In the Well!! Q + A with Robin Lacey

robinlacey

ianmc38 wrote:

In terms of taking shots at games, what's your point of view? At what point in terms of numbers of buyins do you think you should move up/down? I'm currently in this situation myself where I have more than the standard bankroll for the level I play most frequently, but am unsure regarding moving up levels fulltime.

i think once you have 30 buyins for the next level you should be taking shots at it,presuming you have a decent sample size and winrate at your current level.if it doesn't go well and you lose a few buyins you can just move back down for a few days.

the fact that you datamine a lot should make it easy to use good game selection which is hugely important in general and particuarly when moving up.

also,i wrote some stuff upthread about having a slightly more dynamic way of dealing with bankroll and so on that might be worth reading.

Is your 4 bet sizing opponent specific? If you've bene involved in alot of 3/4 betting with somebody, do you like to vary your 4 bet sizes or do you have a standard line? Eg in a 1/2 game 7/28/75

i don't have an exact standard 4bet but i don't usually vary it for any opponent (except occasionally when i get the feeling that given our history if i just push my AA or KK they might call)

one thing about 4bet sizing though is that,assuming 100bb stacks,you can probably make them smaller than you think.i never quite make them a minraise,but they might be a lot closer to one than i would ever normally come,the reason is that once you 4bet they can't really call without making a huge mistake anyway,so its handy to be betting a little smaller both for when you're bluffing and you save a few BBs and for when you have AA or KK and want a call.

What's your favourite restaurant in Dublin?

for years my favourite restaurant has been the cedar tree on suffolk st (is it still suffolk street when it goes round the corner from the thing mote? either way,its nearly opposite the international,just down a bit from the laser dvd shop)

its a lebanese restaurant,really nice tasty middle eastern food,and each meal in there is like a feast.if you go there make sure you get a portion of the rice and the spiced potatoes to share,both are really good. also the house (red) wine is really good,i'm not hugely into wine but this stuff is incredible.

my other favourite restaurant is the mermaid cafe on dame st,just across the lane from the *******.(edit:wtf it won't let me type the name of the theatre! must be to do with that lawsuit)

i kind of avoided it for a while cause it has one of those overly verbose descriptive menus that lists every ingredient with about six adjectives,but eventually i went in there and was amazed by how good the food is,everything i've ever had in there has been amazing,and everyone i've been there with has loved it too.

both of those are reasonably expensive (though fairly informal,you can go in in jeans and a t-shirt),for cheaper,more casual food the clarendon pub beside mao on clarendon street is amazing,don't be put off by the poncy minimalist design of the place,its about 13 euros for a main course and the food is much better than most restaurants charging twice or three times the price.

What are your PT stats like? Would you consider yourself a TAG/LAG? What's your lifetime bb/100?

i think i'm something like 21/16 or something like that,i was surprised when i saw them.

i'm a TAG really,but the way i play,with quite a lot of multiple barrells and river bluffs often means that players with much crazier stats than me will refer to me as a maniac.

i have two poker tracker databases,only stretching back as far as last autumn i think.

the first is about 220k hands at 4.9 ptbb/100,ranging from 3/6 to 50/100,and the second is about 40k hands and i've been running so badly i haven't had the heart to look at it in a while and probably won't till i'm running well again!

i'd love to know my actual lifetime winrate though,just out of curiosity,although i've only really been serious about cash games for about a year so it probably wouldn't tell me much.

robinlacey

lafortezza wrote:

Are you going to Vegas this year?

Tell us a poker story full of degeneracy plz.

i will be going to vegas this year,for the main event anyway,might stick around for the cash games too.

can't think of a story off hand,if one comes to mind i'll get back to you.

BigCityBanker

Arrive in work @ 8.45, open boards and read In The Well, look at cloack realise its 9.45 and you have not started work yet.... Defer work and decide a coffee is in order..

great read.

bill_ashmount

Yes, well done. Great read.

Marq

robinlacey wrote:

i
i love john coltrane's music,and i gather from people who know about musical theory (i haven't a clue) that his saxaphone playing is pretty much unsurpassed on a technical level in the history of music.this is all well and good,but it is the feelings it evokes when i listen to it that interests me.this technical proficiency is probably what allows him to make such astonishing music,but it alone is not enough,again it is the abstract,unquantifiable "inspiration" or whatever in the music that grabs me.

Interestingly enough, Coltrane faced criticism all of his life from certain quarters of the Jazz scene. Many saw his playing as too dense and garbled, and there was division among ciritics as to whether is his extremely fast modal jumps (Giant Steps is the best example of the style) were technically brilliant or bad.
I think it's pretty clear that Coltrane took the saxophone to entirely new levels, and Jazz music with it. Like you mentioned above in relation to all arts, technical proficiency alone isn't enough to make something worthwhile. I remember I just didn't "get" Jazz until I heard Coltrane, and after hearing him I realised there was nothing to "get", just amazing music to appreciate.

New questions Robin. Giant Steps or A Love Supreme?
And, your top ten albums of all time (all genres)?

robinlacey

Marq wrote:

Interestingly enough, Coltrane faced criticism all of his life from certain quarters of the Jazz scene. Many saw his playing as too dense and garbled, and there was division among ciritics as to whether is his extremely fast modal jumps (Giant Steps is the best example of the style) were technically brilliant or bad.
I think it's pretty clear that Coltrane took the saxophone to entirely new levels, and Jazz music with it. Like you mentioned above in relation to all arts, technical proficiency alone isn't enough to make something worthwhile. I remember I just didn't "get" Jazz until I heard Coltrane, and after hearing him I realised there was nothing to "get", just amazing music to appreciate.

New questions Robin. Giant Steps or A Love Supreme?
And, your top ten albums of all time (all genres)?

i love both those albums,but live at birdland is my favourite of his by far.

top ten albums is tricky

number one is gorecki's third symphony,its been my favourite piece of music since i first heard it and probably always will be.

the rest are in no order

selected ambient works vol. II by aphex twin
ready to die by biggie smalls
loveless by my bloody valentine
garbage ep by autechre
live at tresor 1998 by surgeon
laughing stock by talk talk
music for 18 musicians by steve reich (seeing this performed at the national concert hall last year was the cultural high point of my life so far)
illmatic by nas
fantasia on a theme by thomas tallis by vaghan williams
mwng by the super furry animals
little lost soul by third eye foundation
a playlist i made of my favourite timbaland produced tracks
right now! live at the jazz workshop by charles mingus (or possibly live at birdland by coltrane now that i think of it)

i'm obviously forgetting loads though

robinlacey

can't believe i forgot doggystyle by snoop dogg,my trusty final table music

dingle

robinlacey wrote:

absolutely
in fact if anyone has any contacts in barry's and wants to get them to sponsor me that'd be great

My dad's the tea taster/tea buyer in Barry's . I'll have a word, might get you a big free box of the Classic Tea Bags for the WSOP ME next year

Great read btw. Definitely the best of the In the Well series so far

RasTa

robinlacey wrote:

can't believe i forgot doggystyle by snoop dogg,my trusty final table music

The best hipedy hop album ever made.

robinlacey

right i'm off to bed so i won't be able to answer any questions for a while but i'll probably be back online later on tonight.

Heisenberg.

This post has been deleted.

5starpool

robinlacey wrote:

right i'm off to bed so i won't be able to answer any questions for a while but i'll probably be back online later on tonight.

You are making me so jealous with posts like this.

Great read so far Robin as usual. I don't have much in the way of additional questions to add, but I'll throw a couple of things out there.

1. Do you prefer playing live or online? I don't mean from the potential profitability aspect of it only, but overall.
2. If you could choose only one type of poker to play over the year (tournies or cash), assuming that you make the same profit on each (I know this is probably not true, but humour me) which would you choose?
3. If you were to go about learning a game other than Holdem how would you approach it? Would you try to read up on it first before jumping in or would you try to develop a gameplan first at lower levels and then research it?
4. Can you ever see yourself trying to become proficient in another game? I know you said you have dabbled occasionally in Omaha, but is it lack of appeal or laziness or not wanting to be out of your depth at the start that is stopping you?

Wreck

Great stuff Robin, thanks for taking the time to answer in so much depth.

kpnuts

Great stuff Robin, looking forward to seeing you for a few dinners in Vegas this year, we'll go somewhere you can get a nice cup of tea. On this thread's form, even Joe O'Neill won't be able to get a word in with you at the table!

Just out of bed myself, I've read the first 3 pages of this, heading out to Citywest for a round of golf now, I'll catch up with the rest of this thread later and hopefully come up with a few questions.

connie147

Nice read Robin,
You say you'd love to play tournament poker players in a cash game. Can you give me your definition of where tourney players go wrong when they start to play cash games and what big differences did you find when you made the transition yourself?

cooker3

Outstanding stuff Robin, really great read. I have no questions that haven't been asked already. Just needed to say it
Also, nice meeting you at the irish open.

MrPillowTalk

Cool thread well done so far.

Do you consider yourself a gambler? Do you gamble on other sports/prop bets etc?

Are you likely to ship it in neutral ev situation or will you wait for better spots?

Ive been thinking a fair bit lately on opening pots from the button, it used to be that if it was folded to me I would open probably 90%+ of the time unless the bb was v good aggresive player. Obviously Ive changed that in the last year as the game has adapted but I still open probably too much, 70% I guesstimate in most games except full tilt where Im probably opening a little tighter. You seem to think similarly to me on 4betting lines, I get 3 bet from the blinds a lot and as a result I have to four bet a lot or risk becoming completely transparent. Essentially I believe that the bb knows I can be opening very wide and is similarly 3 betting wide so I have to 4 bet lighter.

This is all well and good however it can result in getting all the money in in terrible shape from time to time, what are your thoughts on opening from the button do you prefer to operate a much tighter open pot range and do you think this will lead to better hand definition of your opponents 3 bet ranges? Do you think this is a more +EV approach than having a decent understanding and feel for when to 4 bet? (I just reread that and its quite rambling so just do your best with it)

Similarly to above what are your thoughts on flat calling 3 bets from the blinds, it seems clear we should flat call premium hands a fair ammount of the time and my preference would be to 4 bet AK AQ TT et al, but what are your thoughts on flat calling suited conectors and sp when over say 150bb deep?

You mention briefly in an earlier post that you believe in basically never folding AK preflop, I can think of many instances when imo it would be correct to fold AK pre flop, but am open to being persuaded otherwise I think there are too many times when a nit 3 bets and we havent acted yet or he 4 bets and we opened where I muck allmost religously, or an all in from someone when we havent acted and are at best racing given that players profile etc. Do you not fold spots like this?

Good job on this so far.

delanec8

Quality read. Very interesting, nh, gg, wp, etc,etc.

Any other gems like "The Wire"? I hadn't heard of it until the flipper thread and, had i even read a general outline of it, i don't think i would have watched it anyway, but from the recommendations here, i downloaded it and so far its been savage!

When you made the cross over to online cash games from STTs did you jump straight in without much experience playing cash, or had you been playing both for a while before making the concious effort to play solely cash games? What level did you start playing cash games at?

robinlacey

The Scientist wrote:

Do you think we'll see an irishman finishing in the top 20 again this year at the wsop? if so, who?

given how much luck plays a role in each individual tournament its impossible to say,but i'm sure there are at least 10 or 15 irish players who are good enough to be well in with a shout this year,as well as the chance of some random luckbox getting through.

there's also probably people i'm not even aware of who will end up playing,for example i had never heard of john magill before last year,but he was at my table for day two and i was hugely impressed by how well he played,especially since he doesn't play for a living.

long story short:its statisitically unlikely but you never know

Ste05

Excellent read Robin, really interesting, here's a couple of very quick non Poker questions for you:

I completely agree with you about The Wire, absolutely brilliant show, have you ever watch the TV show "Dexter", if so, what did you think, of not I'd highly recommend it?

And what is your favourite Film of All-Time,

robinlacey

5starpool wrote:

You are making me so jealous with posts like this.

Great read so far Robin as usual. I don't have much in the way of additional questions to add, but I'll throw a couple of things out there.

1. Do you prefer playing live or online? I don't mean from the potential profitability aspect of it only, but overall.

i consider myself mainly an online player,but recently i have been getting more and more into the idea of playing live.

its a totally different game live,i really enjoy the way you can run over a table if you're playing well in a way you never could online.

i've been thinking of making more of an effort to get to the various tournaments and cash games around europe,if only to play the cash games.

if there was a regular 5/10 game going in dublin i'd play in it all the time,sadly there isn't even a 2/5 one,despite the fact that wexford can support a 5/10 game...i don't know what the story is with that...

2. If you could choose only one type of poker to play over the year (tournies or cash), assuming that you make the same profit on each (I know this is probably not true, but humour me) which would you choose?

cash,definitely,tournies would get too boring,with cash there are so many more interesting situations.
i wouldn't like to have to choose though,i do enjoy playing tournaments for a change every now and then.

3. If you were to go about learning a game other than Holdem how would you approach it? Would you try to read up on it first before jumping in or would you try to develop a gameplan first at lower levels and then research it?

i don't know,i'd probably just jump in at midstakes and try and get some experience,and also start posting on the relevant forum on twoplustwo.
if there was a twoplustwo book about the game i'd have a look at that too..

4. Can you ever see yourself trying to become proficient in another game? I know you said you have dabbled occasionally in Omaha, but is it lack of appeal or laziness or not wanting to be out of your depth at the start that is stopping you?

i would like to be able to play omaha to a reasonably high standard,and seeing how the fish flocked to the big omaha games at the irish open made me realise that i really should sort it out.

one thing that often puts me off omaha is that it seems a lot more maths based than holdem,there seems to be less room for "feel",so i think some of my edge in holdem mighn't translate as well to omaha.

having said that,i really should at least learn the basics,enough to sit down in a juicy game and beat the fish while avoiding the good players.

robinlacey

connie147 wrote:

Nice read Robin,
You say you'd love to play tournament poker players in a cash game. Can you give me your definition of where tourney players go wrong when they start to play cash games and what big differences did you find when you made the transition yourself?

well its almost all to do with how deep the stacks are.
once you're a few hours into a tournament (or i suppose a day into a tournament like the world series with a great structure) you almost never play a hand where effective stacks are bigger than 30 bbs or so.

so tournaments quickly become mainly preflop games,there's certainly hardly ever enough money for there to be any turn or river play.

cash games are usually 100bbs deep at least,and live cash games usually play a lot deeper again,so if you get a tourney player sitting down in a live cash game,he's used to playing with 50bbs and all of a sudden he has 250bbs,its going to be very hard for him to adjust.

basically they tend to overvalue weak made hands like top pair top kicker and undervalue hands with potential like suited connectors.

also,since you never really have to excercise much pot control in tournaments,at least compared to cash games,they will often do a lot of your work for you,getting loads of money in with their overpair or whatever,blissfully unaware that they've four buyins sitting in front of them and are out of position.

robinlacey

cooker3 wrote:

Also, nice meeting you at the irish open.

you too cooker,i think i'd met you before but i didn't know who you were on boards.

robinlacey

off to get some dinner,i should be back online later on.

shoutman

Was your dinner nice? What did you have? Did you eat alone or with someone?

When did you decide to make playing poker your profession? Did it take you long to make the decision? What levels were you playing at at that time? Were you sufficently bankrolled to be playing those levels or were you over bankrolled for them? Did you have a contingency plan if it all went pearshaped and you felt you could no longer play poker for a living? Were you living at home when you first turned pro?

What is your computer setup for playing poker like?

Do you often listen to music or do other things when playing poker online?

Which is a better film, Monthy Pythons' The life of Brian or The Holy Grail?


Thanks for taking the time to answer these questions, it has been a great read so far.

Ollieboy

Excellant read and great posts Robin

1. What tells do you look for online, ie betting paterns, time to make a continuation bet etc.

2. Do these tells change as you move up the levels?

3. What level do you enjoy playing at, I find 1/2 very boring due to the money involved v's my bankroll, do you find this or can you grind at levels lower than your bankroll.

4. Do you really think Tournaments and cash game can be combine, I find HJ, Niall and yourself well able to do this.

5. When face with a tough call on flop for your tourney life, would you rather use the odds in your favour to make a hand or wait for a better chance and keep your tourney life intacted? Very general I know sorry.

6. How much edge do you think better players have in cash games and tourneys today? Roundertower made a point that there's very little now with all the knowledger out there, after think about this I tend to agree.

7. What sort of note taking to you make on other players? And can I have any notes on me please...lol

Thanks,

Ollie

robinlacey

MrPillowTalk wrote:

Cool thread well done so far.

Do you consider yourself a gambler? Do you gamble on other sports/prop bets etc?

i'm not much of a gambler no,i've never placed a bet in a bookies and have played casino games only twice in my life (i won both times,which was a laugh)

i do make bets for the laugh with friends,often just fact based bets or betting on games of pool or whatever,and never really for that much money.

Are you likely to ship it in neutral ev situation or will you wait for better spots?

i will nearly always take a neutral ev spot-in tournaments i would never turn down a neutral ev spot (well obviously you could construct some contrived final table situation where i would but you know what i mean) because i will always feel that doubling up would more than double my chances of winning.

in cash games i may as well take a neutral ev spot since it is creating action which is good for the table and my own table image.

Ive been thinking a fair bit lately on opening pots from the button, it used to be that if it was folded to me I would open probably 90%+ of the time unless the bb was v good aggresive player. Obviously Ive changed that in the last year as the game has adapted but I still open probably too much, 70% I guesstimate in most games except full tilt where Im probably opening a little tighter. You seem to think similarly to me on 4betting lines, I get 3 bet from the blinds a lot and as a result I have to four bet a lot or risk becoming completely transparent. Essentially I believe that the bb knows I can be opening very wide and is similarly 3 betting wide so I have to 4 bet lighter.

This is all well and good however it can result in getting all the money in in terrible shape from time to time, what are your thoughts on opening from the button do you prefer to operate a much tighter open pot range and do you think this will lead to better hand definition of your opponents 3 bet ranges? Do you think this is a more +EV approach than having a decent understanding and feel for when to 4 bet? (I just reread that and its quite rambling so just do your best with it)

i tend to have a fairly tight raising range,especially these days with all the reraising going on.

when i say tight,i mean i pretty much never open on the button as a pure steal,my hand will always have some value/potential,so i am never raising K3o but will raise as bad as 68o or whatever,basically i want to have something to work with,no matter how small,after the flop.

basically i am usually playing any hand thats worth playing in position,so i'm already raising enough that i have neither the time nor the inclination to add in hands that are pretty much a pure steal.

as for four betting,it depends,i often find that a lot of players react the same way to 4bets each time-a lot of them instafold,others instapush,this is of course except when they really have a hand.

obviously its handy to figure out which type of player you are up against early on,and start constantly 4betting the ones who know enough to know that they need to 3bet quite often but thats as far as they've got,wheras with the other type i suppose you should tighten your initial raising range and loosen your range for calling a push.

i have been trying to avoid the games where this sort of stuff comes up all the time though,whenever i play on full tilt it seems like i'm just involved in a pointless varience war and i often wonder who really has an edge,to be honest it does piss me off the way poker has become like this preflop guessing game,but what can you do? for this reason though i try and play more on the more passive networks and avoid the "american" sites.

Similarly to above what are your thoughts on flat calling 3 bets from the blinds, it seems clear we should flat call premium hands a fair ammount of the time and my preference would be to 4 bet AK AQ TT et al, but what are your thoughts on flat calling suited conectors and sp when over say 150bb deep?

i have started flat calling from the blinds (well the big blind a lot more than the small) a lot more than i used to,although still not too often.basically yeah i do it with premium hands,small pairs,and then sometimes suited connectors as well.

i like to have some idea what the other players in the hand are like and obviously the deeper the better,and as you say i will be more inclined to just raise with stuff like AK.

to be honest its kind of tricky though cause once you start doing stuff like that it leads to all sorts of headaches,i sometimes do it and then bluff lead so that i'm not only calling and then betting out when i hit a set,but you have to wonder is anyone really noticing this sort of thing anyway...

so yeah,i'm sort of undecided about the whole thing,so i do it every so often,more than i used to,but still fairly infrequently.

You mention briefly in an earlier post that you believe in basically never folding AK preflop, I can think of many instances when imo it would be correct to fold AK pre flop, but am open to being persuaded otherwise I think there are too many times when a nit 3 bets and we havent acted yet or he 4 bets and we opened where I muck allmost religously, or an all in from someone when we havent acted and are at best racing given that players profile etc. Do you not fold spots like this?

yeah there are times when i fold AK preflop,but they are few and far between,i would need someone like soxy to have shown a lot of strenght before i would consider doing it with 100bb stacks.

as i mentioned upthread i'm not very mathematical,so what i was saying about AK is that someone who is better at all that stuff than me played around with ranges for ages and said they concluded that in a 100bb game its very hard to find a range it is correct to fold AK preflop against,now this person probably played on a much more agressive network than ipoker or whatever,so there are some situations where i will fold,but basically what i meant is that it seems in today's agresssive games you can never be making a huge mistake getting it all in preflop with AK.that isn't to say that i never ever fold,just that it would take a lot for me to do so.

robinlacey

delanec8 wrote:

Quality read. Very interesting, nh, gg, wp, etc,etc.

Any other gems like "The Wire"? I hadn't heard of it until the flipper thread and, had i even read a general outline of it, i don't think i would have watched it anyway, but from the recommendations here, i downloaded it and so far its been savage!

When you made the cross over to online cash games from STTs did you jump straight in without much experience playing cash, or had you been playing both for a while before making the concious effort to play solely cash games? What level did you start playing cash games at?

the wire seems fairly unique as far as i can tell,i've certainly never seen anything as good as it on tv.

the best sopranos episodes come close in terms of production values,acting and writing,but its a very different type of show,the sopranos is much more abstract,impressionistic and to do with individual psychology i think.

as for cash games,basically all the time i was a tournament player i thought i was a cash games player too,i would do quite well in tournaments and sometimes play cash games,usually 1/2 and 2/4,but i never really focused on it and took the time to become a good cash player.

i was probably a marginally losing player in cash games all the time i was mainly a tournament player,although i didn't realise it at the time.

it was only after i had been playing full time for over a year that i realised that i should really learn how to play cash games properly,and after that it probably took six months to get to the stage where i was beating 1/2 for a decent clip.

robinlacey

Ste05 wrote:

Excellent read Robin, really interesting, here's a couple of very quick non Poker questions for you:

I completely agree with you about The Wire, absolutely brilliant show, have you ever watch the TV show "Dexter", if so, what did you think, of not I'd highly recommend it?

And what is your favourite Film of All-Time,

never even heard of dexter,i've been looking something to fill the void now that i've caught up with the wire,i'll definitely download it and have a look.cheers!

as for my favourite film,i don't think i could narrow it down to one at all.
in general i prefer old films to new,i love a lot of the forties and fifties classics,and also a lot of the great seventies films.

i'm a big orson welles fan,so the third man,touch of evil,citizen kane and f for fake are all up there with my favourites.

i like most of the classic film noir films that i've seen too.

recently i've been getting into wong kar wai films,and i've enjoyed in the mood for love and 2046 as much as any films i've seen in a long time,they are very abstract and arty but i've never seen any films which can come close to them visually,they are just astonishingly beautiful to look at,and the use of music is amazing.

i am also a huge fan of ferris bueller's day off,in many ways i think this is the perfect film.

my favourite poker film is california split,its a robert altman film from the seventies,i think its up on thepokerbay.

DeadMoney

Robin, when you do play MTT's do you tend to adopt a similar strategy every time? Do you aim to have a certain stack size at the different stages of the tournament?

For example, in a game of about 200 runners with about 70 players remaining, would you feel comfortable with average stack or would you have fully intended on having built an above average stack by this stage?
Would you often take a coin flip opportunity early on in a tournament with a strong hand to double up and put you in good shape or do you try to aviod these types of risky situations?

Oh and the all important question.....Who is currently your favourite poker player?