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**Sam Trickett is among the top pros sitting pretty after Day One of the Triton SHR Series Main Event. Others have had to rebuy. The Paul Phua Poker team reports**

Day One of the Triton Super High Roller Series Montenegro Main Event has just gone, and what a day it was! Some of the biggest names in poker were among the 47 (including re-entries) so far who have stumped up the HK$1m (US$128k) entry fee, making for some exciting poker tournament action and some very difficult tables.

At one point Paul Phua found himself seated in the most unfortunate position of all: with the young internet legend Timofey “Trueteller” Kuznetsov to his left, and veteran five-time WSOP bracelet winner John Juanda to the left of that! Perhaps it’s not surprising that Paul Phua was knocked out twice during the day. Undaunted, he has bought in a third and final time for Day Two!

Top pros who suffered an early knock-out, and then bought in again, include Steve O’Dwyer, Wai Kin Yong and David Peters. Even the recent Triton SHR Series 6-Max Montenegro champion, Fedor Holz, busted out and rebought. And despite the tournament experience born of two bracelets and more than 33 cashes at the WSOP, Dominik Nitsche was forced to buy in three times just as Paul Phua was.

Qiang Wang, the million-chip man

There is just one million-chip man going into Day Two: Qiang Wang. Top pros with significantly bigger stacks than the 250k they began with include Mikita Badziakouski (825k), Sam Trickett (715k) and Steffen Sontheimer (600k). Montenegrin local hero Predrag Lekovic, who came third in the Triton SHR Series 6-Max warm-up event, is sitting in tenth place with 357k. Lekovic busted Timofey “Trueteller” Kuznetsoz out of the tournament on the very last hand of the day!

Registration remains open until the beginning of Day Two. The big question is, will Tom Dwan make a last-minute appearance? Or is he too caught up in the exciting side action of high-stakes cash games at the Maestral Resort and Casino?

Interviews for the Paul Phua Poker School

Once the tournament broke up for the night, the Paul Phua Poker team filmed even more video interviews with the top pros. We’re really excited by the great strategy advice they have given us, as well as their insights into the life of a professional high-stakes poker player. We can’t wait to get all the footage edited so we can share it with you in the Paul Phua Poker School.

In the meantime, follow @PaulPhuaPoker on Twitter for updates on the Triton SHR Series Main Event.
No one can tell the future, least of all in poker. But there is one thing we can say for sure: with some of the world’s top poker pros competing, it’s going to be a thriller.

**In the first of a 10-part series, the Paul Phua Poker School looks at how the world’s biggest poker tournament began**

The World Series of Poker (WSOP) has witnessed extraordinary dramas and created huge stars. In a 10-part mini-series, the Paul Phua Poker School picks 10 key events from the WSOP’s rich history, from Phil Hellmuth becoming world champion aged 24 to internet poker coming of age. We start with the humble origins of the WSOP, and how “the Grand Old Man of Poker” earned his name.

1970: the very first World Series of Poker

When you see the palatial ballrooms of the Rio casino in Las Vegas filled with hundreds of poker tables, and hear the constant clatter of chips filling the air, it’s hard to picture the World Series of Poker’s humble beginnings back in 1970. In those days, Binion’s Horseshoe Casino didn’t even have a poker room. But its publicity-savvy owner, Jack Binion, scented an opportunity when he saw the top poker players of the age gathered at a Texas Gamblers’ Reunion in 1969.
The next year, he invited them to play at Binion’s. Doyle “Texas Dolly” Brunson was there, along with Jack “Treetop” Straus, “Amarillo Slim” Preston, “Titanic” Thompson and “Puggy” Pearson. But there was no tournament, just several days of mixed cash games, after which they were all invited to choose the best all-round player. Legend has it that each man voted for himself! So Binion then asked them to vote for whoever they thought was second only to themselves: Johnny Moss was crowned champion.

Who was Johnny Moss?

Born in 1907, Johnny Moss had been gambling since he was a boy, and as a teenager was hired by a saloon in his hometown of Dallas, Texas to spot anyone trying to cheat. His legendary five-month heads-up poker marathon against Nick the Greek in 1949 – legendary, in that Moss told the story, but it has not been fully substantiated – was thrillingly documented in Al Alvarez’s classic book The Biggest Game in Town. It was no surprise that Johnny Moss could command the respect of his peers.

1971: the first World Series of Poker tournament

In 1971, after a Los Angeles Times reporter told Jack Binion that he needed more of a competition if he wanted press coverage, the World Series of Poker took on the format we would recognise today: a freezeout tournament. Seven players paid the $5,000 buy-in. Though the individual hands have not been documented, it is known that after two days Johnny Moss won fair and square.
“It does show we voted for the right guy,” said Doyle Brunson later.

The Grand Old Man of Poker

Earning the nickname “The Grand Old Man of Poker”, Moss played at every WSOP until the year of his death in 1995, aged 88, winning nine bracelets in all. In one of his final interviews, at a poker table in Binion’s that year, he said: “I’ve been playing since I was 10 years old. I guess I know what I’m doing by now.”

Who was Johnny Moss? Key facts

Born in 1907, Johnny Moss learned to gamble as a boy
Beat Nick the Greek for a rumoured $2m in a five-month heads-up poker marathon
Nicknamed “the Grand Old Man of Poker”
First World Series of Poker champion, and winner of nine WSOP bracelets

Come back tomorrow to read part 2 in our 10 part series on the World Series of Poker. Tomorrow we will revealing how the “Doyle Brunson hand” got its name.

**Want to improve your poker strategy? Paul Phua gives his insights into how to profit from this tricky hand**

Pocket Jacks can be a tricky hand to play, especially for amateurs.
As for me, I’m always happy to see a pair of Jacks. It’s true, however, that there is no simple formula for how to play this hand. It depends very much on your position, your opponent’s position, your stack sizes, and whether they are loose or tight.
The problem with Jacks is that this hand is unlikely to improve: as with any pocket pair, there is only a 1 in 8 chance of making a set on the flop. And if an overcard comes, as it will often, there is a good chance you will be beaten. In this case hopefully you can have some reads on your opponent. If you don’t know them very well you can face some quite tough decisions – and there’s no easy guide for how to make them.

Pre-flop strategy with pocket Jacks

If I get pocket Jacks vs. an UTG (under the gun – meaning first to act) raise, I would usually just call. It can depend on his stack size and who my opponent is, but often I would end up just calling, especially if deeper than 50BB. If shorter than 50BB I would usually raise and gamble with him if he goes all-in, since then he may have AQ, or pocket 10s even, unless he is a very tight player. I would usually re-raise vs. a later position raise.
And in a tournament, if I myself am short-stacked with say 25BB or less and I get pocket Jacks, it’s usually a good hand to go all-in with. And if I have 15BB or less I would almost always be happy to go all-in.

Post-flop strategy with pocket Jacks

An overcard to your Jacks will arrive often, and if several players are in the hand, you are likely to be beaten at this point, and you should be prepared to fold. But if only one other player is in the hand, or sometimes even two, don’t necessarily give up straight away.
Let’s say the overcard is an Ace, and someone bets out. Then yes, I would often fold. But what if it’s a Queen? Or a King? Then you have to analyze deeper.
For instance, if a Queen comes, ask yourself: are they the type of player who raises pre-flop with AQ, or are they more likely to have AK? Are they a solid, straight-shooting player who only bets when they hit, or a more creative player who will semi-bluff with a draw? I have made a lot of money with Jacks against pro players by simply calling on three streets. They might for instance bet with a gutshot draw on the turn, then bomb the river when they don’t hit.
You might ask: why do I just call in this situation, and not raise if I think I’m ahead? It’s because if they have a weaker hand, they will fold to my raise, and I lose out on winning more money.
Even when my Jacks are an overpair I often will just call. If your opponent is representing something stronger than you, why would you raise him? If he has it, your money is gone. If he doesn’t have it, he’s bluffing. So this is one of the many mistakes amateurs make.

Common errors with pocket Jacks

Some less experienced players get so worried by pocket Jacks that they have developed an inflexible strategy: there is a group of players who will usually flat-call from any position, and fold to any overcard on the flop; and another group who usually raise extra-big pre-flop in the hope of taking it down straight away, without having to worry about post-flop strategy.
The first group will lose out on a lot of value that Jacks can bring, but at least they won’t get in too much trouble. The second group is in worse shape. Yes, everyone is likely to fold if you shove all-in or make a massive overbet pre-flop. But you won’t make much money from that. And if you do get called, it’s almost always by a better hand. AK will often call here, and you’ll be the slight favourite; but so will QQ, KK and AA, and then you’ll be in big trouble.
The same is true post-flop: some players with Jacks will raise big, even go all-in, if the flop is all low cards. They see it as protecting their hand. But again, they miss out on value when everyone with a worse hand folds; and they lose everything if someone calls with a lucky two pair or a set – or bigger overpair.
So you can see, there is no one easy way to play Jacks, and you must take many factors into consideration. But don’t give up. They are one of the best starting hands, so just try to play them well.

A quick guide to playing pocket Jacks

With pocket Jacks, you should usually call an UTG (under the gun) raise
You might re-raise vs. a later position raise
Only go all-in pre-flop if short-stacked
Don’t overplay your pocket Jacks post-flop: often you should call, not raise

Paul Phua gets tips on heads-up poker strategy from Dan “Jungleman” Cates in the latest of the Paul Phua Poker School video interviews with high-stakes pros

Dan “Jungleman” Cates is one of the best heads-up poker players in the world. Under his online poker name of “Jungleman12”, he has made more than $10 million profit on the Full Tilt poker site, putting him third on the HighstakesDB.com list of biggest poker winners.

Who is Daniel “Jungleman” Cates? Poker player profile:

— Dan Cates, 27, from the United States, is one of the world’s leading heads-up poker players.
— He plays online poker under the names “Jungleman12” and “w00ki3z”.
— He has made more than $10 million profit on the Full Tilt poker site.
— He has nearly $5 million in live poker tournament cashes.
— He often plays cash poker for high stakes in “the Big Game” in Macau and Manila.
— He is known for his aggressive style of play.

Full-ring poker vs. heads-up poker

In the last few years, he has also branched out into full-ring poker [multi-player cash games], testing himself in the highest of high-stakes poker cash games against myself and other pro players in Macau, Manila and elsewhere. The swings in “the Big Game” can be huge. After one marathon session in 2015, Jungleman (as we all call him) made headlines in the poker press when he Tweeted: “Sooo Manila didn’t go well, only lost about 38m hkd (5m usd)”.
He has made it back since!
In this new video interview for the Paul Phua Poker School, Dan “Jungleman” Cates discusses the differences between heads-up and full-ring poker. He even admits to an early mistake when he first made the switch:
“There are many more combinations of hands in heads-up rather than ring,” Jungleman says, “so a lot of times you can value-bet thinner, when it’s actually quite a large mistake in ring to value-bet thin when, like, a flush draw completes.”
What he means by “more combinations of hands” is that you should play a very much wider range of starting hands in heads-up than in full-ring poker. The winning hand at showdown is also likely to be no bigger than a pair; sometimes even just Ace or King high. Heads-up therefore suits an aggressive style of playing poker, which Dan Cates certainly has!

Aggressive poker playing strategy

One tip I like in this Paul Phua Poker video interview is where Jungleman says, “I guess one strategy for heads-up that I have is I just try to win all the pots that I possibly can. I’d see where people let me take pots from them and where they don’t.”
You see what I mean about an aggressive poker style! Jungleman is constantly attacking and probing for weakness, which puts less experienced poker players on the back foot. They are scared to call his raises unless they have a very strong hand, and in heads-up it’s rare to have one!
Interestingly, Jungleman has found that this skill is transferrable to full-ring. Trying to win many pots helps with the ring poker game, says Jungleman, “because sometimes ring players are so used to having stuff, are so used to playing against strong ranges, that they forget about little pots that they can pick up.”

Poker lessons to be learned

That is something I believe we can all learn from. Many of us get too comfortable playing poker the safe and “proper” way: wait for a premium starting hand, and be prepared to fold if you don’t hit the flop. As Jungleman puts it, you end up folding “because you have, like, Ace-10 off-suit under the gun. ‘Oh, well. It’s under the gun, I have to fold now!’”
But if you apply a bit of the heads-up poker aggression to ring, some of those guerrilla-style tactics of hitting hard with unpredictable hands when your opponents are least expecting it – or representing those hands when you don’t have them! – then you can take down a lot of small pots against opponents who aren’t prepared to take a risk.

Pre-flop strategy from Dan Cates

Pre-flop, Jungleman reveals in the video interview, “I prefer to 3-bet a hand like 5-6 suited more so than, like, Queen-10 suited. But I also try to balance calling and 3-betting with a hand like Ace-Queen off suit because… It’s more of a subtle thing, but if you call so much with Ace-Queen off suit it becomes a really obvious hand that you have.”
The key here is variation. Adjust your poker playing style to whether your opponent is loose or tight, and don’t always play the same hand in the same way. An unpredictable poker player is hard to beat. And they don’t come much more unpredictable than Dan “Jungleman” Cates.
More videos from the poker pros can be found on the Paul Phua Poker YouTube channel. Subscribe if you don’t want to miss out on future releases. It’s free!

In a single year, poker prodigy Dan Colman won $22.4 million in live tournaments and four major titles – aged just 23. He rarely gives interviews, so Paul Phua is delighted to introduce this latest video

The latest video interview for the Paul Phua Poker School is with Daniel Colman, who has one of the most extraordinary rise-to-riches stories in all of poker. He was talent-spotted as a teenager by poker pro Olivier Busquet, after Colman kept calling out his hands while watching him play online. In 2013, Dan Colman became the first online hyper-turbo player to win more than $1 million in a year – what’s more, he managed it in just nine months.

“I don’t see poker as being a sustainable source of income a few years down the road,” Dan said modestly in an interview at the time. It must be one of the only times in his poker career that Dan has been very, very wrong!
The very next year, Dan Colman won the $1m-entry Big One for One Drop tournament, besting Daniel Negreanu heads-up at the end, to win $15.3 million and his first WSOP bracelet. He was just 22 years old.
As if to prove this was no fluke, that year Dan Colman also won the EPT Super High Roller in Monte Carlo for $1.5m; the Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open Main Event for $1.4m (beating 1,500 players); and the WPT Alpha8 Main Event in London for $950,000; as well as making numerous other final tables. He was named Player of the Year 2014 by Bluff, Card Player and All In magazines.

Drawn to the dark side

Unusually for a player so thrust into the limelight, Dan Colman turned down pretty much every interview request (which makes me extra-excited he agreed to do video interviews with the Paul Phua Poker School). He posted a very thoughtful explanation for this online. He said that though he loves playing poker, he doesn’t like the fact that for him to win, someone else must lose a large sum of money.
“I am conflicted,” he wrote. “I capitalise off this game that targets people’s weaknesses. I do enjoy it, I love the strategy part of it, but I do see it as a very dark game.”
He still loves to play. “It is a beautiful game when you think about it,” he says in this new video interview with the Paul Phua Poker School. “Just everything matches up perfectly where there are straights, flushes, what beats what.”
But he also still cautions players to be careful with their money. In my previous video interview with Dan Colman, he warned of the dangers of online poker for recreational players. And in this new video profile, he admits that he himself lost money for his first five years of playing – which may give hope to anyone still struggling to master the game!
“I had poor poker bankroll management,” he admits in the interview, and he went boom-and-bust several times before hitting his stride. [Discover my tips on bankroll management here.]

A DIY style of poker

The other interesting thing about Dan Colman is that he is mostly self-taught – with a helping hand from mentors such as Oliver Busquet. Phil Ivey recently said in our video interview that players nowadays have it easier: he learned by trial and error because there was less advice out there on strategy than there is now. Dan went down the same route, but in his case by choice rather than from necessity.
Even now, as Dan says in our video interview, “I’m definitely a field player. I don’t use much math, game theory. I’m very intuitive but, that being said, the guys that are very math based, game theory orientated, I always want to pay attention to what they are doing and try and understand the reasoning behind it.”
Whatever Dan Colman is doing, it’s working. He’s made another $2m-plus in live tournament earnings just this year alone. He’s also one of the nicest, brightest and most articulate people one could meet.
And he is still only 26 years old!
More videos from the poker pros will be going live weekly on the Paul Phua Poker YouTube channel. Subscribe if you don’t want to miss out. It’s free!

**The latest Paul Phua Poker School video interview is with French poker pro Rui Cao. Paul Phua explores the lessons to be learned**

Rui Cao, the subject of this new video profile for the Paul Phua Poker School, is recognised as one of the best poker players in France. I first played against him six years ago, when he came to Macau to play in the high-stakes cash game known in poker circles as “the Big Game”. Rui Cao is an aggressive, risk-taking player, and he loved the excitement of these huge pots. Anyone who can thrive in such a high-pressure situation, where even the most experienced players can be at risk of losing their bankroll, deserves respect.

In his previous video interview for the Paul Phua Poker School, discussing aggression in poker with myself and Wai Kin Yong, Rui Cao admitted that he sometimes plays a little too loose: “It’s an ego problem,” he said. So this time we asked him what he considers the most important attributes for success in poker.
“I think being smart is a good point,” Rui Cao says in the new video interview, “and being able to learn fast is similar, to adjust fast to the game. Other than that, some human factors as well like discipline, patience, the ability to control ourselves, I think mostly.”

How not to go on tilt

I very much agree with him on this last point. In fact, I wrote a blog about this a few months ago. Even if you have total mastery of poker strategy and poker odds, you will still be a losing player if you don’t have the patience and discipline to apply the theory in practice. What is the point of knowing the best starting hands, for instance, if you get bored of folding and start to play everything you are dealt?
Part of not going “on tilt” is developing a philosophical attitude to the game. Yes, you got unlucky this time. But the longer you play, the more luck evens out. You get unlucky sometimes, you get lucky sometimes. If you make the right decisions, over time you will be a winner. So don’t let temporary setbacks affect you.
When asked in this interview how he deals with losing, Rui Cao says, “Quite OK. I just sleep for 15 hours and try to forget!” The swings in poker, he says, “are just part of the game”. The one thing you can do, he adds, is to examine whether any of the hands you lost were the result of bad play rather than bad luck. “I try to improve my game and losing is part of the game, I would say.”

An epic struggle with Isildur1

Rui Cao originally made his name playing Omaha, which can have even greater swings than Texas Hold ’Em. Asked which of his many matches was the most memorable, he recalls one marathon PLO session against Viktor Blom, better known under his online name “Isildur1” as one of the most skilled, aggressive and feared online players of all.
“We were four-tabling,” Rui Cao recalls in the video interview, “and maybe at one point I was down 30 buy-ins or something, and two hours later I was up like 30 buy-ins, and it was a pretty crazy upswing. We were, like, playing crazy, and it was a really, really fun session to play in.”
I like the way Rui Cao considers this game his favourite not because he bested one of the world’s top players, or because he made a lot of money, but because it was “really, really fun”! We poker players talk a lot about strategy, and discipline, and improving our game. Of course that’s important; in fact, it’s fundamental to the Paul Phua Poker School. Without it, we would lose money. And if we lose too much money, we can no longer play.
But let us not lose sight of the reason we all took up poker in the first place: it’s just a really, really fun game to play!
More videos from the poker pros will be going live weekly on the Paul Phua Poker YouTube channel. Subscribe if you don’t want to miss out. It’s free!

Poker is a fun game, but in order to keep playing, let alone make a living from it, you must learn to manage your money responsibly.

Paul Phua explains why you must be a rock with your ’roll

Last week one of my readers emailed the Paul Phua Poker site with a question: “Paul Phua, please tell me: how can someone make a living from poker, how much cash and/or income would they need, and what stakes should they be playing?”
This is a great question. In fact, I will soon be releasing a video of tips from top players including Phil Ivey, and he says in it that managing your money is one of the most important things for beginners to learn. I hope the following insights will be helpful to players wishing to take poker seriously:

Bankroll management

When poker players talk of their “bankroll”, it means a sum of money they have set aside exclusively for poker. It is very important that this money, whether it grows or shrinks through playing, is kept separate from all your other funds and financial dealings. One reason is so that you don’t start dipping into money you should be using to pay important bills. Another is that it enables you to tell whether you are making or losing money at poker.
Equally importantly, your bankroll should be money you can afford to lose without giving you problems in your daily life. We all hope to win, but no one can guarantee to make money at poker – even the world’s best players can simply have a run of bad luck.
How big should your bankroll be? It could be $500 or it could be $5 million. The principle is the same: it’s money you feel you can afford to risk at poker. The only thing that will change, according to the size, is what stakes you are able to play at.

Choosing the stakes

The bigger the bankroll you have, the higher the stakes you can afford to play. This doesn’t mean you have to play at the highest possible stakes – billionaire Bill Gates supposedly enjoys a bit of poker, but only plays at $1-$2 blinds – but it does mean you shouldn’t play at stakes that are too big for your roll. For one reason, you may be playing scared, and that never results in the best decisions. For another, if you play for too large a proportion of your bankroll, just a few unlucky games could wipe you out.
Poker is a marathon, not a sprint. Only once you are making money consistently at one level should you consider moving up to the next.
So where do you start? Typically, the cheapest live cash games you will find in casinos are $1-$2. Since it is recommended that, in No-Limit Hold ’Em cash games, you sit down with 100x the big blind (some might say 200x is preferable in order to maximise your potential winnings from big hands), you would need $200 to play each time; with another $200 in reserve in case you need to rebuy. And since you may lose in that game no matter how well you play, your total bankroll will need to be several times bigger than $400.
Tournaments are a superficially cheaper option. Though entry to one-off tournaments can be anything from a few hundred dollars to many thousands, regular casino tournaments can be found for $50 or so. Bear in mind, however, that only the top 15% or so of players get paid anything at all, and only the top 5% or so get back a significant return; so again, you will need to have enough in your bankroll for many tournaments.
If your bankroll is not big enough for the above stakes, you will find every possible size of cash game and tournament in online poker sites.

Can you make a living from poker?

There’s an old saying about poker: “It’s a hard way to make an easy living.” And that’s never been truer than today, when so many players have understood that they need to read up on strategy. All the same, it is at least possible to make a living from poker. There is no such thing as a professional roulette player, but there are professional poker players!
Most people will start out losing money, until they develop the experience to become winning players. My advice at that level, when you are still likely to lose, would be to spend no more on a session of poker than you would spend on a typical night out. Poker is, after all, a fun game. A lot more fun, in my view, than most forms of entertainment!
Whether you can then convert that experience into making a living from poker, that will depend on you. You will need skill, strategy, an understanding of the odds and of psychology, a calm temperament, the ability to learn from your mistakes. A good start is to follow the above rules on money management – and to keep reading my strategy blogs on Paul Phua Poker, and watching the videos on the Paul Phua Poker YouTube channel.
— Paul Phua