Barry Greenstein*

As part of PokerStars’ 10-year Anniversary, FlopTurnRiver has been given the chance to interview two of the biggest names in online poker today – Barry Greenstein and Chris Moneymaker. They share their experience with PokerStars over the years and touch on other subjects like regulating online poker in the USA and their predictions about the future of poker.

As people very close to the company, what would you say is the biggest contributing factor to PokerStars becoming and maintaining their position as the largest and best poker site in the world?

Greenstein: PokerStars has done a great job of improving their product over the last ten years and much of the improvement has nothing to do with the software. They have been the number 1 site as far as security and customer support for as long as I have been associated with them.

Moneymaker: Their customer service is top notch. They pay attention to their customer base and treat their players very well.

Barry, what is your favorite thing about being part of Team PokerStars? Least favorite thing?

Greenstein: I initially joined PokerStars instead of other sites because I was able to have a large role in the software and determining what games are spread. My least favorite thing is not being able to play at the moment because of the Black Friday shutdown.

Chris, what is your greatest poker accomplishment since becoming a PokerStars pro?

Moneymaker: Revamping my game to be a winner in today’s poker climate.

Barry, what would you recall as your greatest moment as a PokerStars Pro?

Greenstein: I don’t think it has occurred yet. PokerStars has a habit of signing up WSOP Main Event winners, sometimes after they win and sometimes before. Why not me?!

Before being a PokerStars Pro, did you ever envision yourself as one?

Greenstein: Several sites including PokerStars has asked me for a few years before I signed on. I liked my independence, but eventually I decided that I would have the most influence with PokerStars.

Moneymaker: Not in a million years.

Chris, what are the advantages to being a PokerStars Pro versus a professional player that just plays without sponsorship?

Moneymaker: Sponsorship money obviously and marketing that Pokerstars puts behind you.

Do you consider poker to be a job or is it more of a fun hobby?

Greenstein: It’s fun to make money to pay the bills.

Moneymaker: Can it be both? I enjoy what I do, but it is also a job.

If you had to choose between only being able to play live or (legal) online poker, which would it be and why?

Greenstein: Unfortunately, I don’t have much of a choice at the moment because I have chosen to stay in the United States. Fortunately, I expect I will not have to choose in the near future and I will be able to do both.

Moneymaker: Online, the game moves faster and you can play so many different forms of poker, not just no limit holdem.

Chris Moneymaker*

Chris, do you still play poker online (for fun or real money)?

Moneymaker: Not at the present time, hopefully when they change the laws in the USA.

Barry, do you think the US will legalize online poker within the next few years?

Greenstein: I expect it will be legalized in 2012, but I have been overly optimistic and wrong in the past on this issue.

What would you consider to be the best argument for legalizing online poker in the United States?

Greenstein: We shouldn’t legislate against adult behavior unless it causes direct harm to other people. We should allow people to do what they want in the privacy of their own homes. The arguments against online poker like compulsive gambling and underage gambling have been greatly exaggerated.

Moneymaker: The government should have no right to tell me what to do with my money.

If the United States were to legalize/regulate online poker, do you think there will be another “poker boom?” Why or why not?

Greenstein: I think this would cause a second poker boom. Online poker was huge in the United States even without government regulation and protection. We expect that when online poker becomes officially legal in the United States, there will be alliances with brick and mortar casinos so that the entire poker playing public will have incentive to play online.

Moneymaker: Yes, a lot of players went away when poker was restricted. TV shows would return as well.

Barry, you’ve made yourself famous as the “Robin Hood” of poker. As the game has so rapidly evolved in the past ten years, and so many questions on its future have been raised since Black Friday, how important are philanthropic endeavors to the game’s growth and acceptance?

Greenstein: I don’t think it has a big impact on growth when we do it on a personal level. It’s just the right thing for anyone who has become financially successful to do, no matter what line of business they are in. I am happy that I’m connected with PokerStars because they have been involved in many philanthropic projects around the world. They even made large donations to my main charity, Children Incorporated, at each one of the stops on the Latin American Poker Tour.

Chris, you haven’t found much success since your WSOP Main Even title in 2003. How do you respond to players who call your win a one-time fluke? Do you think you have the poker skills to repeat your win?

Moneymaker: I don’t respond. I am confident in my poker skills and have had a lot of success on the tables, just not the big win. I have won over 500k this year, pretty good for one-time fluke.

Barry, what poker game do you see taking off in the near future (similar to how Omaha took off recently)?

Greenstein: Where I play in LA, Badeucy is the most popular form of poker in the mixed games.

Chris, what do you think of the November 9 format and the way everyone has to wait months? Are you glad there was no delay the year you won the championship?

Moneymaker: It is good for promotion of the 9 players but bad for the actual game. No one remembers who got 3rd the year I won but everyone remembers Dennis Phillips. He did a great job of marketing himself in the lead up to the November 9.

Barry, do you play in any of the Los Angeles card rooms and if so, which ones? Do you have regular games there? How would you compare the Vegas card rooms to the LA ones?

Greenstein: I mainly play at the Commerce Casino these days, but I’ve gone to a few others when a good game is arranged there. The Vegas games are not as reliable except during the WSOP or the Bellagio WPTs.

Having your car stolen from the valet lot must have been crazy. Do you still think about it when using a valet service or are you over it?

Greenstein: I’m over it, but I’ve stayed at that same Marriott a few times since that incident and they are very protective of my car and I get my valet parking comped.

Chris, since you have become a PokerStars Pro, what are some of the biggest changes in poker you have seen over the years?

Moneymaker: Poker has completely revolutionized since my victory. The game was very primitive in 2003 and now it has been studied and written about so much that it is a very difficult game today. The games are much bigger now than in 2003.

Barry, how have you seen the overall skill level of poker players change throughout the years?

Greenstein: Obviously, there are tools to learn poker that didn’t exist when I was growing up as a poker player. When I was young there wasn’t even a good poker book. In addition, the number of poker players has grown exponentially and social media and interaction software allows players to discuss strategy in groups.

Technically, no limit holdem tournament strategy has undergone a huge leap in the last ten years. Betsizing used to be pretty random but now it’s rare to even have one person at your table in a large buy-in event who drastically overbets.

Barry, how does it feel to be inducted of the Poker Hall of Fame? And congratulations!

Greenstein: It’s always nice to get some recognition from the public and my peers, but as my girlfriend reminded me, “At least you finally won something again.” I would like to get back to winning things the old-fashioned way: across a poker table.

Barry Greenstein has been playing poker professionally since 1991. He has notable success in cash games and in the WSOP and WPT. He has three WSOP bracelets, two WPT titles, thirteen WSOP and six WPT final table finishes, and more than thirty large WSOP cashes. He can be seen playing on High Stakes Poker or The Big Game. His book, Ace on the River, details poker strategy for players of all levels. Greenstein has also earned the nickname “Robinhood of Poker” by donating significant portions of his winnings to charity. Over the past 20 years he has observed many industry changes, including the online poker boom, the passing of the UIGEA, and Black Friday.

Chris Moneymaker, whose win in the 2003 WSOP Main Event sparked the online poker boom, began his poker journey just by playing in his spare time. One of the tournaments he decided to play was an $89 WSOP Main Event satellite on PokerStars. The rest is literally history and started a phenomenon deemed the “Moneymaker Effect.” Since that well-remembered win in 2003, Moneymaker has kept himself busying playing in poker circuit tournaments all over. His latest successes include an 11th place finish in the 2011 PCA Main Event and 2nd place finish in the 2011 National Heads-Up Poker Championship.

*Photos courtesy of PokerStars.com.

The 22 year old was first exposed to poker six or seven years ago when he was playing home games with his friends. Duhamel put off his finance studies two years ago to become a professional poker player. His devotion has paid off. Duhamel, who mainly plays cash games online, is on top of the poker world.

We sat down with the champ and asked him a few questions.

FTR – courtiebee
Congrats on the win! What are your plans now as a PokerStars pro? Are you going to continue on the tournament circuit or focus on cash games?

Jonathan Duhamel
I’ll definitely be playing a lot of tournaments on the tour, I’ve played a lot of cash games, now I want to know how good I can do in tournaments. I’m thinking about the PokerStars European Poker Tour and the PokerStars North American Poker Tour just to name a few, and the PokerStars Caribeean Adventure in Bahamas this January!

FTR – cr4zybe4utifu1
How did you get started in poker?

Jonathan Duhamel
Like almost everybody, playing with friends just for the fun of it. Eventually I went online and tried on PokerStars.net, I played for free there for a while to try to improve my game as much as I could.

FTR – courtiebee
Are you able to explain your thought process during the JJ hand with Matt Affleck? Did history between you at the earlier tables come into play?

Jonathan Duhamel
Matt is a very good and aggressive player. When I raised from the Cutoff and he 3bets from the dealer, I felt he could be weak a lot of times. That’s why I reraised him, and decided to go all the way on the flop and turn. The main thing is even if I lost the hand, I still had around 10 million to play with, which was around 30-35 big blinds, good enough to play with.

FTR – CoryATX
Could you talk about the hand vs Joseph Cheong (Cheong’s 6-bet bluff with A7o vs your QQ)? Could you explain your thought process in the hand?

Jonathan Duhamel
Joseph was playing a lot of hands, very aggressive player. When we were down to 3 handed, given the fact John Racener was short in chips, it was normal for Jo to bully even more. I had folded a lot to his 4bet so far, so I might thought I was 5betting light there, explaining why he shoved. For me I was just happy to go all the way with my QQ there. When 3 handed, QQ is a very very good hand.

FTR – lolzzz_321
Do you prefer online or live play?

Jonathan Duhamel
I love both. When you play online you can play up to 8-10 tables at the time, which is kind of cool. When playing live, you see the players and can interact with them, which is also cool. I think mixing both is the best way to go.

FTR – daven
What kind of prep did you do between the summer and November?

Jonathan Duhamel
I did a lot. I played the PokerStars EPT London, which was 1 month before the final table. I also played a lot online, there was the WCOOP on PokerStars at that time, so I played that and a bunch of tournaments and sit n go.

FTR – courtibee
Speaking of the break, was the final table delay beneficial to you directly? Do you think it’s good for the game overall?

Jonathan Duhamel
I think it is good for the game. That way people get into the game much more, and I think more people are watching the Final Table because of that. As for the players, the break was the same for everybody, so it was about who’s going to prepare the best.

FTR
What are your plans with that big $8.9 million paycheck? What was your first purchase?

Jonathan Duhamel
The only thing I have in mind now is to give $100,000 to the Montreal Canadiens Children’s foundation. For the rest I’ll just be traveling a lot to play all the big tournaments.

FTR
Thanks for taking the time to answer our questions and again, congratulations on being the first Canadian to take down the Main Event title!

The future is looking bright for Duhamel. Besides his big Main Event win, the Canadian kid has 3 WSOP cashes and navigated to a cash in an EPT event. With PokerStars footing his tournament entry fees for the time being, only Duhamel can limit Duhamel. Good luck Jonathan!

How did you get started at poker?

I played in grade school many moons ago, got started online after moneymaker. I didn’t play at all in HS or college although we play a ton of euchre.

You’re known primarily as a tournament player, have you ever played cash games seriously?

I play enough cash PLO (mostly high with some LO8 and PLO8) to get supernova. It isn’t a big part of my winnings but it’s definitely helped my deep stack game and it turns out I run good in Omaha tourneys.

Do you coach? Have you ever considered coaching other players?

I reviewed a HH for at FTR poster once. I thought would be a great way to improve, but right now I feel like I am better off spending my time on my own play and my other job. Plus I hate talking to people so it will never be a big part of my life unless it’s just something I can do off line.

Greatest poker accomplishment?

Probably getting through 2007, I broke even for the whole year and at one point during year my roll was down around 6k from a high of 25k the year before. Whole weeks went by where I would not play at all.

I made about 3k playing $50 45 man SNGs from Oct – Dec to get back to even on the year, shipped a 100 freeze on stars for like 9k in Feb 2008 and was back on track. That was probably the best I’ve ever felt after a win.

Biggest score was $47k in the mini ftops, that felt OK too.

Are you a poker professional? Can you walk us through a typical day for you?

50/50 in terms of hours. I quit my cubicle corporate job in 2006. I work for my Dad who owns a small (4-8 employees through the years) company doing coding. I can mostly set my own hours so it’s a great job for a part time poker player. Last year I was almost exact even in terms of earnings, this year after the mini FTOPs poker has the lead.

I don’t have typical days! I play as much poker as I can Fri-Sun with usually 1-2 other poker ‘shifts’ during the week. I also play a ton during FTOPS/COOPs which always seem to be happening or I’m recovering from them. But what time I play day to day is mostly dictated by what works better for my wife and the OSU/Bengals schedule and my other job. I am almost always on Sat at 2pm est for the $200 PLO tourneys.

Subscribed to any poker training sites?

I use my full tilt points for Card Runners but I don’t watch nearly as many videos as I should.

Any desire to play live, like a WSOP Event?

I played 2 events in June, $1k NLHE and $2.5k ½ PLO, ½ PLH. I could not really afford either but I told myself I would play a couple events once I got into the 100k club. I bubbled the 2.5k which was nice and painful. Overall it was a great experience, it was really cool to be there with all the poker all stars. Once I go pro I expect to be out there at least 3 weeks a year, more if I can convince my wife to visit in the middle.

My wife goes to this Microsoft convention each year in April that has been at the Venetian the last two years at the same time as their Deep Stack Extravaganza, so I have played a bunch of those. They also have one during the series that I played pretty much every day I wasn’t at the Rio.

Supposedly we are building a Columbus casino; hopefully they will have some action.

If I had a million dollar roll I’d play most of the series plus 5-6 WPT events per year I think.

Why do you post at FTR?

I think it helps to work through stuff away from the table, and to look at other people’s play. It’s good to see how other players think and also to work through hands you didn’t play so you know your thoughts are based on your ideas and not your ego.

To be honest I tell myself all the time to post less and watch more vids/review my own play, but I don’t.

In terms of FTR vs other sites I have just never read another poker site that made me want to join. I do read the Mid/High stakes MTT and PLO sections sometimes at 2+2.

What FTR posters helped your game?

Mcat, J Fish/Busto_soon. VQC from the SNG days. Michael1123, gabe and ilikeaces all inspired me back in the day and posted great.

Gold Jersey or Silver Jersey ?

To paraphrase Dave Chappelle in Half Baked, I like jerseys but I looooove money.

I should admit here that I had avatars turned off before I won my Gold and fully intended to turn them back off after a week – that was in April, still hasn’t happened. My excuse is that it turns out a lot of people have jerseys and they all seem to play pretty well, in the 20+ rebuys or 150 + freezes it isn’t uncommon to see 2 others plus an FTP pro, at my plo8 200 freeze the other day we had 3 golds and a silver at a 6max table!

Level of education?

Bachelors in Management Info Systems from Ohio University.

Who are some of the best MTTers out there today?

MLagoo came to mind first. I have played several FTs with him plus watched some of his stuff at CR.

Alexander T – he won the SCOOP FT that I made and boy did he deserve it.

Andy McLeod – seems to make every COOP FT while playing like a crazy person, I don’t know how he does it.

McMatto – turn on ESPN yo!

Are you happy with what you have accomplished at poker? What are your goals?

Goals first since it’s the easy one – make enough to go full time and then enough so my wife can do something awesome, or nothing if she wants (I’m hoping for pastry chef). I’d love to get a bracelet or a WPT but if I’m cursed to make millions finishing second I’m good with that. Based on my jersey experience winning may mean more to me than I give it credit for.

Am I happy…wow. I was ready to go pro after I won 2k in a weekend in 2005 so I guess not? I’m happy with my life and glad I’m still chasing the dream. I’m happy I’m a lot better and richer than I was 5 years ago. But I want much more and I am jealous of everyone who is doing better than I am.

Top 3 players to play Ohio State football?

I’m not a history guy so this is just guys I watched play

Eddie George

Andy Hawk

And of course your 2011 Heisman winner TP who appears headed for best QB in OSU history status, although if we don’t win a title no will call him that. Just ask Troy Smith!

And now for some random questions…

Favorite TV shows growing up?

Wonder Years

Thursdays on NBC – Cosby, Family Ties, Cheers, LA Law, ER etc

First car?

First one I owned was a Camry that I bought from my Dad. First car I drove was one of those Chrysler Mini Vans everyone owned in the early 90s.

Nutsinho or Sauce123?

Nuts, just because I met him in Vegas.

Biggest downswing in $?

I won my gold jersey on April 30 and on August 7 I won the 200 PLO on PS and the 200 PLO8 on FT. In between those two days I was down almost exactly 25k in MTTs plus another ~2k in PLO/Vegas cash games.

What was the last album you bought?

The new Ben Folds, not wild about it through 2 listens. Before that I bought the Black Keys “Brothers” and TheDream’s “LoveKing”, both are awesome.

What do you drive?

My car is a Ford Ranger pick up that has been our second car since I quit my job, it’s a 2000 and has under 50k miles. It also has manual windows and locks. Our main car is a 2001 Explorer Sport. I have eco-guilt about it but the damn thing just keeps running. In terms of SUVs it is pretty small I guess. My old job had a discount plan through Ford.

Thanks Ben! Best of luck the rest of 2010!

As mentioned, FlopTurnRiver is home to some of the game’s best poker players. Probably the most famous of these, nutsinho, is a regular poster in the Short-Handed NL Hold’em section of the forum. He can be found at the nosebleed tables of PokerStars battling with other famous players, such as Tom “durrrr” Dwan. Just recently, two other players, Max Steinberg and Adrian Dresel-Velasquez, made deep runs at the World Series of Poker. Numbr2intheWorld and Chardian, respectively, are regulars at the FlopTurnRiver forums. Steinberg, like nutsinho, posts in the Short-Handed NL Hold’em forum while Chardian is fittingly the moderator of the Multi-Table Tourney Tactics forum.

Onto FlopTurnRiver’s celebrations! It will be done in style with one of the best teams assembled in online poker: Team PokerStars. Many of the players on Team PokerStars will be dropping by to offer this great website a quick tip, hello, or congratulations. Make sure you check the thread to see if your favorite player has stopped in to type a little something. There is no telling who will stop by from the pool of amazing poker players that includes Chris Moneymaker, Daniel Negreanu, Joe Hachem, and the beautiful Vanessa Rousso. “The Fossilman” Greg Raymer and Hevad Khan have both already stopped by to offer some advice and congratulate FlopTurnRiver on their huge milestone.

Again, make sure to follow the thread, post a question or two, and hope your favorite PokerStars pro checks in!

Paul Sideris: You’ve come a long way since your last interview in October of 2008. Can you tell us how you’ve done in that time?

Danny Steinberg: Well, 2009 ended up being a really crazy year for me.

For the first 4 and a half months that year I probably played the best poker I have played in my life and the results showed, I made more money in those 4 and a half months than I thought I would make the entire year.

Almost all my profits were at HU cash.

I had been playing HU cash most of 2008 too, but I was playing too aggressive, too spewy, not making the kind of folds I needed to make against the tight players I was playing.

But I really got my act together in 2009, my hand reading, especially with game flow and timing tells was superb, I always felt like my theoretical understanding of the game was as good as the top players in the world, but I wasn’t harnessing it in 2008.

But in 2009, I got my act together. I believed in myself, I got in a good routine, and I felt unstoppable.

I’d play people and it was like I knew what they were thinking, I knew when they would fold and when they would call, and I knew when they were bluffing and when they weren’t.

At that point I thought I was going to make a million dollars that year.

But my play began to degenerate and I made some bad decisions.

First, the only people who would play me at HU were very good players, and I wasn’t that interested in playing $10,000 or $20,000 dollar buy-in a game I didn’t have much, if any, edge playing.
because, of that, I decided to start playing HU sit and goes.

I saw that the players who played the SNGs, even the respected ones, were playing very badly with deep stacks and consequently felt that meant that I could develop a huge edge playing in them.

PS: How is the strategy there different than in cash games?

DS: They are a lot different. First off, your play with much shallower stacks.

I saw all these players playing loose and building pots with mediocre hands and it made me think that they were terrible, but after awhile I learned that with shallow stacks this sort of play isn’t that bad.

In cash, you play so deep, check raising the flop with a hand like top pair bad kicker is hanging yourself, you can’t build pots with mediocre hands because a good player is either going to make a bluff that they would play congruently with nut made hands, or you put yourself in a spot where you feel forced to call your stack of even though you are facing a very wide value range.

Also, cash requires you often to fold a hand such as a two pair, a straight, or even a set. I felt like I was able to make correct big folds very well in cash and it gave me a huge edge. But in HU SNGs, it’s not as relevant.

PS: so are you back to cash games now?

DS: Well what happened is I kept at HU SNGs in June through Christmas, and I struggled to improve but by the end of the year I felt like I was one of the better regulars. I didn’t end up making nearly as much money as I would have if I played HU cash. And the problem was that HU SNGs were detrimental to my cash games. I ended up losing a lot at HU cash because when you focus on playing two different games, your play is going to be worse at both than if you were to focus on one of them. So I ended up having a 6 month long small downswing / break even stretch. It was frustrating, detrimental to my play, and just plain depressing. But I made a lot of rake back and got some free tournament entries so overall I was happy.

I continued to play HU SNGs this year but I really have dabbled back into HU cash. I feel now I’m playing as well as I did last spring, and I am looking forward to a very successful year.

PS: That’s great.

I have a couple questions about grinding.

DS: okay.

PS: What do you do when you are getting ready to play?

DS: Up until very recently, pretty much nothing. I would normally just wake up and put in a morning session, and that would be the poker I would require myself to play that day.

But after working with my mental coach Jared Tendler, he encouraged me to really use some trial and error and figure out what sort of pre game stuff I can do to get better.

So now, most of the time I do this:

I will wake up, take a shower, and have a very small breakfast, which is either veggie sausage links or veggie sausage patties.

then I have two continuous logs going, both of which I review before a session.

First, I look through my poker log, this is pretty much random thoughts I have about poker or my sessions that I write down in a word document.

Second, I look through a log I call my “Mistakes Review.” This is pretty much a log where I write down the general main mistakes and the less important mistakes I make during a session where I’m not playing my A+ game.

PS: Is there anything you try to keep at the top of your mind while you play?

DS: Well this one is a favorite of mine, and its honestly the most important thing for my game. In tier 1 of my mistakes log, which are my biggest mistakes, I have something that says “Bluffing in a situation where my opponent will play a later street with a balanced range.”

It’s not specific enough of a statement, but it means a lot to me. I’ll explain

Let’s say I call preflop with 89o heads up after my opponent has raised 3x preflop.

The flop comes 742 rainbow, I check and my opponent cbets.

Clearly, his continuation bet has a lot of air in it and I want to find some way to get him off some weak hands. But if I check/raise here, there are two possibilities if he decides to continue.

One, he 3bets the flop, which I think he would very well do with some vulnerable hand that he wants to stack off with, and he could do that as a bluff.

Two, he could call, which he could do with vulnerable or not vulnerable nut hands, mediocre hands, or air.

in both situations I feel like doing anything but folding or check folding is a bad move because he can have the nuts pretty easily.

Now if we change the board to 654, same situation…

if I c/r the flop, I feel like my opponent would likely 3bet the flop with all his value hands, rarely doing it as a bluff, and calling with all his mediocre hands that he doesn’t want to stack off with. Both of this situations his range is what I’d call unbalanced: I can fold happily to a 3bet, and I can fire two more barrels on a lot of cards happily as a bluff if he calls

PS: That makes sense

DS: Now again I’m generalizing, but versus a standard opponent this is probably going to be true.

PS: You recently started a poker strategy blog with your twin brother (Suited Aces). How do his strategies differ from yours?

DS: Well, Max is plays a much more controlled game than me. He plays tight and much less bluffy, which is well suited for the 6 max cash games he plays. Me, I’m well known for being crazy aggressive. It’s funny, he could really use more of my instincts in his game and I could use a lot more of his instincts in my game. Guess that’s a twin thing.

PS: Speaking of aggression, in light of what Isildur has been doing in his games, would you like to play even more aggressively?

DS: Well, to see someone play as crazy aggressive as he does, a lot of people would probably think Isildur is terrible at poker. And to be honest, he clearly either doesn’t care to make big folds or isn’t capable of making them. But his style does fit that. He plays like a billionaire whose sole purpose is making someone’s life a living hell.

PS: Haha

DS: He is crazy aggressive, but his aggression is good. There’s a lot of things I’ve seen in his game that helped me improve my theory knowledge. And as I mentioned to some other people, if you assume he’s the best player in the world, there’s a lot you can learn by simply rationalizing his plays.

But the truth is, he’s probably not. Nonetheless, he certainly has the potential to be the best in the world.

PS: So, what can we expect to see on your blog?

DS: Well, Max and I really have three main goals with our blog. One, give our readers a feel for our lives as poker players. Second, give our readers some good poker insights. And third, be a fun blog to read. So far, we have gotten a lot of compliments on it. But this is my first time doing any sort of blog, so as time goes on hopefully we will be able to adjust ourselves to write more about what our readers want to hear.

PS: Why did you decide to start a blog?

DS: It was just something that we wanted to do for fun. Clearly, since we are twins who play high stakes poker, we felt like people would find that interesting. If it ends up getting massive readership, I’d love it. But right now it’s just something we are doing as a hobby and hoping to gain some fans and publicity.

PS: Ok just a couple more things

You say on your blog that you’re interested in going back to school in engineering. Why’s that?

DS: I’m not sure if I’m going back to school for engineering, but I have been looking at my situation like this: I have the money to finance whatever I want to do with myself, my skills at poker are very much from my ability to be creative with theory, and I want to make a lot of money by providing people with something of value to their lives. I felt like engineering is something that is congruent with my skills, and what better do something valuable then by inventing something amazing?

Nonetheless, I graduate in May and I’m going to give myself at least a year to not only have fun and relax, but really consider where I want to go with my life.

PS: You’ve written a lot about poker strategy and recently got offered a job on a coaching web site. Ever consider publishing a book?

DS: The thing is I don’t really like talking about poker strategy because even though I feel like I am able to express some concepts that could really change someone’s game, I am an absolutely terrible writer (who would probably be better if I ever revised my work!). But if someone actually came to me and offered me a book deal, I mean pssssh, I’m accepting that in two seconds.

PS: One more question. How long until you make a million dollars?

DS: By the end of the year. I promised my Dad I would make a million dollars this year, so I’m not about to back down from that haha.

But so far I’m not close

PS: haha well, good luck and thanks for the interview.

DS: thanks Paul

Joe Cada 2009 World Series of Poker Champion

On November 10th, Joe Cada changed poker history as the youngest man to ever win the World Series of Poker Main Event.  Few expected the record would be broken so soon, since Peter Eastgate had just set it in 2008 at the age of 22, but the 21-year-old Cada was able to withstand the competition and take down this year’s final table.  Following his win, Cada graciously allowed FlopTurnRiver.com to take a first hand look into his thoughts on his win, the final table break, and more.

As you may recall, Cada started the final table in 5th place with 13,215,000 chips.  Struggling, Cada soon found himself as the small stack of the table, even down to the point of just 2 million chips.  A majority of people hadn’t expected the comeback that Cada made, not even Cada himself.  As quoted in his exclusive interview with FlopTurnRiver.com, Joe Cada stated, “I wanted to win. I didn’t expect to win. I knew the odds we stacked against me, and it didn’t stop me from wanting it, but it did stop me from expecting it. [When I was down to 2 million chips] I was looking down at my hands and started to get very disappointed. I thought, I’m going to finish in 7th, for sure.”

However, all that changed when he was able to double up, twice, in hands against Jeff Shulman and Darvin Moon.  From there, Cada was able to add to his healthy chip stack size, get heads-up against Darvin Moon, and take down the $8,546,435 first place prize, along with the coveted World Series of Poker Main Event world championship bracelet.  Cada said the first purchase with his prize money was a bunch of push pops for his loyal friends who had sore throats from cheering him on.

The four month break caused much anticipation for this eventual win, and we wanted to get Cada’s thoughts on this recent addition to the WSOP, both as an observer and a participant.  “I tried to ignore most of the hype and the talk leading up to the final table,” he said. “I was able to put the binders on for the most part, and by the time I got to the final table I was surprisingly comfortable.”  He also highlighted both the negative and positive sides to the break. “I feel like the break may have hurt me slightly because I had a good grasp of my game and I understood the other players. But then everyone had all this time to change their games up. I do think the break was needed because allowing the media a chance to pay attention is really good for poker.”

When asked how being a World Series of Poker champion will affect him, Cada stated, “I’ll focus both on tournaments and cash games. I also want to play on High Stakes Poker, so that’s obviously higher than I’m used to, but I won’t be changing stakes online at all. I will make really careful decisions about game selection when I do finally move up in levels.”

Cada is obviously excited about his WSOP Main Event win and his new sponsorship with PokerStars, and with good reason.  He already has some major live events lined up too.  His next planned appearance will most likely be at the Five Diamond in Las Vegas this month, but he will certainly be attending the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure in January.

Congratulations to Joe Cada and your fabulous win!  The full exclusive interview can be found at http://www.flopturnriver.com/Joe-Cada.php.

Bigspenda73: Tell us a little bit about your poker history, how did you get your start?

Mike Catlin: In the summer after my junior year of college [2005], I was doing an internship with the defense department.  My roommate played sit-and-gos in the evening and he had made a few thousand dollars doing this.  I didn’t know that online poker existed before this, but I’m pretty good at doing quick math in my head and I figured that’s all you needed, so I thought I’d give it a try.  I deposited $25 on PokerRoom and played small stakes sit-and-gos during that summer.  By the end of the summer I had made several hundred dollars doing this.

When I went back to school I didn’t play too much poker due to school and my thesis, but once I was done with that I started playing some sit-and-gos and low stakes cash games, and found FTR.  I was pretty bad but the games were easy back then and what I learned on FTR was enough to make me about 20K by the
end of that summer.

Then I moved to California for graduate school right about the time the UIGEA was passed.  During school I didn’t play very much, but I still talked to the people I met on FTR and realized online poker was illegal in name only.  After my first year of school I started again from scratch playing SNGs and MTTs.
I had a lot of success in the Sunday Million satellites and that gave me enough of a bankroll to start playing higher-stakes MTTs and .5-1 and 1-2 cash games.  My cash game results were mediocre but I was doing very well in tournaments so I mostly stuck to them.

A few months later Renton (Thomas Luedke, a fellow mid-stakes professional) asked me why I was wasting my time with tournaments when I was clearly good enough to beat cash games.  Taking his advice I played the 2-4 and 3-6 full ring games for a couple of months, and those were my best two months ever up to that point.  By then I had enough disposable income to travel with FTR friends to Costa Rica, Las Vegas and Uruguay and had a terrific time.

After that summer I tried to move to 6-max and my results weren’t nearly as good as they’d been at full ring. I had a 20 buy-in downswing that left me discouraged, so I decided to play tournaments for a month and then come back to cash games.  Right about then I went on a massive heater, winning the nightly hundred grand and coming in 2nd place in the $100 re-buy three times within the span of a month.  I decided that I’m just much better at tournaments than I am at cash games so ever since
then I’ve stayed there.

BS73: Why do tournaments seem to be a better fit for your game?

MC: I’m very good at the math aspects of poker, but my intuition isn’t as strong.  When the stacks are shorter, it doesn’t require quite as much of that intuition to put people on ranges.  I think a lot of people have a decent idea of what range their opponent is on but they have trouble coming up with the optimal lines to take against that range.  That’s the part of the game that comes the easiest to me.

BS73: Speaking of tournaments, you play quite a full schedule both during the week and on weekends.  Could you run us through a typical “set” you might run during the week and also your schedule on Sundays?

MC: On a typical weekday session I’ll register for all the tournaments from $20 on up that begin within a two or three hour time frame, and play until I’m out of all of them.  Sometimes I add a few cash game tables if I only have a couple of tournaments left, but if I’m deep in a big tournament I’ll usually just one-table that.

MC: I try to play two or three of those sessions a week, usually starting at 5:00 with the 100 rebuy on PokerStars and the nightly $150 on Full Tilt. On Sunday I play much longer sessions, starting with the Sunday Warm-Up at 9:45 and going until I don’t have the energy to start any more tournaments.

BS73: You mentioned traveling around the world to play poker, what’s the biggest difference you’ve found in playing online tournaments vs. live tournaments?

MC: PCA (PokerStars Caribbean Adventure) and LAPT (Latin American Poker Tour) are both full of PokerStars qualifiers.  They’re much more similar to online tournaments than you might expect.  I’ve played some live tournaments in Las Vegas and at my local casino near San Francisco and I guess the main difference is that the players lack a lot of the fundamentals that I learned playing online. For example, they don’t know how to play a short stack, and they make some pretty basic post-flop mistakes like raising the flop with marginal hands to see where they’re at, and then not knowing what to do when they face more action.

BS73: speaking of live tournaments, where can we expect to see you this year?  Big plans for the 2009 WSOP?

MC: I plan to play a lot of events at the 2009 WSOP, and hopefully a couple of LAPT events in the fall.  I had a great time in both Costa Rica and Uruguay so I want to play some more of those.  I’d like to go to Europe but the EPT buyins are too steep for me right now so I’ll probably pass on those.

BS73: Could you list some of the bigger mistakes you see players making in late-stages of tournaments.

MC: The biggest mistake people make is having a sub-par push-botting game.  So much of a tournament is spent with a short stack that it’s impossible to be a big winner unless you’re solid in this phase.  It only takes a few hours of work using a program like SnG PowerTools or Sng Wizard to figure out what you should shove with depending on your position and stack size, and what you should call [others] shoves with.  There are people who play hundreds of tournaments a month yet don’t even take the time to do that, and that’s amazing to me.  When the stacks get a little deeper and you aren’t in shove or fold mode anymore, it’s a little harder to figure out what hands you should shove over people’s opens with, but it’s still solvable with a little work.

When you’re in a tougher tournament with people who know all this stuff, I suppose the biggest mistake people make is to play on autopilot and not adjust to their opponents. This is a mistake that I made often until recently [but] I’ve gotten better about it.  People play the same range of hands against everyone and they miss a lot of opportunities for exploitation that you can notice if you just pay closer attention.

Finally, a huge mistake that a lot of otherwise good players make is that they overvalue their small pairs when their stack size isn’t nearly big enough to set mine profitably.  My VPIP (Voluntarily Put Money in the Pot %) with small pairs is probably lower than anyone I know and it’s because I’m just folding them in a lot of spots where they’re unprofitable.

BS73: Which online MTT players game do you respect the most?

MC: The player I respect the most is definitely busto_soon (Johan Van Til, a top-ranked MTT Professional) just because of how big of a help his posts were to me when I was learning to play MTTs.  It would’ve taken me a lot longer to get decent without his help.  Some of the people I most dislike seeing at my table are Moorman1, Bakes, and The Universe.

BS73: Alright, time for the lightning round, can you handle it?

MC: I’m shaking in my boots but I’ll try.

BS73: Favorite sport to watch?

MC: Basketball

BS73: Favorite sport to play?

MC: Mountain biking

BS73: favorite movie?

MC: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

BS73: Favorite song?

MC: Don’t have one, sorry.  I’m a classical music nerd.

BS73: Poker player you’d most like to bust on TV?

MC: Humberto Brenes was really rude the one time i played with him live, so I’ll say him

BS73: Would you do the whole “sharrrrrrrk” thing in his face?

MC: I’d definitely make a show of it

BS73: favorite quote?

MC: man i’m choking

MC: I don’t know if i have one

BS73: man I’m choking, that from your favorite CPR poster?

MC: haha

MC: I really like that poster that says “not everyone can be an astronaut” and has a picture of McDonald’s french fries.

BS73: One final question before I let you go, would you rather win a WSOP bracelet or see the Pacers win the NBA Finals?

MC: Not even close.  The Pacers winning would be a memory I’d treasure forever.  I’d like to win a WSOP event for the money but the bracelet doesn’t mean any more to me than that.

BS73: A true fan to say the least, thanks for your time Mike.

Bigspenda73: Please tell us a little bit about yourself and your poker history.

Danny Steinberg: Well I’m 20 years old, I live in Washington DC, and go to American University. I started off poker when I was 17 when my Dad put $50 in a poker account for me and my twin brother Max for our birthday. You can read more about the story in Max’s interview. But the gist of it is pretty much I sucked at poker playing low stakes cash until I was 19 where I started to understand this whole poker thing. That month I ended up making 20k and it all looked up from there. Right now I play mostly 5/10 and 10/20 HU, but I’m so ADD you can really find me playing anything from 6 max, full ring, HU SNG’s, or 24 tabling 2/4 6 max.

BS73: You say you started to “understand this whole poker thing”, to what do you attribute your new-found success?

DS:  I don’t know if I can really explain it. If you talk to every successful high stakes poker pro, besides the elite of the elite, they’ll probably give you the same answer. It’s kind of like that part in the matrix where Neo suddenly sees everything not as he normally saw it but as all these numbers and patterns. I just woke up one morning, had a poker thought, called my friend Ben (Ben “Sauce123″ Slusky, a nosebleed NL and PLO professional and Danny’s good friend) up and asked him if what I was thinking was correct, and he pretty much said “Yeah, you figured it out.” From that point on I started discovering all these awesome poker concepts and improved my game drastically.

BS73: Five minutes in and we have a Matrix reference, awesome

DS: lol

DS: You gotta love the Matrix even though it’s played out.

BS73: You mentioned your twin brother, Max, who is another very successful mid/high-stakes poker player. How has having him around helped your poker progression?

DS: It couldn’t have been more amazing. We’d talk about poker non stop. We’re twins so we understand where each other is coming from really well. Our conversations are always extremely productive. We talk about poker still non stop, and even though were twins he often notices fine points of the game that I don’t initially see, and I always notice some points that he doesn’t see. We balance each other out really well. And man when we are sitting behind one screen together were unstoppable! I remember in the early years we’d play the sunday million and what not and we’d play it together. We’d sit there and each take extensive notes on one half of the table while the other one took the other half, and we’d play super flawlessly. However, it’d always seem like we’d make one mistake late and [mess] it all up, lol.

BS73: Max just had a huge cash in the LAPT this past year, are we going to see you break-through in a live tournament soon?

DS: Probably not! I’m not afraid to say Max is much better than me at live tournaments. Not saying that I won’t get any good, but I’m just a tilt monkey. Sitting down in a chair for 12 hours a day… you need to be in a good mental state, and Max has really achieved that. I back Max as much as I can, but of course I’m still going to do live tournaments. They are just too profitable in a lot of ways, and you can’t get any more addrenaline from the possibility of winning seven figures when you sit down. When I’m out of school I see myself doing tournaments more but not for 2 years or so.

BS73: You’ve had a tremendous amount of success at a very young age.  How long do you see yourself playing poker professionally?

DS: Right now I don’t tend to play more than 2 hours a day every day, and pretty much I see myself doing that for a long, long time. I don’t think I want to rely on poker as a main source of income, but when I get out of school my only current plan is to go to Vegas for a month or two for the WSOP and go from there. I don’t really think about the long term right now, I’m just trying to get by in school right now, thinking about the test I have tomorrow and how I’m going to spend my weekend.

BS73: I’ve noticed you’ve started playing more and more of the 10/20 and 25/50 games online, what are some of the big differences in the regulars at 25/50 compared to 3/6 or 5/10?

DS: 25/50 is just a whole gigantic other level. At 5/10 people are making mistakes all over the place. People probably think the players at 5/10 are very good but they really aren’t close to perfect. At 25/50 almost no one is making very big mistakes and you pretty much have to play your A game at all times to win there without any big fish around. I’m confident I can roll with the 25/50 regs but no way I’m playing there without a big fish in the game, and they come around more often than you’d think. 10/20 is the same way except there still are some weak regs and a little more fish.

DS: I learn a lot when I play 25/50 too. When I make mistakes at 5/10 a lot of the time I’m not punished for them, but if you make one mistake at 25/50 chances are your going to get owned pretty hard.

BS73: I have to ask about a strategy you employed at 1/2NL earlier in the year, min-raising a large range of hands PF.  This method seemed quite successful for you at 1/2NL, yet you seemed to stop there, why?

DS: Well, obviously I can make the most money playing 5/10 and 10/20 HU. It’s easily my best game. But one of my issues is my discipline totally sucks. I have a very ADD mind and its hard for me to stay grinding at something for a long period of time. Sometimes, I just like moving down, doing something totally ridiculous and seeing how hard I can beat people with it. Pretty much I saw that there were 20+ regs at 1/2 who play 17/14 or so and dont really bluff or get out of line anywhere, so its obvious to me that I want to play in a way that will get these players to make the most mistakes. For tight nits, the way to get them to make mistakes is to get them playing looser than they want to, FORCE them to play out of their comfort zone, and force them to make big calls. For looser/aggro players, pretty much you want them to show up with the nuts in all of the spots they think your bluffing in and spots where they think your range is weak.

DS: Minraising is a relatively suboptimal strategy when you play normally. For example if I played 10/8 preflop, minraising would be a horrible strategy because the whole concept of a 10/8 winning is to get pots built with strong ranges against your opponents weaker ranges. So for minraising to be a good strategy you have to play much, much looser preflop so you don’t lose any value of pot building because your range is always weaker than your opponents range. When your range is weaker than your opponents range you want to keep the pot small.

DS: So I’d play around 45/35 preflop, raising anything suited, and nearly 100% of hands from the CO and BU. I’d still of course play tight and reasonable out of position and against raises. Pretty much I’d make a lot of money from stealing the blinds or people calling a lot from the blinds but c/f nearly every flop. I didn’t make a lot of money without SD though, because I wasn’t building big pots preflop. A lot of my money came from getting the nuts and having people stack off with worse because I’d show up with T2s on a 922 board. I think some people probably wonder if I threebet a lot as well, and the answer is it depends. I’m not going to explain that any further.

DS: I ran like 20ptBB/100 over 15k hands, then started breaking even a bit, and just decided to quit because I didn’t really want to do it anymore because I just wanted to play HU again. I’m sure overall I could win over 10ptBB/100 long term at that level, but idk as I said I’m ADD.

DS: Oh one more thing, I wanted to be oop against people who werent threebetting a lot because if people started to threebet wider ranges because I was playing so loose they actually ended up playing more optimally against me then they normally did, because they’d never get to a point where they were threebetting me too much of the time.

BS73: Poker after Dark calls and asks you to select your “dream table”, consisting of yourself and five other poker professionals, who are they?

DS: Funny question. I’m assuming you’re talking about the 5 best players I could find. I’d definitely have Ben there because he’d always tell me how dumb I’m playing and how much of a tell box I am and it’d be great entertainment.

BS73: no you can pick any 5

BS73: but if you say Hellmuth this interview is over

DS: I’d definitely have Phil Hellmuth because he’s so bad and is so entertaining to make fun of.

DS: The three others: I’d have Vanessa Rousso and Clonie Gowen because they are both super hot and also seem to hate each other. And as the last guy I’d put Phil Ivey because he is so aggro and should be fun to play against.

DS: I think the ratings would be through the roof.

BS73: Well, they would be as soon as you busto the first hand when Hellmuth limp/bombs the aces

DS: haha

BS73: at least we’d get an awesome speech out of him

DS: that’d be embarassing

BS73: Who has given you the most trouble at the tables, are there any players that you specifically avoid having at your table?

DS: I bet this guy would say I’m horrible at poker, and he should say that because he gets the best of me seemingly every time, and that man is Prokker. I don’t know his real name but he is very very good at poker and I wouldn’t be surprised seeing him at nosebleeds sometime next year. He plays very optimally against me and makes very sick thin value bets. One guy who I thought would give me trouble but doesn’t is PoorUser. I don’t play him much but for some reason I always seem to soul read him.

BS73: Alright, you invented this thing, so I have to make you do it, here comes the lightning round, CAN YOU HANDLE IT?

DS: Idk we will see!

BS73: Favorite beer?

DS: Hoegaarden

BS73: Dream girl?

DS: Don’t have one, but I like the ones who are super sweet.

BS73: Favorite Movie?

DS: American Psycho, no contest.

BS73: Favorite Athlete?

DS: Tiger Woods, he’s just unbelievable there’s no one even close to him.

DS: Also Sean Taylor. I was really saddened when he died, and he really was the greatest safety of all time. Anyone who saw him play would’ve seen that. It’s amazing that we didn’t get to see his career develop.

BS73: Coolest poker hand you ever played?

DS: [Probably] the 47 hand because it represents me the most:

PokerStars Game #14779283469: Hold’em No Limit ($2/$4) – 2008/01/23 – 22:56:18 (ET)
Table ‘Lyalya’ 2-max Seat #1 is the button
Seat 1: heybude ($423.50 in chips)
Seat 2: snowbank ($1061.50 in chips)
heybude: posts small blind $2
snowbank: posts big blind $4
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to heybude [4c 7s]
heybude: raises $8 to $12
snowbank: calls $8
*** FLOP *** [3h 2c Ks]
snowbank: bets $15
heybude: raises $37 to $52
heybude said, “call”
heybude said, “shove”
snowbank: raises $997.50 to $1049.50 and is all-in
heybude said, “haha”
heybude: calls $359.50 and is all-in
*** TURN *** [3h 2c Ks] [5s]
*** RIVER *** [3h 2c Ks 5s] [5c]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
snowbank: shows [5d 4d] (three of a kind, Fives)
heybude: mucks hand
snowbank collected $846.50 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $847 | Rake $0.50
Board [3h 2c Ks 5s 5c]
Seat 1: heybude (button) (small blind) mucked [4c 7s]
Seat 2: snowbank (big blind) showed [5d 4d] and won ($846.50) with three of a kind, Fives

DS: Pretty much I was in a spot against a decent player where I knew a large chunk of his range was the five high straight draw, I was bluffing with 47o and I knew if I called it would be the most awesome call ever so I did it. I always seemed to care too much about making awesome bluffs and calls, I think I’ve become better at just playing my best now.

BS73: Favorite Sport to watch?

DS: Football of course

BS73: Favorite Sport to play?

DS: Golf

BS73: Favorite song to grind to?

DS: Hmmm tough one

DS: I’ll say Mark Morrison – Return of the mac

BS73: Favorite quote?

DS: From a book called structure of magic part 1: “In coming to understand how people continue to cause themselves pain and dissatisfaction, it is important to realize that they are not bad, crazy, or sick. They are, in fact, making the best choice they are aware of; that is, the best choice available in their model of the world. In other words, human beings’ behavior, no matter how bizarre it may seem, will make sense when it is viewed in the context of the choices generated by their models”

BS73: Alright, final question, it’s 10 years from now and in that time online poker has been banned, what will you be doing?

DS: I’ll be working on a website run by Max and I and looking for possible investments for a company called Steinberg, Steinberg, and Steinberg Investments. I’ll also be writing a book about women based on 5 years of research just interviewing all the women I can find.  Pretty much if someone would read stuff that I wrote and I could make a living off that, I’d do it

BS73: Harder to read, Ivey or women?

DS: Ivey definitely, I think I’m good at reading women!

FTR would like to thank Danny for taking the time to conduct this interview and for all of his great strategy and theory posts on our forums.

David Thorne: How’d you get your start in poker, what’s your story?

Richard Lyndaker: When I was around 16, I started playing in $5 home games with my friends from school. During the summer, we played 3-4 nights a week. One summer a couple of my friends started playing online, and one of them made over $1,200 in his first weekend, which was a pretty big deal. So, I thought I should give it a try. I deposited like $50 on Ultimate Bet and gave it a whirl.

After I was beating 10NL, I moved to Party Poker and played SNGs since they were extremely easy back then. I had some success there, but eventually had a long unsuccessful bout with 100NL in the fall of 2005. I didn’t play too much online again until the fall of 2006, where I was able to make a bunch at 1/2 and 2/4 Full Ring on Bodog. I used most of the money for school and stuff, and ended up not playing much until the fall of 2007, where I played a lot of live poker at Turning Stone in New York. A few times I had a small bankroll on Poker Stars, but used pretty terrible bankroll management and busted it.

In December 2007, I was pretty busto. I made a small deposit on Poker Stars and decided to try to take the online stuff seriously. I built $200 into $20,000 in like three weeks, and then I went on a trip to Niagara Falls with some poker guys, most of whom I didn’t know. I was invited by adam001, who has been crushing midstakes on Poker Stars for a couple of years. I had met him at Turning Stone a few months prior. When I watched Adam and one of his friends (kingsofcards, who has done an FTR interview) play sessions, I was introduced to whole new levels of thought that I wasn’t able to see before. I began thinking a ton more when I played and having a lot of success. This year I’ve been able to move up the limits pretty quickly, and since my World Series of Poker score I’ve been playing mostly 25/50 NL and feel only a select few regs are able to outplay me.

DT: Speaking of the World Series of Poker, would you mind talking about your experiences this summer? You had a great run in a $1.5k event, and of course, you just hit it huge in the $5k 6-max event. How much is this going to change the direction of your poker career?

Richard Lyndaker: I was living in Vegas with Adam, Tom, and a bunch of other guys intending to play a few events for fun but mostly just grind online. I played a $1500 LHE tourney a few days after I got there and busted in the last level of the first day. I went deep in the $1500 NL a couple weeks later but was shortstacked for all of Day 2 so I never had any real big expectations. It was a pretty fun experience but it was also pretty grueling so I didn’t feel like playing many more events, if any. My friends insisted that I play the 5k 6max and it sounded like a pretty +EV opportunity since it was deep stacked, so I went for it. It was the longest 3 days of my life but the grind was obviously worth it. As far as changing the direction of my career, I dunno; I was already intending to play professionally for quite a while longer, but I guess now I’m able to play a bit higher stakes which may be a good thing.

DT: As it pertains to the $5k, can you describe how heads-up went for you? A lot of players don’t understand the variance in heads-up play. (including certain players who have trashed your play) How do you feel you played at your final table, as well?

Richard Lyndaker: Basically I was playing my normal HU game, which is fairly strong. I was calling slightly wider out of position than normal because Joe was a huge station postflop. I never flopped top pair or a reasonable draw in any hand where I called a raise out of position the entire match

Also most of the flop textures were bad for bluffing vs. a station since I had no equity most of the time. At the end it was a shovefest because the blinds got pretty high and I got lucky a couple of times but so did he. In the last two big hands he sucked out with an open ended straight draw vs. top pair and then he held with AQ vs. my 97. I think I could have played slightly better but I’m certainly not mulling over any of the hands in disgust. I should have thrown in a couple checkraise bluffs with air but I just didn’t feel any of the spots were independently +EV.

DT: You said before that you feel only a select few regulars can outplay you. How much do you feel your game has grown this year, and do you think that you’re getting more action now, after your World Series score?

Richard Lyndaker: My game has grown a ton; I’d say I was an above average taggfish capable of beating 1-2 and good 2-4 games 6 months ago. And now I am comfortable playing in most any game on Stars. It seems like people were looking to join my games when I first played 10/20+ but now I have the respect of the majority of regs. A few might still feel I’m a fishy but I play nonstandard in a ton of spots in 6max, so that is to be expected and is welcomed.

DT: So clearly you’re comfortable and confident with your game now. It’s also clear that you’re doing a lot of things right with your results this year. What do you think you do that really sets you apart from your competition?

Richard Lyndaker: I think I pick apart when people have unbalanced ranges pretty well and I’m never afraid to go with a read even if it makes me look extremely silly some of the time.

DT: What are your thoughts on live poker? You don’t sound very fond of it; do you intend to play much of it in the future?

Richard Lyndaker: It’s pretty fun; I just don’t like playing 10 hours a day under a lot of pressure. I’ll probably play a few random events per year and a few WSOPs but I’ll never be a grinder who plays 20 events in June. As for live cash games, they’re soft but just not as profitable as multi-tabling online so I won’t be doing much of that either.

DT: What does the future hold for you? Where do you foresee yourself taking poker?

Richard Lyndaker: I’ve probably got another year or so in me of playing a ton of online poker. After that I’ll finish up with school unless I’m super rich, in which case I probably won’t bother if I’m able to find some quality investment opportunities or other business ventures.

DT: Awesome. It’s time for the fun portion of the interview that I’ve adopted from ISF, the lightning portion. First question. What’s your favorite movie?

Richard Lyndaker: Pulp Fiction.

DT: Favorite song?

Richard Lyndaker: As far as classics I’m gonna go with Summer Of ’69 by Bryan Adams, for Modern Rock I’ll go with Corduroy by Pearl Jam, and for Rap music which I’m most fond of I’d say anything from the Slim Shady LP.

DT: Favorite beer?

Richard Lyndaker: Crown Lager (Australian beer)

DT: Favorite poker memory, and why?

Richard Lyndaker: Sending ElkY (Bertrand Grospellier) to the rail cursing at himself after I flatted preflop and then check-called 3 streets with aces with 16 left in the $5k 6-max.

DT: Out of curiosity, what made you play the hand like that?

Richard Lyndaker: Well, preflop he was raising 100% of button and I hadn’t made an aggressive move vs. him yet. As for the flop, the big blind had also called preflop (I was small blind) so checkraising with a player to act would look super strong, and ElkY continuation bets a J84 rainbow flop with 100% of his range so a slowplay looked best. The turn was a 7, so I thought a checkraise would look like 87 or a straight, basically overrepping my hand, and I thought he’d be able to lay down anything worse for his tourney life. I thought the best option was to let him valuetown himself on the river if he had slightly worse, and the only argument for a checkraise was to protect my hand, which I’m never too concerned with.

DT: Thanks for the interview, Rich.

Richard Lyndaker: No problem…thanks FTR for helping me become successful at poker!

David Thorne: First things first, what’s your poker story? How’d you get your start?

Alexander Fitzgerald: I was sixteen years old and a pretty aimless teenager. At the time I was just playing in little high school metal bands and not really taking high school seriously. I was sitting around a bunch of people with the drummer in my band and they were playing poker. I asked if I could play. They said sure and I didn’t have any money but they all played on credit anyway. For whatever reason early on I got that you waited for a hand and just bet it. And then I made money. At the time I was really poor, moreso than most kids. My father had stopped supporting my family financially at that time because he couldn’t trust my mother with money given some habits she had developed and has since left thankfully. So the money really made me like it. I also didn’t have many friends growing up, didn’t have many friends at the time. I was a pretty weird kid, kind of chubby with a high-pitched voice, and ADD, so I talked a lot. I wasn’t exactly loved.

But, people in that game liked me, thought I was funny. That attracted me. I got obsessed, because that is just my personality. Before that it was boxing, video games, whatever I got into I had to know about, and do a lot of. So I started playing in a home game with some older kids who were nice enough to invite me. I was really lucky at first and made some money. I remember being so excited over thirty dollars. I would blow it on stupid things like manga (Japanese comics) or renting movies. Eventually my friends and I got too into it and we argued while we played. And the guy’s mother decided she didn’t like what we were doing, so I started having home games at my house. My mom, who was just kind of glad I even had friends, I was such a socially awkward kid, let me have games whenever I wanted, as late as I wanted, as many people as possible. I really got into that.

Eventually I got closer with one guy who came to our games. His dad let him open a Full Tilt account in his name. In doing so, my friend did one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me, whether he realizes it or not. When he wasn’t playing, he let me play on his account, as long as I could keep the records. So my friend would get done playing, and I would log on. I didn’t sleep much during this, because I was so fascinated. My main frustration with poker in the past was, no matter how many books I read, or how many poker shows I watched (which was all of them at the time), I could not find poker games ever. Now I could play whenever I wanted. The only catch was I had to keep money in the account, so I was really careful with my bankroll from the start. My friend loaned me fifty dollars, but I made it that night, and paid him back online. So, I can say I never deposited.

I read the poker magazines at that time, and an article with Edward Moncada came out. I saw his World Series of Poker final table, and he described how he lived wherever he wanted, and just played poker for a living. That seemed like the greatest thing in the world to me. He detailed the best players online, and worked in conjunction with pocketfives.com. I went there, and Fox was a prominent writer there at the time, and he wrote a great article on bankroll management. I decided to stick to his guidelines for bankroll management. I was terrible when I started online, I wanted to play every pot but I didn’t know how to play a flop. But, through trial and error I learned. I went from the $5 SNGs, to the $10s, $20s. I played .05/.10 NL on the side. Eventually I started taking shots at $5 MTT’s. On one of them, I made the final table, and came in fourth for a couple hundred.

That helped me out a lot, but around that time, things started getting very bad in my household. My mother was going through some problems, and she has gotten better now, and bless her heart because she did try her best. However, she had gotten pretty abusive towards me, and I still didn’t have many friends in high school. Aside from being weird, I grew up in a pretty well off part of Washington State. I was the only kid who didn’t have plans after high school, and I felt like a loser. My high school sweetheart moved to Egypt, and she was supposed to come back in a year. So I was just dealing with a lot of these things at once, and poker became the escape. I would do little else but come home from school and play poker, especially when I got my own account. I had a free period at the beginning of the day, and I did all my homework then. I played poker the rest of the time. Eventually, things between my mother and I got very bad, so I decided to leave my house. I had money online, but I was still pretty broke. I had just turned eighteen and was trying to pay rent, but I was fortunate enough to have my friend’s family take me in. I lived in this garage type place, and it would get 100 degrees in there sometimes. Again, I just played poker all the time. Eventually, I took third in a $10 tournament online.

I went to Alaska then, to be a commercial fisherman. I made about $7,000 in six weeks when I was supposed to make $2,000. The whole time I was in Alaska, I had slept with my girlfriend’s picture above my bed. I hadn’t been with another girl all year, my senior year of high school, didn’t party or anything. She was supposed to be coming home from Egypt, and was supposed to pick me up from the airport when I came back. She told me she wasn’t coming home, and that she knew the whole year prior that she wasn’t coming home. She played me, so when I came home from Alaska; I was the only one at the gate who didn’t have someone waiting for them out of my whole crew. For some reason, that kind of loneliness and hurt put something in me, some anger. I got home, and this girl I had a crush on throughout high school needed a roommate. I went to Wal Mart at 3 AM and bought everything for my new apartment. I moved to Seattle and got a job as a security guard. My first month in security, I made $1200; while online I made $7,000. So I decided to put a couple grand away, and try to become a professional. I was sick of working eight hours, then playing for eight hours. I figured I could get my job back if I wanted. The first couple of months were rough because I realized I sucked. The games got tougher. So I studied more and eventually started beating the turbo SNG’s for a good ROI.

I moved out of that girl’s place because we weren’t doing well. With my own apartment, and a girl not nagging me, I got really sick. I played all hours of the day. My apartment was a piece of shit, and I couldn’t even see the sky from its only real window. It was just another apartment. I had one room for the television, the couch, and the computer, all jammed together. I discovered the $20/180s on Poker Stars, and played them all day everyday. I branched out to other tournaments and had some results. I continued playing, while not studying as much, I just figured it out. I moved up as my bankroll grew, eventually went to college on my own dime. I met a girl, and started taking a few more days off. I moved to one of the nicest complexes in Seattle, traveled the world, won the $200 rebuy on Poker Stars, the $100 rebuy, and final tabled a bunch of others. I switched to cash recently, and am doing well there. And now I’m here talking to you.

DT: Wow, that’s quite a story. What are your goals for poker, where do you see yourself, as you’ll be turning 21 soon?

Alexander Fitzgerald: My hope is that in the next couple years I will establish myself as a cash game player. I really do not have the patience for MTT’s anymore, and I really want a life outside of poker. The best MTT’ers do very well financially but I get depressed very easily, and grinding for six days a week is just not what I want to do anymore. I’d like to be a 5/10 NL regular within the year and also still playing many of the live tournaments, and hopefully win one of them, although it is very difficult given the variance in MTT’s and I am not going to beat myself up if it doesn’t happen. I enjoy playing the nightly tournaments while I am grinding but I cannot play twelve hours a day anymore.

DT: What’s your average poker day like? How many hours a week do you play?

Alexander Fitzgerald: I go back and forth between playing all the time and not playing at all. When I am in Seattle I will wake up, go for a jog, lift some weights, although not enough, get something to eat, and then I will play for usually about 6-10 hours. Sometimes to get over the monotony I hang out with my friends who are also professional poker players. I usually play the bigger MTT’s and a couple cash games, and then turn off the cash games as the MTT’s get more intense. When I bust out of everything I just 12-table cash, listen to my music, chill out. When I am really working hard I do about sixty hours a week, but often I will just fly somewhere and probably play maybe 10 hours a week, and just cash.

DT: You’ve experienced plenty of highs and lows in the past year in tournaments, with your numerous final tables in tourneys like the 200r, 100r, and Nightly Hundred Grand, along your deep runs in live tournaments, just falling short. With that said, what is it about tournaments that tend to polarize a player’s feeling toward them? What makes you still play them, despite the heartbreaking nature of them?

Alexander Fitzgerald: I would say that a lot of people, whether they like to admit it or not, play tournaments simply for the feeling of being at the top of the mountain at the end of the day. There is so much more money in cash games. That being said, I think a lot of people either love or hate tournaments because of the ridiculous amount of variance involved. I do not care who you are if we change 10 hands in any tournament player’s year we can almost certainly cut his results in half. It is that factor that drives anyone crazy. Everybody will win roughly half of their coinflips over their lifetime, but maybe 10 coinflips, suck-outs, or what have you might determine whether your ROI in live events is negative or positive by a wide margin over a five-year period. I continue to play them because I am in a financial agreement where it is no longer my own money in them, so it is a freeroll for me. They are the best chances you can have to turn a little amount of money into a lot. Furthermore, there are few things in my life that make me feel as alive as playing a large final table. Having finished 11th and 13th in two larger (live) Poker Stars events, my biggest regret first was of course not getting a chance at the big money, but a close second was how fun and intense it is to play with great players for so much money. That is pressure. That is intensity. That is where we separate the men from the boys, the ladies from the girls. That is what I live for.

DT: What’s the worst downswing you’ve encountered in playing poker, thus far? How did you deal with it?

Alexander Fitzgerald: The worst downswing I’ve ever had was last fall. I do not want to say a number, but it was a very significant portion of my roll. A large part of the reason for the downswing was my own immaturity. Instead of taking a well needed break and re-evaluating, moving down, discussing things with my poker friends, I just kept playing the biggest tournaments non-stop and heads-up cash. Eventually I ran through more than half of my bankroll and I finally decided to figure out what was going wrong. I decided to move into cash games because when you look at professional horse bettors, stock traders, or anyone else’s job that involves gambling they diversify their bets between the long shots and the steady money. When I was just playing tournaments I lacked that bread and butter game. Tournaments are so variance-ridden, I know of very successful players who have gone through $100,000 downswings. Having a game you can play on the side that is more consistent, like SNG’s or cash games, will really help you. I also re-evaluated my game and found some errors I was making late in MTTs, and after I did that I won a $100 MTT and took 2nd in a $100 rebuy within a 24 hour period. I just was so worn down I wasn’t even realizing how bad I was playing. If I had taken breaks and been honest with myself, and moved down, I could have avoided the whole mess.

DT: You sound like you’ve matured a lot since then as a poker player. How do you feel your mindset and game have changed over time, and where do you feel you’re at in your journey as a poker player right now?

Alexander Fitzgerald: When I was eighteen and started playing for a living I had no real idea what kind of swings you could go through, nor did I possess the emotional maturity to handle it. Over the years I think I have gotten better at accepting things as they come and trying to be calm during the lows and modest during the highs. I have also come to realize that winning a big tournament is a very special thing, and that I shouldn’t get down on myself if it doesn’t work out. I’d also like to think I’ve grown an appreciation for the fact that there is life outside of poker. Instead of just staying in my apartment all day addicted like I used to do I have traveled a lot, met a lot of people, and tried to expand my mind. I think I still have a lot to learn as far as the game goes, especially in cash games, but I would like to think I have laid the groundwork for success with a strong emotional and mental framework.

DT: Everyone has a certain hand that they remember, that sticks out in their head as one of their favorite or best hands, whether it be a great call or fold. This hand just stands out from the rest. What is that hand for you? What is your most memorable hand?

Alexander Fitzgerald: I want to tell you about when I was sixteen and in a home game I called a guy down with one pair on a scary board, and how at that point it kind of hit me that I could be a professional poker player, but to be honest with you every player remembers their biggest beat, and when you asked that question I thought of one hand in particular. Without going into too much detail Alex Brenes and what seemed like a thousand of his friends were cheering for a seven on the river, for 2nd place chips with 10 left in LAPT Rio De Janeiro. I had called him preflop with A-Q when he had A-7, and he had only three outs on the river. Since my name on Stars is Portuguese many of the locals took a liking to me there, so they were cheering for the queen; when the seven hit there was a brief pause and then the whole room seemed to collapse with Alex Brenes freaking out and jumping with his friends. It was the most numb I had ever felt in my life after a poker hand. They counted the chips a couple times and finally figured out I was out.

DT: How did you deal with that beat? You’ve gone deep in many live tournaments in the last year, including the APPT Manila last year, the Irish Poker Open this year, and the LAPT Rio, and have fallen just short. How have you dealt with this? Do you think it’s hurt your game, or empowered you?

Alexander Fitzgerald: I think it has been good for me, actually. Many guys my age are fortunate to win a big tournament early, and then they develop unrealistic expectations, and do not use the money wisely. Of course, I would love to have those issues with them, but I think I have a more realistic view of what a life in tournament poker entails because my first couple years weren’t all strawberries and champagne. I have learned to appreciate the fact that I was lucky to be in those exotic countries taking those beats, instead of serving in Iraq so I could get some kind of education, working as a security guard still, or what have you. Having to focus on the positive when you are faced with disappointment I believe makes you a stronger person, and I would like to think it has made me stronger.

DT: You seem to be very self-aware. What do you feel are your biggest strengths and weaknesses?

Alexander Fitzgerald: I appreciate you saying that. I think my greatest asset as a poker player is being honest with myself, and that gives me an ability to improve my game where others might not. If you can appreciate someone’s game then you can learn from them. If you arrogantly dismiss them as lucky you will learn nothing. I also think I have a lot more perseverance in me than many. I am stubborn as hell; you cannot tell me I cannot do something, because that only motivates me more. Unfortunately, I have kind of needed that, because I think one of my weaknesses as a player is I am slower to pick things up than many pros. I never looked at the game and just got it right away. I got certain things, yes, but my poker development has been a much more belabored process than it is for many players who also share my success. I might need to see something twenty times to understand it while another pro might need to see it once. My other fault is that I am just a lazy individual when I want to be, and other players have much more in terms of work ethic. I don’t see the point of living life only to play poker. I love to play, sure, but when I go to these live events oftentimes my friends do not even leave the hotel. That is insane to me. So many people grow up wanting to see these places you are privileged to travel to and you are just going to stare at a laptop the entire time you are there, and do what you do the rest of the year? That being said, those players will often be better than me because they are more devoted and put in more hands, and they deserve the financial success they come into.

DT: How long do you want to play poker for? Where do you ultimately see yourself going with poker as it pertains to your life?

Alexander Fitzgerald: I really do not know the answer to that question. I certainly enjoy poker now but I do not relish it like I did when I was younger. There are many times when the game is quite monotonous. That being said I still enjoy learning about the game and having something to work on every day. It is not like other jobs where you simply learn your task and repeat it every day, you get to keep learning and developing as a poker player and there is a financial reward to it if you do it well. I do not know how long I will play. I enjoy writing immensely, and to tell you the truth when I moved to Seattle my first goal was to become a writer, poker just took off very quickly, actually paid the bills, and satisfied my ADD. My dream is still to be a published novelist, and change some young person’s life by giving them a different perspective on the world through my writing, in the way that my favorite writers have affected me. I think poker will always be part of my life somehow but if in the future I could branch out towards writing or maybe doing some volunteer work I would be satisfied. I would also like to travel some more too. Perhaps be a travel writer. I don’t really know. Poker goes a long way towards killing your attention span. The only thing I know for sure is I could never do anything I didn’t truly enjoy anymore, which is kind of sad, because I don’t think I could ever take a college class I didn’t truly enjoy without it being excruciating now.

DT: What do you want out of the game, in the long run? What about the game is most important to you? Money, fame, freedom, or a combination?

Alexander Fitzgerald: I like the money because it gives me freedom. That is the most important thing to me. It depresses me how many people in my country (U.S.A.) just work all the time, make little time for their families, and get to do little for themselves. Our culture breeds materialism to properly numb people to the fact they are working more than they should be. As if a nice car or house is going to mend your soul.

I am really into history and one of the things I find interesting is that in many times of economic and societal wealth in the past, say Rome for example, there was a large surge in intellectualism, what we call the Renaissance period. In America we frown upon intellectualism and seem to have cultivated this love for the burdensome life. You watch TV and the constant themes are work is killing me; I hate my wife, etc. Our country has gradually progressed into a system that continues to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. To suggest anything different is to be unpatriotic. If you say you wish we had a better healthcare system then you’re a socialist who is going to kill everyone. If you say you think we need more vacation time like parts of Europe than you are unrealistic. If you say we need to stop putting so much money into hopeless illegal wars and properly fund our school system so that half of 20-year-olds are not buried in student loans by the time they graduate then you are not supporting the war, the troops, your country.

To escape from all of that with a job like poker is what I enjoy most. I do not have to come home every night convincing myself that my hard work is going to pay off one day, when the truth is much of my career will be guided by how much my boss likes me. I do not have to scrape by anymore. I do not have to work fifty hours a week with no benefits just so I can feed myself and keep a roof over my head anymore. I have the time and financial means to travel, meet new people, experience new cultures, read, and enjoy life. I am happy now for the first time in my life. I was clinically depressed years ago, and instead of taking medication and numbing myself I tried to improve my diet, and improve my life, and it has worked. As long as I can have this life that allows me to do what I love I could care less about the rest. I want to put my sister through college, my Mom in a home, and after that I just want enough money to support myself and to do what I love.

DT: Favorite movie?

Alexander Fitzgerald: Fight Club.

DT: Favorite song?

Alexander Fitzgerald: “Meet Me At The Bottom” by Longwave.

DT: Favorite book?

Alexander Fitzgerald: 1984.

DT: Favorite beer?

Alexander Fitzgerald: Tsingtao. I used to have a 40 oz. of that at every final table back in the day.

DT: Favorite band?

Alexander Fitzgerald: Raunchy. Their whole focus is living life to the fullest, drinking, and meeting girls. I love them.

DT: Your favorite place to be in the world?

Alexander Fitzgerald: Seoul, South Korea. Craziest parties and the hottest girls, and you can do anything at any hour. It is truly the sprawling metropolis I dreamed of when I was younger, reading all the time. The big, dirty, beautiful city.

DT: Thank you very much for your time Alex. Good luck in the future.

Alexander Fitzgerald: No problem, peace.
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