Eric Rizen Lynch

Ask Rizen

Before I get to the 'Ask Rizen' questions I wanted to recap my Thursday a bit. I played only a handful of tournaments because I was pretty tired, I ended up finishing around 12th I think in the Stars $100 rebuy and cashing in the Stars $20 rebuy but whiffing the rest. The two cashes made for a slightly profitable night though.

I played some cash games too last night and ended up down less than half a buy in there. I felt like I played well just ran into situations where someone held A4 on a 844 flop and i had JJ and it was very tough to put the guy on a hand that beat me. Add to it he was fairly short stacked and there really was no avoiding it. Same thing happened later when I had AQ in the SB and an aggressive short stack big blind played back at me. We got it all in and his 77 held.

For the 'Ask Rizen' stuff i just wanted to remind everyone to e-mail all their questions to rizenpoker@gmail.com with the subject line 'Ask Rizen', otherwise I'll miss them and they won't be included. So far I've received all good questions and narrowing them down was tough. If your question wasn't answered this week i'm saving a lot of the good questions I received this week for later as I figure the questions will probably die down a bit at some point in the future.

Q: Do you feel you are a better online player or a live player???

A: I'm going to answer this one kind of in a way that ducks the question, but it's the only honest way I know to answer it. I feel like my ROI is higher live because the tournament structures (at least in the events I usually play in) are much better, allowing me more time to take advantage of my skill. Also, I feel that the average live player I run across at the limits I play is far worse than the average online player at the limits I play.

To be clear I think the best live players in the world are some of the best players period, but when I play in a WPT or WSOP event there are often easily 5-6 (and sometimes more) weak players at a table you can take advantage of. When I'm playing the $100 rebuy or $150 freezeouts there are usually only a couple of truly soft players at any table. On Sundays there are a lot more, but that's just one day a week.

Q: Have you or would you be interested in mentoring/staking a protégé someday????

A: No. I get asked this a lot and partially chose this question so hopefully it can cut down on people asking. Don't get me wrong, I'm flattered people ask, but my most precious resource at this point in my life is my time. I prioritize time with my family and between that, poker, writing, and doing videos for PXF I just don't have time for anything else. I do enjoy teaching, and I feel like my videos for www.pokerxfactor.com are a great way for me to do teaching but not have to dedicate the time it takes to mentor someone 1 on 1.

Q: You’re a pro and your cashing only 16% of the time… what hope does that leave for someone just starting out??

A: This question actually had a whole set of data I'm assuming someone pulled from one of the many data mining sites out there. I didn't put the data in mainly because it's inaccurate. Even the 16% number is inaccurate, as I'm about 18% cashing lifetime. I believe the person who pulled these stats just got them for 2007 or something though.

At any rate, this sort of thinking often comes up, so I though it would be useful to address. Often times, especially when players are just starting out, they judge their success by how often they cash. This is really looking at things the wrong way. Your goal should be to max out your ROI and/or hourly rate. If I really tried, I'm pretty sure I could cash 25% of the time or so, but if I did so I would make a lot less money because many times rather than making the optimal long term play I would simply make the play that allowed me to cash the easiest. When playing poker you should always do the decisions that give you the best long term expected return. In my experience, I find that most people who cash 20% of the time or greater are costing themselves money, and I think the sweet spot for ITM% is 15-18 to allow yourself to make the most money possible.

Q: Is it true to really get going in online poker you need a large bankroll?

A: No this is not true, although it certainly helps. I started with a $50 bankroll and didn't put any money into my bankroll I didn't earn playing poker. I know a fair amount of other people who are more or less the same. Having a large bankroll certainly helps, but as long as you play within the limits of whatever bankroll you do have you should be just fine.

Q: Could you do a limit cash game on PokerX Factor?

A: It's on my short list of things I want to do, but I can't make any promises to when it will be done.

Q: There  has been a lot of discussion on a forum i post on about tourney players/ cash players and which are the most profitable.As an exponent of both whats your opinion on this? Has tourney play for you got a better hourly rate?

A: The best cash game players in the world make more than the best tournament players, at least from poker itself. For the biggest MTT players there are lots of endorsement deals and sponsorships etc that help level the field a bit. A lot of players play both but very few excel at both. I would definitely say that the top tier cash players make more than the top tier MTT players though.

As far as my hourly rate goes, it's pretty close. Part of the reason I've been playing less tournaments lately and more cash is because my hourly rate in cash is much better than say, my hourly rate in a UB $100 freezeout with 150 players. But my hourly rate in the big Sunday tournaments is larger than my cash game hourly rate. A lot of that is because I'm a bankroll nit and play at cash limits far lower than what I'm bankrolled for, but at the same time I prefer to play 3/6 and 5/10 no limit where I feel like I have a greater edge and less variance than playing in a 25/50 game where I have to really focus to have a much smaller edge (at least in terms of BB/100).

All that being said I think I might be a weird example. I think I'm probably in the top 50-100 tournament players in the world (live or online) while I probably wouldn't crack the top 1000 as far as cash game play goes. For a player who is equally good at both, they can probably make more money long term playing cash. That being said, I think bankroll management and emotional management are MUCH more important in cash than MTTs, and I've seen lots of very good players skill wise go broke playing cash simply because they couldn't handle their emotions and/or bankroll.

As a side note for www.pokerxfactor.com subscribers, just because I don't feel I'm one of the top cash game players doesn't mean that my videos aren't helpful. I feel that one of my biggest strengths is my ability to communicate and teach poker concepts. I beat the low to mid stakes games at a very healthy rate and feel like I can do a good job of teaching everyone else how to do the same thing. My videos aren't going to make you a winner at the 25/50 to 300/600 games, but they'll definitely do a great job of teaching you how to beat all the games up to 5/10 at a very healthy rate.

-Rizen