Acknowledgements  1
Foreword    3
Author's Foreword   5
Introduction: Making Money with Online Sit-and-Go Poker Tournaments  11
The Formula for Success. 16
A Note about Mathematics. 16
How to Use This Course. 17
A Note about Sharing This Material 18

Chapter 1: Fundamentals  20
    What Is Equity?. 20
    The Independent Chip Model (ICM) 21
    The Equity Equation. 22
    Calculating the ICM Tax (Advanced) 29
    Calculating Stack Size, Bets, and Pot Sizes in Terms of Big Blinds  31
    Effective Stack. 32
    Range Notation. 33
    Analyzing Player Types. 34
    Tracking Software. 34
    Advanced HUD.. 37
    Pot Odds. 41
    Implied Odds. 43

Chapter 2: Low-Blind Play  45
    Low-Blind Hand Selection. 45
    Hand Strength and Position. 45
        Hand Strength. 46
        Position. 46
    Pre-flop Raising. 47
        Pot Commitment and Pre-flop Raise Considerations. 48
    Pre-flop Hand Selection. 49
        If There Is a Pre-Flop Limper 50
        If There Is a Pre-Flop Raiser 51
    Speculative Hands. 53
        Speculative Hands from the Button and Earlier 53
        Speculative Hands from the Small Blind. 54
        Calling Raises with Speculative Hands. 55
    Playing the Small Blind Pre-Flop. 55
        Against a Tight Player 56
        Against a Loose Player 57
    Math Behind Stealing (Advanced) 57
    Playing the Big Blind Pre-Flop. 59
        SB Raiser 59
        SB Limper 60
        Against Other Positions. 60
    Post-Flop Play: 1Bet, 2Bet, 3Bet 61
        Strong Hand, Post-Flop. 62
        Medium-Strength Hand, Post-Flop. 63
        Weak Hand, Post-Flop. 66
        Assessing the Likelihood of Future Bets. 67
    Mixing up Your Post-Flop Play. 68
    Playing Out of Position. 70
    Playing Draws. 72
        The Rule of Four and Two. 72
        Draws on the Turn. 74
        Double Barreling. 74
        A Word of Warning about Barreling. 75
    Loosening Up Early (Advanced) 76
    Low-Blind Play Summary. 80

Chapter 3: Mid-Blind Play  82
    Introduction to Mid-Blind Play. 82
    Open Shoving. 82
    The Difficulty of Learning Proper Push/Fold Strategy. 83
    Difficulties Learning Using Sit and Go Wizard. 83
    Difficulties Learning Based on Conventional Coaching Approaches  85
    Is There a Better Way to Learn Sit-and-Go Strategy?. 86
    Pivot Points: The Correct Way to Learn Sit-and-Go Strategy. 87
        Is the Method of Pivot Points Practical?. 89
        The Secret Behind Pivot Points. 90
    Getting Started Building Pivot Points. 93
        Calling a 10BB Shover from the Big Blind. 93
    Adjusting Pivot Points. 95
        Creating a Complete Spectrum of Pivots. 96
        Using the Spectrum to Avoid Over Adjustment 97
    Small Frequent Mistakes vs. Big Infrequent Mistakes. 98
    Three Crucial Mid-Blind Skills. 100
        Open Shoving. 100
    Creating the PBJ Chart 101
        Setting Ranges for BB calling a SB shove. 110
        Complete PBJ Spreadsheet 110
        Fine Tuning Your PBJ Spreadsheet 112
        Calling Ranges of Bad Opponents. 112
        Edge. 113
        Common Mistakes Players Make with PBJ. 114
            Early Position. 114
            Small Blind. 115
            Effective Stack. 115
        Strategy for Avoiding PBJ Mistakes. 116
        Adjusting PBJ with Antes. 116
    Restealing. 118
        Adjusting the Magic Range for Restealing. 121
        Reward Necessary for Restealing. 124
    Calling Shoves from Different Positions. 125
        How to Use the Calling Pivots. 127
        Determining the Correct Effective Stack to Use when Calling  128
        Calling from Positions Other Than the Big Blind. 130
        Study: Calling Wide Shoves. 131
        Calling Wide Shovers. 134
    Chapter 3 Summary. 136

Chapter 4: High-Blind Play  138
    Pivot Points for High-Blind Play. 138
    Calling Wide Getting Pot Odds. 138
        Identifying 3:2 Pot Odds. 138
        Identifying 2:1 Pot Odds. 139
    Equilibrium Adjustments vs. Good players (Advanced) 144
        Shoving the Small Blind Against Good Opponents. 150
    Blinding Out 151
    Purposefully Making –EV Plays. 152
        5BB UTG. 152
    Assessing the Damage from –EV Shoves. 153
    ICM Explorer for Other Tough Situations (Advanced) 157
    Reducing Your Risk vs. Staying Aggressive. 162
    Finish Distribution Analysis – Playing to Win 1st Place. 163
    Tournament Structure. 167
    End of Tournament Game Plan. 168
    The Bubble. 169
        Pivot Point Adjustment for the Bubble. 170
        Calculating the ICM Tax (Bubble Factor) for the 4- Player Uneven Stack Distribution (Advanced) 175
        Numerically Calculating Risk Adjustments for the Bubble. 177
    Chip Utility. 179
        The Reverse Chip Value Theorem.. 180
        Chip Utility. 181
    Playing with a Dominant Stack – Pwning/Owning. 183
    Playing Three Handed. 185
    Playing Heads Up. 186
    Nash Equilibrium Pivots. 192
        Premiums. 194
        Garbage Hands. 194
        In Between Hands. 195
    Climbing the Buyin Ladder (Advanced) 197
    Bankroll Management (Advanced) 200
    Hold’em Manager Redline Analysis (Advanced) 203
    Summary of High-Blind Play. 207

Epilogue  208

With the recent events of last week obviously a lot of US players are looking for new homes. The threads online at 2+2 are abuzz with players considering moving to merge network. I did my research and the rakeback offer from Drag the Bar at Black Chip poker is unbeatable so I am making Black Chip my new home.

Since my account was only funded this morning I spent last night looking at some of the SNG games available there and the volume on Merge is low. However the influx of new US players should quickly remedy that situation. One intriguing game that I saw was the 18 player SNG's that start 6 handed on 3 tables and payout the top three positions. For a skilled player these games look like they could be juicy because they are top heavy in the payouts. However, they will likely create higher variance since they pay out one less player than the standard 18 man structure I have discussed in videos on FTP and PS. I love the idea of short handed 18 mans though because I can take advantage of some of the short handed NL Cash game skills I have been working on. I suspect that a player with good understanding of the blind battle dynamics and stealing will have a field day with these games. Look for a video on this topic in the coming month.

Anyways, you know you can't go wrong when DTB's own Owen Gaines is one of their online pros and they are partnered with a great site like DTB. I highly recommend checking out Black Chip!

zero

It’s hard not to get excited when within just a few days not only is Steve Wynn getting behind federally regulated online gambling but then the CEO from Caesars Entertainment piles on as well…

<a title="Legal On-Line Poker Would Boost Liquidity: Caesars CEO" href="http://www.cnbc.com/id/42569391/">Legal On-Line Poker Would Boost Liquidity: Caesars CEO</a>

In this article the CEO of Caesars mentions that they are working with Nevada state legislators to draft legislation for online state regulated gambling.  Obviously intrastate (within one state only) gambling is not really the panacea that most online players are looking for because the player pool will be small for any given state.  DC also recently announced that it can start online gambling and these two intrastate measures are really a great start, especially if they can start bundling player pools similar to how PowerBall or MegaMillions does with the lottery.

However, the really great news from this article comes from the CEO’s (Loveman’s) statement that… "We're advocates of this being legalized on a federal level because the state by state process is quite a cumbersome one ... in poker you need liquidity," Loveman explained. "You need a lot of players who want to play a game at a certain level, at a certain time and the best way to do that is to have a federal mandate."

This is huge!  Not only is B&amp;M getting on board they are getting on board the right way, after years of blocking our right to play poker online, we are getting a complete 180 degree turnaround.

I am so excited about this turn of events.  The PPA narrowly missed getting legislation introduced last year to legalize online poker at the federal level.  Getting the B&amp;M folks backing us could easily swing this thing into reality and soon, with much less restrictive measures in place. The one downside to all this is that I would speculate that the poker sites that we play at are likely to have a much harder time getting their foot in the door if the B&amp;M folks want to crowd them out of the market.  But it finally looks like we have gotten dealt AA and someone just raised us from early position. Now all we need is for our hand to hold up!  I am now officially using my ONE TIME DEALER!

Zero

PS. Hopefully John Kyl’s recent fiasco over how much funding of planned parenthood goes to giving abortions has shown the world that he completely lacks credibility and will keep this idiot from imposing his social agenda over our freedoms.

  Recently I’ve been focusing a lot on what it means to make good poker decisions.  When we start out learning poker we are pretty much at the mercy of others telling us what is a “standard” play. We utilize other people’s knowledge to build a database of standard plays and start to try to incorporate them into our game.  A lot of times this can be a treacherous path since if you are frequenting the free or pay forums sometimes even with the best of intentions you will receive bad advice.  The best part about pay forums is that at least the people participating are a cut above the standard enthusiast and they are trying to work on their own games.  Plus you have access to the pay forum’s coaches who usually have much more experience and are rarely incorrect in their advice.  Beyond the forums paying for direct coaching is usually a good way to go because presumably a well vetted coach is going to be giving you mainly good advice.

However the question of what is “standard” is constantly changing.  Poker is evolving and frequently people will state that the way to get ahead of the pack is to be looking for places to either exploit or go beyond “standard” play.  This puts new players in a tough spot.  Should they learn standard poker or should they be trying to get ahead of the pack from the beginning? 

It is my honest opinion that what is standard is somewhat like a marble sculpture and we are constantly in a state of “almost done.”  There are places where you can chip off more to make the sculpture more complete but doing more than slightly reworking what is already there is a mistake because it is likely to do more harm than good. Mostly beginners do not have the foundation to judge whether a non-standard play is profitable which is dangerous.  To take the analogy one step further, their sculpture of a beautiful woman might end up lacking a hand or some other vital element if they decide that “doing this is different so it must be better.”

Usually in poker taking a non-standard line is actually giving up value. For example in a SNG, you might find that a certain shove is –EV but you are making it for the sake of creating an image.  That image is an intangible thing of uncertain value.  The –EV play can be immediately quantified.  Its hard to judge whether a non-standard play would be good or bad.

Overall it is my opinion that the best thing a beginning student can do is to learn the basics.  It’s not to say that they need to stay there forever but learning a proper foundation gives them the ability to be creative in a controlled way.  It allows them to say, “well I know that the standard play would be to do x… but I did y because I felt that I gained some extra advantage for later in the tournament.”  Without that proper foundation it is impossible to say whether taking the nonstandard line is a well calculated play or simply a mistake.   In my next blog I plan to follow this concept up so stay tuned.

 

Good Luck at the Tables

Zerosum79

I've been moving back into MTT SNG's lately.  The competition is just much weaker at the mid-stakes than in 9 mans.  The problem is that getting a decent volume of $24 18-mans is impossible at FT.  They rarely load even during peak hours.  This has gotten me thinking about moving to the darkside... ie PokerStars.

Although I think PokerStars has a lot going for it, the playerpool is noticibly better at the low stakes and their tournament buyin levels are weird.  The real downside though is that you lose out on the steady stream of rakeback that you can get from Full Tilt.  Unless you are a very high volume player, PokerStars rakeback is terrible. So I have spent a lot of time emphasizing to my students that when they are building their bankroll FT is a better choice.  Now I feel like a turncoat.

However, there are some decent options for cashing out your rakeback at PS that do not involve hitting massive volume levels.  As I described in my video on the "Hyperturbo 6max Satellites" on Drag the Bar, you can convert the VPP's to cash relatively easily. Even though you will not be getting the high volume percentage like you would if you were hitting Supernova or Supernova elite its still a viable option for lower stakes players.  Just spend your VPPs on tournament buyins and role it into cash or tourney tickets for other events. Although the eventual payoff is less certain than rakeback on FT, its still a great way to go even for someone earning only a few thousand VPPs at a time.

So don't hate me for being a turncoat.  Sometimes you just have to go where the games are.

Good luck at the tables!
zero

I am excited to announce that I am now officially writing for the Wolrd Poker Tour magazine.

As you may know if you have been following my blog, a few months ago I wrote an article discussing chip utility for WPT magazine in a feature spot for Drag the Bar.  It was a concept that I have been working on for a long time that resolves a certain paradox about the value of chips as they change in a poker tournament.  The article was well received and landed me a more permanent position writing about Sit and Go strategy.

I am really excited about the opportunity to flush out some lesser known strategy points and do some in depth hand analysis. However, the first few articles will be discussing my signature concept, "Pivot Points."  I want to lead off with pivot points because I think it is a crucial part of understanding basic tournament strategy and I also want to lay proper claim to the idea since even writing about it on the internet blogs is probably not enough to keep someone from swooping in and claiming my idea as their own. So I am planting my flag and staking my claim to it.

Anyways, if you have not had a chance to pick up WPT Magazine in the stores, I highly recommend it.  There is a regular feature every month from different Drag the Bar coaches and you will also be able to get an update from me so I think its well worth a look, if not a purchase.  ;)

Good Luck at the Tables,
zero

Regardless of whether you think this hand was well played or not it set off a funny firestorm with a HU opponent tonight...

Villain: "donk luck box"

Villain: "kp on goin like an idiot"

Villain: "stpid american scm"

Villain: "Donk"

Villain: "Donk"

Villain: "Donk"

Villain: "Donk"

Villain: "donk" Villain: "donk" Villain: "donk" Villain: "donk"  Villain: "donk" Villain: "donk" Villain: "donk"

By the end of this tournament he had called me a donk 26 times!

Accept a rematch? Gladly!

And it kept coming.  In fact he hit me with donk so fast and furious  that within a few more hands

Chat Monitor (Support): wolffyro has lost their chat privilege for 5  minutes.  Spamming the table is prohibited.

zerosum79: "donk" :) :) :)

Followed briefly by"zerosum79 finished in 1st place"

Don't forget poker is supposed to be fun.

zero