Hi, I’m Todd Melander, and I’m new here.  I’ve been a semi-successful live player in Minnesota, with all my positive results coming from a mix of innate game theory, instinct, intuition, getting reads, and a graduate background in statistics, really none of it from training, other than hand discussion with my friend Mike, who figures into my meeting Andrew Brokos.

You see, Mike is a big fan of Andrew and of twitter.  Mike was back in Minnesota during the 2017 WSOP while I was out in Vegas playing the new Marathon event.  I’d arrived a little late to the table, didn’t recognize anybody, and was playing for about an hour or two when Mike texted me: “If Andrew Brokos is at your table, he just insulted you.”

I had no idea what he was talking about or what Andrew Brokos looked like (I’d listened to a number of Thinking Poker podcasts, so I knew of him).  Mike explained, “He just tweeted that the only good/decent player at his table just got moved.”  Mike was trying to be funny, because there were about a hundred tables.

But the thing was, the guy I considered to be the best at *my* table had just gotten moved, so I decided to investigate.  I looked around, and the only possible candidate for Andrew Brokos at my table was two to my left.  I asked him his name, and sure enough, he said it was Andrew.  Andrew Brokos?  Yes.  “My friend said you just insulted me.”

I think it threw Andrew for a loop for a moment, but it was all fun, and I explained the sequence of tweets/texts.  Andrew subsequently tweeted something to the effect of needing to be more careful and laughing about it.  He was a good sport and unnecessarily apologetic.

Still, that might have been the first clue I needed help, though I still think Andrew might have stereotyping (generously) middle-aged me more than he was analyzing my play.  If Andrew’s prior for me is “bad player” it’s going to take a while for the posterior distribution to display as “good player.”  And nothing about my play that day said “good player.”  My cards were bad, I wasn’t playing much, and when I opened with the medium cards, I was played back at strongly, making me seem the weak player when I folded.  Or at least that was my take.  I’d dipped my toe to test the water and found it hot.  Hmm…Andrew might have been right.

So I went on to have a bad 7-10 days at WSOP, flew home and proceeded to win a bigger tournament that next weekend and go on to have a nice year.  But as my buddy Mike tells me, I’m a reasonably good player because of “street smarts,” not book smarts, and I realized as I was having a good year that so much of my good fortune was one play in a tournament where I would make a really bad decision and in that instant, I’d hit the gin card.  This happened enough times (though maybe just once a tourney max) where I realized that my really good year would have been the same old decent year if I’d hit that card on that poorly played hand at an average rate instead of at a super-lucky rate.

So it may seem weird timing to have the aha moment in the midst of a good run, but I knew that if I really wanted to get to the level I’d always thought I was at, I would need to start educating myself in poker.  I just couldn’t do it until the good run slowed down, which I determined to be February in Vegas when mistakes I made on two consecutive cash bubble tables in bigger tournaments (about 1500 entries total over both), led to cashing in neither (97th paying 90, 72nd paying 63), followed by another table-bubble in the Iowa MSPT in March.  My luck turned normal, and I knew it was time to learn how to play this game at another level.

My hope is to have enough newly ingrained before I play a $15k package in June between wsop and mspt.  I also am hoping to play the main event and even set up a campaign to raise backing on YouStake (not going so hot).  I am learning a lot and thinking better than I have, which I’m hopeful will start showing itself in Las Vegas.  I’m only a few weeks into this all and have found most to helpful.

So that’s my introduction.  My twitter is @tmelanderpoker if someone wants to get a beer in Vegas.  I’ll be there starting June 4.