Questions for Al Masters

[BigBollocks]

Al if you'd rather not answer some of these questions publicly or even at all it's completely understandable. It's rare to see someone with your poker acumen who takes the time to post on the sports boards (or poker boards for that matter), so I figure it's worth a shot....

1.) Is it fair to assume that a fair amount of your income is or once was derived from poker?

2.) If so, is the majority of your play live or online?

3.) What would be the best/most efficient way to accumulate a fair profit (say $100K annually) online? I see some with close to a half million profit on SnGs alone (not to mention FPPs), but couldn't imagine playing 12 tourneys at a time for 10 hours a day. Also, the frequent details (such as steaming, passiveness/aggressiveness at various stages, etc.) you miss when multitabling can be huge. Is it best to play several small stakes cash games at once, one or two big cash games, several small stakes sng's, a couple of larger sng's, or even MTTs?

4.) If the answer is cash games and your goal is to maximize profits with your time, are you better off playing pot or no-limits to maximize situations (although you risk high variability)?

5.) Do you mind sharing that NAPC hand and how it went down? and....

6.) Is there much money to be made on the poker circuit right now? Several years ago I traveled and played pretty much $2000 and lower tourneys across the midwest (would always play the Harrah's New Orleans tourneys too). I found the grind tough, and thought it all came down to one or two firsts or seconds to make your year.


Thanks for your time whenever you have it Al. Happy holidays!

[Al Masters]

Hi BB, hope you had a nice holiday, and thanx for the kind words.

I flopped onto this site a few years back, hours before making a deposit with BETUS.

I had gone to there site, called them, opened an account over the phone with them( this was like midnight)gave them my info including cell #.

Near the end of our conversation he asked me my prefered method of deposit , i told him either W.U or C.C.

I went on to tell him that i'd call back the following day to make arrangements to send 4 dimes, an hour later my cell phone rang it was the same agent, trying to convince me to use my C.C now! over the phone.

I declined, saw the red flag googled in sportsbookrewiews, and found this site, and made 4 dimes.went to bed like 5 hours later and knew all about those scumbags (BETUS).


I read all the threads& reviews by other players and S.B.R.
Came to the conclusion that when i get the next call from them i'd have to jerk them around, and i did until my stories (about a week later ) drove him friggon nuts.(Really)i had him checking for W.U's 5 times a day minimum for like 5 consecutive days, until finally telling him that no one by that name is associated with this cell phone and how i thought all along it was some friends just f. u. king around with me.

So as you can see i have loyalty to this site,and have learned a ton about online sportsbetting through this site in the last few years.

Thus the reason i've never left this site, plus there are many good posters here.Although i'm certainly no powerposter i've got involved in some heated threads.

However, this is a sportsbetting site not a poker site, and as im a big loser betting sports over my lifetime i now only consider it a hobby ,but i love the action,and sbr is part of the action.

Now when it comes to poker, thats a different story, it's the only gambleing i've done where i can gain money half regularly.

I really started playing when foxwoods opened there poker room, and actually saw a hand full of players consistently leaving the table with more chips then they started with, after spending time in that environment i learned many valuable lessons from many of these pros.

Most of these learnt skills (as i call them)i didnt grasp onto for years, and they have nothing to do with how to play hands or players, but rather what one does prior and after the poker game is finished.

Example: I get to the casino 7th on the list, i know it's minimum an hour wait ,what do i do next?

Go play blackjack maybe craps(my past demon)maybe bet a horse, maybe i'll just go have a few drinks before they call me?

All bad anwsers, but i made these choices for years.

what game to play and not to play these choices you must make prior to playing , how many times have we gone into a 10-25 nl game with 1,500$ looking to make a quick score keep doing that over time and see what happens.

Not knowing when to leave a game, how many times have you heard a player say i should of left 3 hours ago i was up 3.5 k now i'm stuck a dime, i have to get it back and leave at least even for the last 18 hours i've been playing. no marathons in cash games. it takes big balls to leave a game when your runnin over it, as it does to know when to minimize your loss and leave.

Wanna be successful?

LESSON 1 NO LEAKS. my definition of a leak is any game you play in a casino other then poker. Game choice AND KNOWING WHEN TO LEAVE.


BB i will be back to anwser your questions shortly.

[Al Masters]

HEY BB, as for your questions.

1) fair assesment, although since october things have been tough.

2) I played only live then started playing online at one point was playing 90% online but since this past summer i'd say it's like 50-50 between live and online.
now i'm only playing online at P.S and FT.

3) Best way to accumulate a big amount ? get lucky in a MTT OR LIVE TOURNEY and make top 3. i play 10 hours in a day sometimes but never that many tables at once 4 table max for me....... but whatever works for you. that idiot RAINKHAN plays like 25 at once, hes not a good player(imo).

Like anything else in any competition there will be playyers at the top of the leader boards, so guys who are both good\lucky and play in the biggest S&GO'S over an extended period of time will, some will rise to big numbers as some will go south....check out one of my favorite players....GREEKLY.(hope your not him as no lesson\info will be of any good..lol)

As far as F.P.P's are concerned at P.S there only a scoreboard as to how much players have contributed $$$ wise, thus you don'thave to play 20 s&go's just jump into 2 high stakes cash games and see how many F.P.P'S YOU GET IN A FEW HOURS.although playing 20 tables at one time surely won't hurt your ability to acquire F.P.P's.

In the end you play what your comfortable playing, i'm a poker DG, so i play them all, although lately mostly tourneys and sitngos.live games it's the other way around much more cash games then tourneys.

when in a casino ill play either nl holdem, limit holdem,stud, omaha8or better or razz.

Don't like or play omaha or stud hi-low.

ONLINE my goals are always close down if i feel a sense of tilt setting in, minumize all losses, stay away from that one day that can ruin you, search for easier type players , i have notes upon notes of my impressions of most i play against plus i use a few services which gives you players abilities.

5)Was at Niagra Falls playing a 1,200$ sat to the main event when i picked up pocket K-K........ wanted action and it was early in the match, it was a 1 table sit&go all players were still there i raised from a 100 to 400 (wanted action my mistake should have raised consideably more but i wanted action so i got action)got 2 callers.

flop comes..............Ks-10d-10s..............
Now i really want action, however from this point on my initial mistake of a small raise will be the defining mistake in the hand.

Pot has like 1,350 im 1st to talk i bet 400$, they both call.

turn comes ........Ks-10d-10s-Qs............

I bet 2k, they both call, i'm lovin life, then as it turns out(no pun intended) my only card to save the rest of my stack comes!!no not a K.

final board looks like this Ks-10d-10s-Qs-10h

I cringe inside thinking it just killed me, so i check, next guy goes all-in ,guy after him insta calls, i now know im dead , i fold....... other players cards...Ad-10c........other guy As-Js.

6) can be very costly if you don't make some sort of showing between hotels and food and sats and actuall tourney costs.

[BigBollocks]

Hey Al, thanks a heap for your time! Hopefully 2008 is off to a good start for you. I agree 100% about SBR. I used to post at Cov***.com when it first started up, and they give such little shit about the players that it's absurd (they still had a sportsbook.com banner up at last check lol).

That's a hell of a hand at Niagara Falls, and you're obviously right about the river ten being fortunate for you (what a sick turn though)!

The thing with those MTTs is that they seem like such a waste of time in the longrun. Let's say it takes you two months to get a fairly big score, and between then you've broke about even between getting knocked out and finishing fairly low in the money. You might well have been better working at McDonalds! Plus the extreme variance seems a tad like gambling. I won the limit $200 once for like $7k, but it took 6-7 hours to play (and I focused exclusively on it for the last 4 hours or so). I've also played it fifteen other times with mixed results. So all and all I might have invested 100 hours to net around that $7K. I'm huge into making my time show profit in whatever I do be it gambling or investing (which you expect to both be investing), and when I was aggregating some of my MTT numbers was not as happy with return on investment for the time spent.

I've been doing what you were talking about, and just play at tables with perceived poorer players. Is one of the tracking sites you use pokertracker by the way? There are plenty of sites to track players' SnG and MTT stats, but not many for ring games apparently.

Thanks again for letting me pick your brain Al, you're in an upper echelon when it comes to online poker discussion....

[BigBollocks]

The other thing that killed me about the low level poker circuit is being away from family and friends to play with local degenerates everyday. It got kind of depressing for me not that long into it.

I think it'd be a lot different on the EPT circuit with those exotic cities, but playing lower level buyins throughout the American Midwest in February isn't quite that exotic...