Just over a week ago I had the chance to go to Vegas for Annie Duke's Epic Poker seminar. In a word, it was AWESOME.
Check-in was Friday night, with a full day of poker planned for Saturday. I decided to goof around a bit in the poker room Friday night and ended up donking off $100 pretty quickly in a $2/$4 limit game. I immediately changed to the $1/$3 no-limit game and my fortunes changed as well. I played the hand of the night pretty early. I called a $10 pre-flop raise with 77 and three of us went to the flop. The flop came 979 for a flopped boat for me and I was able to get all my money in on the turn. Just to make sure I was good, I rivered a 7 for quads and a $50 high-hand bonus. The rest of the night was pretty uneventful and I ended up cashing out for +$74 on the night.
The next day I had breakfast with Mom and headed off for the noon start of the seminar. The two-hour classroom portion of the seminar was based on Annie Duke's book, Decide To Play Great Poker, obviously, and she pointed out that she would be focusing on pre-flop decision making, as she would need three days to cover everything she writes about in her book (a three day poker seminar with Annie Duke? Where do I sign up?).
I've read Annie's book, but there were times my brain would sort of "tune out" what I was reading. There is a lot of game theory in what she teaches and at times it can get sort of complicated in regards to the multiple levels of thought you have to put into the game. Luckily, she taught this seminar as if none of us had read the book. She was able to illustrate and reinforce what I had read in the book and all of a sudden it just "clicked" in my brain. I could clearly see the benefits, but more importantly, the detriments of playing certain hands in certain situations - hands I typically played as if they were the nuts.
No wonder I haven't become a winning poker player in almost ten years of playing this game.
We broke for lunch, got our gift bags with a sweatshirt, hat, and copy of Annie's book, and then reconvened for the practical portion of the seminar. For this, Annie brought in four poker pros to sit at the table with us and deal while we played hands and then discussed the decision-making process behind everything we were doing. This portion of the seminar was, quite simply, worth every penny. The pros were Annie (@AnnieDuke), Ali Nejad (@Ali_Nejad), Matt Glantz (@MattGlantz), McLean Karr (@mcleankarr), and Tim West (@TheTmay).
Matt was first up at my table. For those of you who may not know, Matt is one of the pre-eminent mixed game players in the world. He was a little nervous at first, admitting that it was probably his first time dealing cards and definitely his first time teaching, but once he started talking about the game he loves, he got totally comfortable.
McLean was next at the table and his genuine enthusiasm for the game was infectious. When someone would ask a question about how to play a hand, he wouldn't discount the proposition, but typically answered with something along the lines of, "Yeah, you could do that. And then maybe if he bets into you on the turn, you can come over the top and crush him. That's what's so great about his game, there's no one way to play a hand." His enthusiasm was made more legit when, before leaving our table, Matt had told us that McLean is one of the "great young minds" in the game.
Annie, Ali, and Tim all rotated through our table as well, and all with the same message: making a good decision before the flop will make your decisions throughout the hand a lot easier, and that's what you want. It was really great to get five different perspectives on the same thing and see how you can take different routes to reach the same goal.
This was an absolutely incredible seminar. And if there were ever another one, maybe covering post-flop play, I wouldn't hesitate to make my way back out to Vegas for it.
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