Equity is our mathematical chance of our hand or hand range winning the hand against our opponents hand or hand range. For example, the hand AA has 80% equity against TT, which has 20% equity against AA. This is the same way with hand ranges. AA has 83% equity against a range of AK, TT+. Sometimes, we want to analyze how well we played a hand based on what we could have in a certain spot and based on what we feel our opponent likely has. For example, a range of AK, TT+ has 63% equity against a range of JJ-88, AJ+. Also,  just like AK has 50% equity against AK, a range of TT+, AK has 50% equity against a range of TT+, AK.

On the river equity, becomes a lot different. Since there is no longer any possibility of being drawn out on, your equity depends more on the girth of your range, in other words, the amount of hands in your opponents range. For example, on a board of 248JK, no flushes, if you decide to bet a hand like JT, and your opponent has a calling range of 89,8T,J9,99,TT,QJ+, QQ, and KT, then we have close to 50% equity against his calling range, as we are beating about half his calling range and losing to the other half.

Equity exists on the most fundamental level of poker. Nothing actually changes in a poker game besides equity.  For example, our opponent raises preflop with 27o. All that happened was he changed his equity against his opponents ranges. Our opponent decides to check the turn with AA and bet the river instead of bet the turn with AA, all he did was change his range on his turn bet and add to the equity of his range when he checks the turn and bets the river. When we can maximize our equity, we will make lots and lots of money.

Now an interesting effect happens when we or our opponent folds our hand. When we fold, we no longer have equity to win the hand. This is huge given the fact that even when we are way behind, such as our bottom pair versus top pair on the flop, we still have about a 20% chance to win the hand, or 20% equity against that hand. So getting our opponents to fold, and therefore getting our opponents to relinquish their equity, can be very +EV. That is why there is what we call Fold Equity. Fold Equity is the value of getting our opponent to fold given there is money in the pot.

In a vacuum, if there is exactly X amount of money in the pot, and we have a hand that will never win (unlikely), and we bet X, we will have to have our opponents fold 50% of the time for that to be a break even play. (Note: There are too many factors to properly calculate this situation with very good accuracy. Other factors include our own equity, how much our bet with air will influence the amount other hands in our range will win, etc. But also note that the factors I named all lessen the amount of time our opponent has to fold to make our bet a good play)

Hopefully, now that you understand Equity and Fold Equity better, you can understand the rest of my articles better!

I regret to inform you all that this is my last article for FTR. I just hit $100,000 in career poker earnings, I’m starting my own business, and traveling a lot so I no longer have the time. I feel like the articles I wrote are some of the more quality on the net. And you get them for free, so try not to take them for granted!

Hope you enjoyed my writing!

DS: So what’s your poker playing schedule like?

Johan Van Til: An average day starts at 8pm for me with the morning 109 rebuy. Then I keep playing until about 6-7am. So I play about 20 MTT’s in a normal day. And lately about 30 step SNG’s as well. On average I play about 4-5 days a week, so I get in enough hours. Sunday’s I start a little earlier with the Warm Up etc. and end with the 200 rebuy.

DS: Are Sunday’s the most exciting day for you?

Johan Van Til: Yeah, its is. Lately I’ve had some crazy Sunday’s. Especially with a lot of step 6s and the 5200 freezeouts running.

DS: How do you explain the great results you have in the Sunday Warm-Up?

Johan Van Til: Just variance lol. Sooner or later I’m going to get some results in the majors, it just happened to be twice in the Warm Up this month.

DS: What’s your general strategy early in MTT’s?

Johan Van Til: Without antes I just play a solid full ring game, similar to cash games. There are usually a lot of bad players left so it’s ok to play a little looser though.

DS: Middle stages of MTT’s, with 30-40BB, I’ve noticed you are more aggressive then most?

Johan Van Til: 30-40bb is quite deep for a MTT. Depending on the table and antes it’s profitable to open a wide range.

DS: How many MTT’s are you playing right now?

Johan Van Til: Just 4 and 1 step 6.

DS: Does MTT play not take a lot of focus for you?

Johan Van Til: No, I don’t pay that much attention. I do when it’s a higher buyin like the 1k or if it gets to the final stages.

DS: When you play an MTT, is the only satisfying outcome a win?

Johan Van Til: Heh, winning is the most fun. But if I made a good play and get knocked out in 188th I’m fine with that too. I’ll just keep going with the other 4-10 running

DS: Is it hard to stay happy when you can go on 100 buy in downswings and ridiculous draughts or do you find ways to stay satisfied?

Johan Van Til: Well, it took some time to get used to the swings. But now I don’t care anymore in MTT’s. Max downswing is about 30-35k and that’s not that much compared to steps or high stakes cash. That’s also a reason why I like MTT’s. I just know I’m winning so there’s no stress at all.

DS: Step tournaments are such a weird format, what are your thoughts on them and any tips and tricks you can give to newbies to them?

Johan Van Til: It’s probably best to stay away from the steps. The rake is ridiculous (I paid over 50k in the last 5 weeks). If you do play them, be sure to understand basic SNG strategy.

DS: In general, do you try and exploit the bubble or just hang tight?

Johan Van Til: No it’s actually better to let the short stacks tangle with each other. It’s all math though. I recommend playing around with Sng Wiz or something similar to solve most situations.

DS: How do you adjust to the tougher fields in events such as the big rebuys?

Johan Van Til: I generally open a little tighter because they’re playing back more. But against solid players it’s possible to play a little more creative and actually make them fold hands.

DS: Do you still feel like there’s a lot for you to learn in MTT poker?

Johan Van Til: About the concepts, not really. But there’s always a lot to improve regarding adapting/reading players.

DS: How do you think your play differs from other top MTT professionals?

Johan Van Til: Hmm, tough question. I don’t know really, most think I’m really loose/aggro/crazy. And I don’t think I get out of line that much. I doubt there’s a lot I do differently. My biggest strength compared to others is my consistency; I can play a lot of volume without tilting/screwing up.

DS: How do you rate yourself among the best MTT players in the world?

Johan Van Til: There are about 20-30 really solid online players, I’m one of them.

DS: How much do the Pocket 5′s leaderboards and other various tournament leaderboards actually mean to you?

Johan Van Til: I don’t care anymore. Maximizing rankings means losing money. And it’s about the $$ after all. Let’s say I want to maximize my p5s ranking. That means I can’t play outside stars/ftp/etc. And that means I miss out on value on the smaller Euro sites.

DS: What are your goals for 2008?

Johan Van Til: Play about 400 MTT’s a month. Other than that, play some fun live tourneys. And get a 6 figure score once.

DS: So what do you think your future with poker is?

Johan Van Til: Hmm I’ll keep playing for the next 6-12 months. After that I might get burned out or just bored with it, I don’t know.

DS: Alright thanks for the interview!

High stakes cash game player Vaga_Lion took home the gold in the Poker Stars Sunday Million for a cool $216,576. He beat out a tough final table including 6th place finisher and top 100 tournmanet player johne147, who won $33,800 for his efforts. JSD1000 took down the Sunday Second Chance for $50,404, and piahott won the Sunday Warm-Up for $115,433. Unknown player named texpert took down the Sunday winner-take-all-freezeout for the standard $100,000.

Meanwhile on Full Tilt, Lee “acumen53” Childs, whose name you may recognize from the 2007 WSOP Main Event final table, received 1st place in the Full Tilt 750k guaranteed for $132,788. Chump change compared to the near million dollars he won in 2007, but a solid score nonetheless. On Party Poker, TheSpider took down the 300k guaranteed for $64,779.  On UltimateBet, rockets_Ifold swept through a super tough final table for a $45,000 top prize. High stakes cash game player tcblade got third for $18,000, and team wafflecrush member THAY3R received 9th for $2,000. Finally, on Bodog’s 100k guaranteed dippydough took the $25,000 score.

Congratulations to all the winners this week!

In an article from a few months ago, I explained the real differences between draws and made hands. In summary, draws and made hands weren’t simply names for hands, but actually each of them have certain equity qualities versus different ranges. Made hands were then renamed as a hand that had variable equity across ranges and stable equity through streets. Draws were the opposite. They had stable equity across ranges, and variable equity through streets. Last time I didn’t tell you a lot about what this all meant, I let you do the thinking. But now, I’d like to tell you what these definitions mean for our poker game. And I’d like to explain the application in terms of some of the most difficult hands we play: weak made hands and draws.

When it comes down to it, poker is all about getting our money in with better equity than our opponents. Yet, you can play hands in such a way that will have better equity than others. That’s because as we change the way we play a hand or a hand range, our opponents calling, betting, folding, or whatever-ing range changes.

But in what ranges do we want to play against, and what ranges do we not want to play against? When examining this situations, what I like to do is compare the equity of a single hand that is representative of a range versus another hand that is representative of another range. For example, on a K74 flop, a hand like 87 can represent mid and bottom pair type hands, and AA can represent nut hands (a little better than top pair, a little worse than a set). So when exploring these concepts on your own, try it out.

Sorry to shuffle around, lets get down to it! Lets start with draws, and a draw representative of pretty much all draws, a flush draw. So first off, lets examine the hands that will have the best equity against a flush draw. The worst equity a flush draw has is clearly against a better flush draw, around 15% on the flop, as we can still pair up and win. Next would be nut hands, followed by mid pair type hands, etc. However, the differences in equity between nut hands and weaker made hands is not very high as you may recall from my previous article.

So what does this tell us about how we should play our draws? As I said earlier, poker is all about getting our money in with better equity than our opponents, which means the converse is also true, as we want to get as little money in when we are behind our opponents. So first off, we want to get in as little money as possible versus higher flush draws when we have a weak one, in other words, we want to keep the pot small and keep our opponent passive with his flush draws, and only with his flush draws if we can. Oddly enough, when we have nut flush draws we want to do the opposite, because our equity advantage is so good. We want to make the pot as big as possible and force our opponent to be aggressive with a worse flush draw.

Doing this sounds hard, but it’s really not as bad as it looks. Here’s a hypothetical example to help you out. We have 53hh on the CO in a. 5/1 6 max game, we raise preflop to 4, and get threebet by an aggressive player to 13. We elect to call. Just ignore whether our decision was good or not. The flop comes Qs7h2h, and our opponent bets 16 into the $26 pot. Now I know this is hypothetical, but lets say we know if we raise that our opponent will shove over us with any nut hand, including any top pair, and a flush draw. And let’s say we know that if we call the flop, he will always bet the turn with his flush draws, but never check them, while its unclear how he will play his made hands.. This is a situation where we may want to just flat the flop, and go for a turn bet if he checks. That way, we play our hand against a range where we have good equity, and put less money in the pot versus hands (bigger flush draws) we have bad equity against.

Now made hands are a lot different. Strong made hands or nut hands are easy to play, and don’t take much logic to figure out how to play. We just try to get our opponent to call or raise with the widest range possible. With weaker made hands, its not that easy. (Note: Since bottom pair and hands that are really weak will almost never get value, they are essentially draws with show down value)

With made hands, are equity changes a lot versus different ranges. Versus better made hands, we our crushed. And versus weaker made hands, we are the ones crushing. So our goal with made hands is to try to get in the most money versus the weaker made hands, and less money against the better made hands. This sounds really simple, but there are some interesting applications to it.

Common situation. A regular opponent raises preflop to 4 in that same .5/1 6 max game, and we call his CO raise from the blinds with 88. The flop comes T74 rainbow, and we check, our opponent bets 6 into the $8 pot. Using the weak made hand concept from before, it would make absolutely no sense to raise here. We blow out all weaker made hands, and we put ourselves against a range of better made hands. Calling, however, makes perfect sense. The times our opponent checks behind the turn, we can bet the river and expect value against a lot of worse made hands, and also expect him not to show up with a lot of better made hands. The same thing applies to T8s here, or any made hand that isn’t going to play well against our opponents stack off range. With weaker made hands, we almost never want to put our entire stack in unless we are forced to by an opponents bet or raise, and when want to try not to allow our opponent to do that anyway.

But conversely to made hands, with draws we actually want to get our money in versus really strong hands. We don’t want to play them against a wide or weak range, as it has just as much value versus that range as it does against a range of purely nut hands. That’s why draws are such good balancers to our nut hands. Their entire value is pretty much giving us more action on our nut hands, because what range they are facing makes so little difference.

So when your examining how you want to play a certain bet, examine what ranges you will be up against with many different lines you could take, and you will find your game improving ten fold!

DS: So tell me a little bit about yourself.

Phil D’Auteuil: Phil is the most successful name in poker though except Phil Gordon. Started playing when he was 16, in low limits live games with Dr. Giggy. Obviously raped him, but he’s still good. I started playing NL200 on STARS when I was 18. I play mostly 25/50 HU now. I can’t play more than 6 tables HU. With some 9 max and 6 max tables mostly, so 6-12 tables most of the time.

DS: When exactly did you drop out of college and why?

Phil D’Auteuil: You want to know the real story? I was a great poker player with such a great future. I went to a place near Quebec for my friends basketball tournament one day. We went out the day before. And by 4 in the morning we were drunk when, responsibly, I decided to not drive my car. So my drunk friend decided to drive it. All I remember is that 2 minutes later cops were runnin’ after us and we took some shortcuts to get rid of them when my friend drove on the rail track and busted my motor. Anyways, so my car was busted and I was too lazy to get too school by taxi or bus so I stopped going. I was giving Giggy (Martin) a lift everyday, so he had to drop out too, he was too lazy as well.

DS: Lol, awesome.

DS: So you play mostly 25/50 HU, but since there are no 25/50 HU tables on Stars, when people join and it becomes 3-4 handed do you leave?

Phil D’Auteuil: Nah, I don’t leave. We ask them to leave most of the time. And if they don’t, I take their money. But people respect the HU games most of the time.

DS: You have probably made more than anyone online at 25/50 the past 3 months, yet you’re not getting much respect. What do you say to all the haters?

Phil D’Auteuil: I think they are alllllll right. I suck at this game and always been lucky, I guess my heater will end up soon and I’ll loose all my money back to them. I hope I’ll have fun till then. (Sarcasm)

DS: What has your biggest downswing been in your career and how do you handle losing that much money?

Phil D’Auteuil: Hmm when I moved up from NL400 to NL600. I lost like my 40K roll, I was tilting like crazy but at least I was still at school. I think it’s pretty much my biggest downswing.

DS: Wow, that’s pretty amazing, not even 9 buy ins at 25/50?

Phil D’Auteuil: I lost 90K twenty days ago at NL10000. But I was up like 500K for the february month so wasn’t that bad, that was lost was in one night though. Pretty much, it wasn’t a big deal

DS: How has it felt to have won over 700k in the past 3 months, and how have your family and friends responded?

Phil D’Auteuil: Hmm they mostly don’t know yet. Dad’s really proud. Mom thinks I still should go back to school. Classic! She thinks I still can loose everything. Maybe the fact I think I’m only on a 2 years heater doesn’t help her to believe in me. “I’d rather be luck than good.” – Barry Negreneau.

DS: Okay, on a serious note, do you really think the last two years have been a huge heater, or do you feel like your one of the better HU players at 25/50?

Phil D’Auteuil: Heaaaterrrr. Until 1000 NL, it wasn’t a heater, I was good enough. But I’m on a 6 month heater now. I owned the 2knl tables for 6BB/100 and now I’m raping HU at 25/50 easily.

DS: How hardcore is your HU game selection, and what game selection strategies do you use?

Phil D’Auteuil: I play everyone till I realize that they are OVERPLAYING (NOTE: by overplaying he means outplaying) me. Till now, I’ve decided that I won’t play some guys that are overplaying me. Like Pr1nnyraid (aka KRANTZ, one of the best NL Hold‘em players in the world), he’s crazy. Wont play durrrr because I have a doubt on his sexual orientation, and some others, I don’t remember.

DS: What sort of investments have you/do you plan making with your spare bankroll?

Phil D’Auteuil: “You can’t lose what you don’t invest.” Jamie Gold. Hmmm, maybe later on. When ill have a huge bankroll (still in the perspective that I don’t run out of luck) I’ll probably invest in the pumpkins or another promising product like pumpkins.

DS: What are some of the major elements of an opponents game you look to adjust to when playing HU?

Phil D’Auteuil: Hmmm don’t know, I only try to play with the good flow of the game, and of course get as lucky as possible. I tend to fourbet bluff people who threebet too much and don’t fivebet bluff ever.

DS: An unknown sits with you HU with 100bb’s, what’s your initial strategy?

Phil D’Auteuil: Stack him. Whatever it takes. I play my standard game and adjust later when I have more information. Not tight or loose, with a lot of fourbet bluffing, the best bluff in Hold’em in my opinion.

DS: How do you adjust your game to three to four handed games when your HU game starts building up?

Phil D’Auteuil: Ahhh I don’t adjust enough. That’s why I’m down at 3 handed in the past month. I really need to adjust my luck to a three player Hold’em hand. I’m playing loose and aggressive and fourbetting a lot.

DS: Planning on taking a shot at the nosebleed games anytime soon?

Phil D’Auteuil: I’ve played a lot of 100/200 recently. Against donks. Like Annie Duke (Pokerkid on Poker Stars) for instance. But I won’t play those limits till my roll grows more.

DS: Wait do you mean KidPoker? That’s Daniel Negreneau?

Phil D’Auteuil: Nah I’m pretty sure it’s Annie Duke.

DS: How would you say your poker game differs from the regulars at 25/50?

Phil D’Auteuil: I’d say I’m more loose aggressive than most, more fourbet bluffs and more moves.

DS: Okay, so now we’re going to move to the lightning round. Pretty much I’m going to ask you a bunch of pointless questions and just answer them as quick as possible.

Phil D’Auteuil: Hehe good.

DS: Favorite beer?

Phil D’Auteuil: Ricard’s White.

DS: Favorite Book?

Phil D’Auteuil: Rounders

DS: That’s a book?

Phil D’Auteuil: No, but I’ve downloaded the lyrics. Oh, and Guinness World Records 2002, too.

DS: Favorite cash game player besides yourself?

Phil D’Auteuil: Gotta go with ADZ, he’s given me so much money.

DS: Favorite Movie?

Phil D’Auteuil: Rounders, watching it with my lyrics, almost every Saturday.

DS: Favorite classic video game?

Phil D’Auteuil: Mario Bros 3

DS: Favorite poker Hand?

Phil D’Auteuil: Jh9c or Jh9s, because they are great hands for fourbet bluffing.

DS: Favorite possession?

Phil D’Auteuil: Surely not my pants, they itch like crazy. Hmm 50K of aejones money, Giggy’s soul, Rounders original movie VHS copy.

DS: Favorite song to grind to?

Phil D’Auteuil: Hmmm there’s a lot but I got to go with Rounder’s Soundtrack.

DS: Alright, last question,  what do you see as your future with poker and life?

Phil D’Auteuil: I see myself playing live in an underground club most of my bankroll against a Russian who especially enjoys eating cookies. Unfortunately, I see myself getting overplayed with A9 against AA on a A9945 board and loosing most of my roll. By then, I see myself grinding back and loosing my girlfriend who doesn’t like gambling at all. Then my friend is gonna get out of jail and is gonna put me into a lot of trouble by owing money to bad people. But since he is my friend, I’m gonna help him out. And then I’m gonna use my roll to play one more time against that old Russian.  I think I might be able to pick up tells on him by the way he eat his cookies. If so… I’m gonna be able to stack him, not once but twice! And then he’s gonna challenge me for more. and I’m gonna be able to have more money… Then I’m planning to go to Vegas in order to get my chance to win the bracelet of the WORLD SERIES OF POKER Hold’em. And also, if I’ve got enough time, I’d really like to 4-bet bluff the world champion:  Johnny Chance (Chan). And if unavailable, let’s say Joe Hachem.

DS: Alright, thanks a lot!

On Full Tilt, clotilda took down the 750k guaranteed for a solid $135,195. In the Party Poker 300k guaranteed, ZiZaZeppo smoked the field and won around $70,000. On UltimateBet, huodini refused to vanish from the final table of the 200k guaranteed, winning $45,000 for first. Finally, in Bodog’s 100k guaranteed, WiCane pulled out the victory for $25,000.

Congratulations to all the winners this week!

                The funny thing about decisions is a lot of time our mistake isn’t whether we should called or folded on the river, but instead how we should’ve played preflop, or even the flop.

                Every decision you make in poker should be influenced by how the decision will affect later street play. For example, if we raise AA preflop, and AA only, our later street ranges are going to be very, very tight. If we raise 12% of our hands, we will have looser ranges on at least the flop, and likely the turn and river as well. And if we raise 25% of our hands, our ranges on later streets will likely be even weaker. Same goes for cold calling, threebetting %, and limping. However tight or loose we make a decision preflop will greatly affect our play postflop. Versus players who are tight postflop, having super wide ranges are okay, as we can bluff a lot and pick up some solid money when they fold. When players are loose postflop however, we may want to have tighter ranges postflop.

                Let’s say we’re on the BU in a .5/1 Full Ring game (Hey! I’m using full ring guys!), the blinds are both 25/2’s, loose and passive preflop, but we feel they are too tight postflop. This is a spot where we should be raising a large frequency on the button, maybe as much as 40% of our hands. We can take the EV from stealing their blinds and also can afford to have wide ranges postflop. Digressing a bit, you may even want to raise 4.5x-5.5x the BB here, no matter what your standard raise size is (Although it doesn’t really have to do with this article, this is worth thinking about).

                Now to another common example. We’re in a 1 / 2 6 max game and decide to raise 97s MP. The annoying 65/25 maniac behind us calls in position. The villain seems to be running so hot, as he is always betting and never folding. You know the player, and god is he annoying. The flop comes JJ2, and we cbet our standard 12 into a 16 pot. He calls. Turn is a 2, so we of course decide to give up, we check and he bets and we muck. “If only we could hit a hand.” We tell ourselves.

                The truth is, we played this hand fine postflop. The issue with the hand was with preflop. What the hell are we doing raising 97s in middle position with a complete maniac behind us? We are going to get called by the maniac most of the time, and most of the time we are going to miss and have to give up, or even hit one pair and be put in a tough spot. As you may have remember from my previous article “There is no such thing as a made hand,” any draws we may flop are pretty worthless versus a wide range. Versus this type of player, we only want to raise hands like 22+, and pretty much any broadway cards. Top pair is so valuable versus this player when any broadway card pairs we essentially have the nuts, as we our never folding. With this range adjustment preflop, our maniac opponent changes from the type of player who annoys us to some fish whose stack is as good as ours!

                We can make the same type of adjustments on the flop. If we cbet less, our turn and river ranges when we cbet become tighter. The more we fold on the flop, the less bad hands we have on our turn and river range. The more we raise preflop, the more air we will have in our range postflop. Every decision we make has side effects on later streets, so make sure to watch what your doing!

Hand for analysis:

This week in a thread I made in the short handed forum about bluffing, Galapogos posted a hand I thought we could all learn from:

http://www.flopturnriver.com/phpBB2/forum/ask-isf-about-a-bluff-or-bluffing-t68810.html#661994

A pretty common spot: A donk player leads into us, on an uncoordinated board, and we feel like he has a weak range. He’d probably c/r two pair or a set, and much of the time this is mid or bottom pair, or a weak top pair, sometimes its air trying to take away a flop that was unlikely to hit us. So should we raise Jd7d here?

Well, the question should actually be, what range should we raise here? It goes back to the question of forming ranges. Jd7d has no back door flush draw, and likely only has one good overcard, and sometimes he’s drawing close to dead. So, the only reason we’d raise Jd7d here is if we thought that we should be raising close to 100% of our hands here, as Jd7d is one of the worst hands on this board for us to have. What we want to find is our best few hands after our easy made hands to raise (top pairs or better), and raise those as well. So 76, 64,96,97,74,AK/AQ with backdoor flush draws are all solid candidates. We could raise our midpairs, but we’re going to want to face a weaker range, one that wont call a flop raise, with those hands. So the answer is we don’t raise Jd7d, unless we felt like when this player lead, he was folding an enormous amount of the time, which is never the case on this board.

In fact, I don’t expect our opponent to fold very much on this board, but this is very much an ISF theorem spot. I expect his leading range consists of hands that he does not want to stack off with, so we should double or triple barrel nearly the entire time we raise the flop. We should find a lot of folds on the turn or river.

As played, regarding the river bet, I don’t think our opponent will call without an ace or better, so this bluff is marginal, but fine.

That’s it for this week.

DS: So tell me your poker story.

Jonathan McGowan: I started playing poker with friends in high school, little $10 home games, where we’d play 10 cent 20 cent blinds. I got instantly hooked, since I love these mind games and I was a huge Starcraft player before. In 2004 I began online poker on a small website called Bugsy’s Club. They held $50 prize pool freeroll tourneys every hour and so I started out playing those to try and build a bankroll.

Jonathan McGowan: From there I cashed in a few of those freerolls and had a couple dollers online so I grinded $1 and $2 sit n gos and 5c/10c cash games to start. Got a decent size bankroll by mid-2005 and started moving up, and put money onto other websites. Most of it went onto Party Poker before it closed.

DS: Wow, pretty sick.

Jonathan McGowan: Yea, I’ve never deposited a cent into online poker. 1000000% ROI for the win! When party poker shut down I was playing NL100, and decided to move over to PokerStars where I continued to play NL100 for a solid 7-8 months. then moved up to NL200 at the middle of 2006, then moved up to NL400 beginging of 2007, but had to move back down by the summer since I cashed out a lot for WSOP + downswing. Got back up to NL400 in september, and now I’m still grinding NL400 & NL600 with a few shots at NL1000. Mainly I play on Pokerstars, but I have bankrolls on FTP, UB, and AP as well.

DS: Would you say your improvement in poker was gradual or did it come in spurts?

Jonathan McGowan: Very gradual. A big part of it probably has to do with the fact that I don’t do well playing after 2 hours straight online, so I’m not really able to play marathon sessions. I don’t really have much freetime to begin with to do marathon sessions thou so I guess that doesn’t matter much. And I’m a nit with bankroll management, like super nit.

DS: So does poker to you feel like an obsession or just a hobby?

Jonathan McGowan: It started as a hobby, but is becoming more of an obsession.

DS: Did your slow and gradual improvement at poker frustrate you at all?

Jonathan McGowan: Yeah, it became very frustrating at times. It amazes me at how many people are actually capable of playing this game for such a long period of time. When you are running bad, it’s very hard to keep an objective mind set about things. I guess same can be said when you’re running like god too.

DS: How confident are you about your poker game now as compared to a year ago?

Jonathan McGowan: I was like in 4th grade last year, and compared to that I feel like a college grad, when realistically I’m probably just entering college.

DS: What changed?

Jonathan McGowan: I met Lyric (High stakes cash game regular). Watching him play made me realize a lot about what I was doing wrong compared to what he was doing. Plus he was nice enough to introduce me to a bunch of other good players. I guess, a bunch of my friends got a lot better too so we all helped each other get better. I’d tell him about hands, and he’d actually tell me how I my thinking was off. That helped a lot. But I mostly learned from what I saw him do and talking to other players online.

DS: You do some coaching with low stakes players. What do you find is a common leak among them and what is some advice that seems to apply to everyone you coach?

Jonathan McGowan: Well I offered coaching services a while ago, and then I realized ‘omg i’m too fuckin lazy to do these lessons’ plus at that time I was making more than what I was asking for the lessons so I decided not to do them anymore. But obviously the biggest leak I find with low stakes players is there misunderstanding of position. When you hear “position is important” most people are like “oh yeah I know that” but I don’t think they really understand how important it really is. When you hear “position is important” most people are like “oh yeah I know that” but I don’t think they really understand how important it really is.

DS: Why is position important?

Jonathan McGowan: Because if you’re playing correctly and are good at reading hands, you can often get yourself in a spot where your opponent is forced to play their hand face-up, and that’s where the real fun begins… where you can feel out whether or not you need to get away from a big hand or turn a marginal hand into a bluff or just make a complete bluff or how to make funky bet sizes to value town the shit out of your opponent. There is all sorts of fun you can do in position. And when the stacks get deeper, it becomes easier and easier to totally pwn people in position.

DS: You recently won an event at the Wynn Classic for about $100,000 (Although you were staked, sad face). Tell us the story about that tournament.

Jonathan McGowan: I’ve told the story a bunch. I basically ran like god. At the table there were 174 players in the tournament, of which, MAYBE there were 15 good players and 15 others somewhat competent players and everyone else were complete morons like the kind you would find playing $4 180man sit n go’s on Poker Stars. Once I sucked out to get a huge chip lead, it was all over because there was 1 good player at my final table and he was too crippled to do anything, and the other competent player to my left who was playing totally fine all day 1 decides to blow-up and overjam AQo with no fold equity versus some donk. So after they were gone, it was like… ez ship. Got half of first for $48,500.

DS: What advice would you give to people who are playing big buy in live tournaments for the first time?

Jonathan McGowan: Have a lot of patience. Buy an ipod, make a playlist of 150+ of your favorite tracks, keep your headphones on and get in the zone. Ignore the donk who’s trying to tell you about his horrible bad beat 4 days ago when he ran AA into KK and the guy spiked his K, or the old guy who gets angry at your and takes it personally when you steal his big blind every orbit. Just use your head, because not many people do, and it’s will give you a HUGE edge to just think when you play a hand.

DS: Regarding your poker game, how would you say your playing style differs from your opponents online, and what gives you trouble?

Jonathan McGowan: Obviously the hardest opponents to play against online are the ones that are relentlessly aggressive. Probably the type of player I have the most trouble against are the ones that I try to abuse, and continue not to adjust. Because for some reason, I always want to think that they are going to be playing back at me because I’ve been so aggressive to them when in reality they are stupid nut peddling nits who aren’t adjusting, so I end up paying off those kind of players too much. Although I’m definitely working on this part of my game. I just tend to think that everyone has a breaking point, but have difficulty gauging where that breaking point is vs some people.

DS: You play a good mix of live and online. What are the main differences between the two and how do you change your strategy based on that?

Jonathan McGowan: Everyone sucks live. Even some good online players suck playing live. It’s really weird. The biggest difference is that the preflop action is far more passive live than it is online. Almost no one 4 bet bluffs, and only the good regulars are the ones 3 betting at all. Everyone else just wants to see a flop and go from there. Also, almost all the live games are 9 handed, so adjusting from 6-max is somewhat difficult but I’m sure not nearly as tough as a full ring player going to 6 max. With that said, I’m a lot more patient when playing live, mainly because not many people have that kind of self control.

DS: Are you happy about what you’ve achieved so far in your poker career?

Jonathan McGowan: Yeah, although I regret not being more serious about it earlier when the games were easy and we could all play on party poker and hold 15+ptbb/100 winrates while 10 tabling. I’m content right now.

DS: So you’re thinking of dropping out of school and playing poker for awhile?

Jonathan McGowan: Yeah, the big issue with me and school right now is that I am a Communication major w/ emphasis on journalism. A starting job coming out of SDSU as a journalist is $30k/yr. I more than doubled that last year, and have already doubled that this year and it’s only March. If I can’t get my major changed to something else I might just take another break off of school. I’ve also never been much of a “stellar” student anyways, basically did enough studying to get by. School isn’t really my thing.

DS: So if you do drop out, what’s your outlook as a poker professional?

Jonathan McGowan: Well it’s comforting to know that I am not a total degenerate like some of my friends. I’m pretty much the last person I expect to go busto out of everyone around me. As for yearly earnings or expectations, I don’t really like to set goals, although I am very confident I can make more than 30k/yr so fuck my journalism career. I just have to make sure I stay motivated and log in enough hours every month. I think in the future I’m going to be concentrating a lot more on playing live because that really is where all the dead money seems to be. I’m going to Bellagio Cup in April and WSOP in the summer, and plan to make trips to these big events more frequently.

DS: Alright, well I’m sure everyone at FTR wishes you luck in the future, thanks for the interview!

Jonathan McGowan: No problem.

Full Tilt reverted back to its 750k guarantee this week. It was won by CapTinBisKuiT for $133,991.  JonnyGstaks, who has been performing well in the Bodog 100k guaranteed, added to his resume with a 2nd place, $37,000 score in the UltimateBet 200k guaranteed. Kush99 pulled out the victory there. The Party Poker 300k guaranteed was won by allanforsyth, and finally MONSTER_DONG won the Bodog 100k guaranteed for $25,000 (The tournament had its biggest overlay yet, a whopping $39,700!)

Congratulations to all the winners this week!

Position, Position, Position.

The proof is in the pudding. Our statistics show that we win much more money on the button than we do UTG. But the advice to play in position is not very powerful when we have no idea why. That’s why, in this weeks article, I’m going to explain why we pound position and how we can apply it to our games.

The main reason is the fundamental difference between being out of position and in position. When we are in position we actually get one more street of information than when we are out of position. Let’s examine a common scenario, where one player, player A, raises in position and gets a caller in the blinds from another player, player B. Player B is ostensibly first to act on the flop. Player B can only act the information from the previous street (what our opponent did preflop and what we did preflop). However, look at what information player A has. He can act on not only what him and his opponent did preflop, but also their flop action. Now look at what information B’s first action has on the turn. He can only act on the exact same information player A had on the flop! Player A actually has a full betting round of information more than our opponent. Considering there are only 4 betting rounds in poker, that information is huge.

Another reason is pot control… Let’s we raise preflop in position and and get called from the blinds. The flop comes 952, two spades. Because some opponents will c/r this flop liberally, we choose to check behind a hand like Ace high, or K2s, maybe even 65. Now even if our opponent chooses to make a pot sized bet on the turn and river versus our extremely weak range, he can only get about 1/3rd of our stack in the pot. If he wants to get our whole stack in the pot, he’d have to overbet the flop, a move that we could easily exploit by checking behind a set or a nut hand on occasion. Out of position we have little control of the pot size, often when we want to keep the pot small with a weak hand, the only way we can do it is to check, which is often a mistake with our midpair and weak top pair hands.

One other reason is the amount of players left to act preflop. Sit and go player know this one well. Let’s say in a six max game we are dealt in UTG. We have 5 people to act behind us, each who have a 2-3% of having a super good hand. All together that adds up to around a 12% chance we are going to be facing a nut hand. Because of this, we are going to face ranges stronger than ours and will likely have to fold the hands we raise to a threebet (unless it’s a good hand!).

Because of all these factors, we can play a weaker range (aka call more hands, raise more hands, bet more hands postflop) than our opponents stronger range. Takes this scenario for instance: We raise on the button 100bb deep with 76s, and our opponent threebets us from the blinds with KTo. KTo has about 55% equity against 76s; in other words it’s a better hand. Assuming both opponents are of the exact same skill, which opponent is better off. That is to say, which opponent will win more in the long run? It’s likely the player with 76s, because of the advantages of position. This is the same concept as if we have a range in position that has 45% equity against a range out of position with 55% equity. Assuming similar skill levels, in all likelihood the player in position is going to win more money in this situation in the long run than our opponent.

That’s why position is so strong.