My brief career as a poker mentor...

My best friend has been staying with us for the weekend, we have known each other since we meet at school twenty years ago. We used to play cards together when we were young and later on in the pub and also with friends in a home game. Our playing ability historically has always been pretty evenly matched.

The last time he came to visit he wanted to play a bit of online poker; he has occasionally played on the internet mostly free rolls and low level S+G’s. So we sat down at the PC with me acting as observer and advisor and he plunged into a S+G; then he very quickly plunged back out again. He had decided to call an early position raise with a weak ace against my advice, and then re-raised all in on the flop with top pair no kicker only to find himself up against top pair and top kicker. No help was forthcoming so there goes a buy in! Then he blew out of an MTT in the early stages hunting a weak flush draw. This pattern went on for a while, he wouldn’t listen to me and kept playing bad cards in poor position and didn’t last very long in any games he played (annoying, as it was my money!). Eventually he gave up when I would only allow him to play one dollar games. (Sorry got to think of the BR chap)

Thinking about the situation afterwards, I came to the conclusion that he would always struggle to take advice from me because,

a.) He thinks we are of about similar ability and their is nothing I can teach him.
b.) He hates being told what to do, as any of our teachers from school would testify.

I didn’t think I would be prepared to try another training session with him and thought that maybe he would just have to follow his own path to poker knowledge like most of us have done. Well a lot of good poker related things have happened to me since our last session most of which he is aware off and we were talking about some of my recent successes over a pint. He was very interested on some of the strategy’s I employ and seemed convinced that I could help his game, I believed he was interested enough in improving his play to give it another try.

I fired up the PC and logged into a poker site to get him started, I choose for him a full table S+G with a decent (for the internet) structure to maximize the skill factor and it quickly fills with eager players. The first few hands pass without incident then a tester, we are in mid position and face a 3X raise from UTG holding K10 suited. He looks at me and I say ‘fold’, then he looks at the cards on the screen again and retorts ‘fold?’ I nod and say ‘yes it’s a fold’. A king hits the flop and he looks at me as if I just stole his pint. He quickly changes his mind as two players get all the chips in the middle on the flop AK versus flush draw with the AK holding. I feel as if I have just won the first battle in the war to improve his play.

To be honest it’s a great table to demonstrate some solid poker fundamentals, all the poker stero types are represented Rocky Mcrock, Scandinavian ‘Gus wanna be’ Maniac, Calling All Station’s and of course everybody’s favorite ‘Captain Play Right’ who can’t go one round without slating other peoples play and loves to tell you how he just executed a squeeze (when he really just shoved with aces). Round after round is spent with me trying to convince my student it’s correct to fold suited rubbish (J 2 of hearts what’s wrong with that) from early position. I also have to work hard to get him to concentrate on the hands he is not directly involved in to learn the style of play of others at the table.

My own personal style would best be categorized as tight aggressive and naturally this is the manner of play I choose to ‘inflict’ upon my student. I tell him ‘we don’t play many hand, but when we do we play for all our chips’. Eventually we are dealt a playable hand, Pocket 10’s from mid position. Calling all stations (CAS) has called from early position so I instruct my student to raise a bit more than standard to try to get a fold. And of course our X5 raise does nothing to stop CAS doing what he does best and we take a flop, and its a good one at that for tens as its eight high. We bet pot and CAS goes into the tank and eventually calls. My pupil is worried when a K turns but I reassure him ‘remember who your in the hand with (CAS) these guys never fold and hardly ever raise’ bet ¾ pot I instruct him but fold if you get re-raised, surprise, surprise CAS calls and a low card falls on the river and both players check and we take down a biggish pot when CAS shows down A 5 for second pair on the flop (these guys never fold).

A few hands latter we pick up pocket 7’s from mid position, I instruct my student to flat call as there have been a number of limpers in front and we like volume in this spot. He again looks at me strangely but complies. Rocky Mcrock (RM) is in the BB and makes an above standard raise; this is of immediate concern because to do this we know RM needs a real hand and pretty big one at that. I explain this to my student and try to explain to him the basic math’s of this particular situation; if the raise represents less than 15% of both our own and the raisers stack and we believe the raiser has a hand big enough that if we flop our set we can stack them, then calling is the correct thing to do. We call because the math’s says we should and flop our set and stack the BB who was holding Queens on a Jack high flop.

The blinds have started to creep up and a few players have been eliminated and I begin to instruct my student to open up his/ours/whatever game and then this hand comes up. Maniac ‘Gus wanna Be’ Scandinavian (MANSCAN) has donked of most of his chips bluffing into CAS who called him down on the river with 4th pair and no spades on a 4 spade board. We have 2800 chips and are in the BB with Blinds now at 150 – 300, MANSCAN open pushes from mid position with his last 750. My student finds 8 2 of diamonds and checks the auto fold button, I reprimand him for using the auto action buttons (naughty boy! 50 lines; I will not use auto functions ever again) and get him to quickly uncheck the fold button before the action reaches him. I can feel this is going to be difficult; I have just spent many hours instructing him to fold suited junk for minimum bet and I’m now about to urge him to consider calling an all in shove with if anything even worse suited garbage. Never the less I press on, and begin to explain the hand analysis in this situation. Loose player who is desperately short stacked player, huge range of hands he could be shoving with and a very good price on the call (300 + 150 + 750 + 1200/450 = 2.6- 1 return on our money) if we fold we have 2500 back, if we call and lose we have 2050 and if we call and win we have 3700 makes this a pretty standard call. We call and our opponent tables Q-5 spades which makes us about 6-4 and confirms the call. We flop a two which is good enough to win the pot.

With four players left table captain (TC) who has been upsetting players from the beginning goes into over drive critiquing every error of judgment and bad call. His immediately to our left, just where we want him! We start picking on his blind because when you have been criticizing the way others play its hard to start pushing with junk, yeah free money! We raise his blind once, then twice and then the third time he re-raises us all-in and types in the chat box ‘get off my blind donkey’. I advise to fold (after a fake dwell up of course) because we know two things,

a.) He has a hand.
b.) We don’t.

Inadvertently he has opened another door for us, when TC makes the warning comment he now believes he has warned us off and that we will only raise with a real hand from this point. Of course I advise my student to go into steal overdrive when its TC's big blind and we rob him like crazy. The fourth time we raise his blind in a row we have a hand, pockets jacks and eliminate TC when he fails to connect with his ace rag and we take him out.

The game plays out and we use our big stack to pressure the other players and take an easy heads up victory using our chip advantage. I really enjoyed trying to pass on some of my own experience but I’m not up to standards of some of the great online pro’s so don’t worry about me starting up my own training site guys!. I feel like I have learned quite a bit from mentoring another less experienced player and it has given me renewed confidence in my own game.

Note: This was not one S+G it’s an amalgam of about 3 or 4 it just reads better this way.