Capture the Flag -- Isaac Haxton

Isaac Haxton got his start in poker by playing cash games while attending Brown University, where he obtained a degree in philosophy. He continues to fuel his soaring bankroll by beating the high-stakes cash games online, where he plays anything from $10-$20 to $500-$1,000 no-limit hold'em. He also has quickly climbed the ranks as a pot-limit Omaha competitor, and plays under the alias "luvtheWNBA." In addition to the money he makes playing cash games, he has $1.3 million in live-tournament winnings.


Kristy Arnett: How did you get started playing cash games, and what stakes were you playing?

Isaac Haxton: When I first started playing poker, I played cash games. I deposited $50 on UltimateBet during my senior year in high school. That was five or six years ago at this point. I started out playing 25¢-50¢ limit [hold'em]. I ended up losing the first $50 and took some time off from online poker, but I played $5 sit-and-gos with my friends in college. I did fairly well doing that. I went back home to Syracuse, New York, for winter break that year and played a lot of small-stakes limit [hold'em] at Turning Stone Casino. At the end of that winter break, I deposited another $50 on UltimateBet. That time, it went a lot better. Basically, I ran that $50 into just about everything I've got now.

KA: Tell me about how you built that second $50 deposit into what you have now.

IH: As I said, I started out playing 25¢-50¢ limit hold'em, which is only a hundred big bets, so I was under-rolled, but it was a pretty soft game. It wasn't too bad, though, and I guess I ran well. I worked on the policy that every time I hit 200 big blinds for the next level, I'd move up, and every time I dropped below 150 big blinds, I'd move back down. I just sort of bounced up and down through the stakes, and about a year later, I was playing $30-$60 [limit hold'em] as my regular game.

KA: When did you start playing no-limit hold'em?

IH: Fairly recently. I actually played limit hold'em exclusively for the first three years or so that I played poker. I switched to no-limit in August of 2006.

KA: What other games do you play?

IH: I've been working on my PLO [pot-limit Omaha] game more than anything recently, and I'd like to get better at some of the other games. I really do think that no-limit hold'em is sort of on its way out, at least in the cash-game format. I think it will stick around for a long time as a tournament choice, because it makes a lot of sense as a tournament game, but in a cash game, the best players have so much of an edge that it's not fun for the fish. I think the other limit games and pot-limit Omaha are where most of the big poker action is going to be in the coming years.

KA: Along those same lines of switching games for profit, did you move to no-limit hold'em games because you thought limit hold'em games were on their way out?

IH: Limit hold'em games had gotten very tough by the time I quit, and have gotten even tougher since. The variance in tough limit hold'em games is unreal. I went from being the biggest winner on PartyPoker in one six-month stretch to break even over the next six-month stretch, and then decided to switch to no-limit. At the point that I switched over, the no-limit games were still very soft. It was really an underdeveloped game. No one really knew what they were doing. You saw a really wide range of styles, starting with how people played preflop. There were winning players who were playing twice as many hands as other winning players, and that's a sign that someone is doing something wrong. In fact, everyone is doing something wrong if there can be that wide of a variation in how people are playing and still winning.

KA: Is that kind of how pot-limit Omaha is now?

IH: Yes, you see the same thing happening. Nobody knows how to play right preflop. There are people doing wildly different things and all succeeding, because the worst players are playing so badly. In no-limit hold'em, that's no longer really the case. There's very little variation in how the best players play preflop in no-limit hold'em at this point.

KA: What's the biggest mistake that people are making preflop in PLO?

IH: It's hard for me to tell, because in all likelihood, I'm making mistakes preflop in pot-limit Omaha, too. I do think that a lot of people are playing too loose, letting pots get too big when they are out of position. Also, people will call three-bets, then fold to continuation-bets post-flop too much.

KA: What advice would you give to players who are making the transition from playing no-limit hold'em cash games to pot-limit Omaha cash games?

IH: One really common mistake that I see in people who are learning pot-limit Omaha is that they will raise the flop every time they have a hand that they are willing to go broke with. So, when they only call a bet on the flop, that almost always means they have a weak hand or a single eight-out draw to the nuts. Therefore, against players who are just learning the game, if they flat-call a bet on the flop and the turn is unlikely to have improved their hand, you are almost guaranteed to be able to take it away from them with another bet. That's something the best pot-limit Omaha players are definitely not letting happen to them.

KA: What games and stakes are you playing on a regular basis?

IH: I'm playing no-limit hold'em from $10-$20 up to $500-$1,000, and pot-limit Omaha pretty much the same, but not much $500-$1,000; mostly up to $200-$400.

KA: What advice would you give players who are making the transition from low-stakes live cash games to online cash games?

IH: Start out at the smallest stakes you can that are still big enough to make you care and pay attention, because the online games are much tougher than live games. If you've been playing small stakes live and doing fairly well, and then you go online and play for a quarter of those stakes, it's still going to be a much tougher game.

KA: Why do you think that is?

IH: A good way of looking at it is how much the best player is going to make in a given game. The best player in a live $1-$2 game can make $20 or $30 an hour - maybe. Online, if he is eight-tabling, he can make that much by playing 25¢-50¢, maybe even 10¢-20¢. So, the determining factor of where people of various skills who are trying to play poker for a living end up is how much money they can make in a game. It makes sense that live games are softer than comparably sized online games. There's more money to be made in an online game of the same size.

KA: How do you deal with downswings?

IH: I'm really lucky, in that it seems to bother me less than it does most people. I haven't really had to put as much effort into learning tilt control and emotional control as a lot of players have, because I just don't get that upset about losing. Nothing really fazes me, but I also don't get as excited as most people do about winning.

KA: What's the best piece of advice that you would give players who need to improve their tilt control?

IH: When you are losing, be really honest with yourself about how you're playing. Recognize when you are frustrated or not concentrating well, and quit. However, there are certainly times when you should keep playing when you are frustrated and want to quit. For example, if you have a huge fish on the hook in a high-stakes heads-up no-limit game and you're down six buy-ins, even if you are playing your C-game, it's better to keep playing, because the guy is awful and you don't have to play that well to beat him.

KA: What makes you want to continue striving to play the highest stakes? Is it just the money?

IH: Certainly, a big factor is just that I'm trying to play poker professionally, so it's my goal to maximize my hourly rate. If there are soft big games running and I have an edge, I'll play. That's going to maximize my hourly rate. That's not the only reason, though. Playing at and winning at the highest stakes is, to me, the most exciting challenge in poker. I really like that challenge. It's something that gets me excited about playing.