Thinking Poker

Ed Miller, whose first first appearance on the show set a new bar for Thinking Poker Podcast strategy content, is back to talk about his new book, Poker’s 1%. Ed and the guys talk about why so many players struggle to think in terms of ranges and frequencies and address some common misunderstandings, plus Ed fields questions from the Twitterverse. 0:30 hello and welcome; nittin’ ain’t easy 17:27 a message from carlos welch 19:09 ed miller on poker’s 1%

Jennifer Shahade is a two-time American Women’s Chess Champion, an author, and a professional poker player. She joins the show to discuss the world of chess, her transition to poker, Open Face Chinese, the Grindettes, and her recent TED talk. You can follow her on Twitter or on Instagram and read her articles or buy her book, Chess Bitch. Plus Nate returns to the show to let Andrew how he did in his absence, and the two discuss a big ...

Carlos Welch fills in for Nate this week and is remarkably open about his recent setbacks, including the challenges of playing underrolled, finding a good backing deal, and balancing live vs online play. In an extra-long strategy segment, he and Andrew discuss bluffing in small stakes games, taking examples from Carlos’ recent play as well as the Thinking Poker mailbag. For more bluffing strategy, check out Andrew’s most recent series on Tournament Poker Edge. Timestamps 0:30 Hello and welcome; updates ...

Mike freakin’ McDonald is on the show this week, talking about his meteoric rise to the top of the poker world, his unconventional views on the desirability of online gambling, his “retirement”, reg-filled rake fests, the Bank of Timex, the influence of staking on the modern tournament scene, and why he still plays both $10 and $100,000 tournaments. PLUS Mike sticks around for a meaty strategy segment that touches on topics such as dealing with overactive players, pre-flop raise sizing ...

Gareth Chantler calls in from a hostel in Phuket, Thailand to discuss his latest travels, his second-place finish in a $215 TCOOP tournament, and the plight of the Rohingya people. You can follow @GarethChantler on Twitter, read his final table write-up on the PokerStars blog, and read more from Brad Willis on his excellent blog. Timestamps 0:30 – hello and welcome; catching up with Gareth 45:58 – strategy: playing Jacks against heavy action

Andre Coimbra returns to the show to reflect on his year as a full-time multi-table tournament professional. He shares what he learned from the experience, his poker plans for the new year, the charity to which he ended up donating his 2013 profits, and what his home life is like now that his girlfriend is also a professional poker player. You may wish to listen to our first interview with Andre, watch the free coaching videos Andre and Andrew have ...

Ryan van Sanford (@RyanTYFL on Twitter) is an active member of both the Tournament Poker Edge and the Thinking Poker Podcast communities. At 20 years old, he’s new to the live tournament scene and just had his first big win in a preliminary event at WSOPc-Choctaw. The Colorado resident talks about launching his career on the US-facing sites, cutting his teeth in live poker, and how he motivates himself to study and improve. We also discuss angle shooting, counterfeit chips ...

John the Lawyer left a profitable legal practice to play poker professionally. He cut his teeth in the big game at Foxwoods playing against, among others, a young Vanessa Selbst. In this interview, he shares his thoughts on live poker, home games, game selection, the evolution and state of no-limit hold ’em, how to deal with collusion, and more. Plus Andrew and Nate talk about whether to fold Aces in a satellite. John recommends reading Unbroken, watching Jiro Dreams of ...

Richard Veenman is a Dutch fixed limit hold ’em player with a lot of charisma and a big personality. At the start of 2014, he retired from both professional poker and PokerStars Team Online. In addition to the difficulties of balancing a day job with a serious poker career and his decision to retire, Richard also discusses the Dutch poker scene, how he got started, why he never followed the crowd to no-limit hold ’em, and what representing a poker ...

Andrew and Nate ring in the new year with a discussion of goal-setting and their own resolutions, both in poker and in life. Plus how to take notes in live poker, first impressions of the (relatively) new poker room at the Maryland Live!, how to take advantage of weak players trying to play well, and even a bit of PLO8 strategy. The organizational tools Nate mentions are Trello and Getting Things Done by David Allen, which we also discussed with ...

Keone Young, prolific actor and poker player, was our guest on Episode 50. Due to some technical difficulties, part of our first interview with him was unusable, and we ended up recording a new interview that differed in many ways from the first. A lot of good material was left on the cutting room floor along the way, so we’re now bringing you some of our favorite unused moments from that original interview. All that, plus strategy discussion of when ...

Joe LaPinta is a professional poker player who won the recent WSOP circuit event at Harrah’s Atlantic City. Of course it takes more than just a tournament victory to score an appearance on the Thinking Poker Podcast, but Joe is also an active member of the Tournament Poker Edge community and an avid podcast listener. In fact, just a week before his victory he was at the Nitcast Meet-Up at the Borgata. It turns out Joe has a pretty interesting ...

Andrew, Carlos, and Sean share stories from their recent trip to Atlantic City. There’s plenty of strategy, from small-stakes cash game hands to big decisions in a six-handed bounty tournament and the $2700 Fall Poker Open Main Event. Plus the Nitcast Meetup, Andrew and Carlos are mistaken for bank robbers, Sean and Andrew engage in high-level psychological warfare, and Carlos sets a new standard for nittiness.

Andrew’s friend Miklos is on the show this week to talk about the Hungarian poker scene, his recent deep run in a Super Knock Out tournament, and strategy adjustments more generally for tournaments with large bounties. This episode is extra-heavy on strategy, so you might find it helpful to reference the hand histories below as you listen. Hand #1 Poker Stars $337.50+$337.50+$25.00 No Limit Hold’em Tournament – t20/t40 Blinds – 9 players DeucesCracked Poker Videos Hand History Converter SB: t5575 ...

Jonathan Bredin is an Australian aspiring professional poker player who won the recent ANZPT Queenstown event. He also has cerebral palsy, which made recording an audio interview with him somewhat complicated. We ended up having a text-chat conversation with him about his career, his recent victory, and how his disability affects his game, for better and for worse. Recent guest Roy Bhasin was kind enough to read Jonathan’s part of the transcript aloud so that we could record it. We ...

Nate’s away this week, but Leo Wolpert and Andrew take advantage of the opportunity to answer some listener questions that have been lingering for too long in the mailbag queue. 0:30 – Hello and welcome; impressions of WSOP final table 18:23 – Playing Kings 42:17 – Barreled on a paired board at the Lil’ One for One Drop final table 1:07:40 – Game selection: tournaments vs cash games

Roy Bhasin is a professional poker player and a member of PokerStars Team Online who specializes in pot-limit omaha cash games. He talks to us about how he got into poker, how he got into PLO, and how he got into self-improvement (hint: Tommy Angelo and Jared Tendler had a lot to do with it, as did a book called Getting Things Done). Roy’s new blog, which explores the self-discipline and motivational techniques that he finds useful in poker and ...

Johannes Levemann is the head of Research and Development for the Snowie Group one of the creators of PokerSnowie, a neural net that has over the course of several years supposedly learned to play a nearly unexploitable no-limit hold ’em game. We talk with Johannes about what exactly a neural net is and how it learns a game as complex as poker, how he expects PokerSnowie to change the internet poker landscape, and the role that he thinks artificial intelligence ...

It’s time again to catch up with our old friend Gareth Chantler. From Trondheim, Norway, he tells us about his new job as a Full Tilt Poker blogger and gets Triple Draw advice from Nate Meyvis. Plus Zoom/Rush Poker strategy, Ricky Gervais is unkind to Andrew, and an epic Nate Meyvis rant. Timestamps 0:30 Nitcast Meet-Up Announcement 4:39 Hello and Welcome 16:30 Triple Draw Strategy 24:00 Blogging for FTP 38:00 Gareth on David Foster Wallace and Nate on Dave Eggers ...

Dave Thornton is one of the principals at SkillInGames and OneBillionHands, a recently-launched site with access to, well, roughly one billion hands’ worth of anonymized hole card data from real money online poker games. We talk about where these hands came from (Dave asked us to clarify that, contrary to what he may have inadvertently implied during the interview, most of the hands did not come from the partner at the data consultancy where he used to work) and the ...