I just started a new Youtube series where I will go into great detail about the more interesting hands I played for the week and release videos daily. Each week I am going to go over 5-10 interesting hands that I played that week and go into every little detail of my thought process. The video will then be chopped up into smaller videos with discussion of 1-2 hands per video being released daily. I am super excited about the series, although for now I am going to wait and see what people think. As you will notice if you watch the video, I am just on my web cam and it is not professionally done or anything. But if people are liking it and all goes well, then I will try to really make it nice and get a nice high def camera etc. For now, while it is in beta phase, I am mostly just seeking to learn what you all think of the concept and whether you find it enjoyable or not.

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If you guys dig it and want more instruction, you can watch my table play videos at Dragthebar.com

Please leave me plenty of feedback either on this site or on my Facebook Page

Man do I feel rested right now.  I went to the Dentist to have a bunch of work done on my teeth and was prescribed halcion to take right before the appointment so I the pain wouldn’t bother me.  I’ve taken that stuff before other dental appointments so I knew what I was signing up for.  Well, I took the stuff and wow did it knock me out.  I was asleep from 5:15PM yesterday and woke up at about 8AM this morning!  So now I feel great and am up a couple hours earlier than usual so I’m going to write this blog and head to the gym and watch some TV news station and get a good workout in.  Once I get back from the workout I am officially beginning work on my poker strategy book with the same co author as my last book, Treat Your Poker Like A Business, Scott Brown.  I feel like since the last book went so well, why mess with a winning formula, so I suspect Scott will be the co author of all the poker books I decide to do.  This book will have a quick turnaround too, so even though we are starting on it today, expect it to come out soon.  We grind when we do books as hard, if not harder, than I do at the poker tables.  Some writers say, “I can only write when I have inspiration” whereas Scott and I say “Inspiration is for pussies.”  No joke, that is our motto!

This weekend at the tables was as swingy as I have ever  had in my entire life.  On Saturday I was insta stuck about $10,000 at the tables (mostly 5/10nl online) and grinded it all back by the end of the day to break even on the day.  Sunday was so bad at the tables I had my laptop in my hand and it nearly went through the window about 5 different times throughout the day.  I mean, of all the poker I have played, I am almost certain I have never run worse.  I went on a 27 buy in downswing in one day, without playing one single hand in a regrettable fashion.  I was just dished out a cooler damn near every 5 minutes.  I would get kings and run into aces.  Had some clown shove 74s on me all in preflop, call with aces and watch the guy flop a flush.  Set over set, boat over boat, flush over flush, get it in with nut flush draw and a pair vs. worse flush draw no pair, and watch the guy runner runner a gutterball.  I mean it was the most incredible thing I have ever seen in my life of playing poker.

So I ended up quitting for the day after a half decent comeback and immediately went to the fridge and cracked some beers.  I needed something to stop the shakes.  Even though I was stuck a ton of money, it wasn’t a big deal really.  I don’t know why I was so upset, but it was just so surreal and nothing like I had ever seen before that my body just couldn’t handle it.

Then a funny thing happened the next day.  I woke up and decided that I was still a little fragile after yesterday’s session so I made up my mind that if I got stuck more than $3k I was done for the day.  I had lost $18,000 the day before (and that is counting the comeback I had at the end) and just felt that health wise my body couldn’t endure another bad day.  So I started winning right away and it did not stop.  I just won stack after stack after stack.  I coolered everyone and never even lost a pot in about 4,000 hands over $500.  Never got properly stacked once.  It was an amazingly good run and guess what, I won $18,000 before I quit.  I think at one point on Sunday I was stuck about $25,000 and by Monday evening I had won it all back!  That is one of my best comebacks ever, but also what is more amazing is that I had my worst day in terms of money lost of the year directly followed by my best day of the year.  What are the odds of that?

Well, I’m off to the gym.  Got some “baby fat” to lose.  I got in pretty decent shape before we had our child last fall and since then I put on about 20 with all the stress and lack of motivation to go to the gym, lack of sleep etc.  All the moms and dads out there know what I’m talking about I’m sure.  I went from 175 to 197 and after 2 solid weeks at the gym, I’m inching down to 192, but still a long way to go.  Actually that reminds me, I should clear something up.  I don’t know why, but occasionally I look at poker forums and I swear half of the time someone is comparing me to some sumo wrestler or something.  I think about half the poker population thinks I am this enormously fat guy.  Well, I am not thrilled with how I look at the moment, but for God’s sake this is the fattest I’ve ever been right now and I am still a 192 pound, 6 foot tall guy!  I mean, I want to be 165 or whatever, but I can’t imagine meeting a 192 pound, 6 foot tall guy and walk away thinking he was some insanely fat, gross guy.  Anyway, ya never know with the LOL internetz crowd what they are going to concoct in their minds and spew onto a message board.

The last few days have been a lot of fun.  Played some golf on Friday at Eugene CC and actually played half decently.  I had only hit about 30 range balls since February before playing on Friday, but managed to shoot 72 from the tips on a tough track, thanks mostly to a really sharp short game (weird, I thought after a 5 month lay off your short game was supposed to be bad?  Golf is strange.)  I played with my buddy Casey Martin and his brother.  We had a great time as always.

The day before my wife and I went to Portland’s annual Brewfest at Waterfront Park.  Brewfest in Portland is AWESOME!  In fact, I have seen it on numerous lists as being hands down the best brewfest in the US.  I have only been to the brewfest in Portland, so I have nothing to compare it to, but I can definitely say I am not sure how you could create a better brewfest.  It is right along the water, has some of the best beers in the world, and there are probably ten thousand people on the grounds, so it can get pretty lively.  Portlanders love their beer and their passion for it comes through pretty obviously at the brewfest.

Last night I was really struggling at the tables for awhile.  I was about to quit playing, but decided to tough it out because I had some pretty sick seats with direct position on some massive fish.  I am glad I maintained my composure and stuck it out because I went on a pretty good run and stacked most of the fish before quitting about 8 hours into my session.  From there the day kept getting better and better.  I decided that I wanted to go on a little trip with my family so I looked into some ocean front rooms along the Oregon coast for next week and found a really nice one.  I went to book two rooms online (one for the 3 of us and one for my mother in law who travels with us now that we have a baby) and the room types I wanted were not being listed as an option online.  So I called the hotel and spoke with a really nice woman who ultimately got us hooked up with an ocean front multiple room suite that we can all stay in, that was actually much LESS expensive than what I was trying to book online!  So here I was calling up thinking we were going to be screwed and I ended up saving $1,000 AND got the better rooms than I was even hoping for.  Score!

So with that good fortune I decided to book a 2 day anniversary trip with my wife that I am sure will score me some major points.  We ended up getting an awesome room by a winery in the Willamette Valley and got all of the fixins to go along with it (massages, champagne upon arrival, driver to take us to the wineries etc.).  What’s even better about all of this is that my wife was cool enough to let us “observe” our anniversary on a different day because if we didn’t, it would interfere with game day for Oregon football against New Mexico (the weekend after that I am going to fly to Tennessee to watch the Ducks play Tennessee on Sept 11th).  What can we say, we love our Ducks!

I will make another blog post about this, but keep your eyes peeled this week for a brand new you tube series I am starting that is essentially me recording myself talking about the most interesting hands I played for the day.  Each week I am going to pick out the 7 most interesting hands I played for the week and record myself breaking down the hands.  I will chop the recording into 7 videos and we will release 1 each day on dustyschmidt.net.  Now only 1 hand per day might not sound like a lot, but keep in mind that I am talking for 3-7 minutes per hand about every little detail of the hand.  No detail of the hand will go ignored and I will be breaking down why I did everything I did (or wish I had done differently).  I am hoping people enjoy this series and if they do, I will keep making them for an indefinite period of time.  I think the  first video will be ready to go up either Monday or Tuesday.  I will make a new blog post about it with links to the video when it goes up.  Please check it out.  If these videos get a lot of traffic, I will keep making them.

Well, I’m off for another big day on Poker Stars.  I am going to play for the next 8-12 hours on Stars in all of the high stakes cash games and tournaments.  I can’t wait.  Hopefully I get some momentum going early and am able to capitalize on the day!

This past week I have played quite a bit of poker online.  The week started off horribly with me losing 4 straight days at the tables.  I went on about a 20 buy in downer, but then I won small on Thursday and got a little momentum in the right direction.  On Friday I decided that I badly needed to get a haircut.  It was hot out, my hair was long and the woman who regularly cuts my hair was booked for awhile, so I just went into my bathroom and shaved my head!  And what do you know, I ran great on Friday, winning about $12k on the day.  So I guess the next time I need to stop a losing streak I just need to shave my head!

Other than poker, I have been watching the British Open at St. Andrews on TV. Tiger is putting SO bad.  I have never seen him struggle this much on the greens.  It is crazy what has happened to him since his scandal broke out.  He just isn’t the same, yet anyway.  When he talks about golf he even sounds more like a regular pro now.  The other day he said that he can’t put ball striking and putting together in the same round.  That is like the #1 complaint of 99% of the PGA Tour.  If they are striping it, they can’t buy a put.  If they are hitting it all over the place, they make everything.  One way or another they end up with their “usual game” which for a good pro is between 67 and 74.

But Tiger has always been the guy who has it all.  If he stripes it, he may just make everything too and win by 15 like he did at pebble.  Or 12 like he did at Augusta.  Or 8 like he did at St. Andrews.  But right now he looks like more like Sergio Garcia then he does himself.  He seems to have gotten his long game in order, but his putting is just abysmal.  I think it will be awhile before Tiger looks like Tiger again, but I suspect once he has his personal life in order (aka he’s either committed to single life, or finds another woman who he can start over with.  Man, can you imagine how insecure his future wife is going to be every time he travels?!!) we will see the old Tiger again.

I am also putting together a draft for a purely poker instructional book that I think people are REALLY going to like when I am finished.  I had no intention of doing a purely poker instructional book, but I came up with what I am hoping is a really good idea for how to present fun to read, easy to understand high level poker instruction that will be fun to write and hopefully will improve the readers’ games.  I had always intended to write a sequel to treat Your Poker Like A Business, which I will at some point probably this year, but this book is what I am most excited about right now.  I will keep you all posted on my progress in this blog.

Well, I think I am going to just play a little bit of poker and spend the rest of the day with my wife and daughter.  Tomorrow I am going to watch the final round of the British Open and play the Sunday tournaments on Poker Stars and tons of cash game hands.  I am definitely pumped to play and hopefully continue to run good.

My family and I had a lot of fun at the WSOP this summer.  We rented a home for the entire month of June which made it nice because I had my whole family there for the month.  My mother in law, my daughter Lennon and my wife Nicole stayed there the whole month and I was super grateful that everyone was so supportive.  My grandma visited as did my sister and law along with her two kids and mother.  Each time we had guests we had a great time.

The house had a sick pool and view of the strip.  The pool had this cave thingy and a powerful waterfall that was pretty cool.  My 9 month old daughter loved getting in the pool and it was a great chance for the two of us to play in the pool and bond together more.  My wife is with her all day and I am probably with her 2-3 hours a day only, but I can tell she really loves me.  Every time I see her now she gets super excited and gives me a big smile. Believe me, those smiles are huge because she has been a very difficult baby so far and it has been tough, no question.  It is all starting to seem worth it now though.  Those big smiles alone make it worth it, in fact.

I was a little disappointed that the WSOP tournaments didn’t go better.  I only played 11, so I guess it is a small sample size, but those things are tough!  First of all, either there are not a lot of recreational players that play or I just got really tough table draws because there was not a lot of soft players from what I could tell.  The other thing that sucks is that there is no good way to make tournaments a great measure of skill.  If you make the stack sizes huge and the blinds go up slowly, it would take a month to play a tournament.  So stacks have to be shallow and blinds must go up quickly.  But the problem with that is skill becomes such a small part of the outcome of an event.  Sure, we all try to play our best, but luck is by far the most critical aspect of how well you do.  What sucks is that even when you get a good table with lots of terrible players, if you aren’t able to get a lot of chips from them early, the blinds get so big that you only have one move: all in.  And really, how much edge do I have on even a terrible player when we are playing 1 move poker?  Even a mule knows a decent hand range to shove with and even if they don’t, they can easily spike a card on you.  Anyway, tournaments are what they are.  I guess as a cash game pro, it is tough to see the great importance placed on these things by the poker community when anyone with any decent poker mind understands that they really are just a big lottery.  But as I say that, the TV cash games seem to be really popular right now, so I guess us cash game guys are getting our due anyway.

I was talking to my buddy the other day and we were saying it is a shame poker can’t have some mechanism to truly determine who the best of the best are.  Golf has a world ranking and 4 major championships a year where the courses are laid out with the intent of identifying the best golfer in the world.  Poker has a ranking, but it is only for donkaments.  But what if they had a true world championship that was something like a $50,000 buy in event where you started with 100,000 chips and the blinds at 25/50.  The blinds double once per 8 hour day and we play the event for like 6 days a week for an entire month?  Now that is something I would play in for sure.  I’d rather do that then play all of these piss ant $1,500 buy in WSOP events that have no skill in them.  And the last man standing at month end is the true world champion.  I think that would be sick.  It would be grueling and luck would definitely not play the biggest role in determining the outcome.  Maybe they only do it every 2-3 years or something like the World Cup.  Anyway, I would love something like that.

In my last blog I wrote about Imagine Media selling books that were “cheap” at $25-$40 a pop. Lots of people thought I was crazy when I said that most books “written by successful online players” were 10-100x that amount. They said that most books were under $25 and they are correct generally speaking.  But the ONLINE PLAYERS books are much more expensive. There is no delicate way to put this, the reason why the books are so cheap that are not written by the online guys is because they are usually written by folks who are NOT successful at poker, generally speaking. The online guys experience a great opportunity cost when they write a book because they could be making substantial sums of money playing online poker. So in order to justify taking time away to not only write a book, but also potentially lower their win rate because they are giving away so much great information, there needs to be a greater value assigned to their work to make it a mutually beneficial transaction between author and reader.

Simply put, you get what you pay for. You want a book written by a guy who crushes poker online, it is going to cost more. But the value of the book to the reader is much greater not only in my opinion, but the tens of thousands of people who have read Imagine Media’s books. If you want a book put out by another publishing company by some author who you may have seen on TV or heard about, the reason that author wrote a book and put it out into the world for $19.99 (and the author’s cut probably being in the range of $1 a book) is because the guy or gal probably can’t make much money playing poker. You don’t see truly successful poker players ever put out books unless there is a big price tag on it. When Doyle Brunson (who we can all agree truly is a GREAT poker player) wrote Super System back in the 70s, it was $100 a book! That was probably at least $500 if not $1,000 in today’s money. But you don’t see Ivey or Antonius or Durrrrr write a book. You don’t see any great players write books without huge price tags. What you see is people who leveraged some of their past successes into a career as a poker media person, which generally includes a book.

Anyway, I’m just trying to give the most truthful and honest representation. Again, I hate to burst people’s bubbles, but the books you are reading by your heroes are probably 90% of the time (some exceptions that come to mind from books that I have read are Dan Harrington and Ed Miller) garbage cash grabs put out by famous poker players who are trying to make money off of their reputation because they sure can’t make much money at the tables. The GREAT poker players who want to write books either carry larger price tags or occasionally, the player may have just wanted a new challenge in life and decided to write a book even though he knew it wouldn’t benefit him monetarily in a way that was worth the loss in poker income.

The best way I can sum it up is with this analogy. What would you pay for an investment book put out by Warren Buffet that exposed, in large part, the investment strategies he uses every single day? I’d imagine a lot of people would pay thousands for this book. There may be some big time Wall Street guys who may pay millions, who knows. But Warren Buffet is probably not going to do that because he is too busy using his skills to make money. Now if some investment “guru” put out a book for $19.99 telling you how to make “millions” (where his cut is $1 a book and he probably will sell 25,000 books max) shouldn’t you be a little worried you are being scammed? I mean, why would a guy who has such great investment strategies that he can make “millions” off of, want to make only a $1 a book AND give away his secrets at the same time. Again, you get what you pay for. This may be a bit of a bold statement, but if you want a cheap book (and therefore “cheap advice” in my opinion) then the $19.99 books are for you. But if you want the goods, it is going to cost more money. It is just simple economics and definitely NOT a rip off like some people may initially think when they see a slightly higher price tag.  And the only reason Imagine Media is even able to put books out into the world for as cheap as $40, is two fold.  1. We are not greedy 2. We have a superior business model that allows us to put books out into the world for less than they should cost.

I am going to get a full WSOP trip report up soon. The cliff notes are that the cash games were amazing, I had one deep run where I came in 23rd for $18,612 and was colder than an iceberg in the Main event, busting 7 hours into the event never seeing a hand better than AJs preflop. Oh well, I am a cash game player and am glad I am. Tournaments just don’t do it for me. The skill level needed to be good at those things relative to deep stack cash is not even comparable. Tournaments are like poker on training wheels compared to deep stack cash games and while people like to think that there is a debate on that, there isn’t. I can’t imagine any player who has taken tournaments and deep stack cash games seriously saying that tournaments were a more complex form of poker. Like Phil Laak said, tournaments are just “a +EV lottery.”

So, I rarely try and spam anything in my blogs, but hopefully I have built your trust and you will take me seriously with what I am about to write. I want to tell you briefly about a poker book that the company I own, Imagine Media just put out into the world. The book is called Way Of The Poker Warrior and it was written by Paul Hoppe (aka GiantBuddha on Poker Stars aka Limit holdem phenom). The book is one I have read and enjoyed immensely, despite not being a limit holdem pro. Essentially the book is poker and life instruction through the lens of martial arts. I guess one might loosely say it is like the book Art of War for poker players. Paul’s Grandmaster, Suk Jun Kim, said this about the book, “In this book, Paul will show you how to win and make money. What I think you’ll ultimately find, though, is that these are the least important things Paul has to teach.” This sums it up completely for me. The book, no matter what form of poker you play, will help you make money at the tables. And while you may be making more money after reading the book, down the line that is the one of the last things you will remember the book for. It is the kind of book that has the potential to really elevate your approach to poker and life in a way that you may be grateful for for a very long time.

One thing Imagine Media is proud of is that we are the leaders is driving down the cost of poker books written by online poker pros. When online poker pros first began writing poker books a few years ago, they were all $500 or $1,000 or even as much as $5,000 a book!! Yeah, that isn’t a typo, there were books put out that cost 5 GRAND! Last summer, I made the decision to write Treat Your Poker Like A Business and I was looking at the poker book market and the cheapest book I had seen written by a successful online poker pro was $399 and it was on sale! No joke, it was on sale at $399. I told myself there was no way I would ever put out a book that carried a price tag like that so I released Treat Your Poker Like A Business for $39.99 (only 10% of the cost of the next cheapest book) and blew every other book written by the online guys out of the water. And I am glad that I did it. I have long believed that there are a ton of talented people out there who never get to realize their potential because of lack of opportunity. So to me anyway, putting a book out into the world that only serves the people who are among the “haves,” is clearly not in line with what I believe in.

Anyway, enough with that, Paul’s book is $24.99 and can be be purchased in either ebook or hard copy form at GiantBuddhapoker.com There is a review up on the site that Pokernews.com’s Barry Carter was kind enough to provide that will give you an unbiased opinion on the book, as well as some excerpts, if you are interested in purchasing it. All in all I think you guys will be well served picking up a copy and I hope if you do, you are glad you did it after reading the book.

Well, I am going to log onto Poker Stars here in a few minutes and play all of the major Sunday tournaments. I am also going to grind the cash games until my eyes bleed so hopefully I can get a hold of some loot by the end of the day. As always, I will provide updates on my Facebook page when I am done playing for anyone interested.

I hope you guys kick some butt today at the tables!