My good friend Derek (S1x) went ahead and made a great video today. Luckily for us it is part of a series he is working on! The video is short, to the point, informative, and hilarious all wrapped in one. Go ahead and check it out by watching below or by clicking here if you don’t see the video.

If you like the video, be sure to like the video and subscribe to Derek’s YouTube channel. Also, if you are interested in his coaching services, he can be contacted at allsup@projects1x.com

Today we are going to discuss how you can read hands. The best way you can think about this concept is by thinking about a funnel:

As you can see, the funnel starts out wide at the top and is very narrow at the bottom. Our opponent’s hand range (and our hand range) get narrower and narrower every single street as we gain more and more information from their actions.

Watch the video below to get a better understanding of this concept as well as an example (if you can’t see the video, click here).

Hand Range Analysis Example

Check out this hand I played recently at $50NL full ring against a solid reg. The results of this hand aren’t as important as the thought process that goes behind it. Street by street try figuring out a hand range villain can have.

Here is a rough example of something you might come up with:

PREFLOP
{22-AA, Broadways, 67s-9Ts, A9s, and a few other hands are possible}
FLOP
{AK, KK, 99, 88, 89, K9s, AA, KQ, KJ, KT, A9, Q9s, A8s, TT-QQ, 9Ts, JT, JQ, 67s, QT, 22-77, AT-AQ}
TURN
{KK, 99, 88, 89, AA, K9s, A9s, 9Ts, AK, KQ, KJ, KT, JT, QT, AThh-AQhh, QJhh}
RIVER
{KK, 99, 88, 89, K9s, A9s, T9s, JThh, QThh, AThh, QJhh, AJhh, AQhh, AKhh, AA, AK, KQ, KJ, JTo, QTo, QJ}

In the above approximate ranges, the red text is the top of villain’s range, the blue text is the middle strength hands in villain’s range and the green hands are the bottom of villain’s range. These ranges aren’t perfect by any means and we don’t have any reads to go by about how he plays certain hand ranges postflop, but this is a pretty good estimate of what his range could be with the limited information we do have.

As always, if you have any comments or questions please feel free to post them in the comments section below. Stay tuned over the next few days as we will expand on this concept and show where math and combinatorics are added to further define villains range and give us a better clue as to how we should play against him.

We are 7 days in and it is time to talk about poker HUD’s! Some of you may have Poker Tracker but for this article I will be showing you how to set up an awesome custom HUD on Holdem Manager 2 (if you don’t have it yet, be sure to click the link for your free trial)! If you want to use another HUD other than HEM2 then that won’t be a problem. Just skip on ahead to video number two below and we will go over the stats you should have on your HUD. Of course if you have HEM2, you are at an advantage as you can click here to download my custom poker HUD for free! Just download the file and unzip it to a location on your computer you can remember. This is the same HUD that I use in all my videos and the one I use when grinding. After a year of testing it at the tables, I’m hoping you enjoy the layout and understand what all the numbers mean.

Setting Up Your Poker HUD

To set up your poker HUD on HEM2, just watch the video below or click here if you can’t see the video.

Which Poker HUD Stats Should You Use?

In my opinion, the best HUD stats you can have on your popup are covered in the video below (click here if you don’t see the video below). After watching the video, check out the stats listed below and consider adding them to your HUD!

VPIP – Stands for “Voluntarily Put in Pot.” This records the percentage of the time villain puts money into the pot other than the blinds which he has to put into the pot. If VPIP is high then that means they play too many hands and if VPIP is low, the are most likely a nit and will show up with strong hands more frequently.

PFR – Stands for “Pre-flop Raise.” This records what percentage of the time villain raises preflop. Typically the VPIP and PFR should be relatively close together for solid players meaning that they solid players are rarely limping or flatting raises with bad hands. If there is a large gap between the VPIP and PFR you know that your opponent is most likely loose/passive and can be “outplayed” by playing a solid value hand range that dominates villains wide range.

Aggression Factor – This is a made up formula that gauges how often a player is aggressive to the amount of time the player plays passively. Typically good players have a range between AF 2-4. If their AF is higher than 4 over a large sample size, they are probably too aggressive and if they have a long term AF under 2 then they are probably really passive.

Steal Percentage – The frequency at which villain steals. Stealing is defined as open raising the cutoff, button or small blind in attempts to win the blinds. Normally winning regs steal anywhere between 30% and 40% of the time.

Fold to Steal Percentage – The frequency at which villain folds to steals. This is one of my favorite stats as many times it is purely mathematical whether I can steal or not. Some players I will min-raise their blinds with any two cards for a profit because their fold to steal is really high. Other players I will just fold until I have a strong value hand since they never fold their blinds.

C-bet Percentage – This tells you how often your opponent is continuation betting. This stat can be broken down by street. Just because someone has a high or low c-bet% doesn’t mean they bluff a lot. You have to take it into context with how wide their pre-flop raise range is.

Fold to C-bet Percentage – This tells you how often your opponent folds to continuation bets. This is a useful statistic (broken down by street) to tell you how often you can bluff your opponent and whether or not multi-barrel bluffing is a good or bad idea.

3-bet% – This will give you their overall frequency of 3-betting. I think this should just be used overall to see how 3-bet happy villain is. You typically want to click on the popup and see how often they 3-bet in that specific position and think about how your preflop raise position might influence your opponent’s decision to 3-bet you.

Fold to 3-bet% – This is a great stat that tells you a lot about someone’s reaction to 3-bets. Some players defend way too wide and others fold way too much. It is your job to figure out which category your opponent falls under and figure out good hands to exploit their tendencies.

Check/Raise Percentage – Probably the least useful statistic on my HUD, I had some extra room so I just added this statistic as it was hard for me to find the few times I did need to use it.

WTSD% – Stands for “Went to Showdown Percentage.” This tells you how often villain will see a showdown by river. If you have thousands of hands on players this is very useful because it will tell you how clingy villain is with their marginal hands or how timid they are to call multi-street bluffs. This stat can be powerful if you use it in the right spots.

Hopefully the list of stats I use are useful to you. I’m also curious as to which stats are on your HUD? Go ahead and respond down below in the comments section!

Day 6 is here and here is your second hand history to look over! Check out the video below or click here to view the video. How would you play this hand and what are your thoughts here? Answer in the comments section below.

Hey everyone! Today is our first day of doing hand history reviews. We haven’t talked much about theory but this video should get your brain primed to be thinking about ranges and player types. Watch the video below (or click here if you don’t see it) and be sure to explain what you would do down in the comments!

What is up guys? Now that we have some of the basics out of the way, we will start to dive in to some meatier poker material. I just want to make sure everyone is on the same level. That being said, this is day 4 so strap in and get ready to talk about table selection!

Check out the video below or click here if you don’t see the video!

What Is Table Selection and Why Do We Do It?

Table selection is simply choosing the table you play at based on a number of factors. We simply do it to maximize profit in poker (just like anything else we do in poker).

In the poker world there is a lot of “conventional wisdom” floating around that I think is largely bad advice for less experienced players because people tend to get wrapped up on the technicalities rather than their intentions. For example, it is “conventional wisdom” to play at tables with the highest VPIP%. This makes sense because a good way to make money is by waiting for good hands and then dominating players who play a wide range of hands. Does this means you should only play tables with a VPIP% > 0%? Hell no! If I were given a hypothetical choice of playing at a table of players with a 0% VPIP and a table with 24% VPIP I would chose the 0% table hands down. 0% means no one ever plays a hand and just folds meaning we can literally sit down at that table, min-raise every hand, and win the blinds. Boring, sure. Profitable? You bet! Think about it. Every orbit at a full ring table you get 7 opportunities to steal 1.5bbs, 1 opportunity to steal 1bb, and 1 opportunity to win .5bbs. This means you earn 12.5bbs per orbit. If you play 90 hands an hour, this comes out to making 125bbs an hour or having a winrate of a whopping 138.9bb/100!

“But Nitreg, 0% VPIP tables don’t exist!”

Yeah, I know, but the point is you can win in more ways than one and just because a table has a high or low statistic doesn’t necessarily mean it is a profitable or non-profitable table.

So What Makes A Table Profitable?

In my opinion it all comes down to the players at the table and how you can best exploit them. Ideally I want the loose players on my direct right, the nits on my direct left, and no regs at my table. If there are regs at my table, I prefer to not be out of position against them and ideally have them sitting at the opposite side of the table.

Because my table selection is so dependent on the actual players instead of aggregate statistics, it is important that I take detailed notes and color code EVERYONE. The color coding allows me quickly look at an empty seat and deem whether it is good to play at or not. It sounds like it will take a while to color code everyone but it really isn’t. If you start with regs and nits who are obvious to spot, then usually the people left are the fish. That means you an start sitting at tables with tight players to your left and unknowns to your right. You can also use other tricks to stereotype unknown players such as looking at their stack size to judge whether they are a fish or not (fish usually have a weird amount in their stack like 57bbs).

You will have to wait until Day 10 of the 31DPC to learn how to exploit different player types, but keep in mind a few general guidelines:

• Nits are on our left so we can relentlessly steal their blinds
• Loose/passive players are to our right so we can continuously isolate them for value and be last to act post flop since we are going to be playing a lot of hands postflop
• We don’t want LAGs or solid TAGs who play back at us directly to our left because they will make our life hell and punish us for isolating fish

What About Starting Tables?

Starting tables is a great idea if you are confident in your post flop play. Usually regs will know who you are and not want to pick a fight since it isn’t that profitable for either of you. Eventually a fish usually sits down then you get the best scenario ever: playing heads up with the worst poker players on the internet. All the money belongs to you (until someone else sits down). The nice thing about table selection is it is a great way to get soft games going even when the current running tables look bad. Give it a try!

All in all, just remember that most of the stats like Plrs/Flop, Avg Pot, and H/Hr are generally useless stats to base table selection on. Do a little work in properly marking players so you can hunt down your prey for your next session! Also, if your table starts sucking, then you should leave no matter what and get a new table up (or start your own new one).

We are on Day 3 of the 31 Day Poker Challenge! Today, we are going to talk about the basic software needed to help you improve our game. Go ahead and watch the video below to see what software you need (or click here if you don’t see the video).

Useful Poker Software

Holdem Manager 2 (HEM2) – When playing online poker, it is essential to have a poker HUD and hand tracking program. HEM2 is the best of the best. I have been using HEM2 for months now and it has quickly gained the number 1 spot over its previous version HEM1. This program tracks every single hand you ever play so you can track your results, review your hands, dissect an opponents game, and create some sexy poker graphs HEM2 also gives you an in-game HUD to see up to date stats on how every player plays. HUDs are vital to online poker because in a casino with 8 other people playing 30 hands an hour you can pay attention while online you are playing hundreds of hands an hour against dozens of people. If you are playing Zoom Poker then there is no exception. You need a HUD. Otherwise you will never have reads on anyone as the tables constantly change. HEM2 only costs $59.99 for the small stakes version which is way less than the amount I would have lost had I had no HUD software. If you click my link above, you will be able to have a 1 month free trial to test it out if you haven’t already.

Poker Tracker 4 (PT4) – PT4 is basically the same type of program as HEM2, just not as good in my opinion. Their interface isn’t as easy to navigate and it lacks some of the more advanced features and integrated apps like HEM2 has. With all that being said, it is a great program and has all the basics plus most of the advanced features. The biggest reason to buy PT4 is if you have a Mac because HEM2 isn’t currently offered to Mac users. Go ahead and click the link above to get yourself a free trial of PT4 and test it out!

Table Ninja – If you play more than 12 tables at once, Table Ninja is the right product for you. It makes multi-tabling super easy! On top of that, it also handles buyins and top ups, always sits you in in case you get timed out, auto time banks for those tough decisions, auto bet sizes to your standard size, and it has customizable hot keys so you can call, raise, or fold with the press of a key. Give Table Ninja a shot if you are looking to take multi-tabling seriously

Poker Stove – Poker stove is an amazing program used to help you study poker off the table. It tells you your all in equity in any situation and lets you specify your opponent’s or your hand range. Just as a warning though, Poker Stove only tells you your all-in equity and won’t tell you your odds of hitting a draw on the turn for instance. With that being said, it is still an invaluable tool for understanding all in equity and doing range analysis.

Team Viewer - An important part of growing as a player is having sweat sessions with your peers. To do a sweat session, you will need a program that can stream your screen to your sweat session buddy. Team Viewer is a good choice but it does have a few lag issues. If you are getting bad lag, try using the program Mikogo or try Skype’s screen sharing feature. Team Viewer is a free program so try it out!

Skype – The standard in voice and text chat is vital to communicating and networking with other players. I use this all the time for coaching, sweat sessions, and discussing hand histories with poker players all over the world. Skype is also free

Calculator - Pretty much all computers come with a standard calculator. This is the perfect tool to help study hands and do some quick math. As simple as this program is, I do use it quite a lot when studying.

If you have any questions or comments, please post in the comments below. What is your favorite HUD program: PT4 or HEM2?

Welcome back to Day 2 of the the 31 Day Poker Challenge! Before you even think about playing poker online, you need to know which site you are going to play at. In this post Black Friday world we are left with very few options (especially if you are in the USA). With that being said, let’s go over what you should be looking out for!

Check out the video below or click here if you don’t see the video.

When selecting a poker site to play on, there is only one thing that matters: maximizing your EV. There are two primary ways in which you can do this. You can either play on a low traffic site and maximize your win-rate or you can play on a high traffic site with a lower win-rate. The smaller sites usually limit you to when you can play, how many tables you can play, and how high in limits you can play. Since the software is usually not as good and the traffic is low, many regs avoid these sites leaving you to mop up all of the fish. The larger sites usually have the best promotions and therefore attract the most regs. With all the regs concentrated in one site, your win-rate will naturally be lower but you will be able to play many more hands than the smaller sites making up for the win-rate loss.

Here are some other things you will want to consider when thinking about which site you want to play at:

• What bonuses or rakeback options the site offers
• How fast and easy are the cashout and deposit options
• How good is the software?
• How reputable is the poker site?

With these factors in mind, here are the best sites that I have played on and can recommend:

US Facing Poker Sites

Lock Poker

Pros:

• Decent software
• HUD support
• 36% rakeback
• Good promos
• Decent traffic and fish

Cons:

• Cashout is around days for WU and currently 2+ months for check

Black Chip Poker

Pros:

• Winning Poker Network (WPN)
• Rakeback up to 66% depending on your bonus level
• Lots of fish

Cons:

• No HEM2 support (yet)
• Very low traffic
• Software is terrible in my opinion
• Wait few weeks for payment

Bovada Poker

Pros:

• Tons of fish
• 4 tables max
• Cashouts are most reliable and take 2-3 weeks

Cons:

• Anonymous tables
• No HUD support
• No rakeback
• Medium traffic

Non-US Facing Poker Sites

PokerStars / Full Tilt Poker

Pros:

• Hands down best sites
• High traffic
• Decent amounts of fish
• Good rakeback and promos
• Great selection of games
• Super fast payouts

Cons:

• None!

As always, if you have any comments or questions, please feel free to post below in the comments section. What is your favorite poker site to play on?

Welcome to Day 1 of the 31 Day Poker Challenge! I know you guys want to dive right in to the deep content but it is important to make sure you have a good foundation to work on. On the first day, we will talk about a more abstract subject. We are talking about why you play poker in the first place and how you can make goals to maximize your enjoyment from poker (at least I hope you enjoy poker!).

Watch the video below (or click here if you don’t see the video)

First you are going to want to know why you are playing poker. There are various reasons why you might play poker but make sure you can identify the one you fall under. Some of these reasons may include:

• Wanting to make money
• Wanting to improve your game
• Wanting to challenge yourself
• Wanting to play relationally as a fun game

None of these reasons for playing are “wrong.” Just make sure you know why you are playing as it will help you in setting up your goals.

Once you have thought about why you like playing poker, you need to create goals to maximize your enjoyment from the game. To do this we need to understand two things about your goals: your goals need to be quantifiable and they need to be something you can control.

Quantifiable basically means something you can count. For example, having your poker goal be “make lots of money” is not a quantifiable goal because there is no point where you have “made lots of money” while “play 1,000 hands a day” is a quantifiable goal because it is something you can measure.

It is also important that you can control your goals. For example “make $50 a day” is a bad goal because you can’t control whether you win or lose sessions. You can be the best player in the world and still have many losing days a year. Winning and losing is outside of our control so we should never try to improve a variable of our game such as winning or losing. An example of something we can control is a goal like “get coaching twice a month.” That goal is something you can control so it would work as a viable goal to set.

To think about what goals you should set for yourself, think about where you would like to be a year from now with poker. Now break it down into actionable steps that you can do every day. For example, if you are playing $50NL and in a year you can see yourself grinding $200NL, think about what it will take for you to get to that next level. It might include some of the following goals:

• Study 4 hand histories every day
• Do poker calculations every day to better understand ranges
• Get coached at the beginning of every month
• Do a sweat session with a poker buddy twice a week
• Get $4,000 for a 20 buy-in bankroll

Obviously for the last “goal” on our list, we can’t control whether we will make $4,000 or not. What we can control is our approach to maximize our odds of reaching $4,000 or more in a years time.

For instance, let’s say you currently win 50NL at 2bb/100 and have played 250,000 hands last year. This means there are two variables you can try and improve to get to $4,000:

1. Play 500,000 hands while maintaining your 2bb/100 winrate
2. Increase your win-rate to 4bb/100 while maintaining your 250,000 hands

Doubling your hands per year is quantifiable and something you can control. Doubling your win-rate is quantifiable but you can’t control it. This means you should set goals that will help you improve your game in an attempt to win 4bb/100 such as the ones suggested above (sweat sessions, hand history reviews, coaching, etc).

With your new goals laid out and a fresh new mindset, it is time to dive into the 31 Day Poker Challenge! Stick around tomorrow where we will talk about which site you should play on!

What are your poker goals this year? Post your goals down below in the comments section.

Hey everyone! Happy New Year! I’m excited to announce a little project I’m working on for you guys called the 31 Day Poker Challenge. Every day we will be going over concepts or hand histories that will help develop you into a lean, mean, chip stacking machine. All you need to do is just follow along every day and keep working hard towards your poker goals!

The first day is simple. Look over the list of things scheduled and try to get some hands in today. Generally Christmas time to New Years day is poker heaven as lots of drunk fish are out looking to donate their money to you. Without further ado, here is the syllabus for the 31DPC

WEEK 1:

1)                  Why do you play poker? Goals for the new year?

2)                  Which site should I play on?

3)                  Software you should use

4)                  Table selection

5)                  HAND HISTORY DAY 1

6)                 HAND HISTORY DAY 2

7)                 Setting up your HUD

WEEK 2:

8)                 How to hand read

9)                 Balancing and the rock/paper/scissors concept

10)              How to exploit different player types

11)              Poker math and combinatorics

12)              Stealing and re-stealing

13)              HAND HISTORY DAY 3

14)               HAND HISTORY DAY 4

WEEK 3:

15)              C-BETTING DAY!!!

16)              C-betting day round 2!

17)              Polarization

18)              3-betting/4-betting/5-betting

19)              Squeezing

20)              HAND HISTORY DAY 5

21)              HAND HISTORY DAY 6

WEEK 4:

22)              HEM2 day 1 (taking notes on opponents)

23)              HEM2 day 2 (reviewing hands/doing filters)

24)              HEM2 day 3 (reviewing opponents)

25)              PTR hand importing

26)              Leak Finder

27)              HAND HISTORY DAY 7

28)              HAND HISTORY DAY 8

WEEK 5:

29)              How to study (study group, coaching, sweat sessions)

30)              Recap of what we have learned. Where to go from here?

31)              Surprise!