This blog post is about a local pro poker player; we’ll call him Maurice, because he’s low-key and he doesn’t want random people knowing much about him. He’s a young guy, in his twenties, who’s one of the best players on our local poker scene. He went from playing small stakes online ($.05-$.10 NLHE and small buy-in SNGs and MTTs) in 2009 to playing $1-2 live after April 2011, to moving ...
Review of poker tells training from Galvin Bay
The following is a review for my poker tells video series sent in by Galvin Bay. Galvin is a professional poker player who currently plays in Macau games. He has also written some poker books (like The Art of Poker) and created poker training videos. Below he gives a review and also some notes on his experience with a couple specific tells. ...
Daily fantasy sports’ connection to poker
Here is a link to an interesting NY Times article titled "How The Daily Fantasy Sports Industry Turns Fans Into Suckers." Amongst other things, it delves into the connection of the fantasy sports world to the poker world: how many of the best fantasy draft players are former poker players; how many of the sites were started by people from the poker world, and how winning fantasy sports bettors ...
Gambling and suicide in Atlantic City
Interesting article from recent Harpers Magazine called Getting To The End, Gambling and Suicide in Atlantic City. The writer, J.C. Hallman, spent five years dealing in Atlantic City and writes a short account of his remembrances of the many suicides that happened while he was there. The account is more experiential and literary than it is journalistic, but still an interesting read about the ...
New Live $1-2 Poker Tells Book
I recently put out a new short ebook that analyzes 35 actual $1-2 NLHE cash game hands, most of which I played myself, but a few are from some $1-2 video footage. The book is called Reading Poker Tells in $1-2 No-Limit Cash Games, and it's available on my site here (in three ebook file formats, including Kindle) and in the Kindle store here. It's only $10 and I think this is a great way to get ...
The Poker Guys’ The Breakdown videos focus on behavior from televised poker
Jonathan Levy and Grant Denison are two Portland, Oregon-area pro poker players. I first met Jonathan playing some $20-40 Limit Hold’em up in Washington state, as you can often find him doing. For the past year or so, he and Grant have been doing a weekly poker podcast and videos that analyze hands from televised poker footage. They call themselves The Poker Guys and they've named their weekly ...
Mark Sherman: The Greatest Poker Player Ever? (guest blog post)
This is a guest post by David Alzofon about a colorful, loud high-stakes poker player, Mark Sherman, who frequented the San Francisco cardrooms in the 1980s. Here's David's bio: David Alzofon grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area where he spent 20 years slogging away in the salt mines of Silicon Valley. During a brief period of unemployment in the mid-'80s, he chanced to come across ...
Hosting a new 2+2 poker tells/behavior forum
Do you know the Two Plus Two poker forum? It's a great place to get poker news and discuss poker hands. I've been a member on there since my first days of playing poker in college in 2000. I still remember reading strategy posts from Greg Raymer years before he ever won the WSOP Main Event. (Yes, I'm old.) Mason Malmuth is the co-owner of 2+2, along with David Sklansky. They've written and ...
New poker tells video series
So the last few months I've been working on a new video series, which I've titled Reading Poker Tells Video. I partnered with Chicago's Windy City Poker Championships, run by Kirk Fallah, so I could use the footage from their cash games and tournaments to make instructional training videos about poker behavior and tells. The last few months I've been watching their footage, analyzing it, and ...
What is Beyond Tells?
Beyond Tells is a poker tells video training series created by Blake Eastman. Earlier this year, I interviewed Blake and wrote an article for PokerNews about BeyondTells. We discussed his background, his interest in poker behavior and behavior in general, and his process of analyzing the poker game footage they collected. I get a lot of people asking for my opinion on the series but I haven't ...