Interview with 307th 

Charles Hawk: How did you discover poker?

307th: My older brother started playing online poker before me, he made some money although didn't go full-time.

Charles Hawk: How long did it take to discover husngs and to play them regularly?

307th: I discovered them pretty fast. I first started playing poker in late 2010, I started with pokerstrategy.com with their free $50 plus $50 of my own. I tried a bunch of different formats, husngs being one of them. I ran good and got up to around $2.5k ish bankroll in total, then black friday happened - most of my roll was on fulltilt, so I didn't see it for a while.

After that, I did try to play poker on pokerstars for a little bit, but it didn't go well. I was in university at the time and I strongly disliked it, so I was hoping poker would become a way of making a living without having to get a degree. But I approached it badly. This will sound stupid, but I didn't understand how to improve at things at that time - I thought you learned the ropes, played a bit, and then you just had to hope that you somehow became good. I didn't believe that "hard work" was a way of getting better.

Because I didn't really know how to improve, I was impatient and rushed things. I refused to move down from NL25 even though I was running bad, and ended up losing about $1000 I think. I don't know the exact time this happened, probably some time in mid-2011.

In early 2012 I dropped out of university in my third year and moved back in with my parents, and I got a full-time job working as a cashier at a convenience store. Because I'm ridiculously helpless at anything practical, I didn't see much hope for myself in the practical trades, and academia also seemed like a no-go for me, so I couldn't see a good way to make a living.

I had picked up starcraft 2 at some point. If you play on the ladder, you're placed in a league based on your performance - bronze, silver, gold, platinum, diamond, master, or grandmaster. Master league is for the top 2% of players on the ladder. When I first got into SC2 I remember hearing about master league and thinking that I'd probably never get into it. But I had fun studying SC2, thinking about strategy, and playing it and I got into masters pretty quickly. Even though it's a small thing it was a big deal for me because it made me realize that it's possible to improve at something by working at it.

Anyway working at the convenience store gave me a lot of time and motivation to plan my way out, and something I eventually settled on was going back to poker, but approaching it way smarter than I did before. Because I was confident I could improve at it by working at it, I was OK with starting off at the microstakes and focusing on improvement - with a good bankroll management (BRM) plan, if you're good enough, you can move up in stakes very quickly even if you're starting from the micros, so the only thing to worry about is getting good.

I had enough saved up for about 6 months, and had a line of credit I could use to live off of for another 6 months, so my plan was to move out, and start out at the $3.50 turbo HUSNGs (I decided on husngs since they were low variance), and focus on getting better and slowly working my way up, with the goal of being making a good living by the end of the year. Unfortunately the line of credit turned out to no longer be available so I only had 6 months, but I went ahead with the plan anyway. So that was when I started regularly playing husngs.

Charles Hawk: Tell me briefly about your journey from the low stakes up to your current limits? How long did it take?

307th: I started out at the $3.50 turbos's in December 2012, slowly progressed up to $30/$60 turbos, then switched to $15/$30 hypers. Then I got staked by husng.com in January 2014, got moved up to $60's hypers after a few months. I battled into the $60's cartel, then $100's cartel, although it took a while (got into $100's cartel in August 2014 I think). Stopped being staked by husng.com then, and started battling $200's after a few months. In March 2015 I got into the $200's cartel. Then in April I got staked and skipped straight to battling $1,000's. So far I've beaten every cartel I've battled for more than the rake.

Charles Hawk: Tell me more about the old days of the divisions, when they were called cartels, and you weren't getting into 60s?

307th: In March 2014 I got moved up to $60s (I was with husng.com staking program at this point), where a cartel had formed. The cartels at this point relied on a voting system to get in - you needed a lot of votes, 30ish if I remember correctly, and no one wanted to give out a vote without a decent number of games played against a trier for fear of seeming "weak". The result of this was that they weren't letting people in. I remember liquaaa played something like 11,000 games at the 100s with around 0% EVROI before getting in.

I started battling the $60's cartel, but since they didn't seem to be letting anyone in, I was very focused on beating them for more than the rake. A lot of people talked about how you should "put pressure" on the cartel, play a lot, show them that you've got "fighting spirit", and suck up to them for votes at the same time. I didn't do any of that - I spent as much time studying doing EV calculations to figure out preflop strategies as I did actually playing, so my volume was low. I ran good to start, and for the first 2-2.5k games I had around 2% EV.

On top of this I was making posts on twoplustwo criticizing the system. On twoplustwo the cartel members weren't saying much, so I figured most of them weren't reading it. As it turns out, a lot of them were reading it, they just didn't post in the thread - instead they were insulting me in their group chats. I found this out when I made this post:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/185/heads-up-sng-spin-gos/pokerstars-hu-hypers-groups-thread-1409288/index126.html#post43231859

where I mentioned to make a point that I was better than most of the $100 cartel members. I guess people thought that I was saying I'd beat most of them for more than the rake, but that isn't actually what the post is saying. Anyway, everyone thought that this was a really stupid, arrogant thing to say. I got a lot of hate for it, some on twoplustwo, I hear that I got a lot in the cartel chats, even people who were on my side seemed to think that I'd messed up big. To be honest I think the cartels at that time acted completely ridiculous, like when they found out coffeeyay did group coaching videos reviewing husng.com members playing against cartel members they all freaked out and kicked him from the $100's. I remember one of the guys laying into coffeeyay also ran a staking group that had videos reviewing play against a cartel member. The cartels are a lot better nowadays though.

Anyway eventually the cartels put in EV systems, so I qualified for $60's (I had roughly 1.5% EV over 3.2k games I think), and immediately got to work playing $100's. I did that slowly too. I studied a lot, improved a lot, and it took me a while but I got into $100's with 2.1% EV over 4k games.

Charles Hawk: Any reg war stories?

307th: When I was in $100's and grinding fish, I got kind of pissed off by all the $300's guys taking up the lobbies. So I sat Rocmar87. He said that we could play at $200's or $300's, but if I ever sat him again at $100's I would never get another lobby at $100 because he'd sit me in all of them. So of course I sat him again. He declined pretty quick both times, sat me a few times then declined, we played like 6 games in total at $100's. Later we battled at $200's and he was pretty polite so maybe he was having a bad day. Still funny though.

Charles Hawk: Could you tell me as much as you can about your study habits? How you improved to go from low stakes to $200+?

307th: Early on I focused a lot on preflop. For postflop I mainly relied on what I'd been told, either in poker vids, will tipton's books, or, once I joined the staking group, by coffeeyay. I also improved at postflop while playing regs.

I liked studying preflop because it was easier to make concrete conclusions, and I'm good at math. Even before I joined the staking program I had figured out some stuff preflop that a lot of people hadn't, for example this thread I made in late 2013 where I had a better handle on openshoving lategame than a lot of high stakes regs at the time. (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/185/heads-up-sng-spin-gos/question-about-openshoving-10bb-1390764/)

At that time even though I had a lot of little things figured out that other people hadn't I was still lagging behind other regs in postflop game, and in some areas preflop, especially my reluctance to play exploitatively. For example I'd 3bet jam bluffs into recreational players even though it's very -ev. But once I got a handle on the bigger things I was missing, all the little things I had figured out ended up making my preflop game better than anyone else's at my stake, which helped me a lot.

Later on as people became less exploitable preflop I had to study postflop more. GTO flops are mainly what I use to study postflop at the moment, as well as just reviewing hand histories.

Charles Hawk: What is your daily routine? Do you have any specific schedule? Eating or sleep habits? Policy on what to avoid while grinding? Do you have any tilt or emotional control methods/strategies?

307th: I'm a bad guy to ask about a routine/schedule. I don't have a consistent one, and my biggest weakness as a player is my poor work ethic. Although it's probably not as bad as some people think, since people judge work ethic based on how much you play, and compared to most regs I have a high study:play ratio.

For sleeping, I go to sleep when I feel sleepy then get up when I feel like getting up. I usually sleep 9h per night. I think the stigma of "sleeping a lot is lazy" is harmful, since sleeping is basically the easiest way to improve your health and think better throughout the day. For someone who's trying to perform well at something, like a student or a poker player, cutting sleep is probably a mistake. That said it depends on circumstance, a lot of people don't have much time due to jobs or just the large amount of forced time-wasting that goes on in schools, so for those people they probably won't be able to get as much sleep as they'd like.

As far as tilt control, when I get tilted I stop playing. For me I don't enjoy playing poker so any excuse to stop playing is welcome and I'm never tempted to keep playing if I'm tilted. Early on I did have some trouble with tilt, but it kind of just went away over time. When I tilted I did try to calm down and explain to myself why I shouldn't tilt, so maybe that worked, but I couldn't really say for sure.

Charles Hawk: How many tables to you play? Are you a good multitabler? Tell me about your multitasking skills and how you improved on that.

307th: I play 3 tables most of the time. I can play more if I have to and I should probably start playing 4 when I can since I have been getting distracted when playing 3 tables.

Multitabling is another thing that just improved with playing, the only thing I specifically did to improve it is I practiced it at microstakes. So for advice for multitabling, I'd say play less tables than you think you can, and when you want to increase the # of tables, practice at microstakes first. If you want to start 3-tabling practice 4-tabling at microstakes. When you're doing it don't just spew though, actually try to play as well as you can.

Also if you do try playing a lot of tables review your play to see what kind of mistakes you make. I'm a believer in reviewing entire tournament hand histories rather than marked hands. I often found myself making simple mistakes that I should have known not to do, because I was autopiloting. If you consistently review and point those mistakes out to yourself you eventually stop making them when playing.

Charles Hawk: What 3 things you would suggest to beginners or low stakes/struggling guys to focus on above else? (any inspirational stories from your practice on how you overcome tough moments?)

307th: I don't have much advice for lower stakes players, I struggled at this phase too. If you can afford it, coaching can be very very valuable if you get a good coach. Getting staked is a way of getting coaching if you can't (or don't want to) spend the money on it.

About overcoming tough moments, when I'm stressed I try to break down all the things that are stressing me and figure out what should be done about them, if anything. Once I've done that I generally feel less stressed.

As far as inspirational stories you would think I have some since I was playing very close to the wire for a while. But I don't think I handled it exceptionally well, I just kind of kept doing my thing and since I didn't run too bad it worked out. That's not to say I didn't feel some stress and desperation at the time of course.

Charles Hawk: How important is proper balance between poker and life?

307th: The things I need to play poker are sleep, food, and time off. I've tried things like excercising, eating healthier, etc., and although those things are great for other reasons they've never made a difference with poker.

For me with poker, I needed to be full-time on it to be able to do it. Doing it while also working a job or going to university just wasn't happening. I think a big reason for this is that I don't enjoy the game and things didn't click well for me at first, so making it happen required a lot more effort on my part than it does for someone who enjoys playing and got good quickly.