The Well: Adanthar (1/16/07)

[adanthar]

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after you are sure you're a significant long term winner.

[/ QUOTE ]How can a player be certain he or she is a long term winner? I see posts all the time from players who started with $50, ran it up to several thousand, and then went busto. Some of this was bad BR management, but others are clearly not good players (even I can tell). Is even a years worth of consistent within-bankroll play enough to be certain that a player is a long term winner?

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Short version: if you post hands here and I don't flame you, you probably don't suck [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Long version: the thing is, the long term is freaking long. On the one hand, Daniel Negreanu probably hasn't played enough lifetime hands to know he's even a winner at poker, much less the stakes he played (this is only a mild exaggerration.) On the other, he is clearly really good at poker. So, overall...I'd say when you can look at the table you're at and say "ok, this guy sucks, this guy's OK but makes bad pushes, this guy overplays top pair..." and be right, you've arrived.

Unless you're deluding yourself, in which case, umm, running hot at the right times is always good.

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Is it wrong of me to have a hard on for Putin because he's just so incredibly cool and monstrous?

Wait until the gulags start up again (probably when his successor turns out to be evil and not just dictatorial), that should be fun.

Was Stalin good for Russia?

I could strain myself and find a "cancer killing AIDS" metaphor somewhere, but really...no

Favoutite book, film, play and band?

I always hate these because I always leave something out...I'll just say I read a lot of sci-fi/fantasy/horror, watch tons of cheesy sci-fi, too, and listen to Scandinavian black metal. Yes, I'm weird.

My best mate, the best lawyer in our year, quit Law to become a primary school teacher and is now really happy, although, to be frank, he has lost much of his mental acuity. Would you rather be a happy pig or a discontented Socrate?

If we're talking hypothetically, obviously, happy anything > discontented anything. IRL...I'd rather dump both and be a space pirate. I hear that pays well.

As you are level-headed, where do you find your 'buzz' in poker?

Level headedness only goes so far when you win $100,000 dollars in one night, man.

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[pocketjacks]

Adanthar,

I really enjoy your satellite posts. I have been wanting to ask this since I read your satellite post.

When it gets down to crunch time and you are a middle stack in the Cutoff with 2 middle stacks in the blinds, or any ideal steal situation, do you ever make a 3XBB raise, or do you always just push? What I gathered from your post is that you never raise 3XBB, you always open push. Did I understand it correctly?

One more question: What do you see happening in the future for online poker?

Thanks

[LearnedfromTV]

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it's probably better for a talented player to move up too soon than to delay development too long, but that's another story...)

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Elaborate.

2. What are your long term, big picture poker goals? I.e., assuming you plan to still be playing in five to ten years, what would you consider success at that point?

3. You talk about quitting your day job. What are your thoughts on online poker's longterm viability? I assume you've done some weighing of "relative chances the ban is enforced/games dry up/everything is fine" with your ability to get a real job if necessary with live poker options and whatever investment opportunities you are looking at. Just curious what your thought process is.

4. How many hours of poker did you play in 2006? How many do you expect to play in 2007? For both what is the breakdown between nl cash games/other cash games/tournaments.

5. If you have to get a fulltime law job would you prefer big firm or working for yourself?

[adanthar]

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I would also be interested in your "poker-life" story.

I have always enjoyed reading your posts and I think it is interesting learning about the past and development process of good players (and teachers). Maybe it's just the fact I'm a history major, but I would like to hear how you got started, etc.

Thanks!

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I've posted this a couple of times, I think, but it's gotten mistier with age so let me see if I can remember this properly...

Up until 1L, I'd probably played 30 minutes of poker in my life. When I started law school, though, I'd happened to be accepted in the only law frat house in America and wound up with 25 very cool roommates, a couple of whom played poker. I therefore signed up and immediately blew around a hundred and fifty bucks in multiple $25 deposits on UB. At that point, I got pissed and decided to read my roommate's books instead of just losing money. After a month of that, I officially broke even in my poker career, left UB (which sucked back then about as much as it does now) and took an affiliate's 50 dollars to go play at Party.

Being an affiliate seemed like a good idea, so I also signed up for that, got about a dozen people to claim *their* free 50 bucks and got a free entry into a 5K freeroll. As it turned out, only half of the 200 people showed up, my game was slightly less crappy than their game, and I wound up taking second place for $800 (after giving up and check/calling a turn all in with a straight draw) with my girlfriend and roommate watching. We were high fiving and yelling so loud that I was hoarse the morning after. It was a completely ridiculous finish that made me move up from .50/1 to 2/4 limit! Yay!

Then I ran hot there, ran hot at 3/6, broke even at 5/10 limit but had a few grand to go play (limit!) SNG's with, eventually switched to unlimited hold'em SNG's a few months later, yadda yadda. Incidentally, limit SNG's are still the softest game on the planet, not least because, all these years later, everyone still only plays them by accident.

[onoble]

Thanks for the answers man.

OK, first hand of a LIVE 5 table tournament. You have 2000 chips blinds are 25-50, levels raise evry 25 mins You are UTG, it's the first hand and you have no reads what do you do with:

1) AJo
2) suited connector
3) PP (22-77)
4) KQ

Do you answers change if it's an online tourney, if so how?

Again my thanks

[adanthar]

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Any new updates on how much your Cake poker % is worth? Do you see yourself becoming mostly a NL cash player in 2007? btw it was good to meet you at PCA, I think we have very similar styles, I basically find myself agreeing with every strategy post of yours that I've read.

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Thanks man [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

If things go well, ideally I want to do a 60/40 mix or so of cash to tournaments, but it's totally going to depend on my mood, busto/robusto, and the phase of the moon. I'm committed to playing more and becoming full time this year, but not necessarily playing a specific game. On top of switching games for variety, it's going to be more important to be well rounded in the near future than it already is.

Cake %...I still have no idea, but I wouldn't sell it for any amount right now since it's such a high risk/high reward gamble. Five years from now, it could be worth nothing or a million, and I somewhat feel like what I personally do will have something to do with that.

[registrar]

Which is your best game, both absolutely and against the standard internet player of that game?

[skier_5]

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I dropped out of school this past semester, and after living at home for a month have decided I'm going to move back to Dallas. I'll be supporting myself, at least for the first 3-4 months, playing low-limit SNGs at $25-30/hr.

Will I kill myself?

Do you have any advice for the next few months in general for me?

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100nl ftw. you can easily make at least twice as much 8 tabling .5/1

[ItalianFX]

Have you read any poker books? If so, which ones? and which ones helped you the most?

What are some key concepts of poker that you know now that you wished you knew when you first started?

Any advice for someone who just can't seem to win?

[adanthar]

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do you have any control/influence at cake poker? coud you be hired as a consultant ala jurollo w/ stars? how often are there $600 average pots at the 5/10NL game?

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While I can own stock of a poker company in the US, I definitely cannot make business decisions while here. I can ask them to do things as a player and make bug reports, and they've been awesome with that, but to do anything else, first and foremost I'd have to leave the country (and, oh yeah, they'd have to want me to do it). Whether that will happen or not in the future...who knows.

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I dropped out of school this past semester, and after living at home for a month have decided I'm going to move back to Dallas. I'll be supporting myself, at least for the first 3-4 months, playing low-limit SNGs at $25-30/hr.

Will I kill myself?

Do you have any advice for the next few months in general for me?

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Well, first and foremost, I would never drop out of school for poker for the basic reason that, as I am living proof of, it is possible to do nothing in school and still get B's. Therefore, you may as well "go to college" and get a degree, even if you happen not to know what rooms your classes were in when the semester ends. If you can't do this, you're attending the wrong college (and it's entirely possible that you are)...but regardless, IMO, passing up all the perks of college for a whopping 30 bucks an hour is pretty lame*.

*in no small part because, yes, playing low level SNG's has been proven to cause insanity in lab mice.