The Scoop -- Scott Seiver

Scott Seiver is a 23-year-old poker pro who not only has more than $1 million in live-tournament winnings and a World Series of Poker bracelet, but also dominates cash games online under the screen name of “mastrblastr” on Full Tilt. He recently sat down with Adam and Diego to talk about the status of high-stakes heads-up play.

Diego Cordovez: You are one of these guys who’s had a lot of success and made your fame on the Internet, in large part, but specifically, it seems that you have a reputation for your heads-up play, which has obviously benefited you in tournaments and such. Well, I’ve got an eight-part question, as always [laughing]. Is the heads-up action drying up online, and what can be done about that? We’ve touched on this with a number of guests.

Scott Seiver: It’s definitely different at different stakes. It’s not so much that it’s drying up, but I feel that people are becoming smarter about how good they are as an individual.

DC: More realistic?

SS: Exactly. Say, six months to a year ago, everyone and their grandmother thought they were the best player in the world. They would take on everyone. Their egos would say, “I will play anyone, anytime.” For the best players, that was great. I think it’s more because there are more people realizing at what level of skill they actually are, rather than the games drying up, and as people are better able to gauge their own skill level, it’s making for fewer games, because you’re not going to want to play someone who’s better than you.

DC: Their lack of bankroll can also help them gauge their skill level.

Adam Schoenfeld: [Laughing] That’s often what tips them off. Is that why we often see a dozen or more mid-, high-, or super high-limit tables with one person sitting there, and we’ll see the same guy at six of the tables and another guy at six tables, and neither of them playing each other?

SS: I feel that’s a separate issue, and problem, as well. You have these people who are, say, normally $2-$4, $3-$6 players, and they are sitting at every limit up to $100-$200, with the hope of landing the big whale, and there’s basically an escalating arms race of people sitting at five or six empty tables, hoping that they will increase their chances of someone sitting with them. It’s resulting in what we see now, which is 30 open tables and no one playing each other.

AS: Right, that’s a problem.

DC: I mean, there’s a lot of action, and the no-limit action has endured; it’s just that the heads-up action, specifically, is harder to pull off.

AS: I read a term yesterday that I hadn’t heard before, but I’ll bet you’ve heard it. They call this bum hunting, where you just sit there waiting [laughing]. You know, David Benefield said that he thinks there should be at least some anonymous tables, and I thought that it was the best idea I had heard in a long time. The one problem is that when you are on certain sites, you don’t feel confident in them monitoring any bad behavior.

SS: It is certainly something that, hopefully, would be tried at one of the more secure sites, and secondly, I think it should be started at the heads-up tables, because it’s pretty hard to collude if you are by yourself.

DC: I would probably limit it to just the heads-up tables. You don’t want to have it in the full-ring games, but in a heads-up situation, if people know the circumstances and know the site has a reputation for policing and monitoring, it can be to anyone’s benefit. And it can also hurt you; you might jump in there and be up against …

AS: Phil Galfond, or you [Scott Seiver]!