Capture the Flag -- Matt Giannetti

Matt Giannetti is a 24-year-old professional poker player who is living the good life in Las Vegas. He had a two-year stint as a student at the University of Texas, but when he realized his talent in poker, he left school. Since then, he has been consistently beating high-stakes no-limit hold'em cash games, confirming his decision to make poker his career.

Kristy Arnett: When did you first begin playing cash games?

Matt Giannetti: When I was 19, I started playing online with like $40. I played 10¢-25¢. In three months, I turned it into $2,000. This was way back in the days when the biggest games online were $3-$6 no-limit [hold'em]. It just kind of started from there. I kept building my bankroll and playing bigger and bigger.

KA: Did you already have a sense of bankroll management, in that you were able to build up so quickly?

MG: No [laughing]. I had no idea. In the beginning, looking back, I realize that I was running pretty good. I was playing $3-$6 online in the very beginning, and I had $2,000. I thought that was plenty to be playing that limit. Now I realize that it was only because back then, the players were so bad. If I had taken a few bad beats here and there, I might have lost the $2,000. Nowadays, I think I'm a very good bankroll manager. I used to be all about just playing the biggest games, and now I'm about just making money and making sure that I'm in a good spot. I used to play just the biggest games, and didn't care who was playing.

KA: How do you evaluate whether or not you want to sit down in a cash game?

MG: The number-one thing I look at is the lineup of who's there. There's got to be a fish or two. Number two is how deep-stacked the table is. The more big blinds there are in play, the more play there is, so it's a big advantage to me. I like to play in deep-stack games. Deciding which games you are a favorite in is the tough part, and you have to be a really intelligent player to evaluate everything that goes into deciding whether or not you are going to be a long-term winner in a certain game.

KA: Is there anything specific that you do to accumulate wealth from poker?

MG: I don't have any kind of system, whereby I deposit a certain amount of money in my bank account. You just have to find a game you can beat, and you have to beat it consistently. I really just put in hours in games in which I think I'm the favorite, and usually that works out well. I would never be playing in a game in which I thought it could influence how I'm living.

KA: What advice would you give to beginning cash-game players?

MG: If you are an absolute beginning cash-game player and are playing online for low stakes, you will hardly ever play against the same opponents, so you just need to play super solid poker. That's really the only way to beat the small games online. If you are playing in a small-stakes home game, you are playing with the same opponents all the time. The creation of an image is the most important thing. Once you create an image and play off that image, it's everything. This is also true for higher-stakes live cash games, since you see so many regulars.

KA: What's the most important aspect of playing solid poker?

MG: Most of it is knowing how to play your position, and not to get overly aggressive. The most important thing to know is how certain hands play in certain positions. For example, if you are at a nine-handed table with A-J under the gun without a deep stack, it is a pretty worthless hand. You can't really get paid on it, because if you get a lot of action, you probably have the worst hand.

KA: What's the biggest difference between tournaments and cash games?

MG: In cash games, you can manipulate people more. I'm not taking anything away from tournament players; I'm not the greatest tournament player ever, as I haven't done too much in them, but tournaments are just more predictable in the way of aggression. In cash games, you can craftily set someone up for a bluff in the next hand or even a hand a few days from then, because you know he is smart enough to recall a hand in the past. You can play off that, and use that to your advantage.

KA: When you began winning consistently and moving up, did you encounter any roadblocks?

MG: Well, I think everyone goes through the "I'm the greatest player in the world" phase. I did. I've seen that pattern with everybody. Everyone, at one point, thinks he is the best, but you need to realize that there's a lot to this game. You go through runs that are great and runs that are absolutely terrible. In 2007, my head was spinning. I didn't understand why I was losing. I had to re-evaluate my game, and since then, poker has been very good to me. You just have to stay humble or you will be humbled by the game.

KA: What kinds of things did you have to look at when you re-evaluated your game?

MG: When I was playing $200-$400 [no-limit hold'em] with a $100 ante, I took some really sick beats, and a lot of them were because I was opening up my game, playing very, very aggressively. I was basically playing more of a tournament style than a cash-game style, which is usually not advisable. Like, if I knew the guy had one pair, I would put him to the test with a full stack, which is about $80,000 in that game. We were playing enormous pots, and with those stacks, it doesn't take much to get in the hole. I realized that if I took a few more of those beats, I would probably have to step down a level, regroup, rebuild, and slow down a little bit.

I think every cash-game player goes through a phase in which he becomes psycho-aggressive for a while, but after re-evaluating my game, I really think playing solid poker is the most important thing. If you play solidly, you can book wins. What I like to do is play really solid poker and use that image maybe once every hour or two to take down a medium-size pot. At the end of a session, four or five medium-size pots that I was able to steal equals at least a hundred big blinds of profit. That should be a pretty decent win, in addition to the pots that I legitimately took down with the best hand. I think playing a solid game and playing off a solid image is the best way to go. All of poker has gone a little crazy with the aggression - the three-betting and four-betting preflop. If you play solidly and are patient, the money just comes.

KA: Do you think that your solid playing style leads to another piece of your edge at the table, which is a strong mindset, since you aren't thrown by the large swings that hyperaggressive players have to cope with?

MG: Yes. The game becomes a lot less emotional and therefore a lot more boring, but at the end of the day, the end of the week, the end of the month, you are making consistent money and living a good life. It's not as fun, but it works. One of the best cash-game players I've played with is Kenny Tran. He doesn't really do anything too crazy, and he just finds ways to book wins. I'm sure that he's making moves more often than everyone thinks he is, but for the most part, he just plays very, very solid poker.

KA: We've talked a lot about exploiting a solid image. How can players exploit a loose-aggressive image at the table?

MG: If you have a crazy image, you can just play really tight and everyone should pay you off, at least for a while. If everyone thinks you are very solid, people are not going to want to pay you off. The way that a really aggressive player can take advantage of his image is to change it up and just play basic, solid poker, and get in all of the value-bets he wants.

KA: What's in the future for you? Do you see yourself remaining a professional poker player for decades down the road, or is it a means to an end?

MG: I know that I'll always player poker in some sense, but as far as it being my sole income, probably not. In about four or five years, I'd like to get some other endeavors going, whether they be in the stock market or with whatever other opportunities may come my way. I've met a lot of interesting successful people along the way, should I ever decide to get out of playing poker for a living.