Barry Carter Poker

Accepting a European Poker Award

2012-01-30T05:48:00.000-08:00

In case you missed it, here is a picture of me picking up 'Player of the Year' at the European Poker Awards:

I would love to end the blog there.

I was actually picking it up for Sam Trickett, who was at the Aussie Millions the time. Why was I chosen to pick it up? I'd love to say it was because we are old mates, but I have only ever met him once. We made the same final table in a £300 comp in Sheffield about 4 years ago, I came 9th, he won it (Obv). He was actually a very nice guy and we got on very well at the time, but given that he plays six figure pots with Ivey and durrrr these days, I doubt he remembers it as well as I do.

So I was pretty embarrassed by the time I got on stage, when I had to acknowledge my relationship with him being 'same country, met once, seemed nice'. Thankfully I was pretty drunk which made the whole process a lot easier. I felt a bit of an imposter collecting an award on behalf of someone else, but a complete fraud for accepting one for a guy I didn't know.

Hence why I hid at the back for this winners group shot:

The awards themselves were great. I was a judge again and this year was joined by my old muckers Jon Raab & Kara Scott on the panel. The final results were as follows:

Player of the Year Sam Trickett

Best Tournament Performance Pius Heinz

Rookie of the Year Andrey Pateychuk

Europe's Leading Lady Natalya Nikitina

Poker Staff Person of the Year Warren Lush (bwin.Party's PR Director)

Internet Player of the Year Ilari Sahamies

Rob Gardner Memorial Award for the Poker Personality of the Year Bertrand 'ElkY' Grospellier

Best European Event of the Year WSOPE Cannes

Lifetime Achievement Award Jesse May

My own voting did not differ massively from the above. I was particularly pleased for Warren Lush & Jesse May, whom I have worked alongside in several different capacities in recent years and they have been a joy to work with.

Hopefully I get invited back next year, and more aptly, hopefully I didn't go OTT with the free bar. I don't remember a great deal past accepting the award, but I do remember spilling several drinks and narrowly missing a few people with red wine, and I certainly remember perhaps the worst hangover I have had in at least 10 years the following day.

European Poker Awards 2012

2012-01-24T13:43:00.000-08:00

I am now in Paris for my third installment of the European Poker Awards. The previous two events were fantastic do's, one of the few poker events where I don't mind taking the missus because she won't be bored. I'm a judge again, and we will be doing the votes tomorrow afternoon. I can't really say anything about the nominees for obvious reasons, but if you follow my twitter account on Wednesday night, I plan on tweeting the results as they happen:

Best Tournament performance
Jake Cody
Pius Heinz
Fabrice Soulier
Benny Spindler
Sam Trickett

Rookie of the year
Adrien Allain
Pius Heinz
Sam Holden
Oleksii Kovalchuk
Andrey Pateychuk

Europe’s Leading Lady
Liv Boeree
Victoria Coren
Nesrine Kourdourli
Barbara Martinez
Natalia Nikitina
Cecilia Pescaglini

Poker Staff Person of the year
Nicolas Fraïoli
Warren Lush
Edgar Stuchly
Kirsty Thompson
Simon Trumper

Rob Gardner Memorial Award for the poker personality of the year
Barny Boatman
Neil Channing
Bertrand “Elky”Grospellier
Tony Guoga
Jesse May

Internet Player of the year
Jude Ainsworth
Viktor Blom
Rui Cao
Chris Moorman
Ilari Sahamies

Best European Event of the year
EPT Londres
International Poker Open Dublin
Finale du Partouche Poker Tour
WPT Grand Prix de Paris
WSOPE Cannes

Jesse May Interview

2012-01-23T01:30:00.000-08:00

Jesse May
"The Voice of Poker"

I haven't mentioned it much on this blog, but one of the bizarre things that has just kinda happened since we published the book is that Jared and I have both unwittingly become podcast hosts.

In my case, it is for PokerStrategy.com. Thankfully for me, Matt Kaufman does all the hard work, I shudder to think what it would sound like with me as an anchor.

Anyway, today's show I interviewed one of my heroes, Jesse May, on the state of TV poker, and as always, Jesse cut a great interview:

PokerStrategy.com Podcast with Matt Kaufman & Barry Carter #5 by PokerStrategycom

The Mental Game of Poker is a College Textbook

2012-01-18T06:17:00.000-08:00

This was a pleasant surprise to say the least.

Dr Patricia Cardner from Park University in the States has used The Mental Game of Poker as a textbook in a class she is teaching on Poker Psychology. This is the course description:

PS 390 Selected Topics in Psychology: Intensive study of an area of psychology selected by the instructor on the basis of student need or current interest. Variable credit: 1-3 hours. Prerequisite: PS 101 or permission of the instructor.

Week 1 Introduction to the Psychological Issues Associated with Gambling & Poker Strategy
Week 2 Poker Strategy
Week 3 Motivation and Goal Setting
Week 4 Managing Tilt: Anger and Anxiety
Week 5 Concentration: Focus under Pressure
Week 6 Gambling Addiction and Treatment, Other Potential Personality Issues
Week 7 Detecting Deception Week
Week 8 Putting It All Together

Instructor Learning Outcomes

Students will demonstrate an understanding of the major psychological constructs that are important to gambling realms (particularly poker)
Students will develop an appreciation for the psychological nuances of various gambling games with a primary focus on poker
Identify and label psychological themes as they appear in gambling mass media
Explain the impact that gambling can have on a person and their family when an addiction to gambling develops or escalates
Understand the course of treatment that applies to gambling addictions as well as assessment procedures
Demonstrate high quality written and/oral communication skills through interaction with other students and the instructor utilizing correct psychological terms and concepts

Quadjacks Mental Game Show

2012-01-12T03:43:00.000-08:00

Last night I was the guest on Jared Tendler's Mental Game Show on Quadjacks Radio. He has been hosting a regular show there for a month now, where he discusses mental game issues with a top name (recent guests have included Lex Veldhuis and Dusty Schmidt).

Clearly someone cancelled because I was on the show yesterday. We talked about the mental game in the context of some of the elite players I have interviewed, and also some broader journalism stuff.

Listen To It Here.

Kindle Highlights of The Mental Game of Poker

2012-01-10T08:24:00.000-08:00

I was not even aware of the 'Kindle Highlights' feature that showed you the most highlighted sections of a book, but someone pointed it out to me last week. Here are what most of our readers choose to highlight from The Mental Game of Poker:

While personal issues certainly affect performance, mental game problems can happen for far more simple reasons; for example, hating to make mistakes, having high expectations, and having a poor work ethic.

Highlighted by 11 Kindle users

‘When you look at a weather forecast and it says it’s going to rain, do you get mad when you go out and it’s raining? So why do you continually get angry when you know variance is going to happen?’

Highlighted by 12 Kindle users

You must stay focused on learning the correction to your weaknesses until it is trained to the level of Unconscious Competence—especially after your A-game improves.

Highlighted by 24 Kindle users

Preparation provides a way to make it more likely that you’ll perform in the front end of your ability, and less likely that your worst will show up.

Highlighted by 17 Kindle users

Here are some general things you can do to prepare to play: Review your long-term goals and set goals for the session. Review a list with the corrections to your common poker mistakes. Review your strategy for improving mental game issues. Use deep breathing, meditation, and/or visualization to steady and focus your mind. Listen to a favorite song.

Highlighted by 15 Kindle users

Look closely at tough decisions to see how you played them. Estimate how much variance influenced results. Calculate whether you accomplished the qualitative goals you set before the session. If you fell short, why? Review how you did in the areas you’re trying to improve (poker strategy and mental game). Did you see any progress? If you’re going to analyze hands later, write some game flow notes or thoughts about them that you may otherwise forget.

Highlighted by 25 Kindle users

Resolution keeps all the positive features that emotions add to your game and removes the negatives.

Highlighted by 18 Kindle users

When the emotional system becomes overactive, it shuts down higher brain functions.

Highlighted by 24 Kindle users

The only way you can stay in control at that time is by doing work off the table to reduce accumulated emotion.

Highlighted by 14 Kindle users

Recognition Deep Breath Injecting Logic Strategic Reminder Repeat as Necessary Quit

Highlighted by 19 Kindle users

Quick Review of 2011

2011-12-31T03:22:00.000-08:00

It was always going to be a better year than 2010 - simply because my dear Father passed away that year.

2011 was a great year all in all. It was still tremendously tough getting used to life without Dad, but some great stuff happened. Most notably releasing The Mental Game of Poker.

Talk about running bad, we released it on April 15 - what became better known as Black Friday, the darkest day in the history of online poker and without doubt the worst day in history to release a poker book.

As a result, we set our original lofty sales goal much lower for the year. I am pleased to say, all things considered, sales have been good. We beat our 18 month target in 7 months, and had our biggest selling month this month (Christmas, plus an unexpected surge on Xmas day from everyone who got a kindle as their big pressie).

More importantly, the reviews have been amazing. To hear that it has been a life changer for some is certainly more rewarding than anything else I have felt in my career and I would like to sincerely thank everyone who bought it, and in particular those guys who chose to discuss it on poker forums, twitter, and the like.

There was a ton of material Jared & I did not use, because the book was getting too big, so we will be working on turning that into something significant in 2012.

2011 also saw me move from PokerNews.com to PokerStrategy.com. I loved it at PokerNews, so it wasn't an easy move, but PokerStrategy are a big exciting company and it has been a great experience so far, and I look forward to helping them become the number 1 news source in poker in 2012 (I already think we are, but I would).

On paper 2012 is going to be awesome. The missus and I are off to Paris next month, we are getting married in New York in May, and going to the Olympics in June. Jared & I are working on 'Mental Game of Poker Project 2' and if that doesn't become a book (It might be a website for example) I want to have my second book finished in 2012 (Working on a couple of ideas at the moment but nothing concrete).

I don't set resolutions as such, but I do have a 'weight loss bet' starting tomorrow. I know 100% that these things are destined to fail, but in my case it is purely a short term thing, as I want to look good in my wedding photos. I am very content with the idea of putting the weight back on immediately after I get married (And America is a great place to do that) - more details on that tomorrow.

Will I blog more in 2012? Not sure, I am always hot and cold with blogging, and ironically blog less when the interesting stuff is happening, but I will try.

Happy new year all.

Vote For Me In The APAT Awards

2011-12-26T00:21:00.000-08:00

Go on, be a mate, vote for me as the 'Best Poker Social Media User' in the 2011 APAT Awards.

You have to create a forum account, but it is worth it because APAT are a fantastic organisation who run affordable deep stack events up and down the UK, who helped pave the way for the fantastic structures we all enjoy in the UK live scene these days.

UK PokerNews is also up for an award, which is a partial brag because although I have left them, I was there for 9 months so it kinda counts too (Though Matt Pitt is doing a great job with it too and I am sure he would have been nominated regardless).

Mental Game of Poker Excerpt - Mental Game Fish

2011-12-16T01:17:00.000-08:00

Open publication - Free publishing - More mental game

One of the two most quoted and commented upon chapters in The Mental Game of Poker is the chapter about 'Mental Game Fish'.

Basically we say that most good players are still fish when it comes to how they deal with the mental side of their game, and we give a list of examples of what it is to be a mental game fish.

So ahead of the holidays we have released it as an excerpt, see how many you score.

The Mental Game of Poker is now on sale at www.mentalgameofpoker.com, Amazon.com, & Amazon.co.uk

(Note it is NOT out of stock like it says it is on Amazon UK)

Get Your Poker Press Release Noticed - Inside Poker Business Column

2011-12-05T03:06:00.000-08:00

I was reminded of this column I wrote months ago for my favourite poker magazine, trade paper Inside Poker Business. It was just before I left PokerNews. It never made it to the Inside Poker Business website, only the magazine itself, so I decided to repost it here.

If you have any interest in the inner workings of poker, bookmark Inside Poker Business as its superb.

The press release has always been the friend of the editorial team, particularly on slow news days when we are waiting around desperately for someone to meet us half way with some content. There was a time that poker news was sometimes hard to find, but as the industry has become much more saturated, complex, and controversial; so getting an editor to notice a press release is becoming much harder. There are more things to write about these days, and more press releases jockeying for space on our front pages.

I am an editor of a news site, and not a week goes by without someone asks me for advice about how to get their press release noticed. Lots of them are very frustrated that they sent their release out and got next to nothing in editorial back from it. Many assume that they simply cannot compete when the larger operators contribute so much in terms of advertising revenue.

It is true that many websites and magazines will have ‘super affiliate’ deals with one of the major operators which could stop you in your tracks. The chances are also that your budget won’t be able to give away Porches or six figure sums away as promotional prizes either. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t get a press release noticed by the poker media, as long as you can give us something to write about.

The biggest mistake that a new poker start-up can make is trying to compete with the big boys by playing them at their own game. The industry leaders have the luxury of boasting huge guarantees, massive freerolls, lavish events and professionally produced content. If one of your competitors is currently is promoting a $100,000 freeroll and the best one you can offer is $1,000, it’s time to pick another USP to put into that press release.

It’s not my place to tell you what sort of promotions you should be running, but I can say that if you want them picking up by editors, and your budget is not limitless, you need to do something different. The smaller operators who manage to capture the attention of players and media alike tend to focus on niches or localised promotions. For example, PKR recently introduced the PKR Social series, offering fun breaks away like golf weekends or tickets to watch Mixed Martial Arts. Likewise, some of the smaller skins like Poker Encore offer satellites to mid stakes regional events like the Dusk Till Dawn Deepstack. These promotions won’t appeal to everyone, but those they do appeal to will become converts, and in the case of a journalist, that could translate to some very enthusiastic editorial.

If you are going to inform the media of newsworthy human interest story then take a step back and ask is it really of interest? Consumers are very savvy these days and they know spam when they see it. There are so many press releases that really only appeal to the person sending them. Press releases saying a player has signed a deal with a poker agency, or a sponsored player came 8^th in a tournament, are not the sort of things that most consumers want to read. Before you send out a release of this kind, ask yourself if it would stand up on its own if you were to remove every reference to your brand from it, if the answer is no then it’s probably not the human interest piece you think it is.

So many press releases are sent every day, and you stand a much better chance of getting one picked up if you adopt a personal approach. Sending a direct, personalised email to anyone on your targeted release list is certainly going to help it stand out from the crowd. A quick follow up email or a friendly phone call will also reap dividends, as most writers are very keen to network and establishing a personal relationship will satisfy this need for them (Especially if you can offer them your ‘exclusive’ earlier than their competitors).

Social media is playing an increasingly more significant part in the way poker is reported, so make sure you get into the habit of retweeting and liking your targeted editors Twitter & Facebook efforts. It can be surprising how powerful a rapport this can create. (And while we are on the subject, always put your press releases on twitter because it is fast becoming the first place we all check for news).

Sometimes it is not apparent to an editor where a press release may appeal to their target audience, so try and identify areas where there is mutual interest. For example, news of your new poker tour may not be immediately of interest to the editor in question, but point out their biggest affiliate partner is hosting qualifiers and you might make an inroad. The result of your tournament may not be big news to a webmaster, but pointing out a deep finish by a member of their online community might become a perfect human interest piece. The poker world can be surprisingly small at times, so look for that common ground.

By the same token, try and identify any major conflicts of interest to manage your own expectations. The recent batch of ‘grave dancing’ press releases by some operators in the wake of Black Friday is a great example of this, as many editors understandably are reluctant to take on press releases that take shots at some of their major partners. If your brand is a major rival to one of their biggest partners, don’t be surprised if it gets ignored (and think how you would respond if you were asked to plug something that promoted your biggest competitor).

Keep your content very simple, particularly when targeting affiliate sites. The ultimate goal for affiliates is to get customers off their page and signing up to their poker partners, so avoid any content that could be confusing, help them make that journey from A to B as linear as possible. Increasing rakeback percentages by 3%, or bonus redemption rates by 50%, or VIP tiers by 5000 points – are all way too convoluted for a writer to want to turn into something meaningful. Much better for a simple concrete ‘do this to get this’ type of message.

The timing of your press releases is going to play a key role in deciding whether it gets picked up. As a rule, try and avoid Fridays through till Mondays, as this is usually the time when tournament reporting takes centre stage. Tuesday to Thursdays are usually relatively baron periods, given that tournament reporting makes up a big part of poker news, so schedule your releases for then. Also avoid releasing anything around the time of major events like the WSOP, because there is only one place the audience and the media will be looking.

Frequency is another factor that is often overlooked; the biggest mistake you can make here is to send too many releases in quick succession. The more releases, the more diluted the overall brand message will get, and the less importance editors place on them. If poker room A sends three press releases a week and poker room B sends one a month, the likelihood is the second one is more likely to stop the press.

And finally, and I cannot stress the importance of this enough, always provide good quality pictures. As most journalists will tell you, getting appropriate images for features is one of the most frustrating parts of the job. 99% of editorial needs images and being forced to find them yourself because the press release didn’t have one is demotivating. Even more annoying, is having to do that because the image provided was way too small to use. Most magazines require dimensions of at least 2000x2000 , so use that as a bench mark for all your releases.

PokerStrategy.com Column - Poker 2.0: What Could Facebook Poker Do For The Industry?

2011-12-05T00:36:00.000-08:00

Is Mark Zuckerberg
bringing us online poker?

My latest column, originally published by PokerStrategy.com

The history books may not look back on this week as one of the turning points in the story of online poker, but this may have been one of the biggest weeks in online poker, at least since Black Friday.

This week, Bodog announced that their new platform would be 100% anonymous and player notes would be removed. So every time you sit down at the tables, you are doing so with no reads on the other players.

This means that the use of HUDs and datamining sites like PokerTableRatings would be deemed obsolete.

PokerStars have unveiled their first foray into mobile gaming, with a phone based client on PokerStars.it. This is also a big week for them for another reason, as they will attempt to host 250,000 players in a world record attempt tournament.

Finally, and most significantly by far, this week it was announced that Facebook is in preliminary talks with several poker rooms about hosting real money poker in the UK.

What all these moves (All of which I think are immensely positive) illustrate is that we are heading towards a new world order in online poker. One that looks out for the interests of recreational players first and foremost, rather than the 24 tabling professional player.

Not a day goes by without us hearing the words 'the games are getting tougher'. This is because there is so much great free strategy information readily available, but it is also because for several years now, online poker has had a cannibalistic ecosystem.

Big rakeback deals, poker software like HUDs, and datamining sites like PokerTablesRatings have all contributed to making low and midstakes games incredibly difficult.

Mass multi-tabling pros can be found at just about every online table with a free seat, and recreational players find a double figure queue waiting to clean out their roll almost as soon as they start playing the game.

These changes are not only great for the casual losing players, they are going to make the games so much better for the grinders too.

Facebook Poker - A Game Changer?

Onto the news that Facebook might be throwing their hat into the online poker ring. Real money poker has been knocking on the door of social media for a while now. We have all been waiting for Zynga Poker to launch a real money product, but they have just confirmed they will not be launching one for their 30 million registered players.

ChiliPoker, 888 Poker, and PokerStars are three rooms who have already made some progress in the social realm, but only as a supplement to their current client.

As someone from the UK, I find the news about Facebook incredibly exciting, in fact I almost salivated when I first heard about it. We have all been looking for that second 'boom', this could be it people.

Why has the UK been singled out for this? Probably because historically gambling has been looked upon a lot more liberally over here than in other parts of the world. We don't (currently) pay tax on gambling winnings, and sports betting has always been celebrated by the mainstream media.

Bear in mind that Facebook has two hurdles to jump through here. Not only do they have to appease the country in questions gambling regulators, social media is also becoming a major topic for government and media regulators, with best practices and social responsibility being hot topics surrounding them.

So I think the UK is a natural starting point for Facebook to test the waters. I fully expect if it is successful, the operation will be expanded around the world (Hopefully not with segregated poker rooms per region).

Why is Facebook Poker such an exciting prospect? Because it opens the doors to players who would never normally have considered playing for real money. Facebook has over 800 million active users (30 million in the UK), that is a database that dwarfs the online poker population by a huge margin.

Rather than advertising or sponsorship, Facebook uses 'permission marketing' which is so much more effective. Word of mouth and recommendation from a friend is vastly more effective than watching a TV commercial, and that is exactly what you get on Facebook.

Brand new demographics will see that their friends are playing real money poker on Facebook, and that will make the thought of playing themselves all the more plausible.

The largest player database in the world

Although we have no idea what it will look like, or how it will be regulated, Facebook Poker is likely to be (Or at least perceived to be) much more financially secure than a standalone online poker room.

With everything that has gone on with Full Tilt, this could be of massive importance in regaining public confidence, and removing the 'Ponzi' label we are currently stuck with.

Social Responsibility & Safety

As excited as I am, I do have some concerns, which I am sure will be taken very seriously by Facebook, and already major topics of discussion in their negotiations with potential partners.

One big one is that Facebook seems very easy to hack. Most of us have either had it happen to us, or at least to several people that we know.

Right now accessing a Facebook related app or website is usually just a matter of clicking 'Yes I Allow Permission To Access', but this would not be acceptable for real money poker. There will definitely need to be a secondary, independent, wall of security.

The second concern will be around vulnerable people. Although it is just as easy for someone who shouldn't gamble to open a poker account right now, this is a debate that is going to take place.

There will be extra temptation to play for people who probably shouldn't, and anti-gambling groups are going to be very opposed to Facebook Poker. So self exclusion and identify verification measures will need to be taken very seriously.

Finally, to go back to what Bodog have done this week, I hope that anonymity will at least be an option. It will be really cool to actually see who the person I am playing against is in real life, and could add a brilliantly fun social aspect to the game.

But by the same token, we don't want some poor soul who has had a massive losing week to wake up the next morning to 700 friend requests from predatory online poker players who have caught wind of their losses.

It could lead to online stalking much worse than takes place because of datamining sites, and could get seriously out of hand because of the much more personalised nature of social media.

But all in all, this is tremendously exciting news for online poker, at a time when it needs it more than ever. I will certainly be pressing the 'like' button for Facebook Poker.

by Barry Carter

Run Doggy, Run

2011-12-01T04:01:00.000-08:00

I know naffe all about Greyhounds, but last year I got shares in this little fella when he was a puppy, and he is just about ready to race any day now.

So expect to see me in betting shops soon, cheering him on, looking like a noob making £2 bets.

The one thing I do know about greyhounds, is he deffo would beat this little fella, whom I have 100% shares in.

The Mental Game of Poker Holiday Sales

2011-11-30T02:23:00.000-08:00

As it's approaching Xmas, we have put the Mental Game of Poker on sale (Which may continue in January too as everyone is skint at New Year). It is now retailing around the £16-£20 mark for softcover, and £7.12 for Kindle.

Amazon are awesome, but some things about how they work have been annoying. Most notably that when they are out of stock, they put a massive 'Out of Stock' sign up on the book page, even though there six other amazon traders selling it, including one which is fulfilled by Amazon themselves - so for all intents and purposes it is very much NOT out of stock.

Anyway, we hit a post-black Friday 12 month sales target yesterday with the book, 5 months early, so I am happy enough. I say post black Friday because the goal for the year obviously rapidly changed, when we launched the book on historically worst day in the history of poker to release a book.

Towards the end of the year, we will finally work on Book Number 2. We had so much material we had to leave out we knew a second one was in the pipeline, hopefully the response will be just as good for the next one.

Buy It Direct Here

Buy It On Amazon.co.uk

Buy It On Amazon.com

Buy It On Ebay

PokerStrategy.com Column - Poker Talent Hotbeds

2011-11-18T01:12:00.000-08:00

Is Germany the
next talent hotbed?

First published on PokerStrategy.com.

There is a superb book out at the moment called The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle. It charts the success of high performers in just about every discipline you can think of, and completely dispels the notion of natural talent, as it proves time and time again the correlation between intense practice and success.

One of the most interesting recurring themes in the book is something called 'Talent Hotbeds', which refers to the fact that often the most successful people in certain field are from the same school or training centre.

Such examples Coyle cites include Brazilian footballers, the Spartak Tennis Camp in Russia, the art Renaissance in Italty, skate boarders in Santa Monica, and the Punahou golf school.

We can also probably think of countless examples ourselves in popular culture like the Seattle grunge scene, Motown or even the Disney Club in America that created many of today's pop icons.

The proximity of all these masters in their craft is usually either put down to either fluke or genes. Coyle brilliantly argues that the emergence of these hotbeds is, in fact, inevitable. What we call talent is actually a direct result of the level of practice that takes place in them.

The reason why Brazilian footballers are so majestic is nothing to do with genetics. It is because most Brazilians grew up playing an indoor version of the game, futbol de salao. The ball is smaller, and heavier, which means that a greater degree of control is developed.

The reason why the Renaissance in the 14th century created so many talented artists is equally as predictable, in hindsight, because artists like Da Vinci and Michalangelo all spent five year apprenticeships working under similarly revolutionary artists.

The Spartak Tennis Club, which has produced most of the top ten ranked female tennis stars in the last decade, was so successful because they literally spent hours a day focussing on every minutia of technique to the smallest of details, literally practicing daily in slow motion to develop skill.

The Brits are enjoying
a lot of success for a
small nation

Natural talent is a vastly overrated concept, these hotbeds prove that how you practice is the key to success.

Poker Talent Hotbeds

The concept of talent hotbeds clearly exists within poker, and proves what many of us have always thought about the game. The most successful players tend to have with them an entourage of like-minded friends who quickly replicate their success.

In the early days of the poker boom, it was no doubt the Scandinavians who were leaving their mark on the worldwide poker scene.

Another great example is the TwoPlusTwo community, who have developed hundreds upon hundreds of successful players, in particular the early post boom internet whizz kids, stemming from their hand analysis forums. Here is an example of a talent hotbed that exists online, rather than in a specific geographical location.

Right now it is the young British players who are the latest hive of talent in the game, taking down a disproportionate number of bracelets, EPT titles, and triple crowns for such a small nation.

A great example within this hive is triple crown winner Jake Cody winning his bracelet this year, and his best friend from school, Matt Perrins, taking down a triple draw bracelet the very next day. Most would chalk this down to an unlikely fluke, but it actually seems a certainty when you think of what no doubt preceded it.

What these talent hotbeds all have in common is that the people involved practiced their craft in a different, more effective way, something Coyle calls 'Deep Practice'. What I think this translates to in poker is simply the act of discussing hands with other players.

As I understand it, Cody and Perrins both started playing cards at school, and no doubt have spent every waking minute since then discussing the game together. There was no wonder they both became so successful.

Ask just about any poker player who is successful what the key to their improvement is, and they will at some point mention that discussing hands with their friends played a massive part.

Whether it's from one on one coaching, hand analysis forums, or just discussing it in person during tournament breaks and travel, it seems the most effective tool we have at our disposal is community.

Pushing the Boundaries

Like-minded friends

One of the fundamentals of deep practice is to challenge yourself to the point where you actually fail.

Just like a weightlifter who lifts a weight they struggle with, the process of attaining skill first requires you push the boundaries of what you are able to do.

This is where having like-minded friends probably has such value. Unlike just about every other form of poker practice, discussing hands with other players comes with it a powerful bullshit detector.

Because of variance, it is very easy to justify to ourselves that we made the right play, if we win the hand we can tell ourselves we played it correctly, if we lose the hand we can say we got unlucky.

But having your game critiqued by your peers inevitably challenges you to a point you perhaps could not do on your own, it takes you out of your comfort zone and forces you to think of your game in a different way.

We don't really have to look far for a talent hotbed in action. If you are reading this, then you have stumbled across one already. Pius Heinz was of course a PokerStrategy.com free $50 player before he became a world champion, and no doubt the videos, coaching, forums, and community of the site had a great impact on helping him along the way.

It certainly won't surprise me if we start seeing more homegrown PokerStrategy.com players taking down major titles in the near future, following his lead.

Poker can be a lonely isolating game if you are not careful, it can be very easy to shut yourself off from the rest of the world. Take a tip from the poker talent hotbeds and get out more, get talking to people, and get involved in the many opportunities to be part of a community that poker can provide.

by Barry Carter

PokerStrategy.com Column - Deal Or No Deal?

2011-11-12T04:54:00.000-08:00

"Shall we just split it
9 ways, guys?"

My latest column for PokerStrategy.com. Please check them out for more of these, as they always appear there first.

There is a big secret in poker. Everybody is doing it, but nobody ever admits to it.

Deals.

I was talking to someone about the Main Event yesterday, about the possibility that the final three men in the tournament did a deal.

The guy I was chatting to felt they played just like they had made a deal (ie. early fireworks), but thought that it was not allowed in the Main Event.

I didn't catch a great deal of the footage so couldn't really speculate, but I did mention it happens a lot in WPT/WSOP/EPT events, but never gets reported.

He was surprised by this, but I followed up by estimating that most 'big 3' main events end in a deal that wasn't reported.

I felt inclined to back up what I thought that I knew. I have reported on hundreds of events in the last few years and know that it happens quite a lot, but wondered just how much. I reached out to my friends, in particular tournament organisers and the guys who report live from these events, to get their own estimates.

I felt that at least 60% of live tournaments end in a deal, and probably closer to about 70-75%. Almost everyone I asked confidently told me it was much higher, closer to 80-85%. This didn't shock me at all.

It never gets reported, but it happens all the time. If you are watching the live updates from a tournament and all of a sudden a 10 minute break is announced (in particular if it's reported that the players decided among themselves to have a break) that seems somewhat unscheduled, then they are usually discussing a chop.

Why Are Deals Never Reported?

It seems in just about everybody's interest to keep deals quiet. The players usually keep pretty quiet because they would sooner appear to have been 'playing for the win' and often deals get derided by the poker community as minus EV.

Peer pressure is very strong in poker; rarely is a deal made public without certain corners of the poker community ripping it to shreds. The deal is usually very good for at least one of the players, but there is always someone else who is percieved to have made a mistake.

The tournament organisers don't like them being reported because it is in their interest to showcase a huge first prize. Someone taking home a seven-figure score is much better PR than three guys walking away with similar six-figure purses.

The TV stations have the biggest interest in keeping deals quiet, because they have stories to tell and drama to create. A heads-up match becomes significantly less exciting when you know that both guys took $500k each and are just playing for $20k and a trophy.

But with such a high proportion of players demanding deals at the end of live events, surely it is abundantly clear that we are getting the payout structures wrong?

Nobody wants to admit to wanting a flatter payout structure at the start of a tournament. When it gets to the business end of a tournament, for most of us our instincts kick in.

Human Nature

Did Pius chop?
We probably will never know.

There are countless studies out there that demonstrate it is human nature to protect what we already have, or perceive ourselves to have, rather than taking risks for a big payoff.

You only have to watch the game show Deal or No Deal to see this in action. Most of the deals that are made are massively minus EV near the end of the game when they still have a big box in play, because they want to protect a perceived amount that is theirs.

They have decided an amount they want or need, and will pass up great chances to win more to protect it.

Likewise, those players who lose a massive box at a critical moment go the opposite way, and behave recklessly, in an attempt to regain what they believe to be their rightful winnings.

Everyone is 'going for the win' at the start of a tournament because it seems so far away, but when it gets down to the big money, many of us start mentally earmarking the amount we want to definitely walk away with.

Tournament poker is extremely high variance. We all want to make every decision on its long term merits only, but realistically most of us could never get a reliable long term sample of live poker tournaments, there simply are not enough of them.

It is understandable why all these deals go on. It is not like online where you can refuse a deal and load up 100 more MTTs that week without giving it a second thought. A lot of time, travel, expense, and frustration comes with live tournament poker.

Now at this point a lot of tourney grinders and pros will be wanting to tell me that they never deal, that dealing is minus EV, they always play for the win, and that it is the fish that tend to deal.

There are of course plenty of players, strong ones at that, who do refuse deals and more power to them. But with such a high percentage of tournaments ending in chops, it is clearly not just the fish that make deals.

Thankfully even though many tours claim they do not allow deals, or at least any deal must include an amount to still be played for, almost all of them do let it happen. The players paid the buy-in and the rake, so they should be entitled to have a say in what they stand to win.

It is obvious that live poker tournament payout structures are not flat enough, but do we need to change things and should the deals be made public?

The only reason the deals should perhaps be a little more transparent is for those people with a genuine interest in the winnings outside the tournament - in other words the tax man and backers.

Of course this is the responsibility of the players, and an attempt to cheat another party by not informing them of a chop could backfire, if the player actually goes on to win, but takes down a lesser prize.

But other than the backers, I happen to think that most of the poker community would actually be much happier leaving the system the way it currently is.

In other words, maybe everyone would be much happier to keep the prize pools as advertised, and deal behind closed doors. Tournament organisers get to boast a massive first prize, TV producers get to showcase the drama of massive pay jumps and the players get a prize they are happy with - without having to face the derision of forum trolls.

by Barry Carter

Mental Game of Poker - Readers Survey

2011-11-10T01:31:00.000-08:00

The Mental Game of Poker has had some amazing feedback that really has exceeded our expectations.

It took a very long time to write, largely because we had so much more material that didn't make it into the first version, so we always knew that we were going to do a second book, or at least get that material out there in a different format.

We are now planning that next stage, and are asking anyone who has read the book to help guide is with what they would like to see with project two. If you have read the Mental Game of Poker, please spare a few minutes to help us with this:

Please click here to complete the survey

2000 Twitter Followers

2011-11-08T04:39:00.000-08:00

It felt like forever to get to 1000 twitter followers, but getting to 2000 only took 3 months. I think that just makes sense, snowball effect and all that.

Onwards and upwards, next milestone is 5000, which should take a hella long time.

PokerStrategy.com Column - Which FTP Repayment Option Would You Pick?

2011-11-04T20:00:00.000-07:00

What will the new
FTP look like?

Originally published by PokerStrategy.com

I certainly don't want to get overly optimistic about the Full Tilt saga, because we have had our hopes crushed several times already, but at the moment there looks like there is some light at the end of the tunnel.

It took a while, but recent news from the Groupe Bernard Tapie camp is suggesting a deal to rescue the site, and reimburse the players, is back on the table.

This week the best news to date was that GBT and the US Justice Department had struck a deal, allowing GBT to approach the FTP shareholders with an offer to take over the site, reimburse non-US players, and arrange a repayment fund for US players with the DOJ.

Incredibly positive news I think we all agree, but although it is looking more likely now that the players will get their money back, it still looks to be a bumpy ride.

That is because last week it was revealed that a French Magazine linked to the GBT has been canvassing players across Europe, asking what their preferred option for repayment would be from the following list:

Cashing Out Immediately with an Unspecified Penalty
Cash Out the Full Amount, released over a year.
Buying Shares of FTP with their funds, which they can sell back at a later date.

This would be to help get the rescue plan off the ground, as clearly GBT do not have the funds to (or just do not want to) takeover the site and pay the players back in full right away.

Poker is never easy, and if these are the options presented to FTP Players (It would be interesting to see if these options were for everyone, or just the high rollers) it would be a sense of two steps forward, one step back.

But it's a fascinating dilemma, what is the best repayment option, if those are the ones in front of us?

Immediate With Penalty

Like most great questions in the poker, the answer as to whether this is a good option is 'it depends'.

The penalty is likely to be substantial, otherwise it probably wouldn't be on the table as an option. I'd guess at somewhere between 30-40% penalty for taking your money back right away.

Any penalty bigger than that would be a definite no I feel, 50% is just ridiculous a settlement figure. A penalty less than 20% should be a fist-pump call, after all with everything that has happened, most of us will be pretty happy anything, so a penalty less than 20% we can just treat like tax or hefty rake.

So in my opinion we are likely looking at getting back 60-70% of our original funds. If that is the case, I think this is the option for anyone who has a significant portion of their life rolls stuck on the site, those players who really have been left in limbo since the site went down.

Full Amount Over A Year

In my opinion, this is the best option for most players, in particular if the money did not mean the world to them. If they had funds elsewhere, only played for fun, or otherwise did not rely on their FTP rolls.

After all, they will have been waiting for a long time anyway, by this point no doubt another year won't seem too bad.

However, before picking this out as the best possible option, there is one major consideration. If this scandal has taught us anything, it should be to be much more careful with whom we are prepared to entrust our money.

Before choosing this option, I would want to know who is policing the new look FTP and Groupe Bernard Tapie. I want to know who is policing these repayments, and who the new regulator is.

Obviously (or at least hopefully) the former shareholders of FTP will no longer be there, so I am not for one second implying that GBT are going to be as crooked as their predecessors.

But what they are doing is very ambitious and could well prove a big financial risk (Especially when you consider they are also currently proposing an equally lofty $30 million guaranteed live tournament next year at Wembley Stadium) - so I would want to know in what way my investment is being protected over this 12 month period.

Equity Share of FTP

No more Red Pros?

It is amazing how things can change in an instant. 7 months ago if someone offered you a stake in Full Tilt Poker in exchange for your bankroll, you most likely would have gone for it without hesitation. Today, I think I would sooner invest in magic beans.

Once again, GBT are not the original shareholders and should not be treated in the same vein. The problem is that Full Tilt Poker will never be the same company again.

There are some positives. The software is still one of the best in poker and enough to entice a lot of people back. With GBT's French routes, there is potentially a lot of liquidity from that market too, which is massive right now.

But the damage has already been done to a great extent, some people will never forgive FTP even with new owners, and other new players will forever associate it with the word 'Ponzi'.

So rather unsurprisingly, one of the first things that is likely to happen is a mass withdraw from the site by players desperate to get their money back. GBT will not be taking over a new business with millions of dollars of player funds ready to start generating rake, much rather they will be almost starting afresh with massive losses for repaying the players.

The biggest impact will most likely be the absence of the American players. Pre-Black Friday they made up about 60% of the total traffic on the site, but they no longer will be able to play. Unlike our friends across the pond, players in Europe have a massive range of choice of what poker room to choose, and will not be desperate to play on FTP like a US player may have been.

Likewise the biggest marketing element of the site, the massive stable of 'Red Pros', surely cannot be sustainable any more? Most of them were American anyway, and I cannot see the players looking positively on the new FTP for sponsoring players when there is so much money still owed.

GBT obviously saw something investable in FTP so don't take my word for it, but if you are going to be considering this option, I think you have to consider it an incredibly long term investment at the very least.

I'd love to get your opinions in the comments boxes, if presented with these options for repayment, which one would you go for?

by Barry Carter

LOL at what is outselling us

2011-11-02T11:25:00.000-07:00

Its nice to be climbing the rankings on Amazon for the search term 'poker' and an honour to be currently outselling such a great book like HOH2 - but lol at what is beating us right now.

PokerStrategy.com Column - A Sense of Entitlement

2011-11-01T20:00:00.000-07:00

First appeared on PokerStrategy.com

A couple of videos are doing the rounds on the poker forums of Tony Hachem, brother of main event champion Joe, conducting himself in a less than humble manner.

In these videos (below) you see him acting pretty arrogantly in the WSOP main event. This has led everyone to ask the same question, who does he think he is?

The quick answer to that one is - Joe Hachem.

Tony is getting a lot of criticism on the forums for his delusions of grandeur. He is acting like he is a world champion himself (a not very gracious world champion), when really, what has he done to justify the behaviour?

In fairness, he has got a pretty decent looking record, lots of cashes, lots of finals, a couple of wins, and one six figure score. His total live tournament earnings are well over $500,000, which I thought was impressive.

Until I discovered, at the time of writing, that 1,666 other players have over $500,000 in tournament winnings, according to the Hendon Mob database.

It's still impressive of course, it's more than you are ever likely to see on my own record, but when 1,666 other players can boast the same, does that justify the behaviour?

The reality is nobody should be sounding off like Hachem is here, but they look all the more ridiculous when they don't have much evidence to back it up.

It used to be that the only noticeable ego in poker was that of Phil Hellmuth. He built his reputation, his brand, and became a one man industry with his trademark displays of arrogance.

It used to be just Phil that would get labeled egotistical, but I think most of us are closer to the Poker Brat than we might care to admit.

Whether its poker, or anything else for that matter, people these days seem to feel a sense of entitlement towards just about everything. Everybody believes they deserve success and happiness more than their peers.

Constant media exposure of successful people makes every dream seem achievable and easy, reality TV turns nobodies into stars overnight, and advertising makes us believe we must have more and more expensive luxuries.

We are led to feel we deserve all the trappings of success, but rarely are we reminded of the hard work that is required to get there.

Premature Exposure To Success

Poker is no different in this regard, in fact if anything the sense of entitlement is accelerated. Variance means that we can all experience what it is like to be an elite player momentarily, without having to do the work required to get there.

If you want to be a Doctor, you have to spend most of your twenties in higher education and working every hour of the day, if you want to be a champion poker player you can literally do it overnight if the cards fell your way.

Such an early exposure to success is probably why we all stuck with the game, we most likely all ran like god in our first few months to have kept up the enthusiasm to learn the fundamentals.

But too much early success can be very damaging if you do not recognise the role variance played. It creates very high expectations, which lead to frustration, stops you working on your game, and even puts you in games you can't beat.

I have seen multiple figures quoted between one third, to three quarters, but whatever the number, a high percentage of lottery winners end up broke. This is because they find themselves with all the results of success, without the successful mindset needed to get them there, and maintain the lifestyle. This is a great metaphor for poker, which highlights what early success can do to a player.

In the case of someone like Tony, that early exposure to success might not have even been from his own actions at the tables. Being the brother of a highly successful world champion must surely have rubbed off on him and had some influence on future his behaviour at the felt.

I can completely sympathise with that too, it cannot be easy being in the shadow of a world champion. Jealously can play a massive part in your demeanour as a player, I know that first hand.

I have lots of friends who are highly successful players, and I regularly interview the best in the world. Because at times they can make it look easy at final tables, it used to create an incredible sense that I should be able to do what they did too and need to catch up.

It felt unfair, and I felt I deserved it too because I would see them winning a tournament by playing ace-king the same way I would, or even worse by sucking out on someone. What I failed to notice, and what most of us never see, is all the hard work they would put in away from the tables to put themselves in these positions.

Because we only see the results and a small sample of hands, and never see the work that led up to that point, our perception of what we and other people 'deserve' is greatly skewed.

We Are All Poker Brats

And before you discount yourself from thinking too highly of yourself, ask yourself this question, how often do you use the word fish? Most of us are guilty of labelling the competition as fish, referring to fish as being victims of our superior skill, and generally berating players who get lucky against us like they do not deserve to win.

It may be much more subtle in its manifestation, but this sense of entitlement over perceived lesser players is no different to Hellmuth saying he deserves to win every tournament.

I'm not saying an ego is a bad thing either, assessing your edge against the competition is the fundamental skill in game selection, which is of course one of the fundamental skills in poker.

But most of us greatly overestimate our edge, we all claim to be in the 5% of players that see a profit, and we all claim to be unluckier than most. Tony Hachem is embarrassing himself in these videos, but we are probably all guilty of acting the same way on a smaller scale at times in our poker careers.

Of course if we really do deserve to win more than others, I am sure the big man upstairs will help us out.....

follow @Barry_Carter on Twitter.

Mental Game of Poker Excerpt - Inch Worm

2011-10-26T03:13:00.000-07:00

One of the most popular concepts from The Mental Game of Poker is something Jared devised called 'Inch Worm'. I must say, this helped my game and understanding of how learning works massively too, and I have managed to apply it to so many other things in life.

So here is the excerpt, not sure if it necessarily will be as revealing on its own without all the other material alongside it, but hopefully it will help.

Open publication - Free publishing - More mental game

Buy The Mental Game of Poker

PokerStrategy.com Column - The Fear of Failure

2011-10-25T22:00:00.000-07:00

First appeared on PokerStrategy.com

I read a really good book recently called Adapt by Tim Harford. He is an Economist discussing how failure is a necessary part of success. The book cites various instances where people have used previous failures to ultimately lead to success in their lives, and others where a zero tolerance approach to failure has led to the downfall of people and businesses.

This got me thinking about poker. There are very few games or careers out there where you have to deal with failure as much as you do with poker. You can do everything right and still lose consistently for thousands upon thousands of hands. In fact my mother could realistically beat Phil Ivey heads-up for a sustained period of time if the cards fell her way (Which is ultimately the greatest and most profitable part of poker).

Even the best players
lose on a regular basis

Despite how much failure we are exposed to, I am not sure that most of us learn from it as much as we should. You only need to see how badly a lot of us can deal with a bad beat or a downswing to demonstrate that. Sometimes it can really affect your mood away from the table, other times it can greatly affect the way we play at the table, in the form of tilt.

I am fortunate to have worked intensively on a book on this very topic with mental game expert and PokerStrategy coach {communitylink=JaredTendler+level}. What I learned from the experience is that players who deal with failure badly usually have an underlying flaw in their approach to the game that causes them to act that way. This is stuff like having overly high expectations and not understanding the nature of variance.

One of the key points in Adapt is that we do not build failure enough into our game plan from the start, that too often we start a plan of action with very little room for error. Harford suggests success is much more likely when you build an environment where it is safe to fail, where one mistake will not lead to complete annihilation.

The most obvious way in which this is evident in poker is when players ignore the rules of bankroll management. On paper, bankroll management is the easiest thing in the world, in practice even the best players routinely ignore it. It is almost certain that if you play long enough, at some point you will go on a 20, 50, or even 100 buy-in (Depending on what you play) downswings no matter how well you play.

This is no secret, the information is widely documented and most of us know first hand what its like, but playing without the bankroll to sustain these swings is still the downfall of many players.

Harford also suggests that the most successful businesses thrive because of a constant trial & error approach to their development. I am reminded of a fantastic quote by Thomas Edison which sums this up perfectly:

"If I find 10,000 ways something won't work, I haven't failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward". Thomas Edison.

You would think that with such a prolific rate of failure in poker, that this is an ideology most of us would buy into. That if we do not win money after a session, we are at least provided with an opportunity to improve.

But many of us have a much more absolute view of wins and losses. The ironic thing about poker is that the very thing which creates such a high ratio of failure, is also the thing that prevents us from learning from it - variance. It is very hard to accurately assess how well you played in any single session because variance played a huge part, so most of us fill in the gaps however we choose to.

Usually that is this way: If we win, we played well, if we lost, we ran bad.

Thankfully if you are reading this, the chances are you are working hard on your own game and less likely to fall into this category, but it is still very important to be aware of it. The best players I have witnessed in my years as a poker journalist are the ones that, even to this day with all their success, still work on their game as enthusiastically as we all did from the start.

Conversely, there are those players who believed they had nothing left to learn when the online age came about, or when the games got tough after the 'glory days'. These are the players who have found themselves getting left behind and struggling to beat the modern game (I'd love to be writing this as someone who didn't make these mistakes, but I'm afraid I am one of the guys who stopped working on his game during the glory days and is playing now catchup).

Perhaps the most important lesson, and one which we are coming round to unfortunately now it may be too late, is having a plan B. Black Friday and the ensuing Full Tilt drama has exposed that many of us were completely unprepared for a major disaster. Players in America are currently in limbo with their main source of income unavailable to them, and players worldwide have their money stuck on Full Tilt in the same situation.

These are not the only instances of adversity for poker players of course, there have been superusers, bots, scams, collusion, cheating scandals, armed robberies, and much more.

If we have learned anything since Black Friday, then surely it is to no longer put your eggs in one basket. Do not put all your money in the same poker account, in fact do not keep all your poker money in just in poker accounts full stop.

The same goes with your time, it seems pretty ridiculous to devote your life to just playing poker when there is so much uncertainty in the industry the world over. Whether it's an education, another career, or just another hobby, it just makes sense to have a broader range of interests beyond poker.

It goes against just about every instinct you may have, but learning to expect failure and make the most of it is probably one of the most underestimated skills in the game. Not many of us plan for failure in poker, but all of us have to face it.

As this is a certainty, perhaps the only thing we can do is build ourselves an environment where failure is never final, and there is always something we can learn from it.

"If you want to succeed, double your failure rate." Thomas J. Watson

follow @Barry_Carter on Twitter.

PokerStrategy.com Column - AGCC, You Failed Again

2011-10-21T20:00:00.000-07:00

First appeared on PokerStrategy.com

Back in September I wrote a column entitled AGCC, You Failed, where I tore into the AGCC for regulating by report, rather than by audit. I argued that they should share some responsibility for what happened with Full Tilt Poker, and many others have agreed with me since.

I had hoped that would be my final word on the AGCC, but alas, the more they find themselves under the microscope, the more inept they are looking,

Yesterday's news that the AGCC had incorrectly reported the amount seized by the DOJ by $172m was yet another blow to their credibility. On September 29 they reported that $331m was seized by the DOJ in total, but Subject Poker reported yesterday the figure was closer to $159m.

In the AGCC's correction yesterday, they stated:

"The underlying evidence in the hearing clearly demonstrated that $331 million was the total of funds unavailable to Full Tilt, of which DOJ seizures formed only a part. The mis‐statement is thus not of significance in the Commission’s assessment of the matter."

False Hope For the Players

To say this mis-statement is not of significance is an insult to anyone who has got money stuck on FTP. It may have not been of significance to the decision to revoke FTP's license, but it created an incredible false hope that the DOJ had seized more money than was currently owed to the players, when in reality the amount seized is just over half the outstanding player balances of $300 million.

I am lucky enough not to have a massive amount of money on FTP, but do I know exactly what it is like to be owed a significant chunk of money that looks unlikely to ever be repaid. You feel helpless, frustrated, and humiliated. This gets exacerbated whenever you get a false sense of hope, only to have the rug pulled from under your feet.

It is not the error itself which I find so unforgeable - that is just incompetence - it is the way in which it has been dismissed as irrelevant.

Subject Poker, who have been one of the few heroes in this whole scandal, have apparently been trying to contact the AGCC for two weeks to question them about this discrepancy, but were completely ignored. For a regulator to ignore such an important error, and then to dismiss it as insignificant, once again highlights how the AGCC has buried their head in the sands throughout this whole affair.

Lack of Due Diligence

They passively regulated their licensees by report, blindly hoping that what they would get back would be accurate. They completely ignore Subject Poker's attempts to discuss their error, despite the fact they clearly stated they would be taking it to press. Then they finally acknowledge the error, but claim it was not of significance.

The AGCC need to realise that their action, or inaction, is having a profound impact on how the Full Tilt scandal is playing out. They are not footnotes in the story of how Full Tilt cheated players out of millions, they are one of the villains, aiding and abetting Full Tilt with a lack of due diligence.

Related News:

AGCC Falsely Reported DOJ Seizures
Tony G To Take Legal Action Against AGCC, Claims They Knew About FTP's Problems
AGCC To Hold Review After Full Tilt Scandal
Full Tilt Poker: What Has Happened Lately?
Daily Rewind: AGCC Interview
AGCC Statement Addressing Full Tilt Players
Barry Carter: AGCC, You Failed

follow @Barry_Carter on Twitter.

PokerStrategy.com Column - Still Sceptical About The International Stadium Poker Tour

2011-10-11T21:00:00.000-07:00

Laurent Tapie

First appeared on PokerStrategy.com

When I first heard about the proposed $30 million guaranteed International Stadium Poker Tour (ISPT), I doubted whether it was real. Then last week, PokerStrategy confirmed in an exclusive interview with Laurent Tapie that it was indeed going ahead.

Sadly, I am still as sceptical as I was before.

I hate negativity, and I love stories of people proving doubters wrong in the face of massive adversity, but regrettably, I have to be one of the many who points their finger and doubts. If I am wrong, I will be delighted to be one of the footnotes in history who were made to look foolish, because this could be great for poker, but I just cannot see this event happening the way it’s currently planned out.

To recap, the ISPT is going to take place at Wembley Arena in September 2012, over five days. It will start with 20,000 to 30,000 players in the stadium seats playing shootout poker on electronic pads. When the field is reduced to 3,000 players, play will recommence live on the pitch, all the way up to the final table. The prize pool is said to be guaranteed at $30 million.

Bad Timing

My first concern is largely around the climate the ISPT is being created in. Not only is online poker currently in the biggest decline since its inception, the people behind the tour are currently embroiled in the biggest scandal the game has ever seen.

Now of course, they were not in any way to blame for what previously happened at Full Tilt, and are currently looking like being the potential knight in shining armour about to rescue the players.

But until that happens, are the poker public going to get behind this event? It seems very premature to announce such an event when a significantly more important deal for the poker economy is yet to take place?

The Tapies may want to keep Full Tilt and the ISPT entirely separate, but the poker community is inevitably going to associate one with the other. Unless they can rescue Full Tilt to the player’s satisfaction, this new enterprise will not be taken seriously.

Then let’s look at the sheer scale of the event. Even though the issue of where to put 3000 tables has been addressed by the use of electronic pads, do we really expect 30,000 players to buy in/satellite in for $1000?

The previous European record is 1765 and in Vegas its 8773. Can we really expect those records to be smashed by such high margins by an unproven event? A brand as reputable as the WSOP has not been able to break the record since 2006 after all.

Questionable Partners

Many of the tickets will be won online, but where? Such an ask needs a big, and I mean huge, room to take on the task of hosting qualifiers, and the only one that comes close is PokerStars. In fact, I don't even think the mighty PokerStars is big enough for such a task right now, nor can I see them getting involved with this.

No other room, or combination of rooms, has a hope of hosting this many qualifiers (especially as we have to assume US players won’t be able to qualify online), especially not a resurrected Full Tilt.

The only real way an online qualification campaign would be viable would be if all the major rooms held qualifiers, like the way in which WSOP satellites are held. That is not beyond the realms of possibility, but this takes me onto my next criticism.

So far all the partners involved have nothing to do with poker. That is never a good sign for me, as most mainstream advertisers wouldn’t touch poker with a 10 foot pole. I'd feel much more comfortable if a big online room or poker brand had been associated with it, but the absence of any poker related partner so far is very worrying - both if some have been approached and said no, or if they were never approached in the first place.

One of the partners is Orange, who are said to be providing the 30,000 tablets and broadband needed to facilitate such an event. Surely that is going to be ridiculously expensive? Whether it’s an existing tablet like an iPad, or a specially made one, when you factor in the broadband and insurance, surely the cost would actually be something close to $1,000 per unit?

I am no expert here, so correct me if I am way off with my figures, but that cost alone will match the prize pool. Even if the cost is closer to $100 per unit, that is effectively the rake accounted for in just one expense, before we even factor in the cost of hiring the Stadium.

Site of the ISPT event: Wembley Stadium in London

That is not the only logistical concern I have for the event. Sitting in the stands of a stadium like Wembley for five days is going to be pretty uncomfortable, especially if it is cold as London often is. I daren't even speculate what would happen if it rained.

Laurent Tapie has told that the prize pool has already been escrowed, which is a good sign. But other than that, there are still a lot of question marks. The date has already changed from May to September, I spoke to the press officer at Wembley who informed me the event is not 100% confirmed yet, and Tapie said in his interview that they still haven’t acquired the necessary gaming licenses to go ahead.

The prize pool may be guaranteed, but this event is far from guaranteed to go ahead.

I hope I am wrong, and at the moment it starts to appear that I am wrong, I will gladly eat humble pie and become the biggest fan of the ISPT, laughing at what a fool I was to ever doubt it. But until then, I just find myself asking too many questions, at a time when poker consumers need more certainty than ever before, to take the event seriously.

follow @Barry_Carter on Twitter.

PokerStrategy.com Column - Negreanu Takes A Stand Against The EPT

2011-10-06T22:00:00.000-07:00

Negreanu Speaks His Mind

First published on PokerStrategy.com.

If you are one of the 131095 people who follow Daniel Negreanu on twitter, you may have noticed over the last few days that he has taken a stand against the European Poker Tour because of their policy of penalising the stacks of latecomers to their events.

So if someone has registered in advance but doesn't arrive at the start they get blinded away until they take their seat. If they buy in late, they receive less than the initial starting stack.

Negreanu is not happy about this, and chose to boycott the remainder of the side events at EPT London in protest.

One of my pet peeves in life is lateness (I am usually the first person to greet the dealer), but even more, I hate bad customer service. I can't help but think KidPoker is on to something with his latest protest.

Someone who registers late is after all a customer, and this practice is surely only going to alienate players who arrive late (Or arrived on time and were forced to be alternates).

They paid their rake like everyone else, and in the case of an event like an EPT high roller they paid a lot of rake, and I have never been a fan of any practice that looks like punishment to a paying customer.

My local gym used to fine people £1 for forgetting their membership card, a petty pointless practice which somehow enraged me more than some of the biggest injustices I have suffered. I can see why small things like this can piss poker players off.

Let us not forget also that our target audience, poker players, are among the tardiest consumers in the world. If we are going to start penalising them for being late, we may as well fine people for being drunk in bars.

Critical Decisions

Customer service aside, let us look at the actual impact of a late player arriving with a full stack vs a depleted one. The old adage of 'you cant win a tournament on day 1' is very appropriate here. The stacks are usually deep and 95% of the field is still in attendance during the late registration period. So a few orbits worth of blinds should never really factor into a critical hand decision yet.

Some people will make the argument that arriving four levels late with a full stack is an advantage, because you have already outlasted X number of players without losing a chip. I can only see such an argument applying to a really weird satellite overlay situation with a small field and a lot of guaranteed seats.

When you start a tournament on level 4 with the normal starting stack, you are already at a disadvantage, because you have less than the average stack. Starting late in a tournament actually has an opportunity cost attached to it, the later you start, the bigger the disadvantage. Penalising players further is only really going to put players off late registering in the first place, which is a lose-lose for both the tournament prize pool for the players, and the loss in rake for the organisers.

There is of course the issue that pre-registered players who arrive late have their stack waiting for them, and are thus blinding away from the start, whereas players who register late have their stack brought to the table with them. This could be said to be a disadvantage for those who register in advance but get held up.

This could be solved easily, by simply having the stacks being put into play when the player arrives at the table. This would also surely make it easier for the dealer to do their job beforehand, by not having to manage the stack on the late player's behalf.

I can imagine hundreds of small situations where giving late players a full stack can have an impact, but none of them being more significant for the players or organisers than negatives of latecomers deciding not to play at all.

Standardising The Rules

Is it worth Daniel Negreanu taking a stand against the EPT like this and boycotting the side events? I notice rather sensibly he didn't do this during the main event. There are bigger issues affecting poker right now than blinding off late stacks, that is for certain.

But you cannot fault a man for calling out his sponsor's flagship tour when he thinks they are wrong about something. Especially when you consider the turmoil that is taking place over at Full Tilt Poker, where 99% of the Red Pros have remained silent on monumentally bigger issues.

I happen to agree with him this time, but should we change the rules just because Daniel said they are wrong? Absolutely not. Negreanu has established himself somewhat as the 'Robin Hood' of poker, and regularly finds himself speaking out on issues others in his position would avoid like the plague. He tends to speak his mind about a lot of things, but it doesn't mean he is always right.

But where he does help poker is that, right or wrong, he gets people talking and taking notice. This issue is not the biggest issue to affect poker, but perhaps if it brings a few more of the right people into the larger discussion of standardising the rules of live tournament poker, maybe Kid Poker has done his job.

follow @Barry_Carter on Twitter.

PokerStrategy.com Column - The Caesars Cup - Who Are The Favourites, And Who Cares?

2011-10-04T21:00:00.000-07:00

Hellmuth & ElkY Lead The Way

The Caesars Cup at the WSOPE is billed as the Ryder Cup of poker. It is a heads-up team tournament between five players from Europe and five players from the Americas, where the best in the world are chosen by team captains Phil Hellmuth and Bertrand “Elky” Grospellier.

Of course the big difference between the Caesars Cup and the Ryder Cup is that 99% of the poker playing community do not care one bit about it.

Most players consider it to be nothing more than a made for TV tournament with recognisable names for the casual poker viewers - which is exactly what it is.

But lets pretend it isn't for a while and actually look at the two teams involved.

Team USA – (Captain) Phil Hellmuth, Doyle Brunson, Johnny Chan, Daniel Negreanu and Huck Seed.
Team Europe – (Captain) Bertrand “Elky” Grospellier, Jake Cody (UK), Gus Hansen (Denmark), Dario Minieri (Italy) and Maxim Lykov (Russia).

Phil Hellmuth claims he has gone for experience over youth by picking Doyle Brunson and Johnny Chan. I can’t help but think these teams were largely picked by TV producers instead of the Poker Brat himself, because surely even someone as 'old school' as Phil could not have honestly picked this team hoping to win?

Out In the Poker Wilderness

Huck Seed and Negreanu both seem like fair picks, even though ultimately they must have been picked for their marketability first and foremost. I have no problem with Hellmuth as the captain either after his rebirth at the WSOP. But Doyle and Johnny? Other than the TV circuit, they have been pretty much out in the poker wilderness for a long time now.

I am sure that certain no-brainer picks like Tom Dwan & Phil Ivey would simply not have been available for obvious reasons this year, but there is still a wealth of TV friendly US players who are crushing the game who no doubt would have accepted an invitation to play. Jason Mercier, Vanessa Selbst, Ben Lamb, and Eric Seidel all spring to mind as being very noticeable by their absence.

Experience is not an excuse in this day an age, when you consider that most online players overtake their live counterparts in number of hands played. Not only that, they also can trump them in specific experience of the format, given the Caesars Cup is a heads-up event.

Two prime examples of this is Dario Minieri and ElkY, who between them arguably may have played more hands that the remaining 8 participants combined (Dario is a really shrewd pick when you consider his heads-up SNG experience).

Team Europe Won in 2009

Team Europe Light Years Ahead

The European team is a much stronger line up in every way, and equally experienced live and online. Every single one of them has at least a bracelet, most have a bracelet and another major title, Cody and ElkY are triple crown winners, and Cody and Hansen have their bracelet in high roller heads-up matches.

All of them are equally experienced in online play, in fact most of them are known to be highly experienced in heads-up variants of online play (Elky came 2nd in the WCOOP heads-up high roller, Hansen plays heads-up cash, Dario is one of the sickest heads-up SNG grinders of all time, and Jake Cody was a heads-up cash player before he shot to stardom).

But as strong a line-up as Europe is, I cannot help but think that the teams were picked by, or at least the draft pool was significantly restricted by, TV producers. Gus is the token 'TV Pro' in the pack, and all five men represent different strong European poker demographics - France, UK, Italy, Russia, and Scandinavia.

I think both team captains, and the TV producers whom I am continually accusing of picking the teams, certainly missed a trick by not including a November Niner on one of the line-ups. The aforementioned Ben Lamb would be been a great addition to the Americas team, particularly because he is racing against Hellmuth in the POY rankings. As this is essentially a WSOP product, it seems like a missed opportunity for reciprocal marketing of both events.

We don't have to enjoy watching televised poker to enjoy the benefits it brings - namely attracting new players to the game. The Caesars Cup is not supposed to appeal to the serious poker players among us, but a few tweaks and it could have done.

Replace Doyle and Johnny with Eric Seidel and either Jason Mercier or Ben Lamb, and you would have not only had an event to appeal to the TV poker audience, you also would have got a match up that would have got more serious poker players talking. It might have even been worthy of a few side bets or a sportsbook opening a market on it.

But who cares anyway? It's just a made for TV poker tournament that doesn't mean anything anyway.

Mental Game of Poker Now Available on Kindle, Nook, EPub & PDF

2011-10-04T06:09:00.000-07:00

I’m excited to announce, The Mental Game of Poker is now available in the most popular eBook formats. The price is $34.95, click below to order:

Amazon Kindle
Amazon Kindle UK
Amazon Kindle DE

Nook
PDF
EPub

*Note: On Amazon, the book cover is showing up in blue. There’s no error with the actual downloaded Kindle version, just with the website.

Notes on the Conversion

The eBook and the softcover versions are identical, except for some minor formatting adjustments to conform to the standards of each file type. One of these adjustment actually improves the functioning of the book. Throughout the book are references to other sections. Rather than listing a page number, as done in the softcover, you just need to click the italicized name and you’re taken right to it.

I spent a lot of time making sure the eBook version closely matched the look and feel of the softcover. Many eBook conversions are sloppy and riddled with errors. Great care has been taken to ensure a quality conversion. Please, let me know what you think.

Already purchased a hard copy?

To get a PDF or ePub version for $9.95, send an email to ebook@mentalgameofpoker.com. Include your name, the email address used when your order was placed, or if purchased from Amazon, include the order ID or approximate date of your purchase.

PokerStrategy.com Column - AGCC, You Failed.

2011-09-30T00:05:00.000-07:00

Originally featured on PokerStrategy.com.

It took nearly two weeks (and before that three months) for the Alderney Gambling Control Commission (AGCC) to revoke the license of Full Tilt Poker. We are only a few hours into this latest plot twist, but after a two weeks of silence, there has already been a big backlash against the AGCC by the players, no matter how inevitable this news was.

Should we be directing our frustration at the AGCC right now, after all they are not accused of money laundering, they didn't accept deposits that they couldn't process, they didn't report funds as liquid when they had been seized by the DOJ. These were all things that were out of control of the AGCC, and they noted this in their press release which stated they were 'fundamentally misled' about the funds at Full Tilt.

Out Of Their Control?

But let us look a little deeper into what was in their control. The accounting evidence in the determination notice was compiled by accountants Dixon Wilson on the 28 June 2011. These audits highlighted that around $331 million was seized by the US Department of Justice between 2007 and 2011. These frozen funds were reported as liquid, and should have been immediately brought to the attention of the AGCC by Full Tilt.

So in 2007 Full Tilt should have reported this, and by not doing so, they managed to fool the AGCC for four years?

Four years?

What on earth does a regulator do if they cannot notice a $331 million shortfall on account over four years? Is it not the job of a regulator to regularly audit a company with millions of dollars of customer money, instead of naively accepting whatever play money account balance is reported at the end of the tax year?

Where were the Audits?

It depends entirely on the industry and the country the business is in, but most regulators insist on annual accounting audits by third parties to ensure things like this do not happen. Full Tilt was a privately limited company, which usually means that they would be subject to less mandatory audits, but surely that is no excuse?

Very few privately limited companies would ever hold onto customer funds for significant amount of times like an online poker room does. In that regard they are operatively more similar to a bank, and with so much potential for financial ruin, surely the AGCC should have treated regulating them in the same manner?

Although I am sure that the AGCC do ensure company accounts are audited regularly, I cannot believe for one second that this happened with the degree of scrutiny they should have been. Let me remind you once again, $331 million seized since 2007 - how can any remotely experienced accountant miss that?

They told us that they allowed Full Tilt an extension on their hearing to pursue an investor as it was in the player's interest to do so, because it would enable the players to get their funds back. Rather fortuitously this also allowed them to get £250,000 in operating fees that were owed to them. Now that they have revoked Full Tilt's license, I am not seeing much mention to them still looking to get the players funds back any more.

The AGCC are trying to say they were fooled by Full Tilt for all this time, I say that the AGCC failed us. Would the events of Black Friday still have happened no matter what they did? Yes. But had FullTilt been regulated with more scrutiny, had they been audited properly in the last four years, not only would Full Tilt's accounting shortfall been noticed sooner, this most likely would have been prevented from ever happening at all.

PokerStrategy.com Column - Should the Red Pros Give Their Earnings Back?

2011-09-28T02:29:00.001-07:00

Tom Dwan has pledged
$1 million to the players

Originally featured on PokerStrategy.com

Right now, Tom 'durrrrr' Dwan is winning over lots of frustrated Full Tilt Poker customers with how actively and openly he is handling the latest revelations.

In particular, sticking to his pledge to pay back the $1 million that he was paid by the site, direct to the players. Not only has he set a great example most of us can admire, he has also urged his fellow Full Tilt Pros to do the same, and pledge back some of the money they made from the site.

Elsewhere, the first European pros sponsored by Full Tilt and also one of their biggest affiliates, The Hendon Mob, made a statement on their site saying that while they admire Dwan for this, they wont be doing the same, and that most of the revenue they got from the site went to pay the staff of their own site.

Pretty much all the other Red Pros have been noticeably silent over the last week. It is understandable, right now large sections of the poker community want to direct their anger at anyone who had anything to do with Full Tilt, and there are few people more symbolic of the site more than the Red Pros. Not only that, now many people are echoing Tom Dwans suggestion that the Red Pros should take some brunt of the responsibility for what happened, and pay back some of their endorsement money.

So should they?

Red Pro or Team Full Tilt?

Before I go on, let me quickly distinguish between Red Pros and Team Full Tilt, because it is important. Team Full Tilt is made up by the 15 players who are said to have the biggest deals, in some cases equity shares, and in some cases helped found the site.

A Red Pro is one of the 250+ players who were sponsored by the site and contracted to play a certain amount of time at their online tables. In return some got sponsored into live events, some were given bonuses, and others were on $30 p/hr + 100% rakeback deals. In many cases the deals were hybrids of all three.

I must admit, I had always been very jealous of anyone with the Red Pro deal. I have no aspirations of being a professional or a sponsored player, but $30 an hour + 100% rakeback? Those of us who have come to rely on rakeback for a percentage of their winnings can only view a Red Pro deal as a holy grail. I, like I am sure many people, have wasted a significant amount of time working out how much money I would pull in as a Red Pro, by 16-tabling low-mid stakes games, while enjoying the feeling of being a sponsored pro, and giving out 'I Bust a Pro' t-shirts to anyone who managed to felt me.

We already revealed in our interview with poker agent Nick Ferro that most of the Red Pros didn't sign any contracts. This of course highlights just how unregulated the handshake business of poker is, and no doubt is one of many clues as to the downfall of the site.

It also reveals how low down in the food chain they were, and just how little influence they had. Do you think that 99% of them had the first clue as to how Full Tilt operated? Other than those with actual shares in the company, I doubt most of the pros knew any more than the guys in customer support, the marketing department, or the staff canteen.

But they were ambassadors of the site I hear you say. Surely the fact that these well known pros gave their seal of approval to the site influenced customers to sign up, assuming their money must be safe? I have no doubt that will have happened in some instances, but how many of us can honestly say they signed up to a site because professional poker player X said we should? Most of us sign up to a site because of bonuses, rakeback, traffic, soft games, big tournament guarantees, good software, rush poker, or a funny little dog avatar.

The players that likely have influenced some of us to sign up are those players at the top end, the guys in Team Full Tilt, who do have a say in the way the company did business - the Iveys, Dwans, Fergusons, Hansens, and Matusows. No offense to them, but nobody signed up to Full Tilt because of Perry Friedman, Berry Johnson, Jeff Madsen, or David Pham (Four names I have picked at random from the huge list of Red Pros).

What Value Did Red Pros Bring?

There were over 250
Red Pros before Black Friday

Which makes you question, if they had such little influence, both in the back room and from a marketing point of view, what was the point of all these Red Pros? I completely agree. The money a Red Pro could stand to get was ridiculously high compared to what they actually brought to the company.

I would say that the only marketing benefit most of the red pros provided was to completely saturate the televised tournament fields with Full Tilt badges, other than that they were really just a luxury of a site that wanted to claim to have the most sponsored players.

So, in the aftermath of the events of the last week, should they feel guilty about all the money they were able to make, in return for relatively easy work? Of course not, they were just the lucky b*****ds we all wanted to be.

When presented with such a generous deal like this, few of us would want to jeopardize it by investigating the inner workings of a business 99% of us believed was making money. When presented with lucrative bonuses, most of us don't set the money aside, just on the off chance our new employer gets accused of being a ponzi scheme, we spend it.

And lets not forget that a great deal of these players have seen a complete reversal of fortune. Instead of laughing all the way to the bank, many of them currently have their own bankrolls currently in limbo on the site, amounts they may not have deposited had they not been hired as Red Pros in the first place.

I think this debate comes down to one of whether you consider a Red Pro an employee or an ambassador. For me, the Red Pros were just employees of Full Tilt Poker, nothing more. They treated it in the same way most people treat a 9-5 job by doing what they were told, trying to make as much as possible, and not wanting to rock the boat when they had a great deal. No doubt this is one of the reasons most of them haven't said a word on what has happened in the last week.

They had no more influence or insight into how the business ran than anyone else at the Full Tilt other than the share holders and upper management. For most part they were greatly overpaid, but being lucky enough to be gifted such a dream job does not vindicate them in this scandal.

by Barry Carter

PokerStrategy.com Column - Should PokerStars Get Rush Poker?

2011-09-28T02:29:00.000-07:00

Originally featured on PokerStrategy.com

Rush Poker

It was revealed this week that PokerStars are working on their own version of a fast moving ring game, like the ground-breaking Rush Poker. With Full Tilt Poker doing anything but rushing to get their players back at the table, the timing would seem to be perfect for Stars to capture the rapid poker market

Some of the initial feedback from many in the poker community has been quite negative, and a lot of the Stars regs are concerned that Rush will kill the cash games. The biggest criticism of Rush Poker in this regard was that it split the cash game traffic on Full Tilt and took a lot action away from the regular games. The high volume nature of Rush Poker and the fact you no longer had to wait long for a hand also appeared to turn everyone into nitty rakeback players, making the game itself a tough place to make a profit.

Killing the Game?

Both concerns are well founded. Thankfully, prior to Black Friday, Stars had over double the average cash game traffic on Full Tilt and even without US custom still has significantly more, so the likelihood of it killing the non-rush games is much less likely. It will no doubt take a significant portion of the traffic from those games, but there should still be healthy traffic in the standard ring games.

As for the fact it turns players into nits, that is true, because any innovation that allows players to multi table more efficiently and generate more rake is going to appeal to the tight regulars. That is the state of online poker today, and if you do not like it, there are plenty of sites with poor software and less regs (I mean that by the way, that’s not a pro-PokerStars swipe at their competitors, there are plenty of softer sites out there specifically because it’s hard for regs to multitable).

SuperNova Elite More Likely?

Not all the regs will be complaining about implementation of a rush format, one group that presumably already started licking their lips and doing VPP calculations are those players striving to make SuperNova or SuperNova Elite. Black Friday had a negative impact on SuperNova Elite chasers outside the US because it significantly reduced the traffic in a lot of the games these players relied on to hit their volume targets. This could redress the balance a bit, and I could imagine a ton of action in December from players trying a last ditch attempt to hit 1 million VPPs.

You can say what you want about Full Tilt (and we all are) but Rush Poker was a genius idea. It was undeniably fun and addictive poker, even for those of us that had gotten sick of the standard No Limit cash game format. And as a business concept, it was even better, as it allowed us to pay rake at a faster rate than ever before, and turn even recreational one-tablers into genuine high volume grinders.

Talent imitates, Genius Steals: I fully expect Stars to take the existing product and do something much better with it. Just before Black Friday, Full Tilt was just starting to expand their mobile version of Rush Poker, and this is where I expect Stars to pick up and improve. The future of online poker, just like just about everything else in life, is mobile, and if there was ever a poker format the lent itself to mobile gaming, it is Rush Poker.

I for one am quite excited to see what PokerStars can do with Rush Poker, I don’t think I will kill the non-rush cash games (Though it will have an impact for sure) and with the biggest poker room in the world behind it, I think it could actually be very attractive to brand new players (Perhaps the only remaining part of the Full Tilt legacy that is).

by Barry Carter

Joining PokerStrategy

2011-09-15T02:40:00.000-07:00

With poker in the current state it is in, surely I would have to be mad to leave arguably one of the most stable poker media companies in the business? I would, and I am pretty risk averse during the best of times, so anyone who knows me would probably have guessed I wasn't going to be leaving PokerNews to invest in magic beans. I am pleased to announce I am going to be joining PokerStrategy.com , mainly as a content writer, but with a few other fun things on the horizon too.

Some people in the UK or US may not know a great deal about PokerStrategy, but in the rest of Europe they are a giant. Alongside PokerNews & PokerListings, they are part of the 'Big 3' of poker affiliate sites, as well as probably the biggest strategy site out there (To date I have probably worked for the two best, most self explanatory, domain names in poker, PokerNews and PokerStrategy).

What they are not as well known for, at the moment, is their news content - that's where I come in. Their actual content is great, and the community is incredibly strong, but I'm not sure as many people know about their news content as they should. That said, they have recently had some exclusive statements from Full Tilt, so I guess they are now on the map. They want to establish themselves as as not only the number 1 strategy site, but also the number 1 news site, in poker. My job will be raising awareness of this, and hopefully ensuring that we have unique content that keeps people coming back for more.

It is a perfect mix of security and challenge for me. One of the real appeals was the challenge of establishing them as the number 1 news site out there, but also having the safety net of them being a massive site with plenty of resource and talented staff to pull it off. This is also without doubt the best ever time to be a poker journalist - not in terms of finding work, in that regard its possibly the worst time, but in terms of finding things to write about. It seems a new scandal breaks every other day at the moment in poker, so one thing is for sure, I wont be bored.

A change is as good as a rest as they say, and I really can't wait to get my teeth into this exciting new venture, so bookmark PokerStrategy.com, because I am going to be shoving it down your throat anyway.

Leaving PokerNews

2011-09-14T02:09:00.000-07:00

I never thought I would be saying this, but I have decided to leave PokerNews. It was a tremendously tough decision because I really enjoyed the job, the company, and the people. The only reason I have left is because a new opportunity has arisen, and after five years I really felt ready for a new challenge.

Lots of people when they leave a job, particularly it seems in poker, use the opportunity to moan about their former employers and air some dirty laundry - that wont happen here. I have nothing but respect for everyone there, have genuinely enjoyed every minute of it, and think there are some tremendously talented people there. In my opinion they are the best at what they do, and in particular have raised the bar for live tournament reporting.

In particular I want to publicly thanks CEO Robbie Davies, who has been a great leader and friend over the last five years. In particular he was very supportive both when I released my book, and more importantly when my Father passed away last year. He was just as supportive when I told him I was leaving, he was a real class act about it and his priority was making sure I was doing what was best for me. Tony G is also one of the most generous guys you are likely to meet on the poker circuit and it has certainly been entertaining having him as the public face of the company you work for.

I'm still tying up a few loose ends at UK PokerNews for the rest of the month so you will still see my name on there for a while yet, but my work for the main PokerNews.com site has come to an end.

Poker is a small world and I know our paths will cross again many times in the future, I wish everyone at PokerNews the best of luck and hope we will all stay in touch.

On to an exciting new venture, which I will detail in a future blog post this week.

For One Night Only - Mental Game Coacing from Barry Carter

2011-08-19T07:31:00.000-07:00

I got an interesting email this week from someone interested in The Mental Game of Poker. They actually asked if I would be interested in coaching them, much in the same way that Jared has coached hundreds of poker player’s one on one.

I was pretty flattered, but even though I know my writing buddy Jared can charge a pretty decent premium for what he does, I said no. Although I am more familiar with the material in The Mental Game of Poker than anyone but Jared himself, and have spent more than two years effectively shadowing him, I know enough to know I am still unqualified to coach someone.

Jared has a master’s degree in counselling psychology, a mental health counselling license, over 3600 hours of supervised counselling hours, and thousands more working with golfers and poker players. I on the other hand am some lucky donk who got to write a book with him, and I think it would be potentially be a bit of an insult to what he does to think I could do it so easily. There are actually a few of people who have set themselves up as mental game coaches who I think are equally unqualified as I am.

But Jared isn’t as cynical as I am, and he actually thought I should go for it, having a unique perspective of being from a poker background and working so closely with him. My official line is still no on that one, but we both did think it would be an interesting experiment to see just how well, or how poorly, I would get on if I tried my hand at mental game coaching.

So I am actually now going to take up the guy who contacted me on his request and try and help him with a tilt problem. I am not charging, it is just a one off, and Jared is going to listen in to both critique me and also rescue the poor sod if I start giving him terrible advice. It’s a win-win as far as I am concerned, either I look good and help the guy, or I look bad, Jared helps the guy, and I make it clear just how skilled he is at what he does.

It is actually going to be fun setting the line on when in the session Jared steps in because I am giving awful advice.

It could end up being a podcast type of deal like some of the other client sessions Jared has recorded, and will most likely happen next week.

Until then here is a cracking Cash Plays podcast with Jared from last week discussing Risk Aversion, where I get a mention too.

For Your Listening and Viewing Pleasure

2011-08-12T03:57:00.000-07:00

Bit of a dump of interesting videos/podcasts here today.

First of all, this is a new news show from Sky Poker called the Rail. You may recall recently I wrote out a list of journalist bucket list things I wanted to do, well a month on and I've done several. I hit 1000 twitter followers, did a 'tweet update' from the Full Tilt Hearing, wrote for a newspaper (The Guernsey Press, lol, for the FTP hearing. Think I still wanna write for the Racing Post at some point). Then was number four, which is work behind the scenes of a TV production.

That would the Rail. Its a news show for Sky Poker, and I have been helping them out with some of the content, and will be appearing on it regularly. Here is the first episode and I actually really like it as a nice, concise, bit of informational TV:

The other thing I urge people to listen to this week is this Quadjacks Interview with Jared Tendler. It starts off as a discussion about the Girah cheating scandal, but the really interesting thing for me is the discussion of regulation that follows it. One of the main reasons I decided to work with Jared and knew our book would be of value, is because he is an outsider from a regulated industry (Both sports and psychology) looking in on poker, and his insight shows just how lacking regulation is from poker, and how much it is needed.

http://www.quadjacks.com/2011/08/10/jared-tendler-mental-game-coach-quadjacks-poker-radio-tuesday-august-9th/

Finally, my god, what can I say about this? Kudos to anyone who makes it to the end, it is either the greatest joke in the history of man, or the most extreme mid life crisis of all time. This guy is a 55 year old casino executive (And the saddest thing is, the song has been stuck in my head for three days):

Not Looking Stupid in Front of a Girl

2011-08-05T03:53:00.000-07:00

I had my first ‘dog rage’ incident last weekend. Like road rage, but between dog walkers, getting aggressive with each other over the behaviour of each other’s mutts. My dog Charlie is the most submissive dog I have ever known, and he went up to another dog and gave him a friendly sniff. Which prompted this tattooed thug of a man to scream ‘Get your fucking dog on a lead’.

To which I pretty angrily reacted with something along the lines of ‘No, we are walking our dog in a dog walking park’.

Anyway, the long and short of it was he was offended I had my dog off a lead, when his was on one, because he had (his words not mine) a ‘dangerous breed’. He didn’t, he had a Miniature Bull Terrier, which is quite a friendly breed. I was shocked he referred to it as dangerous and also pretty angry by this point, and struggled to mumble out the words ‘that’s never been a dangerous breed’.

I wanted to follow up with something along the lines of ‘there are no dangerous breeds, only bad owners’ but a mixture of anger, fear, and confusion meant I started to stutter my words. Obviously I have been rehearsing this very line ever since, and will be looking to deliver it at the first available opportunity. By this point he had had enough, screamed (really screamed btw) at me to get my fucking dog on a lead again, then stormed off.

I am not used to conflict, I am not particularly argumentative, so this was quite new ground for me. Normally I would do my best to diffuse a situation like this (Or leg it), but bad dog owners really annoy me (and I am pretty certain that is the spirit of my late father talking there, he got involved in dog rage incidents all the time, usually whenever he saw someone mistreating a dog). So I think I stood my ground adequately, I certainly wasn’t backing off from the guy and he looked like he could probably deck me. I was with my girlfriend at the time, and we walked away, having a little giggle about it, she seemed unphased by it all.

I recounted the story to a friend, and he asked me the question I have been asking myself since:

“Did you do enough to not look like a pussy in front of your girlfriend?”

That is the ultimate question. Situations like this are, in my opinion, a man’s worst nightmare. Had I been on my own, or with male friends, I think I could have lived with any outcome (fight or flight or cry or become his bitch), but to look like you wimped out in front of a girl is about as bad as it gets.

That may sound really shallow, but its human nature I think. No matter how level headed and sensitive a woman wants her man to be, they also deep down want, at the very least, to feel safe when they are with him. He is or could be the father of their children after all, there is nothing wrong with such a need. We know this too, and at the very minimum we want to appear as if we wouldn’t run away at the first sign of danger.

Did I do enough? I think I got away with it, I sounded angry in my tone, I stood in front of her so as to shield her, and he walked away first. But, I never really reprimanded him, I was rude at best, and I started to mumble and stutter instead of blurting out a killer retort. I’m glad it didn’t come to blows (It was a lot more aggressive than my blog may make it sound) because he probably would have won. I think I got lucky, but it could have been much worse, and it truly had the potential to be a nightmare scenario.

Take these two prime examples of how bad it could have got, one from the friend I was talking to, another from my own experience. The story my friend Jonesy told me was of two couples he knew in a pub, the guys were playing pool, the ladies were having a chat. A group of burly men came along, took the pool cues away from the guys, and straight up told them “we are playing now” and ordered the two couples to leave right away, which they all did.

She knew it shouldn’t have mattered, and they did the logical thing of avoiding violence, but one of the girls could not get head around the fact her man had been made to look such a wimp, and she left him a few weeks later. It’s horrible, but I understand her viewpoint (And feel for him, as I am not sure what I would have done in his shoes).

Likewise, when I was about 19, I was out one night with some friends, about three girls and one of the girl’s boyfriends, who was about 25. We were stood at a cash machine when four much older and hard looking blokes approached the girl with the boyfriend and loudly asked ‘Will you show me your cunt?’, much to the amusement of his friends. I stood there pretending nothing had happened, and unfortunately, so did her boyfriend.

When they left, she immediately tore into him ‘Thanks a lot for sticking up for me’.

The poor sod, had he not been emasculated enough by the guys, she promptly reminded him of it seconds later. What the hell was he supposed to do there? Had he pretty much said anything at all, he would have got the crap kicked out of him, and very possibly me too. This particular situation I sympathise with the girl much less, even though she has been done much more wrong, because she must have known this and was essentially saying ‘Thanks a lot for not getting beat up for me, and getting Barry a good kicking at the same time’.

Of course you have the third, probably worst of all situation, where the woman starts sticking up for herself and gets the guy beaten up (or he leaves her to it).

I think modern men essentially have two primal drives once they have after basic needs like food and shelter, drives which influence every other one after them: The pursuit of sex, and the avoidance of violence. Its situations like these that remind me that we often have to sacrifice one if we want the other. I’m not saying you have to get in fights to get a girlfriend, but if you try to avoid conflict too much in front of women you probably will struggle to get one.

The two drives do seem somewhat going in different directions, but a quick way to fuse the two is to call the drive ‘Not wanting to look stupid in front of a girl’. It’s amazing how powerful a drive that is, I am in a very happy committed relationship, but the thought of tripping over in front of any female still ranks as much worse than a surprising amount of bad things.

If poker has taught me anything, it’s that sometimes you have to pick the best of several bad options. If you are not a violent person like myself, these scenarios are never going to end well, but I think as long as they don’t kill or maim you, you can probably live with yourself more if you know you stood up for yourself and took a beating.

Whether I can actually do that in the moment if the situation arises again remains to be seen, but I will be doing my best to avoid that situation (while making it look like I am not trying too hard to avoid it) as much as possible until then (and will certainly be legging it if there are no women about).

There isn't an App for Common Sense

2011-08-04T08:01:00.000-07:00

Anyone who knows me will be sick to death of me constantly saying ‘what an age we live in’ – but I think it is something that really needs saying. I believe we live in the greatest time ever at the moment, anyone can do anything. We can do more on a phone now than what we could do on a computer a decade ago, and every day technology is getting better and better.

I discussed this with a friend over the weekend; he is currently making a living doing something that pretty much did not exist even 5 years ago. In fact, to some extent he has created his own field, and carved a unique niche for himself. We both agreed that now is a time of tremendous opportunity, but in equal measure it is going to be a difficult time for a lot of people. The lost generation he called it, and basically anyone who doesn’t have an initiative.

The problem is that we have become so reliant on technology that it has removed a great deal of need for common sense. I’m as guilty as anyone in lots of regards here, I will sometimes have Sat Nav on for journeys I know like the back of my hand, and now and then if I happen to have a calculator to hand I find myself using it for 3+4 type equations. I am also pretty useless when it comes to fixing things in the house or car.

Imagine what it’s like to be a kid growing up now, there is pretty much an app for everything, they can have their hand held for most of their life. Having the world literally at ones fingertips is surely something previous generations would have hoped would one day happen, but I wonder if this will be to the detriment to initiative and innovation?

My friend was telling me about how he recently saw several applicants for a job he was advertising. In one such interview, the applicant’s mother not only went to the interview, she answered all the questions on behalf of her son. She could have solved the mysteries of perpetual motion or cured cancer for me, the sheer attendance of this guy’s mother would still be an instant no for me (As would if anyone over the age of 18 turned up with one of those National Records of Achievement in their hand).

I don’t know which is worse, a son who asked his mother to go in the first place (or didn’t have the stones to say you are not coming) or a mother who thought it was a good idea. God help that lad when he starts chasing girls.

I get some similar stuff myself, though nowhere near as bad. Not a week goes by without someone I don’t know emailing me out of the blue asking ‘got any jobs going at PokerNews?’ without any examples of previous work, or suggestions for possible work they could do. I used to reply, but now just ignore. I might be being harsh (and it also doesn’t help my budget for commissioning work is close to zilch), but I had to put much more effort than that to get noticed when I was a fledgling poker writer, so I don’t see why I should spoon feed anyone work when there are so many talented writers out there struggling (That’s why I am pleased to see guys like Matthew Pitt and Lee Davy getting quite a bit of work these days, two chaps who make their own luck).

It is not difficult to start a blog just to get started in writing something, but a lot of these guys are asking me to commission the first thing they have written ever. Maybe I am old fashioned, but I don't think I would have ever applied for a job with literally no reasons to employ me in my covering letter.

Probably the most depressing story I have heard was one from a friend who worked for the job centre a few years ago. She ended up essentially writing out the answers to an application form on behalf of a young girl who had no idea what to put. This girl went on to copy & paste those answers on every future application form she filled in - even though the questions were different. So a question about team work on a future application would get an answer about a time she helped a customer, a question about working in a high pressure environment would be answered with the girls hobbies and interests, and so on.

This is indeed the greatest time to ever live, anything is possible (and most of which can be done with an iPhone). But now is also a time when the playing field has been levelled like never before, so competition is fierce. I do worry that having endless opportunities like this is creating overly high expectations for a lot of people, while at the same time demotivating them to actually knuckle down to some real effort and initiative, because they are used to having apps do these things for them.

The Full Tilt Hearing - Wow, that was dull

2011-07-28T03:45:00.001-07:00

The Full Tilt Hearing this week was the first of its kind in poker, and also the first for me as not only was it the first legal hearing I have attended, it was one of the first ‘tweet updates’ I have done. After an entire day of the press being shut out, the hearing was adjourned, much to the annoyance if the poker community.

For me personally, it was one of the most rewarding things I have done as a journalist, and, in equal measure, one of the biggest wastes of time.

It took an entire day, behind closed doors, and the end result was nothing had changed and nothing was going to happen for a couple of months. It was not what the poker community wanted to hear, it was not the story I wanted to write, and a dozen or so of us poker journalists were left to twiddle our thumbs, and try to find something, anything, worth writing about.

It was very much like waiting for a delayed plane, mind numbing but with a degree of hope keeping you awake. I actually can sympathise with anyone who participated in the phone hacking scandal, because if that is what more traditional journalism looks like, there is no wonder they would do anything for a scoop – they must be so bored all the time, waiting for news to happen.

(Only joking of course)

But on the plus side, I learned a lot about the legal process, mainly from talking to the rest of the press and staff that were shut out of the hearing. I will be much better prepared next time (I have already downloaded Tetris for my phone), and in a sick way I will be happy to do it again.

I also received an additional 300 twitter followers in one day (who are yet to unfollow me). That in itself was worth losing the day in the foyer of the Plaza hotel. Amazing that, on the day I said the least, I got the most followers.

And I also managed to tick one off my poker journalist bucket list, as on the train on the way back I wrote a small write up of the hearing for a newspaper. OK, it was only the local newspaper of Guernsey and not quite the Racing Post like I had hoped, but its newsprint nonetheless.

I am live on Sky Poker channel 865 tonight from 8pm, where I will be talking about the hearing.

Looking Ahead to the Full Tilt Hearing

2011-07-22T08:47:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday I will be in London attending the Full Tilt Hearing, held by the Alderney Gambling Control Commission (AGCC). This is the first time I have ever been to any sort of hearing, and journalistically one of the most important things I am likely to be a part of. I am really excited to be involved, and in equal measure I am very anxious.

Anxious, because there are so many unknowns going into it. Both for the industry as a whole, and for me as a reporter. I have never reported on something of this scale and importance before, and also figure it to be potentially quite mentally taxing; it is after all a legal hearing.

I have spoken to some people at the AGCC and the hearing is not going to be particularly reporter friendly. Phones will not be allowed, recording equipment will not be allowed, press cannot ask questions, and wifi access will possibly not be allowed either. So my initial hopes of tweeting the whole thing word for word turned out to be a bit lofty.

One of the really difficult things on the day will be managing the expectations of poker players. Just about everyone I have spoken to about this event have some real misconceptions about the hearing, most of which are around the idea that the hearing will bring about some resolution to the story. They think that Howard is going to be there, exact monetary figures will be discussed, that Full Tilt will make a statement, and that a final decision will be made.

I would say, lower your expectations. I can’t see many, or any, of those things happening. I would say that the likelihood is we will see a lot of red tape, a few nuggets of new information that shine some light of the gravity of the situation, and a better idea of what the next steps look like. It’s unlikely that anyone from Full Tilt other than lawyers will be present, or that any decision made can’t be disputed in court.

Of course I am going down for that 1 in 10 (my crude EV calc) chance that I will witness one of the most historic moments in the history of online poker, featuring a cast including Howard Lederer and Phil Ivey, and perhaps a custard pie thrown in for good measure. That could happen too, nobody knows, and that is all I know for certain – that nobody really seems to know other than the AGCC. Everyone is desperate for answers right now and putting a lot of stock in the AGCC hearing. Unfortunately that means people are listening to anyone who will talk loud enough about the future of Full Tilt.

I for one will be going in to the hearing knowing what I know best – nothing. It’s such an unprecedented moment in the history of online poker, all I can do is go and try and report back from it as transparently as possible.Hopefully also, I will be reporting some good news (again lower your expectations) - I would much rather report on something positive for the industry than get a big scoop on more turmoil.

I’ll be reporting for PokerNews.com and hopefully tweeting from @barry_carter on the day.

Poker Twitter Top Trumps

2011-07-20T04:40:00.000-07:00

I celebrated a milestone yesterday, which was pretty important to me, largely because it’s amazing how much of a social media geek I have become in recent years. I passed the 1000 twitter followers mark yesterday (And also managed to increase my ‘Klout’ by 2 places to 59, whatever that means). I am not sure quite why it is that was so important to me about getting there, other than perhaps most of the people I admire in twitter terms are into quadruple digits.

I have purposely avoided trying to get autofollows from spam accounts. The thing I love about twitter is that it is a listening tool, and certainly not a spamming tool. I like to think that anyone who follows you actually wants to see what you have to say. It is much better to have 20 people who like what you tweet, than have 20,000 people who have followed you for the sake of it.

I also see it as the future of journalism. I am going to the Full Tilt Hearing next week and I am hoping to tweet some updates live as they happen. People want to consume their media much faster these days, and twitter is often the anchor for this new form of consumption (A prime example being yesterday, as millions of us watched a live stream of someone trying to custard pie Rupert Murdoch, speaking of which, that guy got an extra 10,000 twitter followers or something immediately after).

I tried also little stunt to get me over the line; basically anyone who followed or retweeted me that day got put in a draw to win a copy of The Mental Game of Poker. Yes, it was a bit bribey, but I figured that it was at least only going to be poker players who will have participated, and thus exactly the sort of folks I want following me.

I have been playing a little game in my head lately called ‘Twitter Trumps’, where basically I have been trying to assess the relative value of a retweet from a well-known poker player. Thus far @tony_guoga got me around new followers when he retweeted something I posted, @senseichanning got me about 9 new followers, but the big dog of poker social media, @KevMath, on average has got me about 19 new followers every time he has retweeted something I tweeted. (This is all pretty anecdotal evidence btw, please don’t take as gospel).

Makes me wonder who would get me more followers from a retweet - Daniel Negreanu or Hellmuth. I would say Phil, and I reckon the over/under would be 50 followers.

Of course the best way to get more followers in poker is probably to make the WSOP final table; I’ve just seen Samuel Holden (@SamDMND) get 300 overnight.

I guess 2000 is the next milestone. It seems like some of the guys I consider very influential poker journalists (Dr Pauly, Gary Wise, BJ Nemeth, Kara Scott etc) have about 4000ish, and in my opinion the biggest grassroots social media influencer KevMath has nearly 8000, so I guess if I could come close to 4000 before Twitter becomes the next MySpace, I will be happy enough.

All I can really do is actually tweet stuff that is worth reading, the next thing of which will be next week when I will be live at the Full Tilt Hearing in London.

Its @barry_carter btw ;)

The Poker Journalist Bucket List

2011-07-15T06:46:00.000-07:00

I hear a lot of authors refer to their books as their ‘business cards’, to demonstrate the number of opportunities that come their way as a result. Jared and I are both experiencing that phenomenon significantly at the moment, now that The Mental Game of Poker has been out for a few months. He is out in Vegas right now and networking with everyone, we expect to see him on a PokerNews Podcast next week and we are trying our hardest to get him on ESPN before it ends (Don’t quote me on this, but I believe he has several clients still deep the in main event).

I may be stuck in Blighty but my phone has also never stopped ringing, for both book stuff and non-book stuff. I have some really interesting stuff on the horizon, I will be a judge at another poker awards, I am going on Sky Poker again, and hopefully I will have an interesting feature in trade magazine Inside Poker Business (as long as they like it).

I also will be scratching not one, but three things off my ‘poker journalist bucket list’ – a list of things I have wanted to do as a journalist at some point. I have already ticked off loads of things including being on TV, live reporting, publishing a book, judged at the European Poker Awards, interviewed pretty much everyone but Phil Ivey etc.

Now I can also claim ‘wrote for every magazine’, kind of. Thanks to the book and some very generous editors, we have got samples of the book in just about every magazine in the UK. The last one being the first one I ever bought, PokerPlayer Magazine.

Two more will soon be ticked off the list. This month I will be in London reporting on the Full Tilt hearing in London, where I will be reporting for PokerNews and ticking off another thing I have always wanted to do, which is the rather new trend of live twitter reporting, where I hope I will break a major news story and get thousands of followers as a result (Though I feel it will be nowhere near as exciting as that).

And soon I will be ticking off one I have always wanted, which is live commentary of a televised poker tournament. I am not 100% certain I can mention which one, simply as I haven’t seen anywhere that it has been advertised as televised (On the interwebs, not actually telly as far as I know). I’m not sure why, but I have always fancied myself doing that co commentator role, probably a mix of liking attention but not wanting to force my mug on the TV audience.

All of which makes me wonder what is next on the poker journalist bucket list left to do. Obviously the nicest thing would be to ‘do a Roland’ and win a WPT event, but assuming that doesn’t happen, this is what I have got so far:

Get a Massive Twitter Following: I am a twitter nut, and I am closing in on my 1000^th follower, but I believe the future of all journalism lies there and I think I need to be aiming for 5000 or 10,000 if I want to claim poker klout. (Its @barry_carter btw)

Write Something for a Paper: Any paper will do, even gutter press, but I reckon the most realistic aim would be the Racing Post.

Work on a TV Production: I have lots of chums who work on poker shows, and I have been around the guys at Sky Poker and Matchroom quite a lot, and all I know is I like being around a TV production. What could I do? No idea, I’d guess some sort of script writey, consultancy kind of work (Although I am getting more comfortable in front of screen, I could never see myself even attempting to present). No doubt Tikay will read this and tell me to fetching him cups of tea would count).

Get Poker on Sky Sports News: This is no doubt the loftiest of all the aims, having spoken to several people at Sky and Matchroom, this is very unlikely. Poker is so incredibly down their pecking order that most would tell me not to bother, especially because no doubt the significantly more influential Sky Poker & Matchroom must have tried along the way. But every time I watch Sky Sports News (every day) I just feel the audience would love to know that the UK are dominating at least one sport – poker. All the other goals on my list are realistic, but I think it’s not such a bad thing to have an ambitious one too.

Will the Real Phil Hellmuth Please Stand Up?

2011-07-07T06:15:00.000-07:00

I must admit, I was one of the doubters.

I must also admit that I am one of the many who have done a complete U-turn this year and cheered on Phil Hellmuth Jnr at the World Series of Poker.

He has answered most of his critics this year. Three non hold’em runner up places, including the most prestigious non hold’em event of the year, over $1.6 million in winnings, including his first seven figure score ever (Yeah, I was surprised at that too), and the player of the year award almost nailed on.

He has impressed me as a player, but more as a person. His attitude has been great this year, and his post-match interview with Kara Scott was a breath of fresh air. He was very complementary of his opponent, admitted he had made some errors along the way, acknowledged he had been too cocky in the past, couldn’t bring himself to say he was the greatest when asked, admitted the criticism has gotten to him at times, and generally conducted himself like a gent.

I think most people would be crushed to come second three times in one series, and amazingly, I think he took it much better than many of us would have. He was upbeat and jocular.

In The Mental Game of Poker we categorise different forms of tilt, one of them being what we call ‘Entitlement Tilt’, which we preface as ‘Classic Phil Hellmuth Tilt’. It is the tilt that comes when you believe you deserved to win more than someone else – because you think you are better than them, because you think you work harder than them, because you think you have been unluckier than them, because they are French etc. Entitlement tilt happens when you do not truly understand the role of variance in poker and/or are unable to make a proper assessment of yours and your opponent’s relative ability.

Hellmuth obviously has demonstrated entitlement tilt throughout his career, telling anyone who will listen how he deserves to win more than the rest of us mere mortals simply because he has 11 bracelets. If anything was going to spark off ‘classic Hellmuth tilt’ it would be coming runner up three times in a row, but not today. Yes he still moaned a bit, but who wouldn’t? He took it like a champ and I think we are seeing a new Phil Hellmuth, or perhaps, the real Phil Hellmuth?

It is no surprise to me that that Phil 2.0 comes after he parts ways with UB. Whether it has relieved him of some pressure, or more likely, he doesn’t feel the need to act like the Poker Brat. Let’s face it, if Phil endorsed your products, the next best thing to winning the main event would be him flying off the handle and acting like a prick on ESPN, giving your brand lots of TV time. Were most of his temper tantrums fuelled by loyalty to UB?

Perhaps as well, not being sponsored and the new vulnerability of the poker industry has forced him to work harder on his game? Pre Black Friday you would expect him to have his pick of seven figure sponsorship deals, and while I still think he has lots of potential to earn a living just for the name branded on his baseball cap, perhaps he is playing off his own dime a bit more, thus taking it a lot more seriously?

It could be one of many things. Whatever the reason, I love the fact that the new and improved Hellmuth the player has emerged at the same time as the new and improved Hellmuth the gent (And I presume one is causal of the other, rather than just a coincidence). I still think we will see the Brat emerge from time to time, an ego and temperament like that don’t vanish off the face of the earth, but if he keeps this up, he will certainly have a fan in me.

Full Tilts Downfall Was Their Customer Service?

2011-07-05T09:29:00.000-07:00

Ok, maybe it didn't directly lead to their downfall, but it certainly was a telling sign of things to come.

It sounds like an easy, and shitty, thing to say, but I always imagined Full Tilt could have gone the way they have. I am shocked on some of the minutia involved, but not surprised they are in the situation they are in.

When Black Friday happened, I had money in Stars & Tilt, I left the money in Stars and panic withdrew from Full Tilt. It was a gut reaction from years and years of experience with them, which was it seems a good move on my part. I had no previous evidence to suggest they were in financial straits, no rumours anything dodgy was happening, no inkling they were doing anything illegal - it was purely down to their customer service.

I actually was offered a job at Full Tilt a few days before Black Friday, I didn’t apply for it, I was approached by them. I probably wouldn’t have took it anyway, but my gut told me no to taking it for the same reasons (That would have sucked, leaving PokerNews for Full Tilt AND releasing my book, both on Black Friday).

Head of Customer Service at Full Tilt

In my opinion, FTP were as big as they were because of their software, and nothing else, I had money in there because of the software. I loved the software, they had some really interesting games, most notably Rush Poker, but beyond that they were awful. Getting a reply to an email was a rarity, and when you did, it was usually a cut & paste job that didn’t come close to answering your question.

This is not just their customer service team either, as a journalist and working for an affiliate they have been appalling to deal with. Even some of their sponsored pros struggled to get basic responses from them pre Black Friday.

Contrast that with Pokerstars, who not only have the best customer service in poker, they are up there with some of the best customer service I have seen full stop. At the heart of this was clarity, they kept us in the loop, even during Black Friday, questions are rarely left unanswered. You didn’t get that with FTP before Black Friday, you certainly don’t get that now.

So I withdrew my money from Full Tilt Poker on a hunch based purely on customer service, which I think is a decent barometer for these things. If you cannot show an ounce of respect to the people who are paying for you to exist, if you are not doing everything in your power to keep them happy and playing on your site, then what other crucial elements of your business are you neglecting?

We live in a world of extremely savvy consumers, the internet and social media has levelled the playing field and you can’t pull the wool over people’s eyes any more. Going forward I don’t think I am ever going to invest a significant amount of my time or money in any entity that doesn’t hold transparency and customer service in the highest of regards.

Update: For clarity, I am referring to the people in charge at Full Tilt, not customer service reps.

Generic Book Going OK Post

2011-07-05T08:02:00.000-07:00

Wow, been a few weeks since a blog update. I hate these ‘quick round up of the last two weeks’ type blog posts, so let’s just get it out of the way.

Book is starting to go very well indeed, we just celebrated a big sales milestone this morning (I’m too coy to say what it is) and general interest, positive discussions on forums, and positive reviews, are all on the up and up. I’m actually yet to see a bad review if I am honest, I am sure it will happen, so I’m not getting too cocky, but it’s nice to know with a degree of certainty that we have produced a quality product.

I was aways going with this picture.

Jennifer Tilly bought a copy, which we were both pretty excited about. It’s not every day a bracelet winner, Oscar winner, and most importantly regular on Family Guy, buys your book. Jared missed out on seeing her buy the book at the Rio so he went looking for her to sign it. It made me wonder whether the owners of the book store might have just been playing a little joke on him to watch him wander round the WSOP with a pen in his hand asking if anyone had seen Jennifer Tilly.

I also have it on good authority that Brian Townsend has a copy, and he had ‘heard good things about it’ prior to getting it.

The book is also now available on amazon.co.uk (and correct me if I am wrong, but that should make it available to anyone else in the EU on their respective amazon sites).

Anyway, I haven’t been blogging so much because I have been busy with a project at PokerNews that is nearing completion. Nothing exciting, well it is kinda exciting, but not a ‘watch this space for big news exciting’, just quite interesting, kind of.

Oh well, the blog is now up to date, got an actual interesting one on its way about Hellmuth in the not too distant future.

Lessons in Self Publishing Volume 1

2011-06-18T13:17:00.000-07:00

One of the strangely gratifying processes of the entire book writing process has also been one of the most mundane. Because we self-published the book, we are learning as we go along about the ins and outs of the publishing process. One of the things we didn’t do the best of research on was distribution. It was really important for me to ensure that people in Europe got the book in their hands quickly, and as the printers are in Arizona, this means that I personally send a lot of the European orders from a stockpile in my office.

Every day I go down to the post office with a bagful of parcels, exchange pleasantries with the women behind the counter, and piss off anyone unfortunate enough to be behind me in the queue. It is the sort of thing that could be a pain in the arse for many, to have to do it every day, but I really love it.

Obviously the fact that I am there every day with a bagful means that we are selling books, so no wonder I am happy. Although I hated working in customer service, it’s always been a priority of mine and I think I am good at it, so there is also some satisfaction in knowing that the orders are getting there on time, and hand sent by one of the authors no less.

There is also a big part of me, that, not sure why, always wished he had his own little eBay type business. So this is the next best thing.

The book has been on Amazon just over a week, and sales have been good. We have already jumped a bunch of places in the amazon rankings for our chosen search terms, and at the time of writing we have 12 very good reviews, all of which have been given 5 stars.

There are some rather frustrating elements to the whole amazon process. One of the oddest things is amazon do not allow us to set our shipping prices and ETA, so it shows the standard as $12 and 22-44 days for outside the US. The reality is that the shipping is closer to $8 and the ETA is 2-5 days. Very frustrating because that must really put some people off buying at all, and in other instances people have been choosing shopping options that are really expensive (which we are refunding the difference for after).

So if you buy the book, pick the cheapest option, I assure you it will get there in less than a week.

It’s all good though, it’s nice that most of our problems at the moment are the good sort of problems. The response and the reviews have been amazing so far, and there seems to be more and more buzz, and the average sales seem to pick up, on a weekly basis. I think that is because word of mouth and customer reviews are starting to drive it, now that people have had time to finish the book. We started our PR campaign by churning out lots of written content for magazines & websites, but are finding that it doesn’t convert to sales much. What does work well, which I think is a sign of the times we live in, is anything where we can interact with potential customers – forums, social media, video, interviews, and live coaching.

It’s all been a fascinating learning process if nothing else.

One more thing, for fans of this blog. We have about 30 copies of the book which have cosmetic damage on the front cover – nothing wrong with the books or content, just blotches on the cover that we couldn’t possibly send out to customers who paid full price. However, if anyone wants to buy them we are going to sell them at $25 each (normal price $44.90) + whatever the postage costs. If anyone is interested just email me at barry@mentalgameofpoker.com – and you can rest assured I will be taking them to the post office first thing in the morning.

The Brits are No Longer Underdogs in Mixed Games

2011-06-14T10:36:00.000-07:00

At the start of the series I said I thought the over/under line for Brit bracelets was 4. Then after Jake Cody and Matt Perrins came flying out of the door I thought maybe upping it to five. Today I was asked several times what I thought the line was now, after Darren Woods won the $2500 six max limit event.

Probably still five, but I am starting to like the over.

I have theorised many times over the last 12 months why the Brits are doing so well on the world stage. The conditions are great to play poker in the UK, the live scene is brilliant to learn your craft, the communities and forums are superb, you don’t have to pay tax on winnings etc etc. One big thing I realised today which is having a (pretty obvious in hindsight) impact is that we are no longer dogs in the mixed games.

We always have the no limit, pot limit hold’em, and PLO games in our arsenal, but recently we have added O8, limit hold’em, stud, and triple draw bracelets to the collective British cabinet. Not to mention Richard Ashby showing his is one of the top all round mixed players in the world too, this year and last year.

These are games that are not traditionally played in the UK and Europe (and not so much stateside either these days), so why have we caught up? The internet is the obvious answer of course; in particular as NLHE is getting tougher, professionals inevitably look to mixed games as the next place to find value.

But I think it is more than that. Not only have we got better at them, I think the Americans have got worse. Not so much worse, it’s just the current generation of American players have only known the internet, just like most of the UK players. Outside of Las Vegas, nobody really plays games like stud, O8, triple draw, razz, 2-7 etc. It is only the ‘TV Pros’ from pre internet Las Vegas who have any significant experience advantage over European players (Case in point, John Juanda winning the triple draw the other night, and putting on a master class). The longer Americans are locked out of the online game, they could actually get overtaken.

Whatever the reason, it excites me way more when a British player is deep in a non NLHE event. That said, I will be cheering on Alex Martin tonight as he is deep in event #20: $1,000 No-Limit Hold'em. You may not have heard of him, but I do not know many people who work as hard at their game as he does, so hopefully he will get a well deserved score tonight.

One Week Only: 35% Off The Mental Game of Poker on Amazon

2011-06-10T10:10:00.000-07:00

It is funny, but I appear to have gotten a much more enthusiastic response from my non poker friends that my book is on Amazon, than when it was first released. I think that makes it 'legit' in most peoples eyes.

To celebrate the amazon launch, for one week only we are offering 35% off when you buy The Mental Game of Poker on Amazon. Please note, if you are outside the USA, choose the 'Standard Shipping' option. It may say 21-42 days, but that is Amazon covering their own back, we ship the next day and it usually arrives in 1-5 days maximum.

If you have already bought the book, you would do us the biggest favour in the world by posting a review on Amazon. We have seven up already and they are all really good, but we need as many as we can get.

35% Off The Mental Game of Poker on Amazon

What people are saying:

“Tendler and Carter also take a fresh approach and give you actionable things you can do to improve your mental game but also measure your improvement.”
- Bill Rini, Legendary Blogger

“I’m a tilt monkey and finished the book with the confidence knowing I can diminish tilting at the tables.”
- Paul “Tao Pauly” McGuire, Author, What is Jack Tripper Stole My Dog?

“Raises the bar so high for poker mindset books, other thinkers may not be able to clear it.”
- Jack Welch, Poker Author, Editor & Player

“Tendler provides real steps and real answers for poker players involved in the day to day struggle who are too often beating themselves.”
- Jesse May, PartyPoker
“This book contains advice that simply isn’t out there.”
- Matt Perry, Bluff Europe

“Quite simply it is the only book you will ever need regarding the mental side of poker.”
- Matthew Pitt, Betfair
“This book is the first of its kind and should be considered mandatory reading for any poker player.”
- Hunter Bick, DragTheBar CEO

“The book is full of so many ways to help you improve your emotional control that they are literally spilling out from the pages.”
- Lee Davy, Poker Journalist

“Any player that hopes to have long-term success with poker needs to have this book in their library.”
- Verneer, Cardrunner’s Coach

“Concisely written, painstakingly detailed and fantastically insightful.”
- Daniel Smyth, WPT Magazine

“Jared Tendler’s book is by far and away the most advanced Poker book out there”
- Colin, Customer

“This is the most advanced, detailed information in one spot that I have ever seen on the mental side of poker.”
- Charley, customerPublish Post

“I now easily see how losing players continue to be losing players…they are, ‘Mental Game Fish.’”
- Rey, Customer

35% Off The Mental Game of Poker on Amazon

Jesse May Appreciation Society

2011-06-09T05:53:00.000-07:00

I think I am jumping on the bandwagon quick enough here to make it look like I am not jumping on the bandwagon.

Whenever I am asked who do I most admire in poker, I rarely say any notable players. I usually say people like Jesse May, because as a journalist/pundit myself, I kind of aspire to what he does more than some hot shot player with a million dollar poker roll. Jesse is one of my favourite pundits, because he is so knowledgable and passionate about the game. He is like a walking Hendon Mob database with a cool accent to boot.

So I was delighted to see he is blogging for the Poker Farm this year. A bit surprised to see him linked with those guys, just because I see them as a bunch of young twenty something ballas and Jesse seems a bit of an odd fit there (A bit like when you go on a Stag do and somebodies Dad comes along). But he is blogging and presenting for them, and doing a great job.

In particular, the blogging. I always find it strange that the Americans don’t seem to like Jesse as much as we Europeans do as a commentator; there must be something about him that is uniquely Euro despite his accent (understanding irony and sarcasm might be a starting point). I think he is probably the best commentator out there, and I think now, once he is writing again, the Americans are reminded about why he truly is the voice of poker.

Actually, just like Kara Scott, I consider Jesse May British anyway.

Bookmark his blog, it is brilliant. He has a few short lived blogs on other sites and I truly hope he keeps this one up, at least for the series. In one of his blogs about the Full Tilt response to the Ivey situation he said ‘that statement was written from a bunker’ which for me is the quote of the WSOP so far.

I’d also love for him to start a twitter account, but something cynical inside me thinks he currently doesn’t really ‘get’ twitter yet. The one thing I am certain of is that twitter is ready for him, and will be waiting with open arms for him if he ever decides to. Jesse knows everything about this industry, and I know whatever links he would be tweeting, I would be insta retweeting. But maybe 140 characters is nowhere near enough.

He also did a great podcast about The Mental Game of Poker.

Update:
I started a hashtag #getjesseontwitter in a weak attempt to start a movement and now the bossman, Tony G, has retweeted it, so you heard it here first if it takes off.

Why are the Brits So Good at Poker?

2011-06-07T05:49:00.000-07:00

The Brits are proving they are the real deal once again in Las Vegas, and so far you could not have made this up. Jake Cody wins the triple crown in 18 months, then 3 days later his best friend from school, Matt Perrins, takes down a bracelet in a game he has never played before.

I cannot imagine how amazing it must feel, for two lifelong friends to pull off such a unique back to back like that. They really must feel like they have the world in their hands, and why not? I’ve interviewed both men before and they both struck me as both hard working, and unassuming, young guys.

That 100% is the link with the invading British players btw. The last two years the Brits have dominated the WSOP and the EPT for those two reasons. Forget DNA or natural talent, what all these guys have in common is that they clearly work very hard on their game, and despite all their success have managed to remain level headed. I’ve seen it in Jake and Matt, as well as countless others including JP Kelly, Stuart Rutter, Toby Lewis, David Vamplew, James Keys, John Eames, Rupert Elder, and many more.

I think factor A (working very hard on their game) and factor B (humility) complement each other greatly. What they also seem to have, which I think is the net combination of both criteria, is a much solider understanding and acceptance of the role of variance in poker. Variance is the factor that allows players to greatly under or over estimate their own level of skill. It is this that stops players from feeling they have to work on their game, or recognising where they have shortcomings, which is what ultimately leads to the downfall of great players.

Obviously these young guys have ran well recently, but the big difference between them and many others like them, is that they most likely are fully aware that they ran well and have not allowed it to inflate their egos.

It also helps, massively in my opinion, that they have all found each other. The fact they get to travel the world (and the UK circuit, and no doubt skype) together invariably means they will be talking poker 24/7 with other great minds. I wager most of them will point to this as the single biggest factor in their development as a player; likeminded friends.

The Americans might not think they are so grounded because they don’t quite ‘get’ the British rails, so over the pond they may have an undue reputation as thuggish. It’s actually something of an ironic contrast, that the ferocity of the rails has a direct negative correlation with the temperament of the player. It seems the bigger and louder the rail, the quieter and humbler the player being cheered.

If I get time this week, I may blog on how Perrins won a bracelet in a game he has never played before, because that is also a fascinating subject from a mental game point of view. Until then this just leads me to ponder what the over/under is on Brit bracelets in Vegas this year, I am thinking its 5 (would have said 4 at the start).

The 2011 World Series of Poker: The Year of the Tweet

2011-06-03T01:43:00.000-07:00

Taken from PokerNews

There is no doubt that the 2011 World Series of Poker will be one of the most significant in the history of poker. It is the first WSOP since the US Department of Justice changed the landscape of poker forever more. It is also the year that Phil Ivey dropped one the biggest drama bombs seen by boycotting the series, and suing his former sponsor.

That will probably be what everyone looks back on as being the definitive moments of this year’s series; however, I think there is one more thing the series will be remembered for – the year of the tweet. I still haven’t decided whether I am going to Vegas this year (and with the clock ticking that probably means I ain’t) but thanks to the power of social media, I don’t feel like I am missing out on anything (except lots of hangovers).

Kara Scott (@karaotr) summed this up perfectly for me in a tweet:

I am AMAZED how different things are now that social media (Twitter) is so popular/powerful. Its a whole new world for information gathering

Yes twitter has been around a long time (relatively) and it was at the series last year, but there has been a massive shift in its usage over the last 12 months. No longer is it just a place for poker players to give us the usual ‘got 22k at the break, table full of donks’ updates.

It is perhaps because since #blackfriday everyone has been forced into becoming much more news savvy consumers. The listening and gathering information element of twitter has been forced on us to an extent because playing poker isn’t as easy as it once was. There is also simply much more news to report right now – every day some story breaks that would have otherwise been a ‘major industry changing story' but in the last six weeks seems quite ‘standard’. This week already we had Phil Ivey’s announcement, Tiltware’s statement, the ‘outing’ of several (currently unsubstantiated) Full Tilt rumours on Quadjacks, James Bord vs. John Juanda, and a little bit of poker to talk about.

Social media is also allowing us more than ever before to influence the news as it happens, and interact like never before. Last month there was the story of Daniel Negreanu calling out alleged cheater Ali Tekimtamgac in front of a packed card room, and even more packed twitterverse, at the WPT Championship. There was also the story that the media would not be allowed to play WSOP events breaking, and quickly reversing, after a storm of angry tweets from the poker media. I myself found myself faced with an angry tweet from Tom Dwan after completely not expecting him have read, let alone reply to, a joke I tweeted at his expense (Dwan was in the right btw, and I tweeted a grovelling public apology, to which he sent a smiley face suggesting all was well again in the twitterverse).

There are countless more ways in which social media is allowing all of us; players, journalists, spectators, industry experts, and total whackos, to interact like never before. Twitter is allowing more news stories that would never otherwise see the light of day to break, and at the same time ensuring fewer ways to censor them.

To get all the action from the WSOP, I would still say follow our PokerNews Live Updates because they really are the nuts. But to get all the drama around the WSOP (and poker in general), now is the time to get yourself a twitter account.

Oh, and follow me, as I follow the poker world and aggravate high stakes pros - @Barry_Carter

Slow News Day: Thoughts on Phil Ivey and Apologising to Tom Dwan

2011-06-01T12:39:00.000-07:00

Generally I have tried my best to avoid writing about the state of US poker post Black Friday, mainly because there are so many great writers across the pond doing a much better job than I ever could hope to. Not sure why, but I do feel compelled to wax lyrical on the latest string of bombshells surrounding Phil Ivey and Full Tilt Poker.

I got wrapped up in this story after cracking a quick joke on twitter that backfired. It wasn't actually that funny, and I had just woken up when I did it, so I wasn't really thinking when I tweeted. It was a reply to a Tom Dwan tweet, like a true keyboard warrior I never expected a response from the OP, because you don't really from a 'celebrity'. This is what I tweeted (which includes Dwan's original tweet):

So..you agree with him and are suing/boycotting too? RT @Tom_Dwan: @philivey poker isn't a sport.Rest of your statement is awesome though.

But low and behold, he did respond, quite quickly, by direct message. As it was a DM I won't post it (It was nothing hush hush, I just respect private messages) but needless to say he wasn't happy with the tweet, and he respectfully pointed out the fact that he had personally pledged all the money Full Tilt has paid him to the players, should FTP not pay out to their US customers.

And right he was, I apologised for the confusion, and publiclly apologised to Dwan on twitter. (Which prompted a smiley face DM from him which I assume means we are best friends now). What Dwan is doing, imo, is arguably a lot braver than what Ivey is doing.

Do not get me wrong, I respect Ivey greatly, I did anyway before, and do just as much now. It cannot be easy to walk away from your own poker room, it certainly cannot be easy for him to essentialy declare war on some of his close friends, and I imagine it is very hard to sit out of the WSOP when he has a bracelet legacy to maintain.

As brave as this was for Ivey, it was also the obvious thing to do from a PR perspective. At some point, pissed off FTP customers were going to give him shit about getting their money back (I assume that is what Bord vs Juanda was about, likewise I know Ferguson and Lederer feel like marked men). In light of all the recent revalations about FTP, things were only going to get worse for sponsored representatives and shareholders during the WSOP.

Ivey had the most to lose of any of the sponsored pros, he is the most recognised face in poker, and the best player in everyones books – he does not need to get caught up in all this. By declaring war on Full Tilt, who are sinking fast and he will never be able to play there again anyway, he looks like the hero in this story. He can go away for the summer, come back when the dust has settled, and look like the people's champion along the way.

I also feel as though perhaps Ivey was aware somethig big is about to go down. Although I am sure they did not know about the DOJ thing ahead of time, I am convinced Hellmuth and Annie Duke were becoming more aware of the fragility of UB, which is why they left, seemingly for no reason. Likewise, I think Phil possibly knows of the gravity of what is ahead for FTP, hence the decision to leave (Maybe Nick Rainey told him what he was about to say on QuadJacks).

Please do not mistake this for dissing Ivey, I am not. What he did was brave and it was honourable. It was just also the only thing he could have really done from a PR perspective.

Back to twitter and I am quite proud of this tweet, which got a lot of retweets today:

Anyone think @Phil_Hellmuth will seize the opportunity and come dressed as Phil Ivey for his main event entrance this year?

Quick Blog Dump: Sky Poker, Poker4Heroes, PokerStrategy.com

2011-05-27T09:06:00.000-07:00

The last few days have gotten pretty hectic, which is a good thing, I will hopefully blog more on this later on but if not:

Sky Poker

I was once again a guest on Sky Poker last night, and once again had a great laugh. It was a lot more ‘natural’ this time around, once again we got to talk about films and the team were very generous with the amount of time they devoted to plugging The Mental Game of Poker. We also got to analyse some hands played by non other than…..my mum.

She started playing on Sky Poker after my last appearance and has come 2^nd in two bounty tournaments in the last week, so we reviewed a few of her hands. Deffo made for some fun TV I think.

Great time had by me and I hope they ask me on again.

Poker4Heroes

I am going to this this weekend and will be giving out some free copies of The Mental Game of Poker as prizes. This really is an exciting event and well done to Cheryl who organised it all, I think this event looks better than any other charity event I have seen in a long time. I am also pushing to get anyone who wins one of the great added prizes to pledge 10% of any winnings in that tournament to the charity also.

James Atkins Motivation Session

This is a really great blog where Jared and James worked through his motivational issues while going for SuperNova Elite. There is a funny part involving a chair which I wont spoil for you.

PokerStrategy Interview

We were interviewed by PokerStrategy.com and also have some guest articles on their site.

Wow, really don’t like doing these rushed blogs, but we are so busy as the response for the book is really starting to take off. Normal service will be resumed next week.

Man Doesn't Win Poker Tournament

2011-05-25T08:59:00.000-07:00

Possibly our biggest fan boy so far, Matthew Pitt over at Betfair, has written another blog around our book. This one was pretty personal to me, and recounts a story of my own that appears in The Mental Game of Poker. Basically it was from the moment where working with Jared Tendler probably forever changed my entire outlook on poker, work, and life. Rather than recounting my story, I’ll see what Pitt says about it:

“After reading The Mental Game of Poker a couple of times something really struck a chord with me and that was co-author Barry Carter's story. I won't relay it word for word but he discusses when he first spoke to Jared Tendler and was asked what his image of a winning poker player was and Barry says that the image he thinks of is a poker player sat behind a huge pile of chips, proudly showing off their winning hand having won a major tournament. But the problem was that Barry was not playing in many tournaments so how could he ever become, in his own eyes, a winning poker player.”

“When I read that I was thought they had got into my own mind and were writing about me. I think it is a common problem with poker players who work in the media because most of their time is spent writing about players winning major tournaments and reporting live on the various tours around the world. Behind every poker writer and blogger is a frustrated poker player, trust me on that one.”

It was a huge moment for me when Jared made me realise my own perception of success was skewed. Every Monday for the last 3 or 4 years I find myself reporting on the story ‘Man Wins Poker Tournament’ and as someone who plays the game, but is yet to win a live tournament (a proper one, not a £10 rebuy), it did really quietly and sneakily distort my view of success and my own game. I barely ever play tournaments, I prefer short sessions and thus SNGs and cash games, but the textbook image of success for me was always the image of a man holding two cards up at the end of a tournament he won.

So I was judging my own success based on a metric that didn’t even register in what I was actually doing, I was getting pissed off at not winning a live tournament even though I wasn’t playing any. Once Jared made me realise how silly this was, it really freed me from poker in a sense. No longer do I subtly beat myself up for not having a ‘1^st’ on my Hendon Mob database. I think this not only helped me take extended breaks from poker to pursue other interests (Including writing a book) it also helped me enjoy poker again in the social context it should be enjoyed.

I like Pitt’s other comment of ‘Behind every poker writer and blogger is a frustrated poker player, trust me on that one’. I could not agree more. A journalist in any other walks of life is able to distance themselves from the people they are writing about. I couldn’t write about Wayne Rooney smashing a wonder goal in from 30 yards in the Champions League and beat myself up for not doing the same, but most poker bloggers could very feasibly buy into whatever tournament they are covering. They are also privy to all the good fortune and misplayed hands of the eventual victor, which can skew their perception on whether they could have, and should have, somehow won the tournament themselves (I wrote a blog on it yesterday as it happens). This is not the exclusive domain of poker writers either, anyone who is good friends with successful poker players can feel this strange inverted kind of jealously

Its Easier to Play Other People's Hands

2011-05-24T10:55:00.000-07:00

Daniel Pink is one of my favourite writers, mainly because he is a journalist with a real enthusiasm for psychology in business, and I am a journalist with an enthusiasm for psychology in poker. He put out a really interesting article last weekend on the Sunday Telegraph last weekend about how people find it easier to solve other people’s problems than their own.

He cited recent research from Evan Polman of New York University and Kyle Emich of Cornell University, where they posed a puzzle to two groups, one group was asked to imagine themselves as the person in the puzzle, the other had to imagine another person the puzzle. The group that imagined someone else beat the first group hands down.

“Polman and Emich build upon existing psychological research showing that when we think of situations or individuals that are distant – in space, time, or social connection – we think of them in the abstract. But when those things are close – near us physically, about to happen, or standing beside us – we think about them concretely.” “Over the years, social scientists have found that abstract thinking leads to greater creativity. That means that if we care about innovation we need to be more abstract and therefore more distant. But in our businesses and our lives, we often do the opposite. We intensify our focus rather than widen our view. We draw closer rather than step back.”

This is something we touch upon in The Mental Game of Poker although nowhere near as much as we did in our original edit, which needed to be trimmed down by a few hundred pages. Basically it is around the subject of how we often know the right answer to how to play a hand when we are analysing it, or watching someone else play it, or are reviewing it for someone else – but in practice, it is much much harder to apply that knowledge, and we often find ourselves making plays we later know were wrong.

Your mind has only so much mental capacity when you are making a decision, and when you are under the pressure and scrutiny of playing the hand yourself, with money on the line, a lot of that mental space is used to deal with the pressure of the hand, rather than focus on the technical aspects of it. Pressure you don’t have when you are relaxing and in study mode.

It has always been a pet peeve of mine when poker players don’t understand this when they are watching hands unfold from the comfort of being a spectator. I hate it when players lay into each other for botching up hands they consider ‘standard’. In particular, it really gets my goat when it is a fellow journalist on the tournament floor slagging off someone who has made it deep into a large tourney. The blogger has the least pressured vantage point in the room and the player the complete opposite; of course the writers are in a great position to know what the player should do.

Pink suggests in his article that the important lesson is to seek out more outside advice and mentoring. This nicely illustrates why getting poker coaches, or likeminded friends to share hands with, is so incredibly vital to improving as a player. I doubt there are many successful players from the last few years who have not benefited from the objectivity of friends at a similar level to them. Put simply, other people can see parts of your game that you cannot, just like you can see how other people should be playing when you are not under the pressure they are under.

Check Out The Mental Game of Poker

Five Thirds of a Review of The Mental Game of Poker

2011-05-20T00:21:00.000-07:00

One of the things we say very early in The Mental Game of Poker is not to form too quick an opinion of the book, and to re-read certain sections multiple times. This is not so much a defensive strategy from us, simply because some of the material is radically different to what every other poker book out there suggests, so it may take some getting used to.

So I don’t really know what to make of the following five reviews of the book, which have all been written by people who felt compelled to write about the book while they are only about one third of the way through each (so we have 1 and 2/3s of a review currently from them). Thankfully all the reviews are very positive and I think we can take it as a complement that so many people felt so compelled to discuss the book early.

http://www.atkinator.net/2011/05/joey-knish.html

http://mrjayomg.blogspot.com/2011/05/mental-game-of-poker.html

http://fingertilt.com/crea-tu-ventaja-libro-recomendado/ (This one is in Spanish but Google Chrome will translate it)

http://betting.betfair.com/poker/puds-poker-progress/the-inchworm-280411.html

http://thep-log.blogspot.com/2011/05/have-good-mentality.html

There are loads more reviews coming through, but I just thought it was interesting that so many people have taken to reviewing it so prematurely.

Check out all three thirds of The Mental Game of Poker.

Tilt in Poker and Magic The Gathering

2011-05-19T02:27:00.000-07:00

We’ve had quite a lot of interest in the last week from unexpected sources, I say unexpected sources, I always thought there would be interest but from these but not quite so soon. Poker is similar to so many other disciplines, a book like The Mental Game of Poker was bound to have plenty of transferable skills to offer. I am living proof, as I have used what Jared Tendler has taught me to change my eating habits, learn boxing, manage my time better, and even cope with grief.

So recently we have had a few interesting back and forths from people who have bought the book, not just for poker, but also for Sports Betting, Trading, and Magic the Gathering. I must admit the latter I am least familiar with, but I do know it’s a card game that is structurally & strategically similar to poker (albeit with dragons and warlocks and such). They use a 60 card deck, they have draws, and there is a shit load of variance.

I’d already done a bit of research into these markets, and all of them come up with quite a lot when you combine their name with ‘tilt’ in a search. In fairness, something like tilt exists in any aspect of life, just it is called anger, but I think there is something unique about the ‘tilt’ that we all know in poker that is likely very similar in sports betting/trading/magic the gathering. Although the following video confused the shit out of me, in a strange way the final few seconds were strangely familiar (Thanks to Kar from http://www.manadeprived.com/ for bringing me up to speed on this):

In all four disciplines there is so much out of your control that you can do everything right and still lose, consistently, for long periods. The reason mental game issues are so prevalent in poker is because most people have a hard time accurately distinguishing skill from variance, separating what they did right/wrong and what was out of their control.

Linked to that is the notion of the unknown, incomplete information. No matter how good a poker player you are, or trader, sports bettor, or magic-er (Is that the term?) – you are relying on your ability to fill in gaps in information. The better you are, the more you can fill in with confidence, but combined with variance this can create a great deal of uncertainty, which can lead to other issues.

I’m looking forward to learning more about how games like Magic the Gathering have parallels with poker. I apologise if referring to it as ‘dragons and warlocks’ is actually offensive to the guys that play it (I don’t want them to club me with their +1 mace after all).

Check out The Mental Game of Poker whether you are a poker player, trader, or 4th level Paladin.

Poker and Adrenaline

2011-05-19T00:50:00.000-07:00

Another video blog. They are slowly getting better quality production wise, apologies for the sound we have worked out how to get the echo on Jared sorted for the next one. This was once again a reader question and we had the guy on the line this time, he basically wanted to know how if psyching yourself up like an athlete or musician is a good or bad idea for poker.

We picked it because, like the drugs in poker discussion, it is not something that is discussed much, however I see tons of threads where people talk about getting psyched up for poker, what songs people listen to etc. We'll be doing more of these video blogs, so stay tuned to our Twitter where we will be taking suggestions.

Check out The Mental Game of Poker for more mental game advice.

Drugs in Poker

2011-05-15T02:26:00.000-07:00

So it seems Blogger had a major issue on Friday where it deleted everyones posts the previous day, so here once again is the Drugs in Poker video blog we did:

It got some interesting chatter on twitter afterwards, just to clarify, when we talk about prescription drugs we are talking about them when they are being used by someone who doesn't medically need them, ie. someone who is just taking them purely because they think it will help them play better or longer.

We are running another video blog suggestion contest, just suggest a mental game topic for Jared to address (and me to sit quietly in the background and occassionally make a smart alec comment) and the person whose topic gets picked withs a free copy of The Mental Game of Poker. Suggestions on Twitter or Facebook.

Book-et List

2011-05-12T06:36:00.000-07:00

I realised in the space of two days I genuinely ticked two things off a long running bucket list I made when I was about 20. I have always wanted to win a trophy, in anything (this was way before poker), and I got that last weekend on the Sky Poker Tour (albeit a '7th place' trophy, sigh). And I always wanted to write a book, and that finally arrived this week (Obviously I wrote it ages ago but didn't believe it until it arrived).

Now I just need to appear in a film, watch a boxing match at Madison Square Garden, and have a threesome and my list is complete.

Taking a leaf from Gary Vaynerchuk's book the Thank You Economy, I decided to go a little extra for one of the guys who had been a real advocate of the book. Jamie Mortimer has been really supportive about the book on twitter and his blog.

He was one of the first guys to buy the book, and I was amazed that not only does he work at my former workplace before poker, Aviva, and is engaged to a girl I worked with, he also sits next to my old house mate in the office. It is in my hometown of Sheffield and I thought the very least I could do was to hand deliver his copy as a thank you for his support (While he was at work, he didn't dress up to receive it....I think). Its nice to see Social Media in action like this.

Finally, if you are reading this today (Obviously you are reading it today, I mean 12/05/11) check out the EPT Madrid Live Stream on PokerNews.

Check Out the Mental Game of Poker

Jared Tendler Session with Supernova Elite Chaser James Atkin : Laziness

2011-05-10T23:38:00.000-07:00

I make fun of him most days because I am much bigger than him, but I honestly think James Atkin is one of the nicest, most interesting poker players I know. No pretense, really enthusiastic, a great Dad even though he looks 12, a surprisingly good rapper, and a sick player. I set him up a session with Jared Tendler to try and overcome motivational issues on his way to getting to SuperNova Elite - here it is.

James was on course for SuperNova Elite but Black Friday significantly killed the traffic in his bread and butter games.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

James is a pro SNG player and he has been doing some really interesting research and discussion on the recent PokerStars SNG changes, which are well worth a look if you are into SNGs.

We have lots more advice about poker motivation in The Mental Game of Poker.

Mental Game of Poker: Press Release

2011-05-09T14:08:00.000-07:00

Well, after five years receiving these things I finally sent out my first ever press release. I wasn't quite prepared for what an arduous task it was, because after a long time working in the industry my journalists/contacts list is near 1000 email addresses. Hopefully it hasn't gone direct to 1000 spam folders:

Jared Tendler Releases 'The Mental Game of Poker'

New book changes the way poker players improve mental game issues like tilt, motivation, confidence, and more

New York City, United States, May 9, 2011: Mental game coach Jared Tendler announces the release of his much anticipated book, The Mental Game of Poker, designed to help serious players conquer the biggest mental game issues in poker. The Mental Game of Poker promises to revolutionize poker by giving players the best of sports psychology, and the most definitive work on Tilt ever released.

Tendler, who previously coached pro golfers on the PGA Tour and LPGA Tour, has coached over 170 professional poker players over the past three years. Plus, his training videos and articles have helped countless more eliminate tilt, increase their volume, improve their motivation, and play their A-game consistently. He's also coached eight players to the status of SuperNova Elite, including Dusty 'Leatherass' Schmidt, who introduced him to poker after a chance meeting on the golf course.

Schmidt explained, "As a former professional golfer, I saw the tremendous benefit sport psychologists had on players on the PGA tour and knew they could be of equal value to poker players. Jared has been an enormous help to my game, and he helped me reach SuperNova Elite. I'm now virtually tilt-free and bring my A-game nearly every time I play. The bottom line: Jared has made me a lot of money. If you don?t think the mental game is important, just think about how much tilt or other issues have cost you over the years."

A former professional golfer himself, Tendler has a master's degree in Counseling Psychology and is a licensed mental health counselor. He explains that poker has desperately needed someone from the sports psychology industry to show them the way:

"The amount of variance in poker makes sport psychology very important to poker players; perhaps more so than competitors in any other game or sport. The realities of poker mean that superior players can consistently lose while playing well; and that can really mess with their mind. As a result, every mental game issue is amplified by the cruelty of running bad."

The book focuses on four key areas where poker players have mental game leaks: tilt, fear, motivation, and confidence. Throughout the book are stories from clients of Tendler's who have used his methods to conquer their own issues.

"Poker is tougher than ever, and over the past few years, players have begun to see how much of an edge they can gain by working on the mental side of the game. When a sport becomes as competitive as poker is now, sport psychology is usually the next area people go to create edge."

Tendler continues: "Common advice in poker psychology has been too broad when it comes to issues like tilt; it's seen as something unavoidable and mysterious. The tilt section alone in the Mental Game of Poker might be more comprehensive than all of the other tilt advice out there. I've worked hard to create a straightforward, step-by-step strategy to prevent and even eliminate tilt. Believe it or not, in this book you will learn how tilt can be a good thing."

The Mental Game of Poker: Proven Strategies for Improving Tilt Control, Confidence, Motivation, Coping with Variance, and More is $49.95 and available exclusively at: http://www.mentalgamepoker.com/.

About Jared Tendler:

Jared Tendler, M.S., LMHC, was a mental game coach for golfers on the PGA and LPGA tours before becoming the leading mental game expert in poker. He now coaches some of the top players in poker and has coached more than 170 professionals from around the world. Jared's groundbreaking methods have also helped thousands more through his training videos, articles, and forum Q&As. He is a featured coach for DragtheBar.com, and writes monthly instructional articles for WPT Magazine and PokerPro Europe.

Jared earned a master's degree in Counseling Psychology from Northeastern University, and became a licensed mental health counselor prior to becoming a mental game coach in 2005.

He has two popular 'Ask Jared' threads on TwoPlusTwo and CardsChat where poker players can post their mental game issues to him directly. They can also contact him directly at his own forum, twitter, and facebook.

To see a full list of testimonials, press excerpts, strategy articles, and blogs you can find out more at:http://www.jaredtendlerpoker.com.

What People Are Saying About the Mental Game of Poker:

"This is no psychobabble; this is no man sitting on a leather couch in an ivory tower spewing transcendental waves. Tendler provides real steps and real answers for poker players involved in the day to day struggle who are too often beating themselves." Jesse May

"Any player that hopes to have long-term success with poker needs to have this book in their library. The mental side of poker is huge, and this is a good investment in that direction. For $50 it is a steal." Verneer, Cardrunners Coach.

"What we have here seems to be advancement on the traditional approaches to the Psychology of Poker espoused by Schoonmaker amongst others." Rich Prew, Blondepoker.

"I have neck and face ache from sitting nodding and smiling to myself, agreeing with absolutely everything that has been printed in The Mental Game of Poker. This is quite possibly the only poker psychology book you will ever need." Matthew Pitt, Betfair Blog.

"Jared Tendler is a pioneer of the poker mental game. No one else even compares to his fact-based, scientific approach that is backed up by years of study in modern psychology. This book is the first of its kind and should be considered mandatory reading for any poker player." Hunter Bick, DragTheBar CEO

"I honestly believe if you are going to buy a poker book then make it this one. Unlike strategy, this book contains advice that simply isn't out there on forums or training sites and could well be the most important book you ever read." Matt Perry, Bluff Europe Magazine.

*Ends*

Contact: barry@mentalgamepoker.com +447989720466 for more details or interview requests.

Sky Poker Tour Leeds Final Table

2011-05-08T09:36:00.000-07:00

Tikay insisted on capturing this rarest of sitings.

I haven't played live poker for about 7 or 8 months, mainly for both book and family reasons, but an invite to the Sky Poker Tour in Leeds was more than enough to awake me from my hibernation. I have nothing but good things to say about the tour – the team at Sky are second to none, the atmosphere is always fantastic, and the action is always very loose.

I was in a unique position mentality wise for this tournament, because I brought my fiancee along and we met some old friends beforehand. So I decided very early I would gamble for a big stack, because if I bust out, I got to catch up with some old friends. To make sure I did just that, I necked five pints in quick succession at the table.

I won the very first hand and after that, I reckon I was pretty much the chip leader or thereabouts for the rest of the tournament until the final table. It was a very liberating experience, playing with no fear of busting because I wanted to see my friends, and I was much looser and more aggressive than I can remember ever being. I was playing pretty crazily, but in a measured, considered kind of way.

The second interesting dynamic occured a couple of places off the bubble. My stack had just took a hit, but I was still easily in the top 5 or 6, but I had another dilema. Knowing full well I was gambling from the start, I didnt book a hotel, and I had about one hour to catch the last train home. So even though I was in a position where I probably should sit back, I started pushing every hand. Very liberating feeling again, no fear and the net effect was I was also creating a very good table image, and I accumulated a ton of chips.

The bubble burst, we soon made the final table, and again, I was pretty much the most active player from the get go. I ran really well throughout the entire tournament so I cant really complain about running into a few coolers near the end. The first pot I had AK vs AQ vs AA and lost to both hands, which damaged my stack. Soon after I shoved with AQ, the guy next to me didnt see me enter the pot and announced 'raise' as he was on the button. The dealer declared the raise had to stand, and his 8-6 hit a straight on the river to bust me in 7th place. Not much you can do about that.

Running into Thewy with a hand for the 9th time in a row

But it was great fun as always, especially sharing a final table with Julian Thew. Thewy is such a nice guy he makes you forget he is hoovering up your chips with no remorse, you almost root for him when he is in the pot against you. The event was televised and I did quite a good exit interview after (At least I think I did, I was pretty sozzled by then). The best part was that after years of wanting one, I actually got a genuine trophy, albeit just one for making the final table. I have always vainly wanted a trophy – for anything, not just poker – so that was a nice one to tick off the bucket list.

A great weekend indeed and I may have the live poker bug again, I'm just a bit gutted in my drunkon stupor I completly forgot to plug The Mental Game of Poker on TV.

Why Poker Coaching Sometimes Doesn't Work

2011-05-06T01:24:00.000-07:00

One of the big concepts we discuss in The Mental Game of Poker is the learning process. A lot of mental game issues in poker are caused by people not understanding the nature of learning. Most poker players assume they have mastered certain concepts too early, or try and learn too much at once. Failure is often treated as a sign you should give up trying, rather than a natural and important part of improving.

If you get the book you will see some great advice on how to correct some of these incorrect assumptions. The whole process of writing the book has made me think long and hard about poker coaching. It is big business in the industry, I myself have been coached/sweated by 3 or 4 different coaches, some of them very high profile ones. Knowing what I know now, I realise how important understanding the learning process is for any coach, and from my own experience it is vastly overlooked.

First of all, I will say that one on one coaching is probably the most beneficial way anyone will learn poker (or anything else) – your game is exposed, stripped bare, and critiqued. You also will find a friend and role model if the coach is good. However, if the coach/student does not understand the learning process, it can actually be a frustrating experience.

I once had some sessions with Jay ‘KRANTZ’ Rosenkrantz, a sick sick player, but the difference between us was massive. A big blind for him was a buy-in for me, and he didn’t really cater his teaching style for the level I was at, rather he spoke to me like I was a nosebleed player – it may as well have been a foreign language I was hearing and I actually think the experience may have held me back, rather than helped me. The best coaching I ever had was from a great guy called Stuart ‘Balloo’ Menzies, who actually didn’t play games much bigger than myself, but he understood where I was as a player and coached accordingly.

The biggest single issue I have encountered from poker coaches is they try and teach too much, too soon. They will sweat a session, or study a series of hands, and overwhelm their student with all manner of technical information. Most of us poker students are just as much to blame, because we are just as keen to immerse ourselves in as much higher level literature as we can (I think everyone who has ever purchases a subscription to a poker training site has tried to watch all the videos back to back because of the sheer enthusiasm of having joined).

This is not how the learning process works; it is much more gradual and requires a lot of repetition. When we overload ourselves with information, or our coaches do, it only serves to create frustration when we are not able to execute that information when we are at the tables. Which in turn can lead us to question our ability and feel like a failure, because we don’t realise the learning process is supposed to be like this. (There is also a phenomenon called Decision Paralysis whereby the more information you have in front of you, the harder it is to make a decision and you are more likely to make a bad one, well worth reading up on).

If you are a coach or you have a coach, or even if you are just teaching yourself, it is vital you know that the learning process is much more gradual and you cannot just expect to know something because you have been told it.

Before embarking on coaching, the coach and student should agree between them what the 3 or 4 biggest areas they need to work on are (Whether they are leaks, or developing new skills) and frame the coaching around those issues. If the student’s biggest areas for improvement is 3-betting and playing in multi-way pots, don’t overwhelm them with 4-betting, G Buck calculations, playing the turn and metagame, it is just too much to take in (Obviously these scenarios will come up, and do address them as they do, but keep it simple and mark it as a future topic for discussion).

Don’t move onto something new until the student is proving they have learned the lesson over a large sample. Don’t assume because they showed they understood something in a sweat session they have learned the lesson to the point where it will show up every time. They need to consistently prove it when they are not being watched before it can be considered mastered. If they can prove they have learned something while under extreme pressure, like a big downswing, then you know they have it mastered and are ready to move on to the next lesson.

One on one coaching or discussing hands with friends is definitely the most valuable learning experience in poker, because you not only learn about the game, you learn about yourself. Just make sure everyone involved knows what learning looks like, because you can actually hinder progress if they don’t.

Learn more about Learning in The Mental Game of Poker.

The Mental Game of Poker is Shipping

2011-05-05T14:23:00.000-07:00

Apologies for anyone who pre-ordered the The Mental Game of Poker, for reasons beyond our control we were delayed by 3 or 4 days beyond the projected shipping date. Believe it or not, it was apparently because the printers didn't quite have the right shade of blue for the cover and it came out slightly purple-y instead. Had we known this was the issue right away we would have just sent a Barney the Dinosaur version of the book out.

If you did pre-order the book, Jared & I will be sending something along shortly as a special offer and thank you via email.

Anyway, we are now both going to try out the medium of Video Blogs, just because it seems easier, more compelling, and more engaging. I probably should have shaved beforehand, and my god do we both look tired - that is actually the toll the book has taken on us lately, no joke. The sound quality is pants and it will be better in the future, I will also edit my mug out of it more often next time.

Check Out The Mental Game of Poker

Poker Show With Jesse May

2011-05-05T09:49:00.000-07:00

There is a ton of blog stuff coming its way in the next few days but right now I just wanted to post a link to Jared's interview on a recent Poker Show with Jesse May. Jesse reviews the book and he couldn't say enough about it. Jesse is probably one of the top five industry guys I respect in poker, his knowledge and enthusiasm for the game is unparalleled in my opinion - so for him to like the book so much has really got me excited.

Listen to the Poker Show

Check Out the Mental Game of Poker

Poker, Motivation & Prop Bets

2011-05-03T01:58:00.000-07:00

In the motivation section of The Mental Game of Poker I touch on a subject that is dear to me, prop bets. I have always been a big fan of some of the stories of outrageous proposition bets in poker, in particular, old school road gambler legends like Amarillo Slim (Shame he is a bit, erm, dodgy, in other aspects of his life).

There are some fantastic modern prop bets in the online generation, however, there is a notably different trend among online players, which I call 'Motivational Prop Bets'. Back in the day, a successful proposition gambler would rarely bet unless it was a sure thing (And in some cases, when they have outright cheated). Usually the bet would involve a 'sucker' who would be unaware of a significant edge the gambler had (Look up the legendary Amarillo Slim table tennis bet series to see what I mean).

I call these 'Edge Prop Bets', you only bet when you believe you have an edge that you can run 100 miles/play 100,000 hands a month/eat 30 eggs in an hour etc. That is exactly what a successful gambler should be doing, investing in a perceived edge which will pay off over time. Most successful poker players know all about this.

But the modern trend of 'Motivational Prop Bets' suggests quite the opposite. Check out any popular poker forum and you will likely find a ton of these. Someone will propose that they can play x number of hands in a month, win x amount of money, or lose x amount of weight. Most of the time, rather than proposing these because they believe they can do it, they propose them because they want to do them, but are struggling to motivate themselves.

They have no prior evidence to suggest they will actually succeed, in fact, they have a ton of evidence to support the opposite viewpoint. They don't have enough motivation to lose the weight or play x number of hands for its own sake, so they want to force their interest by putting money on the line.

If someone proposes a bet because they are struggling to motivate themselves to do something they should be doing anyway, particularly if it is way off what they are currently capable of, take it. This is a bet that is destined for failure more often than not.

Motivational problems are not caused by a lack of motivation, rather the focus of your motivation is elsewhere. When someone is struggling to motivate themselves to play more hands, it is actually because they are very motivated to take more time off from playing. If someone is struggling to motivate themselves to lose weight, it is because they are very motivated to eat bad foods and not exercise.

I know that sounds like really fluffy pop psychology but it is true, and most of the time that motivation to eat crap or play less is stronger, much stronger, than the motivation not to lose money in a prop bet. I read a great book called Drive by Daniel Pink recently that confirmed just that. Basically, our ability to perform actually decreases when financial incentives are introduced, even when it is a hobby you would do for free, introducing money makes it feel like work, which makes it a real grind – all of which makes it all the more likely that desire to be lazy will win.

It creates an interesting paradox with poker, because of course it is a game where money is the way to keep score. One thing I have learned from working with Jared Tendler, and also from observing hundreds of players I have interviewed, is that in order to succeed when money is on the line you need to detach yourself from the dollars and concentrate on developing the skill needed to make it for its own sake.

I can support this argument first hand too. After working on the book with Jared Tendler I managed to drop quite a bit of excess weight through plain old eating less and exercising more. I did this by applying his mental game methods by changing my attitude to eating (I was a bit of a binge eater) and learning to box at my gym. Rather than focussing on my weight, I focussed on why I was binge eating, my eating habits, and improving my ability in my new hobby at the gym. I haven't changed the food I eat, I just am learning how to exercise portion control. It has gone really well and I am only keeping half an eye on my weight (In fact my first real dip in progress came when I started weighing myself regularly and made it all about the numbers again, which I quickly changed back again to once a month).

It has been about five months I have lost about 20-22lbs, but more importantly it hasn’t felt like a grind because I have done it for its own sake, not for the sake of losing weight itself, which will hopefully means I am developing the habits that wont see me sling it all back on again.

I actually was offered to turn it into a prop bet at the start of the year with someone who was looking to lose a similar amount of weight, I am glad I turned them down. Doing something because I wanted to is much easier than doing something because I feel I had to. When you see some porker telling you they want odds that they can lose x amount of weight in a month, unless they are Ted Forrest, take them up on it, because deep down they probably don't want to win as much as they claim to.

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The Mental Game of Poker and the 'PLO Phase'

2011-05-02T10:00:00.000-07:00

Several people, including Betfair Blogger Yorkypuds, have mentioned to us that they are going to use The Mental Game of Poker as a jumping off point to start a foray into playing PLO. Evidently their hope is that it will provide a solid emotional base to withstand the inevitable swings of the four card version of hold'em.

In principal, that is a great idea, and I like to think that the book can do just that. What I would say, however, is that most players should probably work on major mental game issues within their usual games initially before attempting to test them in uncharted waters. One of the things we strongly stress in the book is that you should work on your biggest leaks first before trying to develop new skills. You really need to work on the issues in your 'C game' before moving towards mastery, otherwise they are just going to show up again (and probably sooner and much worse in a game like PLO).

I think just about every poker player (myself included, several times) has had a 'PLO phase'. It is a bit like the poker equivalent of a mid life crisis, most players I know have attempted a different game when they are frustrated with poker – a change is as good as a rest. The ironic thing about most PLO phases is that often players are frustrated with the variance of hold'em, yet seem to think the way to remedy that is to take up an even swingier version of the game.

Of course not everyone has their PLO Phase because of frustration or variance; some just want a new challenge or see it as potentially very profitable. And for many, it isn't a phase, but the start of their new bread and butter game. Yorkypuds is a keen student of the game so I am sure he is fully aware of the swings about to come his way.

I guess the key thing I want to get across is that if you currently have a problem coping with variance in hold'em, work on that issue first until you know it has improved before taking up PLO for the first time. Variance itself doesn't cause mental game issues, it only amplifies them, so taking up a higher variance form of poker is only going to create more problems. I say this both as someone who has spent the last two years shadowing Jared Tendler, and also someone who has had their fair share of ill advised PLO phases.

Of course the nice flip side of this is that when you do have a really solid ability to cope with variance, you put yourself in an even better position to make money in the high variance games. Jared had a great article about a year ago about how often these highly charged testosterone fuelled games often comes down to the player with the best 'C game' and I think it's very applicable to PLO.

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Crush It

2011-05-01T10:49:00.000-07:00

I enjoyed Thank You Economy by Gary Vaynerchuk so much I snap bought his first (none wine) offering, Crush It. If time taken to buy-then-read is anything to go by, clearly I loved it, as I managed to blitz through it in a matter of days.

And love it, I did. Crush It is all about how we live in an age where anyone can turn a hobby or passion into a career. The message is simple enough, find something you love and monetise it. If you are passionate enough about a subject you will be able to find a niche way of blogging/wrtiting/video blogging/podcasting/creating content about that subject, which you can build into something people will pay for.

Step forward social media, which is how you find your audience. Just like in the Thank You Economy, Gary reminds us that social media is really the greatest listening tool in the world – not an opportunity for spammers and old school marketeers to dump links.

It all sounds so simple. Find your passion, produce the best blog site in the world, create a community of followers, wait for the money to roll in. Of course it isn't as simple as that, it requires lots and lots of hard work, which Gary is all too eager to point out again and again. However, he is so passionate and persuasaive that he does fill you with confidence that we all have the power to do it.

This book spoke to me as much, if not perhaps a bit more, than Thank You Economy. I think this is because for the past five years I have turned a passion into a career. I haven't done all the things suggested in Crush It, nor have I necessarily done those things I have done to the best of my ability, but I have seen first hand how liberating having a job you would do for free is. With my first book now available to buy, I think this was a very fortuatous time for me to have discovered Crush It.

It's a brilliant book, and a rare one I may read a second time. I think Thank You Economy is the better book, and one that everyone should read. But Crush It is perhaps my personal favourite of the two, because it really speaks to me as a self employed journalist.

Once again, as good a book as it is, think seeing the man in action does much more than my review ever could.

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Mental Game of Poker - Reviews & Article Link Dump

2011-05-01T01:42:00.000-07:00

Pre-sale of The Mental Game of Poker went surprisingly well considering we chose to release the book at the worst time in the history of poker book publishing. One third of the sales were still from the US, which was a good sign, and also kind of a kick in the teeth too when you think of how much better it could have been.

Lots of reviews on their way from the likes of Dr Pauly, Jesse May, Bill Rini, Lee Davy, Bluff Europe, and Matthew Pitt. Until then, I have been keeping Jared busy as his Spin Doctor/Tea Boy. Here are some of his interviews/blog posts/articles/book reviews from the last week or two:

BlondePoker Review

Cardrunners Review

Betfair Blog Review (Not the actual review, Matthew Pitt got so excited he did a '55 pages in' review)

Black Friday Special Interview on Cash Plays Podcast

PokerNews Article on Black Friday Anxiety

How Jared Tendler Coached 8 Players to Supernova Elite

PartyPoker Article

"Should I Buy The Book?" Thread on TwoPlusTwo (We had nothing to do with this, but was really nice to see the response.

The Mental Game of Poker is now available to buy. If you have any questions about it at all, drop me a line.

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The Thank You Economy

2011-04-24T08:11:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading 'Thank You Economy' by Gary Vaynerchuk, which was recomended to me in very apt fashion by someone in the comment's section of this blog. The book is about how social media has levelled the playing field for small business and once again created a word of mouth culture.

10 years ago if you had recieved bad customer service from a large company, you would probably tell your circle of friends and it wouldnt make a dent in that companies bottom line. Now you can moan on twitter, facebook, amazon, trip advisor, a podcast, a blog, a forum, and probably 100 effective methods. If not handled well, your compllaint could reach thousands upon thousands of people. Likewise, if you recieve exceptional service, your praise can reach the same number of people and give that company some of the best free marketing available (Think of how much more effective a friend's recommendation is compared to banner ad these days).

I don't really see the point of explaining the book any more than this, because Vaynerchuk explains it himself much better in this video. In short, he is very successful because he gave a shit more than his competitors:

I loved the book, it has really spoken to me at a transitional period in my own life. First of all, I have really become a social media convert in 2011, I think it will be as mandatory a skill in ten years time as operating a PC is today. Secondly, I have my own book - The Mental Game of Poker - coming out next week. The nature of the book really means that word of mouth is vital to its success (especially as the US DoJ appears to have created a massive bump in the road), I know social media (particularly twitter, facebook, and forums) will play a huge part.

Finally, on a personal note, losing my Father last year has a major influence. I must admit I was much more a fast buck kind of guy, I would usually go for the easier route, I would sometimes (semi) joke that 'if a job is worth doing properly, it's not worth doing'. Dad was never someone I would call particularly ambitious, however, he always did his best, he never cut corners, he never did a shoddy job, he never put off tomorrow what he could do today, and most of all, he always did the right thing by others – customers, friends, and family.

One of the really humbling things about his funeral was seeing just how profound an impact this had, one that you would never see day to day, month to month, only in a lifetime. So many people came to the funeral, his plumber came, his mechanic came, my friends who knew him when we were at school came, so many people who would otherwise barely be acquittance's came – not the sort of people you would usually expect to see at a funeral. We also heard many stories about lives he touched, how he was like a second father to a lot of people, and was a real role model to people who were on bad pathes until they met him (One guy in particular who could have easily been in jail, but after meeting Dad, followed his example, and became a stand up family man and a nurse).

Thats not successful in an ROI sense, but thats a legacy. It was a real turning point for me in my life, I want to leave an imprint like that. Don't get me wrong, I want to earn a shit load of money too, but I want to do it right.

There are so many ways I could shamelessly spam this book, but I'm not going to. I have no intention of misseling this to players who shouldnt buy it (like brand new players) because whats the point? There are loads of things I could do to increase my twitter followers, but why bother if they don't want to listen (please follow me on twitter btw) - much better to know that the people that do follow us want to hear us. I know the book is good, because I know Jared Tendler is a genius, so I'm not going to ruin things by pushing too hard, I hope that enough people agree with me to spread the word because they want to.

Anyway, to get back on track, the Thank You Economy is the second best book of 2011 so far for me and I read a hell of a lot (Top read so far this year for me was 'Made to Stick' by the Heath Brothers). Its passionate, persusaive, and easy to follow. Its a real must for anyone in, well, any industry, and simply put if you don't buy into the principles of the Thank You Economy, you will get left behind.

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Mental Game of Poker Excerpt - Fear

2011-04-20T12:16:00.000-07:00

We released this as a direct response to Black Friday, figuring that a lot of US players may find some of what is written is applicable to them right now.

Obviously fear is a pretty universal thing so all poker players can probably see some benefit too.

****Buy the Mental Game of Poker Now****