Today seems like an odd choice for which to write a positive minded blog entry. I had a truly awful day.

I woke up at 6am to catch an 8:15am flight. I normally wake up at 9am. There was bad traffic on the way to the airport and I was afraid we’d be late and miss the flight, though I was pretty sure we’d be okay. When we arrived they informed us that the flight was two hours delayed.

As always when I’ve under slept I felt horribly sick to my stomach and couldn’t eat very well in the morning. Our flight didn’t actually leave until 11:15am and as a result of Celina and me checking in separately online they had seated us apart. I asked the guy next to me if he wouldn’t mind swapping his aisle seat for Celina’s window and he declined on account of wanting to stay in the aisle seat. I went over and asked the lady next to Celina to move and after some consideration she agreed. I thanked her excessively.


The flight on United Arab Emirates was pleasant enough for the first 80% or so. Then they took away my head phones mid movie as we began our descent, forcing me to watch the rest of ‘Recount’ in silence, unable to understand why everyone in the movie hated Katherine Harris so much.

Then the plane experienced considerable turbulence, which caused me a rare bout of air sickness. I turned ghastly pale and my body felt like I was on fire. I unbuttoned my shirt down to a level that’d make Antonio Banderas think I was overdoing it then started sweating profusely as I dry heaved into the air sickness bag. I never actually vomited, though I doubt anyone else on the plane knew that from the sounds I was making.

Our descent turned out to be a rouse, as about 50 meters from the ground we suddenly pulled up and rapidly gained altitude. The captain came on the loud speaker and informed us that given the extremely wet and windy weather conditions it was too dangerous to land the plane. We’d have to hover over the airport and try again in about 10 minutes, and if we couldn’t land in the next 30-40 we’d have to reroute to Christchurch. On the second attempt the pilot managed to give us a surprisingly smooth landing.

I exited the plane as quickly as possible and after we went through customs made our way to the taxi line. We got a taxi immediately but the drive into town ended up taking 90 minutes as a result of a crash on the freeway. The ride is supposed to take 25.

When we arrived at the hotel Celina realized she’d forgot her make up at home. That meant we needed to go walk about in the rain for about 45 minutes searching for a place that had the appropriate accessories, which we never found.

I finally arrived in the poker room around 8pm, half an hour late to get into the media/celebrity event which Lee Nelson hosted. So yes, it has been a rough day. But now that it’s all done and over, I’m in the mood to spread some love around the poker world. Especially since my last entry has people thinking I’m a massive hater.

It’s worth noting though, that my frequent shots at Hellmuth are more than a simple professional envy. Sure, there’s that. Sure I’m jealous that a guy who behaves like an idiot and plays with hilariously awful leaks has made more money from this game than I ever will. Sure it’s appalling to watch him receive special treatment and have penalties taken away just because ESPN is worried about ratings. Sure he makes himself a massive target for criticism with his constant declarations about being the best in the world and in the history of the game when he’s too retarded to figure out how to play QQ to an open raise. But what really makes Hellmuth the epicentre of my scorn is his attitude and treatment of people.

There’s a popular Hellmuth story that everyone knows at Crown Casino in Melbourne. Back in the earlier days of the Aussie Millions (I believe it was 2004, though I could be wrong about the year and it’s not terribly relevant) Phil came down to play in the tournament. They had a players party one night and a popular poker room floor man by the name of Franky, who’s just about the nicest guy you’ll ever meet, was given the task of escorting Phil up to the party since he didn’t know his way. On the way up the escalator Franky turned to Phil and said
“Man it must be so exciting to travel around the world and play so much poker in Vegas.”
Phil glanced down at Frank and retorted sternly
“Franky, don’t talk to me, just take me to the party” then never said another word. And just in case you think I got an exaggerated version, it was Franky who told it to me.

But enough of the negative vibes, let’s get some love flowing. I’ve already written one entry a while ago about those I know in the poker world and why they are awesome, which you can find here: http://tworags.com/blog/bond18/post/2279/the_people_i_know_

Now let’s talk about some people I’ve gotten to know better recently and why they are so fucking cool.

Lee Nelson: I could write pages about why Lee Nelson kicks ass, so I’ll try and sum things up neatly here. First of all, he’s a flat out excellent tournament player, with the results to prove it (not that results prove anything!) He’s a guy in his mid 60’s who while retired and looking for a hobby picked up poker and made up his mind to get as good at it as possible. He’s written three books on poker, one of which I consider to be one of the best pieces of poker literature in the game, ‘Kill Everyone’. He has all the people reading and ‘feel’ skills of a great live player, but thinks about the game much closer to an online player. He’s the only predominately live playing poker player I’ve ever seen who seems more at home discussing strategy with online kids than with other live players, yet has a sense of humour and enthusiasm few of them can match. His game is grounded in math, but knows when to break it. It’s no secret that Lee has done a lot for me, including getting me involved in these seminars, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to write him a suck up paragraph just to return the favour.

Grant Levy: For those who don’t know Grant, he’s the guy who won the APPT Grand Final in Sydney last year, making him the first Australian to win a million dollars (AUD) on Australian soil. It immediately launched him into poker stardom in the region and landed him an instant major sponsorship deal with Stars. On top of this, Grant has had some massive results online, both previous to and after his win. All that said, Grant is one of those guys whose ego hasn’t changed in the slightest since his string of success, and although he aspires to be a great poker player, he talks and acts like a guy who knows he’s not the perfect player. He knows where he needs to improve and shows the drive to keep increasing his knowledge, and my guess is that time will prove Grant to be no one hit wonder.

Shane ‘Shaniac’ Schleger: Shane is poker’s Elliot Ness (go ahead, google him), a guy with the utmost respect for the game and a genuine passion for protecting its ethics. He’s an outspoken guy on the forums who I learn something from just about every time he stops in to make a post. He’s perhaps poker’s best blogger (it’s a coin toss between him and Dr. Pauly in my opinion) when he’s motivated enough to update the damn thing, and he also crushes both live and online poker. Sure, he told JJprodigy to go kill himself, but who hasn’t thrown around a “Hey, why don’t you go kill yourself” in their day? At least on the internet anyway. I keep those comments for people in positions of authority myself, but were I to tell one and only one notorious online cheat that he ought to end his own life it’d be JJ too, so who am I to judge? Oh shit, there’s still Teltscher. I guess that’s two coin tosses this paragraph.

Dani ‘Ansky’ Stern: I mean, he’s just the sickest of the sick. I’ve learned as much from Ansky’s strategy posts as I have from just about anyone’s. He plays the biggest cash games and crushes. He’s the guy every single 2+2’er would swap with in the 10k live tournament. He makes awesome Pokersavvy videos. He plays 500/1000 heads up against Durrrr (baaaaaaaaaaaaaaalla!) What’s not to like?

Jeffrey Haas: I kind of hope Jeffrey never reads this because he’s a guy whose in a position which makes it inevitable that people will constantly suck up to him and I don’t want him to think I’m doing that. Jeffrey is cool, both for what he does and just as a person. And what exactly is it this guy 95% of you have never heard of did that’s so cool? HE BROUGHT POKER TO FUCKING ASIA. He’s the president of the APPT and although there’s a lot of credit to be given for its success to a number of people I’ve gotten to know recently, Jeffrey is at the top of the pyramid and the guy with final say. If there comes a time five years from now when players from all over Asia are making the online games as soft as ever this is the guy you thank. And five years after that when all the Asian players have taken over poker this is the guy you burn at the stake. The over/under on the total amount of hours of sleep Jeffrey gets in a week is 15.

Gazillion: For those of you who don’t know him, Gazillion was the 2+2 poster who brought my ‘TJ Cookier and the UB Scandal’ comic strip to life with his incredible photoshopping skills. His real name is Mike, though I haven’t a clue about his last name. We’ve never met but spoken on AIM a ton of times. Gazillion manages to be on of the extremely few regular posters in ‘News, Views, and Gossip’ who doesn’t just spew retardation onto the forums. A quick glance at his body of work, found here: http://www.pokerroad.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8 and you’ll know why he was the best man for my job. He also handles my constant insults about his being English with all class. Now if only that pommie, tea sucking, red coat wearing, probably bad teeth having, inexplicably soccer enjoying, drunken British bastard would finish my fucking comic.

Celina Lin: Yea, she’s my girlfriend, so it’s obvious I love her for reasons outside of poker. But this is a poker blog, so let’s keep it on topic. A bit under a year ago Celina cashed in the APPT Macau tournament and when the Pokerstars people found out she was trilingual and born in China they decided to live up to their name sake and make themselves a poker star. Since then Celina has been on the cover of poker magazines, featured in non poker literature, done press conferences, and dealt with people who consider themselves ‘fans’ of hers. What impresses me is that throughout it all Celina has never lost sight of reality. She doesn’t consider herself a big deal even though others treat her as such, and her behaviour hasn’t changed in the slightest. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little worried at the start that all the attention and praise might change my girlfriend, but a year into it I now know that’s just not how she is. She’s not just sitting back and acting like she’s hot shit either, she knows she still has a ton to learn and every time she busts from a tournament on a questionable hand comes to me and says “Tony, will you help me get better at poker?” If only I knew how to stop two outers.

Okay, that’s enough pleasantries for one evening. It’s quite late and I’ve had a long day. For those wondering about the seminar, it’s $750 New Zealand (ball park $500 USD) for one day. We include a workbook that’s nearly 200 pages long for you to take home that has content from every instructor. At the end we run a tournament where we interact with the players and give them feedback about how they play. The winner of the tournament gets a seat into the APPT New Zealand main event. It lasts around eight hours long I believe. Sorry I don’t have more thorough information, but this is my first go at this.

Every now and then I write something where I criticize the play of Phil Hellmuth. I maintain to this day that while Phil certainly isn’t ‘bad’ in the sense that he’s unprofitable in live tournaments, he is ‘bad’ in the sense that he’s fucking clueless with pot odds, stack sizes, position, math, playing thinking players, and especially ranges.

Every time I state stuff like this (also known as stating the obvious) a couple dozen Phil Hellmuth supporting mouth breathers come out of the woodwork and snap at me with comments like “OH MY GOD, WHAT DO YOU KNOW BOND!? DO YOU HAVE 11 WSOP BRACELETS? NO? THEN WHO ARE YOU TO QUESTION PHIL!?!?!?” then they return to drooling on themselves while losing money at .05/.10 and masturbating to bestiality porn. And thank God for those mouth breathers to, otherwise I might forget the true measure of a poker player’s skill is how many bracelets they’ve won by beating up on the softest live poker fields in world (WSOP NLH events) and not their ability to make optimal decision after optimal decision. Again, I thank you mouth breathers for clarifying this for me.

Luckily Phil does a lot of work to make my argument about his play for me. I thought he’d never top his K6o raise/fold, but it turns out I was very wrong. I refer you to this link:
http://tinypic.com/player.php?v=33usfhh&s=4

Note how Matusow nearly has a seizure when he sees Phil’s cards.

Anyway, this will be my last serious day online for about a week. Tomorrow morning I head off to New Zealand for APPT Auckland. Before the tournament I’m doing a day long seminar there with Joe Hachem and Lee Nelson among other excellent players and poker thinkers. If anyone is attending Auckland let me know so I can say hello.

The main event is a $2500 USD buy in and the high rollers event is about $6500 USD. Unfortunately the high rollers is on the second day of the main event, so if you last through the first day no high rollers for you. I’m not sure why they put it their, but Danny McDonough (the APPT tournament director) is a smart guy so I’m guessing it was the only time realistically available. I may or may not blog the trip, after having done the ‘Around the world in 90 days blog’ I’m a little worn out on trip report style blogging, but I’ll be taking notes at the table in case things get interesting.

I’ve been talking to a number of my friends who are highly successful tournament grinders lately such as Seabeast, Psyduck, and StevoL about the ‘bigger picture’. What we’re trying to accomplish through poker, what we want to do outside of that, how much money we think we need to accomplish these goals, life style choices, etc. We’ve especially been talking a lot about money management.

The thing that never stops startling me about the poker community, and especially the multi table tournament community, is just how many guys are reckless with their bankroll and general money management. I’m not necessarily a master of either, but I know crazy when I see it. A surprising amount of guys I talk to who are winning regulars have much smaller bankrolls than I’d imagine, especially some of the guys who directly buy themselves into major live events, sometimes with less than 10 buy ins for that event.

The more I think about not only this game but life in general it becomes so clear how the removal of ego is integral to success. There’s so many MTT guys who make awful bankroll decisions, and my best guess as to why is that it’s ego driven. That’s not to say we shouldn’t be confident, I’ve stated before that when you’re playing at the table you should have, as Tucker Max put it, ‘confidence bordering on delusional hubris’.

What is important at this game of ours is a willingness to put in volume with the removal of ego. A lot of guys I know will only play the biggest buy in tournaments. For a few of the sickest guys like Menlo, Andy Mcleod, Randallin who do this, that’s all fine and good. However, there’s a ton of guys who don’t have these players skills or their bankrolls that only bother with the largest buy ins. The problem with this is that leads to massive variance and probably a smaller overall earn than guys who are willing to put in the volume. I understand for some guys that 12 tabling simply doesn’t mesh with their playing style, but for guys who want to make the ascent through the ranks its pretty God damn important that you’re willing to grind your ass off.

Let’s look at some of the math here. Say you’re a good but not great MTT player with an average buy in of $100. That means you’re playing most large tournaments, but now and then you pass up the toughest fields like the weekly 1k’s and the 100 rebuys. Now let’s say you have an ROI of 50%, which is entirely reasonable at that average buy in playing pretty high volume and very attainable with enough work if you’re a guy who’s learning. It’s easy to confirm this because you can look up just about any player on www.officialpokerrankings.com and check their ROI over their entire sample size. In fact, were you curious enough you could basically figure out how much every serious MTT grinder makes, though you couldn’t be exact cause many of them play on European sites that aren’t tracked and OPR isn’t perfect, but let’s get back to our example.

So you play an average buy in of $100, at 50% ROI and play 20 tournaments a day, which can be accomplished in a 7-9 hour work day. Now let’s say you play six days a week because it’s pretty easy and there’s no commute and no homework (although you should study you don’t have to if you don’t want to.) Your average week is worth $6,000. In a fucking week dude. Now let’s say you put in 45 weeks a year, how much do you make assuming all these variables hold roughly true? $270,000. Obviously bad runs happen, good runs happen, etc, but this is in fact your expectation.

Now let’s say you need to spend some, and have to pay taxes of course (if you’re an Australian reading this, go fuck yourself you lucky tax free bastards.) By the end of the year you should still be able to pocket well over $150,000. If you’re careful with your money and put in two years of work like this you can have a large enough savings to never have to worry too much about money for the rest of your life. Sure you’re not rich, but you won’t be eating Ramen noodles three meals a day any time soon.

So when I look at math like this it completely blows my mind that so many MTT regulars don’t have a bankroll worth one years worth of pretty low stress work. Most of these guys probably have a slightly higher ROI at an even higher average buy in. I guess it’s because you have to drop the ego and the chase of the ‘big score’ in order to think along these lines. There’s a bunch of MTT guys I know who have the skills to do this and bank a ton, but instead take a staking deal which includes both online and live play and end up suffering the horrendous variance of live poker while all their online efforts go back to the backer, turning their backing arrangement more into a long term money loan to play live poker at a FUCKING GIGANTIC vig.

See I’ve thought about and discussed all this shit more times than I can count. That’s why you’ll see me in every tournament I can cram in and play comfortable. That’s why you’ll see me in $11 buy ins with a single rebuy add on. You’ll see me in $25 freeze outs. That’s why I work seven days a week and greet anything that derails this with the utmost disgust and annoyance.
“Please Tony, take me to the hospital, I’m bleeding to death. HELP ME.”
“GOD DAMN IT!! Do you have any idea what this is going to cost me in expectation!? FUCK.”

And that’s why I should see all your asses grinding with me. Think long term people. Drop the ego. It’s not about just the money, it’s about the security. You won’t be 23 forever. I should know, my ass get’s older in two weeks, and I’m thinking about it.

So it’s about time that I got back into the habit of regularly updating my blog. After having done so much writing for the Around the World in 90 Days blog plus an enormous sum of live poker I was pretty worn out and didn’t feel up to writing anything for a while. Over the last few days I’ve felt my desire to write to grow again, so here we are.

Not only has my drive to write increased, so has my drive to do a lot of things. To put it bluntly, I’m pretty fucking bored with myself. Yesterday I had a golf lesson. The day before I had a boxing lesson. I’m playing a ton of tennis. I’m thinking about writing some material and going to perform it at an open mic night at a comedy club. I’ve been working out and dieting religiously.

Celina is currently away in Korea at the APPT Seoul. I didn’t go for a couple of reasons which I’ll talk about in a future entry, nothing major, just a business detail that meant I probably shouldn’t go to Korea. That and I’m really exhausted from all my recent travel, so another 14 hours in planes not to mention God knows how much time in airports seemed a bit too much for me. That and I’ve been killing online.

As most people reading this blog would know, last week was PokerStars WCOOP. The tournaments started at what’s 4:30am Melbourne time so I was up at 4:25am every morning and playing as many tables as possible for the next 12 hours. I didn’t have any major results in the WCOOP itself, but over the last 10 or so days (the last few I’ve gone back to my 8 hour schedule starting at 9am) my results have been:
1st on Titan for $15,000.
3rd on Stars for $12,000.
1st on Stars for $6000 New Zealand APPT package.
1st on Full Tilt for $9,900.
2nd on Stars for $16,500.
1st on UB for $7,500 Aruba package (I think that’s the value?)
1st on Stars for $5,800.
Not to mention a bunch of other random final table appearances for like $500-$2000 or something. It feels really good to be back grinding online and making money at a consistent rate. I’ve also continued my Midas touch of swapping, swapping with a friend at the final two tables of the 100r which he won and had to send me $1500, and swapping with Luckychewy with 10 left in the Tilt winners choice, which he won and had to send me $1200 for.

Today is Grand Final day in Melbourne so I’m going to take the day off and get outside. First going out to breakfast, then playing some tennis, then throwing some money on the game and watching the mayhem. If we go to the right spot for the game and get a couple beers in me (yea, I’m going to take a one day break from my strict diet) perhaps there’s potential for an epic day. We’ll see.

Hey people, it’s been a while since I’ve done any strategy writing but I assure you I was very busy rotating between grinding long days of live poker and considering suicide. Now that I’ve got some more free time I’m hoping to get back to productive writing and getting some articles done. Today I want to talk about a concept I’ve been mulling over in my head for a while now, manipulative vs deceptive play.
Alternating between manipulative and deceptive play is a concept I’ve struggled finding a balance with for some time. First let’s define what I mean by both manipulative and deceptive play.
Manipulative play: I alternate between calling ‘manipulative play’ manipulative and ‘obvious play’, or on the days a regular tries something obvious on me “Do you think I’d fall for that obvious fucking shit?!” Most manipulative plays are just that, rather obvious, at least to those of us who are thinking players. A good example of manipulative play is min raising or (tiny reraising) with AA/KK pre. You lower the cost for players in the blinds to see the flop (or the original raiser), hoping to manipulate them into getting married to their hand post flop against your over pair, or perhaps interpreting your pre flop min raise as weak and coming over the top. The problem is that many people don’t have anything besides AA/KK in their pre flop min raising/reraising range, so when you see it from them it becomes very obvious.
Deceptive play: Deceptive play is a way of describing a play that consists of making the same move with the majority or your entire range, making your hand very difficult to read. The major benefit of deceptive play is that it makes your hand much more difficult to read, but as a consequence it can sometimes discourage the action that you want. A good example of deceptive play is when it folds to you on the button with 13 BB’s and you shove your entire range of playable hands into the two blinds on your left. In order for this to be better than the manipulative play here though (which would be shoving hands that don’t want action and 2.5X’ing hands that want to get shoved on so you can snap call) you need the players on your left to be thinking or regular players. We’ll elaborate on that example a bit further in.

Basically, you want to use the manipulative play when appropriate to encourage the action you want against non thinking players, and use deceptive play against good/thinking ones who will see through your manipulative play. Manipulative play can be used both to encourage getting action on a hand and to discourage. Figuring out when to use which is a combination of hand reading, board reading, and being image and history conscious. Let’s look at some examples:

Example 1: Effective stacks 8,500. Blinds 100/200 with 25 ante 9 handed. You hold 8h8d on the button.
Preflop: Folds to MP2, MP2 raises to 550, folds to you on the button, you call on the button, both blinds fold.
Flop: Jc 8c 4d (Pot 1325)
MP2 bets 1000, you…

Many players would either flat here, or perhaps min raise. Some might raise 3X, some may even shove. Often though, people take the flat call or min raise option, hoping to keep the other player putting chips in the pot. Against a non thinking player you should take the route which you feel best manipulates that specific player to get a lot of chips in the pot, and whichever play that is depends on what kind of non thinking player you’re against. Many go with the min raise.

Against a thinking player you want to make the play that he expects you to make with the full range of hands that get a lot of chips in the middle, which is mostly draws and good jacks. If the thinking player perceives you as the type to shove your draws, then you should consider shoving your set. What you don’t want to do against a thinking player is alter your play solely based on the strength of your hand, since many have seen the same pattern before and know how to react to it.

Example 2: Your stack: 20,000. SB stack: 4800. BB stack: 5000. Blinds 200/400 with 50 ante. You hold QQ on the button.
Preflop: The action folds around to you…

Now, against non thinking players the optimal play here is to go with the manipulative play; make either a min raise or your standard open to like 2.5X (or whatever it may be.) This affords them the chance to resteal on you thinking they have fold equity, when in fact because you are aware of stack sizes that was never possible.

Against thinking players you need to just shove. This is because you would be shoving a huge range of hands on the button against these stacks, and they know that, and if you only make a nominal raise with you’re strongest hands they’re going to take note of that and you lose action from hands which would have called a shove but know to fold to your nominal raise.

Example 3: It may seem like every example of manipulative play needs to be done against a non thinking player, but there are in fact situations where using the manipulative play (especially if you are an unknown) can be better than the deceptive one.
Your stack: 10,000. HJ’s stack: 25,000. Blinds 300/600 with a 75 ante. You hold AdQc on the button. HJ is a good thinking regular.
Preflop: Folds to the HJ, HJ raises to 1600, CO folds, you…
Now, here’s a spot where against a good player the correct thing to do (particularly as an unknown) is to raise small, to something like 4000. This makes your hand look much bigger than it actually is and against some players will force folds from hands you’d really like to fold out (such as mid pairs and AQ, although AQ won’t fold that much.) It’s a useful play since against the hands that will never fold it’s effectively the same thing as shoving, but gives you one extra opportunity to take the chips in the pot without having to flip and be behind against some hands that will snap call a shove but occasionally fold to the scary looking raise.

As a rule, you should go with the deceptive play against anyone you consider to be a regular or good, and go with the manipulative play against players who seem bad or are totally unknown. If an unknown seems to be playing very well and thinking through his decisions, then opt for the deceptive play. However, be aware of situations where you can manipulate thinking players based on the tendencies they expect.

You should also give consideration to what site and stakes you’re playing on. On some sites way more players are ‘in the know’ and aware of the most obvious manipulative plays (such as Stars) whereas on sites with almost no regulars and are blocked to the US the manipulative plays work at a much higher frequency. Your choice in play should be different between a $50 freeze out and the $100 rebuys. Also, when it comes to playing unknowns in live poker you should pretty much always take the manipulative route, because well, unknown players in live tournaments rarely have a clue.