Hi, I'm
Phil Rocquemore

Cognitive architect and founder of the Cardquant poker research centre.

Since 2012 I have trained high stakes professional poker players how to use context maps, decision plans and game theory to understand and beat competitive poker games. 

That could mean optimizing your pre-flop strategy, stopping opponents from bullying you in the blinds or adding delayed aggression lines to your game.

Join the smart, ambitious poker pros who use my decision plans to dominate PLO games.
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© 2019 Cardquant Ltd. All rights reserved

Frustrated by the slow pace of life as a Physics PhD student I decided to take Engineering Entrepreneurship classes from a Wharton business school professor in search of inspiration. Those classes made it clear to me that I was meant to be leading a research enterprise rather than serving as a cog in someone else's lab. 

To build such an enterprise from the ground up I would need money and I would need to find a research area that truly fascinated me. I knew that independence was essential for my creative success so a City job was not for me. I had played bridge for the England National U20 team and already had a decent amount of poker under my belt so I felt confident that I could make a living from the game whilst I figured out my next step. After a period of deliberation I completed my Master's degree and then took my first leap into the unknown.

The date was 31st January 2011.

WHY MY METHODS WORK

My research is designed to teach you how to identify the situation you are in and exactly what factors you should think about to make the best decision in that situation.

I classify poker situations into groups with similar features. These groups, or reference classes, as I define them, are designed to make our strategic planning more manageable. Instead of having to remember the best response for every possible hand in every possible situation, we use the same strategy for every situation within a given reference class.

I also design context maps for you to use as a guide to recognise the key features which identify a given situation as belonging to a particular reference class.

Whilst a GTO strategy would most likely be a mixed strategy with varying action percentages for each hand (all 270,725 of them) in your range, the chance that you, a human, can learn that strategy is ZERO.

So, although searching for optimal strategies is an important part of what I do as a poker researcher, it is just one part. The more powerful parts are translating that strategy into decision plans that human players can learn and then helping them to implement these plans at the poker table.

I know you have a lot of choices in who you read, so I know I have to earn your trust with every post I make. If you're curious, here's a little bit about me.

PLO TRAINING CENTER

$100K CLUB COACHING

CARDQUANT DIAMOND 

Poker training programs to
calibrate your intuition

For poker players aiming to make their next $100,000 from PLO, 5cPLO or 6+ Hold'em

A Poker Strategy Research Program restricted to a few elite high stakes members.

Poker is becoming more technical
as poker research develops. I show you how to calibrate your intuition to build a dominant natural game.

I discourage ignorant players from joining my premium material. I only work with ambitious, intellectually curious players with the discipline to practice what they learn from me.

I KNOW WHAT IT TAKES TO LEARN AT AN ELITE LEVEL

I hold a degree in Physics from the University of Oxford and I won a prestigious Thouron Scholarship for my Master's degree at the University of Pennsylvania.

I BUILD CREATIVE, UNPREDICTABLE POKER PLAYERS

Right now, I want to prove that my material can massively upgrade your poker game. Sign up for my FREE video course—The PLO Playbook—and you'll receive three PLO lectures with strategies that you can implement today:

> Protecting your Flop Check In Position

> The Delayed River Bluff in a 3-bet Pot

> How to Float a Turn Lead on a Flushing Turn

"I became a solid winner"

"I have worked with about 3-4 different coaches before Phil and I can tell that I haven't had such analytical and precise coach before him, who would be willing to put that much effort into the coaching sessions and explain theory so fluent."

David 'danfiu' Mezei, Hungary

"He will change your intuition"

"It's the best pre-flop content on the market. Phil will show you a different way to see PLO.  He will change your intuition and you will realize that almost all the field make some serious pre-flop mistakes. I think the [Pre-flop Principles] course is the best in the world."

Yuri 'thenerdguy' Dzivielevski, Brazil

"I couldn't be happier with my decision"

"A true professional and by far the greatest source of omaha wisdom and knowledge I’ve ever stumbled upon. He has changed my poker world and has also made significant contributions to the rest of my life. I am forever grateful.”

Jesper 'Nessilita' Nordkvist, Sweden

TODAY'S BRIGHTEST PLO STARS TRAIN WITH ME

"His classes are on point"

“I have been a successful regular in the High Stakes PLO/NLHE games for over half a decade and have been in touch with quite a few talented poker players over the years. I can honestly say that Phil is one of the brightest poker minds I have come across."

'n0d1ceb4by'

"Best coach out there"

"I have had multiple coaches over the years but Phil is the only one I stuck with. Its not only that he explains stuff in a way you can not only understand but also implement during your play. Its very theoretical but also very deep on different Textures or Situation. Best Coach out there without a doubt and its not even close."

Thomas O, Germany

Every hand of poker puts us in a new situation - some strange, some familiar, some so bizarre that we don't expect to ever encounter such a situation again. The proliferation of computer-generated strategies has made exploring the PLO game tree easier than ever before.

So why don’t we play perfect PLO? Could it be that we don’t just need more SIMULATIONS...and instead we need to master the game theory and heuristics that will help us to make BETTER DECISIONS in real-time?

Our poker decisions at the table come to us one at a time, with each hand played in a very different context from the last. Without a clear framework for thinking about these decisions, players are left confused and overwhelmed by all the possibilities.

As Professor Gerd Gigerenzer, former Director of the Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition at the Max Planck Institute, wrote in Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart, 

 “The frame problem arises when a system must decide what to do in a way that requires several steps. Each possible step that the system could take has certain consequences and sets up a new set of conditions and problems. This is the case in chess, where each move may simultaneously threaten an opponent's piece, expose or cover one's own piece, and so on. Each of these consequences also sets up new circumstances for the opponent, making the opponent's next move a particular problem that is different from the problem faced in a different move. For most problems, each possible step sets up new circumstances, and vast arrays of possible future circumstances, that make the computation of optimal solutions an enormous challenge. The problem is how to decide when to stop considering more possibilities, and make the primary decision that is supposed to be made."

IT ALL STARTED WITH A ONE-WAY TICKET TO AUSTRALIA

My student 'danfiu' took 2nd in the $25k High Roller WCOOP PLO Event in September 2018

My student Erik made over $100k from PLO cash games in the first half of 2018

Life in Melbourne seemed very new; my daily grind at the No-Limit tables at $2/4 through $5/10 was punctuated by long walks along St. Kilda beach and excursions to nearby islands. My collection of books from a nearby second-hand bookstore grew and I felt at peace for the first time in many years. But this peace was all too brief...

'Black Friday' alarmed the entire online poker world and I was shaken from my reverie. Federal agents blocking poker sites, player bankrolls lost or otherwise inaccessible. Suddenly a future in poker seemed so uncertain. I had chosen this path to give myself the means to start my own business independently; grinding out a decent income on auto-pilot simply wasn't an option.

How could I harness my technical ability to give myself an advantage at the poker table?

NLHE theory was already well developed and many players had years of experience but I could see that PLO was relatively unexplored. As I began to study PLO it soon became apparent that I could get ahead of the curve by using the analytical approach that had served me so well in physics and philosophy, and at the bridge table.

With renewed focus I began to analyse PLO situations in a way that seemed natural to me. Wary of the uncertain poker climate I dropped down to PLO50 to practice the strategies that my analysis suggested and the results came quickly. As the good results continued I moved up through the stakes and began to formalize my poker analysis.

I posted some of my insights on forums and, to my pleasant surprise, they received an immediate enthusiastic response. This gave me the confidence to start a (then anonymous) blog and it wasn't long before coaching requests came rushing in. 

Here, then, was a golden opportunity — my break from academic institutions did not mean a break from academic research.

I took the opportunity to start my first research venture and in 2013 Cardquant was born.

Since then my coaching clients have gone from strength to strength. In my 5 years of consulting for professional poker players I have used my unique analytical approach to help clients from around the world to move up in stakes and win hundreds of thousands of dollars.

I have taken ambitious low stakes players to high stakes, helped high stakes crushers switch from heads-up to 6max or from NLHE to PLO.

I've taken top 6max high stakes players going through a downswing and helped them to beat the games again when the competition is tougher than ever.

The view across the pier from St. Kilda beach in Melbourne