I'm Alkazar99, and my role here is to try to help you maximize your success playing online sit-n-go poker. As a player, I concentrate on medium stakes games of one or two tables, with 6 to 10 players per table, although I also play quite a bit of cash poker and Multi-Table Tournaments (MTTs). My "specialization" games are No-limit Holdem and Omaha Hi-Lo. Please feel free to look me up and track my progress on Sharkscope's impressive site; you'll find my ROI's (winrate) for SNGs quite difficult to match. It would be a lot of fun to proclaim that my inflated winrate (given the stakes & types of games I play) exists because I'm such an amazing player, but the honest truth is that the winrate discrepency is mostly due to the fact that so many winning players (and most professionals) play multiple tables to a huge degree--about as many as they can jam onto their computer screen at the same time. The fact that I typically play only two games at a time allows me the ability to carefully analyze the playing conditions of each game, thereby increasing my winrate.

In my videos I won't be training you how to play by volume; instead, I'll be training you to maximize your chances to win money on a game-by-game basis, regardless of stakes. Whether you are a small-timer or a heavy-hitter, the fundamental skills of understanding probabilities, reading the player, and playing the situation are still tantamount to success. The only differences between a $1 sng and a $1000 sng are the psychological burden of financial risk and the possible differences in player quality. The risk some people handle very well and others don't, and the differences in player quality are critical to acknowledge in any game, where different strategies should be used against sharks than against fish. But you should be aware of player qualities no matter what the stakes are, and there will be a great deal of time spent in these videos alerting you about these strategies. Regardless, the fundamentals of quality poker play don't change according to buy-in value.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF POKER

I'm very proud of my track record, of course, and yet my credibility as a poker player isn't all I have to offer you. I have a Ph.D in Psychology and hence the good fortune of being trained in the fundamentals of observing, understanding, influencing, and predicting interpersonal behavior; needless to say, these skills can count for a great deal at the poker table, and all the best poker pros have this almost magical ability to predict the cards of others and successfully make use of those predictions. There are many paths to building this kind of poker insight, and I will show you mine--the specifics of what I look for from both the player and the situation to predict cards and behavior. Of course, my graduate training also produced the boons of training in statistical methods and familiarity with risk aversion, prospect theory, and other decision-making heuristics that speak volumes at the poker table, and I will do my best to make this information available to you in a simple-to-understand way when appropriate.

PROFESSIONAL INSTRUCTION

There's also something more I'd like to add to my credentials: I'm an experienced instructor, having taught many classes in both psychology and technology; I know how to be clear, and I know how to introduce, break down, and pass on a concept as a teacher. But as my old statistics professor used to say, "the proof of the pudding is in the eating", and so I heartily invite you to judge for yourself the effectiveness of my videos. I certainly don't expect you to believe in my methods until I've earned your trust.