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In the Well!! Q + A with Robin Lacey
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18-04-2007 11:21am#1
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How/from where, did u pick up the bulk of your poker knowledge?
Did u grind you're way up through the lower levels? If so, how long did that take?
How many hands have u played?
Do u use any pahud stats besides #hand/agf/pfr/vpip? how do they help your decision making process if u do?
Whats your set up like?
Do u spent any time doing ev calculations or calculating hand equities versus hand ranges, like abba talked about I think, in his well?
do u tilt badly/at all?
do u think playing poker has changed your personality at all?
on friday there was a 25/50 game on at the io, andy black, laak, antonio , donnacha etc, and a bunch of internet kids, do u think you'd have an edge in that game?
I think that's it. thanks
nice meeting you at the IO btw.0 -
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1. have you ever considered it to be -ev posting advanced strategy you think of on a public forum?
2. How satisfying is winning a large buy in event i.e. Austrian Open to raking in a massive pot in a cash game with a marginal call that you were correct in?
3. What do you see as the main flaw in tournament structures?
4. What do you see as the main mistake you see people make in tournaments/Cash games?
5. Is it possible for a losing 1-2 player to be a winning 5-10 or above player due to the style of their game?
6. Do you remember giving me 100-1 and me placing 10 euro on Marty Smith winning the IO in Clonmel? If Yes, ill pm you my PS SN, if not..forget it you have no honour! 0 -
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UnLuckyLloyd wrote:Robin Lacey has kindly agreed to do a well session (via PM). Apart from playing full time at a decent level online, Robin knows his way around donkaments. Amongst other things, he has won the $109 Pokerstars deepstack before and has a high general ROI% for online MTTs. His live record includes a cash in last year’s WSOP and a nice recent score in Vienna:
http://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/player.php?a=r&n=70926
Standard Questions:
1) What games/levels are you playing right now?
2) How many tables at once?
3) Are you running good or bad in the last few days?
My Questions:
1) There has been much discussion of how the general standard of online cash games has shot up since the legislation was introduced last year. How has this manifested itself in your view? In terms of your own game and success, how have you been directly affected?
2) Do you forsee a bright and stable long – term future for online poker? If not, why not?
3) How did you get into poker? How long have you been playing?
4) How long have you been playing full – time?
5) What were you doing before? Do you hold a third level qualification?
6) Do you perceive playing poker as a sole means of income as a long – term career option? It has been noted on previous occasions in various places that people who can beat poker for large amounts of money are probably wasting their time as they could be making much greater amounts doing other things in the corporate environment. Do you believe this to be the case? If so, why?
7) Briefly describe your 2006 WSOP experience.
8) In terms of your WSOP ME placing – do you feel validated on any level by tournament successes? Or would you conclude that there is too much short – term variance involved for them to be considered a relevant measurement of poker skill?
9) Does the idea of winning tournament titles and the possible media attention and sponsorship opportunities that would bring appeal to you in any way? Or would you simply look on them in terms of an opportunity to make a large amount of money through a single score?
10) What do we need to do to improve the general quality of the forum?
11) Is the tramp / unemployed / homeless look a help or hindrance in terms of getting laid?
Sorry If I'm misunderstanding this thread but do people need to ask questions and then Robin will pm an answer to their specific questions only or can I just ask to be pm'd the answers to the questions already written because they pretty much cover the stuff I'd be interested in. Thanks.0 -
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Hey Robin, good luck answering all these questions, I hope you have a spare day coming up soon My questions for you.
What 2+2 forums do you currently post most in and what posters do you consider as the current cream of the posting crop.
What posters from the Archives do you look out for most.
Do you have any recommendations for the best CR videos you remember watching, answers such as "GP7" or "MW9" would be perfect if you can remember or have any bookmarked or saved.
Cheers.0 -
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UnLuckyLloyd wrote:
1) What games/levels are you playing right now?
at the minute i'm playing 3/6 nl here and there,with a little bit of 2/4 and 5/10 when the games dry up in the mornings. i've been running badly and was also away travelling for a month so i've hardly been playing at all recently,i've only played 50k hands of cash so far this year,compared to 60k/month for the last
few months of 2006.
i'm also playing the nightly 100k on stars as often as i can,and trying to get into playing the mansion 100k as well.How many tables at once?
i usually play 6-8,however since i've been running badly and am less motivated to play i've just been playing 3 or 4 tables most of the time recently.Are you running good or bad in the last few days?
very bad all this year.some of it is no doubt my own fault but for the most part i've been happy with how i've played,and i've been running much much worse than i ever have before.
that said,a lot of it is my fault,in that i find it a lot harder to put in the hours when i'm running badly,so if i'd played as much as i do when i'm running well i'd be laughing by now.
all of that refers to online by the way,i'm running very well live this year thanks to a good week in vienna.
My Questions:1) There has been much discussion of how the general standard of online cash games has shot up since the legislation was introduced last year. How has this manifested itself in your view? In terms of your own game and success, how have you been directly affected?
i definitely think the games are getting tougher by the minute,and it is a worry.however,i think they are still beatable up to the highest levels,but i'd say game selection is becoming more and more important.
its hard to say how it has affected my own success,the first few months after the legislation passed were my most successful by far,and the last few months have been my least successful.both of these facts are obviously more to do with varience than anything else,but they do make it difficult to judge exactly what is going on with the games and where that leaves me.
its also hard to tell since the month the legislation passed was the month i started getting coaching,so every month that has passed since then i have been playing better than last month.
basically its a worry but not the end of the world.2) Do you forsee a bright and stable long – term future for online poker? If not, why not?
its hard to tell really.the future certainly doesn't look as bright as it did a year ago.however,i don't really follow this sort of thing religiously,so any answer i give is really only my own vague impressions of what is going on,taken from my subjective experiences actually playing online poker and from my occassional glances at the twoplustwo legislation forum.
however,i think the speed with which the games is getting big in europe is encouraging,so its not going to be a total disaster in a few years time,or at least i hope not.
one possible ray of hope is that some of the more panglossian members of the twoplustwo legislation forum seem pretty sure that within a few years there will be legalised,regulated online gambling in america,and if this were to happen it would be a unimaginably lucrative time for poker players,especially those of us who had struggled through the previous few years of increasingly tougher games.
its hard to know how realistic this is,but given the potential money involved for harrahs and the like i'd say its not impossible.3) How did you get into poker? How long have you been playing?
i got into poker maybe three and a half years ago,some friends started playing just for a bit of fun,i was initially not bothered and in fact quite anti-poker (people were playing it at parties and stuff,it was lame)
anyway,one night i got swindled into playing,and quite enjoyed it.
there was maybe 8 of us regularly playing fiver buyin cash games (which seemed like a lot of money at the time-i remember feeling the pain the first time i lost 20 euro) for a while,then daragh,hectorjelly on boards,starting putting in the effort to read about the game,and started making some money both online and in the merrion.
this encouraged the rest of us to try to learn how to play well too,and of course it was a help to have one of us who already knew the basics and several more who were interested in learning.4) How long have you been playing full – time?
about two and a half years i think.5) What were you doing before? Do you hold a third level qualification?
i was working part time in a bookshop and also studying english in college.
i don't have a third level qualification,i tried the whole college thing a few times but a combination of cynicism,laziness and frustration at how boringly the subjects i was interested in were taught conspired to ensure that my only academic qualification is my leaving cert.6) Do you perceive playing poker as a sole means of income as a long – term career option? It has been noted on previous occasions in various places that people who can beat poker for large amounts of money are probably wasting their time as they could be making much greater amounts doing other things in the corporate environment. Do you believe this to be the case? If so, why?
i agree with the idea that people who are good enough to succeed at the highest levels of poker are also good enough to succeed elsewhere,however this doesn't particularly interest me,since my idea of a successful life is probably quite different to a lot of other peoples'.
if i get to middle age and have a family who i love,an interesting group of friends,a nice enough house,and the means to pursue my interest in music,books,travel,food art and films, (and to support my family obviously) then i will consider my life an unqualified success.
this would be the case even if i won the lottery tomorrow.i would like to be successful,but only because success would allow me to lead that sort of life,success in itself holds very little interest for me,or at least not enough that i would be prepared to sacrifice anything for it if it were not necessary to do so.
however,for people who have a more conventional view of success and achievement (which i understand and admire,its just not high on my list of priorities) i fully agree that playing poker in the long run might be a waste of time,and if that if they directed their energies elsewhere they would probably have considerable success.
the difference between my viewpoint and the standard view of success was driven home in the twoplustwo thread a while ago started by strassa when he decided to go and work for one of the big investment banks with a view to becoming a trader.
he was basically saying that he had achieved a lot in poker and was happy with this,but that now he was going to focus on bigger things,and there was a lot of talk about how the amounts of money he would now make would dwarf anything even ivey could hope for,how great an achievement this would be,etc.
there was also a lot of talk about how it would be incredibly hard work,how he would be working 70 hour weeks for the forseeable future,etc,but how this would be worth it for what he would acheive.
i admire really driven,focused people who could think like this,but i would hate to be one,and reading that thread confirmed for me that i was right to remain almost completely ambitionless.
i'm not saying i wouldn't love to win the world series or something,just that i wouldn't be prepared to make huge sacrifices to do so.
i do have one ambition for the sake of it,however-i would love,at some stage of my life,to be able to translate my passion for the arts into something that would allow me to introduce other people to the music,books,whatever,that has meant the most to me,whether it be as author of a book of "criticism" (for want of a better word) or curator of a museum or whatever.7) Briefly describe your 2006 WSOP experience.
well this was the first major tournament i had ever played,so i was curious to see if i would be nervous or feel under pressure or whatever.
after a few hours of the first day i was down to about 6 or 7 thousand and struggling to not let it get me down,then i hit a few good cards and suddenly i was flying,i started playing a lot better too and ended the day on 60k or so,which was incredible.
day two was disappointing,i ended up with the same amount of chips i had finished day one on,i lost a few biggish pots which would have left me in a great position,but overall i don't think i played or ran as well as the first day.
day three i was disappointed with how i played,there were a few AK hands i played too cautiously,and the fatigue of concentrating for so long really kicked in (i hadn't noticed it as much during day one when i had the wind in my sails)
i went out to two bad beats in a row (all in preflop with AK against AJ,then with AQ against A8) so i can't be too annoyed,but to be honest even if i had won the first all in and had doubled up i would have only been about average stack,which is a great place to be with 500 left when you're talking about it before the tournament,but not so great given what a good start i had made.
overall i was somewhat disappointed with myself,in that i feel i could have done much better had i played a few hands better,but at the same time i know i played well overall,didn't really let the pressure get to me,and considering it was my first major live tournament i'm happy enough with how it went.8) In terms of your WSOP ME placing – do you feel validated on any level by tournament successes? Or would you conclude that there is too much short – term variance involved for them to be considered a relevant measurement of poker skill?
well i don't feel like the fact that i placed in the world series makes me any better at poker,i am proud that i played better than most people would have and so on,and when i play well in a tournament i am pleased with myself,but if for example someone was saying "that robin lacey is crap at poker" i would never in a million years defend myself on the grounds that i had placed in the world series (or even if i had won it i wouldn't consider it a valid arguement).
however,if someone is consistently successful in tournaments then it means they are more likely than not to be pretty good at poker,although i wouldn't accept it as proof of this,and if i played with someone for a few hours,thought they were terrible,and it turned out they had 5 bracelets it wouldn't change my opinion of them much,except that it might make me consider the possibility that they had been on tilt/tired or whatever.9) Does the idea of winning tournament titles and the possible media attention and sponsorship opportunities that would bring appeal to you in any way? Or would you simply look on them in terms of an opportunity to make a large amount of money through a single score?
i'm not really sure about this to be honest.
as i said in one of the other answers,i'm not particularly ambitious for the sake of it,however i can't deny that i would be very pleased if i won a major tournament.
i am quite shy so the idea of being in the media spotlight would probably freak me out a little bit,but i'm also fairly level headed so i wouldn't be too bothered by it.
if i won a major tournament and was then sponsored into other big buyin events i would be delighted,since i would be certain i am +ev in almost any big tournament but i don't have the multi-million dollar bankroll to prove it,and even if i won a few million i probably wouldn't want to risk the varience,although i would obviously play more big events than i do now.10) What do we need to do to improve the general quality of the forum?
i don't know,i have seen a few people mention the possibility of dividing the forums into beginners and others,or having a separate strat forum,one of these might be a good idea.
i have been reading boards occassionally for three years or so,but it is only in the last nine months or so that i have felt compelled to start contributing,and this is because the standard of posting has gone up hugely.
there are now a lot of people here who are posting interesting stuff and doing quite well at poker,which is good to see,and its possible some sort of split might help to capitalise on this,but i don't know exactly what format this should take.11) Is the tramp / unemployed / homeless look a help or hindrance in terms of getting laid?
well something is obviously a hinderance,so maybe its that!
i'm now sporting my summer look however,much the same as the winter look to be honest but with a slightly neater beard.i may even get a haircut if the mood takes me.0 -
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phantom_lord wrote:How/from where, did u pick up the bulk of your poker knowledge?
at the very start,from hectorjelly,then from a few books that i read,then from talking about it with my friends as we learned to play,and more conversations with hector,then from twoplustwo,and more recently from getting coaching from mdma from twoplustwo.Did u grind you're way up through the lower levels? If so, how long did that take?
for some stupid reason i mainly played tournaments for the first year or two,so almost all my grinding was done in stts.How many hands have u played?
i've no idea,since a lot of my play was in tournaments,and it took me ages to sort out pokertracker since it wasn't tribeca compatible for ages.
all i have in pokertracker is 220k hands from sept-dec of last year,and about 25k hands from this year.
Do u use any pahud stats besides #hand/agf/pfr/vpip? how do they help your decision making process if u do?
Whats your set up like?
yeah when i found out you could add all sorts of stuff to the dropdown menu i kinda went a bit nuts,so there's loads of stuff there,most of which i don't use.
some stuff liked fired second barrell is useful,but i often don't have enough of a sample size anyway,and its hard to find the stuff on the drop down thing in time so i usually don't bother,but if i am ending up in a lot of hands with someone over a few tables i will take a minute to study all their stats when i get a moment.
i watched the sbrugby cardrunners video a while ago,and he pointed out that a great stat to have is the cold call preflop one,since if this is high they are calling with a lot of marginal hands that will make medium strenght hands on the flop,call one bet and fold on the turn.
i still haven't got around to adding this to the list since i have been playing mainly on bodog recently,but this is an excellent point and something i never thought of.Do u spent any time doing ev calculations or calculating hand equities versus hand ranges, like abba talked about I think, in his well?
i hardly ever do stuff like this,i'm pretty bad at maths and rely mainly on instinct,however over the years i've picked up enough of a feel for things like this that on the rare occasions that i sit down and work out something like this out (usually just to prove a point) i'm generally not far off.do u tilt badly/at all?
i don't think i tilt nearly as much as most people,just from observing my group of poker playing friends i don't think its much of a problem for me.
i have only been on the sort of super monkey tilt other people have a problem with maybe five times in my life,and only for about twenty minutes each time.
i do have a problem with a more insidious form of tilt,where i am just making smallish mistakes,calling a bit too much preflop,paying off smallish bets on the river,etc,basically just not concentrating as much as i should.do u think playing poker has changed your personality at all?
a little bit.in a lot of ways i am quite an emotional person,but i have also always had a streak of cold logic,all my life i have loved to argue and it is my ability to be quite cold and analytical that allows me to not tilt as much as others,to really believe all that stuff about the long term and all that.
this has always been a part of me but that side of my personality has probably come to the front a little more recently.
i don't think it has hugely changed me though.on friday there was a 25/50 game on at the io, andy black, laak, antonio , donnacha etc, and a bunch of internet kids, do u think you'd have an edge in that game?
hard to say,it really depends on who the internet kids are,if they have worked their way up through cash games to the point where they can play 25/50 then i probably wouldn't have much of an edge on them if at all,however if they are the sort of internet kids who are constantly up and down,taking shots,changing levels five times in a week then i'd love to play in that game,also if they are tourney players i'd love to play.
as for the name players,its hard to say,in general i think i'd probably have an edge in a deep stacked nlhe cash game on most "name" players,simply because most of them seem to have very little experience in these types of games,since they have only become big over the last few years.
however,i gather laak and antonio are among the name players who are best at nlhe,so they would probably destroy me.
i don't know anything about andy black or donnacha (o 'dea i presume?i dont really know anything about him) 's cash games,so i don't know.
if i had been there and running well i probably would have jumped in the game and found out,but cautiously enough,i don't really know enough about any of the players to judge.
I think that's it. thanks
nice meeting you at the IO btw.
you too0 -
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Solksjaer wrote:You double up in a tourny and you are now above average, do you consolidate for a while or do you move quickly to build up your stack?
well the situations that arise and to some extent that cards that i am dealt will dictate how i play more than anything else,but i am certainly not going to sit back and relax now that my tournament life has been extended!Don't have to answer this (I have my owns views)....Do you think there are a lot of overrated players on this forum?
Care to name 1 or 2...hmm maybe not.
well i think varience makes it hard to judge how good or bad someone is,so anyone who is considered good or bad based solely on their results is in danger of being over- or under- rated.
the posters i rate on this forum are the ones whose posts demonstrate a good knowledge of poker,regardless of how successful they have been in the last while.
since i mainly play online i haven't put in a lot of hours with most of the people on the forum so i'm not really in a position to judge.What are your pet hates at the poker table?
i presume you mean live...one thing that gets to me is all the people who take minutes to make a really basic decision,they do all this shownboating before folding preflop or whatever.
the one thing that really bothers me though is people being rude to the dealers.
i have found in the poker world that most of the people i end up talking to turn out to be nice,interesting people,but there is definitely a higher proportion of people in casinos who i have no respect whatsoever for than in society at large,and the best way of identifying these people is seeing how they treat the dealers.
several times recently (including at the irish open cash games) i have ended up being the only person at the table defending the dealer when some idiot is getting really out of line,and that bothers me,especially when the dealer is a young,foreign woman sitting at a table full of men.
once you get to a certain level where you know the basics,i think concentration is the most important thing.What makes a successful online tourny player/cash player?Best poker book out there?
i suppose the right answer is theory of poker,but the more i think about it the more i appreciate supersystem,i keep meaning to reread it.
neither come close to the twoplustwo forum archives though.
no relation no,there aren't too many laceys around so its a strange coincidence that there's too of us in a relatively small irish poker scene.Are you related to the other Lacey of GJP fame?If you were playing a TV tournamnet and someone like Tony G, Mike the mouth started badgering you, how would you react.
this came up in conversation recently,and i really don't know.
when i play live and someone starts talking during a hand,i usually try to just ignore whatever they are saying and think about the hand exactly as i would if i saw it written down as a hand history,so i'd like to think that it wouldn't get to me.however having seen some of the tony g stuff on youtube,i can imagine it would be pretty hard to take.
i suppose i'd just try and make as good a decision as i could.the trouble with tony g is there's no point trying to outwit him,since there is no spark or wit to what he is saying,he's just being a prick.one of my friends suggested that a possible counter strategy would be to point out the table as soon as you sit down how much he looks like the kid from that two and half men show,hopefully people would then start laughing at him and you would have him on the back foot.
In my opinion a lot of the high stakes poker players are just above average players with a bankroll, which of these type of players impress you most and lest.
its hard to tell really,i don't watch much poker on tv anyway,and even if i did you can only tell so much from the hands they show.
however,i'm sure some of the big names pros have just ran well,but in general most of them are probably doing something right,at least in mtts.
from what i have seen most of the big names are pretty bad at nlhe cash.Have you ever come close to blows due to poker?
i never get in fights,for both practical (i am small and weak) and philosophical (people who end up in fights more often than very occasionally are usually dickheads) reasons
however,i did have a guy try to start on me in the bellagio when i told him to shut the f.uck up after he was getting particularly out of line with the dealer.
at the last minute he decided it wasn't worth getting kicked out,so he backed down,which was lucky cause he around six times bigger than me.
other than that no.0 -
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goodluck2me wrote:1. have you ever considered it to be -ev posting advanced strategy you think of on a public forum?
maybe on twoplustwo,but here the pool of players is fairly small,so even if everyone here improved hugely it'd probably be a drop in the ocean,there'd still be plenty of fish.2. How satisfying is winning a large buy in event i.e. Austrian Open to raking in a massive pot in a cash game with a marginal call that you were correct in?
just to clarify,i won the 1k event in vienna,not the austrian open itself.
anyway,i really enjoyed winning that tournament because i think i played really well,so it was satisfying,however if i'd fluked my way to the win i wouldn't have gained any personal satisfaction from the title,or at least no more than if i'd found the money on the street.
money aside,i do get a lot of satisfaction from making good decisions in cash games,not even just in big pots,i like nothing more than a cheeky little wafer thin value bet on the river.3. What do you see as the main flaw in tournament structures?
i don't really play enough tournaments to be able to give much of an answer,but really just the more blind levels and the longer the clock the better.4. What do you see as the main mistake you see people make in tournaments/Cash games?
think i answered this one already,its probably people calling too much and raising too little.5. Is it possible for a losing 1-2 player to be a winning 5-10 or above player due to the style of their game?
interesting one,probably not in the long run,but i would imagine there are some players who would be more likely to do well in a 5/10 game than a 1/2.6. Do you remember giving me 100-1 and me placing 10 euro on Marty Smith winning the IO in Clonmel? If Yes, ill pm you my PS SN, if not..forget it you have no honour!
i'd love to answer this but to be honest that would be an ecuminical matter and it wouldn't be my place to discuss it.0 -
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Ste05 wrote:Hey Robin, good luck answering all these questions, I hope you have a spare day coming up soon My questions for you.
What 2+2 forums do you currently post most in and what posters do you consider as the current cream of the posting crop.
i've never really posted that much on twoplustwo,i think i have about 700 posts to my name in the last three years.i've been posting a bit on the el diablo forum recently since i think it has a lot of potential,i hardly post on any poker related forums though.
for the strat forums,hsnl and msnl are both good but far past their best,i don't bother reading either as much as i used to do,although both are still quite good and still the best resource for learning the game.What posters from the Archives do you look out for most.
the best thing to do is to look for the best of threads and see who appears most often in them.
however,there are a few posters who never posted a huge amount,but often when they did they posted some really great,they wouldn't be there every day discussing every hand but they'd put up little mini-essays that were fantastic.
off the top of my head,the best of these were limon (early days) and samoleus (more recently)
also people like strassa,cero z and bruiser
then there were the other regulars who were constantly posting good stuff,you'd probably know most of their names,el diablo,fsu player,mdma,etcDo you have any recommendations for the best CR videos you remember watching, answers such as "GP7" or "MW9" would be perfect if you can remember or have any bookmarked or saved.
Cheers.
i don't really have any that i remember,to be honest.
i watched a lot of the green plastic ones when i joined and found them all to be good.
i never bothered with any of the others,until sbrugby of course.
ive only watched two sbrugby ones so far but i presume they will all be worth watching.0 -
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