The Upswing Lab stands as the main course on the Upswing menu. The Lab offers hundreds of hours of courses on No-Limit Hold’em, from beginning strategy to advanced, solver-based techniques.

Upswing Poker also offers standalone courses on Pot-Limit Omaha, heads-up poker, mixed games, Short Deck Poker, and multi-table tournaments. The training site truly offers everything a player could need to find success at the poker table.

In this article, we’ll be taking a closer look at the 15 coaches on Upswing’s roster, the standalone courses and course modules they instruct, and the poker skills they’ll help you master.

Doug Polk

Study focus: No-Limit Hold’em, Heads-Up No-Limit Hold’em, mental approach and mindset

Upswing Lab Modules: Most of the 29 modules included in the Lab Core Strategy section of the Upswing Lab. Topics include: Ranges, Raise First In (RFI), RFI vs. 3-Bet, Playing vs. a Raise First In, The Value of Position, Micro Stakes Bankroll Building, Lab Member Online Cash Review, and several others.

Standalone courses: Advanced Heads-Up Mastery

One of the co-founders of Upswing Poker, Doug Polk established a reputation as one of the world’s best No-Limit Hold’em players before announcing his retirement from the game in 2019. Polk and fellow Upswing co-founder Ryan Fee launched their poker training site in 2016, and since then Upswing Poker has grown into one of the most comprehensive collections of training materials in the world of poker. The Lab Core Strategy section offers hours of video training courses from Polk himself.

READ MORE: Our review of Upswing Poker’s Advanced Heads-Up Mastery

Ryan Fee

Study Focus: No-Limit Hold’em cash games, database management

Upswing Lab Modules: Ryan Fee and Doug Polk are your guides through the Lab Core Strategy portion of the Upswing Poker Lab. This section contains 29 different modules, designed to build a solid fundamental No-Limit Hold’em strategy from the ground up.

Fee, a cash-game specialist, also appears in several courses from Beyond Core Strategy, the advanced courses from the Upswing Lab. Fee’s modules in the Beyond Core Strategy section include Mastering Database Software, which is a must-watch for online players.

READ MORE: Our review of the Upswing Poker Lab

Fried Meulders

Study Focus: 6-max NLHE online cash games, advanced solver-based poker strategies

Upswing Lab Modules: Graduating to the Beyond Core Strategy section of the Lab introduces you to online cash-game specialist Fried Meulders. Known as “mynameiskarl” on PokerStars, Meulders has a well-forged reputation as one of the best regulars in the PokerStars Zoom 500NL pool.

Those games are some of the world’s toughest, and the training materials produced by Meulders break down the solver-based approach that’s put him in the top echelon of cash game players. Modules include Intro to Solver-Based Strategy, Advanced Pre-flop Strategy, Single Raised Pots Button vs. Big Blind, Single Raised Pots Blind vs. Blind, and four different modules covering 3-Betting strategy.

Upswing Poker could easily offer any of Meulder’s modules as standalone courses, and they’d be well worth the price. An Upswing Lab subscription is all it takes, however, to access eight modules and more than 60 Play & Explains from Meulders.

Nick Petrangelo

Study Focus: Multi-table tournaments

Standalone courses: Winning Poker Tournaments

Watch any high-stakes poker tournament show from the modern era and you’ll see Nick Petrangelo as a ubiquitous presence. Petrangelo’s live tournament earnings stand at $17.5 million as of August 2020, and that’s not counting his equally impressive online tournament resume.

Petrangelo’s standalone course, Winning Poker Tournaments, offers advanced training for players looking to achieve success in the realm of poker tournaments. Petrangelo teaches you how to use solvers and apply the outputs to build a winning tournament strategy.

Winning Poker Tournaments also comes with pre-flop range charts for six different stack sizes and multiple different strategies.

READ MORE: Our review of Upswing Poker’s Winning Poker Tournaments

Mike “Piano Mike” Finstein

Study Focus: Live No-Limit Hold’em Cash Games

Upswing Lab Modules: Mike “Piano Mike” Finstein offers content geared specifically to live poker cash games. The Live Poker section of the Upswing Lab features five modules by Finstein.

Ryan Fee joins Finstein for modules like The Upswing Poker Live Approach, A Deep Dive Into Live Dynamics, and Bayesian Adjustments Live. Members of the Upswing Poker Engage group on Facebook frequently reference Finstein’s modules as some of the most popular in the Upswing Lab.

Alex Millar

Study Focus: 6-max NLHE online cash games, advanced solver-based poker strategies

Standalone courses: Advanced Cash Game Strategy

Alex “Kanu7” Millar shows a profit of more than $4.5 million in tracked high-stakes cash games on PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker. Millar’s Advanced Cash Game Strategy course aims to lift your cash game strategy to the next level, using the same techniques Millar used before retiring from the high-stakes scene.

Millar covers topics like GTO vs. Exploitative Strategies, How Hard Should You Exploit?, Theory of Betting, and Frequencies & Sizings in his can’t-miss standalone course.

Image credit: Jayne Furman for PokerNews

Jason McConnon

Study Focus: 6-max NLHE online cash games, advanced solver-based poker strategies

Upswing Lab Modules: Single Raised Pots OOP (out-of-position), Check-Raising From The Big Blind, Probe and vs. Delayed C-Bet On the Turn

One of the online cash game specialists on the Upswing coaching team, Jason McConnon crushes the games at stakes up to $100/$200. McConnon’s modules are based on his extensive experience with solvers, and his detailed insights into his own study habits and thought process are a must for players who want to take their game to the next level.

McConnon specializes in breaking down common but complex spots, including big blind check-raising strategy.

Daniel Merrilees

Study Focus: 6-max NLHE online cash games, advanced solver-based poker strategies

Upswing Lab Modules: Reintroduction to Multi-way Pots, Raising on the River

Daniel “DANMERRRR” Merrilees is yet another online cash-game specialist, and Upswing Lab members get access to the mind of this highly successful mid- and high-stakes player.

Merrilees’ debut module for the Lab, titled Reintroduction to Multi-way Pots, takes a deep look at a button vs. small blind vs. big blind spot, using detailed analysis derived from Monker Solver outputs.

Image credit: Alin Ivanov for PokerNews

Moritz “Mo” Dietrich

Study Focus: Multi-table tournaments

Upswing Lab Modules: MTT Advanced Pre-flop Guide, Betting on the Flop, Probing from the Big Blind, Check-Calling on the River Out of Position, Check-Raising Flops as the Pre-flop Raiser, How ICM Impacts Your Flop Strategy.

Moritz “Mo” Dietrich joined the Upswing Team in 2018, bringing with him a multi-table tournament resume that includes more than $2 million in cashes.

The addition of Dietrich allowed the Upswing Lab to update the Multi-Table Tournaments section with six new modules, with Dietrich breaking down his tournament strategies over hours of content.

Daniel McAulay

Study Focus: Heads-Up No-Limit Hold’em, 6-max NLHE online cash games, multi-table tournaments

Upswing Lab Modules: Heads-Up 101

Much like Upswing founder Doug Polk, Daniel “dougiedan678” McAulay represents the rare kind of poker player that seems to be good at every format.

McAulay grinded out a well-earned name as one of the world’s best heads-up players throughout the 2010s. McAulay’s heads-up prowess is so impressive that he was called on to take on artificial intelligence supercomputer Libratus in a 2017 humans vs. AI heads-up poker challenge.

McAulay has recently taken to studying and playing six-max cash games a multi-table tournaments as well.

David Yan

Study Focus: 6-max NLHE online cash games

Upswing Lab Modules: The Art of Simplification

The Upswing Lab’s newest coach debuted with a module titled “The Art of Simplification”. The material in Yan’s first Upswing module focuses on taking complex solver-based concepts and refining them into simplified strategies.

The resulting strategies present a simple yet effective way to approach cash game poker in 2020. Yan is a PokerStars Zoom 500NL winner, and brings that resume to the table for Upswing Lab members.

Dylan Weisman

Study Focus: Pot-Limit Omaha, mental approach, and mindset

Standalone courses: Advanced PLO Mastery

Upswing Poker extensive strategy materials include extensive coverage of games outside of No-Limit Hold’em. Dylan “iheartco0kie” Weisman teaches as one of two Pot-Limit Omaha experts heading up the Advanced PLO Mastery standalone course.

Weisman’s materials include not only in-game strategy, but also a multitude of lessons on healthy mindset and mental approach needed to play poker at the highest level.

READ MORE: Our review of Upswing Poker’s Advanced PLO Mastery

Chris Wehner

Study Focus: Pot-Limit Omaha

Standalone courses: Advanced PLO Mastery

Chris “bluffmast” Wehner joins Dylan Weisman as one of the masterminds behind the Advanced PLO Mastery standalone course. Wehner’s study approach comes from his firm status as a cash-game grinder.

Wehner started on the bottom rung on the stakes ladder, but in his career has climbed from $0.01/$0.02 all the way up to his current stakes of $10/$20 and $20/50.

Jake Abdalla

Study Focus: Mixed Games

Standalone courses: Mixed Games Mastery

Jake ““JLlama” Abdalla presents two things on his official Upswing page that pretty much say it all about his poker acumen. One is a PokerStars graph displaying more than $1.4 million in high-stakes cash game earnings. The other is an account of playing Phil Ivey heads-up, and winning.

Abdalla takes his place among the Upswing coaches as the teacher behind the Mixed Games Mastery standalone course. His course prepares you for success at the highest of stakes in the world of mixed games.

READ MORE: Our review of Upswing Poker’s Mixed Games Mastery

Kane Kalas

Study Focus: Short Deck Hold’em

Standalone courses: Master Short Deck Hold’em

Kane Kalas’ Short Deck course offers the opportunity to learn poker’s newest popular game variant from one of the best.

Kalas’ standalone course breaks down nine-handed, six-max, and heads-up Short Deck strategy, with a focus on the unique ante-based betting structure used in many Short Deck games.

READ MORE: Our review of Upswing Poker’s Master Short Deck Hold’em

I was intrigued about the game from the first moment I saw it. It definitely looks much more action-packed than traditional NLHE. Hand equities definitely run much closer and the blind/ante structure is such that it makes it possible to play many more hands from different positions. In other words: ACTION!

All of this is theory, though. Up until now, there’s been no solid course on Short Deck that would actually explain what this all means in terms of actual hands you should and shouldn’t be playing and what those equities really look like.

So, when Upswing’s Master Short Deck Hold’em was launched I was really keen to watch it. Presented by Kane Kalas, one of the regulars in those aforementioned Triton Poker high stakes games, there was no doubt in my mind this course would offer answers to many of the questions I had about the game. I’m happy to say I wasn’t disappointed.

Upswing Poker’s Master Short Deck Hold’em: Course Structure

The course contains over 27 hours of viewing material and is divided into several main groups, namely:

• Fundamentals
• Pre-flop play
• Post-flop play
• Play & Explain

The way it’s been structured, the course can help even those completely new to Short Deck Hold’em. It starts with explaining the rules and goes on to build from there, tackling some pretty high level stuff by the end. There is really no stone left unturned as Kalas does his best to explain every important aspect of the game.

Upswing Poker’s Master Short Deck Hold’em: Fundamentals

In the Fundamentals section, as the name suggests, Kalas covers the game basics, including the rules. While the game plays a lot like No Limit Hold’em, there are some important differences. The first one is the fact that all the deuces, treys, fours, and fives are removed from play, leaving only 36 cards in the deck.

Because of these changes, there are also some adjustments to hand strengths. In Short Deck, at least in most variations played, a flush beats a full house, which influences the strategy a lot. The structure of the blinds is different as well, as everyone posts an ante and the button posts the double ante, so there is much more dead money in the pot and everyone’s getting much better odds before the flop.

The Fundamentals section isn’t too long, but it manages to explain all the important bits. Kalas touches upon some important concepts such as limping much more often (having a higher VPIP in general), utilizing overbets, and how to properly value hands such as open-ended straight draws.

Already in this section, the course was able to answer many of the questions I had about the game going in and some specific plays I’ve seen on live broadcasts but couldn’t quite understand. The way things are explained in a detailed and understandable manner really provides an excellent foundation to dive into the next section, which is a bit more technical.

Upswing Poker’s Master Short Deck Hold’em: Preflop Play

The first section after the introduction addresses the pre-flop play, which is a huge part of Short Deck, much more so than in (full deck) No Limit Hold’em. I was really interested in this part and how hand ranges are constructed given the fact that equities are so much closer across the board. Some of the interesting takeaways for me from this part were:

• Stealing isn’t nearly as profitable as the button gets much better price to defend
• Middle connected hands go up in value
• There are fewer true premium hands in the game
• Raise-folding with 50 antes isn’t a thing
• Pre-flop blockers matter much more

Kalas explains differences between two main variations of the game, i.e., when playing 50 antes deep vs. 100 antes deep. He also spends a lot of time explaining how having 50 antes in Short Deck is very different than having 50 big blinds in traditional Hold’em.

Although this makes a lot of sense when you think about it, he provides the reasoning behind it and really makes it easy to understand.

Raising vs. limping

One thing that I was really interested in was why there seems to be so much limping going on and not nearly as much raising. I was a bit shocked to hear that in Short Deck, you shouldn’t really be raising anything before the cutoff in a 6-max game. That’s definitely a huge difference from NL games.

Kalas goes on to explain why this is, and then it begins to make sense, but it’s definitely not something I would’ve been able to just stumble upon. Constructing your ranges in Short Deck is a process in which knowing standard No Limit Hold’em does help, but there are also many new factors to consider.

Heads Up Play

Although the course is focused on 6-max play, Kalas takes the time to also address heads-up play in several videos, which is a nice touch. In these videos, he covers the most important situations, explaining how to construct your raise and limp ranges when first in, what hands to defend with, what part of our range represents good 3-betting material, etc.

While heads up play isn’t a particular area of interest for me, these videos were still entertaining to watch and quite educational. Having at least a solid idea about your heads up ranges at different stack depths can be useful, even if only when you find yourself battling for a tournament win.

Upswing Poker’s Master Short Deck Hold’em: Post-flop Play

Although there is a lot of focus on the pre-flop segment of the game due to the blind structure, post-flop play is still important in Short Deck Poker. A lot of money will have gone into the pot by the flop, so there is a big focus on that particular segment of gameplay.

The way the post-flop section is crafted is quite intuitive as Kalas analyses different major group of hands, such as:

• Straights and sets
• Bottom sets and two pair hands
• Overpairs and top pair-top kicker type of hands
• Top/middle pair + a draw
• Bottom pair + an open-ended draw

Kalas goes on to explain these different types of hands in detail on various board structures and how to approach them correctly. There are many great examples in these videos where we’re presented with equities vs. various likely holdings by our opponents. These numbers and percentages are really helpful in understanding why some hands need to be played differently in Short Deck vs. No Limit Hold’em.

A fair amount of time in this section is devoted to playing nut flush draws, as these are very powerful hands in Short Deck since flushes even beat full houses. Kalas explains how to approach these types of hands depending on the board structure and also does a great job of explaining why our equity is often very high in these spots even though we have fewer outs to complete our flush.

Overall, this section definitely covers a lot of ground in terms of post-flop play. If you’ve been dabbling with Short Deck but are uncertain about how to play different hands like open-ended straight draws, flush draws, sets, etc., this course will shed a lot of light on the topic. It doesn’t just provide you with answers to your questions, but also with great, sound reasoning behind those answers.

Upswing Poker’s Master Short Deck Hold’em: River Play

The penultimate theoretical section of Upswing’s Master Short Deck Hold’em course deals with river play. I was somewhat surprised by the amount of material covering this particular topic, but Kalas once again quite simply did a great job of covering a wide spectrum of related topics. The section is divided into two main subdivisions:

• Playing as the aggressor (bluffing / value betting)
• Playing as the non-aggressor (bluff catching)

Across six videos, Kalas goes on to explain how to build your bluffing and value betting ranges when playing as the aggressor and how to find the best hands to bluff-catch with when facing aggression on the river.

There are some very interesting concepts discussed here, such as anti-blocking, i.e., holding cards that we’d expect our opponent to have in their folding or bluffing ranges. Although the river play may not be as important in Short Deck as it is in No Limit Hold’em, these lessons are still quite valuable and will help solidify your newly acquired Short Deck poker knowledge.

Upswing Poker’s Master Short Deck Hold’em: Adjustments

In the final section of Upswing’s Master Short Deck Hold’em course, Kalas moves away from all the GTO talk and actually discusses how we can adjust our play based on our opponents’ tendencies. This is one of the parts that I liked the most because it addresses what you’ll often encounter at real tables.

He identifies several major pre-flop and post-flop leaks that you’ll likely notice when playing Short Deck, such as players limping too much or too infrequently, those who have too many 3-bet folds in their range, failing to shove value hands, c-betting board textures that are good for c-betting in NLHE, etc.

This advice is very useful as you’ll be able to start implementing it straight away. If you’re playing in lower stakes and/or live Short Deck Hold’em games, you’ll likely be up against players who don’t have very good theoretical foundations. This means that they’ll be making a lot of mistakes that you can take advantage of.

Quantifying Stakes in Short Deck

The final video addresses the comparison between seemingly same stakes in Short Deck and NLHE or PLO. This one is quite interesting as well as it explains why Short Deck games in effect play much bigger. With everyone posting an ante before the flop and the button posting two antes, there is much more dead money in the pot. Thus, games play bigger and that’s why there is a big difference between having 100 antes in Short Deck versus having 100 big blinds in No Limit Hold’em.

Upswing Poker’s Master Short Deck Hold’em: Play & Explain

Like most Upswing Poker courses, this one concludes with an extensive Play & Explain section, where Kalas takes a great number of actual hands and goes through them. There are three main sections here, one analyzing the play of an Upswing member, another focusing on his own heads up play, and finally the one going through various live hands from Triton Poker cash games.

While all of these are very educational, the Triton Poker analysis section is definitely my favorite; after all, that’s what got me into the game in the first place. You’ll get a new look at many of the big pots you might have already seen on live stream broadcasts or YouTube. Kalas breaks down the action and plays from the likes of Paul Phua, Tom Dwan, Andrew Robl, Timofey “Trueteller” Kuznetsov, and others, providing a lot of useful insight.

So, How Good Is the Upswing Poker Short Deck Course?

As it’s currently the only existing course on Short Deck Hold’em, Upswing’s course is the best one by default. With that said, even if there were some competition, this one would likely be the best and most comprehensive course for those wanting to learn the game. Having the talented and eloquent Kane Kalas as the instructor really is a big unique selling point here.

While the $999 price tag might be steep for those playing low stakes poker, the course is structured in such a way that it can be watched and understood by someone who has almost no knowledge about Short Deck Hold’em whatsoever. It’s not aimed at advanced players looking to get better, but rather everyone wanting to become good in this new game format. And remember, you’re not spending money; you’re investing it in becoming a better player!