I frequently get PM’s asking for coaching and staking. These days I do basically zero staking (though I do buy percentages of people now and then) and minimum coaching, almost never in the traditional sense (mostly people come over and watch me play and ask questions.) However, my friend StevoL and I are always on the look out for the next perfect horse-student. This is a person we’d both consider investing time in training and staking in order to groom them into the perfect horse (though obviously they could eventually go alone.) Stevo recently had one of his horse-students hit a six figure score for him by winning the $15,000 buy in Sydney high rollers event during the APPT grand final. Jarred Graham, aka ‘FlopNutsOnYou’ online, has been working under Stevo for about a year, though it’s important to note that a huge amount of Jarred’s success is a result of the enormous hours and hard work he put into his game. It’s also relevant to note that I don’t think Jarred hitting one large score in Sydney proves his success; he has been putting up big scores for some time now online and consistently crushing for some time.

So what exactly are Stevo and I looking for when we consider someone for that kind of thing? I thought it might be interesting to make a list and talk about what qualifies or disqualifies a person from consideration:

1. A potential student must have absolutely zero gamble in them. Anyone who spends any time whatsoever in the pit, sports betting, or doing anything else that’s –EV gambling is pretty much instantly disqualified. Same goes for anyone who used to gamble frequently but has since settled down. I’ve learned the hard way that once a person gets the gamble in them, it pretty much never leaves. If someone plays their favorite pit game a couple times a year with a small amount of money as simple recreation (as I and several other poker players do) that’s not a big deal, but anything beyond that and they are no longer in the running.

2. A potential student must not be an emotional person. In poker you’re constantly dealing with disappointment and frustration, and anyone who reacts strongly and negatively to that is again pretty much instantly disqualified. Surviving in poker over the long term in a stable way requires a very even temperament and while there are plenty of successful players who are emotional I honestly believe they are worse players (and often people) because of it. It’s totally normal to swear, feel disappointment, or be annoyed over running bad or taking an especially brutal beat. However, anyone who flips out, breaks things, lets fury heavily affect their play, or takes their anger out on others is out of the running. Additionally, I flat out hate dealing with emotional people’s bullshit. Grow the fuck up.

3. A potential student must not use drugs outside of marijuana. I don’t really care if someone has tried this drug and that drug, but anyone who regularly uses recreational drugs outside of marijuana is normally disqualified. I’m aware that plenty of people are capable of only using drugs on occasion and in moderate doses, but any use of a potentially addictive substance is additional liability to a backer who has their money in the trust of the horse. Additionally, anyone indulging in more than occasional drug use is likely out partying a lot, which means less time they will spend grinding. Although I’d tell most people asking me for advice to have a balanced and very social lifestyle, I’d obviously prefer that a horse spends as much time grinding as possible. A huge percentage of professional poker players regularly use marijuana, many in very high doses. I would likely give less consideration to a person who was a full blown pot head as it tends to make people lazy and unmotivated, but I wouldn’t disqualify them because many very good players function under the substance near constantly and find it easier to put in volume as a result.

4. A potential student must have a real desire and motivation to learn. There are lots of people who think they want to learn the game quite badly but once they realize the amount of work required get lazy or apathetic. Others think that if they are taken other the wing of a highly successful player then things will sort of fall into place for them and not too much work will be necessary. The fact is, even someone given the undivided attention of a highly successful pro will still have to put in massive hours of both play and study by themselves. This quality was highly evident in Jarred and one of the chief reasons for his quick evolution as a player. Whenever someone I know asks for a blue print of how to get better I essentially assign them a large amount of homework and demand they give me feedback and questions after reading it. Anyone who can’t be fucked isn’t worth my time.

5. It is preferable that a potential student didn’t learn poker by playing live. This isn’t my having some vendetta against live players or trying to get into an argument about superiority. The simple fact is that learning through live poker creates and reinforces many bad habits in a poker player. Stevo and I have discussed this at length and both agree that we’d both rather work with someone who was 100% raw and inexperienced than trying to deprogram a live player and teach them the game all over again (with a few already successful exceptions.) I know how hard this is because I am a prime example of having done it. I grew up playing live home games and eventually grinding at Crown casino, as well as learning from the books live players. When I was finally taught the game correctly it was evident that my years of learning and practicing incorrectly were making it more difficult for the proper concepts to sink into my game. The ideal student has been playing online for some time and already studies the game from established resources (training sites, forums, articles, etc) but simply hasn’t broken through yet.

6. A potential student should ask many questions, but not question us. This goes back to having a desire to learn, which is certainly a quality in a potential student. However, having a student who won’t take orders or do what’s necessary of him is a liability neither of us is willing to deal with. Of course as teachers we’re going to be wrong from time to time and it’s certainly acceptable that a student would point out flaws or suggest a better alternative. That said if he’s overruled and told he’s wrong or needs to do something how we say it should be done it needs to get done that way.

7. A potential student should enjoy grinding, or at least not mind it. Many poker players actually hate putting in volume (one of the reasons many spend their playing time high.) If a player is at the early stages of career and development and already hates putting in the hours it’s not a good sign for his future. Although I know many successful players who absolutely hate playing, were I to spend time teaching someone it would obviously be preferable that they enjoy the time they spend grinding.

8. It is preferable though not necessary that a potential student is good at math. There are plenty of poker players who aren’t particularly good at math (myself included) but at a minimum a student needs to be willing to make the effort to understand the basics of pot odds, equity, ranges, and things of that matter. Naturally, it’s even better if the potential student is highly capable at math, because at the end of the day the whole game is really a massive math problem and people experienced in the area will have a better idea understanding the idea of ‘long term’.

9. It is preferable that the potential student is young and single. For the most part as people get older they have a higher degree of responsibility, often to an already established career or a family. Anyone with a serious girlfriend or wife immediately has a major drain on his time and in many cases the woman in his life will want something more stable than a poker playing boyfriend/husband. The ideal age for a student is 18, particularly in Australia as far fewer Australians enter college allowing for maximum time commitment to learning the game.

10. It is highly preferable that a potential student is male. It’s rather obvious that I have considerable experience teaching a girl to play and in no way regret that experience. That said, women are already predisposed to being much more emotional than men and almost every known female poker player has been known to outbursts (there are exceptions, but not many.) Additionally, the poker world is a harsh place for a woman to try and make a living. If she gains any fame or notoriety her looks and personal life will be under constant scrutiny and potential ridicule. And if she happens to achieve a major success the line of haters will be a mile long (Hi Annette!) Additionally, many female players (attractive ones anyway) realize that they don’t really have to be very good in order to get attention and sponsorship money and as a result lose the drive to constantly improve their game. It is extremely unlikely I’d ever consider taking on another female student.

11. It is mandatory that either I or Stevo know the potential student in real life. This is necessary in order to observe the behavior of the person in regards to the rest of the list not to mention being able to ascertain whether our personalities match up in a way that’s conductive to a proper learning environment.

Lastly, I want to say that we do not want anyone sending us any form of application or request. Anyone I’d consider for this kind of thing is likely someone I would approach about it personally. Even if someone fit this list completely it’s extremely unlikely that we’d consider them as we are highly selective with this sort of thing (a result of failing to be so in the past.) If you send me some kind of information or student request I will likely give it a very brief glance then reply that I’m not interested.

I wake up at around 1pm on Christmas “morning”. It looks about 30 degrees Celsius outside and I go for a run in the heat. When I get back I call Alex and ask him for directions to his house for the BBQ. I assure him I’ll bring the Afghan white rhino blend my friend has hooked me up with for coaching him at poker.

I arrive at the house and we start cranking down beers while watching the end of a bowl game that Hawaii got crushed in. There are only three of us for the moment and we roll up the Afghan in a fat paper then head outside to begin the holiday festivities. I estimate that it is 2:30. The Afghan is incredibly powerful and the three of us are coughing like beginners. I scramble inside in search of water but am elated when I instead find beer.

As the afternoon continues more and more guys show up which results in more and more blunts being rolled (naturally.) At some point we make lunch but the grill isn’t working and there are no buns for the hamburgers. Instead, we eat them with a knife and fork on a plate. I continue to drink a variety of beers.

At around 6pm I find my way to the sofa. Despite being in a room with blaring Kanye West, a large TV on, and several people talking loudly I fall asleep peacefully on the couch and remain totally undisturbed.

When I wake up it is pitch black outside and everyone is sitting around the table about to eat. At some point during my slumber Alex has logged onto my facebook and written “Tony is stroking his moist vagina” (though I will not be aware of it for another 24 hours.)

After dinner we’re all standing around outside and local poker player slash self aware worlds most degenerate bankroll management extraordinaire Kaz suggests we should order strippers. One of Alex’s friends leaps on the idea and a phone book is brought out. The friend dials the number and requests two attractive girls
”No! No! Nooooooo! Dude don’t” Alex begs.
“Yea make sure they’re attractive.”
”No dude, stop this. I don’t want them here.”
I’m against the wall laughing “Man this is so degenerate” I say.
“No dude, I don’t want them here. No!”
”How much will it be for 90 minutes? $1200?”
”Yea that’s fine” says Kaz.
“Okay sure send them to…”
”NO! Aw man no I don’t want fuckin strippers over here!”
”It’ll be fine” Kaz reassures him.
“Okay send them to XX XXXXXX st.”
He hangs up the phone with a smirk. Alex continues to protest. I tell Kaz he’s my “favorite degen ever.” Kaz appears to be quite drunk and is slurring heavily.

At some point Alex manages to call them back and cancel the strippers. Kaz tries to convince people we should just go out to a strip club instead. I decline and go home and fall asleep very early.

The next day is Friday which I now always take off out of principal. I drive into the city and take advantage of the Boxing Day sales at Zegna. I find a sweet ass gray pinstripe suit and buy myself a Christmas present. When I go home that night I call the girl I’m seeing to ask her what she’s doing. She says we should hang out and maybe go out. She comes by at 1am and we head out into the city to meet some friends. We wind up at ‘Loft’, the first white people club I’ve been to in about two weeks. Everyone starts smashing down shots and vodka red bull. I get to see a girl punch another girl in the face on the dance floor (fucking awesome!) I later ask the girl who got jabbed “Why’d that other chick punch you in the face?” and she just shrugs at me. Not every day you see girls throwing right hooks.

Everyone starts really draining down the drinks but because I mostly stick to beer I’m considerably more in control. On the dance floor my date encounters the classic ‘club douche’ who comes on to her, gets rejected, then stands there for another 10 minutes trying any other attempt at game he can think of while literally getting a middle finger in the face. Eventually I tell her “Let me do you a favor” then throw my arms around her and we start making out while standing right next to him. Eat it stereotypical club douche.

By 4am the whole party I’m with is extremely hammered. I’d started on waters about an hour ago and feel okay. At 4:30 I tell them I’m going and I stand out and wait for a cab. My date chats with the driver the whole ride home, often asking him the same question multiple times. She sways back and forth and I’m worried she’ll vomit. I have the cabby stop a block short so in the event of vomiting I can direct it away from myself. Luckily, the fresh air seems to improve her composure. When we get inside I try to keep her up and force her to drink water. I get to bed around 6am.

I had the appointment with my immigration lawyer yesterday. I laid out the whole situation for him and asked how it would be possible for me to stay in Australia legally. As it turns out, it won’t be very hard at all. First of all, the two year visa I was given under Celina’s sponsorship still applies despite the fact that we’ve broken up. That means I have roughly another year of absolutely zero visa concerns. After that the lawyer said he will help me find a low intensity language course that will allow me to stay in the country on a student visa but not take too much time away from poker.

After the appointment I met Stevo at ‘Number 8’ in Crown for lunch. That restaurant never fails to be delicious and the host knows me well enough at this point that we often chat for some time about our preferences in high end men’s wear. After lunch Stevo and I made our way over to St. Kilda road to check out more apartment possibilities. We fell in love with the third apartment we viewed and will be lodging an application to rent it. It can be seen here:
http://www.realestate.com.au/cgi-bin/rsearch?a=o&id=105349054&f=0&p=10&t=res&ty=&fmt=&header=&cc=&c=79116794&s=vic&snf=rbs&tm=1230095990

The building is across the street from the Botanical Gardens, a roughly two minute walk to Albert Park, a 5 minute walk to Fawkner Park, a 10 minute walk to Crown, and a roughly 7 minute walk to the city. I’ve already claimed the bedroom with the direct view into the city, something I’ve always wanted. However, we have to have Steve’s dad lodge the application because not too many real estate companies are going to rent an apartment like that too two 24 year old professional poker players. I normally wear a suit when going out to look at apartments which prevents unwanted questions, though it occasionally encourages some less expected ones such as two the agent gave me this time; “Do you have a business card?” and “Have you got any children?” I’m disappointed in myself for not being on the ball enough to quickly quip back “Not any I’m aware of” but you live and learn.

I’ve had a pretty lazy week work wise (though I am sitting here grinding on Christmas Eve) and will continue to do so. My Christmas plans involve going to my friend Alex’s BBQ and getting incredibly hammered while taking photos of myself pointing and laughing under the sun to put on my facebook and show friends back home in Wisconsin. I won’t be working Friday or Saturday either (because I just don’t anymore) and will likely use the time during the day to go outside and play sport then spend some serious time in a café working on my book. I’ve decided to approach it without the slightest alteration in my style or vocabulary (it’ll have swearing!) though I will have it professionally edited because I still make some God awful grammatical mistakes.

The time I spend between now and New Years should end up making for some interesting stories, though very little of it will be poker related. So if you’re opposed to reading a blog entry about my getting drunk, best to avoid this until January.

It’s a bit of a strange period in my life right now. It’s come to my attention that because my relationship with Celina has been dissolved my legal ability to stay in the country of Australia is now very much up in the air. I’ll be calling my immigration lawyer tomorrow to set up a meeting and discuss what my options are (if any) when it comes to staying in the country. Otherwise I’ll have to figure out a new place to live, and at the moment I have no idea where that’d be.

I’ve been talking with my friend StevoL about getting a place together and we checked out an apartment right across from Albert Park a couple days ago. Here’s the link for those who are curious: http://www.realestate.com.au/cgi-bin/rsearch?a=o&id=403404735&f=90&p=30&t=ren&ty=&fmt=&header=&cc=&c=30244994&s=vic&snf=rbs&tm=1229569787
It’s got pretty much everything we’re looking for although I wish the view of the city were a little better, as the picture provided is at an angle you really have to stretch to reach on the balcony. Also, the bathroom in the master bedroom is encased in see through glass, meaning if you had someone over and needed to use the bathroom you’d have to kick them out of the whole room for privacy, which would make for an awkward conversation
“Listen baby, I know you’re exhausted from the 92 orgasms I just gave you, but I need you to slide your sweet ass out of bed and wait outside for a while cause I need to take a monster crap and you’re not gonna wanna be here for this.” Yea, that’ll go well.

Meanwhile, things have been going spectacularly in poker. My first few days back I blanked out but after that I’ve hit a massive streak of positive variance. In my last five days of play I’ve hit scores of $5600 for 1st, $5600 for 2nd, $18,000 for 6th, $5300 for 1st, and $8000 for a tie for first in an Aussie Millions satellite. I’ve been extremely productive in creating Pokersavvy videos and managed to get back to a lot of old PM’s sitting in my mail boxes. I’ve recently gotten an avalanche of new ones, many of which I plan to respond to tomorrow since I’ll be working most of the day. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, anyone who reads this is free to PM me with whatever questions they have, as long as they don’t mind the possibility of my going AWOL on the response for up to a couple weeks (though because I’m at my computer much more lately my response time is normally within a couple days.)

Every now and then someone will PM me and ask why I write the strategy articles I do, or why I’m willing to answer people’s questions without any real monetary motivation or compensation, or continue to post thoughts on 2+2. While standing in line at ‘Subway’ today I read a quote attributed to George Bernard Shaw that summed up my thoughts on the topic rather well
“If I have an apple and you have an apple and we exchange apples we each have just one apple, but if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange ideas we each have two ideas.”
To me, the knowledge I have isn’t something I own. It’s not for my personal keeping and profit. I’ll never learn anything keeping all my thoughts to myself, because without those with differing experiences and knowledge giving feedback, thoughts, and edits, I’ll never be able to improve. I’m not quite smart enough to figure all these things out on my own, and pretty much every ounce of poker knowledge in my head was the original thought of someone else. As a result, I’ve been thinking about how to approach the poker book I plan on turning my articles into. It’s occurred to me lately that finding a publisher for a poker strategy book full of vulgarity and absurdist humor will likely be no easy task. As a result, I’ve decided that if after finishing it and submitting it to various outlets they aren’t interested, I’ll simply turn it into an Ebook and release it for free. Then when people read it and point out where I’ve fucked up, I’ll really learn something.

Oh, and for those of you who tell me to stop writing this stuff and educating the masses I have only this to say; Quit bitching you lazy bastards. Odds are you’re smarter than me and can probably figure out a way to counteract what I’m imparting if you just apply a little effort. Poker is constantly evolving and so too should your own game. As if you didn’t get your poker education from external sources anyway.

I was sitting outside at a neighborhood café today looking to get a 1pm breakfast of pancakes and coffee. I’d taken the day off as I had some things to take care of during the afternoon. The café is on a fairly busy street with considerable foot traffic in a neighborhood that’s a pretty eclectic mix of people.

As I was sipping my coffee two “girls” walked past me, one on the phone. The one on the phone was staring right at me and smiling then pointed at me to “her” friend. I smiled back and as “she” walked by “she” said “Heeey!” Neither was particularly attractive but I smiled and said “Hi” back because whatever. The “girls” walked past and down the street, out of view for a period.

A couple minutes later the “girl” that wasn’t on the phone came walking back towards the café with a slip in paper. “She” walked right up to me with a smile and said “This is for you” and handed me the piece of paper with a number on it. This person handing me the number was clearly a dude. The name on the slip of paper was “Leilani”. It was written in blue ink and the dots above the ‘I’ were not written with a heart. Clearly a fucking dude.

Now I know how you all feel about pictures, but unfortunately in the moment I didn’t have the focus to whip out my phone and tell the “girl” handing me the number to “Hold the fuck still while I take a picture.” As a result, I have scoured the internet and found a similar looking transvestite to help with the imagery of this story.