Today’s CardRunner’s instruction comes from utility coach PoorUser, who comes to high-level poker with an advanced degree in Starcraft, a military science fiction strategy video game. Clearly CR is assembling an ever-expansive crew of instructors comprised of the coolest party animals on campus.
Kinda interesting here to watch his heads-up thinking giving lessons while playing ZeeJustin:
That’s probably a stretch, referring to any Razz player as Jungleman … but hey, as of this moment he’s the most skilled and accomplished Razz player I’ve ever met studied on a training video. Or actually, maybe his sidekick, Brandon Shack (aka Oscillator) is the better player. It’s hard to say, but they seem to have rather different philosophies on playing the game that most of us got to know from a single Final Table hand in 2004 — you know, the one where Howard Lederer and TJ Cloutier taught us that Razz could indeed be a painful game?
(That hand, of course — they had the same low until the river — led me to my first and only bracelet, in Razz, in the 2005 $1,500 event on the PlayStation. I should clearly be in the TOC!)
Anyhow, that’s why I liked this video. And though I still have no plans to ever add Razz to any 1/2 NLH/PLO game I’m pimping, getting in the middle of an intense poker convo about the nuances of Razz does leave me feeling a bit better prepared should I ever end up in the game Vegas-local aggro-nit Rex really wants to host – NLH/PLO/Razz:
Albini, btw, is a rather interesting dude — a guy who comes to poker from the music biz. He worked as a producer on albums by Nirvana, Bush, the Pixies, Flogging Molly, the Jesus Lizard (Chris Ferguson, lol?), Helmet, Cheap Trick, and Robert Plant. Apparently he became quite the badass legend amongst producers in the underground-alt scene. Neato.
A note from @CRLana in Chicago that we’re happy to pass along to Pokerati readers (emphasis added) … and congrats indeed! We should like hang out sometime and/or follow each other on Twitter:
Congratulations to Jonathon “Nikachu” Zaczek, winner of the inaugural CardRunners Video Challenge. Along with the $5,000 Grand Prize, Zaczek has also signed as a new video instructor at CardRunners. View the winning video here.
Polls were open for two weeks and voting was very close. Fewer than 30 votes separated the top 3 finishers of our contest.
Final standings of the Video Challenge are:
1st Place – $5,000 – Jonathon “Nikachu” Zaczek
2nd Place – $2,500 – Matthew Janda
3rd Place – $1,000 – Lee Przytula
4th Place – $500 – Bryce Paradis
5th Place – Chip Set ($175 value) – Johan “Roundkick” Ryning
Thank you for all who participated and please keep an eye out for future contests at CardRunners.
As always, if you haven’t done so already, give yourself an edge over someone who likes to play online poker but is lazier than you by signing up for free poker training from CardRunners.
Keeping with the 6-max NLHE, today we turn to Peter Jennings, aka “Marshall28” … a low-stakes 6-max NLHE specialist who advises CardRunners students on $.50/$1 play online — instruction that seems particularly well-suited for slightly short-handed $1/$2 and $2/$5 no-limit live game players.
It’s all about stack size and subsequent implied odds, working your opponent’s subconscious, and what small bets on the flop can do to set up bluffs on the river … dependent on scare cards, of course.
Because if that’s the game you’re looking to play, you better know when to pull the plug on a triple-barrel assault with nothing.
Today’s lesson brings us back to the 6-max cash tables that action junkies just love … with CardRunners mid-stakes 6-max NLHE instructor Joey Lawrence — the Aussie online poker pro “jcl”, not the ’80s pop star — talking through a hands with an eye for extracting the most value when players are deep, and how not to tie up too many chips in places you shouldn’t. All pretty critical if you really wanna see your bankroll, um … Blossom?
A note from 