Guest Posts

Exploitative Play vs GTO Play by Michael Acevedo

This post is a tiny piece of Michael Acevedo’s upcoming book Modern Poker Theory. I had the pleasure to see an early copy and it is excellent. You will not want to miss this ground-breaking book!

Passive Exploitation

Does GTO play make money against bad players?

In a HU situation, if one player is playing optimally vs a suboptimal opponent, any deviation the weaker player makes away from GTO to a worse strategy can only cost him value, which will in turn be gained by the optimal player. This phenomenon is called passive exploitation because the optimal player does not have to do anything besides play his equilibrium strategy to gain extra Ev from the suboptimal player. …

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#1 Tip for Small Stakes Players from Top Pros

I just completed the manuscript for my upcoming book Mastering Small Stakes No-Limit Hold’em and I am proud to say that it is full of actionable advice for small stakes players looking to move to the middle stakes. This got me thinking about what other top pros would suggest, so I asked them. Some of these pros are well-known household names while others are lesser-known, but are who I turn to when I want to study poker. Here are their replies, with my commentary below in italics:

Daniel Negreanu: Find a group of players whose game you respect and discuss hands with them, especially those already playing the stakes you want to be playing. …

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Age and the WSOP by Neil Blumenfield

Optimized_NWM-Neil_Blumenfield3by Neil Blumenfield

When I made the 2015 WSOP Main Event November Nine at age 61 a big deal was made about age as the Final Table tends to be dominated by young male players.  2015 was especially significant because, while I was older than any previous final table player in the November Nine format, I was joined at this final table by 73-year-old Pierre Neuville, So discussions about age and poker became a big topic.  …

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Adapt or Perish

222I am away on my honeymoon so this week’s blog post is a guest post by Pamela Maldonado, who is part of the editorial team at PokerNews. I hope you enjoy it. Let me know what you think!

In 2013 I played my first ever WSOP Event — the $1,000 Ladies tournament. It was a 3-day event with 954 entrants and I lasted a disappointing two hours.  Like many other players, I was eliminated by a bad beat.  I don’t like to complain so I’m not going to, but after the event was over I wasn’t as disappointed in the hand that sent me to the rail as I was in my play and outlook for the rest of that tournament.  Turns out I was a fish. …

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67th place in the Colossus WSOP event

WSOP CropBy James Iglinsky

Since 2010, I have been traveling to Las Vegas from Houston to play in a WSOP event. I don’t get the opportunity to play much, as the closest casino game is 2.5 hours away and I will not play in any of the local raked home games.

Leading up to this year’s WSOP trip, I began a heavy study schedule watching videos and playing hand packs from InstaPoker. Then I joined Jonathan Little’s online training site, floattheturn.com. …

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Live Open Face Chinese Poker

Lessons I’ve Learned at the World Championship

by Jennifer Shahade

Jennifer-Shahade-1_mini - CopyThe two-time US women’s chess champion, and PokerStars Mind Sports Ambassador Jennifer Shahade admits that her biggest highlight of this poker season was winning the TonyBet Open Face Chinese World Championship High Roller event. Not only was it the biggest live buy-in she ever played, it was also the biggest cash prize of her career.

Since the event was streamed live, the recorded video footage allowed Jennifer to analyze her own game and use it to teach others about OFC poker. In this piece Jennifer shares her thoughts on two hands she played during the tournament and looks at them in more detail.

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Blueberries: Feed your brain

blueberriesBy Ken Adams:

How do you prepare for playing in the WSOP Main Event?  Everyone has their own ideas about what you can do to increase your chances of making a deep run.  If you think you can’t learn anything useful by studying Jamie Gold’s successful championship run in 2006, you are mistaken.   Whatever your opinion of Jamie’s poker skills, you would do well to copy his habit of snacking on blueberries throughout the long tournament days. …

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