Both blinds fold and your opponent shoves his remaining stack into the middle……all 196bb of it. With absolutely no knowledge of our opponent then we have a somewhat tricky decision. Many players would snap call but snap calling is a potentially big mistake if your opponents range only consists of A-A. Let’s face it, if you knew that your opponent held exactly A-A then you would fold in a heartbeat wouldn’t you?

Many people will argue, yes but we don’t know he has aces. Of course we don’t and this underlines the point about how important it is to know how opponents range. The entire profit that we show or don’t show whichever the case may be is dictated by how much equity our hand has against their range. This is the entire point of this simple example, it isn’t to highlight how we cannot possibly know our opponents hand.

Well actually it is because when we can narrow down our opponent’s range of hands then we are getting closer to revealing their hand. When we know our opponents range then we also know how many different hand types are in that range. This has a profound effect on our overall line and strategy in the hand and also how we play against a particular opponent full stop.

For example if an opponent has a very wide range pre-flop then calling and floating become very effective tactics post flop. This is even more so when our opponent rarely barrels with his weak holdings on all three streets. Also semi-bluffs also increase in effectiveness because our opponent will be folding all of his fresh air and as we know, there are a lot of weak hands in his range. Our opponents range also has a big impact on the board texture as well.

So everything is connected and just like we are trained to look at equity in poker, we should also be training ourselves to look at ranges as well. Any strong poker player will tell you that their game is based very heavily on equity and ranges and this is basically what the fundamentals of a good solid poker game are based on.

For example let us say that an opponent raised pre-flop, bet the flop and checked the turn…..what is their likely range here? Forget what hand you hold or what the board texture is…concentrate on the betting line of raise/bet/check and figure what that means. Would they start to check big hands? Probably not in all likelihood but they would check mediocre hands for pot control and weak hands when giving up on their bluffs. So unless they are tricky then their range is weak to moderate hands on the turn unless proven otherwise.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson is a professional poker player at www.888poker.com and you can also see Carl on Google+ at https://plus.google.com/u/0/115053726433255054649/posts

Don't Go Yet!

The post It’s a question of range: Guest Post by Carl “The Dean” Sampson appeared first on Bill's Poker Blog.

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2. Are you playing for long enough? Guest post by Carl “The Dean” Sampson
3. Hearing too many voices: Guest Post by Carl “The Dean” Sampson
4. Don’t listen to the hype – Guest post by Carl “The Dean” Sampson
5. A look at combatting ordinary regs by Carl “The Dean” Sampson

A couple of years ago I went through a period where I tried to play too many tables ultimately trying to do the exact same thing that I now look to combat. Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that playing say sixteen tables is not profitable……it certainly is if you are good enough and play low enough. However my game stagnated and I felt that I needed to go back to the drawing board and also play fewer tables. I feel that when you play a very low level of VPIP then you miss many profitable opportunities.

If you can make more money per hour simply by playing more tables and you could handle the increased volume then you would be a fool not to play that way. However it is when your earn rate goes backwards by playing too many tables that you maybe need to look at how you are playing. I think it is very instructive to see how a normal run of the mill “rakeback reg” operates. When you do that then it becomes a very educational exercise because it helps you to build an average profile of your opponent.

When these players raise in full ring for example from early position then their range is exceptionally narrow. So you can avoid these marginal spots and even though you have a positional advantage it is still highly marginal given the tight range that your opponent has. With more big pairs as part of their range then your opponent will be able to barrel more often which will reduce the effectiveness of your arsenal of plays and floating is one such example. So if you want to multi-table yourself then it could quite simply be a default play to not call raises against regs in full ring when they raise from early position.

Quite clearly a reg will try to utilise position more than most players and so will expand their ranges more and look to capitalise on a positional advantage. This is when floating is more effective because you are doing so against a much wider range. So calling raises and flop c-bets is more profitable. If your opponents are playing on eight tables then the chances are that they will be reticent to become involved in marginal spots when their VPIP is so low and their hand is so weak.

Hand reading becomes more difficult in these situations and it takes a really strong regular to push through this stage of their development. The majority of regs simply look to profit from indiscipline and weak play from fish and rakeback/reward points etc. However many regs are certainly exploitable and just because a player is active on eight tables doesn’t mean that they offer no value. The bottom line is though that you will need to learn how

to combat conventional regs because these will present such a large percentage of your opponents. If ten regs are active and each reg plays eight tables then this represents a total of eighty available seats on the cash games of a certain site or network and so finding ways to beat them is an important part of your strategy.

Carl Sampson is a professional poker player who plays online at www.888poker.com

Don't Go Yet!

The post A look at combatting ordinary regs by Carl “The Dean” Sampson appeared first on Bill's Poker Blog.

Related posts:

1. Why you need to become a better poker player: Guest Post by Carl “The Dean” Sampson
2. Are you playing for long enough? Guest post by Carl “The Dean” Sampson
3. Don’t listen to the hype – Guest post by Carl “The Dean” Sampson
4. Hearing too many voices: Guest Post by Carl “The Dean” Sampson
5. Razz Poker and the Worlds Greatest Ever Gambler

Some of this review may end up sounding somewhat similar to what I wrote about another book I recently read called Poker Hero. The reason for that is both books cover many of the same topics and give very similar advice.

In fact, I was unsure of how to approach this review since I throughly enjoyed both books. Is one better than the other? Do I recommend one over the other?

I guess the best way to reconcile that is to put the two books into perspective. Poker Hero is an excellent book if you’ve never thought about the mental aspects of poker before. It’s an excellent book that opens to door to novice players to get started on taking their game to the next level.

TMGP2 (and to a large degree, TMGP) is an advanced look into peak performance. For instance, both talk about playing in “The Zone” but 2 goes a step (or two) further. The content is more focused on serious players and the explanations are much more detailed.

The zone is a state of heightened mental functioning, awareness, and concentration that allows poker players to perform at the highest possible levels. – The Mental Game of Poker 2

Both of these books are exciting because this is one of the areas in poker that has been under-explored. Tommy Angelo was one of the first major authors to discuss the concept of forgetting about working on your A-game and put more time into eliminating your C-game if you’re really interested in putting more money in your pocket. TMGP2 validates and evolves Angelo’s observations about the game using recognized research into how the brain learns and processes information. Tendler’s background in sports psychology applied to poker is a natural progression in performance enhancement.

I remember years ago hearing a Tony Robbins speech about coaching professional athletes. He said that you don’t teach an NBA player how to shoot free throws. They already know how to shoot free throws. They didn’t get to where they are and not know how to shoot free throws. It’s not about their form or their stance or any of the basics. It’s about getting them into them into the right mental frame of mind.

Essentially, Tony Robbins was talking about eliminating the player’s C-game. If you can teach them to be in the zone more often they’ll make more free throws. The goal is to increase the amount of time spent in the A-game and reduce the amount of time playing the B and C-games.

What TMGP2 teaches isn’t some secret that you can read and your game will magically get better. It’s work. Hard work. And what makes it even more challenging is the fact that much of it is training your own mind. Most of us never learn to direct our own minds. We put information into it but we don’t train the mind to produce the states which give us the outcomes we desire.

TMGP2 is the manual. It’s a guide. You still have to get in there and do the work yourself. It seems soft and fuzzy and all new age-y when you first hear about these methods but they’re backed by scientific research and by countless professional athletes outside the realm of poker.

Whether you’re talking poker, golf, basketball, or boxing, technical skill will only take you so far. Crossing the threshold between good and great is entirely psychological. If you aren’t working on your mental game, you’ve already set a limit in terms of how far you can go.

In many ways working on the mental part of your game reminds me of meditation or mindfulness. In fact, there are many similarities in terms of training yourself to be able to put yourself into an empowering mental state.

When you first begin to meditate you train your mind to think about nothing. That is very difficult when you’re first starting out. Your mind is used to going here and there and moving from one thought to the next.

And then you have a moment. A moment when your mind has completely stilled itself and you are entirely present in this very moment. It might have taken weeks or months of sitting there each day for 10 or 15 minutes trying to focus on nothing and not perceiving that you’ve made any progress but when it happens it’s like getting slapped in the face.

But that moment is fleeting and is quickly gone. However, the more you keep practicing the more often that moment comes and the easier it is for you to still your mind each session and get access to that state again.

Perhaps Tendler and Carter would disagree but that is what your A-game is about. You can’t live in your A-game every moment of your life but you train your mind how to get there more frequently and stay there longer. Even more important, you can learn the difference between your A-game and your B-game before you even begin to slip back into your B-game.

As Darren Kramer attests in TMGP2:

I’ve gotten to the point now where I don’t even have to make mistakes to know my game has slipped. Last year, one of my B-game mistakes was becoming creative and making too many fancy plays. After calling this out and working on it over many months, I was able to recognize when I was just thinking about being creative. I didn’t have to make a mistake to know I was in my B-game! This gave me so much control over my game and allowed me to prove that I was making real progress with my mental game. Now, when my game slips and I start to feel like I want to get creative, I say to myself, ‘Darren, you know the things you do well—be patient and clear.’ That stops me immediately, and then I can look to what I do in my A-game and try to play that way. The knowledge I have from working with my A- to C-game analysis is incredibly empowering. I have extra knowledge about my game that not many players have. When I sit down at a table full of good regs, I feel like I have one or two extra tools in my back pocket.

Probably the most difficult part about employing the strategies and techniques outlined in TMGP2 is that you can’t force it. Just like you cannot meditate harder, you can’t rush the processes in TMGP2 by trying harder. It’s a learning process, a training process, which has a natural progression and clearly defined steps along the way. If you put in the effort and the time the results will come but there are no shortcuts.

If what I’ve said sounds like a load of BS, don’t buy this book. You’re not ready for it. You might be ready for it one day but you’ll get absolutely nothing out of it today. If anything I’ve written has resonated in even the slightest way, this book is 100% for you.

Don't Go Yet!

The post Book Review: The Mental Game of Poker 2 appeared first on Bill's Poker Blog.

Related posts:

1. Review: The Mental Game of Poker
2. Book Review: Poker Hero
3. Pre-Book Review
4. Barry Greenstein’s Book?
5. Book Review: Basic Economics

And that’s one of the reasons I always tried to avoid it. The “understanding” during Songkran is you can pretty much douse anybody with water with no repercussions. What, you just walked out of the mini-mart talking on your phone? Nope, you’re not even allowed to get angry at the person who just turned your high-priced phone into a worthless piece of garbage. You have to smile and deal with the fact you were dumb enough to venture out of your home without having sealed your phone in a waterproof case.

In fact, I just read a Facebook update from a good friend saying that there are a bunch of foreigners out on Soi 11 in Bangkok throwing water on people as they head out to late night nightclubs even though water play is supposed to end at 9pm (his post was well after 9pm Thai time).

It’s almost like the Bangkok (and from what I hear Pattaya and Phuket) version of Songkran is an excuse the push the limits of acceptable behavior.

But several years back I celebrated my first Songkran outside of Bangkok. Out in the provinces you get a little more of the traditional aspect of the holiday. Any Thai who isn’t forcibly chained to a desk travels back to their hometown and pays respect to the elder members of their family. There’s normally a ceremony in which you bathe a Buddha statue and then use the water that was used to wash the Buddha to pour over the elder members of the family.

I actually wrote about my first experience with this ceremony back in 2010 in which a language barrier between my wife and I had me totally confused and her completely frustrated when she asked if I would like to come shower her grandmother and I declined the invite. We still laugh about that one.

The fun part though is the water fights. Up here it’s mostly contained to one specific road though it’s not uncommon to be riding down some back soi through fields of rice or corn and have a small group of ten year old highway bandits stand in your path and give you a squirt or two from their water guns.

This afternoon Ked and I made our way down the main strip of road where the real action takes place armed with only a water gun, my GoPro camera mounted on my chest, a thousand baht note stuffed in my pocket, and have-to-stay-dry items like mobile phones in a waterproof bag.

We went on foot, zig-zagging through cars, motorbikes, throngs of people, and more than a few folks who seemed to have been drinking since breakfast.

As I mentioned in some of my past posts about Songkran up here in Phetchabun, being a caucasian in a place where you might only see 4 or 5 others of your kind out of the thousands and thousands of people celebrating is a funny experience. People will literally cross the street to rub some talcum powder paste in your face or dump a bowl of water on you.

Unfortunately, I had burned through all of my batteries in the GoPro when it happened but at one point late in the day we had met up with some of Ked’s friends and sat on the tailgate of their truck going through the battle zone. As traffic came to a standstill (and the max speed is already only about 5 MPH) four little girls, all about ten or twelve years old, jumped out of a truck that had been heading in the other direction and ran up to our truck and asked, “OK, mai?” (Is it okay?). I smiled and they all jumped on the tailgate next to me squealing with excitement.

Ked started laughing while pretended to be angry asking them if they were trying to steal her husband. Like little children do they just giggled with ear to ear smiles on their faces before eventually scattering off into the crowd a block or two later.

That’s what I like about Songkran up here. The whole vibe is about fun. Of course, many would say the same about Bangkok’s version of Songkran but I’m talking about the real joy you see in people’s faces.

Since a pictures is worth 1000 words, let me shut the heck up and just post some pics :-)

These are off my GoPro that I had on chest mount. So they’re screen grabs from video which I hope to be able to put together into something when I get back to the US.

Don't Go Yet!

The post Songkran in Thailand appeared first on Bill's Poker Blog.

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2. Happy Songkran
3. Songkran Part I: No KFC, No Peace!!
4. Songkran Part II: Washing Grandma
5. Valentine’s Day in Thailand

One of the reasons I love this book so much is that Roßner basically captured exactly what I had been thinking for some time but had, as of yet, not been able to articulate (as well as Roßner). Back in 2005, I wrote a post called, The Ultimate Secret to Winning Poker, where I argued that poker books were like self-help books in that most people keep buying books but they rarely put what’s in the books to use.

If you want to lose weight, buying a book about the latest diet isn’t likely to help if you purchased previous diet books and failed to follow the diet. If you buy a book by Tony Robbins for motivation but you fail to do what he tells you, buying a book by Ken Blanchard isn’t going to help you since they both essentially give the same advice.

This idea has been in my head for a long time now. And before I picked up Poker Hero I had been reading Tim Ferris’ book The Four Hour Chef where he talks about how one can quickly master almost any skill. I know it sounds like it’s about cooking but Ferris’ point was you can learn something like how to Salsa dance at a competitive level if you know how to figure out the most critical elements and focus on those areas.

Roßner speaks to that same philosophy. Poker Hero is sprinkled with examples not from the poker world but from the world of sports. He dissects what separates a Micheal Jordan from any other player.

The basketball court at the Laney High School, in Wilmington, North Carolina, looks shabby. The first rays of dawn hardly make their way through the dust covered windows. Fourteen young athletic kids, dressed with blue washed-out basketball shirts, stand in a row. Balancing from one foot to the other, they fix their eyes on a middle aged man, a whistle dangling from his bullish neck. He wears a blue shirt, printed with “Coach.” He points his finger to the first player in the line. “Sorry, you are out.” He looks at a scribbled list with three names on yellow paper and trod to another player. “Sorry, it was close.” One more to go. He looks down again: “Sorry, Michael.”

The first rejected player joined a local league afterwards. The second, an intramural squad. Yet the third one was different. Immediately after his removal, he started to practice long hours day after day. If he felt too tired to continue, he forced himself to recall his cut from the team and drove himself even harder, never giving in to the voice in his head begging to stop.

20 years later, Utah is in the 6th game of the 1998 NBA finals. It’s 5.2 seconds left to play, and 33,000 eyes stare at Michael, knowing that he will take the shot. Bryon Russell, one of the Jazz’s best defenders, guards him, but Michael makes a quick move, goes up in the air and seals his sixth Championship for the Chicago Bulls.

Michael Jordan was cut from his team in his sophomore year of high school. At this time, all hopes of obtaining a college scholarship were gone. Most athletes would haven take their lumps and moved on with their lives. Michael Jordan, however, was different. He responded with hard work. Two years later, he was a McDonald’s All American and the MVP of the McDonald’s game. The year after that, he hit the game-winning shot for the University of North Carolina in the NCAA finals. By the time his NBA career ended, Jordan had made an astonishing 25 game-winning shots.

Without any doubt, Michael Jordan was an elite performer. But Michael Jordan was not always Michael Jordan. He rose from high school reject to college star. Though he never averaged more than 20 points per game during his college career, and was selected only third in 1984′ s NBA draft, he became one of the greatest players of all time.

How did this happen? What made Michael Jordan different from the average basketball player? Is he a super human? Or can we copy his success? Is there something we can learn from him or from other great performers like Lance Armstrong, Mohammed Ali, Tiger Woods, or Jerry Rice to improve our Poker game?

And that was what I found so amazing about the book. It’s one of the only books on poker that I’ve ever read that separates the strategy from the willingness to win. In fact, Poker Hero doesn’t offer any strategy. It’s all about how to motivate yourself to be great.

Now, I know some people are rolling their eyes. They’re probably thinking that Poker Hero is a bunch of psychological mumbo-jumbo but it’s anything but that. For instance Roßner dismisses the stuff you normally read about like feel-good affirmations as being self-delusional.

Merely abstract positive thinking won’t do the job. Reciting affirmations such as, “I will be a consistent winner” is empty at best, self-delusional at worst.

Instead Roßner shows you concrete examples of how to focus yourself on what’s important.

For instance, almost every poker strategy book will mention reviewing your results. But what does that mean? Poker Hero walks you through identifying your weaknesses, formulating a plan to address your weaknesses, and a methodology to track your progress.

Basically, Roßner has taken educational theory (how people learn new information) and combined it with sports psychology as used by some of the top performing athletes in the world.

In fact, I was recently having a conversation with a friend and I was telling him what I thought was wrong with poker training today. You go to one of these training sites and you watch some video of a good player commenting on his play over maybe 45 minutes or an hour.

What does that teach you? Sure, you might learn a little about his thought process or pick up a new line you hadn’t considered before but there’s no direction or focus in the learning. You might see the instructor/coach play AQs UTG and the next hand he plays he’s playing JTo from the button.

Well, the problem in that is that you would learn so much more if they did an hour long video on AQs from every position, against every type of opponent, and on every type of board the flop could bring.

Or put another way, if you have trouble putting, do you think your putting would improve more from spending two hours practicing just putting or from playing 18 holes? Obviously spending several hours focused on putting will do more than taking 18 putts during a round of golf.

That’s a lot of what Poker Hero is about. It’s about helping you identify what parts of your game need work, using focused learning to improve as much as possible in the shortest amount of time, and applying those lessons in your game and tracking the results.

As I mentioned earlier, I had already been thinking about this concept for a long time so my biggest disappointment with Poker Hero is that there wasn’t more information. As I read through each chapter I was hoping it would drill down into the nitty-gritty but it seemed as if Roßner was trying to avoid getting too far into the details so as not to scare people off from trying things out.

On the other hand, the kind of people who will get the most of of this book are exactly the types of people who will dig deeper on their own, so maybe Roßner was right to point people in a direction and let them do with it what they need.

Don't Go Yet!

The post Book Review: Poker Hero appeared first on Bill's Poker Blog.

Related posts:

1. Pre-Book Review
2. Barry Greenstein’s Book?
3. Review: The Mental Game of Poker
4. Book Review: Basic Economics
5. Product Review: “Playing the Player: Moving Beyond ABC Poker to Dominate Your Opponents” by Ed Miller

Being back amongst my World Poker Blogger Tour brethren in December and chatting with folks like Grubby made me think back about those posts recently.

As I went back and reviewed my posts I noted to myself that some of the issues had been addressed and others have yet to be addressed by even a single online poker site. While I guess we should applaud the advances we have seen, I wrote both of those posts back in 2005 and most of the larger issues are still outstanding.

One of the biggest issues, as I see it, is that operators are fixated on the top raking players. Even in my blog posts, I approached the issue from point of view of someone who spends hours in front of their software every day like a typical high-raking grinder (which I’m not).

But, that isn’t the majority of a site’s players. Most players are recreational in nature. Your average poker site has 80% – 90% of their player base in this category. However, it’s the other 10% – 20% who rake the most who tend to dominate the mindsets of online poker software developers. It doesn’t help that that forums like Two Plus Two amplify the voices of this 10% – 20% and make their needs sound more important than the needs of the rest of the players.

That is possibly one of the most difficult aspects of managing poker software design. Trying to balance the needs of both groups when one group has a very powerful megaphone and the other group simply disappears and never comes back to your site.

So, I wanted to revisit the topic of what online poker sites could be doing but with the knowledge I’ve gained since I originally wrote those two posts.

Player Segmentation

I brought this up back in 2005 and, sadly, nothing much seems to have changed since then. The part that frustrates me so much about this issue is that ultimately the poker rooms would be making a lot more money if they actually understood their customer base.

If I’m a limit poker player, it seems crazy that I would get a constant stream of promotional information about no-limit games or tournaments. Or, if someone has never held a balance in their account over $100, what purpose would it serve to continuously promote tournaments with $200, $300, or $500 buy-ins?

I remember a player contacting me once and saying, “I don’t understand why you guys keep doing reload bonuses. I’m a winning player so I have no need to deposit. All that ends up happening is that I withdraw enough money to max out the bonus and then redeposit it. You pay the processing fees both ways when you could tell me how much I have to play and just give me the bonus money.”

He was absolutely right. The reload bonus has a horrible ROI for players who don’t need to deposit. It costs the room money to ship the money back and forth and the player would have played the required number of hands with or without the bonus.

The problem is that reloads are great for players who make frequent deposits or players who need an incentive to make a deposit but horrible for another segment of your players who already have more than enough money on deposit. Likewise, many promotions that benefit your top grinders (i.e. rake races, leader boards, etc), offer almost no value to recreational players.

Player Motivation

Once you start to look at player segmentation, you must also look at the psychology of players in different segments. The guy who deposits $50 a month and plays a $10 tournament every Saturday night when his wife goes to hang with the gals has an entirely different motivation to play than some grinder trying to make his mortgage payment this month. One of them views playing poker as a job and the other just wants to have fun.

Not only do you need to market to these players different but you need to treat them differently as well.

For a grinder, things like rabbit hunting or social media feature integration is of little interest. Meanwhile, features like that may be a major decision factor for a recreational player.

But here’s the catch, the grinder is in your vocal 10% – 20% and recreational players are in the silent 80% – 90% so most poker sites give little, if any, thought to the kinds of features that recreational players might enjoy.

This is one of the major reasons why online poker sites have designed their software around the grinders and had to throw obscene amounts of money financing AFPs (advertiser funded programming, i.e. High Stakes Poker), print advertising, and hiring throngs of poker “celebrities” to get the attention of recreational players.

It wasn’t until Zynga came along and grew larger than even the largest real money poker sites before it dawned on the operators that the problem in attracting recreational players was deeply rooted in the fact that they weren’t listening to them.

To further illustrate how ingrained this thinking is in the industry, think about the millions of dollars that were spent on television advertising of .NET sites in the hope that the operator could eventually lure them over to real money. Online poker sites have databases with millions upon millions of players who never made the jump to real money and rather than look at that as an opportunity to monetize the players in some other way, they wrote them off as a cost of doing business.

So, in reality, any of the online poker operators could have squashed Zynga several years ago had they recognized the fact that players could be monetized without becoming real money players. Zynga understood the mindset of these play chip champions while most online poker sites cursed them as being an expense they had to incur to get to the real money players.

But it’s more than just real money vs. play money players. It’s the fact that Zynga was successful because they understood that these two types of players had different motivations for playing the game. Zynga simply figured out how to tap inside their heads, delivered an experience they found compelling, and found a way to generate revenue from them.

Loyalty

I always cringe whenever I hear the term “loyalty program” in reference to poker sites. There’s no such thing. Nobody rewards loyalty. They all reward activity that generates revenue. And since the loyalty programs are activity based, again, they favor the grinders at the expense of the recreational players who will likely never earn enough loyalty points to ever do anything with them.

We call it rakeback today but really it’s like your credit card cash rewards or cash back programs. The more you spend the more you get back.

Loyalty should not be based on how much revenue you generate. If poker rooms want to call it a loyalty program it should actually reward loyalty.

For instance, nearly every room tries to lure in grinders by making it easy for them to switch. I can become a Super Nova Elite Grand Poobah Master Wizard 14th Level at any point. Even if I started playing on the site last month, as long as I grind out enough hands, I can reach the highest “loyalty” reward level nearly any site has usually in under 12 months.

On the other hand, if I go on the same site and deposit $100 a month and play 4 or 5 sessions a month, I won’t make Super Nova Elite Grand Poobah Master Wizard 14th Level in ten lifetimes.

That’s not to say that grinders shouldn’t be rewarded for generating lots of rake for the poker operator. It would be stupid not to recognize the value they bring to the operator. However, if that is the only mechanism that the operator has to reward “loyalty” then many players will never realize any value regardless of how loyal they are.

A better system would be to have a cash back program for those who opt into it and a loyalty program that actually rewards loyalty for those who don’t.

Now, before we go too far on this topic, I want to clarify what I mean by loyalty. Loyalty can be measured in time but it can also be measured in a player’s willingness to do things that the poker operator deems helpful.

For instance, even a player who generates little revenue can be turned into a valuable asset to the operator. Someone who tweets to 2000 followers on Twitter has value. Someone who will purchase goods and services based on your recommendation has value.

So, let’s say that one aspect of determining loyalty depends on a player’s willingness to share their experiences using your software with their social media following. They’re displaying loyalty to your brand so why not reward them for it?

Or, let’s say that ABC Poker partners with Coca Cola and you can earn loyalty points by purchasing a can of soda.

These are rather simple examples but the idea is that once you quit discounting the value that low raking players can bring to your business, it opens up an entirely new universe of possibilities.

Gamification

Gamification is sort of a natural extension of all of the previous topics. Once you segment your player database and understand that different players have different wants and needs, and you realize that loyalty should be rewarded for things other than generating rake, you can really start to think about your online poker product as a real gaming platform.

One of the problems with the current loyalty model is that its designed to reward players generating lots of rake. Most recreational players never achieve enough points to ever do anything useful with them though. So, for them, the points are essentially worthless and for the poker operator they become a potential liability that has to be kept on the books until they can expire them.

But what if you made the cash back/rake back model opt-in for your grinders and provided alternative rewards to players that was more in tune with their motivations for playing?

For instance, a few years back someone showed me a site that was running a points buy-in tournament that had an all-in or fold structure. I think the site might have been Ladbrokes but I could be mistaken. I was blown away at how many players they had playing.

Basically, every hand you only had two pre-flop options, all-in or fold. And you could do endless rebuys in the first hour. I couldn’t even begin to calculate the number of loyalty points the operator was sucking out of the player balances.

But it illustrates the fact that because the chips were perceived as worthless they didn’t care about a crazy all-in format because for them they were just having fun gambling it up with a chance to win something for nothing (they perceive the points as having little or no value). And if they did well in the tournament they could actually win enough points to buy something more than a stress relief ball in the site’s points store.

Now, what if you extend that thought out a bit and eliminate the points altogether and simply devise a loyalty scheme that rewards achievements rather than generating rake?

One of the best examples I’ve seen of that is the Full Tilt Iron Man promotion. I’ve talked to so many players over the years who gush at winning Iron Man status for X months in a row. Very rarely do they even mention what that translated into in terms of dollars in (or out of) their pocket.

Imagine a poker site that had no loyalty program for recreational players but incentivized them in other ways. For instance, what if playing 100 hands a day for X days in a row got you a free roll entry into a tournament with a large prize pool?

How many extra hands would those players play in order to get a free roll entry? What if you gave them virtual tokens (medals) like Full Tilt did so they can show off their achievement?

Instead of issuing millions of dollars in points that muddy up your accounting as potential liabilities and eventually expire worthless at some point in the future, you pool that money and hand it out to a smaller group of players? Sort of the difference between giving 1000 people a $1 each or giving 1000 people a chance to win $1000.

This is more fitting to the recreational player mindset. While a grinder looks at ROI the recreational player is more likely to be influenced by the fact that he can win something for nothing (which is what he considers existing loyalty points to be worth).

And once you wrap your head around the fact that these players really are seeking a form of entertainment, a lot of possibilities begin to open up.

Value

Continuing on the previous thought that recreational players view poker as a form of entertainment, now we have to consider whether or not we’re offering recreational players sufficient value for their entertainment dollar.

You’re competing against film, television, video games, sports, books, hobbies, the rest of the internet, and anything else that people do to occupy their time. That’s why it’s important to realize that the gamification model in poker isn’t about getting people to play more poker (though you hope they do), rather it’s about keeping the player’s attention as compared to other forms of entertainment.

That doesn’t mean a race to the bottom in terms of price (i.e. rake) but whether you provide an experience that players feel is a good value for their money.

Vegas gets it. The Strip is a horrible value for the dollar but people flock from all over the world to get mediocre odds on the tables. Meanwhile, the locals usually gamble far off The Strip where the casinos offer the best odds.

Now, that may appear as if I’m arguing that poker rooms should aim to be like the off-strip casinos but that’s not the case. The locals who go to the off-strip casinos are like the grinders. They don’t care if they’re playing in a dingy, beaten down casino as long as the casino is offering the best odds.

While the recreational player is like the millions who invade the Las Vegas Strip every year. For them, gambling is about entertainment. They want to have a good time, gamble, party, eat great food, and be wowed at all of the sights and attractions. They take the mediocre odds because the difference in slot machine payouts or how many decks the casino keeps in the shoe is irrelevant to them.

Of course, they want to win. But for them it’s all a form of entertainment.

Depositing $100 and losing it in an hour isn’t very fun. There’s little entertainment value in that. That’s why such a massive percentage of online poker players only make one deposit, are active less than one month, and never play on the site again.

So I would argue that the problem here is that the poker site didn’t offer the player $100 worth of value. But if you start viewing your gaming platform as an entertainment platform and think about how you can offer an experience that is not strictly tied to playing poker, you can offer that player $100 worth of perceived value for his entertainment dollar.

Build Relationships

Over the last five or six years I’ve received exactly zero birthday emails from online poker sites. They have my birth date in their database but they haven’t even used that very basic data point about me to further their relationship with me.

Meanwhile, I spend a couple of weekends in Vegas and both my wife and I have received birthday greetings from M-Life (MGM’s loyalty program) and Total Rewards (Caesar’s loyalty program).

It becomes very evident how differently online and offline casinos make use of the information they collect about you. For instance, my wife, who likes to play the machines, receives twice as many invitations and comps as I do. Almost all of the offers I receive are for discounted room rates and discounts on meals or shows. My wife’s offers are for free rooms and free play on the slots.

It’s fairly obvious which companies understand us and which don’t. Even though I’ve played far, far more hours online than I’ve spent in Las Vegas poker rooms, the land-based casinos understand me and I feel a closer relationship with them than I do the online poker sites I’ve played.

Come to think about it, even though we both have player’s cards from Commerce, The Bike, and other LA poker rooms, I’ve never received anything from them either. Yet, I get a monthly newsletter in the mail from Pechanga with all of their poker tournaments for the coming month.

So it seems like it’s not just online vs. offline but poker dedicated poker rooms vs. land based casinos that cater to different types of players. Land based casinos that have a range of games seem to understand that relationship building is part of the equation while poker-only venues (online or offline) don’t understand the value of relationship building.

Balance

Notice that I have not said that one side is right or wrong in all of this. Grinders have valid wants and needs as do recreational players. No side is more important than the other. That’s why I’ve always referred to it as a “poker economy” or “poker room ecology.” All of the parts of the economy are important. If you focus too much on providing for one segment you harm the other segments.

It’s all about balance.

In the end, that’s what all of it comes down to. At the moment the pendulum is swung too far towards the grinders. Even though, as a business, it would be much cheaper for poker rooms to retain their low-raking players rather than go out and trying to find more. It’s in the poker room’s best interest to ease the pendulum back towards center.

Don't Go Yet!

The post Online Poker in 2013 appeared first on Bill's Poker Blog.

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Unless you’ve been living under a rock the last couple of days, you’ve probably heard that 2004 WSOP Main Event winner, and all around good-guy, Greg Raymer was busted in a prostitution sting. The reaction in the poker community has been, well, as expected. Some people have taken some humorous jabs, some have defended Raymer, and some have questioned why prostitution is illegal in the first place (usually as a backdoor method of defending Raymer).

First off, for the sake of full disclosure, I don’t know Raymer. I may have met him once or twice but can’t recall a particular time or place. I like what he’s done for poker and think that, in the past, he’s been a very positive influence in the poker community.

I also have mixed feelings about prostitution. I can see both sides of the argument. Prostitution can be degrading to women and can often lead to more horrific things like sex trafficking and slavery but I’ve also traveled to and lived in places where prostitution was openly practiced and within certain confines it seems to work well for all parties.

That said, I do take issue with those that feel we shouldn’t talk about what happened. Like Lee Jones from PokerStars who chose an odd way to voice his message.

Any of us that would be happy to have our private lives detailed in the news are welcome to comment about Greg Raymer. #FirstStone

— Lee Jones (@leehjones) March 15, 2013

First off, I’m not sure referencing the Bible (#FirstStone) to make a point about a guy who got busted for prostitution really gets the point across.

But more importantly (to me) is that there’s a huge difference between Joe Sixpack’s private life and Raymer’s private life. Joe Sixpack isn’t trading on his name and reputation. Raymer is. Raymer enjoys a very nice lifestyle and perks many normal folks don’t have afforded to them. He puts himself out there as a spokesman for online poker sites and poker tours. He lobbies members of Congress.

In other words, he chose to become a public figure. And even the law thinks that there’s a difference between a public figure’s private life and Joe Sixpack’s. The standard for a libel or slander lawsuit is much higher for private citizens than it is for public figures.

There’s also the fact that this is public information now. It’s appeared on TMZ, news reports, and in most poker media. It’s not his private life if it becomes public information via a police blotter.

Matt Kaufman, who I had the great pleasure of chatting with at the blogger tournament in December, had a different take though it was slightly similar to Lee Jones’ view.

The impact that this arrest will have on Raymer’s career is yet to be seen, but frankly it would be a shame if this leads to Raymer no longer acting as a public advocate for poker.

The poker community should be thankful to Raymer for all of the hard work he’s done for us over the years, and it is this author’s opinion that we should forget this incident ever even happened.

Where I think Matt goes astray on this is that he can’t separate Greg Raymer the poker advocate from Greg Raymer the (accused) solicitor of prostitutes.

I too think it would be a shame if Raymer were to no longer act as a public advocate for poker. I too am thankful for all that Raymer has done for the poker community.

But I don’t agree that we have to be willing to open up our private lives before we can comment on Raymer’s situation. I also don’t think we need to forget this incident ever happened.

Not because I think Raymer did anything bad. I don’t have any moral issues with his actions.

There’s a big difference between forgiving and forgetting. I forgive Raymer for what he did (not that he needs my forgiveness) because I don’t think it’s that big of a deal. But I’m not going to forget just because he’s a good guy.

If he did it, he did it. He should be man enough to deal with the jokes, comments, and opinions of others. That’s the risk he knew he was taking as soon as he responded to the ad.

Raymer is the one who gets to choose how this incident defines him. Personally, I don’t think it’s that damaging to him in the long run.

The funny part is that if Raymer comes out and tells people to stay out of his personal life or to forget about it because he’s been overall +EV for the poker community, he’s done. If he comes out and just deals with it bluntly, I think nobody even remembers it twelve months from now.

Don't Go Yet!

The post Greg Raymer’s Prostitution Arrest appeared first on Bill's Poker Blog.

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As I read the book I found myself trying to figure out if I liked it or not. As I turned each page I kept wanting to read about the much-hyped balla lifestyle. But it never quite got there.

While it’s a decent story of a bunch of kids who rode the internet poker roller coaster and mostly came out ahead of the game, if that’s what’s considered a balla lifestyle today, maybe I need to readjust my sense of what a balla is.

It’s funny because as I browsed other reviews on Amazon they focused on the huge amounts of money these guys made and how they partied like rock stars. So, I’m expecting some Motley Crue or Guns and Roses sort of stuff. But the book is filled with very un-balla moments like $300 a night hotel rooms in The Bahamas (relatively cheap for Paradise Island – that’s their base level room rate) and guys using their crazy cash to buy a Subaru. Subaru doesn’t even make a car worthy of being called balla transportation. The most expensive car they make lists at under $40K.

In fact, I think the book would have been a much better read had they not hyped the balla lifestyle as much as they did. There’s no payoff unless you’re impressed by throwing billiard balls through your own windows and pouring goldfish crackers in the hot tub.

The stuff that happens to them is interesting and would have made an excellent story on its own merit. However, the constant promise of these guys doing balla stuff just never delivers.

Most of these guys are just kids who have too much money. Or, to be more accurate, being so young they think they have too much money.

For instance, there’s a bit in there about Good2CU trying to impress the ladies in a bar in Barcelona by telling that he’s rich because he made $100K last year. While $100K a year isn’t anything to sneeze at, it’s hardly rich. Heck, the median household income in the city I live in is $98,000 a year. For as smart as some of these guys are, making $100K a year in a regular job wouldn’t have been too difficult.

I felt it would have been a much better book if they focused the entire story on how these guys changed and evolved as they were forced to deal with the psychological pressures the game and easy money placed on them. And when the book does stick to that storyline, it’s a pretty good read.

Of course, their success at the poker tables is impressive and some of them do end up playing the biggest stakes games around and doing quite well in them. But, the cover of the book promises a much juicier story.

I mean, just last month they had a story in WPT Magazine about Dexter Koh dropping nearly $200,000 at a nightclub after a big night at the tables. Compared to that it’s hard to consider the Holla Balla crew dropping $40K between probably a dozen guys at a strip club in Vegas very balla.

I think Jon Katkin summed it up best when I was telling him about my impressions of the book, “It sounds like it was written five years too late.”

I also got the sense that the story was pieced together pulling from conflicting sources. For instance, one minute you’re reading about Good2CU pulling down $70K a month and then a few pages later he’s in Barcelona claiming he made $100K last year.

PAGE 167 (July 2006)

The idea had come to Good2CU while riding shotgun in Raptor’s race-ready Subaru: it’s time for an automotive upgrade. Past time, really. He’s still driving a ten-year-old Saturn that looks like it couldn’t even make it to the junkyard. Meanwhile, he’s won more than $70,000 in the past month, and there’s no reason to think the roll he’s on is going to end anytime soon.

PAGE 192 (September 2006)

“I’m so rich! I made $100,000 last year! Check out my Rolex! I’m a Ship It Holla Balla!” Even by the (low) standards of this turista bar – a sponge for young backpackers thanks to its proximity to the youth hostel next door – Good2CU is off-the-charts drunk. His earsplitting declarations of greatness can be heard from one end of the crowded room to the other.

Likewise, the authors mention that in discussing Good2CU’s decision to leave college with his father that he showed him how he won $70K the month before. Then he goes off and parties in Europe for a bit and when he comes back he’s invited to come hang out down in Texas and he says that he’s a little tapped because he just spent $4K on his European adventure.

Four thousand taps a guy who’s making $70K a month? Wait, $4K for a trip to Europe? I’ve had week-long business trips that cost more than that.

PAGE 112 (April 2006)

“Let me show you something.” Good2CU opens a file on his computer – a detailed spreadsheet chronicling his daily poker results – and points to a number at the bottom of the screen.

“You’ve made $70,000?”

“Yeah, last month.”

His father looks over the spreadsheet. It shows profit, often four figures, nearly every single day.

PAGE 123 (April 2006)

He’s home in Michigan less than three days when he gets a phone call from Apathy. “Road trip.”

“Can’t do it,” Good2CU protests. “I spent like four grand in Italy.”

There are just way too many places in the book where you read something and you stop and say, “Wait, how can that be?” The missing pieces are never filled in.

Bottom Line?

Ship It Holla Ballas is a pretty decent book though it has some flaws. It tells the story of online poker from the very earliest beginnings up to almost present day. If you want to take a trip down memory lane and relive the origins of things like Two Plus Two, Brandi Hawbacker, and the rise of Party Poker, Poker Stars, and Full Tilt, then it’s a fun read and very entertaining.

If you’re looking for tales of sick degeneracy or the balla lifestyle, uhm, maybe you should pick up the Motley Crew biography instead.

Don't Go Yet!

The post Ship It Holla Ballas!: How a Bunch of 19-Year-Old College Dropouts Used the Internet to Become Poker’s Loudest, Craziest, and Richest Crew appeared first on Bill's Poker Blog.

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Sort of reminds me of the video of Howard Lederer talking business ethics. Both videos pretty much outline everything that both did wrong with Full Tilt Poker.

Don't Go Yet!

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Typical New Year fueled poker related goals are misguided and destined to fail. Today, I’m pleading with you to avoid the one that could cause the most harm to your poker progress and to your bankroll; I beg you, please ditch the HANDS PLAYED GOAL you set for 2013.

Overreaching hands played goals

Trying to reach a predetermined number of hands within a set time period can crush your progress.
Intermediate players set these goals too high and force themselves to play longer and more frequent
sessions than they are ready for. Yes, hands played goals can benefit the elite crowd, but only because
they are better equipped psychologically and strategically to play “marathon sessions”. They have an
edge because they play better under the tough conditions marathon sessions bring:

• They play better when tired
• They tilt less often
• Tilt affects their play less
• They handle swings better
• They are less results oriented

These attributes are a big part of what makes these players Elite. For everyone else, it’s more important
to fix your “C-game” before pushing the envelope with hands played goals. To be clear, I am not saying
that goals like “reaching supernova elite or “to play 3000 hands a week” are necessarily bad, but it
would be wise to evaluate your game and to see if you are ready to grind it out before committing
to such missions. Otherwise, they will do nothing but magnify your weaknesses and lead you to
disappointment.

What to do instead

Intermediate players need to improve their play. A better understanding of strategy and focus on fixing
leaks should be prioritized. Instead of focusing on maximizing volume of play, they need to set time
aside to work on their games. There is no value on reaching hands played plateaus before becoming a
winning player.

Suggested alternatives

It wouldn’t be very helpful to point out how bad hands played goals can be without offering some better
alternatives. Even though I feel that New Year’s resolutions are pointless, goal setting is important for
improving your game and the vast majority of people figure that January 1 st is the perfect time to set
these goals.

Goal setting tips:

Commit to studying the game: Set a goal of committing to a specific number of hours per week to
reading up on poker strategy, or watching poker training videos

Engage in hand discussions: Set a goal of posting a specific number of key hands you played or
witnessed per week in your favorite poker strategy site’s forums

Journaling: Start a poker journal to log your thoughts, key hands played and notes on opponents you
play regularly. Update your journal daily.

Your turn

Do you agree that “hands played” goals can have negative effects on your game? Did you set any new
poker goals for 2013? Please post your thoughts in the comments.

———–

Jeff has been playing poker seriously for over 8 years.  Growing up playing sports and other games of skill he always obsessed about the intricate details that determined the winner of any given competition.  To read more about Jeff’s thoughts on poker strategey, visit his blog at www.pokerforvalue.com or his personal blog at www.sjmcintyre.com

Don't Go Yet!

The post The first 2013 New Year’s Resolution you must break: Guest Post by Jeff appeared first on Bill's Poker Blog.

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