I did not feel washed or like I was going through a mid life crisis on the day of my birthday, but the fatigue I have felt after having four drinks and a steak dinner, followed by regularly staying up past 11pm to watch baseball games, has me feeling extremely washed. So this week I did not have the brainpower to fill this space with some missive on the state of poker and I will be keeping things brief.
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Testimonials
After last week’s plea for more subscribers, I got some very nice words from existing subscribers, which I will share below. If these words sway your opinion, I will post another subscribe button below.
“I applaud your work ethic, in-game and out of the game with POTD. I think its is a lot more work to do well than people realize and every subscriber benefits from this in some way. Keep up the good work.”
“Hey Sam, as promised/threatened, I’m back as a paying subscriber (after weathering the worst three months of my poker avocation this summer). Really respect your work and the thought behind it and eager to dive back in (have been faithfully reading up to the paywall all along)
https://x.com/FLiPTRUTH/status/1977690116643832160
Hey Sam, happy birthday brother. I subscribed because of the way you worded this post. Honest reflections penned by accomplished peoples truly make the world a better place. Thank you for your contributions.
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:
Two PIO sims using unequal stack preflop ranges for POTD #146
Sims graciously run by Octopi Poker for POTD #147
Three different Rocket Solver sims for POTD #148
A PIO sim focusing on Punnat’s exact bet size for POTD #149
PIO ICM sims; one with several sizes, one that uses Pads’s size for POTD #150
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 #149 where I wrote leading when a card is “good for your range”
POTD #149 onemorething
Leading on board pairs, like leading on low card flops, is something that makes sense as a poker player, but is also overdone. There are times where you get to lead because you have a range advantage. In today’s hand I have a range advantage, but I only have 55%. I also have a trips advantage, 18.7% to 6.6%. However, I have a full house and quads disadvantage. So Punnat has trips or better 12.4% of the time, I have trips or better 21.3% of the time, and his average trips-or-better hand is stronger than mine. My trips-or-better hands have 90.6% equity vs. his relatively weaker range; his have 93.8% equity vs. my stronger range. We have top pair a similar amount of the time, but his kicker plays more often than mine. Nevertheless, I have a range or nuts advantage, so why don’t I pure lead? One way to look at this is to look at specific hands. Hands like 22, AT high, and certain Q8 combos make more EV checking than betting. If you’re on the river, it’s easy to understand that you don’t bet everything even if you have a range advantage or a nuts advantage; some hands in your range have properties that lead to passive play. The same is true on the flop or on the turn. An early lesson one learns in poker is to think of your range, not your hand, but the more I’ve played, I’ve realized a well-played hand involves knowing your range so you can fit your hand within that range and overall strategy, but it’s still very important to know how to play your hand.
Housekeeping
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
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Media
I have decided to post more general musings as Notes on Substack. I have more followers on Twitter and IG than here, so my natural impulse was to do most of my posting on those platforms. Then I realized, people actually pay me money to read things I write on Substack, so I will be posting more assorted thoughts, jokes, observations that are not related to poker, etc. on here. Whether my notes will be “good” or represent a value add for the Substack reader is unclear. Watch this space.
Speaking of being washed, in another life I would have probably watched the first episode of The Chair Company, I would have seen and panned The Smashing Machine, and I would have probably seen One Battle After Another twice— I certainly would have seen it before it was bumped out of IMAX theatres by Tron: Ares. I really liked OBAA and have enjoyed reading about it, but for whatever reason it just missed the mark for me. The final car chase is thrilling, I like all the performances, and the movie is funny and propulsive. I have never read a Pynchon novel, but there are certain Pynchony jokes in the film that feel novelistic and did not translate on screen for me, but to be fair, others in my screening laughed at them. I liked Leonardo Dicaprio and Chase Infiniti’s performances, but the father-daughter relationship is the core of the story and it didn’t quite connect with me emotionally. I found the first act gripping and interesting in a way that Paul Thomas Anderson’s best movies are. So to tie back to the opening paragraph and also one of the themes of OBAA, perhaps I am just a washed dad and I would have liked the movie more if I saw it at an earlier screening and was not so tired as the movie reached its climax.
As always I can be reached on
Happy bday mate, I hope you had a great day ☺️