I sometime think my brain is completely ****ed up. I can’t focus on one thing at [a] time. <div class="source">babar86</div>   I haven’t read a book in years, I can only read articles. […] I’m distracted basically instantly and have no short term memory. <div class="source">jimmyvjv13</div>   I was told [by my doctor] that if I choose to play online poker as a full time career, I will likely die...
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So it’s time for the three-week followups. If you’re just joining us in our program, I’ll get you caught up. A few weeks ago I did a drawing for free public coaching sessions, and posted them publicly. Now, three weeks later, I’m following up with them to see if their poker games have improved, and what we can do to sustain positive changes going forward. Well, I recently finished the...
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Strap in, because it’s time for coaching session #3. João is an MTT grinder whose average tourney buyin is around $150. He’s a strong player online, and even took 2nd in several of this year’s SCOOP events, but his primary issues were in live poker–particularly, he wanted to make the transition to playing more live tourneys. His challenges were that he got bored easily, would get anxious when his stack...
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Hey guys, Have had a number of people tell me they got a lot out of hearing the first coaching session I did with Scott C. Well today I finished my first session with the second candidate, a grinder from Belarus named Yaroslav. Yaroslav is an online HU $200NL-$1000NL grinder who wrote in telling me that he had a lot of anger and tilt issues. He said he was a...
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Hey guys, So the applications came in, and I selected a few people for the public coaching sessions. Thanks to everyone who wrote in! I have a few big names in store for the public coaching. It’s going to be exciting, so stay tuned. I’m going to be posting the coaching sessions one at a time. You’re likely to pick up a lot of the techniques and resources I use...
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Hey guys, For the next two days, I’m going to be accepting applications for public coaching sessions. If you’re interested, here’s how it works: [Note: the window for this has now passed. I’ll be posting a follow-up very soon!] [video] Write in an application (subject: Application), and just tell me a little bit about what games you’re playing and what you suspect your mental weaknesses are. I’ll accept (probably) three...
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Hey guys, I’m currently doing a forum Q&A on PokerVIP.com, as well as an interview that should be going live soon on their site. Check it out, and maybe pop in with a post or two if you have any burning questions for me! Forum Q&A Link [video] [video]
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Hey gang, Wanted to feature a really in-depth interview I did on Quoracast with my old friend Jeff Meyerson (also known as Crablar back in the day). We discuss in detail my early poker years, living with Dan “Jungleman12” Cates and Ashton “ASHMAN103″ Griffin, and the infamous Million Dollar Bet. Give it a listen, and subscribe to Quoracast if you enjoy it! Link to part 1 of the interview Link...
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Hey gang, Today (after a brief hiatus due to illness), I bring a new video where I explore the innumeracy bias. The central question I explore is this: are our minds naturally built to think in terms of probabilities and ratios? (They’re not, it turns out.) And if not, then what, as poker players, can we do about it? [video] If you have any questions, thoughts, or reflections, please leave...
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The poker community, momentarily breaking character, has been reflective lately. It all started with Joe Hachem lamenting the decline of poker at the hands of new-school players. Phil Galfond then weighed in with his thoughts on how to bridge the gap between new and old-school. Finally, Daniel Negreanu went on 2p2 to chide new-school players for not preserving the fun of the game; he imagines “a world where players think...
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Lately, I’ve been thinking about the infamous “million dollar bet” I made back in 2011. Today, I thought I’d repost the original story on this blog so it’s all here in one place. I was originally planning to rewrite it, but I’ve decided instead that I should post the whole thing unedited. It was very raw when I wrote it, and that rawness comes through in the writing. It’s an...
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Today, I’ve got a special treat: I recorded a preview of the audiobook! Hear a great section from the book, “Tilt: the Customer is Always Right,” which teaches how to play optimally against a tilting player. Of course, you also get to enjoy my chocolatey voice in its full aural deliciousness. It’s okay, it’s not weird that you like it. It just makes you more of a man. [video] Hope...
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I was in a coffeeshop a few weeks ago browsing the internet, when I came across this article by Glen Whitman called “The Two Things.” In it, he recounts the story of the Two Things. A few years ago, I was chatting with a stranger in a bar. When I told him I was an economist, he said, “Ah. So… what are the Two Things about economics?” “Huh?” I cleverly...
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What’s the secret to playing pocket jacks? This is probably one of the most common questions in poker, and yet no one seems to have come up with a satisfactory answer to the question. Here, I’m going to examine why that is, and give you my own take on the answer. [video] If you guys enjoy this format, please leave a comment and let me know! Or if you have...
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My first ever purchase as a poker player wasn’t made with money. It was made with FPPs. About a year after I started playing poker, I was $3/$6 reg with over $70,000 to my name, and I decided to cash in my FPPs on Pokerstars to buy an iPod. I was 16 years old, and my parents didn’t have the slightest idea that I was a poker player, much less...
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Today I’ve edited and cleaned up a post that I wrote many years ago. Back then, I was a solid 3/6 6-max grinder. I was the biggest winner on the PokerStars 6-max games and put in tons of volume, but I could never move up to 5/10. Every time I tried, I’d get smashed and would return to 3/6 to retool my coffers and try again. This was really disheartening,...
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(For those of you who don’t know what’s going on with me right now, read this post first.) Christmas has come and gone. It’s never been a big day for me and my family. We don’t celebrate Christmas. So mostly Christmas is a day when everything is closed, my friends are busy, and everything is dim and quiet. For me, it’s a lonely time of year. Two days before Christmas,...
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So I’m starting over. I’ve decided to give away all of my money. Two years after retiring from poker, I have left about half a million dollars. I’m giving some of it to charity, and the rest to my family to go toward my parents’ retirement. I’m leaving myself $10,000 to live off—you know, in case I’m an idiot and everything goes horribly wrong. Oh, and I just finished the...
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This is a glossary of common poker terms. Suggest additions or changes in the comments below. [#](#num) [A](#a) [B](#b) [C](#c) [D](#d) [E](#e) [F](#f) [G](#g) [H](#h) [I](#i) [J](#j) [K](#k) [L](#l) [M](#m) [N](#n) [O](#o) [P](#p) [Q](#q) [R](#r) [S](#s) [T](#t) [U](#u) [V](#v) [W](#w) [X](#x) [Y](#y) [Z](#z) # $1/$2, $5/$10, $10/$20 A way of notating the size of the blinds in the stakes being played. $10/$20 means a $10 small blind, and a $20...
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I had been thinking some about the aesthetics of poker lately, and someone reminded me of an article I wrote in 2009, back when I was 19. I’ve decided to reprise it here with a little editing; it didn’t need that much, to my surprise. It’s one of the pieces I wrote about poker that I’m really proud of, so I wanted to have it here as well. I hope...
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In the first two parts of this article, I gave much advice on structuring your poker career, and the proper roles of health, ego, and obsession. But what I have not yet discussed are the spiritual and philosophical aspects of life as a poker player. How should we live our lives away from poker? What relationship should we have with the game? How can we become happy, and still be...
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We concluded the first part of this article series with a discussion on structuring your poker life and career. But being a poker player is about more than merely playing poker—it is also in how you conduct your life around it. It is no secret that poker is an unwieldy horse. It is stubborn, unpredictable, and will happily buck anyone who can’t hold on. Most can’t. You likely know someone...
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Nobody teaches us how to be poker players. Poker culture teaches us how to slowplay, how to setmine, how to manage our bankroll. It teaches us how to think, how to talk, what is cool and what is not. We absorb these teachings eagerly. But when was it going to teach us how to be poker players? What to think of ourselves? How to thrive in a culture that is...
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Poker cannot be played alone. For a game to be dealt, you must have other players to battle, to deceive, to outmaneuver, to control. And yet, every hand of poker you are ever dealt you will play alone. No one else is in your corner. You may find sympathy in others, encouragement, words of wisdom. But you know they have no stake in your success. You are the only one...
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“Poker theory” is inherently seductive. In a game full of chaos and uncertainty, poker theory beckons to us, promising comprehensibility and control. But while theory is powerful, it is not a panacea. That’s not to say that theory in and of itself is flawed—rather, that we are. Human beings are only boundedly rational. We are merely approximations of logical thinkers. And yet, we often take it for granted that in...
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We all come to poker with a blank slate. No one arrives knowing how to identify a SA/WB, read a flop texture, or spot a cooler. We learn these things through the feedback that poker provides us. And yet, though poker gives us all essentially the same feedback, some of us become proficient and others do not. One of the strongest determinants of how good a player will become is...
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There is a vague and shadowy mythology surrounding the Feel Player. He is a genius of mysterious origins. No one can explain how or why he is good at poker—not even the Feel Player himself. He is like a mathematical prodigy hailing from a tiny, illiterate village in India, or a low-born squire who pulls a mythical sword from its pedestal. He is a fluke, an exception. He is not...
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What is learning? How does it work? How can we learn better? These questions might seem naïve on first glance. Learning is fundamental to how humans negotiate the world, and yet it feels strange and reductive to take it aside and interrogate it. But if you are a poker player, learning is an essential part of your vocation. To really improve at poker, it is imperative to optimize the process...
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I don’t tell people these days that I used to be a professional poker player. It seems like a weighty and cumbersome admission, one that always leads to the same tired conversation. The last time I played a hand of poker was well over a year ago. That life feels like an episode long behind me—an identity I’ve left behind. And yet sometimes, in my dreams, I find myself playing...
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The embryo of this post has been sitting on my desk for several weeks now. Originally, it was a frenzy of thoughts that I scribbled purely for myself, just to flush the words out. But after seeing it on my desk day after day, I finally decided to post it here. I apologize if this seems self-indulgent, but it seems to me the right thing to do. Several weeks ago...
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Greetings citizens of the world, It’s become something of a routine that whenever I post a new blog post, I apologize for not rolling them out often enough. This time, I’ll save you the jig. You’ll notice I have a new site! Basically, the formatting on Blogspot really sucks and the interface is pretty clunky, so I decided to migrate my blog over to WordPress instead. Right now it’s a...
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Hey all, Looks like I was late on my update again, haha. Sorry. A week per chapter, it turns out, is pretty brutal when you’re taking full time classes five days a week with lots of reading and essays to do. This chapter also required research in order to write and structure it effectively, but I think I can stand by it pretty confidently. If I had to say, I...
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Hey guys, Sorry for missing my update last week. Finals caught me off guard, and it’s been tough to keep up writing consistently. I’m taking a full summer term as you guys know, so there’s a lot of schoolwork to keep up with—5 days a week, with lots of homework. Once this semester is over, I’ll have a four day break and then onto my next term of classes, haha....
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Hey all, Summer classes are in full swing, and I’ve been super busy. Right now I’m taking a class on Virginia Woolf, which I needed for graduation. I don’t know how many of you have actually read her novels… but holy shit, are they tedious. Her short stories and essays I can appreciate more, but something about the post-Victorian stream of consciousness is just… ugh. Haha, I probably shouldn’t criticize...
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Hey guys, My summer classes have just begun. I’m taking a full load in the summer since my goal is to graduate by the end of the year, so my schedule has been really intense. Basically, I’m waking up at 7am every morning, writing in the library in the morning for a few hours on my book, going to class from 11-5PM, then coming home to eat dinner, work out,...
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Hey all, Some of you will remember that a while back I wrote a blog post detailing an e-book that I wanted to write. It was originally titled “To the Young Professional Poker Player,” and I meant for it to be the embodiment of the most valuable ideas that I never had a chance to communicate in my career as a teacher of poker. I intended to release it freely...
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Hey everyone, Sorry for being slow to update this blog. It’s somewhat lame of me, I know, but I’ve been tremendously busy this last month. I was slogging through finals and finally finished this first semester, was working through the month of free mental coaching, and a slew of other things in my personal life – I started working with Habitat for Humanity (it’s a volunteer construction gig, which is...
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Hello friends, It has been a long time since I’ve written. Too long really, though perhaps it has taken me this long for good reason. It still surprises me that people occasionally e-mail me, asking what I’m up to and why I’m not writing in this blog anymore. Apparently my story is meaningful to people, which in the back of my mind I find difficult to comprehend. But for my...
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I wasn’t sure that I was going to come here. I had toyed with the idea my mind many times, but I was never sure what to do. It wasn’t until working on the farm in France that I finally made the decision. But I think all along somewhere in my journey, there was some invisible string that tied me to Portugal. And though I swung around in my arc...
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Hey guys, As I’m writing this I’ve just arrived in Budapest, Hungary. It’s a beautiful city, and over the next few days I’m going to be exploring it as much as I can. But the subject of this blog post is not going to be on my travels. Over the last couple of weeks I have been thinking quite a bit about my career as a poker player – what...
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Hey all, I am now in the Czech Republic and have met up with some of my friends. It’s been fun hanging out with them again, but the first few days in the Czech Republic by myself were pretty interesting. While I was in Cologne, I spent my nights in cheap hotels. I wandered around the city looking for hostels but couldn’t find any, so I just settled on hotels....
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It’s taken me some days to write again since I’ve been pretty occupied while I was in Berlin. I stayed there with my good friend Fredrik Keitel (aka Fisheye, observer84), he was very generous with letting me stay on his couch and showing me the city. Berlin is a pretty cool place. Greener than just about any other city I’ve visited considering its size. It also has the strange habit...
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I’ve just now gotten internet access again since when I posted my last blog entry. Cologne is an interesting and beautiful city (although I’ve met a few locals who seem to think it’s a boring place… but I guess that’s true of everywhere to the people who are used to it). I visited the Dom cathedral, the Roman-Rhineland Museum, and walked along the Rhine river for several miles. My feet...
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I’ve been having these recurring dreams lately. In these dreams I am a child again, and I am causing trouble against authority figures for no real reason. I’ve never been a big fan of dream analysis, but it’s been on my mind. Maybe it’s my psyche trying to tell me that this little exodus, this attempt to rebel against what by now is my nature, is pointless and childlike. Maybe...
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I just wanted to mention and link this here, because I think it’s responsible to do so. This will be my last time engaging the poker world. From my previous blog: At this point, all of the truths have come to light. I am only updating this blog so that everything is in one place. For those of you who have not read it, I have come forward on HSNL...
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I’ve finally gotten a full night’s sleep again. The night after I posted my last blog entry, my mind was restless thinking about all of the hatred that people would have for me.  Jungle went out to meet up with some fellow high stakes players who also wanted to see me and grab dinner together, but I told them that I wasn’t feeling well. I kept waking up in the...
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This is a post. I will write more when more stuff happens. I don’t know my plans yet or where I am going to go, but for those of you who wish to contact or meet me, I am reachable at haseebonroad at gmail dot com. Once I decide what exactly my plans are, I will write more. Right now the first thing I could use is tips on backpacking....
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