That's all I haave to say. Get your tolerance up boys

Look at this beauty! Eveyone at the table got paid 800 each and the winner got 2000 dollars and the bad beat got 4000 dollars!

This is kind of a rant.

When I started playing poker I found this nice no rake 1/2 home game hosted in a bar that played every Tuesday. I was a big fish at first so I was losing / breaking even.

After taking a break from the home game and studying a lot I become a lot better playing a tight aggressive strategy and I started crushing casinos and that game. The game was full of old passive fish type players so it wasn’t that hard.

I’m kind of a big personally at the table I like to talk and joke around but I was very confident in my abilities taking about strategy and my win rate. I was proud of it I was a losing player for a long time.

I am also tough to play against bluffing and betting big I was putting people in tough spots.

Recently when I asked when the next game will be run I got an email saying that “0players have been complaining about my behavior” saying “I’m too sarcastic and cocky” and “my behavior and arrogance isn’t a good fit for the group”

I’m not gonna sugar coat it I was being sarcastic and cocky but I thought I was among friends and a little trash talk at the poker table was fine. I never insulted or berated anybody.

I tried to apologize but I didn’t want to beg to get a seat back. I’m really upset at this because there are no good games in nyc that aren’t crazy raked.

If you learn anything for this. If you are a big winner at a private game make sure to bring something extra to the game like food or other whales or something cause if you don’t they will find a reason to kick you out

Im playing 25NL and studying alot, GtoWiz, Got coaching, watching quality youtube like Knowyourpoker, Saulo, Benabadbeat and then some..

Ive been up and down, feeling like im improving alot with coaching and also especially from watching Luke Johnsons series on YT.

Im finding more aggression, more bluffs and more profits when i am the aggressor.

This last week has been awful tho, and this is from starting to defend more. And i think this is a symptom of "too much to soon, too fast". Its like i went from being a nit and now after 2 weeks i got all this new info and knowledge that im not really ready to handle, im gonna 3bet 10% and defend the BB this much and defend against 3bets a certain % and so on.

For me tho if i defend BB or say im in HJ and defend vs BTN 3b. Im in spots were i make a ton of mistakes, ive yet to learn and study good boards on wich i checkraisebluff some of the time, or what frequency im flatting or raising JJ on a T high rainbow board?

Should i implement stuff at a much slower rate and slow down maybe to have coaching like every other week?

Im making this post cause i want to hear how others handled like "information overload"?

I mean these people take all there time to fold on a 25c pot. Seems incredibly rude to me.

SRP: UTG vs BB — A♠ K♠ 3♦
Why does the solver prefer betting JJ when holding the J♠, but prefer betting 88 when not holding the 8♠?
I’ll attach a screenshot of the solver’s strategy. I’m curious about the reasoning behind these blocker effects.

This is tournament poker.

My username there is hans_marcon.

basically I flat called AK pre in the BB (yes, roast me for that lol), flop is KJ 2 diamonds (it's relevant). I checked, someone bet ahead of me, the other guy called and I raised to about half my stack. The original raiser then jams, I fold and the other guy calls.

Turns out we both have AK. I was thinking was this a bad fold? Like it feels like it is based on the actual holdings, but based on hand strength by intention, they had like 2 pair plus (or exactly what one of them had which was Q10dd lol)

Anyway have a nice day yall

Been out of the loop for a while and saw that he passed. (RIP) What happened with him? Some have said that he dies penniless, how could this be the case? Did he have a substance abuse issue?

I held a balance of $7861.50 in PokerStars NJ prior to their merger with FanDuel.

I contacted support to retrieve my funds ([support@starsaccountnj.com](mailto:support@starsaccountnj.com)) and they assured me a check would be sent to my home address, which I confirmed and verified the details. This correspondence happened on September 26, 2026, and they said checks typically arrive within 5 business days. It is now Oct 21, 2026 and has been more than 25 days.

Support is completely unresponsive and does not respond to my emails (I have emailed them 4-5 times). I truly do not know what to do and feel stupid for leaving my funds in Pokerstars - I never thought a company this big would scam me.

1. Is anyone else in a similar situation? We should group up and put pressure on FanDuel / Pokerstars to make things right.
2. Anyone have advice on how to retrieve the funds? The support email address ([support@starsaccountnj.com](mailto:support@starsaccountnj.com)) is completely unresponsive, I have emailed them 4-5 times.

Last message from PokerStars support on Sep 26, 2026 at 4:17 PM ([support@starsaccountnj.com](mailto:support@starsaccountnj.com))

Hello <redacted>,

Thank you for contacting us.

We have sent a request to the relevant team to send a new check for $7861.50 to the registered postal address on your account (it matches the address provided by you). It should be sent in the next few days.

Checks sent by standard USPS first-class mail typically arrive within 5 business days.

If there's anything else we can help you with, please feel free to ask. We're always here to help.

Regards,

Gearoid
Stars Support

So background, I’m 21 and have been playing poker very regularly every week and put in close to 30+ hours a month while also maintaining college and work. And have shown myself being profitable over the course of 3 years+. I’ve played majority of cash games in person at local card rooms (18+) or home games while also getting into casino cash games and online play. Over the years I’ve raked over 20k+ plus and want to take it more seriously and get into bigger games and play more professionally. I play mainly 1/1 to 1/3 but any advice on doing so, I’ve been considering coaching and have started dabbling with GTO and tracking my hand history and have been figuring out my leaks.

This happened to me a little over a decade ago and I don't know what made me dredge up the memory but it's stuck in my head now so I thought I'd share.

Like many, I started playing online long before I ever sat down in a brick and mortar casino. The first time I ever played a live cash game, the action was on me and I wanted to make a pot size bet, so naturally, I yelled "Pot!" like the pokerstars button was there in front of me, in real life...

The dealer looked at me like I was retarded and then kindly explained I had to make an actual bet with a numerical value.

🔥 Can be anyone content creators, family, celebrity.. yourself ...

Hey guys,

Jack here, also known as Jackstack99.

I've made over $5 million in net profit playing poker throughout my career. Over $4 million came from HU hypers and over $1 million from cash games.

The cash game profits have come over the last 4 years, generally playing just 1 or 2 days per week.

These days I mainly focus on high stakes cash games and also run Team651, where we stake and coach Spin and Go players and cash game players.

Happy to answer questions about cash game strategy, moving up in stakes, bankroll management, downswings, game selection, HU hypers, staking, or anything else poker related.

Ask me anything!

Verification on Twitter: https://x.com/thejackstack99/status/2113044867601584416?s=20

How big can downswings of full-time cash game players / tournament players get?

What's considered common?

First year in poker here. Math background (math lyceum, applied systems analysis, then a civil engineering master's), my day job is calculations. Here's the hand that made me start studying seriously.

I got lucky in a small Saturday live tournament: $50 in, about $1,700 out. Instead of going home, I sat down at a cash table far above anything I should have been playing. It went well. I built my stack to about $9,000 and was literally stacking my chips to leave.

Then I looked down at KK. I raised. Flop: K 8 8. Kings full.

The player next to me — a very wealthy guy clearly there for fun, already reloaded several times — went all in. I thought for a long time and called. He showed A5 and congratulated me.

Turn: A. River: A. Aces full. A third player said he'd folded AJ on the flop.

I left with about $700.

The math part: when the money went in, I was a 99.6% favourite. Of 990 possible turn and river runouts, he wins 4. The call was right. The mistakes were earlier: sitting at a table my bankroll had no business at, and not leaving when I had already decided to leave.

Later I found out the exact same runout happened at EPT Barcelona 2014, €50k Super High Roller: Sven Reichardt's KK vs Olivier Busquet's A2s, board 8 8 K, then A, A. Busquet went on to win it.

That's the difference between MTT and cash for me. In a tournament you can't leave — your risk is the buy-in you already paid. In cash every chip is real money and you can stand up whenever you want. I had already decided to. That was my edge, and I didn't use it.

What's the one thing you wish someone had told you in your first year?

Are PLO H/L tournaments and sng’s less likely to have bots solvers and collusion than NL Hold ‘em?

During my last session a hand came up where the dealer put the river prematurely. Actually, I didn't see anything. I wasn't in the hand and was paying more attention to my latest Balatro run than the game itself. But after the dealer put out the river, the reg complained that his opponent didn't do anything on the turn. While we waiting for the floor, I asked the calling station - reg's opponent in the hand - if he checked the turn. He said no. So both the players in the hand were in agreement that it was a premature river. The reg definitely knew the implications of this. Whether the fish did or not, who can say.

This was my first session with the fish. We didn't actually play any meaningful hands, but he had been hero calling with bottom pair all night, much to the chagrin of his opponents, who all seemed to be habitual bluffers. One hand he called a river overbet jam with A6, on a board that was something like T8632 with a possible flush. Villain had raised pre, bet the flop, checked back the turn, and jammed river. I'm like 95% sure that villain is just a totally clueless noob whose calling station strategy happened to luckbox into the optimal play at a table full of maniac bluffers. But he was surprisingly right on a lot of his calls. And he took his time with them. By the end of the night he had managed to build up an impressive stack, easily 800 bbs+.

In addition to not doing anything on the turn, the station villain had also bet the river out of turn. A bet which would normally be binding. But in this case it wasn't, because the action needed to be rewinded to the previous street. So once we explained the floor what happened, the river came back, and villain took back his out of turn bet. He then had his turn action, at which point he bet the exact same handful of chips that constituted the previous out of turn river bet, this time on the turn. The reg then check raised to 80 BB and they stacked off pretty quick.

The board was 2 6 8 Q, with no possible flush.

The reg showed 222. No surprise he had fought so hard for a new river, and for villain's right to make a turn action. Not that he was angle shooting. He was right afaik that villain did not act on the turn. He was right that the river - which completed a possible straight and flush, btw - had to go back. He was just vigorously protecting his interests, both within the rules and cannons of poker ethics. But he was perhaps a little extra motivated based on his hand. The calling station - who had remained completely passive during these discussions, even saying or intimating "it is okay i would have checked anyway" on the turn, showed 666. A higher set, masterfully played.

Law 21 of Robert Green's 48 Laws Power

Play a sucker to catch a sucker. Always appear dumber than your mark.

Kind of mundane spots but i dont have solver access anymore so someone tell me if this was bad:

2 tighter regs to my right, live $340 freezeout which is big for the area I live in. I'm on BB w/ 10 BB AJo, ChipEV territory not really near money. Both stacks cover me by 3-4x. 800/1600/1600. B opens 3200, SB 3! to 10K. Do we just dunk this in or fold?

I tank folded. B left to act and cant really think of a hand i'm ahead of besides some suited Ax bluff type hands and i'm flipping with anything else he 3 bets. Of note, SB is mid 40s-50s and watching comedy on his phone at the table with overhead headphones on so i'm not exactly giving him credit for 3 bet bluffs here (Axs, KQo, etc.) He later told me he had a good pair so i squarely put him on TT+ and even TT is probably stone bottom of range. In theory though I feel like this is still a fold but someone more studied than me could weigh in.

Bustout hand is also questionable, next shuffle I have 77 on SB off 9.5BB. Tight fish in LJ opens to 4K, folds to me I shove, he tank calls KQo and I bust. Feels close but in ChipEV and <10 BB I think i have to just go with a pair here. Probably fold 22-66. 77 feels like the cusp.

Hi, I'm a low stakes player playing mostly 0.05/0.10 on ggpoker. I want to play tournaments as well, but previously it hasn't gone so well compared to cash games where I am able to make a profit. Any tips on how to translate my cash game to tournaments as well? also, any recommendations for tournaments to enter to start?

Hey guys, have you tried building your own GTO trainer with claude AI?

Yesterday I started building it and so far it works great. I am a complete noob regarding GTO trainers so I don't know if it's accurate but it looks and plays nice :)

I am too stingy to subscribe to one of the GTO trainers out there so I created one completely free.