Entro789

Lets gooo! Pumped for this!

1) On that techne matter, what is your studying schedule looking like on a weekly basis? How many hours have you been studying and how have you been studying recently?

2) With all those great results on multiple sites, have you been able to play well across multiple of them at the same time? I tried playing on Ignition and ACR at the same time but failed miserably due to the differences in software and timebank etc. And on clubWPTGold it seems even harder to do so given their software so far.

Keep up with the posting man. Truly inspiring and GL. I have a 3 week old newborn baby at home and I've been relating so much to your posts!

Hey Luke, your logic seems a bit inconsistent on 21:52 when you call that rec too light.

5 seconds after that (21.57) you make that call, you say that this recreational is "a big station". If that's the case, then why would you float the flop with such a wide range? Surely the EV of floating this would mainly come from bluffing on rivers since you have very limited improvability. But if he's indeed a "big station" like you mentioned 2x, these rivers bluffs won't get through as often as you'd need. So I'm just a bit confused on how you are generating your EV in this case. Being "proactive" for the sake of being proactive is not enough.

Kevin Rabichow Yeah, sometimes it is really hard to come to a solid conclusion. If you don't have a clea answer, do you fall back on theory or do you go with your best explo guess?

Kevin Rabichow Great Video!

At 2.39 you are discussing the River Bluffing Process. Step 3 is to "identify if this node is under or overbluffed". How do you come to this conclusion? Is it by using your knowledge of theory in order to estimate how villain is deviating or is it by using MDA hacks?

Patrick Sekinger You said you use MDA "to form your own gameplan". Sounds like it would be a fundamental part of your strategy. So how come in your videos you roll an RNG in every single spot and try to copy Pio?

Seems good. What exactly do you mean by "using mda to form your own gameplan"? Sorry for the multiple questions, but I am just trying to learn :)

At 24:00, you start talking about the differences in some pools regarding overbluffing. Since you run a successful stable, I would like to know your overall view regarding the Ignition NL500 and NL1k pools. Do they bluff too much? Call too much? Any particular spots you suggest your students to exploit on that pool?

Nice video! At 18:00 you decide to bluff A6s for a 3/4 sizing. And right after, at 19:20, you decided to bluff 2x pot with 98o.
1) Why did you pick these sizings?
2) In general, how do you pick your bluff sizings? Is it more based on MDA data or more based on theory?

Patrick Sekinger And do you think your approach is better than theirs? Why?

Patrick Sekinger Thanks for the answer! So you don't use any MDA stuff when playing NL1K/2K?

Hey! I was watching one of your previous videos and you said you could import Ignition's clairvoyant hands into H2N. How did you do that, since Ignition's hand histories are not compatible with H2N? I guess you used a hand converter? Is that hand converter able to import the exposed (clairvoyant) hole cards?

Hi Patrick Sekinger, I would like to ask you a question:

I really like your content and your theoretical knowledge about poker. However, almost never in your videos you mention exploitative strategies. Based on your great results and on the games you play, I find it highly unlikely that you do not deploy more exploitative strategies in your game. Are you hiding information due to being scared that other regulars will watch your video and counter explo you? Even if you are, I would like you to admit it and be totally honest here because it would be quite misleading if you were showing your results and uploading training videos for a reputable site like RIO whilst leading us to believe that you achieved all your poker success "simply" by trying to copy pio/play a theoretically sound game.

I would really appreaciate a clarificaton here because ATM I am a bit lost in my poker journey :)

Thanks Saulo. Yea, I definitely feel like I am too atached to short-term results. I will work on changing that. However, I must say that the situation only affected my confidence because that was all the sampel I had. It was not a case of sampling bias.

But I really appreciate the tips. Also really enjoyng the blog. GL for you in 2023

I have learned that I was not as good at poker as I thought I was, and there was some wishful thinking going on. When I came to that realization, I was already a professional player for a year, and was playing NL1K after quickly climbing up the stakes from NL5. I was aware of the Dunning-Kruger effect, and I also knew that most people think they are better at poker than they actually are. And yet, my monkey brain convinced me that I was "different than them" somehow.

But then, at some point my confidence took a hit. I used to play 4 tables at one poker site and 1-2 tables of ACR. Mostly at NL1k. I was still making decent money and life was good, but when I decided to dissect my results a bit further, I realized that it was statistically highly likely that I was either breaking even or losing at the tougher ACR field. I had a -6.12bb/100 win rate over 46k hands at NL1k at that site. Those were absolutely terrible results. According to primedope, even if I was truly a break even player, there would be a 90% chance that my results would have been better than the ones I was getting. It was time to be humble, keep working on my game, and stop playing on this site for the time being. Notice that I said stop playing on this site, instead of moving down stakes. Because I was till making decent money with a nice win rate at the other site I was playing (and wisely putting most of my volume at). Sure, I was probably experiencing negative variance/card distribution on ACR, and a positive one on that other site. But the whole situation was an eye-opener to me.

In face of that scenario, I came to the realization illustrated on the first paragraph. Even though I was probably a good poker player, I was not as good as I thought. Dealing with that was tough at first, but after a couple days of ruminating over the punch I received, I was able to absorb it. I still was (and still am) on the very early stages of my career, and I know damn well that mastery takes time + deliberate practice + consistency. I was able to recognize and be proud of the progress I had made so far, while still knowing that it is just the beginning and that the journey towards mastery continues.

sauloCosta10 Thank you for the answer. For context, I am young (24), I've been married for a year, and no kids yet. My goal is to put in 45hrs per week exclusively dedicated to studying and playing poker. No other major obligations yet. I achieve my goal around 75% of the time. I reach at least 40hrs 90% of the time. Sometimes I wish I put in even more hours given my ambitious goals, but I still need (and enjoy) to spend time with the wife, friends and do some other leisure activities. We are planning to have kids in 3 years maybe, and I am actually really scared of the impact that this will have on my career.

You mentioned 9hrs of poker per day for 6 days a week. I think it could be doable, but probably not sustainable. Let's say we are awake for 16hrs in a day, we spend 9hrs dedicated to poker, 1hr doing exercise, 2hr eating, 1:30hr figuring out normal life stuff, and 1:30 relaxing. Seems brutal but I would be willing to give it a shot.

Interesting, we probably just don't share the same goals/priorities then. Your priorities are related to being a better family member, whereas mine are to reach my full potential as a poker player.

sauloCosta10 From your experience and also from your most successful players' experience: How do you balance (or try to balance) the necessity of having to spend 40 hrs per week dedicated to poker and other aspects of life like family and friends? How do you manage to raise children and remain fully committed to putting in the hours required to obtain success in poker and business?

Very interesting take, I agree with this. I even think it is unethical for coaches to accept producing content to a training site like RIO or GTOwiz, but hold back crucial information without disclosing it to whoever hired them on the training site. They are paying to have you as a coach, but you don't disclose the truly relevant info. Pretty shady imo.

My favorite coach. Shoutout from Brazil. Looking forward to the next posts :)

Luke Johnson Thanks for the answer. Your answer just tells me that the boards that hit 54s (A32 and A54) are better than a random A high board like A72 or A94, but it still fails to show how your heuristic of "The boards that hit 54s are better for the BB than other wheel boards" is any good.

Hey Luke, I have a question about your heuristics at 11:38 on the A43 board (top left).

You said that the boards that we dont like the boards that hit 54s, but my logic tells me it should be the opposite. We actually open 54s at a very high frequency from the BTN, and BB 3bets 54s at a very high frequency for us. Because of that, boards that hit 54s shouldn't be too bad for us. On the other hand, I would think that boards that hit 43s, for example, would be worse for us since we never open 43s from BTN and BB always defends it.

I was thinking that in-game and with timebank etc you confused your heuristics with SB vs BTN. What you said makes more sense to me if it was let's say SB 3b vs BTN. Then BTN would have 54s quite often and we would never or almost never depending on ranges

Really like your videos! I know you used to play a decent amount of 2k+. Do you still play those stakes regularly or are you mainly playing 1k lately?

Very nice video. You seem really good, why dont you play higher stakes?

Great format. Training >>>

I doubt the J9cc fold at 13:45 is actually bad. He is OOP against 2 players and most of their
range will dominate J9s for sure. Depending on rake structure, Will is getting 28%-33% pot odds to call and he has 31% equity in a scenario that, miraculously, none of the other 2 players dominate him. On top of that, OOP against 2 players he will not even realize his whole 31%. Easy fold for J9s. Surprised you said it was bad.

This format is the best. I didn't like too much the format of your latest video (which basically focuses ONLY on cbetting EP vs BB). On the latest one we spent too much time going over a flop cbet, which won't add much at all to your bottom line. It is still good to play close to perfectly on flop, but I prefer this video a lot more since we get to play out the hand and talk about turn and river spots as well

Great video. In order to see the whole range frequency instead of hand freq, go to the info tab on top right. It shows range frequencies there.

Great video! I learned more from this than from some random mid-high stakes play and explain video in which the coach is making TONS of mistakes and neither him nor the viewer learn anything because they don't get feedback on their actions.

Hey, Luke. Enjoyed the video.

@39:46 You realized that the JJ hands was a mistake, and then proceed to explain the reasons why our hand wants to jam. However, you didn't talk much about the block sizing that actually gets used a fair amount of the time too. Are you having that on your strategy or are you just jamming or checking?