you play free rolls, you can't get something for nothing. Most hands go to showdown, and there is first place and no place---coming in second, whoc ares.

In No Limit Holdem, things don't even out with time, they even out with the number of hands you play. Sometimes nothing can be a good hand....but I am rethinking free rolls.

Advice for limit applies to No Limit Free rolls: Free Roll Hold em is a game of high cards, and kickers, In Limit Hold em, the number of players increases, so big cards must be played most of the time. NLH is like chess; Limit, like checkers: so don't play it like cheese! Find the holes and leaks in your limit game, and plug them up.

Hand selection is very important since almost all the time you are going to a showdown---the one with the best hand usually wins; and bluffing is a rather hard thing to pull off, since it only costs one small bet for Deputy Barney Fife to "keep you honest". Nevertheless,You can bet or raise with ATC, any two cards, but your call MUST have a positive mathematical expectation. Calling for value must outweigh the risks you are taking.

INS and OUTS

For the beginner, everything is even money, when you don't know any better. Replacing that with true odds is the goal. There is one goal and many pathways. There is the psycho path way, playing like a Kramer maniac.---the push and pray NLH way, hoping to hit the flop big. There is the rocky road, playing a tight-is-right, the Jerry game of counting your outs---the number of unseen cards that will give you the best hand---the NUTS!
There is wise and there is otherwise. Generally speaking if the FLOP gives you 10 or more outs--go all the way to the river, regardless of the number of opponents in the pot.
If your draws have less than 9 outs 2 handed, that will yield you a negative result more often than not.
A Multi-handed raised pot with six or more outs =profit.

ADVICE THAT DOESN'T WORK IN FREE ROLLS:If a guy has 20k behind him, and you are first to act and bet 6K. He is really betting 20K if he calls your 6K.(the implied turn and river bets) You bet 6K. he bets 20K That is the threat of NLH, the all-in threat. PUT THE COMMITMENT ON HIM.

In The Beginning...The best way to win more is to fold more! Hand selection is really something to consider; so is position. Playing too many starting hands is the How Not to Do It way..When it is raised in front of you-Your mantra should be "I'm looking for a way to fold this AJ offsuit.

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First In Money Is So Pre Spetember 11th

Date: Fri, Apr 18, 2008 Professional Live Tournament

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The Power of New Americon Poker is about being the last in the pot. It too can be an extremely effective way of accumulating chips in spite of your hole cards, not because of them. Lights Out Poker is about playing 'in the dark': betting that your opponents DON'T have the cards rather than that they do.

• First in vigorish is Dan Harrington’s concept. Being the first player to bet, "creates" the edge of being the first to put your chips into the middle of a pot. OK.

• Sklansky’s old school calls it The Gap Concept ---“you need a better hand to call a raise with than you would need to open the betting yourself”. Sure.

Top Three Old School Concepts To Re-Think

Basically, Opponents can be divided into two types ---those that play like Sklansky, Gordon, and Harrington, and those that don't. Guess who does the dividing?

• M Factor---there is no survival stage.
  
• Gap Concept---your cards are immaterial more often than not.
  
• First In--- hands of value are based on 1-2-3- 1,your position, 2,your chip stack, and 3, the players you are confronting.

First in Redux---

First in the pot is the old school idea of taking pots down pre-flop or pre-turn using stack pressure. Especially when a tournament is in the money stage. Today, Playahs may go into the game with a larger bank and better cards, they will lose in the long run to the Ballas, who are last in.

This can happen heads up in cash games too. NLH is a game of position, and not only being last to act but also this immediately shows the importance of making a play that leaves you last in.
Phil Ivey did it back in 2005 in Monte Carlo. It can backfire too, if you are playing against Stu Unger, who called Mansour Matloubi's all -in bluff.

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The Secret Is About Results; Poker About Making Good Decisions

Date: Thu, Apr 17, 2008 Professional Live Tournament

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For the poker Balla, nothing is better than when that average Joe Player sits down at a poker table. Why? Because he just sat down with money he INTENDS to lose!

There is no more +EV situation, and most tables in a live poker room are filled with players exactly like that. When you treat No Limit Hold em as only a game of chance instead of skill, it is not a law of probability, it's a fact for games with negative expectations: Risk of ruin is 100%.

JOES verses PROS

Joe plays when he "feels" like it, a Pro, all the time! Call them perpetual shortcuts JOES make when losing poker ASAP; and as any of the PROS will tell you, they don't need cards to win--that's for amateurs. Pro Players specialize in other people's biases! especially that malignant optimistic one that beats its chest and says, "I'm the best player at the table".

Secrets to Beating America's 92 Million Irrational Poker Players:Behavioral Finance-Part ART Part SCIENCE:

Common sense is not so common, and these common flaws are often consistent, predictable, and can be exploited for profit. We are not logical, we are emotional, and motion creates emotion-winning and losing in the stock market or in poker have some suprising failings--Let's reframe them and call them OUTCOMES:

Illusion of control - the tendency for players to believe they can control or at least influence outcomes which they clearly cannot. NLH is 100% luck and 100% chance. An opponent can (suck out) win one hand 100% of the time. NLH is too random to be left up to chance-yet good results will have you rejecting alternative ways to play--Nothing fails like success. Doing things right the first time is an obscenity--If your game isn't broke, don't just break it, break it before the competition does.

Loss aversion - The pain of chips lost generally is much greater than the pleasure of a chips gained. Playars strongly prefer avoiding losses over acquiring gains ( Quit early when winning and playing marathon sessions when stuck or chasing---see also sunk cost effects.

To win money over the long haul, you’ve got to win big pots. And to win big pots, you can’t be held back by this thinking error. You can't play a safe tight- is -right solid game and expect to win. You can't avoid crisis, you must be in a perpetual one that you create...but selectively picking your spots).

Bias blind spot - The left side of the brain will do the math. But the right side will "tag" it with a story. That story usually doesn't compensate for one’s own cognitive biases.

Choice-supportive bias - It's called "anchoring" remember one’s choices as better than they actually were. (Using the past to predict the future). There is never a certain prescribed way to play a hand, just a way to think about them. I've had racks of chips only to be felted 14 hours later because instead of an attitude of gratitude, I had the Mick Jaggar Tumbling Dice "Anything worth doing is worth overdoing"soundtrack playing.

Endowment effect - When I own something, I will tend to value it more highly. If I have to sell it, I will probably want to ask more than it is really worth. (Not being able to let go of QQ,AA,KK---rookie moves, and over betting the pot) There's the expected result, based on analysis, and the actual result, based on events. Poker is a game of situations---I've learned to thrown away Kings, Queens, and with a four card flush on the board, even two red Aces!

Confirmation bias - The Indians Rain Dance worked because they never stopped dancing! The Jeane Dixon effect-of making a few right predictions, and overlooking the false ones. Searching for information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions. The delusions of reference--tells, lucky charms, hunches and coincidences.

Bandwagon effect - Do things because smart money people do or believe the same, like playing Helmeuth starting hands, or walking the painted line of Sklansky's Theory of Poker or Doyle's Super System. Related to groupthink, herd behaviour. That's what I find so cool about my game--being able to fire three barrels with squadush. (Thank you Poker Stars Sit and Go's)

Déformation professionnelle - the tendency to look at things according to the conventions of one’s own T.O.E., time on earth; assuming things that have similar traits are likely to be identical; forgetting any broader point of view. Past experience and feedback loops can make you Hola Lupe.

Disconfirmation bias -. We tend to use the information that is most handy when we make decisions/predictions. The path of least resistence mashed up with thin slicing.

Focusing effect - prediction bias occurring when players place too much importance on one aspect of an event; causes error in accurately predicting the utility of a future outcome.

Hyperbolic discounting - the tendency for players to have a stronger preference for more immediate payoffs relative to later payoffs, the closer to the present both payoffs are.

Impact bias -Our minds are suited for solving problems related to our survival, rather than being optimised for poker decisions. Players overestimate the length or the intensity of the impact of future feeling states.

Information bias - Seeking TMI, too much information, even when it cannot affect action. Try playing in the dark, or blind---With less information to be processed and filtered, the brain assigns higher priority to the information that it does receive.

Neglect of probability - the tendency to completely disregard probability when making a decision under uncertainty. Expected Value and Variance---weighing all the possible outcomes, weighting the more likely outcomes, and coming to a conclusion---play a big part in the decision process. There is therefore, never a certain prescribed way to play a hand, just a way to think about them.

Mere exposure effect - the tendency for players to express undue liking for things merely because they are familiar with them. If it's not broke, break it!

Omission bias - The tendency to judge harmful actions as worse, or less moral, than equally harmful omissions (inactions).

Outcome bias - the tendency to judge things on their outcome, and not on their process. Over weighing and overeacting to a bad beat-- the most recent information or circumstances.

Planning fallacy - the tendency to underestimate task-completion times. It has taken me ten years to become an overnight Holdem success!

Post-purchase rationalization - the tendency to persuade oneself through rational argument that a purchase was a good value.

Pseudocertainty effect - the tendency to make risk-averse choices if the expected outcome is positive, but make risk-seeking choices to avoid negative outcomes.

Selective perception - the tendency for expectations to affect perception. (Gamblers Fallacy)

Status quo bias - the tendency for players to like things to stay relatively the same.

Von Restorff effect - Purple Cows and items that “stands out like a sore thumb” have a tendency to be more likely to be remembered than other items.

Zero-risk bias - preference for reducing a small risk to zero over a greater reduction in a larger risk.

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Paper Or Plastic-Folding The Invisable Way to Win

Date: Wed, Apr 16, 2008 Professional Live Tournament

Wednesday, April 16, 2008 9:33 AM

Pain For Sale-Playing Too Many Starting Hands

Date: Tue, Apr 15, 2008 Professional Live Tournament

Keeping My Head Above Water

Here's your Business Class ticket to cool, with complimentary mojo after takeoff.

When your poker game crashes, here's the black box. One day, the whole plane will be made out of that stuff.

Make your whole game out of the POW, pearls of wisdom from the best damn poker blog.

The best things in life aren't things, they're people who write free advice on how to play poker without cards. It is after all, a game of money played with cards, not the other way around.

Pain For Sale-Don't treat Paper like Plastic, cash games for tournament chips.

PAPER: The Longest Journey begins with...a cash advance from Bank of America.

PLASTIC: "Money can't buy happiness but it can buy chips which is kinda the same thing"-

The sex of Poker is really a game of mistakes and the greatest one is rooted in pleasure. The fine line we walk between success and self-destruction comes down to asking that one dirty (Harry) question rooted in the loner cop’s message of personal freedom, “Do you feel lucky? Well, do ya punk?”

Poker is a game of situations. Winning poker is about making good decisions Feeling lucky and going to a casino is like feeling athletic and going to a sports bar. It’s a bad decision. It is the in to your sane, a kind of voluntary madness. The surest way of getting nothing from something. The road less traveled-the psycho path!

In Blackjack, there is always a correct decision, a perfect strategy. No Limit Holdem, on the other hand, is a game of completing the puzzle of partial information; where players make inferences and “investments” under uncertainty. Fixed strategies don’t work because players don’t always act perfectly. You are, above all else, playing against other people, and conditions change.

No Limit Hold ‘em or NLH is designed to have a high luck factor that can quite easily lead to a sort of pathological optimism. It’s a fast, easy to understand game that pulls down huge bucketfuls of short-term luck. In fact, playing because you are “feeling lucky” is (almost) the right way to play.

Yet, the right way to play NLH and (almost) the right way to play is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. I don’t want to steal your thunder but that’s what luck is--- the Thunder. Thunder is a good thing , thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does all the work and gets the job done, and it doesn’t strike twice in the same place because the same place isn’t there anymore.

The sex of poker therefore can be misery. It no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it. The remarkable thing about luck is no matter how bad it gets, it can always get worse. Luck is a strange teacher. It gives the test first, the lesson afterwards. Luck is your university. The chips are your report card. Everything proceeds from there.

While it is true that it is the mark of an inexperienced player not to believe in luck, luck doesn’t always believe in you--- Luck is pauperized ecstasy because it lends but never gives. When you’re buying in to feeling lucky, there is plenty of pain for sale. It is easier to change your religion than your diet, and in the buffet of luck may have no calories, but everyone eventually goes home hungry.

If Pain is weakness leaving the body, then Poker pain is weakness leaving your game. It is not something we acquire. It is something we tune into--- the poker frequency. Do you play in-frequently? Is that one word or two?

Playing too many starting hands in a standard $2-$4 NL game is weakness. You should have a 20-30% view of the flop percentage. This means folding, saying “No” to AJ in first position, KT in middle position and QT in late position Just saying `no', to every hand, however prevents bad playing the way “Have a nice day” cures chronic depression. A Jackass who persists in his recklessness, nevertheless becomes a smart ass.

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The Hardest Way to Make An Easy Living

Date: Thu, Apr 3, 2008 Professional Live Tournament

In poker, "The Nuts" refers to not only an unbeatable hand, It is also an unbeatable style of playah, a raisey-crazy one -man asylum., whose default mode of betting suffers from Jim Carey’s “advanced delusionary schizophrenia with involuntary narcissistic rage.”

An adrenaline junkie with demented energy, grandiose plans, he likes being feared. It imbues him with an intoxicating sensation of omnipotence. The Playah is inebriated by the looks of horror or repulsion on people's faces, as they fold with the best hand as you bluff--The poisoned joy to the poker world of depriving others of what you don’t have, a legitimate hand.

The crime and punishment for playing with the Playah is a malignant optimism. He plays a one-handed game of "Good Cop, Bad Cop" with different people. Stiring the pot, triangulating and pitting one against another. Gossip may be false intimacy but Torture is the ultimate act of his perverted intimacy. A kind of Traumatic bonding", akin to the Stockholm Syndrome, takes place… You are his “Supply”. He is your change agent—He find you; gets you,to love him; make you eventually hate him. That’s fine with him---He love to be hated and he hate to be loved The Playah uses up other people like candy bars; and, when he’s finished eating , he throw away the wrappers. Disposable relationships. No deposit. No return.

In RL (Real Life), When you define me you negate me, but in NLH, --- Love Thy Label As Thy Self. This Perception Shifting is the Most Promising to Define a New Space for winning at NLH. . Playahs need a reputation to live up to and tend to become whomever people see us as. Most of life is a self-fulfilling prophecy. (Players tend to confuse habits with identity. When asked WHO they are, most people resort to communicating their habits. Get into rearranging. Native American Indians on Caribbean Islands couldn't see Columbus's ships sitting on the horizon because they were beyond their knowledge. You don’t see it then believe it. You believe it then you see it.

All the lies will be washed away by the truth---In Poker, you are what you pretend to be. Go ahead, put the con back in confidence, the sin, back in sincere. Bet with with best hand or gamble with the worst!

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Passing The Test But Failing the Class

Date: Wed, Apr 2, 2008 Professional Live Tournament

Teach an old DOGMA New Tricks.

An Ace and A Race...

Paper or Plastic-Cash verses Chips

When you lose, you lose money, when you win, you lose respect for money. Yet too much respect for money makes you a bad player.... I must be a great player because I have lost total respect for money- and now I know why.



I treat cash game chips like tournament chips... I thought making the change from limit to NLH was apples to oranges, well, so is live cash verses tournament, where you have an infinite verses finite amount of chips to work with. On any given Friday night, people come to gamble in a cash game and they will call you down with ace high..

RAISE or FOLD- If you call, you are accepting someone else's odds.

Doyle's Super System says AK is his best hand...because it's easy to let it go. It is after all, a drawing hand, not a made one. In position, I'll almost always make a continuation bet, if the flop is low ball, and hardly ever check.


Being normal. It is the ideal aim of the unsuccessful and unimaginative. Ask your mother. Normal is the setting on her washing machine. Normal isn't a virtue. It denotes a lack of poker courage. You have to be Madonna, constantly reinventing yourself. Otherwise, it’s a vast, conforming suburb of the soul. You don’t want to be normal. Normal people spend their lives avoiding tense situation, Poker Playahs spend their lives getting into them. The whole upshot of NLH is that it be a perpetual crisis that you create. The Phish is the last one to know it is in the ocean. Phush swim in it. Players surf on it. Failure to plan creates crisis in RL (Real Life) In NLH, planning for crisis eliminates failure.


This is a Poker Mini-Satori- You abhor monotony and constancy, equating them, in your mind, with death. Seek upheaval, drama, and change.God may play dice with the universe,, but this ain’t no metaphysical crap shoot, it’s NLH. If you want to have “fun” then spin the wheel of fortune, phone a friend, buy a vowel, and get voted off the island. Deal or No Deal. If you want an “experience”, play NLH. It’s not a sport, it’s a concussion! Good NLH poker is not a "A-ha" experience, it is more of a "holy-shit" experience.


Suited And Booted

When I started playing NLH, the two expressions I said constantly, were, "I don't believe it!" and "...but they were suited". I stopped saying the last one, but it is still unbelievable, like losing with Quads to a straight flush online...that hurts-ouch!"- Ed Reif

Most playahs are experience rich and technique poor. Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have to keep going back and beginning all over again. Someday, this blog will start to read like one long typographical error, and you come away thinking, “From now on, I'll connect the dots my own way”. 'It’s like football - if you don't wear a helmet and pads, you're going to get hurt.. This blog is your equipment. It is a contact sport, and the more contact you have with other players, the more you will win.


You simply can’t play a solid, safe game. Anyone who plays poker within their means suffers from a lack of imagination. You have to get in there and gamble.. Aggression makes you money. And the trouble with NLH is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more. Poker very simply, rewards aggression. Aggression is the main source of energy for the NL playah.. NLH is about aggression and domination- it’s a playah’s only redeeming qualities. When everything seems under control, you're just not going fast enough. Due to the effect of community cards, hold'em is a game of "domination. A hand is dominated if it has 3 or fewer outs against another, like AQ against AK.


The price of aggression, however, is not cheap. You have to be willing to lose in order to win. Aggression causes trouble. The trouble is you must use extreme self-discipline. If you cannot obey yourself you will be commanded by someone else’s play You cannot control the luck factor, but skill is something over which you have control, and you have the power to gain yet greater skill by becoming a Playah. A playah is just looking for opportunities, not guarantees. Don’t get me wrong. This isn’t amateur hour, this is gambling. All of life is risk exercise. It’s the only way to live more freely and interesting. Dream with your eyes open.


Aggression causes pressure and pressure makes diamonds and diamonds last forever--- It creates the mutant ability to do the impossible, win consistently at NLH. You deserve to win consistently, and the minute you settle for less than you deserve, you get even less than you settled for. But you don’t get what you deserve in poker, you get what you negotiate, and you better be good at negotiating risk.

In NLH, betting is far better than calling. That’s aggression. When you bet, you can win if you have the better hand or if your opponent folds. If you call, you can only win if you have your opponent beaten. If you bet, you determine the bet size. You determine the pot odds. If you call, you are accepting someone else's odds.

If you bet, you force people to pay you off when you have a good hand. If you are a caller, you have to hope someone else will willingly pay you off. The importance of aggression is why tight-passive players can win a lot more at Limit than No-Limit. If you were arrested for aggression would there be enough evidence for the poker police to convict you?

The gambling world is a kind of gambling kindergarten where millions of bewildered infants are trying to spell "Poker" with the wrong blocks.. You got “T” testosterone, that’s good, you’re gonna want that. You got “A”, aggression , that's even better. You're gonna want and need that too.

You can’t spell danger without anger, and every NLH needs to feel dangerous.But any two year old kid can throw a fit! NLH is about controlling that aggression , harnessing that aggression into a series of wins. Only people who die very young learn all they really need to know in kindergarten.

The antidote to anger is patience, and as we already know: infinite patience brings immediate results to your game. Yet the opposite of patience is aggression. We have this paradox. We are learning that NLH is more subtle and multiple than conventional 'either-or' limits have allowed. Our imaginations have some catching up to do. The power not of positive thinking but paradoxical thinking. The nearer you are to paradox, the nearer you are to beating the game. A Playah Passes The Test But Fails The Class---It's time for New AmeriCON Poker:

The Power Of New Americon Poker—the language of betting, a slang that rolls up its sleeves, spits in the street, screams strength possibly more than any other and gets the work done. Tells Don’t Tell – People Do with the language of their betting. Poker is a game of partial information and the language of betting "last in" is information dominance.Making a bet that leaves no option available to the opponent other than to call is asymmetrical warfare. It disarms their can of whoop ass-- deep stack arsenal. Hands which are ok to try and re-steal from a loose aggressive player are frequently horrible hands to call that final bet with. No one likes calling big all-ins with hands like 88 or A-10 regardless of how sure they are that a player is stealing from them.

The Power of New Americon Poker is about being the last in the pot. It too can be an extremely effective way of accumulating chips in spite of your hole cards, not because of them. Lights Out Poker is about playing 'in the dark': betting that your opponents DON'T have the cards rather than that they do.

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Eating What You Kill Is So Money

Date: Tue, Apr 1, 2008 Professional Live Tournament

"Money can't buy happiness but it can buy chips which is kinda the same thing"- Ed Reif"

The longest journey begins with a cash advance from the Bank of America"

The Kung Fu Book of Caine

Poker Without Money Is An Opinion-- Just busted out with Anna(looks good never wins!)...Here's my bad beat story...

The sex of Poker is really a game of mistakes and the greatest one is rooted in pleasure. The fine line we walk between success and self-destruction comes down to asking that one dirty (Harry) question rooted in the loner cop’s message of personal freedom, “Do you feel lucky? Well, do ya punk?”

Poker is a game of situations. Winning poker is about making good decisions Feeling lucky and going to a casino is like feeling athletic and going to a sports bar. It’s a bad decision. It is the in to your sane, a kind of voluntary madness. The surest way of getting nothing from something.

In Blackjack, there is always a correct decision, a perfect strategy. NLH, on the other hand, is a game of completing the puzzle of partial information; where players make inferences and “investments” under uncertainty. Fixed strategies don’t work because players don’t always act perfectly. You are, above all else, playing against other people, and conditions change.

No Limit Hold ‘em or NLH is designed to have a high luck factor that can quite easily lead to a sort of pathological optimism. It’s a fast, easy to understand game that pulls down huge bucketfuls of short-term luck. In fact, playing because you are “feeling lucky” is (almost) the right way to play.

Yet, the right way to play NLH and (almost) the right way to play is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. I don’t want to steal your thunder but that’s what luck is--- the Thunder. Thunder is a good thing , thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does all the work and gets the job done, and it doesn’t strike twice in the same place because the same place isn’t there anymore.

2.Eating What You Kill Is So Money!

You can't spell Manslaughter without laughter, so when you eat what you kill, make sure your neighbors are having a good time. It’s not some felony conviction; more of a firm belief in magic, the process of putting the con back in confidence and creating community, paying them off with social currency and street cred.

You are not keeping up with the Joneses. You’re dragging them down to your level on the green felt jungle. It’s not how good you are. It’s how bad you want it. The quest is in the question of not, “ Who is going to let me?” Rather, “Who is going to stop me?” Power is never given. Power is taken.

Losing Holdem ASAP is about putting that monkey on your opponents back; the “hundredth monkey” that creates a critical mass of change in how they view your “table Presence” As they start believing your own B.S., your third eye and turd eye are one--- Shift Happens! Poker appears to be ’ user friendly. After all, it takes a minute to learn …and a lifetime to master. It isn’t user friendly, it’s user illusionary.

The cards are just there to confuse the bad players, the Hellen Keller’s. It’s not what you look at that matters but what you see. You don’t need cards to win. You need cards to lose.

Try=Fail.The illusion of control is like pushing an elevator button and thinking it will arrive faster. You can however push people’s buttons, and get them to do things faster, like calling your “All in” when you flop the nuts, an unbeatable hand, or folding when they have the best hand. Your mind can't tell the difference between what it sees and what it remembers. Nerons that wire together fire together. You have this social situation, where you get to create your own reality, your own table presence.

The Playah puts the odd(s) back into God--- a Megalomaniac who not only must confuse his thoughts with gods, but gets you to believe in his thoughts. Your reality check will not bounce because you create your own reality. It’s your world, others are just tourists in it and eventually, their own. They believe a monster truck is coming toward them, they will always jump out of the way. So keep on truckin, They have been gas lighted. “Let there be flop”….

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