Heads Up Poker Player Cog Dissonance Profile

Welcome to the Cog Dissonance bio page. Here you can find information about the heads up poker coach and professional player. 

Quick Stats

Started Playing HUSNGs: Early 2005

Poker Handle: Cog Dissonance (Full Tilt), Cog Dis (PokerStars)

Birth Year: 1971

Went Broke on the Way Up:  No.

Secrets to Success: Patience, positive attitude, game selection.

Cog Dissonance's Strengths: Identifying opponent tendencies and player types and adapting.

Cog Dissonance's Weaknesses: Failure to move up in stakes aggressively.

Starting Heads Up SNGs

Cog Dissonance started out playing low buyin multi-table tournaments back in 2003 when anyone with a pulse could turn a profit. During this period he noticed the hu sng tab and started playing at the $5 level. Soon enough he realized he was making more from the hu games than if he cashed in the tourney and therefore switched solely to heads up sngs.

 

Cog never read any poker books or poker strategy sites, and so developed quite an unusual game, limping nearly every button. This style drove other regulars and players mad, but Cog's game had developed independently and once he was comfortable with the style, playing more aggressively felt weird.

Survival

In 2006 Cog Dissonance was a high school English teacher who made decent money on the side playing poker. He decided to quit teaching and play full-time. At the time he lived in Indonesia, and with a wife and two children and 7k USD to his name he moved to Bali. Six months later he was looking for work, although that year he earned 18k from poker, he realized that he wasn't going to make enough to buy a house and be financially well off, he was simply surviving.

 

In 2007 Cog returned to teaching, becoming the head of the English department at OFS, the world's largest IB School, located in Singapore. Cog survived a year without the management discovering his incredible lack of organizational skills, saved up 20k and returned to Bali, buying what felt like the smallest house on the island for 16k. Cog was playing on UB at this stage and decided to move to FTP where he was playing the $50 regular speed heads up sngs.

At this stage Cog heard that someone had been talking about him on 2+2 the famous poker forum. He joined the forum and met I Just Lold, who was to push Cog into coaching and unintentionally into making videos.

Cog Dissonance designed a program for coaching reg/turbo speeds using his teaching skills, and this program became highly successful, ultimately imitated in an acceptable way by TagPoker's BrokerStars, a student of Cog's.

In 2009 Cog started pestering Ryan to let him make videos for HUSNG.com. Starting with a guest video debut in March 2009 and eventually a full time role, a wider audience got to see Cog's unusual style. Since then he has made over 60 videos, nearly all of which have been well received.

(above) Eurofish - From left: Wowkaa, Cog with his wife and Serkules

Moving to Super Turbo Heads Up SNGs

In 2010 the regular speed games dried up with the introduction of the new super turbo heads up sng format and Cog Dissonance was left to either adapt or die. He sought out Mersenneary for superturbo coaching. Reluctant to pay $100 for an hour Cog suggested a profit sharing deal, which ended up costing him 1k for an hour of coaching and some sweats watching Mersenneary play, and that was after Mers agreed to cap the deal at 1k, or it could have ended up as one of the most expensive coaching hours in heads up history.

Later in 2010, Cog met the "Eurofish" when they came to Bali for a holiday. Serkules, Degarin, NiceIQ25, wowKAA and Malte. They had a great time in Bali and Cog plans to travel to Europe next year to see exactly how these fish crush the hyper turbos so hard.

Presently Cog is still living in Bali, coaching, playing and spending as much time at the beach as possible!