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Study Plans

Tadas Peckaitis Helps You Study the Game of Poker | Podcast #279

By Sky Matsuhashi on February 20, 2020

Tadas Peckaitis of MyPokerCoaching.com stops by to share 3 critical aspects to effective poker study.

I love everything he discusses here, especially his idea of the balance between poker play and study, and their circular relationship with the level of your skill edge. It’s a very interesting and smart concept.

Listen to this Podcast Episode from Tadas:

Here’s a bit of what Tadas discusses in the episode. Click the play button above and follow along below to get the full story.

1. Devote Time to Off-the-felt Work

You must combine poker play with study to improve your skills.

Study gives an edge over your opponents who study little or none at all.

2. The Play and Study Balance

Once you study and play enough to build a solid foundation, follow a play:study ratio of 60:40 to 70:30.

There’s a circular relationship between playing, studying and the skill edge you have over your opponents.

  • As your edge decreases, you should study more and play less. This makes financial sense as less skill = losses, so play less to avoid excess losses.
  • As your edge increases, play more and study less. This makes financial sense as more skill = profit, so play more to earn more.

3. How to Study the Right Way

1 hour of structured learning > 10 hours of random learning.

One thing at a time:

  1. Where to focus? Concentrate on the weakest parts of your game which are also very common spots. Fundamentals such as preflop ranges, cbetting and folding when necessary are good areas of focus.
  2. How to study? Learn the fundamentals through coaching, a training site or solvers. Put strategies into practice and review your hands.
  3. Always review your play session. Do this with a concentration on the skills you’re learning off-the-felt and practicing on-the-felt.

A huge thanks to Tadas for doing this guest podcast post for us.

Learn more about Tadas at MyPokerCoaching.com.

Your Poker Study Guide for 2020

By Sky Matsuhashi on October 17, 2019

2020 is fast approaching and it’s about time you activated your poker study habit, eh?

Too many of us go willy-nilly from one video to the next, or binge listen to dozens of podcasts without even putting one piece of poker strategy to use.  Well, no more!

This is your ultimate poker study guide for turning yourself into the player you want to be in 2020.

The Ultimate Poker Study Guide for 2020

Poker Study Technique #1: Just Get Started

The more you do, the more you can do.

This is one of my favorite quotes and it’s applicable to anything in life you want to get better at, poker study included.

Maybe you’ve never studied or don’t feel your poker study time is productive. You don’t know how to review a database now how to find and plug your leaks. You don’t know how to get the most out of every poker book you read and you don’t know how to practice the strategies you read about.

Well, the only way to make your poker study time effective is by actually “hitting the books” and doing it.  Every new thing you study and new technique you use adds to your poker study repertoire and you begin building intuition for the best ways to approach poker learning.

Example: Poker Study Progression

Your goal is to improve 3bet bluffing skills, so you watch a video. You take notes on what you learn to help you remember it all.  You also know that practice makes perfect so you take action on making better 3bet bluffs in your next session.  So far, you’ve used 3 study techniques: watching a video, taking notes and purposeful play.

But, you encountered 3 tough spots where your bluffs failed.  You open your PokerTracker 4 database and find those 3 hands. You replay the hands and discover that there’s no way they were folding to your bluff 3bets because you made them too small. So, you record in your journal these 3bet sizing mistakes and you decide to practice more 3bet bluffs. Bam!  You just used 3 more techniques of reviewing hands, recording mistakes and going back to the felt for more action.

The next session, you make more bluff and value 3bets.  Some are successful and some are not. So, you have the idea to go to your database and filter for 3bets with different hand strengths. You don’t know how to filter for this, so you read an article for help.  You do what they do in order to learn from your different 3betting hands. Bam!  You used 2 more study techniques of learning via repetition and filtering through your hands.

You just utilized 8 different study techniques for one strategy!


Begin building poker study skills by choosing one strategy to improve.

Find one video or article or podcast to study and take notes.

Put what you learn into practice then let your intuition take over and continue your studies however feels most natural (or, scroll down for more useful poker study techniques).

Now, I challenge you to take action!


Listen to episode #260:  A Simple Poker Study Plan


Poker Study Technique #2: Use the ‘No Time for Study’ Plan

This plan is designed to be printed out and written on. Treat it like your poker journal and store them for future reference.

The 'No Time for Study' Plan

1. Choose a Topic to Study

Write your study topic for the week at the top. It could be as broad as “3bets”, or as narrow as “3bet bluffing from the BB versus the BTN”.

The intent of choosing a topic of study is to help you avoid overwhelm by keeping you focused on one strategy at a time for an entire week.

2. Record the Top 12 Stats

You can only improve what you measure.

I’m a firm believer in this, so I’ve listed the top 12 most beneficial stats to keep track of.  These give you insight into how your poker study is affecting your game.  As you study and improve your skills and knowledge, your statistics will naturally change to reflect this.

For example, if you’re a crazy aggressive 3bettor, a week of 3bet studies might see your 3bet stat go from 12% to 7% because now you’re picking better opportunities to 3bet.

The top 12 statistics are:

  1. # of hands played
  2. Total Win Rate
  3. VPIP
  4. PFR
  5. Raise First In
  6. Call 2bet
  7. 3bet Preflop
  8. Call 3bet
  9. Cbet Flop
  10. Cbet Turn
  11. Fold to Flop Cbet
  12. Fold to Turn Cbet

Write down the numbers from last week in the first column, then write your end-of-week stats in the second column. Record the variance in column 3 (the difference between the 2 numbers, positive or negative).

3. Choose 2 Items to Study

Take a few minutes to run a Google or YouTube search for 2 items to study.  Choose one for the first 3 days of the week (Monday through Wednesday), and the other for Thursday through Saturday. It could be a video, article, podcast or a chapter in a book.  Whatever you choose, it’s something that you think will help you become better at the strategy you’re studying.

Write the name of the item down so that you can easily find it again in the future.

The Plan has a small note-taking section, but that’s intentional. The idea is that you record the most important things that you want to take with you into the future.

Within the notes area, there’s a spot to write down the #1 takeaway from the item you studied and just below that, there’s a “Take Action” section to write down the action you’re going to take to practice what you learned.

Action is your greatest teacher, so you must create one of your own action steps. If you don’t step into action and put to use what you learned, you just wasted your time studying it. The action step you create is what you’ll focus on over your next 3 play sessions. This is how you’ll make your off-the-felt studies a part of your on-the-felt game.

4. Daily Checklist for Study and Play

On Monday and Thursday, check the box after you’ve studied your chosen item. Your study time can be done right before your play session as a warm-up if you’d like.

On Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday you’ll spend 10 minutes reviewing hands from the day before (scroll below for instruction on hand history reviews).  This is also your session warm-up. Check the box after you do your 10-minute review.

When it comes to playing poker, Monday through Saturday are all considered focused play. You’re going to play with purpose and practice the action you chose from the content you studied.  Check the box afterwards.

And Sunday is your grind day.  This is the day you can play or study however you want.


Utilize the ‘No Time for Study’ Plan for your studies this week (download and print).

Choose your study topic for the week and record your Top 12 Statistics as they stand right now.

Find 2 items to study, take notes then practice what you learn on the felt!

Now, I challenge you to take action!


Poker Study Technique #3: Game Tape

Game Tape is recording yourself perform so you can analyze it later to improve your performance.

As poker players, this means we record our play session and speak through each decision we make, saying the logic that led us to the play we chose.  After the session, probably the next day, we watch the game tape to find mistakes made and also look for mistakes other players made.

You’ve probably heard game tape used mostly by sports players, namely football players.  But presentation speakers, stand-up comedians and actors use it as well. Joe Rogan says he records every set he does and listens back to them occasionally to help him fine-tune his performances.

These performers take their skills and growth seriously and game tape helps them spot areas of opportunity. This helps them improve performance, and who wouldn’t want to be better at that thing they love or get paid to do, right?

There’s no hiding

Game tape shines a spotlight on your mistakes.  If you do a database review and find a mistake of calling the river when it’s obvious you’re beat, you might rationalize this mistake.  You could think to yourself, “I was 5-tabling, so I didn’t have enough time to make a good decision”.

But, with game tape, the truth of what happened is right there and you can’t hide from it.  You’re going to catch yourself clicking CALL and not even mentioning the opponent’s range, their bet size, their stats or the board at the time.  You won’t even discuss the situation at all.  You’ll just see yourself clicking call, then getting upset that they had you crushed.

I also love game because as far as I know, I’m the only one who talks about it.  That means that out of your opponents who study poker, you’ve got a leg up on them.  If you use game tape, you’re doing this incredibly beneficial form of play and study, and they’ve never even thought to do it.

All they do is watch videos and review hands, baby!  You’re crushing them in the study efficiency wars.

Listen to Podcast #261: Game Tape: My Favorite Poker Play and Study Strategy Combination

The 3 Benefits of Game Tape

1. It Forces You to Speak Aloud Your Logic

Too often we button-click because a play seems right or we think it’s the right one to make.  “I’ve got AK, I’m gonna 3bet!”  Yeah, you just voiced what you’re going to do, but you gave no reason behind it.

You didn’t say, “I’m 3betting with AK here because the open-raiser is folding a ton and I block some of their stronger hands.”  Nor did you say, “I’m 3betting here because this Fish calls 3bets way too often and with every Ace, so I’m crushing their calling range.”

Forcing yourself to speak the logic you use gets you thinking more about the plays you make.  By doing game tape, I’ve become a more consistent and logical player, making plays more often because I have a purpose and I know how to get what I want from my opponent.

2. You Don’t Want to Disappoint Your Audience

There’s a reason Twitch streamers often play so well; the audience expects them to voice the reason for every play they make, and this forces them to make better plays.  They don’t want to seem like a dumb-ass for making illogical 3bet bluffs or river calls or 20bb final table shoves.

Even if you never publish your game tape, you can imagine you have an audience watching you and hoping you make the best plays possible.

Pretend that these are being recorded and your grandchildren will play them for your great-grandchildren:

“Look how incredible your great-grandfather was.  He had this crazy ability to fold when he knew he was beat, and call when he knew he was ahead.  His poker prowess built this incredible mansion we’re in right now.  Let’s watch this video and marvel at his brilliance.”

So, when you record your game tape, pretend your coach, friends, husband or wife or God is looking over your shoulder.  Because they’re watching, you’re going to strive to make the best decisions possible by taking into account all the information available in every hand dealt.

3. You Can Find Your Mistakes

It’s weird how we learn so much from reviewing our play away from the pressure that we feel when on-the-felt.

There’s no money on the line, no pride at stake, no audience watching and we have all the time in the world to dissect the hand.

Because all this pressure is gone, we can look objectively at how we played.  We’ll catch ourselves NOT looking at HUD statistics or NOT noticing bet and stack sizes or NOT remembering this is a 3bet pot when we call the flop, turn and river with top pair weak kicker.

Because we catch these mistakes, we can take note of them and now work to NOT repeat them in the future.

I always have my poker journal open in front of me to record my mistakes during my game tape reviews, and you must do the same.

3 Steps to Using Game Tape

1. Download OBS and Set It Up

This takes less than 5 minutes, and to help you out, here’s a quick set-up video:

I recommend OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) because it’s quick and easy to use, and it’s FREE!

Run it and follow the steps in the video above to get it game tape ready.

Of course, have a microphone to record your speaking as you play.

2. Record Your First Game Tape Session

Fire up one or two tables then hit “Record”

Play for just 30 minutes.

Make sure you speak through your decisions out loud as you play.

In the beginning, you’ll find yourself not speaking as you work out a hand in your head.  But, just keep practicing.  Playing and speaking your thoughts is just another muscle to develop and with time you’ll be speaking for a full 30 minutes or longer.

Stop the recording then continue playing your normal session.

3. Review Your Game Tape

I recommend reviewing your game tape the next day when the session isn’t so fresh.

This way there’s a better chance that you can watch the video objectively with the goal of learning from your mistakes.

Take notes on any mistakes you catch.  I could give you a whole list of things to look for, but what’s the fun in that?

The only way you’ll learn how to review game tape to find mistakes is to record then review game tape to find your mistakes.

Action is the greatest teacher after all, so take action on game tape and learn on your own the power of using it.


Record your first game tape tonight, then review it tomorrow to find your mistakes.

This is the best play and study strategy you can do, so get to it.

Now, I challenge you to take action!


Bonus: Setting Poker Goals

Since you’re going to study and play more in 2020, you must set some goals to work towards.

“The major reason for setting a goal is for what it makes you do to accomplish it. This will always be a far greater value than what you get.” -Jim Rohn

I used to believe that the reason for setting a goal was simply to achieve that thing.

But, now I believe the real benefit of setting a goal is to become the person who can achieve that goal.

Listen to episode #262: The Really Real Reason to Make Poker Goals

In order to run a marathon, maybe starting from scratch, you have to become…

  • A person who runs multiple days every week
  • A person who can smartly plan your training to gradually increase your endurance and strength
  • Someone who can persevere through sore muscles and not wanting to train that day
  • Someone who has the mental fortitude to make a long-term goal and work over weeks and months to achieve it without giving up

Those are the real benefits of setting and working toward a goal of running a marathon.

Striving to achieve this goal turns you into the person you want to be. Every goal that you strive for is an opportunity to improve yourself and develop a growth mindset, great habits and increased confidence.

Setting a Monetary Poker Goal

Most players want to earn money from poker, at least a nice side income from the game.

Let’s say you are a 25nl player, and your current win rate is 4bb/100 hands.

You decide to set a goal of earning $20 per day over the next 30 days, for $600 total profit. So, what do you need to do to earn $20/day?

1. On-the-Felt: Become a Grinder

With a win rate of 4bb/100 hands, you earn $1 for every 100 hands you play.  This means that you need to play 2,000 hands per day to achieve $20 profit per day.

But, maybe over the past 30 days you only played 30,000 hands (1,000 hands/day).  How are you going to fit in 2,000 hands/day in the next 30 days?

Now your task is to figure out how to play 2,000 hands per day.  This is where the real benefit of setting a monetary goal comes in.

  1. Force yourself to play longer sessions. This is going to mentally toughen you up to deal with the beats, the boredom and the extra time on the felt. You will become a mentally stronger poker player for putting yourself through this.
  2. Increase the number of tables you play.  This leads to more hands per hour so it will take you less hours/day to play 2,000 hands. This is also going to make you a stronger player.
  3. Improve your poker scheduling.  If you create and stick to a schedule of play, you’re more likely to hit your 2,000-hand target.  So, you can decide to play every night from 7pm to 10pm.

By trying to implement these 3 things, even if you don’t hit your goal of 2,000 hands per day, you’re turning yourself into the type of person who can. That’s the real benefit here.

And, even if you don’t hit your goal of 60,000 hands but only play 50,000.  That’s 50,000 more hands of experience, more hands to study and more to help you find and plug leaks.

2. Off-the-Felt: Study Dedication

Let’s say over these 30 days, you decide to work on incorporate more study to improve your skills and win rate. So, you schedule 30 minutes of study time every day.  Maybe it’s during your lunch breaks or you wake up 30 minutes earlier every day to hit the books.

You select one strategy to study via article, video or podcast and you take notes. You also do one full hand reading exercise in relation to your strategy focus. And then you focus on executing this strategy in your play session that night.

So not only are you playing more poker, you’re doing it with better focus and with an eye towards building specific skills.

Maybe during these 30 days of extra play and study, you’ve improved your win rate from 4bb/100 hands up to 5bb/100 hands. At this higher win rate, it’ll take you less hands to achieve your $20/day.  Or, if you still play 2,000 hands, you’re going to earn $25/day on average.

Now that your win rate is increased and you can play 2,000 hands per day, imagine what you can do over another 30 days.

Set another goal, this time for $25 per day, or even $30.  Continue to push yourself on an off-the-felt, and you’ll be turning yourself into the player you want to be.


Take the time right now and figure out what kind of player you want to be.  Do you want to slowly grind out some profits at the micro stakes?  Maybe take down your local tournament at least once a week?  Or, are you looking to make a living from poker?

Once you figure this out, you can set some goals that will bring your closer to your ideal poker self.

Now, I challenge you to take action!


SMARTER Goals

I make my goals around the ‘SMARTER Goals’ formula that I learned from Michael Hyatt.

SMARTER is an acronym: Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Risky, Time-keyed, Exciting and Relevant.

Specific

A specific goal is made very clearly and says exactly what you’re shooting for.

SMARTER Goal: Play consistently at 50 NL by January 1st.

Measurable

Measurable means that we can assign a quantifiable and trackable number.  These goals are better because you either hit them or you don’t.  The numbers don’t lie.

SMARTER Goal: Increase my bankroll by 20% to $6,000 by December 31st.

Actionable

Actionable means that your goal begins with an action word, not what you want to be.

SMARTER Goal: Listen to one podcast per day, take notes, and put into action one thing from each podcast.

Risky

Risky goals are hard to hit because they push you beyond what you’ve done in the past.  These goals command more of your attention and force you to get creative, to focus more and to put forth so much more effort. These goals take you out of your comfort zone and put you into your discomfort zone, which is where all the magic happens (but don’t get into the dellusional zone).

SMARTER Goal: Play 600 hands each day, Monday through Friday, with weekends available to get me to 4,000 hands or more per week.

Time-keyed

This means that you give yourself either a deadline or a specific time frame to achieve the goal.

SMARTER Goal: Record, edit and post 13 episodes of my new vlog called “Vlogging the Dolphin” once per week starting January 1.

Exciting

You want to set goals that you are pumped to achieve and that you have an internal drive towards. These are goals set around things that you just love to do, and maybe you can’t see yourself doing anything else.  If you love it you’ll do it.

SMARTER Goal: Play the $10,000 Main Event at the 2019 WSOP.

Relevant

Being relevant means that they fit in with the season of life you’re in.  So, I have a wife and 2 kids to support. Deciding to go off and become a traveling tournament grinder just is not in the cards for me right now. What I can do instead that fits with where my life is right now, is to grind all the PM online tournaments every Monday and Tuesday.

SMARTER Goal: Study 30 minutes Monday through Friday by waking up 45 minutes earlier than the kids do.


Create a SMARTER poker goal, and strive to hit it in 2020.  Remember that the purpose behind the goal you create is to turn yourself into the type of person that can achieve the goal.

If you actually achieve it, great!  Make a harder goal next time.

If you don’t achieve it, be happy with that fact that you’ve pushed yourself to do something difficult and you’ve grown as a poker player because of it.

Now, I challenge you to take action!


Poker Study Technique #4: Utilize Focus Sessions for Active Learning

A Focus Session is where you play only 1 or 2 tables for at least for 30 minutes, where you are intently focused on putting one strategy into play.

Listen to episode #265: Take Action with Focus Sessions

Of course, don’t ignore everything else. If you’re working on making better bluff cbets, you won’t mindlessly 2bet or 3bet preflop just to give you the opportunity to cbet. You’re simply looking for every opportunity to make profitable cbet bluffs (whether you’re involved in the hand or not).

Focus sessions give you a great opportunity to diligently apply your off-the-felt studies to you’re on-the-felt the game. Too many players passively spend their time watching videos or reading a book or listening to a podcast and they hope this is enough to build their skills.  Maybe they take notes, but without actively applying the strategies learned, this is just inefficient.

Your goal must be to actively learn as much as you can by taking action and practicing what you’re learning off-the-felt.

Step 1: Choose or Create an Action Step

If you’re NOT new to my podcast or my books or my training videos, you know I’m all about taking action. Everything that I create not only teaches you a strategy, but it also tells you how to practice that strategy on-the-felt because I give you action steps or challenges all the time.

I work hard to make it easy for you to be an active learner. If you’re watching videos or reading somebody else’s books, most of the time they just teach you the strategy. That’s good, but it’s now up to you to figure out how to put that strategy into play.

For example, if you watch a random YouTube video on cbetting, you have to come up with your own action step. You have to pay attention to the things that they’re talking about and then figure out on your own how to implement that on-the-felt.

But, I do things differently.  In my latest Poker Forge strategy video, I taught members the benefits of utilizing flop texture for better cbet bluffing.  In the video I started with discussing strategy, then I demonstrated how to do off-the-felt work with a spreadsheet and Flopzilla Pro to improve that understanding.  Then I gave 3 action steps, two off-the-felt and one on-the-felt that gets them actively working on the strategies I taught. If members simply follow those 3 action steps, they’re being active participants in their poker education.

Step 2: Know the Elements at Play

When you are implementing a new strategy on the felt, you’re not just willy-nilly button clicking without taking into considerations at least a few bits of information.

For example, if your goal is to bluff cbet more frequently and profitably, you’re not going to indiscriminately throw out cbet bluffs, right? Instead, you must…

  • Think about which players are most susceptible to folding versus cbets
  • Consider your relative position versus them
  • Strive to put yourself into profitable cbetting opportunities against foldy players
  • Pay attention to their Flop to Cbet statistics and their Raise and Check-raise Cbet statistics
  • Take into account the size of the pot, the stack sizes involved and whether or not they’re already committed to the pot
  • Choose the best cbet bluffing size that maximizes your fold equity while saving you chips when your bluff doesn’t work
  • Put them on a preflop range of hands and gauge how well it interacts with the board

Wow, that’s a lot of elements to keep in mind for one strategy focus of making better bluff cbets.  It’s critical that you write all of these elements down to prepare you for an effective focus session.

Step 3: Just Do It

Now that you know the action step you want to take and the elements involved, just do it.

Read and noodle on your list of elements for bluff cbets during your pre-session warm-up. Then, fire up 1 or 2 tables and play with focus.

For our example of cbet bluffing, you’re looking for every +EV, profitable cbet bluffing spot. Do this even when you’re not involved in the hand.  Assess the caller’s range and the board, look at their stats and stack sizes and decide whether or not the open-raiser (whoever that is) should make a bluff cbet or not.

And for hands that you are involved in, when you come across a good opportunity, make the bluff cbet and tag the hand for review.  If you encounter any questionable hands that confuse you, tag those as well so you can spend time off the felt in your next review session figuring out whether or not it’s a good bluff cbet spot.


Choose a strategy you want to practice in your next session.

Create an action step and write down the important elements to focus on as you practice your strategy.

Now, I challenge you to take action!


Focus Sessions: Just Do It!

I recommend doing focus sessions in one of 2 ways:

1. For an Entire Session

Let’s say you’re used to playing 4 tables at a time, but you really want to ingrain bluff cbetting as an effective strategy.  So, you decide to play just 2 tables for 2 hours each day this week.  This is going to give you more time to focus on watching every hand that sees the flop and gauging the profitability of bluff cbetting on every one of them.

Imagine how much better you’ll be with 14 hours of cbet bluffing focus.  You’ll train those cbet bluffing elements into your thought process for every hand that sees the flop and you’ll pull the trigger numerous times on +EV cbet bluffs.  You’ll also see many spots where a cbet bluff won’t work, so you don’t make it and you save yourself money for it.

After your week of focus, you can go back to your normal 4-table sessions and work to continue your great cbet bluffing with more hands coming at you.

2. At the Start of a Normal Session

You can start your fist 30 minutes of any session with just 1 or 2 tables as you focus on bluff cbets.

After your 30 minutes is up and if you feel like it, add tables until you get to your desired number.

Help to Stay Focused

I love using Game Tape to help me stay focused (poker study technique #3 above), and it’s great for your focus sessions.

Game tape helps you stay focused on the task at hand because you’re forcing yourself to speak through your decisions.   The goal would be to speak about each of the elements for each cbet bluffing decision and ultimately why you pulled the trigger (or not) on every bluff cbetting opportunity.

One more thing that helps me to stay focused is utilizing a tick sheet. These are used to track the number of times you make a specific action:

Every time you make one of these plays, you put a tick mark in the appropriate column.  There isn’t a magical number of tick marks to have in each column at the end of your session.  The whole idea with this task is to just help you keep focused on cbetting.  As long as you’re making check marks under the different columns, you’re probably staying focused on the strategies you’re trying to implement.


Play 5 focus sessions this week surrounding ONE strategy you’re studying off-the-felt. For Poker Forge members, cbet bluffing is a perfect strategy to focus on.

Choose whether or not you’ll do your focus session for 30 minutes or maybe the entire session.

Write out the important elements then get to practicing. Tag every hand where you use your strategy or choose not to so you can review them later off-the-felt.

Now, I challenge you to take action!


Poker Study Technique #5: Conducting Hand History Reviews

Hand history reviews are when you go through your database of hands (LIVE players review their notes) to learn from the way you played prior hands, normally in your most recent session.

Listen to episode #266: Conducting Hand History Reviews

You’re looking for any mistakes made so you can take note of them and work to not repeat them in the future.  You’re also looking at mistakes your opponents are making. When you find common mistakes that they make, you can devise exploits to use against them.

You’re also going through your hands to help refine your strategies. Maybe you’re studying cbet strategies and you’re practicing them on the felt.  So, in your hand history review the following day, you can review hands with that exact same focus.

I often do my hand history reviews early in the morning before my day begins or sometimes as a pre-session warm-up. Going through yesterday’s hands gets my mind primed for A-game poker play.

There aren’t any hard and fast rules for when you conduct your hand history reviews.  But, they should be done sooner rather than postponed for a few days or even a week down the road. You are studying off-the-felt and putting new strategies to work on-the-felt. It is absolutely necessary that you review your hands in order to learn from your mistakes and to refine the strategies that you’re trying to ingrain into your skill set.

Start with Tagged Hands

Every hand history review starts with looking through your tagged hands. If you don’t currently tag important hands as you play, that’s because you haven’t developed it as a habit. It’s something that you must train yourself to do. PokerTracker 4 has an easy function for tagging hands:

Click the “tag”, scroll down to the hand in question and select the “Review” tag or create your own.

Go through each tagged hand by replaying the action.

Always assign Villain a preflop range. This doesn’t mean you have to do a full-on hand reading exercise if you don’t want. But, putting them on a preflop range helps you make better post-flop decisions against them, so practice this off-the-felt.

As you review hands, try to learn what you can about each opponent you face. When you spot something worth remembering, take a note of it within their PokerTracker 4 note editor. This way the note is available to you the next time you play against them. Try to make sense of their actions to help you understand how they and others like them play so you can exploit them in the future.

Watch how I conduct a cbet-related hand history review:

Review BIG Losing Hands

I hate seeing big losing hands in my database, but I love learning from them.

When I lose an entire buy-in with a top pair hand, I can almost guarantee there is something I can learn from this.

You must review these hands to understand why you made the street by street plays you did. Maybe you are totally justified and you got in with the best hand but they caught their draw or sucked out on you. At least you can take comfort in the fact that you didn’t make a mistake but instead it was variance working against you.

But, if you catch a mistake, take note of it in your poker journal. The reason you record your mistakes is so that you can review them in your pre-session warm-ups in an effort to NOT make those mistakes again.

I’ll also look at big winning hands. It feels good reliving the glories of earning an entire stack from somebody.  But, there’s still an opportunity to learn from mistakes that they made or that I made. I can’t tell you how many time’s I’ve made an ill-timed bluff shove on the flop, Villain had the nuts, but then I backed into a better hand.

Yep, sometimes the suck-outs are in our favor.  Just because we won the hand doesn’t mean we didn’t make a mistake that we can learn from.

Filter for Specific Situations

One of the reasons I love PokerTracker 4 is for the ease with which it allows me to sit through my database and filter for specific hands that are relevant to my current focus.

If improved cbetting is your focus, a simple yet great filter would be Cbetting Opportunities on the Flop:

So, if you played 700 hands yesterday, you might have 20 or 25 opportunities to cbet. These are more than enough hands to learn from in one hand history review session.

Once the filter returns the necessary hands, I often start on the button because it’s the best position and this is where I should be able to make the best cbetting decisions. So, I’ll sift through the hands first to find hands where I lost a lot but haven’t reviewed yet, or maybe where I checked instead of betting or where I bet with an absolute bluff.

There’s no set way that I go through hands.  I’ve done this so many times over many years, so I let intuition guide me as I look for important hands to review.

So, if you’re not sure on how to filter through your hands and then start reviewing them, just start doing it and you’ll figure it out along the way.


Before your next play session, review your prior session.

Pull up yesterday’s hands in your database and go through your your tagged hands.  Didn’t tag any?  Review your big losers and big winners.

Still got more time to study?  Filter for the situation you’re working on and review those hands to find your mistakes and to refine your strategies.

Now, I challenge you to take action!


4 Hand History Review Tips

#1 – Complete 1 Full Hand Reading Exercise

With every hand history review, I always do one full hand reading exercise. Hand reading is the most important skill to learn and by doing at least 1 of these daily, you’ll improve your use of this skill so you can use it on-the-felt to improve all of your decisions.

I believe that hand reading is the most important skill that’s why it was the 1st thing I covered for an entire month in the Poker Forge.

If you aren’t in the poker Forge you can still learn hand reading on your own with a bit of practice:

  • How to Do Poker Hand Reading Podcast Episodes
  • 66 Days of Hand Reading videos on YouTube

#2 – Let Your Questions Guide You

As you review your hands, you’ll ask yourself questions like, “Why didn’t I cbet there?”  When this happens, let that question guide you to further studies.  Maybe you didn’t cbet with AKs when you flopped the nut flush draw.  So, dive into this by filtering for all flopped nut flush draws to see how often you’re cbetting.  Look at the hands where you failed to cbet and gauge whether the cbet would’ve been better than checking.

This could easily raise more questions like “If I don’t cbet the nut flush draw, then what hands am I cbetting?”  You can filter for Opportunity to Cbet and you can do so on various board types as well.  Dive into these hands to figure out your cbetting tendencies.

You might also ask yourself, “How profitable is AKs for me?”  This could lead you to filtering for all AKs hands and learning from them.  This could also lead to studying AQ, AKo and so on.

#3 – Save Your Filters

You’re going to find yourself running tons of filters to narrow your studies.  Save each of these because doing so will:

  1. Save you time re-running filters in the future.  Some filters are super quick and easy: 3bet preflop or cbet on the flop.  Other filters like lines taken (ex: flop bet, turn check and river bet), are complicated and take multiple steps to run.
  2. Remind yourself of what you’ve studied in the past.  Maybe you know you have some sort of problem on the turn, things just don’t seem right and you’re often at a loss for what to do.  Saving all your turn related filters will allow you to go back and re-study these situations and remind you of prior lessons learned.

#4 – Take Notes

Always utilize your poker journal as you study hands.  You might think you’ll remember that, “I’m folding too often on the turn with TPWK hands”.  But, it’s really easy to forget things like this.  Take notes, revisit them occasionally and try to work on the mistakes you catch yourself making.

Also, utilize the player note taking feature in PokerTracker 4.  Maybe you just caught “Bobby789″ making an all-in bluff shove on the flop with a weak gut-shot draw.  Taking this note now might help you respond better when they make this play again in the future.


Support the Podcast

Rishi Srivastava, Chuck Stowe, Lucky Bozzer, John Williams, Michael Stracener, Matt Balloch, Scotty Cavanagh and Daniel Haylow picked up PokerTracker 4, the best poker tracking software.  I love it and use it everyday!  In appreciation, I sent them each a copy of my Smart HUD for PT4.  With a ever-growing database of hands to study and all the helpful features, PT4 is the go-to software for serious poker players.

Trevor Mascos, Josh Balsom, Vilma Rozsa, Alex, Robert Flanders, Carpenter, Michael Hink, Oliver Jordan, Jeff, Lucky Bozzer, Jamie Hill, Daniele Fiori, Tiago Alex, Remo Jovan, Mayur Pahilajani, Daniel Warburton, Christian Hart, Chris, David Lanno, JP and Josh bought the Smart HUD with a 1.5 hour webinar for PokerTracker 4.  It’s the best online poker HUD in the business, and you can get the Smart HUD by clicking here.

Josh Balsom (supporter extraordinaire) is looking to get into the most profitable poker situation possible, so he picked up the Poker’s Bread & Butter Webinar (10% off).

Richard Canelle picked up the Getting the Most From PokerTracker 4 Webinar (10% off) because he knows that I’m going to teach him how to do exactly that in this webinar.  He’s learning how to filter for leaks, run reports and dissect opponents (among many other things).

Jon Homan is looking to break out of the micro stakes, so he got Playing to Learn: A Micro Stakes Webinar (10% off).  This webinar teaches all you need to know to profit and build a bankroll in the micro stakes.

Josh Balsom got the Poker Mathematics Webinar (10%off).  This teaches all the math you need to know to make +EV decisions on the felt.

Kiett and George picked up Finding and Plugging Leaks with PokerTracker 4 Webinar (10% off).  There’s a lot to study and take action on here, so they’ve got their work cut out for them (and you will, too).

Avoid Overwhelm in Your Online Poker Studies #220

By Sky Matsuhashi on January 31, 2019

In this episode, I discuss how a weekly study plan will improve your study efficiency, avoid overwhelm and will give you maximum value from free and paid-for online poker content.

Challenge (2:20)

Here’s my challenge to you for this episode:  For the next seven days, complete your first planned week of study and play. Download the ‘No Time for Study’ Plan to get started.  This is going to help you avoid the overwhelm and focus your studies around just ONE topic.  Choose that ONE topic you want to study, then select 2 pieces of content to learn from.  Remember, it’s critical that you step into action and purposefully practice what you learn.  So, pull one action step from each item you study and get to practicing.

Now it’s your turn to pull the trigger and do something positive for your poker game.

How does a plan help avoid overwhelm? (4:25)

The number one benefit of planning your studies is to avoid overwhelm. There is so much out there with new things constantly hitting our email inbox or our YouTube notifications that it’s easy to be distracted from our main job scratch that from the thing that we want to improve right now.

For example, this week from Carroters, I received an email about his latest episode of “PIO Versus Population” regarding 4betting. I also received a YouTube notification from Jonathan Little about equity realization. But, on Monday of this week I decided to study double-barrel cbets.

I purposely deleted the email from Carroters and I ignored the notification from Jonathan Little because neither of these jive with my goal this week of becoming a better double-barreler.

Here’s my tip for avoiding overwhelm:

Plan your studies and ignore the rest.

 

Types of content: Free and Paid-for (5:45)

Free Content

This is what the majority of us learn from: videos on YouTube, articles on websites and podcasts. Free content can be very good and highly respected, but often we treat free content like it’s not that valuable. We consume without much thought because it came to us at no expense.

Paid-for Content

People put a much higher value on things that they pay for, so they’re more likely to be followed-up on, studied and acted upon. That’s one of the reasons why I’m putting out more paid-for content in 2019 alongside my usual amount of free content every week.

As a producer of both free and paid-for content, I put the same effort into both. The goal with each is to deliver extreme value to the end user. But I will admit that my paid-for content goes a little bit deeper and gives additional strategies, actions and insights than my free content.

For example, yesterday I held the “Poker’s Bread & Butter Webinar”. This webinar taught you how to purposefully put yourself in the most profitable situation more frequently to increase your profits.

I did one podcast episode on this exact same topic in the past: episode #184.

But in the webinar, I gave additional strategies for getting into more B&B spots.  I also gave more actions they can take on-the-felt and I also gave some hand quizzes to get people on the webinar thinking more critically about the concepts I was teaching.

The idea is that the webinar is more valuable than the free podcast, which makes it more worth it for those who actually made the purchase.

But, whether it’s free or paid-for, there’s a basic strategy you should follow to learn from online content.

3-Step Process for Learning from Online Content? (7:45)

1. Create a plan of study.

In How to Study Poker Volume 1, I gave an extremely detailed weekly study plan. You can use this, but if you’re having a hard time focusing on the topic you want to learn, I would suggest using the ‘No Time for Study’ Plan (download above).

But suffice it to say, planning your studies on a day-to-day basis scratch that for the entire week is the best way to avoid overwhelm and improve your game with purpose.

2. Study one piece of content at a time, take notes and create action steps.

Too many people watch a video after video, or binge-listen to podcasts without taking notes nor thinking about how they can practice what their learning. You need to study one item at a time, take copious notes, and decide on one or 2 things you can actively do to work on your game. These can be off or on-the-felt actions.

3. Jump into action and review hands afterwards.

You’re going to purposefully practice the actions you created from the content you studied. This is how you will ingrain new skills into your skill set and make more money at the tables.

Start your audiobook learning by picking up ‘Preflop Online Poker’ through Audible.com. Click the pic above to begin your free 30-day trial or to purchase the audiobook version if you’re already a member.

Study Examples (11:35)

Free Content

My favorite tournament training site is TournamentPokerEdge.com.

A few years ago when I was big into MTT’s, I would watch video after video on this site. The pros here really know their stuff, and the different 5, 6 or even 10-part video series are super detailed and perfect for someone like me.

They have a great search feature that allows you to type in and filter for specific video content or even content created by individual coaches. If you like Andrew Brokos as a coach, you can look through just his videos if you’d like. Or, if you want to work on cbetting, just search for that and many videos popup for you.

But, maybe you’re on the fence about getting a TPE membership so you want to watch some of their free videos to see how you like it.  If you’re going to study some stuff, you might as well do it with purpose, right?

On that page you’ll find 20 different videos covering different topics. But, let’s study these with purpose before we decide to purchase a membership.

Great study idea!

There are five $109 tournament videos. 4 of these are part one in a series, and the 5th is a part 5 video. Let’s make a plan to study the 4 part one videos.

Every 3 days we’ll watch one of them, take notes and create some action steps to practice in-game over the next 3 days. Then 3 days later we repeat this process with video #2 and so on. At 3 days each, this is 12 full days of studying $109 tournament play as well as practicing all we’re learning.

In these 4 videos, created by 4 different coaches, they discuss the early stages of tournament play, the ranges and types of hands they play, the opponents at the early stages and how to build stacks.

These are all things that we really want to focus on as an MTT player, right?

So utilizing this free content from TPE, we’ve created a next 2 week plan for purposeful play and study around becoming better mid-level buy-in, early-stage tournament players.

Support the show by getting a TPE membership. At no additional cost to you, they’ll kick back a little something to me when you sign-up. Thanks for the support!

Paid-for Content

When it comes to learning from paid-for content like an online course, it’s worth it to have a plan of attack so you can get the most out of it.

Most courses are organized in a particular way by the course create. Hopefully they put it together in an order that allows your knowledge and skills to build as you go through the course.

But, courses don’t always tell you how to use what you’re learning. So here’s my three-part method for learning from courses.

1. Videos: watch these one at a time and do these:
  • Watch the videos in order that they’re listed. I would hope that the course creator put them in a specific order to build upon each other.
  • Take notes on the things you learn in the video.
  • Create at least one action step from the video (preferably two or more, at least one for off the felt and one for on).
2. Supplemental Materials​: use these in-game or off the felt.
  • Whatever they give you, use it on or off-the-felt as they direct you.
  • Use them and feel comfortable with them before moving on to the next item.  Or, you’ll learn that it’s not for you and put them to the side.
3. Questions: send the coach your questions
  • If he’s a good course creator, he’ll answer your questions.

Do the things above for one video before you move on to the next. Don’t treat it like a race and don’t pursue the destination.

Getting through the course, but putting only 20% of it into your skillset is a waste of your money and time. It’s the journey that matters and with so much content, it’s okay if it takes you the entire year to go through this course. If it’s as good as you think it is, spending time will only help you to put the strategies/skills they teach into your skillset.

Support the Show

Walter Chambers purchased the Smart HUD for PokerTracker 4.  In addition to the 3-part HUD with 6 custom popups, he also received loads of video links to help hih get the most from the HUD and from PT4.

Thomas Tatman purchased the Mashing the Micros Webinar (click for $5 off).  There are so many landmines to dodge as well as value to earn at the micro stakes, and this webinar is your key to unlocking the strategies that lead to success.

Up Next…

In episode 221, I’ll give you some Actions for 3 of your Questions.

Until next time, study smart, play much and make your next session the best one yet.

Leak 6: Willy-Nilly Poker Studies | Podcast #197

By Sky Matsuhashi on August 3, 2018

poker studies

In this episode, I discuss self-planning your weekly poker studies so you can build important skills into your game.

In episode 196, I answered 3 questions about getting beyond the micros and avoiding Zoom poker, taking LIVE poker notes and learning to use popup stats.

Quantity of Study and Play (3:10)

Too many people are willy-nilly about their studies.  They hit random topics here and there throughout the week, and often days pass between study sessions.

You want the biggest poker bang for your study buck.

For this, you need to control the Quantity and the Quality of your studies and play time.

The quantity of study and play comes from your dedication to a minimum amount of each on a daily basis.

  • Study and play 5 days per week, with 6 or 7 being optimal.
  • I recommend you spend between 20% to 33% of your poker time studying. This would make a Study : Play ratio between 1:2 and 1:4. So for every hour you study, you play between 2 to 4 hours.
  • Minimums: 20 minutes of study and 40 minutes of play daily.
  • Don’t cram all of your studies for the week into one day. This doesn’t help you learn efficiently. Your mind needs down time to help process the information it’s taking in. This also helps you make connections between poker concepts and gives you more time to practice what you’re learning between sessions.

Quality of Study and Play

The Quality of your study and play comes from focusing all of it around one specific strategy. You may want to improve your 3bet game, your board texture understanding, your utilization of poker math or you want to plug the leak of open-limping. With a singular weekly focus, you’ll get more out of your time on and off the felt.  You will:

  • create a weekly plan that keeps you on track and hits your chosen strategy topic from a variety of angles.
  • study content (videos, articles, books, podcasts) from a variety of creators.
  • track your progress by recording before and after statistics related to your strategy topic.
  • Play with Purpose and intentionally put into practice the strategies you’re learning off the felt.
  • treat your study and play time as sacrosanct and you’ll time block them and remove distractions.

The 6-part Weekly Poker Study Plan (5:45)

Download, print and use the plan: www.smartpokerstudy.com/htspweeklystudyplan

6 parts might sound daunting, but I assure you it’s quick and easy to complete. Plan your week ahead of time, say on Sunday for a week of study and play starting Monday.

I’m going to go over the 6 steps here with the idea that you want to improve your poker math utilization.

Maybe you feel you draw with bad pot odds, or maybe you never know how often you must win to make a profitable river call. Or maybe you don’t understand implied odds nor how to calculate the chances you’ll hit your draw. Maybe you don’t want to be a “feel player” anymore and want a more logical approach to the game.

Whatever the reasons, you’ve decided to improve your poker math skills.

1. Committing to a Singular Weekly Theme (7:15)

You are no longer a willy-nilly studier. No more cbet video on Monday, preflop ranges on Tuesday then no studying until Sunday.

Flitting from one topic to the next, without fully diving into any one is how you’re going to prolong your poker journey. For many of you stuck at 25nl for the past 3 years, I bet this is how you’ve been approaching your studies.

Because we’re committing to a full week of poker math study, everything we do will be math-centric. But, there are so many avenues of poker math study that we can go down. We don’t want to simultaneously study EV math, break-even math, outs and odds math, ranges and percentage form, implied odds and negative implied odds. That’s just too much for one week. We need to get granular with our math studies this week.

Maybe we think our biggest problem is drawing with poor odds being offered. We draw to the gs, oesd and flush draws too often and lose a lot of money doing so. We don’t know if the price we’re paying is worth it or not, we’re basically just going by feel and we call in hopes we’ll hit our draw.

This week’s theme: Outs and Odds Math

2. Creating Knowledge Seeking Questions (8:55)

I love asking myself questions that help guide my studies. Great questions lead to great answers and a better understanding of the topic at hand.

So you need to write down 3-5 questions that will put you on the right path to learning. This makes you a more active participant and answering your own questions is a way to challenge yourself to learn all you can.

5 Questions:

1. How often do different draws hit on the next street?

2. How do I calculate pot odds?

3. How do I compare pot odds with outs?

4. What bet sizing can I call to profitably continue with a) gut-shot straight draws; b) an open-ended straight draws; c) a flush draws; d) two overcards?

5. How can I practice my math skills on the felt?

Of course, additional questions and avenues to explore will present themselves to you as you study and play with purpose this week.

3. Tracking Quantifiables (10:15)

We can’t improve what we don’t track.

You want to track the progress of your study and play, and the best way to do that is with statistics and win rates from your database. You want to record “before” numbers of 30,000 or more hands up until the day you begin your studies. Then at the end of your week of study and play, record these numbers again to see how you’ve progressed.

Quantifiables to track:

:: Total BB/100 hands win rate

:: # of hands saw the flop and the associated win rate

:: # of flopped flush draws and win rate

  • The # of calls with flopped flush draws and win rate
  • # of raises with flopped flush draws and win rate
  • # of folds with flopped flush draws

:: Same as above with open-ended straight and gut-shot draws

Once you’ve decided on your quantifiables, you must have an idea of what you want to see from your numbers.

Since we’re working here with the idea that you are approaching draws with a lack of mathematical understanding, it’s possible you’re not folding enough. So, you may want to see your fold numbers increase. It may also be a good idea to find more spots to turn your draws into semi-bluffing opportunities, so you’ll want to see an increase in raising numbers.

As you go about your studies and play, over time you’ll learn how to interpret the numbers you’re generating. Also, throughout your week you may realize you want to track even more numbers. If you start with tracking only flush and straight draw situations, you might realize that you flop 2 over cards even more frequently than any other drawing hand so you can add that situation to your quantifiable tracking.

4. Choosing Your Study Methods and Content (14:30)

There are multiple ways to study the theme of your choice each week. Beyond PokerTracker 4 and Flopzilla for hand history reviews, there is almost too much poker strategy content out there just waiting to be consumed.

Videos, books, articles, podcasts and forums are all readily available on the interwebs for you. To keep yourself focused on the topic at hand, it pays to make a list of the items you want to study that week. Do this on Sunday as you plan the week. Spend a little time on Google, YouTube and within your favorite training sites searching for quality content from different content producers.

You’re consuming different viewpoints because no single producer has all the answers. They’re each going to hit a topic from different angles, and each will emphasize different aspects. This will give you a well-rounded understanding of the topic at hand.

List of Content:

Article: ‘Poker Mathematics’ by The Poker Bank

  • http://www.thepokerbank.com/strategy/mathematics/

Article: ‘Outs, Probabilities, and Odds in Poker’ by Mark Warner at ExceptionalPoker.com

  • http://www.exceptionalpoker.com/?p=739

Video: ‘How To Use Pot Odds In Poker | Poker Quick Plays’ by The Poker Bank on YouTube

  • https://youtu.be/Y_dVZYyBxjg

Video: ‘How to Quickly Calculate Pot Odds and the Probability of Hitting your Outs?’ by Goku Poker on YouTube

  • https://youtu.be/iqLHDL7pCMw

Book Chapter: ‘Secrets of Professional Tournament Poker Volume 1’ by Jonathan Little. Chapter 1, “Pot Odds” section on pages 28-33

  • https://amzn.to/2LSJHFk

With a list like this you’ll hit a different piece of poker math content each day, and you’ll watch/read/listen to it with a critical ear. And most importantly, you’ll take notes on all you learn. You can do it in a physical journal, Word document or Evernote.

Study Methods

The other aspect of study methods is your in-game and off-the-felt types of purposeful practice. In How to Study Poker Volume 1, I give you (25) different ways to study poker. You can just consume content from others, or you can do self-imposed purposeful practice like:

  • Game tape
  • Tick sheets
  • Dedicated warm-ups
  • Reviewing notes
  • Creating one-sheets
  • Forum posting or study group help
  • Many more…

5. Planning Day By Day – Combining Daily Studies with a Daily In-game Focus (18:00)

Now you must build out your week to create a daily plan that you can follow and keep your studies on track.

For the five pieces of poker math content listed before, you could study an article on Monday and Wednesday, the videos on Tuesday and Thursday, and read the chapter on Friday. You can mix in some database analysis as well as some game tape reviews or even some forum hand posting on different days as well.

The second part of this step is having an in-game focus as you play each daily session. This is your chance to actively put into practice the things you’re learning. In every session of poker play, you will strive to use the tactics and strategies that you worked on off-the-felt, hopefully the same ones you studied earlier that day.

For the theme of outs and odds math, an in-game focus you may use is to actively plan preflop for how you’ll approach your flop draws. A typical 20% preflop calling range hits a straight draw or flush draw 18% of the time. If you include 2 over card draws, then the range hits one of these 32.4% of the time. With one out of every 3 calling hands hitting a draw, planning for these draws to hit is a prudent measure.

6. Taking Notes, Quantifiables 2nd Round and Reflection (19:50)

Note taking is extremely important. You want to record the most important details from the content you study and the lessons you learn from playing with purpose and your hand history reviews. Good notes are your opportunity to put your thoughts and findings down on paper. This helps you remember what you learned and it’s easy to go back at any time to familiarize yourself with your studies.

At the end of your week of study and focused play, you must record a 2nd round of quantifiables for the hands you played. Hopefully you’ve played 3,000 or more hands, with the more the merrier.

Now, reflect on all you’ve learned and the development of your stats. Try condensing your notes into a one-sheet summary of the most important findings. Think of this sheet as “The Ultimate Guide to ___.” In this case, “The Ultimate Guide to Outs and Odds Math.”

Challenge (21:05)

Here’s my challenge to you for this episode:  Plan your next week of study in 3 steps:

  1. Choose any strategy that you want to build skills around.
  2. Download a blank copy of the plan.
  3. Take 30 minutes to plan your next 7 days of purposeful study and play on your chosen strategy.

Now it’s your turn to take action and do something positive for your poker game.

Q&A: Tilt Control, Acting Too Fast and a Weekly Game Plan | Episode 193

By Sky Matsuhashi on July 6, 2018

I answer 3 questions about how to work on tilt control, how to not act too fast and I give you a weekly game plan for study and play.

In episode 192, I played for you a chapter from my latest audiobook, ‘Preflop Online Poker’.  The chapter is called “Blind Versus Blind Situations”.

Q1: Tilt Control (2:30)

From: Richard

Q: To stop going on tilt. For example, in an online SnG, I was all in with AKo, my opponent was also in with AKo. Villain made a Royal.

Answer:

I’ve had an issue with tilt all through my poker career, and I consider my tilt issues as an ever-going work in progress.

Here are some mental game podcasts and read some books I recommend:

‘Poker on the Mind Podcast’ with Dr. Tricia Cardner and Gareth James

‘Peak Poker Performance’ by Dr. Tricia Cardner

‘The Mental Game Podcast’

‘The Mental Game of Poker’ by Jared Tendler

It sounds like you suffer from Injustice Tilt and/or Entitlement Tilt. You’ll learn a lot about these two from ‘The Mental Game of Poker’. In this book, Tendler gives many logic statements that help to inject logic during a tilting experience to help you keep your cool. Here’s one that I created and I’ve been using lately:

“Don’t have any expectations; accept what happens, tag the hand for later review and move on.”

Tag and Review

You have to try and just accept the beats. Tag and review every hand that tilts you and see if there are patterns to your tilt. Maybe it’s every time you lose after 3betting for value, or when your bluffs fail, or when you get it in and lose with the best hand.

With that AK v AK hand the bright side is that you got it in with a 50/50 shot and he just sucked out. Try to remember this when you gii preflop with AA vs TT and lose, or when you flop your straight and they river a flush. You got it in good, variance just wasn’t on your side. Do you react the opposite way when you suck out on somebody? Do you have an equal wave of euphoria when you crack somebody’s AA with 65s? Probably not, so try not to allow yourself to feel that anger when it happens to you.

Variance can be a pain in the rear, but you know what helps?  Having a proper outlook on variance and playing with a healthy bankroll.

Q2: Acting Too Fast (7:45)

From: Robert

Q: I react to fast without thinking the situation 100% through.

Answer:

1. Figure out if you have any mental leaks that lead to acting too fast.

Maybe you look down at AA and all you can think about is the money you’re about to make, so you make bets, raises and calls without considering why your opponent is doing what they’re doing.  Or every time you’re dealt AK you just auto-get it in with re-raises. Maybe you can never fold a TP hand on the flop. Maybe you can never fold oesd’s or nut fd’s. Once you figure out any mental game issues surrounding this, put a focus on getting beyond them in your next sessions. Evaluate your progress.

2. Focus on having a reason for every button click.

For bets and raises preflop, you need to be making them for value, as a bluff or for isolating an opponent. For bets and raises post-flop, it’s for value and you can list the hands your opponent can give you value with; or it’s a bluff and you think your opponent can fold better hands like Ace high, weak TP hands and 2nd pair hands. Verbally list the hands you’re getting value from or getting to fold.

3. Play just one or two tables when online with the above focus.

More tables = less time to think about your actions. So cut the number you play so you act with more focus and intent.

4. Utilize a tick-sheet for bets and raises as you play.

If you’re betting for value, put a tick mark under the word “Value”. Bluffing, put a tick mark under “Bluffing” and if you’re iso raising preflop, put a tick mark under “Iso”.

5. Start doing hand reading exercises off the felt.

These get you thinking more about your opponent’s ranges and actions, and doing more of this off the felt will translate into you doing it more on the felt. Check out my 66 Days of Hand Reading videos on YouTube: https://www.smartpokerstudy.com/66daysofhandreading.

6. Start recording game tape of your sessions and reviewing them the next day.

When you catch yourself making non-thinking, too quick decisions, figure out why. Are you distracted, too focused on your hand and the board, or just committing too early with specific hands?

Q3: Weekly Game Plan (14:05)

From: Jason

Q: I’ve got a lot of time for poker study and play but I’m very disorganized and distracted. I’m having a hard time creating a good routine. I waste a lot of time. Do you have any recommendations on a basic routine that I can do every day for beginner learning?

Answer:

Here’s my 1-2-3-4-5 Weekly Game Plan:

1. Choose 1 topic or skill to base all of your play and study around this week.

It can be general like “3betting Preflop” but it’s better to get granular and choose “3betting with suited connectors” or “3betting from the SB” or “3betting against LAG’s”.

2. Utilize Google and find 2 articles to study and take notes from.

Do a Google search, then go through the results and skim the resulting articles. Look for reputable sites like Red Chip or Upswing or other ones you trust. Copy and paste the URL’s into a Word document so you can study them later.

3. Utilize YouTube search and find 3 videos relating to the topic you’ve chosen.

Once again, find good videos from reputable video makers. Copy and past the URL’s so you can study them later.

4. Select at least 4 statistics to track over the coming week.

For a theme of 3betting, you might want to record your 3bet as a total and by position, your win rate when 3betting and your cbet when 3betting. Maybe also record your fold to 4bet stat and anything else you think can help you gauge your progress. Record these stats for the 10,000+ hands you played prior to this week, then record them again at the end of your week.

5. Commit to one hour of study, 5 days per week and one hour of play, 5 days per week.

Each day, go in this order:

Start each day with a warm-up or a study session prior to your play session.

Your warm-up should include reviewing any notes you’ve taken on the topic at hand. Also, do a full hand reading practice on a hand related to your topic of study. If you do a full study session instead, read one of the articles or watch one of the videos and take good notes on it. Then, review your database in relation to the topic at hand in the article or video.

Play your session with focusing on 1-2 tables for the first 30 minutes. Force yourself to use the strategies you’re studying and to find opportunities to use them. Tag any related hands to study in your sessions.

Record at least 1 game tape this week to review in one of your sessions.

Click here for a simple weekly study plan.

Challenge (17:15)

Here’s my challenge to you for this episode:   My guess is that everyone listening to this episode suffers from at least one of the questions I answered today. Here’s the deal: pick the one that’s most relevant to you and implement what I recommend. Let me know how it goes: sky@smartpokerstudy.com. I guarantee I’ll respond and I just may share your story with the audience.

Now it’s your turn to take action and do something positive for your poker game.

Support the Show

John Tahoe purchased a copy of my webinar Expert Hand Reading.  And Ken Nielson purchased Getting the Most from PokerTracker 4.  Follow their lead and get your study on!  Click either link for $5 off.

Q&A: MTT Leak Win Rates, Study Discipline, Equity Practice and Playing the Player | Episode 179

By Sky Matsuhashi on March 10, 2018

I answer 4 questions about analyzing win rates in MTT’s, developing study discipline, equity practice and playing the player.

In episode 178, I gave you my 7-step process for finding and plugging leaks for online poker players with a database of hands.

Q1: MTT Leak Finding (2:45)

Stefanos:

Hey sky!  What’s up?  I was going through your episode #178.  Great material as always, highly appreciated.  There’s a thing I would like to ask regarding the paragraph about calculating the cost and defining the quantifiables.

As a cash player, you use the bb/100 hands win rate.  But as an MTT player, this doesn’t say much, right??

How do you approach it in MTTs?

Answer:

Use a combination of BB/100 and All-in Adj BB/100.

Look it up in the statistics guide (in the Configure menu) for the definition and calculation. It’s your win rate that’s been adjusted for the equity you had when you went all-in and your opponent’s hand is shown.

BB/100 hands is useful for most of tournament database reviewing, as a negative number is likely a leak.

Use All-in Adj BB/100 to see how the win rate changes with all-in equity calculated.

Filter for potential leaks and situations to see where the two rates differ, and look for negative numbers as well.

In the screenshot above, you can see the losses in the CO when 2betting pre-flop. Maybe this player is too risky in this steal position and doesn’t give up steals too easily. Maybe their CO ranges are too wide. It’ll require further diving into to figure it out.

In the EP, it’s + for BB/100 then – for All-in Adj BB/100. This also means the player is getting it in with worse and they “should’ve” lost more chips just based on the equities at the time of getting it in, but they’ve lucked out a bit and have actually earned chips in the EP. This player should filter for all-in situations and review these hands to see where mistakes are being made in the EP.

Q2: Developing Study Discipline (6:30)

Lester Leslaw:

Discipline. I need to study more but I totally feel overwhelmed. Just bought a Deuces Cracked subscription. And bought your book on how to learn. Have to read that. The first fifteen minutes I’ve read is super juicy! So, any motivational things you can send me for more poker discipline would be great!

Answer:

The discipline to study comes with time and seeing the benefits of study.

Here’s what I recommend:

1. Commit to studying 1 losing hand every day within your database. This is an easy commitment to keep. What often happens is your 5 minutes can quickly turn into :30 or longer as soon as you get motivated to study further. Make this commitment every week for 4 weeks and see how you improve.

2. Time block your 5 minutes (1 losing hand) and put it on your daily calendar.

3. Commit to one area of focus each week in these 5 minutes. You can decide to study 3bet losing hands this week, or 2bet calling hands or whatever. This will help to prevent overwhelm and your game will improve even more than if you hit a completely different area of study every day.

Q3: Equity Practice (10:30)

Danny Seay:

The one poker skill I know I need to improve is calculating equity.

Answer:

The best way to work on equity calculations is to whip out Flopzilla and run through tons of common situations. Practicing this over and over will start to cement these equities in your head and you’ll start naturally using them in-game.

In the equity area under the “Dead cards” section, you can right-click that box to hide the equity calculations. Now, you can run different hands vs ranges vs boards and guess what the equities are.

Example: Let’s say you’ve got AA and you’re up against a suspected fd on the Jh5h2c board. How much equity does 8h7h have with their fd+bdsd? You might guess 35%, but when you hover over the area, it’s at 39%. Okay, what if they had a pair +fd, like Kh2h? You might estimate it at 48%, but it’s 49%.

Just keep practicing different scenarios like this for a few minutes every study session, or do it every time you’re reviewing questionable hands.

Q4: Playing the Player (13:20)

Superstickboy:

Adjusting my play to who I am am playing against and not just my cards. Work on asking for help and making good questions.

Also in the email: The one thing I want to do is change my SharkScope flat line to an uphill growth pattern.

Answer:

The perfect solution: HUSNG’s.

I think my full month playing them (December 2018) really helped to open my eyes to how much I was NOT doing this and just playing my cards and the board. I didn’t realize that I had de-volved into a robotic game and I wasn’t playing the player.

Please listen to podcast episode 175 (https://www.smartpokerstudy.com/pod175) for what I learned from playing 263 of them.

Good luck on getting that Sharkscope.com line up. This was Olivier Busquet’s big motivation when he went from a fish to a pro. He learned about Shark Scope and saw what his opponents would think of him. This motivated to study his ass off and improve his game to go from a losing to a winning player. This ended up propelling him to one of the the top players in the game.

Please join us in the FB discussion group as well so you can ask tons of questions and help other people with your own answers. (https://www.smartpokerstudy.com/discuss)

Challenge (16:35)

Here’s my challenge to you for this episode:  Study more often. I recently said, “Everybody studies on Monday”. I want you to study every Monday, and 4 more days through the week. If motivation is an issue, time block 5 minutes out of every day and review just one hand. You’ll be surprised at how often your :05 will turn into :30. Also, shorter daily study sessions are better than 1-3 hours of study one day per week.

Now it’s your turn to take action and do something positive for your poker game.

Support the Show

Karl Beard got the Smart HUD for PokerTracker 4.  Get ’em, Karl.  They’ll fear the Beard soon enough.  Get the Smart HUD here.

Chuang Li also supported this past week by picking up a copy of PokerTracker 4.  Go here to learn more and get your own copy.  PokerTracker 4 affiliate link.

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