The Poker Zoo Podcast

T.S. Eliot famously stated that “there is no method but intelligence” when asked about his craft. Poker is like this, too, so when a savvy player doesn’t make it work, the postmortem is always interesting. Nate Serisky, the “new pro” DGAF dubbed “Tom Brady Jr.” in one of his session reviews, stopped playing poker at the end of 2024. A staked and studied mi...

Jason Su, mental game and performance coach for an increasing number of poker players, returns to the Zoo . While poker is a game (not “just” a game), there is something a touch more serious in this visit. Why is this? Perhaps because the money involved in poker is increasingly scarce and so every edge has become important. Actually, it’s worse than that. People are leaving the o...

It’s early in the back nine for the Poker Zoo podcast, so it’s time to focus on what we want to accomplish. I have a fitting guest today in Sara O’Connor, a mid-Atlantic player and writer who has gathered some attention through her book, A New Queen’s Guide to Poker ,  and through some social media expertise. Sara has a lot of drive. I was introduced to Sara through my frie...

For our milestone episode, I talk with old friend Steve “ChipXtractor” Catterson. I met Steve through the defunct Red Chip Poker forum, and we have been more or less in touch since. Steve and I go over some stories, but it seems to me that the present in this case is more interesting than the past. Steve is working on his game and that means becoming more interested in the game. Teachi...

As we roll into 2025 it’s well worth checking in with Zoo member Jason Burge, aka Jambasket. He’s a tough online winner in the active Michigan online games but is also a hidden superhero on Twitter (I’m not calling it X, c’mon), where he trolls the hell out of poker’s puffed-up personalities and various engagement beggars. Students in the Zoo have a lot of questions a...

The five things you need to do to win in 2025. The roadmap to poker success in 2024. Three tips for crushing poker in 2023. They do it all day, every month, every year, but what if we turn them on their head and listen carefully: You’re not winning 20 bbs/hr at your live game because you didn’t listen to us. You’re not trading pots with NL500 regs because you didn’t take ou...

We are happy to close our best year of interviews with Poker Zoo stalwart Greg Porter. We not only cover his swingy year in the games but address the many interesting things that happened in 2024 poker culture. First, though, remind me what they were again? One thing that does actually matter to a serious player who needs to produce is dealing with the increasingly gatekept public/private games. G...

Merry Christmas from the Poker Zoo! To celebrate, we bring on (depending on your point of view) gadfly or pest Norman Chad. Mr. Chad is indisputably one of the true co-pilots of poker commentary and the boom itself. There are many myths that surround the poker boom, such as it being triggered by the 2003 world series champ, but we’re not going into that today, because Norm is still alive and...

This year we have focused on very broad issues in poker, both in poker theory and in its statistics, but today we are going to get very specific. Scoop! is a series of detailed books focused on one game in two variants: PLO8 and Big O. Its author, Greg Vail, makes a living playing and teaching these games alone. In Hold’em, there are often cards on the board that are considered to be blanks or bri...

The straddle is a third blind added to the traditional two blind structure of hold’em and other related games. It’s not always a neutral proposition. The extra blind can help stimulate action or inhibit it, depending on the players and stack sizes. More controversially, the straddle often gets put into play with a certain amount of social pressure. For this reason, in the games I host,...

One of the common twists of fate in poker is the change in personal relationships on account of strategy and results. At one point now nearly forgotten, the entrance of Alvin Lau into the Red Chip Poker forum caused a whole chain of events to unfold. One end result was the rise of Alvin’s first poker teaching and programming, Overnight Monster , as ambitious RCP and other players flocked to...

The Poker Zoo continues its latest revival with an interview on a key poker subject: the quantification of winning and losing in games of chance. Going to play a session of poker is gambling, guest Mason Malmuth asserts unambiguously, but the question becomes more interesting and complex over the horizon of time. In fact, the answer now can change – or may not, depending on your expectation....

Poker pro and instructor Marc Goone has created a bit of a stir in saying he can beat the low stakes, specifically his local 5/5 game, for at least $100 an hour . Interestingly, it’s been done and is being done – the shock is not actually the number but how few do it or challenge themselves to get there. On today’s Poker Zoo I get the details on the challenge (he’s already...

Legendary poker theorist and writer David Sklansky joins us on the Zoo. We discuss Twoplustwo Publishing’s new book, Small Stakes Hold’em: Help Them Give You Their Money,  an already controversial strategy work by David and his business partner Mason Malmuth. Freshly published in January 2024, the new book focuses on adaptive play in the softest small-stakes games and against the absol...

OOP Oberleutnant Greg Porter returns to the Zoo pod for an update on his successful career as poker pro. I can’t believe it’s been six years! Time has really flown since the early days of our little group and teaching community. Greg is an indispensable and senior member of said little community. He runs the OOP training games, providing high-level poker feedback, and specialized coach...

It’s been a long time since I played in Washington, but the scene continues to evolve, however strangely. See, it’s all about the weird rules and regulations. Podcast guest Mannes N. gives us an update on the state of the games. The most important details are the rules for the tribal casinos and the rules for non-tribals, which are particularly hard on the poker player. To complicate m...

The poker world loves tournaments in the 2020’s. Online, tournament culture is vital and MTT-heavy while cash game action stalls. GG has challenged Pokerstars with huge tournaments series . U.S.-facing ACR continues to thrive . As for the live scene, everyone is amazed at the action, with WSOP and WPT now vying almost non-stop for your dollars; did I see they were bringing back the NAPT? I g...

Vegas is home to more than just gaming, it is home to the history of those games and to those who created that history. Richie Brodie, lifelong “poker bum,” has played with all the greats, from Doyle and his “southern” crew, to the Mayfair’s Erik Seidel, to California’s rising 1990’s NL scene with Bobby Hoff and Barry Greenstein (along with an apparently m...

Picture late 2019. Britain was finally Brexiting, Trump was somehow still presidenting, and general protests for a more liberal, freer society were happening all over the world- remember Hong Kong? Remember life before mask and vaccine discourse?  That’s when I last talked with Gerard S. , aspiring pro and studied player who had worked with a number of noted pros and organizations, including Faust...

Swirling beneath the never explicit politics of the poker scheme is the treatment of so-called “recreational” player. A lot of condescending, hypocritical stuff is said every day, on every platform, by every talking head about this source of all poker income. Occasionally, however, that tension is resolved when one decides to stop donating and start taking his own, or in this case, her...

Few are able to get themselves banned from social media sites like Abe Limon, guru of west coast live poker and advantage gambling. Our last pod with Abe was a little rough on the ears , so we make up for it this time with good conversation ranging from his online arguments, why the WSOP is not meaningful for poker, his take on abortion, and even to a little split-pot strategy sideshow. It’s...

Welcome back to the Poker Zoo, now a little long in the tooth but looking to finish strong. We never really left, of course, but I did need a personal break to focus on writing; Dean, my co-host and producer, was suffering a significant personal tragedy concurrently. So, a pause in the action. We persist now, and I am hoping to do about twenty more poker zoos before moving onto something different...

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! For our final episode of 2022, Dean and I talk shop and how it’s going for him. We discuss poker swings, education, and the unpleasant, hard reason why some players succeed while others keep running in place. The conversation branches off into the plan, or lack of, for the Poker Zoo. Oops, letting the outsiders know what we’re thinking. Then, Dean in...

Yes, the Poker Zoo returns amid the poker crisis, but not the one you think. Previous guest Fernando is back, troubled by developments on the casino floor caused by the lack of top-notch dealers. That doesn’t keep me, having restrained myself from much commenting during the most heated days, from getting his thoughts on the Hustler “cheating” scandal. Manager, please! We touch on...

The poker vlogging movement is only ten years old but has probably done more for keeping poker in the public eye than any pro celebrity of the era: the vloggers matter. It all mostly started with Tim “The Trooper” and few other experimenters and click revenue hopefuls (including the unfortunate Mark Ari ). Then, the number rapidly expanded into the more popular second wave featuring th...