PrimordialAA
Name: Bryan Pellegrino
Stakes: $500
Age: 27

Charles Hawk: How did you start playing poker?

Bryan ‘PrimordialAA’ Pellegrino: I started when I was really young, 15, and I took a trip to Washington, DC. One of my friends there showed me poker (I had never seen it) and we played some penny, nickle, quarter games. I ended up winning $60 there which at the time was super exciting. Then as I was leaving, he told me you could play online at Pokerstars. As soon as I got home I convinced my dad to deposit $50 for me under an account in his name, lost it, put on $50 more, lost it, read a few chapters of a book and told myself if I lost this $50 I was going to stop and study a ton, I would have been busto too $150 was a lot back then :P. Deposited the final $50, won a tournament for ~$800, and have never had to redeposit since outside of cashing in on bonuses PS offers, so it's gone pretty well after that ;p

CH: Tell me the whole story from starting grinding low levels into reaching high stakes.

BP: Well after this I got to "high stakes" pretty quickly. I ended up playing $5/10 by the time I was 16 (which was the highest stakes on Stars at the time) and $500 HU SNG, but eventually I got into a big war with -BBJ- and he took most of my roll in HU so I floated for a few years playing MTTs and messing around. I moved to Budapest for a semester abroad, and the MTT was SO bad back then in Europe so I ended up playing HU SNG full time and it went really well. At the end of that year in Budapest I wanted to leave school and move to France with my gf at the time (now wife). I moved to Vegas for WSOP for the summer with HokieGreg and Cwar and told myself if I made $4k a month during that time I would quit. I didn't, so I planned on going back, but then that August my wife came to visit me and I had a $17.5k month that month and said "F it", left school, and moved to France. Had a 35k month the next month and my life of HU SNG was setup after that. Then a few years ago I also got into really HS cash and that has been pretty interesting as well. I play a healthy mix of both now.

CH: Describe your main leaks which you had when you started grinding turbos and hyper turbos, and how easy or hard it was to eliminate them from your game.

BP: For me it was mainly mental game stuff. I always have wanted to play poeple better than me, just continuously challenging the best and would tilt really hard, not outwards or berating people and stuff, just end up playing super poorly. For a very long time I would have like 25 winning days a month and 1 losing day that was worth like... 15+ of my winning days, just HUGE losses to go with all my consistent wins, so I had to work on that a lot.

CH: Do you ever tilt? Do you have any methods on how to be mentally strong and stable for as long as possible?

BP: Yea I still do, but it's always just a different kind of tilt for me. I get pretty depressed/uninterested and start just kind of mindlessly clicking without any focus or anything, more lost in the despair of the annoying situation than anything else. My only solution has been to just try to keep a strong focus during these times or to quit when I'm feeling like that. Even now I usually let it go on way too long but you can only try to get better and better about it :P

CH: Tell me about your biggest downswing ever.

BP: It depends on the format. In cash I've lost a bunch of 100k hands and stuff, so that makes any of my HU SNG swings pale in comparison if we just look at the #s, but my most recent tough one was when I first came back to poker/moved abroad to Vancouver. The divisions had formed (they wern't a thing before I left) and I had to battle to get a spot at 500s. I ran over 200 BI / 100k below EV taking shots at 500s in my very first month back so that was a really depressing start, but it was also the most motivating time possible because I had a clear goal in sight vs just waiting around for fish or something, so it was a tough start but I used it as a time to keep improving and working towards that goal of getting in.

CH: Could you send me a photo of your grind station?

CH: What is your ratio betwen grinding and analyzing/learning new stuff?

BP: Earlier last year when I was moving back up and getting situated with poker again I was learning and studying a TON, probably like a 0.8 : 1 ratio or so, now I feel really comfortable with my game and review 30 min or so a day before I play but other than that I don't do too much at the moment unless I really need to break down someones game

CH: What are your hobbies?

BP: I love to ski, watch a ton of movies/TV shows, play some video games, eat out a ton, and then just spend time with my friends/family. Pretty normal stuff I guess.

CH: How did you meet your wife?

BP: I studied abroad in Budapest for 1 year. While I was there I ended up being roomates with the girl that is now my wife :P, after that I dropped out and moved to France with her, then we moved to the US together and we got married + she got her citizenship, and now we're in Vancouver. We had our first kid (baby boy (flex)) in January so that's been new and really awesome.

CH: How old are you by the way?

BP: 27

CH: Also as I know you own one fantasy site. Could you give link? Do you think market is coming back?

BP: I did own www.buzzdraft.com but it was bought out by FanThrowdown (who also bought out Taylor Caby's DraftDay). The market has grown 400%+ year over year for 3 years straight, with the 2 biggest sites just getting raises of 50 and 70M, so yeah I think it's doing very well and will continue to grow.

CH: Do you invest in other areas? How do you select where to invest, and how much time do you spend in this activity?

BP: Yeah, I've invested in lots of stuff. I've had 4 startups now over the past ~5-6 years, as well as investing in a lot of other stuff I'm not involved in like stables or the energy arbitrage hedge fund a bunch of invested in last year that has been doing pretty well. I usually look at anywhere from 2-4 opportunities a month and probably only invest in 1 maybe 2 per year.

CH: Any advice for poker pros who have more than they need to grind and would like to invest as well?

BP: Just look at as many things as you possibly can. It doesn't matter if you don't think you're going to invest. Go through the business plan, see how far along they are, what they have, what you think it's worth, and what they are asking for. You'll see tons of variation here from guys with nothing but an idea in a crowded market wanting a $10M valuation to guys with an amazing business that's making money already for a $600k-$800k valuation. Look at them all and try to get a guage for what things are valued at because it's very very hard to do on the fly.

CH: How long did your break from poker last? How did it feel to not play poker? Did you miss the game? Did you notice that players got stronger (and the game itself tougher) when you came back?

BP: It was about 2.5 years after Black Friday. My wife was going through the US citizenship process and if we left she would have lost her citizenship, so we stayed. I worked on some other stuff, and once she got it we moved shortly after. It felt great to not play any poker, but it was tough going from making tens of thousands a month to having no income except the equity in what I was working on. Players definitely got stronger and the dynamics had changed a ton (divisions, large amounts of forced battling, etc.) but I adjusted pretty quickly.

CH: Did you hear about Amaya's plan to increase rake overall?

BP: Yup, going to be very VERY bad for the games and for the bottom line of everybody playing HU SNG, going to lower ROIs pretty significantly and put a lot of the RB grinders in a really tough spot. I also imagine staking is going to go down a TON in frequency, especially since most stakes lately have been to move up / battle into a different division. Will be very interesting to see what happens, but it's very bad for us for sure.