2 Month Checkpoint: Looking Back and Moving Forward

This post was originally published on March 16, 2020, on my personal website, Lukich.io. I have since consolidated all of my poker-related content by reposting it onto Solver School.

Looking Back

It’s been a little over two months since I started this site. I wrote all about it in January. I didn’t know what I wanted to do on the site or what it would turn into. My primary goal was to continue pushing my growth as a poker player. The website was meant to be a peer review — a way for me to share my work broadly and defend my thoughts and process.

I wasn’t sure if anyone would find or want to read it. For all I knew, there would be four other guys out there who would be interested in math-heavy blog posts about poker data analysis. However, to my surprise, some people come here for content and keep coming back for new posts. For that, I’m appreciative of all the support. It’s encouraging to know that what I’m doing is landing with some people. It also gives me confidence that my work is headed in the right direction.

I have been doing some reflecting this past week — given the circumstances in the world right now, many of us likely have extra home time to do so. This has included looking at this site and better defining the direction I want it to go in the future. While things were a bit more uncertain in January, I have a better picture of how I want to focus this site. I am excited to share my vision today.

Primary Goal: Development of a Comprehensive Data-Driven Strategy

In early 2019, I started working more seriously with solvers. Specifically, I began utilizing my data analysis skill set to examine poker situations. Since I began doing so, it has opened my eyes to new concepts, strategies, and exploits. That led me down the independent study path, where I started developing and testing hypotheses using data. Consequently, I have seen incredible growth both in my confidence at the table and my results.

In May, I went to the S4Y Academy. I forget the specific context, but Berkey commented on one of the days about documenting your strategy. That idea stuck with me for the next few weeks. After giving it much thought, I realized I didn’t have a cohesive strategy I could draw from. I knew a lot about the game, but my strategy was a mixture of the concepts I’ve learned over the years. This worked fine in my local $2/$5 games, but I couldn’t cleanly tie everything together. I also believed that if I ever tried to deconstruct it, I would find a lot of leaks.

I realized then that documenting my strategy would not only be helpful to pull everything together, but it would also identify and shore up areas in my game that are underdeveloped. So, I decided to build a complete and comprehensive strategy that I can implement in the live environment, starting with preflop and working through the river. In doing so, I wanted to take a data-driven approach. After all, this process resonates with me. This is the biggest project I’ve been working on for the past 6+ months in the evenings after my kids go to bed. I currently have ~120 pages written, and I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface of the flop. In other words, I have a long way to go.

I recently realized that I’m writing a book documenting my strategy. More specifically, I’m writing a poker strategy book founded entirely using data that details a comprehensive strategy for deep-stacked cash games. While I’m developing this for me and my game, I believe the insights broadly apply to cash games in any casino environment. I have no idea when this will be done or who I’ll share it with, but the process has been incredibly valuable.

This brings me back to the primary update mechanism of this site. I want to document the process of completing this strategy project. I realize that’s meta, but I’m already doing this with my research posts. Every concept or situation I have explored using data has been documented. Some of those posts have already made it into my strategy. I’ll make sure that I tag all of these posts appropriately. It’ll be cool to go back and read the research that led to the final product.

Ongoing Website Plans

As for the rest of the site, I’ve looked at the engagement metrics within Google Analytics. I think I have a good sense of what people are interested in. So here is a plan moving forward.

I plan to post a new video every month.

The videos I’ve posted so far have great engagement and seem to be the most popular content on the site. I plan to record more in the future following one of these formats:

• I think there’s a general misunderstanding of how to use solvers to analyze a problem. So, I’ll have videos showing the mechanics of using solvers in different situations. I started with this general video of how to use a solver, but I think this can be expanded to explore different components of the tools.

• Hand analysis videos are a great way to use data to view a situation from a stream. There’s a reason the Finding Equilibrium videos get such great engagement. The analysis video I completed in this Berkey vs Price hand from Poker Out Loud is a good example of something I’ll continue to look at. If there are any hands that you’d like me to analyze, please email me!

• I’ve considered compiling some review or comparison videos of the different tools. I use multiple solvers and often get the question of which is best. For the most part, I think there are strengths and weaknesses in many of the solvers — I use a few of them myself for different purposes. So, I’ll try to dig into that a bit.

I will continue blogging about Poker Out Loud.

It’s been fun to relive that experience through this medium. At the same time, only a few more episodes are left in the season. I plan to write a recap for each one. It’s a good way to introduce some less conceptual and math-heavy posts. For a compilation of all my Poker Out Loud recaps, click here.

I will make some of my research and spreadsheets available for download.

I have had a lot of requests for some of the spreadsheets that I’ve demoed in my videos. It’s great that others are interested in taking a data-driven approach to their own independent learning. I think a lot of great work happens by building on the findings of others. So, I will start to share some of my resources to help others.

I’ll provide some of the simpler spreadsheets I’ve put together for videos for free. However, I am also working on more in-depth spreadsheets that I plan to make available for purchase. I need to polish up the UI on these tools first and figure out how to protect against piracy, but I plan to do it in the future.

I will plan to include some shorter “bite-sized” posts.

I’m unsure what this includes, but many things I’ve posted have been long-form. They’re dense posts that take 10-20 minutes to read or videos that take upwards of an hour to watch. While that’s not changing due to the complexity of some topics, I think there’s an opportunity to have some shorter thoughts or graphs here or there. You’ll start to see some of these things sprinkled in.

Moving Forward

With all of the plans above, I’m excited to continue the site's growth. I’m passionate about this subject matter. But given the state of everything now, I also think having an escape valve is important. Diving into poker is a great one for me. Hopefully, it can be helpful to you as an audience as well.

Like most people, I’m currently hunkered down in my house. With everything closing and the US seemingly on an inevitable path toward a nationwide shutdown due to COVID-19, it’s easy to get depressed. I’ll admit that I fell into this camp last week as I obsessively looked at the data that showed us following the same path as countries like Italy.

There is a lesson I have learned over the years as a poker player that helps — there are many things you can’t control, so focus your efforts on the things you can. I can’t control what’s going on in the world. But I can control the effort I put into the things that matter — my family, my friends, and my work.

It’s time to get to work. I’m plowing full steam ahead with my projects, this site, and trying to become a better player. And when this is all said and done, and we go back to playing in casinos, I’ll be ready to jump into higher games. You’ll be able to see my progress here, and hopefully, I’ll be able to provide some value to others trying to do the same.

If you have any comments or thoughts, please feel free to leave any comments below. You can also contact me at [email protected] or on Twitter or YouTube through the links in the footer below.

Thanks for reading, and stay safe out there.

-Lukich