# Phil Galfond – Full Article Corpus

> Every essay by Phil Galfond, full text, newest first. Source: https://www.philgalfond.com/writing

## Why I'm Still a Procrastinator
Date: 2026-04-14 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/why-im-still-a-procrastinator

# Why I'm Still a Procrastinator

Today, I'll tell you something embarrassing and hope it's helpful.

When I launched [BTG](http://joinbtg.com/?utm_source=article&utm_medium=why_i_still_procrastinate&utm_campaign=btg_traffic), I prepared the first month and a half of lessons beforehand, with a plan to get (and stay) even further ahead.

Three months later, I was consistently preparing my lectures the week of. Sometimes the day of.

This is a program where I'm teaching people about habits, discipline, structure, and accountability – and I'm pulling my slides together the night before.

It wasn't because I didn't care. This was something I'd just launched, something I was genuinely excited about, something I'd decided to make my primary focus. The members were counting on me. I wanted to deliver for them – really deliver, not just show up and wing it.

So every week, I'd tell myself: This week, I'm going to start early. I'm going to have my lesson ready days in advance. And every week, I wouldn't. I would start, but without fail, the day before, there was some serious finishing up and polishing to do.

I kept telling myself it was a discipline failure. I need to be better. I need to start earlier. But that didn't sit right. It didn't line up with my beliefs.

One of the things I actually teach – something that comes up a lot in BTG – is the idea that when you're not doing something you think you should be doing, there might be a meaning problem. That the reason you're not doing the thing isn't laziness or lack of discipline. It's that the thing doesn't mean enough to you yet.

But it didn't make sense. BTG meant a lot to me. Helping these people meant a lot to me. And, truthfully, what they thought of me – how happy they were with what I taught, or how unhappy – mattered a lot to me, too. So if meaning was my framework for understanding why people don't follow through... what was going on with me?

I'll come back to that. First, the part that I teach.

**"I Should"**

Say you've been meaning to get in better shape. You've tried before, plenty of times. And every time, the same thing happens – you go hard for a few days, maybe a few weeks, and then something comes up, and you stop. And then a couple months later, you try again.

If I asked you, "Why do you want to get in better shape?" you'd probably say something like: I know it's good for me. I want to look better and feel better. And those are true. But do they actually move you? Do they make you want to get out of bed early and go to the gym on a Wednesday in February when it's cold and dark outside?

For most people, "because I should" and "because it's good for me" is not enough fuel. Because it's not really meaning – it's an obligation. And obligations, at least for me, make terrible fuel.

**Two Options**

There are two paths I take when something doesn't have enough meaning to stick, and those are the two I'll suggest to you.

The first is: Don't force it. Accept that you don't care enough about this thing right now to actually do it consistently, and stop beating yourself up over it. Not everything needs to be on your plate right now.

I'm all for setting goals, but having things on your to-do list that never get checked off has a real cost beyond the wasted ink. Carrying all these “shoulds” on your shoulders is a great way to feel worse about yourself and lose motivation to do the things you really want to do.

The second option, if there's not enough meaning, is to try to find the meaning. Really dig for it.

**The Exercise**

There's an exercise I've seen in goal-setting contexts that works great for this. I've done different variations, but the core idea is simple: you take the thing you want to do, and you ask yourself what it would do for you. And then you take each answer and ask it again. And again. And you don't stop until you've built a list of at least twenty reasons – ideally more.

Most people stop at three or four. "I'd have more energy. I'd live longer. I'd feel more confident." Those are fine, but do you connect with them?

Do they *actually* move you, emotionally? If not, good luck getting them to move you physically.

The point of going deeper is to get past the surface and into the part where you actually feel something – where it stops being generic health advice and becomes yours. I’ll use fitness as the example, and I'm going to go deep so you can see what happens when you don't stop at three reasons.

Say you're a poker player who wants to get in better shape. You start the list.

*Getting in better shape would mean...*

I'd have more energy during the day.

I'd probably live longer.

I'd feel more confident in how I look.

Standard stuff. But now take "I'd probably live longer" and ask – what would that actually mean for my life?

I could watch my kids grow up – know them into their forties, fifties, sixties... maybe beyond.

I could be there for graduations, weddings. I could support them through all of these big milestones.

I could meet my grandkids. I could actually know them, be part of their lives, and see who they turn out to be.

With more years, I could take on projects and ambitions I've been unable to get to.

Go deeper. What would that do for me? And then, what would those things do for me?

I could have more of an impact on the people I care about.

All of my personal goals, my work goals, the things I want to contribute to – I'd have more runway for all of it.

And not just more time, but more energetic time. There's a real difference between being alive at 80 and being active at 80.

I could actually see the legacy I'm leaving behind.

I could mentor not just my kids but also my extended family, younger players, and people coming up behind me.

Now go back to "I'd have more energy during the day." What does that actually get you?

More physical energy for playing with my kids – getting on the floor, running around, not being the dad who sits on the bench at the park.

I'd be more productive. I'd study more.

I'd play at a higher level during my poker sessions. Less brain fog, fewer spots where I'm just going through the motions.

That means more money: better decisions, fewer mistakes, and a higher win rate.

It means actually reaching the financial goals I've set for myself, instead of always feeling like I'm chasing them.

Moving up in stakes. Beating bigger games.

Pride. Confidence at the table. Confidence in the community.

Now go back to "I'd feel more confident in how I look." What does that open up?

I'd enjoy being at the beach instead of thinking about my shirt.

I'd feel more attractive to my partner. I'd change the way I carry myself around the person I love.

That's good for the relationship. I’d feel good about myself and show up differently; we’d grow closer and happier 
together.

Feeling comfortable in my own skin at poker events, dinners, wherever – instead of that background hum of self-consciousness.

Keep going.

With more pride and confidence, I'd speak up more. Share ideas I've been sitting on.

With a better relationship, we'd be better parents together. It compounds in so many ways.

I'd sleep better, and when you sleep better, everything else gets easier.

I'd be modeling something for my kids. Showing them how to live healthy. I might even be extending their lives simply by 
the example I set.

Less anxiety about getting older. Less dread that the clock is running out and I'm not ready.

More willingness to say yes to things – trips, activities, opportunities – because I'd feel physically up for it, confident, proud to be out in the world.

With more productivity and more years, I could create things that outlast me. Write something. Build something.
Feeling good about myself would make me a happier person and a better friend and family member.

I'd have less guilt. Fewer unchecked “shoulds”.

I very easily could (and would suggest you) go on, but I don’t want to bore you any more than I already have!

**See The Difference?**

How did that feel?

Compare it to: I should get in shape because it's good for me and I'd have more energy.

One of those is an obligation that you'll probably write on a list and forget about. The other one connects getting in shape to your kids, your career, your relationship, and your legacy. Somewhere in that list, it went from a "should" to a "get to." It went from an obligation to a vision, an ambition, and, hopefully, excitement.

**Making It Last**

The tricky thing about meaning, even when you've found it, is making it last.

I've had to keep coming back to meaning – rereading, reminding myself. It's a little bit of a hassle, but it's entirely worth it.

I like to use the analogy of pushing a kid on a swing. One big push, and he'll swing for a while, but not forever. The friction of the chains and the wind resistance are the forces of life – distractions, emotions, other passions.

Eventually, you'll be too far removed from the push of your meaning. So give the kid another push every once in a while.

Don't just write the list and put it in a drawer. Put it somewhere you'll see it. Review it before the workout. Look at it once a week. Remind yourself what you're actually doing this for. If you don't, your meaning will usually get replaced by the “shoulds” that we were trying to conquer in the first place.

**So What Was Going On With Me?**

Now back to my BTG mystery.

If meaning is the thing that gets you to actually do hard things, what was happening with my lesson prep? Because it wasn't a meaning problem in the usual sense. I cared deeply about delivering something valuable. I cared about helping members make real changes in how they approached poker and their lives. I cared about not letting them down. And, selfishly, I cared about what they'd think of me. Would they be disappointed in a lesson? Would they think the content was weak? Would they start wondering if the program was worth what they paid?

All of that should've been more than enough to get me started weeks in advance.

But it wasn't. And it took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out why.

It dawned on me while I was preparing a lesson about – of all things – meaning. I wish I could say I figured it out through deep introspection, but no. I was literally making a slide about meaning and went, "Oh!"

The meaning was all there. But five weeks before the call, I wasn't choosing between "do something great" and "disappoint everyone," which would've been all the meaning I needed.

I was choosing between "do it now" and "do it later."

And because I'm a veteran procrastinator – because I've proven to myself, again and again, that I can wait until roughly the last minute, morph into “Super-Phil,” and pull together something really good (probably better than it would've been if I'd started months in advance) – "later" didn't cost me anything. There were no stakes – no meaning.

The meaning, if I wanted to find it, would lie more in the realm of "getting work done ahead of time so I could focus on other things" or "avoid the stress of rushing last minute."

But the truth is, I don't mind the rush. I thrive in it. And, as I said, I think it actually leads to better work.

So, for now, I’m content with waiting for the meaning to kick in. And in the meantime, there's no guilt, no shoulds, no extra unchecked boxes on my to-do list.

In this area, I'm still a procrastinator. The difference is that I'm choosing to be.

– Phil

---

## The Adjustment That Never Comes
Date: 2026-04-06 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/the-adjustment-that-never-comes

# The Adjustment That Never Comes

**They Caught You. So What?**

You've noticed that one of your opponents c-bets way too wide on the flop. Not only that, but he folds to check-raises with anything that isn't a very strong hand.

So you start check-raising him. A lot, and almost purely with air.

It works beautifully – until it doesn't. He calls one; you have nothing, so you check-fold the turn. He calls another, the hand checks down, and you show down a ridiculous hand. He's seen it now. You got caught with your hand in the cookie jar.

Your first instinct: *Okay, he's onto me. I have to stop.*

In some cases, maybe he does adjust. But think about what "adjusting" actually means here. It's not one thing.

To properly counter what you've been doing, he'd have to change a lot. He'd need to start c-betting a stronger range. He'd need to call your check-raises wider. And then, in the hands where you don't raise – now that your calling range is stronger because you've been check-raising so much junk – he'd need to tighten up on later streets. That's three different adjustments to three different parts of his strategy, all flowing from one read.

That requires him to not only notice what you were doing, but figure out every downstream implication, and then actually execute all of it in real time. Most people understand the difficulty of the first two parts. The third, not so much...

The first time I noticed this was maybe eight years ago. I was playing someone who folded too often and check-raised too rarely against delay c-bets in single-raised pots. After some off-the-table work and contemplation, I decided I wanted to increase my delay c-bet frequency from 38% to 60%.

I went into the next session focused on it during every relevant hand. I bet with bluffs that were normally too weak for me. I bet more for protection than I was used to. I bet more on boards that weren't as favorable to me.

I was worried I overdid it.

After the session, I checked my delay c-bet percentage.

46%.

With full intention and concentration, knowing exactly what I wanted to do and why, I only moved a third of the distance. And that was one adjustment.

The reason it was so hard is that there were so many hands that made no sense to bet. When I added from the edges, it didn't do nearly enough. I needed to change my flop c-bet strategy in order to show up with enough new potential c-bet bluffs and protection bets, and I had to fight against my instincts and intuition to get the number higher. I got close, eventually, but I'm also probably not who you're sitting across from.

So, you got caught. Maybe they noticed. *Maybe* they've thought about what it means for your ranges. *Maybe* they know how to counter it strategically.

And if all of that is true, *maybe* they can rework three parts of their game to punish you for it. And *maybe* they can go from way over-folding to folding closer to optimally, which *still* doesn't really exploit you.

But to do all of that and start *under-folding?* I wish them good luck with that. (Not really – for your sake.)

The next time your exploit gets revealed, fight that instinct to retreat. They saw you take the cookie. It doesn't mean they moved the jar.

– Phil

---

## Why I’m More Exploitable Than You
Date: 2026-03-24 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/why-i-m-more-exploitable-than-you

# Why I’m More Exploitable Than You

Open up any solver output and you'll see something terrifying.

Mixed frequencies. They're everywhere!

This hand bets 67% of the time. That hand bets 35%. Then after checking, this one raises 12% and calls 88% while that one folds. And that's just one spot on one board. Scroll down and there's another board. And another. And another.

(Don't get me started on multiple sizings!)

Perhaps your first instinct might be to memorize it. Study the frequencies. Drill them until you know K♠️T❤️ bets 85% of the time on this exact texture.

Players try this – open up an output, stare at the percentages, and try to commit them to memory. They drill them time and time again until their accuracy improves. And, in their defense, it usually does improve.

Today, I'm begging you not to waste your time.

##The Common Mistake

You're not going to flip a coin at 63/37 odds at the poker table. You're not going to remember what each specific hand on this specific board does at every frequency. And even if you could get close to that on certain flops – your opponent isn't playing optimally. So what's the point of memorizing the "correct" frequency against a strategy they're not using?

I know, I know – to be "unexploitable."

But the reality is that even players who do a pretty good job at getting close to the way a solver plays can be very exploitable. 

Poker is such a complex game, and the decisions at every node impact the decisions before and after them. Even if you could play the flop 100% perfectly, if you missed certain plays on the turn and river (which you would), the “perfect” flop strategy wouldn’t do much for you and your exploitability.

The players who hyper-focus on remaining "unexploitable" will leave gaps, just like everyone, but for many, their leaks will be more consistent. To remain "unexploitable," they can't make adjustments to your exploits. Many of them will watch you play very non-GTO strategies and sit there with the false confidence they get from being closer to optimal than you.

Their closer-to-GTO play might leave a smaller target to aim your exploits at, but it's a target that’s standing still. 

I am more exploitable in theory than most pros I play against, but I’m a moving target.

##The Map

Trying to memorize frequencies is a bit like trying to memorize every route on a map.

You could sit down with Google Maps and try to memorize every possible route. Not just the streets – the routes: Target to the dentist. Starbucks to Frank's house. Every starting point to every destination.

Millions upon millions of routes. Good luck. And even if you had infinite time, you'd be lost the moment you needed to go somewhere new – or the moment one of your memorized routes hit construction.

But as you know from – well, living on Earth – you don't need to memorize every route.

If you understand north, south, east, and west... if you learn the highways and the major streets near your house... you'll be able to get to the bakery on the corner of 5th and Oak without having memorized that specific route. You'll know that 5th runs east-west, and Oak is a few blocks north of where you are, and you'll find your way.

(Plus, we're allowed to use RTA when we drive!)

And what's even better – you'll be able to navigate in other cities too – cities you've never seen before, where you’ve had no time to memorize the map. Because you understand how navigation works. You understand the system.

This is what it's like in poker: Understand how to navigate, and you'll be able to find your way, even in spots you've never studied.

##TMI

Am I saying you shouldn't study? 

No, not at all. Studying is extremely valuable if you want to win in today's poker environment. Which leaves us with a problem: 

What do we do with all of this information? It's way too much, as we've established.

After learning from friends and my own studies, I broke down my process – which is different than many of my peers. The first step, when it comes to studying postflop spots, is looking at **thresholds.**

Instead of asking, "What percentage of the time does this hand bet?" ask: "Which hands are strong enough to bet?" You aren't looking for exact frequencies; you’re looking for the threshold – the minimum strength required to value bet, call, or raise.

You're looking for the minimum hand that can take an action, not the exact rate at which every hand takes it.

After certain preflop and flop action, K♠️T♦️ might bet 70% of the time and check 30% on K❤️7❤️5♣️8♦️. The solver is mixing. But that's not what matters. What matters is that K♠️T♦️ can bet. It crosses the threshold. It's strong enough to value bet (for whatever the sizing in question is) on this board.

Meanwhile, QQ might never bet. 

Why? Because it's below the threshold. It's not strong enough to value bet – or at least, not with this sizing.

Once you see it this way, you don't need to remember that KT bets 75% and KJ bets 60%. You just need to learn: "Top pair can value bet here. QQ can't."

That's your threshold. And that's the first thing you need to know.

What’s good enough to value bet? What’s good enough to call with? What’s weak enough to bluff with? What kind of draw is strong enough to semi-bluff raise with? 

---

##Why It Works

Solvers don't think. They just calculate. They don't know why they bet – just that betting works out as part of an optimal strategy. 

*"Bet win money. Bet good."*

That's fine for a computer running billions of simulations. It's not so helpful for a human sitting at a table trying to make a decision in 30 seconds.

Your brain doesn't work the same way. It works in categories. "Strong" vs. "weak." "Good enough" vs. "not good enough." You can hold one threshold in your head much easier than fifty frequencies.

And when you start thinking in thresholds, you start building intuition that transfers to other spots. You notice that on wet, connected boards, the solver's sizes and thresholds are different. Or on dry paired boards, maybe there's more raising against small bets. You're not memorizing spots, but recognizing patterns.

The solver arrived at its frequencies through brute force. You can arrive at something close through logic. It won't be perfect. But it'll be usable – which is more than you can say for a frequency you forgot the moment you closed the tab.

So, the next time you open a solver, before your eyes glaze over – ask yourself: where's the line?

Start there. Everything else might start to make more sense.

([This approach to studying](https://www.runitonce.com/courses/simplifying-solvers/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=simplifying_solvers) has earned me 7 figures at the poker table. It has not, unfortunately, stopped me from missing my exit whenever my GPS isn’t on.)

---

## A Pile of Non-Mistakes
Date: 2026-03-13 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/a-pile-of-non-mistakes

# A Pile of Non-Mistakes

You drill GTO Wizard, and it tells you that a particular river bluff-raise is roughly 0 EV. Doesn't matter if you do it or not – same result either way. It’s breakeven.

So you don't do it. Why would you? It's a little scary, it's a little uncomfortable, and the solver just told you it doesn't matter.

You do this with lots of similar spots –  big river bets, bet-3-bets, IP and OOP. Each time, solver-approved, zero cost.
But the solver isn't who you play against tomorrow – you'll (hopefully!) be playing a person. And that person, if they’re reasonably sharp, is going to start noticing something about you.

Your range is starting to get out of whack. You're not bluffing the river enough. And once they pick up on that, the adjustment is simple – they just fold more when you try to put a lot of chips into the pot.

I have seen this in students and opponents. Someone drills against the solver and looks great – losing very little EV. And then they sit across from someone who's paying attention (hopefully me) and they get exploited.

And they can't find the leak, because in the tool they're using to study, each individual mistake isn't a mistake in isolation. But this bunch of non-mistakes, piled on top of each other, magically turns into one huge leak.

The tool you're using to study isn’t yet designed to keep an eye on your range. Your opponent is, and you should be, too.

---

## What You’re Trading for “Freedom”
Date: 2026-03-07 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/what-you-re-trading-for-freedom

# What You’re Trading for “Freedom”

When someone tells me they keep wanting to meditate – or study poker, or get in shape, or stay in touch with their family – but they're not doing it, I ask them one question.

Before I tell you what it is, I want you to pick something. Something you keep saying you want to do but aren’t doing – whether you're forgetting it or just not sticking to it.

Got it?

Okay.

*"What are you making more important than that?"*
##The Exercise That Stops Too Soon
A common (and effective!) exercise I’ve been through and given many times has to do with priorities.

Someone hands you a worksheet. You list what matters *most* to you. Family. Health. Career. Creativity. Whatever.

Then you compare: where am I in each of these categories versus where I want to be?

Some of these exercises tell you to look at your calendar. Your time tells you your real priorities – not the ones you think you have. 

There's truth to that, though it's not a perfect 1:1 correlation. For example, you don't need fifteen hours a week at the gym to genuinely prioritize your health. 

As I said, I have found this kind of thing effective, but I also think it stops a little bit too early.

You list your priorities. You see the gap. Maybe you have an epiphany. Maybe you’re a little ashamed. Maybe you get an idea.

You go back to your life. And for most people, without ongoing reflection or support, the same exercise a year later would show the same result. 

The question that takes things a step further isn't, “What are my priorities?”

The question is: *What am I making more important than what I say is most important?*

And even as I write that, I'm thinking about the concept for this draft sitting untouched in my phone for months.

I committed to writing more newsletters this year. This was one of the habits I intended to make a priority. And yet, I am currently waiting until the last minute to write them rather than getting ahead or being regimented.
“I’ve got so many important things to work on,” I say to myself. 

And it’s true: I do have a lot of important things to work on – a lot of people waiting for me to reply to emails, create other content, and make decisions.

But that wasn't really the reason, was it?

*What was I making more important than writing this?*

##When the Answer Is Obvious
Sometimes the answer to this question is pretty straightforward. 

*I'm making my work more important than my family right now.*

Okay. Is that the trade-off you want?

Maybe it is. Maybe you're in the middle of building something and this is the season for it. Maybe your family understands and supports it. Maybe you've consciously chosen this for the next six months.

Fine. At least you know. At least it's a choice you're making with your eyes open – not something that's just happening to you.

But sometimes – often, actually – the answer is less acceptable. Less comfortable to say out loud.

*I'm making my comfort more important than my health.*

*I'm making my fear of conflict more important than being honest with my friend.*

*I'm making looking like I have it together more important than getting my life in order.*

And there's one I see a lot with poker players specifically – people who've chosen this unconventional path.

##The Story of Freedom

Imagine someone who quits their corporate job to play poker full-time.

They've dreamt about it for years. And after putting some time into it, watching a course or two, stringing together a winning month, they finally feel confident enough to go for it. They put in their notice and begin their life as a pro.

The first few weeks are incredible. They're free. But then results go the other way. They ask their poker friends for advice – tips, tricks, hacks. Someone suggests they build a study schedule. Review hands systematically. Maybe join a group, get coaching, set goals.

And our player thinks: *That sounds like a job. That sounds like the thing I left.*

So they don't build systems. They don't create structure. Structure is for people who haven't really escaped.

A few more months in, their bankroll is shrinking. They haven't improved.

Meanwhile, the version of them who built the structure is still playing. Still free. Moving up in stakes.

They’re updating their LinkedIn. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that!)

They weren't *actually* prioritizing freedom.

It could be that they were prioritizing the feeling of freedom. The identity. The story they told themselves: *I'm free. I do what I want. I don't have to follow rules.*

The feeling of freedom became more important than the reality of it. 

Or it could be they were using the story of freedom as an excuse to avoid hard work. They didn’t want to study. They wanted to play, relax, play, travel, repeat. And the discomfort of hard work and studying and schedules – avoiding that is what they were making more important than their success.


---
So. What's your answer?

What are you making more important than the thing you said you wanted to do?

##The BS Detector
This question won't suddenly make you disciplined. It won't make the hard stuff easier.

But it can make you stop lying to yourself.

Once you've named what you're actually prioritizing – once you've said out loud, even just to yourself, I'm choosing comfort over growth – the old stories don't work as well anymore.

*I'm too busy to study more.* 

*I’m too tired to play another session – I might be on my B game.*

That's what we might tell ourselves. But if the honest answer is that you're staying comfortable instead of actually pushing yourself? Now you know. You can still make that choice. But you can't pretend it's about something else.

*I'm waiting for the right time to get my routine in order and get in shape.*

But things never slow down, do they? Meanwhile, you're making comfort today more important than being healthy in five years.

That's a trade-off. Maybe not one you'd consciously make. But it’s the one you’re making.

And this one is similar to my newsletter writing. 

What was I making more important than writing this?

I get wrapped up in the excitement of whatever rabbit hole I find myself in – new projects, business decisions, working with students. I enjoy my work when it’s 'on my terms,' and I avoid it when it feels like the homework I used to skip in school.

Much like the player who used the story of freedom as an excuse – I’m using the story of other opportunities being more important as an excuse to avoid doing my homework – homework that I clearly thought was important when I made a commitment to much more of it in 2026.

---
Naming what you're actually choosing can feel bad at first.

*Great, so I'm the problem.*

But it's also good news. Because if it's you, you can do something about it. If it's your obligations, your circumstances, the economy, your genetics – you're stuck.

But if it's you... well, you have a good amount of control over you.

##What to Do With This
If your answer to the question is something you'd never consciously choose – fear over actually trying, comfort over health, a story over reality – that's information.

You don't have to change today. But you can stop pretending the obstacle is external.

You can start being honest about the trade-off you're actually making.

And then, when you're ready – whenever that is – you can make a different choice.

---
So, what are you making more important than what you say is most important?

Answer honestly. Even if just to yourself.

---

## Control Your Airspace
Date: 2026-02-26 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/control-your-airspace

# Control Your Airspace

I have worked with a lot of people you'd call high-performers – ambitious people always looking to grow and improve.

And for as much as they already know, and as obvious a topic as this is, you'd be very surprised how often the phone comes up.

We get into talking about their schedule, their goals, their output, and eventually, I learn about their routines. Of course, using the phone is part of their routine. And so far, it's always more of a detriment to their work and lives than it needs to be – and each time, the person says some version of the same thing: "Yeah, I know. I know it's bad."

They know. You know. I know. We all know.

##Control Your Airspace

And yet, every time I revisit this topic – even in a room full of people who take their performance seriously – some people get a ton of value from it. I've had to talk myself into bringing it up – including in an email like this – because I feel like people don't want to hear things they already know.

But knowing and thinking about are different things. And thinking about something and doing something about it are even further apart.

So that's what this is – a reminder. Of a thing you already know.

###That Doesn't Add Up

The natural tendency is to think about your phone in terms of time. You've got your hours – playing, studying, working, whatever – and checking a message takes 20 seconds, and scrolling for five minutes takes five minutes. And at the end of the day, you think: *Okay, I spent maybe an hour total on social media. That's not so bad. I still had plenty of time for everything else.*

Some people argue that social media is educational. And in theory, it is. There's tons of very valuable content out there. But if you're not using it carefully *(really carefully)*, you're getting a small dose of positive mixed with a large dose of negative.

And much of the negative part, you don't even notice.

I'm not a neuroscientist, so I won’t be quoting studies or speaking in certainties. But there are two concepts I keep coming back to because they match what I've experienced and what I've seen in many other people. The first is attention residue.

###Attention Residue

Say you're working on something – studying a solver output, reviewing hands, writing – and you hit a wall. There's some friction. You're stuck on something, and it's not clicking. And in that moment, your phone is right there. Or Twitter is one tab away. So you take a quick look. Just 60 seconds – maybe 90. Then you come back to what you were doing.

That didn't cost you 90 seconds. It cost you more, and potentially much more, if you're like me.

The wall you hit right before you grabbed your phone can be the moment right before things start to click. Pushing past the friction is (part of) how you get into a flow state. When your brain is forced to sit with a hard problem, it can be uncomfortable, but it can have great returns.

But when you have an easy escape hatch every time you encounter resistance – *Oh, I'll just check this real quick* – you never push through. You bounce between things, you come back slightly less focused, and you never get into that deep, locked-in state where your best work actually happens. The hard stuff gets pushed off or done poorly, and you call yourself a good multitasker.

I'm sure you can remember poker sessions where you were really locked in – where reads came easy, decisions felt clear, and you really felt great. And you can remember sessions where everything felt foggy and slow and hard.

If I had the secret to harnessing flow state on demand, I could sell a course on it for $20,000. I don't have that secret, but I do know one of the things that actively *kills* flow: giving in to distractions when things get tough. Starting to study, then checking a text, then coming back, then seeing a notification, then coming back again.

Each interruption doesn't just cost you those seconds. Depending on the type of brain you have, it might cost you anywhere from 5 to 20-plus minutes of refocus time. And those 20-plus-minute recoveries tend to be more common in the ADHD and other unique minds that are often attracted to poker in the first place. I would know.

I've read about studies showing that simply having your phone near you – even if it doesn't buzz, even if no one texts – hurts your focus and productivity. Across the room is better. Out of the room entirely is better still.

And it's not *just* the phone. If you've got your email open, and Discord, and Slack, and Telegram – notifications popping up across your desktop – same thing. It may not feel like much, but it's death from a thousand pings.

###The Dopamine Problem

The second concept is dopamine. A dozen paragraphs later, I'm still not a neuroscientist, but this one also lines up with everything I've seen and experienced.

Apps, and most phones, are designed to keep you on them. They're built by really smart people with really good data, and their entire job is to make you stay. The way they do it is by making the experience exciting – the novelty of opening your feed, the little rush when someone likes your post, the pull of wanting to reply so you can get a reply back. All of that triggers dopamine. Lots of it.

The problem isn't just that it makes you want to keep scrolling – although it does and that's unfortunate, too. The bigger problem is that dopamine also drives your motivation for everything else. It's part of what makes you want to study, want to stick to your habits, want to push through a tough session. When you're getting bucketfuls of it for free – just by picking up your phone – the smaller, harder-earned bits from focused work start to feel like nothing.

So you lose much more than focus. You lose motivation. The study session you planned feels like a slog before you even sit down. The work that used to feel engaging now feels boring.

The work didn't change, but your brain's baseline for stimulation went up.

###What I Actually Do

So this is your reminder that these costs exist, they're real, and they go way beyond the minutes you can count.

A lot of [BTG](https://joinbtg.com/) members have found real success with simple structural changes. Leaving their phone in another room while they play online. Keeping it in the car when they go to the casino – or at least in a pocket, turned off.

Willpower is finite. The point is making the distraction harder to reach so you don't have to fight it constantly.

For me, what's worked best is protecting my mornings. I put my phone on airplane mode before bed (and an automation does it if I forget to) – partly because it stops me from scrolling at night, which is its own very costly problem. Then I keep it on airplane mode. I have an automation that turns it off at 10am, which gives me about four hours of completely uninterrupted work before I even see a text.

I don't open anything on my computer that can receive a message (on my good days. I slip sometimes).

In my experience, the difference is dramatic. My mornings are wildly more productive when I'm not fighting my phone. I'm not checking. I'm not wondering who texted. I'm not deciding whether to look. I'm just working. And the experiences of people who I've talked to about doing the same tend to be similar directionally – sometimes not as potent as it is for me.

###I Can't!

People very often push back on an idea this "radical." Nobody can reach me? No phone at all at bedtime? The most common things I hear are:

*I can’t do it. I need to be reachable. What if there's an emergency?​*
​
Or
​
*​I like to listen to podcasts to go to sleep, so I can't do it. Oh well.*

Do you really need to see that message right now? Is it actually true that you can't see it three hours later?

And if the answer genuinely is yes – if there's a spouse, a parent, a kid who might need to reach you in an emergency – there are solutions for that. Separate lines. Certain contacts that bypass Do Not Disturb.

And if you need to listen to podcasts – guess what? You can download podcasts! There are other devices that can play podcasts for you! It's 2026.

I haven't yet heard an excuse that isn't solvable.

Now, I have no idea if what works for me will work for you. Maybe your issue is something else entirely. But the point remains – distractions cost you a lot, and there are usually simple ways to make yourself noticeably more productive and happy.

You could finish reading this and then think about it for 5 minutes, create the solution in 10 minutes, and those 15 minutes could save you a hundred hours this year.

Or, you could think "that sounds like it would help. I'll do that one day," and continue bleeding time, energy, and focus.

Action is on you.

---

## What You Should Do: Finding the Hidden EV
Date: 2025-11-07 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/finding-hidden-ev

# What You Should Do: Finding the Hidden EV

A few months ago, I was working with a student – let's call him Sam – trying to map out his poker career. As we talked through his goals, I noticed something: two of the things he wanted seemed to be at odds with each other.

So I asked him: which was more important to him? Being the best player he could be – figuring out what he’s truly capable of – or making sure he made a certain amount of money from the game and reached ‘financial freedom’?

## The Struggle

I wouldn’t have asked this if there were a clear answer. Sam very much wanted both of these. And to be clear, the path to one will usually help out with the other. But poker players (myself included) tend to be optimizers, and I needed to know what we were optimizing for.

Sam wrestled with this for over a month. We discussed it several times. He did a lot of self-reflection.

Sam grew up in an environment where the kind of money he was making from poker now was unheard of. As a result, he had a deep respect for the money, and he would never take the earning potential he had for granted.

The internal struggle, as I sensed it, was a battle between his competitive drive and passion and this respect for money – the regret he’d feel if he “passed up” the opportunity to make the most of this amazing opportunity.

Eventually, he came back with an answer: "You know, I do want to be the best. But I also don't know how long I’ll have this opportunity and I want to make the most of it. I've decided to focus on maximizing income."

Great! We had a path.

## Wrong Path, Right Answer

We set out on a path to maximize his earnings.

What did this look like? In his case, we decided it meant focusing on softer games, more grinding, less study. Spending some time on setting him up financially outside of the game, too.

For others, the path would be different, even with the same goal in mind.

A couple of months went by, and all was going according to plan.

Then Sam came back: "I've been going down this path, and… it's become clear to me that I actually do care more about being the best."

We’d spent around two months planning, another two months going down the path, and now he wanted to reverse course.

Some people might see that as a waste of time.

I was thrilled.

We started with very little clarity, and Sam making a really tough decision, with a lot of uncertainty, about an important goal. (If you’ve read enough of these, you may know that I view having clear long-term targets as extremely valuable. Yes – clear and defined and written – not living somewhere vaguely in your head)

Now, after only a few months (nothing when we’re talking about a 5-year or 10-year plan), we had clarity about where he wanted to go. True clarity can be elusive. This was a huge win.

## Clarity from Movement

You can theorize forever, bounce ideas back and forth, and convince yourself you’ve thought of everything, but there is a difference between theory and practice (which we’ll talk about next week, but directly at the poker table!).

Sam is extremely thoughtful and self-reflective – he wasn't avoiding the question or lying to himself. But he still didn't know. Sometimes you don't know until you try.

And, in most cases, you can simply change course after trying something, just like Sam did.

We didn't intend for this to be a test – I tried to guide him towards deciding what he really wanted and heading that way.

But for Sam, that's what it took – action – to realize what was more important to him. He wanted to see just how high he could climb. That's what excited and drove him most.

He'd felt like he should pursue the money – it was a powerful “should” for him given his background. In this case, that stood in the way of him accepting the “want to” path.

## From Need to Love

A mentor of mine often refers to a spectrum around the way we view the things we do.

On the left side are things like "need to" and "have to."

On the right, we have things like "want to," "get to," and "love to."

The further right you move, the more energy there is behind what you do.

I've learned over the years – through my own work and through coaching others – that paying attention to energy matters a lot.

Certain things give you energy. Others drain it. The more you optimize for what gives you energy, the better your performance tends to be. When we look at our EV in one game vs. another, or in one career vs. another, or even the effectiveness of one way of studying vs. another… we often assume equal performance.

But that’s rarely our reality.

When you spend more time engaged with the people, places, and things (nouns!) that energize you, and less time with the nouns that drain your energy, you will have… more energy!

So the path that looks higher EV on paper can very easily be outmatched by the “lower EV” path if that second path creates more energy, passion and focus.

What ends up happening is you pursue a path that's "lower EV" on paper, but you bring more energy, passion, and focus to it – and that makes it higher EV in real life.

An EV calculation can come up short if it doesn’t account for hidden EV – Energy Value. If you pick the path that looks smarter but drains you, you'll pursue it with ever-decreasing energy. It will compound over time. Your focus and enthusiasm fade. You bring a diminished version of yourself to the table.

Ask anyone who’s worked closely with me, in any of the businesses or projects I’ve run, and they can tell you the stark contrast between when something is my passion – a ‘love to’ – and when it turns into an obligation – a ‘have to.’ And I don’t just mean the parts of the job – my passion shifts over time (namely, when I find or revisit another passion that consumes my focus).

I started off writing these newsletters because I wanted to. Yes, there was a little bit of “should” in there, but I love to teach and I love to write. I was excited about it.

In time, the weekly cadence wore on me. I was writing not because I wanted to, but because I had to. I had a deadline. And it was neverending – spend hours completing one email, celebrate for a moment, then “oh yeah – I have to do it again now.”

I had a few emails that, while still useful, I’m less proud of, and it’s because they came during that low-energy time. So, lately, I haven’t been writing as much. I’ve waited for wanting to.

I won’t bore you with the details, but I have shifted some priorities in my work lately, and I expect to be writing to you more often. Maybe not every single week, but I don’t know… maybe I will.

## Obsession + Love = Energy

This reminds me of this past summer. We ran the BTG Summer Summit in May, during which I hosted a panel with three poker legends: Brian Rast, Jeremy Ausmus, and Scott Seiver.

We took questions from the audience, and while there was a lot of interesting conversation and wisdom shared, exactly one thing stood out to me the most. It was realizing that all four of us had a deep love and obsession with the game of poker, and all four of us agreed that’s what it takes to get to the top.

Poker was never a “have to” for me. And I expect they’d say the same.

This obsession and this love created energy. And that energy fueled the work, the study, and the resilience that led to long-term success.

If you are mostly grinding through pain to get there, I don’t think reaching an elite level of play is realistic.

## Follow the Energy

One of the cool things about working with people one-on-one and in groups is that I'm getting a much larger sample size and really understanding what works and what doesn't work for people on average.

Before, I was thoughtful about these things, but I only had myself as the sample size. This energy and passion thing – it's something I always observed in myself, but it's become a lot more clear to me as I've seen it in so many others and been taught the same by mentors in and outside of the game.

This doesn’t mean you should let your ‘want to’ win out over your ‘shoulds’ across the board. I want to eat an entire large pizza every night, and I want to spend days at a time ignoring my responsibilities – those sound more fun than my usual routine. I’m not saying go do whatever you feel like doing at all times. I don’t think that would go well.

But I am saying to be mindful of your energy. To reflect on your current day-to-day life and take note of the things that deplete you and energize you. And to build your life – as much as you reasonably can – around the people, places and things that increase your energy, avoiding the opposite whenever feasible.

And when you’re not sure about a path to go down, which habits to incorporate, who to study with, what club to join, or which project to launch: consider flipping a coin and giving something a try.

You might be surprised how much a little bit of movement can teach you.

---

## Making a Life-Changing Decision
Date: 2025-07-15 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/making-a-life-changing-decision

# Making a Life-Changing Decision

I was on a coaching call recently with a recreational poker player – let's call him Dan – who was wrestling with whether to leave what he called his "golden handcuffs" situation. He was in his mid-50s, successful in his career, and bringing in good money – but absolutely miserable at work. The kind of miserable where you can feel it weighing on you every Sunday night.

Dan talked about how he couldn’t wait to leave corporate America. He felt trapped in a system that was making him miserable, trading his happiness for a paycheck he didn't even need that much.

Life's too short to be miserable. When someone tells me they hate what they're doing, especially someone capable like Dan clearly was, my immediate thought is: We need to get you out of there. Let’s find a way – any way – to do something else.

And I believe that. When someone's doing something they hate and they're a capable person, there's absolutely a way to make a change. Why stay trapped in corporate America when you have options?

## The Surface Story

Dan was making good money. He figured he could live on a fifth of his current income if he cut back on some non-essential expenses. He's a winning recreational poker player who, with more focus and study, could likely earn enough from poker to support a semi-retirement lifestyle.

The obvious conclusion seemed clear: reduce expenses, play more poker, maybe find some part-time consulting work to be safe, and escape corporate America for good. Get out of the rat race. Stop letting some corporation own your soul.

Everyone on the call was nodding along. It made perfect sense. Dan seemed ready and eager to move forward with this plan. It felt like he just needed permission and maybe a little bit of a push to take the plunge.

The math worked; he had the skills, and most importantly, he'd be free from the misery of corporate life.

Why wouldn't you take that opportunity?!

## Then I Got Curious

But something made me want to understand his situation better. Instead of jumping straight to "quit your job," I started asking Dan more specific questions about what exactly he didn't like about his work. What part of corporate America was bothering him? What specifically made him feel trapped?

That's when the real story emerged – and it changed everything.

Dan used to love his job!

Years ago, when his company was smaller and scrappier, he was solving new problems constantly. The work was challenging and interesting, the kind of stuff that made him excited to dive in each morning. The culture was different, too. He felt connected to his team and the mission.

But as the company grew and matured, everything changed. Now he was doing the same tasks week after week, following processes that had been established years ago. There were no new interesting problems to work on – zero! – just repeating the execution of one that he had solved long ago. The culture had shifted immensely. He felt disconnected and not very useful.

The job hadn't just become boring – it had become the opposite of what made him love work in the first place.

## Dan Has Needs

When I heard how his job had changed, things became a whole lot clearer for me.

I was immediately reminded of a framework that applies perfectly – Tony Robbins' concept of the Six Human Needs: certainty, variety, significance, love and connection, growth, and contribution.

The idea is simple: every behavior we choose is an attempt to meet one or more of these needs. The more needs an activity meets, the better it tends to feel. The fewer it meets, the more likely it is to feel draining, aimless, or, in Dan’s case, even soul-crushing.

It only takes meeting a few of these needs for something to be really enjoyable, or even addictive.

Looking at Dan's situation through this lens was like putting on the right prescription for the first time:

Certainty: His job still provided this. He had a steady income, and he knew what to expect.

But everything else? Gone.

Variety: Zero. Same tasks, same routine, week after week after week.

Significance: He used to solve interesting problems that felt meaningful for the company's success. He used to feel valued and important. Now, it felt like what he worked on didn’t matter – like he didn’t matter.

Love/Connection: The team culture and relationships that once energized him had disappeared as the company grew and changed.

Growth: No new challenges meant no reason to develop new skills or push himself intellectually. Show up, repeat the same tasks, go home.

Contribution: He used to make a meaningful impact on an organization he cared about. Now he was just going through the motions.

## The Plot Twist

Dan's problem wasn't with jobs or corporate America in general – it was with this specific job at this specific company at this specific point in time.

If he could find a role that brought back variety, significance, connection, growth, and contribution – even just a couple of them – he'd likely be happy again. Maybe really happy, the way he used to be, if he found one that brought back most or all of them.

I could see this realization hit him in real time. "Oh yeah, wow. It's not just corporate America. It's this job. I've been so focused on this one experience that I assumed all corporate jobs in this field were the same. But I don’t have a good reason to believe that."

## The Lesson

Think about what we almost did.

Dan was ready to abandon an entire career path because of one bad situation, and I was almost ready to advise him to. A few years ago, before discussing countless situations like this and before training to be a better coach, I would have. And I would’ve been confident it was the right choice.

We would have left a massive opportunity for success and happiness on the table simply by accepting his surface-level explanation and not digging into the why.

While there are several lessons we can take away from Dan’s story, this is the one I want to hammer home:

We don’t know what we don’t know. Get curious.

We are wired to find meaning – to find answers. Dan hated his job. He thought he knew why. He was pretty much sure he knew why!

And as someone giving advice, why even waste time questioning that?

We tend to diagnose ourselves (and others) quickly, and then we focus on solving the problem. We focus on the what and the how because we think the why is already sorted.

What should I do? How can I earn enough to support myself doing something I love? What’s the best strategy – should I save up for another miserable year or two before making the move? Should I cut my expenses? How do I decide what to cut?

I always considered myself a great problem solver. Give me the constraints, and I’ll figure something out. I’m sure Dan is a great problem solver – he’s thoughtful and very intelligent.

But the best problem solver in the world is useless if you’re trying to solve the wrong problem.

## Accepting Your Limitations

I don’t care how thoughtful and smart you are. I don’t care how much you journal. (Actually, I kind of do care – that’s a useful way to get more insight.)

You can only see things through one set of eyes. You can only think with your own brain, and you can only reference your knowledge and experience.

When people say things like, “There’s no point in finding a therapist. There’s no reason to get a mindset coach. I know what’s wrong with me and what I should do,” I want to shake them.

No, you probably don’t know what’s “wrong” with you. Not all the way.

And even if you do, you probably don’t know how to solve it.

And even if you do, you haven’t done it yet. So why do you expect you’re suddenly going to?

You don’t need an expensive coach like me. You may not even need to hire anyone, depending how serious your challenges are. You just need someone, or someones, who will listen to you with their ears, see you with their eyes, and share with you what clicked in their brain.

And even if you don’t take my advice and seek help from others (you probably won’t), at the very least, try to dig a little bit deeper. Try not to accept as fact the first story that explains your situation.

This applies beyond career decisions, of course. Whether you're advising someone else or making decisions for yourself, it's worth pushing past the surface-level complaints to understand what's really missing. What specifically was good before? What specifically is wrong now?

Stay curious. The solution might be simple and powerful once you pinpoint the right problem.

---

## The Story in Your Head
Date: 2025-07-09 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/the-story-in-your-head

# The Story in Your Head

One of the best tools I've ever learned from a coach isn't complicated. There's no complex theory, no multi-step framework. It’s just a phrase (four words, to be precise):

"story in my head…"

These words are simple, as is the lesson, but they’ve been incredibly valuable for me, and I hope they are for you, too.

## At the Poker Table

Let's bring this down to the poker table (where most of my life lessons seem to start).

Imagine you're at your average cash game table, battling it out, staying disciplined, feeling good. You open from the cutoff with QTo, and immediately, this younger player (headphones on, shades reflecting the felt) three‑bets you from the button. You fold your hand, slightly annoyed, as any flop-loving poker player would be.

Twenty minutes later, the exact scenario unfolds: you open, he three‑bets, and another reluctant fold from you.

Then an hour passes, and now you pick up KQo in the small blind. You three‑bet against a late position open, only to watch this same player swiftly cut out a 4-bet, to which you fold again.

Now you’re more than annoyed – you feel under attack.

"He’s picking on me."

"He knows I’m weak."

"Maybe I’m giving off a tell."

"I need to fight back."

And this is where you can get yourself in a lot of trouble.

Based on a sample size of three hands, you’ve formed some unwarranted strong reads. Or, even if you “know” your information isn’t solid enough, you still have that fear in the back of your mind that something really is going on here.

## Changing the Narrative

So, what if you paused and reframed this rapid-fire narrative into something more accurate – something less immediately emotional:

"There's a story in my head that this player is picking on me."

Now, if you were vividly imagining this scenario along with me, you’d have felt what I just did – the pressure valve release… the weight of the urgency and fear lifted.

Suddenly, you're no longer handcuffed to a single perspective. You're not declaring war or retreat. You're simply noticing a thought and holding it lightly.

And from this new vantage point, you can ask yourself questions you'd previously skipped over:

Is it possible this player is picking on me?

Sure. Let's call it a 20% chance. Maybe he actually sees you as easy prey.

But then, there’s also that very real 80% chance that he's just playing his own strategy, attacking everyone's opens from late position, or maybe he's just running hot and genuinely picking up standard 3-bet and 4-bet hands in these few spots.

With reality framed this way (the way it actually is 🙂) you can avoid overreacting and overadjusting.

Because beneath that first story is a second, even sneakier story:

"I need to do something about it."

This story is almost never true. Poker isn't about defending your honor; it's about maximizing profit. You don't need to react out of pride. You don't need to teach anyone a lesson. You don’t even need to prevent a player from picking on you.

Your job is to make money – to make the best possible decisions with the information you have (the useful information).

Let’s say this player really is going after you – you could tighten up your range, trap effectively, and let this aggressive player hand you their stack when you finally have the goods. Or maybe you simply fold more often to them and seek out easier, more profitable battles elsewhere at the table.

The beauty is in the choice: you get to choose your adjustment deliberately, based on clear‑headed logic (not because you're impulsively reacting to a narrative your mind spun in the heat of the moment). Remember: You don’t need to do anything. You get to play the game the way you want.

## Beyond the Poker Table

The power of this idea extends far beyond poker. So, let's carry it into your everyday life.

Maybe you texted a friend yesterday to ask for a favor, and they haven’t responded yet. Instantly, your mind spins up a tale: "They’re upset with me. I shouldn’t have asked that."

Or your boss sends you a curt email, devoid of their usual friendly tone, and your brain swiftly drafts a new plot: "I'm in trouble. My job is on the line."

Or perhaps your partner seems quiet and withdrawn tonight, and your brain quickly fills in the blanks: "They're mad about that thing I said earlier."

## Using the Phrase Effectively

What happens if you slow down, breathe, and add those four magical words?

"There's a story in my head that my friend is annoyed with me."

Suddenly, you've pulled back the curtain. You've stepped away from instant judgment and anxiety, giving yourself a moment to assess the truth more clearly.

Better yet, if it's really bothering you, you can reach out directly and say something vulnerable yet incredibly powerful:

"Hey Mike, there's a story in my head that you're annoyed with me after our chat yesterday. Is there any truth to that?"

That simple phrase works wonders because it does three key things:

It demonstrates vulnerability and emotional intelligence. You’re acknowledging that you have this fear, and that it might be wrong.

It invites the other person into clear and honest dialogue without accusation.

It helps both of you get clarity quickly.

Our brains are incredibly talented storytellers, spinning narratives constantly.

Your task isn't to silence the storyteller – it's to be aware of the stories and choose carefully how you act on them.

## The Truth About Stories

The stories in your head aren't always wrong, but they're definitely not always right.

The second you internalize that, you start living a more intentional, less reactive life. You stop letting stories dictate your decisions, and you start operating from clarity, calm, and control.

These stories come up every day, but there are also some bigger stories – stories that persist.

Stories like:

“I’m lazy.”

“I’m terrible with money.”

“I’m not a morning person.”

Even stories like these can be wrong, especially as time passes:

“I don’t like cooking.”

“I handle criticism well.”

“I’m more of a realist than an optimist.”

And then there are my least favorite stories of all time:

“I’m so unlucky.”

“Of course he hit that river. This always happens.”

“Must be nice. Good things like that don’t happen to me.”

What stories have you accepted as fact? When was the last time you questioned or tested some of them?

If you can spot the story, you give yourself a real edge, both in poker and in life. You get to choose your next move, instead of letting the story choose it for you.

It’s been really impactful for me.

…or at least, that’s the story in my head.

PS – My year-long coaching program, Beyond the Game, is onboarding new members until the end of July. After that, we are closing registrations for the remainder of 2025. You can read more and apply ​here​.

---

## The Broken Compass Effect
Date: 2025-04-22 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/the-broken-compass-effect

# The Broken Compass Effect

I used to work 1:1 with a PLO player. We’ll call him Jamie*.

Jamie was a winning recreational live full-ring player who wanted to learn heads-up PLO. He had found a good opportunity, and despite having no idea what he was doing, felt he was probably already a winner.

We were reviewing 3-bet pots out of position.

As we discussed some hands he’d played, I noticed a lot of confusion. He was stacking assumptions on top of guesswork on top of random bet sizes. And in doing so, he wasn’t focusing on reading his opponent properly. He wasn’t using the logic and hand-reading skills that I knew he was capable of using – at least not using them well.

I realized that this wasn’t at all what he sounded like when he discussed full-ring hands. He was lost.

He needed help finding his way back to his normal thought process, and he needed it fast.

I solved this by utilizing what I’ve decided to call “The Broken Compass Effect.” *​BTGers​ recently laughed at the fact that I only have 3-4 names I use, so I’m broadening my horizons!

### Lost

Imagine being dropped into the middle of a huge forest.

On one end of the forest lies an exit – your path home. On the other three, cliffs, mountains, and other obstacles line the irregular boundaries.

For weeks, you try finding your way. You try to walk in one direction, but you get confused. As you navigate around bushes and trees, you second-guess yourself.

“Was I walking this way or that way?”

Eventually, you stumble upon a cliff. You turn and walk back. More weeks pass as you wander, mostly aimlessly. You reach another cliff, but it looks the same.

“Did I go back to the exact same spot?” you wonder.

Mental exhaustion sets in. Tracking your path becomes impossible, so you surrender to aimless wandering, hoping randomness might accidentally lead you home.

It doesn’t work.

### Getting Un-Lost

Imagine now that I hand you a compass. You’re thrilled!

Unbeknownst to you, the compass needle wavers unpredictably, moving as much as 20 degrees off in either direction.

You are motivated, and you now have something to follow. You start by heading “North,” where you encounter the same cliff you saw twice already.

This time, you’re undeterred. With your newfound confidence, you start noticing landmarks.

You head East, and while you zig-zag your way there, you finally make it. A mountain.

Excited that there are only two sides left, you zig-zag your way South, walking way out of the way this time, before finally hitting the southern border.

It’s the exit! You’re home free. All thanks to your broken compass.

### That Beautiful Broken Compass

Despite the compass’s inconsistency, it allowed you to orient yourself. The task of keeping it all in your head before the compass was excruciating. Debilitating, even.

This broken compass was much better than no compass at all.

You weren’t always heading where you thought, but you were in your mind. And you were close enough that you were generally making progress.

You freed your mind up to notice other things you didn’t previously have the bandwidth or the confidence for.

### Jamie’s Compass

Now that you’re out of the forest, let’s head back to the poker table, and to my call with Jamie.

In a matter of 5 minutes, I gave him his first broken compass: A full, oversimplified flop c-bet strategy in 3-bet pots…

> 25% Pot your Full Range on:Monotone BoardsStraight Boards with no cards under 7Paired Boards with at least 1 card 9 or higher50% Pot your Full Range on:Double Broadway BoardsAxx BoardsCheck your Full Range on:Three Cards under 9 (paired or not)50% Pot or Check (mix):All other boards

25% Pot your Full Range on:Monotone BoardsStraight Boards with no cards under 7Paired Boards with at least 1 card 9 or higher

50% Pot your Full Range on:Double Broadway BoardsAxx Boards

Check your Full Range on:Three Cards under 9 (paired or not)

50% Pot or Check (mix):All other boards

This strategy – Jamie’s compass – wasn’t great, but it was fine. It was, at least, a strategy.

And it was relatively easy to execute. Decisions on most boards were automatic, and on the ones where they weren’t, bet sizing was.

Jamie wrote it down and quickly committed it to memory.

A week later, he told me that this had made a massive difference for him. He was thrilled. He felt so confident in himself in these pots. He knew his strategy, he knew what his ranges were, and he got used to seeing what his opponents did.

He was able to hand-read again. He could think and talk through hands in the same way he could in full-ring previously. And his results (over a small sample… but they continued after!) were great.

We went on to define simplified strategies in other common parts of the game tree, and his game grew from there.

### Why The Broken Compass Works

The key to the Broken Compass Effect is the paralysis of uncertainty vs. the confidence of direction.

The level of confusion Jamie felt before getting a foothold with this strategy didn’t allow him to make any decisions confidently. He was guessing, and he didn’t feel good about his guesses, and this led to more guesses on future streets. Without him entirely realizing it, he probably often checked out mentally during the hand – threw up his arms and shrugged, looked at his hand and the board, and just clicked a button.

The new strategy also helped with decision fatigue. Not only because some of the decisions were now automatic, but because the future decisions got a lot clearer and simpler. He wasn’t burning the same level of mental energy trying to navigate the never-ending jungle of his confusion.

We freed up mental bandwidth, we added confidence, and we got him back to playing his game, just like he did in full-ring.

Because here’s the thing – Jamie’s full-ring strategy wasn’t close to optimal either. But the key is that he knew it. He knew his baseline strategy, whether he had it spelled out the same way I did for him or not.

And that flawed strategy had always been enough to leverage his intelligence and intuition and beat the somewhat soft games he was competing in.

### Your Next Steps

Many of you reading this are well-studied professionals, and many of you aren’t. Either way, the same concept applies, albeit a bit differently.

When I played my Galfond Challenges, I had an oversimplified strategy compared to the solver (which I fully broke down node by node in ​This is PLO​). I always will, because I think it’s ideal. I want to have a foothold in every situation I find myself in, so that I never feel lost, and I can always leverage my intuition, hand-reading skills, and focus.

Wherever you are in your game, here’s what I’d urge you to do:

Find any spot where you don’t have a clearly defined strategy.

Create one!

Use the 80/20 principle. Get your v1 strategy locked in.

Some pros like to spend 40 hours studying solvers before deciding on a strategy for a given node of the game tree. If that’s you, fine – do that – but only after you have your v1 strategy figured out in every relevant situation.

While you wait for perfection, you’re leaking EV through guesswork in all of the areas you haven’t had sufficient time to study.

And for the majority of you – those who don’t study to that level of intensity – figure out what the 20% effort scales to for you. Maybe it’s simply picking a bet sizing based on a training video. Maybe it’s asking a coach to cobble together your own broken compass, as I did for Jamie.

### Do It

90% of you reading this, even if you loved the piece, will still walk away and not do anything.

90% of poker players are losers.

So be the 10% today. Go take a step. It can be an easy step!

Just go define and solidify a strategy in one scenario that you don’t currently have locked in. Then you’ll get to experience the difference and, my hope is, the value you gain will give you the motivation to take the next steps.

Sometimes we need to knowingly and purposefully accept imperfection to make progress.

Go be imperfect.

---

## Calibrate Your Poker Instincts
Date: 2025-04-15 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/calibrate-your-poker-instincts

# Calibrate Your Poker Instincts

Over many years of playing poker, talking to peers, responding to questions on training videos, forums, social media, and more recently, talking to students of my ​coaching program​, I’ve noticed some patterns.

Today, I’d like to offer a thought, and invite you to reflect on your own process when you’re in a hand.

## What Are You Looking For?

Have you ever bought a new car and suddenly started to notice that exact model on the road again and again?

Or maybe you’ve become a new parent, and now strollers, cribs, and kids' TV shows start showing up everywhere? (And not just because advertisers are spying on you!)

There’s a psychological reason for this – the Reticular Activating System (RAS). It’s a part of your brain that acts as a filter, highlighting whatever you’re already focused on or expecting to see.

While I can’t say with any confidence whether or not the same system is the cause of the phenomenon I’ll discuss today, it does feel like the same type of thing to me.

## Can I Call?

Many players, I’ve noticed, are looking for reasons to call.

One student recently was going over a hand facing an all-in on the flop and sharing the exact same thought process: “I need 25% equity. I know these outs are good – that’s 15%. And probably these other ones are, so 20%-25%. And it could be more. So it can’t be that bad!”

I’ve noticed that pre-river, most players tend to be biased in this direction – looking for reasons to call.

On the river, facing a big bet, they seem to be more split. Some are looking for reasons to call, while others are looking for reasons to fold – or, more accurately, checking to see if there are any reasons that they have to call.

## Should I Bet?

With the betting decisions, there are all sorts of different wants.

Some players look for a reason to semibluff, while others look for a reason to check back, fearing they might get check-raised off their equity.

Some players look for reasons to trap, while others look for reasons to build a big pot right away.

Some players look for reasons to bet to protect their hand, while… actually, almost everyone looks for reasons to bet for protection!

And with river bluffs, I see the most polarization – by which I mean, it seems that many players have an extremely strong preference for bluffing, and many have a remarkably strong preference for skipping bluffs.

Interestingly, in my experience, it seems like players looking to justify a bluff use quantitative reasoning more often:

> “I only need him to fold 33% to half-pot. He’s going to have this type of hand 20% of the time and auto-fold, and then if he folds some middle pair, that’ll be plenty.”

Meanwhile, players justifying not bluffing tend to lean more on qualitative reasoning:

> “I don’t think he’s going to believe me. I can’t rep this card that well. You know what? He might even be trapping here. Yeah… he’s probably trapping a lot on this runout.”

I could go into value bets, check-raises, and so on – we haven’t even talked about pre-flop! – but you get the point.

## What’s Going On?

In all of the scenarios, it comes down to comfort, fear, and excitement. Whatever the player is more comfortable with, less afraid of, or more excited to do, dictates the question they ask themselves.

So ask yourself:

What are you afraid of at the poker table?

Getting a big bluff picked off? Getting check-raised when you’re making a thin value bet? Getting run over by your opponents? Getting sucked out on?

What kinds of plays make you very comfortable?

Protection betting the turn to check back the river? Checking back a thin value hand to call a river bet rather than value cut over two streets? Folding the turn so you don’t have to face an awkward river decision?

What are you excited by?

Making a huge bluff? Picking off a big bluff? Spiking a gutshot against a set and winning a massive pot?

Whatever it is that you’re seeking, you’re more likely to find.

## Flip the Script

Let’s revisit that student who needed 25% equity and said his call “can’t be that bad.”

I’ll tell you what I told him:

“Yes,” I said, “but another way to look at it is that the best-case scenario is that you have about 28% equity. So it can’t be that good either!”

What if instead of asking yourself if you have enough equity to call, you asked yourself if your opponent has enough equity for you to fold?

How might that change the way you make decisions?

What if instead of thinking of all the reasons your bluff won’t work, you pause for a moment and play devil’s advocate?

## Recalibrating

Sometimes, it’s less about flipping the way you analyze and more about a tiny adjustment.

Many years ago, after countless hours of learning together with a good friend, he shared with me one simple observation: “I think you need to hand-read more optimistically.”

It was a subtle yet powerful shift. Trusting in my friend, I thought a bit more about the positive than I was. I immediately began to see more possibilities. I started noticing bluffing opportunities I'd previously overlooked. I started making thinner value bets and check-raises. This fine-tuning had a significant, lasting impact on how I played and on the results that followed.

My friend didn’t see a problem with my thought process as a whole or the way I adjusted to the ranges I put my opponent on. He astutely noticed the one setting that was off.

## It’s Up to You

Ask yourself what emotions might be driving you at the poker table – and how they influence your thinking. Reflect on the patterns you tend to repeat, and question if they're serving you.

Whether it’s a small shift, a different set of questions, or both – I encourage you to give yourself permission to experiment. Worst case, you’ll have learned something – like not to listen to me again!

But best case, you'll uncover a meaningful improvement that positively impacts your decisions and your results, just as I did.

On and off the poker tables, you won't just find what's there – you'll find what you're searching for.

---

## Look Around The Table: Who’s the Mark?
Date: 2025-04-09 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/whos-the-mark

# Look Around The Table: Who’s the Mark?

Mark was an online mid-stakes cash game player in a group coaching program of mine.

One day, in a mastermind hot seat session (where one person shares a challenge and the rest of the group offers feedback), he asked us to help him with a very common challenge: Which poker format to focus on.

Mark was growing pessimistic about his chances at cash games, and he was considering making the move to tournaments.

He explained that edges at cash games seemed to be small. Games would run around one recreational player, and then the table would be filled with pros, a couple better than him, a couple on his level or slightly below.

He’d been on a downswing, and his confidence in his ability to beat those games was fading.

The desire to hop to another format (or business venture – I’ve been guilty of that!) when one isn’t going so well is a common one. It’s a “quick fix,” and it’s easy to see all of the challenges to the format you’re playing in, and to assume the other is rosier than it really is.

As Mark continued to share his thoughts, something became very clear to me. He had a blind spot.

And that’s the topic of today’s post. Let’s get into it!

## Making a Read

We all have blind spots – we have to. We need some sort of framework of assumptions and beliefs in order to operate in the world. We can’t rethink everything we know at every decision point!

Blind spots come in many forms.

A while ago, a coach of mine assigned me and the rest of the group I was in a book to read. He wanted us to finish it in a week, because we’d be discussing it next time.

He didn’t know that I hated reading. I never read. I learn best through videos, conversation, and practice.

Books… I don’t know… they were too slow – too boring. My mind would wander, and I couldn’t focus well enough to get anywhere. I truly couldn’t even remember the last time I finished a book, much less in a single week! My coach didn’t realize what he was asking of me.

I debated not doing it, but the peer pressure was enough to push me over the edge. The rest of the group would be reading it and discussing it next week. I didn’t want to disappoint everyone.

So, begrudgingly, I ordered a copy, carved out some time from my busy schedule, and started reading.

15 minutes passed, then 30, then 90. I stopped and came to a realization:

I’m enjoying this!

What was going on?

Was this book great? Meh, it was fine.

Was I proud of myself for reading? I guess… but that’s not it.

What it turned out I loved about it, upon further reflection, was the peace. It felt almost meditative to sit and read.

When I tried reading in the past, I was either a college student or a young poker player. When I finished playing, I’d relax and do whatever I wanted. That’s not my life anymore.

I’m 40. I’m a poker player, coach, ambassador, multi-business owner, husband, and father.

When I “finish” working, I still get emails, I still have problems to think through, or things I wish I’d finished and want to attempt to. I have a son to take care of. I have chores and adulting to deal with.

Taking over an hour to sit and read, blocking everything else out for a bit – a break I rarely gave myself.

I’d been operating under the assumption that I hated reading for 15 years.

Not only did I think I hated reading. I knew I did.

And I knew wrong.

The lesson I took from this experience is that the things we know and think about ourselves (I wanted to write “our priors” but not all of you are nerds) need updating from time to time. And that it’s worth testing something out.

## Another Perspective

Sometimes it’s an experience that opens our eyes, like mine above. Other times, it’s a perspective we’d never considered. This is what happened with Mark (who we’ll get back to soon!).

It’s also what happened to me when I was seven years old.

My parents had named me Philip. And during my early years, that's what everyone called me – my family, friends, teachers – until second grade.

That year, my teacher, Miss Wood, decided to call me Phil. I don’t know why, and I certainly never told her to because I hadn’t even considered being Phil.

But then some classmates started calling me Phil, and pretty soon I realized “I like this better.”

From age seven onward, I've been Phil.

And sometimes you get someone else’s perspective even when you’re not involved.

I remember an Elliot Roe mastermind event I went to that really changed my perspective on perspective!

What struck me so much about it is that, while I got plenty of valuable feedback on my topic, I actually learned much more by others sharing their own.

I changed my perspective on a poor assumption I’d made about what life would look like for me a couple of decades down the road, once I’d “accomplished all I wanted to.” Next, by seeing how a multi-business owner structured their week in a unique way, I realized a better way to structure my work to be conducive to playing poker. And the list goes on.

## Who’s the Mark?

This is why self-reflection alone isn’t enough. Or, I should say, isn’t the best you can do.

And this is why Mark’s realization was one that he couldn’t make on his own.

What was clear to me as I heard Mark speak was that he had put himself in a box with a level of certainty that wasn’t close to warranted. So, I asked Mark a simple question:

“Why can’t you become the best player at the table?”

Mark paused. I could see him thinking. And even as he started answering, his brain was still catching up.

Mark had taken it as fact that every table he plays at will have a couple of players better than him, chipping away at whatever edge he might have. He’d never considered – or at least hadn’t anytime in the past 10 years – that he could be a top player in his player pool.

But what made these top players untouchable?

What if he could become the best at the table and they became the Mark?

This is what I challenged him to consider. And, since I got the benefit of continuing to work with him and seeing some of his progress, I got to see the difference it made.

Questioning one assumption changed his entire outlook, his level of motivation, and his confidence at and away from the table.

## What Story Are You Telling Yourself?

Mark’s story is a common one. I’ve struggled with something similar, ​as I wrote a while back​.

I once convinced myself I couldn't compete in the post-solver era of poker. I was a "figure-outer," not a studier or memorizer. I assumed that the new era belonged to players with different strengths than mine. That assumption could have cost me so much had I not found the right people to push me on it.

What imaginary box have you put yourself in? What assumptions might be holding you back right now?

Maybe, like Mark, you've mentally placed yourself in a hierarchy where you'll always be outmatched by certain players. Maybe, like me, you've decided that certain aspects of the game are beyond your capabilities. Or maybe you're assuming that some part of your current approach is the only one that could possibly work for you.

What I can guarantee is that there are several stories you tell yourself that aren't true.

Whatever your unseen assumptions might be, finding them often requires an external perspective. It requires putting yourself in environments where others can help you see what you can't.

The most powerful breakthroughs in poker – and in life – often come not from fine-tuning our skills, but from questioning the assumptions we didn't even realize we were making. When we shed these limitations, we don't just improve incrementally – we unlock entirely new levels of possibility.

## Level Up Faster

I hope this has opened your eyes to the power of uncovering your hidden assumptions. I hope it encouraged you to make time for reflection: both self-reflection and reflection from others.

If you want to fast-track this leveling up, and learn from me and experts like Elliot Roe, Brian Rast, Blake Eastman, Scott Seiver, and many more, I'm hosting the ​BTG: World Series Summit​ in Las Vegas from May 26th-28th.

In addition to bringing together some incredible people to learn from, I designed the event to help you ask yourself the right questions and to open you up to new perspectives. We’ll be doing small group mastermind sessions along with speakers, panels, and a whole lot more.

​Learn more and reserve your spot​

I hope to see you there. Either way, I’ll see you again here next week.

---

## Logic vs. Emotion: Off the Table
Date: 2025-04-02 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/logic-vs-emotion-off-the-table

# Logic vs. Emotion: Off the Table

Last week, I ​wrote​ about how emotions impact your game at the poker table – and how to use that to your advantage. This week, I’m going to talk about two ways that I’ve carried those lessons over to my life off the poker table.

Let’s start with the simpler one:

### The Harder Path

Just like in the hand ​where I was on the fence about firing a river bluff​, there are many times in life where a decision will feel close.

Do I have this tough conversation with my brother or leave it alone? Do I end this relationship or wait it out and see? Do I go for a run today or get to work early so I can get more done?

Much like the poker example, when it feels close, the right answer is often clear: It’s the path of greater pain and discomfort now.

The tough conversation with your brother will be uncomfortable right now. Ending a relationship will be painful immediately. Going for a run (if you’re me) is much more unpleasant than getting to work.

So the fact that it feels close means you know what to do.

This "Hard Choice Razor" is one that, if you lean into it, can do you a lot of good. And it’s not just that you’ll make the right decision more often. There’s another benefit to always choosing the hard path:

It leads to growth.

You will learn more. You’ll become more fearless. You’ll gain confidence in yourself, knowing you can handle tough things.

Every time you choose the hard path, you’re adding to your toolbelt in ways that may not be obvious right away.

### What Is Real

The next lesson is a connection I didn’t make between my on and off-the-table worlds until recently, when a mentor of mine shared these wise words with me:

“Emotions are not truth. Emotions are signals.”

Just as being afraid to bluff doesn’t mean bluffing is a mistake, being angry at a friend’s actions doesn’t mean those actions were wrong.

Being angry is a signal.

It’s a signal that’s impacted by your past, your unique set of beliefs and values, fears and desires.

And not only that – it’s a signal that isn’t even consistent! You might be five times as likely to be angry after a night of no sleep or a difficult life event. That can’t possibly mean that everyone around you is five times as wrong!

I like anger as an example for a couple of reasons. First, people very often use the signal of anger to assume they are right and someone else is wrong or bad. Many other emotions don’t cause us to unfairly judge someone else in the same way.

Second, anger is considered by many to be a secondary emotion.

This means it shows up only when you’re experiencing another emotion underneath it. Anger serves as a protective reaction to make you feel less vulnerable, hiding beneath it one of:

Let’s make up an example to illustrate what I mean…

### Table Talk

A group of friends is having dinner together. They go around the table, each sharing a good memory from the last month.

Bob shares that he got a raise at work.

Joe talks about a nice date night with his wife.

Dave describes a 3-hour mountain hike.

Steve shares that he surprised his mom with a new car for her birthday, that she was over the moon, and it made him feel really good. He shares how thankful he is for all his mom did for him and that he feels so lucky he could pay it back in this way.

After dinner, Bob texts Joe, “Can you believe Steve? Bragging about how good a deed he did, and not-so-subtly making sure we know he’s richer than us. Hate him.”

Joe says, “I know. So annoying and weird. Just talk about something normal.”

Bob texts Dave the same thing. Dave replies, “I thought it was sweet. It clearly meant a lot to him. Was he not supposed to share his best memory from the month?”

Bob is annoyed that Dave doesn’t get it.

### Different Perspectives

Steve’s story made Bob angry. He felt guilt and shame during it because he had been struggling financially and keeping up appearances that everything was okay in front of his friends.

It made Joe angry because he felt guilty that he’d been ignoring his mom, not helping her when she needed it.

Dave didn’t have any of this baggage. Steve’s story didn’t make him feel anything but some warmth from his friend’s happy experience.

Steve’s share made Bob and Joe feel angry (on top of their guilt and shame). Instead of recognizing their anger as a signal, they treated it as proof that Steve had done something wrong.

If hearing his story made them angry, it must have been bad. He’s wrong, and they are righteously mad.

In an instant, their minds created a story of their own – Steve was arrogant, inconsiderate, or something else.

### A Signal About What Exactly?

You could argue that every time someone “makes you” feel angry, sad, annoyed, embarrassed, or anything else, the signal that you’re receiving isn’t about them. It’s about you.

This doesn’t mean that you’re not allowed to take a stance on someone else’s actions. It doesn’t mean that the other person should be able to do and say anything they’d like, and if you don’t like it, that's too bad.

But it does mean that our immediate beliefs when we feel a strong emotion can’t be trusted implicitly – that we can, instead, get curious about what aspect of the thing in question set us off.

If, like me, you’re always keen to develop more self-awareness (one of the keys to poker success, in my humble opinion), this is exciting news! It’s a potent new source of truly meaningful information.

Your reactions, especially if they are overreactions, are signals that something within you is being bumped up against. It could be a core value, like fairness, respect, or integrity, or it could be an insecurity, a memory, a fear, or other things along these lines.

Get curious about what it could be. Solve the puzzle!

---

## Logic vs. Emotion: Who is in Control?
Date: 2025-03-25 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/logic-vs-emotion-who-is-in-control

# Logic vs. Emotion: Who is in Control?

I’ve played millions of poker hands. I started learning over 20 years ago through the books of David Sklansky – a pure logician.

I wanted to be one myself – a robot at the poker tables. I viewed fear as weakness. I viewed hoping for a specific river as weakness.

And while I still advise people to focus more on the decision at hand than on things that are beyond their control, I have also drastically changed the way I view my own emotions.

Pretty early in my career (and thanks to some mentorship from Tommy Angelo), I learned to be aware of the emotions and how they impacted my play. I realized that, while I thought I was successful in turning myself into a cyborg, I hadn’t succeeded.

Instead, my emotions were impacting my play without me realizing it.

### Recognition

So, over 15 years ago, I changed my relationship with emotions at the poker table, and I’ve stuck with the same approach since:

I recognize my emotions, and I use them as data.

Here's what that looks like in practice:

$100/$200 Full Ring NLHE

I raise to $500 on the button with A♠️Q♠️. BB calls.

Flop: Q♣️T♣️7♦️ ($1100)

Check, I bet $400, call.

Turn: T♥️ ($1900)

Check, I check.

River: 2♠️ ($1900)

BB Bets $600, I...

My first thought is that my opponent usually has a weak Q and I should raise to $2200.

My next thought is, “Wait, this might be a trap.”

I start thinking of the reasons not to raise: “He can bet-3bet lots of hands here, bluffs included. I don’t want to get blown off the best hand. He might also just believe me and hero fold all of his Qx, so then I’m getting no value.”

And as I’m deciding I don’t want to raise, I stop myself.

I recognize that I’m afraid of something, and I ask myself, “Do I want to just call because that’s what I think is the best play? Or is it because I’m uncomfortable?”

By adding that to the thought process, I’m able to take a step back and analyze the decision with a clearer head. By calling out the emotion, it takes away some of its power, and it allows me to think practically, with that information included.

When I was attempting to be a robot, my emotions were influencing me in ways I couldn't see.

### Breaking the Tie

Let’s say I'm on the river, facing a decision between making a $50,000 bluff or checking back and losing the hand. I’m on the fence, and I know that as time goes on, I’ll begin to lean towards giving up.

I recognize that I’m nervous. Even though I’ve been here a thousand times, making a big bluff is, on some level, scary – I don’t want to lose. I can imagine my opponent snap-calling with the nuts. That doesn’t feel good.

So when I’m on the fence, and I feel fear: What does that mean?

Usually, it signals a profitable bluff!

If I recognize my fear, and I know it biases me towards checking, that means this “close” decision is likely one where, if I were thinking 100% logically, I’d have landed on bluffing being the best choice.

My emotional hesitation often means I should bluff rather than avoid it.

### My Process and Yours

My emotions don’t match yours. Yours may be stronger or much less strong. Rather than fears related to losing, yours could be more excitement related to winning – leading you to bluff and call too often.

Regardless, the process I’d suggest is the same:

Away from the table, write out the types of plays that make you uncomfortable or overly excited

At the table, recognize when you’re in those spots

Or, recognize anytime you feel emotion creeping in while you play

Step back and ask yourself: Is it logic or emotion making you want to bet, call, or fold?

This process doesn’t erase the impact of emotions on your game (I haven’t come across a process that does). It reduces it, helping you find the logically appropriate play more often than not.

Note: This doesn’t apply to “my gut says he’s bluffing.” That’s different than emotion, and if you have a good track record, I’d encourage you to trust that gut instinct, even when you can’t put it into words logically.

### The Bigger Game

There are two ways I’ve carried this lesson over to my life off the table. One, I realized long ago. The other, only recently.

I’ll dive into these next week. See you then!

---

## Damage control: The First Domino
Date: 2025-03-18 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/first-domino

# Damage control: The First Domino

I was recently on a call with several members of my group coaching program. One of them – we’ll call him Bob – shared a specific story from his rough month at the tables.

The action was slow (something I’m seeing players struggle with more and more these days), and Bob decided to add a couple of heads-up tables against the only player sitting – a player he’d previously decided he wasn’t going to play against.

Now, Bob didn’t necessarily think he was an underdog to this player. He just wanted to focus on his 6-max game rather than his heads-up game for some time, and he didn’t want to play tough players in a game format he wasn’t actively studying.

He shared this story among others from throughout the past month, but I zeroed in on this one in particular, because a new perspective popped into my head as he was telling it.

That’s the topic of today’s post.

## The Obvious Problem

It's evident to most of us that breaking our pre-set rules is almost always a bad idea. Bob knew this, too, and he was frustrated with himself for the decision.

I've always recommended creating guardrails – rules you set for yourself while thinking clearly, away from the pressure of the table – and following them at the table, trusting your former clear-headed self over the current, somewhat impaired, version of you.

And Bob had done this – at least the first part!

When you break a rule that was there for a reason, you’ve likely made a poor decision.

Either you’ve come up with an excuse that isn’t good enough, or you didn’t think through the potential exceptions beforehand when you were supposed to be thoughtful and clearheaded.

Or maybe you don't justify it – you just quietly tell yourself, “I shouldn’t be doing this,” as you click the buttons.

Regardless of your reasoning, you’re doing something that you previously thought was a bad idea, and there’s a pretty good chance it is.

## Hidden Problems

What's equally or even more important – and what I told Bob – is that by breaking his rule, he was off his A-game in two different ways.

If Bob were cool, calm, collected, and focused, he wouldn’t have broken his rule. By making the choice he did, he proved he wasn’t at his best.

Not only was he playing an opponent he previously decided to avoid – he was doing it while on his C-game!

Once he decided to play, he stacked the deck against himself even further from a mindset perspective.

When you do something you know you shouldn’t, as soon as something goes wrong, the thoughts start to creep in:

“I shouldn’t have done this.”

“I knew this would happen.”

“Why am I so stupid?”

Each self-critical thought chips away at your confidence, distracting you, and making it harder to play your best.

Bob agreed, and shared that several times during the session, the thought “Should I be playing this?” popped into his mind. And he said this framing should prevent him from repeating the same mistake.

## What Are Your Rules?

I can’t tell you how many players I’ve talked to who agree that setting rules and guardrails like Bob did is a great idea, yet still haven’t done it for themselves!

They convince themselves that it’s great for others but doesn’t apply to them. They’re capable of making good decisions in the moment, even though they recognize that others aren’t always.

Don’t let that be you!

Do you have any rules set for yourself when you play? Any stop-loss, session length, or break rules?

If you take one thing away from this, let it be action. It’s one thing to read about an idea and nod along, thinking, “That sounds right. That was helpful.”

It’s another to take what you’ve learned and apply it.

If you want to be the kind of person who applies it, here’s what I’d encourage you to do:

Set some rules.

These rules can be based on things that you’ve noticed in the past.

Do you play worse when losing a lot? When winning a lot?

Does your play drop off significantly after 6 hours at the table?

Do you notice that when you’re tilted, you play faster?

Do breaks help you reset and refocus?

Do you play your best when you’ve done a short pre-session routine?

Reflecting on where you’ve gone wrong in the past and protecting yourself from that version of you in the future are what rules are all about. So use the past as inspiration for your rules.

Set a timer for 5 minutes (that’s all!), remove all distractions and notifications, and write out 2-6 rules for yourself.

If you let yourself read a single word of something else (a text, an email, a calendar notification), if you eat something, if you listen to or watch something – if you do anything else during these 5 minutes – restart the timer.

That’s it!

(If you can’t spare 5 minutes of work to improve your earnings at the poker tables, I’d encourage you to ask yourself why you think you deserve to win.)

## Followthrough

Once you have your rules, remember what Bob learned, so that you don’t have to learn it the hard way.

Trust your original rules. They’re there for a reason. You can adjust them between sessions, but during the session, stick with what you came up with.

The next time you want to break one, take it as a cue. If you break your rules, you are, by definition, not at your best.

If you’re considering breaking one, you’re probably off your game, too. Perhaps it’s a good time to take a walk or call it a day.

---

## Make 2025 Different. Actually.
Date: 2024-12-31 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/make-2025-different-actually

# Make 2025 Different. Actually.

Allow me to start with a hypothetical:

Imagine you met a new friend at an event, and made dinner plans with them. Dinner time rolls around, and they stand you up, saying “I’m so sorry – work was crazy today. Let’s do tomorrow.”

The next day, you show up at the restaurant, wait 30 minutes, and then leave. They text an hour later: “I can’t believe this happened again. My cousin was going through something and really needed my help. Tomorrow I will be there!”

The following day, you only wait 15 minutes after the no-show and no response. Later that night, this friend says, “Okay, I know I said this a couple times now, but let’s do tomorrow and I won’t miss it.”

Would you agree to dinner for the fourth time in a row?

I probably wouldn’t, and I’d bet most of you would pass, too.

## Why not?

Your new friend is telling you they’ll be there. They’ve acknowledged what’s happened in the past, and they’ve said that it will be different this time. Everything they’re saying indicates they’ll show up.

So why don’t we fully believe what they said?

Because behavior is a language, too.

And their behavior is saying that even if they might make it, there’s at least a pretty good chance you’ll be wasting your time again. I (and most of you) intuitively know to listen not only to the words they speak, but the words their actions tell us.

Their actions say they can’t be trusted to keep their word, and we don’t want to risk another hour of our time on a bad bet.

So then, why are we so easily fooled when it comes to ourselves?

## This Year Will Be Different

“I know that I’ve dedicated myself to a study habit, a bankroll management strategy, or a regular pre-session routine in the past and not followed through. I know I’ve started workout plans and diets and all of them fizzled out before I expected them to.

But this time will be different.”

Really? Seriously?

Why?

Why should I believe you won’t miss dinner for the fourth night in a row?

And how are you willing to risk so much – your year of poker, health, important relationships, or whatever your resolution is about – on a bet that has proven, time and time again, to be a terrible one?

## Selective Amnesia

With our friend, we didn’t know what he really intended to do. He might be misleading us about the chances he’ll show up on the fourth night, or he might fully intend to. We can’t know for sure, so it’s easier not to trust him.

Perhaps we believe ourselves in these scenarios because we know that we intend to do it this time.

But was that not our intention in the past?

What is our past behavior loudly telling us?

Many people plan on the next year being different than the others. They set a goal, and this time, they’re going to stick with it.

But the data doesn’t lie. Depending which study you reference, somewhere between 40% and 80% of people have failed on their New Year’s Resolution by February.

You’re different than the average person, of course, so simply look at your own track record. You have perfect data to reference. What has your batting average been?

## When I Followed Through

The first time I got in great shape (the most common New Year’s Resolution) as an adult was in 2011. I was 26. I’d recently ended a long-term relationship, and I’d just moved to Vancouver, BC, far away from all of my non-poker friends.

New country, newly single, with lots of new free time. I was excited to dedicate myself to poker and my health after they’d shared time and focus with my old social life.

First, I did the procrastination-disguised-as-research thing.

I pored over different ways to get in shape for weeks. Eventually, I landed on intermittent fasting. But I needed a workout plan, too.

(If you’ve been down this road of research before, you may know how much of a setback it can be to wait until you have the perfect plan!)

In my research, I’d come across Martin Berkhan, considered by many to be the “godfather of intermittent fasting.” Fortunately, he offered 1:1 coaching, so I clicked around on his website to figure out how it worked.

As I got excited and was ready to apply, I saw the words: “There is currently a waitlist of several months for private coaching.”

Damn.

There was no way I was going to wait that long. I needed a solution now.

So, what did I do?

I sent him an email with the subject line: “Private Coaching: I’ll Pay Triple” (Note: I had no idea what the training costed normally)

Martin was nice enough to accept me without charging me triple. He could get me right in because he had a special training program for… what would eventually be called “influencers” – we didn’t know the word for that back then!

## What Happened Next

I got started with Martin right away. Because he was so revered in the fitness world by those familiar with his work, I followed his every word.

Did I mess up sometimes? Sure, but rarely. And I always told him when I did, so he could offer advice, support, or yell at me!

After the first four months, I was the leanest and strongest I’d ever been, and I continued in that direction. I worked with Martin for nearly a year, at which point he became too busy to continue.

After parting ways, I continued to follow the plan he’d set out for me for a few months, at which point I crossed paths with poker crusher Ben Tollerene. We became fast friends, and the main way we spent time together was by going to the gym and lunch (which was breakfast for me) most days of the week before separating and playing our online poker sessions.

Jason Koon eventually moved to Vancouver and roomed with Ben, and we quickly connected, too.

Ben and Jason were the type of people who more or less never missed a workout. In fact, I can’t recall a single instance of either of them missing one that they intended to do.

I’d later learn – or hear about and come to believe – that certain people are built differently as it relates to taking action when they intend to. We normally call that being disciplined and consider discipline something you can change, but I’ve formed the opinion that, while this is partly true, there’s a much larger component than I previously thought that is predetermined.

Regardless, going from working with a fitness mentor I respected to surrounding myself with peers like Ben and Jason worked great. I stayed in great shape for a few years.

## The Downswing

I thought this was the new me. I thought I was never going back. After all, my friends never fell off.

And now I was like them! I was a fit guy.

Unfortunately, I was wrong.

I began dating Farah (my wife) in late 2012. We started off long-distance, and I continued in my routines. Eventually, we spent most days together, splitting time between Vancouver, LA (where she lived when we met), and Las Vegas.

My workouts with Ben and Jason were no longer routine. I’d join them sometimes when I was around. But missing most of them because I was traveling led to me more or less stopping.

I still kept things up on my own for a while.

Until I didn’t.

Things eventually came up that “got in the way,” and after many years, I returned to my old ways – rarely working out, eating terribly.

I gained a lot of weight – and not the good kind. I was back where I was before… just a little bit stronger.

## Resolutions

At this point, despite being out of shape, I knew exactly what to do to get back in fighting form. I just wasn’t doing it yet.

I sometimes toyed with the idea of another virtual trainer, but it felt silly. “I know how to eat. I know how to workout. I don’t need a plan – I just need to stick with it. I’ve done it before and I can do it again.”

I started several times, and I failed several times. I lost and gained 30lbs at least five times. I lost and gained 15lbs more times than I can keep track of.

I didn’t understand. Why couldn’t I just be disciplined? I thought I proved that I was! Where did that discipline go?

And why did my resolutions (be it New Year’s or otherwise), keep fizzling out?

## Sustained Successes

Eventually, in late 2020, I hired another fitness coach. And, over the following years, another. And another.

I found that the accountability aspect played a big part for me. Once I worked with someone long enough, and I saw that nothing bad happened when I failed and reported back, that coach lost some accountability influence over me.

Over these past years, I’ve done better than I had in the five years prior. It hasn’t been perfect, but it’s been better.

Living with my wife, having a son – there’s always been food in the house that I don’t want to be eating. There have been more dinners out – more social plans. I’ve had less control of my schedule.

This isn’t to blame them, or my circumstances – I wouldn’t trade them for anything.

But what I’ve come to learn is that for me, and for most people, it’s not so much about discipline as it is infrastructure – the things around you that make it easier, or harder, to do what you intend to do.

## The Shoulds

Motivational content is very popular, especially this time of year. Influencers telling you to “just do the work,” “no more excuses,” “It’s easy. You just do these things and you’ll get the results.”

And they’re right. Excuses suck. And it often is as simple as routinely engaging in behaviors that lead to the outcomes you want.

Simple. But not easy.

If it were easy, you’d already be doing it.

While these people are often trying to help you with motivation, I believe it can be detrimental to those of us who can’t simply start doing something and stick with it at the snap of their fingers – aka, the majority of the world.

It makes us think we shouldn’t need help.

We shouldn’t need a study group to meet every Wednesday and report back on our solver homework because we can simply not slack off this time and do it on our own.

We shouldn’t need to keep cereal out of the house because we should just be able to not give into weakness and eat it.

We shouldn’t need a trainer to come to our house because we should just workout on our own when we say we will.

## Shift The Odds in Your Favor

Having the right things in the house, easy access to a gym, a schedule that accommodates exercise and meal prep, a meal delivery service, coaches, trainers, accountability partners, friends to exercise with… these are the things that lead to more success.

Can you do it without them?

Sure. You can.

But why would you not give yourself every advantage to succeed at the things that matter to you?

Why not stack as many of these edges on top of each other as possible, so that your success becomes easy?

The truth is, for most of us, discipline has let us down time and time again, despite our best intentions.

Yes, sometimes we can get something to stick over time. But is that discipline? Or were our circumstances supporting us? And was the 30th week in a row of a habit easier than the third?

## Make 2025 Different

If you are expecting big things from yourself this next year – awesome! I’d invite you to ask yourself a question:

If you do what you’ve always done (not what you intend to do – what you’ve done), are you going to get where you want to go?

If not, don’t leave this up to your flaky friend, discipline. Give him every opportunity to show up to dinner. And I don’t just mean making one small change. I mean taking drastic action.

Buy him an alarm clock. Send a courier to retrieve him. Tie him up if you have to! (This is a metaphor. Don’t do this to someone.)

Don’t just decide to do something. Change your environment to support it.

Make this year fundamentally different than the last.

## Mentorship

You’re here reading my emails, which means you’ve chosen me as one of your mentors. I truly appreciate it. I also recognize that as someone you respect enough to give space in your inbox, my advice carries some weight, much like Martin’s did to me.

I hope you’ll take the above to heart and set yourself up to succeed this year.

If you want more of my support this year, there is an opportunity to take that mentorship to the next level and work much more closely with me, which I’ll share with you now. (There is a big promotion ending tomorrow that I want to make sure you don’t miss!)

If you’re not interested, I don’t want to waste your time – go set up an infrastructure to support your resolutions and kick some ass in 2025!

This is the end of the email for you.

For the rest of you, I built a program designed to help higher-stakes poker players level up using the concepts I talked about above (and many more).

Before I ask you to consider investing the time and money to work with me, let me first share my own approach to investing in myself.

## You Are Your Greatest Asset

I want you to know that I wouldn’t ask you to do anything I wouldn’t do.

I’ve invested in myself throughout my career. In fact, it’s been a cornerstone of my approach to life, and I credit a lot of my success to it.

I’ve had four long-term fitness coaches, nine mindset/performance/life coaches, three psychiatrists/therapists, three business coaches, a handful of poker coaches, and many other mentors or mentors for miscellaneous things I wanted to improve at.

I’ve been to several retreats/masterminds/workshops and have joined multiple long-term peer group communities.

(Plus, without paying, I’ve constantly worked closely with peers in whatever I endeavor to get better at.)

I’d estimate the most I spent in a year at around $80k, and I’d ballpark the total financial investment in myself so far at around $500k.

Some will consider that an absurd price to pay.

To me, it has felt like a steal. Thanks in large part to my approach to learning from others, I’ve had a very successful career for 20 years, and the knowledge, experience, and mindset I’ve equipped myself with will pay dividends for years to come.

I’ve also armed myself to teach others some of the things I’ve learned, not only from the investments above, but also the years of experience playing nosebleed-stakes poker against the best in the world, the handful of businesses I’ve founded, the life experience I’ve gained, and the peers I’ve been lucky enough to learn with.

## Going Beyond The Game

I started Beyond The Game because I realized so many of the lessons I’ve learned from outside of poker are ones I desperately needed during the early and middle parts of my career. And I realized nobody was teaching most of them – at least with the infrastructure I wanted to create.

After a few iterations of imparting these lessons and mentoring groups of poker players, I settled on the current version of BTG: A one-year program, centered around weekly 90-minute calls, led by me, and a Discord community.

There’s more to it than that, but that’s the core of what it is.

While poker strategy obviously comes up, our focus is largely on everything surrounding that. Things like:

Studying Effectively

Choosing a Career Path

Switching Game Types

Making your way to higher-stakes games

Handling downswings, roadblocks, and challenges

“Balancing” poker with the rest of your life

Finding training resources

Mindset

Performance

Becoming a Poker Coach

Content Creation

Leaving Poker for Another Career

Etc.

We also end up covering lessons and topics that apply outside of poker. Some BTG members have made big changes to their health. Others have leveled up their relationships. Some have left relationships, business partnerships, or backing deals.

BTG members have hired other BTG members as coaches, joined other members’ stables, and formed study groups. Members meet up with others at tournament stops – myself included! And some have surely made new lifelong friends.

The environment I aim to create at BTG is one of limitless possibilities because that’s something I’ve experienced in somewhat similar settings outside of poker.

As I tell members at the start, you never know when one lesson, one realization, or one connection will change the trajectory of your career (and even your life).

For now, Beyond The Game is accessible to anyone for a one-time investment of $8,000 ($667/mo).

If you have the bankroll and are right for the program, I believe this is an absolute steal, but perhaps I’m biased. I don’t want you to take my word for it…

## Listen to Them

Me going on about how much I believe in Beyond The Game is doesn’t really tell you much, so I’ll stop now and let you hear from BTG members:

Here’s what BTG members are saying about it:

I felt stuck in my poker career and was not sure what I needed to be doing differently. BTG is perfect for the poker pro who's been struggling at mid-stakes for a long time. You're working hard, getting coaching, studying with friends, watching the latest content on video sites, but you're not getting the results you want. BTG can help you get there.

Jake, BTG Member

When I joined BTG, I was completely burned out after almost 20 years as a poker pro and was already exploring other career options. Within a couple weeks I realized that it wasn't that I disliked being a professional poker player, I just hated the way I was approaching the game. Now poker excites me. Playing, studying, talking poker - I love it again.

BTG would be perfect for someone who is either at a roadblock, or just looking to take "the next step" in their career and in life. It doesn't matter what exactly you're trying to accomplish because BTG is all about giving you the tools, the community and the support to reach your goals. BTG will work for anyone who is willing to put the work in.

Jason, BTG Member

Before BTG there was a lot of guesswork - uncertainty over both known unknowns and unknown unknowns. I no longer have to guess what the right approach will be when it comes to issues that arise in poker. I can consult Phil or the group, and the weekly meetings equip me with useful wisdom and information to tackle problems.

BTG is perfect for those who feel like they have untapped potential in their poker career and are looking for the missing piece.

Lawrence, BTG Member

Before BTG, I would get distracted easily playing poker and I was always on my phone on social media or texting people. I was not a good listener and there were times when I was difficult to deal with. That isn’t the case anymore. My mental game in poker is so much better. I’m so much more focused and I’ve never been more motivated to succeed. Also, outside of poker, my relationship with my girlfriend is a lot better. I’m a much better listener and I get more tasks done around the house.

BTG is perfect for someone that wants to take their mental game to the next level. Not just in poker, but in life.

Jarod, BTG Member

Pretty much my entire experience with BTG had exceeded expectations. I’m really happy with how much everyone contributes to the community. And the weekly lectures from Phil are great. They provide something to ponder over each week and something to use to grow.

BTG is perfect for anyone who wants to improve their results but isn’t sure how to go about it outside of just studying.

Michael, BTG Member

Since retiring, I've struggled with daily structure and BTG has inspired me to build and maintain daily routines. I recently made a deep run in a WSOP circuit main event finishing in 4th place. Healthy morning routines combined with exercise goals and poker study goals have greatly contributed to my ability to do well in tournaments.

I've also lost nearly 30lbs.

BTG is perfect for anyone looking to level up in poker or life. The community is full of great advice on a myriad of topics and the weekly meetings and small groups help hold oneself accountable. Anyone struggling with structure would benefit greatly from a program such as BTG.

Brian, BTG Member

BTG will teach and empower you to drive your own career and life to success, whatever that may look like for you personally. It will not force you to conform to one thing, like many courses may do. BTG has not only improved my approach to executing and improving in poker, but in all aspects of my life.

Conor, BTG Member

## next steps

If you’re interested in joining Beyond the Game, learning a bit more, or reading even more words from BTG members, you can find all of that here:

Beyond The Game

Either way, I’m rooting for you in 2025, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t hoping to take it on together.

---

## Why I No Longer Aim for Work-Life Balance
Date: 2024-12-17 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/work-life-balance

# Why I No Longer Aim for Work-Life Balance

For most of my poker career, I preached work-life balance – the need to focus energy on life outside of the game.

Poker was unique, I thought, in the way that it can lead to losing for extended periods of time. And, if poker makes up most of your life, and it’s going badly, it can feel like everything is.

As I’ve expanded professionally, going from playing poker to running businesses, ​coaching​, and creating content, I’ve realized that poker isn’t all that unique in this way.

If your work is all-consuming, whatever it is, you run the risk of “losing” for a while, and feeling like your whole life is in a slump.

Losing as a business owner doesn’t look all that dissimilar from losing at poker. Losing as an employee is a bit different, but can be every bit as defeating.

So, am I saying that everyone needs work-life balance?

No, actually. I now think perhaps nobody does.

Let’s get into it.

## The Imbalancing Act

Balance is arbitrary. It implies giving an equal amount of attention to various aspects of your life (so that they balance out).

Even if we don’t take it that literally, it also implies that there is an ideal balance out there – the right number of hours to dedicate to work, your health, your family, your friends, and whatever other areas you want to include in this category list.

And that would imply that this perfect balance is constant, not something that should change given your circumstances.

Now, am I reading too much into the implications of the word “balance?”

Maybe. But words are important!

## Shifts in the Weather

We all go through different seasons in our lives. And much like the changing weather, these seasons call for adjustments in our routines, priorities, and how we equip ourselves.

The right “balance” for a 21-year-old, up-and-coming poker pro is different from the right balance for a 45-year-old accountant with a wife and three kids. The right “balance” can be different from one year to the next, or even one month to the next, based on what you want to take on and what your life and career are demanding of you.

It’s okay to be in a season of long work hours and little time for friends if you determine that to be the best path for you right now. It’s okay to be in a season of less work and more focus on family, even at times when work is extra demanding.

I took over a month off of work during the most hectic work period in my life because my son was born. I planned for it ahead of time, working overtime to ensure things would go more smoothly while I was gone, and I detached and focused on my family, putting work mostly out of my mind, when I decided that was what I wanted to dedicate my time to.

I wasn’t remotely balanced during either of these periods.

So, should we just do whatever we feel like we need to do?

Not so fast.

## How Are You Deciding?

Is poker getting stressful and you just want to battle your way out of this downswing, studying extra hours until you can get things back together?

Are you taking it day by day, playing extra long sessions when you feel like it, canceling plans with friends and family because the games tonight are good, again and again?

Or have you evaluated your goals and opportunities and carefully decided that the next three months are a time for focus? Or, when specific games arise, you drop your plans for them; otherwise, you’re off work at 9pm to be with your family?

There’s a difference between:

Flying by the seat of your pants, taking it one day at a time, only to wake up 3 years later, realizing you’ve neglected your health and relationships, and

Making a conscious decision and a plan to take these steps for now to achieve a specific goal.

Note: This can work the other way too – spending all your time and energy on a new relationship or hobby without making a plan to do so, only to wake up years later, having fallen behind in the game and missing several big opportunities.

The difference, which should be clear by now, is intentionality.

If we’re being intentional about our schedule, our energy, and our focus, it’s okay that things might not look particularly balanced.

But, that doesn’t mean we should forget about the other areas of our lives. In fact, I believe we should involve them heavily in the process. Not striving for perfect balance, but rather for something else.

## Harmony

A few years ago, I was introduced to the phrase work-life harmony.

As soon as I heard it, I knew I liked it better than the work-life balance I had sought for so long.

As the term implies, work-life harmony means that the different areas of your life work well with each other. You may focus much more on specific areas at certain times, but you do so in an intentional way that aligns with your values and allows you to still tend to the deprioritized areas.

It involves sustainability – creating routines, habits, and systems that prevent burnout and support long-term wellbeing.

For example, it’s one thing to spend a lot of time working and less time on your health. But if you neglect your diet, fitness, and sleep entirely, that’s going to lead to much worse quality work (in addition to wrecking your body).

So perhaps this season, you drop cooking and you find a healthy meal-prep service that doesn’t taste quite as good to reheat in the short breaks you allow yourself. Maybe instead of working out 5 times a week for an hour, it’s 4 times a week for 20 minutes.

Maybe instead of seeing friends twice a week, it’s once every two weeks.

It’s more work and less attention elsewhere, but it’s intentional and sustainable. It’s by design.

## Relationships

I’ve had seasons of extremely heavy workloads, both before and after becoming a family man. And I have done it wrong many times.

Of the poker players I work with, one of the most common struggles as it relates to reaching their goals is scheduling and family. I’ve seen many players who followed the same path as I did – starting a poker career as a single guy with no responsibilities, taking on more responsibilities and relationships, and not being able to push as hard or obsess as much as we used to.

Sometimes it comes from a place of personal boundaries: “I’m not willing to give up taking my kids to school in the morning. I don’t want to miss dinner with the family or to work weekends.”

Other times, it comes from external pressure: “My partner complains that I’m working too much, not helping enough, and not giving them enough attention.”

In both cases, it’s a tough obstacle to overcome. How do we find harmony between these areas of our lives? How do we tend to all of the things we care about as much as we would like to when we only have so many hours in the day?

I don’t have the secret hack, but I do have some thoughts, based on what I’ve learned from my own experience and from others.

1) Quality over Quantity

Not all hours are created equal.

The eighth hour of your poker session is not going to be as focused as your first. Your fourth hour of study isn’t going to be as impactful as your second.

Perhaps more importantly, split focus is a great way to damage all of the hours you have in your day.

Optimizing your schedule to get the most out of the hours you have, in all areas of your life, is a way to find time where there isn’t any. A quality hour is worth three low-quality hours in most cases.

Would your family rather have 6 hours of your time while you’re studying poker on your phone and responding to emails, or 3 hours during which you're fully present, happy, and energized?

2) Energy

Bringing energy to each thing you do is a superpower. And it’s not an easy thing to do.

I’ll speak from my own experience. If I work a 10-hour day, hopping from call to call and task to task with no real breaks, other than quick bathroom trips or scarfing down a protein bar, and then leave my office to join my family when the agreed-upon work time is over…

They aren’t getting the best version of me. I collapse onto the couch. My son wants to play with me, and I try to talk him into watching TV. There’s a chore to do, and I sit there and let my wife do it.

My energy is gone. Not only my physical energy, which is drained, but my emotional energy. I’m not even excited to be there. Even if you take away my phone and other distractions, forcing me to be present, the real me – the best me – still isn’t there.

Now, if instead, I start my day with a solid morning routine, get in a great workout, and take breaks every couple of hours to stretch or walk or rest… at the end of my work day, I’m showing up in a way I can be proud of.

“Yeah, let’s go play outside!”

“No, honey, I got it. You relax – you’ve had a long day.”

And what did I sacrifice?

Probably two out of those 10 working hours. But here’s the secret…

I did more in those energized 8 hours of work than I’d have done in 12 low-energy hours.

I’m showing up more fully in meetings, creating more things (like this newsletter, for example) per hour, or playing poker with more focus and presence.

So I did more work, showed up better for my family, and got physically healthier (rather than the opposite). And if I took one of those two hours away from my family time instead of my work time, it still would’ve been a win-win-win.

Managing your energy is the key to so much of succeeding at whatever it is you want to do.

## Energy and Tasks

It’s not only about breaks, diet, and exercise. It’s also about what you work on and what people you engage with. What are the tasks that drain your energy? What are the things that give you energy?

If someone bugs me to [redacted so nobody can take it personally], and I don’t want to but feel like I have to, that’s a recipe for draining my energy.

If I hop on a small group call with my team or BTG members and have a free-flowing and meaningful conversation, I leave that call with more energy than I entered it with.

Recognizing which parts of your day give you energy and drain your energy is incredibly valuable. Sometimes you can delegate or automate certain energy drains. Sometimes you can remove them entirely, even if it means sacrificing some EV in the short term. It’s likely you’ll recoup that EV and then some elsewhere.

## Your Own Expectations

I want to be clear that I never want to talk someone out of what’s most important to them. I’m not trying to change anyone’s priorities.

Instead, I want to encourage you to keep an open mind – to remove rigidity and truly question things.

Is it true that you’re a bad father if you miss two family dinners a week?

Is that true no matter what you and your family get in return for that?

What if it gave you more time with your family overall?

I’m not telling you to skip dinner with your family. I’m telling you to ask yourself if it’s true that given all of your and your family’s goals, it’s exactly where you, and they, want you to be at that time. That it’s better than the alternatives.

Several years ago, my wife asked me if I could stop working seven days a week (I told you I made some mistakes!). She wanted a weekend with me, starting with one day a week and eventually moving to two.

But a year ago or so, I realized that:

We almost never had time together alone since becoming parents, and

My early morning hours are my most impactful work hours

So I proposed a switch: instead of five full days per week, what if I worked 4 full days and two half days? I’d even drop a couple of total hours.

This way, we get some time together alone while our son is in school, and I get roughly the same amount of work done in less time. It’s been a great win-win for us!

Spending 11 hours with them instead of 15 hours on Saturdays doesn’t take away from our feeling like a family.

But having 6 hours with my wife on a weekday instead of 0 hours has made a meaningful difference for us.

And my work hasn’t suffered.

If I had a story in my head that "good dads and husbands don't work on weekends" (which I obviously didn’t, given where I started from!), I’d have been closed off to this solution.

## Their Expectations

A more common challenge I’ve seen people face is feeling like they could use more work time to achieve their goals, but fearing (or knowing) it would disappoint their partner – that it might get them in trouble.

For this, I see two clear potential solutions.

The first is what I did with my wife, as mentioned earlier: I proposed a trade, so to speak.

“If I get this, it would allow me to do this. Would that work better for you too?”

It helps if you have a reason for it, and it helps even more if it involves your family. My reason, "I really want to spend more time together as a couple," is a good example of a meaningful reason.

But even if your reason is that the timing simply works better for you – as long as they like what they get in the trade, it can still work well!

The second solution is a bigger undertaking, but it’s the most impactful one. It’s something I recommend everyone do. It starts with getting very clear on your own goals and vision for your future.

Next, you ask your partner about their goals and vision for their future, and for your future together. You compare notes, and you come away with a shared vision and set of goals for your family.

In a good relationship, you’ll care about their goals, and they’ll care about yours – sometimes because they align well with each other, and sometimes simply because the person you love wants it to happen.

With your partner enrolled in your shared vision, they become a true teammate.

If we take a step back and think about running a business, one of the keys to team motivation is that your team members can see how their individual work contributes to the success of the business. There’s a big difference between “do this data entry” and “please fill in this information. We’ll use it to reach out to potential partners more efficiently. If it works as planned, we should grow our revenue by 15% this year. I’ll keep you posted on how it goes!”

Similarly, there’s a big difference between, “I need to work two more hours. You take Timmy to practice,” and your partner helping you find more hours in your week so you and the family can move into your dream home by 2026.

They can go from feeling like you’re shirking responsibility and they have to pick up the slack to feeling like they are actively contributing to, and are a key part of, your shared vision – which they are! They just didn’t see as direct a connection before.

## Get to Harmonizing

I hope a section or two in here spoke to you and your situation and that you found it helpful.

If you’ve been reading my newsletter for a while, you might have noticed a dropoff in frequency. In essence, I’ve been applying a concept from this post: Energy.

I started off with a love for writing and a bunch of ideas that had been brewing in my head for a while.

After many months, the great ideas to write about stopped coming every week. So I “had to” make something up to write about and force myself to do it.

Part of this is that my schedule got extremely busy starting around July of this year, when I set out to launch my big coaching program, BTG, and it only got busier as we geared up to launch BetRivers Poker in Pennsylvania.

My task list and “want-to-do” list have been endless, and the weekly obligation to write led to stress and uninspired writing.

So, I’ve been trying to write only when an idea strikes and I’m excited to share it.

I expect that I’ll start getting some more of my time back as there are fewer and fewer one-time business setup type tasks and decisions, but I don’t know exactly what the frequency will look like over the next year.

What I can promise is that I’ll do my best to make the content valuable when I share something!

Thanks for your patience, and thanks for being here with me.

---

## The confident man
Date: 2024-11-26 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/the-confident-man

# The confident man

Just like poker, life is filled with competing perspectives, biases, and the need to navigate uncertainty.

This week's email expresses some of my thoughts on the topic at large, with no relation to poker. While it’s a departure from my usual strategy posts, I hope it resonates with anyone trying to make sense of the complicated world we live in.

I originally wrote and published this piece elsewhere last year, and now feels like the right time to revisit it.

The confident man is shaped over a lifetime, beginning at its very inception.

Year after year, layer after layer, his experiences, along with the opinions and accepted truths of those around him, seep into his consciousness, sculpting the thick lenses through which he views the world.

His fears, insecurities, and the biases inherent to the human condition fog these lenses further.

Yet, in the face of all this confusion, the confident man has a remarkable ability to get to the truth, as he believes it to be.

He is bombarded with inputs…

• A video of unverifiable information.

• The assertive written opinion of an intellectual he respects.

• A conversation with his friends.

• 14th-hand facts – originating from a poorly performed research study, grossly misinterpreted in a magazine article, and contorted through a game of social media telephone.

Presented with a daily buffet of information and influence, the confident man is undeterred.

He fearlessly consumes and digests the vast spread and, with astonishing speed, produces a viewpoint of his very own.

This viewpoint emerges compact, tinged by a subset of facts – the most prevalent and palatable ones he’s encountered.

Of course, the confident man shares his freshly formed opinion, and this is where the true magic happens…

With his opinion on record, he no longer has the luxury of curiosity.

Those who challenge his stance force him to defend himself.

He hunts for evidence in support of his truth – the truth – efficiently discarding anything unhelpful to this mission.

Intelligent people validate him; idiots and evil people debate him with laughably flawed arguments.

The sincere bring forth supporting evidence.

The dishonest or misguided share fake news in a futile attempt to prove him wrong.

Some who he previously deemed smart and honest have their true colors revealed.

Unsurprisingly, this process emboldens the confident man.

His thoughts, still in their intellectual infancy, are swiftly encased in amber, preserving their youthful form in a rigid, unchangeable state.

A hardened cog in the very same marketing machine that shaped his own beliefs, his 15th-hand facts and unshakeable views prejudice anyone they come into contact with.

And so it continues.

The certainty. The polarization. The disgust. The hate.

Though the outcome is undoubtedly negative, the confident man means well.

He believes he’s forming and sharing his views thoughtfully. He’s trying, sometimes desperately, to help.

You and I, the observers, can see the truth.

That he, merely a human being, up against a world of powerful yet nearly invisible influence and trickery, cannot see reality as clearly as he believes he’s able.

This is how he and another confident man, born with the same level of intellect and kindness, each grazed by slightly different surroundings, can become so certain of opposing viewpoints that they fail to even comprehend how the other could be so stupid.

Or worse, so evil.

For the confident man, encountering and disagreeing with another is an inevitability, as, unfortunately, he exists as a member of confident mankind.

Billions of people, all inhabiting one planet.

Each and every one of them, merely a human being, up against a world of powerful yet nearly invisible influence and trickery, duped into actually believing their version of reality is authentic.

An entire species of delusionists.

While some manage it better than others, no amount of knowledge can cure them of the reality-distorting genetic condition with which they’ve each been born.

It is inescapable.

To cease forming opinions and beliefs is not an option for the confident man, nor is seeing the world as it truly exists.

There is only one thing he can do.

Only one hope to curb his delusion and the damage it perpetuates:

Be less confident.

---

## Run, Rush, Rake, Revolution
Date: 2024-11-11 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/run-rush-rake-revolution

# Run, Rush, Rake, Revolution

What if a poker site aimed to give back all their rake? How could it possibly work?

If the future of this plan to revolutionize online poker rake relied on players like you, would you support it?

Let's find out...

## Run

For those of you who haven’t followed my journey closely, I’ll start with Run It Once Poker.

In 2019, in an attempt to change the online poker world for the better, my team and I launched Run It Once Poker. We designed a poker site that we wanted to exist, as online poker players.

Through every stage of our product design, we aimed to innovate.

In the months leading up to our launch, I wrote a series of posts – each introducing a group of our policies and features. I pulled back the curtain and explained the reasoning for each and every substantive decision we made, because this transparency and connection with the community is what we felt was missing from online poker.

## Rush

Our journey as RIO Poker culminated in the sale of our business to Rush Street Interactive (RSI).

RSI recognized the value in our platform’s design and our team’s creativity. As a company who also puts players first, RSI loved our deep connection with the poker community, and they were eager to bring us on to complete their online gaming experience in the US and other regulated markets.

They also knew that there was some work to do.

RSI brought on a talented development team with extremely valuable online poker industry experience to ensure we could turn our beautiful baby into something with the flexibility and scalability expected of a leading gaming company.

As the tech and product teams put in that work, the poker team and I revisited our decisions in light of what we’d learned the first time and our new circumstances. While some minor changes to the product were made (none are post-worthy), we kept the overall design of our platform, which in many cases, we liked even more in this new environment (and from the feedback we received, our players liked it too)!

But we did innovate elsewhere, which is what I’m so excited to share with you (now that our history lesson is over)!

## Rivers

We recently relaunched as BetRivers Poker in Pennsylvania!

We are no longer a small startup. We are part of a leading gaming company with an already thriving casino and sportsbook business. With that, priorities change.

I’ve had conversations with many operators and employees from competitors over the years, and the process of selling our business only reinforced what I already learned: When a business has casino, sportsbook and poker, poker is not, and cannot, be the top priority.

Why?

## Revenue

If you look at revenue reports from publicly traded companies with casino, sportsbook and poker, you’ll see that poker makes up a very small slice of the pie. So why would a company give poker its best resources when it only makes up a tiny percentage of total revenue? Why even invest or care about poker in the first place?

At a large, multi-vertical gaming company, the primary purpose of poker is not to generate poker revenue. It’s to acquire and retain players for the other, more lucrative verticals. And it serves its purpose – poker players cost companies less to acquire than casino or sportsbook players, and casino and sportsbook bettors who enjoy poker will often bring all of their action to a platform that has it all over one that’s missing poker.

RSI has always supported poker, but launching BetRivers Poker presented us with new challenges and opportunities. We had to carefully consider our decisions about the poker platform, which we used to make in isolation, while also recognizing the need to support the broader goals of the company.

Would we focus primarily on what’s best for the players, like we did last time? Or would we make sacrifices on the poker side, prioritizing other higher revenue generating verticals, to better serve our company as a whole?

## Reimagine

If you followed our pre-acquisition journey, you’ll know that we search tirelessly for win-wins. I don’t believe it needs to be player vs. platform or professional vs. recreational player. If you look hard enough, and you think outside the box, there are opportunities to reinvent the rules.

What’s best for the entire company is for us to do our job: Bring in new players, help retain existing players and introduce poker players to RSI’s sportsbook and casino products.

What’s best for the players?

Some would argue that not introducing poker players to other verticals is best for poker players. They fear that by doing so, we take good action and liquidity away from the poker games.

While I would agree with that in isolation:

• The cross-promotion of casino and sports players to poker is hugely beneficial for the poker ecosystem – it works both ways – and…

• We have no choice! Cross-promoting is precisely why we’re able to bring poker to the US in the first place, and having great, modern poker options in the US market is something I’m very passionate about.

So, what else do players and I care (deeply) about? What could really move the needle for professional and amateur poker players alike?

## Rake

Tommy Angelo cleverly describes the game of poker as “zero-sum, minus some.”

Players can win if they outplay and outwit other players, but plenty of money leaves the game, through rake, because the house needs to make their money too.

In the years since we set out to start our own online poker site, the industry has changed. The former monopoly of Pokerstars made way for new industry leaders.

Poker industry leaders have raised rake far beyond levels even considered by the poker platforms we were used to. I’m in no position to argue with their business strategy given their success, but as a player, I wish it could be different.

Members of the poker community have expressed their unhappiness, too. They’ve staged boycotts. They’ve complained and criticized. But they haven’t made much of a difference.

The players want lower rake, more rewards, or both. I want that, too.

I could have argued that by significantly cutting the rake, we’d attract more interest from the community, boost player liquidity, and lower our acquisition costs, ultimately bringing in more players to explore our other products.

The problem with that argument is that the poker-playing community hasn’t consistently voted with their wallets for platforms with the lowest rake.

Of course, I knew players would like it, but I had no idea if it would help us catch the other poker platforms with a big head start. Simply competing on price isn’t exactly groundbreaking, and at least so far, it hasn’t worked in online poker.

## Rewards

Less rake… more rewards… they’re similar. As rake-aware poker players, we learn to think in terms of Net Rake: The amount of rake we pay after deducting our rewards. In other words: Zero-sum, minus some, plus a little!

However, one of the benefits of giving rewards, rather than simply cutting rake, is that you can use those rewards to shape player behavior.

Want to build up your tournament fields? Give out more tournament tickets.

Want more volume per player? Create leaderboards to incentivize grinding.

We approached our rewards decisions from a first-principles perspective: We want to give players as much back as possible, and we have a clear business objective. I’ll quote myself, from above:

“At a large, multi-vertical gaming company, the primary purpose of poker is not to generate poker revenue. It’s to acquire and retain players for the other, more lucrative verticals”

In a matter of seconds, the solution here became clear.

If our purpose is to introduce players to other verticals, let’s do it really, really well.

And if our purpose isn’t to generate poker revenue…

Let’s not?

## Revolution

Obviously, the idea of trying not to generate poker revenue is a bold one, and I’m not the boss anymore! You might imagine this would be an impossible proposal to get approved by a global gaming company:

“Hey, I know you bought our company and invested more into developing our platform further. Is it cool if we try not to make money? 😀”

But I was passionate about this idea. I wanted to give more back to players, and I believed it could be a huge win-win if executed well. So, I constructed my argument and presented our case.

Fortunately, RSI is a company that focuses on treating its players well, and they acquired us for a reason – our values aligned with theirs. Some in the company loved the idea. Others needed a little convincing on the numbers side.

Ultimately, we agreed to give the idea a chance.

We have three months to prove our plan works.

We need to prove that offering exceptional rewards will attract more new poker players than projected.

We need to prove that these poker rewards will inspire poker players to bring their casino play and sports betting over to BetRivers.

Most importantly, we need to prove that the poker community not only cares, but thrives when we give more back to players.

When we previously launched in the non-US market, many in the community supported us from afar. We didn’t have a complete platform. We didn’t have a big marketing budget. We didn’t have a lot of traffic. Players enjoyed our experience but told us they’d come play once we had those things.

Unfortunately, we ran out of time.

This time around, things will be a little bit different. We have a complete offering: Cash games, SNGs, and MTTs. Desktop and Mobile play. We have a real marketing budget. And through BetRivers we have an award-winning customer service team, an industry-leading platform, and a wave of casino and sportsbook players ready to try poker.

And we have three months to show that this model can work.

## Rollout

Shortly after launch, BetRivers Poker went from having one of the lowest rakes in Pennsylvania to something much more radical. We plan to keep none of it, giving our share of rake away in rakeback, rewards, incentives, freerolls, and more. We will aim to disrupt the way online poker is run in PA and, if successful, many more regulated jurisdictions.

Much of that rake will be given back via our bonus store. Whether you prefer poker, casino or sports betting, you’ll have flexible redemption options. If you choose to redeem your points in casino or sportsbook instead of poker, you’ll benefit from significantly enhanced rates.

Pennsylvania (and Pennsylvania visitors!): If you’re as passionate about rake and rewards as I am, come play on BetRivers Poker. Your play and feedback will help us fine-tune our platform and rewards programs.

And if you’re not in PA but you like what we’re doing, let us know. Let others know! Reply here to help us spread the word!

This experiment could spark a paradigm shift. If we succeed in Pennsylvania, this model could become a long-term feature for us in each market we expand into.

If it doesn’t play out as we hope, we'll remain committed to building the kind of site we want to play on – with unique features, thoughtful design, and a focus on innovation and delivering what we believe players want. We'll keep searching for win-wins and adapting to the ever-evolving poker landscape, and I expect we'll still have the lowest rake in PA, even with a more traditional approach.

And the online poker world will continue on, unchanged by our efforts.

But maybe – just maybe – this three-month experiment marks a pivotal moment in poker history: The catalyst that transformed online poker into zero-sum, minus none.

See you at the tables.

---

## Studying GTO: One Size Doesn’t Fit All
Date: 2024-10-15 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/gto-one-size-doesnt-fit-all

# Studying GTO: One Size Doesn’t Fit All

If you’ve been reading this newsletter for a while, you’ll have heard some of my thoughts on GTO poker.

I’m in the camp of players who think that attempting to approximate GTO play is a waste of time, that there’s much more EV to be had in exploiting even the strongest of opponents, and that studying enough to get a simple, basic, solid gameplan down is the best way to go.

I’ve argued with players who ignore exploits, and think being closer to optimal means you’re playing better. I’ve taught that one should focus on simply extracting core concepts rather than deep diving into each and every possible spot.

Today, I admit my mistake.

## The Call

Last week, I was on the weekly Beyond The Game group call. I spend most of these particular calls speaking to a group of eighty or so members, so it’s more of a college lecture than a small class environment. But we also break into smaller groups, where I get more face-time with individuals.

I was talking to one student – we’ll call him Bob 😉 (inside joke) – about studying poker, and my mind was changed in a matter of minutes.

Bob is a successful mid-high stakes online player who studied with the opposite of my approach. He put in a lot of time, and he was granular in his approach – focusing on one board at a time, attempting to consume literally 100 times the knowledge that I do from solvers.

## First Thought

As I was listening to Bob speak about his struggles with deciding how much to study vs. play, how detailed to get with his study, and wondering if he’s studying the right things, my mind began to form my typical response:

Okay, Bob. You’re taking on too much. Having a basic, simplified gameplan is plenty, and then you can observe and adjust to your opponents. There’s no point in trying to get this close to optimal. You’re going to deviate anyway!

What I like to do is focus on heuristics and concepts – not specific strategies on specific boards. And I simplify them to one sizing wherever possible, range bets and range checks wherever possible, and I …

But, then, something caught my attention.

## Second Thought

While I was thinking of advice to share, I heard Bob mention ​System 1 and System 2 thinking​, and how he’s trying to get to the point of moving more into System 1 but struggling because of the level of detail he feels he needs to study.

The reason this caught my attention is because this is a big part of my approach to studying and playing, and it’s one I’ve shared in a $2500 PLO course I created. By the way he was talking, I was pretty sure that’s where Bob had heard of it as it relates to poker study.

So, I thought to myself… It seems like Bob has consumed a lot of my content, including the more advanced stuff, where I gave the entire lecture I was about to give him and more. But he still isn’t studying like me. Why not?

Bob was clearly intelligent, driven, and hardworking, and he trusted me enough to spend at least $10,000 to learn from me between BTG and that course. So it’s not like he’s unable to understand my approach or unwilling to take my advice.

And yet he still doesn’t. Fascinating!

I turned off my mind and listened.

## First Feeling

Just in the same way that I play better poker when I move as much of my gameplan and thought process into System 1 (automatic thinking that doesn’t require mental bandwidth), I learn best when I can turn off my brain momentarily and remain present in the moment.

And as Bob was talking, it only took me a minute to realize the truth: I don’t need to know the optimal strategy in any situation to play good poker. But Bob did.

I don’t mean that I’m smarter than Bob or more intuitive than Bob or anything like that – I mean that I’m comfortable in the unknown, and Bob was anything but. Navigating a turn spot he’d never studied wasn’t just confusing for him – it was unsettling.

I might also be confused, but I’d be perfectly at ease with that confusion. I’m happy to give it my best guess, understanding that I might screw it up royally, but knowing that more often than not, I figure things out better than my opponents.

I probably interrupted Bob as soon as I realized this (I was back in my head. Sorry, Bob!) and asked, “You’re uncomfortable deviating from optimal strategy against anyone good, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Bob said, “I don’t do it. I try to play optimally unless it’s a weak opponent.”

And just like that, it became clear that I’d been giving bad advice to some percentage of the players who follow me.

My approach was right for me. And it was wrong for Bob.

He needed to study more. He needed to study things that I thought were a waste of time because if he didn’t, he wouldn’t perform well at the table – not due to a lack of knowledge, at least not directly, but because he wouldn’t have the confidence to play to the best of the abilities he did have. It would throw him off his game.

## Growing My Knowledge Base

After fifteen years of coaching exclusively through videos, it’s been eye-opening to work with people more directly. I’m disappointed I didn’t do it sooner.

One of my favorite things about more hands-on coaching is that I get to see how it’s landing. I get to see what works for some people and what doesn’t work for some, and if I’m lucky, I get to learn why.

What I told Bob in the moment was that my approach seemed like it wouldn’t work for him. And, to be honest, that’s probably the only helpful thing I came up with!

I don’t really know the best way for Bob to learn. All I can say for now is that we’re not all the same. And if someone’s advice isn’t working for you despite them knowing what they’re talking about, it might be because you’re not applying it right – sure, but it also might be because it doesn’t fit you.

Don’t be afraid to try on a different size.

---

## When It All Clicks: Bad Assumptions, Good Results
Date: 2024-10-01 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/when-it-all-clicks

# When It All Clicks: Bad Assumptions, Good Results

I was recently having a conversation about the psychology behind playing poker with one of our ​Run It Once Elite​ coaches. It got me thinking about a recurring theme in my heads-up matches that’s been a game-changer for me. Whether you play heads-up or not, the realization I came to might be valuable for you, too.

## The Tipping Point

When I play a long heads-up match such as the ​Galfond Challenges​, or find myself in a prolonged battle on the high-stakes streets against the same opponent, there’s almost always a moment in the match when everything just clicks for me.

It tends to happen when my game plan for my opponent feels complete. I've broken down my opponent’s stats such that I have a plan for every branch of the game tree.

I’ve formed a psychological profile of sorts – a feel in my mind for how they think and how they react to various things.

For example:

I’m going to delay c-bet more bluff-heavy.

I need to fold more to his turn probes.

I’ll start slowplaying flops to raise more turn c-bets.

Once I reach this point in a match, my results tend to get a lot better.

This is a very logical pattern… except for one thing.

## The Mystery

I go on in the match, feeling great about my adjustments and proud of myself for having figured this opponent out, usually having great results.

Then, a few thousand hands later, I go back and review the stats. I figure I’ll see if they’ve countered in any way, and I’ll be able to uncover some more valuable leaks with this larger sample size of hands.

Interestingly, about half the time, I learn that many of my initial assumptions were way off.

They weren’t folding to delay c-bets too much. It turns out they were just running bad in that spot.

They weren’t double-barreling too thinly for value, and my flop slowplays had cost me a lot of EV.

So, while some of my adjustments were right, others were dead wrong – surely costing me money. And yet, somehow, that flawed game plan still led to me having better results.

How is that possible?

I pondered this question for a while, reflecting on my matches and the sessions themselves, and I think I’ve figured it out.

## The Three Bonus Ingredients

Along with the reads I got from breaking my opponents down and the game plan I developed from those reads, I also generated a few more advantages.

### Confidence

Being confident in your game plan allows you to play with confidence!

The feeling of knowing the answers in most situations is a powerful one. That knowing leads to decisive action, less vulnerability to emotional swings, and ​less fear in big pots​.

As a result, I’m tilting less, I’m trusting my gut more, and I’m making the big plays when I believe they’re the right ones.

### Bandwidth

When I have a full game plan, I no longer need to dedicate mental bandwidth to figuring out the theoretically optimal play in each situation, nor am I trying to evaluate exactly how my opponent seems to be playing.

I have my answers. I found them in my research.

So I’m not trying to play GTO – I'm playing to exploit my opponent by overfolding, underfolding, overbluffing, underbluffing, attacking this sizing but not that sizing, and so on – all the things that I decided on away from the table.

That, in turn, allows me to be truly present in the game.

### Presence

I believe presence in poker is extremely underrated. Many know that it’s important, yet they still overlook its significance.

When you're present in-game, you get to pick up on small nuances in individual hands. You get to access that next level of your thought process, where you can connect dots just a level or two above your less focused mind’s capacity.

You get to draw from all your knowledge of the game, your opponent, and your history with them to see the opportunities for above-the-rim plays that take focused effort to spot. This happens consciously, but also subconsciously.

Presence allows your memory and pattern recognition to link an opponent’s action back to something you've seen before. On a conscious level, this usually translates into a certain feeling about a situation, such as "I don't think he has it here."

Sometimes you can explain it, and sometimes you can't, but I’ve seen enough evidence over the years to know I should usually trust those reads.

While it's impossible to fully free up your mental bandwidth to focus solely on observation, I try to do everything I can to maximize my presence. I ​simplify my strategy​, build a game plan that I can execute with confidence, and minimize thoughts that aren’t focused on the moment and hand-reading.

## Double Blind Trial

To oversimplify things: When I develop a game plan, one of two things happens:

I develop valuable knowledge on my opponent and execute a strategy that generates more EV, or…

My game plan leads me astray more often than in the right direction, but allows me to play with the confidence and presence that makes me better than I was before.

Each time I go through this, I don’t know if I’m getting the placebo or the real thing, but it works all the same.

Whether or not my exact method works for you and the games you play in, it's worth asking yourself the question:

What strategies can you use to bring presence and confidence to the tables more routinely?

---

## How to Handle Tough Decisions
Date: 2024-09-17 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/how-to-handle-tough-decisions

# How to Handle Tough Decisions

Welcome to this week’s edition of In Position!

Let’s begin with a hand puzzle:

$5/$10 NLHE 9-max.

The cutoff opens to $30. Others fold, you call in the big blind with A♦️T♥️.

Flop: Q♥️6♦️5♦️ ($65) You check, CO bets $35, you call. Turn: A♥️ ($135)

You check, CO bets $100, you call. River: 9♦️ ($335) You check, CO bets $250. You…?

Think about it carefully, and then keep reading to find out my answer.

## Tough Decisions

An interesting discussion came up during a recent session in my coaching program, Beyond the Game. One of our members presented the group with a very complex, difficult life decision he needed to make soon.

We all agreed that his position wasn’t enviable: Either choice could be one he might end up regretting.

We discussed it for a long time. Many people weighed in.

Both options were advocated for, and there wasn’t a clear consensus. Then, one of our captains suggested applying poker wisdom to the situation: Why not just flip a coin?

Before sharing more about this, I want to discuss how it reminded me of a key concept in poker – a concept that applies to many other areas of life and business.

## It Doesn’t Matter

When most people post a hand history and ask for advice on poker forums or a community chat, it’s usually a rare, big river spot like our hand above. And that makes sense! The bigger the pot and the tougher the decision, the more likely it is to stand out to you after your session.

But sending select hands to coaches, or sharing them with a study group, is rarely the best way to improve. If you think the hand is close enough to ask about, the options are probably similar in expected value.

If a decision feels like a 53-47 spot, it won’t impact your bottom line all that much – especially when it’s one of those hard, agonizing river spots that isn’t going to repeat itself very often.

Think about it this way: If you're a chef, sure, perfecting a soufflé is cool. But how often are you making one? What really impacts your success – and your bottom line – is mastering the everyday stuff: chopping, seasoning, cooking meats just right.

If you review a session that you’ve played, there are usually one or two exciting soufflés in there. For most people, these tend to garner a disproportionate amount of study time.

What you should instead focus on are the hundreds of spots that feel more mundane: The things a master chef repeats tens of thousands of times over their career.

## What to Focus On

Some examples of the types of decisions to focus on and the questions to ask yourself:

$5/$10 NLHE. UTG opens to $30. Others fold, you call in the big blind.

Flop: 7♠️5♠️4♦️($65)

Do you lead with any hands? What hands are your best check-raising candidates?

or:

You open to $30 from the button, SB folds, and the big blind calls.

Flop: K♦️8♣️5♣️ ($65) BB checks.

Do you c-bet with all your hands? With most? What sizing do you use? Do you want to split into multiple bet-sizes on flop? And if so, which hands types prefer to bet which size?

or:

The button opens to $30. You 3-bet to $115 from the small blind. BB folds and the button calls.

Flop: Q♠️J♥️6♠️ ($240)

What does your flop plan look like? How do you balance a betting range with your check-call, check-raise, and check-fold ranges?

And so on.

These are situations that you come across day in and day out. It’s easy to overlook them because a c-bet decision in an 6.5BB pot feels so unexciting – you probably don’t even care much whether you win or lose that pot. Yet the better decisions you make in the early streets, the less likely you are to end up in that difficult river spot in the first place!

## Give Us a Shot Clock!

An interesting phenomenon I’ve observed in poker players is that, despite being able to make complex decisions in seconds, some of us can agonize over untimed decisions away from the table.

I think it’s our ability to see and consider so many factors, and our desire to optimize.

The other day, I walked outside with a trash bag in one hand and the recycling in the other. In the five seconds before I approached the bins, I thought:

If I open the recycling bin and it’s full, I’ll have to put the recycling in the trash can.

If I open the trash can and it’s full, I can’t put the trash in the recycling bin.

If I open the trash first, and it’s not full, then I open the recycling bin and it’s full, I’ll have to open the trash can again to put the recycling there.

Three opens.

So I should open the recycling bin first because then I’ll only be opening each bin once, no matter which, if any, is full.

Now, this decision didn’t matter, and I knew it, but this is just how I’m programmed to think now – and many other weirdo poker players are the same!

When given unlimited time and an actually important decision, we notice so many things that might be worth considering!

## Real World Flips

It took years to train myself not to fall victim to this (as often) in my businesses. Like in gambling, the more +EV bets you can make, the better. Spending countless hours to make sure you’ve thought of everything means costing yourself the opportunity to make many more +EV bets.

Generally, I don’t advocate making huge decisions by flipping a coin, and our BTG captain from the opening story wasn’t exactly suggesting that either.

Simply acknowledging that the decision was close enough to leave to fate in situations like these may help ease some of the perceived gravity of the decision. And, as he suggested, our hero might find clarity through the exercise.

When you flip a coin for a meaningful situation, you may notice yourself very clearly rooting for an outcome.

And there you have it: Your answer.

Good luck winning those flips!

---

## The Art of Storytelling
Date: 2024-09-03 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/the-art-of-storytelling

# The Art of Storytelling

I recently had a conversation with a friend who was growing bored with poker. He felt it had become too robotic and wanted to pursue something more creative.

While I encouraged him to pursue whatever brought him fulfillment, I couldn't help but think his characterization of poker as formulaic and lacking creativity was off base.

In fact, there are strong similarities and lessons between poker and the creative arts – even in the solver era.

This week’s lesson comes from an unusual place: The world of 19th-century playwriting.

## Chekhov’s Gun

Anton Chekhov was a famous Russian playwright and author. Over 120 years after his death, you still see his most famous maxims in almost every work of fiction – from novels to TV shows and films.

​Chekhov’s Gun​ is a narrative principle stating that every element in a story must be relevant and necessary.

If you see a gun on the shelf in the background of a TV show scene, even if it's never mentioned, that gun will be featured prominently at some point in the story. No time should be wasted on irrelevant details – everything you see or hear has a purpose.

I know what you’re thinking: How can a simple piece of story-telling advice from the late 19th century possibly help with my poker game?

## Know the Story You’re Telling

More times than I can count, someone has asked me for advice on a poker hand they played, and they start with:

"So I’m on the river in this hand, and the river brings a 3rd heart, and my opponent shoves for 2x pot…”

“But how did we get there?” I ask. “What happened pre-flop, on the flop and on the turn?”

“Umm, let's see… I think he opened from MP, or wait, maybe there was a limper and he raised, and on the flop he led into me, or maybe he check-called?"

They are focusing on the street where they became unsure of what the correct decision was, and couldn't clearly recall what had happened from the beginning of the hand.

If you don't know the details of the story, how can you judge its credibility?

## The Setup

Some time ago, I was playing in a live game. I was in the small blind, and I noticed that when the player to my right first looked at his hand, he didn’t seem interested in playing it.

Normally, he would pay close attention to the action before him when he wanted to play, but now, he didn't seem to care what the action was. It seemed like he was getting ready to fold, but when it was his turn, he realized that no one else had entered the pot, and he was the button. So, he came in for a raise. I 3-bet, and he gave up the pot without resistance.

When you play a hand of poker, you need to be laser-focused on every detail (action) from your opponent(s). You never know when a small detail that at first feels irrelevant may play a crucial role in your decision-making. Had I not paid attention from the very start of the hand, I would have missed that crucial detail.

Everything is important.

Had I not made that observation, I would’ve just folded. While this read didn't end up winning me a million-dollar pot, it won me four big blinds (a decent winrate for the hour!), and it led to me playing a dialed-in, confident session.

## The Confrontation

Let’s look at a hand example to see how else we might use our observations to gain more EV.

$2/$5 PLO

CO raises to $17, BTN 3-bets the pot to $58. The blinds fold, CO calls.

Flop: 9❤️8♠️7❤️ ($123)Check, BTN instantly bets the pot. CO calls.

Turn: 2❤️ ($369)Check, BTN instantly pots it again. CO calls.

River: 9♣️ ($1,107)Check, BTN instantly pots…

The board texture has changed dramatically on every street, yet the button is seemingly unfazed by the changed circumstances. This is a story that doesn’t make much sense. The betting itself is confusing, but the speed at which the button played their hand makes it even more puzzling.

If you only read the 1st chapter (pre-flop), or any of the other chapters (streets) for that matter, nothing would seem out of line. But when you take in the entire narrative, it’s easy to see why it’s nonsensical.

More often than not, when a story doesn’t make sense, it’s because the author hasn’t thought things through. And when that happens, they’re usually bluffing.

When I look back at my career, I’ve found myself on the river facing a large bet, holding a pure bluff-catcher, more times than I could dream of counting. Early in my career, I would fold, as I couldn't beat much.

But as I learned to reconstruct the hand, from the very first page to the final sentence, I got quite good at noticing when a story didn’t add up. When that happened, I’d make the call – and the majority of the time, I was right.

Note that this is an important lesson not just as a hand reader, but also as the storyteller: When you’re playing poker, you’ll need to tell stories at the table, and you’ll need to dissect them.

## The Resolution

Let’s look at another hand example:

$1/$2 NL

UTG raises to $8, everybody else folds, and you defend your big blind with Ac5c.

Flop: Q♣️3♦️2♠️ ($17)

You check. UTG bets $12. You decide to tell a story. You can’t pretend to have two pair, as you’d fold all those hands preflop, but you have 22 and 33 in your range, and you know this UTG opponent doesn’t.

You raise to $40. UTG calls.

Turn: 2❤️ ($97)

You decide to keep firing, as you would if you actually had a full house or quads. You’re fully prepared to empty the clip on the river, and are pretty confident that your opponent can fold even an overpair. Your story checks out.

You bet $80, and UTG calls.

River: 3❤️ ($257)

Before you confidently jam your stack in, now would be a good time to pause and check your story.

How often do you have the hands you’re representing now?

When you were representing those sets on the flop, there were three combinations of each available.

3♣️3❤️

3♠️3♣️

3♠️3❤️

2♣️2❤️

2♣️2♦️

2♦️2❤️

With the second deuce and second trey landing on the board, you’re down to just two:

3♠️3♣️

2♣️2♦️

Suddenly, it’s become very unlikely for you to have the hands you've been trying to represent. And you’ve still got all the gutshots and other semi-bluffs you would have played this way.

Does your story make sense?

Sure, technically. But it’s become pretty far-fetched.

Sometimes, the only way to end the story that you’ve been telling is by surrendering. Going against Chekhov’s advice and blasting away when you can’t represent much isn’t heroic – it’s just reckless.

You may not find the rest of the table screaming at you in frustration when your story makes no sense – but they will happily take your money.

When you find yourself on the river telling a story, look back at all of the narrative elements you’ve introduced throughout the hand. Consider them carefully, and then piece them together for your happy ending.

---

## The Best Poker Advice I've Ever Received
Date: 2024-08-20 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/best-poker-advice-ive-ever-received

# The Best Poker Advice I've Ever Received

This newsletter is now a little over a year old. In the past ​53 volumes​, I’ve given you my poker advice from ​fixing your tournament leaks​ to ​developing reads​ and from ​utilizing blockers​ to ​goal-setting​.

This week, I’ll share lessons from my coaches.

Without further ado, the five best pieces of poker advice I’ve ever received:

## You're Not Playing Poker to Try to Get Lucky

The first piece of advice comes from Tommy Angelo, who mentored me early in my career. He explained to me that poker isn’t about trying to get lucky; it’s about earning steadily over time.

Let’s say you’re playing $5/$10 at a casino, and you’re a 20BB/100 hands winner. If you’re playing around 33 hands an hour, you might be making about $67 per hour on average.

Now, imagine you’ve been playing all day and you’re down $5,000. It’s unfortunate, but not an unusual loss for those stakes. You’re not having fun, and you feel like you should quit, but you’re tempted to play just one more hour to hopefully make up for some of the losses.

Tommy taught me to think about my hourly rate in situations like this. If you’re down $5,000, do you really want to stay in that game, tired and unhappy, for another hour, just to make $67 back?

This framing helps remind us that poker is about long-term results, not short-term swings. When you start saying to yourself, “just one more hour,” you might actually only be there to gamble.

When you know that you're in the game to consistently earn over time, not to get lucky, it becomes easy to make good quitting decisions.

## You Will Eventually Run Worse Than You Ever Thought Possible

This isn’t exactly advice, but more of a warning that has stuck with me.

About 19 years ago, when I was 20, a friend named Craig, who I looked up to online, said something that really resonated with me: “You will eventually run worse than you ever thought possible.”

This idea stuck with me because we all know that downswings and bad runs can happen. We often don’t fully grasp just how bad it can get. Even when we acknowledge the possibility of a downswing, we don’t actually believe the really extreme ones are going to happen to us.

Yes, a bottom 1% run over the course of three months is very unlikely to happen to you beginning today. But guess what: You’re not only beginning today.

Every time you start a new hand, you’re beginning a new sample where an extended downswing could begin.

You’re constantly creating new opportunities for improbable events to occur.

This understanding prepared me for the reality that if you play long enough, a terrible run is not just possible; it’s inevitable.

## Don’t Limit Your Bluffs to Hands That Have Missed

This lesson came from Tom Dwan. When I was 22, I shared a house with Tom and some other guys for the WSOP. One evening, I was showing Tom a hand that I’d played and asked whether I should have called or folded the river.

Tom thought it over and said, “I would raise.”

I hadn’t even thought of hands that were decent bluff-catchers as raising candidates. But through our conversation, I realized that he was right: When it’s clear that you have something based on how the hand has played out and you raise, players will usually overfold.

Tom’s advice opened up a whole new way of thinking about bluffing for me. If you never turn made hands into a bluff… today is a good day to start!

## Things Happen – Don’t Let It Affect You

This advice also comes from Tommy Angelo, who could probably fill this list all by himself.

A key lesson he taught me was that some things in life and poker are just supposed to happen, and you shouldn’t let them bother you.

For example, let’s say that you go to the airport and find out your flight is delayed. Many people would get upset, but not Tommy. As he put it to me, “getting delayed is one of the most common things that flights do!”

He approaches life and poker with this mindset: If nothing surprises you, then nothing needs to bother you.

At the poker table, this translates to situations like getting your aces cracked by ace-ten offsuit all-in preflop. How shocked can you really be? Aces losing to ATo is the second most likely outcome!

## Every Hand Is a Chance to Make the Right Play

In poker, we often fear certain turn cards, hope our opponent checks, or regret a recent action.

These thoughts aren’t useful.

Don’t hope for a turn card, don’t fear your opponent’s action, and don’t dwell on the play you just made.

Every time the action is on you is an opportunity to make the right play.

It doesn’t matter what turn card hits or what your opponent does – your job is to make the best decision in that situation. Focus on that, and let the cards fall where they may.

## Bonus: Whatever They Ask, Just Say "Yes"

As a bonus, I’ll share a funny tactic from Tommy that I’ve never used, but it’s something I’ve always wanted to try: When you’re playing live poker, after you bet the river and your opponent folds, they might ask if you had a flush or if you were bluffing. Engaging can be annoying, and giving information can cost you an edge.

Tommy’s approach is to just say "yes" to whatever they ask. If they ask if you had a flush, say "yes." If they ask if you were bluffing, say "yes".

Sometimes, Tommy’s opponents might ask questions that aren’t consistent with each other, and he still says "yes," which confuses them. Eventually, they might realize that he’s just been saying "yes" to everything.

***

I hope you found these pieces of advice as helpful as I did throughout my career.

I’ll see you next time!

---

## Let’s Bluff: Seven Actionable Tips
Date: 2024-08-06 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/lets-bluff-seven-actionable-tips

# Let’s Bluff: Seven Actionable Tips

Bluffing is an art form, much less flashy and dramatic than movies make it out to be.

Assuming that my back-of-the-envelope math is correct, I must have fired over one billion dollars worth of bluffs over the course of my career. If I were shown a highlight reel of my most memorable bluffs, there would indeed be some glorious car crashes. But the majority of my bluffs fired would be ordinary and well within the speed limits.

It’s those normal and unexciting bluffs that make the most money in the long run, and in order to find them, you need to know what you’re looking for.

In fact, not bluffing enough is one of the biggest and most common leaks among poker players.

## To Bluff or Not to Bluff

Let's say that you’re on the river with a terrible hand, and you’re trying to decide whether to bet or not. The hand has already gone poorly for you, but if you just check and don't bluff, you can't lose any more money. A lot of players shy away from bluffing, because loss aversion is a stronger force than the excitement of winning.

And in close situations, people tend to think: "Okay, I think it's going to be close. I'm not sure if it's a good or a bad bluff, so I'm just not going to make it."

This approach can win some money against bad players – you start with a very tight pre-flop range, build big pots with big hands only, and otherwise bow out.

But if you’re playing against anybody who’s a half-decent hand-reader and you're missing most bluffs, you'll lose out on a lot of money when you have a good hand.

If you're playing in my game, and I see you show down a winner every time you bet the river, yet I’ve seen you miss multiple bluffs… when you check-raise the turn and I have top pair, I'm just going to fold. You have a better hand than top pair when you're raising, so you're not getting more of my money.

## Actionable Tips

So, we know you likely need to find bluffs – in theory, there are ​percentages you should hit based on your bet size​ – but how should one decide when to go for it?

Here are seven actionable tips to make your bluffs more profitable:

### Tip #1: Attack Boards That Miss Your Opponent’s Range

If your opponent’s range is high card heavy, they won't love the 6❤️4❤️3♠️ flop.

If stacks are deep enough that they can’t just rip it in with KK, consider lots of small semi-bluff raises with gutshots, flush draws, and even pairs.

### Tip #2: Be Careful When Draws Miss

When you’ve called two bets on J♦️9♦️4♣️5♣️, and get checked to on the A❤️ river, you need to restrict your bluffs.

Why?

In theory, because you have many missed draws.

In practice, people know & they like to overcall.

### Tip #3: Know What You’re Representing

Knowing that your hand and the situation are good for bluffing is a good first step, but it’s not enough.

You need to know what you’re trying to represent with your chosen bet size and whether or not it makes sense with your previous actions. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve caught bluffs because someone bet a sizing that made no sense with their other actions throughout the hand.

Think of a specific hand you want to represent, review your past action to confirm your story makes sense, and bet like you have it!

### Tip #4: Against Weak Players, Focus on Their Hand

Weaker players aren’t adept hand readers. They tend to fold weak hands and call or raise strong hands.

If you can put them on a weak range, attack! They are going to overfold when they have weak hands.

It’s as simple as that.

### Tip #5: Against Strong Players, Focus on Your Range

Strong players, on the other hand, are good hand readers.

They'll have a rough idea of whether your range contains more potential value bets or bluffs.

So, you should too.

They’ll also analyze the story you’re telling (Tip #3), so make it a good one!

### Tip #6: Know Your Opponent

Can you tell that your opponent is afraid of losing a big pot because he’s been down money all session and finally got even?

How important is this tournament chip stack to this guy? Is this his deepest run ever?

Understand what losing a big pot means to them, and bluff the right players.

### Tip #7: Use Leverage

When you’re c-betting the turn or check-raising the flop, your opponent knows they might need to call more than just this bet.

Put yourself in their shoes. Have you ever thought to yourself, “If I call this turn bet, I’m going to face a huge river bet,” and decided you’d rather not deal with it?

Your opponents are human, too. Make it clear early in the hand that you might be threatening their stack, and they’ll be more likely to get out of your way.

## One Final Push

If you’re a player who’s under-bluffing in a game with decent players, and you have some fear surrounding it, it’s going to be a much better experience than you think!

You’ve been building a great bluffing image with your default game, so the pots are ripe for the picking! Don’t be surprised if you shed your fear after your first few big bluffs.

It’s also likely that you’re going to go from way under-bluffing to still under-bluffing, but not by as much. What does this mean?

They’re still going to overfold to you if they’re observant.

Your bluffs will often be “unexploitable,” by which I mean: They’ll still be making a mistake in most spots if they call you.

I hope these tips have armed you with some more confidence to take down more than your fair share of pots.

Happy bluffing!

---

## Why to Set Goals (and How to Achieve Them)
Date: 2024-07-29 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/why-to-set-goals

# Why to Set Goals (and How to Achieve Them)

I recently ​shared​ a goal-setting framework I love on X, and the response was so positive that I wanted to share and expand on it here.

Let’s talk about how I like to set goals, and some of the first things I like to think about when it comes to actually achieving them.

### Why I Set Goals

Studies show that those who set goals achieve more.

If those goals are specific, measurable, and challenging, they are even more successful. The full breakdown of the popular “SMART Goals” framework is:

SpecificMeasurableAttainableRelevantTime-Bound

I’m less into the Attainable and Relevant parts personally. Who says what’s attainable? And if you want to achieve it, I say it’s relevant!

I do think time-bound is important. I didn’t mention it above the acronym simply because it’s a default for me. If I set a goal, I set a date.

Studies also show that writing goals down increases your chances of success even beyond simply setting them.

There are more best practices, but first, let’s get into the way I like to set mine.

### More Than One Target

When setting goals for myself, I used to use the popular framework of “floor and ceiling goals.”

The idea is to set a minimum (floor) goal and a higher bar (ceiling) that you hope to clear.

This way, you get the chance to aim high without risking the loss of motivation that failure can bring.

### For Example

Let’s say you want to spend one hour in the gym five days a week, every week, for the next year.

If you made that your goal, the first week you missed, you’d have failed. For some people, that might mean giving up entirely.

If, instead, you set a goal of:

Floor: At least 20 minutes of physical activity five days/week

Ceiling: One hour in the gym five days/week

Or

Floor: Five days of one hour in the gym at least 30 of the next 52 weeks

Ceiling: Five days of one hour in the gym at least 45 of the next 52 weeks

You’d be more likely to stay on track.

### MTO

In the last year, I was introduced (and switched) to the MTO framework, developed by Jack Canfield.

Instead of a floor and ceiling, you set Minimum, Target, and Outrageous (MTO) goals.

While it accomplishes similar things, I like this framework better for a few reasons, the most important one being that it encourages you to think bigger.

Minimum should be the least you can accomplish and still consider it a success. It should be realistic and attainable with a reasonable amount of effort.

Target is more challenging than the minimum goal and requires consistent effort and dedication.

Outrageous is a stretch goal that requires extraordinary effort and perhaps a bit of luck. It pushes you to think beyond your usual limits.

You don’t even need to see the clear path to hitting the outrageous goal to put it down on paper!

With that in mind...

### My $100 Million Goal

With my ​Beyond The Game program​ launching at the end of this month, I’ve decided on the following MTO goals for myself:

Minimum: $15,000,000

Target: $50,000,000

Outrageous: $100,000,000

These are goals for the amount of poker profit (including other gambling income – sports, staking, etc.) I want program members to net, combined, between August 1st and the end of 2025.

(Note: This is not "tournament winnings." This is Profit.)

I decided on this goal because, in order to hit it, I'm going to have to both grow the program and help the members succeed as much as possible.

(Enroll to Beyond the Game by 11:59 PM (PT) on July 30, and you’ll also get a free year of Run It Once Elite ($1,400 value). ​Click here to read more about the program, testimonials from past students, and to sign up!​)

### I Set My Goals. Now I’m Done?

Setting goals, while actually making achievement more likely, isn’t the end of the road. Obviously, you need to put in work.

This post isn’t going to tell you the work required to achieve your specific goals, but I’ll touch on a couple of other things that will make it more likely you’ll achieve them once they are set!

Each of these topics could be expanded into an entire post, but let’s give you the quick, actionable checklist instead:

Most goals worth striving for are big enough that they can be broken down into much smaller milestones and steps.

Do this! One of the common ways people fail is that they don’t know what the very next step is. That friction leads to inaction.

Make the first to-do after setting your goals be breaking them down into steps.

Creating a system for tracking your progress towards your goals is extremely valuable.

In my past iteration of Beyond The Game, when I asked members what had the most impact on their success during the program, goal tracking systems came up as often as anything else.

It sounds simple, but it’s very effective. Track your progress!

I’m sure I’m not the first person telling you about accountability when it comes to goals.

Again, it’s simple: Find a partner, or group, or any way to make yourself accountable to someone else as you put in the work towards your goals.

Note that accountability can serve as a way to track your goal progress publicly. If you tell your buddy each day whether or not you went to the gym, you’ve tracked it!

Usually, you’ll know why you set a certain goal.

But do you really? Do you know, and think about, all of the benefits that will come with its achievement?

Here is an exercise that helps with meaning. There are many versions of this, and to be honest, I’m making this version up right now:

Write down your goal.

Ask yourself: What will achieving that do for me?

Write down 5 answers.

Now, for each of those answers, ask yourself: What will getting that do for me?

Write down one answer for each.

And, for each of those answers, ask yourself: What will getting that do for me?

…and then continue if it feels right!

So, an example of this would be:

Goal: Get a promotion at my job by 2026

What would that do for me?

Allow me to buy a house.

What would that do for me?

I’d get to set up my dream workshop in my garage.

What would that do for me?

I’ll be able to work on projects around the house.

And what would that do for me?

It will make me happy, calm, confident, and proud.

Keep this list of the meaning achieving your goal will bring nearby. Set a calendar reminder to read it each week.

### Ready To Go!

Alright, now you’ve got:

A reason to set goals

A framework for setting them

Systems to keep you on track

Meaning to keep you motivated

What are you waiting for? Get after it!

(Unless you’ve already signed up for ​Beyond The Game: Expanded​. We’ve got a few steps to go through together first!)

---

## Sleep: Your Secret Weapon at the Poker Table
Date: 2024-07-23 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/sleep-your-secret-weapon

# Sleep: Your Secret Weapon at the Poker Table

What if there were a drug that could boost your focus, performance, and emotional control at the poker table by 100%?

Before you decide to take it, you should know some of the side effects: More happiness away from the table, improved body composition, and a longer life.

The good news is that this exists. The bad news is that it doesn't come in pill form.

### Zzz

We all “know” that sleep is important, just like we all know that exercise is healthy and donuts aren’t.

But I feel as though people don’t realize just how valuable good sleep actually is.

If you’re a poker player – or in any line of work that requires “performance” (intense focus, high-level decision-making) – I’d argue that sleep is probably* as impactful to your bottom line as any preparation or study you can do.

When I played my heads-up ​Galfond Challenge​ matches, the difference in expected value between my A and B game became crystal clear to me.

Playing a format that intense against tough competition, how I showed up could mean the difference between being a 7bb/100 favorite and a 7bb/100 underdog.

I began tracking some of my habits, sleep included, in a spreadsheet, along with grades for my performance each day.

Two clear patterns emerged from all the noise:

Sleep

Work/Study

*”Probably” because you can’t just sleep perfectly for years and never learn the rules of the game, just as you can’t study 24/7 and never sleep. Neither will lead to success in isolation. I’m assuming a more reasonable balance to your existing life.

### Sleep

I was entirely unsurprised to find that better sleep led to better play.

I track my sleep with an Oura ring, and I set the sheet up to import my sleep scores each day.

Better sleep was correlated to more focus, more discipline, less sloppiness.

A shock, I know.

### Work and Study

What actually was more surprising was the impact that working before a session had on my play.

Whether this was taking a business call or studying solvers or stats from the match, I played worse when I worked before I played.

My best explanation for what was going on is that I was “using up” brainpower.

### Conclusions

What I took away from this is that I needed to put my routine above all else – study included!

Yes, I would try to study post-session, but I often barely had time for that. So most of my studying and learning came before the match.

The only “study” I like to do before playing these days is watching videos, without taking notes – passive learning.

If I didn’t need to cram in as much studying and other work as I could, my aim shifted towards maximizing sleep quality.

Note: This is significantly harder while playing intense poker than while not.

My friends and I have seen sleep scores drop across the board when playing as compared to not playing, even with all of the same habits. Poker is a stressor to our bodies, no doubt. The focus, the number of decisions, the adrenaline, cortisol, and dopamine.

Regardless of that – it can still be improved from whatever place it’s in.

### Do It

There are many places to find advice on improving sleep. I’ll share some tips below, but I’m no expert.

The main purpose of this post is to convince you to finally take it very seriously.

Get better sleep. Prioritize it. Do it.

Study all you want, but if your brain can’t access the information quickly enough, you’re not going to play great.

You should absolutely ​work on your mental game​, but you’d have to overcome far fewer mental game obstacles if you just slept well.

If I were your personal poker coach, this would be my #1 piece of advice.

So, what are you waiting for? What do you deem more important?

### Getting Better Sleep

While I’m not a sleep coach, I have spoken to one! I’ve also consumed a lot of sleep-related content and tracked my own for years now.

There are times when I do everything I “should,” and there are times when I don’t.

While I’d advise you to do your own research, I’ll share my basic learnings.

Lowest hanging fruit, roughly in order, as I understand it:

Consistent waking hours (whatever they are. Yes, including weekends)

No alcohol

5+ minutes outside in sunlight in the morning

No caffeine after ____ o’clock (depends on your body)

No binging before bed

No blue light in the hours before bed*

*I actually haven’t observed a measurable impact for me personally as it relates to blue light, but there seems to be consensus that it’s important.

Once you’re ~35+, you also can limit liquids before bed to avoid waking up to pee during the night and risking not falling back to sleep.

### What Works for Me

I quit caffeine a few years ago and found that it drastically improved my sleep and gave me more energy. Maybe I metabolize caffeine slowly, as coffee, even at 9 am, would impact me at night.

For those who drink caffeine regularly and are interested in quitting cold turkey (as I did), you can expect a very tired 2-5 weeks!

The times that I do wake up at night, the only thing that has somewhat reliably helped me get back to sleep is Yoga Nidra for sleep. While most people get sleepy doing any kind of Yoga Nidra, there are some specifically designed for sleep. I use the Insight Timer app and have found a few audios that I like.

I also use an app called Opal to block my social media apps in the hours leading up to bed. Getting sucked into the algorithm’s vortex has damaged my sleep more times than I can count.

As mentioned above, I’m not ultra careful about blue light, though I do turn my iPhone’s screen red with color filters when I go to bed. (I still watch a poker video to fall asleep almost every night to quiet my mind – not recommended by experts, but it works for me!)

### Just Do It. Again.

It can be daunting to make multiple changes and expect to stick to them.

So, how about starting with one?

What’s one of the items on the lowest-hanging fruit list that you can start implementing today?

Each and every one of them just tilts things further in your favor.

Good sleep is not binary. If your sleep is terrible, it can get slightly better, still be “bad,” and have a positive impact on your life and performance compared to where you are today.

Stop worrying about perfecting your turn c-bet range and start worrying about recharging your brain each night.

PS: If you're looking to seriously improve your sleep quality, my friend Mollie is a sleep-genius who has worked with countless poker players. She regularly runs group coaching programs, which ​you can find here​ – use the code 'PHILGALFOND' upon checkout for $100 off.

I'm also planning to have Mollie do a guest Q&A for the students of my coaching program, ​Beyond the Game​.

---

## The Five Post-it Notes Stuck to My Screen
Date: 2024-07-16 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/the-five-post-it-notes

# The Five Post-it Notes Stuck to My Screen

Like many people in 2024, I mostly use my phone and different apps to remind me of things. Yet, anyone who visits my office will find five old-fashioned sticky notes stuck to my monitor.

Each sticky note reminds me of something crucially important to my game, and they’ve been worth their weight in gold.

In today’s newsletter, I’ll explain why I find these five yellow squares so important, and why you might want to consider visiting your local Office Depot!

## Sticky Note #1: HAND READ!

My first note is written in all caps, underlined, and with an exclamation point.

It’s really, really hard to play for six hours straight, stay focused, and hand-read throughout. Our minds aren’t built to sustain the same level of energy and concentration without lapsing. And when we lose focus, we revert to autopilot.

You might find yourself in a river spot and say to yourself, “Well, I have the spade blocker on a board with three spades, so I’m supposed to call,” so you do. Most of the money in poker isn’t made this way.

When I'm playing my best, I'm reading the way that my opponent's played on every street, thinking about the way that they've played every hand that we've played together before, and comparing their chosen line to a profile of them that I have formed in my mind.

Having a single blocker on the river often moves the needle by a percent or two, whereas even great players can easily be off by 15% with their frequencies. Reverting to autopilot and deciding on a river play based on a theoretical 1-2% edge is just lazy.

Do I think they’ll struggle to find enough bluffs on this board? Or is this a runout where they’re going to end up overbluffing due to their understanding of the situation?

When I glance at this sticky note, I think: “All right, Phil, don’t let yourself be this lazy. Lock in.”

## Sticky Note #2: Patience, Some Pots Aren’t Mine

This note reminds me of a core lesson: Don't think about how I can win this pot; think about how I can make the most money. Sometimes, that means conceding the pot.

There are times when the only way to win the pot is to bet. But that doesn’t mean betting is the best play!

Not only are there situations where our opponent is overcalling, and we’re simply burning money by bluffing. We also end up with ranges that are way out of whack (making his overcalling great!) if we almost always bluff when we can’t win.

Sometimes, you’re facing a flop check in a 3-bet pot, and you think, “If I don’t bluff now, I’ll probably lose this pot.”

Sometimes that’s okay 🙂

When you sense weakness, it’s tempting to attack – and you should attack often! But if you don’t use moderation, you’re going to be the one who gets exploited. This note helps me restrain myself by reminding myself of the big picture: I can’t win every pot, but every hand is a chance to make the best possible decision.

## Sticky Note #3: It’s So Simple

This note was specific to a couple of heads-up matches I played, but the lessons from it are applicable to many situations.

I went into these matches with a game plan that I had worked on away from the table – I had done the work and identified tendencies I could exploit, and I felt my opponent’s strategy just couldn’t beat mine in the long run. Not only that, but my counterstrategy was (relatively) simple.

But I would often start sensing patterns in-game. Pattern recognition is normally very useful in poker, but your in-game barometer can often be misleading.

For example, let's say I went into a session with a plan of overcalling rivers with my bluff-catchers when most draws had missed, because I knew my opponent tended to overbluff. Then, to my surprise, I saw him checking with a hand that I was expecting him to bluff. So I started to question myself: Is my plan still good, or has he noticed what I’m doing and started counter-adjusting?

The problem is that these "reads" formed in-game are often driven by fear: “Oh, he's taking advantage of me in a spot that I’m not prepared for!”

What happened to me (before I wrote this note) was that I second-guessed my rock-solid game plan when the in-game patterns seemed to fly in the face of the assumptions they were built upon. Eventually, I realized that if my opponent was truly making a big adjustment, I could find out later.

After the session, I could calmly look back at stats and showdowns, and determine whether or not my opponent had actually made an adjustment. If he had, I’d have all the time in the world to formulate a counter-strategy. But in-game, not only was I going to analyze the situation with less conviction; I wouldn’t have time to formulate a proper counter-strategy.

Sometimes we also just get fooled by randomness. Maybe the reason that your opponent check-raised paired boards three times in a row is that he had trips twice and a perfect bluffing combo once. Or maybe he had three perfect bluffing combos, and he's still playing the exact same strategy as he's always played.

It's so important to not overreact to tiny samples – especially when you're emotional and in the heat of battle. There are many explanations for unusual play over a tiny sample, and reacting to it in-game, away from a game plan that was going to work very well, can be costly.

## Sticky Note #4: Discipline, Power

Alongside focus, the two elements that I judge my sessions on are discipline and power.

When you’re playing on autopilot, a spot like this will often come up: You’re facing a big turn bet, and you have a decent bluff-catcher plus some outs. Based on your history against this particular opponent, you think he’s likely going to way under-bluff in the situation you’re in. But you flick in the call anyway, because theory says it’s a call – it can’t be too bad, right?

This is a perfect example of lacking discipline. If my opponent is underbluffing such that I have 25% equity against his range, facing a pot-sized bet with no implied odds, it’s just a fold. A sad fold, sure – but a fold.

Usually, when I'm having an undisciplined session, I don't struggle with finding calls; I struggle with finding the folds. For you, it may be something different. The first step is becoming aware of your leaks!

“Power” is not as self-explanatory as “discipline.” To me, in relation to poker, it embodies intensity and relentless execution. When I'm playing a session without enough power, I may find myself in a spot where I know that my opponent’s turn betting range is too weak, and I know that if I check-raise bluff the turn and jam river, he's going to overfold. But I just don't feel like doing it and subjecting myself to a big swing, so I shy away and concede the pot.

When playing against tough competition, the problem isn’t the couple of lost big blinds in EV. It’s that when I have the value hand that's supposed to check-raise the turn and bomb the river, I'm always going to go for it. For a sharp opponent, it’s not difficult to identify a leak this big and start exploiting me by overfolding.

Power, by the way, is one of the toughest things for me to consistently maintain. It's so easy to start a session with power: I do a lot of things pre-session to prepare, and as a result, I'm usually feeling pretty comfortable. But as the session goes on, it's easy for me to lose that power and find myself no longer in the mood to make the big play.

That’s when the sticky note comes in handy!

## Sticky Note #5: No Protection

While betting for protection is part of the game, protection is only a tiny slice of the reason for betting flops and turns – most players tend to overvalue it. I overvalued it in a couple of my matches, hence this note.

Years ago, as I was re-learning PLO for my challenges, I was reviewing hands with a friend. In one of the hands, I was playing $25/$50 heads-up, and this spot came up:

I open to $150 with Q♣️8♦️5♦️3♣️ on the button. My opponent 3-bets to $450. I call.

Flop: Q♥️7♠️3♥️ ($900)

My opponent c-bets $600. I pot it to $2700 with another $1900 behind, with the intention of getting it in with my top and bottom pair. My opponent folds.

“Well, I knew that my hand would be doing okay against the range that's getting it in, but it was going to be really uncomfortable on a lot of turns and rivers,” I said.

“If your hand is going to be really uncomfortable on most turns and rivers, it can’t be a very strong hand to begin with,” my friend countered. “This hand isn’t strong enough to be worthy of protection.”

“Worthy of protection” really resonated with me, and this consistently served as a great reminder of how easy it is to slip into a flawed thought process in the name of protection.

These days, I overvalue protection less than almost anyone, yet I still need this note to remind myself not to overvalue it. What does that mean for you?

## Your Leaks, Your Notes

Despite their simplicity, I personally find these reminders really helpful. If you decide to try my method, don’t just copy my notes. A great way to start is digging deep and identifying your own leaks and biases. Once you’ve found a few areas to pay extra attention to, it’s time to grab a pen and those sticky notes!

And even if you don’t want to use my advanced sticky-note system, I hope you found these lessons as helpful today as I did each time I stared at them.

---

## My WSOP Main Event: A Valuable Lesson
Date: 2024-07-09 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/my-wsop-main-lesson

# My WSOP Main Event: A Valuable Lesson

For the first time since at least 2019, I decided to play the WSOP Main Event this year. I got off to a flying start, and finished day one as one of the bigger stacks. On day two, I had over 200 BBs, and began to entertain thoughts about a deep run – only to bust before the day’s end.

My fate was partially sealed in two big pots, both against the same player. In each hand, a case could be made for a different line on almost every street. I don’t hate either of my plays, but I don’t love them, either, and I believe there’s a valuable lesson in them.

### Background

We are about halfway through day two. I get moved to a new table, and need to start building my reads from scratch. Over my first few orbits against this new set of opponents, I open a lot of hands, and the player to my left seems to start pushing back against me. He seems competent, and using his position and stack depth to his advantage is what a competent player would do against someone who opens as light as I’m opening. He ends up winning a few hands against me, including one where he 3-bets my EP open with J♦️T♦️ from middle position and makes a couple of small value bets with top pair, but nothing particularly noteworthy happens until our first major confrontation.

### Hand #1

The blinds are 500/1000. I raise to 2,200 with 2♥️2♠️ on the button. The aforementioned opponent 3-bets to 8,500 out of the small blind, the big blind folds, and I make the call. We are over 200,000 chips deep.

Flop: Q♥️5♥️4♥️

He checks, and I bet 4,500 into a pot of 19,000. My bet is mainly a protection bet: I’m happy to take down the pot against a hand like J♦️9♦️ or K♣️J♣️ that he’s just giving up with. If he calls, I’m usually far from drawing dead – I can still make a flush against a hand like K♣️K♦️, or I can hit a set and win a big pot.

My opponent calls.

Turn: 9♣️ (28,000)

My opponent checks. I bet 21,000 into 28,000 – a bet on the larger side, aiming to get a hand like J♣️J♠️ to fold. Against this sizing, overpairs without a heart should start getting nervous as well – I assume people view me as someone who’s capable of firing multiple barrels, and I’m optimistic about getting most hands without a heart to fold. It’s also noteworthy that while my bet is a bluff, it has some merge properties – while my opponent will have many hands that beat me, he might still have something like A♥️K♣️ in his check-calling range that I’m actually ahead of.

Unfortunately, my opponent calls again.

River: K♦️ (70,000)

The off-suit king is not a good card for me. My opponent could very plausibly have either kings or KQ, both of which almost surely talk themselves into a call. He could, however, have hands like JJ or TT with a heart, or perhaps a hand like Q♦️J♦️.

My opponent checks, and I make a read that he doesn’t have a big hand – not much more than a vibe I’m sensing, but I decide to go with my gut. I bet the pot (70,000), and he goes deep into the tank.

Eventually, he calls with A♥️A♦️, and about half my stack is gone in a blink.

### Hand #2

In our next confrontation, I’m down to around 110,000 chips. The level is 1000/1500, I open to 3,500 from early-middle position with 9♣️8♣️. The same opponent 3-bets to 8,500 from the HJ. It’s folded around to me, and I make the call.

Flop: 9♦️7♠️3♥️ (21,000)

I check, and my opponent bets 5,000. I read this sizing to be on the weaker side – if he was aiming to get all the chips in, I think he’d bet a little bit bigger at this stack depth.

I decide to check-raise to 13,000, for both protection and value. He might call hands like A♦️K♥️, A♦️T♦️, Q♠️T♠️, J♥️T♥️, etc, which I’m ahead of, but he also might fold similar hands, which is a great outcome for me. Compared to calling for 5,000 and making the pot 31,000, I’m putting in only an extra 8,000 to see if I can deny equity to overcards. And if I’m beat by a hand like an overpair, I’m also hoping he might be weirded out by my line and check back the turn a fair bit, saving me money.

He calls.

Turn: 6♠️ (47,000)

I consider just overbet jamming for 75,000 here, but I fear that my aggressive image might get me called by all of his overpairs at this point.

I decide to bet 15,000. I’m happy to take it down against a hand like AK, and if he has something like AA, KK or QQ, my equity is still reasonably good. Betting bigger would be turning my hand into a bluff, since I would only get called by better hands. Similarly, if I were to check-call, he’d only put in money when I’m in bad shape.

He calls again.

River: 7♥️ (77,000)

I have about 60,000 behind. There’s no value in betting at this point, so I check. My opponent bets 30,000…

This isn’t a great spot, obviously. While this type of bet is often going to be for value, it’s worth considering my line, which should be perceived as weird. What does he think that I have?

There’s no counterfeited two pair that I could realistically have based on pre-flop, so it doesn’t look like I got counterfeited (whereas if the river was the 3♦️ instead, I could have 97s that just became a bluffcatcher). It looks like I’m giving up on a bluff, unless I’m trapping or have a hand like mine or T♥️T♠️.

The million-dollar question is: Would he bluff with a hand like K♠️T♠️, or just show it down (trusting that he beats my bluffs)? And if he had something like Q♠️Q♣️, would he be weirded out by my line and check back, worried about a potential trap and not finding many hands to get value from?

I rewind the hand all the way to the flop in my head – how I felt that he would’ve sized his bet bigger with a value hand. Hands like J♠️T♠️, Q♠️T♠️, K♠️T♠️, and A♠️T♠️ could definitely have played like this, not to mention some weaker 3-bet bluffs like J♠️8♠️ and some more ambitious 3-bets and flop floats like K♠️5♠️.

I feel I’m probably beat, but in the end, I decide to call given the excellent pot odds. He shows K♦️K♠️, and I’m suddenly hanging on for dear life. I fail to make a comeback, and bust out a couple hours after.

### The Big Picture

Over the next two hours, I watch the same player show down more winning hands. As I start to rewind all of the showdowns I’ve seen, I realize that I haven’t seen him bluff the river once, and I haven’t seen a light 3-bet other than the J♦️T♦️ one against me earlier, which is hardly light and very standard.

I also noticed one pot in particular where he instantly checked back the river and lost to a very weak hand, meaning that he didn’t consider bluffing.

Is this player capable of bluffing? I expect he is, sure.

But is he overbluffing, and doing so against me? I highly, highly doubt it.

Maybe his turn calling range is so strong in hand 1 that I should never bluff the river. Maybe his 3-bet range, his flop betting range, and his range to call my flop raise are so strong in hand 2, and his likelihood of bluffing missed draws so low, that my call was only going to work 1% of the time, and I torched chips.

I think that’s entirely possible and, after watching more hands, even very likely.

### The Lesson

The story in my head that he was playing aggressively and fighting back against me was just that: A story.

In poker, you have to make guesses with incomplete information, so coming up with these stories is valuable, but it’s important to be focused on showdowns much more than frequencies.

I’d never seen this player show down a hand that corroborated the story I was telling, and while I couldn’t have known much during my 2♥️2♠️ hand, I think I had the opportunity to make a very valuable fold on the river with 9♣️8♣️ had I not gotten as caught up in the story as I had.

This happens a lot in live poker, where the pace of play is slower: You feel like you’re being pushed around or targeted when in reality, it’s very easy for someone to simply run hot against you for a few orbits.

Poker is a game of incomplete information, and you are meant to start interpreting every bit of information as soon as it arrives, however small it may be. But putting too much emphasis on unsupported assumptions can be dangerous.

---

## A Year in the Making: Two Launches
Date: 2024-07-03 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/two-launches

# A Year in the Making: Two Launches

We’re going with a different style today, as these past few days mark the launch of two projects my team and I have been building for about a year, and I’m excited to share them with you!

I’ll talk a little bit about the journey and then send you to them.

Let’s go!

### Galfond: The Docuseries

I’ve often been asked to share some behind-the-scenes, day-in-the-life content, and I’ve always resisted – not because I’m uncomfortable, but because I didn’t think it would be interesting. I sit behind a computer screen in my office for 11 hours a day doing nothing particularly exciting. Then I go hang out with my wife and son.

My wife, Farah, came up with the idea for a series while we were watching Netflix’s Full Swing, and she talked me into it! We brought in a very talented friend to help our team put it together, and we got to work late last summer.

The ​first episode​ finally launched last Friday, and people have loved it – even though, personally, Episode 1 is my least favorite of them all!

We’ll go deeper starting this Friday, July 5th, with Episode 2, which focuses on the most challenging time in my life.

Episodes 3 & 4 will air in the following Fridays. I hope you’ll check it out, and I hope you enjoy it!

### Beyond The Game: Expanded

[Note: This section is an announcement of a new coaching program. In that sense, it’s sort of an ad for it, mixed with an update on my life and beliefs. If that annoys you, you can stop reading. But I know that if I subscribed to someone’s newsletter and I didn’t hear about something they’d built for a year that I could sign up for, I would be annoyed. This program is for mid-stakes, high-stakes, and nosebleed-stakes poker pros. If that’s not you, I still think there are some lessons here.]

If you’ve followed me for a while, you know I’m a big believer in investing in myself.

I’ve had coaches throughout my career, and that number has only increased in recent years. Last year, in addition to the few coaches I had, I joined a group coaching program and applied to another. Inspired by that experience and how much of a difference it made in my life, I launched a group coaching program of my own.

I launched the first version of Beyond The Game as a pilot program last fall. I planned to do a single cohort of 12 people, but over 200 applications came in immediately, so I decided to run two concurrently. It was incredibly successful – I was very proud of how it went.

I took my learnings and applied them to v2, which launched early this year and ended right before WSOP. Once again, I loved it, and once again I went back to the lab to apply my new learnings.

Meanwhile, this year, I added two new personal coaches, got into the group coaching program I applied to last year and joined another. As of now, I spend 2.5 hours a week on these group calls and nearly 2 hours a week with 1:1 coaches.

I tell you that because I want you to know I’m not selling something I wouldn’t buy myself. In fact, ​Beyond The Game​ is something I wish I had early in my poker journey. Knowing what I know now, I’d have signed up a year into my career… though the 20-year-old version of me wouldn’t have been wise enough.

I’ve completely changed the BTG curriculum based on my learnings from the last two iterations, pulling from some of my favorite elements from these other programs as inspiration, and a lot of brainstorming with my team, and I’ve come to what I believe will be the final version of my program.

Beyond The Game: Expanded is much bigger, in multiple ways:

One much larger group (split into smaller teams)

5 times the length (1-year)

More structure and systems

I believe I can do much more for someone in this year-long program than in the prior 10-week program, while making it more accessible. (BTG was $8500 for 10 weeks. BTG: Expanded is $8000 for the full year – $1600 per 10 weeks.)

### What’s In It?

I wanted to get a feel for common questions and concerns about BTG, so I decided to email a tiny segment of you and have some back-and-forth discussions.

One of the challenges I’m running into is that many people would like a point-by-point list of every topic we’re covering and how we’ll do so, as well as a number of other specifics because they want to make sure this is a +EV investment.

I completely understand and respect this perspective, and I don’t have a good answer for you. There is a general structure, and the topics we cover will be adapted based on the group.

What I can tell you is:

While you may find great opportunities to study with and coach your peers, the program will not focus much on poker strategy, so all game types are welcome.

We’ll focus on everything else that goes into creating a successful career in poker.

I will be there on calls for 90 minutes every week (barring a few unforeseen circumstances, during which I’ll make sure you won’t miss me).

This program will be my #1 priority (followed by this newsletter!).

If I were able to talk to all of you and get your life and career story, I’d strongly recommend it to 95% of you if your bankroll is $50k or more.

It is geared towards poker pros, but if you’re a serious recreational player who plays higher stakes, I think it’ll be well worth it for you, too.

If that’s not good enough for you, I get it. I don’t want you to join if you are on the fence. I’ll be sharing stats on the success and improvement of my students as a whole, and perhaps that will be enough evidence for you after a year’s time.

The program launches at the end of July. You can ​learn more about it and sign up here​.

If you sign up in the next 48 hours, you’ll also get a free year of ​Run It Once Elite​ ($1,400 value).

See you all next week!

---

## Hacking Envy: A Wake-Up Call
Date: 2024-06-25 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/hacking-envy-a-wake-up-call

# Hacking Envy: A Wake-Up Call

It’s World Series of Poker season.

That means lots of poker to play, tons of content to watch, and many people winning life-changing money.

It’s a time for nonstop poker updates, a time for watching players battle for coveted WSOP bracelets, and, for many, a time for not feeling so good as you watch people who aren’t you win millions.

I figured this would be the perfect time to upgrade your perspective on envy.

### The Beginning

The number one way I fast-tracked my growth as a poker player was by surrounding myself with poker friends, starting early in my career.

Learning together, rooting for each other, supporting each other when times were tough – there were so many benefits to surrounding myself with great people working towards the same goal. I often find myself smiling when I think back to those times.

But there are also some bittersweet memories.

I can recall the first time one of my friends had a huge score. I was rooting for him the whole time. It was exciting, and I was so thrilled for him to win.

…Or was I?

What a strange feeling to have the thing I wanted to happen come true, only to feel more sadness than happiness.

Why haven’t I broken through like this?

He’s not a better player than me. Does he deserve this?

### That Feeling

I’d have told you I was experiencing jealousy, but I've since learned that the appropriate term is envy*.

My friend achieved something big – something I wanted, and I couldn’t be happy for him because I was busy feeling envious.

Obviously, I kept it to myself. I felt terrible about the thoughts going through my head. I felt like a horrible friend.

Poker's significant luck factor often makes us feel we deserve better results, and that others don't deserve theirs. It’s a game in which your status is measured primarily by how much money you’ve won, so it’s easy to keep score. Plus, it’s a zero-sum game. You and I can’t win the same tournament.

In a prior post, I talked about ​blaming bad luck​, and how it can truly hold you back from success.

Today, I want to talk to you about my journey with envy, and how you can turn that negativity into something positive.

*(Though they’re often used interchangeably, envy refers to wanting what someone else has, whereas jealousy means you’re afraid of someone else taking what’s yours.)

### The Illusion of Enlightenment

When my career passed the five-year mark, I was regularly playing the highest stakes available.

I’d grown tremendously as a player, and I’d grown as a person, too. In addition to all I’d experienced in the game, I was no longer a teenager!

One of the many things that had changed for me was envy. I watched my friends experience big scores or year-long heaters, and I felt purely happy for them. What a big man I’d become!

How did I conquer envy?

I wasn’t really sure. I figured I’d probably learned so much about logic, reason, psychology, and mindset from my years in the game that I’d risen above it.

Or perhaps I just matured.

Either way, I was proud of myself. By overcoming my envy, I could experience nothing but joy when my friends crushed it, and I absolutely loved that!

### Growing Up

Over a decade of virtue passed before I became… unenlightened.

Many of my friends were doing great, which is awesome! But something strange was happening: I didn’t feel awesome about it.

I found myself not rooting for their successes in the way I used to. I wanted them to win – at least in my head. But what was this feeling that came up in the instant I learned of their achievements? I barely recognized my long-lost companion.

Even more than in my early years, I was disgusted with myself for envying people I cared about. I thought I was above this.

What is going on? I conquered this forever ago! And I’m years more mature, conscious, and evolved than I was then. This makes no sense!

### The Unpleasant Truth

Why was something I conquered coming back?

Because I never conquered it in the first place; its voice had just become quieter as I became more successful.

It’s easy to be happy for your friend when their big score makes them 1/3rd as successful as you are.

I hadn’t evolved like I thought. I hadn’t become a bigger person. The only thing that had grown was my bank account.

### The Decline

After 2015, I became more involved in running my businesses and less active in poker.

I had a couple of good years in the live cash games here in Vegas, playing a handful of times per month.

By 2018, I was playing only sporadically and not doing as well.

In 2019, I barely played at all. Poker income wasn’t coming in, and business expenses were going out.

2020 brought the Galfond Challenges, which were extremely fulfilling for me, but the wins were for much smaller stakes than I’d been playing for before – I couldn’t afford to play bigger – and my business costs exceeded them.

2021 was far and away the toughest year of my life. (I won’t get into it now, but you’ll get a very high-production-value behind-the-scenes breakdown on my ​YouTube channel​ next week!)

As my bankroll, life, and fulfillment declined, envy rediscovered his power. Even as I got back on my feet the next year, he would speak up from time to time.

I now had many friends doing better than I was, and logically, I was thrilled for them.

But that knee-jerk reaction – I hated it so much. I wanted to be better than that. So, I sought to become better.

Over the past few years, I’ve done more work on personal growth than in the rest of my life combined (which was already more than 98% of people!). I’ve hired an absurd number of coaches (all worth it). And I became a coach – to share what I’d learned, to reinforce it for myself, and, primarily, because one of the many things I’ve discovered is how fulfilling it is for me. I’ve done more reading than ever before. I’ve done much more writing, too (hi!).

When I coach, I combine the things I’ve learned from others that resonate most with my own reflections and experience. From all of that, here are a couple of things I believe can help with envy: one realization, and one path to growth.

### The Reality: Look The Other Way

You watch someone achieve something you want, and it feels bad. If your envy is really loud, it might keep on saying things like:

She’s so lucky. Must be nice to own three houses. Does he really deserve to win again and again?

You may imagine what their life is like, or think about how free they must feel to spend $50k without thinking about it, how carefree their life must be, and how they don’t even realize or appreciate it.

Obviously, your perception of their life will be out of touch with reality, but that’s beside the point. Your real problem is this:

You’re thinking about the wrong person.

Envy isn’t about them. It’s about you.

When I watched other people crush it, I wasn’t bothered that they were doing well. I was bothered that I wasn’t.

Every time I watched them win, it reminded me that I wasn’t winning. While they’d spent the past several years growing their bankrolls and businesses, mine had stood still. The decisions I made – passing on certain opportunities while acting on others, moving out of Vancouver and away from online poker, not learning this game or that, focusing on my business, and all the small choices along the way – led me to the least successful financial years of my career.

Did I work hard enough? Were my decisions good or bad? Who knows. We’ll see.

The point is, the pain I was feeling was nothing other than disappointment in myself. The successes I envied just brought it out.

### The Growth: A Wake-Up Call

It was during a conversation with a coach, Dr. Aaron Wilkerson, that I felt “re-enlightened” on this topic. I’ll share with you what I took from it, mixed with a few of my own thoughts:

Envy is a resource – a valuable one if used correctly. Here are the things you can get from it if you know how to use it:

Information

When you feel envious, it’s a notification from your mind that there’s something you want and don’t have. Don’t get upset. Get curious.

Don’t think, “Some people have all the luck.”

Think, “Oh wow… I want that too.”

You probably already knew you’d like to be more successful, but has it been front of mind? For some, the first step is literally just admitting to yourself, out loud or on paper, what you truly want.

So, do you have a specific dream? Do you have a plan to achieve it? This is your chance to make one.

The key here is to realize that, barring some rare exceptions, you don’t actually want the precise thing you saw someone else get. You don’t want that WSOP bracelet. You don’t want their beautiful family.

You want your own version of what they have. Your own achievements. Your own family.

Maybe you don’t even care about poker tournaments; you just want more success in your career as an engineer. Maybe you don’t want more money, fame, or family; you just see someone looking happy and realize you’re not.

When you recognize this – that your envy is simply a signal that something in your life isn’t where you want it to be – you can start looking at it more practically and productively.

When you stop making it about them and focus on yourself, you can use your envy as a tool for clarity and let it inform your vision of the future.

Direction

After looking at the right person, you next need to ensure you’re looking in the right direction. You can’t change your past, so there’s no sense in focusing on it beyond the lessons it has taught you.

My path has led me here. I’ve learned a lot and grown a lot. It doesn’t matter what decisions I made… I have an opportunity to make a great decision right now.

This is the time to get clear on your vision of your ideal future and work backwards from it to goals, milestones, and first steps.

If it’s so important to you, what steps are you going to take to reach the next level in your career? Or to get in great shape? How will you make your priorities a priority?

Fuel

It’s one thing to know you want something; it’s another to make a plan, and it’s yet another to actually get off your ass and start working towards it.

There are many reasons we struggle to move towards the things we want (another topic for another day), but when we lack that motivation to push through the friction that lies ahead, envy can be our friend.

Use it! Feel that envy. Let it give you the energy to push through the inertia.

“Enough with the excuses! Enough waiting for my dreams to come to me. Enough of my fears holding me back. I’m done with this shit. I’m done playing small. Let’s go.”

### Information + Direction + Fuel =

If you use envy this way – if you took the information to learn about your desires, made a plan, and finally acted on it – what was that envy?

Inspiration.

The person whose success you thought 'hurt' you didn't cause you harm; they inspired you to achieve a dream of yours.

Whether it’s a friend, a stranger, or even someone you hate, you can change your perspective on their achievements. As you watch them realize their dreams, don’t get sad. Get moving.

Go from:

“Wow. Must be nice to have it all,”

to:

“I’m happy for you, and I’m inspired by you. Thank you.”

---

## Five Common Tournament Leaks And How to Fix Them
Date: 2024-06-18 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/five-common-tournament-leaks

# Five Common Tournament Leaks And How to Fix Them

We’re in the middle of the World Series of Poker. Thousands of poker hopefuls flock to Vegas, dreaming of winning the coveted bracelet, making the final table, or even just making the money in a WSOP event.

In any given tournament, the vast majority of them will end up being disappointed.

The long run in tournaments is… long. Due to the nature of MTTs, no other poker format has so many of its players convinced that they are pathologically unlucky. While luck obviously plays a big role in any given poker tournament, it also makes for an easy excuse.

Today, I’ll share five issues that may be stopping you from making that deep run, and what you can do about each.

## Leak #1: Lack of Aggression

This is you if: You usually end up in the top 50% of the field, but rarely make final tables

One of the archetypes of not-quite-great tournament players is those who say they can usually survive a long time in tournaments, but always lose that crucial flip before they can make the final table. These players usually don’t sport a huge stack, or if they do, it mysteriously dwindles when the blinds and antes rise.

If this is you, I’d invite you to consider that you may be playing too tight. Or, more specifically, you’re not taking enough risks in the late stages of the tournament.

Poker is a very different game when played at 15 big blinds than at 100 big blinds. You can't wait for the same stranglehold on a hand to put your money in.

It’s natural to be afraid of going all-in when the bubble is looming and you really want to cash. It’s natural to convince yourself that you can’t risk it. After all, even if you’re ahead of someone’s range, you still might lose 40% of the time.

So much of short-stack play is about aggression and putting all of your chips in. You usually want to be the one going all-in rather than calling an all-in, but you also need to call shoves with some less-than-stellar hands sometimes.

All of those things you're feeling in tournaments – other people are feeling them, too.

Everybody's human. And this humanity – our emotions – can lead to some big leaks. This is where a lot of the money is won in poker tournaments.

The way to capitalize on those emotions – most often, fear – is to be the one putting people in uncomfortable spots.

Be the one attacking blinds. Be the one 3-bet jamming against somebody who's opening too wide.

When you have 10 big blinds, stealing the 2.5 big blinds lying out there is a 25% increase to your stack. You're always going to have equity when they call – and with that 2.5 big blind overlay, getting it in as a small underdog still means you’re making money in the long run (ICM considerations aside).

If this resonated with you, I’d recommend looking at charts for 8-20BB play.

It often surprises people how light they should be sticking their money in at these stack depths. And once you’ve seen the charts, push yourself to play that aggressively.

Actually, to conquer your fears (and potentially see how well it works), push yourself to play even more aggressively. This is an exercise best performed at stakes lower than your usual buy-ins.

## Leak #2: Energy Management

This is you if: You often find yourself confused and in a lot of tough spots late in the day

If you’re convinced your short-stack game is aggressive enough, but you’re still not making those deep runs, another underlying issue could be energy management.

Tournaments, especially live tournaments, are grueling. You play for 12-14 hours, sleep for six hours, and then play another 12-14 hours (rinse and repeat during big events like the WSOP).

You're not going to be at your best for 12 hours (neither are your opponents!), so I don’t want you to have that likely unattainable goal. I just want you to learn how to manage your energy levels and your expectations.

The early levels of any tournament are the least significant ones due to the small size of the blinds and antes, yet that’s when unseasoned players tend to hit their peak. It’s understandable: after traveling for a tournament, expectations and enthusiasm tend to build up before the cards are in the air, and the adrenaline and caffeine lead to being very alert right out of the gate.

The problem is, if you’re alert at 12:00 PM when the tournament starts, you’re not going to be as alert at 12:00 AM, when the blinds are 15 times the size.

Save your focus for when it really counts, and avoid too much caffeine early on. If you’re tired, sleeping in and registering late is a better option than forcing an early start only to crash later.

For day two and day three, prioritizing sleep is crucial. There's no substitute for sleep and what it does for you.

When you're playing all day, your mind is racing – adrenaline is pumping during each big pot. After the day is over, you'll likely be amped up. I often continue to have hands replaying in my head for hours afterward.

Going right to sleep is challenging without a relaxation process in between. Anything you can do to wind down quickly after a long day of tournament poker is immensely valuable.

Personally, I use Elliott Roe’s Primed Mind for post-session meditation, but anything that helps you unwind should be beneficial.

## Leak #3: Structure Unawareness

This is for you if: You don’t understand what ante structures mean for your strategy

In today’s age of big blind antes, which leads to more standardized blind-to-ante ratios, the art of navigating different levels based on their antes is less relevant than it used to be. Still, it can be valuable from time to time.

Some levels in tournaments will have larger antes relative to the blinds, and vice versa. Bigger antes incentivize looser, more aggressive play, while smaller antes call for a tighter approach.

Take a look at the structure sheet and see if the blind-to-ante ratio fluctuates throughout the tournament. Then, adjust your play accordingly.

I like to take things a step further: When the antes are a smaller portion of the big blind, I’ll play even tighter than normal to build an image for the upcoming level where antes will be bigger, allowing me to get steals through at a slightly higher rate when it matters more.

## Leak #4: Failing to Adapt

This is for you if: You’ve ever found yourself going from chip leader to short stack to out before you knew what was going on

Let’s say you're the big stack deep in a tournament. You're running people over, and then you lose a big pot. Suddenly, you're an average stack at the table.

Been there, done that. It sucks.

How to proceed from here isn’t as simple as avoiding tilt and not punting it off. You need to mentally reset and adapt to your new circumstances – fast.

You likely can’t afford to continue playing the same number of hands as before.

Make an effort to habitually pause, consider how your current stack compares to others, the makeup of your table, and what your strategy should look like with your new stack.

In tournaments, you’ll often need to adjust your strategy based on a single hand – and it may not even be a hand you played!

If your stack remains the same, but due to your opponent’s double-up, you suddenly find yourself covered by a loose-aggressive player to your left, it’s time to re-evaluate.

Similarly, when a player loses half of their stack and drops to the 15BB zone, you need to account for how that shorter stack impacts your strategy.

Interestingly, both of the above scenarios often call for tighter play!

Tournaments are dynamic, and that’s exactly what makes them so fun. You need to be just as dynamic to take full advantage.

## Leak #5: Lack of Short-Handed Experience

This is for you if: You only play multi-table tournaments

In a tournament with hundreds or even thousands of players, it’s hard to make the final table. And when you finally make one, you may be happy just to have made it that far.

This is precisely why a leak that only applies to final tables is so hard to spot: There’s no “problem” that stands out.

If you only play full-ring tournaments, you won’t gain enough experience for those rare times when it really matters: when you are under the bright lights of the final table.

A massive percentage of all prize money is handed out to the top five or so players, and if you get run over during this stage, you have an extremely costly leak.

Let’s use the ​most recent WSOP Event​ (at the time of writing), a $1,500 NL Hold’em event, as an example.

2,317 players bought in, forming a total prize pool of $3,095,865. Of that money, a whopping 37.1% was handed out to the top five players.

If you don’t have the right skill set for short-handed play, you’re lighting money on fire.

This effect gets accelerated even more when you get heads-up. In the above example, the difference between first and second place was over 91 buy-ins. It’s going to take a long time to recoup that with min-cashes!

The common objection to spending time and energy studying final table play is, “Why would I spend time learning these skills when I’ll need them so infrequently (and if I make the final table, I’ll be rich anyway)?”

What many fail to realize is that improving your short-handed play actually improves your full-ring play as well.

It enhances the way you play from the cutoff, from the button against the cutoff, from the small blind against the big blind, and so on – in other words, situations that occur orbit after orbit during all levels of tournament poker.

The best way to learn short-handed and heads-up poker? Practice, practice, practice.

Sit-and-gos are a bit of a lost art form, but if you have access to them, they are great for simulating a final table. If you don’t have them available, just practicing in short-handed or heads-up cash games can be really valuable.

Get stronger short-handed, and you’ll not only get stronger across the board – you’ll also be prepared for when it matters most.

## Go Get ‘Em!

Hopefully, you found this helpful! If one or more of these resonated with you, please let me know with the survey below! I love to make sure I’m hitting the right notes for you.

Good luck out there.

And to those in town for the series: Get some sleep!

---

## Want to Win in Theory, or in Real Life?
Date: 2024-06-11 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/gto-gone-wrong-part-2

# Want to Win in Theory, or in Real Life?

Last time, we talked about how many people get the “bottom of their range” bluffs wrong because ​they don’t understand the theory​.

Today, I want to discuss a more pervasive and dangerous phenomenon: Understanding theory and neglecting practice.

### Bottom of Expected Outcomes

Let’s say you’ve gotten to the river in the perfect situation to bluff the bottom of your range.

You understand what types of scenarios do and don’t qualify because you read ​my last post​ and bought ​my most inexpensive course​. You have a great idea of your range, and you know that this particular hand is at the bottom of it. You know that it’s a bluff in theory… that your range will be “unexploitable” if you bluff this hand. And you bluff.

You pick the right sizing, you don’t give off any tells, and you know you’d value bet the range that is roughly required here too. There’s nothing your opponent can do to take advantage of your range in this spot.

So, what’s the problem?

Well, the problem is that your opponent is someone who hates folding, and you know based on the way the hand was played and their tendencies from past history that they have a showdownable hand – a bluff-catcher, at least.

And when this player has a bluff-catcher, they usually call.

So you’re going to bet $80 into this $80 pot, and you’re going to get called 90% of the time.

10% of the time, you’ll win the $80 in the pot.

90% of the time, you’ll lose your $80 bet.

On average, your bet will lose you $64.

If poker is about winning money, your bet sucks.

It doesn’t matter how balanced or unexploitable you are. Right now, you have this hand, in this spot, against this opponent.

Why wouldn’t you make the most profitable play you can?

### It’s Not Always That Obvious

Hopefully, most of you reading this would know not to make the bet above, but most situations in poker are less obvious.

What if this opponent only calls 60% of the time?

Should you take the bit of extra money by checking to exploit him, or should you sacrifice a little bit of money to remain unexploitable?

What if you are 80% sure that this opponent calls 60% of the time, but you might be wrong and he calls appropriately?

What if your read is less confident than that?

My answer: I’d usually go with the read and make the exploitative check.

First, I’ll tell you why, and then I’ll tell you when and why I might not.

### GTO is Fragile AF

Imagine a house of cards – each card perfectly positioned, the perfect distribution of force applied by the others, leveraging the laws of physics to remain in place.

When we remove a card, the whole house comes crashing down.

This is GTO.

A strategy that is perfectly balanced. Every potential counterstrategy prepared for – from preflop, all the way through the hand. Taking into account every possible combination of flop, turn, and river cards. Considering every conceivable betting line. Approaching, for our human minds, a practically infinite number of potential scenarios that may unfold.

Every little thing an opponent does that strays from this mythical GTO blueprint incentivizes a massive shift in strategy to take advantage of.

If you:

Fold the turn too often, bringing a stronger-than-optimal range with you to the river

Play marginally too tight preflop

Bluff slightly too often, leaving your checking range stronger

…my optimal counterstrategy is to go from bluffing 33% of the time to 0%-5% of the time.

If you call 1% too often on the river, my optimal counterstrategy is to stop bluffing almost entirely.

This is why I look to play exploitatively.

This is why I trust and go with almost any read – even a gut feeling that you’re going to play slightly exploitably is enough to move the needle for me.

If my gut is right more often than not, that is. If my reads on you are to be trusted, on average.

Sometimes, that’s not the case...

### When to Pump the Brakes

The fact of the matter is, some players will be a step behind you, and others will be a step ahead of you.

If the average person reading this thought they had a feeling about how Stephen Chidwick was unbalanced and tried to take advantage, there’s a very good chance that Stephen would be the one taking advantage of them.

Exploitative play is a dance. It’s an art and a science*. And it’s dynamic, not static.

If I see you making an adjustment to me, I can counteradjust to take advantage of it. Now you have cost yourself money by attempting to exploit me, making yourself more exploitable in the process.

Does this fly in the face of everything I said above?

No. Unless you’re outclassed.

That’s the bottom line:

If you’re a stronger player than your opponent, look to exploit them ruthlessly. Look to play defense (try to remain less exploitable) against players who are stronger than you. And if someone is close to your level, split the difference.

When I play a strong pro who I think is overbluffing in a certain spot, I will overcall. But I won’t go from calling 50% of the time to calling 100% of the time. Instead, I might call 85% of the time.

I’m making the exploit while doing three things:

1. Not opening myself up quite as much to a counterstrike

2. Making it harder to detect my adjustment

3. Calling often enough that I can gather some data to see if I’m being counter-exploited

If my opponent starts showing down a lot of bluffs when I find my 15% calls – especially if they are bluffs that I wouldn’t expect them to have – I need to immediately update my read and my strategy.

I don’t go for the maximally exploitative counterstrategy because I respect my opponent too much for that. I know that they’re capable of noticing and adjusting if I make it too obvious, and I want to be ready for that potential.

*If you haven't mastered the science behind exploitative play yet, you would almost certainly benefit from my 4.5-hour ​Foundations course​.

### Don’t Be Lazy: Using GTO as an Excuse

If you make a conscious decision to utilize your default gameplan against certain opponents, in certain spots, or on certain days (maybe you’re too unfocused to do better) – I can support that.

And studying GTO is awesome – I’m all for it, if you do it well. But don’t make the common mistake of using GTO to justify bad plays.

If you’re feeling lazy someday and you don’t want to make reads, it’s easy to default to calling hands that are “supposed to call” and folding hands that are “supposed to fold.” Or if you are someone who hates getting bluffed and has a tendency to be a bit of a calling station, you might know a fold is better, but use GTO to justify a bad call against someone who’s not bluffing nearly enough.

Or, the opposite. You might be risk-averse and find a GTO excuse not to make a big bluff or big hero call even though you find the perfect opponent and spot for it based on your reads.

Also, don’t use GTO to justify your plays after the fact.

I see so many players review a session, look at a few tough hands that they lost by running it through a solver, see that their play was solver-approved, pat themselves on the back and move on.

It doesn’t matter that your play was solver-approved if there was evidence out there that you should’ve done something different. This is soothing your ego after a losing session, or protecting yourself from questioning your own abilities.

Reverting to GTO may give you comfort during sessions and after them, but it won’t push your game to the next level.

Ask yourself this:

Do you want to feel better or do you want to get better?

---

## GTO Gone Wrong: \"But I Had the Bottom of My Range!\
Date: 2024-06-04 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/gto-gone-wrong-part-1

# GTO Gone Wrong: "But I Had the Bottom of My Range!"

One of my ​more popular past issues​ was about how players trying to emulate GTO strategies screw up due to bet sizing (and how to take advantage of it).

The list of ways that players mess up the implementation of GTO concepts is long, so I figured it would be a good time to dive into the next iteration.

### Bluffing: In Theory

Awareness of one’s own range, and the range of one’s opponent, is critical for playing high-level poker. You don’t need to be ultra-precise, but you should have a rough idea.

Where you’re at in your range determines whether or not you should bluff, value bet, bluff-catch, or fold.

There are many spots in poker where you should bluff based primarily on where you are in your range.

These occur most often in wide-range spots, and when you’re in position, where you should usually bluff the absolute worst hands that you have.

Fortunately for you, reader of my newsletter, many people get this wrong, and in a few different ways!

### When the Bottom Doesn’t Matter

One of the concepts people first learn when studying GTO poker is to bluff with the bottom of their range – the worst hands they can have.

While some situations call for this, others don’t.

Here’s an example for you:

You raise to $15 on the Button at a $2/$5 NL game and get called by the Big Blind.

Flop: T♥️9♠️6♥️

Check, you bet 3/4 pot, call.

Turn: T♥️9♠️6♥️2♦️

Check, check.

River: T♥️9♠️6♥️2♦️J♥️

It’s checked to you. What types of hands are you bluffing with? What’s the bottom of your range?

First of all, if you asked yourself those questions thinking they’re the same answer, I’ve got bad news for you. (Yes, I tricked you. Sorry!)

This is not a spot where you want to bluff the bottom of your range – and this is a GTO-approved statement!

Why?

Because your opponent check-called a big bet on T♥️9♠️6♥️. On this J♥️ river they almost always have a pair, and if they don’t, they’re not going to check to you!

When you know your opponent always has a 6 or better, there is no difference in showdown value between Queen High and 55. None.

So you don’t want to choose your weakest hands to bluff with – you want to choose your weakishhands that have good blockers.

You’ll check 7♦️5♦️ but bluff with A♥️Q♠️.

The key to remember here is that a bet has already gone in, and the hand has played out in such a way that your opponent can’t have total air anymore.

### At the Bottom Again

In GTO Land, the quintessential spot to bluff the bottom of your range is when no money has gone into the pot (you’re in position) and you’re trying to make your opponent fold their better air by betting your weakest air.

With only a cursory understanding of the way ranges work, players often bluff “the bottom of their range” in a spot where they mostly have “the bottom of their range,” or what feels like it.

Let’s get into a hand example:

You raise to $15 on the Button at a $2/$5 NL game and get called by the Big Blind.

Flop: T♥️9♠️6♥️

Check, check.

Turn: T♥️9♠️6♥️2♦️

Check, check.

River: T♥️9♠️6♥️2♦️J♥️

It’s checked to you. What types of hands are you bluffing with? What’s the bottom of your range?

You’ll notice that this is a very connected board. There are three straights possible (KQ, Q8, and 87), a flush possible, and a new top pair candidate on the river!

That’s a lot of potential value hands, which means you should bluff some pretty strong stuff, right?

You’ve probably seen similar spots where you have to dig into hands like 5♥️5♣️ and A♠️2♠️ to bluff because of how well this board connects with a preflop opening range.

Here’s the problem: You didn’t bet the flop, and you didn’t bet the turn.

You’d have bet most flush draws, sets, straights, two pair, Tx, and straight draws that hit top pair on the Jack.

Yes, your preflop range connects really well with this board, but by the time you check the flop and the turn, your range gets very weak and will not connect very well with this river.

### Theory vs. Practice

In theory, you’re supposed to have plenty of JT, QJ, KJ, J7, and some flush draws.

In practice, most people bet too many of those hands on the flop or turn.

In theory, you’re supposed to value bet hands like A9.

In practice, most people get too scared by the board texture to do so, and many would’ve already bet A9 before the river!

If the above holds true for you, you shouldn’t bluff nearly as much in practice as you can in theory (to remain balanced).

In theory, you have about 23% of your range that can value bet, which means that you can bluff around 10% of hands if you bet ¾ pot or so.

In practice, you might have 10% of your range that can value bet, meaning that you can only bluff about 4% of hands!

What a lot of players will do, if they are trying to bluff the bottom of their range, is bluff most Ace High and worse. On a board this connected, that looks like the bottom of a Button opening range.

Can you guess how much of your range that actually is?

The player described above will have Ace High or worse around 35% of the time.

So that’s 35 bluffs for every 10 value bets, meaning you’ll be bluffing 78% of the time you bet!

Remember: If you bluff over 30% of the time here, your opponent should call with anything that beats a bluff*.

In theory, even with a more proper value range, you should check back most of your Ace High hands!

In practice, you’ll want to check all of your Ace High and most of your King high to remain in balance.

And if you’re up against the player described, you’re going to want to check-call all bluff-catchers and check to check-raise all good hands!

*If this is confusing to you, you would almost certainly benefit from my 4.5-hour ​Foundations course​.

### And There’s More

These were two common examples of how people mess things up by misunderstanding the theoretical implications.

Next time, I want to talk about how people mess up in practice even when they understand the theory properly, because I view that as an even bigger problem.

See you then!

---

## How I'd Start Learning Poker in 2024
Date: 2024-05-28 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/how-id-start-learning-poker-in-2024

# How I'd Start Learning Poker in 2024

It must be overwhelming for unstudied players to enter the world of learning poker today.

The way some players around you speak about the game, you'd think they know exactly what to do in every situation. You'd think they have studied charts and sims 30 hours a week for the past decade.

People throw around buzzwords that you almost understand, and some that you’ve never heard of. (Spoiler alert: They often don't understand them either.)

There are countless books, tools, training sites, coaches, courses, and communities – each of which sounds like a great place to start, at least according to their advertising!

Today, I’ll tell you how I'd start learning poker in 2024.

### The Problem

So, you're willing to put in a little effort to get better at the game and give this a real go, hoping to become a semi-professional or at least a consistent winner. But where do you begin?

Not only are you met with an endless stream of potential starting points; you're up against the fact that most of them would be bad first steps.

Algorithms tend to promote the most entertaining and (often) least educational content. If you haven’t truly studied, it’s hard to tell the difference between good lessons and bad. (And even the rare good ones aren’t usually designed to take you from A to Z.)

If I told you that the best way to combat someone with a high flop check-raise frequency is to call them down when they check-raise and barrel off, and you took my advice without question, you’re not ready to learn from poker streams.

If I told you that, in theory, you have to always defend half of your range against a pot-sized bet so that your opponents can’t profitably bluff everything, and you believed me, you don’t understand theory well enough to become a strong player.

If I told you that the right adjustment to a loose-aggressive player who keeps barreling every street with a really wide range is to call the flop more often because their range is too weak, and you nodded, it’s because you aren’t equipped to analyze the game properly.

### Where to Begin

I would start with a basic theoretical foundation.

There’s a common assumption that “GTO” is only for the more experienced players. In many ways, it’s true – I’ve argued against mimicking GTO strategies, especially for beginners, and in many cases, even for experts.

But waiting until you’re winning to understand how poker really works (and why) is the wrong approach. You need some basics to navigate the ocean of content you’re faced with, incorporating the good advice and discarding the bad.

So I would start with how game theory works in poker, generally speaking – not detailed GTO strategies street by street, but the concept.

What is the actual purpose of a bet?

What do “one minus alpha” and “MDF” mean, and how and when should they be applied?

How does the AKQ Toy Game work, and why is studying GTO ranges without understanding it a waste?

Next, I would learn basic strategies for the game type I want to play, such as preflop play and postflop basics. (Many people learn this before the above – no problem.)

I’d use the knowledge I gained from learning the building blocks of GTO strategy to visualize the way the game works, starting from the river and working backwards, so that I can evaluate the basic strategies and tips I pick up.

From here, I would learn how exploits work.

When someone plays an overaggressive style, how should I counter that, and why?

If someone is calling my c-bets too often, how should I adjust?

What risks am I taking by choosing a certain exploit? How exploitable have I become, and how likely is my opponent to be able to attack me?

While it’s going to be hard to make big exploitative adjustments as a beginner, I would want to get my brain going – practicing the type of logical reasoning that informs proper exploits. This is critical because almost all of the content available out there is either too theoretical to be very useful in small-stakes games or based on an exploitative framework.

If it’s the latter – strategies that work in small-stakes games because of the way the fields tend to play, I’d want to be able to tell the difference between good and bad advice. Once I know basic theory and how to think about exploits, I’ll (hopefully) be able to follow the reasoning of the person I’m learning from and see if it makes sense.

I’d also be able to tell when someone is spouting nonsense using fancy terms they don’t truly understand because my foundational GTO knowledge would have covered that.

Lastly, before embarking out into the vast world of opinions and strategies, I’d want to develop some basic soft skills.

How does rake work, and how does it impact my potential winrate?

What stakes should I be playing for my bankroll? Or, if I don’t have an official bankroll, for the money I’m willing to risk?

What’s a good approach to game selection? To managing my mental game?

The soft skills in poker aren’t ones that you continually build upon in the same way as the other knowledge I’ve listed above, but they are important to learn right away because they are guardrails that prevent you from veering off the road before you fully know what you’re doing.

### Where to Learn

I’d learn in four simple stages:

1) Structured Content

I would invest in a book or course that can teach me the above, ideally from someone whom I trust knows what they’re talking about.

Yes, I would start with a small expense because I’d spend much, much more money by learning on my own – not to mention the massive amount of time it would save.

2) People

Once I understood the basics, I would look for people to study with. A friend, a community, group coaching, or a 1:1 coaching program.

Learning with others is a hack unlike any other.

3) Practical Experience

I wouldn’t just study forever without stepping into games. Too many people consume ideas and things they “should do” only to never take action. You know… watching forty videos on how to lift weights before stepping into a gym.

You learn so much better if you’re learning and doing, in my opinion, than simply learning.

So, I’d take my newfound knowledge and support system and bring it to some real games, within my bankroll.

I’d choose low-stakes games where there are plenty of inexperienced players. The last thing I want to do is burn through my bankroll by playing too big or in games where I’m massively outclassed.

4) More Content

Once I had a support system, actual experience, and enough understanding of the fundamentals to tell the difference between good and bad advice, I’d be ready to open up my doors and walk into the bright sunlight of available poker content.

Depending on my bankroll and expenses, I’d either invest in more training, or I’d consume free content. (What I actually did early in my career was a lot of both!)

### My Solution

I’ve been thinking about this more and more over the past year – what most of the people consuming my free content need to understand in order to avoid confusion and begin growing their games more effectively.

I won’t tell you where to go for steps 2 through 4, but I created something specifically to solve for step 1.

I set out nearly a year ago to build the course I’d have liked to start with, and I’m excited to say it’s finally here!

It’s called Foundations.

It’s 49 videos for a total of just 4.5 hours, meaning that you could be a different player in a day if you wanted to.

By investing only those few hours and a small pot in a $1/$3 No-Limit game ($49.99), you’ll get the course we worked on for months. It comes with GTO-based starting hand charts I’ve modified for ease of use, three add-on PDF resources (Basics, Poker Math Made Easy, Bankroll Management), and a free month of Run It Once Essential ($25 value).

We’ve intentionally underpriced Foundations, not out of the goodness of our hearts, but in the hopes that some very satisfied customers start winning more and, down the road, buy higher-priced poker training products from us.

You can ​get Foundations here​ and be a smarter player within the week. Congratulations on taking a meaningful step towards the poker future you want – and away from that river!

Cool! Your journey, your pace. I’m glad you’re here with me.

See you soon.

---

## Four Attributes of Elite Poker Players
Date: 2024-05-21 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/crafting-an-elite-poker-player

# Four Attributes of Elite Poker Players

Over my nearly two decades as a high-stakes poker player, I’ve had the privilege of observing, competing against, and befriending many of the best players the game has ever seen.

That puts me in a unique position to answer a question that I get a lot: What sets apart the truly elite poker players?

Put another way: What do most of the players near the top of Hendon Mob’s all-time money list, or those who battle in the biggest cash games in the world, have in common?

Today, we craft an elite poker player from what I believe are the four key building blocks.

### 1. Logical Reasoning

It’s a common misconception that math is the most important area of intelligence among strong poker players. While an aptitude for math certainly helps, the right answer is, unequivocally, logic.

Every elite poker player I know excels in logical reasoning.

Hand reading, for instance, is essentially deductive logic: You find yourself in a tricky river situation, and solve it by playing the hand backward in your mind, narrowing down your opponent’s possible hands street by street, move by move.

Similarly, exploiting requires strong logic. Against weak players, the exploits are often obvious: This person is a calling station, so you bluff less and value bet more.

But the higher stakes you play, the stronger logic you need to figure out the correct counter-strategy, as it’s not always intuitive. Often, the perfect response doesn’t involve attacking the leak directly, but taking full advantage by ​adjusting your strategy across multiple streets​.

### 2. Competitive Drive

A fierce competitive drive is prevalent across all realms of achievement.

I can’t think of a single elite poker player who isn’t fiercely competitive – at least with themselves, if not others.

It's no coincidence that many of the world's top poker players were once strong athletes.

Patrik Antonius and Gus Hansen were youth tennis champions; Doyle Brunson almost became an NBA player; Jason Koon, Alex Foxen, and Chris Brewer were all college athletes… the list goes on.

The athletic talent these great players share isn’t what led to their poker abilities. It’s their competitive drive that contributed to their successes in both athletics and poker.

And the same is true for many players who weren’t physically gifted enough to reach those levels. If you dig into the pasts of great players, you’ll often find a competitive pursuit that was an obsession for them, whether it was high school athletics, chess, Magic the Gathering, video games, or something else that allowed them to push themselves to achieve their version of greatness.

For me, it was video games when I was younger and sports during my teenage years. Thankfully, I was too short to follow my passion into college athletics, and I picked up poker instead!

### 3. Passion

Being a poker professional comes with a lot of stress, irregular hours, and unpredictability. If you don’t genuinely love poker, enduring the grueling hours of play and study needed to continuously improve – regardless of recent results – will be nearly impossible.

Every top player I’ve encountered is, or at least was at one point, completely obsessed with poker. They aren’t in it just for the money; they are fascinated by the game itself.

During the first several years of my career, poker was my life. I'd play for hours and hours, almost every day. And even after sessions, I couldn't stop thinking about the game. I would replay hands in my mind, wondering what I could have done differently and what I might have missed. Poker was my singular goal – improving my game, moving up in stakes, and battling against the best in the world.

Since then, there have been years when my focus has been split and years when I've gone back into my cave of dedication, passion, and obsession. Those years in my cave have been the times when my game has evolved the most.

### 4. Self-Awareness

You can learn the basics of poker, and even reach a decently high level, without knowing where the holes in your game are. But to make the leap to being elite, you need to fill in those holes.

How are you going to work on your weaknesses if you don't even know you have them? I don't just mean strategic weaknesses, but weaknesses in your mental game, work ethic, discipline, and lifestyle.

So much of improving yourself to the point of greatness starts with introspection and self-awareness. This is not specific to poker, by the way. But I believe it becomes all the more important in poker, a game that pushes you to your limits with pressure, stress, and fear, and requires you to perform in a way that allows you to make great decisions quickly, despite whatever emotions, fatigue, or pressure you're feeling in that moment.

Further, reading other players starts with self-awareness, in my opinion. If you understand what makes you tick, it's a step in the direction of understanding what might be going through the minds of your opponents.

This is the only one on the list that not all elite pros I know share, by the way. There are a few top-tier poker players without much self-awareness, but even so, their lack of it hasn’t done them any favors.

### The Sprinkles on Top

In addition to these key building blocks, I’d sprinkle in some understanding of psychology and math.

Math in poker isn’t very complicated, and high school level is all you need to succeed at poker.

Lacking math skills isn’t necessarily the end of the road, as there are a few great poker players, and certainly a long list of good ones, who aren’t great at math. But having a general aptitude for math is still going to be a big help.

Another trait that’s going to be very useful is being able to put yourself in your opponent’s shoes. This is, in essence, empathy.

What does your opponent desire? What are their fears? How might those affect their play? What kind of thought process might have led them to take this line?

Being able to empathize with other players helps to get inside their heads, and most elite poker players are pretty good at that.

### The Elite Player

What do you get when you combine a high competitive drive with self-awareness of one’s weaknesses?

A poker player who’s going to work really, really hard to improve upon them.

If that same player also loves the game to a point where even the longest sessions don’t feel like work and approaches studying with child-like wonder... I wouldn’t bet against their success.

### Your Path Forward

It might seem as though the makings of an elite poker player are predetermined by qualities inherent from the start.

That’s only partially true – and you might have more of these building blocks than you think!

Since you’re reading this, chances are you have a passion for poker and a curiosity about improving your game. Many of you are naturally competitive.

Whether you’re self-aware or not, ​it’s never too late for introspection​. And even if you’re not yet a strong logical thinker, skills like hand-reading can be honed with practice.

I can’t guarantee that you’ll become an elite poker player, but I can assure you of one thing: It’s a freeroll to keep learning.

---

## Your First Hour at the Poker Table
Date: 2024-05-14 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/your-first-hour-at-a-new-table

# Your First Hour at the Poker Table

You sit down at a $2/$5 cash game table. You don’t know anyone there.

How do you go about profiling your opponents and building a strategy?

I asked my Twitter/X followers what they’d like to read about, and this was one of the questions I received.

Here are the five things I would focus on first.

### 1. Stereotyping

Judging a book by its cover is generally a no-no, but that rule goes out the window at the poker table.

Every play that you make is already based on incomplete information. Why not add one more guess if it points you in the right direction more often than not?

Younger people tend to play more aggressively. Older people tend to play tighter and bluff less.

Draw on your past experience at the tables and make some loose assumptions.

You don’t need to make massive adjustments based on these reads, but you’d be wasting an opportunity if you didn’t make small deviations.

Every time you play against someone, you’re trying to find the best play against the average of all players that person could be. If they’re going to be a nit 8/10 times and a maniac 2/10 times, play as if they’re on the nittier side – you can make adjustments over time as you get more clues.

Sometimes, you’ll be wrong. That’s okay! More often than not, you’ll make a good deviation.

I once made a read that an older gentleman would be very unlikely to bluff in a big pot, and I was wrong. Unfortunately for me, ​it happened to be on national TV​. Oh well!

I’ve never regretted the play for a second. Given the information I had at the time, I did the best I could. More often than not, I’d have been right. That time just happened to be one of the nots.

### 2. Table Talk

The quickest way to profile players is based on what they tell you about themselves.

Are they a pro? Is this their first time playing?

Do they watch poker on TV? Do they watch training videos?

Do they use “GTO” poker lingo? Do they use it poorly, or do they use it well?

The overwhelming majority of players volunteer tons of information about themselves in the flow of normal conversation. You can pretty quickly guess who the strongest and weakest players at the table will be.

I have no ethical issues with asking questions to gain intel for the purposes of making reads, but I don’t do it personally. It feels a little too disingenuous for my taste, so I sacrifice the bit of money it costs me to engage in a natural conversation instead.

If you want to gather information with targeted questions, I say go for it. There’s nothing wrong with it if you don’t feel uncomfortable.

Some people who are naturally outgoing will have these conversations anyway. They’ll ask everyone where they’re from and what they do. They’ll talk about poker experiences. These conversations are rich with valuable information.

You can also learn so much from the way they talk about hands that have been played.

I once thought an opponent was a strong player until, hours into a session, I saw him bet the river with a weak top pair hand, get called, reluctantly show his hand, and then, after winning, say, “I didn’t like my hand so much once you called.”

“Wow,” I thought to myself, “This guy didn’t even know why he bet the river!”

If he’d have silently collected the pot, I’d have thought, “Cool. Good value bet.”

By letting me in on his thought process, he made me realize how flawed it was.

### 3. Table Presence

You can learn a lot from the way players handle themselves at the table.

Do they shuffle their chips?

Do they always know where the action is, or are they betting out of turn?

Do they bet, call, raise, check, and fold with confidence and comfort, or do they often look confused?

Sure, some players have played a ton of live poker, shuffle chips well, make every move decisively, and still play terribly.

But remember, you’re playing against the average of all the opponents they could be.

Experience correlates with skill.

Lack of experience is even more reliable. Unless you’re up against an online wizard who’s never spent time at a live poker table, someone who doesn’t know what to do with their cards and chips will be an inexperienced, weaker player.

You can even observe and learn how hard certain decisions are for them.

Are they taking a long time to c-bet in a spot that should be a c-bet 100% of the time? That means they don’t know that.

Did they take a very long time to call the river with a very clear calling hand? They likely either don’t know it’s a clear calling hand or they are nitty and will be easy to bluff.

This brings me to the next tip…

### 4. Showdowns, Showdowns, Showdowns

There is no greater source of information at the poker table than a showdown.

You can watch them bet, raise, and fold all day, but this only gives you so much data.

You may notice certain things, like an opponent seeming to cbet the turn frequently. Given how high-variance poker is and how few hands each player plays in an hour or two at a 9-handed poker table, you can’t make a good guess as to how aggressive they truly are.

They could very easily just be running hot.

Showdowns are irrefutable.

You get to see the cards they had and look back at how they played.

You know with certainty that they made those plays with those cards.

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking:

This guy is picking on me.

He double barrels a lot.

Wow, he’s aggressive!

… without seeing your opponent’s cards.

Until you’ve seen a showdown, the evidence you can gather from their actions at the table is very unreliable – usually more unreliable than guesses based on the way they look and what they’ve said.

Showdowns are gold. If you’ve tuned out after folding and missed most of the action, tune back in for the showdown and see what you can learn.

### 5. Making an Impression

This one isn’t about profiling other players, but about them profiling you.

Be aware of the image you portray.

The way you look, what you say, the way you move your chips and cards – they’re going to cause players to make some educated guesses about you.

Think about what those guesses might be.

If you don’t know, ask a friend! You can even ask someone you just met that day after playing a long session with them:

“Hey, what did you think I would play like when we started today?"

You’ll likely get an answer close to the truth.

Next, be aware that your early play is going to be your first impression, and first impressions last a while.

If you run a big bluff in the first five minutes of joining a table, and you get caught, you’d better believe people are going to remember it and categorize you as a bluffer.

Even if you don’t bluff again for the next four hours, they’ll likely still think of you that way.

You could try to make an impression intentionally with your play style, but I feel like that’s often too hard to control.

Instead, I let the hands play out as they will, and I take note of what I look like to them in the first thirty minutes.

Usually (​but not always!​), you want to play in a way that contradicts your opponents' image of you, so I’d often let any big plays early in a session impact the way I approach the game for the rest of the session.

### Good Luck

I hope these tips help you feel more confident when you next sit down at a new table. May your reads be sharp and your bluffs convincing!

---

## Deep Stack Struggles: Hot Tips
Date: 2024-05-07 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/deep-stack-struggles-part-2

# Deep Stack Struggles: Hot Tips

Last week​, I wrote about why you might get uncomfortable as stacks get deeper and deeper.

I promised you a few hot tips, so without further ado…

### My #1 Deepstack “Hack”

I love to 3-bet weaker players with basically all of the hands I opt to play when I’m in position on them and nobody has yet called their open raise.

This allows me to isolate them and play a heads-up pot with a lot of money behind.

I get to leverage my positional advantage across each street and my large skill advantage.

I get to read their hand with each of the many actions they’ll be forced to take throughout the hand.

I get to spot and attack their imbalances with the flexibility of not having to worry about getting raised all-in.

If you know what you’re doing, it’s like taking candy from a baby who’s trying to escape on ​a bike with no training wheels​.

### Getting on the Pedals

But what if you don’t (yet!) know what you’re doing? What if you don’t have a large skill advantage, or have those proper, balanced ranges in place yet – the ones that can connect with a variety of flops, turns and rivers? Here's a bit of interim guidance – think of it as the duct tape holding your strategy together while you fine-tune your skills for the long haul.

### Position, Position, Position

We all know that position gives you an advantage: The IP (in position) player gets to act last, after seeing what the OOP player(s) decide to do.

Playing with deeper stacks means you’re going to see more turns and rivers without being all-in. Each additional street you see gives the IP player another turn to act last – another advantage.

This is especially true when the training wheels come off and ranges get out of whack, which is why it’s so valuable to play more pots in position while you’re learning to balance.

Tip: Play more hands in position and fewer hands OOP.

### We’re Not In One Pair Land Anymore

When playing with shorter stacks, top pair in a 3-bet pot is often enough of a hand to put your whole stack in. Hands like AJo and KQo are powerful hands in late-position confrontations.

When stacks get deeper, top pair won’t often be good enough to want to continue piling in money with, and it will become more of a check-and-guess type of hand. In addition to the discomfort of facing aggression, there is a real, structural, proven EV advantage to being the one with the polarized range applying the heat.

Because of this, those pre-flop hands that make strong top pairs will decrease in value as stacks get deeper, and speculative hands will increase in value.

76s can make some big hands and some big draws, both of which are great ammunition to put your opponent to the test.

Big preflop pairs are still very powerful, by the way. Not only can a hand like KK win a medium-sized pot, it can also flop top set and stack some weaker sets or two pair for a ton of money.

Tip: Avoid playing big pots with “top pair hands”. Instead, aim to build bigger pots with hands that have potential to develop into huge made hands or draws.

### Embrace the Small Bet

With the advent of solvers, we’ve learned that small bets get used very frequently in GTO poker.

They get used most frequently when out of position, and when stacks are deeper.

Why?

Because if we employ a big-bet-only strategy from out of position with deep stacks, we’re going to be forced to define our range too early in the hand, giving our opponent the ability to react with visibility and aggression on a number of turns and rivers.

(This is an oversimplification, as the full list of reasons gets quite complicated! Check out my prior ​article on small bets​ to learn more.)

Regardless of your familiarity with the concept, I suggest you try out small betting when out of position.

Tip: Fire more small bets out of position (and make sure to learn ​the theory behind it!​).

### Next

These concepts and tricks should get you headed in the right direction as you gain more experience and knowledge about deep stack play. You’ll also notice that each tip will make your life a bit easier when playing deep: You’ll find yourself in fewer awkward big pots with hands that can’t stand the heat, and more often setting the tone in position.

Remember, like I said ​last week​, improving your overall poker game is what you’ll need to do to crush these games. Combine practice, education, and time, and you’ll get there!

---

## Deep Stack Discomfort
Date: 2024-04-30 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/deep-stack-discomfort

# Deep Stack Discomfort

Why don’t your skills seem to translate when stacks get deep?

Why does it feel like you always get in tough spots?

Why do you lose so much money with your big hands?

Deep stack play can be intimidating, scary, and confusing.

But it can also be fun, easy, and extremely profitable.

### Why it Feels So Challenging

You’re not going to like this answer, but it’s the truth:

Deep stack play feels complicated because it is more complicated.

If you’re a cash game player used to playing 100bb poker, think of how much simpler the game is at 8bb.

To someone who only played 8bb poker, 100bb poker would be intimidating, scary, and confusing.

Why? Two reasons:

They’re not used to it

They haven’t built up the skills to deal with the complexity of the game

You’re not comfortable with deep stacks because you’re not used to it, and you don’t yet have the skills to handle it.

It’s not the same game.

You can’t simply treat it like a slight variation of your normal game, where a couple of hot tips will change everything for you (though I’ll share some hot tips anyway!).

### A Balancing Act

Riding a bike with training wheels is still riding a bike. You need to pedal, steer, brake, and… almost surely some other things, too (I’m not much of a cyclist!).

But no matter how many hours you’ve ridden with your training wheels on, you’re going to wobble when they come off. Your training wheels let you learn the other necessary bike-riding skills without the need to balance at the same time.

This is how poker works, too.

As you increase the complexity of the game, you need to get better at balance. An unbalanced range won’t hurt you much at 9-handed, 100bb NL Hold’em. But if you want to reduce the number of players, or, as we’re focusing on today, increase the stack sizes, your inability to balance properly is going to hurt you.

### Range Issues

Let’s say you’re playing 9-handed $1/$3 NL Hold’em, with $300 in your stack.

Someone in middle position opens to $15 and gets three loose callers. You look down at A♣️A♦️ in the SB.

You make it $75, and only one player calls.

The flop is J♦️8♠️4♦️. There’s $198 in the pot, and you have $225 in your stack.

You can’t screw this up.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a nit who only 3-bets with QQ+ and AKs.

It doesn’t matter if you don’t know what Minimum Defense Frequency means.

It doesn’t matter if you can’t hand read.

You’re playing in a loose game against weak competition. You understand the poker basics. You can just play tight and find an edge.

Now, if instead of $225 in stacks there is $1500 in stacks, you’re going to have to play some real poker.

And if you’re up against someone decent, who knows how tight your 3-betting range is, things might get a little dicey.

They know not to pay you off light if you keep betting, so it’s hard to make more money.

On the T♣️ turn, they know that the best hand you can possibly have is one pair. And they have a lot of ammo to put your one pair to the test.

This is why nitty players without a fully developed game get so uncomfortable when stacks get deep. They don’t often know exactly why, but they find themselves not getting paid off as much, and they end up getting “coolered” for a lot of money when someone “sucks out” on their Aces.

### Things Need to Change

The deeper stacks get, the more important it is to have proper, balanced ranges – ones that can connect with a variety of flops, turns and rivers.

You need to be 3-betting a wider range of hands, not only so that you can hit the T♦️8♠️7♠️ flop, but so that you can miss (have bluffs) on the K♠️8♦️6♥️ flop!

You need to learn to apply pressure with a balanced range including value bets and bluffs across multiple streets.

You need to learn to handle having a mostly capped range on certain boards by understanding how much of that range you need to defend in theory as you face multiple barrels.

In short: You need to get better at poker.

There’s no shame in not being better already.

There was no need to learn balance while the training wheels were on. You focused on more important things. But if you want to know how to succeed with deeper stacks, you need a deeper understanding of the game.

The problem isn’t that you need to learn new tricks!

It’s that your old tricks – nitty preflop, barely bluffing, betting big with your value hands, folding when the board gets scary – won’t work so well anymore.

### All-Out

When stacks were shorter, you could get all-in preflop, on the flop, or on the turn, when you had a good hand.

If you 3-bet AA like above and they outflop you, oh well! They’re only going to outflop you one in nine times or so. If they do, they get the last $225 in your stack. If they don’t, you get all-in ahead, or you take down the $198 already in the pot.

They can’t make up for all the times they lose, and they can’t bluff you off of your hand.

The same thing is true when you check-raise your flopped set in a single-raised pot with a range that doesn’t contain enough flush draws or gutshots. Without much left to play for, your unbalanced raising range can’t be punished too badly. (I would still punish you by folding top pair on the flop!)

All those times you could get all-in before the hand became too difficult…

Those were your training wheels.

### Time to Find Your Balance

So, how do you actually improve at poker?

You’re here, so that’s a great step! Check out the resources below to continue learning, and come back next week, where I’ll share some of those practical tips for adjusting to deep stack poker.

I’ve talked in prior posts about how investing in your growth is ​critical​, but there’s more to it than just that. You also need to take the training wheels off, fall down, and skin your knee a few times. (Sorry – there are no knee pads on the poker side of this metaphor!)

It’s my opinion that playing without learning is silly, and learning without playing is wasteful.

Consume knowledge, and then put it into practice. Allow that practice to get you curious to consume more knowledge. Now put that into your game and see how it goes. Leverage this cycle of education and execution, which makes the motivation come much more naturally.

One of the things that makes poker so beautiful as a potential career is that you get rewarded (on average) for how well you play. You don’t need to have an impressive PHD, have 8 years of experience, and suck up to the right people to get a raise and promotion.

All you have to do is play better.

---

## Plotting Your Poker Career
Date: 2024-04-23 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/how-to-plot-your-poker-career

# Plotting Your Poker Career

Over the course of my poker career, I’ve played the highest stakes online in multiple game types.

From an early career of haphazardly hopping through the game types on a whim to a more methodical last several years of intentionally sticking with my strengths and running businesses, I’ve learned a few lessons that I wish I had considered all those years ago.

Today, I want to talk to you about how to choose what types of games to study and play.

### From Low Stakes SNGs to High Stakes PLO

I started my poker career by playing online Sit-n-Go’s (poorly).

I don’t even recall how I decided to start with them, but whatever the reason, that’s where I found myself.

I learned the game, studied, and moved up through the ranks. After a couple of years, I’d gone from a $100 deposit to a $100,000 bankroll.

Then, a friend told me that there was more money to be made playing cash games.

“Okay,” I said, and left the $200 SNGs to hop into the $1k NL ($5/$10) cash game streets.

As it turned out, he was right, and it ended up being a great move for me – not only because I could earn more there, but because in the coming years, available online NL cash game stakes would increase while SNG stakes wouldn’t for some time. I had unwittingly moved out of a game with a lower ceiling and into a game with a higher one.

I rose through the ranks and ended up at the highest stakes NL cash games online: $60,000 NL ($300/$600). Soon after, the NL games at those stakes started to dry up while PLO cash games were running constantly.

“I’d better learn PLO,” I decided.

So, I did.

Somehow, I got lucky again, as PLO was a game that suited my skillset very well, and I found myself enjoying it immensely.

Years passed. Things went well.

Then, a new game was getting a lot of online action at nosebleed stakes: Limit 2-7 Triple Draw.

Once again, I thought, “I’d better learn this!”

### Drawing to a Close

The switch to Triple Draw wasn’t as auspicious as my previous transitions.

I lost over $1 million within the first 6 months of playing. This game was so different from the others that I felt like I had started learning poker from scratch.

Fortunately, I managed to get good at the game, and I turned things around.

Then, on April 15th, 2011 – known as poker’s Black Friday – the US DOJ shut down online poker sites and declared it illegal for them to offer poker to US players.

I was playing three tables of $1,500/$3,000 2-7 Triple Draw on Full Tilt Poker at the time I heard the news. We were all discussing in chat what was going on, and if the results of our play even mattered. I wondered if the $450k I had spread across the tables was even worth anything.

My life changed drastically. I left New York City, where I was living, and moved to the opposite coast, up to Vancouver, Canada.

Full Tilt Poker remained shut down, while Pokerstars stayed open to non-US players.

Pokerstars didn’t have the same nosebleed 2-7 games, so I stepped back into the ($25/$50 – $200/$400) PLO streets.

For the past decade, I’ve been primarily a PLO player.

### The Game That Fits You

When you’re choosing a game type to specialize in, there are a number of factors to weigh. There’s no simple formula that will spit out an answer, but I hope this will get you thinking along the right lines.

What game types do you enjoy? Which ones do you dislike?

This is a critical, if obvious, first step.

Along the same lines, what game types play to your mental and emotional, or even physical, strengths?

Do you get too worn out by back-to-back 12-hour tournament days?

Do you tilt easily when on a downswing? PLO might not be for you.

Does bluffing make you anxious? Heads Up NL might be a problem!

Lastly, what games fit your lifestyle?

If you have a family and you want to be on a normal schedule, that limits your options.

If a lower-stress, lower-risk, and lower-return job works best for you, make sure you’re picking a game with a ton of low-stakes availability so that you can put in good volume at stakes you can comfortably beat.

### The Availability of an Edge

Of the game types you’d consider playing, which of them has the most game availability at the stakes you want to play?

What about at the stakes below and above those?

If you go on a downswing, you need a game to step down into and rebuild.

If things go well for you, you might want bigger games to comfortably step up into. This goes both for the one stake above yours, but also the ones further up. How high* is the ceiling for you in this area of expertise?

What about achievable edges?

Some games are simply more beatable than others.

You might have availability of NL games at the stakes you play, but maybe they’re extremely tough where you are. Maybe PLO cash or MTTs are a much more beatable option for you.

In many cases, No Limit and Pot Limit games have much higher potential win rates than limit games, even when taking into account the requisite bankroll for each and the adjustment in stakes that allows for.

Which is, of course, another topic: Variance. NLHE is not the same as PLO. Your bankroll, assuming responsible bankroll management, might allow you to play $500NL but only $200PLO.

*As a nosebleed player, I didn’t get to consider this. I was playing the biggest games available, and for many of them, there weren’t consistent games at the levels beneath them. Not much I could do, but this is a first-world problem if I’ve ever seen one.

### Optionality and Transferability

While the above are things that many players likely consider, this is an area that is often overlooked.

One of my biggest regrets was spending time and energy working on games with low transferability. When I learned Limit 2-7 Triple Draw, and that game option essentially went away for me, from a learning perspective, I’d wasted those years. I returned to PLO with essentially no added skills acquired from my limit poker exploits.

Furthermore, while PLO and NLHE are more similar – and skills absolutely transfer over between the two games – I also put myself on a bit of an island with PLO.

Not only could I not easily step back into reasonable stakes NL cash games, but almost all tournaments are NL Hold’em.

One of the highest value skillsets to have as a poker player these past several years (and today) is the ability to beat high-roller MTTs. There didn’t used to be many tournaments with buy-ins over $10k, but today you routinely see $25k-$100k tournaments, and more than occasionally, buy-ins of $250k-$1m.

Had I been playing high-stakes NL cash games, I still would’ve needed to do a lot of studying to play these tournaments well, but I would’ve been much closer than I am today.

Similarly, a High-Roller NL Tournament specialist is already a long way towards being a great NL cash game player.

With NLHE being the most played variant of poker by far, all forms of NL present players with good optionality should their game of choice die down, or should another great opportunity arise.

### Extra-Curricular Optionality

Other opportunities can present themselves to poker players: Coaching, sponsorships, TV cash game invites.

Again, using myself as an example, I’ve hurt my ability to coach a larger demographic of players at a very high level.

Now, fortunately, I’m good enough at poker to teach 95% of people who want to learn NLHE, but I can’t teach experts there like I can in PLO.

I’ve even pigeonholed myself in further by ​specializing in Heads Up PLO​ as of late.

Now, am I mad at myself for it? No.

I love playing heads-up, and setting up scheduled heads-up matches is more conducive to my lifestyle: I have a family, need to work regular hours, and I live in the US. Therefore, I don’t have access to most of the good online 6-max cash games.

Do I wish I was an NLHE player who could win in these amazing high-rollers and be the best player in TV cash games?

Yeah, I do – but it’s just not my time for that now.

### Resources

The last thing to consider is what resources you have available to learn a game type.

What software tools, training videos, and books will help you reach the level that you want?

More importantly, because it’s more of a potential unique edge for you, what games do your friends play?

Learning poker with friends is one of the best and most fun ways to improve your game, so choosing a path that doesn’t allow you to study with your network will be much harder.

### Next Steps

Things have panned out just fine for me, but as I look back on my career, I wish I’d have been more conscious and deliberate about choosing my path. I wish I’d have kept my options open.

As I said, there’s no quick formula to plug all of the factors I laid out above into. I recommend taking out a pen and paper and considering the questions I’ve laid out in this post.

You should also check back with your ​goals and priorities​ to see how congruent they are with some of the game choices you’re considering.

You can pick your games mindfully. Don’t let your games pick you.

---

## It's Time to Wake Up
Date: 2024-04-16 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/its-time-to-wake-up

# It's Time to Wake Up

Today, I need to talk about something I’ve been holding myself back from writing. This is about how some (a lot) of my readers are – sorry – delusional about themselves and poker. How they have no idea where they stand and even less of an idea about what it takes to improve.

I want to start this post by stating the obvious (at least to me): I own a poker training site. I'm financially incentivized to convince you to buy poker training, and this post will be doing that. This is why I haven't written it yet. I know some of you will think this comes from a disingenuous place. I won't link to my stuff today.

If a thousand of you think that's why I'm doing this and unsubscribe, and five of you snap out of your delusion and have a better life and poker career, that's a win. So, let's do it.

## Losers

Poker is fundamentally different than roulette or craps in that it's player vs. player, which allows for long-term winners, but it is still gambling.

Gambling is such a successful industry because humans aren't wired to understand it. We're fooled by it.

Most losers don't know they are losers. Some know it, but don't know what it really means. They don't think about the fact that every time they make a $5 pull on a slot machine, they're losing $0.50.

Sure, there will be swings.

But five years and 50,000 pulls later, they're extremely likely to be down $15,000–$35,000.

In the meantime, they'll ride the waves of random noise, successfully designed to obscure their near-inevitable destination.

Poker, in some ways, can be worse.

Because poker players can win in the long run, it's easy to fool yourself into thinking you're a winner.

In fact, I'll go further: It's hard not to fool yourself!

## When You're Not Qualified to Know

Are you more intelligent than the average person?

If not, are you more street-smart than them?

Or are you more intuitive or better at understanding people?

Do you have better emotional control?

Of course you believe you're one of these. And, of course, that means you have a "great" reason to think you'll gain an edge at the poker table.

Maybe you've watched some free YouTube videos reviewing poker hands, looked at a preflop chart, talked to friends about poker, or subscribed to a strategy newsletter!

Perhaps you read about a type of mistake people make, you really understood it, and you've since seen many of your opponents making that very mistake.

There are tons of reasons to think you have an edge over the competition.

And losing poker players – the ones who are big underdogs – they don't have any idea how much they don't know. They don't know how to spot 98% of mistakes (they think they do). They are so clueless about how to think through strategy that if they try to evaluate their skill, their thought process is entirely nonsense.

And they don't know it. How could they?

## Wake-Up Call

80% – 90% of poker players are losing players.

If you haven't studied with a paid resource, it's probably 95% likely you're a losing player.

If you don't know how combinatorics work at the poker table, you're 95% likely to be losing.

If your results over the past couple of years are negative, you're 99% likely to be an underdog.

If you aren't sure whether or not you're winning or losing the past couple of years, you're 97% likely to be losing.

If a few of these are true for you... guess what?!

You're almost definitely a losing player.

And 80% of losing players reading this are still going to think, "That's not me."

## How Much Are You Losing?

Let's say you play $2/$5 live no-limit hold'em as a losing player.

This will vary a ton based on your play style and skill level, but to give you a ballpark, you might be losing something like 15bb/100. (If you don't know what that means... you might be a losing player!)

At about 3 hours to play 100 hands, that's $75 lost, for -$25/hr.

If you play an average of 6 hours/week, that's $150 a week, $7,800 a year, $78,000 over ten years.

And this loss rate is not a wild one. It's very common for losing players to lose double this amount, and over five times as much in tougher games.

## "I Can't Afford It"

Though I've known everything I've written above for 15+ years, I was triggered to rant about it when I saw a (very nice) comment in response to a recent newsletter.

It's funny… if I read a comment like, "lol who needs to study at your stupid training site," it doesn't bother me.

But this comment was about how much this particular reader loves and appreciates my content and how they'd love to learn from the paid resources I share someday but can't afford to right now.

It triggered me because I want this person and people like them to do better!

You can lose an average of $100 per poker session, but you can't afford a $50 course?

You can lose $8k/year but you would never pay $1k for advanced poker training?

This reader knows who they are (I don't because the survey below is anonymous). If you're reading again, I don't care who you buy poker training from, get coaching from, etc. But I want you to do it!

Go to a competitor. Advancedpokertraining.com, apestylescoaching.com, BBZPoker.com, carrotcorner.com, clcpoker.com, crushlivepoker.com, gripsed.com, GTOwizard.com, jakacoaching.com, pokercode.com, pokercoaching.com, pokerstrategy.com, pokersnowie.com, raiseyouredge.com, redchippoker.com, solveforwhy.io, tournamentpokeredge.com, upswingpoker.com… there are countless options. Hire a coach, or join a community that gets you actively involved in learning.

I truly don't care if my company doesn't make $50 from you. But don't tell yourself that you can't afford it.

If you play poker with any regularity, you can't afford not to learn to win.

And this isn't just for losing players!

Let's say you're a 3bb/100 winner at $0.25/$0.50 online, and you play 2k hands per session, five sessions a week. What if you could increase your winrate to 5bb?

That adds $5,200 to your annual earnings. $26,000 extra over the next five years, if it doesn't also lead to further growth and advancement and you moving up in stakes to earn much more than that!

Everyone can benefit from investing in themselves as poker players.

I always have.

Before training sites, I bought books and hired 1:1 coaches. Then I subscribed to training sites. Then I hired more coaches, invested in tools, created serious study groups.

And, guess what else?!

I was smarter than the average person. I was good at understanding the way people think. I was naturally level-headed.

And I was still a loser before I studied the game. I still needed it.

Not only did investing in myself make me a winner... it accelerated my growth and earnings substantially.

But sure... maybe you're special. Maybe you're more naturally talented than I am and are entirely unhelped by learning from anyone else.

Maybe you're already making as much as you possibly can.

Or at least you will be once the cards even out. Right?

## What Do You Want?

It's absolutely fine to treat poker as a hobby, and to not have an interest in studying in any way, shape or form. I respect that completely.

What gets me, though, is the disconnect from reality that I'm becoming more and more aware of.

You're given a survey when you sign up for this newsletter so that I can learn about what my readers need. And I have been absolutely floored by the results.

The majority of you would like to be semi-professional or professional.

And the majority of you who want those things have not invested a penny into learning the game.

?????????????

When I coach people directly, I'm essentially always working with high-performers -- people who are driven to achieve more. They don't all have perfect discipline or follow through on everything they wish they did to improve – that happens – but they all want it, and they're willing to keep trying to do what it takes to succeed.

It's how I'm wired, too, which is what makes this so hard for me to understand.

"I want to get super strong, but strength training isn't for me."

“Omg I'm SO thirsty, but I don't want water."

"I plan to be a world-class physicist, so I'm going to drop shit off my roof every week and see what happens."

Poker playing is a skill. It's a massively complex and fascinating game.

I have literally never met a player who doesn't or wouldn't benefit from investing in their game.

Never.

## Me and You

I truly appreciate you trusting me with your attention by subscribing to my newsletter.

You may like me a bit less now, but I'd be betraying that trust if I held this back and let you continue living your delusion.

Maybe 50% of my readers are these mythical beings who can't benefit and earn more (or lose less) by investing in their game. Maybe they are somehow this breed of human that I've never encountered in the real world during my 20 years in the game.

Or maybe... just maybe...

They're the reason that some of us can make a living playing a game we love.

Whether you're predator or prey in this game, I respect and appreciate you.

But since you're here with me, if it's what you want too, I'd rather have you on my end of the food chain.

It's time to wake up.

---

## Why: Beyond the Poker Table
Date: 2024-04-09 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/why-off-the-table

# Why: Beyond the Poker Table

My poker and business career, investments, and coaching... What do these all have in common?

They are some of the ways in which I've learned the lessons I'm going to share with you today.

Last week, I wrote to you about the ​critical importance​ of "Why" on the poker table. Today, we step away from the table and take our "Why" with us. Let's dive in.

## Risk Non-Management

This will surprise many of you who don't know me well, but I've been financially irresponsible for the majority of my career.

Due to a levelheadedness that likely won't surprise you, along with a little luck at times, I've managed to survive and thrive in spite of my risk-management skills – not because of them.

This started in poker, where my dream from the beginning was to ​compete at the highest stakes​ and on the biggest stages. I would grind away, building my bankroll at $5/$10 NL, then take $50k shots at $50/$100 NL, often losing half of my bankroll in the process before eagerly grinding my way back up so I could do it again.

Once I finally did reach the highest stakes, that pattern didn't really change.

I was usually under-rolled for the stakes I played. I'd sometimes have to drop down a few buy-in levels for a period of time to make sure I didn't go broke.

Then, eventually (as the online games did have a maximum buy-in level) my bankroll grew large enough that I no longer had the option to be in over my head.

## Why?

Why did I consistently put myself at risk the way I did?

At the time, I thought it was for three reasons:

1. It was exciting.

2. It motivated me to work harder.

3. I wanted to maximize my EV.

During the second decade of my career, I figured out a better approach and better “Why”.

## Risky Business

Eleven years ago, I co-founded Run It Once Training. I loved teaching poker, and I felt we could do it better than everyone else. My co-founder and I made the product that we wanted as players.

It was an ​instant success​.

For the first five years, I was still a full-time poker player. So, I had poker-playing income and cash flow from the business. I was in a good spot.

But I didn't "cash in" on it and live the easy life. I wanted more.

We reinvested all of our profits into the creation of other businesses. I'll save the full story for another time, perhaps, but the end result was this: In the past eleven years, despite running a profitable training business the entire time, it hasn't contributed to my income.

If I had to guess, I'm just now approaching being roughly even after several of the reinvestments didn't pan out the way we'd hoped.

At times, I was actually risking far more than I'd planned to. There were times when, despite a successful two-decade poker career and a great business, it looked like I could end up in pretty rough financial shape.

## The Realization

A few years ago, through my work with coaches – most of all, ​Elliot Roe​ – I took a good hard look at my Whys.

I thought about my values and priorities. I thought about some rough financial goals.

I realized that if I'd kept things simple, just running a nice cashflowing business while continuing to play poker, I'd have already reached the levels I wanted to achieve.

I was making investments that I deemed +EV, which, on average, should work out for me, but EV isn’t the whole story.

This is where my true realization came. I’d been playing poker and business exactly the way I had since I was 19 years old. No thought of the practical use of money or the diminishing returns of net worth as it increases – just this compulsion to aim higher.

I was taking all of these shots to create multiple $50m+ businesses (as a majority owner).

Why did I want that? What would I use the money for?

I'd never thought about it.

I was just chasing EV. And, unfortunately, I was constantly putting pressure on myself to do much more than I’d ever managed to get done. I always felt behind.

After some proper goal-setting over the following years, I settled on financial targets that would allow me to be “set” and take a step back from my 60+ hour work weeks (now down in the 50s, by the way!). I envisioned the life I wanted to live in ten years, and I looked forward to hitting my goals and taking the edge off of my constant need to push for more and more success.

And I began treating risk a bit differently. I no longer wanted to bet a great life for the chance of a massive score. Once I sat and thought about the future I actually wanted, and what was needed to get me there, I couldn’t unsee it. The way I made decisions was forever changed.

## Your “Why”

Just like you do at the poker table, you’re making decisions every single day for a reason. And, just like at the poker table, the more of those decisions you make without thinking, the further off track you can get.

The solution, in my opinion, is curiosity and awareness – bringing awareness to what you are thinking and feeling at your decision points, and curiously asking yourself why you want to make the decision you do.

Even more importantly, bringing curiosity and awareness to what you truly want in life, long-term, can help your future decisions become more purposeful and aligned with your goals.

You don’t need hundreds of hours of coaching like I’ve had to focus on your own Whys.

You simply need to ask yourself some questions and take the time to answer.

Finances (Income, Net Worth, Debt Reduction)

Career (Job, Achievements)

Relationships (Family, Friends, Romantic)

Personal (Knowledge, Projects)

Contribution (Service, Community, Legacy)

Wellbeing (Physical)

Wellbeing (Mental, Emotional, Spiritual)

Fun (Hobbies, Travel, Relaxation)

(There are several versions of an exercise like this with varying numbers of categories. I like these ones!)

Which of these are most important to you and your happiness? List your top four in order.

Ideally, what would these important areas of your life look like in ten years?

How can you focus your time and energy differently to help you get there?

## What Did You Learn?

If you truly take a good look, you may notice several parts of your life – the things you spend your time and energy on – that don’t align with what you really want. Perhaps you view your physical health as hugely important, but you’ve not been where you want for years now.

Maybe your mental health is at the top of the list, as you notice its ripple effects onto every other area of your life.

Or perhaps your career isn’t nearly as important as your relationships to you, but you’ve consistently neglected those relationships for your career.

The first time I did an exercise like this was with Elliot Roe, and it was eye-opening for me. I’ve done several variations of it since, and I teach my own version of it as a small part of the intro to ​Beyond The Game​.

What’s interesting about exercises like this one that prompt self-reflection is that they tend to impact you differently over time. Your priorities may shift. You may find that you’ve overcorrected since the last time you audited your life.

You might not get much out of it on one occasion, and it might change everything for you on another. Either way, it’s a freeroll. You either notice that your life needs realignment, or can take a moment to congratulate yourself for all you’ve been doing.

These types of prompts help because they force the awareness and curiosity that can serve us so well. They bring a little bit of clarity to the destination we’d like to reach.

## Do You Have a Destination?

A GPS works great if you tell it where you want to go, but ask it to take you north, and you won’t be impressed.

Most of them these days, if you tell it you’re looking for a farm in a certain area up north, will present you with a list of options.

Not bad.

You could start driving north towards a cluster of them and make the decision later. For now, just pick one in the group and let the GPS point you in that direction.

But, if you’re like me, you’ve spent most of your life without even that level of clarity about the destination.

You know you want to go north – more success, better relationships, better health – but that’s about as far as you’ve thought it through.

You’re so busy and preoccupied that you often drive around aimlessly. You get distracted, caught up in the day-to-day grind and the barrage of unexpected issues to deal with that is adulthood.

Before you know it, you’ve driven somewhere you never really wanted to be.

If you’d just plug the destination into your GPS, you’d start making true progress – progress in the direction you want.

Sure, there will be roadblocks. There will be detours. You might need to make emergency stops far out of your way. You may make a slight change to your destination as you go.

But you won’t be aimless.

Every time you come to a crossroads and have a decision to make, you’ll glance at your map and know which turn to take.

And one day before you know it, in the midst of all the chaos, you might look up and realize your destination is in sight.

PS - When you're ready to take your poker game to the next level, here are some ways I can help...

For Free:Check out my ​TV Poker Hand Reviews​Get access to ​3 Free Training Videos​​ Read all of ​My Past Newsletters​ For Budgets Under $100:Get started learning NLHE ​From the Ground Up​Ultra-affordable-but-still-advanced ​Run It Once Essential​ For Bigger Budgets: Get two advanced training videos daily, with ​Run It Once Elite​My 73-hour advanced PLO course, ​This is PLO ​Work with me directly at ​Beyond The Game​

---

## Why: Poker’s Most Important Question
Date: 2024-04-02 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/the-most-important-question-in-poker

# Why: Poker’s Most Important Question

I began teaching the importance of “Why” in poker fifteen years ago.

It’s been a while since I’ve put it in writing, and I have some present-day additions.

Today, let’s dive into “Why,” at the poker table and beyond.

### Your Whys: Newer Players

The number one piece of advice I give to new poker players is this: Start asking yourself why you make every play you make.

Why did you bet the turn?

Why did you call preflop instead of 3-betting?

New or unstudied players will often find themselves answering things like:

“I don’t know” or “Because I had top pair,” neither of which are good reasons to do anything.

But that’s okay! Their answers are supposed to be bad!

It’s through this process of asking themselves “Why” before and after each play they make that they begin to become aware of not only their own thoughts, but their reality.

I keep betting for no reason.

It seems like I’m making a lot of plays out of fear.

I don’t understand what I’m supposed to be thinking about. Maybe I need to study?

Eventually, they advance out of the unconscious incompetence stage and realize that high-level poker won’t simply “come to them” over time. Poker is not toddlers learning a language – it’s teenagers learning algebra.

As these recreational players examine their own thought process and begin to incorporate some type of formal education, they find themselves on the path to winning poker.

### Your Whys: Students of the Game

If you’re a winning poker player, it’s likely that you’ve been studying the game in some form.

Perhaps you’ve ​watched a course​, hired a coach, or studied with ​GTO tools​ – or many of the above!

I became a winner in 2004 after reading a few poker books and joining strategy discussions on forums with serious players, but in 2024, it’s not quite that easy.

So, if you’re well-studied, do you still need to ask yourself “Why” like the newbies do?

Yes!

Notice when you’re not sure a play is right, but also notice when you know a play is right, but your why is “a coach/solver/video told me.” These are opportunities to dive in deeper and strengthen your understanding of the game.

They don’t need to be right all the time – literally nobody is – but they need to be able to reason their way through hands. All hands. Until you can do that, you’ve got a ceiling.

I love playing against players who are just attempting to execute a system, as I explained in a past post. Some of them, with a ton of hard work and dedication, can become very, very good. But they’ll never be the best.

### Your Opponent’s Whys

The next step on the path of “Why” is turning that question towards your opponents.

Facing a river bet: Why is he betting that size?

After a showdown: Why did she decide to overbet the turn with that hand??

Whether your opponent is studied or unstudied, experienced or inexperienced, smart or dumb, they have a reason for each play they make.

They might not know the reason, but that doesn’t mean you can’t figure it out before they do. This is a path towards huge edges over your competition.

### An Example Opponent

To give you one of countless potential examples, let’s say you’ve observed your opponent:

Consistently bet big with strong hands on dynamic flops and turns.

Frequently bet big with decent hands on dynamic flops and turns to check back the river.

Show down slowplays with full houses and nut flushes, but never with sets or two pair.

Bet smaller with value hands on very dry boards, like K♠️9♠️ on K❤️9♣️3♦️ and Q♣️J♦️ on Q♠️7❤️2♦️2♣️.

Bluff on occasion, but miss many clear bluffs and semi-bluffs.

So, what do we know about this player?

To sum up, I’d say that the key thing we know is that they value bet too much and don’t bluff enough.

What else did you observe, if you think about their whys?

I’ll share my observations next, but if you'd like, give yourself a chance to think first.

### A Breakdown

To me, this player lets fear run their game.

They bet big with hands that they think are best when there are draws present because they’re afraid of being sucked out on. This is why they bet smaller on dry boards with big hands, and why they only slowplay with hands like boats and nut flushes that basically can’t lose.

They’re afraid of facing tough decisions. They push too thinly for value so that they can check down the river, missing out on potential river bluffs from their opponents. They’d rather avoid the discomfort of facing a bet.

They are afraid to lose money with a bad hand, so they rarely bluff themselves.

They know enough about poker that they bluff occasionally, but they don’t know enough to realize that their missed bluffs combined with their too-frequent value bets means that they’re massively underbluffing and that any good player should fold to them all the time.

That’s a lot of reads! But now that we have this player profile, we can take it further with some more educated guesses.

While we didn’t observe anything about their flop and turn raises, I’d be willing to bet that they handle them just like their bets: Not enough slowplaying, too much value raising, and not enough bluffing.

Their same fears take over – they’d rather take the pot down now without getting extra value than risk a scary river card hitting.

With a little bit less confidence, I’d guess that they don’t like making big calls on the river. That risks putting in money bad, which they don’t like doing.

Whether the above is true or not, it’s virtually guaranteed that they’ll overfold to river bets after checking the turn. Their betting range was too strong, which means their checking ranges have tobe too weak. If they don’t like hero calling, they’ll overfold even more.

I’d make the same reads on the turn, but with more confidence. A player who doesn’t like scary decisions won’t want to call a big turn bet with a marginal hand, knowing they’re likely to face a scary decision on rivers. Once again, this is exacerbated by the fact that their flop checkback range is too weak.

I’m going to absolutely hammer them with turn bluffs when they check back. I’ll bluff rivers against their weakened ranges. I’ll make big, big folds when they’re doing the betting.

Any unique situation I find myself in, where a hand has played out in a non-standard way, I’ll think back to everything I know about how this player not only thinks about the game, but feels about the game, and I’ll have an excellent idea of the type of range they’re going to have and what they’ll do with it.

I understand this player. They won’t have a chance.

So, begin to unravel the 'why' behind your decisions... before it’s too late and someone else does.

### Next Up

Next week, we'll continue on the topic of "Why?", but in a broader context. Spoiler alert: It's a question you should be frequently asking yourself outside of the poker tables, too!

PS - When you're ready to take your poker game to the next level, here are some ways I can help...

For Free: Check out my ​TV Poker Hand Reviews​Get access to ​3 Free Training Videos​Read all of ​My Past Newsletters​For Budgets Under $100:Get started learning NLHE ​From The Ground Up​Ultra-affordable-but-still-advanced ​Run It Once Essential​For Bigger Budgets:Get two advanced training videos daily, with ​Run It Once Elite​My 73-hour advanced PLO course, ​This is PLOWork with me directly at ​Beyond The Game​

---

## The Wild Image Paradox
Date: 2024-03-26 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/the-wild-image-paradox

# The Wild Image Paradox

Poker is a game of misdirection and deception.

You want their image of you to be the opposite of how you actually play.

Or do you?

Today, I want to talk about the #1 exception to this rule: The Wild Image Paradox.

### Common Sense

Common sense would dictate that you want your opponents to misunderstand your playstyle. And in almost all cases, that’s true:

You want them to think you’re underbluffing if you intend to bluff them

You want them to think you 3-bet a wild range if you actually intend to have the goods

You want them to think you’re easy to bluff if you plan to call them down

But in some formats, against some opponents, there’s a unique type of (mostly) true image that you actually want to have.

### Leveraging Variance

In tournaments, there are a lot of chips out there to pick up.

They tend to attract relatively weak competition on average, and these weaker players tend to play on the overly nitty side, especially as blinds get big and relative stack sizes decrease.

For this reason, a loose-aggressive style of play works excellently in large-field tournaments.

By playing a loose-aggressive style, you can pick up a lot of small-medium pots and chip up. Plus, you can sometimes get paid off when you finally do make a big hand, thanks to your image.

Ideally, you’d like to pick up most of these chips up without much variance.

Variance is problematic in tournaments, especially once ICM becomes a big factor, and taking a near-coinflip for your tournament life is very costly. You want to avoid big confrontations.

So, while you’re out there fighting for pots, you generally want your opponents to fold, and you very much want them not to play back at you.

Now, you might think that if you want to enter a lot of pots and bluff people, a tight image would be valuable. You’d want them to think you’re raising with good hands.

But in tournament poker, especially given the average softness of the fields, fear routinely overpowers logic.

### A Game of Chicken

Many tournament poker situations are, in a sense, a game of chicken:

Neither player wants to get all-in on a coin flip, and the first one to commit themselves often forces the other to make the wise decision to back down.

But in poker or chicken, what if you can’t trust the other person to make a wise decision?

What if they’re an unpredictable maniac?

I’ll tell you what: They’re usually going to win.

### The Ideal Tournament Image

The optimal image to have in a poker tournament is:

Fearless

Capable of anything

Can see into their opponents’ souls

With an image like this, your opponents aren’t going to want to play a big pot with a decent hand where you’re going to threaten their stack.

When you check-raise the flop, they don’t think, “This is probably a bluff. I’m going to call down.”

They’re thinking, “Oh man, I’m probably going to see a big turn bet and a river jam. I’ll wait til I have a hand I can happily call down with.”

And they fold.

When you bet flop and check turn OOP, they aren’t thinking “weak preflop and flop range, now weaker because of the turn check… I should protect my hand (or bluff).”

They’re thinking, “If I bet, I might get raised! If I bluff, I might get called down by Ace High!”

And they check.

They stay out of your way, even if they know you’re starting with a weak range.

This is the paradox of a maniacal image.

They think you’re going to play a lot of hands, and you do.

They think you’re going to bet or raise a lot of flops, and you do.

They think you’re going to play big pots on turns and rivers, and you do.

Yet, it works for you.

It works because each of these aggressive actions carries with it an implied future threat.

They don’t want to play chicken against the maniac.

---

## From Captain to Table Captain
Date: 2024-03-19 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/lessons-from-the-unthinkable

# From Captain to Table Captain

If you’ve followed my career for a bit, you won’t have to look back far to see evidence of me dealing with adversity.

I started off my hyped and eagerly anticipated (by at least myself!) return to high-stakes poker – the Galfond Challenge – by losing 45 buy-ins straight. Over $1 million, on a big stage, in front of everyone.

Some players can’t imagine losing that amount of money or facing that amount of pressure and embarrassment on a big stage, and then not only continuing to play but fighting back and actually winning.

People often ask me how I handled it – how I didn’t crumble under the pressure. And I’ve spoken about it with pride, thinking, “I guess I am pretty tough!”

Just a couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure of being part of a small group that sat and spoke with a very impressive man – ​Captain Charlie Plumb​.

As it turns out, he’s experienced things even more challenging than losing at a card game while sitting comfortably behind a computer in a Vancouver luxury apartment.

### The Captain

If you’d like to read the full list of Captain Plumb’s accomplishments, a quick Google search will get you there.

You’ll learn about his role in the start of the Navy Fighter Weapons School, otherwise known as “Top Gun.”

You’ll read about his 74 successful combat missions as a Navy fighter pilot.

And, next, you’ll read about his 75th mission, which took place just five days before the end of his tour – a mission during which he was shot down over Hanoi, Vietnam, where he’d spend the next 2,103 days as a Prisoner of War.

This particular mission, his years as a prisoner, and the physical and emotional torture he endured, would form the main topics of our conversation.

I was particularly eager to ask him how he overcame adversity that few of us could imagine surviving, and how he could explain his incredible mindset.

### A Mindset Miracle

While I was engrossed by everything Captain Plumb shared with us, what piqued my curiosity more than anything was the unfathomable statistic he shared with us:

He said that 36% of US Vietnam Veterans dealt with PTSD – a heartbreaking and unsurprising truth.

And then he asked what we thought that number would look like for the 591 POWs who returned home with him, most of whom endured years of captivity and torture.

I couldn’t imagine. 70%? 85%?

No, he said.

Four percent.

And many of those who did suffer from PTSD, he said, were the ones who arrived towards the end and were in captivity for the shortest amount of time.

In fact, a new term was created to explain what happened to most of these remarkable prisoners:

PTG – Posttraumatic Growth.

Not only did they survive the experience and come out of it in one piece. They came out stronger.

### A Wire, a Will, and a Way

Charlie then told us about his early days in his 8’ by 8’ cell, accompanied only by his own thoughts and the occasional rat or snake.

As a student of mindset, I was on the edge of my seat.

Through an excruciatingly long process, he finally learned to communicate with the prisoner in the cell next to him through tugging on a wire in specific patterns.

One of the first messages he received from his neighbor, Lieutenant Commander Robert H. Shumaker, was: “Pull up your big boy pants. There’s no whining in this prison camp.”

Upon hearing this, I asked Captain Plumb a question: “How long did it take from the time he told you to change your attitude to you actually changing your attitude?”

### Lesson One: Forgiveness

Charlie said that for the first three or four months of his stay in what his fellow POWs jokingly dubbed the Hanoi Hilton, he was filled with anger, hate, and vitriol.

Hate for the guards and the camp commander who imprisoned and tortured him, anger at the war, at the president, and anger at (and disappointment in) himself for not accomplishing his mission and being shot down.

For months, he blamed the world, and himself, for what had happened and where he was.

It wasn’t until he forgave everyone, himself included, that he was able to shift his mindset into the one which allowed him to not only survive, but thrive.

In a ​past issue of this newsletter​, I discussed the importance of taking responsibility for your results – of not blaming other people or other factors (namely, bad luck) for your failures.

I am now thinking of forgiveness as another step in that same direction – as an extension of accountability and acceptance.

I take responsibility for my results, even if other people or the so-called poker gods may have made it harder for me to succeed. Instead of blaming whatever obstacles have been thrown at me, I forgive them and accept the outcome.

### Lesson Two: Curiosity

In what was more of a casual, almost throwaway sentence in Captain Plumb’s discussion of turning his mindset around, he said:

“I knew there was some purpose here. And I challenged myself to find out what it was.”

This, to me, was an incredible example of curiosity in action.

Rather than simply being miserable about his circumstances, he got curious.

What could he learn from this? How could he grow from the experience?

Whether you believe that God or the universe has a plan for you or you think it’s all random, you can recognize that any situation can be a learning experience.

Imagine you’re on a big buy-in downswing. (Cue half of you saying “I don’t have to imagine!”)

How can you use this experience to better yourself?

What is there to learn from the way you’re feeling?

Are you motivated by it?

Use this as fuel to improve your game!

Think about how you could tap into this motivation without needing to lose your shirt first.

Are you demotivated by it?

Use this as an opportunity to work on your mindset.

What practices can get you back on track? What things throw you back off, and why?

Curiosity is one of the best antidotes to unhappiness.

### Lesson Three: Leadership and Community

Charlie credits leadership for the unbelievable outcomes for he and his fellow POWs.

Even when they were in individual cells, secretly communicating through a less efficient Morse-code-like language, they were a team.

And the leaders of that team were able to organize and even coordinate action from the group.

The leaders were setting the rules and expectations for everyone, including the no-whining rule.

And while he didn’t credit it in the same way he did their excellent leadership, Captain Plumb spoke about the importance of connection.

Making contact, communicating, and bonding with the other POWs was clearly a key part of maintaining his strong mindset.

While poker isn’t a team sport, the benefits of learning, collaborating, and bonding with a group of players are numerous.

Many in poker understand the value of studying strategy and knowledge-sharing within a group, but they often underestimate the mental and emotional value.

Leadership isn’t always as easy to come by in our game, and it comes with risks – the wrong ones can lead you astray.

So, though it’s possible to find yourself in a large community of players with true hierarchy and leadership, I don’t think it’s necessary.

A small group of friends can do wonders for you. This happens to be the way I’ve learned for most of my career – surrounded by like-minded pros, trying to support each other and improve ourselves.

Roles have sometimes emerged – even hierarchies on occasion. But it’s the connection and collaboration that’s the true magic.

All of the biggest leaps in my game have come during the times I studied with others.

### A Closing Note

Of all the inspiring lessons Captain Plumb shared with us, I chose to highlight these three in my newsletter, as they resonated with me and stood out as particularly relevant to poker. I hope you found them as enlightening as I did!

Fortunately for all of us, Captain Plumb has gone on to share his whole story with the masses. There’s a lot more you can learn from Captain Plumb’s keynote speeches and his book, I’m No Hero.

I bought I’m No Hero right after speaking with him, which I’m sure will continue to put in perspective the “toughness” we all strive to exhibit at the poker table.

---

## Variance: Beyond the Surface
Date: 2024-03-12 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/variance-beyond-the-surface

# Variance: Beyond the Surface

Variance is one of those words people throw around as if they fully understand it and its implications.

In actuality, it’s a confusing and abstract concept.

Today, I want to share the three most common misunderstandings relating to variance among poker players (who understand it much better than the rest of the world!).

### Unintuitive Results

The human mind isn’t built to handle variance well.

We evolved to learn from our actions.

A caveman only needs to put his hand in a fire one time to learn never to do it again. That’s a fast education!

We take an action, we get a result, and we calibrate our actions based on that.

Imagine if that caveman had two options:

Put his hand in a fire.

Put his hand in cool water.

But instead of things working the way they would in the real world, the fire burns him 70% of the time, and the cool water burns him 30% of the time.

It’s going to be a lot harder to learn which the better option is.

### Definition

In poker, people tend to equate variance with bad luck and downswings:

“I’ve been dealing with some variance lately.”

That’s not what it really means.

Variance is a statistical measure that represents the degree of spread in a set of data points.

It quantifies how much the numbers in a dataset vary or differ from the average (mean) value of the dataset.

In simpler terms, it addresses the question:

How much might my results differ from the average result?

You don’t need to understand how to calculate variance, or that the standard deviation in a data set is the square root of the variance.

But you do need to understand its impact on results.

In poker, you have your expected result (expected value, expected winrate), and variance.

The higher the variance, the more likely it is that your actual results will differ from your expected results.

Let’s get into the misunderstandings, starting with the least misunderstood.

### #3: It Can Really Get That Bad (and Worse!)

Most everyone underestimates variance.

When I was just starting in poker, I remember reading the words of a successful player that really stuck with me:

“If you play poker long enough, you’ll eventually run worse than you ever thought possible.”

I’ve seen it happen to myself, and to countless other players. The losses somehow keep piling up in spite of it seeming astronomically unlikely.

In your local $1/$3 NL cash game, with a winrate of 5 big blinds per 100 hands, what do you think the odds are that you’d win over one year of playing?

Well, at 30 hands/hr, and 16 hours of play per week, you’d play about 25,000 hands in a year.

The chances of losing over that year are something in the neighborhood of 13%*.

*These calculations were done with ​Primedope's​ free variance calculator.

Play better than your opponents for an entire year, and you still have a thirteen percent chance of losing!

What if you play for three years? Surely by that time, the long run will have hit, right?

Well, sort of.

Now it’s only 2.5% likely that you’ll be losing after that three-year stretch.

That’s still one out of forty players!

And what’s worse is that in a sense, every time you play, you’re starting the clock over.

Over the course of 10 years, there are countless opportunities to start a 3-year downswing. You might fade the first 2.5% by winning a lot in year one, only to lose over years two through four.

I know what some of you are thinking:

“OMG. That’s what happened to me!”

This brings me to the next misunderstanding…

### #2: Variance Works in Both Directions

If bad runs can go on longer than we think… Guess what?

Good runs can too.

How many of you thought, “OMG. I’ve been winning for three years without studying. I must be running hot!”?

How often have you felt like you were running above expectation for a long time?

Many people don’t ever feel this, because they think they deserve to win. It’s easy for your mind and ego to construct a story around you winning:

“I’m playing great.”

“I knew I was a genius.”

“I studied preflop charts for 30 minutes.”

And it’s just as easy to construct a story around losing:

“I’ve been so unlucky.”

“My opponents always hit their stupid draws when I have a big hand.”

“If I didn’t get my aces cracked three times, I’d be winning this month.”

Even for more advanced players who know otherwise, it’s easy to think that variance only happens in one direction.

This leads players of all skill levels to overestimate their winrates and abilities. It makes them play in games they shouldn’t and experience even more “variance”.

So, what can you do about it?

How can you reduce variance?

This brings me to the most common misconception of all:

### #1: Variance Reduction

“I know I should 3-bet 10% of hands here, but I feel better 3-betting just my premiums to reduce variance.”

“I could bluff here, but I don’t know if it’ll work. Giving up is lower variance.”

“I’m probably ahead, but many rivers will be tough to play, so I’ll just fold to reduce variance.”

Let’s go back to our example – a 5bb/100 winrate over one year of play – and see what impact reducing our variance would have.

If we play a variance reduction style, we might take the standard deviation from 70bb to 50bb/100.

Now, instead of losing 13% of the time, we lose only 5.7% of the time. Cut it in half!

Not bad, right?

Here’s the problem:

When you take alternate betting lines instead of the “right” ones in order to reduce variance, you are, by definition, playing worse.

You’re passing up on spots where you could win money on average because they are riskier.

You become much easier to play against, which, if players notice, is going to hurt your winrate even more.

What happens in practice is that your 5bb winrate may get reduced to 2bb/100.

And now, with a 2bb/100 winrate and the “lower variance” of 50bb/100 standard deviation, you’ll lose after one year 26.4% of the time.

You doubled the chances of losing!

### What Does This Mean?

Does playing a tighter, more passive, nitty style reduce variance?

Yes.

But reducing variance doesn’t mean reducing the chance of downswings.

Usually, it means increasing it!

You see, if you play around with a variance calculator for thirty minutes, you’ll figure out that “swings” depend on exactly one thing:

The ratio of your winrate to your standard deviation.

Let’s say instead, we keep the standard deviation at 70bb and we double our winrate to 10bb/100.

Now, after one year, we lose only 1.2% of the time.

From 13% to 1.2%!

If your goal is to reduce your swings, you don’t need to reduce your variance. You need to get better at poker.

And your winrate has importance that goes far beyond your swings…

Even if we took the standard deviation down far enough to make you only lose 1.2% of the time with a 2bb/100 winrate (which isn’t realistically possible), your average outcome on the year would be +$3,000.

With the 10bb/100 winrate, your average outcome would be +$15,000.

### The Bottom Line

Are there scenarios where changing your strategy to reduce variance makes sense?

In theory, probably some.

Should you ever do it?

I’d argue, no.

Your winrate is everything.

A sacrifice of your winrate to the gods of variance is unlikely to be worth the cost.

If this post scared you, good.

Take that fear and do something positive with it.

Don’t leave your fate up to luck.

Study, hire a coach, run variance simulations, work on your game.

Don’t be one of the many people reading this right now who give in to their delusions.

Delusions that they’re unlucky.

That they know “enough” about the game.

That they’ve won for a few months because they’ve figured it out.

Not one great poker player has ever learned enough that they couldn’t still improve.

Variance is scary.

And fear is a terrible thing to waste.

---

## Block Bets: Part Two
Date: 2024-03-05 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/warfare-with-small-bets

# Block Bets: Part Two

Last week​, we went over why small bets are a part of optimal strategy and how a GTO solver “thinks” about when to utilize them.

Today, we’ll dive into a discussion on splitting your range between small bets and checks.

But if modern poker terminology like "splitting your range" makes your head spin, you're not alone.

The good news: My goal in this article is to render a complex concept slightly more digestible and to offer some practical advice.

### Probably

I promised you I’d explain why some unintuitive hands make small bets. Before I deliver on that promise, I’d like to set the stage.

Depending on the action you take, you’re varying degrees of likely to face aggression.

Let’s take ​last week’s example pot​, where we 3-bet from the small blind and got flatted by the cutoff opener. But instead of discussing a specific flop, let’s see how we average across all flops (in GTO land):

Simulated across all possible flops using GTO tools.

Let’s take a look at another aspect of this: How often do we get too see a turn, depending on the action we take?

What does all this mean for us?

Well, it means we need to be prepared.

### Attackers and Defenders

Some hands are better for aggression, while others are better for defending against aggression.

Yes, the best hands are great for both, but we can’t always have the top of our range.

Hands that are better for attacking are:

Value hands that don’t mind narrowing your opponent's range (meaning they’re very strong and/or they benefit from folding out overcard hands, for example)*Note: Larger bets narrow your opponent’s range more than smaller bets.

Bluff and semi-bluff hands that like folding out the bottom of your opponents’ range (less showdown value)

Hands that are better for defending are:

Monsters that crush the board (AA on A33), making it more likely your opponent has air to bluff with and less likely they have a calling hand.

Good hands that don’t want to narrow your opponents’ range (e.g. A3 on A98 – We don’t want to fold out KT, and we don’t want to bet multiple streets for value).

Draws with more showdown value.

### Board Coverage: Conditions

We don’t know what the turn and river will bring. As such, we need to be prepared.

The less likely a type of turn is to hit, and the smaller the consequences of not connecting with it, the less prepared we need to be for it.

For example, on A❤️T❤️3♠️, it’s much more important that each of our ranges (big bet, small bet, check-call, check-raise) can turn a flush than for them to be able to turn a set on an offsuit 7♣️.

Firstly, the flush will hit way more often. Second, we may already have sets on the flop, and hands like A♣️T♦️ which can still play big pots on the 7♣️.

### Ready for Battle

We’ve now set the stage for a metaphor that works just well enough for it to solidify some concepts in your mind.

We are at battle. Our base is miles away from our enemies.

You have soldiers who are better attackers and others who are better defenders. Attackers tend to specialize in unchanging weather conditions (board texture), whereas defenders can handle the change.

If you’re going to launch a full-scale attack, going after your enemies base, then it’s clear what you do:

You send most of your attackers out on the mission (big bet), and you keep most of your defenders on base (check).

You leave a few attackers back for a counterstrike (check-raise), and you send a couple of defenders out there in case your attack doesn’t end things and the weather changes.

When you attack their base (big bet), whoever is there to fight you is usually forced into defense mode. Your attackers get to stay on the attack. Your defenders stay home and defend against whatever is coming.

Now let’s look at another scenario:

### Partial Attack

This time, you don’t want to launch an all-out attack. You notice that the enemy is softer in between your base and theirs, so you’d like to advance some of your army halfway (small bet).

This forces them to mount some defense, but doesn’t put them on their heels so much that they can’t attack (raise).

The unit you send out to go halfway needs to be prepared to either continue attacking or to defend.

The battle is much less likely to end with your attack, too, so this unit needs to be prepared for changing conditions (board texture), as does the group staying back on base.

You can’t leave either group overexposed, or they can exploit that gap.

So, you send out (small bet) a mix of attackers and defenders, with a slight preference towards attackers. As a result, you keep a mix back on base (check), slightly skewed toward defenders.

### Back to Our Hand

So, the hand in question…

We 3-bet from the small blind and get called by the cutoff. The flop is A♦️6❤️5♠️ .

We learned last week that our opponent’s base is doing just fine, but they are very weak halfway there. We decide to attack with a small bet, splitting our range into small bets and checks.

Here is what an optimal strategy looks like:

Last time, we talked about hands like K♣️K♠️ and K❤️Q❤️. Why do they bet?

Well, they bet sometimes – a little bit less than half the time, because that small bet range needs to be well-rounded.

But you’ll notice that they bet less often than hands like AK, AQ, 98, 77. Those hands are better attackers, and KK and KQ are better defenders.

Now, this is where the metaphor falls apart because, obviously, our attackers like 77 can handle defending against a raise, while K❤️Q❤️ cannot.

But the point remains that if we leave either range unbalanced, we are left exploitable to an attack that can come in many forms.

Our opponent can “attack” our betting range by folding on the turn because we don’t have enough bluff candidates.

They can attack by small betting after we bet flop and check turn with a range that can’t defend well against a small bet (because we either have bluffs we gave up on, which can’t call any bet, or strong hands that can call or raise).

### Small Bets. Big Mistakes.

If you start to “correctly” employ a small bet strategy in a given spot while incorrectly splitting your range – checking hands that feel good to check and betting hands that feel good to bet – you’re not getting closer to GTO. You’re getting further away.

Against a strong player, you’re making a much bigger mistake than if you stuck with your intuitive big betting.

Why?

Because you’re sharing a lot of information about your range without even charging them much to see the next street and take advantage of it.

If I know your range is going to struggle on certain turn cards, you don’t want to let me see those turns, and take advantage, cheaply.

This is one of the risks of implementing solver strategy without understanding it.

### Practical Advice

We’re all at different points on different poker journeys.

For those of you who aren’t looking to earn income playing poker, ​investing in solver tools​ and ​training videos​ may not make sense.

Some of you may have very limited study time or limited patience for the monotony of solver-based studying.

If, for whatever reason, you’re not going to be able to fully wrap your head around a GTO-based strategy, my advice is this:

Don’t try to.

If you’re used to making big bets with hands that feel intuitive to you, keep doing that!

If you’re used to c-betting small with 100% of your range on many boards, don’t bother cutting that down to a solver-approved 74% of your range.

It’s more important that you either charge your opponents more when you split your range, or that you don’t split your range at all, than that you pick the perfect sizing and near-perfect frequencies.

### Know Your Opponent

Keep in mind that the types of leaks that are caused by poor range construction are only taken advantage of in a big way by observant, strong players.

If you’re playing in low-stakes MTTs, where you don’t run into the same players frequently enough for them to figure out your strategy, and where most players wouldn’t know what to do about it even if they did – don’t sweat it!

If you’re playing in soft cash games where your opponents have never thought about poker strategy ​beyond watching a TV hand review on YouTube​, you don’t need to worry.

What you should do, though, is start taking steps to become the player who is exploiting their imbalanced ranges.

The best players in the world make range-construction mistakes. You can be sure that weaker players leave gaping holes in their game.

If you can begin paying attention in a way you haven’t before, you’ll be on your way to making a lot more money against them.

Ask yourself questions like:

“What kinds of hands do they never bet here?”

“What kinds of hands do they mostly bet?”

“What turn cards will they struggle, with that range, to value bet on?”

“What turn and river cards will they struggle to bluff enough on?”

If you practice thinking these through, especially while you’re not involved in a hand (so that you can process them with a clear head), you’ll make incremental gains in your understanding of the game each time you play.

---

## New Kids on the Block Bet
Date: 2024-02-27 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/new-kids-on-the-block-bet

# New Kids on the Block Bet

Raise your hand if you find GTO poker frustrating.

Whether you’ve studied solvers, watched poker training videos, or have simply watched poker in the last few years, you’ve heard of GTO (Game Theory Optimal) play.

The ​advancement of poker tools​ brought about the advancement of the game.

If you have fallen behind, it’s costing you.

Not everyone has time to study poker sims for hours each week. For most non-professionals who aren’t surrounded by poker friends and mentors, staring into a labyrinth of solver outputs is a waste of time and brain cells.

Trying to copy GTO play is a recipe for disaster. You have to actually understand the reason for the strategy.

And the truth is, nine out of ten players emulating GTO play don’t even understand why they’re doing what they’re doing.

Today, I want to demystify some of that for you so that you can make more money at the tables.

I promise (I’ll try) not to make your head spin.

### Let’s Talk About Bet Sizing

Big bets are intuitive.

You’ve got a good hand that you want to make more money with, or you’ve got a bluff and want to take down the pot. Easy.

Small bets, when used properly, are often very unintuitive.

That is – until you understand their purpose, which should hopefully be in just a few minutes.

### Small Ball

Back in my day, small bets, often called “block bets” were used to keep pots small.

Whether it was the small pot, lower variance, tournament strategy made famous by Daniel Negreanu, or the “let me block bet the turn so I don’t check and face a big bet” strategy, small bets have been around a while.

Yet they’ve never been used as much as they are these days, in the post-solver era of poker.

But what is the point of them?

If I 3-bet from the SB and get called by the CO, why would I bet 25% pot on A♦️6❤️5♠️ with most of my hands?

Why bet 25% pot with hands like K♣️K♠️, which needs no protection from overcards but is losing to an Ace?

Why would I small bet K❤️Q❤️ and make almost all better hands call and worse hands fold?

And why don’t I want to bet bigger with A♣️K♣️ to build a nice pot?!

In the “good ol’ days” a player might bet big with hands like A♣️K♣️ and 9❤️8❤️, bet small with hands like T❤️T♦️and J♣️T♣️, and either check or bet small with K♣️K♠️ and K❤️Q❤️ and the like.

If those plays feel more intuitive to you, you’re not alone.

Let’s talk it through.

### Small Bets, All Bets

To understand why small bets are used, you need first to understand the point of a bet.

Not a bet with individual hands, but holistically – what purpose does a bet serve as part of an overall gameplan?

If you’d like to pause to think of your answer before reading on, now is the time.

It sounds silly to many of you, I’m sure. But if you asked yourself to figure it out, it may have been more confusing than you expected.

I’d like to define the purpose of a bet as follows:

Get money into the pot with hands that have an equity advantage.

Or, in simpler terms, “to put money in good.”

Now, you need to compliment that range with some bluffs, of course. But stick with me on the idea of starting with value as a reason to bet.

If you use it as a building block for understanding GTO poker, things may begin to make a lot more sense.

### Minimum Defense Frequency

If I pot bet the river on K♣️9♦️9♣️ 7❤️ 4♦️ with the following, completely made up, range:

2/3rds 9♠️9❤️

1/3rd 6♦️5♦️

You are breaking even calling with your bluff catchers, and you have to, in theory, call half of them.

Why?

This is a concept called minimum defense frequency, or MDF, which tells you the minimum frequency you need to call (or raise) to stop your opponent (me) from profiting with all potential bluffing hands.

I risked 1 (pot-sized bet) to win 1 (pot). If my bluff works more than one out of every two times, I profit, which means you need to defend half the time.

### Kinda-Sorta Good Hands

While I could prove this with pages of text detailing an example, I promised not to make your head spin, so I’m going to ask you to trust me as I simplify this:

The purpose of a small bet is to get money in good with certain hands that cannot get money in good if they bet bigger.

What would that mean? Well, let’s say I have a hand that is best 70% of the time, and I want to value bet it.

(If it helps to make it more concrete for you, let’s say the hand is 8❤️7❤️ on 8♠️3♣️3♦️ 6❤️ K♠️)

If I bet pot, based on MDF, you need to call 50% of the time. That would be with the 30% of hands that beat me, and 20% of bluff catchers that don’t.

3 out of 5 times, I lose the pot and the bet I put in. That’s a bad value bet.

But if I bet 1/3rd pot, you have to call 75% of the time (MDF). You call with 30% of hands that beat me and 45% of hands I beat. That’s a good value bet.

This is why you would want to use a small bet in certain situations.

### Think Range

There are many situations in poker where one player has a big range advantage based on the action so far.

Usually, that player does more of the betting. Sometimes they do this with a lot of big betting, and other times, with a lot of small betting.

That decision comes down to the makeup of everyone’s range.

Some people like to look at “targeting a part of your opponents’ range.”

Others think of it as “benefitting a section of the hands in my range.

These are both oversimplifications, which I’m in favor of! They make it easier for our human minds to identify good spots for small bets quickly.

Let’s make this a little more concrete for you.

### Back to the Beginning

Remember that unintuitive 3-bet pot we started with? Let’s see if we can make sense of it.

We 3-bet from the SB and get called by the CO.

Using simplified GTO ranges, let's say that we 3-bet with: 77+, A8s+, A4s, A5s, AQo+, K9s+, QTs+, JTs, J9s, T9s. The CO's flatting range is: 22-QQ, AQo+, A8s+, A4s, A5s, K9s+, KQo, QTs+, J9s+, and a bunch of smaller suited connectors and one-gappers that flop a piece, such as 87s, 76s, 65s, 54s, etc. (I was surprised how much GTO wants to flat QQ and AK in this spot, too!)

The flop is A♦️6❤️5♠️

Let’s look at an equity chart of the two ranges:

Simulation: ​GTOWizard​.

This shows how much equity the top, middle, and bottom of each range has against the other full range.

The X-Axis is the range percentile – the top 10% of each player's range is on the rightmost part of the chart.

The Y-Axis shows the equity for each of those percentiles for each player.

The SB (blue) has a range advantage throughout – top to bottom.

But do you notice that big dip in the CO’s (green) line around the 75% mark? (I like to read these right to left)

The two ranges are close to similar at the top, but then there is a huge dropoff. In this particular hand, that dropoff occurs when we get to the CO’s hands that are worse than top pair.

The SB has far more top pair hands and has an advantage when it comes to non-ace hands (more KK, QQ, etc.).

Whether you call it targeting this middle section of the CO’s range or leveraging the middle section of the SB’s range, the fact is, the middle of the ranges are where we, the SB, have the substantial advantage.

### Tactical Leverage

So, how do we leverage this advantage?

Let’s flip it around:

How could we fail to leverage this advantage?

If we bet full pot, the correct strategy for the CO is to continue with straight draws, an ace or better, the few other board pair hands they have, and barely anything else.

The middle part of the range that we were crushing gets off easy!

If that middle part were stronger and more similar to ours, the CO would still fold most of it. So, to oversimplify, betting big makes it inconsequential that we had that massive advantage in the middle half of our range.

By betting smaller, we force the CO to put money in with around 75% of hands, and we force them to keep playing with that disadvantaged part of their range.

We choose a betsize that specifically benefits the section of ranges that we have the biggest advantage in.

### Continuing On

What about those hands that were so unintuitive to bet? The K♣️K♠️ and K❤️Q❤️.

We’ll cover that, and more on small betting, in next week’s newsletter, where I hope to get a little less mathy and more conceptual.

If you stuck with this one til the end, congratulate yourself for putting in the time to improve!

---

## On the Trail to Tranquility
Date: 2024-02-20 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/on-the-trail-to-tranquility

# On the Trail to Tranquility

Conventional wisdom in poker is to detach yourself from your results and from your emotions – to focus only on your strategy.

But I think that’s wrong – It’s okay to be sad about losing.

I'm bringing this up today because, if you're like me, I want you to stop being so hard on yourself.

I’d like to differentiate between a realization I had many years ago, about handling emotion at the poker tables, and one I just had recently about life away from the tables.

### At the Poker Table

Early in my career, I was taught by the Sklansky books and the forum posts to be purely logical.

So I always strived to have a strong mindset at the poker table. I’d pretend while I played that I had no attachment to the outcome – no fear. And I believed it!

It wasn’t until years later that I realized I’d been ignoring the emotions I felt and that they were driving my decisions at the table.

Acknowledging those emotions and bringing my awareness to them allowed me to identify when I was feeling excitement, frustration, fear, anxiety… and it allowed me to make adjustments.

Maybe I need a break.

Maybe I should call it a day.

Do I think a checkback here is the right play, or am I afraid to bluff?

Once I allowed myself to feel what I was feeling, my game and results improved.

### Away from the Poker Table

I’ve strived to have a balanced life, not only in terms of the time I gave to things outside of poker, but also with the aim of not making poker my whole life emotionally.

I used to think, “If you’re losing at poker and it makes you feel like you’re losing at life, you need some perspective or you need more in your life.”

My goal was to remain as close to emotionally neutral as possible.

An early mentor of mine, Tommy Angelo, has an adage that I love:

Why would I get upset when my flight gets delayed? That’s one of the main things that flights do!

So why would I get upset when I go on a downswing? That’s one of the main types of swings there are!

I love this framing and approach, and for many years, I’ve aimed to live by it. I’ve aimed to be unaffected by the swings of poker, especially once I leave the tables and go back into “the real world.”

Losing is part of the game.

I know that. I accept that.

It’s a very common, expected result. So I shouldn’t let poker results impact me, my mood, or my behavior away from the table. If I ever do, I view it as a failure.

At least, this is how I felt until just a few months ago…

### A Different Voice

At the end of last year, I ran a group coaching program for the very first time.

When you have several students, you begin to notice common themes. And sometimes, it can illuminate something you didn’t realize when looking at it from your own perspective.

During a coaching session, a student was talking about a rough downswing and how it was impacting him in between sessions.

He was asking me and the others how we got over it and kept poker “at the table.”

How did we go back to our lives, and to our families, and bring our best selves when things were going so poorly?

As he spoke, I first started digging into my mind for methods and techniques I’ve used to stay calm, or to get over losses.

But then I paused and thought more critically about what he was saying.

What I heard beneath his words was:

“What’s wrong with me that I can’t do this?”

I related to it. I’d felt the same way many times.

Why can’t I shake this? Why am I letting the game impact my mood outside of it? Come on, Phil – you’re stronger than this.

… aren’t you?

But hearing a voice outside of my own head say the same thing felt different.

And something clicked for me.

### A New Outlook

For nearly 20 years, I beat myself up for not meeting my sky-high standards.

Yes, we know it’s not helpful to wallow in self-pity and blame things outside our control. Tommy is absolutely right.

But we also need to accept our humanity.

Tommy aims to approach unshakeability, and he’s a lot closer to it than most of us will ever be.

In my view, Tommy’s words are there to give you perspective, and to move you closer to being unshakeable.

But we aren’t fully enlightened. We still feel things that we wish we didn’t.

In the same way I realized I should let my feelings in at the table many years ago, leaning in and feeling everything away from the table is healthier and more fruitful than ignoring those feelings and wishing them away.

Continue to work towards unshakeability and fully experience whatever emotion remains.

As I told my student that day, “It’s okay to be sad about losing. Losing for a long time sucks. You’re not supposed to be happy about it. You’re not supposed to be indifferent.”

And there is nothing wrong with you.

---

## Exploiting GTO: Bet Sizing
Date: 2024-02-13 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/exploiting-gto-bet-sizing

# Exploiting GTO: Bet Sizing

I’d played against the best players in the world for many years before solvers were invented. I’d succeeded in large part due to my ability to hand-read.

After solvers, I found myself in a difficult spot – not able to trust the very same skills that got me to the top.

Between running a business and my general resistance to boring things, I played for many years against solver-studied players before I dove into studying myself.

Sure, I watched GTO experts make training videos. I could understand the concepts involved, and they provided me with some “ah-ha” moments.

But they also often left me with the feeling that these players were infallible – that they’d memorized optimal strategy and there wasn’t much I could do against them.

### The Wrong Approach

When I played against these players, who I decided were too good due to their knowledge of GTO play, I stopped playing my game. Much like I talked about last week as it related to live tells, I didn’t even try to make reads.

Instead, assuming they were ultra-balanced, I attempted to play my own approximation of balanced, GTO play.

They potted river? Where am I in my range? I’ll try to call the top 50% of hands.

They bet small on the turn in a spot where I’d never have done so? Ummm… Let me just take an entirely uneducated guess at what a GTO response would be.

This was the worst adjustment I could’ve made. I was trying to beat them in the exact area they’re obviously better than me!

The truth is, I was afraid to guess against someone so “perfectly balanced.”

I was afraid to feel stupid.

So instead, I actually was stupid. Instead, I guessed in a way that I was less qualified to.

It wasn’t until I combined learning from videos and solvers that I truly understood how hand reading is still very much a thing in the post-solver era of poker.

There are many ways in which players trying to emulate solvers get things wrong and, as a result, are exploitable.

Today, I want to talk about just one of them: Bet sizing.

### How GTO Really Works

Once I combined videos with solver study and play, I began to truly get it.

I began to understand the difference between GTO and what my opponents – even the best in the world – were doing at the table.

And poker became fun and exciting for me again!

True GTO strategies are unbeatable.

Scary, right?

But GTO strategies are also extremely fragile.

What do I mean by that?

If you play a strategy that is pretty close to GTO, but I know which way it’s off, I’ll take your money.

Nobody is capable of playing GTO. The definition of “close” is subjective, but in my view, nobody is capable of getting close*.

*assuming we aren’t playing heads-up 10 big blind stack poker.

And since nobody is close, all you have to do (not that it’s easy!) is understand where they are falling off from optimal strategy and how you should combat it.

### Bet Sizing

One of the many ways people can mess up optimal play is with bet sizing.

Solvers have taught us that optimal poker involves a lot of different bet sizes. If we were to look at truly optimal poker – which our computers can’t quite conquer yet for reasonably sized game trees – it would involve more sizings than you could remember.

Now, there’s no real reason to solve to that level of granularity. You don’t lose much at all by using “only” three sizings in one spot instead of 15. And humans have more than enough trouble splitting into three bet sizes.

Why is juggling multiple sizings so hard?

Let’s just imagine a simplified scenario, where the out-of-position player can’t bet, and IP (In Position) has to decide to bet or check each street.

With those two decisions across three streets, there are 2 x 2 x 2, aka two cubed, aka eight potential lines of action for IP.

That’s eight separate ranges to keep balanced.

Now, let’s take the same example and let IP use two bet sizes on each street. So now, they can decide to check, bet small, or bet big, at each decision point.

With three options at each node of the game tree, they now have three cubed, or 27 ranges to balance.

Remember, if those ranges are pretty close but not quite perfect, they are going to be exploitable.

Now in the real world, there are more factors. You need to handle bets. You need to handle check-raises.

If you’re out of position, you need your betting ranges and a check-raise range, a check-call range, and a check-fold range!

And you need to be prepared to navigate drastically different turns and rivers with the ranges that you’ve arrived with.

If it sounds impossible, that’s because it is.

But this isn’t bad news. It’s great news.

It means that nobody is capable of playing perfectly. It means that everyone is exploitable and beatable if you know what you’re doing.

### But How Can I Exploit Their Bet Sizing?

Let me offer you a simple and concrete example, and one that I think is representative of the way most players mess up.

You’re playing a great player in your $5/$10 game.

You raise to $25 in the HJ with A♠️Q♠️, they 3-bet from the SB to $110, and you call.

Your opponent started the hand with $1k in their stack and you cover.

Flop: K❤️Q♣️5❤️ (pot: $230)

Your opponent bets $170.

What should you do?

You flopped 2nd pair top kicker, which often feels worth calling. And in theory, AQ is a call.

Let’s look into our opponent's strategy – specifically, their bet-sizing – and decide if we should exploit them by doing something different.

### Solver Outputs

If we let a solver use two bet-sizes (25% and 75%), here is how the SB is supposed to play:

Bet 100% of their range. Never check.

(Coincidentally) Bet 25% pot 75% of the time, and 75% pot 25% of the time.

Mix both sizings for most hands, with some preferences:

AA, AK, KQ, 5x like to bet big (75%) more than other hands

Sets, KJ, KT, Qx, and underpairs like to bet small (25%)

Bluffs have some preferences, but let’s ignore that for now

It might feel intuitive to you that the strong (non-set) value hands prefer to bet big and get stacks in by the turn.

It probably feels intuitive to you that QJ and JJ prefer betting small.

What won’t feel intuitive to many readers is that all of these hands use each sizing a lot.

To truly play GTO, you need to bet big with QJ and TT somewhat often. You need to bet small with AK and AA and KQ frequently.

GTO play involves that level of balance.

### GTO-Studied Humans

What often happens, is that well-studied players will do one of two things:

Simplify into one sizing. Bet 33% pot 100% of the time, for example.

Use two sizings, and remember which hands prefer what.

Since your opponent bet ~75% pot, we can assume they’re using strategy #2 – attempting to balance two bet-sizes.

If this opponent still:

Successfully bets 100% of their range

Plays every unpaired hand with a perfect mix

Knows which hands prefer what sizing

…but makes the simplification of always betting the sizing each hand wants to bet, that leaves them always betting:

AA, AK, KQ, 5x for 75% pot

Sets, KJ, KT, Qx, and underpairs for 25% pot

Even though they’re bluffing perfectly, this throws them out of balance.

…and now, you should fold your AQ!

See, the solver puts every hand in its place for a reason. And it mixes bet sizings on so many hands that “don’t feel right” because the alternative is getting exploited.

It likes to bet big with 77 to get calls from 65 but fold out 99.

It likes to bet big with TT to get calls from A5, so that you don’t have an easy fold with AQ, and so that it can bluff jam on the J❤️ turn.

Your opponent is playing really close to an optimal strategy, but not close enough to avoid being exploitable.

### How to Make These Reads

The type of simplification (from your opponent) described above is a common one:

Roughly remembering which hands like to do what, but not remembering to mix enough.

Playing hands in a more comfortable way – the way that feels more intuitive and is validated by solvers.

In lower-stakes games, your opponents will usually not get anywhere close. You can figure out the types of mistakes people are making based on common card sense and experience with them and other players in your player pools.

And you can use logic to work backwards from there to the exploit.

Once you’re playing against players who are well-studied, this is going to be much more challenging if you’re not well-studied yourself.

This is the struggle I had for several years.

I could make observations. I could logically deduce exploits.

But I didn’t know what they were studying. I didn’t know what they’d think an optimal strategy would look like.

To understand and beat them, I had to change my approach to studying.

### P.S.

As the owner of a poker training site, I’m incentivized to tell you that if you want to win consistently, you have to start investing in your education.

But you don’t have to take my word for it!

Ask someone who has actually earned a side income playing poker for years this:

How much would investing $150 into learning save me over the next year?

---

## From Intimidation to Illumination
Date: 2024-02-06 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/from-intimidation-to-illumination

# From Intimidation to Illumination

Last week, I finished off by explaining that even the strongest players leave clues when you're trying to hand-read.

While I understood this for reading hands/ranges, I didn't learn this lesson fast enough when it comes to physical tells.

Let me explain…

### The Transition

In my early twenties, I was playing the biggest games available online – $200/$400 through $500/$1k NL Hold’em and PLO.

This was my bread and butter, but I also had a desire to make a name for myself in the live poker world. To that end, I spent every summer in Las Vegas to play the WSOP.

While I was there, I took a look at the cash games that were running – the biggest of which were usually played at Bellagio.

The high-stakes NL and PLO games were plentiful, and they looked good.

Those unfamiliar with online poker might assume what my parents did – that the games are easier there, and the real players come out to play in Las Vegas.

This couldn’t be further from the truth. Online games were worlds more competitive than their live counterparts at similar stakes.

### The Rule of Ten

This is a tangent, but I’ve seen many live players make this critical mistake when playing online, so I want to share it with you all.

When comparing live and online, I generally suggest a multiplier of ten – meaning you’d take whatever stakes online, multiply it by ten, and that would give you the stakes with similarly skilled players live.

The true number has fluctuated over the years, and depends on exactly where you’re playing live and where you’re playing online, but it will get you somewhat close.  And the math is easy!

I’ve often seen players who play $2/$5 NL live deposit online and try out the $1/$2 NL tables online. This is a big mistake.

$1/$2 NL tables online are more similar to $10/$20 NL tables live.

A $2/$5 Live NL player should hop into $.25/.$50 NL games online, with just a $50 buy-in, if they want the same level of competition.

Now, if you play for fun, and buying in for $50 when your normal buy-in is $1k sounds incredibly boring – by all means, you do you. I just want you to know what to expect.

### Back to Our Story

Due to the rule of ten, when I popped into the Bellagio and looked at the live $300/$600 NL table, I salivated over the competition.

I took a seat with my $60k, and got to it.

Now, while I was confident in my technical skills and hand-reading ability, I wasn’t entirely arrogant.

I knew that I was playing with players who had a lot of experience at the live poker tables. I knew that I was at risk of giving off tells, and I knew that I had near zero skills at reading other players' physicality

I was nervous about this element of the game, but I remained confident overall.

### The Gameplan

The way I planned to “deal with” live tells in those early days was as follows:

I would try to move as little as possible, and not engage in conversation during hands.

I would avoid looking at my opponents.

I assumed that those stronger than me with live tells (aka everyone) would be picking up some reads on me.

I also assumed that I wouldn’t be able to pick up anything on them. That anything I thought I picked up would simply be them leveling me with reverse-tells – something they wanted me to see and interpret incorrectly.

So, I didn’t look at them, because there was no point for me, and I might’ve given more away if I tried.

### The Results

I didn’t play too many live poker sessions over those first few years – I usually opted for WSOP tournaments or playing online (Anyone remember when we used to be free?) because you could put in so many more hands – but my results weren’t great.

Playing games averaging a $50k buy-in during those years, I lost around $600k.

Now, 12 buy-ins doesn’t mean much – I lost that in a single day online more times than I could count – but looking back, I wonder if I really had an edge, even with my significant technical skill advantage.

In hindsight, I handled the live environment worse than I expected to.

I let the fear of other players reading me lead me to play worse.

I bluffed less, especially when pots got big. I was nervous they’d see through me, so I shied away from the scary plays.

### My Education

Over time, starting with amateur players in live WSOP events, I began to notice that I could make some reads.

This eventually led me to realize that I could pick up tells on stronger players, too.

Not often! But sometimes.

My biggest ah-ha moment, however, was about the other side of this – the intimidation and fear by other players reading me.

It came after facing the most intimidating stare in all of poker.

Sometime in my mid-twenties, I was playing a $10k buy-in WPT event, which, like my live early live cash experiences, was also at the Bellagio.

### Face to Face With Fear

Late on day 2, I got moved to a new table. I looked across from me, and there he was.

Phil Ivey.

Now, fortunately, he and I had played online a number of times. And while he played incredibly well, I at least had the confidence of having sparred with him before.

Even with that experience, it was scary.

Betting the turn in a 3-bet pot with a thin value hand, looking up to see Phil Ivey’s eyes locked on you. I don’t need to explain the feeling – you can imagine it.

The hands that created my ah-ha moment were entirely uneventful.

Phil Ivey raised from late position. I had 8♠️6♠️ and decided to 3-bet bluff from the small blind.

He looked at me, and he quickly folded.

“Huh,” I thought, “I guess he can’t see through my cards.”

Two hands later, he raised from middle position, and I looked down at J❤️7❤️ in the CO.

I 3-bet again.

He took a moment. Looked me over.

And his cards hit the muck.

I picked up a few chips. Not a big deal.

But these two hands against the most intimidating and arguably best live reader in the world proved to me that tells were not magic.

They proved to me that I didn’t need to be afraid of my more experienced opponents seeing right through me.

They gave me the freedom to play my game.

The lesson came at a good time.

The next year, I found myself playing for over $817,781 and a WSOP bracelet at a final table full of the biggest stars in the game: Daniel Negreanu, Phil Hellmuth, Johnny Chan, John Juanda, Brian Rast, David Benyamine.

I started the day with the chip lead, played my game without fear of being soul-read, held the lead for most of the day, and won my first bracelet.

### What I’ve Learned

Looking back at those early live cash sessions, I can now evaluate my play and approach with a lot more experience.

My first assumption, that skilled live players would occasionally pick something up on me, was fair but overblown.

Tells aren’t like what you see in the movies.

You don’t often learn something like “he’s definitely bluffing.”

The information you pick up on is smaller and more nuanced, and it’s not coming to you often if the player knows what they’re doing. Moreover, the strongest tells come from countless hours of experience against the same players.

I should have played – and bluffed – with more confidence.

I also believe it was a mistake to avoid looking at other players.

By not looking, I let them be comfortable, and I robbed myself of the ability to pick up on tells and, more importantly, begin my live-reading education.

How would I learn to read players if I never looked at them?

The key problem here was my second assumption: That players more experienced than me wouldn’t give off any tells unless they wanted me to see them.

That’s not how it really works.

### How it Really Works

Tells are not about who is superior. This is the big misunderstanding I had.

I thought that tells were a game of chess.

I was going to lose to a grandmaster 100 times out of 100. Any opening I think I had would be an illusion – I would fall right into their trap.

The reality of tells is different.

Your opponent is telling a story with each and every check, bet, call, and raise that they make.

Their physical actions are akin to the answers to an interrogation of that story. The small details.

Yes, an amateur interrogator is not often going to trip up a seasoned criminal.

But they might!

It’s much easier to tell a story in which all of the details add up if that story is the truth.

Your interrogation – looking for physical tells – is an opportunity for them to leak information. It’s an opportunity for a detail to come out that simply doesn’t fit with the rest of the story.

Even the best live readers will make missteps from time to time.

Sure, they could mislead you, but this is a lot harder than it sounds.

They don’t know what you’re looking for. They don’t know what you interpret as weakness. And they don’t know what they’re going to want to represent on the river when it’s their turn to act on the flop.

### I Can Read You

I know what you’re thinking:

“Phil! Share some good tells! I want to know what my opponents have! I want to make money!”

The reality here is that, like the details of a story, the best tells tend to be specific to the person and the situation.

I can absolutely write another post on tells, but it won’t be the magic bullet you’re hoping for.

The way you get better isn’t by reading a few tricks. It’s by putting in the time observing.

Which is why I should’ve gotten started by opening my eyes all those years ago.

---

## Bluffing and Value Betting, Naturally
Date: 2024-01-30 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/bluffing-and-value-betting-naturally

# Bluffing and Value Betting, Naturally

You’ve called an early position raise to $20 from the button, and you go heads up to a K♣️8❤️5❤️ flop.

There’s $47 in the pot. Your opponent bets $30, and you call with 8♠️7♠️.

The 2♠️ rolls off on the turn. Your opponent bets $75, and you decide to call again.

River comes the 4❤️.

Your opponent checks. You happily check back.

Your opponent shows K♦️Q♦️.

You muck your hand, and you move on to the next without thinking twice about it.

Now, let's look at the same situation with different hands:

You’ve called an early position raise to $20 from the button, and you go heads up to a K♣️8❤️5❤️ flop.

There’s $47 in the pot. Your opponent bets $30, and you call with 7♦️6♦️.

The 2♠️ rolls off on the turn. Your opponent bets $75, and you decide to call again.

River comes the 4❤️.

Your opponent checks. You bet $230.

This time, I’m your opponent.

I show you the next best hand, K♠️K♦️, and I fold.

### Easy Fold

How did I do it?

Did you give off a tell? Did I see your cards?

No.

I simply did some hand reading.

And because I could hand-read, I made your value bet with a straight worth nothing.

Actually, I made it worth less than nothing! I was only going to put in money if I had you beat.

The reason I found the fold against you is the topic of today’s newsletter. As you may have guessed, it has a lot to do with the first of those two hand examples I showed you.

We’re going to talk about natural bluffs and natural value bets, and why this concept is one of the keys to profiting at the poker table.

Let’s dive in.

### You’re a Natural

You know what a bluff is, and you know what a value bet is. But what makes them “natural?”

Let’s illustrate this with the board example above:

K♣️8❤️5❤️ 2♠️ 4❤️.

After you’ve called my two bets, if you’re playing somewhere close to theoretically optimally, you’ll have roughly 19% flushes and 4% straights when I check to you.

These are hands that are very clearly worth betting for value. That makes them “natural.”

Natural simply means that the decision to bet should come naturally to you.

You don’t have to think hard to figure out that straights and flushes are good hands to value bet!

So in this hand example, you have a clear value bet 23% of the time.

You bet about 90% pot, so in order for me to call, I need to have you beat just under 1 out of 3 times or more.

That means (if you only value bet these 23% of hands) I need you to bluff with about 11% of hands or more.

You didn’t think about bluffing with 8♠️7♠️ in the first example. So the $230 question is:

What would you bluff with?

### Natural Bluffs

Continuing with the same example, you should have exactly zero unpaired hands by the river after calling my two big bets.

So if you’re ever going to bluff, you need to bluff with a pair.

And if you’re going to pick pairs to bluff with, you generally would want smaller pairs, and it would be nice for them to block a straight or flush. (Check out this previous newsletter to learn more about blockers)

You don’t call preflop with 9❤️8♠️, and you’re not supposed to call the turn with 3❤️3♦️, so it’s going to be very hard to block flushes while having a low pair.

8♠️7♠️ is about as good a bluffing candidate as you’re going to get. And again, you didn’t even think about it.

That is the key.

Maybe you could pick different hands to bluff with, like T❤️T♠, and still end up with almost enough bluffs (probably still not). But for that to be true, you’d need to have had the thought of turning your 2nd pair into a bluff.

If you didn’t think it... guess what?

You likely don’t ever bluff in this situation.

That means that even if you’re value-betting all of the weaker sets (5% of hands), I should still fold Kings!

And it means that when I fold it, I’m taking a lot of money out of your pocket.

### The True Cost of Missing Bluffs

Many beginners might think about not getting paid in this spot and shrug.

“It’s not like I lost the pot.”

No, you lost the $230 you should’ve won if I called you.

This is a $2/$5NL game.

That’s 46 big blinds you just got outplayed for. In one hand.

And if you’re thinking, “But I bluff sometimes, so you’ll be wrong when you fold those times...”

I’ve got more bad news for you:

I probably won't fold when you're bluffing.

### Every Hand is Unique

The reason I could fold top set against you in this hand is because of the specific board runout and the specific betting sequence.

You called two big bets on a board with only one open ender and one flush draw. And both of those got there on the river.

In a situation like that, you will not have any natural bluffs.

Can you guess what you have to do, if you want to be balanced, when you don’t have any natural bluffs?

That’s right – You have to bluff with hands that feel unnatural.

If the board were instead K♦️J♦️6♠️ 7❤️ 5♣️...

And you remember to bluff with T♠️9♠️ and Q♣️T♣️, and maybe you decide to bluff with A♦️4♦️…

Congratulations – You bluffed with unpaired hands, just as I’d expect you to in a spot where you can have a lot of unpaired missed draws.

Bluffing with a weak hand feels a lot more natural.

### A VERY Important Caveat

Before we go further, I want to make one thing very clear:

You’re not going to be playing $2/$5nl against me.

If your opponent is just going to shrug and call with K♦️Q♦️ because “he has top pair,” then it doesn’t matter that you have no bluffs.

Your opponent is not hand reading.

If your opponents are calling stations who don’t think about your hand, you don’t have to dig deep for those bluffs – in fact, you shouldn’t.

So, if your opponents aren’t that good, is there any point in this post for you?

YES!

### To Call, or Not to Call?

You can carry on playing just the way you have as the in-position player, but as the out-of-position player…

You get to be me!

Hand reading is the key to massive win-rates against weak players, and even against good players.

One of the most important ways to hand-read is to look at your opponent’s range and decide how many natural bluffs and value bets they have.

Because every board and line of action is different, even the best players will struggle in situations where they’re supposed to find very unnatural-feeling plays.

We all have a barometer in our mind that hints at what types of hands are good enough to VB and what types of hands make good bluffs.

Maybe we know that we need to adjust based on the situation, but often, we don’t adjust far enough.

Or we don’t realize in the moment how few natural bluffs (or value bets) would play the hand in the way we did.

If you can spot these situations (and the opponents who are less likely to adjust properly), you can gain a big edge.

### To Bluff, or Not To Bluff?

When you’re playing against opponents who do hand-read, you can take this concept even further.

Not only should you dig to find all of the unnatural-feeling, theoretically correct bluffs to make you balanced – you might want to dig far past that and way over-bluff.

If I’m folding sets, you could even start bluffing with top pair.

Similarly, in situations where you have a lot of natural bluffs and/or where you don’t have a lot of natural strong value bets, you’ll want to dig deep and go for thin value.

I might be hero-calling you with Ace High!

### Takeaways

If this struck a chord with you, take a moment to think about what you’re going to take from it and apply to your game going forward.

Write it down.

It'll take you 2 minutes, and you'll be more likely to actually change your game if you do it.

I can’t stress enough how important hand reading and hand representing are – how much your win-rate increases when you routinely find correct folds or cals against big river bets.

Sure, study solvers and learn optimal play – that’s great. But don’t turn off your brain and simply try to execute.

For those of you who already knew all of this, I want to offer you this takeaway:

I’ve played against nearly everyone who’d be in the conversation for the best in the world. Each and every one of them is unbalanced at times, as am I.

Never assume someone is playing too perfectly for you to hand-read against them.

Players that precise don’t exist.

---

## Down to Business: Poker Training (Part 3)
Date: 2024-01-23 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/down-to-business-part-3

# Down to Business: Poker Training (Part 3)

Welcome to part 3 of 3 reviewing the journey of Run It Once Training!

The feedback for this series has been overwhelmingly positive, but a minority of you have expressed that you’re only here for the poker knowledge.

Don’t worry – we’ll be getting back to that next week!

### Returning to our Roots

Over the last two weeks, we’ve covered the RIO Training’s past. Today, I want to discuss the present and future.When we first launched Run It Once, our mission statement consisted of two principles:

If poker training were an airplane, Run It Once would be the first-class cabin.

We want the consensus amongst poker players to be that Run It Once is clearly the best.

In my opinion, we never wavered from these objectives from the perspective of our offering.

We continued to be picky about design and user experience.

We’ve continued to release 2 videos, every single day, for the last 11 years. Nobody else can say this.

In my very biased eyes, we continued to deliver the most high quality content from the best pros.

But, somewhere along the line, there no longer was the same consensus.

If you polled the poker community about who the best training site was in 2023, I think we would come out on top, but I don’t really know.

We certainly wouldn’t capture 90% of the votes as we could have years ago.

Now I don’t think this represents a failure on our part. Let’s give credit where credit is due:

Many fierce competitors have emerged in the years since we first launched.

They emulated many elements of our approach and added their own twist, just as we did with our previous competition.

So what does being the best look like now?

### Structure

On one hand (and yes, this is self-serving and perhaps my bias speaking), most of the competitors nowadays have the same sporadic and limited video release schedules we decided to crush 11 years ago. I wonder sometimes if it’s just that we’re still getting smashed on marketing when I see that there’s debate over who’s best.

On the other hand, I recognize the benefit of far fewer videos taught mostly by the same few coaches and, as a result, a safer-feeling and more continuous experience for students.

We’re not going to change our approach of having a large swath of great pros making videos, each bringing their own expertise and approach to the game to the table.

However, we will learn from our competitors and create more structure.

We decided to have pros create mini-courses within our Elite program rather than keeping the library largely one-off videos on whatever the coach was inspired to do that day.

We’ve made improvements to our algorithm to recommend videos that specific users might need, and we’re enhancing the curation and organization of our massive (8,000 video!) library.

### Community

When we launched Run It Once, forums were the main way that the poker community congregated and shared information.

So, we created forums with some cool new features, aiming to enhance the way poker players interacted online.

However, this initiative turned out to be one of my failures.

Despite our efforts to improve the forum experience by combining it with a social feed – allowing users to browse in a forum view or a follower view to see what people were posting – it didn't catch on as we hoped.

I think the design was great, but I underestimated the unbeatable power of all-topic social feeds. If the poker community is already conversing on platforms like Twitter or X, they’re less likely to migrate to our poker-focused space.

Forums still exist, but most community interaction is done through major social media platforms or more immersive, interactive, real-time community containers, like Discord.

While we’ve had a RIO Discord for a long time, we are going to prioritize and reinvent it in 2024, including a strong members-only community.

### Open to Beginners

As mentioned in previous posts, we neglected non-professionals for many years.

We have some courses now geared towards beginners, but we have more beginner-friendly content and features on the way!

That said, Elite and Essential will remain focused on high-level play, and you will still have trouble understanding a large portion of the content there if you’ve never studied poker before.

### The Best Pros

While we continued to have great players and coaches throughout these 11 years, we had lost some of the big-name recognition that we once had.

We spent months trying to bring in some more big guns.

It took a sizable increase in our pro budget, but we managed to succeed in bringing pros like Jeremy Ausmus, Dan Smith, Jason Koon, Justin Bonomo, Ryan Leng, Kevin Martin, and more, onto our already big pro roster.

And we’re absolutely not done hunting the best talent out there!

### Prices

An increase to our pro budget (during a time when membership was declining) was something we needed to figure out how to make work.

We discussed the idea of raising prices significantly. As I mentioned in Part 1, I think we set the price of Elite ($99/mo) too low 11 years ago, and we hadn’t changed it since.

And sure, inflation – prices are going up everywhere.

But the main thing we wanted to look at was what price felt not only appropriate compared to our competitors, but was a good deal. If we (and I) are going to tell people they should choose us, we (I) need to believe it’s the best choice.

After a detailed competitor analysis and a lot of conversations with our team, we settled on $199/mo for the new Elite program, and we also decided we’d offer an annual membership at a steep discount ($1400) to keep prices not too far off for the most dedicated members.

(In the past, we didn’t offer an annual membership outside of once or twice-a-year promotions, and the discount was much smaller.)

We also knew the entire time that we’d be grandfathering in any current members at our old price for as long as they stayed an Elite member.

### Reception

​We gave people a couple of weeks after announcing our plans to get locked in at the old price, before permanently increasing it on January 5th.

While we didn’t really know what to expect, we were all very pleased with the results. A lot of players came in and invested in their 2024 poker education (and the option to remain at our old price point).

We still have a lot of work to do, and only time will tell if the market responds to our new and improved roster and product at its new and improved price tag, but I’m happy with the start.

### Some Honesty. Some Promotion.

When we were gearing up for the Elite relaunch, I thought about sending a newsletter about it.

I’m always wrestling with the level of marketing I want to do in places like this – to followers and subscribers like you.

In the end, I decided not to. I’d just relaunched the newsletter here on a new platform (hence the different design, if you’ve been here since 2023), and I don’t know… I just didn’t want to.

If I’m being honest, it all stems from a fear of judgment – a desire to be liked.

I want you to think highly of me. I want you to see the value that I deliver in these newsletters and think I’m so kind and generous.

I don’t want anyone to think I’m here to trick them into buying stuff they don’t need. I don’t want you to think I’m writing to you in hopes of a payday.

So, as he often does, the need-to-be-liked Phil won this battle.

The Elite relaunch came and went with no emails to you about it.

And then an interesting thing happened…

I felt guilty.

I felt guilty that some of you didn’t hear about what we were doing, and that I didn’t give you the chance to be grandfathered in forever at our old price.

One of those lose-lose situations, I guess. I’d have felt bad whatever I decided.

After feeling that, I set out to write a newsletter about it the very next week, and extend the chance to get in for any of you.

And as I geared up to write it…

NTBL-Phil won again.

So, I reached out to him and made a compromise.

I would write about the Run It Once Elite relaunch, but in a way that I hoped would deliver value. I’d talk openly about our business in ways I never had shared before. I’d reflect on the lessons I’ve learned in hopes that they’d help you avoid the same mistakes I made.

And I’d try to make it interesting.

### Here We Are

So, after three posts on Run It Once’s journey, we are now done.

The truth that I am still trying to face is that wanting you to think I share so much knowledge with you, mainly between this newsletter and my YouTube channel, purely out of the kindness of my heart, is silly. It’s wanting you to believe a lie.

I love writing these newsletters (YT videos, a little bit less so), and I absolutely love when people are helped by them. I love hearing about the difference I’ve made in readers' and viewers’ games and lives. It’s the best!

But being realistic… If I thought I’d never generate any income from my social media or my newsletter, I highly doubt I’d be doing it.

I’m constantly busy. The hours I spend working on these each week isn’t nothing. The time I put into YouTube isn’t nothing. The money I invest in my social media team isn’t nothing (and might shock you!).

Someone is editing this and formatting this.

Someone created the thumbnail, and someone is managing that creation process.

If you’re reading this on web rather than email, someone designed the website and another person created it.

Multiple people edit my videos, collect clips for me to review, give notes on edits, manage thumbnail design, contribute to ideation, post shorts every day, and many more things.

So, the truth is that I’m looking to see a return on all of that investment over time.

I like doing this, and I try hard to make this newsletter as valuable as possible for you.

And, also, it’s not charity.

I’m not being kind by writing to you each week. I want you to think I am, but I need to get over that.

There will be advertising, whether for products I made or own or from 3rd party advertisers.

The good news (for all of us) is that you don’t need to buy anything. In fact, I don’t want you to invest in anything that won’t be more than worth it for you.

You can simply enjoy the free content for as long as I continue to create it.

And in that way, if you’re enjoying it, I guess you’re rooting for me to earn my investment back, too, so that I keep going for a long time.

In today’s post, I spoke highly of RIO Elite. I said I think it was already the best, and that it’s now improved and improving.

That will make some of you interested in it.

Fortunately, I believe everything I said!

---

## Down to Business: Poker Training (Part 2)
Date: 2024-01-16 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/down-to-business-part-2

# Down to Business: Poker Training (Part 2)

In ​Part 1​ last week, we covered the Run It Once origin story. If you haven’t read it yet, check it out before continuing here, as I’m picking up right where we left off.

This departure from my usual, ​more strategy-focused writing​, was really well-received by most of you (thank you for the feedback!). For a few, you weren’t interested. If you don’t want to hear me talk about my business journey, you can tune out again and wait a week or two for what you’re used to.

### Adjusting to Our Opponents

After learning that we were losing market share, we still weren’t equipped to make all of the right adjustments.

Our entire approach towards business had been product-focused – that was the only lens through which we viewed the competitive landscape. We not only didn’t value marketing highly enough – we wouldn’t have known where to start if we wanted to.

So, instead of focusing on advertising, we did what we’d always done: Review and analyze our product.

We felt we still very clearly delivered the best product, at least from the perspective of subscription memberships, and we figured (incorrectly) that this would take care of itself.

However, we did recognize the value of a different type of product.

### Competition: Courses

Besides advertising better than we did, competitors built their businesses more heavily around courses.

The way our team learned poker was through membership sites like RIO, allowing you to get inside the minds of great players and see what they’re thinking as they play. I first learned PLO almost entirely from watching Brian Hastings’ videos on Cardrunners.

This worked pretty well for strong players, but not as well for the rest of the market, many of whom didn’t know where to start when they landed on a site like Run It Once.

Our Elite membership was not structured A-Z, both because of the way we learned, and because of what we could get out of our coaches.

When you’re dealing with high-stakes poker players who came up during the 2003-2010 era (a less studious time), all you can hope for is them submitting their videos less than three months after their due date!

That said, putting ourselves in the shoes of our members, we were able to see the value of a structured course, especially when it came to students who weren’t already experts.

We discovered the leak in our offering, and set out to make courses a larger part of our business.

### Diversifying and Adapting

As much of the above was happening, we also began taking on other ventures - entirely new companies offering entirely different products.

Some of these you may know of, some you don’t – but these aren’t the topic of this post.

I bring them up because they led to a structural change in our business.

With the focus of myself and my co-founder, Dan, elsewhere, as we founded these new projects, we promoted James Hudson, a former RIO pro turned employee, to the role of RIO Training’s CEO.

While we made the decision largely out of necessity, it was a great thing for Run It Once – first and foremost because James led these anti-marketing co-founders to begin spending more energy and money on marketing!

In hindsight, it’s incredible that we were able to build the business we did without dedicating anything at all to advertising.

Despite it being one of our biggest mistakes, I’m, in a way, very proud of this.

It means we did a great job with the areas of the company that we focused on and valued: Product, Design, Brand, and how we treated our members and coaches.

### A Bit of Luck

With the combination of marketing and paid courses, we had some record years after our sophomore slump.

This was helped in no small way by the blockbuster MTT course ​PADS on PADS​, by Patrick Leonard.

Over the years, we have approached many great, nosebleed-stakes crushers. But in Pads' case, he actually came to us, because of who we were and what we’d built.

We were lucky (and thrilled) that he decided to bring his incredible course to Run It Once, and that he has continued to update it since. The number of hours he’s put into that project blows me away.

Over the years, we dedicated a lot of (too much) time, energy, and money towards all of the things that you could say construct our “brand,” without any clear expectations for how we would see a return on that investment.

Brand isn’t something you can often point to and say, “As you can see here, this has paid dividends.”

But Patrick coming to RIO, followed by us setting company records with his course, was something we could actually pinpoint, with clear and concrete value.

### Solve This One, Guys

The advent of solvers literally changed the game, both for playing poker and for learning it.

Some believed that solvers would take the place of training videos, but my belief has always been ​that they are complementary learning tools​.

Still, they’ve been a scare for us at points, and excitement for us at other times.

Solvers (and solver-based tools) are excellent ways to learn, but they are very easy to misuse if you don’t know what you’re doing. The majority of players, in my opinion, don’t know what they’re doing when they learn with these tools.

You need to be able to extract human logic in order to implement your strategies in-game. Memorization doesn’t cut it unless you’re playing 5bb preflop poker.

What’s a great way to learn the human logic applied to solver outputs? Watch a video from a human who’s excellent at it!

There’s another reason videos are important:

They are used by most as passive learning. These viewers watch without taking notes, simply thinking about and absorbing the information.

“But isn’t passive learning a bad thing?”

I’d say yes and no. It depends.

You likely learn less per minute when you’re learning passively than actively, but you have a limit on how much activity your brain can handle.

When I played my challenges, I prioritized performance above all else. I almost never studied with tools on the days that I played.

Instead, I watched videos, made by my friends, specifically for me during challenges.

Studying with tools depleted my brainpower, and I needed all of it that I could hang onto to reach the level of ​intensity​ and skill that I wanted to at the tables.

(Anyway, if you were looking for some poker strategy/advice instead of business learnings, I guess some snuck in!)

### Competition is Competition

But it didn’t necessarily matter what I thought was best for learning. It mattered what the members thought.

No matter how you slice it, players spending more money to learn from solver-based tools meant they had less money to spend elsewhere, so solver tools take market share, even if players should use both.

My feeling was that this wasn’t a problem, but an opportunity – yes, players would spend less on videos on average, but who says Run It Once has to stick to videos?

### Vision

​Vision GTO Trainer​ is a solver-based PLO training tool we offer on Run It Once.

We didn’t build it.

Instead, I found a product that I loved using but wasn’t getting the traction it deserved, and we struck a deal to make it a Run It Once product, leveraging our user base, brand, design and development team, and our newfound ability to market.

It was a great success for all parties involved. The product was already very well designed (imho), and with the help of RIO, word got out quickly.

Vision has done very well. Software like Vision doesn’t carry with it the costs of paying a roster of 60-some poker pros to create content, and the synergies with our existing business were great – especially our heavily overlapping target markets.

After the success of Vision at Run It Once, we set out to find a partner for a No Limit Hold’em Tool.

It turns out that was easier said than done.

### Swiping Left

Over the past several years, we’ve been in deal talks with several potential software partners to collaborate on a No Limit Hold’em tool in the same way we did with Vision.

Some of the conversations have been very serious. I won’t go into detail here, but 2-3 of these talks went further than you imagined as you read the above.

In the end, none have yet worked out. We’re still on the market!

Why did many of them fall apart?

Sometimes, we couldn’t come to terms. Other times, as we dug in, the product wasn’t strong enough for us to be confident we could take it the distance.

Part of having a premium brand like Run It Once is that we don’t feel comfortable launching a 4th-best product on the market.

GTOWizard specifically has become so dominant that it makes it very hard to compete. You could say that some partnerships didn’t work specifically because we couldn’t see the path to contending with GTOWizard.

Props to them on building a great product!

Frankly, there’s a good chance we stay out of that market entirely.

While product design has been a strength of ours, we’re not a tech company in the way that some of these tool companies are. We don’t have illusions of whipping up an amazing product on our own in the competitive market environment there is today.

Will the perfect suitor come along? Could we simply become a partner for multiple software products, bundling our videos together with their tools for some win-wins?

Maybe. I don’t know.

For the time being, we’re staying in our lane.

### Complexity

My biggest misstep as a founder, in my current opinion, was trying to do too much.

We built a successful poker training site. I thought that meant I was good at business.

What it actually meant was that we built a great product in an area where I had immense expertise, and grew a word-of-mouth userbase in a community that I could (relatively) easily reach.

Could I (and we) have figured out the important elements of running a successful business in any space? Probably.

But could we do that in three new businesses simultaneously while still effectively operating our first, and while I played poker full-time?

No.

This misstep comes from something within me that has always been there and will likely never go away: I love new challenges. I love new ideas. I love building. I love testing the limits of my capabilities.

And, just as importantly, I get bored and unhappy when I’m not challenging myself to grow in that way.

I consider this more of a blessing than a curse. It could even be a superpower.

But I’m still learning to harness it.

In poker, you are always learning and growing (you should be, at least).

You can always be pushing towards that next big milestone.

And it’s fun and exciting! You’re challenging your brain and solving problems every single time you sit down at the table.

In non-poker work, it’s often not quite like that.

Sometimes, the best path is to simply execute something you already know how to do.

No fancy new ideas.

No problem-solving.

Just sit down and do the work.

Find your bread and butter, and keep getting it done.

Frankly, I haven’t yet built up the tolerance for that kind of job, but at least I now recognize and respect the value of it.

In the next and final part, I’ll catch us up to present day and take a look ahead. I’ll share more about my personal leaks as a business owner and where they stem from within me. And I’ll drop a couple of clues about things on the horizon for us.

I hope you’re enjoying the ride. See you next week!

---

## Down to Business: Poker Training (Part 1)
Date: 2024-01-09 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/down-to-business-part-1

# Down to Business: Poker Training (Part 1)

One of the most common requests I got from readers when I asked for directional feedback in my end-of-2023 newsletter video was more thoughts on business.

I’m confident enough in my poker game to tell you how you might want to adjust your poker game, but I don’t want to tell you how to run a business. Instead, I’ll share how I’ve done it and what I’ve learned.

I’ve launched multiple businesses, each presenting different challenges. I want to start with the simplest and most successful among them: ​Run It Once Training​.

Over a few newsletters, I’ll share my thinking behind the decisions we’ve made over these past 11 years, and I’ll discuss what worked and what didn’t, and why I think that is.

Just as there are life and business lessons hidden within poker lessons, there are poker and life lessons hidden within business learnings. So, even if you don’t intend to run or work for a business, I hope you’ll take something away.

### “Make the Product You Want to Buy”

This somewhat common entrepreneurial philosophy is the one that led to the inception of Run It Once Training. In some ways, it led us to make good decisions. In others, it led us astray.

Newer players don’t realize how saturated the market was when we began building Run It Once. It was packed.

Cardrunners, DeucesCracked, and LeggoPoker were big businesses, and there were countless others competing as well.

Normally, this would be a deterrent to entering a market, but we felt that the products weren’t up to the level of quality and professionalism that we wanted as customers.

I’d seen a lot of videos with advice I felt was bad (along with good videos, of course). We didn’t want that.

Most sites also released videos haphazardly, more or less whenever they were ready. Some weeks, you’d get six videos. In other weeks, you’d get two.

### Our Mission

I don’t believe we advertised this publicly, but internally, our mission statement was clear:

If poker training were an airplane, Run It Once would be the first-class cabin.

We’d release videos consistently. Two videos a day, every single day. Two to four times as much as our competitors.

We’d have a staff of full-time designers and developers so that our website would be unique and beautiful.

We would sign the very best pros. We made this the key part of our mission - hunting down the best talent.

We were excellent at researching and discovering top players at all stakes, then internet-sleuthing to figure out how to contact them. On more than one occasion, a player asked us, “How the hell did you find me?”

### Pricing

Prices were much lower back in 2012 when we launched. You’d pay around $30/month for access to training videos, which was set (I believe) by Cardrunners many years prior when they entered the market, then copied by others.

Cardrunners launched at a time when almost all sites capped their games at $10/$20 NL or lower. By the time we built RIO, $500/$1k was available online.

The knowledge and skill possessed by top players had gotten more valuable, and the prices hadn’t changed to reflect that.

To put out 14 videos a week with the aim of having the highest caliber lineup of pros, our expenses would be higher than our competitors, and we’d need to charge more to keep up.

We decided on $100/mo.

(We all felt that this was actually underpriced for what we were offering, but we shared a fear that the sticker shock would draw too much backlash if we went to $200 or $300/mo given the industry standard.)

Our theory was this:

If the consensus amongst poker players was that Run It Once was clearly the best, and the debate was about whether the price was too high, we would do well.

As an insurance policy, we also offered an Essential membership, where the videos included were capped at lower stakes, for only $10/month.

The purpose of this was two-fold:

Generate a lot of leads, make them better at poker and win more, and eventually have them upgrade to Elite.

If we got backlash on price, to be able to point to also offering a killer product for cheaper than the rest of the market.

When we finally launched, we were pleased to find nearly nobody complaining about the price… although this meant we certainly went too low.

### Success: Luck and Skill

I firmly believe our product-focused vision and strategic differentiation (more, better, pricier), worked beautifully.

But, we also ran hot.

Around the time we launched, several of our competitors' biggest-name pros left poker altogether in the wake of Black Friday.

I know that at least some of those pros were compensated with company equity, meaning they couldn’t be replaced for no cost.

Within our first year, we became the industry leader, and we accomplished this with no marketing.

A great accomplishment? Certainly.

A wise strategy? Not exactly.

### Our First Failure: Bad Assumptions

Remember the part about building a product for ourselves?

There are some cons to that.

We built poker training that was designed for professionals. Even our $10 Essential membership was designed to teach low-stakes pros.

While our Elite membership soared, Essential was essentially a failure. We had the same number of users at $10/month as we did at $100/mo. It was only 10% of our revenue, and more importantly, it didn’t reach as wide a base as we wanted to bring in and eventually convert to Elite subscribers.

In hindsight, the reason for this is obvious:

Our Essential membership targeted almost the same demographic as our Elite membership, which was already well worth the cost for most of that demo.

If you weren’t a very serious poker player, our Essential videos were still too advanced for you. With poker terminology as detailed as it is at high levels, it may as well have been Greek to relative beginners.

By building a product for ourselves (pros), we neglected the needs of non-pros, which are the overwhelming majority of poker players.

There were two key assumptions we made that were entirely wrong:

Nearly all people who’d pay $100/mo for poker training would be pros, and

They will learn about us through the poker community’s word-of-mouth

We viewed buying poker training strictly as a career investment.

If you play $2/$5 NLHE, we felt it was reasonable to expect to make an extra buy-in per month by being a RIO member. Investing $100 to make $500 is clearly well worth it.

In hindsight, being a RIO member would reduce loss rates of recreational players (assuming they could understand the content) by likely more than that, but we just didn’t put ourselves in the mindset of non-pros.

So, we only targeted pros, and we didn’t market.

And, unfortunately for us, quickly becoming the industry leader made us believe we’d gotten it right!

### Competition: Marketing

It wasn’t until the next wave of competitors popped up years later that it became apparent we’d missed something.

New competitors spent much more time, energy, and money on marketing, and they often targeted the amateur players that we neglected.

I won’t mince words: They absolutely crushed us from a marketing perspective.

Now, fortunately, this didn’t hurt us too badly, because we still had a great product, and we had only ever reached the serious poker community anyway.

But new businesses came in and captured the other areas of the market that we were essentially blind to, and started competing in the area we had monopolized.

We didn’t begin losing business (subscribers churning) noticeably faster, but we were gaining fewer new subscribers, which caused membership numbers to begin slipping.

(I don’t know the numbers of our competitors, but my educated guess is that we fell out of the #1 spot before reclaiming it years later.)

It was a wake-up call, but one we weren’t equipped to answer at the time.

### Next Up

I hope you found this first part interesting, enjoyable, and hopefully actionable for some of you!

Next up, I’ll go into some of our learnings as we navigated through the changing environment that is online poker training. We’ll talk about the introduction of solvers and solver-based tools and the impact that has had on the training market, and we’ll see what else I’ve screwed up!

I’m eager for feedback, even more than usual, since this strayed outside of the typical email. You all get to shape this with me, so please let me know what you want more and less of!

---

## Let's Get Uncomfortable
Date: 2024-01-02 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/lets-get-uncomfortable

# Let's Get Uncomfortable

What do taking the escalator and playing poker have in common?

You can do both in a casino, I suppose, but today, we’ll be discussing a more interesting and useful similarity.

### Making it Rain

During a couple of the years I lived in Vancouver, the first thing I did each day was take a long walk. I spent at least 30 minutes – usually 60 – striding through that beautiful city, even when it rained.

(If you didn’t walk when it rained, you wouldn’t be walking very regularly!)

During my walk, I’d stop at one of many Starbucks locations for an iced coffee, black.

In the US, that means the same thing at every Starbucks. In Vancouver, at least in 2011-2013, it seemed to depend on who you talked to.

At first, over half the time, my iced coffee would be sweetened. Then I started saying “black, no sugar,” which mysteriously only dropped it to one in three.

Starbucks was always crowded in the late mornings. To get the attention of a barista and correct them was… I don’t know… not fun.

So, I quickly developed a foolproof system:

When my order was wrong, I’d thank them, walk out the door, drop it in the trash, and head to the next Starbucks until they got it right.

I could afford it, was going to keep walking anyway, and you know – doing my part to support multinational corporations.

### The Escalator

Was I scared to go back and correct them?

No. I didn’t like to, but I wasn’t scared.

Was I saving time by ordering elsewhere instead?

No, I had to wait in line again.

There wasn’t a strong reason keeping me from doing the more practical thing – managing to get a worker’s attention while they were doing something else and telling them they messed up.

It was simply more comfortable not to.

Taking the stairs is healthier than standing on an escalator.

Most of us want to be healthier, can take the stairs without pain, and aren’t afraid to.

But how often do we choose the comfortable route anyway?

### Emotions At The Poker Table

We know that fear keeps people from making scary bluffs or calldowns. We know that tilt, excitement, or a desire to gamble can make people put in money too light, hoping to win a big pot.

What we don’t discuss as much is comfort.

And I believe that comfort, among competent players,leads to far more mistakes than these other emotions.

Once we’re practiced enough, we don’t rip our stacks in with hands that are clearly mistakes to do so with. We don’t let fear stand in our way too often.

But our human desire for comfort is sneaky enough that we don’t always register it as a threat to our game – our #1 leak creator.

### Discomfort

Maybe we have a hand that could bluff-shove the river, or could check. It’s close in theory.

Are we afraid to bluff? Maybe some of us.

But for others, it’s not fear. It’s simply more comfortable to take the safe route and not come into contact with any slightly negative emotions.

If you are afraid in that spot, what about in a much smaller pot? There’s a threshold at which it’s no longer fear holding you back from making the riskier play, yet you still shy away more often than you should.

For some people, bluffs are comfortable, but something else isn’t.

Maybe it’s calling a big bet with a good hand on a draw-heavy board.

We know the solver-approved play would be to call, keeping in our opponent’s bluffs and thinner value bets, which will often jam the river.

Instead, we shove for value, protecting our hand and torching EV.

Maybe it’s checking back the turn with a weak top pair, opening ourselves up to facing bets on scary rivers.

It just feels a little nicer to fire that turn c-bet and check back the river, even though it’s too thin in theory.

Maybe it’s raising flops to find out where we’re at and protect our hand. Calling and guessing can be mildly unpleasant.

Putting our marginal holdings in a range protected by monsters feels safer.

Whichever plays you find more comfortable will often creep into your game much more than you realize.

### Opportunities

If you’ve read this newsletter long enough, you should know that this means two things.

Thing #1: You have an opportunity to improve your game by identifying and fighting against the desire for comfort that’s poisoned your strategies.

Thing #2: You have a (more fun) opportunity to exploit your opponents, who are inevitably falling victim to the same mental leak.

How do you do this?

My advice – you can take advantage of both opportunities by starting in the same place.

### Introspection

Self-awareness is one of the most valuable attributes a poker player can have.

To become more self-aware, you have to… checks notes … be more aware of yourself?

This means paying attention to your thoughts and feelings. It means looking inward and reflecting.

What makes you uncomfortable at the poker table?

Or, perhaps better yet, what plays feel good and comfortable to make? And what are the opposites of those plays?

If you really want to improve, take it further.

Start paying closer attention to what makes you uncomfortable away from the tables, too. And what makes you feel scared, excited, sad, lonely, inadequate, fulfilled…

You don’t need to be on a mission to change these feelings.You just need to recognize them.

To approach your environment, and its effects on you, with more curiosity.

“Why did I snap at that guy? What emotion was triggered in me that caused me to react? What is that reaction ‘protecting’ me from feeling?”

Consider how your emotions vary across different environments – with colleagues, friends, or in family settings. Ask yourself, "Do I feel more relaxed or tense than usual in this situation? Who or what is causing me to feel that way, and why might that be?”

Some of these answers may come to you easily. Some will be buried deep.

Some of your emotional reactions will be rational and proportional. Many will not.

We’ll get back to poker talk now, as I expect I lost a few of you. Just know that if you lost interest in the above, you’re the person it’s most important for.

### From Self-Awareness, to Empathy, to Reads

Introspection leads to self-awareness.

Self-awareness is a building block towards developing more empathy.

I don’t need to tell you all of the ways that empathy is valuable away from the tables.

At the poker table, it can be invaluable when used correctly.

The biggest edges in poker come from knowing what your opponent would do with certain hands better than they do – when your understanding of them exceeds their own self-awareness.

I’ve experienced this many times during my career – playing against someone who’s representing a hand that I know they can’t have. For me, it’s the most fun part of the game.

When you know what makes you uncomfortable at the table, you develop more of an intuition for what makes others feel the same.

They won’t be exactly like you, so you’ll need to look at how they play.

When they show down a hand that seems poorly played, ask yourself:

Do they think that’s the correct strategy?

Do they have a read on me?

Or was that line more comfortable (or otherwise more enjoyable) for them than the correct one?

Accumulate clues from showdowns, and from statistics or table talk, depending on whether you’re playing live or online.

Create a hypothesis, and see if theevidence continues to support it.

The nice thing about developing your self-awareness is that, in my experience, this part mostly comes naturally.

You’re already looking at showdowns and stats. You’re already developing reads.

So, more focus on emotions, and more awareness of your own, lets you interpret that data better.

Just be careful with this – you might accidentally improve yourself away from the tables, too.

---

## Finding My A-Game
Date: 2023-12-19 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/finding-my-a-game

# Finding My A-Game

In our journey together, we've delved deeply into the intricacies of high-level poker strategy, uncovering the nuances that transform good players into great ones.

This week, I'm taking a slight detour to share a personal story – which also serves as the foreword I wrote for Elliot Roe's new book.

Many of you have reached out with questions about how I’ve worked on the mental aspect of poker – staying focused, handling pressure, and overcoming the psychological hurdles that often accompany this intense game.

The truth is that I’ve had to work – and still keep working – on my mental game much more than you may think.

Many years ago, I was lucky enough to discover the services of Elliot Roe, who, to this day, is my mindset and performance coach. With Elliot's guidance, I’ve been able to not only overcome many mindset roadblocks, but to fundamentally reshape my approach to poker and its role in my life.

I don’t have any financial incentives to promote Elliot’s work. But his insights have been a game changer for me, and given my number one goal of this newsletter – to help you grow and reach your goals as a poker player – I believe sharing these insights is invaluable.

I’m also excited to have my words published in a book for the first (but hopefully not last) time!

Without further ado…

### My Foreword to “A-Game Poker”

Your outcomes aren’t a direct result of your knowledge and skills.

They come from your knowledge and skills multiplied by your performance.

As someone who’s spent half my life making quick, complex decisions while playing against the best poker players in the world, this was painfully obvious to me from the beginning.

At some moments, or even some days, my mind worked on an entirely different level than others.

Though I was absolutely aware of these moments as they were occurring,I couldn’t predict them or make them happen.

After working in the business world, I realized that the difference between an A-day and a C-day wasn’t quite as obvious to me there. I wasn’t sure how much it mattered in a more “normal” setting, away from intense competition.

That was before I met Elliot Roe and he showed me how I could bring the things he taught not only into my approach to poker but into my approach to my life away from poker.

I’ve learned the concepts in this book over the years, both through Elliot’s course and through working with him directly.

Dollar for dollar, I’ve invested more in Elliot’s teachings than in every book I’ve ever owned or ever will own, but the return on that investment has been enormous.

Through some of the concepts and exercises outlined here within, I unlocked potential that would have gone unrealized. I learned to perform well more consistently in all areas of my life. I gained clarity on my life’s direction, and I achieved great things by facing fears I wasn’t even aware I had.

Let me give you just one of the many examples.

### Washed Up

For over a decade, I had competed in the highest-stakes poker games online against the best players in the world with great success.

Then came 2015, when I stepped away from poker to work on my businesses.

It was around this time that poker solvers began having a profound impact on the way people played.

I never studied with them before stepping away from the game, and I didn’t touch them over the next four years, as I worked on running my businesses.

Truth be told, I was unhappy about solvers.

I’d figured out how to beat the biggest games without tools telling me how to play. That was my strength. I was a figure-outer.

Know what I wasn’t? A studier. A memorizer.

My memory isn’t anything to write home about, and I squeaked by without doing my homework in high school by figuring things out during tests.

I expected that, in the post-solver era of poker, the winners would no longer be the figure-outers but the studiers. And so, though I never accepted it, I worried that my days as an elite poker player – one who could beat world-class players – were behind me.

That thought, anytime I faced it, made me sad.

Poker was the place where I achieved greatness. I played a game that millions played, and I rose to the top. I wasn’t ready for that part of my identity – that achievement – to be over.

My whole life, I was told that I could achieveanything I set my mind to, and I believed it.

In fact, I made sure not to work too hard so that I could always continue believing it.

Elliot calls this the “Too smart to try” program.

He taught me how and why it had been installed early in my life and was still running into adulthood.

(I have no doubt that 12-year-old Phil would’ve been an incredible student if he’d had the opportunity to work with Elliot)

Through exercises contained in this book, I realized that I was afraid to try to learn from solvers.

If I didn’t try, I’d never know whether or not I could be a great player again.

If I gave it a shot, I might learn that I wasn’t as smart as I was told throughout my childhood.

### The Galfond Challenge

The exercise continued to help me overcome the fear I’d unearthed, and through further work with Elliot, I devised a plan to help grow my business while doing what I truly loved: Challenging myself against the top players of today.

The Galfond Challenge was born.

I studied with and learned from solvers. I competed on a huge stage, 1 on 1, against world-class players.

This was just about the most extreme version of my fearI could dream up, and I faced it, brimming with excitement.

During the first of five challenges, I immediately faced incredible adversity and crushing losses.

Thanks to my work with Elliot, I kept my composure and competed admirably.

Through the Galfond Challenges, I learned that I was capable of contending with the best in the post-solver era. I learned that this part of my life didn’t have to be over. I simply had to adapt.

Competing on the same level with great players would have been enough, but as it turns out, I went on to win all five of my matches!

It has been, hands-down, the most rewarding experience of my poker career.

I now know with complete confidence that I’ll always be able to compete at the poker table if I set my mind to it, and it’s hard to express how happy that has made me.

Without Elliot, I might have stayed retired. I might have never learned what I was capable of.

### You

Perhaps the fears you will uncover will come from someplace else. Maybe the issues holding back your performance are entirely different.

Fortunately for you, Elliot has worked with numerous high-performers from all walks of life, helping them navigate their unique sets of goals and challenges.

Whatever you want to accomplish and whatever you’re dealing with, he’s seen it.

And – judging by the unanimous glowing reviews from those I’ve personally referred to him – he’s probably helped conquer it.

As a client of Elliot’s, I’ve long wondered what makes him so good at helping others unlock their greatness.

Yes, he’s got that experience. Obviously, he’s an intelligent problem-solver. Sure, he’s had training.

But those things are true of other people, too. What is it that sets Elliot Roe apart?

It wasn’t until I became his friend that I understood.

Elliot is so good at what he does because,  save for spending time with family, there is nothing in the world he’d rather be doing than helping others become the best version of themselves.

This unmatched passion and dedication are what have shaped him into the master that he is today.

### ROI

The contents of this book will lead you to outcomes that may range from small improvements in your performance to huge upgrades in your life as a whole.

We’re all unique. I don’t know which sections of this book will make the difference for you. I just know that some of them will.

Think of the work that you do.

What would a 25% increase in your output or performance mean for you?

What would even a 5% increase be worth over the next ten years?

I don’t know you, but I can guarantee you’ll see a return on the modest investment into this book and the time it will take to put Elliot’s wisdom into action.

Study this book with the aim of improving your performance in your career, but don’t be surprised when something more profound happens.

If you’re interested in Elliot’s book, you can find it here. Again, to be clear, I have no financial interest in the book. As should be evidenced by my foreword above, I believe that Elliot’s work is extremely valuable, and I wanted to share that with you.

---

## Intensity - The Power of Perception
Date: 2023-12-05 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/intensity-the-power-of-perception

# Intensity - The Power of Perception

I went digging around in my mind this morning, trying to unearth principles I use in my poker game that aren’t as commonly taught or discussed.

I came across the concept of what I like to call Intensity, which happens to be one of the most important ways that I evaluate my opponents.

So, let’s discuss what intensity is, and how you should use it to alter your decisions at the table to become an even stronger player!

### What is Intensity?

Intensity has nothing to do with a player’s general level of aggression or their knowledge of the game, at least by definition.*

Intensity is, simply put, being observant and reactive.

A high-intensity player pays attention, processes and remembers information well, and persistently makes reads based on that information.

Sherlock Holmes is the epitome of high-intensity.

Most wouldn’t notice the one-word slip in your story or a speck of dirt on your shoe. Good luck getting it by Holmes.

A high-intensity player must also have the confidence and bravery to act on those deductions.

At the poker table, it’s one thing to sense weakness. It’s another to put your chips in every single time you do in order to take advantage of it.

*The highest-intensity players tend to be aggressive and knowledgeable because being knowledgeable and high-intensity means you’ll want to capitalize on many situations with aggression.

### Playing with High-Intensity Players

I expect you all know how to categorize players as loose or tight, passive or aggressive, and many of you know some good ways to exploit those tendencies.  I expect fewer of you have categorized players based on high and low intensity, and it’s one of my favorites, which is why I wanted to write this for you!

If I’ve shown down two bluffs after check-calling flop, the turn checking through, and betting 1/3 pot in a spot where every draw got there, I assume that a high-intensity player has noticed this.

A lower-intensity player might have noticed one or both of the times, but only that I bet 1/3 pot with a bluff, rather than noting the pattern between the hand action and board types.

The lowest-intensity players haven’t noticed, haven’t cared to store it in their memory, or won’t bother to change their future decisions based on it.

### The Preflop Spot

Imagine you’re playing $2/$5NL. $800 deep.

Your image is that of a competent player, but you tend to get involved in too many pots preflop.

A splashy player opens to $20, and two weak-tight players call in a way that indicates relative weakness to you. (This could be a tell, or observation that they’d always 3-bet decent hands in this spot)

You’re next to act in the HJ.

There’s $67 in the pot, one player with a wide range, and two others with capped ranges.

This is a great squeeze spot. Almost free money for the taking.

You hope for any two reasonable cards, and look down at A♣️A❤️.

It’s normally a big mistake to slowplay a hand like this, even given your reads on their ranges.

But, what about the players behind you?

If they are four passive or low-intensity players, raise it up!

But, if the button is $170 deep, the SB and BB cover you, and they’re all high-intensity players, this becomes a great slowplay spot.

Why?

The great squeeze (bluff) spot you had got even better once you called with your loose preflop image. High-intensity players will notice this and act on it! In addition, your reads mean that if you 3-bet yourself, your opponents are very likely to fold, meaning that a 3-bet is lower value than it should be with aces.

If you call, the high-intensity button will notice that this is a great spot to jam 20% of hands. Both blinds might squeeze 25% each. Even the low-intensity CO might wake up with a few good 3-betting hands.

This means that by calling, you’ll face a 3-bet over 55% of the time!

The players in front of you are likely to fold, but maybe the opener wakes up with A♦️Q♦️, or maybe one of the callers decides to peel with 7♠️7❤️. And even if they fold, you’ve still got a ton of money into the pot with dominating equity before you act.

Since we all like a conclusion:

In this actual fictional hand, you call, the SB makes it $150. Folded to you, who decides to call.

K♦️4❤️4♠️ ($365)

SB bets $75, you call.

6❤️ ($515)

SB bets $150, you call.

9♠️ ($815)

SB puts you all in for $425, you call.

SB shows Q❤️J♣️ and you double up 🎉

### Know Thy Opponent

There have been many times in my career where I’ve orchestrated the perfect slowplay, or masterfully represented weakness based on thousands of hands of history, only to have a low-intensity opponent pay no attention, look at their hand, and make whatever lazy play they felt like.

This is why it’s critical to understand the intensity level of your opponents – not only their default state, but their current state.

Sometimes, a normally high-intensity player is trying to lock up a win. Sometimes they’ve slept four hours and are on autopilot. Sometimes they’re watching the basketball game.

Save your genius plays for opponents who are focused enough to notice what you want them to notice, and bold enough to react to it.

### Beyond Hand Reading

As crucial as hand-reading is, reading your opponent’s range up to this point in the hand is only half of the story.

The rest of the money is unlocked when you can read the future.

What’s my opponent’s range, and what are they going to do with it next?

Intensity isn’t the only attribute that helps you unravel that mystery, but it’s one of the most important.

### P.S.

As should be clear, being a high-intensity player is very valuable, so long as you do it well. (It’s possible to constantly notice and react to clues, but to usually be wrong!)

To become high-intensity is no easy task, though. Perhaps that’s a topic I’ll try to tackle another day!

Meanwhile: For those of you who prefer to watch a video over reading, I’ve recently converted a couple of my most-liked posts into YouTube videos. You can find them on my YouTube channel!

Why You’re Stuck (How to Improve at Poker)Perform Like a Pro (How to Make Better Decisions)

---

## The Realities of Leaving Professional Poker
Date: 2023-11-28 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/cashing-out-the-realities-of-leaving-professional-poker

# The Realities of Leaving Professional Poker

I’ve been playing poker for twenty years now.

I’ve seen many pro poker players come and go during that time. I’ve seen many players go and then come back.

What I’ve found interesting is how often pros express a desire or a plan to leave poker for good and how infrequently they follow through on it.

This was brought to the forefront of my mind recently, as I’ve heard the sentiment a few times in group coaching and have been able to dig into it with people a bit further.

So, I’ve been thinking lately about why this phenomenon occurs.

If you’re not a professional or aspiring professional, this post may not be relevant, but perhaps you’ll find it interesting.

### Why They Want Out

The most common reason, in my opinion, that people plan to get out of poker is that they expect it to die.

They see the writing on the wall – tools becoming more powerful, governments putting up roadblocks, games getting tougher or vanishing.

Another common reason, of course, is downswings.

Losing money at your job can be rough – even more so when you don’t know when it will turn around.

Whether a player has lost their confidence due to a downswing, or they’re simply sick of the stress that a career in poker brings, downswings lead to a lot of people wanting to find another path.

While there are other reasons, I suspect these two are the most compelling, and they bring up one bigger issue: Uncertainty.

When you’re 24, you’re usually not so stressed about what your financial situation will be at age 55.

But as we get older, it’s easier to start worrying.

For some who are extremely successful or believe they’re on a path to continued growth in earnings, the “plan,” whether acknowledged or not, is to make enough money from poker over the next decade of playing that you don’t have to worry about money.

But when you’re in your 30s or 40s, and you feel that your earnings have settled to what they’re likely going to be, and it’s not enough to retire in ten years’ time, uncertainty can be scary.

What if you can no longer earn like this in five years, or even in fifteen?

What do you do then?

### When They Want Out

An interesting element of the wanting to quit phenomenon is that 95% of the time that I hear someone talking about leaving the game, they speak about it at a date years into the future.

It’s rarely, “I’m going to quit poker in a few months.”

It’s, “I’m only playing for a few more years, and then I’m moving on.”

Like anything I find interesting, I ask myself why.

If they’re so sure they want to move on, why do they not want to quit yet?And, more interestingly, why does it seem to not often happen?

The way I usually see people quit poker is in an unplanned way:

They hit a huge downswing and run out of bankroll, forcing them to find income.

They get a job opportunity and decide it sounds better.

Their crypto goes to the moon, and the games become not worth it (or too tough for them at the level that it would be worth it)

For me, I accidentally (and temporarily) semi-retired from poker back in 2016 because the companies I launched began to require much more of my energy than I’d planned for.

So what’s with the future quitters?

### Why They Don’t Want Out Yet

Poker can be insanely challenging – mentally, physically, emotionally, and financially.

It’s not strange that some pros want to move on. But why do they often want to move on later?

I think this comes down to a few things:

1) Money

They have an income in poker right now that can’t be matched elsewhere, so they want to earn for a while longer and pad their bank accounts before moving on.

2) Not Being Ready

They either don’t have a plan for what they’re going to do next, or they have a plan, but they’re far from being ready to capitalize on it.

I think there can often be a naive optimism or perfectionism driving this. They expect that if they take the next few years to earn while finding that other opportunity and getting it ready, it’ll be an easy transition.

It’s hard to start over, often taking a reduction in income while you learn the ropes in your new career.

We want to be as prepared for that as possible, both with our finances and the opportunity.

We’re on the poker train, chugging along at full speed. We don’t want to jump onto the stationary ground. We want to seamlessly hop to another train, moving at our pace and ready for boarding.

This leads me to why it often doesn’t work out how people plan.

### Why They Don’t Jump

What tends to happen is that the years pass, and the jump to the next train doesn’t look the way they want it to.

Perhaps they haven’t made and saved as much money as they planned.

They’re no longer on a downswing, and they’re really enjoying the game.

Poker isn’t as dead as they expected it would be. Pros have expected the imminent death of the game for decades. Yet, so far, the opportunities have lived on. They’ve merely changed and shifted.

There are many potential reasons that things don’t look as they expected.

But the reason I suspect is most common is a lack of planning and preparation.

They didn’t spend the time visualizing what it would truly look like, mapping out the steps to getting there, and executing those steps.

So they don’t do as much as they think they’re going to do over those years, while poker is still their primary focus, and the new opportunity is going to happen “someday.”

“Someday” rolls along, and they aren’t ready. They don’t know where to start.

So, perhaps they set a new someday. They’ll give it another couple of years.

But, there are some who make the move. They just don’t all stick with it.

### Why They Leave and Come Back

Poker as a living is no picnic. To compete in today’s games, you need to work hard – not just on your game, but your bankroll management, emotional control, perhaps on your network and opportunities.

You have to protect yourself and survive being cheated, scammed, or stiffed. You have to show up to your job focused and ready to go.

No phoning in your workday – it’ll cost you too much.

It’s easy for poker to wear you down. It feels like most other jobs would be easier, and in many ways, they are.

But here is a stance that I’ve changed my mind on more recently:

Is poker a hard job?

I’d say no.

It can be extremely hard.

But it’s not a job.

We could get technical over the language, but here’s how I’d define it:

Poker can be a career, but it’s not a job. It’s a game.

Like playing in the NFL is a career playing a game.

Is it hard?

Do you have to work your ass off to compete at a high level?

Absolutely.

But it’s just… something different.

It’s a different kind of work with a different kind of reward.

It’s easy to take for granted all of the wonderfully enjoyable, exciting, and motivating parts of being a pro poker player and, instead, focus on how hard it is.

This makes you want to leave. And I get it – I’ve been there at times.

But what can happen when some players try their hand elsewhere is that they get reminded of the positives that poker offers.

Whether it’s the setting of your own hours, the motivation that playing a game for money brings, or simply the competitive pursuit – they sometimes find themselves longing for what they used to have.

### What to Take Away

While this was more of an exploration of my own thoughts than actionable advice, I’d like to leave you with some.

First, acknowledge and appreciate the positives of the career you find yourself in. It’s easy to take those for granted and focus on the negatives. Actively thinking about, or even writing out, the positives is a great way to remind yourself that there is more to your job than the parts that cause you stress.

If you want to move on, dig deep and figure out what is really driving that decision.

Then ask yourself if those stressors or negatives can be removed while still maintaining most of the positives.

Next, I want to be clear that I’m not suggesting you go pro, stick with poker, or that you quit. That’s a huge decision that I can’t possibly have enough information to comment on.

What I do want to suggest, however, is that whatever path you want to be on – make it real.

Don’t just say that you’ll  “someday” do this next thing.

Think about what that would really look like.

Make a plan. Write out exactly what needs to happen before “someday” comes along.

Then, take action on that plan!

It sounds basic, but very few people actually make a concrete plan and stick to it.

Lastly, if you’re emotionally checked out but staying on the poker train simply because the next train isn’t ready, I’d invite you to consider hopping over now anyway.

Playing poker without your heart in it can be expensive, and doing so while not progressing elsewhere is doubly so.

If you jump now, yes, there will be a steep learning curve in whatever it is that you do next, and you need to be prepared for that financially.

But at least you’ll be giving something your all and finding out if it’s the path you want to take.

Other careers are different than poker, but if you’ve been a successful pro for more than a few years, that means you’re smart, you’re self-sufficient, and you have grit.

If you’re financially responsible about it and willing to work hard, trust yourself to figure out and conquer whatever comes next.

I know I do.

---

## The Anatomy of a Read
Date: 2023-11-21 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/the-anatomy-of-a-read

# The Anatomy of a Read

Some assume a read at the poker table comes to you magically.

Others believe it is the product of countless hours of observation.

They are both right, and they are both wrong.

Last week, I talked about using blockers to influence your decisions and how you should incorporate blocker logic based on how strong of a read you have.

I said, “My hope for your game is that you rarely utilize blockers because you’re routinely making strong reads.”

Today, I want to help you make my hope a reality!

We’ll discuss the different types of reads that one can make at the poker table, how to utilize them, and why you should rarely be readless.

### #1: Intra-hand Reads

This is what most people think of when they hear the words “making a read.” It’s what happens during an individual hand at the poker table.

Tells

The most common intra-hand read is a tell.

A player does something outside of the strategic decisions during a poker hand, which you can use as a clue to further narrow their range.

Notice how I said “further narrow their range” rather than “know if they are weak or strong?”

This is because tells are best used as part of the hand-reading process rather than on an island separate from your other deductions.

Which leads me to…

Deduction

This is one of the most critical skills in poker – taking stock of each strategic decision your opponent has made during a hand, and then using those decisions as clues to deduce their hand range.

“He’s repping a flush, but he wouldn’t have playedmany flush draws like that on the flop.”

Any time I use the term “hand-reading,” this is essentially what I’m referring to. Their pre-flop, flop, turn, and river decisions, each analyzed and combined to form a guess as to their hand range.

Note that “bet-size tells,” which you might assume fall into the category above, are technically part of deduction because they fall squarely within “strategic decisions during a poker hand.”

### Game Flow (+ Current State)

While it has certainly lost its luster in the post-solver era of poker, game flow reads are alive and well in most circumstances.

I say “most”, because you will encounter some elite opponents at certain, more mechanical, game types, against whom you’d be hopeless in looking for adjustments to be made based on game flow.

You may be wondering about the definition.

Game flow reads are speculations, based on recent events,of how your opponent is likely to react differently than normal.

Some examples:

Michael was down 4 buy-ins and just completed a comeback to be up 1 buy-in. He’s not going to want to take a big risk now.

Bob just got sucked out on again. He’s going to be looking to play a big pot.

Mary just got caught bluffing for the 4th time this hour. No way she tries to bluff again right now.

I’ve raised huge in position twice today on the turn against Frank, and he’s folded. There’s no way he’s checking this turn with a big hand because he’d bet, hoping to face another big raise and finally have the goods.

As you can see, game flow is still something I believe is well worth considering when making decisions.

Note that I’m including what I’ll refer to as current state reads with game flow, even though they could have their own category, because the line between them is quite blurry in many cases.

Michael’s current emotional state after completing a comeback is what presents the opportunity for a read, but the comeback is part of the game.

A current state read that’s unrelated to game flow would be something like:

Steve just had a big fight with his girlfriend and is going to be tilted and looking to gamble.

### #2: Player Tendency Reads

Tendency reads are, as the name implies, information about how a player tends to play in general.

They have nothing to do with an individual hand or circumstance, though they can and should be used in conjunction with intra-hand reads.

I like to split these tendency reads into two categories, though I don’t pretend this is clearly the right way.

Data-Based

While they can be determined from statistics, data-based reads don’t absolutely require stats to be tracked.

Yes, the best place to make data-based reads is from a database, but you can also accumulate data at the live poker tables from experience and observation.

In live poker, I tend to focus primarily on showdowns – how I know someone played a certain hand – rather than make an often misguided attempt to approximate statistics.

When playing online, you can end up with a world of data at your fingertips.

Utilizing that data well in order to make reads is an entire skillset and topic of its own, but for now, I’ll simply put it in this category.

Emotional Leaks / Player Profile

While I tend to infer emotional leaks and build a player profile almost entirely from data I’ve acquired, I view it as a separate category.

Over time, if you’re astute, you can get to know players beyond their statistics.

Yes, they don’t value bet thinly enough, but why?

Is it because they don’t understand what hands are good enough to value bet on a technical level?

Or is it because they fear a check-raise, or that they are usually content to take down the pot without risking any more money?

We are all made up of both sides:Our technical understanding and our emotional makeup.

Understanding both allows you to get much deeper inside the minds of your opponents.

Plus, it’s fun!

### #3: Population Reads

When someone tells me they’ve never seen a player before and they are readless, I scoff.

Not externally, of course – I don’t want to be rude – but in my mind, I know that they are missing out on valuable information.

You really shouldn’t go into any hand readless, because no matter where you are playing, there is an average player type.

The average player you encounter at $1/$3NL.

The average player that you’ve never seen before in your small $25k buy-in tournament player pool.

The average player plays a certain way. Reverting to a balanced GTO strategy because they’re new to you is foolish in almost all cases.

The Above, Generalized

Most population reads are based on the exact same things that Tendency Reads are:

Data-based

- The stats and showdowns of the average player in your pool

Emotional Leaks / Player Profile

- The average fears and influences on the players in your pool

You can gather these in the exact same way, as well.

There is one more though, unique to the population reads category.

Stereotypes

In nearly every situation in life, we’re discouraged from stereotyping people, and for good reason.

It’s unfair to draw conclusions based on someone’s age, race, gender, or appearance. Plus, you can’t judge a book by its cover, right?

But in the game of poker, we aren’t hiring an employee or meeting a friend.

It’s not unfair to adjust your play based on a guess of how an opponent might play. In fact, it’s essentially the entire point of the game.

Also, when hiring, you’re looking for the right individual person, not an average of a population. In poker, playing against the average of all people your opponent might be, is precisely what you want to be doing.

So, yes, you can and should make generalizations!

I played a hand once on High Stakes Poker, where I made a very big fold against Bill Klein, an older recreational player who, at the time, I’d never seen before. I made the fold primarily due to stereotypes.

It turns out he was bluffing, and it turns out that he likes to play an aggressive game!

It was a bad fold against his hand, and it was a bad fold against him specifically, but against the average wealthy businessman his age, it was a great play.

To this day, I have zero regrets about the way I played that hand because I did the best I could with the information I had.

Don’t be afraid to be wrong.

You’re not going to be right every time, and you’re not supposed to be!

You’re supposed to come out ahead based on the reads you make on average.

As for stereotypes, don’t focus strictly on the way someone looks. When you speak with someone, you’re getting more and more information.

Perhaps it’s no longer the average of “Young white guys in a hoodie” but “Young white guys in a hoodie who work for their father’s construction company, are in Vegas for a bachelor party, and called a straight ‘a flush’.”

### Never Readless

If you revert to a GTO game plan because you’ve never seen this person before at the $2/$5 tables, you are saying that you expect a random $2/$5 player to play optimally on average.

I call BS.

I hope you can see now that you will always have something to construct a read from.

There’s information – and money – sitting on the table.

It’s yours if you’ll just reach out and take it.

---

## Blockers: A Practical Guide
Date: 2023-11-14 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/blockers-a-practical-guide

# Blockers: A Practical Guide

If you’ve been near a poker table, you’ve likely heard about blockers.

Blockers are interesting in that they are critically important in theory and, in my opinion, often useless (or worse) in practice.

I want to talk to you about how they can impact strategy, how I like to use them, and how I’d suggest you do.

Let’s get into it!

### Blockers: Theory

Before moving on, you need to understand the following:

In theory, all players have perfect knowledge of each other's overall strategy, and all ranges are perfectly balanced.

This means that when facing a river bet, you should be indifferent with most of your bluffcatchers, which means that they will break even whether you decide to call or fold.

When this is the case, blockers are hugely important.

Why?

Because if your perfectly balanced opponent is betting the K❤️K♠️8♦️J❤️4♠️ river with a range that contains bluffs and JT or better for value, when you hold a jack in your hand, you have extra information! That jack reduces the number of value bets your perfectly balanced opponent has without reducing their bluffs, so you know they’re no longer perfectly balanced, and you have a profitable call.

If you were to ignore blockers against a perfectly balanced opponent, you’d be making a mistake.

But, guess what…

### In Practice

Nobody in the world is perfectly balanced.

In fact, virtually every poker player is so unbalanced that, if you could know their strategy – like all players do in theory-land – you’d likely never use blockers to decide how to play against them.

Does this mean you should ignore blockers in your game?

The answer depends on you and your opponents, so instead of outright telling you what to do, I’ll lay out the factors at play.

### The Problems

The main issue I’ve witnessed, as blockers have become a common part of strategy discussion and poker education, is that people are turning off their brains.

They find themselves facing a bet, notice that they have a good blocker, and call because of it.

Or they have the potential to bluff the river, but they don’t have a specific card, so they simply don’t do it.

Thoughts like, “How would my opponent find enough bluffs here?” or, “It seems like this guy always folds to river bets,” aren’t entering their minds.

These are factors that are much more important.

Let’s take a look at a simplified example:

The board is Q♠️ 9❤️ 2♠️ 2♦️ 3❤️

Our opponent bets with a value range of AA, KK, AQ, and KQ. (For the sake of this example, he’d have taken a different line with sets and two pair.)

That’s 12 combos of overpairs, and 24 combos of top pair, for 36 total value combos.

Now let’s say we hold Q♦️T♦️

We have a queen, the best blocker in the deck!

Now our opponent has 12 combos of overpairs, and only 16 combos of top pair, for 28 total value combos.

The best blocker we could hold (in a narrow range, high-impact example) reduced our opponent’s value combos by 22%.

### Twenty-Two Percent

In theory-land, 22% is huge!

We’re facing a pot-sized bet. Our opponent is betting 36 value combos and 18 bluffs, for an optimal bluff frequency of 33.3%.

Now that they’ve only got 28 value combos, they’ll be bluffing 18 out of 46 times, or 39% of the time. Easy call.

In practice, however, 22% doesn’t go a long way.

You’ll encounter opponents and board textures on which people are massively underbluffing (or overbluffing).

Your Q♦️ blocker means that the breakeven point for you to call is no longer 18 bluff combos, but 14 bluff combos.

It’s not really that big a difference.

There are plenty of spots where the best in the worldmiss over 50% of the theoretically correct bluffs.

How close do you think Jim from your local $2/$5 game is getting?

Or nitty Mark, who hasn’t shown down a big bluff since the ‘90s.

Are you calling him with the Q♦️ blocker?

A great hand reader finds spots where their opponents are massively unbalanced. This is where the big edges in poker come from.

Do you really want to ignore hand reading as soon as you do or don’t have a relevant card?

### It’s Not All Bad

There are some good reasons to use blockers in your thought process.

Firstly, there are spots where you’re up against an opponent who’s very balanced in several spots. Against them, sure, that blocker will absolutely move the needle.

Blockers can also make you more balanced.

If you structure your gameplan purely around whether or not you think a play will work, you’d better be really, really good at it.

Otherwise, a strong player will be able to find extra holes in your game.

I usually opt for exploitative play like this – making very strong adjustments to what I perceive as big opportunities – which leaves my game unbalanced. I’m exploitable by choice, and I’m betting on myself staying a step ahead of my opponent in the game of adjustments.

But this is a “don’t try this at home” type of situation. It’s a very difficult style to play when you’re up against strong professionals.

What can happen to some players is that they “make reads” that aren’t actually reads. They are excuses that your mind makes to justify the play that is more comfortable to you.

“I don’t think she’s going to fold here.”

“I bet he’s bluffing too much.”

You tell yourself you’re making these reads, and you end up rarely bluffing and usually calling because that’s what you want to do.

In this way, blockers can make you more balanced by forcing you to make plays that are hard for you to make.

Maybe you don’t enjoy making big river bluffs, but when you have the straight blocker, you feel emboldened.

Good!

Work on your emotional hurdles as well, but for the time being, use blockers to push you to make more of the plays that you need to make.

### My Advice

Hopefully, some of the things I said above spoke to you, and you have a good idea of how and when you want to utilize blockers in your decision-making process.

If not, here is my advice:

If you have a somewhat strong read, whether it be during a specific hand or an overall read that your opponent loves to overbet bluff, just ignore blockers and go with your read.

If you have no read at all, use blockers! They are a useful part of basic strategy.

If you have a weak read – a guess that you don’t have a strong reason for or strong feeling about – use blocker logic here, too.

I suggest this because, even if your weak read would outweigh the impact of blockers, this can serve as insurance against your emotions dictating how you play and leaving you unbalanced.

If you’ve followed most of my prior newsletters, you should know that I believe there are countless opportunities to make reads that should impact your default strategy. If you didn’t know that yet, I’d suggest you stick around!

My hope for your game is that you rarely utilize blockers because you’re routinely making strong reads.

---

## Why Can’t I Break Through? (Part 2)
Date: 2023-10-31 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/why-cant-i-break-through-part-2

# Why Can’t I Break Through? (Part 2)

Last week, I talked about excuses  – factors you might think are holding your poker career back, but in reality, aren’t.

Today, I want to talk to you about some things that may very well be roadblocks in your way as you try to climb to the next level.

Let’s dive right in!

### Trick or Treat

(Happy Halloween!)

In softer poker games, you can become a winner with simplified strategies built on rules and tactics, which I like to call tricks.

You can do so without really understanding why certain moves work or how poker is supposed to be played in theory.

A trick might be, “3-bet light against late position opens,” “overfold to river check-raises,” or “raise pre-flop and bet twice with basically everything.”

As you move up in stakes, the average skill level of your opponents tends to increase.

Each and every trick at the poker table has a ceiling.

At some point, the players you’re up against can no longer be tricked. You have to actually outwit and outplay them.

So, if you’ve found yourself doing well at $2/$5 but are struggling at the $5/$10 tables, the first thing to ask yourself is whether your game is built on tactics or on knowledge and logic.

Here are the two most common “tricks” that I see lead people to early success before they hit a wall playing against tougher competition. Interestingly, they’re very different from each other:

Aggression, even somewhat blind aggression, works really well against many weak players. It’s hard to handle someone who’s applying a lot of pressure. It’s hard to play back an appropriate amount. It’s easy to fall into the trap of simply getting out of their way, which is precisely what an aggressive player wants.

Bad aggression can make you a winner at low stakes. Smarter over-aggression can make you a winner even in some pretty big games.

But, as you keep moving up, you’ll eventually encounter players who are skilled enough to not only handle your aggression, but to take advantage of it.

Most players in low-stakes games are too loose. Playing tight ranges against them means you head to the flop with the best hand more often than not.

Most players in low-stakes games also don’t pay enough attention to you or your tendencies, which means that they’ll still call you down with top pair even though you’ve literally never shown down a bluff.

So, nittiness works for a while. You don’t put in money bad, and you get enough action when you have the goods.

As you move up, people will soon recognize that you can be pushed around. More importantly, they’ll see that you only play good hands, and you’ll stop getting action. They will fold top pair to your double barrel. They’ll never call you down light.

All of the sudden, you’re folding and losing a lot of small pots, and you’re no longer winning the big pots to make up for it.

At some level, there’s simply no substitute for doingthe work and getting really good at the game.

But perhaps your game itself, or lack thereof, isn’t what’s making your shots at the $5/$10 tables go poorly. Maybe you have the knowledge and understanding and logical abilities to beat bigger games, but for some reason, every time you try it goes poorly.

What else could it be?

### Tricking Yourself

In an analytical, mathematical game like poker, one concept is often overlooked: The mind is a powerful thing.

There are many ways that your mind could be ruining your chances of making it at the next level. Let’s talk about a few of them.

You’ve won at your stakes for a while now. You can approach most sessions with confidence, knowing that you’re skilled enough to win.

When you move up, even if you believe you’re good enough to win there too, you can’t be sure.

You go from playing with confidence to thinking things like:

“These players are tough. I probably can’t get reads on them.”

“If I bluff here, he’ll probably figure it out.”

I call this “False Idols Syndrome.”

Your opponents, all the way up to the greatest in the world,are humans who err. Don’t turn them into gods.

What do you think happens to your execution when you have thoughts like this?

Do you really believe that you’re implementing your knowledge and skills in the same way you did in games you were more comfortable in?

I don’t.

Along the same lines, sometimes our identities can lead to bleeding confidence.

Perhaps you’ve thought of yourself as a $2/$5 player for so long that even when you step up and play $5/$10 for a week, you still consider yourself a $2/$5 player.

This is another, sneakier form of not believing in yourself.

And when you don’t believe in yourself, when you don’t trust yourself fully, you limit your strategic options during every hand you play and you interfere with the thought process that made you successful in the first place.

I’ve written a previous post about Fear of Big Pots. I’d suggest checking that out if the following resonates with you:

As you move up in stakes, the pots get bigger than you’re used to. As a result, the fear and discomfort many of us face when the money involved gets more meaningful happens much more often.

Like with FOBP occurring in 3-bet or 4-bet pots, you also might have a barometer of sorts, set by your intuition based on all of the hands you’ve played, that a certain strength of hand is worth a certain number of dollars.

That barometer needs to be recalibrated when you move up in stakes. For some of you, that’s not fully happening.

You see $500 in the pot, and think that you needtwo pair or better to put more money in.

That intuition may have served you well at the game you used to play, but now it’s holding you back and tightening you up far too much.

### What to Do

The bad news is there’s no easy fix for these challenges.

The good news is that awareness is at least half of the battle.

Recognize when you’re doubting yourself or falling victim to False Idols Syndrome.

Notice when your body tenses up at a certain pot size.

Admit to yourself whether or not you’re using tricks that work or strategies that are calculated and adaptable.

Then, keep tuning into this newsletter, and I’ll continue to share thoughts and strategies for improving your game, both by improving your strategy and your mindset.

See you next time!

---

## Why Can't I Break Through?
Date: 2023-10-24 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/why-cant-i-break-through

# Why Can't I Break Through?

Every one of us is at a different point in our poker journey.

But the one thing we all have in common is that we haven’t reached the highest level of our potential.

Many players feel that their skill level is higher than their results have shown. They feel that they belong at higher stakes, but they just haven’t been able to break through for one reason or another.

So, what might be holding you back from moving up to that next buy-in level?

I sat down to write this with some specific issues in mind, but I then realized that there’s something more important to talk about first:

What many people think is holding them back.

So, next week, we’ll dive into my initial ideas. Today, we’ll begin with some excuses.

### Excuse #1: Bankroll

“I could beat games so much bigger than the ones I’m playing in, but I don’t have the bankroll. Those players aren’t even that good. They’re just lucky they have the roll to play those stakes.”

This is the 2nd most common delusion that I hear in poker.

Is it possible that you’re good enough to beat bigger games than your bankroll will allow you to play?

Of course.

This is true for some people, but not for most who say it.

Even if it’s true for you… so what?

Your bankroll is your bankroll.

The less time you spend focused on blaming your circumstances, the more time you can spend growing that bankroll.

On a long time horizon, your currentbankroll isn’t that relevant.

Where you end up in ten years depends much more on your future skill level than your current bankroll.

Grow your skills, and the bankroll will come.

### Excuse #2: Bad Luck

“I would be crushing $10/$20 if I didn’t run so bad.”

This, of course, is the most common delusion.

The variance involved in poker makes it a game that even great players gamble on against each other, not knowing where they stand.

It’s the core of what makes poker work as a game people play for money.

It fools even the strongest and smartest of us.

Have some people been luckier than others?

Undoubtedly.

Have you been less lucky than average?

Maybe!

But guess what: Variance is here to stay.

Your past poker results may have been impacted by bad luck, and your future results might be, too.

So, you have a choice.

You can complain. You can go into each session with a negative mindset. You can throw your hands up and relinquish all responsibility for your results.

Or, you can find a way to succeed in spite of it.

### A Mindset Shift

50% of people are luckier than average, and 50% are less lucky.

In most areas, we can have a rough idea of where we stand.

I have led an objectively fortunate life. Most of you have, too, given that you’re alive and able to read this, though some have been through many more hardships than others.

In poker, I have no idea whether I’ve run above or below my expectation, and neither do you.

Your circumstances may have made getting to where you are today much harder than it should have been.

You may, on average, “deserve” a better outcome than you’ve gotten.

But focusing on that blame isn’t going to help you. In fact, it’s only going to hold you back further, multiplying the impact of whatever unfairness has taken place.

You get to choose between a victim mentality and taking ownership of your outcomes.

Your outcomes will get better if you choose the latter, but your ego will look for opportunities to choose the former.

Within poker, those opportunities are everywhere because of the variance involved.

Poker allows each and every one of us to consider ourselves unlucky if we choose to fall into that alluring trap.

### Success in the Face of Bad Luck

So, how do you set yourself up to succeed in spite of (potential) bad luck?

Simple:

Be responsible with your bankroll

Grow your edge

The frequency and magnitude of downswings you experience are directly related to how big your edge is at the table.

Growing your edge enough can makelong-standing downswings virtually impossible.

So, dismissive as it may sound, my advice for those of you who are unlucky:

Get better.

Sick of seeing some players have all the luck?

Be good enough to win without their luck.

Frustrated that your bankroll isn’t big enough to play the games you want to play in?

Get so good that reaching that bankroll is an inevitability.

Maybe you’re as unlucky as you think. Maybe you’d be ten times as successful if you caught the breaks your friend did.

But maybe your fixation on that has left you blind to your own leaks, and you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be.

Either way, the universe doesn’t care.

Whether you’re playing this video game on easy or it’s stuck in hard mode, your actions will determine where you end up.

You can sit and complain, or you can take your next step.

---

## The Value and Risk of Patience in Poker
Date: 2023-10-17 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/the-value-and-risk-of-patience-in-poker

# The Value and Risk of Patience in Poker

Patience is a huge strength.

We’ve all seen the guy who loses a big pot to a 4-outer and immediately shoves his last 7 big blinds in the next hand with nothing.

We’ve also all seen the players who maneuver a 7 big blind stack for hours in a tournament.

How can we cultivate patience?

Today, we’ll cover that, as well as a look at how patience might cost you.

Let’s do this!

### A Virtue That Can’t Be Mastered

Picture what a patient person looks like at the poker table.

You may have pictured someone calm, and confident. Maybe happy?

Now picture an impatient person.

That’s a more vivid picture.

Most of us don’t think of ourselves as that impatient person we just pictured, but rather a patient person who sometimes isn’t quite as patient as the first image we had in our minds.

“I need just a little more patience,” you might think.

This perfectly patient person we have in our mind – I believe they don’t exist in the way we imagine.

We can all be rattled. We are all impatient at times. It’s just a matter of howimpatient.

I believe we shouldn’t strive to be perfectly patient, but to be impatient less frequently and less intensely.

Expect yourself to be perfectly patient,and you’ll inevitably be disappointed.

No, I’d rather you be a little more patient with yourself.

### Recognition

Before you can work on your patience, you need to see it. You need to feel it.

How does impatience often manifest in you?

Do you get bored and distract yourself with social media?

Do you get upset that you have to fold a hand pre-flop?

Or do you play that same hand even though you know better?

Whatever signs you exhibit, take note of them, so that you can recognize them right away in future sessions.

I’d also invite you to take note of what led you to feel impatient.

Did you sleep poorly last night?

Did you just lose a big pot?

Have you folded the last 30 hands pre-flop?

Knowing what triggers your impatience and knowing how to identify it are two great first steps – not towards “conquering impatience,” which I don’t believe should be your goal, but towards feeling impatient less often, and improving your game in spite of your impatience.

### What to Do

I think that simply acknowledging impatience can go a long way.

Once you recognize it, there are a number of methods to improve it.

The method that I personally like is to close my eyes, say (out loud if I’m in private), “I’m feeling impatient,” and take a deep breath.

I find that labeling my emotion turns down the volume on it,and helps me become acutely aware of it.

When I get dealt a hand that I shouldn’t play and want to, I find that I’m more clear-headed.

Next, as I’ve discussed in my ebook Poker Mindset Strategy, having rules set for yourself ahead of time is a great way to protect your bankroll from your (worst) self.

Perhaps when you notice yourself making a play out of impatience, you take a break and a walk. Perhaps when you do it for the third time, your session is over.

Set whatever rules you decide, while calm and away from the table, will work best for you.

With rules and practices like this, you can work towards not feeling as impatient as often, and you can reduce the number of times that you play poorly (or at all) while being emotionally compromised.

### The Trojan Horse of Patience

Before we go, I want to warn you about a potential leak you may have as a relatively “patient” player.

Players with more patience have better results, no doubt, but be careful.

Sometimes fear masquerades as patience.

What do I mean by that?

Patience can involve not going broke in a spot you shouldn’t. It can involve discipline in a situation where you want to bluff, but realize it’s not going to work quite often enough to be profitable.

But fear can lead to the same thing.

I’ve seen many a player make bad, nitty plays in the name of “waiting for a better spot.”

Sure, there are settings in which it’s correct to pass up on a tiny amount of EV, usually in tournament situations. But those spots don’t come up even 10% as often as someone tells themselves they’ll “wait for a better spot.”You need to play with patience and discipline, but you also need to play with fearlessness.

Where patience prevents you from making a bad spewy play,fear prevents you from making a good risky play.

Fear might protect you from that spewy play in the same way patience does, but it’s going to cost you elsewhere.

Just like with patience, it’s not about expecting perfection and never feeling fear. And it’s not about forcing yourself to make a super-aggressive play just for the sake of it.

It’s about recognizing when fear is creeping in and impacting you, acknowledging it, and trying to reduce its effect on your bottom line.

Good luck.

I wish you all a session of being consciously, fearlessly patient.

---

## A Game of Perception
Date: 2023-10-10 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/a-game-of-perception-1

# A Game of Perception

In prior posts, we talked about how to use your reads on others to adjust.

Today, we’ll cover how to use their reads on you to do the same.

It’s actually not all that different.

Some adjustments will be obvious to you, like “I should bluff more with a tight image,” and some will be less obvious, more nuanced, and more fun!

And, as usual, I’ll have some caveats and tips for you to be aware of.

Let’s get into it.

### Building an Image

Before adjusting to your image, you need to have an image.

Should you consciously construct one?

In my opinion, no – usually not.

There are some rare situations where intentionallycrafting an image might make sense.

But they are few and far between, and I wouldn’t suggest most players attempt it. More often than not, you’ll just be making bad plays in a futile pursuit of a future edge that won’t even be there.

I prefer to play as well as possible, keep an eye on my image, and adjust accordingly.

That said, if you are going to pursue building an image, focus your efforts up front. The first few hands you play will stick out in your opponents’ minds much more than hands from the middle of your session.

As they say, you never get a second chance to make a first impression.

### Identifying Our Image

This, in my opinion, is the most important thing I’ll discuss today. I want you to avoid a very common mistake:

Over-adjusting to an image that exists only in your mind.

You get to look at your cards every hand. Your opponents, I hope, do not.

You might be making a lot of big folds, but as longas you’re not telling them, they don’t know that.

You might be bluffing a lot and taking down pots. They don’t know that either.

There is so much uncertainty and noise surrounding the frequencies that you bet, check, call, etc., at the poker table.

Unless you’ve shown down some extremely telling hands multiple times or played a large number of hands online against players tracking your stats, your opponents usually won’t have a good guess as to what you’re doing.

What does this mean for your image?

1) When playing live poker, your image will often be based more on stereotypes and generalizations than your actions.

What kind of player do you look like? How quickly do you play? How do you handle your chips?

How are you talking about poker at the table?

These are the things that your opponents are more likely to adjust to than how many hands you’ve check-folded on the river.

As far as reads based on your play, what will more likely stand out than your actual frequencies are things like:

What are your chosen bet sizes saying about your knowledge of the game?

Do you seem fearless or fearful when putting in a lot of money?

Yes, there are plenty of things people will adjust to, but how often you bluff, hero call, hero fold, etc., won’t be at the top of the list.

2) You need to be careful making big adjustments based on the way you’ve played a few hands.

It’s easy to start telling yourself stories like, “I keep running them over, and I showed down a bluff. They think I’m a maniac.”

If you put too much weight into these stories, you might make some very bad adjustments.

These stories are just guessworkabout their guesswork.

To be fair, that’s what a lot of poker and hand-reading is, but in this particular case, I think most of us are equipped with distorted lenses.

Outside of poker, when it comes to how the world perceives you, what others are thinking about your actions, and especially how much others are thinking about you, is it possible that your perception is off?

This is called the “spotlight effect” – a cognitive bias where we mistakenly believe we’re being noticed and judged more than we actually are.

Because we’re so aware of and focused on our own behaviors, we might assume others are noticing, and thinking about, things that they aren’t.

At the poker table, people are trying to observe you more than they do in everyday life, but there can still be a wide gap between our perception and reality for this same reason.

### Adjusting to Our Image

So, you’ve avoided all the biases and misconceptions listed above, and you have a good idea of how you’re perceived.

What should you do?

The main thing I’d encourage you to dois think beyond one street of play.

Yes, you’ll figure out the basic adjustments like “they think I’m a calling station so they’re not bluffing me.”

But go beyond that to think about multi-street strategies.

Let’s say you’re the only player in the game who makes big overbets on the turn and river, and you’ve shown down a few big bluffs.

This is a great one because big overbets are emotionally impactful, meaning they’re more likely to be noticed and adjusted to.

Your opponents may expect you to make a lot of big overbet bluffs on turns and rivers. Don’t overbet bluff as many rivers until you’ve shown down more value.

Your opponents fear the multi-street overbets from you, so they’re going to simply fold the flop more often to avoid facing them with weaker hands.

You should bluff the flop even more than usual!

Your opponents are excited to trap you with their big hands by check-calling the flop, so when you get raised on a flop of K♦️8❤️6♠️, it’s very likely to be a semi-bluff like T❤️9❤️.

Their normal raising range might be two pair, sets, and straight draws (simplified), but now that they slowplay two pair and sets, it’s just straight draws. Call them down!

For any particular image, think about how your opponents are likely to adjust, and play out the consequences of that on all of their ranges.

### My Image in Action

In my early twenties, I was playing a $25k WPT event at Bellagio when an interesting image-based hand came up.

It’s day one, and stacks are plenty deep.

I raise J❤️4♠️ on the button because I’m a young hotshot and think I can outplay everyone.

An old-school player calls in the BB.

Flop: Q❤️9♦️6♠️

He checks, I bet ½ pot, he calls.

Turn: A❤️

He checks, I bet 60% pot, he calls.

River K❤️

He leads into me for 60% pot.

We could discuss my preflop, flop, and turn plays, which may or may not have been good at the time, but the river is the most interesting street.

What would you do?

I have jack-high. I block the nut flush and the straight.

It seems like one of the best possible combos to bluff-raise.

But, here’s the problem – my image.

We hadn’t played that many hands together, but at this time in the game, $25k was as big as tournaments got, there weren’t that many young kids playing in $25k High Rollers, and we were all aggressive.

Further, I sensed that in the minds of the old-school pros, we were even more aggressive than that.

Even without having built an image with my play on that table, I knew how I’d be perceived due to the way I looked and acted.

I was a young online hotshot maniac idiot.

I’m the preflop raiser, and there’s an Ace, King, and Queen on the board. He’s not leading with two pair or a set.

His value bets are either a straight or a flush, and those aren’t going to fold to a raise from an idiot like me.

So, as I’m hand-reading, I realize that a raise won’t work out well for me.

His straights and flushes aren’t folding, and… wait a second…

Why would he lead into a maniac idiot on the scariest river card in the deck with a straight or a flush?

A bunch of straight draws missed, and I can even have bluffs with no draw (as evidenced by my actual hand).

What air could he have? He check-called twice, and the only flush draw got there. Literally, 87 and T8, if he decided to play them that way on the flop and turn, were the only air hands he could have. So that’s really unlikely.

But, despite not knowing his game well, I couldn’t imagine how he’d ever decide to lead with a good hand against me there.

T8 and 87 were extremely unlikely, but if good hands were impossible, what else could it be?

I called with my jack high, and I beat 87.

That’s what you get for trying to bluff an idiot.

---

## The True Cost of Free Content
Date: 2023-10-03 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/the-true-cost-of-free-content

# The True Cost of Free Content

I’ve long been an advocate of leveraging the experience of others to learn.

Tools, courses, memberships, study groups, 1:1 coaching… I’ve sought these out since the start of my poker career, both inside and outside of the game.

In fact, I currently have five coaches:

Two mental game/performance coaches

A life/career coach

A health & fitness coach

A social media coach

You could even say I have poker coaches, too, but I don’t pay them – we help each other.

I’ve also spent countless amounts on courses and other training tools.

All that to say – I practice what I preach.

But with all the free content out there, do you even need to pay for training?

What if you’re a relative beginner or playing small stakes – in poker or whatever else you want to learn?

### Abundant Resources

There’s so much free content available these days.

We’ll stick to poker since that’s likely why you’re here. How many ways are there to learn for free?

Televised poker streams are everywhere. You can watch great players play!

There are endless YouTube videos, many of which involve some element of teaching.

There are Twitch streams available 24/7. Someone is always online playing poker and showing you exactly what they’re doing in every spot they encounter.

There are Twitter (X) threads, Instagram Reels, TikToks… the list goes on and on.

I make content on all of these platforms (besides Twitch lately). Plus, I write these newsletters!

Surely I’m in favor of you consuming them if I make them, right?

Sort of.

Let’s get into it…

### The Cost of Free

For many people, there’s a line in the sand between free and paid content.

Yes, they see a difference between $5 and $500, but the line between $0 and $1 is disproportionately thick.

(People do the same thing at the poker table: Into a pot of $30, a $3 bet is almost identical to a check when comparing it to a $30 bet. Yet when that line between check and bet is crossed, it can feel much different.)

Let’s take this newsletter, for example.

I’m releasing a newsletter every week, and they’re free.

How would you feel if I started charging $1/month for them? Would you pay it?

The majority of you wouldn’t.

But why is that?

Perhaps the educational value isn’t worth $1/mo to you. Perhaps you would never pay money for written posts like these, regardless of what was in them.

However, you will spend 5-10 minutes reading my posts without thinking twice.

Let’s pretend you earn $24/hr.

Just five minutes of your time and attention is worth $2.

So why would that extra ~$0.23 per post stop you?

### Cost #1: Your Time

I’m not arguing against that line in your mind between free and paid. I just want you to start thinking more seriously about the value of your time.

Let’s say you want to learn poker, and your options are to spend:

A) 150 hours watching free Twitch streams and YouTube videos

B) $150 and 10 hours on a course that’s targeted to your needs

Most people choose A over B.

Not only do they spend $3,000+ worth of time* to save $150…

They learn less in the process.

*Yes, it’s not apples to apples. Obligatory Disclaimers:

People watch/read for entertainment, too.

You could find great free content.

You could find bad paid content.

Etc.

The point is that many people are careful with their wallets while being extraordinarily reckless with their time.

I’m not here to tell you whether or not to be frugal.

I’m just pointing out that your time is a precious resource, too.

### Cost #2: Bad Advice

Learning from free content can cost you in other ways.

What if you watch a Twitch stream from a mediocre player, and you’re led astray?

What if you watch a stream from an expert player who’s playing in conditions drastically different than your own, and they’re not explaining their reasoning because they never intended for the stream to be educational to small-stakes players?

That’s not only costing you time – it’s costing you money at the table by making you play worse or teaching you bad habits that inhibit your growth later on.

This can be extremely expensive.

Now, can it happen with paid content?

Sure.

You can get bad advice from coaches that you pay, too, but it’s less likely.

There are far fewer people making paid content, and they’re stronger teachers on average than those making free content. Plus, most importantly, they’re making a product specifically designed to teach you.

The opposite can be true of free content:

My most popular YouTube videostend to be my least educational ones.

I try and try to make videos that I think will help people improve, but the majority (and the algorithm) clearly want content that’s geared more towards entertainment.

So, finding videos on YouTube with a ton of views, and even great comments, doesn’t often lead to the best education.

Finding coaches or courses with good reviews usually will.

### Cost #3: (Lack of) Leverage

Bad content can lead you to play worse, but what about good content?

Let’s say you play $2/$5 NL, and you’re going to play around 30hrs/week for the next five years, and there’s a course, a tool, or a coach that can improve your winrate by 2bb/100…

That’s a $78,000 gain.

Not to mention:

Compounding growth and returns from the right learning path

Fewer and shorter downswings due to higher winrates

The ripple effects of that on your overall EV and happiness

Is this example overly simplistic? Yes.

Does it illustrate a very real point? Absolutely.

Investing in yourself pays dividends for years to come.

I used five years as the example above, but I’ve been playing poker for 18 years so far since I first got coaching.

### Quick Note

I feel the need to state the obvious:

In addition to making free content, I own a company that makes paid content, so I’m incentivized to tell you to spend more money.

I hope, if you’re subscribed to my newsletter, you know me well enough to know that this isn’t the motivation for this post.

There are plenty of other sources of paid content and coaching. Check them all out!

### What to Take Away

I’m not telling you that free content sucks. I make tons of free content, and my goal is to make it not suck!

There is free content out there that can help you improve.

But can you correctly distinguish the good from the bad?

And could you have learned more in a fraction of the time by parting with a few dollars?

Think about your time and money more fluidly.

Blur the distinct boundary between $0 and $1, and guard your time more vigilantly.

For example:

Did you get a return on the time you invested reading this?

---

## Conquering FOBP – Building Pots and Performing Well
Date: 2023-09-26 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/conquering-fobp-building-pots-and-performing-well

# Conquering FOBP – Building Pots and Performing Well

Hugh doesn’t like to 3-bet “bluff” with hands like 8♣️7♣️.

Let’s talk to him and get to the bottom of this.

Hugh, surely you’ve seen preflop charts, right?

“Yes”

But you don’t want to 3-bet 8♣️7♣️. Why not?

“Well… players don’t fold enough to my 3-bets, and then they call me down too much.”

Okay. So do you 3-bet wider for value with hands like A♣️J❤️?

“No”

Do you want to start doing that?

“Yeah, okay.”

Really?

“No 🙁”

Now, many of you reading this already execute a good pre-flop strategy that includes a wide enough 3-betting range, but that doesn’t mean Hugh’s problems don’t apply to you.

Let’s continue solving Hugh’s problems before we address yours.

Hugh… It sounds like you feel 3-bet pots don’t go well for you. What do you think goes wrong?

“When I 3-bet AK and the flop comes K96, I don’t get any action unless I’m beat.”

(Of course you don’t, I think to myself. You only 3-bet AK and QQ+.)

“And when I 3-bet A❤️K♠️ and the flop comes T❤️9♣️6♣️, they always take the pot away.”

Because you check with A❤️K♠️ there but bet Q❤️Q♦️?

“Yeah”

Yeah.

The reason Hugh isn’t 3-betting wider isn’t that his opponents call too often. That’s an excuse he allowed himself to believe.

Poker logic can be tricky that way.

The game is so complex, and the potential exploits so vast,that even the smartest players can fool themselves.

So, why don’t you like to build big pots?

Sorry… I mean Hugh.

Why doesn’t Hugh want to 3-bet wider?

I see three pretty clear reasons:

1) He’s not playing well in 3-bet pots

2) He’s starting with a poorly constructed pre-flop range

And, most importantly…

3) He’s uncomfortable in big pots and scared to play them without huge hands.

### Excuses

We’re excellent at coming up with excuses for implementing a strategy that makes us more emotionally comfortable.

Hugh’s logic was easy to tear down. Yours might be more believable.

But the same pattern is likely taking place somewhere in your game – a spot where you shy away from building huge pots with certain hands that are supposed to, leaving your ranges unbalanced and leading to those spots playing out worse than they should for you.

Generally speaking, the higher your skill level, the higher the skill level of your opponents. This means that your imbalances, while hopefully less obvious than Hugh’s, may be noticed and adjusted to by your adversaries.

### Bloated Pots

One of the main reasons people struggle in big pots, other than their fear, is that they’ve got their barometer for what constitutes a “stacking off hand” set based on single-raised pots.

Once a pot is inflated preflop, yes – ranges are stronger. But you’re no longer looking for top two pair to put your stack in, because putting your stack in might be 2-3 mid-sized bets.

Another reason people struggle is that they don’t have as much experience playing 3-bet pots!

If you’re 3-betting nitty and calling 3-bets tight, you’re going to be more uncomfortable in 3-bet pots. It’s self-perpetuating.

If this is you, I want you to write down, stare at, and remember this silly-sounding but accurate statement:

Big pots are like small pots, only bigger.

Ranges narrow based on action. This is true in any pot.

Stack-to-Pot ratios may change, which may require more studying to get comfortable with, if you’re not used to playing with low SPRs on the flop.

A 50% pot river bet works the same way in a big pot as in a small pot.

### What Should You Do About It?

My exact advice to you would depend on a number of things – primarily, is this coming up for you in a very specific situation (4-bet pots) or every time the pot gets big?

For now, let’s give Hugh some advice.

Obvious? Maybe.

But many people focus on the former and not the latter.

If your bankroll is large enough to handle swings at certain stakes, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re ready for them.

There’s a lot of hidden EV loss when moving up in stakes based on your execution deteriorating for reasons like we’ve discussed today.

The more you study a spot, the more comfortable and confident you’re going to feel when it comes up.

If you’re thinking, “Well, duh – I should study the whole game,” I’m saying that you should pay special attention to areas where you’re underperforming due to your emotions.*

*If it’s a spot that comes up extremely rarely, you probably won’t see the ROI to make prioritizing it worthwhile.

Gaining more familiarity with strategyin uncomfortable spots has a compounding effect.

In addition to having more knowledge about the spot, you’ll gain more comfort in it, allowing you to execute on that knowledge even better.

How should you study?

All the ways you normally do!

Training videos, a coach, hand reviews, solver work, peers.

There’s no one right way. Just dive in and get familiar!

You have to do more than study. You need to get practice!

By 3-betting more hands, even before you feel “ready,” you will get more reps in, and you’ll have more 3-bet pot hands to review and study.

You may even want to 3-bet too wide to get more reps in and to really leverage your image as a nit before it goes away!

You could drop down in stakes to get this practice, too.

### Exposure Therapy

Here’s a fun way to get comfortable with something you’re afraid of.

Let’s say your leak is that you don’t c-bet enough turns and rivers.

Drop down 1-3 stake levels, and literally c-bet every turn and every river.

This will get you comfortable with the action, and you’ll get to see how people respond. We often tell ourselves stories about how people will always call us down if they see us getting aggressive, or that people never fold certain rivers.

This is an excuse we’ve come up with to protect ourselves from doing something scary. By trying it out, we get to see!

Sure, the way people respond at lower stakes might not be exactly representative of what your usual opponents will do, but I expect it still may open your eyes.

### Reflect

Did anything in this post remind you of yourself?

The best and most experienced players in the world deal with these types of emotional hurdles.

If you think you don’t, think again.The first step to any of this is recognizing that you have an emotional leak. Until next week!

---

## How Understanding Your Player Pool Can Boost Your Winrate
Date: 2023-09-19 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/how-understanding-your-player-pool-can-boost-your-winrate

# How Understanding Your Player Pool Can Boost Your Winrate

The most iconic concept introduced to the poker discourse by the great Tommy Angelo, in my humble opinion, is that of Reciprocality.

The core idea is simple and inarguable: In order to have an edge, there must be a difference between your approach and that of your opponent.

Today, I’d like to take “doing something different” a step further.

I’m going to explain why you should actively seek to do something uncommon in the games you play.

Not randomly, but calculated.

And not so uncommon that you intend for it to stand out.

Simply opposite.

### Player Pools and “Adaptive Equilibrium”

Ever since there have been poker players – heck, ever since there’ve been people – there have been tendencies.

We all have our tendencies as poker players – even the best of us. The not-so-best of us have even stronger ones.

As you likely know by now, exploiting those strong tendencies (leaks), is how you generate a lot of value at the poker table.

Oftentimes, a leak in a player pool will lead to another one.

Let’s look at an example:

You play in a local $2/$5 game with a lot of regulars.

On the whole, this player pool tends to way underbluff the river.

Through conditioning, regulars start calling river bets as often as they used to.

This is further amplified through natural selection.

The winners, who survive and continue to play this game, are the ones who correctly over-fold to river bets.

Perhaps some of the most successful players teach their friends, or even create free or paid training content sharing their strategies. And now more and more people learn to fold the river.

The players – teachers and students – don’t need to realize they’re over-folding the river. The teacher can show others how they play, and the students or peers can emulate it without understanding why it works.

What started as a general tendency to underbluff has created a new (and strong) population tendency to over-fold, and many of the players making that good adjustment may not even know they’re making it.

This is what I’m calling an “Adaptive Equilibrium” in poker (a term that is used outside game theory, as I understand it) – a player pool is, consciously and/or unconsciously, making a good adjustment to a bad tendency, and has settled into now having these two tendencies.

### Opportunity

Any player pool tendency that is not GTO provides an opportunity for an edge.

In this case, players are not “wrong” to generally over-fold the river, but you can take advantage of it!

This is a player pool that you should be bluffing rivers against as much as possible!

And, funnily enough, you should also employ the exact same strategy that you’re exploiting – folding rivers – because the rest of the player pool won’t have made the adjustment you have.

### A Closing Window?

You might be thinking, “How long will I really be able to overbluff them?”

Nothing is guaranteed to last forever.

For the same reason that underbluffing led to overfolding, that overfolding could lead to overbluffing.

The same process of players becoming aware and natural selection can take place in the other direction.

It happens slowly, which is good for you, the astute player. You’ll see it happening over time, and you can react and flip your strategy.

For some leaks, though, things may not flip.

Underbluffing tends to come from a psychological place. Humans are usually more loss-averse than they are win-driven.

If you’re playing at low enough stakes, many players won’t be putting in the work to flip this tendency of theirs, so the player pool might continue to respond the same way indefinitely.

### Math Is On Your Side

“But,” you may ask, “Even if the player pool doesn’t entirely change their tendency, won’t they adjust to me specifically?”

My answer: Maybe!

I want you to keep in mind a few things:

Nobody at the table is going to be nearly as aware of your adjustments as you are.

You might feel like you’re going crazy, but that’s because you see your cards every hand you play, you are always paying attention to yourself, and you know exactly what you’re doing.

Nobody else at a 6 or 9-handed tableis thinking about you much at all.

They also don’t get to see many showdowns. Online, showdowns and stats will add up faster, and players tend to be more attuned to these things. However, player pools tend to be much bigger online as well.

At the live poker table, even in a small player pool, and even if your opponents are astute, they can’t see your stats, and they don’t get to see many showdowns.

It’s harder for them to notice than you think.

Many players over-folding rivers don’t even know they’re overfolding.

They’re using heuristics that tell them what a good calling hand, or spot, is.

Many of them aren’t strategically-enlightened players. Even if they’re winning, they might not understand how to adjust correctly.

If someone is folding 70% of the time to half-pot river bets, and they decide they want to call you more because “you’re a bluffer,” they might make some calls that feel looser but only get their fold frequency down to 50%.

You’re still risking 0.5 to win 1, meaning they need to adjust ALL the way down to folding 33% for you to break even on a bluff.

So often, when people are worried about others adjusting to their counterstrategy, they don’t realize how far their opponent would truly have to shift strategies in order to make the counter clearly bad.

Even if Bob in seat 6 is astute enough to get his fold frequency down from 70% against everyone else to 28% against you, you’re still barely losing money by bluffing him, and you’re crushing by bluffing everyone else.

The bottom line: Don’t let unfounded fear and anxiety lead you to shy away from a powerful exploit.

### Cause or Effect?

Why does it matter if two tendencies are linked like this in many player pools?

Because this concept shows you where to hunt for more edge.

It can be hard to notice if people are over-folding the river if you’re not tracking stats.

So perhaps the first thing you notice is that players are underbluffing. You get to see the showdowns, and you start to notice that not many bluffs are being shown.

You should first make the obvious adjustment - fold rivers.

But then you should ask yourself… “If players clearly aren’t bluffing enough, is that the cause of another tendency, or is it the effect?”

Cause: Their underbluffing (origin) causes people to over-fold

You’ve now sought and uncovered the player-pool response.

Effect: Their underbluffing (response) is a result of people over-calling

You’ve now sought and uncovered the leak origin.

When you notice a strong tendency, it should alert you to search for the complimentary leak.

Then, you go against the grain.

Be the only player bluffing in a pool that doesn’t bluff. Or be the only player folding in a pool that under-folds.

And then join the player pool by employing the exact tendency you’re exploiting.

### Takeaways

Be different, but not for the sake of being different.

Be astute, be vigilant, and let each uncovered clue lead you to the next!

I hope you’ve found this helpful, and that you’re enjoying these weekly insights. It’s more time-consuming than I’d like, but I’m having fun writing them. Until next week!

---

## What You Don't Get About Board Texture
Date: 2023-09-12 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/what-you-dont-get-about-board-texture

# What You Don't Get About Board Texture

You likely understand that a K♣️7❤️2♠️ flop is different than Q❤️T♠️7❤️.

You may view the first as “a better board to bluff.”

You might even use different bet sizes based on the board texture.

But you also learn rough heuristics to apply in-game, whether from books, by studying solvers, or on your own.

And they are failing you.

Today, we’re going to talk about why you’re screwing up and how you can apply a framework to minimize those mistakes.

### Heuristics

Heuristics are cognitive strategies or rules of thumb that simplify problem-solving by allowing for quick judgments based on limited information.

In simpler terms, they are shortcuts our brain takes to help us make decisions quickly.

Whether you actively learn and define heuristics to base your play on or not, your brain is creating them for you.

If you face a pot-sized bet on a K♠️T♠️4❤️ flop, you know that you’re not folding A♠️J♠️.

You’re capable of doing the math to figure out your odds of making a straight or a flush, looking at the pot odds, and perhaps even playing out future street potential outcomes and approximating your expected value based on them.

But you don’t need to do all of that to decide you won’t be folding. You know it without needing to think at all.

This is a heuristic. And your brain has created a whole host of them!

Despite the fact that some of them are failing you, this isn’t a bad thing. It’s a key part of the learning process.

### So, What’s the Problem?

Those of you reading this aren’t all on the exact same level. Some of you will make fewer of these types of mistakes than others. I’ve never played against someone who didn’t make some of them, though.

Let’s take a look at constructing a flop check-raise range.

We’re playing $5/$10 No Limit Hold’em. Our opponent raised from the button to $25, and we called in the big blind.

Flop: K♣️ T❤️ 6♣️

We check, and our opponent bets $25.

I’m going to ask you two questions, and I want you to answer them quickly:

What types of hands do you want to raise for value?

What types of hands do you want to raise as a bluff?

Have you got your answers?

I asked you to answer quickly because that’s what you have to do while you’re playing. Yes, you can take a minute to make a decision, but you’re also not casually reading an article at the time. You have countless other things to focus on while you’re trying to make that decision.

So. You probably came up with something that looks like:

Value:

Sets

Two Pair

Bluffs:

Flush Draws

Open Enders

Gutshots

Perhaps you got more specific than that, or there are other hands on your list. That’s okay! It’s actually good, but I wanted to keep my list simple for teaching purposes.

Maybe your heuristics lead you to raise more often when your draw has less showdown value. Perhaps you like to raise gutshots but not open-enders.

We’re, of course, not going to raise all of our value hands or all of our bluffs.

Whatever the case may be, you’ve got a group of candidates for a value range and a bluff range, and you’ll raise them at some frequency.

Do you know what percentage of your flush draws you’ll raise? Do you know the frequency at which you’ll raise a gutshot?

Probably not. I know I don’t.

Let’s move on to another hand example and then tie them together.

### Hand Number Two

Exact same spot.

We’re playing $5/$10 No Limit Hold’em once again.

Our opponent raised from the button to $25, and we called in the big blind.

Flop: A❤️ 6♣️ 4♦️

We check, and our opponent bets $25.

Quickly:

What types of hands do you want to raise for value?

What types of hands do you want to raise as a bluff?

Ready to move on?

On this flop, you’ll have noted some key differences:

The flop is Ace High

There’s no flush draw

There are fewer straight draws

For some of you, the candidates might look like:

Value:

Sets

Two Pair

Bluffs:

Open Enders

Gutshots

Again, not everyone’s list will look like this. The solver will add a lot of other hands at a low frequency, both to this board and the one above. That’s challenging to do in practice for all but the strong professional player.

And once again, you won’t be raising all of your raising candidates.

Some players might look at the Ace high board and not want to bluff against the pre-flop raiser. Others might like to trap with A6 and A4 but raise their sets.

But if I ask you at what frequency you’d raise your gutshots, would you know the answer? Or would you simply call sometimes and raise sometimes?

### Here’s the Problem

We know these boards are different.

Yet many of you will have roughly the same heuristics in your mind:

“Raising candidates are strong made hands and draws.”

Let’s look at just how unbalanced you’re at risk of being.

On K♣️ T❤️ 6♣️, your range roughly contains:

Made Hands (4%)

Sets: 1%

Two Pair: 3%

Draws (22%)

Flush draw: 6%

Open Ender: 2%

Gutshot: 14%

Whereas on A❤️ 6♣️ 4♦️, your range looks like:

Made Hands (5.5%)

Sets: 1.5%

Two Pair: 4%

Draws (6%)

Flush draw: 0%

Open Ender: 2%

Gutshot: 4%

On the second board, we have about a 1:1 ratio of potential bluffs to potential value raises.

On the first, we have a 5.5:1 ratio!

Why are the numbers that drastically different?

Because a lot of the straight draws on A❤️ 6♣️ 4♦️ get folded preflop when they’re offsuit, and there are far more combos of offsuit hands than suited.

Are you adjusting your frequencies appropriately? Are you, for example, raising draws five times less often on the first board than on the second?

Many of you will c-bet bluff much less often on K♣️ T❤️ 6♣️ than on A❤️ 6♣️ 4♦️, but will you make sure to check-raise bluff much, much less too?

Will you make sure to dig deep on the A❤️ 6♣️ 4♦️ flop with check-raises?

Many of you reading might not even dare check-raise bluff this dry ace high flop against the preflop raiser, thinking you “can’t rep it.”

You absolutely can! You have more 2pair+ on A64 than on KT6!

### That Wasn’t the Point

Now you have an idea about how you might check-raise differently than you have been on these two boards, but that example is there simply to show you how your shortcuts can fail you.

Usually, they fail you in situations where you are deciding whether or not to put in a bet or call.

You’re generally supposed to be a bit looser on draw-heavy boards, but almost all players (accidentally) take it too far.

They call a turn c-bet with Top Pair, Second Pair, and all the obvious draws.

On one board that’s 40% of their range.

On another board, it’s 65%.

On Q♣️6❤️2♠️, you should call a small c-bet with most of your Ace and King highs with no draw.

On A♣️T❤️6♣️, you should fold all of your King highs with no draw, not to mention your Queen high.

On Q♣️6❤️2♠️ K♦️, you should call a big turn c-bet with all of your 2nd pair hands.

On A♣️T❤️6♣️2❤️, you should fold 80% of your 2nd pair hands.

Why?

Well, for a lot of reasons – I’m picking boards that are very strong examples – but it has to do with two things:

The makeup of your range

How many hands you’d rather call

### Picking Your Team

Think of it like you’re drafting a kickball team on the school playground, where only half of the kids make it on a team.

Whether King High Kevin makes a cut depends on who else is there.

Kevin might barely not get picked on a normal day, but when Flush Draw Fran is home sick, you’re happy to have him.

On A♣️ T❤️ 6♣️, you’d rather call 7♣️5♣️ than K♦️9❤️.

On Q♣️ 6❤️ 2♠️, you don’t have those flush draws, so your other hands move up.

When you check call A♣️ T❤️ 6♣️, your turn range on the 2❤️ contains a lot of Top Pair Toms!

When you check call 7♣️6❤️2♠️, and the J❤️ turn peels off, you’ve got about 1/3rd as many.

These are all examples to illustrate the same point, which I want to make sure lands with you:

You need to adjust your approach based on the board.

### A Framework

It’s not so simple to rewire your brain and unlearn the heuristics you have picked up. It also wouldn’t be a great idea to try to remove heuristics altogether, even if you could.

So, if you’re going to work with those heuristics that tell you at a moment’s notice what a hand is worth, you need to be able to catch yourself and prevent the overvaluing and undervaluing I’ve been talking about.

The way I started doing this is by running through a checklist in my mind before making a decision.

Is the board draw-heavy?

Is my range strong?

If very true: Adjust my perception of what hands are worth downward.

If very false: Adjust my perception upward.

If in the middle: I already know what to do.

Eventually, over time, I’ve needed to do this less and less, because my brain has been learning to shortcut this process, too.

Brains are cool!

### Takeaways

Every board is different.

On boards with few potential draws and pairs for your pre-flop range, you have to dig deeper (in theory and in practice).

On boards with a lot of draws, you have to be tighter than you think (in theory and in practice).

Most importantly, if your opponents haven’t yet subscribed to this newsletter, you now know where they’ll be unbalanced!

---

## Become a World-Class Quitter
Date: 2023-09-05 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/become-a-world-class-quitter

# Become a World-Class Quitter

We all know that quitting sessions when tired or tilted is good.

I’m not here to tell you what you already know. I’m here to offer a new perspective and tools to achieve what you recognize you should, but often don't.

Let’s be honest:

For most of us, quitting poker sessions when we “should” can be really hard.

We all know that we should eat healthy foods. Yet, most of us struggle to eat as well as we would like to.

I’m someone who’s struggled with the discipline to quit (and to eat well, but that’s not why we’re here), which is why I’m a great person to tell you how I’ve improved in spite of it.

When a super fit person tells you, “You just do it no matter how you feel,” they’re not wrong, but that isn’t enough to change many of us.

### Reality

A number of you are not living in reality. If you haven’t read my post on performance, I URGE you to stop reading this now and go read it first.

Seriously. Don’t read on until you’ve read that. It’s pointless.

The first step is accepting reality – your skill level and abilities do not equal your performance.

The next step is preparing for reality.

### Know Thyself

Being more realistic about how we view our edges, as I covered last week, is only half of the battle.

We now need to prepare ourselves to make better decisions at the table.

First things first, let’s audit ourselves.

1)Identify your bias

Do you tend to play longer sessions when losing?

(This is most people, but it might not be you.)

Do you tend to play longer sessions no matter what?

(This is me!)

Do you want to quit after you’re up a couple of buy-ins?

Whatever your emotional leak,the first step is seeing it.

2) Identify your warning signs

We don’t always realize that we’re in a diminished state at the table. Many people don’t even stop to consider it.

What are some things that you tend to do when you’re playing a little bit too long, or tilted?

You can use these as alerts to wake you up and get you thinking about your current mental and emotional state.

Some common ones:

Playing faster

Forgetting the action

Autopiloting

Feeling angry

Getting hungry

These can be anything you can use as a trigger, not to “snap out of it and play better,” but to snap out of it and re-evaluate whether or not you should continue playing.

### Your Personal Rulebook

Right now, as you sit and read this, are you tilted? Are you exhausted?

If the answers are yes, now’s not the time to create your rulebook.

If the answers are no, then now is the perfect time to make decisions for your future self – your tired, tilted, or otherwise compromised self at the poker table.

You know your biases. You know your warning signs.

Use both of these to create some rules to protect you from your future self.

On page 21 of my e-book, “Poker Mindset Strategy,” which you’ve already received if you’re a subscriber, I go over some of these rules and the reasons behind creating them.

Next, beginning on Page 26, I share a valuable lesson on quitting that I was taught by a mentor, Tommy Angelo.

Rather than simply repeating myself (it’s free, if you haven’t gotten yours yet), I’ll share some more detail on using the above insights to create your own rulebook.

### Default Rules & Trigger Rules

Default rules are simple:

Quit anytime I’m down 10 buy-ins

Take a short break every 3 buy-ins I lose

Take a short break every 2 hours

Re-evaluate the game I’m in every 2 hours

Trigger rules are based on you catching yourself displaying one of your warning signs. For example:

When I notice I start playing too fast, I’ll take a 15-minute break and evaluate whether or not I should keep playing.

In the past, I would make the wrong adjustment here.

I’d catch myself playing too fast, and think, “Okay, Phil. Slow down,” and I would play more slowly for a while.

This isn’t the way!

Fast play may have caused a couple of extra mistakes, but making myself consciously play slower was wasting time and mental bandwidth to fix the wrong thing.

The fast play wasn’t my problem -it was a symptom of my problem.

My problem is that I was tired or tilted. And being tired or tilted comes with a whole host of other symptoms!

What I should have done, rather than slow down my play, was take a break.

During that break, I could’ve evaluated whether or not this game was worth me continuing to play in, given my diminished state.

If I thought it was, I could’ve utilized one of the boosts I talked about in last week’s post.

If I thought it wasn’t, the decision is easy: Quit!

### There’s Always Tomorrow

Whether or not the same exact game will be running tomorrow, the opportunity will be there again eventually.

If you accept that your performance combined with your skill is what creates your edge and that your performance will diminish during long and/or frustrating sessions, or on days you’re upset or under-rested, then it will hopefully become easier to make better quitting decisions.

Accept reality.

Audit yourself.

Create a rulebook.

Look out for triggers.

Follow your rules.

May the best quitter win.

---

## Performance: This Is Reality
Date: 2023-08-29 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/performance-this-is-reality

# Performance: This Is Reality

Poker is a game of logic and mathematics, and it attracts players who excel in the quantitative disciplines.

To many of them, an emphasis on topics like performance, mindfulness, and health, when it comes to poker, might sound like esoteric fluff.

Perhaps you’ve heard about players who have a pre-session routine, and you’ve rolled your eyes.

Or perhaps you’ve thought, “I should probably do that,” but have never considered it a priority.

My goal today is to share the way that my view of poker skill, edges, and performance has shifted over the years.

Let’s begin.

### Change your Perspective

You are not a favorite at the poker tables.

You are not an underdog.

This is true because we haven’t given you a lineup of opponents yet, but also because you are not always the you that you are right now.

If you’ll humor me for a moment, I want you to think of yourself as a character in a video game.

You have certain attributes that make up your abilities as a poker player:

Knowledge

Focus

Logic

Discipline

Knowledge recall

Problem-solving ability

Appropriate Aggression

Empathy

Imagine each of these on a 1-100 scale. I’ll do mine as an example:

All of these combine into your overall skill rating. Mine looks to be about an 86.

When you match your rating up to the ratings of others at the table, you determine whether you’re a favorite or not in the game, and just how large of a favorite or underdog you are.

### And Then, Stuff Happens

Over time, your rating is going to change.

Your overall poker knowledge remains the same throughout a session, but every other attribute is going to fluctuate.

Your ratings can change before a session even starts - if you have a bad night of sleep, a stressful day, or a great pre-game routine.

If we were to play this all the way out, by the way, there would be a second set of attributes that contribute to how well you retain your ratings:

Endurance

Emotional Control

Experience

Fitness

Etc.

But for now, I think you get the idea.

And that idea is that over the course of a session, most of these ratings will go down.

Perhaps you get more comfortable and can access aggression and knowledge faster one hour in. But over time, it’s likely that everything will decline.

Phil at hour two is not the same playeras Phil at hour fifteen.

He’s just not.

My Knowledge Recall will drop from an 87 to a 75. My Discipline, from a 72 to 45.

It is inevitable that my ratings are going to go down.

I accept that. I want you to as well.

### Accepting Reality

The reason I think this framing is so valuable is that it frees you from the misguided notion that you’re “a 3bb/100 winner at $2/$5 NL.”

Over time, perhaps you have been. But at any given moment, you’re almost surely something else.

If you don’t realize that, why would you waste ten minutes on a pre-session routine? Why would you take a break to stretch after four hours of play?

And why would you ever quit a game that looks better than the game that you started in?

We so often look around the table and view our edge over our opponents in a static way.

“I’m better than these three. This one guy is probably better than me. I’m about the same as the other.”

But how often do you look around that table, see that the players on par with you are well-rested and in good spirits while you’re not, and think, “I’m going to play worse than them right now”?

What may have seemed like a video game fantasy is a more accurate portrayal of reality than the delusion you’ve been living in.

### Boosting Our Ratings

Hopefully, for some of you, the impact of reality on your poker game has become clearer.So, what do we do about it?This is where practices like taking planned breaks, or a pre-game routine, come into play.If it helps you finally get on board, think of them as spells you can cast on your character to boost your ratings.

There’s no avoiding the fact that cognition declines over time.

Studies have shown that being awake for 24 hoursis similar to having a blood alcohol content of 0.1%.

But, there are things we can do to boost our ratings for a little while, especially if our ratings have declined not only because of the time we’ve spent awake, but the time we’ve spent actively engaging in a mentally draining activity, or because of emotional turbulence.

Walking, stretching, supplements, drugs, cold exposure, meditation, NSDR, and breathwork are some of the many ways to boost your performance at the table.

Whether you’re looking for a way to snap back into it during a long session, or you’re simply looking to up-level your game during a normal one, start casting some spells!

(Elliot Roe’s Primed Mind has guided audios specifically targeted to situations you might encounter in poker. I have no affiliation with the product, other than Elliot being my coach and a friend)

### Boosting Our Supplementary Attributes

Away from the table, we can work on our second, supplementary set of attributes.

By improving our ability to get a good night’s sleep routinely, we’ll start our average day with higher ratings.

By eating better foods, we’ll improve our default mental clarity and blood sugar regulation.

By meditating, we’ll increase our focus and emotional control.

The list goes on and on.

If you play poker professionally, or you have aspirations to, I’d highly recommend that you consider some of these practices part of your job – similar to studying the game or putting in hours.

If you don’t play poker professionally, well… hopefully you have a job that rewards you when you perform well, in which case improving your performance is also part of your job.

The nice thing about embracing these habits is that almost all of them have benefits that carry over into your everyday life. These are things that you’ve been wanting to do – likely meaning to do – for a long time.

### Act Now

Has your view on performance, and on the value of these attribute-boosting things changed?

If so, great!

But if you read this, think “Okay cool. I agree,” and then go back to your life as it was, you haven’t gained anything.

You haven’t really learned something.

Pick one thing right now – only one – that you’re going to implement, and start today.

You don’t need to change everything. In fact, I believe you shouldn’t.

I still don’t do everything that I mean to do, but I do more than I did last year. Next year, I’ll do a little bit more.

Improve with me.

---

## Mastering Multi-Way Pots
Date: 2023-08-22 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/mastering-multi-way-pots

# Mastering Multi-Way Pots

Does it ever feel like you always get coolered in multiway pots?

Are your semi-bluffs not working well?

Do you ever try to rep the nut flush but get called down?

Or does it feel like you never get any value when you bet?

Today, we’re going to dive deep into this one spot, both in theory and practice, and we’re going to extrapolate these learnings to other multi-way pot situations.

I’ll share some stats, some solver work, and my own advice for navigating multiway pots in practice.

This will be a bit denser than my average post, but I’ll make sure to wrap up with some actionable advice in plain English!

You ready?

## The Spot

Imagine you’re playing $2/$5 NL at your local casino.

You raise to $20 in early position with A♣️A♦️, and you get four callers.

The flop is K♠️T♠️6♣️

The blinds check to you.

WTF do you do?

What if you have A♠️Q♦️? Or 8♠️7♠️?

### By The Numbers

We all know that the more people that see the flop, the more likely it is that somebody has a good hand.

But just how likely is it?

Let’s start with some math.

On this flop, At least one player has…

Top pair or better: 69% of the time

A flopped flush draw: 42% of the time

Exactly QJ: 25% of the time

And how often will nobody have one of these hands?

10.5% of the time.

No wonder your bets are getting called!

Even if we ignore your hand and ask how often none of your four opponents have one of the above hand categories, it only jumps to 17%.

Compare this to how often a single opponent will flop worse than top pair without a strong draw (67%), and you can see why it feels so much different being up against one or four opponents.

What’s more important, when we’re sitting there with A♣️A♦️ against four callers, is that someone will have out-flopped us about 22% of the time.

This isn’t how things actually work, but let’s say we bet 75% pot on the flop. If we got called 55% of the time, and only by the strongest hand left among our opponents, we’d be beat 40% of the time, and we’d be up against a flush draw the rest of the time.

This means we would be an equity underdog with Aces after getting just one bet called!

[Note: I have no affiliation with them, but I answered these questions using ProPokerTools Odds Oracle, which used to cost $90 but is currently free through at least the end of the year because the developer is unsure if he’ll continue the project. It’s an excellent tool for you to pick up for no cost!]

### Okay. But WTF Do I Do?

What does the above conclusion tell us about how the spot should be played?

Well, the first thing I’d take away from the above is that our threshold for putting in big bets on the flop (calling or betting) should go way up.

The next thing it would tell me is that big bets are going to be tricky to manage.

Why?

The logic I would use is: What bluffs do I want to bet big with?

A♠️5♠️? Sure, I guess that works okay.

8♠️7♠️? Doesn’t feel great, because I get called a lot, and never fold out the nut flush draw or Q♠9♠️ and J♠️9♠️.

Weaker than a flush draw or an open-ender? No thank you.

And what about my value range?

I can’t even big-bet AA here profitably.So, my value range needs to become KT+.

That’s a pretty narrow value range, and also, what am I hoping to get called down by?

If I bet big, people are mostly supposed to defend with draws and KT+.

So now I need to drop to only betting sets for value? Two of which block KT really hard.

This just doesn’t feel right to me.

Let’s consult the solver.

### GTO Solutions

I ran a 4-way flop simulation in MonkerSolver, which, if you have ever worked with Monker, isn’t very fun! (I tried to run it 5-ways and, well, it didn’t go great.)

Let’s first look at what defending ranges should look like against a big flop c-bet. Are they in line with what I expected?

To sum up, the following hands have to fold very often to a big bet:

QJ, KJ, K9, weak flush draws – and even KQ should fold sometimes.

If one of the blinds leads into the preflop raiser, the preflop raiser should sometimes fold AK!

There also happens to be essentially no big bettingused on the flop when playing GTO.

How does this spot work, then, in theory?

As might be implied by my words thus far, in theory, there should be a lot of small betting in multi-way pots.

Why?

When you bet small, you accomplish two things:

You widen the range of hands that can bet for value (or protection)

You apply pressure far beyond your bet-size, because your opponents need to worry about you and each of the remaining players behind them

When looking through the strategy, here’s how I interpret the solver’s “thinking”:

Small bets allow me to bet a wider range of hands, and to apply a lot of pressure to my opponents for a low price.

I force my opponents to fold hands with outs against my 1-pair hands, and I also force them to define their stronger hands some of the time by raising.

When they don’t raise, they somewhat cap their range, while I remain uncapped, allowing me flexibility and leverage on future streets.

For most of my betting range (1-pair), I am “clearing up equity,” folding out weaker 1-pair hands and weak draws, increasing my equity in the overall pot for a cheap price.

Small bets make sense to the solver, and they make sense to me.

### In Practice

What’s best in theory-land is all fine and good, but that’s not what we encounter from our opponents at the local $2/$5 tables!

We see things like:

• 50%-100% pot bets

• Much looser calls against big bets

• People really defining their hand on draw-heavy boards (less creativity)

So, what should we do?

The first thing to be aware of ismaking sure you fold to big bets a lot.

Less than in theory, because your opponents are betting big with too wide a range, but still more than your opponents do.

You should be especially careful calling big bets with several players to act behind you. Remember, they’ve flopped a big hand pretty often!

As for the rest of your strategy, I have two alternatives for you.

### Tricky Tactics

Assuming your opponents won’t be super-focused on following your tendencies, you have some freedom with how you can respond to the average players’ leaks in these situations.

They are betting too big and too often, calling big bets too often, and they’re defining their hands too often against bets.

What? I thought we figured out that small bets are great!

Yes, we did, but one way to adjust to these situations is to not stand out from the crowd.

Use bigger bet sizes, just like them, but only bet with huge hands. Sets, some nut flush draws, and that’s about it. Check the rest and see what develops.

Most of your opponents won’t notice that you’re betting a fraction of the frequency they’re betting. It’s too hard to keep track of.

So they’ll put in too much money calling your bets, you’ll rake in those chips, and you won’t waste your money bluffing with weaker holdings or “value” betting KQ like they will.

For this approach, you only use a small bet sizing on the flop, and you can go ahead and bet all of the hands that “like” betting small. These are hands that want to thin the field and clear up equity:

AA, KQ, KJ, K9, AT, some 76, QJ, flush draws, KT.

And check your hands that want to put big money in:

KK, TT, 66, some KT

Now, you accomplish what you want to accomplish with your small bet hands, but when you have a monster, you check to let your opponents make their bad big bets.

Most opponents won’t raise against small bets as often as they should.

When you small bet TT, you’ll rarely get raised, so betting doesn’t allow you to build that large of a pot.

Yet, when you check, your opponents will often build the pot for you by betting big with KJ and the like.

When you small bet K9, you’ll rarely get raised, which is perfect.

(Keep in mind that the closer you are to being last to act, the more often you’ll still want to bet your good hands)

This is the tactic that I prefer personally.

### The Turn and River

After employing one of these two flop tactics, I’d encourage you to play “normally” on the turn and river once a bet goes in and the field has been thinned to two or three of you.

If the flop checks around, treat the turn somewhat similarly to how we’ve discussed the flop.

These are, of course, simplifications, but they aren’t too far off. As I’ve mentioned before, it’s critical to simplify your strategy.

---

## From Mistakes to Greatness
Date: 2023-08-15 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/from-mistakes-to-greatness

# From Mistakes to Greatness

Let’s begin with two questions:

How many mistakes do you make during an average poker session?

How many do you think you should make?

If your answer to question 1 is zero, you’ve got a very serious problem. You lack the self-awareness required to succeed in poker, and you’re on a path towards barely improving.

Either that, or you’re a robot, which I guess isn’t a problem if you’re cool with it.

What about question 2?

As you may have intuited by my answer above, this answer shouldn’t be zero either. Though, if you answered zero here, there’s still plenty of hope for you! You were just misinformed.

Until now.

As humans, we’re fallible. Poker, unless you’re playing something like heads up no limit with five big blind stacks, is an extremely complex game.

Not only that, but it’s a game in which you might make hundreds or thousands of decisions per hour.

How could you possibly make that many decisions without a misstep?

### Defining Mistakes

What is a mistake?

If a solver says that your hand should bet 75% pot, but you bet 80% pot, did you make a mistake?

If a solver says your hand should’ve checked, but a very similar hand should bet, is that a mistake?

The annoying answer is:It depends.

If you bet 75% with your entire betting range besides top pair, which you bet 80% with, that’s a leak that an opponent could pick up on and punish you for.

But are they going to pick up on it and punish you, or will they not notice, in which case you’ll go ahead and make a little bit more money with your top pair hands?

This is one tiny example that should illustrate the first key distinction between mistakes:

### Theory vs. Practice

I’m not going to preach a specific way that you should measure your mistakes.

Some great players strive to play as close to theoretically optimal as possible.

Other great players strive to make whatever they believe the best play is in practice in each unique spot they find themselves in.

Many great players strive for a combination of these two.

What I want to caution you against is evaluating your mistakes in whatever way you’d like at the time.

### Ego is Your Enemy

You probably don’t like making mistakes. They don’t make you feel good.

Because of that, when you’re looking back and evaluating your mistakes, you have a strong bias toward not seeing your faults.

I see so many players review hands and talkthemselves into thinking they played great.

In one spot, they had a read that made it a great bluff, even though it’s not in theory.

In another spot, they first think they might’ve made a bad calldown, but it turns out their play was solver-approved!

Now, these might have both been great plays. But they might have been terrible.

Solvers give us an objective way to evaluate our plays, but, if your goal isn’t to play exactly like the solver, they’ve also given your ego another way to justify mistakes to yourself.

Treat each hand the same when reviewing them, and you’ll be more likely to root out mistakes, which is key because…

### Mistakes Are Your Friend

If you almost never make mistakes and are satisfied with where you’re at, great! Because you’re staying there.

For the rest of us, every mistake is an opportunity to improve.

I’ve played with many of the best players in the world, and I can tell you confidently that every poker player makes mistakes. Every poker player has room to improve.

I make countless mistakes every session, and while they can frustrate me, I enjoy finding them because that means I see an opportunity to better myself.

This is true in all walks of life:

Mistakes are the best possible clueson your path to improvement.

But you have to be willing and able to use them.

The first step towards that is the willingness part – you need your ego to get out of your way.

As I said, I still get frustrated by my mistakes. I’m not fully enlightened.

But I’m always willing to see my mistakes. And after getting frustrated, I treat them as exciting opportunities to get better.

### Using Mistakes to Improve

Let’s say you’re facing a big river bet. You call and lose, and in the minute after that, you realize why you shouldn’t have called - you realize that you screwed up.

You say to yourself, “I’m such an idiot,” and you move on, slightly tilted for the next hour.

Later that night, you think about it again. “That was such a dumb call. I could’ve been up another buy-in today.”

The next day comes, and you don’t think about it again.

Will you improve from this?

Maybe, in a really tiny way.

If you face a similar player in a similar spot, you might think back to the lesson you learned here – perhaps it was something like, “Don’t call river against passive players when they need to be turning a made hand into a bluff” – and make a good fold.

But that situation will come up rarely, and more importantly, you already knew this – you realized 60 seconds after your call why you shouldn’t have. In a few months, will this painful reminder still be there, or will you make the same mistake again?

To really improve from the mistake, you need to examine it.

Like almost everything in poker, it all starts with the why.

### What Went Wrong?

You had the knowledge somewhere in your head to make a good fold. So why didn’t you?

There could be a whole host of reasons.

Maybe you were tired. Maybe you’d just gotten a distracting text that upset you.

Maybe you get excited about making hero calls and tend to find any excuse to go for them.

Maybe you simply didn’t give yourself enough time!

Maybe you were on autopilot.

At any decision point, we need to compute all of the variables in question while cross-referencing all of the knowledge we have somewhere in our heads.

Identifying what truly went wrong is the hard part.From there, you’ll know what to do.

If you didn’t understand the spot, study more.

If you didn’t give yourself enough time, take more time for big decisions.

Set yourself up to succeed.

### Reduce – Don’t Eliminate

Do we want to eliminate our mistakes? Yeah, that would be great.

But a black-and-white view of mistakes can lead you to focus on the wrong things.

Don’t try to eradicate mistakes. Try to reduce the frequency and magnitude of them.

You can’t study every spot in the poker game tree well enough to have easy access to all of that information. So, rather than study a specific spot until you have memorized it completely, start by studying many spots well enough that your mistakes won’t be big.

You can’t expect to be fully focused and in a great mood every minute that you’re playing poker, so look to increase the number of hours that you play in that state. Look to eliminate the worst of your bad states.

As my mentor Tommy Angelo says:“Lop off your C-game.”

You could do that by being a better quitter, or by taking breaks. You can work to improve your sleep, eat better, exercise… the list is endless.

But if your criteria is “will this eliminate mistakes?” you’re going to miss out on a lot of EV.

Will getting better sleep eliminate mistakes? No, of course not.

Will it, at least marginally, improve your performance, reducing the frequency and/or magnitude of your mistakes?

Absolutely.

### Winning

If you’re unwilling to consider the benefit of slightly reducing money lost by mistakes, or even worse, unwilling to admit that you make mistakes, you’re not going to start stacking up these small wins and improving yourself.

Now, some of you might be thinking, “Is Phil seriously telling me that I need to start working out every day, studying preflop play, looking at flop strategies on paired boards, meditating, warming up pre-session, tracking my sleep, breaking down my opponents’ games, avoiding my phone during sessions, quitting the game whenever I feel off, hiring a poker coach, hiring a performance coach, taking 15-minute breaks every two hours, eating clean, reviewing my past hands to find mistakes, journaling, and a bunch of other crap?”

No, I’m not.

I’m telling you that if you pick one thing that you expect will reduce the frequency or magnitude of your mistakes, you’ll start making more money than you are now.

You’ll never be perfect at the poker table, and you’ll never be perfect away from it.

But you can get a little bit better today.

---

## Simplify Your Strategy
Date: 2023-08-08 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/simplify-your-strategy

# Simplify Your Strategy

You’ve raised preflop from the cutoff 150bb deep with Q♣️T♦️. Both blinds call.

The flop comes J♣️8❤️4♣️. They check to you.You begin to think about all you’ve learned about the spot.

“Okay, I have a gutshot + overcard + club blocker. This is a good betting hand. I block continues, I have equity, and I can barrel on lots of turns and rivers.

Or would I rather check back because I can defend against small turn probes? Plus I can delay c-bet, or even raise a turn bet?

Or wait, is this a spot that they should bet big on turn or small? I know I looked at a spot like this, but it was heads-up to the flop – not three-handed…

No, I should bet. I remember hands like this usually bet.”

Then, you wonder: Should I bet big or small?

“What is the pot size? I raised to $80 and they both called. No ante. $240.

I think I split sizings against one opponent but should I only bet small against two opponents?

I’ll bet…”

Hang on a sec!

Firstly, well done on having all of those thoughts. Good stuff.

Have you had time to think about your opponent’s tendencies? Or your image – what they think of you?

Do you recall whether or not they check-raise the flop too often, or if they fold too much against turn cbets?

Did you pick up any reads on either of them? Do either of them seem unfocused or tilted?

I guess, since I could hear all of those thoughts going through your mind, I know that you didn’t have time to think about these things.

And that’s a problem. Trust me.

### Winning Poker

As I mentioned in my post about not playing like a solver, most of the money you’ll make at the poker table will come from exploits – from making reads on your opponents and then adjusting your strategy accordingly, sometimes in a major way.

These reads can be momentary reads (He looks like he’s weak here!) or historical reads (She calls down way too much).

In order to remember historical reads, to notice momentary reads, and to logically deduce the right adjustment based on them, you need to pay attention to those things!

If you’re spending time and energy trying to figure out whether or not your hand is a good betting hand, or which of your three flop bet-sizes you want to use, you’re taking from your ability to do these, frankly, more important things.

You need to unburden your brain andbe able to find hugely profitable exploits.

You need to have less mental baggage if you’re ever going to reach a flow state.

So – what can you do about it?

### System Shift

Psychologist and Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman describes two different ways the brain forms thoughts, as detailed in his book "Thinking, Fast and Slow."

He calls them “System 1” and “System 2.”

These aren’t physical parts of the brain, but rather conceptual models for understanding how our mind operates.

System 1 is like your brain's autopilot. It's super fast, automatic, and doesn't need you to tell it what to do.

Now, System 2 is your brain's grandmaster. It's slower, more careful, and doesn't do anything without you being fully aware of it.

These two systems work together to help us navigate the world. System 1, with its speed and intuition, helps us make quick decisions and respond to our environment rapidly. System 2, on the other hand, allows us to deliberate, plan, and make more complex decisions.

### System 1 vs. System 2 in Poker

When it’s folded to you on the button in your game of choice, do you have to consider what size you’re raising to? Do you have to contemplate how to grab your chips or click the raise button?

Hopefully, you don’t, in which case, these things are System 1.

But, at some point in your poker journey, raising the button wasn’t so automatic. You didn’t know if you wanted to limp, or what size to raise to. You had to count your chips or figure out how to move the slide. It took some real thought – System 2!

This goes to show you that you can move things from System 2 to System 1 over time.

Now, one of the ways you do that is simply with practice, and it takes time. But we can fast-track it!

### Simplify

If PIOSolver tells you that the optimal strategy is to use three bet sizes on the turn, does that mean you should?

If you compare a solver output with multiple sizings to one that only has one size, you’re usually going to see that reducing to only one size will cost you some EV in theory.

My take: Who cares?

I’ll take that EV loss every day if it means less study time, fewer mistakes, and, most importantly, more opportunity for my brain to work its magic during a poker hand!

Further, that fractional EV loss is rarely going to exist in practice. In theory, if your opponent knows they’ll only face 35% pot on the turn instead of a mix of 35% and 100% pot, they get to check a range that is well equipped to face 35% pot and relatively less equipped to face 100% pot.

In practice, most of your opponents either won’t know your strategy, won’t think about the impact of it, or won’t know which hands to shift from bets to checks and vice versa even if they do understand it.

### Fewer Leaks

The best reason to simplify your strategy is so that you can fast-track getting more of your System 2 thought process into System 1 so that you have the mental bandwidth to find big edges.

The second best reason is that you’ll make fewer mistakes.

Those astute opponents who might know how to claw back a fraction of a big blind in EV by facing only one size are nothing compared to the excellent hand-readers who will spot holes in your story and make +10 big blind EV hero calls against you.

If you have two sizings on the flop, turn, and river,that’s eight different betting ranges to balance.

Not to mention the countless other ranges that involve checking at some point in the hand!

There’s essentially no chance you’re going to be balanced regardless, but the more ranges you need to juggle, the easier it is for a tendency to create a huge hole in your game.

As soon as you develop the habit of betting a certain size on the flop with a specific hand, and then your turn heuristics tell you to only overbet a certain hand category, and so on… you’ll end up telling stories that don’t make sense from time to time.

This is where a true shark will tear you apart.

### Bandwidth Is Key

Of all the points above, the one I really want to hammer home is the importance of freeing up as much of your mental bandwidth as possible at the poker table.

I think that players with no understanding of optimal play can far outperform players who routinely study solvers if the studious player is spending all of their energy trying to recall and implement solver strategies. This is even more true in large-field tournaments or small-stakes cash games, where most of the money will come from exploits.

The best players will study solvers so much that their fundamentals become automatic.

Or, if they take my approach, will study enough with simplified strategies that their fundamentals become automatic (much faster).

Either way, you need to give yourself the freedom to deviate from what you’ve studied, and you need to give your mind the space to process as much as possible in the moment.

Poker isn’t football or basketball – it’s not a true sport.

But it is a mind sport.

In mental and physical sports, it all comes down to performance.

You can have the most poker knowledge in the world, but if you can’t perform in-game, you’ll be outplayed.

Free up that bandwidth and perform like a champ.

---

## Don’t Play Like a Solver (But Think Like a Solver)
Date: 2023-08-01 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/dont-play-like-a-solver

# Don’t Play Like a Solver (But Think Like a Solver)

I began my poker career long before the advent of solvers.

As a result, I’ve talked to and played against many of the best in the world in both the pre-solver and post-solver era of the game.

Among my peers, I’m relatively vocal and passionate about not playing GTO. I’ve tweeted about it, and made videos about it, many times. As such, I think I’ve often come across as “anti-GTO.”

It’s true, and it’s not.

I come from a world where so many of my peers are GTO experts, and many believe it’s the key to success.

Through that lens, I’m “anti-GTO.”

But, as I tweeted and especially as I made videos on YouTube, I got to read comments from many who aren’t high-stakes poker players, and I realized that they were misconstruing my sentiments.

Or, more accurately, I was failing to explain them well enough.

Many people watching my YouTube videos and reading this haven’t even done one hour of solver study.

When you’re approaching my words from that perspective, they land differently.

Today, I want to talk to you about:

The importance of solvers

Their strengths

Their limitations, and

How I believe great poker should be played

I don’t want the fact that I rarely attempt to play a GTO strategy to be your excuse to be lazy.

The path to becoming great at poker, in my opinion, should include studying with the most powerful tools available to us. Right now, those are solvers.

When it comes to how you study and implement what you’ve learned, that’s where I have some passionate opinions that go against the mainstream GTO-centric approach.

### The Strength of Solvers

Solvers are extremely powerful.

Back when I was learning poker, we had equity calculators. A few years later, slightly more advanced equity calculators, as well as some push-fold calculators which required you to manually enter everyone’s stack sizes and calling ranges.

Eventually, a tool came out that allowed you to manually solve certain situations. It was called StoxEV (then rebranded to CardrunnersEV), and it was so time-consuming to use that I never touched it.

In essence, we were all just guessing at what good strategy was, based on books, equity calculations, and experience.

In today’s game, solvers offer you the “right answers” to almost every possible situation you might find yourself in.

That’s huge!

The biggest impact solvers have had on the modern poker game relates to bet sizing.

They’ve completely changed our understandingof what bet sizes are appropriate.

We’ve gotten used to a lot of small betting. Some of us even understand why it’s good!

We’ve gotten more comfortable with overbetting. It’s not just Prahlad Friedman doing it anymore.

The game has changed a lot, no doubt.

### The Weakness of Solvers

Poker is a complex game. And that’s an understatement.

Let us not forget that computers could beat humans in chess long before they could beat humans in poker.

There are thousands of ways for a board to run out.

Multiply that by all of the ways that the betting could unfold, and you’ve got a game tree that is absolutely massive.

The solver is, in some ways, too good.

It creates entirely different strategies based on extremely subtle differences.

It might bet the 5❤️ turn 90% of the time for 25% pot and the 6❤️ turn 20% of the time for 75% pot in a spot where they look pretty darn similar to our measly human brains.

The solver knows how to handle every single spot.

But we, as humans (shoutout to all the AIs reading this, too!) aren’t capable of seeing all of the subtle nuances.

Even if we were, we wouldn’t be able to memorize the strategies for each individual branch of the game tree on each specific board texture.

The solver thinks forwards and backwards.

If you memorize the perfect flop c-bet strategy, but you fail to execute the turn or river strategy on each and every turn card, how perfect was your flop strategy, really?

The solver has hands betting specifically because they are required to bluff or defend properly on certain runouts and after specific lines of action. If you miss those, that flop bet may not have been so good after all.

We are not omniscient. We can’t execute like a robot can.

Humans are solvers’ #1 weakness.

When we try to copy solvers, we inevitably end up getting things wrong. Even a small failure in execution can invalidate the parts we got “right.”

### How to Study With Solvers

From the answers and overall strategies a solver offers us, we can infer reasoning.

This is the key.

We have to apply human-logic-based frameworks to allow our human-logic-based brains to retain the information that is valuable for our execution.

It’s not valuable to know that the solver prefers 33% pot bets on a specific turn card after a specific flop and a specific line of action. It’s valuable to understand why.

You shouldn’t try to play like a solver.You should learn to think like a solver.

Once you do, you can find yourself in any possible spot in the game tree and end up with a decent guess at a strategy that is close enough to optimal (aka not losing much EV).

If you understand the concepts behind solver plays, you can execute a strategy that aligns with those concepts.

I like to learn solver logic and then simplify my strategy as much as possible to give myself the ability to think more clearly and deviate more easily.

### When and Why You Should Deviate

Against competition weaker than you, many of these situations where you should intentionally deviate from optimal strategy will be obvious to you. In my humble opinion, opting to stick to your flawed approximation of optimal strategy in cases like this is a massive mistake.

If you’re confident your opponent isn’t bluffing, why would you call a hand that only beats bluffs?

If you know your opponent’s range is too weak, why wouldn’t you attack that?

There are, of course, more nuanced exploits – checking back the flop because of your opponent’s turn and river tendencies on specific boards. Value betting a hand that has no business value betting because you’ve eliminated parts of your opponent’s range due to their bet sizes and past showdowns.

I discussed exploits like this last week.

Exploits are where the real fun and big edges are.

Now, against competition closer to your level, should you attempt to play GTO?

This is more debatable, but I would still say no, for the same reasons as above.

If you resign to play in a way that’s simply attempting to reach equilibrium, you are putting blinders on – deciding not to look for holes in your opponent’s game, which frees them up to find the holes in yours.

And trust me – there are always holes.

If you won’t adjust, they get to truly pounce on your weaknesses. Like boxing against someone who won’t counterpunch, they can drop their guard and attack with everything they have.

### Just Play

At the end of the day, when you find yourself at the poker table, it’s just you, the other players, and your chips and cards.

Humans are not solvers. They’re not even close.

In order to gain the big edges that come from exploits, you need to give yourself the freedom to try!

And to trust yourself with that freedom, you need to understand optimal strategy.

This is why you shouldn’t just skip the part about learning what optimal poker looks like because “you’re not going to play GTO anyway.”

A friend who’s a keynote speaker told me, “Once you really know your speech, you can go off-script and improvise as much as you want because you’ll always be able to find your way back.”

The same is true about your poker strategy.

> “First you learn the instrument, then you learn the music,then you forget all that shit and just play.”Charlie Parker

“First you learn the instrument, then you learn the music,then you forget all that shit and just play.”Charlie Parker

If you’ve prepared well and you understand the fundamentals of the game, you will be armed with the knowledge to know where, when, and how to deviate.

At the tables, you won't find yourself in a flow state if you're just trying to recall memorized strategies.

When you've prepared yourself well and can eliminate distractions, sometimes you will.

This is where the true magic happens.

---

## Expert Exploits: From Reads to Adjustments
Date: 2023-07-25 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/expert-exploits-from-reads-to-adjustments

# Expert Exploits: From Reads to Adjustments

Last week, we discussed how to develop reads – a critical step in exploiting your opponents’ weaknesses, AKA the most lucrative part of the game.

Developing the reads is, in my view, the grunt work. It’s time-intensive, often tedious, organizational, and hard.

Turning those reads into exploits is the fun, creative, and exciting part of our job as master exploiters!

Now, that doesn’t mean it’ll be easy, but that’s why we’re all here.

We’ll start with the more straightforward principles and move towards the really fun stuff as we go. Buckle up!

### Find The Biggest Weaknesses

Once you’ve developed a list of reads on an opponent, go through them and figure out which of their leaks is the largest.

If you’re playing someone heads-up, you might be able to go after all of them, but in a ring game with several opponents to keep track of, you can’t expect to have mapped-out adjustments for every leak of every opponent.

Focus on where you’ll get the most return on your investment (of attention and brain-space).

Keep in mind that a weakness might be a range strength.

If your opponent double barrels with way too strong of a range, that’s a leak. And you exploit that leak, primarily, by folding.

That said, there are often several ways to adjust to a specific leak (or a collection of leaks), and it’ll be our job to pick the most impactful.

We likely won’t have the time or memory to gameplan the six ways we’ll adjust to each of five leaks from eight different opponents.

So, we pick one or two key ways to adjust to one or two key leaks, and otherwise, we just keep the leak in mind. It may come in handy for us to think through a novel situation on the fly.

Let’s get into an example…

### Direct Strikes

Let’s take our above opponent, who continuation bets the turn with way too strong of a range.

We’ve picked that as our main leak to target. Now let’s come up with a couple of ways that we’ll adjust:

Nice and easy. This is what I’ll call the direct strike.

The turn c-bet range is too strong, so we fold more against it.

Another semi-direct strike would be:

If our opponent’s turn betting range is too strong, they have far fewer bluffs to choose from on the river than they’re supposed to.

So, unless they do something crazy, their river betting range has to be too strong, too. You can attack that by folding to more river c-bets.

Notice that I said “attack” by folding.

It’s so important to view these exploits as the attacks on your opponent’s EV that they are. When a range is too strong, many players will shrug and think, “Welp, can’t do much to exploit this guy,” and they don’t get excited.

Not me – I’m pumped to fold the river to a nit.

Whenever you get to fold a hand that you have no business folding in theory, you’re making money by losing less.

When the roles are reversed, and they have two pair against your set, they’re going to call the river and lose 20 big blinds. You’ll find the hero fold, which you need to think about as making you 20 big blinds.

### Indirect Maneuvers

If the above examples are direct strikes on our opponent’s leak, what’s an example of an indirect one?

Well, let’s assume this opponent has a normal enough preflop and flop c-bet strategy.

That means their turn c-bet frequency is going to be low.

Why?

If their range for getting to the turn is normal and their range for betting the turn is way too strong, that means that they have to be missing some turn c-bets with weak hands.

So if their turn c-bet frequency will be low, what kind of indirect maneuvers can we make to take advantage of that?

(For clarity’s sake: Let’s also assume our opponent is in position, so we can get specific.)

We could:

Call flop with weaker bluff-catchers.

Float flop with more weak draws to bluff river.

Skip flop check-raise semi-bluffs and check-call instead.

Bluff more and check more value on rivers.

I could go on, but let’s stop here and make sure you understand how each of these takes advantage of our opponent’s strategy.

If you haven’t figured them out yet, take a few minutes to consider them and formulate a guess before we move on.

Even if your guesses are going to be bad – just try. It’s good practice for you, and you’ll improve over time.

Okay, let’s continue…

All of these take advantage of the fact that we will face fewer turn c-bets than we’re supposed to, and they’ll be from a strong range.

These weaker bluff-catchers get punished by turn barrels from value and bluffs, but since our opponent is skipping most of the bluffs, we’ll get to see more showdowns with these pairs than normal.

We’ll be allowed to see more rivers than we’re supposed to in theory, and the range that checks back the turn will be weaker than it should be. So we get to realize more equity and bluff more effectively on the river.

Why will it be weaker? More on that soon.

Normally, we check-raise semi-bluffs to win the pot against weaker parts of our opponent’s range.

When we run into the stronger part of their range, we’ve put in more money than we hoped, but it’s the price we pay.

Not anymore!

Now our opponent is going to tell us on the turn whether they have a strong hand or not, and we get to avoid putting in too much money against those hands, get to realize more equity in the check-call line, and get more profitable bluffs on the river after the turn goes check-check.

The above examples include planning river bluffs with flop check-call hands, but I want to separate this out to be clear.

All of those potential turn bluffs that your opponent misses go into their check-back range.

That means that the check-back range has more potential bet-check-bet bluffs.

Bluffing against this weakened range should work nicely, and checking more hands to induce river bluffs could too, especially when they fold too often to your value bets.

### Zoom Out

What we learned in these last few examples is a key concept:

Every branch of poker’s game tree is interconnected.

If one range gets stronger, another range has to get weaker.

When our opponent skips c-betting most of their weak hands that they should c-bet on the turn, there is nothing they can do to avoid weakening their turn check-back range.

(Unless, of course, they want to start mucking their weakest holdings before even seeing the river!)

Whenever you spot a leak, zoom out and identify the impacts of that leak on various ranges. There will always be a consequence, and sometimes the consequences aren’t so obvious.

I’m pumped to fold the river against a nit.

In the example above, it was clear how to “attack” our opponent’s strong turn c-bet range directly. We just fold.

But some leaks won’t offer openings for high EV direct strikes.

It’s possible for players to have a robust, well-balanced betting range while still leaking. It’s harder to figure out how to beat them, but that’s our job. Let’s get into an example.

### A Tough Leak to Crack

We’re now up against an opponent who c-bets the turn too often.

They accomplish this by:

Never slow-playing or pot-controlling on the turn.

Betting too thinly for value, and

Adding the appropriate number of bluffs to that range.

Could we find a direct strike against this opponent?

Not really.*

*We could probably expand our turn value check-raise range slightly to attack their thinner value, but this will add negligible EV.

Despite betting at the wrong frequency, our opponent has a pretty balanced and relatively strong betting range.

But, wait!

Are there any indirect maneuvers we could deploy?

Yes!

Firstly, we can reverse a lot of the flop adjustments from our previous example opponent, because we’re now going to face too many turn c-bets rather than too few.

So we should over-fold the flop with some of our weaker made hands and other floats, and we should check-raise other draws more aggressively, since they are now losing EV as flop check-calls.

Now we’ve got our opponent c-betting the turn into a range that we’re happier facing c-bets with.

But, the highest EV adjustments we can make come on the river.

Whenever you spot a leak, zoom out and identifythe impacts of that leak on various ranges.

Our opponent isn’t just a little bit capped when they check back turn – they’re entirely capped. They are never checking back even a pretty good hand on the turn.

They built that powerful, aggressive turn c-bet strategy by utilizing valuable hands that should be in their turn check-back range.

This means, barring huge changes to the board, we can go nuts on the river.

We get to value bet thinner and bigger.

We get to check-raise thinner and bigger.

And we get to add more bluffs to these ranges to capture EV.

If your opponent bets flop on J♠️7♠️3❤️ and checks back the K♣️ turn, and they never have J9 or better, when the 2❤️ river peels off, you can, for example, bet 500% pot with J9!

It sounds crazy because it’s a very strong adjustment (and a safe river), but it’s truly part of a good counterstrategy.

### Takeaways

Your opponent managed to c-bet the turn too often while still constructing a turn c-bet range that was fairly robust.

You can’t do that without a cost.

You have to pull those range resources from somewhere.

If you’ve taken anything away from this, please open your mind to the domino effect of poor range construction and the world of possibilities it opens up for you – the master exploiter.

Have fun out there.

---

## Expert Exploits: Developing Reads
Date: 2023-07-18 · URL: https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/expert-exploits-developing-reads

# Expert Exploits: Developing Reads

The biggest edges in poker don’t come from perfecting GTO play. They come from exploiting your opponents’ weaknesses.

Identifying those weaknesses is no easy task, and figuring out the right adjustment once you pinpoint those leaks is even tougher.

In fact, I would say that this skill set has been my most valuable asset as a poker player.

Let’s walk through the first steps involved in becoming a master exploiter.

### Spot the Leak

Before you can pounce on a vulnerability, you need to know what it is!

How you accomplish this depends on what type of poker you play. It’s a much different process online than it is at the physical poker table (aka live poker).

In either case, the key to success is being observant.

### Online Review

Online, you can see hands even when your opponent mucks at showdown. You can usually save hand histories, which you can import into a database and analyze a myriad of statistics.

Stat analysis is the key online.

You can find out where your opponent overfolds, where they call too often, where they don’t bluff enough. The possibilities are endless.

Your primary limitation is how much time you have to study each opponent.

### Live Poker

Live poker is much different. Any attempt to estimate statistics based on observation (without tracking) is something I’d advise against.

I can’t tell you how many sessions I’ve played online and thought, “Man, he’s really c-betting the turn a lot,” only to find out, when I checked the actual stats, that I was completely wrong.

Our minds play tricks on us.

They remember the times we were faced with an action that we didn’t want to face. They remember actions that frustrated us, and they amplify them.

What’s worse is that these stat estimates will be over small samples, and we don’t get enough corroborating evidence to reach conclusions we can trust.

Did he check-raise the flop three times recently because he’s bluffing a lot? Or did he simply run hot?

Or maybe he ran hot, and he is check-raising too many value hands! Jumping to conclusions is a great way to make terrible (expensive) adjustments.

If we can’t trust our perception of their frequencies, what can we rely on?

You guessed it: Showdowns.

There’s no evidence more reliable than seeing your opponent’s cards at showdown. There’s no guessing – you know exactly how they played those cards on that board. And, in time, you’ll learn how they play other hands.

Did they miss a few obvious bluffs in a row? Did they value bet way too thinly? Did they use a nonsensical bet size for their hand?

There’s so much you can learn from showdowns.

### Behavior

Last but not least, you can pay attention to the way a player speaks and acts.

Plenty of players, even good players, love to talk poker at the poker table. When someone checks back a good hand on the river and says, “I just thought you were going to check-raise again,” or, “I was scared of that ace,” that’s insight into how they think!

You can also often see how easy a decision is for certain players.

Maybe they tank-call river with a hand that’s an obvious call, indicating that they’re likely overfolding that spot.

Maybe they think for a long time before finally checking back top pair good kicker, indicating that they thought it was close between a value bet and a check.

Looking beyond the way they played their hand is key. You’re trying to figure out how they play and how they think.

Especially at live poker, you won’t play enough hands that you’ll have strong reads on an opponent in every spot, but once you know how they think in certain situations, you can extrapolate and make some pretty good guesses about how they think through others.

### Play, Thoughts, Emotions

As humans, we’re driven by our thoughts and emotions.

Thoughts may be comprised of what we’ve learned from studying, watching training videos, talking with friends, and playing the game.

Emotions tend to be more innate, specific to each person.

When I’m speaking about emotions, what I really mean is a player’s emotional drivers.

Our minds play tricks on us. They remember actionsthat frustrated us, and they amplify them.

In all of gambling, there’s the excitement of the win and the fear of the loss.

The scale to which someone is driven by each of these varies from person to person. In poker, it can get even more specific.

Some players are terrified to bluff, while for others, there’s nothing they love more than winning a pot they “didn’t deserve” to win.

Some players, once a pot gets big, they try as hard as they can to win it. Others mainly bluff at small pots and shy away from the more expensive bluffs.

Some players are afraid to bluff but happy to call down light.

This, by the way, was my natural state before working very hard on overcoming it. I was more interested in outsmarting an aggressive player than running over a nitty player.

The point is, everyone has different emotions coloring the way they make decisions at the table.

Don’t just limit your profiling of them to basic strategy weaknesses. Build a psychological profile! Really try to figure out what each player thinks and feels.

### Supporting Evidence

Once you have some theories about an opponent, see if you can back them up, not only with more examples of your precise read, but with evidence elsewhere that might support it.

Here’s an example:

Let’s say that you think someone doesn’t c-bet bluff turns often enough.

Every time you see a showdown where they bet the turn and had a value hand, that’s evidence in support of your theory. Every time you see a showdown after they bet the turn with a bluff is strong evidence against it.

But this is the obvious, level 1 evidence. Let’s go a step deeper.

Let’s say that the player raises out of position, bets flop, and checks turn. When they face a bet, they quickly fold.

Well, that was likely a hand that they could’ve bluffed! So that check-fold supports your theory.

Looking beyond the way theyplayed their hand is key.

On the other hand, let’s say that you see them check-call turn in that same spot, and then show down a slowplayed hand. This isn’t evidence that they will bluff turn, but might you be able to remove some value hands from their turn betting range?

If someone misses 20% of bluffs and 20% of value bets, their range is still going to be roughly balanced (the exact math depends on bet size, among other things).

You have to look not only at the exact situation you’ve made a read on, but at the lines that correspond with it.

If someone misses turn bluffs, their betting range gets stronger and their checking range gets weaker.

This is how you would approach it online as well.Let’s say that we have the exact same read. If the turn c-bet percentage is lower than normal, that’s evidence that he’s missing bets with some hands – probably bluffs, like you suspect.

After he checks turn, does he fold to a turn or river bet often? If so, that’s more corroborating evidence.

After he bets turn, does he bet river often? Does he call river often after betting turn and checking river? More corroboration!

### Where to Go Next

Whether you’re studying your opponents’ stats online or making showdown-based reads at the live poker table, you need to keep track of them.

It may feel like you understand all the reads you’re making at the moment while you’re observing things, but you’re going to forget!

Take notes.

Take notes on your computer, on your phone, or in a notebook for all I care. Just take notes!

Once you’ve got some well-developed reads, the magic begins.

---