[El Diablo]

c:

"how did you learn to write such incisive forum posts and polls?"

1: Smart.
2: Practice.

Chicago:

Playing
Posting on forums
Other(session review, stats review, etc [talking/sweating w/ friend])
Coaching
Reading

c:

"Why don't you play poker full time?"

I think it's pretty boring and can make more money and have more fun doing things I find more interesting.

"Do you play LAG because you think you maximize profit, or just for the fun?"

At low limits, a combo. At high-limits I only play LAG if I'm playing in a really good game, otherwise I'm generally more on the TAG side.

j:

"what kind of cool stuff have you bought from poker?"

I don't buy much cool stuff. Most of my "fun spending" is on food/drink/entertainment(shows, travel, etc.).

1:

"What would you suggest I do to improve and move up the levels in the best way possible? Bank roll is currently $4000 for reference."

Post hands. Find a smart friend at the same level and discuss strategy and sessions. Sweat each other.

Grifter:

"Could you expand on how you read hands."

One thing I do is try to put players on exact hands. I try to do this in every single hand I play. After a while, you pick up things that help you realize that he has to have exactly J8c or whatever. It's a combination of pattern matching, deductive reasoning, and feel/instinct. It also helps that I can remember details of just about every significant hand I've ever played.

"top five novels..."

This would take me hours to do. I'm gonna walk around my room and just list five good novels I see.

American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis
High Fidelity - Nick Hornby
Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk
The Bourne Identity - Robert Ludlum
The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

"and three favorite porn stars."

I'm not much of a porn guy and don't know who current porn stars are. In general, I prefer pretty faces and real rack or non-ridiculous boob job. Racquel Darian was a favorite of mine. Janine. Tera Patrick.

j:

"How can I become the next El Diablo in terms of playing skill?"

Depends on how smart you are.

toy:

"1) Everyone always tells us to improve our hand reading by trying to 'think visually' each hand regardless of if we are in it or not. Do you have any other advice to improve hand reading in general?"

As I said above, work on putting players on EXACT hands. Sweating hands together with a friend and talking through how you read the hand definitely helps refine the process.

"2) What are some plays that you think can be profitably used at SSNL that generally aren't?"

River checkraise bluff. Third barrel.

"3) Could you maybe write us a quick one or two paragraph bit that tells the story of your poker career?"

Done, see above.

"4) How did you get to be so cool?"

At some point I stopped worrying much about what other people thought of me. Somehow I became way cooler then.

ilya:

"do you think it's a good investment for a relative beginner (little cash experience, but a solid track record beating low-buyin SnGs over a large sample) to play perhaps too agressively preflop, say open-raising hands like 76o and Q8o in the CO, in order to see more flops and gain postflop experience?"

I like the 76o play there just fine, don't like the Q8o. I think a good way to get more postflop experience for cheap is to flat call a reasonably wide range of hands both in position and in the blinds.

"how do you handle getting 3bet by the PFR when you raise the flop with a draw? e.g. you cold-call a PFR with 89h. flop comes AhTd6h. He leads for 2/3 pot you raise and he makes a small 3bet, giving you direct odds to draw. Do you take the odds or shove it in to ensure you get more action those times you have a set or 2pair?"

Well, a monster draw like this I'm gonna almost always push. If my draw is not quite as strong, I'll call/push I dunno 50/50ish.

"what are you cold-calling standards in the SB and BB when you have good relative position on the raiser? Say an EP/MP player raises and one or two players call behind him. I presume you would call with any small pair in the SB, but would you also play hands like 76s or A8s? Are you more likely to call against an EP than an MP raiser?"

I definitely call both raisers there w/ both of those hands and a lot more. I cold-call more pre-flop than most because I like playing lots of hands post-flop and feel like the more post-flop play the bigger my edge.

"say you've been raising a lot preflop and betting a lot of flops but between missing most of the flops hard and getting floated/raised, you haven't been taking down many pots. how do you adjust to having developed this kind of weak image?"

I'll tighten up a little and turn more passive, doing more check-calling w/ made hands. I'll also get a little more aggressive post-flop with my draws, since my fold equity w/ strong moves is increased. I make lots of changes based on how I think opponents perceive me based on the cards I've been dealt. That's why some people in 3/6 lately consider me a LAGtard while others consider me a set-mining nit. The correct answer is probably somewhere in the middle.

"how do you handle missing the flop with AK on rag/paired rag flops? say you raise UTG and get a CO caller and the BB also calls. the flop is 852 and the BB checks. or the flop is 883 and the BB checks. what if you're HU OOP? It seems strange to cbet when few/no better hands will fold and observant players may use worse hands to put a move on us, cos really no matter how wide our open-raising range is we're likely to have missed the flop. And even if they don't the worse hands that fold often have few/dominated outs."

I try to mix this one up between c-bet, check-call, check-fold, and check-raise, probably about 25% each.

"finally...i think it's better not to use PAHUD when starting out. do you agree? "

I don't use one and think it makes you a better handreader and player, but I think it's likely more profitable to use one if you're playing smaller games and/or multitabling a lot.