AceHighWine

For those who haven’t been introduced to the wonders of egg tarty goodness, here’s a shot of some recent dim sum treats I brought back to the office after lunch one day.

Obviously this post speaks volumes about my love of food, but we’ve already starting looking into the local treats we’ll be able to get stuck into while in Macau.

Thanks to blog posts like this, we’ve began compiling a to-eat list of Macaunese dishes which thus far features egg tarts, pork buns and African chicken.

The tournament schedule hasn’t been released yet but fingers crossed there’s enough time to go exploring and enjoying all the gastro-treats the Island is known for.

Thinking optimisitcally, it’s really a win-win: you either go deep and make the final table and win cashola, or you have free days to spend exploring a new and exotic location.

Through the grace of Lee Jones, I managed to luckbox a package to the APPT Macau this September which was great news indeed as I’d already made plans to go and booked flights, so not having to worry about accommodation and buying in to the main event is heaps good.

The critical hand when it came down to the final seven was when I raised KQo in LP and got called by the next player to act. Checked the queen high flop and fired when the second queen landed on the turn. I value bet the blank river and opponent shoved on me. I snap called and was shown pocket nines much to my relief and raked a handy pot.

From there, the other three shorties were despatched within the space of a few hands and I managed to sneak into the four-man (figure of speech here for the PC brigade, there may well have been a woman among the four top finishers) winners circle.

While I’ve been to Hong Kong once, I’ve never actually been to Macau so am really looking forward to adding another country to the list of places I’ve visisted.

Here’s hoping I don’t screw up getting over in the ferry direct from Hong Kong airport!

The first time I met yoyo (born Jonny Vincent) was in 2006 during the Victorian Poker Championships at Crown when introduced to him by our mutual friend, Marcus.

My first impression of Jonny was that, like me, he was just some young kid who recently got into poker and was having a bit of a holiday with his mates. I remembered hearing something about him being from Brisbane or something. His cap atop an outfit of tee, jeans and sneakers certainly did little to distinguish him from the hundreds of other similarly-attired 20-something semi-metros in the poker room at the time.

Then I overheard him talking to our buddy about his bust-out hand and it felt like I just had 50 points lopped off my IQ. The conversation suddenly became very technical and Jonny and Marcus started using these alien-sounding terms that sounded like jargon to my untrained ears.

But if the poker equivalent of watching a foreign film with the subtitles off wasn’t enough – what really amazed me was seeing Jonny reach into his pocket and pull out the turquoise and black chip equivalent of well over a month’s salary for a poor journo like me. The way he casually picked through the contents of his palm (similar to how most of us would riffle through pocket change for the parking meter) suggested he wasn’t just some regular teenage poker player who played cards with mates on the weekends.

While I haven’t had the chance to meet him in the flesh since, the name yoyo has been a remarkable constant in a poker world that’s changed plenty in less than 18 months. There was a runner-up finish in the Pan Asia Poker Tour later that year (funnily enough to the aforementioned mutual friend of ours, messeur Marcus Collins), his 2006-birthed blog (www.jonnyvincent.com) that would provide hours of entertainment while I was bored at work and of course, his prolific posting on the PokerNetwork (PNW) forum. While I haven’t been there for every one of his 7242 contributions to Antipodean poker society, he’s made me laugh, cry, think, shake my head, and marvel at the wonders of GIF animation.

But now, he’s bid adieu to the PNW fraternity – though despite his best intentions, he has made the occasional wander back to his old online stomping grounds - for a better life in the land of milk and honey known as pokercrack as well as his promising new rakeback site www.rakebackstat.com (from his blog: “…basically just pure professionalism. I decided to get into rakeback as I was sick of hearing stories of broke or incompetent operators messing their players around.”)

And the world of poker seems the poorer for his departure.

Granted, yoyo wasn’t everyone’s friend and over the years, managed to ignite enough amusing flame wars to warrant a national class action served by bosses sick of lost productivity, but no one could ever accuse him of being a wallflower. He was never afraid of speaking his mind and “challenging” people’s notions on life, poker and themselves.

As is the nature of life as a yoyo, sometimes life goes up, and sometimes it goes down. While the yoyo’s position on its piece of string counts as an important KPI, what’s more interesting is how the darn thing got there. Welcome to poker from a yoyo’s point of view.

Where did the name yoyo come from?

Whenever someone used to ICQ me, I would reply “yo” or “yo yo sup” etc. It’s a silly name, but it’s stuck.

How did you learn to play poker?

I taught myself on low limit fixed Paradise. It was very hard in those days, no big forums, reading material was very average, etc.

What did your initial poker exploits involve?

I was purely a recreational player for the first couple years as I was working full–time. It was only a few years later around 2005 where I started taking it a bit more seriously.

When did you make the decision to pursue poker as a job rather than just a hobby?

2006 when I realised I could not afford to continue the expensive Masters Law program I was in, so my only options were poker or work.

Were you a winning poker player initially?

Yes I pretty much was a winning player from the moment I started playing. I mean, I wasn’t all that talented, but due to my maths background, I could very quickly and easily see how my decisions had positive expectation.

My biggest problems in the first couple of years was dealing with insane monkey tilt. I genuinely believed online was rigged for a long period of time in the early years due to my lack of understanding of variance. In reality, it was probably just a lazy 30k hand downswing, but for a new player to online, who has been winning a lot in live games, that experience can be pretty brutal.

I became fairly proficient in NL only late in 2006 after realising that Limit was retarded and dying. Vos helped me a bit but most of my skill was developed through common–sense approach to optimal lines and also reading a few non–retarded forums like CardRunners and watching some CR videos.

What are some of the leading poker educational tools available at the moment?

Cutting-edge poker strategy is mostly found on forums these days. Most of the best players are involved in various high-level strategy forums like CardRunners, 2+2, Pocket5s and www.pokercrack.com. I don’t think poker strategy books have a great deal to offer, and some are just flat–out bad or outdated.

How is your T6 sponsorship going? What is it about T6 that makes you willing to lend your support to the site?

I don’t think I’m a T6 player anymore. I never actually formally signed a contract or anything, it was mostly a handshake deal. They were great to me at Aussie Millions and I played a lot on the site for a couple months but I was unable to sustain the required level of play due to other (business) commitments. T6 has done a lot of work to improve their software and I hope they end up doing very well. I will continue to support any online site which does not have Full Ring games, because FR is a ridiculously silly way to play poker. I think the future of poker is probably 4–handed games or HU.

You’ve earned a bit of a rep for being forthright and not being afraid to call a spade a spade. While this has made for some entertaining reading at work, have these spats gone any further than name calling on the internet?

Not really. Most people realise that online comments are not all that important in the grand scheme of things. It might be hard to believe, but I hold back from exposing probably 90 per cent of the misrepresentation, the lies, the scams, the cheaters, some of whom are big names in Australian poker.

I think its important to cut through all the bs, but at the same time, people are very sensitive about their own financial bustoed situations and their debts when they’re trying to represent themselves as winning players to build their profile and either beg for sponsorship from suckers or delude new players into thinking they know what they’re talking about in the form of articles or videos, most of which are embarassingly bad and any winning 200nl player who watches these videos will be able to instantly realise that most of these guys would be losing players at even low limit NL.

I don’t really like people who lie as a general rule, and I hate misrepresentation, but things are very grey and its not my job to be a whistle-blower on all the insane lies and misrepresentation that goes on in this industry. If you have even an average IQ, you should be able to see the patterns and see through the nonsense and the endless sickness of lies, misrepresentation, unpaid debts and unethical behaviour. If you can’t, you shouldn’t really be mixing in this industry – its not a pretty world of glamour and success, which is the image that casinos and poker sites and magazines try to sell.

The reality is that most of the players you think are good are losing players, and the best players are the players who just grind out huge amounts of hands every month online and generate a mountain of rakeback. The guys who are mixing in the tourney scene and trying to build their profiles are almost all broke or close to broke, as a general rule.

What was behind the decision to move to the Phillipines?

Really bad logic led me to the Philippines. I’d been meaning to move into Asia or Europe as I was planning on playing a lot of EPT and other events at the time (Australia is so far away from everything). Also, cheaper cost of living, maids, drivers, etc – all attractive. I’d been here before and liked it, I had friends who were here telling me to come over and I was pretty keen to get out of Australia for various reasons. I made a snap decision and moved over. It was a big mistake in hindsight.

That’s actually surprising to hear as other than playing the WSOP and Aussie events, I didn’t pick you as much of a tourney player. How much of your poker “career” has involved tournament poker? Has that percentage changed over the years?

When I made the snap decision to move to Manila early last year, I was really starting to play at a very high level, smashing 5/10 and 10/20nl HUSH games and I wanted the option to be able to quickly fly to Europe or US for 5k or 10k USD donkaments. I actually ended up doing quite a bit of travel once I moved to Manila, but I quickly realised how much traveling completely sucked and I’ve been cutting down on all non-essential travel in 2008.

I’ve actually played a reasonable number of donkaments, but after 2007, where I ran horrendously bad in all forms of 30bb tourney play and spent about 100k or so on a few trips and countless more opportunity costs from those trips and the resultant tilt, I decided to only play donkaments if they were nearby and only if I very much felt like it (for example, all the APT/APPT tourneys). I think tournament poker is a pretty stupid form of poker, but the occasional one is fun to play if you have friends descending on whatever exotic location the tourney is being held at. From now on, I will only travel to nearby tourneys or to a tourney being held in a country I haven’t visited yet.

A lot of people have the conception that playing poker for a living is glamorous and exciting – is this true? If not, what are some of the downsides to playing cards for a living?

Simple human beings, especially ones living in poverty or struggling to make ends meet, love the fantasy that comes with jobs like poker, professional gambling, professional sports, etc. Anyone who actually lives those lifestyles or is exposed to those lifestyles knows the truth.

The industries themselves are very good at marketing the glamour, but the simple fact is that there is very little glamour in professional gambling or professional sports. Firstly, only a very small per cent of all serious players actually succeed – the rest experience an extended period of soul–crushing failure.

For professional gambling, you’re often playing very anti-social hours (many players work all night, sleep all day), you don’t have much of a (normal, grounded) social life, the job itself is brutally intense in terms of stress due to huge swings and insane variance, and only the superhuman are able to have terrible weeks, months or years and keep smiling like a fulfilled salary worker may be able to do. It’s the same deal with professional sports, it looks amazing to the spectators, it looks glamourous, but the truth is, to get to that level, they all burned thousands of litres of sweat and tears and endured huge pain conditioning from insane training. One of my favourite quotes comes from Michelangelo: “If people knew how hard I work to achieve my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful.”

In terms of playing cards for a living: the main downsides in my opinion are the stress involved, the bad hours, the endless dealing with irreputable characters, the difficulty of imposing any kind of routine in your life and the inability of almost all professional players to find the balance between work and life. I know literally 50 professional poker players, and I think only one or two of those have long-term girlfriends. It’s extremely hard to meet girls or even male friends. In this industry, especially if you’re doing well, you need to have eyes in the back of your head and you’re pretty much forced to trust no one, even those you consider your friends. It’s a pretty sordid, sick industry and to be honest, I can’t wait to be out of it. For every respectable, ethical friend I meet in poker, maybe 20 to 30 shysters, scam artists, liars, cheaters and whatnot pass through my life.

What are some of the stunts these shysters and scam artists try to pull? Is it mainly newcomers to the game who are at risk or are “veterans” of the game with zero business savvy being fleeced too?

You could write many thousands and thousands of pages of scams, cheats, tricks, etc which abound in the gambling industry. The biggest risk and most annoying aspect of interacting with a lot of gamblers is being exposed to situations where you are indirectly exposed to loan risk. I’m probably owed about 40k at the moment and I am not a generous loaner. Any time you loan or are exposed to situations where money is out of your control (often there is simply no avoiding these situations), there is inherent risk. I have a very low opinion of most gamblers, so the day I am able to disassociate myself completely from this scene will be a glorious day.

So when you say “disassociate myself completely from this scene”, do you mean just as a player or as a “service” provider too?

My long term dream is to remove myself completely from the gambling industry. There are many good people in the gambling industry, however they are very much the tiny minority. Most gamblers flat out suck as people. Initially, I will extract myself from the playing side of things, moving into poker industry businesses (as that is where all my knowledge lies at the moment), but my long term dream is to completely remove myself from the day to day interaction with gamblers and gambling industry personnel.

What do you think life after poker for Jonny Vincent will hold?

I’ll probably read a lot more. I’ll probably head back to uni and study something that interests me, like philosophy.

Life after gambling: do you think you’ll allow yourself the occasional sports bet flutter or hand of cards or are you planning a straight cold turkey withdrawal?

I’ll probably always continue to bet sports. It’s one of the few forms of gambling I enjoy.

Considering that gambling for a living involves taking money from other people (particularly poker), it stands to reason that most of the people involved in such an industry couldn’t give a rats about ethics. Is there room in the industry for ethical behavior? Who are some of the players/organisations that come to your mind when you think of ethical poker figures?

Ethical behavior is a rare commodity, no matter the industry. Any vice industry such as sex, tobacco, alcohol, firearms or gambling is going to be especially plagued by unethical behaviour. You can make a pretty solid argument that anyone profiteering from vice is behaving unethically, but that’s debatable. My personal opinion is that you can profit from vice and do so in a responsible and ethical manner.

Ethical organisations in the gambling industry include companies that take proactive steps to give players a level of protection. Betfair appears to be pretty proactive in the fight against match-fixing in sports, and eCOGRA works hard to protect online casino players. However, organisations really only behave ethically when it’s in their best interest to do so. Many organisations do the right thing not because it’s the right thing to do, but because doing the right thing is good marketing or good for business. For example, Betfair has a vested interest in promoting the façade that sports are mostly free from corruption and eCOGRA is in the same boat.

Getting back to full time poker being like social life Kryptonite – how has this personally affected you? Do you find that most of your friends are poker players? Is it possible to develop any real meanigful relationships with poker players? Could you ever see yourself being in a relationship with another poker player?

Poker has had a strong negative impact on my social life. I haven’t had a girlfriend in three years or so. I lost my last one partly due to my inability to handle the stress of insane swings. Also, it’s pretty hard to smile and laugh with friends if you’ve lost $20,000 that day. It also creates awkward situations when you’re winning and losing five figure amounts every day and your friends are working for $20 an hour or whatever. For this reason, most of my close friends are poker players because they can relate. The numbers involved are incomprehensible to normal people living normal lives. All the same, I don’t think I’d ever get romantically involved with someone who played poker professionally. I don’t really like gamblers as a general rule. The poker player friends I respect are those who play poker primarily because they are extremely good at it, not because they like it.

Are there plans to get out of the Phillipines and if so, where to?

Yes, I won’t be in the Philippines for much longer. I’m heavily involved in a wide range of new projects at the moment, but once I have time to breathe, I will make a quick international move, probably to South America (Argentina or Chile) but I’m also not ruling out Eastern Europe or even moving back to Australia and settling down there.

So poker tournaments are a lot of fun, but do you believe they’re good for the poker economy?

Tournaments are very good for the poker industry. They shoot a lot of dead money into the pool.

“lol donkaments” – true/false/why?

True. Tournament poker is like 20/20 cricket and 100 or 200bb cash games are like Test matches. Tourneys are just hit and giggle. You can run good for 500 hands and win $10 million. You can be a winning cash game player and lose for 500,000 hands.

I like the cricket analogies for tournament poker and I agree with your comments on the potential monetary difference between running good for 500 hands as a tournament player versus 500,000 hands as a cash game player. But on the other side of the coin, consistent performers like Rayan Nathan, Eric Assadourian and others make a strong case for there being some element of skill to tournament poker. Are people like them just anomalies or destined for an imminent downswing of biblical proportions?

Rayan and Eric are both great tournament players, and there is skill in all forms of poker. It’s simply that there is a great less skill element in tournament poker due to the smaller stack sizes, and the variance is so huge in that a single race win deep in a big tourney can be the difference between winning $1 million or busting out on the bubble.

Yes, Rayan and Eric are both statistical outliers, as are all tourney players who have a lot of success.

So what do you think the true EV is of most tournament players?

It’s extremely hard to say and depends on the player and the tournament they are playing. 99.9 per cent of poker players don’t really understand variance, and as a result overestimate their expectation, and that includes a hell of a lot of pros. EV can be estimated to a point of accuracy when a lot of variables are taken into account.

People claim that selling and swapping pieces helps reduce the variance of tournament poker – do you agree? Or is buying pieces of most players is like setting money on fire?

Selling/swapping pieces reduces variance, but someone is always getting a bad deal. If I play tourneys, I’ll usually swap points with friends but mostly that’s just because it’s fun to hold interest in other players after you bust. Most poker players suck, so yes, buying pieces and swapping is bad as a general rule, but that doesn’t mean there are +EV deals to be made if you know what you’re doing.

Touching on your comment that the majority of successful tourney players are statistical outliers, what’s your take on the grey and murky world of tournament staking, particularly long–term arrangements? Are these almost always stacked in favour of the stakee? Could these ever be a +EV move for stakers? Would you ever consider being staked?

Most staking deals made by intelligent backers are +EV for the backer, however almost all backers heavily under–estimate the risk of various forms of fraud, including outright theft and other unethical behaviours. Most staking deals made by unintelligent backers are hugely –EV, mostly because they are clueless and they don’t understand maths and/or overestimate the ROI of their stake(s).

I accepted staking once off Tony G a few years ago for some WSOP tourneys – at the time, I thought it was a pretty neutral deal for both of us, but in hindsight, it wasn’t a great deal for Tony, even though makeup was included. I ran pretty horribly and I think I cost him something like 15–20k. I felt terrible about it. A few months later, he wanted to play pool with Gus Hansen so he got me to play with his stack in a ridiculously soft 25/50nl shorthanded live game with some British tourney donks in Singapore. I won about 16k in an hour and shipped the entire amount back to him and felt a whole lot better.

I doubt I’ll ever accept staking of any kind again. I can’t see the situation ever arising where I will ever need backing or need to give up EV to get backing.

You’ve recently started staking low limit grinders – how’s that going for you? What inspired you to start doing this and are you expecting to make a healthy return on it?

My stakees are going fairly well overall. I have some very talented stakees on my program. The decision to get into low limit cash and SNG staking was financially motivated, but it’s also nice to help talented players get back on their feet after they’ve busted their rolls playing too high or playing donkaments. At the moment, it’s mostly a small hobby project which is quite time-consuming, but it has the potential to grow into a large project if I can structure it right.

Does the poker media (locally and globally) do a good job of covering the “scene”?

No. The poker media mostly has no clue. 99 per cent of media coverage focuses on tournament poker, which is hugely inferior (in terms of skills required) to deepstacked cash game poker. The poker media creates household names out of tournament winners, most of whom any winning 5/10nl player would gladly play for a living. Most big tournament winners should be as proud of their achievements as lottery winners. Out of the 10,000 best players in the world, I would guess 9,800 of those are cash game players.

So if the media is putting “false” heroes up on pedestals, who are some of the poker identities the world should be focusing on? Who are some of the consistent (renowned) tournament performers that you would include in your top 10,000 players?

The only players I respect are players who grind out huge amounts of hands at the mid limits. The reason I don’t really respect a lot of the very high stakes players, even though most (or all) of them are vastly more talented than I am, is that almost all of them are statistical outliers (in that they were the ones that ran good all the way up the limits, and we don’t see the 99,999 other guys who could have been as talented if they were allowed to run as good) or they broke bankroll rules all the way up the limits, martingaling their way to the high limits (which also makes them statistical outliers as many players attempt this – we only hear about the ones that make it, and the rest are left busto’ed and broken along the way).

The best players in the world at the moment – guys like CTS, durrr, et cetera – are all hugely talented but even though they are brilliant, they are still statistical outliers, and the more honest and objective of them will admit as much.

In what direction is poker headed in Australia? In five years, will online/casino/pub poker be the country’s big poker market?

The poker boom was an amazing fad primarily fuelled by online technology. Like all fads, poker will slowly die out as people realise poker is mostly fool’s gold. For the last five years, the entire poker industry has been driven by the universal misconception that almost anyone can make a fortune in a very short amount of time. The insane nature of variance only serves to further enhance that fantasy.

If you could provide one piece of advice to people contemplating playing poker for a living, what would it be?

Don’t. It’s incredibly hard to succeed, and even if you are the one in a thousand who is capable of making it, it’s a stressful, lonely, tough career.

To borrow a cliché (though let’s be honest, who doesn’t love a good cliché?): it’s the quiet ones that you have to worry about.

At the poker table, Jay Kinkade doesn’t draw much attention to himself. Conservatively dressed, softly spoken, he keeps his thoughts (and chips) largely to himself.

But catch him online where he plays mainly under the moniker of ‘SEABEAST’ and it’s a different kettle of fish.

As well as being a long-term winner at mid-stakes NL games, Jays’s also a regular presence on the 2p2 forums and coaches on Leggopoker, sharing his cash game secrets with students eager to learn.

While most online poker players would be stoked to enjoy the healthy hour win-rate that he does, Jay’s not the kind of person to rest on his laurels.

In search of a new poker challenge, he’s recently declared war on the global online MTT community, putting in some massive volume that has seen SEABEAST bolt up the PocketFives tournament leaderboards to being a country mile ahead of second place on the West Australian standings and gaining ground on Australian tournament machines Kochan, StevoL, Bond18 and rkruok.

He even managed to scale his way to the top of the PocketFives May TLB and held on to the title for a while until online legend ShaunDeeb overthrew him.

Some highlights from his recent run: second in the Sunday Mulligan for 28k, two victories in the Stars $109r for 18 and 15k, winning the 65k guaranteed on Full Tilt for 20k, the Stars 50-50 for 11k or so, victory in the Full Tilt 30k and a second-place finish in the Party High Roller for 11k. My personal favourite though is Jay winning the $109r, $33r and $22r all in the space of 24 hours. Sicko.

It’s been a long and exciting journey from playing Magic: The Gathering with friends to being weeks out from a month in Vegas and the trials and tribulations of the WSOP for the 26-year old poker pro (trivia: Jay also plays guitar in thrash band Extortion).

Join us on the journey as we delve into the belly of the Beast…

 
How did you learn about poker?

I learnt about poker through playing Magic: The Gathering (MTG). I played that pretty seriously and was one of the best players in WA and heard that some of the best players over east started playing poker online after Rounders came out. Also my friend Hao/Michael had a card store and we used to stay there after hours drinking and playing 20c/40c limit hold’em. So it was a pretty direct transition from MTG to poker and because of that, I always came at the game strategically.

Did you start playing live or online poker first?

My very first poker was played live at my friend’s card store and at other friends houses. I was actually less interested than most of the other guys and probably lost at first because they were all reading Super System and stuff and I was just passing the time until we could play MTG again!

How much did you deposit when you first started online?

My friend from Adelaide who was one of the best MTG’ers in Australia shipped me $50 on Party (Poker) to play .5/1 LHE. I felt so awkward about someone I didn’t know that well lending me money to gamble that I played all night and morning until I had doubled my money and could send the $50 back. I’m still going off that $50.

What was your aim with that money you first deposited money online?

I wanted to see what it was like playing online and playing for money, whether people still sucked and whether I thought I was good enough to make any decent money from it as I had heard stories about other MTG’ers who were playing as high as 20/40 limit hold’em and making thousands of dollars a week!

What sort of level did you get to playing MTG?

I was ranked number one in Western Australia for a long time as well as top 20 in Australia. I never won any really big tourneys though, just had a very good record in medium sized ones. When I started playing poker, I was a student living off Centrelink.

Did you play any other sort of card games before Poker and MTG?

I never really played anything else before MTG, just videogames and stuff like that.

You’ve bought your home through poker, are a respected 2p2 forum member and coach with Leggopoker: what’s left in the world of poker for you to achieve?

It’s funny you should ask, I have just started getting into tourneys heavily. I won a couple of seats for the WSOP and am heading to Vegas in June. I have been practicing a lot online, doing pretty well, and I would like to try and become the number one ranked online tourney player in Australia. Part of the reason for that is exactly what you mentioned, I’m trying to keep myself interested and motivated by setting new goals. I don’t really aim to play nosebleed stakes and I’m already playing in the highest NL games that run regularly, so I’m looking elsewhere to keep myself interested and I actually think I’m naturally a better tourney player than cash player anyway, just there is a little less money in it.

There’s a tonne of resources out there for people to learn how to beat the games. What did you poker education consist off?

From when I started to when I became decent I learnt everything through 2+2 basically. I have probably read 2+2 every day of my life since about 2003. Nowadays I watch a lot of the vids on Leggo to pick up ideas from the other guys who play a little different to me so I can stay open-minded and pick up new tricks. I think 2+2 has gotten a lot worse now because the best former strategy posters are all coaches or affiliated with a video site, so watching videos or getting coaching is almost mandatory nowadays.

With all these resources out there, the games have understandably gotten tougher. Do you think games will continue to get tougher and tougher until there are (in theory) no soft spots left?

The games will definitely continue to get tougher and tougher, but there will always be soft spots in the game because gambling is part of human nature, and fundamentally, people almost always overestimate their own ability. Plus things like intelligence and how hard you work will always play a part. No matter how much information is out there, the smartest, hardest working players will always have an edge. The bad players are becoming “ok” players, but the good players are becoming truly sick.

What form of poker do you enjoy the most?

I enjoy playing deep in tourneys the most. As far as cash games go, I probably like limit more than no-limit but play mostly NL because it’s where the most money is.

What’s the most common mistake you see new and low-limit poker players making?

Thinking that poker is about cards when it’s really a series of situations in which cards are involved¬ – trying to learn how to play good cards, rather than how to accurately analyze situations. Of course, when you first start off you need to know what hands are “good”/”bad”, but the first real breakthrough in poker is when you realise that the cards are merely tools, and your goal is to make the right decision each time the action is on you, based on the variables, of which your hand is only one.

Has coaching improved your play and thought processes as a player?

Yeah it has actually, quite a lot I think. I have a much better understanding of how “ok” players play, which helps me fine tune ways to outplay them, and also getting asked questions you intuitively know the answer to but have never actually thought about directly or organised coherent thoughts on is really helpful too. I have had a couple of students who asked really good questions.

“LOL donkaments.” What are your thoughts on this comment?

LOL donkaments - totally appropriate! I actually own one of the lol donkaments shirts that got made with barry g’s face on it. If I ever make it onto a TV table I wanna wear it. There’s a lot of skill in tournament poker, and in any given tournament only x per cent of the field have any chance of winning it… nevertheless tournaments feature a lot of incredibly poor play, and in a field where the skill level was roughly equal, the predominant determinant of who won and who lost would be luck rather than small skill differences. Fortunately however, most tourney players are terrible - even winning players.

How do/will you change your tournament play live compared to online?

Good question. I will be more willing to make laydowns because people’s ranges are smaller and they are more scared to bluff. I will watch how people play carefully and make more specific reads/decisions rather than just basing strategy around math/intuition. Hopefully I can be psychologically tough enough to still play as aggressively.

What are your expectations leading up to your maiden WSOP campaign? In addition to the main event, what other events will you be playing?

I’m probably going to play a ton of events actually. Depending on how I’m feeling day to day, most of the 1500, 2500 and 5K NL events, some LHE and PLO maybe. Expectations? Lots of annoying people, very exhausting and draining… I’m really hoping to go deep in at least one tourney if I play a bunch. The Main Event I really don’t think I’ll take too seriously unless I am still alive when it gets serious, like if it gets close to the money and I’m still in and the media starts to circle around then great, that would be amazing, but realistically, it’s basically the lottery and I’m not going to put pressure on myself to do well.

While the poker landscape has gotten a lot broader than NLHE as of late, can you see any other games getting the same popularity as no limit?

I can see PLO continuing to get popular, but I think NLHE will always be the most popular game.

As well as your NL talent you’ve got some pretty handy limit chops as well – without opening the entire chest of SEABEAST secrets, what are some of the fundamental differences that NL players don’t seem to grasp when they try their hand at limit?

The whole idea of NL players trying their hand at LHE seems weird to me, I can’t imagine playing NL first as I played LHE for so long. But definitely a fundamental difference is that the only way you can ever make a big mistake in limit is to fold incorrectly, which means playing looser and much more aggressively is absolutely necessary.

What’s the story behind your handle SEABEAST?

After lurking 2+2 for a while in 2004 I decided I finally knew enough to start posting there myself without getting abused so I signed up for an account. Around that time, a band I like called Mastodon released an album with a song on it called Seabeast, and I thought it fitted the poker fish theme well. I still like the name.

What’s your daily routine like? Do you play poker everyday and go on holidays where you take time off poker completely?

It’s very day to day. I have probably had about 20 days off in the past three years so I do play most days, but until recently I never had any kind of schedule at all. With the tourney grind now I’m basing everything around the US run of tourneys in the morning and sometimes the Euro run of tourneys in the middle of the night. In general, I just do whatever I feel like doing most of the time. It’s a very hedonistic sort of lifestyle, but I play in three bands at the moment and have a girlfriend, try to get to the gym when I can, and so on. Tourneys are much less healthy than cash games though. Playing cash games is more like a 45 minute session here, then go for a walk and eat, then come back play a little more, kill some time, then go out and do something for rest of day and maybe play once more before bed. Unfortunately though, you can’t really justify playing online tourneys without playing a whole bunch of them for a whole bunch of hours.

Do you treat poker as more of a “game that you make a living from” or a “job”? How important do you think it is for poker players to have “passion” for the game?

100 per cent like a game, and I think it’s absolutely essential to have a passion for the game. It’s something you can’t fake, either. I would say only five to 10 per cent of the population (maybe less) could ever make serious money from poker, no matter how hard they tried, and not that much of it has to do with intelligence – you could be the smartest guy in the world but risk-averse and not very competitive and you would never get very far. Whereas you can be average intelligence but very competitive and have a really strong urge to learn how to win, and you will for sure end up beating mid-stakes. You have to want to win more than you want to avoid losing. You have to have serious drive and competitiveness, but also be ok with the antisocial element too. If you’re not going to be able to get up day after day wanting to beat people, even after already knowing that you can do it, then you won’t really get anywhere. Sometimes it feels like a bore to me, but every time I take a holiday or something and don’t play at all for a few days or a week, I can’t wait to get back onto the tables.

In addition to a sound understanding of poker concepts and strategies, what are some of the other skills poker players need?

Poker players definitely need mental and emotional discipline. The game is almost like a mirror that reflects what you put in to it. If you are humble, and treat the game with respect (ie only play when you feel like playing, only sit in games you can beat, keep trying to improve and thinking strategically, and being realistic and honest with yourself about everything) then you will win. If you play when you shouldn’t be playing, in games you shouldn’t be playing in, and externalise everything bad that happens, you will lose. The best way to look at the game is to make decisions today as though you are looking back on them from tomorrow.

How much crossover is there between poker and your normal life?

I like to keep my worlds pretty separate. My friends all know that I play poker but I don’t talk about it much. I talk to specific people about it but mostly I feel sheepish talking about the money, and frustrated answering the same few generic questions about the game. I am very fortunate that my parents have always been supportive of me, my mum worried at first but that was years ago. I’m sure my dad wishes I took the academic path but he knows that I’m suited to poker and that he’s most of the reason for that, so he is supportive. But yeah I definitely have different sides to my life, like I have poker friends, music friends, et cetera.

Music also plays a big part of your life – is it important for poker players to have other interests outside of cards?

Yeah it definitely is, I mean poker is very immersing but there are many elements to life other than just the mental/competitive… there’s physical, emotional, spiritual, etc. It’s especially important to make connections with people that aren’t slightly nerdy males, too, which obviously makes up most of the poker demographic.

What are some of the sickest swings you’ve experienced in your poker career? how do you learn to deal with these swings?

Sickest swings… I had a $100,000 downswing in March that was kicked off by losing $55K in less than an hour. I was never very good at handling swings to be honest, that was my biggest weakness when I first played (like a lot of ex MTG players I think… MTG is like poker tourneys: when you lose, you just “don’t win”, there is no actual losing like in cash games). But as time went on I got more confident and better attuned to how good I was/wasn’t, and more able to tell when I had an edge and when I didn’t… and if I did, then losing was irrelevant. And then when Leggo came along and coaching went really well, I got to another level of confidence in my poker abilities and also financial security (because I knew that at worst, I could always fallback on coaching) so I became much more comfortable moving up and playing higher stakes. All this year I have played only at $1000NL and above and it has gone well. Really, the more you play the more utter disrespect you have for money, and the chips are just a way of keeping score.

If you weren’t playing poker, what would you be doing with your life?

I don’t know what I’d be doing. definitely playing some sort of strategy game a bunch of the time for fun, but whereas at 16 to 21 I couldn’t care less about money. Once I reached my 20s, I started realising that as you get older, like it or not, you need money, so I guess I would have had to get my ass back to uni and actually gotten myself into a decent job of some kind. I was studying psychology/criminology and wanted to be an ASIO profiler or something like that. I’m definitely interested in the way people think.

If you went busto tomorrow and had to try building a roll back up from another $50 deposit but still have all the poker knowledge you already have, how would you do it?

Probably playing a bunch of small stakes sit and gos I think. I would go insane trying to grind microstakes cash games, but infinite-tabling microstakes sit and gos could be fun, and they are very systematic so you can be fairly detached from the outcome or the stakes.

SEABEAST’s Leggopoker blog

Time flies when you’re turning 29.

Since the last blog post, recapping the Melbourne trip has been “on the cards” for some time now but while I’m NOT doing that, I’ve been interviewing one of Perth’s sickest and arguably most infamous online poker players for a piece that I’ll be putting up soon. Formerly a cash game specialist, he’s since turned his attention to tournaments and has already started surging up the PocketFives leaderboard for Australia and looks set to mount a serious challenge on the title of Australia’s number one ranked online tournament player.

The weekend just gone was my 29th birthday and Marie did a great job of spoiling me with a great dinner at Harvest (the tasting menu with wine was great value at $120 though imho, some of the red wine matches were fairly average and not up to par with the great, creative cooking), lunch at the organic restaurant Sandcastle (pictured is the amazing white chocolate and caramel creme brulee we shared for dessert) the following day and an overnight stay at a cool boutique B&B.

As a birthday present to myself (and let’s be honest, other poker players too), I took Monday off to play some (read: two) of the Sunday majors online and signed up for the Stars Sunday Million and Full Tilt Poker FTOPS Main Event. Amazingly, I cashed in both and gave myself a nice little birthday present in the way of an extra 1k in profit.

The (Western) Force also came through for a nice early birthday present on Friday night when they pulled off a great come-from-behind win against the Brumbies who were completely owning the Force defence in the first half.

Also, nice work Stars for setting up some special “tournaments” where people can “buy-in” to make a donation to Stars’ China Quake Relief Appeal. Stars will match every dollar that is raised through these tournaments (buy-ins range from $1 to $100) or transferred directly to the Stars’ account ‘Quake Relief’. If you have a couple of spare bucks or get particularly lucky one time, I encourage you to make a donation to this worthy cause.

Finally, shout out to the one and only John Auf who made an FTOPS final event in the PLO event. After getting his AAxx hand in on the flop as a short stack, his opponent called with bottom pair only to hit trips on the river and send John home in ninth place and a tad under 7k richer. Nice one mate and I can feel a big score for you just around the corner! Or at least a result that’ll net you enough P5 points to overtake that s0stndrd luckbox…

The good folk at Bluff Australasia have put together a piece on my Sunday Mills Win (the timer on my 15 minutes of fame must be running somewhere near 14:55 or something) in the latest issue of the mag.

Also, that’s not me on the cover of the mag - I don’t wear blue hats.

While catching up with Bluff Australasia’s editor Sean while in Melbourne, he told me that circulation was going really well and the proverbial proof in the pudding was finding a copy in a quiet suburban newsagency in the Tasmanian town of Sorrell while hunting for something to read on my flight home. Buy the mag and support the region’s leading poker publication! I haven’t actually seen the article yet but I’m confident that Sean would have done my tale justice…

I was also recently approached by the Texas Holdem Australia for an interview and I took the opportunity to get on a little soapbox and speak my piece on a few issues to do with online and live poker. Click here to read the piece and thanks to Dave for the interview.

While I can do a passable job of writing, I fail horribly at most things to do with technology - maintaining blog software is definitely one of my weaker points.

Long story short: AHW wasn’t working and now is thanks to the genius of Matt at Abstract Gourmet. ty ty mate. For the record, Matt can not only write very well, but he photographs very well and knows his internet stuff. If you live in Perth and don’t already have his blog bookmarked, shame on you. Actually, who cares where you live - add it to your favourites anyhow, you won’t be disappointed. Matty, again, God bless you sir and your wine rack will be taking receipt of something really nice, really soon.

In addition to fixing the accessibility problems, Matt’s also upgraded my version of WordPress to something a little more up-to-date. The first time I logged on to my dashboard, I felt like both a fish out of water (blatant and obvious pun entirely intentional) and a kid on Christmas morning: at my disposal was a shiny new interface that was destined to usher in a new age in wine and poker blogging. AceHighWine was redefining itself for the ‘08 and getting with the times! The year just gets better and better…

Now some obligatory poker content: commiserations to John Auf who bubbled in Sunday’s $330 NZ Poker championship satellite at Burswood. According to John, the 21-strong field was just that: strong. His third place finish was good for “F*CK ALL :)” (that’s a direct quote) while first place got the seat and second pocketing $2300.

Also: being the uber-nit that I am, I played a $125 one-in-10-go-through live sat at Burswood to play the Sapphire Series Main Event (considering payout structure and capacity for just 120 players, I just think buying in 1k is still -EV) during the week and did a good job of disputing the fact that poker is a skill game.

After keeping my head above water for the first few levels, I once again found myself in that familar red zone and forced into pushbot mode. After open shoving and re-shoving a few times (what else are you going to do when you’re 6BB deep?), the rest of the players on my table were cracking the shits at my “internet player” play and rooting against me. After losing with AKs vs Aks and 99 - I turned the flush draw but missed to lose a massive pot and find myself with a pitiful short stack - they all had their wish but through the grace of God, I won all my all-ins to build myself up to an okay stack. Then the fun times began.

Folded to me in the SB, I put the rest of my chips in the middle with J7o. BB snaps with KJ and the flop of 10-K-K pretty much sealed the deal for me. However the A on the turn and Q on the river made for a pretty good exit clause and we went chop-chop.

Next I open-shoved with the massive holdings of 10-5 suited in spades and found a caller in big Wayne (who had doubled me before when my KQs rivered a straight against his AJo) who woke up with A10. Rivered the flush. Easy game.

I then open shoved 92o in MP when we were down to three tables and near the two-table bubble and found a caller on the button who had pocket 10s. God I pick my spots well. Flop 8-k-7. Turn 5. River… gutterball 6. During the hand, a small crowd had gathered around my table including many bemused dealers who all promptly threw up in their mouths as they realised I rivered a gutshot one-card straight. I walked off to the side for a bit, shook my head and then returned back to the table to offer my condolences to the poor guy with the 10s. I had previously crippled him with 55 vs his AKc on the bubble in a live satellite to last year’s Sapphire Series main event so I am expecting big fireworks the day he lays a beat on me. To his credit though he took the beat very well and plays with a lot of class which is more than I can say for 98 per cent of Burswood players who are a complete joke when it comes to poker etiquette.

I made it to the final table where seven got seats and eighth took home $880 and UTG as the short stack, an M of .8 or something and the blinds about to go, I put it in with 2-3o after doing a half-hearted lookatholecards-think-hmmm-shove as I figured I had to shove ATC. The SB called with KJ (after some other player told him openly ‘call, call’) and rivered a full house and I (justifiably) get the boot. I say I was lucky to make it as far as I did.