Capture the Flag: Bobby Hoff

Bobby Hoff, known as "The Wizard" for his ability to make his opponents' chips disappear, has been playing poker for almost 50 years. The old-school gambler is a fixture in Southern California cardrooms and his game of choice is no-limit hold'em. Hoff is held in the highest regard by his fellow cash-game players due to his consistent results. Dan Harrington's highly anticipated book Harrington on Cash Games: Volume I, due out in early 2008, contains an extensive interview with Hoff, the man Harrington respects as poker's best cash-game player.

Lizzy Harrison: What factors make for a good cash game?

Bobby Hoff: Lots of money and bad players. I look for those two things. The quality of the players is very important. I also like to play in games where the ratio of the stacks to the blinds or antes is really high.

LH: What is your preferred game, and why?

BH: The games I really prefer to play in are credit games [laughing]. People talk about cash games, but what really makes a good game is one with a lot of liberal credit. Credit games were games we played back in Texas years ago. We wouldn't even bring cash; everybody would play on credit and then we would settle up the next day. A lot of credit makes for a good poker game. I am really just kidding - kind of [laughing]. In reality, though, my favorite game is pot-limit hold'em. I think it is the game that requires the most skill.

LH: What about your least favorite?

BH: Well, I am not really fond of pot-limit Omaha. Hold'em is really the only game that I care for very much. I don't care much for lowball, either.

LH: When you first started playing cash games, what games and stakes did you play?

BH: I played a little bit in high school. We played dealer's choice once or twice a week. I started seriously playing poker at the University of Texas in 1959. The game we played was 25-cent ante pot-limit seven-card stud eight-or-better.

LH: How quickly did you become a winning player?

BH: I was a winning player from the start in that game, because my opponents were so poor. If you were a bad player in that game, you were dead. I won 40 times in a row and thought I was surely the best poker player in the world. I won $8,000 in those 40 sessions. In 1959, that was just amazing. So, I thought I was not only the best poker player in the world, but one of the richest ones. I soon discovered I was not.

LH: When did you first play poker in a casino?

BH: In the town I grew up in, there were clandestine casinos, but they did not have poker. There were, however, clandestine cardrooms. The first time I sat down to play in one was in 1960. I was not a winning player there, even though I had thought I was the best player in the world. I started playing pot-limit and no-limit hold'em in those rooms. I quickly discovered that I was not the best player in the world, because I lost all of my money.

LH: What tweaks were needed to turn yourself into a consistent winner?

BH: It took me a long time. When I went broke, I started working in one of the casinos; I dealt craps and blackjack. Those clandestine casinos paid their workers in cash every night. When the casino closed, I would go play poker until I went broke or it was time to go back to work again. I did that for quite a while, and my bankroll went up and down. When it went up, I would quit working for a while, and when I went broke, I would have to go back to work. Then I read [Dr. Edward O.] Thorp's book Beat the Dealer, and started playing blackjack. I struggled with that for a long time, because I didn't know anyone with money to put up. Eventually, I wound up forming a blackjack team. Back then, there were only about 20 casinos in the whole state of Nevada, and they were the only legal casinos in the United States. By early 1969, we were pretty much barred from all of the casinos. But by then I had built a pretty good bankroll playing blackjack, and I started to play no-limit hold'em in Las Vegas. It took them a while, but they broke me. However, I did learn something; I learned how to play poker with that blackjack money that I lost. Then my friend Sailor Roberts started staking me, and I started winning. That was in 1971.

LH: What stakes are you comfortable playing?

BH: The game that I play at Commerce Casino is a game that I can count on being there around-the-clock. It's a $20-$40 blinds game. I play the game well, and I win, because I am a good no-limit hold'em player.

LH: How should a player determine when he is ready to move up in stakes?

BH: If you are going to improve your game, one thing you have to do is play with players who are better than you. You cannot learn anything if you are the best player at the table. Another thing you need is an adequate bankroll. A lot of people do not understand what an adequate bankroll is; it depends on whether you are going to play poker for a living, which is a very difficult thing, or you have another source of income so that your poker bankroll is separate from your living expenses.

LH: What is the most common mistake that you see inexperienced cash-game players making?

BH: I guess it would be getting too involved with a mediocre hand, or limping in with a bad hand and then calling a raise. To be a good player, you want to stay out of binds. The way to do that is to stay away from hands that produce second-best results.

LH: What skills are more important in cash games than they are in tournaments?

BH: I think the main skill that is more important in a cash game is reading your opponents. It is more important because, in general, the ratio between the stacks and the blinds is much higher in a cash game than it is in a tournament. Another skill that is more valuable in a cash game than in a tournament is the ability not to steam. You must have self-control in a cash game.

LH: Which poker players have most influenced your game?

BH: Sailor Roberts was the one who gave me a lot of good advice, because he was my dear friend and he staked me. The players who beat me also taught me. James Roy, "Goody" was his nickname, beat my brains out at the tables. He is the one who won most of my blackjack money; him, Doyle Brunson, and a few others.

LH: Which cash-game players do you most respect, and why?

BH: That is a tough question. That is one of the things that Dan [Harrington] asked me when he interviewed me for his new book. Here is the problem; there was a time when I probably knew every single good player, and that time has long passed. There are so many good players now. I love the way Gabe [Thaler] plays, and I love the way my friend Steve Lott plays. Occasionally, I get discouraged because I look around and there are just so many more good players than there was. Then I remember that there are also many more bad players than there used to be. I am not so sure that the percentage of good players is higher than it used to be; it might be, because of all of the information that is out there. But I can say that there are a lot of good players right now.