Interview with Will Tipton
First off, congrats on your new book Expert Heads Up No Limit Hold’em, Vol. 2. What can users expect to find in volume 2?
Thanks, I just got my copies last night, and they look great. Vol 2 picks up where Vol 1 left off. I cover streets in reverse order, and we only made it through river play in Vol 1, so in the second book, we have turn, flop, and preflop play. So the new book begins with the turn, and we spend a couple chapters getting familiar with things that happen in multistreet games. Once we learn all the theory in the context of two-street (ie turn and river) play, it's easy to apply it to flop and preflop situations.
Towards the end, I give the results of some large calculations, including some pseudo equilibrium preflop strats up to 20bb which are presented in detailed charts in the book. The earlier/more theory heavy chapters were a lot more work for me, but I imagine these strategies and the surrounding discussion of unexploitable vs standard/exploitative preflop and flop play will be the most exciting portions of Vol2 for many HUSNG players
Were you surprised at the success of volume 1? I've seen people talking about how it is one of the best no limit hold em books on the market. It seems to have found an audience outside of just heads up sit and gos, or even heads up poker.
Yea the feedback in general has been really great, and I've really enjoyed talking to readers.
As far as the non-HUNL audience, I don't think it's too surprising that they've found it useful as well. The book is pretty theory-heavy, so a lot of the concepts are broadly applicable. I mean, The Theory of Poker only talks about old games that few people play these days, but people find it useful. The Mathematics of Poker covers almost exclusively 2-player situations as well, and makes little effort at practical applications to any real game! Perhaps I should have titled my book differently.
Do you have any plans for a volume 3? Anything else in the works?
No plans for any more writing. Starting out, I just meant to write one book!
I do have a video series in the works, however, that I'm very excited about. It has sort of a teach-a-man-to-fish theme. I've presented pseudoequilibrium strategies for a variety of spots in the books, but there's nothing like giving people the tools to find those themselves. So, the new video pack will walk students through the design and implementation of a fully functional max exploit and equilibrium strategy solver. This will give players the necessary knowledge and tools to do some cutting edge strategizing on their own.
What is the best compliment you've received about the book?
Well again the response has been very gratifying -- lots of people have had nice things to say, and I appreciate all of them. Maybe this is a favorite:
https://twitter.com/ikepoker/status/334335492453699584
How has it been working with your publisher, D&B Publishing?
They've been great. They've put a lot of work into making our products as good as possible, and I've been very happy with the quality of our books.
Lets talk about your poker career span. You had a ton of success on Full Tilt pre Black Friday, and seemed to take more time off after Black Friday. Was Black Friday the actual reason for this, or did you have other motivations for slowing down your volume at the tables?
Well, I'm an online player, and I was a full time student in the US when BF hit, so of course BF had a huge effect on my poker career. Eventually I felt comfortable keeping money on the smaller sites, but the HUSNG action has never been all that great, and getting money on and off the sites can sometimes be challenging. I've studied the game a lot over the past few years, and if better American sites open up under new legislation, I think I'm well prepared to start putting in volume again. However, I just started a new career last month, and I'm mentally prepared to move on to this next phase of my life.
How has school gone?
I actually just officially completed all my degree requirements last week! My thesis was on predicting the atomic structure of materials with an evolutionary algorithm. The applications to batteries, clean energy etc. were fun, but in practice it was mostly software development, and that's the direction I've decided to go career-wise.
Are you still coaching? You've received a lot of praise from former students, particularly well rounded thinkers such as Yoni "ph33rox". Do you plan to get back into poker more frequently at the tables, or just work on study/teaching?
Yea I've had a few great students that I've learned a lot from working with, but I haven't taken any new ones for quite a while, and I doubt I will. To be honest, I've tried hard to put most of what I know theory-wise into the books, and at this point, other people are more in touch with modern games.
Where do you see yourself in 10 years?
That's tough -- 10 years is a long time, and I'm sort of in a transition period right now. I guess I'll have a much better idea about things in a year or two -- professionally, whether I'll make a go of it at my current company or whether I'll find a better opportunity, and personally, whether I want kids...
What are your thoughts on the longevity of poker? Poker as a whole has declined in the last 5 years, mainly due to the US market all but closing, and many countries regulating and heavily taxing and/or sectioning off their players (France, Italy, Spain). HUSNGs have grown in popularity, particularly hypers, so have 6 max hypers, and fast-fold zoom type games, as well as PLO. What do you see happening in future years with any of this, and do you have confidence in any predictions?
Well, the trend towards low edge games is bad for winning players. The trend towards divided player pools is probably bad for players at the top of the pyramid but not as much for low stakes regs. Declining interest by recreational players is bad for almost everyone making money from the poker ecosystem.
In the US, the best case still looks like federal legalization and regulation, and if the big casinos open sites and throw enough advertising dollars at it, it would do a lot for the games. I still think things are looking pretty promising for this happening eventually, but it could be a while.
Do you ever sportsbet or prop bet with friends?
I don't sportsbet, and I've had pretty bad luck prop betting with friends. I think lots of non poker players (and especially poor graduate students) are sufficiently risk averse that if they're willing to bet much money, it usually means I'm going to lose. :(
What kind of hobbies do you have?
Outside of poker my main hobby is BJJ. It's a sport close to olympic wrestling, except the goal is to submit your opponent with a choke or joint lock (as opposed to pinning him on his shoulders as in wrestling). There's actually a ton to learn technique-wise, so it's something of an intellectual exercise as well as a good workout.
How did the game change starting from 2012? Do you recognize any specific tendencies?
Well I've been a bit out of touch with the international player pool over the past couple years, but the games have changed a lot in my time. I remember when the shove/fold charts were for 12 BB play and any deeper, opening 3x was standard. The push towards shorter stacked formats (driven by recreational players who want to gamble) has made people learn those situations a lot better. And that process is continuing. In the SB, people are learning how to incorporate limping and build more balanced cbetting ranges. BBs are learning how to attack/punish people who fail to do those things.
Do you think husng hypers could become too dry in the future (winrate would decrease drastically)?
I think the edge between regs will continue to decrease as we learn more about the game. Even so, I think hypers have a lot of things going for them that, say, HU cash doesn't. Fish like the high variance feel of the game (we should fight against higher-variance, lower-edge formats that are probably unbeatable like short stack allin-or-fold games), and the fact that you can't decline action if you sit first lets organizations like the cartels restrict the number of regs.
Which programs do you use when analyzing hands?
I use my own software for range analysis, EV calcs, and the like. I'll be showing how some core components in my toolbox (the equity and EV calculators and the max exploit and equilibrium strategy solvers) work in my new video series.
Could you post some valuable quotes from your newest book?
Here's a picture quote (10 BB effective):
http://i.imgur.com/tv5hMjL.png
Otherwise, check out the free excerpt here:
http://www.dandbpoker.com/perch/resources/expert-hunl-volume-2-extract.pdf
Whats your opinion about not using HUD in HUSNG hypers?
It sounds like a terrible idea to me :). I'm not saying that a HUD can give you all the info you need to know about an opponent, but there are some pieces of information a computer is good at gathering (anything involving incrementing counters) and some that a human is good at (patterns based on gameflow, texture, etc). I let the computer do what it's good at, so I can focus on the other stuff.
Hands down best poker book on the market.
Like a child on christmas eve awaiting my copy of volume 2.
Hi, when is this video pack coming out?
Hey minotaurs,
There isn't a release date set. It'll be a few weeks at least, but possibly a decent bit longer -- getting it done right is more important to me than getting it done fast. Thanks for your interest, though -- I'm looking forward to getting them out, too. :)
Cheers,
Will
Nice man, and yea i agree with you abut getting it done right :) So no rush also because i'll get my 2nd book anyway only on 30th May :D
will, in your first book you have a table showing how strong different holding are on different flop textures.
eg that AQ is in the top 10% of holdings on a 222 flop, that JT is in the top 25% on a 876 flop etc. [i cant remember the exact tables, but i hope you get my drift].how did you get these numbers, is there a program that will crunch those numbers?
thanks.
Use EDVis, u can get it here ---> http://www.dandbpoker.com/extract/equity_distribution_visualizer_win32_1...
Yup, EDVis is one option for this! Thanks minotaurs!
yeah, it's not quite what i'm looking for.
im not talking relative strength v a given range, but in the charts it says that hand x is the 90th percentile of all possible holdings as ranked by absolute strength on a given board as shown in figure 5.2 on page 138 of the kindle edition.
edit this table:
any ideas on how to crunch those numbers?
So if u interested in finding top 10% of ur range u see that worst hand in ur top 10% is J6o. J7o of course is a little bit better so its maybe 91 percentile hand i dont know.
very informative and easy to read, thx!
Hey Will. Is there gonna be also some tools to solve SB river bet or check game in that video pack like you did in Wolfram Mathematica? Just wondering should i buy Mathematica.
Thanks
Hi minotaurs,
I don't plan on any more supplemental content that uses Mathematica. My next video pack will use the (freely available) iPython software.
Cheers
Yey got my paperback today. Maybe later in the weekend some update about video pack?
Ohh and that question i asked about Mathematica - I wanted to know if there will be ways to solve SB river bet or check game and "big river game" (like you did using Mathematica) in this video pack (but this time using iPyton) So is there gonna be ways to solve these games using iPython instead of doing it in Mathematica.
Your new book is very good, probably best poker book ever written, but here are couple of things that I don't like:
1. Some of the graphs and charts are very hard to read in e-book and kindle format, especially when there are 3 or 4 different lines shown (dashed line, dotted line, mixed dashed and dotted line), it is very hard to distinguish which is which...
2. I really dont like so many questions with no answers like this one:
-“The SB’s strongest second-pair hands here prefer to bet, while his weakest top pairs and weaker second pairs check. Why is this?”
There are 100s of questions of this type in the book and some of them are really hard to answer. I imagine most people just skip these at first. I did so in the 1st book and only tried to answered them after the 3rd reading of the book. The problem is that even if we try to answer them we have no way check if our answers are correct or wrong... It would be nice if you could publish a short workbook, where we could find answers to all bolded questions from both books. I would be willing to buy such a workbook and I think it would be very helpful for many people...
Good luck with your new job at Google!
"If you want to win, you must not lose!"
Yea i would also snap buy them but anyways if u read carefully and ask questions on forum u can get the answers.
I just got my copy of vol 2. I'm reading through and plan to go back to the questions later.
The author is posing questions which if you put in the (substantial) required effort will lead you to a far deeper understanding of the content than if you simply read the answer. For example, in exploring such questions, the nuances and limiting assumptions you need to make will become more explicit in your mind. As such, you will become more adept at realising where particular models are not applicable and being able to appropriately adjust your approach to solving new problems you encounter.
This type of teaching is typical of someone with a technical background like (I think he has a Materials Science or Engineering background?). The thing about analytical subjects like science / engineering / poker is that the subject in its completeness is actually impossible to learn.
Rather, the typical approach is effectively to learn how to learn. The skills to be able to find answers you don't know the answer to and to continually build upon your existing knowledge base / experience are more valuable than a rote learned comprehension of the current theory.
Poker is a game that evolves at a rapid pace because it is market driven. The advice of books and videos that were considered cutting edge in yesteryear are in many cases laughable because the game has moved on. Most of Will Tipton's book is related to the interaction with the structural elements of the game which won't change within the confines of the specific game it is related: Heads Up No Limit Holdem.
I'm really torn because I would also like a solution manual. But if there is a solution manual I might give up on solving some of the problems myself if I get stuck and become impatient!
In a new book, epub and epdf version there is a big error I believe. Figure 14.26 and 14.27 have the same image. 14.26 is correct one and 14.27 seems to be wrong... It is kind of big error, two full pages. I don't know if the same error is in the printed version of the book, don't own that one.
"If you want to win, you must not lose!"
If SB never jams facing a c bet, how than there is tab in equilibrium that describes "BB fold to raise all in"?