The TDA Thinks We (the Players) Need to Straighten Up
Reading through the 2026 revision of the Tournament Directors Association rules produced one clear takeaway: the TDA thinks the players need to clean up their act. Sure, there were a few minor technical changes. Like figuring out whether the big blind ante counts as part of a player’s stack in determining who had the bigger […]
How This $1/$2 Stream Hand Took The Poker World By Storm
A $1,825 pot in a $1/$2 game got more attention this weekend than a $20 million heads-up match did. That tells you something about poker, and probably more about the internet. Here’s what happened on The Lodge poker live stream. During a $1/$2 “friendly” game, Abby “abbypoker” Merk jams A♦️5♦️ for $821 as a 4-bet […]
5 Final Table Tips That Can Save Your Tournament
Hey everybody, this is Alexander Fitzgerald, head coach for Advanced Poker Training, and today I’m going to give you a few tips for final tables. I know many of you are about to play more local tournaments as the kids get back into school and as you come home from summer vacations. Sometimes, when we […]
Texas Mike’s $4.26 Million High Stakes Poker Bluff, Analyzed
You have probably already seen the biggest pot in High Stakes Poker history. Texas Mike fired in $1.6 million with ten-high and put Eric Wasserson in a very uncomfortable spot, where he made the right call and won the pot of $4,260,000. It’s easy to look at the hand and think Texas Mike was going […]
What Is PLO Poker? A Complete Beginner’s Guide to Pot Limit Omaha
If you’ve spent much time in a cardroom or in online poker, you will have witnessed PLO at some point. The poker format has exploded in the past few years, and a lot more No-Limit Hold’em players are either bringing it into their wheelhouse or diverting to PLO entirely. What is PLO, what does PLO […]
GTO vs Exploitative Poker Strategy: Which Approach Is Right for You?
Anyone who has tried to improve their poker game over the past decade has faced the same debate: GTO vs exploitative poker strategy? It’s one of the most common questions recreational and improving players ask, and it’s usually framed as an either/or choice. Solver purists on one side, old-school intuition players on the other, and […]
What We Can Learn From the 2026 WSOP Main Event Final Table
Every year, the World Series of Poker Main Event gives us a masterclass under the brightest lights in the game. And the 2026 WSOP Main Event final table, won by 22-year-old Lucas Jumalon for a life-changing $10,000,000, was full of moments worth studying. Beyond the pressure and excitement, it was a live lesson in chip-lead […]
So… How Do You Build a Poker Bot That Plays Like a Real Person?
Now that we’ve shared the full simulation results, the obvious next question is: How did we build the 2026 WSOP Main Event bots to play like real people? Related: See our complete 2026 WSOP Main Event simulation results and Steve Blay’s official prediction People often ask me: “How can a computer possibly predict how nine […]
One Million Simulations Later: Our 2026 WSOP Main Event Prediction
Between July 24 and July 26, we ran 1,000,000 simulations to produce our 2026 WSOP Main Event prediction. The results produced a clear statistical favorite. Lucas Jumalon, who enters the final table with 194 million chips, won 40.4% of our simulations. No other player came close. But tournament predictions are not always as simple as […]
Have we saved the next WSOP Main Event champion for last?
Our WSOP Main Event champion simulations are underway. As our look at the Final Nine comes to a close, we’re turning to the last three players competing for the title. Meet Lauri Saaskilahti, Han Feng and Evagoras Evagorou. Lauri Saaskilahti Chip Count: 37.5M · 7th of 9 Age: 39 Residence: Barcelona, Spain — originally from […]