jjd323's blog

So far I have made a point to say as little as possible about my results. I think I will keep things that way, as I see little benefit in focusing on monetary goals. Overall, I am pretty happy though and am about ready to move up in stakes at most of my normal games. For this I am glad.

My main goals for March are to complete writing the “Maths of PLO” series I announced last weekend, and to release at least the next two episodes. Sadly, the next two episodes are a little dry and unexciting as I am simply working through starting hand combinatorics; I feel that is really important though. In order to discuss post-flop strategic choices in later episodes it will be necessary to call upon starting-hand frequencies and pre-flop analysis. Hopefully someone is planning on watching this and will get something from it. Some of you may be interested to hear that I have also started making pen & paper notes on a couple of bonus “Maths of 27 Triple Draw” situations. :D

Yale University offers a variety of lecture courses for free via the Open Yale course website. This really is the future guys – video training for real people, not just poker players. I’ve been watching Ben Polak’s lectures on Game Theory The course is basically a strategy 101 class, and consists exclusively of working through canonical examples; Ben really is exceptionally thorough and very clear. I didn’t discover many new ideas as I have studied game theory before, but I did learn a lot about how to communicate the ideas central to the subject and about strategic thinking in general. There are some games that translate really well to pre-flop strategies in poker, especially in shorter blind-structures. I’ve been thinking about ways I can communicate these ideas to a general audience. Look out for even more user-generated content in the near future :)