Today is October 11th, 2025, and it is my 37th birthday. In today’s introduction, I am going to request a gift that you, the reader, can give to me. If you like Punt of the Day or me, please subscribe, or become a paid subscriber, or recommend it widely. I normally only include one subscribe button in a post, but for my pleading birthday post, I will be throwing in a lot of them, starting with this one.
My writing and demeanor can often be self-deprecating, and I have heard people describe me as humble, but here is the truth. I am not humble, but I try to be honest. I believe I am one of the best poker players in the world, and I believe that the quantity and quality of the content I am providing on Punt of the Day is as good as any poker strategy content on the market, and it’s being offered at a much cheaper price than my competitors. The goal of POTD is to get in my mind, so I can tell you what it’s like to play the highest-stakes poker tournaments in the world and to access my thought process as I am playing hands. The analysis I aim for is in-depth and accurate and not full of vague platitudes like “being aggressive is good” or false promises like “these three simple tricks that will fix your poker game.” I aim for content that I would like reading myself and that is on point and insightful. Improving at poker is a long journey and I’m here to help you reach your poker goals. I cannot guarantee you that subscribing will allow you to make money from poker, but I do think the cost of subscribing is a great investment in your poker game and a much better investment than many other products out there.
Punt of the Day is two weeks away from its six-month anniversary, and while subscribers have grown throughout those six months, they have plateaued since the WSOP Main Event concluded. I was drawn to poker because I am a competitive person who likes to win. I spend a lot of time on POTD, and as a competitive person, I also want this newsletter to “win.” Which to me means continuing to grow and gain more subscribers; at least, let me get more subscribers than Phil Hellmuth writing about his aces getting cracked. If you count the work I am doing for premium subscribers, I am writing over 10,000 words a week, running sims around the clock to share with those subscribers, and making five videos a week. It has been a fun project, but has not yet grown as large as I’d like it to. There are some reasons for this: I am bad at marketing, social media throttles links to outside sites, it takes time to build an audience, and maybe there just is not that big an audience for this form of written poker strategy content.
In trying to grow POTD, I’ve talked to people about paid online ads and e-mail marketing, but a piece of advice I got that has stuck with me, from someone with experience in building an audience, is that the best way to organically grow any sort of online business is word of mouth. My e-mails are opened at a very high rate, and I appreciate all the readers of POTD and all the engagement I receive. However, today I am asking for a little more if you’re unwilling to upgrade and become a paid subscriber please just send a couple of your favourite posts to people within your poker circle. I am not humble, but begging people to subscribe to your newsletter on your 37th birthday is certainly humbling. If you like POTD and would like to see it grow and prosper and continue into the future, please subscribe and spread the word.
I am also going to leave the comments to this post open to the public, because I also want your feedback. If you have suggestions, complaints, or ways you think POTD can be improved, please leave them in the comments or message me directly. I can be reached on
Substack
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Bluesky
And a reminder of the different subscription tiers and what they entail:
Unpaid - You get one free POTD per week, previews of all the posts and the Week in Review post.
Monthly/Yearly Subscribers - For $10/month or $100/year. You will get hand history analysis on all five punts a week when I’m not playing poker and up to seven punts a week when I am playing poker, the Week in Review post and the ability to comment on this Substack
Premium Subscribers - For $300/year. You Will get access to the Punt of the Day Discord server, a Google Drive folder where I post sims I discussed in the newsletter, additional bonus sims I ran just for Premium Subscribers, daily videos of me looking through the sims, extra strategy analysis, AND you have a chance to submit your own hands to be analyzed by me in the blog.
Private Coaching - Anyone who pays for an hour of private coaching from me will be gifted a premium subscription for one year. Below are all the ways I can be reached. Coaching starts at $600/hr, but there are discounts for bulk purchases. I mostly do one on one coaching, but group coaching is available as well.
And if you are also in poker content and interested in collaborating or are interested in group rates, group private coaching, etc. You can also reach out to me.
Onto the normal Week in Review.
Additional Sims For Premium Subscribers
Premium subscribers get the raw files of sims I used to write my POTDs, sims that are more accurate and appropriate than equivalent sims in the big public libraries, videos of me walking through the sims, and a text summary of how I ran the sims. This week I uploaded:
PIO sims using unequal-stack PF ranges for POTD #141
Sims provided by Octopi Poker for POTD #142
PIO accounting for the odd 10k/15k blind level for POTD #143
A Rocket Solver flop sim and a PIO turn sim for POTD #144
An FGS-5 and a non FGS sim for POTD #145
Additional Analysis for Premium Subscribers
Everyday Premium Subscribers get an extra bit of analysis not included on Substack. Today I’ll share #onemorething from POTD #141, where I wrote about how you need to marry live reads with technical analysis:
POTD #141 onemorething
The live read I mentioned in the main post is a common timing or table presence read; if I had to put a name on it, it would be something like “knowing what to do bias.” If I raise UTG 100bbs deep and it folds to you on the button, you might snap call 22 because you know it never three-bets on the button. If I raise UTG and you have AA and 20bbs deep, you might act slowly because you aren’t sure if you’re supposed to trap or three-bet non-all-in. You also might think with A2s because you’re unsure if it’s a call or a fold. The problem with this read is it requires a second-level read. Okay, they acted in a way where it’s clear they weren’t thinking and they had an easy decision, but what’s an easy decision … for them? In today’s hand, a queen is never supposed to fold on the turn; Brian might know that, in which case his smooth-comfortable turn call might represent that he just has second pair, which often folds to a river shove. However, Brian is also an exploitative live-read player; maybe he’d fret a little on the turn to see if I am strong or weak myself. Maybe he has a bad hand and is trying to act quickly and confidently. Maybe his technical knowledge is off a little bit and he thinks some Qx gets to fold the turn here. As always, every bit of information is a piece of the puzzle that could lead you to the right answer, but you need to notice it, contextualize it, and apply it correctly.
Affiliates
If you’d like to sign up for Octopi, Run It Once or GTO Lab you can get a discount using the following codes.
Run it Once use code: POTD for 10% off
Octopi Poker use code: PUNT for 50% off 1st month for monthly subs and 2 free months for annual subs
GTOLab use code: POTD for $25 off any product. It can be used multiple times.
Media
I am going to see One Battle After Another tonight and am very excited, but c’mon there are two easy answers this week
You can follow John Schnieder and/or Frank Sinatra’s advice and start spreading the news about Punt of the Day, it will be appreciated. Once again, I can be reached at