Welcome to the PokerMix newsletter!
I’ve been busy researching, making more courses, and upgrading the backend of the PokerMix website to be more user friendly. For example, the new course architecture now helps you track your progress and come back to where you last left off.
But I also wanted to write because, well, I love to talk with people about poker strategy! So I’ve made a commitment to write and make other content more in order to start conversations.
Recently I’ve been thinking about a stream I was watching a few weeks ago of the Triton invitational in Monte Carlo. When the tournament wound down to the final two, legendary poker player Patrick Antonius found himself heads up with a relative newcomer, Vladimir Korzinin.
As the heads up match began, commentator Brian Rast noted that it should be an interesting match because one player, Antonius, was heavily incentivized to play small pots. His opponent, as someone with significantly less experience, was incentivized to play an aggressive, high variance strategy.
More experienced players often want to play a small ball strategy where they play lots of pots post-flop. This enables them to be able to take advantage of mistakes their less experienced opponent may make at the various decision points of the hand.
The more decision points, the more opportunities for the opponent to make mistakes.
Less experienced players will often be better off playing a higher variance strategy. For example, when playing out of position heads up, less experienced players may wish to re-jam rather than make small 3-bets or isolation raises that would allow the more experienced player to play post-flop in position.
While shoving all-in for 20 or more big blinds is usually a lower expected value (EV) and higher variance strategy in theory, it may be a higher EV strategy for a less experienced player who is at a significant skill disadvantage. This is because when a solver calculates the EV of a particular strategy, the results include perfect post-flop play to realize the value of the hand. By playing a more heavy rejam strategy and using larger raise sizes, a less experienced player can even out the odds that favor the more skilled opponent.
Korzinin did indeed put this strategy into action, making wild plays and frequently getting all-in pre-flop. It almost worked! And indeed it did a few days later when Korzinin took down a title. But in this event, Antonius found the win.
Most of us will find ourselves in both positions at various times, as we all can’t be the best in the world! Understanding this theory behind our incentives with various strategies can help us adjust our play on those lovely days we find ourselves at the coveted spot of playing heads up for the tournament win.
The more experience we gain, the less we will want to consider employing high variance strategies, but all kinds of interesting situations can arise, and the more adjustments we have in our toolbox, the better we can adapt to any spot.Have you ever employed such a strategy? I’d love to hear about it. Feel free to post on social media or on the PokerMix discord: https://discord.gg/s5fuUbwJq9.
30% off Black Friday Sale!
It’s that time of year, plus I’m releasing a number of new tools and courses this fall. If you’ve been waiting for a sale to sign up for the Bounties Made Easy or 8-Game Bootcamp courses, now’s your chance. Get 30% off all courses until midnight on November 30th with code BlackFriday30.
And speaking of new tools, I’m very proud of the work I’ve done on the new Bounty Buster Calculator. This tool allows you to calculate the value of a bounty in any type of bounty tournament at any stage of the tournament. Click “More Info” below and it will take you to a short video I made that demonstrates what the calculator can do.
Any questions or want to book a coaching session? Contact me here!
