Interview with 1rake1

1rake1, mavrickkk, majcy

First part of the interview: CLICK HERE

Charles Hawk: I know you have done a HU4ROLLZ in the past, is this something that you would be interesting in doing again?

1rake1: I do actually enjoy the bigger reg battles the challenege and the dynamics that evolve deeper into a reg battle that you don't get to experience with just 40 games here and 40 games there. However i think HU4ROLLZ are generally quite an inefficient use of time the way they are usually laid out. But yes I would challenge anyone to a HU4ROLLZ but the structure would have to look something like... 3k games, 12 days of 250 games (straight or 1 small break), taking place over a 3 week period.

Charles Hawk: You coached majcy who is now in 300s. Is he an old friend of yours? How did you meet? Why did you decide to coach him?

1rake1: It’s actually a funny story of how we came to know majcy. At the time I was mainly bumhunting 60's - 300's and I think he was giving me some shit in the chat at 60's as he genuinely didn't believe I was a 300s reg. I was due a break at the time and despite barely ever chatting to anyone in the chat box I decided to chat back whilst I ate some food. Around that time myself, mavrickkk and adamc were considering getting into staking and coaching. One thing led to another and despite us barely knowing each other we paid for him to come join us in the UK for a few days where we could briefly get to know him and we coached him intensively for a few days before we began the deal and he then went back to Poland.

Shortly after this me and mav were going away again and this time round adamc was going to stay in England with his girlfriend (although they both later changed thier mind and came to join us). Having spent most of my life with my twin brother we decided it might be a little boring just the 2 of us and speculatively suggested if majcy wanted to join. To our surprise he jumped at the opportunity and it all started there...we have lived with each other since this point and considering the randomness of the whole event we all get on very well.

Charles Hawk: Tell me about your twin brother Mavrickk growing up. What were your interests in childhood and teen years? Have you (or your parents or friends) noticed any signs back then that would predict your poker career?

1rake1: I'm not sure anything could have predicted a career in poker but we were always very competitive in pretty much anything we did. During childhood at some stage or another we were much involved in all sports and would represent school in lots of these. Anything from football, rugby badminton, golf, cricket, chess, basketball. long distance running. We actually both played chess as a child for our county which is kind of random looking back and at the age of 14 I had a golf handicap of 9 but I slowly lost interest and later discovered other things ;) I used to consistently just pip Mavrickkk on any endurance style events which would fustrate him but I have to admit he would consistently do very slightly better than me academic wise, which he would always use in his defense.

I think we were both always pretty driven by money. From selling sweets in the playground as a kid to buying and selling on ebay, we were always spinning some plate or other. At university we spent hours playing the perfect game of blackjack across several different sites at a small loss in order to collect the deposit bonus which was released after turning over the money x amount of times. We used to take part in medical trials. Occasionally we played small local live poker tournaments £30 - £100 entry, reflecting back... I'm not sure what edge should have been achievable in those games but I'm guessing I ran pretty hot. My biggest win was ~2.2k GBP I think which was very big money at that time. Little did I know at this stage 5 years later I would be starting my career as a poker professional.

We both also had many traditional part time jobs I remember a time where where Mavrickkk had actually just been offered 2 jobs and we were both pretty short for cash at the time. I also had a job at the time and although we decided neither 1 of us would have enough time to be able to do the 3rd job we decided we would have enough time between us. haha. So un-beknowing to them we actually shared the job doing alternating shifts...this created so many awkward situations stemming from the littlest of things. They still don't know to this date that there was actually 2 different people doing that job.

Charles Hawk: You’ve done a lot of traveling. Tell me about your most memorable moments from places you’ve visited.

1rake1: One memory that springs to mind is when my older brother visited us and him and his girlfriend had organised a hike up the volcano Rinjani on the island of Lombok in Indonesia. We didn't really listen much to the details but me mav and majcy decided we would go along. We thought the hike would be fairly short and we’d have time to see the rest of the island, majcy thought he would do a bit of surfing, mav had packed some clothes for a night out ect.. Shortly after turning up to the airport and hearing the full details from our older more organized brother, it turned out the entire 3 days would actually be spent climbing the volcano which turned out to be insanely challenging, although there were few jokes at the time we have joked many times since about a combination of lack of food, length and intensity of the walk, our general lack of organization and equipment. But we had a great time and saw some amazing views and have some great photos of the adventure. One of the few pieces of equipment that majcy did happen to have was a helicopter drone which he had carried all the way to the summit...only for it to break before we got any footage lol.

1rake1, mavrickkk, majcy

My friends generally know very little details of me as a poker player and I like to keep my work separate. I spend enough time working and I don't want to be reminded of this in my time off. haha. However they are always very keen to come and visit. We have enjoyed many fun holidays with them around Asia both in Thailand and Bali whilst living there and also taken trips to meet with them in Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and recently we had a reunion in Hong Kong for new year. We usually visit Europe in the summer and have done Ibiza, Amsterdam and Tomorrowland festival in Belgium the last few summers. We also just got back from our brothers stag do in Vegas and then his wedding in France which were both a lot of fun!

One of my most memorable and challenging events with friends was when I and 7 other friends cycled from Leeds in the North of England where we all lived at University all the way to Perpignon on the South coast of France. We traveled a total distance of 1300 miles during the course of 25 days whilst carrying all our clothes, equipment and tents with us and raised £3000 for charity.

Charles Hawk: You are currently living in Indonesia with Mavrickkk, Adamc1988, Majcy and Campbell - Gee. Tell me some interesting or funny stories from living together.

1rake1: We all get on really well and our villa is generally a very fun living and working environment. Everyone brings something different to the table, Campbell-Gees the joker of the house and he keeps us entertained with his hilarious experiences with the ladies that always come with a twist...not sure they can be repeated here though lol!

We also always rip Campbell-Gee for the extra time he would spend chatting on skype compared to the rest of us...it takes some dedication! So much so he was once sat on the back of mavrickkk on a kawazaki ninja with his laptop on his knee, holding his phone which he was hot spotting from so that he could continue a skype chat.

Whilst we were all in Europe last summer majcy and campbell went away to Berlin for 2 days to visit a friend and go to a festival. Campbell never does any admin stuff so majcy was responsible for booking the hotel. Busy with other things he picked one quickly based purely on how close it was to his friends place. When he briefly mentioned this to his friend, his reply was "ha, you booked a gay hotel" which at the time sounded to him as its simply not the greatest hotel and pretty much forgot about it. When they arrived it striked them as weird that behind the muscular receptionist wearing overly tight clothes was big poster of half naked man with water dripping down on him. However the real surprise came later when they entered the room; no doors to the bathroom of which its walls were made from huge red see-through glass panes, a very large strategically placed mirror very effectively enabled you to see whoever was taking a shower from pretty much any point in the room. Finishing touches to the room included; wine, condoms which replaced the usual mints and an optional sign you could hang from your door knob reading 'Please Disturb!' Just in case the wine they provided opened them up to a little experimentation. Needless to say they obviously had the time of their lives! ha!. However since then Campbell always books his accomodation himself!

Charles Hawk: Because of your team-shot some regs were added to the 1ks, and 500s after 2-3k games. Now the cartel doesn't want to add you and your twin brother although you war them quite successfully. How you would evaluate your chances to become 500s division member? How about 1ks?

1rake1: I think it is just a matter of time before they will have to let us in. At the end of the day if they plan to keep us out it comes down to 3 things

1. Do we have the skill and work ethic to see it through?

I believe yes and I'm pretty sure this wouldn't be up for dispute amongst most of the 500/1k cartel. I also believe we are currently learning faster than anybody else right now. I have actually just put my summer holiday in Europe on hold (because of these stubborn buggers!) which was going to be centered around a week yachting in croatia along with seeing friends and family back in England and maybe a cheeky couple of days in Ibiza. I don't have any more holidays planned for the rest of the year.

2 .Is it our most profitable avenue to continue along this path or is our time better invested by giving up and jumping ship and doing something like spins…

Whilst I don't doubt there is good money to be had grinding $300 hypers and lower and at spins. The stuff I'm currently very motivated to learn will always be very transferable throughout poker in the years to come. Whilst i am so motivated I'm happy to pursue this avenue. Plus i think I'm way too competitive to give this up now... ha! We have basically only just got started on the new strategy so although it sounds odd it's still very early days. Now that all 3 of us can cherry pick our opponents when we are ready I'm excited to see what results we can achieve.

3.Do we have the bankroll to be able to survive the variance?

In short yes and I'm sure if people thought about it carefully they should also easily come to this conclusion, however I do believe the current cartel might be holding out for the hope this isn't true. We are currently spending a lot of time off the tables doing theory when the people we want to play aren't around. If at any point I wanted to boost my bankroll I could easily spend some of this time fishing or playing spins where I'm confident I could make pretty good money. There is also more creative arrangements I could make with numerous people where I could sacrifice some long term profit for some short term cash but i’m confident we won’t have to go down that avenue.

I’m very confident we will become 500/1k members, timescale is another question but before the end of this year I think shouldn't be too optimistic. We are in it for the long haul and everything we are doing has that in mind and I believe if we just continue the routine we have been doing for a very long time now it's just inevitable. adamc actually used to be a competitive distance runner prior to poker so I think he's just getting into his comfort zone about now and he's certainly got the stamina for a long war. haha!