The Poker Zoo Podcast Chris M. aka Persuadeo & Dean Martin

Legendary poker theorist and writer David Sklansky joins us on the Zoo. We discuss Twoplustwo Publishing’s new book, Small Stakes Hold’em: Help Them Give You Their Money, an already controversial strategy work by David and his business partner Mason Malmuth.

Freshly published in January 2024, the new book focuses on adaptive play in the softest small-stakes games and against the absolutely worst players. “When I started to play these games,” David writes in the book’s introduction, “which are the large majority of poker games spread today, it was shocking at how badly many of the players played, and this included many opponents who were regulars in these games.

A book wasn’t far off from there, especially as Mason was already in the Vegas low-stakes scene and was seeing many of the same things; here’s his PZ interview. Early versions attracted attention on Twoplustwo thanks to some provocatively strange hands that were unsurprisingly misinterpreted; even Bart Hanson, king of live poker training, when correcting a forum statement about wide ranges, felt further compelled to drop some literalist outrage as well as scold Mason over a nitty drawing recommendation. On one hand, everything is fair game, and the examples were not perfectly representative, as David explains in our podcast. On the other, a little unfair given how many ideas Bart (and all of us) has cribbed from the old theorists – think of all those endless podcasts on set mining, implied odds, and effectively value betting that derive straight from Sklansky and Seidman. Ideas, especially in books, are best understood as questions to be discussed. Instead, we have social media, whose arc is short and bends toward conflict.

It definitely didn’t go past me that many of the experienced posters in the book’s forum thread didn’t seem to understand certain poker fundamental ideas. One recurrently loud poster kept challenging Sklansky on the expected value of a hand multiway, not understanding where EV comes from or how the game might differ from the “allowed” calls in a solver abstraction. Now what was interesting was that this player is a studied one, a student of the solves and the population data. He probably is quite the online threat. Yet when his conversation extended itself to why we open and to what size, he revealed only further misconceptions. The urge to assume prolific poker authors don’t have some slight idea about what they are doing is odd to say the least, and the ability of players to play in certain environments without knowing what is going on underneath is a fascinating surety.

These short interactions demonstrate an interesting leak in today’s poker education culture: we love the model and its outputs, while we are quickly losing track of the theory. The model is not theory; we improve theory from the model’s outputs, but the model is itself mute and is only possible because of theory. Consider how often smart players say to study the big picture, not every detail; what do you think that is really all about? Yet aspiring players immediately run home to check their lines against GTOW, the seductive application which has become as much of a soothing AI doll for regs as it is a strategic tool. Further, consider how often someone in your Discord starts a foolish statement with “in theory we should,” then goes on to refer to some obscure spot in a solve output. No,

OOP Oberleutnant Greg Porter returns to the Zoo pod for an update on his successful career as poker pro. I can’t believe it’s been six years! Time has really flown since the early days of our little group and teaching community.

Greg is an indispensable and senior member of said little community. He runs the OOP training games, providing high-level poker feedback, and specialized coaching. Greg edits my more challenging pieces and, more importantly, provides timely puns in the Poker Zoo chat.

On today’s episode, we hear about his games, and in particular about the influence of the Stand-up Game on mid/high action.

We then go through some of the highlights of 2023 in poker, the year of Doyle’s departure, Berkey’s ascension, and the long-needed return of produced poker content. Speaking of, here’s that opinion piece where I called for the return of production and writing to poker media.

After a short mental game interlude, we get into some hands from his local games.

A previous episode with Porter.

Here’s today’s hands discussed:

Hand #1 10/25 6.3Ke 8h

s5 75

s6 c

s2 c 88ds

Ac5d4h

s2 x/f

s5 100

s6 c

6d

s5 275/c

s6 1100

Jh

s5 x

s6 5025ai

 

Hand #2 10/20/40 8Ke 8h

s7 130/c

s8 c/c

s1 650 AJss

Qs9d8s

s1 600

s7 c

s8 f

8h

s1 x

s7 x

2c

s1 x

s7 2500

Best wishes in 2024.

It’s been a long time since I played in Washington, but the scene continues to evolve, however strangely. See, it’s all about the weird rules and regulations. Podcast guest Mannes N. gives us an update on the state of the games.

The most important details are the rules for the tribal casinos and the rules for non-tribals, which are particularly hard on the poker player. To complicate matters, the tribes have basically quit the poker business, taking the big bets with them, and forcing all the traffic into small rooms around (but not within) Seattle.

Basically, that’s why Eric Persson, owner of many of the small poker rooms, can punt your rake money off at a surprising rate. It’s a great time to own a poker room in Washington State.

Mannes regularly plays at the Caribbean and Fortune rooms, two of the most popular in the current Seattle poker market. He occasionally posts on his “Owlkeeper” blog about poker, mainly tournament trips to Vegas. Here’s a post regarding the local games.



Living in the Raleigh, NC area, Mickey and I started to frequent bar league freeroll tournaments (lots of fun) and landed in our first home game, a low stakes NL progressive-blinds game upping the blinds every 30 minutes.

My first live cash tournament was at Mirage, 2009. I fearfully deposited the $85 buyin and with about 23 runners won the event for something like $575. Needless to say I had no idea what I was doing, played like a passive nit and ran well.



In the second part of the pod, we go over a couple hands under the Spread Limit regime.

HH #1:

– Cardroom: Fortune Renton, 3/5, buyin cap 1,000, betting cap 300. Discuss the 300 constraint and if/how it should influence play.

– Stack: 1080 (216 BB)

– Setup: 8 handed, Villain is Vpiping higher than most of the table, no prior history

– Hero is in S4, Main V is S5 (using the S1=Small Blind convention)

Preflop:

– S3 limp/call

– Hero S4 with A6hh 20

– Villian S5 call, V’s stack covers me

– Pot 60 after $8 rake

Flop: 652 with one heart

– S3 check/fold

– Hero S4 check/call

– S5 40

– Pot 140

Turn: Qh

– Hero S4 check/call

– S5 80

– Pot 300

River: offsuit 8

– Hero S4 check/ action to be revealed

– S5 250

HH #2:

– Cardroom: Caribbean Kirkland, 1/3, buyin cap 590, betting cap 300. Caribbean recently became part of Maverick gaming owned by Eric Persson of high stakes cash game infamy. The clientele is generally older than that of Fortune, it also gets some of the local tech crowd.

– Stack 515

– Setup: 7 handed, early in the session

– Hero is in S2 (bb)

Preflop:

– S4 10. This is “Jack” a 70-ish fun player who was once ejected from another cardroom for smuggling hard liquor in his “water bottle”. Likely playing a linear range with a short stack of approx. $110.

– S7 call, s approx $400. When he sat down he was introduced by someone else as an “action player” and seemed to live up to the tagline so far.

– Hero S2 with AQo call

– Pot 30 after rake

Flop: A86 rb

– Hero S2 check/ call

– S4 20

– S7 call

– Pot 90

Turn brick – think it was a 2

– Hero S2 check / 165

– S4 40/ call for approx 80 all in

– S7 call/call leaving 200 behind

– Pot 500

River 5

– Hero S2 check/ action to be revealed

– S7 200 all in

Mannes is also a thoughtful commenter on my blog, I want to thank him and all those readers who like t...

The poker world loves tournaments in the 2020’s. Online, tournament culture is vital and MTT-heavy while cash game action stalls. GG has challenged Pokerstars with huge tournaments series. U.S.-facing ACR continues to thrive. As for the live scene, everyone is amazed at the action, with WSOP and WPT now vying almost non-stop for your dollars; did I see they were bringing back the NAPT? I give in. Today we talk with one of the best in tournament poker, Enrico Camosci, and hear what it takes to rise to the top of the MTT food chain.

Enrico has had a huge 202o’s so far, with an online bracelet and multiple big results, leaving him with about $2.5 million in online wins. In Spring he took third for a massive score at the EPT Monte Carlo high roller; maybe that’s why he’s even started to scale back the grind and hang with the live whales.

Despite his success, the only way you may know him is that Enrico was the televised victim of a curious slow roll that got a little attention in 2021. Not really sure what Sam Grafton is thinking here.

In this interview I didn’t focus on results and trophies too much, but process. I wanted to hear how Enrico got to the top of the (specifically Euro) MTT world, and so I asked a lot of questions about what he does. In general, it sounds like an intense dive into specific spots but also returning to the spot later, in cyclical fashion, is his studying and coaching key. It’s certainly true that two weeks on a single board BU V BB is going to yield a lot of fruit, for instance, but you must also come back to it to truly own the knowledge.

I’m thinking he’s doing it right. If I study like him, can I be a thirty-year old vacationing in Paris, tired from beating the games in Monte Carlo? Definitely.

Once a novelty, there is now even a school of thought that tournaments have more complexity than cash games; with changing stacks, levels, and tougher competition, I think they may be right. Hope you enjoy my first chat with Enrico. You can find him on Insta, and also contact him at his in-development coaching site, MTTgod.

Vegas is home to more than just gaming, it is home to the history of those games and to those who created that history. Richie Brodie, lifelong “poker bum,” has played with all the greats, from Doyle and his “southern” crew, to the Mayfair’s Erik Seidel, to California’s rising 1990’s NL scene with Bobby Hoff and Barry Greenstein (along with an apparently more reluctant Dan Harrington). Today we hear his story and the story of a whole age of poker, from the pre-internet obscurity of the late seventies to a comfortable seat at the Sahara deepstack game of the Covid era.

Richie starts in upper New York but is soon drawn to the Nevada games, led by his older brother, a gambler and expert sports bettor. I say Nevada deliberately, as there is a great deal of less-told history surrounding Reno, Tahoe, San Jose, and the rest of western cards; Las Vegas just wasn’t the only place. As Richie emphasizes, the games moved, and the players followed, from famous rooms to forgotten obscurities. (One of the casinos Richie mentions, Harvey’s in Tahoe, was even bombed.)

It sounds like a lot of fun: a bunch of guys who love poker gathering at Caesar’s Tahoe for two weeks of around-the-clock-play.

Think again. This is serious business.

The approximately 100 entrants in the casino’s third annual Superstars of Poker tournament huddle intently around the fifteen tables in the roped-off tournament area.

Their concentration is so intense it is nearly impenetrable. Neither the smoke hanging heavy in the air nor the persistent clanking of coins in nearby slot machines is enough to jolt the players out of their poker-induced trance.

A television broadcasting a college basket all game goes unnoticed for hours. Finally, a passing cocktail waitress turns it off.

from the Reno Gazette-Journal, “Poker More Than a Game for Tournament Players,” probably early 1990’s

For point of reference, when Richie first started playing seriously in the late seventies, David Sklansky, with whom he would soon be playing against, had just published Hold’em Poker, one of the first modern poker books. Doyle Brunson’s Super System would not appear until 1979.

I think I missed some questions that poker players would like – the real details of the games, and I mean down to the nitty gritty: what were the sizings, how many players per hand, and such.  We know Bobby Hoff introduced a lot of three betting, but what about the others? Yet Richie hints at the answer during the interview, “in reality,” he comments, “the games haven’t changed that much, but the number of players who know what they are doing has.” I think we know what that means.

Enjoy this interview full of poker history.

Picture late 2019. Britain was finally Brexiting, Trump was somehow still presidenting, and general protests for a more liberal, freer society were happening all over the world- remember Hong Kong? Remember life before mask and vaccine discourse?  That’s when I last talked with Gerard S., aspiring pro and studied player who had worked with a number of noted pros and organizations, including Fausto Valdez and Solve For Why. Gerard had a poker blog, a girlfriend, a residence in sunny Florida, and was finishing up a year cleaning up at live ring games and MTTs.

Then it happened: Covid went from zero public awareness to a full-blown hysterical crisis that would shape the next decade. Covid would also trigger a sequence of events that changed everything for Gerard and his poker life. Soon he’d be signed up with Poker Detox and battling not only to beat the games, but to understand them at a new level, all while making rent.

Today, we find out where he’s at and what he’s learned.

As any poker player will tell you, a significant element of skill is involved in winning at the tables long-term. However, it’s also important to acknowledge the role luck plays in poker too.

We have zero control or say over the poker hands the dealer gives us. Nor do we have any control over the community cards dealt on the flop, turn and river. These variable outcomes can cause short-term volatility in your poker results, known as variance.

Game selection has a major bearing on the cause of variance in poker. If your preference is to enter vast, multi-table tournaments with fields of hundreds or thousands of players, it’s fair to say your poker bankroll will encounter immense variance. That’s because these big-field tournaments carry so much volatility. If you’re playing for hours or even days, it’s possible to experience run-good and then run into the brick wall of a downswing and be knocked out before you’ve even made the money.

-from “What is Variance in Poker?” by poker.org

The Poker Zoo often visits with Coaching for Profits players, check out episodes such as

Episode 43: Luka turns to CFP and Nick Howard

Episode 40: Coaching for Profits with KYT

Episode 36: Odb_Blackbaron/DLF on CFP

PZ 71: More Coaching, More Profits, with Luka V – Out of Position (persuadeo.nl)

and others, including from a coaching perspective.

 

Food in this episode:

Hot Pepper Jelly

2 C Green Bell Peppers cut into pieces for the food processor

1/2 C Jalapenos, chopped – Seeds & webbing removed

For a red version, substitute red bell peppers and just 1/4 C thai chilies

Combine these in a food processor and mince accordingly

Ingredients:

Pepper mash from the food processor

5 3/4 C Sugar

1 C White Vinegar

1 Bottle Certo (or 2 pkgs) This is just Sure Jell or any fruit pectin

Combine Pepper mash, sugar and vinegar in a sauce pan and boil for 5 min, then turn heat off and leave for 20 minutes.

Add fruit pectin and boil hard for 2 minutes.

Ladle into small canning jars (we use pint size) and can using typical water bath canning procedure.



For a quick appetizer for parties, you can simply serve over a block of Philadelphia cream cheese.

If you have access to a smoker you can take it to the next level ...