The alpha value is one of the most important numbers in a discussion of poker because it gives you a lot of information with a simple calculation. However, it’s often applied incorrectly because of a lack of understanding of what it can and should be used for. Our goal here is to gain a better [...]

This is the first of a series of poker articles that I’ll be writing each week here at FlopTurnRiver. The objective of this article is to present what I think is an excellent approach to studying poker that will be central to my future articles. The Problems Players Face I’ve worked with a lot of [...]

Today I played 1.57 hours of FR for 1036 hands and -$10. Additionally, I played 1.52 hours of HU for 319 hands and $135.65. Holy crap HU is awesome. I don’t really feel like doing the biggest winners/biggest losers thing anymore. It takes up like 15-20 minutes of my time at night when I’m ready [...]

Today I played 3.02 hours of cash for 1801 hands and $44.75. Additionally, I played a half-dozen or so $5.50 and $11 MTSNGs tonight for a profit of $23. Here are my biggest hands: Biggest Losers: 1. I called a 5-bet shove in LP v BB with AQo, ran into AK, -$50. I think planning [...]

Today I played 2.82 hours for 1678 hands and -$128.15. Besides doing my normal thing of posting my biggest hands, I’m also going to start doing something else by ranking my day on a number of factors from a scale of 1 to 5 where 1 is the worst and 5 is the best. Session [...]

Today I played 2.93 hours for 1756 hands and $38.80. Here are the biggest hands: Biggest Losers: 1. Open KQs in EP, semi-loose crazy in LP guy calls. I c-bet KJ2 two-tone, he raises and I decide it would be a great idea to stack off against 22, -$52. 2. AK loses to AA aipf, [...]

Shunryu Suzuki was a Zen master from Japan who did a lot of work to bring Buddhism to North America. A number of his talks were put into a book named “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind”, which centers around maintaining the idea of shoshin (beginner’s mind). Here is an important quote for those who study and [...]

Today I played 2.80 hours for 1665 hands and $307.70. After running like God in two 300bb pots, I had two major breakthroughs today, which I will get to after I post my biggest hands from the day. Biggest Losers: 1. I call a small 4-bet in the SB oop with AK, flop comes AQ3 [...]

Today I played 2.90 hours for 1628 hands and -$10.85. Here are the biggest hands: Biggest Losers: 1. I open UTG with AsAh, crazy guy calls in LP. Flop comes 5h4h2s and I get it in against 44 and lose, -$54. 2. Three limpers in EP (literally UTG, UTG+1 and UTG+2), I raise in LP [...]

I haven’t played any today, and I don’t plan to. I’ve been doing a lot of stuff that I guess could be considered mental game work, though I don’t necessarily see it like that, maybe I’ll do posts about it later on. I guess I’ll post some stats and graphs and whatnot of this week [...]