I'm gonna try to stick to some basic goals this month. They are not all poker related so that should help!

40k hands 6-max
20k hands HU
10k hands PLO (I've never played before!)
Figure out how to use Holdem Manager
Read Game Theory section of Mathematics of Poker (at least skim)
Read Elements of Poker
Watch minimum 1 video per day
Review days daily (or at least every 5k hands!)
Read 4 finance books
Get back to daily reading routine (finance news mostly)
Train for basketball

Meh, I'm being way too ambitious this month for no particular reason.

April has been a pretty good month poker wise (got in 22k hands yay!). I've been working more on my HU game and I think I will crush the HU games next month. I also made a 2-tabling .5/1 HU video which should be released next week or so. I did the pause and record format, and it turned out being 1.5 hours long. I think I will make a 1/2 or 2/4 6-max video next time. Also, some have requested I play on a Euro site next time. I only have an account on Party, but perhaps I can set up a OnGame account or something.

Since I suck so much at getting in hands, I decided to upgrade my office setup. I ordered the Freedom Chair ($1050) and a keyboard system ($300). I've been using a crappy Staples chair which can't be too good for my posture. I also have carpel tunnel problems in the wrist and elbow, so the keyboard system should help with that.




I'm going to really grind for the next 6 weeks. I want to play at least 50k hands before I go to Vegas in middle of June. I also gotta get in basketball shape before Vegas. Bobbo is going to enter our house into some kind of rec league, and we will probably play a lot pickup as well. There was a prop bet in HSNL about Krantz dunking a basketball (which is pretty funny if you've seen Jay in real life). But apparently he has some hops, and can actually grab the rim. He could probalby win the bet with some plyometric training.

So I finished watching the Krantz DVD today. Overall I was impressed by it. Jay was my first coach, and obviously he is a terrific player. Overall the video was very well made, and was better than I expected. On the other hand, the video isn't going to help a winning 5/10+ player that much. The target audience is small to mid stakes players, or live/full ring players looking to make the transition to aggro short handed games.

The first half of disc 1 is an overview of Jay's approach to short handed NLHE. He talks about aggression, position, implied odds (or lack of it), a bit about preflop selection. I didn't learn much from this section. But I imagine new players will up some new philosophies about short handed poker. The second half of disc 1 and all of disc 2 is about hand reading. This is the meat of the video, and is very well done. Jay uses real hands that he has played for all the examples. The examples are mostly 10/20 and 25/50, both 6-max and and heads up. The hand analysis is pretty thorough, and mostly correct.

There are some spots where I think his hand ranges are a bit incomplete. He makes some assumptions about ranges (like player won't c/r for value with a certain type of hand), which is fine but I would have liked to hear more discussion about alternate lines players can take, and how to adjust to it. Although the hands are mostly pretty interesting (there are 2 HU hands vs durrr!), it definitely feels like he was leaving some high level stuff out. That is understandable since the target audience isn't the winning 10/20 player, but this is also a bit disappointing. Also, some hands seem like brags more than anything else. Overall the selection of hands is ok, but could have been more well thought out.

Is the video worth it? Most players would benefit from it. And for $50, I'm pretty sure it will be a good investment for almost anybody. I'd imagine it is still a lot better than most of the garbage material released (Phil Gordan/Hellmuth DVD's etc). Furthermore, how can you resist those shades?

General update today. I've been pretty busy with grinding (my version hehe) this month, and also thinking a lot about poker strategy. Sometimes I get in that mode where I think I already know the great secrets of the game. But it's always good to step back and try to improve your game. I've been sweating a few friends lately, and this has opened up my eyes in some subtle areas.

I ordered the Tommy Angelo book (Elements of Poker) this week. I've heard good things about the book. Apparently it is an awesomely written book on poker psychology. I ordered it from the site professional poker.com. I also ordered the Krantz DVD while I was at it! I don't think I'll get much out of it.. but I'll post a review sometime.

Man I am excited about Vegas. I'll be staying for a month June to July 15th, with bobbo and some other 2p2ers. Our house is pretty sick. More importantly I think it will be a great chance to talk and learn from other poker players. I stayed about a week last year, and it was great fun. I may also do some live (ie in person) coaching, so message me if you'll be down at that time and want to do some sessions.

Last week was my birthday. Day was pretty standard. Went out for Japanese and then watched the movie 21. 21 is a movie about the MIT blackjack team that won millions in Vegas by counting cards. Watching the movie was kind of eerie for me. Before poker I studied blackjack. I learned to count cards and made some money in Vegas one summer (like 5k which felt huge back then!). That summer I discovered poker, and haven't played more than a few hours of blackjack since. The movie was entertaining, although not too realistic IMO.

I'll be making a few extra videos this month. So leave a comment if you have a recommendation on stakes and format. My last one was full ring. Even 6-max players may find it useful. Especially since live poker is full ring. That's all for now. Good luck at the tables.

I recently began keeping a poker journal. A journal is an effective tool for knowledge based work. Writers, scientists, and stock traders are among the people that keep a journal of their work. I recently read about the importance of keeping a journal for traders. Many successful traders are known for keeping a careful record of every trade they have made. Trading and poker have a lot in common (perhaps I will write more about this sometime), thus I thought that a poker journal would be a cool thing to try.

An $8 hard cover ruled notebook from Staples is all you need to get started. I use the journal to record any ideas, questions, hand analysis, and calculations. I also use it to track brainstorming and rough thinking (you'll find many mind maps in my journal). Many times I've read threads where a good question is posed. Now I write these questions down so I don't forget to think about them at a later time. A journal is a very personal thing, but I recommend you to try it out and see what works for you.

Recently I have been spending a lot of time developing my reading skills. For most of my life I have avoided "unnecessary" reading such as fiction. About a month ago, my reading speed was roughly 350 words per minute (the average reader reads at 200 WPM). Although above average, 350 WPM is no longer acceptable to me.

These days I read a lot about business and the financial markets. It takes me a few hours to get through my daily routine of The Economist, The Financial Times, Businessweek, and a host of blogs. However, my main motivation for improving reading speed is to cover more material, not shorten my reading time.

About a month ago I ordered the books "Triple Your Reading Speed" by Cutler and "Breakthrough Rapid Reading" by Kump. Kump is more helpful since he has a set of drills for each chapter. There are a lot of books and programs out there that promise outrageous results, however Kump really emphasizes the amount of practice that is necessary to obtain significant improvements in speed and comprehension. The free book at http://www.semanticrestructuring.com/lookma/ is also pretty useful.

I am now up to about 500 WPM. I estimate that two more months of solid practice will help me reach the 1000 WPM barrier. Beyond that, I suspect the law of diminishing returns will set in. In any case, doubling reading volume or halving reading time is definitely +EV for the long term.

Hey guys. Its been ages since I posted. I got back from my 1 month trip (honeymoon plus wedding in India) about a week ago. I'm going to post a good trip report in about a week when I get all the pictures together. It was a nice vacation, but I'm glad to be back into the grind of things.

Poker has been going well since returning. I had a bad 1st session of the new year 4-tabling, and since then I'm just been 2-tabling and crushing. My next video will be released I think soon, it will be 2-tabling at nl$100. I've gained inspiration from aejones and plan to post more often this year.

I'm still taking a few more students this month for my coaching program. I think its an excellent program for the small stakes player who wants to solidify his game. I feel it gives a good balance of theory, examples, and evaluation (3 tests). Here is the outline of the program if you are interested:

1) developing a winning strategy, playing styles and paradigms, where profits come from
2) understanding preflop poker in NL, opening/calling/3-bet ranges by positions, when and how to vary your play
3) reasons for betting the flop with examples, board texture analysis with examples, bet sizing
4) situations for checking, examples of each situation, playing out of position as the preflop non-aggressor, thoughts on varying flop play
Test 1
5) the framework of equity, examples about 2nd barreling, when getting check/raised, raising the flop
6) the power of draws, fold equity, EV calculations
7) 'power poker' in 3-bet pots with more focus on equity and preflop play.
Test 2
8) hand reading: assigning hand ranges using PT stats and combinatorics, weighing hand ranges, modifying hand ranges based on betting patterns.
Final exam!, covers the whole course

So I've been thinking about flop textures lately. I wrote a small program that generates random flop textures. Right now I'm going through the output and trying to categorize different flop types using various metrics. I'll make a post about my finding when I get somewhere. Kinda funny I used QBasic to write it, but it took all of 10 minutes and it does the job!

Instructions:
- Download flops.zip and unzip the files into some directory
- run qbasic.exe
- open file flops.bas
- press F5 to run the program
- enter the number of flops you want to generate. I suggest 100-1000 since I think something is wrong with random number generater (its a pseduo-random generator, but I haven't figured out how to reset the initial seed yet)
- the results will be saved to the file flops.txt in the same directory.

The leggopoker launch was pretty huge, BUT I'm actually referring to something even bigger in my life. I'm getting married next Sunday, and this next week is going to be crazy. I still have to write the groom's speech, help my fiancee move her stuff, and make my apartment inhabitable for a women. We are going to Vegas for a few days after the ceramoney. Then in December we're going to Thailand, Sri Lanka, India, and Dubai. The trip will take about 1 month and I'm really excited, especially since I've never been to Dubai or Thailand. So yeah, this is the last week for me as a free man and damnit I'm going to enjoy it -).

Hi guys. I'm Isura, and I'm an instructor for leggopoker. You may already be familiar with my old blog, and can read more about me at http://www.isurapoker.com/about/. Well, I don't have much else to say for now. Soon I'll start posting some cool hands and more info about my coaching program among other things.