Rolled On The River

As you may have seen, Jason Ho is all over the popular poker forums, this is because former students have made allegations against him:

The overall feeling is that Jason owes his students a full refund, but also that StoxPoker.com should share in part of the blame because their coach quality control measures weren’t stringent enough in weeding out someone of this nature, and students were basing many of their financial decisions regarding coaching and staking based of the reputation StoxPoker gave Ho.

When confronted with these allegations in the StoxPoker.com private forums, Jason dodged the issues, made veiled threats and tried to organise a prop bet to combat the claims about his winrate, even though that was the least of anyone’s problems. I never had to deal with the guy personally, but being Stox’s productions manager, Skelm did.

It’s just a shame to see what happens when someone has the power of influence over many, and abuses their trust. Whether or not every detail of every allegation is true, the common theme is that Jason Ho is not, and was never the million dollar winning high stakes pro that was only out to help people improve their game through his charitable nature. StoxPoker’s damage control measures are to refund a portion of coaching to each of the people who have been burned by Jason. How many people come forward, and how they will determine who has a legitimate claim and deserves a refund I’m sure we’ll find out soon.

Original Stoxpoker.com thread – http://www.stoxpoker.com/forums/showthread.php?t=29205

TwoPlusTwo thread – http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/101/coaching-advice/where-did-jason-ho-thread-get-moved-695466/

One of the many programs I’ve been focusing writing on for the book is StoxEV, this little beast is a really in-depth EV calculation tool. You create a hand in flowchart format, giving each player specific hole cards or ranges, and then you can throw some actions in, add a bunch of conditions, set parameters for flops, and weight decisions. You can basically make a tree that represents something that did happen and fuck with it to find more profitable lines, or you can create a big tree full of ‘what if’s’ and build scenarios.

This is true EV, risk vs. reward with all the facts, and all the assumptions. Blinds, site rake, caps, antes, tournament structures are all catered for, including ICM conversions. You can use the program to make unexploitable shoves, create ranges with only +EV hands for situations, or use the powerful math engine to get results accurate enough to hang on your wall.

I’m glad I had to research, play, and try to break this program for the book, it’s taught me a lot, and I hope what I’ve written about it will do it justice.

You can grab it from http://www.stoxev.com

One problem I had until recently was checking the Hold’em Manager sessions tab and/or FullTilt cashier when playing to see how a session was going.

I noticed that simply telling myself I wasn’t going to click either of these wasn’t enough – I needed something more drastic. The end result of this was an AHK script that will close the cashier if it’s opened and minimize Hold’em Manager if I try to look at it (if you use the AHK script remember to start auto-importing before you open it).

I’ve included the AHK script below for those who would like a copy. I’m in the process of writing an article on how to use and write your own AHK scripts so although some of you may not yet be sure what to do with it, I will be putting instructions up in the coming week.

#Persistent
#SingleInstance

SetTimer, NoCashierOrHEM, 300
return

NoCashierOrHEM:
IfWinExist , Cashier
WinClose , Cashier
IfWinExist , Hold’em + Omaha Manager
WinMinimize , Hold’em + Omaha Manager
return

As you may or may not have noticed my blog has been merged with Skelm’s, the reasoning is twofold, firstly, we want to create a fun and engaging blog that combines his technical expertise and my overwhelming bullshittery. Secondly, we have a little announcement:

We’re writing a book.

Around the time Dusty Schmidt was finishing up writing ‘Treat your poker like a business’, he contacted Skelm to see if he could write an article for the book relating to Rakeback and Affiliate deals, upon completion, the cogs started turning in Skelm’s entrepreneurial little skull. People didn’t know much about rakeback, it takes a long time for everyone to learn about affiliate deals and VIP schemes. Coaching site and staking knowledge doesn’t come instantly, you don’t just pick that sort of information up from a book… yet. Professional Poker – Away from the table, the concept was born, a book about everything ELSE, no strategy, no tips and tricks for taking down a pot, a book about the community, the resources available, the tracking software, HUD’s, scripts and the like.

He sat with me in KFC as we were discussing prospects for writing something that would be worth reading, we know a guy who has just self-published a book, through Skelm’s position with StoxPoker we know coaches for all stakes and game types, designers, programmers, software authors, representatives for various sites and products, the foundation was there all along, waiting for us to take the initiative. In addition to this Skelm has also worked for Hold’em Manager Support helping him have a grasp of the areas people struggle to learn early on.

We aren’t known for squandering opportunities, and this one came begging, small enough to turn over in a few months, large enough to destroy anything that could resemble a social life, but important enough to cause a sick feeling in the stomach at the thought of letting it pass by waiting for someone else to pick it up. Within a couple of weeks the idea picked up momentum and we presented it to Dusty who agreed that it needed to be done, and we were the right guys to do it. A day later we were on a call with Scott Brown of Imagine Publishing creating a work schedule and debating the terms of a contract.

It’s been a little over a month since that fateful Toasted Sweet Chilli Twister Combo meal (Pepsi Max, I’m on a diet, thanks), and we’re getting stuck into the meat of it, we’ve invited a few specialist guest authors to write articles about their forte, but kept the bulk of the content for ourselves. The table of contents list has changed twice, and we’re having new ideas for articles every day, so it’s hard to pinpoint an exact release date (however it will be in the next few months), but we’re well on our way with most of the people we needed to contact having responded positively. We’ve got at least 15 people contributing or assisting with the project in their various fields, and clocked well over 10,000 words of writing so far.

In addition to all of this my handle has been changed from padawan to Dutchin to represent my symbolic coming of age in the wide world of poker, though I’m still a fledgling apprentice, I hope I can step up and be worth my weight in information for this monster of a project. Watch this space!

Dutchin.