Running like Jason Mercier …

Summary

Challenge: +$50.10

Total winnings so far: $179.45

For those of you who are a little lost with my post title, Jason Mercier is a professional poker player who has been tearing up the tournament scene for the last couple of years.

He has cashed more than $1 million in tournament winnings every year since 2008, an enviable feat that has spawned the term “I’m running like Jason Mercier”.

Well, I lack the two World Series of Poker bracelets, the inherent skill and the consistency of Mercier, but for the last month at least I’ve shared some of his luck.

I managed to reach another final table yesterday in 888 Poker’s $800 guaranteed tournament. On the way there I got my money in good about half a dozen times and held up, as well as getting it in bad and sucking out once.

I made it to the final table in third

It’s been a bit of a trend of mine recently to play quite aggressively at the final table and surge into first place, and this was no different. I was sitting in 1st place with 5 people left.

Unfortunately, all of my tournament suckouts came back to haunt me, as my flopped nut flush was mercilessly crushed by a rivered full house.

A few hands later I over-played pocket fours and I was out. In 5th place. Again.

While I missed out on the top prize ($200+), I added another $54.15 to the Challenge account, which is looking pretty healthy after some solid results recently.

In fact, it is doing so well that I’ve pretty much stopped playing freerolls. I played the Bwin $1,000 freeroll on Sunday and it was such a grind. I made it to 150th out of 5,000 entrants and got a $1.20 ticket.

It seems silly to stop playing them (after all, they are free), but I’m finding it difficult to maintain the same concentration and focus I exhibited when I needed to place in them to get the Challenge off the ground.

I’ll probably continue to enter them if I happen to be already playing at the specific time they are on, but otherwise I don’t think I will be going out of my way from now on.

My 888 Poker winnings so far

 

The Highs and Lows of Omaha Hi/Lo

Omaha Hi/Lo is a fun game. Full of swings, high variance and hands that rarely dominate pre-flop, it can be both exhilarating and maddening at the same time.

For those who have never played, the full rules are here, but for the purpose of the blog I will give a brief explanation. Using the same hand rankings as in Texas hold’em, traditional Omaha uses four hole cards instead of two. However, unlike Texas hold’em, where you can use two, one or none of your hole cards to make a five-card hand using the board, in Omaha you must use exactly two of your hole cards and three from the board.

Sound confusing? Well, Omaha Hi/Lo Split adds another dimension by allowing you to create both a high and a low hand. The high hand is the usual flushes, straights and full houses, while the low hand is the worst five cards you can muster (from an eight downwards). Aces count as both high and low cards.

For example, if you are holding A♦ 2♠ 8♥ 8♣ and the final board is 8♠ 3♣ 3♦ 4♣ J♥ your “high” hand is a full house eights full of threes (using the two eights from your hand and the eight and two threes from the board).

However, you also have the best possible low hand, using the eight, four and three from the board and the ace and two from your hand for: 8♠ 4♣ 3♦ 2♠ A♦.

If you hold the high and your opponent holds the low, you split the pot. However, if you can manage to hold the best hand both ways (or if the board doesn’t have three cards 8 or lower) you can win the whole pot.

Since my last decent win I’ve been playing a lot of Omaha to blow off a little steam – with varying levels of success. I’ve been running bad in Omaha for a while now, and it looked like this wasn’t going to change anytime soon, managing to sink around $8 into tournaments.

However, at the last roll of the dice yesterday I managed to reach the final table in a 51-entrant Lucky Dollar Omaha Hi/Lo tournament on Bwin. Not only that, I had a healthy chip lead over everyone else.

With nearly $40K in chips, I was a fairly significant chip leader

Things only seemed to get better for me, as the majority of the table was playing super-tight in order to climb up the money. I raised the pot with a lot of hands, taking down the blinds and the antes without much of a challenge.

This was particularly true when it got down to the last four, where I was max-raising almost every pot. I finally eliminated two players and was heads-up with just under a 3-1 chip lead over my opponent.

I remained chip leader throughout the final table

The prize pool was pretty pathetic. Due to it only having 51 entrants (although it did have rebuys and add-ons), the winner got a measly $42. However, I was far more interested in getting my first multitable victory online since coming back to poker.

What followed can only be described as the most hideous run of bad luck in showdowns I’ve experienced in quite a while. My opponent was folding a lot of his hands preflop, as well as folding to a lot of my raises. Of the 51 hands we played heads-up, I won 32, he won 15 and we split 4.

Unfortunately, he won all four of the hands where we got the money in pre-flop. Including the last hand, where he flopped a boat and rivered quads against my queens and low draw.

Owned

In fact, he pretty much flopped me dead on the high because he was holding one of my queens, meaning I needed the case queen to win the high. I could have still hit any ace, two, four or eight for the low, but it was not to be and I busted out in second.

On the positive side, I did net $28.80 (minus some buy-ins for earlier tournaments) for the Challenge, and I was very pleased with my play, particularly at the final table. It was also nice to eek out a decent placement at Omaha, which is usually my strongest game, but in which I had been suffering a big downswing.

Summary

Challenge: +$20.65

Total winnings so far: $129.35

 

First milestone reached!

Summary

Challenge: +$49.90

Total winnings so far: $108.70

I played in two tournaments yesterday and managed to place in both of them, with one of them a 4th place finish in 888 Poker’s $600 Guaranteed tournament for $50.40.

I played pretty tight ABC poker to be honest. It is difficult to use a full repertoire of strategies at 888 Poker due to the poor quality of the players and the fast-moving blind levels.

This final table was pretty even in terms of stacks. I started middle of the pack, blazed ahead into 1st all the way to the last four, but then busted out in two consecutive hands – one was a coinflip that I lost on the river, and the second I pushed on the button with pocket eights and the small blind woke up with tens. Total cooler based on my stack and the blinds.

However, despite falling short on a victory again, this means I’ve met one of the targets that I set myself for the end of September a month early. I’m also kicking Chris Ferguson’s arse by reaching $100 around 4 months earlier than him!

As such, I’ll set myself a new target of reaching $300 by the end of next month, as well as winning at least one tournament. This is a significantly tougher target, particularly with work and uni commitments next month, but I’m confident I can achieve it.

Until I hit a downswing that is ….

A graph of my 888 Poker winnings

 

Near miss on big Challenge score

Summary

Challenge: +$5.91

Total winnings so far: $58.01

Yesterday was a frustrating day.

After busting out of a few tournaments in quick succession, including extending a huge downswing in my Omaha results, I found myself extremely deep in 888 Poker’s $800 Guaranteed tournament.

With 19 players left out of 664 entrants, I was sitting solidly in second place with around 30BB. Just as I was feasting my eyes on the plump, juicy $220 top prize I played a hand like a total fool and lost about 66% of my stack. (I may revisit this hand in a later post, as it was truly terrible).

“Not to worry,” I told myself. “You’ve been getting some monsters today, you’re still in with a good chance and you have 10BB.”

And I was right. Barely an orbit went past before I looked down and saw:

 

 

 

Two queens. Sexy. I had a stack of just over 40,000 and with blinds at 2,000/4,000 and antes of 400, I would pick up 9,000 chips even if everyone folded. An increase of 25%.

Before I’d had a chance to consider how to play them, there was some mega action at the table. The chip leader popped it up to 8,600 and then the player after him pushed for 36,000. Perfect!

I pushed, the original raiser folded and I was heads up with a 90K pot in the middle. My opponent had:

  

 

 

This is a dream situation. I’m over an 80% favourite to win and he’s drawing to two outs. Of course, I wouldn’t be here bitching and whining if things had panned out like they should! The board reeled off:

  

 

 

His one card flush meant I had gone from being an 80% favourite to drawing dead on the turn. Standard. Exit stage left.

My 17th placement netted me $9.96, which minus the other tournaments I played for the Challenge that day resulted in a net profit of $5.91. Time to break out the party hats ….

It does mean I’m at my highest Challenge amount since I started though and I’m getting closer and closer to a big win.

I am in a bit of an interesting position now, as my bankroll for the Challenge is pretty much the same as my separate bankroll for casual play. This makes the latter rather redundant, so for now I’m going to concentrate purely on the Challenge.

 

Summary: The first two months

It’s been approximately two months since I started the Challenge and after having a week of no poker due to spending the week in Lincoln for a wedding, I decided now might be a good time to do a summary of my overall progress.

(Also, my Poker Tracker runs out in a couple of days, so I’m trying to get as much use out of it as I can, although I’m pretty sure I will end up buying the software as it is invaluable for improving your play).

The Challenge

Total profit so far: $52.10

Since my last post I’ve actually played very little for the Challenge. I’ve been playing in $1.20 tournaments at Bwin and apart from a few small cashes I’ve not achieved much progress, resulting in a loss of around $5.

Annoyingly, due to my wedding commitment I also didn’t get the chance to participate in the World Poker Tour Freeroll Qualifier which I had landed a ticket for. The top prize was an all-expenses paid trip to a WPT event in France – a package worth around €15,000 in all.

While it is supremely unlikely that I would have won, it is still irksome that I could have potentially cleared the Challenge, won entry into a huge live event and potentially won a WPT title to boot! Admittedly, this is pretty far-fetched but stranger things have happened.

Overall, just over $50 isn’t bad for the first couple of months, although I’m keen to increase the number of tournaments I’m entering, as well as securing a far more lucrative first-place finish. I may have to consider attempting cash tables as a more flexible alternative to multitable tournaments, as I’ll be pretty busy again next month.

Non-Challenge poker

Total profit so far: $74.96

To keep myself sane during the early days of the Challenge, I decided to dedicate some funds to a separate bankroll for recreational play. Originally, I intended to deposit between $50-100, but instead I used $8 I got free from 888 Poker when I signed up to start me off and I’ve not actually had to dip my hand in my pocket since!

I’m way more liberal with this fund, entering tournaments that are way too expensive to be considered sound bankroll management, as well as playing a variety of different games to keep my brain occupied while trudging my way through the day’s itinerary of freerolls.

I’ve not been keeping a proper running count of this particular bankroll and have arrived at the winnings total by simply taking my overall tournament profits from Poker Tracker ($127.06) and taking away the Challenge money. I think it might be slightly lower than my true total (for some reason, Poker Tracker doesn’t track winnings at Bwin, you have to manually enter them yourself, which I haven’t been doing for piddly placements).

Anyway, here is a graph of my total online winnings exported from Poker Tracker

This is my online profit over the last two months

Live poker

Total profit so far: £151 ($250)

I’ve only played live once over the last two months, so this section is pretty short, although it is by far my most profitable one.

I’m not really setting a bankroll for live poker, as I’ll just use money I would usually be spending on beer. Although keeping tabs on my winnings/losses should be pretty easy due to the lack of frequency in live tournaments.

Despite this, I am keen to play in more casinos, primarily because my style has always favoured a reads-based approach and I had a number of leaks in my play that need to be plugged as much as possible.

I’m setting my sights on entering the Genting Poker Players’ Championship next month, with the onus being on me qualifying online through a satellite in order to gain the extra 2,000 starting chips – not to mention bypassing the rather steep £165 buy-in.

Overall profit across all poker: $377.06

Looking at my profit over the last couple of months, I can’t be anything but pleased. Especially as I’ve not deposited a single penny to achieve it (apart from $10 to clear bonuses in my Bwin account).

August has also been a particularly busy month, as I’ve had lots of external commitments with work, travelling, weddings and applying for my Masters course in journalism, which has prevented me from putting in any solid sessions.

However, by the end of September I want to have achieved these targets

• The Challenge: Stabilise at $100 (around 3 months quicker than Ferguson)
• Non-Challenge: Win at least one tournament
• Live poker: Play in the Genting Poker Players’ Championship (buying straight into the tournament is going to be tough for me, so qualifying may be my only chance)

I’m confident completing the Challenge is possible, I’m just concerned about how long it may take … particularly in light of me starting a Masters in September, meaning I will be back to doing almost a 9-5 day during the week, peppered with freelance work to keep me in booze and skittles.

My original timeframe was to have it completed within a year, so July 1st 2012 is my tentative target. Ten months to turn $50 into $10,000? Piece of cake…..

Adios for now

 

Alcohol and poker: The good, the bad and the ugly

I’ve been known to enjoy a drink every now and again. Mostly though, I like to have more than one drink, several, in fact. A dozen ideally.

However, apart from a few beers while enjoying the company of friends during a home game, I rarely mixed alcohol and poker – until Monday. I had been reduced to around 7BB after a terrible bluff on my part and I decided to buy a beer that I could savour while I waited for my inevitable knockout. It was my second beer of the tournament, as I’d bought one before the tournament started, but it was my first in a couple of hours.

I doubled up, continued to drink, and the rest is history. By the end of the night I’d probably had about 6 pints and I was pretty sozzled. So did alcohol help me to victory? If you ask most professional poker players, they would say booze is a definite no-no, and will eventually be a serious detriment to your expected value.

But is this true of everyone? Scotty Nguyen and Men ‘The Master’ Nguyen are just two players who are renowned for drinking while they play poker. The latter was famously paid $500 per hour by Johnny Chan not to drink when they were playing heads up – The Master agreed and then lost consistently for an hour until he backed out of the deal. Layne Flack is another player known for becoming more dangerous after sinking a few beers.

Scotty regularly drinks alcohol at the poker table

And is it really that surprising? What happens when we drink? We become more confident, more aggressive and less predictable. All qualities that make a good poker player.

While I won’t go as far as to say it allowed me to win my tournament, I could definitely sense an improvement in my play. I was making more moves, I was less afraid of being eliminated and, crucially, I was having more fun. Engaging the locals in a bit of banter gave me a little bit more information on the kinds of hands they had, something I doubt I would have done stone-cold sober.

But, and there is always a but, it is important to realise your limit. Once I’d had about 5 beers, I was on a slippery slope. Not least because I had broken the seal and was nipping to the toilet every half an hour. This may not seem too bad, but I missed at least half a dozen hands, including an absolute monster I would have flopped on my big blind had I been at the table (the dealer was nice enough to rub my nose in it by showing me my hand when I came back).

Also, I was probably lucky to win when I did, because any more drinks and I definitely would have suffered a loss of judgement. I was already becoming over-aggressive and risked busting out on a silly bluff.

Ultimately, I don’t think you can make a blanket statement of whether drinking while playing is bad practice. My ridiculously small sample of just one tournament could easily be a blip, but I’ll definitely be sinking a few casual pints when playing in the future – at least in live games.

That’s the Good and the Bad, so what about the Ugly side of drinking? Well, I’ll leave you with Scotty Nguyen’s infamous WSOP 2008 HORSE final table appearance where he was drunk as a skunk. All in all, it was a pretty classless performance … although, the astute of you will notice one thing. He won didn’t he?

 

First tournament win at live poker

I won my first tournament since I started playing poker again on Monday, and it came from an unlikely source – live poker. I’ve not really played much casino poker over the years, and on those occasions I’ve been pretty terrible.

The main reason, I believe, is because I often go with other friends and I hate the thought of going out first and having to wait around for them to play. Selfish? Totally. However, this approach usually leads to me being an absolute nit, only playing premium hands in position and slowly blinding myself to oblivion after a couple of hours.

This time though, I played pretty aggressively and it helped me to win first place. Unfortunately, the prize pool wasn’t particularly impressive. The event was a £15 buy-in at the Grosvenor Casino in Manchester, although £5 of each entry went on bounties. If you knocked someone out, you received £5 (or £20 if you knocked out randomly allocated super bounties).

While this makes the game a bit more fun, it also drastically reduces the prizepool for those who place, so I only received £170 for my win (£150 for first and £20 in bounties). What’s even more aggravating is that I missed out on three bounties where I absolutely crippled people during an all-in, but because they had a few more chips they survived only to be knocked out a couple of hands later for someone else to pick up the money, with one being a juicy £20 one.

That aside, there were a number of positives and negatives that I have taken away from the win:

Positives

• I only made one serious mistake all tournament (which, incidentally, nearly knocked me out)
• I felt confident I was one of the best players there
• I managed to maintain aggression despite my usual tendency to clam up in casinos

Negatives

• The mistake I did make was horrific, a bad bluff that was NEVER going to work against the kind of opponents you meet in casinos
• I definitely need to brush up on my poker face and keep a lid on my emotions. Somehow playing in a piddly little tournament had my heart racing like a greyhound on crack. More competitive live experience is required, something you can’t learn online
• I was pretty jammy! I won all my coinflips and no-one outdrew me when I held the best hand. I was all-in three times and I won all three

I did have a fantastic time though and it is far more exhilarating than playing online. I will definitely be looking around for some tournaments in my area to try and boost my live skills, which haven’t really had a workout since I was in first year of university in 2003.

Unfortunately, I got home after the event and realised I hadn’t taken any pictures of my final chip stack or my winning hand (AJos) as a memento of my first live casino win. I appreciate it’s not the WSOP, but I think a photo always breaks up a blog post pretty well! Maybe next time.

I’ll also take a note of any interesting hands I get involved in, as I can barely remember any of the ones from Monday.

Summary

Casino poker profit: £151 (£170 – £15 entry – £4 extortionate tournament fees)

 

Worst play of all time?

I was going over some hands in Poker Tracker recently and I came across a hand that could possibly be the worst played hand I have ever seen. Fortunately, it wasn’t me! I remember at the time that my opponent played it badly, but having had time to reflect I have decided that the mind-numbing incompetence of the player in question is worthy of highlighting in particular.

This took place in a Bwin freeroll (which you would think excuses idiot plays, but in this specific instance it only makes it worse).

Here is the hand history, I have changed the user’s name to DONK to avoid any confusion:

Seat 1: Klik4 (1500)
Seat 2: fcvs_4ever (1490)
Seat 3: Mace_Kyle (1480)
Seat 4: Nibnobbly (1500)
Seat 5: AnutaGabriel (1500)
Seat 6: djcelas (1550)
Seat 7: _PokerGodXXX (1500)
Seat 8: bazsakun69 (1500)
Seat 9: xaris23_x (1480)
Seat 10: DONK (1500)
Mace_Kyle posts small blind (10)
Nibnobbly posts big blind (20)
—
Dealing pocket cards
Dealing to Nibnobbly: [Jh, 5c]
AnutaGabriel folds
djcelas folds
_PokerGodXXX folds
bazsakun69 folds
xaris23_x calls 20
DONK calls 20
Klik4 folds
fcvs_4ever folds
Mace_Kyle folds
Nibnobbly checks
— Dealing flop [Qs, 9d, 5s]
Nibnobbly checks
xaris23_x checks
DONK bets 20
Nibnobbly calls 20
xaris23_x calls 20
— Dealing turn [5d]
Nibnobbly checks
xaris23_x checks
DONK checks
— Dealing river [7h]
Nibnobbly bets 80
xaris23_x folds
DONK calls 80
—
Summary:
Main pot: 290 won by DONK (290)
Rake taken: $0
Seat 4: Nibnobbly (1380), net: -120, [Jh, 5c] (THREE_OF_A_KIND FIVE)
Seat 10: DONK (1670), net: +170, [Qh, Qc] (FULL_HOUSE QUEEN, FIVE)!!!

***** End of hand T5-157292266-2 *****

Now, I’m not usually one to criticise other people’s play (their loss is my gain), but this is a truly astounding example of how to brutally mess up in every stage of a poker hand.

Let’s summarise

1/ He flat calls in middle position with pocket queens when the blinds are miniscule, encouraging pretty much any hand to limp in and catch a flop (shockingly everyone folds, even the small blind who is getting 7:1 on his money, which is pretty much a call with any two cards, but one fool at a time)

2/ He flops top set and minimum bets. This not only gives anyone with a draw the chance to suck out, it isn’t exactly massaging the pot, which is already looking downright anaemic because of his limp preflop

3/ When he hits his absolute monster, he checks again. Good stuff, keep that pot nice and small. Just what you want when you have an essentially unbeatable hand. Not to mention dishing out a free river for anyone who might be willing to pay for a draw

4/ After I hit my trip 5s, I’m keen to put in a small bet on the river (I’ve put him on a missed flush draw, but either player could have a pair they might call with). And this is where he manages to transcend poor play and reach a level of utter stupidity that I had to look on Thesaurus.com for an adequate synonym for ‘idiot’. I finally decided on ‘cretin’. He flat called my raise on the river with the second nuts! The only hand that was beating him was pocket fives for quads.

Now, I should probably note that I don’t necessarily disagree with some of his plays in isolation. Slow-playing top set/a boat isn’t a bad play on its own, but when you combine it with the other horrific plays in the hand, it only emphasises his cluelessness.

In a freeroll this is even more unforgiveable as he’s not risking any actual money by re-raising me with his nut boat (however, a flat call would be a ludicrous play in this situation regardless of the buy-in/risk).

I was just happy to escape with minimal losses, but I think this example definitely highlights the difficulty that can be encountered when trying to win freerolls. It is almost impossible to put people on hands because nothing they do makes sense.

Oh well, I can only hope that a solid and persistent style can continue to edge me ahead in these micro and low-stakes tournaments until I reach a level where decent play has a real effect.

 

Harrington on Hold’em Volume III: The Workbook

Dan Harrington is a hallowed name in the poker world, renowned for being one of the best tournament players the game has seen in its brief but turbulent history. Not only has he won the World Series of Poker (WSOP) main event, he reached the final table in consecutive years in 2003 and 2004, beating fields of 839 and 2,576 respectively. This is often cited as one of the most significant achievements in WSOP history, perhaps only beaten by Johnny Chan’s 1987-1989 main event run where he placed 1st, 1st and 2nd, (although this was with much smaller entry pools).

WSOP main event winner "Action" Dan Harrington

“Action” Dan, an ironic nod to his generally conservative style, has since written a trio of books outlining tournament strategy for advanced players. The first two volumes of the set, Strategic Play and The Endgame, are generally considered must-reads for any player looking to progress from a beginner level to an intermediate/advanced level, although some feel Harrington’s style is slightly too tight for some of the aggressive developments seen in poker over the last few years, both online and in live play.

Personally, I think Harrington is an absolute hero and everyone should read these books if they are looking to improve their game, particularly at micro- and low-stakes games where a conservative approach is much more successful. I’ve read both cover to cover several times and still refer back to them if I feel I need a refresher, much more than I do other poker books in my collection, even Tournament Poker for Advanced Players by David Sklansky – another must-have classic.

However, less revered is the third book in the Harrington series, The Workbook. Often overlooked, I think this volume is definitely a worthy follow-up to its predecessors, despite being shorter on theory and strategies.

Harrington's Workbook

The book uses a format familiar to any of you who have ever picked up one of those trite lifestyle magazines that form the backbone of any doctors’ waiting room reading selections. In these mags you’ll inevitably find a quiz entitled “Find your perfect man” where you will be asked a series of questions with answers of A), B), C) or D) depending on your preference. Each answer is designated a certain points score and you tot them all up at the end to find out your perfect match. Normally a load of horseshit, in other words.

Well, Harrington employs this structure in a poker context, with much better effect, and readers are encouraged to work through 50 poker problems, being asked at separate stages what they would do at certain phases of a hand. This usually comes in the form of betting, raising, checking or folding. You write down all your choices and then Harrington goes through the solution to each problem, dishing out different points for how he thinks you played the hand.

Despite having had the book for about 3 years, I only actually went through it this week. Overall, I thought it was a good challenge, which definitely does a good job of encouraging you to accumulate the knowledge you have learned from the other two volumes and bring it together to solve “real-life” situations. When answering the questions I tried to do it quickly in order to emulate the kind of time pressures I would be under online (I’m pretty sure 99% of decent players could solve most poker odds problems with infinite time, a calculator and multiple choices!).

Once you’ve finished, you tot up all the points and calculate your final score out of 591, which Harrington stratifies as:

• 500 or more: World Class. Probably already making a fine living out of the game
• 400 or more: A very good player who should show a solid profit in big tournaments
• 300 or more: A player with a solid base of skills to build upon
• 200 or more: A player whose game needs work in many key areas
• 100 or more: A novice or beginner-level player

So how did I do? Well, before I started I would have been happy to get 300 or more. However, after adding my total up twice I managed to achieve a rather surprising 506 points. World class!! However, halfway through packing my bag for Vegas and next year’s WSOP I realised that the score is flattering in more ways than one.

1. I guessed on a few questions. When I was truly stuck on how to act in a hand (usually whether I should check or bet), I tended to check, knowing this would probably score higher with Harrington’s conservative approach
2. While it’s easy to make the right choice with plenty of time and background knowledge, making the same moves in the heat of battle, so to speak, is a lot more difficult and I would be hard-pressed to say I always make the optimum plays when under pressure
3. The book is around 5 years old now and Harrington is extremely tight, so even if I was world-class by his standards, it can be argued that standards have changed in recent years
4. Some of the questions are pretty leading. For example, one is called “Smelling the threat”. Obviously, you are inclined to take the cautious approach in this problem on the understanding that your opponent clearly has a monster
5. I’m not world class, so it’s clearly wrong. Duh

I suck then? Well, there were a few positives to take away from the exercise. I got almost all of the pot odds problems correct without really spending too much time calculating them properly (on instinct mostly). I also got 99% of the bet sizes right. Furthermore, the problems where I dropped points were marginal rather than blatant mistakes. For example, I tended to take a more aggressive line in some hands, which is obviously frowned upon by Harrington, but can’t really be faulted in some circumstances (incidentally, the hands where I took this approach I would have “won” by pushing people off draws, as results-orientated as that sounds).

All in all, I think this is a nice little book to work through and a lot of the information, particularly the mathematical calculations, are still relevant to anyone looking to improve their game. It does have a few faults – my biggest gripe was that “good” answers were often given a mark of say 4, while all other answers would be given 0, despite some being obviously worse options than others. While this is supposed to encourage you to make the optimal play (in his opinion) each time  I think it could discourage some players by having their slightly sub-optimal play being ranked alongside ridiculous donk moves – such as pushing into three overcards on a drawy board with an underpair.

Despite this, I think it serves as an excellent companion to Volumes I and II of Harrington on Hold’em, albeit a less well-thumbed one.