In Part One [Pokerazzi 5-27-08] of my review of Daniel Negreanu’s new interactive poker training site PokerVT.com, I went over the first two sections of the site (“Negreanu’s Custom Course on Hold’em” and “Negreanu’s Hand Analysis”).
In Part Two, I’ll tackle the last two main sections (“Know the Math, Play Winning Poker,” and “Online Poker Instruction from Winning Online Pros”) as well as a few odds and ends also available on the site.

KNOW THE MATH, PLAY WINNING POKER

In this section, Daniel hands off to Professor Charley Swayne, an expert in Probability and Statistics specifically as they relate to poker.  The section has a Q&A section with Professor Swayne that is sure to grow as the site expands, but the bulk of the learning comes in Swayne’s teaching section called “Poker Math, Featuring Charlie Swayne.”

Getting Started with Poker Math

In Charlie’s introduction video, he clearly demonstrates that he is an experienced lecturer and knows the best way to impart knowledge in a lecture format.  His main mantra is that to eventually excel at implementing poker math into your overall strategy, you must learn one or a few concepts at a time, then apply them until they are an unconscious part of your poker arsenal.  He uses the example of military pilots being required to have engineering or similar degrees before they can become military pilots, because to truly excel at flying, you have to not only know how to fly the plane, but everything about how the plane works and functions – i.e. knowing that a check-raise with a big draw can be a very affective move can be even more powerful if you truly understand how you’re using the numbers to put pressure on your opponent in that situation.

He then goes through characteristics and traits of each of these types of players that we need to either learn to exploit, or learn to defend against.
Professor Swayne then goes on to teach how to use the PATL to apply to things like deception at the table, reading boards (or “Boardology”), and finally how to apply the PATL to “Position & Risk.”

Numbers

The next section is just what it says – numbers.  Swayne starts off with our basic probabilities on drawing hands, preflop win percentages, etc.  He uses a very helpful visual aid called “The Hand Pyramid” to demonstrate the frequency we receive certain combinations of hole cards and uses that to demonstrate how often we receive “playable” cards from each of the different categories – pairs, suited cards, unsuited and non-paired cards.

He eventually moves on to familiar concepts like pot odds, implied odds, and expected value.  I’ve learned about these concepts umpteen times before and am very familiar with them at this point in my learning curve, but Swayne’s use of visual aids and a truly unique method of delivery made this lesson a very compelling  brush up course for me.  I would assume that to users unfamiliar with these concepts, this would be a very effective way of disseminating this ultra-necessary information.

Relative Strength

In the last section of the “Poker Math, Featuring Charlie Swayne,” the Professor, introduces a concept that I am familiar with in practice, but have never actually seen it taught, particularly from a math-based perspective.  By the end of the lesson, Swayne does a really great job of demonstrating and making it simple for the user to truly understand that (in his words) “Certain types of hands change their patterns (of strength)… based on the number of opponents.” 
He goes on to show graphs of how certain hands’ strengths change as the number of opponents change.

Some of the graphs were extremely interesting, even for someone with my knowledge of the math side of poker (which I consider above average for someone with my same skill level and experience).  Graphs like the one below, that show the relative strength of non-suited aces as number of opponents increase piqued my interest particularly.  This is a concept I’ve been intrinsically aware of for a long time, but again, seeing it visually was a great reinforcement.  I can assume that this kind of tool would be infinitely more beneficial for someone who is completely unfamiliar with this concept.