May Update: Solver School, WSOP, and Puppies

I’m back with a new post today…finally!

The past few times I have written updates, I have said — both publicly and to myself — that I will start posting more frequently again. And then inevitably, life seems to get in the way, and the next one doesn’t happen for a few months.

I’ve had this particular one on my to-do list since March. Unfortunately, I’ve pushed it back a number of times for other priorities.

But this week, I’m finally getting around to writing. My most recent post was a quick launch announcement for Solver School, so it’s really been about 7 months since the last time I shared a more complete update. Just as with that one, I thought I’d share what I’ve been up to across all things poker, business, and life.



Solver School

The majority of my time for the first few months of the year has been spent creating Solver School.

Way back in October, I decided to leave my full-time job leading marketing analytics for a major Fortune 500 company. I touched on this in that October post, but I was getting burned out with the work and didn’t feel the same passion that I used to. I was comfortable, but things felt stagnant. I needed a new challenge.

Starting a business was always a bucket-list item for me. My largest hurdle was that I never knew what its focus should be. In 2018, I started to explore going off on my own as a marketing analytics consultant. After spending a month building out some of the infrastructure to do so, I started having some doubts. As it turned out, I felt massively uncomfortable selling to people. I’m sure there’s a bunch to unpack there, but I don’t think I had the grit at that time to sell myself to potential clients. When I started being recruited by my last company, I took that as an off-ramp and went with the safer, more comfortable route of a full-time salary.

Solver School was an idea that came to me in early 2021. After launching this site in 2020, I began to acquire and work with a number of coaching clients — mostly helping them with their solver-related poker study. From all of those sessions, it became abundantly clear to me that most people had developed some misconceptions about how solvers work. Many of my clients are excellent poker players who think very deeply about the game, but almost all of them had some bad habits that they developed from watching videos on various training sites.

Almost all of the training sites had videos leveraging solvers to demonstrate concepts. However, the information within those videos happened to be inconsistent and varied from site-to-site, or even coach-to-coach. To amplify the confusion, the overwhelming majority of those videos focused on teaching poker strategy using solvers as a tool — not on teaching people how to actually use the tools.

With the barrier to entry of using solvers becoming lower by the day, more poker players had started to purchase the tools and use them within their own study. I realized that there was an opportunity to provide the community with more accurate information. Instead of trying to piece together solver tactics from a bunch of poker strategy videos, my goal was to create a comprehensive course to teach people how to use the technology to test and develop their own strategies.

I started working on Solver School in mid-November and quickly realized that the project was much bigger than I had anticipated. My original estimate of launching in 4 weeks stretched out as I outlined the course, built out its modules, figured out a content management system, and developed a launch plan.

In January, I finally launched the first 5 modules — the base concepts that I believed were necessary to understand before jumping into solvers — at an Early Access price point.

And over the next few months, I continued to build out the course:

I’m happy to say that after all that work, I now have a completed course. The Solver Masterclass was designed specifically to teach anyone to use solvers properly within their own poker study. The course is organized sequentially, with each module building on the ones before it.

I’m extremely proud of what I’ve created. I’m confident that this is the most comprehensive, thorough, and advanced course about how to use solvers and include them into your own poker study. The course currently has over 100 videos and 30 hours worth of content covering the most important topics you need to understand to effectively use solvers. You aren’t going to find this content organized and taught as effectively anywhere else. And with plans to continue creating content, the value will only increase over time.

As I mentioned above, this post has been on my to-do list for a while. My original goal was to publish this before I moved out of the Early Access pricing phase. Unfortunately, I did not make that deadline and I’ve since moved the course to its regular price point of $999. However since that delay was on me, I’d like to open up a special pricing offer for readers of this site. Through the end of May, you can get the course for the Early Access pricing of $799 using the coupon code EARLYMAY.

If you have any questions about the course, feel free to reach out. I’m happy to answer them or connect you with some of the early adopters who have purchased it to get their direct feedback.



Poker

To be honest, it’s been a bit of an up-and-down start to the year with my poker play. For starters, I’m not playing the volume that I was last year. And when I do play, it’s in inconsistent bursts. After the WSOP in October, I tried shifting back into cash but struggled to maintain a consistent study and play routine. Part of that was because I was so busy with Solver School. But my constant struggle with motivation has spilled over into my poker study and play.

Results have been inconsistent. The year started off great. I won a Sunday Special tourney in February on PokerStars, I was running well in online cash, and I booked some big wins in a few live sessions. After I returned from a great trip to Vegas, I started going on a downswing.

While I’ve been on downswings before, this one was incredibly frustrating. I don’t play that much. I play anywhere from 0-15 hours per week. But sometimes, I can go 7-10 days without playing a session because other priorities pop up. When I do play, I usually play 2-4 cash tables or 4-6 tournaments. So a downswing can last a while from a calendar perspective.

A good portion of the downswing came on the newly launched WSOP Michigan site, which made it even more frustrating. The site should theoretically be right in my wheelhouse. WSOP doesn’t allow for HUDs, so the gameplay will mimic a live environment more so than PokerStars or BetMGM will. I’m sure I made errors that cost me EV, but I was also dealt a lot of coolers and 2nd best hands, and that made April a pretty lousy month.

While I haven’t increased the volume significantly in May, it at least feels like the worst of that might be behind me. This month has been shaping up to be decently profitable. I’ve slowed down my cash play and ramped up my MTT volume to prepare for my WSOP trip in June.

After the WSOP, I haven’t yet decided how I plan to focus my own study. I’ve been wrestling with the idea of learning PLO because the games here in Detroit are really good. I am interested to explore tournaments a bit more. The idea of binking a large score is more appealing than slowly grinding out smaller wins at the cash tables. I plan to table that decision until after the WSOP.



Professional Life

After I decided quit my job in October, I didn’t have a clear idea how to adjust my cash flow finances. While I believed in what I was building in Solver School, I didn’t expect it to fully replace my executive salary anytime soon, if at all. We’re lucky to have enough in savings to give us some financial leeway, so I planned to give the project 6 months and reevaluate from there.

Around that time, I came across a tweet from Andrew Seidman. He was looking to hire someone with experience in account-based marketing and marketing measurement — basically exactly what I have done the past 10 years.

If the name above doesn’t ring a bell, you might also know him under his poker alias, Baluga Whale. Andrew had written an excellent book, Easy Game, that I had read a number of years ago. My first thought when seeing the Tweet was that I had no idea Baluga Whale was in the marketing space. Since I was recently unemployed, I decided to reach out. After all, a networking conversation couldn’t hurt. And if the marketing talk didn’t work out, it’d be cool to chat with him about poker.

As it turned out, Andrew was very much so in the marketing space. He co-founded a company called Digital Reach Agency with a couple friends 10 years ago and has grown it to ~40 employees. We began talking about ways in which we could work with one another and carved out a role for me in the organization. I started working with the team at DRA in December and have now been supporting them on a part-time basis for the past 5 months.

My time working with Andrew and the rest of the team has been great. For starters, it has eased all of the cash flow concerns I started having towards the end of 2021 by giving me a steady income source. I’m also only working 2 or 2.5 days per week, so I still have a lot of flexibility to devote uninterrupted time towards Solver School and my own poker development.

In addition, the work has been interesting. I forgot how much I preferred being on the agency side instead of the client side. Things move more quickly, and I’m more often in problem solving mode than in a specific execution routine. That mix keeps me much more engaged in the work — something I haven’t had in a few years since the last time I was in a consultancy.

Finally, the people have been awesome. I recently returned home from a 3-day company retreat in Miami that I was invited to join and was able to meet most of the team in person. It was a bit weird being the old guy at a company — at 40 years old, I think I’m the 3rd oldest person that works there. But after I got over that, it was really fun spending time in-person with a bunch of good people that I had only previously talked to via Zoom.

Stumbling into this opportunity has been a great stroke of luck. I get to spend some of my time doing the things that I liked in the marketing space, providing me with some additional revenue. That eliminated any of the initial growth pressure for Solver School that I may have had and let me grow the business at a more organic pace.



life in ann arbor

I’m coming up on 2 years now living in Ann Arbor, and I have to say that it’s been a wonderful place to live. The funny thing is that my 10 year old self would have been so pumped if he knew that he’d end up in Ann Arbor when he was 40. For as long as I can remember, I was a big Michigan sports fan.

Growing up in northern New Jersey, there are a ton of professional sports teams to follow. But we didn’t really have a local college sports program that was widely supported. Rutgers was the closest major program. It’s certainly in a better position now in the Big 10, but in the 80s and 90s, there weren’t a lot of kids growing up rooting for their sports teams. Several groups ended up rooting for Notre Dame, Penn State, or Michigan.

I was in the Michigan crew. I liked the colors, but the helmets were the coolest thing ever when I was young. I’m not sure if I could tell you much about the Michigan teams before the Desmond Howard era, but I liked their uniforms a ton. Then the Fab Five and Desmond Howard happened. I was 10 years old and completely won over for the rest of my life. I became obsessed with Michigan football and basketball. While I’m not nearly as devoted of a fan as I was in my teenage years, I’ve continued to root for the teams. So it’s been nice to be able to go to some football, basketball, and hockey games in person.

Besides the local sports, it’s really all I could want in a community. I live on the outskirts of town on 3 acres of land in a nice community with some good neighbors. My 10-minute drive in the morning to drop my kids off at school has one 4-way intersection with a blinking red light and no other traffic signals. But I’m a 15-minute drive to get downtown to a ton of restaurants, bars, and the rest of the things you’d expect within a major university town. And I’m a 35-minute drive to get to Detroit and several casinos with poker rooms.

yellow lab puppy on bed

I spend 95% of my time at my house, so it’s a good thing I like my neighborhood! Working from home has been the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I’m not sure if I’d like it so much if I were in my 20’s, but at my current point, it’s amazing. I spend so much time with my kids. My girls are 6 1/2 and 4 1/2 now, and they are so much fun to hang out with. We try to limit our TV time as much as we can, so there’s a lot of exploring outside and building forts in the basement.

About a week ago, we brought home a little yellow lab. His name is Maize — given that we’re big University of Michigan fans and their colors are maize and blue, the name felt like a good fit. Maize is now 9-weeks old now and has been spending this first week getting to know me, Caroline, and the girls. I’ve developed a pretty good bond with him already. He really likes chasing down the basketball as I shoot around in the driveway. While the puppy phase is exhausting for sure, we’re so happy to have him in our family.



WSOP Plans

As I mentioned above, I’m heading back to the WSOP this year. In my last long post in October, I had mentioned that the 2021 series was my first one. I was so excited to play. Up until that point, I had only played 4 live tournaments in my life. I played in 2 in the Maryland/DC area before COVID in 2020 and 2 in Detroit last year — and I bricked them all.

While I have played poker since the early 2000’s, I don’t have much tournament experience. I played in a few home-game tournaments in the 2004-2005 timeframe with ~30 entrants on a monthly basis, but I mostly stuck to playing cash. When playing online, I just ended up gravitating towards the cash tables and never really played the MTTs.

In 2020, I decided to learn start learning tournaments. While I love playing cash, I don’t have a ton of time to play and can’t put in the volume. So unless I move up to much higher stakes or get into far better games, my upside is never that high. Tournaments somewhat alleviate this. While my overall EV might be lower in a tournament setting (honestly, I have no idea if that statement is true or not, but I’m starting with that premise), the upside of binking something for a big score would be so much more impactful than a great night at the $5/$10 tables where I win 3+ buy-ins.

I prepared rigorously for the WSOP last year and entered 5 tournaments — 4 bracelet events and 1 at the Wynn. And I bricked them all.

I know, I know. 5 tournaments is an incredibly small sample size. The best MTT players in the world have 5 tournament brick streaks all the time. But I was demoralized. I don’t know how you tournament guys do it.

Anyways, I finally did get my first tournament cash a few weeks ago. After going 0 for my first 9 live tournaments, I finished 37th out of 1370 entrants at the $313K guaranteed event at the Motor City Casino here in Detroit. It was good for just over $2100 — a far cry from the $114K up top. While I was gutted getting knocked out after running deep, it was good to get that experience under my belt…and to finally get a Hendon Mob page!

I head out to Vegas on June 10 and will be playing in the $1500 Monster Stack for sure. The rest of my schedule is a bit TBD at this point. I plan to play at least one other tournament, but I’m going to keep it a bit more unstructured than I did last year. Basically, I want to put less pressure on myself, have a great time, and hopefully make a deep run in one of these events. I’m still prepping — I’m just not worrying about trying to learn everything like I think I did last year. Instead, I’m going to keep working on parts of my game and hope that I can translate that into good decisions at the table come June.



Conclusion

As always, these posts get a bit long. I don’t plan on writing long-form posts every time I sit down, but there’s a lot to share and I tend to be wordy sometimes.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how I should differentiate this site from my work at Solver School — if at all. While I may double post something on both sites from time-to-time, there will be some separation. On this site, I mostly want to share updates about my own poker playing journey, provide a look into some of the data explorations I’m doing on my own, along with some miscellaneous personal blog topics. As such, some of the poker products that I sell here will move to the Solver School site this summer. I’ll also make sure to send an announcement when that happens.

In the meantime, I’ll reiterate the special pricing offer on The Solver Masterclass. By using the code EARLYMAY, you can get $200 off the regular price of $999. The code will be good through the end of May, so don’t delay in taking advantage of this deal!

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If you have any questions, comments, or want to discuss anything, please feel free to reach out to me on any of those channels or email me here. Thanks for reading.

-Lukich

WritingMichael LukichReflectionsComment