2026 From Online Cash Games to Live

Step 1 filter all hands that have an equity > 50%.
Step 2 use that range to find all hands that have an equity > 50% against the result in 1

Result 1:

Result 2:

Next possible steps:

• keep refeeding to see an equilibrium
• set different equity restraints for both players
• use the fold range to set the threshold
• compare final results with AI-solver GTO solutions

I am wondering a little bit what in this approach would be wrong. Why would a AI regret model that prunes unlikely branches be better than a simple itertion?

Expanded the script to multi-way which surprisingly easy.

Then I asked myself how should I write a handevaluator to know how to split the pots between players. In addition to that I already was worried about side pots.

The obvious choice just to calculate the equity with a full board escaped me.

The only difficulty left are odd chips. The rule is high board gets the odd chip. Then the worst position. In split games, if somehow two players are participating on hi an lo, then the odd chips should be distributed evenly.
How the rule is for two boards I'm not sure. Either worst position or to winner of the first board. I guess I will need to find pokerstars hand histories.

• how many players win a part
• how many odd chips
• round up this often clockwise

That's odd. Two days ago I read an interesting article about range compositions. Maybe, like for every bet you do, you should name the type of bet you do; I should do the same with ranges. Not only randomly assign cards to a range but also make it type-safe and call the name in my head. Kind of a double check. Does that type of range make sense in this situation? Do those hands actually belong in this kind of range. Why didn't I include certain hands.

In case you wondering why that's odd? Because today's video Play your range, not your cards - Fish play hole cards, pros play ranges has actually a chapter about the morphology.

Summary
2 Tournaments
+ $5.75
$1505.78

Watch the trailer for the new TV show Poker Face

Finally watched the first episode. Was fun and I will definitely continu with episode two. Some compare it to Columbo which technically isn't quite true. It's maybe closer to a movie that is played in the background of a tv set. But yes the murder is not a mystery. The question is

why someone is lying

was probably the biggest value to poker players.

OddsOracle
AK 16 hands, AxK 16 hands, AxKy 12 hands, AxKs 3 hands

Hopefully Barry Carter or Doke for that matter won't sue me for any copyright infringements. But as I'm unable to create something original on my own, my only resort is to flee into an epigonality. Create even more pastiche! A less grown Rhodriguez, still in his adolescence, would have insert here a picture of Homer with a text something like mmm - pastiche. But I'm a grown adult and know 3000 pastiches would be silly.

Speaking of Homer he lived 8th century BC. While Socrates lived several years later in the 5th BC. In the timeline they were furter apart than the invention of poker to today.

GTO Poker Theories: The Socratic Method
todo: Insert AI-token, feed url GTO Poker Theories: The Feynman Technique and replace Feynman with Socrates but keep the writings styles like "validated something I had unwittingly been doing in poker". Please explain each step why you replaced it and mark where I have to insert my contribution.

• What do we already know? What is the definition of the topic? Do we have any bias?
• Ask Open-Ended Questions / Find Challenges
• Engage in Dialogue / Probing Questions and Counter Arguments
• Challenge Assumptions / Develop Hypothesis Against Different Sources
• Seek Clarification / Test New Ideas
• Reflect on Responses
• Document Your Analysis

That are the first steps to critical analythical thinking.

To learn these Socrates tool set, I have chosen the topic "Why do we steal blinds"

To get into a dialogue I asked the AI what different types of players would say. Here are the responses.

• I heard stealing blinds is a good way to win chips without having to show my cards. I’m still learning, so I want to try it out and see how it works.
• I usually play only strong hands, but stealing blinds from late position can help me maintain my stack without taking too many risks. It’s a low-risk way to stay in the game.
• Stealing blinds fits perfectly with my aggressive style. It keeps my opponents guessing and allows me to build my stack quickly by putting constant pressure on them.
• I like to play a lot of hands, and stealing blinds is just another way to keep the action going. It helps me stay active and unpredictable at the table.
• Stealing blinds is a crucial part of my strategy. It’s not just about the immediate chips; it’s about controlling the table dynamics and exploiting my positional advantage.
• I don’t steal blinds often, but when I do, it’s because I’ve noticed the players in the blinds are folding too much. It’s a calculated move to pick up easy chips.

Next step would be to respond to each statement where are they right how they are wrong. And yes, but when I do sounds like a meme. Only one step away from getting rick rolled by the AI...

Oh and yes, I look forward to the second season of Poker Face next year.

Poker Schedule to Financial Quarter

Because the last quarter of the calendar began I asked myself what would be the best way to split the year into quarter from a (live) poker schedule point of view. Ideally a quarter encapsulates the bulk of the business so the quarter before can be used to prepare. The quarter afterwards to settle, update and bookkeeping.
So what is the main event in poker? Most likely the WSOP. They start at in May after Memorial Day. The earliest would 26th. The last day in 2025 is scheduled for 16th July. Which almost 3 months and would fully occupy a quarter. First quarter therefore 25th December to 24th March.

The problem I noticed where all the other events. They are scattered over the remainder of the year. Surprisingly holidays are occupied by multiple series and the free spot shared between all.

Therefore for me it will still be the calendar quarters. Which means 30th June would be the cut off and the main event as something extraordinary, a windfall setting the tone for WSOPE and the winter schedule. The WSOPE again the decision maker for WPT or EPT in December.

Good luck for the last quarter in 2024!

Because of popular demand. A new GTO Poker Theories from me!

GTO Poker Theories: The Dunning-Kruger Effect
Ok. You caught me. There is already an article available on this site. => Professional Post

Then I will only going through the motions on that subject. A topic that is connected to the Dunning Kriger effect is the Illusion of Masery or Illusion of Competence. We can step in that trap when we reread a text too quickly or watch a poker video "on infinite loop". Just because something sounds familiar doesn't mean we did understand it well. It gives us a false feeling of confidence that we understood the subject. On first glance most AI outputs are in the category "looks good to me". But when you go through line-by-line and double check sources you start to learn and understand what is wrong. The same is when we study fast paced or play fast paced. "Yes, right - close enough" and already forgotten. We stop observing. We are missing that he did eat his oreo. And only went through the motions.

Instead of drills I will set minimum time I need to take before the next question.

Three weeks ago I wrote

Begin analyzing a hand with a timer. Being able to speak out loudly everything necessary within 30 seconds

Without speaking I aim for 10 to 15 seconds for each decision. Heads-up the average time it takes players is 15.4 seconds for each action. Which is skewed as the median is only 9.6 seconds. But again that's for heads-up. If anyone has numbers for short or full tables, please share.

Doesn't look like much but finally I managed to write something that does something with a GUI in pure C++!

What does your AI assistant show you when you uploaded a hand history of yours, and ask the AI how the AI does imagine you sitting at a table?

I started to use the AI to generate lists without explainations. So I have to look up what it means myself. Maybe by being more involved I won't get as tired as quickly and learn better. Even more valuable as the list or "guide" are the sources. Direct links to sites I would never have visited. Some even in other laguages. Which means, the AI has a bigger pool it can poll from than me when I google! or bing

Summary
4 Tournaments
+ $13.51
$1519.29

My excuse to not blog today would be that I already responded to someone elses post!

Now I have lost my train of thought and everything is derailed. But there's something I wanted to add to the false confidence in understanding something. I watched a very good video. Unfortunately I can't for the life of me recall the content of it. Part of it is due, despite I understood all the word that were used, I do not understand them anymore. I once was a stickler for definitions. All had a meaning. Something I lost. Something I have to get back. Each definition has it's clear cut edges. There is not the "it depends". It's either this or that (and occasionally not enough information).

Eventhough I have nothing to show. I finally getting back in a positive cycle and making progress.

Will the Aussie Millions come back in 2025?
Will the EPT come back to Italy in 2025 after a hiatus of elven years (Campione, 13 years ago, to be more precise)

Unrelated:

Couldn't apply one thing I learned the last two weeks. Couldn't even reread my notes of the last two weeks. That's why poker is that hard to master. You can apply all conclusions you come to withou looking up anything. In any other area if you're stuck you need to look up how somehing works and is connected. The learning is built into the process. Poker is like one of those certificate black boxes. You take the test, then you get a test score and done. If lucky you learn in which area you passed/failed. I need to slow down even further.

A little bit more than a month till black friday. A couple of coaching sites are already sending in their half price or a month free offers. Nice idea to get the people already on a subscription and have them ready to sell them the black friday deals. Feels more positive getting a deal without being reminded that it's just seasonal. It's so tempting to give in to the illusion that throwing money at something would improve somehow the situation. But in the end it's just one thing more I would need to do. If only there was more time.

Summary
5 Tournaments
- $17.50
$1501.79

I had three topics to write about. All were kind of negative towards some else in the poker realm. Nothing like cheating, not even dubious/shady practise or unethical. One person had a bad take trying to sell their course. From a second author the contibution was lazy. The last one delivered, in my opinin, low quality. Low quality when you take into consideration that the creator charged additional money. But I might not have been the target audience. I don't sell anything and nobody would gain anything after I convinced people to agree with me.

Instead go trough the book I borrowed. It begins with set theory.

There is a set that contains all river cards. {...}

We are holding A♥:K♥:

We could create the set of card needed to make top pair {A♦:A♣:A♠:}.
Or top pair with top kicker {K♦:K♣:K♠:}

When we think it's enough to hit a pair to counter opponent's hand we can add those two sets because they don't contain the same elements.

{A♦:A♣:A♠:} OR {K♦:K♣:K♠:} = {A♦:A♣:A♠:} + {K♦:K♣:K♠:} = {A♦:A♣:A♠:K♦:K♣:K♠:}

On the other hand if we think a flush or a straight is needed.
flush = {Q♥:T♥:9♥:8♥:6♥:5♥:4♥:3♥:2♥:}
straight = {Q♥:Q♦:Q♠:Q♣:}
We can't just add flush + straight because then there would be {Q♥:Q♥:} as a subset. We have to subtract {Q♥:} which is flush AND straight.

flush OR straight = flush + straight - flush AND straight.

{Q♥:T♥:9♥:8♥:6♥:5♥:4♥:3♥:2♥:} OR {Q♥:Q♦:Q♠:Q♣:} = {Q♥:T♥:9♥:8♥:6♥:5♥:4♥:3♥:2♥:} + {Q♥:Q♦:Q♠:Q♣:} - {Q♥:T♥:9♥:8♥:6♥:5♥:4♥:3♥:2♥:} AND {Q♥:Q♦:Q♠:Q♣:} = {Q♥:Q♦:Q♠:Q♣:T♥:9♥:8♥:6♥:5♥:4♥:3♥:2♥:}

In the first example the AND would have been {A♦:A♣:A♠:} AND {K♦:K♣:K♠:} = {}.

A or B = A + B - A and B works in both cases.

Afterwards (if all elements are as likely) we simply can divide the sizes of the sets. {A♦:A♣:A♠:K♦:K♣:K♠:}/{...}to get the probability.

I had already wrtten something about conditional probability. Quick reminder how the formula look like.

P ( A ∣ B ) = P ( A ∩ B ) / P ( B )

Then I began to watch How to play a micro stack in MTTs

Made two screen shots of the video

Which I wanted to use to show how to calculate everything. But then it felt like a tautology,

Wie all know that 20.7% * 74% = A ∩ B

P(B) is we have raised 20.7%..
P(A|B) is the conditional 74%

Just for fun

P (Ā | B) * P(B) = P (B) - P ( A ∩ B )

(20.7% - 15.3%) / 20.7% = 26.1% = P (Ā | B)

Do not try to calculate P(A) because on the other side the tree doesn't exist.

Should have used my first example with straight and not flush to explain...
But it seems like that the probability part doesn't contain much more. Just rearrangements and some rules about order and how to overwrite operations.
Next it seems like visiting the basic permutation and combination as factorial to count. And the remaining of the book are only exercises in different types of poker like stud, draw and lowball.

Summary
1 Tournament
+ $12.73
$1514.52

Well I did make two mistakes.

First was to buy space age. Now I have even less time...

Second was to think after being able to climb stairs gang and have cofidence to make small little jumps I'm back to my best health. Unfortunately there is still a lot missing. Started to walk between 5:30 / 6:00 in the morning for the last two weeks. Unfortunately never far and very soon I hopped on the tram to get to the train station to buy me my breakfast... This has to become better.

I did however go to the post office and printed me something like this:

I won't print complete books (Should I print exercises as a book?) Only took six month to learn to edit sheets and tick off printing. One dollar for a sheet or (four pages). The goal is now to spend more money on print jobs than a coaching site would cost per month. But yes, six months for such a simple task shows either how distanced I am for poker or maybe the average player. Doing just a little bit more than I did and you could crush the stakes.

7 weeks left (as last day is Tuesday 50 days)
One final last spurt!
MTT/CG/PLO/CGLive/Math/Concepts/Live/Gossip/Off the table/2025

And of course 500 tournaments and 300 walked km!

It worked for one day and then I had a little health scare. Felt a stinging pain and was already afraid something has busted again. All seems to be fine but to be safe I took some rest. Now I struggle with motivation again. Played a couple of hundered hands of PLO to have some distraction.

Summary
10 Tournaments
+ $7.65
$1522.17

I tried it for almost a year. Won 300 bucks this year. But it seems as if MTT just isn't compatible with my life and my nature. Next year I want to travel again a little bit more - similar to the two last years before. If I now imagine myself entering a casino to play tournament or cash games, the level of anticipation is much different. It's that 10x everybody is talking about. When I looked up tour dates I always check which ring games are organized at the same time. Maybe the reason to switch to MTT was the wrong and always in the back of my head. Because of the current rakeback situation. Now it's even worse. Let's see how long it will take for the money to bleed.

Will still try to reach $6000.
The decision to rate the challenge as failed is up to you.
For me it is failed. But I rather want to challenge myself to 4x than restart with the proper goal of $7500.

Next update for the 2nd of December

Woke up at 4:30 am, worked a little, played for 45 minutes and left before 7, wearing my only black friday purchase - a pair of new gloves, the apartement to walk to the train staition, to buy me some breakfast. The distance only coveres 80% of my daily goal, so I simply walked without any hesitation two tram stations back as well. I mean, I had warm hands, done some work, played poker and now short after 8 I already was able to ticke off walking - nothing to complain.

My biggest cash game leak, I learned most recent, is, that I give up hands too early. Maybe you saw that I did begin to look into math more frequent. And now I realize I should have looked into gain before posting. But basically the ranges you play are much more connected to the sizes you will bet. Nothing new, but looking at it as formula helps me to understand where everything comes from. Too bad that most coaching out there promises to use as little math as possible. The only coach on RIO who did use a lot of math, stopped it within the season and has never seen again. But I will collect my own formula book. Any suggestions are more than welcome.

One hand I still remember was A♦:3♦:
I called a raise IP.
Flop :2x::4x::5x:
I guess in NLH I should never be scared of :3x::6x:
Called on the continuation bet into me.
Was faced with an overbet on blank-ish turn - from the OOP.
Really felt uncomfortable but I decided to be uncomfortable myself and raised back.

Summary
201 hands
+ $1.32
$1523.49

250 and 256 are both beautiful numbers. This many days till EPT Barcelona depending if you look at the festival or the main event.

• Till then I want to be able to run from the W Barcelona to the Casino
• Able to have a casual conversation in Spanish
• Sync files from my laptop to my phone, to analyze there, in program I have written myself
• finished this challenge

Right now, I my mind, the most important thing to achieve these goals in any order is, to buy earplugs. Makes no sense, but for once I will trust myself and not doubt. Something more to pack when I leave my home.

Three of four days ago I was looking up prices for travelling to Paris. This has solved itself already. Then I wanted to try to animate a gif.

Wondering how long it will take to animate something useful.

Summary
903 hands
+ $11.15
$1534.64

What new stops should the EPT add in 2025?

Will the EPT come back to Italy in 2025 after a hiatus of elven years (Campione, 13 years ago, to be more precise)

I stand by my pick against Barry Carter's San Remo!

Till then I want to be able to run from the W Barcelona to the Casino

A shorter distance than I recall. Thought already about increasing it. But then I noticed that I literally can't run than two steps... Don't worry, last friday I walked 12.5km during the day. Even if I would never be able to run again I still am healthy enough to get through the day. Maybe I should start doing yoga and stretching. Hopefully that will fix the range of my motions to bring be back on the track.

Sync files from my laptop to my phone, to analyze there, in program I have written myself

Learn SQLite to store everything it.

• write a list of casinos
• get some presents
• play hands
• look into somethring to respomd to a question
• plan groceries for the next three weeks...