Generation Next -- Aaron Jones

B - R - I - N - G _ I - T was the attitude that Aaron Jones would bang out on his keyboard to elicit feedback. Like Rocky standing toe-to-toe versus Clubber Lang, he would endure bloody beatings online in the poker forums, and then beg for more. Jones feared no judgment from his peers, posting cash hands daily about the optimal way to play. When told he had played a hand wrong - which happened often - an argument would ensue that would feed his poker-hungry mind. Now, 12,000 forum posts and three years later, Jones is still not satiated and is widely considered one of the best high-stakes cash-game regulars online.

"The most important development for me was reading every single hand, every single thread on the forums," said Jones. "And I wasn't scared to express my opinion. Great players would tell me I was an idiot, but I wanted to know why I was wrong about a hand. Just tell me why. Eventually, being wrong a lot led me to finally being right."

Early on, Jones battled with bankroll-management and extreme tilt issues after grinding his online bankroll up to $3,000-$4,000 many times, only to go broke, deposit after deposit. But with each knockout, he would get up and come out swinging, always willing to learn. This obsessive mindset drove Jones up the stakes ladder, and to success in the $25-$50 cash games and a rewarding coaching position at Leggo Poker. Jones eats fear for breakfast, so stay out of his way, unless of course you can teach him something.

Craig Tapscott: What's the secret of working up the stakes levels?

Aaron Jones: You have to play a ton of volume, a ton of hands. That's extremely important. You improve in each hand. In that regard, you really cannot beat playing 300,000 hands at six-max.

CT: And, obviously, you learned a ton from all those forum posts.

AJ: From every online session, one or two hands would get posted on a forum, and five or six would be sent to friends whose opinions I value. If we disagreed on something, there might have been a 20-minute discussion about it. I still believe that is the most useful tool. I can't stress that enough; the most important thing is to surround yourself with good poker friends. And hopefully they're better than you. Don't be afraid to do that.

CT: Share some of your thought processes during a hand.

AJ: Each hand is like a fingerprint, and is insanely unique. With each hand, there is kind of a scale of decision-making. It's between three different decisions: calling, raising, or folding. There are tons of variables that can tip the scale toward doing one of those three things. The number-one thing that isn't thought about enough is position. It's more important than anything anybody can ever say in words. It's probably the number-one leak of every player at every level until you get to about $25-$50. At the smaller stakes, players don't take that into account enough. They learn a lot about hand ranges and c-betting [continuation-betting] with ace high on the flop. But the reality is that the hand will be so difficult to play on later streets; they're going to make bigger mistakes on later streets by being out of position.

CT: They don't really think ahead.

AJ: No. People don't have a plan. Even high-stakes players do this. You have to be thinking three or four steps ahead, till the hand plays out on the river.

CT: You used to have tilt issues. How do you deal with the bad beats now?

AJ: Our brains are conditioned, and to some degree, we are conditioned improperly. If I take a bad beat, my brain might want to play a hand a different way in the future, even though I know it's the correct way to play the hand. Nevertheless, if you can condition yourself to remember how hands played out, there is a certain muscle memory in your history of hands that will automatically make you play better. It might not be a drastic improvement, but you improve because you have more information about the game in general. By doing this, you're just destined to get better.