The Official Red Chip Poker Podcast

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.

As poker players, our relationship with pocket aces can be intense. They are a beautiful sight, but we must wait so long for a glimpse. The moment becomes critical. Will our aces get cracked? Will this rare opportunity be squandered? There are a lot of "feels" to be had about pocket aces, and Dr. Tricia Cardner breaks down the science and psychology behind overcoming them. This is a mental game episode you won't want to miss.

Kat Martin has been grinding $1/$2 in Vegas for years, and shares many nuggets of hard-earned wisdom for any poker player looking to take on the sleepless city's live poker rooms. Making a living in a place bent on taking away your money is no easy task, but Martin has made it work by carving out his niche, and perhaps you can too, starting with his tips for doing Vegas as a visiting poker player.

What if everything you thought you knew about pot control was wrong? This week, Adam Jones explains why "pot control" is inherently flawed as a poker strategy concept. Through a series of hand history reviews, he'll show why attempts to keep the pot small through checking can be a big, exploitable leak, and what real profitable "pot control" would actually look like.