Week In Review #50 March 15th-March 21st
Feedback on Feedback
Last week I ran a survey asking for reader feedback (ICYMI, you can still fill out the survey here). Most of the people who filled out the survey are current paid subscribers, which makes sense; the people who engage the most with POTD are the people who are most willing to fill out surveys. If you are a quiet POTD subscriber or a non-subscriber, your feedback is still appreciated, and the discount code at the end of the survey is still active.
Of the people who filled out the survey, most of them heard of POTD through my social media or poker media. So if you are reading this, like POTD, and want to do some unpaid advertising by spreading POTD via word of mouth, I would greatly appreciate it. Of the unpaid subscribers who filled out the survey, most of them read all the free content that is available. I appreciate that, but in terms of planning for POTD, I have to assume you are outliers. The consistent 40% e-mail open rate I have is probably more accurate. People who fill out surveys also probably like reading all my stuff. There is a roughly 50/50 split between people who read via e-mail and people who read via the Substack App. I am leaving the comments open to this post, so if anyone has any medium specific suggestions, things that make reading POTD easier on e-mail or Substack, please let me know.
Most of those surveyed try to read POTD every day and make it part of their routine, which I appreciate. No one who filled out the survey said they find they are getting too many e-mails and wish there were fewer posts, although some people who have unsubscribed from POTD have given me that feedback. Don’t worry, my goal for POTD is to cater towards paid subscribers, not cancelled subscribers, but for my own sake, it’s worth noting once again this subsection of survey-filler-outers thinks more highly of POTD than the average reader.
Similarly, when I asked how long the post was, 88% said “Just right.” Perhaps in addition to spreading POTD via word of mouth, I should ask some of my biggest haters to fill out the survey for balance. The most common feedback I have gotten was about how I should try to focus a little less on high-level poker concepts and include more things about exploits, mindset, how to play at lower stakes, etc. In that regard I’ll always take feedback on individual posts. For instance, I felt that POTD #254 was mostly about exploits, and I felt a lot of POTD #243 was about exploiting someone like Richard Yong, but if the readers feel that even those posts as written don’t include enough exploitative information, I’m happy to change things up. Some people requested that I write about more hands played by people who aren’t me, and to that I say, if you play or observe a hand that you want to see get written up, send it my way and it might just happen.
The final note that was given by many people was to include stack sizes in BBs, but in talking to people in the POTD Discord (which you can join here), there is some dispute about how people would like that information presented. Right now I am just including the stack sizes in chips and in BBs at the top of the hand history. I will always include the bet sizes in chip denominations because I think it’s important from a psychological perspective; there is a difference between betting 99k and 100k that is not communicated in 20bbs vs. 19.8bbs. It’s also important because in a tournament there is a big difference between betting 20bbs when it’s 20% of starting stack and when it’s eight starting stacks. Some have suggested writing the bet size as a percentage of the pot, but I think that can be confusing in hands where there is postflop raising and gives readers a crutch they won’t have when playing an actual hand, so I’d rather not include it. If you’d like every postflop bet written like “Sam bets 5k(2bbs),” I could do that, but I think others might find it clunky. Let me know. Once again the comments are open.
If you read all of that, you surely must care about the future of POTD. So I suggest you subscribe and tell others to do so as well. Click the button below.
One comment in the poll requested a “Discount for premium sub upgrade to premium.” and added that “Premium price [is] hard to justify vs training sites.” First things first. A premium subscription is $300/year and an annual subscription is $100/year. If you have paid $100/year and would like to upgrade to premium, reach out to me and I’ll make sure you can upgrade for $200/year. Second, I think the premium is good value, and instead of comparing it to a whole training site, I’d compare it to a course. Most training courses are $500+, provide less annual content than POTD, and feature less interaction with the creator. So I think it is good value. And, as a reminder, I will share everything that POTD premium subscribers get, including two new features that we debuted this week.
Premium Subscriber Exclusive Posts
Everyday Premium Subscribers will get an exclusive post with extra written analysis and a video of me going through sims of the hands I wrote about. You can see examples of these posts in the reruns I ran over the holidays, #24, #56, #70, #103, #105 #149, #158, #184. If you go to the Punt of the Day homepage, you will see these posts are up and paywalled.
Additional Sims For Premium Subscribers
Premium Subscribers are given access to a Google Drive folder where they will also be able to download 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. This week I uploaded
A flop sim and a turn sim PIO sim for POTD #251
150bb deep flop/turn sims that follow the exact betting line we took in POTD #252
A PIO sim using custom preflop sims generated for POTD #253
HRC sims that look at my response when Jaka four bets total air for POTD #254
Two PIO ICM sims, one that forces a c-bet one that doesn’t for POTD #255
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 #251, where I write about the perils of overthinking when playing early nodes in standard poker hands.
POTD #251 #onemorething
When I posted this hand on Twitter, JP Reilly replied
How come no flop cbet? You got a flush draw and an over, you’re blocking J9 and 98 (so your hand can be a good triple barrel), and you cap your range when you check.
I think he’s right about this hand, I probably should have c-bet Jd8d, however I think the way he talks about this hand reflects a leak I see in some people’s thought process. It’s a little too structured. What he’s saying about J8 is true, but it’s also true of say KdTd, which checks the flop ~25% of the time. The unsatisfying answer is that humans like clear, logical explanations for why a play is the best play. I have a flush draw and a three straight and I block two offsuit trips combos, however so does KdTd. Qh2h has none of those things and bets more often than Jd8d. 8d8s, bets less often than any of the hands mentioned. Solvers are much more willing to add complexity in ways that seem chaotic. JP thinks you should pure c-bet the flop for a variety of logical reasons that he listed that usually correlate with reasons to c-bet any flop in any situation. The solver doesn’t think of logical or illogical characteristics that can turn into heuristics that humans can learn from, it’s just trying to maximize EV and willing to embrace the chaos of sometimes checking a hand that a rules-based strategy would almost always bucket into being a pure bet.
It’s not satisfying to study a poker hand, think of all the qualities your hand possesses and come to a strong conclusion, just for the solver to respond “lol, poker is chaos it doesn’t matter, do whatever you want”. I would not recommend playing with that level of nihilism, but sometimes the solver can remind me of the benefits of adding some chaos and playing in a way that isn’t quite so rules based and structured.
Videos of Sam Training
I’ve been posting daily videos of me going through sims for all Premium Subscribers for quite a while now, but I am also adding videos where I play vs. the PIO trainer for a couple hands so we can see what happens on different runouts or going down different lines. Here is an example from POTD #255.
Media
This post has gone really long, so you’ll have to wait a week before I give my thoughts on the newest Bill Lawrence shows, but I can do one more plug. Watch the video that Justin Bonomo called “the best free strategy content I’ve ever seen.”
If you liked that video and would like further analysis, I will be going through all the mistakes we made in the #studywithsam channel in the Punt of the Day Discord. Join here. As always I can be reached on