If you’ve been playing poker for some time, you will have your share of bad beat stories to tell. That’s because poker is a game of probabilities (some critics would call it a game of luck but that’s because they don’t know better). Even if you’re ahead of your opponent with a pair of aces on a A93 rainbow flop, there’s always the possibility he catches running 5′s for 4 of a kind. This element of chance is the basis of all variance in poker. Variance combined with your skill set at the tables is what makes your stack fluctuate from hand to hand, and your bankroll fluctuate on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis. If you’re a poker novice, your bankroll will most likely decrease because you still have a lot to learn, but even poker pros
have bad runs.

Besides learning all the poker rules, proper bankroll management is your best weapon against variance and the risk of ruin. It goes without saying that you’re much more likely to lose a 100$ bankroll playing NL100$ tables compared to NL5$ tables. With proper bankroll management you will always have enough buyins in your bankroll to outlast bad spells. As a rule of thumb, you will need between 20 to 50 buyins on the level you’re playing to make sure you won’t go broke in the long run.

Before you make your first deposit, make sure you realize the consequences of your bankroll management choice. If you’re looking for quick thrills and the chance of building a bankroll with lightning speed go ahead and put your entire bankroll at stake on one table. Just be aware that you have a low chance of success. If on the other hand you’re looking to sustain your bankroll for a long time then stick to the 20 to 50 buyin rule of thumb. However, following this plan means that you will be grinding it out on small buyin tables for a long time in order to increase your bankroll enough to move up to the next level.

As for me, my grinding days are over. Some years ago I followed a strict bankroll management scheme for about a year and made enough money to pay for a road trip in Asia with my best friends. The trip was the best I’ve ever been on, but I realized that grinding isn’t my cup tea. Nowadays I deposit on average $100 a month into various poker sites and just have fun playing tournaments. If I cash big, I pull out the money and if I go broke I don’t worry too much about it.

If you don’t have money of your own to deposit, or belong to the group of unfortunate poker players in the US who are not allowed to deposit into poker sites, freerolls are a great way to start up a poker bankroll.

Congrats on the November Leader Board Win.

How long have you been playing the #tpt events? I seem to remember you there at first (last year) then on and off again
I started playing TPT this summer, although I don’t remember exactly when. It was in the middle of the last three/four month season. I think I’ve played them all since, it’s an awesome tournament.

How long have you been playing poker?
I’ve played on and off since I was a kid, but only started playing seriously in 2006.

Do you play anything besides NLHE?
I started out playing Limit Hold’em and still enjoy that. I really enjoy Stud Hi/Lo but I’m not very good. I’ve recently gotten into PLO and hope I can get better at that.

Do you prefer live or online play? Why?
Each has their benefits. Live is a lot of fun because the players are usually really bad, plus it’s nice to actually be at a table, see people, whatever. However, I think online wins out because I like to multi-table and can keep notes.

Do you prefer Cash/MTT/SNG and why?
I prefer MTTs, it’s where I have the most experience and I love MTT strategy and the hours-long battles. However my graphs show most of my profits come from SNGs so I suppose I should give them a shout out. I lose too much at cash, yet somehow still come back for more.

Your twitter bio says you used to know a joke, can you remember the joke and tell it now?
Two peanuts are walking down the street, and one of them is assaulted.

Do you play poker for fun or a way to make some extra cash?
Mostly because I love games and the challenge of competition. I’m basically a break-even player, I’ve never made enough profit to withdraw anything, but I’ve never had to redeposit either.

Do you have any favorite poker pros or watch any poker on TV?
I watch Pokertube all the time; WSOP, EPT, WPT, whatever. I like Negreanu, he’s great, but I also like Matusow, Joe Sebok, Phil Ivey… you know, the usual pros. I’d like to see more of people like Steve Dannenman and Paul Wassicka, but part of why I like them is that they are modest.

Have you used any training sites or read any books to help you with your game? If so, which ones?
I’ve read probably too many poker books, I have a whole shelf of them. I’m reading two right now. I’d say “Harrington on Hold’em” and “Power Poker by Daniel Negreanu” were the most influential on me.

I was going through your flickr site and you have some awesome photographs, do you do photography as a hobby or get paid?
Thanks! I love photography, it’s just a hobby for me. I’ve actually made more money playing poker in the last year than I have with my photography. Going out with my camera is a great hobby, it’s peaceful and quiet and helps me get my thoughts straight.

Every photograph tells a story, do you have a particular favorite photograph that you’ve taken?
Hmm. That’s a tough one. I have two that I have framed 18″x24″ prints hanging over my desk. The first is from a marina in Port Townsend, WA. The second is from a playground a few blocks from my apartment. I suppose the red wheel photo is probably my favorite, if I had to pick one out of the thousands I’ve taken.

Have you listened to the Ustream broadcast of the twitter poker tour? What are your thoughts on it?
I did the other day for the first time. It was awesome! I love listening to the live commentary. I kept waiting to get involved in a hand so I could hear it being discussed! I’ll absolutely come back in the future and listen along.

Do you have a favorite hand to play?
I don’t really play it, but Q4 off-suit has won me some serious pots a couple of times. Every time I am dealt it, I want to play, but I take myself too seriously for such shenanigans. Suited connectors are a more serious favorite hand.

What’s your biggest win whether online or live?
I chopped a $60 buy-in tournament at MGM in Vegas for $1000 a few years ago. Online, my biggest score was $340 or so.

Every poker player goes on tilt at one time or another, how do you handle going on tilt?
I am lucky enough that I hardly ever go on serious tilt anymore. When I do, I usually shut down the computer, grab my camera, and run around taking pictures until I feel a little better. The real problem I have is minor tilt that flies under the radar and eats away at me. I don’t know how to fight that, other than to remain vigilant.

Do you play different online then you do live? For some reason live, I play much tighter and am trying to play that way online.
My strategy is the same live or online, but live players play differently (usually a lot more limping and MUCH less three-betting) so I make adjustments to my play to accommodate that. Usually in a live game, I make a point of finding out who is an online player, and plan my strategy accordingly.

Will you be playing the #tpt in the future? Do you have any ideas on how to improve it?
I will continue playing until the hosts get tired of me. I think it’s a great series and I wouldn’t change a thing. Maybe I’d like to see a few other games thrown in the mix, but I am realistic and understand that those events don’t get any participants. Heck, I skip the HORSE game that runs on Fridays…

I know you’ve only played a few #tpt events, but is there any one player that sticks out that you either love to get in a pot with or want to avoid playing pots with?
Sort of. I have notes on most of the regulars, and there are a few opponents who fall into each category. I don’t really gun for anyone, but if I have someone pegged as loose, of course I am trying to trap them, and if I know someone is a rock I’ll usually stay out of their way.

Is online poker rigged for the underdog to give more inexperienced players a reason to keep playing the shit cards they seem to win with consistently?
No, I don’t believe online poker is rigged at all. I’ve seen some really crazy things happen in live poker. Also, why would the sites risk getting caught? They make tens of millions of dollars a month in profits playing fair, so why screw it up?

Thanks for taking the time to answer these questions, any final thoughts or shout outs?
Thanks for the great questions, this was fun. Thanks to cprpoker and the rest of the people running TPT, it’s a super fun tournament and I love seeing it grow. And thanks to anyone who actually stuck around and read this!

Then the Internet came along, and with it brought the poker forum — a place where hundreds or thousands (and even hundreds of thousands in some cases) of poker enthusiasts gathered to discuss the game. Suddenly there was a system in place that allowed poker players of all levels improve their game by reading the thoughts of many more experienced players, discussing their own play and comparing it to the play of others. This online poker discussion is arguably the most important factor in the rapid increase in skill of the poker playing population over the last decade. More important even than the information available in the hundreds of poker books on the market today.

Unfortunately the format that existing online poker forums take is lacking in many desirable features and is not conducive to creating high quality content.

Voting
A major problem on typical forums is the existence of high numbers of low quality posts. There ofter will exist a question which has a number of great responses, a number of good responses and a number of less than useless responses. Today’s forums display the answers to an question in chronological order, so the first reply always gets seen first by all future readers regardless of its quality. A voting system would allow users to vote up good answers and vote down bad answers. Future viewers of the question will then be able to instantly see what is likely to be the best response and won’t need to read every reply and mentally strip away the unhelpful answers.

Reputation
Reputation is that little thing in life that people can use to judge a person without having to spend a lot of effort getting that person and discerning their good traits form bad. This is incredibly useful. Can you imagine having to place the same trust in a common criminal as in your president or believing that all your opponents at the poker table are of equal standards until you have seen for yourself how they play? It is safer to believe that the rock, whom you are told plays one hand every two hours, actually has a hand when he 3 bets you and that notorious drunk bluffer does not actually have AA every hand.

Today’s online poker forums make a pedestrian effort to give a reputation to their members. They do this by recording the post count of every member and displaying it by their name. Ever wonder why there are so many meaningless, single word responses? That little number beside the posters name is the reason, and as a reputation score it is woefully deficient. A more advanced and balanced system would allow users to accurately adjust their trust in the posts of another member, a member who they are otherwise unfamiliar with. Suddenly you would, with a high degree of confidence, choose to heed or discount the advise of others – safe in the knowledge that their reputation is accurate and based on the community’s overall affinity for that member and their advise.

Tags
Our structure is the only structure…and you will abide by it.

Today’s forums have a preset structure comprising of a number of sub-forums loosely based on the topics that the creators think that the members will post about. No-Limit –> Holdem –> Medium Stakes would be common sub-category where people are expected to talk about medium stakes no-limit Holdem and nothing else. Online Poker –> Software would be another popular sub-category for discussing online poker software.

This is all well and good if you want to talk about exactly that, but the system quickly breaks when people want to talk about anything that spans two topics or does not slot neatly into a preexisting category. If you want to discuss how best to use Poker Tracker for your online Holdem play at various levels, do you ask it in the software forum, do you ask it in the medium stakes Holdem forum? You are forced to choose one and accept that it is mislabeled and will not be seen by many people who are interested in real topic of your question.

A wholly more suitable categorization system would allow tagging of questions where you are free to choose a number of tags that are relevant to your question. Never again would you be forced to compromise where your question located and never again would otherwise prospective viewers of your question be unable to find it.

Set in stone
Have you ever come across information on the Internet only to find that it is grievously out of date? Perhaps you found a link to a great sounding poker app, downloaded and installed it and, only after hours of struggling to get it working, you discover that the author abandoned the application back in 2003.

Perhaps you have happened upon a post on a forum that has a simple typo, a broken link maybe, causing every reader to think twice before realizing the intended meaning of the author?

This type of thing happens all the time on today’s forums and is such a frequent occurrence because once a post it is created it can only ever be edited my the original author, and frequently cannot even be edited by the author after a short grace period has passed.

All these problems can be reasonably solved by taking a page out of Wikipedia’s book and allowing trusted members of the community (remember that reputation thing I was ranting about earlier?) to update any post. The latest up to date information would always be available to view to the casual reader, and the full change history of the question or answer would be available for the inquisitive reader.

Outflopped
Don’t you just hate people who are quick to point out every little thing that is wrong with something but are deafeningly quiet when asked for a solution? I would hate to be that person so, I present to you Outflopped, a poker forum that solves all the aforementioned shortcomings plus has a number of neat features such as…actually, I won’t spoil all the surprises for you. I invite you to come and check out www.outflopped.com to see for yourself. I am confident that you will find the forum refreshingly easy to use — you don’t even need to sign up to post a question.

Everyone folds, except the player to your right, who raises it to 20. You yourself call, as does the dealer to your immediate left, the small blind folds, and the big blind calls the raise. Four people will see this flop.

The flop is the 6 of diamonds, 3 of spades, and the 8 of spades. The big blind checks, but our pre-flop raiser bets 200 chips. What do you do?

The flop is 9-5-2 rainbow, giving you trips (three nines) and the best hand at the moment. In most like situations, what is the proper course of action? Remember, its not 100% of the time as your tactics/strategy can vary.