I don't really set New Year's Resolutions, but I do have goals. In 2010, poker and myself will tangle like never before.

I've spent the last couple of days thinking about what I want to do in the next year poker-wise. In certain ways I've lost the fire for 6m NLHE, and I've grinding through the awaiting process at HU tables for more than my fair share as well. Ironically, as stated in a couple of my 'boxes' posts, this has made my holdem game stronger. When it came time to draw up a poker plan for 2010, I made a list of all the ways that I could make money playing poker:

NLHE 6m
NLHE HU
MTTs
SNGs HU/6m/Full
PLO 6m
PLO HU
Mixed Games

Most of these categories split further into live and online. In 2010, I want to become a complete poker player. I want to be able to sit down in almost any game imaginable (in other words, go fuck yourself full ring limit holdem, etc.) and be confident in my ability to perform at the highest level. This task will require a ton of work away from the table, but, as I have found, that's where most of the work gets done (as a bigger bonus, most of the game types on the upcoming list are solvable/nearly solvable/easier because they betting structure is limited). Without further ado, here are the games I will be playing in 2010:

NLHE HU and 6m online: As of now I would categorize these games by low to moderate volume. Most of the work I do is away from the tables and the beneficiaries are you guys/students.

PLO 6m and HU online: I will probably be devoting around 2-4 months on omaha in the next six months. My game does not even resemble what it did two months ago. I can now draw the line between what hands are acceptable and too weak to play in various situations preflop, which is something I think everyone who switches to omaha hopes to do. I feel comfortable in most of the games that run at 5/10 and 10/20, HU and 6m.

Mixed Games: I want to be comfortable playing in all 100/200 8 games by the summer. That effectively means learning bottom to top 5 games, but these won't be too difficult between receiving coaching and dissecting the games mathematically. Additionally, something like stud hi ten years ago is almost identical to what it is today, and cannot be compared to NLHE 2 years ago vs. today. I want to be able to potentially play the 50k 8 Game at WSOP.

MTTs: I want a 20k+ score online in a 'normal' buy-in tournament (i.e. not a WCOOP 5200 main event). Live I want a 50k+ score. I'm going to hope to play 5-8 big buyin tournaments not including WSOP. For the WSOP, I plan on being prepared to play over half of the events. I have no idea how often I will have 'tournament' day online, but I feel very comfortable when I play them now. I really want everything to come together during the WSOP, so I'll be working extra hard to come into it as prepared as possible. From my experience, most "good" cash game players are slightly better than breakeven at tournaments, and I've worked hard enough to overcome that statistic. The next step is parlaying my cumulative skills into a big payday.

SNGs: There is some small merit to being capable at SNGs. The 6m/9m ones mirror the endgame of MTTs, and sometimes randomly playing HU SNGs is fun. From my experience, I have an edge on almost all the regs at the ~500 HU NLHE limit (they tend to get surprised when I don't shit the bed with <35 bb ). Of course, I will be rarely playing any sit and gos, but I included it because I will still play some.

Yes, that means there is no chance I play limit holdem ring games*

I wanted to put a dollar goal, but it was tough to quantify what everything here would amount to. After some consideration, I'll go with $750k-$1MM.

Here's to 2010. I'll see you at the finish line!



*I actually did play limit holdem recently, but that was to knock out supernova. I closed it out with some HU SNGs, obviously.

Happy Holidays to everyone out there (and Merry Christmas to those celebrating today). We will pick back up with our strategy series in the next few days. Shame on you all; almost no one listed things that temporarily or permanently expand or shrink your poker box.


I personally am in Florida with my mother's family. Interestingly, the title of professional poker player seems to have a ton of credibility with the current generation of grandparents. Apparently, soldiers from WWII were allotted a few months of unemployment after the war (regardless of if they had money/a job), so many chose to gamble with it. My grandfather's family owned a pool hall that had a poker room in the back. I learned that my grandfather used to hustle pool to pay the bills in high school and shrotly after. Just the way I would never play SNGs professionally, my grandpa explained that pool made him money, so he had no reason to go into the poker games.

Accordingly, we played a friendly game of poker last night. The five contestants (my dad, grandfather, myself and my two younger brothers) each started with 100 chips at 1/2 NL. It was a typical loose/passive game, but, as with all poker games, eventually shit goes down.

The first knockout occurred when I raised preflop with about 45 chips to 16 at 2/4 (we moved the blinds up out of boredom). My dad called and I shoved for eff a 3/4 PSB on a T84fd. I was dissapointed when my dad called all in (I covered), but somehow was flipping against 35hh. I faded and we had our first victim.

My youngest brother went out shortly after on fairly epic fashion. 3 handed to the flop of AKJdd. My grandpa donks, and I raise. My youngest brother cold calls with about a 1/4 PSB left for the turn. My grandpa calls and the Kh turn hits. My grandpa bets out again, I fold, David goes all in. He get called and announced flush, flipping Q5hh. To his dismay, a flush is actually five cards of the same suit, not of the same color, so he is drawing to a T river. A 9h harmlessly falls and he loses to K6o.

It was getting fairly late and my luckbox grandfather was getting tired. 3 handed, fairly deep, with all around the same stack sizes, I get KK in the SB. My grandpa calls OTB, and I raise big in the SB. My brother in the BB announces all in. A little humorous history about him. He is a D1 athlete in baseball who is projected round 1 or 2 in the MLB draft this year. He is obviously a very aggressive ballplayer and person in general, but it's funny when he plays poker because he plays incredibly weak/tight. For example, I would snap fold JJ in this spot, because he would call with all his non-amazing hands (amazing defined as either QQ+ or KK+ and AK), even if it meant putting in 60% of his stack preflop. My grandpa overcalls all in.

I flip kings, my brother has aces and is very excited to be in great position to win the tournament and go tell all his friends how he played well and won the family tournament. My grandpa flips T4cc. As you can imagine, the board ran out JT464. This "ridiculous play" left my brother confused and frustrated for the rest of the night. In fact, the first thing he said today was that he can't believe our grandpa "stayed in with such a bad hand what was he thinking!" My grandpa confidently replied, "Seeing seven cards gives you a lot of chances to win."

Hell, it seemed to work for him.

Happy Holidays,
Greg

When I made my last post, there was a bit of a discrepancy over what exactly your poker box is. The reality of the situation is that it doesn't matter what specifically we define the box as, but rather that we understand it's purpose.

In fairness, my own personal view of the poker box was in line with Reid's. The box is this big mansion with lots of secret doors. Various experiences give you the keys to new doors, or provide you with the knowledge that they exist. Everyone's box/mansion is the same size, but some people realize that there house contains more than others'.

The other view might be that our box can expand, but we still cannot think outside the box because once we do that, our box has just expanded . It's fairly abstract but I think the general point was appreciated, which is what I wanted obviously.

I considered listing all the ways in which I thought our poker box might expand or shrink, but, since many of those are intuitive, I'll touch on a couple points that may be useful:

-Our poker box temporarily GROWS (technically returns to full capacity) when we take a short period of time off. This is the case because playing temporarily taxes our minds, which SHRINKS our poker box (1).
-After a certain period of time off from poker, our box temporarily SHRINKS (we become 'rusty') (2).
-Overplaying does not allow our box to fully recover from the last session, which makes it temporarily SHRINK. If you are in a perpetual state of overplaying, consider the effects on your poker box.

(1) Playing actually allows us to experience situations that have the ability to expand our poker box permanently, but most of the time we do not take advantage of it. Whenever we encounter an interesting spot, it usually receives a "hmm, interesting" acknowledgement, and, if it is particularly interesting, gets brought up to friends or posted in a forum. However, we almost never actually conquer the spot; we do not take enough time, playing with ranges, opponent types, various streets before/after, to be fully confident the next time we enter a similar situation. This uncertainty prevents progression, and causes us to become results-oriented. We learn to simply change what we will do next time based on what happened the last couple of times.

(2) Going from personal experience, people usually underestimate the amount of time in which it takes us to shed the rust. When taking a significant time off playing or focusing astutely on a game (NLHE, PLO, whatever), I would attest that it takes 3-5 full days to return to normal. This includes playing with moderate-heavy volume, and reviewing/re-familiarizing yourself with the situations of the game.

One of my central themes seems to be: Play less, review more. In the future, I'll go over what that means -- for now, consider the following:

How many really good HS grinders that you know force themselves to play? The answer is very close to zero; almost every one plays when they want to because they want to. It allows them to both mentally recover from a previous session, and to continue playing their A game. A very high volume 2/4 NLHE grinder recently figured that playing too many hours cost him about $150,000 over his career. He made about $100,000 from rakeback, and lost about $250,000 from being in games when he should not have been playing.



I have a lot of things that jump through my mind that I can talk about, but I want this whole experience to be more feedback oriented. Ramblings tend to be all over the place, so don't be afraid to ask for clarification if needed. Also, I would appreciate if you told me what you thought of this post, and what direction you want this series to go in. As an exercise, post a couple ways that your poker box can shrink or grow that haven't been mentioned yet (by me or my user comments before your's)

Greg

PS. I am going to be creating another monumental 6m 5/10 NLHE multipart sereis soon. PokerStars or Full Tilt?

My inspiration for making this series was based off my own experience. I went off learning PLO, dabbling in 7/8-game, and playing NLHE tournaments, both live and online. When I went back to HU NLHE, or 6m NLHE online, I destroyed everything in sight. I was making all these sick plays, and just embarrassing regulars at 5/10 and 10/20. I realized that the reasons I was able to do this were:

1) My mind had been expanded from playing other games. When you learn a new game, you aren't restricted to 'rules' the way that you are after playing a game for hours and hours every day. You just do what feels right (twss). Interestingly enough, you emulate your mindset after a great session in your staple game. "Wow, I played really well. I was going with all my reads and just owning people!" Sound familiar? Well, when you play different, less familiar games, you're not necessarily owning everyone, but you're still going with all your reads, and never playing on autopilot (your lack of knowledge forces you to sit there and try to absorb every piece of information you can).

2) I was playing less. I was fresher when I played, I was more enthusiastic, and I cared more. I then realized that I could actually change that theory to: I was playing less HU and 6m NLHE online. I was still playing a decent amount of poker, but I was dabbling in different games and arenas. Playing too much breeds an autopilot style of play, so playing too little is always better than playing too much.

These two factors allowed me to both play at capacity, and expand my thought process. We'll discuss why and how later, but at least some reasons should be intuitive.

Getting back to concept of the 'box', and thinking 'outside' of it, we can't. Our poker box is our cumulative ability to think about situations and theory. It's everything that we know that we can apply to a street, a line, a hand, a player, a session, metagame, etc..

I am going to make the argument to you that the poker box is the most important aspect of our game. Therefore, managing our poker box should be one of, if not the, highest priorities for a poker player. The good news is, we can expand our poker box, both temporarily and permanently. The stereotypical bad news is the opposite: our poker box can shrink, both temporarily and permanently.

Use this post as an introduction to this concept and think about the importance of both expanding your box, and keeping it at its current maximum capacity. Brainstorm how you would be able to grow your knowledge base (ie your Poker IQ), and think about what detrimental things may cause your box to grow in the wrong direction. I'll be back with some lists tomorrow/the next day, but I want participation and feedback when I post them. The more effort you put in, the greater the results will be.

Greg

I'm going to make you an offer you can't refuse


I'm going to make you a better poker player -- For Free! (you can say that in the unforgiveable voice if you want)

This is a series of sorts that will appear exclusively on my blog. I will be making whoever passively involves themselves in this journey a better poker player. If you play NLHE, it will make you better at NLHE. If you play other games, it will make you better at other games. Essentially, I want to raise your poker IQ. The posts will be frequent and all over the place, so make sure you are checking back daily in order to not miss any material.

A cliche topic of improving your poker game has become 'thinking outside the box'. You'll hear this terminology thrown around in lots of videos, where the instructor suggests thinking outside the box in order to get 'creative' with your 'lines' and avoid 'playing on autopilot'. I've watched a lot of videos, and I can testify that instructors on Leggo say this almost never compared to instructors on other sites. Of course, giving this advice is the same as saying: Just win at poker you fucking idiot! Tomorrow, we will begin our series by discussing what any of that means, and how to actually think outside the box. SPOILERS!!!!!!!! (highlight the text): It's not by thinking outside the box because you can't actually think outside the box!

Stay Tuned!
Greg

So, last Sunday was an especially good Sunday to play tournaments. There was the Sunday Warmup, FTOPS Knockout, Sunday 2.5Mil on Stars, and FTOPS 2.5M ME onF TP.

I got furthest in the warmup, busting around 300 when 99 < 66 for a 3x avg stack.

However, my sickest run from the recent FTOPS (I played 4 events) was the 1k 6m. We battled through a field of 1300 people, and with around 100 people left I was 5th or so in chips. I get moved to a new table, and the one fucking guy in the entire tournament who is left and I care about, mastr, is sitting to my direct left. So, I weave back and forth between raising/3betting a good amount, and having mastr 3b/flat me. I felt my reads were pretty on against him, and I still applied pressure when I needed to, while still passing on a variety of spots vs. him because my expectation was so much higher elsewhere.

Apparently, Shannon Shorr (the heralded BLUFFforrent on FTP) gets moved to my table. I 3bet him a couple times, donk a few times after calling pre, and have fairly good control over him and the table in general. We are down to 20 people left, $300k to the winner I believe, when the following hand comes up:

I am 5th in chips with around 500k. Mastr is 3rd with 600ish, and Shannon Shorr is 4th, covering my by about 20k. I know what Seth Rogan thinks of me, and I assume that Shannon has people on AIM or something telling him that lolmonies is a cash game donk (they obviously love to bluff preflop!) 1st in chips is 650k, blinds are 3000/6000 with some ante:

Full Tilt Poker FTOPS Event #12 No Limit Hold'em Tournament - t3000/t6000 Blinds + t750 - 5 players

Hero (UTG): t488391 M = 38.31
mastrblastr (CO): t539989 M = 42.35
wellgaz (BTN): t650343 M = 51.01
BLUFFforRENT (SB): t523246 M = 41.04
IITTII (BB): t137073 M = 10.75

Pre Flop: (t12750) Hero is UTG with K K
Hero raises to t13275, mastrblastr calls t13275, 1 fold, BLUFFforRENT raises to t48775, 1 fold, Hero requests TIME, Hero raises to t84275, 1 fold, BLUFFforRENT requests TIME, BLUFFforRENT raises to t522496 all in, Hero calls t403366 all in

Flop: (t998307) 8 3 A

Turn: (t998307) Q

River: (t998307) 8

Final Pot: t998307
Hero shows K K (two pair, Kings and Eights)
BLUFFforRENT shows Q A (two pair, Aces and Queens)
BLUFFforRENT wins t998307




So, that would have been fun. 1st in chips by 400k, 20 people left, 6m tourney, running over table, playing really well. Whatever, I will eventually get a six figure score at these silly things .

The other tournament is a Halo 2p2 Tourney I entered. I teamed up with Rob and Garbageman18, and we are set to win. We play Reid's team on Friday, and here' s a little preview for him:

http://www.leggopoker.com/blogs/garb...l#comment26185

Lastly, I made a 2/4 NL live video that will be uploaded and out somewhat soon. I'm going to be making more videos in the near future, so let me know what you are looking for. Additionally, I feel like my SN's making videos creates an unrealistic environment a lot of the times, so I'm probably going to be looking for volunteers to give me some footage to discuss. If you are interested in recording a session at 2/4+ (honestly I'd review a session at any and all stakes 2/4+, the higher the better), let me know.

Take care,
Greg

I am the Champion of the LeggoPoker tournament. 1/72, tyvm.

As the title implies, this post serves as an interlude between my European adventures as I acquire all the pictures from the trip...

On Sunday, I decided I would play a grueling day of donkaments. I started at 1 PM EST, and stopped registering in tournaments around 5:30 PM (OK I got burnt out!). As fate would have it, I was still up until 2 AM playing because I wound up getting 11th in the Sunday 500. Frustrating that I didn't final table, especially since I believe I made a mistake causing me to punt my 18 BBs, but I continue to feel my game improving.

PLO has been going well (in the sense that I keep getting it in ahead vs. ranges... what happens after that is anyone's guess), and I have been switching back and forth between 6m and HU.

My latest video just came out (HU vs Reid). I'm taking ideas of what to do for my next video, so request away!


Leggo Community: I need your help!

I need a new poker desktop, but have little knowledge about computers. Would someone be able to point me in the right direction? I'm thinking about getting a new laptop as well...

Lastly, I've been spending a lot of time in NYC lately. Does anyone have any good connections with nightlife there? I have a few friends that know a couple people, but it would be nice to not have to depend on them every time I wanted to go to some trendy place. If your connects are really good I'll probably throw in some coaching for the hookup.

Greg

This will probably be a multi-parter (unless I get into grind mode and write a book).

For the past two and a half weeks, I have been in Europe with my friends Craig and Derek. They visited my house for a day on the 27th of September, and then we headed to London on the 28th.

Earlier in the day, we went to play tennis at the local courts. Derek was down about $100 to Craig in prop betting, and when he picked up a ball by lifting the bottom of the surrounded fence up, he challenged Craig again: He bet Craig he could climb under the fence faster than Craig could climb over the fence. Craig instantly accepted and the following video was captured (excuse my hysterical laughter -- I thought Derek just looked really funny):

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So, Derek clawed back through some of his debt, and we took Virgin Atlantic Premium Economy to London that night. We got in around 10 AM London time (GMT) on the 29th, and, after a short nap, it was time to go to the Arsenal game.



After the game was over, we went to a couple pubs in the area because everyone was taking the tube (Americans read bars/subway) from the Arsenal station (which is awesome/hilarious that Arsenal has it's own station). Then, we went back to the hotel bar.

As a quick interjection, and, admittedly, to impress the non-Americans, I thought Arsenal played *ok*. I was surprised to learn that the team's stars were in the 18-20 year old range, but, since they are still playing on such a big stage, I can critique them. I thought they played too passively, and didn't take open space quickly enough. I also thought that they tried to string together too many passes in the box before shooting, because Olympiad(?)'s goalie could not hold on to the ball at all. So, take the mediocre first shot instead of trying to set up a 1-on-0 on the six, and take space so your cutting forwards can actually get the ball when the defense has to challenge!! They wound up winning 2-0, but it should have been 4 or 5-0.

The game was still really fun, and, as you saw, we donked it up and bought jerseys. Back to the hotel bar... London basically shuts down at 11 PM. Most pubs close, and special ones stay open until 1 AM. Clubs can keep going until 3-5 AM. Luckily, our hotel bar was able to serve "residents" (i.e. guests) until 3 AM. So, we grinded that and then went to bed, with the 6m to be played the following afternoon.

I wound up getting 11th in the 6m. When we got there, it actually took the TDs about 15 minutes to figure out the table situation, which was fine, but the MTT nits were FLIPPING out (I thought they just folded for the first 4 levels?). Annette_15 was acting like a total bitch to the TD, and this other kid was speaking derogatorily to them as well. The latter guy actually got placed at my table, and started to get pretty annoying pretty quickly. On the first hand (4 handed), I raise T2ss UTG and get called by the BB (6k stacks, 25/50 blinds). The flop comes out T85fd, and my cbet gets called. The turn is a 3o, and my turn bet gets check/raised really small. I call, and also call on the K river that completes the flush. He BB has A6o and I take it down. However, that annoying kid then starts the "DO YOU PLAY ONLINE? WHO ARE YOU WHAT'S YOUR SCREEN NAME?" I response, "Are we really gonna do this?" He keeps going, so I say who I am and move on with life. He seems bothered that I don't ask him who he is, but I really didn't give a shit. (NB: After this point, we decided that we would give fake screen names if asked. Mine would be PrancingUnicorn111, but I mostly play cash).

I then start flatting all of his opens whenever I have position preflop, and proceed to keep taking pots away. I just hated his attitude -- it's poor etiquette to talk about that stuff around recreational players, and he gave off a "holier than thou" attitude which I hate so much. As it turns out, Craig knew who the kid was because the kid actually randomly came up to Craig (Craig is such a celebrity that the MTT community recognizes him in public) and said what's your screen name I'm xxxxxx and I work for Poker VT (Are you fucking serious?). Craig told me that he didn't even recognize the kid's screen name, and I can't recognize his face on the Poker VT web site to call him out .

For the remainder of day one, I had my ups and downs, with my 6k starting stack dwindling to 4k at 100/200/25 at the lowest point. I had a couple eventful hands against David Pham, with the most significant one mentioned in my previous blog post. When we hit the money at 24 we went on break to day two.

Day two was a complete shitshow. The blinds were ridic high, average stack ridic low, etc, to the point where I would have been happy taking my chip equity at the beginning of the day because the variance was unspeakable. I went out 11th, but my German friend got 2nd.

I'm going to stop here because I want to include photos of the other stuff we did in London, and they haven't been uploaded yet. The Main Event was uneventful, and I went out 270/720 sometime on Day 2.

Poker wise, I'm still interested in grinding PLO. I'm also interested in playing some Sundays, so I might do that tomorrow. I recently opened up my coaching again, but yesterday I actually got a coach for PLO. I'm pretty excited because he's really nasty, and seemingly very knowledgeable about the game. I would hate to be my coach though -- I'm probably a pain in the ass student .

I'm still going to be the biggest winner in the non 25/50 games of PLO from now until the rest of the year, so see you all at the finish line.

Greg

I don't have too much time to post a blog b/c we are busy, but played in the 1k GBP 6m. There were 223 entrants, and there are 24 remaining. I have twice average and probably am 4th or 5th in chips. I made a sick bluff v David Pham literally on the bubble where I 3b his button open in the BB with 52o. The flop came 369r, and I bet/3bet all in. He folded, Craig yelled "Show the bluff" from the rail, and I did. It's a shame the day ended shortly after because no one wanted to play a pot with me from that point on.

Anyway, after I play tomorrow I'll be back with a proper update.

Greg

EDIT: Got 11th for 3200GBP