Barry Greenstein Interview

Barry Greenstein used to be poker’s best kept secret. For years he dominated the biggest live cash games poker has to offer. He came to prominence as the ‘robin hood of poker’ as he translated his cash game success to the tournament arena and promptly gave all his winnings to charity. After writing ‘Ace on the River‘ and making numerous TV appearances he is now one of the best known names and faces in the game. Very few players are more respected and he still regularly beats the biggest tournament and cash games in the world.

You recently said you thought the UIGEA (the legislation banning internet poker in America) would be overturned in 6 months – is that still the situation?

When I said that, there was pressure on Congress to act because of the threat of WTO sanctions. However both cases against the US have now been settled so that pressure no longer exists. We still have a lot of congress behind us on the issue, however it’s a question of perception and none of our politicians want to risk losing votes by being seen as ‘for gambling’, so it’ll probably be pushed back until after the November election

You were quite vocal in the recent spat between online and live players at the recent PokerStars Caribbean Adventure. So you still think you can hold your own against the best new young players?

Definitely.  The young online players are definitely in bad shape against me in a live tournament. Some online players say I’m over the hill – well I might be but I’m still better than they are. They don’t understand live play and give away too many tells. Some of them say that tells aren’t important but that’s because they don’t know what to look for when they themselves are tell boxes. They always let me know what they’re thinking because they don’t know how to disguise it. And this applies to the top players. Some of them will go on to adapt well to live poker, but at the moment I’ve got some bad news – there aren’t any 19-year old tournament players that play better than I do.

A lot of knowledge is shared online – do you find online players play in a similar way?

Well they all bet their hands well. But they also play as if all their opponents are the same person. When you’re multi-tabling online you fall into that way of thinking. Also online players think that if something is +EV it’s also right. Well all poker plays should be +EV – if you put money in the middle you expect it to come back with interest – but that doesn’t make them right. For example, moving in with Aces is +EV but it isn’t always the best play. The bigger your edge in play over your opponents, the more hands you want to play and usually the smaller you want to make the pots preflop.

Do the younger players have the edge in stamina?

I think the WSOP should include an Iron Man event where the players have to play straight through for several days. These young players are wimps - they complain about long days when they only play for 2 hours then have a break. I’m used to playing  sessions for days on end. That event would be great for commercial sponsorship – especially deodorants

We’ve seen you on High stakes poker – how was that experience?

Well often the games are different on TV. We don’t usually play a no-limit Hold’em cash game without a cap, but there’s generally so much bad play on the show that you can make money just playing fundamentally. That doesn’t make great TV though so if you want to stay on you need to make some plays.

In Season Two I got stuck early so I played very tight short-stacked to show how to play when you’re behind. Limiting losses is the key to being a successful poker player

When I do that my opponents still know I can make a big move so I still got action when I had a hand. This is an old trick I’ve used since I was 20 – I’d play solidly when behind or short and still get action because of my image.

How did you find the game with the 500k buy in?

The 500k buy in was great for TV but only Guy [Laliberte] could really afford it. Most of us were playing outside our bankroll and our comfort zone. You could tell Guy could afford it as he was the only one ‘playing up’ and the rest of us were playing much tighter than normal. I’d say it was a good experiment for TV but it stopped some of the players from playing their natural game.

Did you find yourself playing differently on TV?

Against the field on high stakes poker it’s definitely possible to make money playing good fundamental poker however it doesn’t make for good TV. I’ve definitely made one or two big bluffs I might not have made if it wasn’t on TV. Also in the 500k game there was a hand where I held AJ and raise; Sammy called and Patrick made a reraised. I thought he was probably making a play against me – not a squeeze play but a play against me – but if I continued in the hand it would have gone to TV and it was a marginal situation so I folded. Actually Sammy ended up calling down Patrick with a very marginal hand so it did go TV and it turned out Patrick was making a play with 9-7

You play a lot more tournaments than you used to. Do you enjoy them and do you still enjoy poker?

I never played poker for enjoyment, it’s always been a job, . There is some enjoyment in tournament poker as there is an end point to work towards. If it wasn’t for the poker boom I wouldn’t need to play to earn money any more but the boom cost me because the big side games where I used to make all my money have dried up so now I have to play more tournaments. . Unfortunately this has meant I can’t give away all the money I make in tournaments like I used to because they make up so much more of my playing time

Dan Harrington has said it’s almost impossible to make a living from large live tournaments because of expenses and the juice – is it possible?

Well I can. I have enough of an edge over the field to make a living from them. I have started  playing in some of the $25/50 and $50/100 cash games they have at the events. I used to think they were too small for me but now they help pay my expenses.

Originally published in Poker Player magazine.

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