Capture the Flag -- Daniel Negreanu

Daniel Negreanu is one of the most recognizable faces in the poker industry for a reason. He has four World Series of Poker bracelets, two World Poker Tour titles, and $11 million in tournament winnings. As impressive as that sounds, Negreanu has accumulated even more wealth than that in cash games. A widely respected cash-game player, Negreanu is competent in all variations of poker and has been a frequent competitor in the "Big Game."

Kristy Arnett: Let's start off with your beginnings in cash games. When you started, what stakes and games were you playing?

Daniel Negreanu: Well, we're going to have to go way back. When I was 17, I was playing in house games, $1-$5 mixed games. It wasn't hold'em, though, it was all kinds of fun games. But when I first started playing for a living in Toronto, for the first three or four years, my bread-and-butter game was $10-$20 limit hold'em. I did that until I moved to Vegas and started moving up in limits.

KA: Do you think that learning different games and playing limit hold'em first helped you think about the game in a more helpful way than those who learn poker by playing strictly no-limit hold'em?

DN: Absolutely; no question about it. A great limit hold'em player can play anything. A great no-limit hold'em player is, a lot of times, one-dimensional. Frankly, the whole philosophy that I teach, the small-ball style, is born out of so many years of playing limit hold'em, because it is a similar strategy, in that I pretty much min-raise [minimum-raise] before the flop and make 50 percent bets on the flop, and things change on the turn and river; but basically, I transferred my limit hold'em skills to no-limit hold'em, and use the same principles but with a few extra wrinkles.

Players should not discount how much limit hold'em will help their game, especially people who learn by playing no-limit tournaments. They're so fast-paced, so people don't do a lot of post-flop play. All they do is go all in, all in, all in. That's all they are learning, but when you play limit hold'em, you see a flop almost every hand you play. So now you're getting trained on how to play flops. There are so many more difficult decisions, and the more difficult decisions you get accustomed to making, the easier it is for you to play post-flop. This will help you in two ways. When you play no-limit cash games deep-stacked, it's going to help you a ton, because it's all post-flop, not preflop. Also, it will help in WPT tournaments, because it's not all about preflop play. It's about playing after the flop. Limit hold'em is the best training ground possible for that.

KA: So, what is your favorite game? Is it limit hold'em?

DN: If I went broke tomorrow and needed to go make some money, I'd play limit hold'em. But my favorite game to play, and the game that I think I play the best, is stud eight-or-better. Stud is a game in which I feel like I can read hands better than even in no-limit hold'em.

KA: What gives you that edge to be able to read hands so well in that game?

DN: There are so many variables to it that help your reading ability. There are cards that are just bricks based on certain players. If a guy starts with a 5, and then he catches a jack, there are certain players you know that the card is definitely a complete brick to their hand. They've got 8-6-5 or 7-5-3, or something like that, so you can bet and represent something. Let's say you know another guy, and you know that if he catches bad on fourth street, he's going to fold, so you know that if you bet here, even if you have nothing, you can steal it. It's less about what you actually have and more about the visible cards on your opponent's board and playing your board against his. By fifth or sixth street, it's pretty easy to define someone's hand to a rough range.

KA: Was there anyone along the way who helped you improve your cash game?

DN: Oh yeah, tons. A lot of my personality is imitating people and mimicking them, and getting inside their heads, kind of like Sylar on Heroes. He's this guy who zaps people's heads open and steals their special powers. The analogy is that when I used to play with someone who would win, I would soak up everything that he did for a full week, figure out exactly what he did, and then incorporate it into my game. I also had a group of friends who were pretty good at poker - Phil Ivey, John Juanda, and Allen Cunningham. We were the young guys. After playing, we'd go to dinner and talk - talk poker, talk strategy. We'd all argue, and then Allen would tell us the right play [laughing]. After that, I became good friends with Jennifer Harman. I got to sweat her cards in the Big Game, so before I even sat down in that game, I already had a feel for the players because I'd watched them for so long.

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

DN: The way I look at it is, there's no time date on it, and a lot of it has to do with bankroll. Some people, like the Sklansky camp, might say that you don't take shots, but not one player in the Big Game got there with what you could say was an appropriate bankroll. I'll give you an example of how I would have done it. Let's say I was playing $20-$40 hold'em and $4,000 was enough for me to play that game comfortably. If I ever got my bankroll up to $6,000, I would take a shot with that $2,000 and play $40-$80 - just get my feet wet. If things went well, I'd stick. If I lost that $2,000, I'd go back to my comfort zone - $20-$40. So, I think that whenever you do make the decision to jump up a level, know that it is a temporary thing, unless you continue to win. Always maintain the thinking that this is my limit, but I'm going to take a shot at the next one. And don't stay at that new one until you actually stick and have a bankroll that you think is comfortable for that new limit.

There's another by-product of why this is such a good idea. What that will actually do for you is that when you go play in a higher-limit game, you will get better at poker. You will play in a tougher game with tougher players. Now let's say that you lose and go back to that $20-$40 game; you are already better than you were before. So, you are going to make even more money in the $20-$40 game than you would have made before. So keep taking those shots until you stick. That's what all the top players do, for the most part.

KA: What is the biggest mistake amateurs make when they are playing cash games that is the easiest to fix?

DN: One of the first columns I ever wrote for Card Player was about playing hours, not results, which is absolutely the biggest mistake. The whole concept is that, generally speaking, players try to win each session. That's their goal, and it shouldn't be. They want to take a win, so they play longer sessions when they are losing and shorter sessions when they are winning. Your mindset is so much better when you are winning, so you should actually, if anything, play longer when you are winning. The best way to break yourself free of that is to decide what time you are going to quit when you first show up at the table. Decide then, while your mind is clear. Let's say it's now 6 p.m. and you want to play a six-hour session. At midnight, you quit, unless you are winning and the game is really good. If the game is really good and you are losing, it might be really good only because you are in it.

KA: When a game is really loose, how do you cope with being card-dead?

DN: That's one of the toughest situations to be in, because it tests your patience, and really, that's all you're left with. When you are in a really juicy game, you can't necessarily outplay these people; you have to "out-fundamental" them. You just have to play more solid poker, by the book, and not let yourself get carried away with what's going on. You can't let yourself fall into that trap, and if you can't do it, you have to quit, no matter how good the game is, because sometimes, in those games particularly, you have higher fluctuations, so it's dangerous to your bankroll if your mind is not ready to do it.

KA: Who is the cash-game player you respect the most, and why?

DN: Well, he's passed away, but Chip Reese was the guy everyone respected, because he always had the even keel. He never raised his voice. Every hand he was in made sense. Even when he got caught bluffing, it always made sense. It was always logical, smooth, and graceful.

At his funeral, there was something said about his poker game that was so powerful. Once, someone said to him, "Chip, you play in the biggest games in the world with all the best players. How do you win?" Chip said, "Well, you know what? Some of those players might be better than me a lot of the time, but my A-game and my F-game are not that much different." So, there might be players who are more talented, but they rarely play at that level on a consistent basis. Chip did.