The Beginning of the End for SNG Domination

Hello all,

I am almost done with the process of completely moving to my new home

www.zerosumpoker.com.

All my old blog content is up there and I suspect that I will be rarely updating sngdomination after this blog. At some point I will delete all content and pull the plug but I wanted to give some advanced warning.

Greg

Life: Training, Eating and Weight Gain

Yesterday was a big milestone as I did my first legitimate "long run." My training for the 10 mile race is going to consist of a lot of short exercise sessions (30-45 minutes) running plus progressively longer weekend runs. I got together with my friend Brandon and we ran 4.5 miles outside on Sunday. Before we started he said "Are you ready for some hills?" The run was downhill for the first half and uphill for the second half and I am talking some major inclines!!! Even though it was slow it was a continuous run and the good news is I am feeling great. The most difficult part is actually muscle fatigue rather than cardio fatigue.

Unfortunately my weight loss goals are not really going well so far. I have been exercising and eating healthy but my weight has gone up about 4lbs. I can only attribute this to water retention and muscle growth otherwise I am going to have to do something more drastic than portion control and low fat eating to lose weight rapidly. Part of the incentive for losing weight is for health reasons so I am happy that I am getting healthier through exercise. However, my left knee and ankle are both not fantastic and getting the weight off is important for avoiding long term injury through running. From what I understand you put about 3X your body weight on each joint while running so dropping 20 lbs is like reducing the stress on my joints by 60lbs. Talk about the wrong kind of "going with your gut."

Greg

Coaching: Updated Contact Info - coaching@zerosumpoker.com

Please contact me about coaching or information related to this blog at...

coaching@zerosumpoker.com

Good Luck at the tables!
Greg

Strategy: Information Overload III - Going With Your Gut

In Super System by Doyal Brunson he talks at length about gut feelings and instincts. It turns out that he may really be well tuned into a now proven form of instinctual thinking that is studied extensively in Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell.

Early in the book Gladwell describes an Iowa study run with a simple gambling game. The participant picks cards from one of 4 decks. Two decks are red and two blue. The red decks are a minefield of steep penalties and large rewards. Overall the red decks are a loosing proposition. The blue decks on the other hand have more modest payouts and overall allow the player to win in the long run.

Typically within about 50 cards most participants had a hunch about what was going on and by about 80 hands had figured out the game so that they were able to explain what was happening.

However the Iowa scientists also did something interesting. They hooked each participant up to a machine that measured stress by checking the perspiration rate in the participants hands. These sweat glands are acutely tuned to our stress response. Clammy hands when under pressure is a real phenomenon.

The amazing result is that by the 10th card typically the participants began to have a stress response to turning over red cards. Unconsciously, the participants bodies realized a full 40 hands before their conscious mind that the red cards were a bad idea. More importantly after the 10th card their behavior began to change as well and they began to favor the blue cards although they were not yet aware of the trend.

It has now been determined that as a species we have a second more primal decision making process working in our brains and that by learning to listen to this process we may be able to make much faster accurate decisions.

I don't know how many times I have been sitting at the poker table and "had a feeling" but ignored it to my detriment. Usually, I can justify ignoring the feeling based on a plethora of information that I can gather from the situation. However, invariably, it is that nagging feeling when the cards are turned up that turns out to be correct. Typically its all that extra information that is really getting in the way of making the right decision. I guess that learning how to harness this primal split second decision process is difficult, but that the first step is to recognize that it exists and to start to be aware of what it is saying. Maybe someday like Doyal, I will be able to make huge laydowns and bluffs based on my gut.

Good Luck at the Tables,
Greg

Coaching: Scheduling and Lesson Price Increases

I would just like to make a public statement that my coaching business has been growing faster than I ever imagined possible and as a result I am having a very difficult time scheduling. This is a very good kind of problem!

One issue that I have been trying to work in students at 6pm EST which is a very tricky time for me since it is only available on the days that I don't pick my daughter up from daycare. This changes on a weekly basis.

Another problem that I have been having is that I am having to contact students on a weekly basis to find out if they are having a lesson. Then once I have my regs scheduled I try to work in new students. This has become difficult as I am constantly putting off new students until I can find out "what the deal is with my schedule."

So starting today I am instituting some new policies.

1. During the week I am now coaching from 7pm EST to 1opm EST with the occasional student from 10-11:30 if necessary. This way I can maintain a weekly schedule with regular students no matter what the daycare situation. I will only fill the 10pm slot once the 7pm and 8:30pm slots are filled because I like to sleep. On weekends I will be coaching Saturday and Sunday mornings but filling Saturday first.

2. I am posting a calendar of my availability so that students can email me and let me know their availability. Slots will be filled on a first come first serve basis.

3. Students who want a regular slot will be expected to maintain a weekly or biweekly appointment. If I am giving up a prime slot for a student I expect them to show up. I will now be charging a $10 cancellation fee for day of no shows. I want 24h notice if you are not showing up so that I can fill your slot. Being a weekly student gives you the the right to a prime (read first pick) slot before my schedule is posted but with the responsibility of showing up.

4. As of Jan 1. 2010 my current students per lesson cost is going up to $55 and my new students per lesson cost is going up to $65 for an hour and a half lesson. For students who can only afford a hour lesson I will now be offering 1h lessons but current students will not be offered a discounted price for 1h. I will be escalating my student prices in all cases to the same scale at some point in the future. I still feel that this offers the best pricing in the business not only for the quality of content but also the hourly rate which is about what any music teacher or tutor charges.

Typically poker coaching is much more (70 per hour minimum) and I can not promise that my rates will not continue to increase due to supply and demand. But, due to the escalating prices I feel that it is only fair to offer an hour long lesson as an alternative.

Current Student Pricing: $45/hr or $55/1.5h
New Student Pricing: $50/hr or $65/1.5hr

As you can guess that means all my package prices are changing as well but I am going to still be running the Foundations package (deluxe package) 5 lessons for $295. For students who have not already purchased SNG wizard (essential software) I can also get them a reduced price saving them an additional $10. This represents a $40 savings over the hourly lessons.

Plus now I have added a bonus 1 month later 5HH review plus Q&A session. Essentially this is a 6th lesson aimed at keeping players who set and achieve their goals from falling back into your old habits and gives us a chance to make additional tweaks to your game once you have played some significant volume. This lesson comes with some strings attached. You are going to have to set a volume goal, play it, and then contact me saying you are ready for 1mo later within 1 month!!! I am such a believer in setting goals I am willing to give you a free lesson for following this key path to success.

So with all the tweaks the value of the Deluxe package is approximately there is now over $100 of savings built into the deluxe package worth roughly $325+$10+$65=$400. I think that the price of $295 is more than a bargain for the information and value provided. There is enough content in here to take a beginning SNG player and transform their game into a winning game at the $12 level with no other instruction necessary.

In addition I am developing unique "coaching club" members only content that will be available only to students who have completed the deluxe package or 5 individual lessons as a way of paying them back for their repeat business. This will include video classroom topics, virtual sweat sessions of my games, and hopefully some free rolls where the prize is a free lesson and the HH's are compiled for a all hands revealed video. That way everyone wins!

I will be posting a weekly calendar on Saturdays that will be for first come first served coaching slots and sending out a mass email weekly with the calendar. If you want to be on the list you know how to contact me by email. If not post a comment and I will reply with contact info. Soon I will be migrating to a service with built in email so that I can deal with email just relating to coaching and will post the email publicly so that you can contact me. I am going to be producing a weekly newsletter with upcoming events and calendar slots etc.

If you are on an extremely tight budget but want coaching and these prices are out of your range I am always happy to consider people on a case by case basis and can work out a coaching arrangement based on unusual circumstances.

Good luck at the tables.
Greg

Strategy: Information Overload II - Algorithmic Thinking

Another fantastic example of when too much information is simply too much is discussed in Blink in the case of a cardiologist named Lee Goldman.

Dr. Goldman was a research scientist and while working for the Navy faced a problem. It turns out that when diagnosing possible heart attack patients it is very difficult to tell from their history, and symptomology whether they are in fact having a heart attack. Unfortunately, even soldiers on submarines have heart attacks and this becomes a very inconvenient problem when the sub is submerged. A submarine can not just rush a soldier to the hospital every time that soldier has gas pains that they mistake for a heart attack.

Based on studies it turns out that Doctors love to take information about patients. The more information they take the more comfortable they feel with their diagnoses about heart attacks. However, it turns out that not only are Doctors not able to easily diagnose heart attacks, more information does not make their diagnosis more accurate. It just makes them feel more confidant. Many of the diagnostic tools that are used in heart attack diagnosis can give false positives and false negatives so any single diagnostic reading is useless. For example ECG readings can be normal or abnormal in both healthy and heart attack patients.

Dr. Goldman developed a controversial method. He came up with an algorithm that took several diagnostic readings and developed a treatment method for each combination. He looked at the ECG readings, whether there was fluid in the patients lungs, whether there was unstable angina, and whether the patients systolic blood pressure was below 100. Although Doctors balked at this method (no history, no other information taken into account) it turns out that it was significantly more reliable at identifying false positives and 95% correct at identifying the most serious patients and getting them quick medical help.

Reading this reminded me a lot of pivot points. You don't need a lot of information to make a decision in SNG's. The structure of the tournament makes it so that correct decisions are really based off of a formula of Effective Stack Size, Range, and Position. It turns out that the range is the really tricky thing to evaluate quickly, but that by assigning standard ranges we can correctly create pivot points that evaluate and determine the correct decision with a high percentage of accuracy. Plus, pivots allow us to make quick decisions and really filter out the noise of all the other factors at the table that might cause us to feel more confidant about our decision, but that either don't help us at all or that actually might make us second guess our strategy.

I am certain that if Mr. Gladwell were to take a look at pivot point strategy he would concur that it is in line with the basic premises of this section of Blink.

Good Luck at the tables,
Greg

Strategy: Information Overload

Recently I have been reading "Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell." There are many lessons in this book about the power of using instinct and split decision making effectively as well as ineffectively.

One story that I was particularly struck by is called Paul van Rippers Big Victory. Paul was a big time military personality who was a bit of a rogue. He was brought into a military simulation that was run to test strategies for invading Iraq or Afghanistan (it is never specified but I suspect it is Iraq). He was supposed to run the enemy forces (red team) while the US forces (blue team) were to be given unparalled information resources.

Blue team had massive decision making metrics based on tons of information. Red team was at a significant technological and information disadvantage. Paul Van Riper was set up for defeat. He was supposed to be the fall guy. He was never supposed to win. Yet somehow within hours of the simulation Riper's Red team had sunk 12 ships of the US forces and had made a drastic blow with little more than simple strategies and effective decision making processes. The US in the simulation was devastated even though they had Riper out gunned and were at a superior information advantage (so they thought).

The problem that the US forces faced was that their decision making process was overly complicated. By having so much information at its disposal the Blue Team was unable to make effective decisions while Riper was able to make intuitive quick decisions that ran circles around the Blue team.

So what does this have to do with poker? For a long time I fell victim to the same kind of thinking when it comes to my poker HUD. The prevailing wisdom in most circles is that the more HUD stats you have at your disposal the better. However, now my HUD looks like the following.

VP$IP/PFR/# Hands.

And the truth is that I use it much more than I ever did when I had 15 different stats at my disposal.

For me stat use is as simple as trying to find out whether my opponent is a good or a bad player. If my opponant shows stats like 33/9 or 33/29 I am instantly aware that I am against a bad player. They play too many hands! If I see a player like 12/2 I also know I am against a bad player. They do not correctly value their hands and are very passive.

The only HUD stat that I worry about looks like 14/12. However that is not enough to know that a player is good. It is just the first step. After seeing hud stats like this I typically sharkscope them to see if they are a winner. If they are a winner I tag them with a red mark in my FT notes.

Once I can distinguish a good player from a bad player the stats are pretty much irrelevant. Bad players pretty much make similar types of mistakes. They typically shove too tight and call too tight. It is not really necessary at the low limits to know what type of bad player they are. They all make similarly bad mistakes in the Shove/Fold game. This allows us to really simplify and accelerate our decisions.

Good Luck at the tables,
Greg