In October 2016, my Global Poker League team, the Las Vegas Moneymakers, were sitting at the bottom of the America’s division despite my best efforts and winning record. With only three weeks of play remaining in the season, we needed to win all three games of our weekly heads-up match to not be mathematically eliminated from payoff contention. We were told that we would face Phil Galfond, one of the biggest winners in all of poker. I was away on a vacation when I got the news, walking through the streets of Budapest with my wife, and told her that whoever was put in to play Galfond was going to get murdered. A few minutes later, our team manager Chris Moneymaker texted me and told me that I was going to be our team’s savior. All I could think was “It looks like I am going to be the one who gets murdered!” …

Learning from my mistakes in the Global Poker LeagueRead More »

This hand is from the $10,000 buy-in Bellagio cup event that takes place near the end of the WSOP. The field is usually quite soft because many pros are still in the WSOP main event, or so worn out from the series that they skip this tournament. This event is effectively acts a “last chance” high roller tournament. Day 1 did not start off too well for me. After grinding up my 40,000 starting stack to 60,000 by winning lots of small pots, I lost a big hand with A-A versus J-J in a 4-bet pot when my opponent rivered trips. This left me with 30,000. …

Taking a Trip to ValuetownRead More »

An Interview with Jonathan Little by Albert Hart

This interview originally appeared on the FloatTheTurn.com blog.

Albert: Jonathan, rebuy tournaments, where players could re-enter immediately after busting out, right at the table and in the same seat, or purchase more chips when they were short, were popular 10 to 15 years ago. But now, they have largely been replaced by re-entry tournaments, where you can re-enter, but will be assigned a new seat, and where you cannot add-on chips when you get short stacked. …

My thoughts on re-entry tournamentsRead More »

I have been fortunate enough to be featured in the poker (and non-poker media) quite a few times over the last few months. In this blog post, I will share with you a few of these mentions, many of which include lots of free educational poker content. This blog post has been in the works for quite a while, but great things have kept popping up. Sorry that it is so long!

The Cover of CardPlayer Magazine

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In the mediaRead More »

Last year I had the opportunity to travel to Deauville, France for the European Poker Tour series. Even though I had only marginal success, cashing for the minimum in the €10,000 buy-in high roller event, I got to play lots of fun hands. This hand is from a €5,000 buy-in six-handed turbo tournament. My opponent is a loose, aggressive kid who I have been pushing around so far. While I am not sure if he is a stereotypical overly aggressive European kid, I tend to assume that European kids are overly aggressive until they prove otherwise. …

Facing a river raise in DeauvilleRead More »

This blog post is an experiment. I have been trying to figure out a good way to help amateur poker players better understand how to put players on hand ranges in a clear, easy to understand format. I am considering writing a book using the format below and I want to see what you think about it. Please let me know in the Comment section below. Thank you!

This blog post would likely be near the end of the book, after it is fully discussed how to put someone on a reasonable preflop range. I also have to figure out how to add weighted ranges in a visual format. Writing books is hard work!

Preflop

At 100/200-25 with 25,000 effective stacks, a good, loose, aggressive played raised to 525 from the lojack seat.

The lojack’s preflop raising range is:

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In-depth Hand Range AnalysisRead More »