The Official Red Chip Poker Podcast

Mike Gano has been a pro and coach for years, and he's still out there grinding, learning and teaching at serious stakes. We take stock of the modern online poker landscape, strategic considerations for new styles of play, and where the world's top players are finding their edge in an age of unprecedented information and computing power. Enjoy this wide-ranging discussion with a top-tier poker mind.

What you put in your body has a direct correlation to whether you play your A game or your C game. We all know how valuable that difference is. Paul Salter, a nutrition coach to athletes, bodybuilders and poker players, breaks down the small steps we can take to make big long-term changes in our lives and games. A poker player himself, Salter gives tons of advice for optimizing your nutrition and getting a biological edge over less healthy competition.

Pro/coach contributor Fausto Valdez has a keen sense of when and how to make adjustments in any poker environment. We talk to him about his successful tournament grind at this year's WSOP, his return to crushing cash games and coaching up-and-coming poker pros. Plus, listen in as Fausto walks through a hand he played with host Zac Shaw at this year's Red Chip Poker meetup in Las Vegas.

This week's podcast features a hand history breakdown provided by Adam Jones. Lots of strategy concepts are discussed, primarily around planning your bet sizing across three streets. The hand was originally submitted to the Red Chip Poker forum by one of our members, generated considerable discussion, and eventually found its way into our much-acclaimed CORE study program as a Level III lesson. For $5/week, CORE provides all the tools you need in structured lessons to help you analyze your own hands, and to take your game to the next level.

Andreas "Rayo" Kniep provided the Red Chip Poker community with a sweat in this year's WSOP Main Event, running deep into Day 5 and a 173rd place finish. Rayo, a student of RCP coach Luke Haward, has been playing poker for less than two years. His introduction to poker came when his marathon-running hobby was interrupted by a hip injury. Rayo reveals how that starting point eventually saw him at the TV table in the Rio.

This week, host Zac Shaw talks about the biggest pot he ever played at $1/$2, and in the process details over a dozen ideas you can use to analyze your own big hands. Rather than focus on breaking down his strategic decisions, Zac invites you to analyze the hand along with him, and encourages you to try many different methods to better learn from your big hands, win or lose.

This week, Greg Vail, our resident split pot specialist, joins us to answer your questions from the forum about Big O and O8. He's celebrating the release of his new book, Scoop! Big O and PLO8: Winning High Low Concepts for the Hold'Em Mind. Written by Vail and edited by Doug Hull, you'll be the smartest person at your split pot table upon digesting its contents. Heck, you'll probably be the smartest split pot player at your table after listening to this podcast!

Author, consultant and poker player Eileen Sutton has been getting deeper and deeper into the grind, taking on star coach Tommy Angelo and distilling his wisdom down to a strategy to win in the underground NYC poker scene. We take you into her world and mindset on this week's wide-ranging podcast interview.

How do you beat a player that's much better than you? The answer is: Run good. But seriously, there are some winning strategies to taking on tough opponents, and one of the toughest is James 'SplitSuit' Sweeney, who joins us to talk about how you can beat players like... well, like him. Since host Zac Shaw is about to head out and play with Sweeney and the other coaches at the 4th Annual Vegas meetup, he needs all the help he can get in this department. The duo signs off with news on the future of the podcast and discusses the PRO and CORE membership as Red Chip Poker heads into its 5th year of helping poker players of all walks of life improve their games and their lives.

Where does your profit come from in poker? This week, Ed Miller explains why most players get the answer to this question wrong. And don't worry, he shares the right answers too. This episode will get you out of your comfort zone and into the strategic concepts that are actually responsible for you taking money off the table in the long-term.

You hear the pros talking about "balancing your range" all the time, but what exactly does that mean in practice? In this episode, coach and cash game grinder Fausto Valdez shares his secrets for thinking about your range and the ranges of your opponents. How do we become less exploitable, while exploiting others at the same time? Valdez walks host Zac Shaw through a $1/$2 hand he played to dissect each decision and coach recreational players to think more like a pro when it comes to ranges.

As poker players, our relationship with pocket aces can be intense. They are a beautiful sight, but we must wait so long for a glimpse. The moment becomes critical. Will our aces get cracked? Will this rare opportunity be squandered? There are a lot of "feels" to be had about pocket aces, and Dr. Tricia Cardner breaks down the science and psychology behind overcoming them. This is a mental game episode you won't want to miss.

Kat Martin has been grinding $1/$2 in Vegas for years, and shares many nuggets of hard-earned wisdom for any poker player looking to take on the sleepless city's live poker rooms. Making a living in a place bent on taking away your money is no easy task, but Martin has made it work by carving out his niche, and perhaps you can too, starting with his tips for doing Vegas as a visiting poker player.

What if everything you thought you knew about pot control was wrong? This week, Adam Jones explains why "pot control" is inherently flawed as a poker strategy concept. Through a series of hand history reviews, he'll show why attempts to keep the pot small through checking can be a big, exploitable leak, and what real profitable "pot control" would actually look like.

When we suspect our opponent is capable of firing double barrel bluffs our way, how do we counter-attack? This week, we take a chapter out of Doug Hull's classic strategy book Poker Plays You Can Use and analyze a hand to answer the question. Hull even illustrates alternate lines, alternate board card scenarios, and dives deep into the math behind his decisions.

If you've never experienced a coaching session firsthand, it can be hard to overstate just how much coaching can change your game. This week, Kris Murray (aka Persaudeo) stops by for a coaching demo that leaves host Zac Shaw floored with new poker strategy revelations. The two review a recent hand Shaw played street-by-street to ask and answer the question, "Why are you making decision X?" Buckle up for an extended episode and a fantastic ride-along with a top coach.

Facing tough river decisions and big bets while holding non-nut hands... it's what no limit hold 'em is all about! Even though this will happen comparitively rarely in your session, these decisions have an outsized effect on shaping your win rate. It's critical you get these spots right. This week, three coaches review three tough river spots and break down each street to detail their strategic thinking.

We've all sat down at the table full of super-tight players and been frustrated by a lack of action. But the key to profiting from these positions is to realize you're in a massively exploitable opportunity, and to get exploiting! On this week's podcast, James 'SplitSuit' Sweeney shares a chapter from his book Unfolding Poker, giving you some solid, specific tactics for crushing tight tables.

This week, we look at the one thing almost no live poker players are doing, yet it could improve their game immediately. And that one thing is taking notes at the table. Host Zac Shaw delivers advice from the Red Chip Team and our member community on how and why taking notes on the hand histories you play can transform your game.

Are you trying to improve your win rate? What about the value of your poker time? This week, James 'SplitSuit' Sweeney joins us to explore the many ways poker players can squeeze more value out of their poker time through simple mindset adjustments. Touching on strategy and mental game, this episode will give you a fresh perspective on how to accomplish your poker dreams and goals.

We're back with another episode you'll want to listen to more than once, as Adam "W34z3l" Jones shares four questions that you should be asking before c-betting. We've done a few c-betting episodes in the past, so what's new this week? C-betting is a major part of poker and you can never know enough, but this week, you can take these four questions to the poker room this weekend and notice an immediate change in your game.

In one of the most value-packed episodes of the Red Chip Poker podcast to date, Adam 'w34z3l' Jones breaks down strategies and tactics you can use in each of five common preflop spots. You're going to encounter these spots in practically every session you play, and Jones breaks down dozens of specific considerations and tactics for each spot. This episode is an audio excerpt from a training video included with CORE, Red Chip Poker's new poker strategy training experience, available at redchippoker.com/launch-core.

We'll let you in on a little secret: No single strategy or tactic can make you a winning poker player. You need them all. So the secret to winning any poker game is to study more efficiently and effectively than your competition. That's where Adam Jones comes in on this week's podcast. He produced many of the exclusive training videos you'll find in our brand-new CORE poker learning platform. In this episode, Jones takes us inside his process for breaking down poker's more complex concepts into fundamentals that are easy to digest and apply in the games you play.

Most of us aren't competing for a six-figure score at a televised final table, we're grinding out the daily tournaments in our local poker rooms and online. Red Chipper Nick Graphia is one such tournament grinder, and he drops by the podcast this week to talk about how he used our training material to hone his game into some great cashes. In this episode, you'll hear a down-to-earth story of modest tournament success the likes of which any of us could imagine achieving.

With so many moving parts, a coherent poker strategy can feel like an impossibility. So we created CORE from the ground up to lay out everything you need to know in an easy-to-grasp course. It's the poker university you've been looking for, and we're here to help you through it. CORE makes professional-grade, winning poker accessible to anyone who's willing to put in the effort. This is the world's first all-encompassing poker strategy syllabus and learning platform. We believe it's the best way ever to learn to play like the pros.

Jordan Young won millions in online poker tournaments and is approaching the million mark in live tournaments as well. This week, we talk to him about what advice he imparts to other tournament players who seek to achieve similar results. We focus on strategy and discuss the foundations of a winning tournament gameplan. Young helps listeners identify and eliminate weaknesses in the way typical tournament players approach the game. He also gives tips on population exploits at the WSOP, and shares how it feels to sit at a final table with six figures and a bracelet on the line.

How would a poker coach go about learning poker from scratch in today's environment? It's a fascinating question, and on this week's podcast, James 'SplitSuit' Sweeney answers by breaking down the four pillars of poker learning: Math, Tactics, Strategy and Mental Game. If you're not learning poker from scratch, it doesn't matter, there's something to be learned in this podcast for any player.

Barreling is one of poker's most fundamental skills. Whether you're firing once, twice or all three times, whether it's for value or as a bluff, you need a working barreling strategy to win in this game. Ed Miller joins us on this week's podcast with a simplified barreling strategy that anyone can use: "When they check, you bet." Of course, the profit is in the details, so don't miss this week's podcast.

Our resident split pot expert Greg Vail is on the podcast this week, dispelling all the expensive myths held by unstudied O8 and Big O players. Becoming familiar with these leaks will help you plug your own and exploit weaknesses in others. Vail has long been an advocate for the profitability of split pot games in the face of so much player error, and he shares his secrets in this episode.

Our first episode of 2018 is geared toward psyching you up for a great year of studying to win. Host Zac Shaw takes the helm and offers up some advice for finding your place in the poker ecosystem, so you can set poker goals for the new year that you will celebrate achieving this time next year. Why do you play? What resources do you have to study and play? Where do you want to go in poker? This episode is all about being honest with our leaks and limitations... something poker players often struggle with. Good luck in 2018!

At year's end, lots of poker players are asking the question, "How do I pay taxes on my poker and cryptocurrency earnings?" Zak Zimbile from Kondler & Associates breaks down the ins and outs of doing just that in the most financially responsible way you can. This podcast is pure gold for anyone who scored in poker or Bitcoin/cryptocurrency this year and is facing tax time with a big question mark over their earnings.

Peter Clarke literally wrote the book on 6-max strategy (The Grinder's Manual) and now he's back with a new book, 100 Hands. It's just as it sounds -- 100 hands of 6-max poker, analyzed in depth as if Clarke was coaching you through each spot. And that's exactly what we do in this week's podcast: We review a random hand from the book and focus on giving listeners the skills to do their own strategic analysis at home.

Robert Dewberry is a poker vlogger and aspiring Zen master of the game. He joined us to provide his unique perspective on the life of a winning player. Our conversation touches on strategy, studying, and the connections between winning at poker and winning at life. Hear musings of the Monk on this week's podcast.

Do you understand how frequencies work in poker? Years ago, Ed Miller's classic training text Poker's 1% heavily impacted the poker strategy scene with its unique approach to exploiting the common frequency-based errors of opponents in live cash games. This winning strategy endures because players are still not exploiting frequency leaks in their opponents as often as they should be. This week, James "SplitSuit" Sweeney breaks apart the flawed strategies of unstudied players who ignore frequencies to their own detriment.

Robbie Strazynski is a man about the poker industry, known widely for his thought-provoking poker productions such as Cardplayer Lifestyle and the Top Pair podcast. This week, we go behind the scenes with Strazynski to gain a unique perspective on professional poker and what it takes to make it in this game. He shares his strategic insights and reflections on many years in the orbit of the game's brightest stars.

The game of poker is quite profound when you really think about it. Jerry 'Imperator' Monaco is one such deep thinker who has a wealth of insight into the game's many philosophical underpinnings. He's a poker polymath who has earned a reputation in the Red Chip Poker forum as having a unique and fascinating spin on strategy and the game as a whole. Get a new perspective on poker in this week's podcast.

There are few better ways to develop poker skills than to drill through tricky spots away from the table with a poker strategy workbook. James 'SplitSuit' Sweeney has authored several such workbooks, and he joins us on this week's podcast to give a behind-the-scenes look at how they come together, as well as tips for getting the most out of them. You'll find strategy workbooks to be invaluable in gaining experience and intuition, as well as a comparatively cheap way to make mistakes before you deal with the spots you study off-table in real life with real stacks.

When it comes to poker tells, there are few on this Earth more knowledgable than Blake Eastman. It's not just that he's dedicated his life to the serious scientific study of nonverbal and verbal tells in poker. It's not just that he's an accomplished player in his own right. Eastman, with his Beyond Tells training site, has armed hundreds of poker players with a serious edge over their competition when it comes to reading live tells. He's on the podcast this week to announce the exciting evolution of his Beyond Tells research: the largest study ever on the behavior of poker players.

Normally, 986th place is not the greatest finish in an MTT, but when you're talking about the biggest live tournament of the year, it's quite a feat. Red Chip Poker PRO member Keith Christopher drops by this week to discuss his deep run in the 2017 WSOP Colossus. What did he study and how did he apply it to outlast 17,000 other players and cash in this mammoth field? He shares his insight on another episode exploring the deep tournament runs of our most dedicated members.

Poker's more fun when the pot's split between the high hand and the low hand, and perhaps more profitable too! Greg Vail, the newest addition to our Red Chip Poker coach roster, drops by this week to share his enthusiasm for Omaha 8-or-Better and Big O, two of the most popular split pot games being spread these days. Hear Vail break down the basics of how these games work, the common leaks you need to plug and exploit, and the strategies you need to adjust your hold 'em knowledge to compete in a split pot environment.

When we first sit down at the table, how do we gather as much information about how our opponents are playing as quickly as possible? This is a question you'll ask in every session you play, and every time a new player sits down. In this episode, James 'SplitSuit' Sweeney dives deep into how to read opponents and their actions for answers. He discusses how to profile players, from their appearance and demeanor all the way to their betting frequencies and sizing.

We couldn't be more excited to bring you this week's episode, because Doug Hull is here to discuss his upcoming new book, More Poker Plays You Can Use. The sequel to Hull's acclaimed debut as a solo poker strategy author is a literal wealth of information that low-stakes live cash players will use to dominate games for years to come. The book is based on Hull's years of experience grinding $1/$2 games and analyzing the mathematics of poker strategy, even developing his own software release (Flop Falcon) to help players build flop intuition. Don't miss this exciting preview with one of poker's most respected strategists and authors.

Mark Rumbaugh had one heck of a summer. He finished first in two local $110 tourneys vs. smaller fields. Then, with a profitable poker wind at his back, he traveled to the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas and did not disappoint his bankroll. He ran deep again and again, nabbing three cashes in the four events he played: 295th/2020 in the WSOP $1K, 24th/1368 in Planet Hollywood's $600 Goliath, and 208th/2320 in the Wynn $1100 classic. Hear how he studied his way to tournament success this summer on the podcast this week.

By popular request, poker mastermind Christian Soto is back on the podcast this week going over hand histories. First he discusses the infamous $20,000 pot he played on Live at the Bike versus Hashtag King. How did he handle this maniac and get stacks in as a 75% favorite? Then Soto goes street-by-street, action-by-action, picking apart a live $1/$2 hand host Zac Shaw played, where all involved take questionable lines. Get your hand history fill from one of the best hand breakdown artists out there on this wee's Official Red Chip Poker Podcast.

Exactly one year ago, Red Chipper Fausto Valdez appeared on our podcast to discuss his dedication to becoming a professional poker player as he moved from $1/$2 to $2/$5. This week, Valdez drops in for an update, and it's a big one: He quit his job to play poker full-time and has dedicated his life to the game. He's even coaching! Look inside the mind of a cash game grinder and tournament shot-taker this week and get a taste of what professional poker is all about.

Take a peek behind the curtains of our PRO membership this week with excerpts from two of our most popular videos on continuation betting. This episode is pure value and you will use the information in every session you play. First, Adam Jones debunks some common c-betting myths that could be costing you chips. Then, Mike Gano goes over six specific reasons why you might want to delay a c-bet.

You don't have to be told that at the final table, your decisions matter. So why don't more tournament players work through the spots they're likely to face, under extreme ICM pressure, with major pay jumps and big cash on the line? To fill that knowledge gap, tournament coach and pro Ben Hayles recently collaborated with James "SplitSuit" Sweeney on the new Poker Workbook: Tournament Final Tables. Hayles stopped by the podcast to share details on their new approach to developing poker skills to dominate final tables.

In honor of our 100th episode, we have an all-star lineup on this week's podcast. James "SplitSuit" Sweeney, Ed Miller, Mike Gano, Dr. Tricia Cardner and Doug Hull all drop by to share their answer to a single question: What first inspired you to study, and what inspires you to continue to study?" You'll hear five very different stories about falling in love not just with the game of poker, but the study thereof. It's a unique look into the lives of five very accomplished poker coaches, and there is something for poker players at every level to relate to here.

Stack-to-pot ratio, commonly known as SPR, is a fundamental poker concept every winning player needs to understand. This week, James 'SplitSuit' Sweeney is on the podcast to explain why the size of the effective stack relative to the size of the pot demands your full attention. If you're new to SPR, this episode is going to transform your game. If you're already familiar, there's value for you here in refreshing your understanding, because SPR is something you will use in basically every pot you play.

Studying is not the sexiest part of being a winning poker player. But it is a necessary part, and poker writer and educator Eileen Sutton is on the podcast this week to share more effective ways to approach thinking about and studying the game of poker. Author of The Total Poker Manual and regular blogger here at Red Chip Poker, Sutton has a unique perspective on how to integrate serious study into our poker routines. In addition to writing about poker, she is a dedicated player, and she speaks to her own revelations on how get more out of every minute of study you put in towards becoming a big winner in the game.