For our milestone episode, I talk with old friend Steve “ChipXtractor” Catterson. I met Steve through the defunct Red Chip Poker forum, and we have been more or less in touch since.

Steve and I go over some stories, but it seems to me that the present in this case is more interesting than the past. Steve is working on his game and that means becoming more interested in the game. Teaching, in turn, makes me more interested in the game. The reason for all this is that when we see what is possible or what we have been blind to, the world regains its color. I’m obviously not just talking poker here. The way to overcome loss is to see what still lives and what you have been missing from the bigger picture.

Less seriously, it’s fun to hear hand histories from South Point, which can be a fun, popular local’s place. Soon Steve will be moving up from the cheap seats and will get involved with the notorious shit regs of the “Jewel.” Good luck with that.

Here’s the hand discussed:

The theme of this podcast is sociability. From Steve’s angle, poker is a part of one’s real, physical, meaningful life. Otherwise hard-tack players need to remember that. I regret my many rudenesses at the table and have been trying to make up for them for some time. For those currently embracing misery and its spread to others, I suggest you rethink your approach. You don’t have to embarrass that old guy who doesn’t want to show his cards. You don’t have to fight over who straddled when. You don’t have to wander the room looking for exact right game to worsen.

Thanks to Dean for all his work on the pod. Thanks to Porter, Julie, Burge and anyone else who put in some editing time. Congratulations us.

If you want to join Steve in relearning the game, use the coaching link or email me.

Have a great week,

Chris

The post PZ100: Poker as Social Good, with ChipXtractor appeared first on Out of Position.

As we roll into 2025 it’s well worth checking in with Zoo member Jason Burge, aka Jambasket. He’s a tough online winner in the active Michigan online games but is also a hidden superhero on Twitter (I’m not calling it X, c’mon), where he trolls the hell out of poker’s puffed-up personalities and various engagement beggars.

Students in the Zoo have a lot of questions about how to Jambasket, so we go through them all. Should be valuable for the aspiring: how do you make a living in your underwear these days?

We also talk poker culture. One thing that’s important this month is the Global Poker Awards and their coming award show on February 22. Anyone (who is fair) can see that Eric Danis and company do a pretty damn good job overall. I have no complaints and enjoy helping out by voting. Because the awards are really the promotional arm of a poker business rather than some non-aligned committee, it’s easy but incorrect to get upset when some corner of the industry isn’t included or perhaps is passed over.

One of those debatable corners is the podcast scene, where the usual suspects keep shuffling in and out of the finalist nominations. Those selected are worthy candidates who serve the needs of the poker industry. Yet one of the few podcasts of any real lasting worth, Sessions, isn’t likely to ever make it out of the first round, never mind win the award itself. Jason and I talk lightly about this problem for a bit.

After seven seasons of diary-meets-storytelling, Billy is still in a tough spot, but he continues to stretch out a grand story arc. His is not really a podcast in the sense GPI voters mean, but a kind of oral history, one which represents an entire vein of the culture. It’s hard to compare Sessions to a half-hour interviewing the latest tournament donkstar, in other words.

Jason and I also go over the recent Faraz Jaka queen-nine of diamonds hand, tournaments in general, and a few other fun things as well.

Jason has made several appearances on the Zoo, here’s another one to check out.

He also has a series of amusing trip reports documenting his days in Las Vegas, check them out through searching my website. Here’s one.

Hope you enjoy this one as much as I did.

Thanks,

Chris

The post PZ99: Jambasket FAQs, GPIs, MTTs, & LOLs appeared first on Out of Position.

The five things you need to do to win in 2025. The roadmap to poker success in 2024. Three tips for crushing poker in 2023.

They do it all day, every month, every year, but what if we turn them on their head and listen carefully:

You’re not winning 20 bbs/hr at your live game because you didn’t listen to us. You’re not trading pots with NL500 regs because you didn’t take our program. You’re not heads up because of our ICM class that you skipped.

Sirens, our poker masters, yet sirens who compete heavily for our sailors. The proliferation of information and poker knowledge has never been greater, and so the big poker educators say with more and more confidence and more and more fear, we have the way to win. A few authors pitch in, too: look at this fresh batch of Poker for Dummies.

I’m sure they all bring some value. Yet the exact same people say, out of the other side of their mouth, that only a select few actually win. In other words, come to be vetted and culled. Is this how coaching should work?

If all these poker educators are doing their advertised job, we should, by 2025, be seeing the Great Evening of Poker, where win rates plummet and loss rates improve, but the evidence is not clear. Instead, the migration to tournaments may be the ultimate expression of the Evening and its tighter margins, where more and more money is agreed to be flushed out of the player pool and into the supportive but parasitical industry. Hey, here’s a mystery bounty, dummy! Come over here!

My win rate, for instance, is the same now as it was then; the Evening of Poker is not affecting me in some respects. In fact, certain faces never seem to leave, while newbies come and go like the tide. Moreover, the primary public-facing success of the poker industry, the story of the tournament luckbox semi-genius, continues its tale of an unstated minimal return floated by an increasing volume of staking cattle-calls. Further, while the channels do change, the themes do not: just as we once loved Andrew Neeme’s tour of how soft 5/10 Vegas was, now Marc Goone fascinates us by showing deep 5/5 games which seem to be as full of fish as the Hudson was in 1609.

So how do we resolve the essential contradiction of the poker educators, who break the rule of good business and prefer to promise more than they can deliver? After all, the best students are those already destined to win, but they compose a tiny fraction of the student pool.

What about the try-hards, don’t they count? More importantly, what if that try hard is you?

Today our guest is James Tichenor. He’s played poker over a long time period. He’s getting there, but it is a struggle many of us can identify with. Almost everything he was doing when we started working together, I considered backwards – yet he didn’t just make it all up on his own. No, he came from all the usual schools and classes and coaches and poker celebrities.

Didn’t the tips work? Did he not read the menu? Are we supposed to blame him or them? Is everything that simple? What happened and what’s next?

Today, we find out.

The post PZ98: Behind the Facade of Poker Education appeared first on Out of Position.

We are happy to close our best year of interviews with Poker Zoo stalwart Greg Porter. We not only cover his swingy year in the games but address the many interesting things that happened in 2024 poker culture.

First, though, remind me what they were again?

One thing that does actually matter to a serious player who needs to produce is dealing with the increasingly gatekept public/private games. Greg tells us about his experience managing expectations and keeping the games alive. That also brings up the inevitable novelty games that help sustain the action, such as the notorious Stand-up, aka Nit Game. (And look at that friendly guy in the podcast photo – don’t you want him in your game?)

For those dealing with the stress of performance, Greg talks about hiring Jason Su for mental game coaching. Here’s our interview with Jason that I mention, and here is that essay on mental game from way back.

Two notes on the close of the podcast. While we joke around about some of the foolish “women in poker” discussions that happen among the thinkfluencer types, it’s worth underscoring that there is no inherent reason for women to play worse (or better) than the men do. There are always, however, personal issues for both men and women and these are far bigger hurdles than immutable characteristics. To that question, Greg provides some classic, unheeded, and excellent advice on how to get to his level – it’s the theory, stupid.

(If you need a more in-depth discussion on why there are so many bad takes on the woman in poker subject and why it is women are slow to take up the game as their hobby, I wrote heavily about it here.)

Second, I meant the question of what is the good poker book or good poker writing of 2024 rather literally. I’m out of touch on this subject after a year of closely following politics instead of poker. Other than yet another solid Dara O’Kearney intro to strategy text, is there something great I should check out before the GPI Awards process starts? Let me know.

Here’s last year’s interview with Greg if you want to hear more from him.

Thanks for listening and putting up with me. Special thanks to Dean for all his work and to SDJen for the recording space and her general helpfulness in all Poker Zoo matters. Have a great 2025, readers and listeners.

Chris

The post PZ97: Relax, Greg Porter is Not a Poker Pro appeared first on Out of Position.

Merry Christmas from the Poker Zoo! To celebrate, we bring on (depending on your point of view) gadfly or pest Norman Chad. Mr. Chad is indisputably one of the true co-pilots of poker commentary and the boom itself. There are many myths that surround the poker boom, such as it being triggered by the 2003 world series champ, but we’re not going into that today, because Norm is still alive and kicking and screaming and yelling at the clouds, here in post-Covid, dumpster-fire America.

One problem he’s having is that the technology of the social media age allows the audience to yell back. Fortunately, Norman has broad shoulders, or at least a funny suit jacket, and is weathering Elon’s version of twitter and the 2021-24 reaction to the censorious centrist politics of the past decades fairly well. Norm, ever the grumpy contrarian, takes up the cause for institutional standards on a daily basis on X, but also on his revamped show, Gambling Mad with Norman Chad.

Gambling Mad is being promoted on YouTube under the preferred two-pronged strategy, leading with a long video and following up with clipped-out “shorts.” For the moment, both are unloved and underappreciated by humans and algorithms alike, but this is a favorite to change; even as this is being written, one of the shorts I mention in the podcast seems to have become a hit on the TikTok platform. Norm has little quit in him and everyone can eventually find their correct YouTube pitch. As I delved into Wolfgang’s extraordinary success, the short form is about precision – every nanomoment truly counts for the “shorts” viewer. The spoiled-for-choice make instantaneous decisions on tone and expectation – literally within seconds – and so far, Norm needs a little more time to fire up his best rant.

For this reason, the full show is Norm at his best. We talk about its origins today, including the interesting set he films on.

Also, for everyone who does not enjoy Norm or who flames him on Twitter, he invites you to go here, the “worst restaurant in Las Vegas.” However, it might just be that no one ever taught Norm how to handle the tableside music: you don’t pay for the accordionist, you pay for accordionist to go away.

Hope you enjoy our show. Dean and I are talking about how we might continue and improve the Zoo. Help us by letting one of us know what you’d like to hear and who you’d like to hear from.

Best wishes,

Chris

The post PZ96: Cloud Yells Back at Norman Chad appeared first on Out of Position.

This year we have focused on very broad issues in poker, both in poker theory and in its statistics, but today we are going to get very specific. Scoop! is a series of detailed books focused on one game in two variants: PLO8 and Big O. Its author, Greg Vail, makes a living playing and teaching these games alone.

In Hold’em, there are often cards on the board that are considered to be blanks or bricks that should not help anyone’s hand. This is almost never the case in High Low. Since there are so many combinations of hands in play, most cards on the board are going to help or connect with something or someone. Therefore, we must consider how the “best” hand can fare against the entire deck and the entire run out. Once this is done, the “best” hand is the hand with the highest equity. Most of the time, this is not the hand that a Hold’em mind would consider to be “ahead” right now.

Vail, Greg. Scoop!: Big O and PLO8: Winning High Low Concepts for the Hold’em Mind (p. 13).

For whatever reason, splitting the pot into two simply blows away many poker players. While I have been preparing a modest class for Double Board Bomb Pots in particular, the Scoop! series by Greg, soon to be completed with volume four, is the seminal contemporary text for big bet omaha games and is emphatically built around split pot concepts.

Play for the scoop. We wouldn’t draw to chop in Hold’em, so why would we in split pot games? We will gain most of our profit by exploiting players who do exactly that. We’ve all seen someone River an inferior Flush in Hold’em, pay off a large bet to the nut Flush, and say, “I hate it when I was drawing dead and got there.” That happens all the time in split pot games. Do not be that guy.

It is a conceptual series but also a detailed one.

Breakdowns like this, of the entire combo, help clarify what you are looking for in a split pot hand.

A few more links:

Here’s the software Greg mentioned.

Greg can be found at doublesuited.com.

Here’s a Zoo episode where I argue with Limon about a split pot double board spot. What would Greg have to say about it?

Basically, this is a great series, I don’t have a lot to add here. You should just buy and read the books if you are going to play Big O and PLO8.

Enjoy the interview!

As for sourdough, I use allrecipes.com for everything these days. Maybe Dean will write out his own recipe and post it here.

The post PZ95: Greg Vail, Split Pot Expert appeared first on Out of Position.

The straddle is a third blind added to the traditional two blind structure of hold’em and other related games. It’s not always a neutral proposition. The extra blind can help stimulate action or inhibit it, depending on the players and stack sizes. More controversially, the straddle often gets put into play with a certain amount of social pressure. For this reason, in the games I host, I allow unlimited straddling but never allow it to become mandatory – because there is always That Guy who doesn’t want to straddle, and I don’t think a good host forces people to do things.

Our guest today Brent Jenkins is that guy who is tired of what he calls “stakes terrorists” prodding him into putting on the straddle. Not a big deal you say? Just say no to straddles, Nancy reminds you – you have the option. Well, as we all know, it’s not that simple. Pro-straddlers can be pushy and unpleasant. There is a social stigma that if you are against the straddle, you are somehow against a “good game.” Objecting to the straddle becomes a form of poor behavior – it is stigmatized.

Brent doesn’t think it should be like this and has written what he titles The Anti-Straddle Manifesto. For the TLDR crowd it’s going to be a heavy lift, but I can assure you it is fairly straightforward and marshals many good arguments for his case. In the introduction he even lists the headers for the points he’s going to make, at pains to be clear.

To really understand his argument, we have to separate the social pressure aspect and the straddle itself. Brent makes arguments against both, but the former is what is most important to him. Poker is constantly concerned with “what is good for the game” and he makes a fairly reasonable case that “stakes terrorists” are not acting in its best interests.

The straddle itself, on the other hand, is going to be a less clear subject. Most players who love it confuse the correlation of action they bring with the incentive the straddle adds to the game, and therefore are under the delusion that they are the “good guys” here, when it is really much more of a grey area. Straddles halve the effective stacks and limit actions, while providing third blind complexity. Tradeoffs.

The notoriously bitchy, micro-edge seeking culture of the 5/10 scene at Wynn and other casinos has led to that leading room now removing the straddle from the game in favor of a big blind ante. Brent is obviously pleased by this contiguous development. We’ll want to watch and see how it all plays out. Brent argues the lack of straddles will stimulate players to play at their appropriate stakes size, and anecdotally already reports some of that happening. Conversely, I’ve heard negative rumors as well.

In any case, whether you are a die-hard straddler or one of Brent’s acolytes, hopefully today’s podcast makes you think about this hidden big deal within cash game culture. Enjoy the pod.

N.B. Dean is occupied, my apologies for the stripped down podcast and any balance issues.

The post PZ94: Brent Jenkins is That Guy appeared first on Out of Position.

One of the common twists of fate in poker is the change in personal relationships on account of strategy and results. At one point now nearly forgotten, the entrance of Alvin Lau into the Red Chip Poker forum caused a whole chain of events to unfold.

One end result was the rise of Alvin’s first poker teaching and programming, Overnight Monster, as ambitious RCP and other players flocked to his initial offerings. This established Alvin as a strong coaching prospect for low stakes online players. The forum feuding and questions of etiquette in turn led me to become more independent, as I could not deny Alvin’s superior strategies and reasoning in the forums. This interaction later became a series of interviews with Alvin which would become the most popular of the Poker Zoo’s first episodes, as we both agreed and sparred over a whole series of subjects and ideas, from Pluribus to race identity.

Today Alvin returns after several years in the Texas poker scene. It’s been a minute for sure, and he’s changed quite a bit: our far-reaching conversation reflects both personal and professional changes. As a coach who has a very straightforwardly successful and straightforward program, he has become popular with those who are absolutely committed to moving up fast online and live. While coaches and players do grumble about their competition behind the scenes, Alvin belongs in a special tier of slightly less-known experts you can count on probably better than anyone in poker yet are still accessible, a unique tier that includes player/coaches like Upswing’s Gary Blackwood, Peter Clarke of Carrot Poker, and now Marc Goone of Hungry Horse.

While Alvin had earned a reputation as a difficult person to deal with, relationships work both ways; I was not persuaded his apparent harshness was always unwarranted. Further, his many success stories bely the trouble he’s run into – even with students from my own community. He has also had an obviously huge impact on the vlogger with the highest number of subscribers ever – Wolfgang.

We talk extensively about Alvin’s work with Wolfgang today. Being the coach of a near-celebrity poker player means the spotlight is on the student. Alvin, however, is more than ever okay with that, even writing about it on his Youtube page.

Yet that’s not the real surprise today, because Alvin discusses a likely reason he has sometimes struggled in the coaching relationship, despite his passion for it: autism.

Does this self-diagnosis resolve everything? Alvin, a fierce solver and simplification advocate at the time, was hard on RCP and on a semi-related book project. Under the weight of Alvin’s public fire, the project collapsed, and the forum was retracted as RCP reorganized itself to catch up with the times. Was Alvin unnecessarily cruel or was he just stating the facts, an inevitable agent of the marketplace of ideas?

Through the lens of his diagnosis, it was neither. Instead, it was the manifestation of indifference or unawareness of social behaviors that is often the outcome of his condition. I’m not a fan of the medicalization of personality issues that seems to plague contemporary society and especially parents – why can’t he just have these traits without a diagnosis – but it struck me during our talk that if a diagnosis of a trait can bring understanding and peace to a person, and even change their behavior for the betterment of all, who am I to question the label or the process?

Our talk goes quite a bit beyond this and Wolfgang, as we get the real deal on the state of Texas NL, the real reason not every great poker mind plays high stakes, and even some strong live poker tell stuff.

I hope you enjoy Alvin’s return.

A few links:

Alvin mentioned Wolfgang’s ownership stake in Home – The Fort Card Room

Alvin on the Poker Zoo.

The post PZ93: Alvin Behind the Scenes appeared first on Out of Position.

The Poker Zoo continues its latest revival with an interview on a key poker subject: the quantification of winning and losing in games of chance. Going to play a session of poker is gambling, guest Mason Malmuth asserts unambiguously, but the question becomes more interesting and complex over the horizon of time. In fact, the answer now can change – or may not, depending on your expectation.

A new edition of his Gambling Theory and Other Topics covers this and all kinds of other poker statistics concepts. It seems like a forgotten essential text because the questions and the math don’t change, nor has the community really added much to Mason’s work that started back in the 1980’s.

Gambling Theory and Other Topics has been very helpful in creating my current article series on playing live one three. The interplay of expectation and standard deviation was not previously clear to me before, especially as forum posters continuously toss around arbitrary sample size requirements and myths about “variance.”

The final section of the book is unexpected, however, being a long series of short reviews on poker and gambling books. As I went through some of the reviews, I realized how valuable this summary is, should anyone want to get a picture of the history of poker strategy. That said, there are two key books (and maybe others) that are not in the reviews, unless I’m mistaken. The first is Easy Game by Andrew Seidman, probably the finest of all poker general strategy books in overall quality and influence. It’s somewhat dated now because of the precision of today’s tools, but Seidman’s thinking process and his teaching knack remains unmatched. Second, Let There Be Range by Tri Nguyen and Cole South similarly shared high stakes high ideas in the transformative years of modern no-limit. This was a breakthrough read for many.

Thanks to Poker Zoo member Kent D. for reading the book with me and preparing questions. Thanks also, of course and as usual, to Dean for putting our podcast together. Now go find some peppers!

The post PZ92: Malmuth on Gambling appeared first on Out of Position.

Poker pro and instructor Marc Goone has created a bit of a stir in saying he can beat the low stakes, specifically his local 5/5 game, for at least $100 an hour. Interestingly, it’s been done and is being done – the shock is not actually the number but how few do it or challenge themselves to get there.

On today’s Poker Zoo I get the details on the challenge (he’s already well into it) and find out why he thinks he can take the lead in the under-appreciated, temporal excellence of the modest and modest-stakes crusher. After all, if you are good – like Marc is – you don’t hang around here, right?

We also go over Marc’s coaching and staking program, Hungry Horse. He’s not the only one out there providing this exact kind of poker education. More and more of your opponents in the low to mid stakes are part of programs or study groups or professionals. That’s the inevitable effect of time, inflation, and shrinking cash game liquidity. Players move down or laterally, looking to find the existing soft games. Hungry Horse is just that, hungry, and is gathering and focusing many names you know on grabbing more dollars. Marc’s recent tweet about content creators being fish probably hit all too close to some client homes.

Part of Hungry Horse’s marketing is Marc’s appeal to younger players. With his tattoos, mustache and opinionated yet mildly ironic attitude, Marc presents the slimmer, more contemporary face of live poker, a scene which is often otherwise filled with alternating slobs, fitness lifestyle freaks, untrustable social media baiters, and withdrawn or tempestuous shitregs. Hungry Horse is not aimed at the average the aging boomer or gen-x player who no longer studies and still identifies with a fat accountant’s inexplicable tournament run, but at those who still want or need a growing future in poker.

Of course, much of the appeal, as with everything, is in the presentation. Surrounding some intriguing tactics in Hungry Horse’s free Youtube videos are all the classic hits of strategy adjustment: nihil novem sub sole.

A few extra notes: it’s worth listening to Charlie Wilmoth’s six month fall from grace and his subsequent time at the $5 games, in a series of podcasts focused on a major, attitude-changing downswing. Moreover, Charlie coaches for Hungry Horse, if I am not mistaken.

My latest series on a similar challenge contains some data and statistical stuff that might be of use. Further, a Zoo podcast with Mason Malmuth on those ideas is done and is being produced.

Here’s the Aero vlogger I mention who is having big success in my player pool. His style doesn’t look as sustainable as Marc’s but on the other hand, demonstrates the money available and is an argument in Marc’s favor for succeeding in the challenge.

Lastly, check out Limon’s interview with Mike Basich, another known crusher of the California five-dollar games, and how he does it. It’s interesting to listen to how little things change, despite solvers and data and all the stuff with which we scare ourselves.

The post PZ91: The Marc Goone Challenge appeared first on Out of Position.