Jim Reid is a longtime lover of poker, a member of the PokerOrg Player Advisory Board, and host of the popular RecPoker podcast.
Hey, gang! Regular readers already know that this week I am shooting my shot: I’m playing the WPT World Championship event at the Wynn, and it’s going to be the biggest, most expensive poker tournament I have ever entered in my life. Do I belong in this field? Almost certainly not. Do I have the skills to go toe-to-toe with the best poker players in the world? Hell no! But I do have one very important quality: I’ve got heart.
Whether it’s Kevin Mathers, Michael Acevedo, K.L. Cleeton, or myriad others that have graced the RecPoker Podcast interview room, almost all of our guests got their start in the poker world by doing what they loved, and doing it well enough to garner attention.
That’s almost always how it starts - okay, some folks can just bink a big tourney early in their career and coast on that success into a mainstream industry role; and sure, it’s fine to be a genius, of course, but keep that old horse before the cart. For most, it's an exercise of climbing up the ranks of the poker world, and it usually starts with working for free and demonstrating your value. You gotta have heart!
So you’ve got heart… now what?
Last week ‘Jungleman’ Dan Cates tweeted a list of roles that folks in the poker industry could benefit from - and with the right mindset, it is also a list of roles that folks who want to break into the poker industry can start with! I’d encourage anyone to check it out and see if there’s a good match for your skill set and passion. You can also check out this question at Ask The Org.
You have to start somewhere! Remember, poker is unique in its credentialing: there is no ‘university of poker’ with a diploma on the wall you can point to when folks ask what makes you qualified to do your job in the poker world. What qualifies us is the fact that we have been successfully doing it for a while, demonstrating our value and building an appetite in the market for ourselves within the industry.
Like many industries of this type, your skill and talent are necessary but they are not sufficient: there are lots of skilled, talented players that burn out without finding success, or never make it beyond the felt. So what sets the successful folks apart?
Well, of course like with many things about poker, luck plays a role. But luck is what happens when opportunity meets preparation. What are the other qualities that the success stories in our industry have in common? They are the ‘soft skills’ of success: Do you have a good reputation? Do you work hard and bring professionalism to your business dealings? Do people trust you? Are you a pleasure to work with? Do you under-promise and over-deliver? Do you treat people with respect? Do you put yourself in positions to ‘get lucky’ by meeting the right folks at the right time? The poker world is a small world after all, and who you know (and what they think of you) is as important as what you know.
More c-betting tips
Speaking of what you know, let’s wrap up this week with another c-betting strategy tip from Matt Affleck.
We’ve talked a lot about how, when you open from early position and get called from the blinds, you should be c-betting far less often on 9-high boards or lower, because the big blind calling range intersects more strongly with those boards than yours does.
But what about when we open from the cutoff and get called by the button? Well, the fact is, we generally c-bet much less frequently when we are out of position than we do in position, and the ‘good for us’ board textures are different too.
In this scenario, we actually c-bet at our highest frequency on exactly 9-high boards, and boards that are good for a nine! This is because our standard opening range from the cutoff is offsuit 9’s and suited 6’s, but the standard calling range from the button has far fewer 9’s in it.
In a previous week we went over how you should slow down in this configuration when the flops come ten-high (or worse yet, double or triple broadway), because we have more air in our opening range then the button does in their calling range. But on 9-high flops specifically, we have more of the top pair and overpair hands than our foe on the button, so we can fire away.
And ‘firing away’ is exactly what I intend to do this week, folks - cross your toes for me, I’m shooting my shot!
You can follow Jim’s progress here at PokerOrg, on BlueSky and on X, and catch the most recent edition of his podcast here.
