The Official Red Chip Poker Podcast

What you put in your body has a direct correlation to whether you play your A game or your C game. We all know how valuable that difference is. Paul Salter, a nutrition coach to athletes, bodybuilders and poker players, breaks down the small steps we can take to make big long-term changes in our lives and games. A poker player himself, Salter gives tons of advice for optimizing your nutrition and getting a biological edge over less healthy competition.

Pro/coach contributor Fausto Valdez has a keen sense of when and how to make adjustments in any poker environment. We talk to him about his successful tournament grind at this year's WSOP, his return to crushing cash games and coaching up-and-coming poker pros. Plus, listen in as Fausto walks through a hand he played with host Zac Shaw at this year's Red Chip Poker meetup in Las Vegas.

This week's podcast features a hand history breakdown provided by Adam Jones. Lots of strategy concepts are discussed, primarily around planning your bet sizing across three streets. The hand was originally submitted to the Red Chip Poker forum by one of our members, generated considerable discussion, and eventually found its way into our much-acclaimed CORE study program as a Level III lesson. For $5/week, CORE provides all the tools you need in structured lessons to help you analyze your own hands, and to take your game to the next level.

Andreas “Rayo” Kniep provided the Red Chip Poker community with a sweat in this year's WSOP Main Event, running deep into Day 5 and a 173rd place finish. Rayo, a student of RCP coach Luke Haward, has been playing poker for less than two years. His introduction to poker came when his marathon-running hobby was interrupted by a hip injury. Rayo reveals how that starting point eventually saw him at the TV table in the Rio.

This week, host Zac Shaw talks about the biggest pot he ever played at $1/$2, and in the process details over a dozen ideas you can use to analyze your own big hands. Rather than focus on breaking down his strategic decisions, Zac invites you to analyze the hand along with him, and encourages you to try many different methods to better learn from your big hands, win or lose.

This week, Greg Vail, our resident split pot specialist, joins us to answer your questions from the forum about Big O and O8. He's celebrating the release of his new book, Scoop! Big O and PLO8: Winning High Low Concepts for the Hold'Em Mind. Written by Vail and edited by Doug Hull, you'll be the smartest person at your split pot table upon digesting its contents. Heck, you'll probably be the smartest split pot player at your table after listening to this podcast!

Author, consultant and poker player Eileen Sutton has been getting deeper and deeper into the grind, taking on star coach Tommy Angelo and distilling his wisdom down to a strategy to win in the underground NYC poker scene. We take you into her world and mindset on this week's wide-ranging podcast interview.

How do you beat a player that's much better than you? The answer is: Run good. But seriously, there are some winning strategies to taking on tough opponents, and one of the toughest is James 'SplitSuit' Sweeney, who joins us to talk about how you can beat players like... well, like him. Since host Zac Shaw is about to head out and play with Sweeney and the other coaches at the 4th Annual Vegas meetup, he needs all the help he can get in this department. The duo signs off with news on the future of the podcast and discusses the PRO and CORE membership as Red Chip Poker heads into its 5th year of helping poker players of all walks of life improve their games and their lives.

Where does your profit come from in poker? This week, Ed Miller explains why most players get the answer to this question wrong. And don't worry, he shares the right answers too. This episode will get you out of your comfort zone and into the strategic concepts that are actually responsible for you taking money off the table in the long-term.

You hear the pros talking about "balancing your range" all the time, but what exactly does that mean in practice? In this episode, coach and cash game grinder Fausto Valdez shares his secrets for thinking about your range and the ranges of your opponents. How do we become less exploitable, while exploiting others at the same time? Valdez walks host Zac Shaw through a $1/$2 hand he played to dissect each decision and coach recreational players to think more like a pro when it comes to ranges.