Upswing Poker Vs Run It Once

I’ve played poker recreationally for a long time, but 18 months ago I decided to have a crack at playing full-time. My strategic understanding of the game was patchy at best, though, so I set out to find training material that would give me solid fundamentals. Basically, the plan was to build my game from the ground up.

Re: First Look At Run It Once Poker Software i think its awesome that they are really making a site but i always wonder why site makers look past old fulltilts skin and avatars. Full tilt had the best of the best for fish and just entertaining to look at. Using dark dull earthy colors makes it look like ACR. Feb 21, 2017 Two-time WSOP bracelet winner, high-stakes cash game regular and Upswing Poker coach Doug Polk recorded an exclusive strategy video for Card Player viewers on playing the button in. Oct 19, 2016 I get a lot of questions from viewers of this channel about The Lab at Upswing Poker. I am one of the founders of Upswing Poker, a training site that aims to build a foundation for correct poker.

After doing some research, I went with the Upswing Poker Lab for a few reasons. First, head coaches Doug Polk and Ryan Fee have proven track records in the game, both of them having worked their way from the bottom to the top. Knowing that they’ve achieved success by putting in the work motivates me to do the same.

They also bring in coaches who specialize in different areas (like Fried Meulders for 6-max cash-games, and Parker Talbot, a.k.a. ‘tonkaaaap’, for tournaments). Diversity of knowledge was important to me, as I wasn’t sure which game format I would be most drawn to.

Finally, the structure of the Lab made perfect sense. Rather than many individual videos on a variety of ideas, the Lab releases a monthly ‘module’, which contains a collection of videos that give you a comprehensive understanding of an entire topic.

I want to share with you some of the most valuable strategy concepts that the Upswing Lab taught me, all of which improved my game and increased my win-rate. Implement them in your own game and I’m sure you’ll see the same results.

1. Which Hands to Play in Every Pre-Flop Spot

When I first began refining my game, one of the things I looked for was a concrete and detailed pre-flop guide that would tell me what hands to play from each position. Fortunately, the Upswing Lab offers exactly three in-depth ‘Chart Viewers’ for online cash games, tournaments and live poker. These include detailed range charts that tell you which hands to raise-first-in (RFI), which hands to 3-bet or call with versus a RFI, and which hands to 4-bet or call with after you’ve raised-first-in and then faced a 3-bet. The charts cover every position at the table (including 9-handed positions), so you can be guided on the correct play in any situation. For live poker – where limping is common – Upswing included an additional set of ranges for dealing with pesky limpers.

Where I once felt lost, these guides helped to give structure to my pre-flop decision-making. I can’t post all of them here, but you can get some RFI ranges for free. Whether you’re new to poker or want to rebuild your game from pre-flop on, this is a great place to start.

2. Knowing When to Run Big Bluffs

There is an art to bluffing in poker. It takes more than a ‘feeling’ that your opponent is weak. In the Lab’s ‘Post-Flop Play’ modules you’ll learn more about the factors that determine when you should and shouldn’t bluff. This material taught me to identify the optimal hands to bluff with, and the ideal situations in which to do it.

Most illuminating was the idea that bluffing is rarely, if ever, based on gut feelings. Rather, bluffing is grounded in logical theories. For example, blockers play an essential role in knowing when to bluff. A ‘blocker’ refers to when a player holds a specific card that ‘blocks’ their opponent from having hand combinations that contain that same card. The player holding the blocker can use this information to their advantage, as it tells them that it is impossible for their opponent(s) to have certain hands, and less likely for them to have certain others.

When bluffing, it is ideal to use hands that block the value range of our opponent, as this makes it less likely that they will call our bluff. The most obvious case is when a player uses a nut flush blocker to bluff with. For example, if we have on , our hand makes it impossible for our opponent to have the nut flush, allowing us to bluff more effectively. Additionally, both of our cards block a possible straight (T9 and AT), making it even less likely that our opponent has a strong value hand that will call our bet. Knowing how to use blockers to bluff more effectively is just one of many useful concepts in the Lab’s post-flop modules.

3. A Straight-Forward System for Constructing Post-Flop Ranges

Unlike pre-flop, the complexity of post-flop poker makes it impossible to give ready-to-use ranges for all spots. And compared to pre-flop, post-flop play can feel intimidating and confusing. Doug devised a unique, convenient and effective strategy to solve this problem, which allows players to construct post-flop ranges on-the-fly. In ‘The Four Categories’ video under the ‘Foundations’ section of the Lab, Doug explains how to group your post-flop hands into four categories:

Category 1: Hands to value-bet with. This includes any hands which are strong enough to bet or raise for value.
Category 2: Hands to check or call with. These are not quite strong enough to value bet, but too strong to fold. This category functions well to bluff-catch with.
Category 3: Hands that aren’t strong enough to call with but can work well as bluffs.
Category 4: Hands that are too weak to continue with and will be folded to a bet.

These categories make post-flop play easier to manage, and working out what category a particular hand falls under can help you to avoid making costly mistakes.

4. Adjusting to Your Opponents’ Strategies and Exploiting Them

Depending on the stakes that you are playing, your opponents will exhibit certain tendencies common to the entire player pool. The Lab taught me how to identify and exploit those tendencies, and for different player pools. This can do wonders for your win-rate. For example, players at lower stakes ($0.25 / $0.50 and below) have a tendency to call too often and bluff too infrequently. We can exploit these tendencies by using a larger size with our value hands, by bluffing a little less often, and folding at a higher frequency versus barrels. Ryan tests these adjustments himself in the ‘$50 NL 10,000 Hand Sample Breakdown’ module, which prove to be very effective.

You can learn more about making different adjustments from the ‘Play & Explain’ videos in the Lab, which feature real-time play and commentary from the Upswing coaches. They cover a range of stakes, so you can observe differences between them.

Is the Lab Really Worth it?

Although I consider myself an intermediate player at this point, the training material at the Upswing Lab is continually expanding and diversifying, which keeps it relevant and valuable. With a library of more than 40 modules and a new one added each month, there are hundreds of hours of video content to explore. I’ve only scratched the surface, and will continue to dig in.

For more advanced players, a module like Fried & Ryan’s ‘Introduction to Solvers’ demonstrates that the coaches are committed to offering up-to-date material and covering the latest developments in poker strategy. Above all, and to echo a point I made earlier, having 24/7 access to a knowledgeable community of coaches and players has been indispensable. I certainly won’t be leaving the Lab anytime soon, and I hope to see you there!

_{Sponsor generated content by Upswing Poker}

Be sure to complete your PokerNews experience by checking out an overview of our mobile and tablet apps here. Stay on top of the poker world from your phone with our mobile iOS and Android app, or fire up our iPad app on your tablet. You can also update your own chip counts from poker tournaments around the world with MyStack on both Android and iOS.

Tags
Advanced strategyIntermediate strategyPoker StrategyDoug PolkRyan Fee
Related Players
Doug Polk

Phil Galfond’s Run It Once online poker room is set to launch in summer 2018 and when it does, players on the site will not be allowed to use Heads-Up Displays (HUDs).

Galfond recently penned a lengthy blog entry on the Run It Once website that details some of the policies of the soon-to-be-released Run It Once online poker room. Galfond revealed that Run It Once Poker is being built from the ground up and it isn’t going to try to be “888 with lower rake or partypoker with different designs or PokerStars with more transparency. We’re here to be Run It Once.”

HUDs Banned From Run It Once Poker

The first policy that is sure to cause a debate in the online poker community is that HUDs will not be allowed at Run It Once Poker. Galfond explains that the gap between professional players and recreational players has continued to widen over the years and as HUDs grow more advanced, that gap continues to widen.

'I wonder how many people have quit online poker simply from seeing something like this.'

Galfond also explains his vision that seeing HUDs can be scary for recreational players and can put them off playing online poker. “If I’m a recreational player and I see a Twitch streamer of Run It Once training video that looks like this [a screen covered in HUD stats] I’m thinking that I have no chance. A number of people even think that this is some kind of bot (which it’s definitely not, guys!). I wonder how many people have quit online poker simply from seeing something like this.'

The Run It Once Poker team discussed HUDs at length and created a system that makes using a HUD -EV using a three-step program: prevention, enforcement, and disincentivizing.

Upswing Poker Lab Review

The blog does not detail how the Run It Once Poker team will prevent the use of HUDs on the site. Instead, Galfond has highlighted a couple of features coming to Run It Once Poker that will vastly reduce the advantage one would gain from using a HUD.

Upswing Poker Charts

Table Aliases

Many online poker sites have anonymous tables and Run It Once will have these too, but with a difference. Instead of being called Player 1, Player 2, or even a string of numbers, Run It Once Poker players will be randomly assigned a first name and a last initial that will be displayed to your opponents on that particular table. Having names instead of numbers means you can remember opponents more easily and it is easier to notice if someone has left the table and has been replaced with a new player, as Galfond explains.

'Table Aliases are more like temporary IDs than a collection of faceless numbers.'

“You’ll more easily notice if seat 2 leaves the table and is replaced by a new seat 2, because Simon T will be replaced by Meredith R, for example. If Simon T comes back after eating dinner, he will still be Simon T, and you will still have the notes you took on him. Table Aliases are more like temporary IDs than a collection of faceless numbers.”

Galfond goes on to explain that this system eliminates the potential advantage of players accumulating and analyzing hands you’ve played via datamining and eliminates the possibility of your results ever being made public, therefore reducing the practice known as “bumhunting.”

Players who may be uneasy with the anonymous tables because they won’t be able to investigate suspicious behavior themselves, need not worry because Galfond and his team have come up with a solution. Run It Once Poker will send you your hand histories 24 hours after you’ve played and do so with every player’s hole cards revealed. The hand histories will be anonymized with the same “first name last initial” format that the players were displaying at your table.

The Run It Once team estimates that this system will reduce the value of using a HUD by approximately 60 percent if someone managed to avoid the HUD detection systems in place and were prepared to risk the yet-to-be-announced punishment. Galfond and his team have created a system that they believe levels the playing field in a fun way and results in reducing HUD effectiveness by approximately 90 percent when combined with the table aliases.

Dynamic Avatars

Run It Once will have a kind of built-in HUD, but one with a significant difference. Instead of displaying several statistics next to your opponents, the stats will be collected and grouped into one of eight playstyle categories, and that information will be communicated to you via their avatar’s emotions.

These Dynamic Avatars only take into account the hands you have played against an individual opponent and use VPIP, PFR, and 3bet stats. These statistics show how often an opponent voluntarily puts money into the pot (how loose or tight they are), how often they raise preflop, and how often they three-bet.

The avatars will change over the course of a session as the players’ playing style alters and Galfond promises to share all of the criteria Run It Once Poker uses to classify players.

Conclusion

Galfond concludes his length blog piece by claiming Dynamic Avatars and Table Aliases reduce HUD effectiveness by up to 90 percent while supplying information to players who would ordinarily have none.

'We believe we’ve made our games more fair in a way that adds to, rather than subtracts from, the playing experience.'

“Along with prevention, detection and punishment, we think we have an effective way to enforce our no-HUD policy, which takes us one step closer to the level playing field that we aspire to offer at Run It Once Poker. Also very important to us: We believe we’ve made our games more fair in a way that adds to, rather than subtracts from, the playing experience.”

The blog entry is the first in a series that will detail Run It Once Poker’s policies and features so stay tuned to Pokernews as we bring you all the latest from Run It Once Poker.

Run It Once Vs Upswing Vs Poker Coaching

Everybody needs an account at one of these online poker rooms! They're the biggest, the best, and we get you the best poker bonuses. Check out our online poker section for details on all the online poker rooms around.