The Name; The name Mientjeuh originates from a friend's cat, which has since been given away. She lives on a small farm now. The name carries over to the tables.
Me: How old are you and how did you get started in poker?
I receive a lot of emails and read a lot of forum posts asking how to get the most out of heads up sng coaching. Personal situations and solutions tend to vary a lot, but being fully aware of your options and new ideas should drastically improve the value you receive from coaching.
Work Ethic
The most important thing you can do to make sure you get the most out of heads up sng coaching, or any other heads up sng training tool, is to have a good work ethic. Even the best coaches will not provide good value to a player that does not take the time to utilize the information provided to them. Conversely, a great student that studies hard and asks good questions can often make what is usually a marginally valued coach a great value for them.
These are the critical effective stack depths at which your villain makes dramatic adjustments to their preflop ranges when facing a minraise. A good, balanced player should not have these, but most do. Before explaining why, I should define them. There are two:
1) Skates Calling Point (SCP) - This is the effective stack depth at which your villain switches from an all-in or fold strategy to one that incorporates calling. When facing a minraise at 2BB, your villain can only go all-in or fold. At 5BB, nearly all villains will either go all-in or fold. At 10BB, some will mix in calling with some hands. The effective stack depth where the calling frequency becomes significant is the SCP.
Adam recently finished 2nd in the $1,000 WCOOP event for $187,000. He analyzes some of the hands from the final table below:
PokerStars Game #32632272614: Tournament #200909016, $1000+$50 USD Hold'em No Limit - Level XXXIV (17500/35000) - 2009/09/09 5:54:22 PT [2009/09/09 8:54:22 ET]
Table '200909016 130' 9-max Seat #9 is the button
Seat 1: cabbie182 (1030186 in chips)
Seat 2: O0Brian0O (1940228 in chips)
Seat 3: amrasaralond (409130 in chips)
Seat 4: hoodini10 (934209 in chips)
Seat 5: DuckU (1688089 in chips)
Seat 6: Holla10 (1280776 in chips)
Seat 7: skilled_sox (3834827 in chips)
Seat 8: XTheDecanoX (3137342 in chips)
Seat 9: pedmend (1325213 in chips)
cabbie182: posts the ante 4375
O0Brian0O: posts the ante 4375
amrasaralond: posts the ante 4375
hoodini10: posts the ante 4375
DuckU: posts the ante 4375
Holla10: posts the ante 4375
skilled_sox: posts the ante 4375
XTheDecanoX: posts the ante 4375
pedmend: posts the ante 4375
cabbie182: posts small blind 17500
Adam is a 23 year old from Boston where he rents a place with a few friends. He started playing poker when he was 14, but didn't take it seriously until the summer of 2007, when he started short stacking 2NL full ring. By the fall he took a $275 roll and started playing the $23 husng turbos on Stars. A year later he had made well over $300,000 in profit, almost exclusively from heads up sngs. He's now earned almost a million dollars from poker lifetime.
Adam is a big sports fan, following basketball, football, baseball and boxing. He also used to run competitively. He's taken two different years off from school, and is now finishing up his junior year at Boston University. He plans on playing in both the triple draw and heads up events at the WSOP, where he'll be staying with some poker friends in a mansion. He recently became the first player on PokerStars to reach SupernovaElite status in 2009. You can find him playing in the PokerStars high stakes heads up sngs under the handle skilled_sox.
