Capture the Flag: Niman Kenkre

Niman Kenkre is a 36-year-old professional cash-game player who turned $25 into millions. After scoring 1580 on his SAT, he graduated from the University of Texas at Austin and went on to obtain a Master of Science degree in electrical engineering from Penn State. Despite having a high-paying job at MIT, his income from playing part-time online poker quickly overshadowed his salary, and he quit his job to pursue poker in 2006. Kenkre plays under the alias “Samoleus,” and is well-known for his analytical approach to the game.

Kristy Arnett: How did you get started playing cash games?

Niman Kenkre: I started playing poker in some home games with some friends, and I was the typical bad player, playing loose and passive poker at first. I just watched some of the winners and learned to play fundamentally. Then, I started playing on Planet Poker way back in the day. The first time I ever made a deposit, it was for $25, and I entered a $25 tournament. My wife was kind of unsure about the whole gambling thing. If I had lost that money, I don’t know if I ever would have funded my account and gotten into poker. It turned out that I won that tournament, and I cashed for $600. I started playing cash games after that. One thing that is cool is that I’ve never made another deposit in my life.

KA: How did you build from that $600?

NK: I was always concerned with not going broke, because I didn’t know if I would re-fund that account, due to my wife’s comfort level, so I was always pretty conservative with my bankroll. After winning the $600, I started playing 10¢-25¢, with a $25 buy-in. In the beginning, I always kept a 30-buy-in rule for myself [bankroll size], and I have stayed true to that. I never took shots at higher limits. I found that I got to be good at it fairly quickly. I really built up my bankroll pretty rapidly, and settled in at the $10-$20, $25-$50 level on PartyPoker, which ended up being my primary site until it rejected U.S. customers.

KA: What is the key to coming out of downswings successfully?

NK: The thing that’s most difficult but really paramount is to be able to be very self-critical, to tell if you are playing well or not. The way the game is played today, it is much more aggressive and players play a much more high-variance style than they used to a few years ago, so it’s very possible to go on downswings without playing poorly. I think that when players do go through downswings, they need to be very self-critical and really see if leaks have developed or if there’s something wrong. If not, they have to maintain their confidence to keep playing their hands the same way.

KA: Can you give us an example?

NK: Sure. Just making up a scenario, let’s say that you have a number of situations where you flop a massive draw like a pair and a flush draw, or an open-end straight-flush draw, and you get the money in as you should, and you lose several times in a row. One of the things that I’ve seen players do is adjust; they say, “I just can’t win these anymore,” and they start playing them less aggressively. They’ll have these draws with large amounts of fold equity, and will start just calling with these hands or folding because they are afraid of playing a big pot and losing again. This is when a downswing can really propagate. A downswing can begin even when you are playing well, but because of it, players can let it affect their play, which can be really dangerous.

KA: Do you think players make the mistake of valuing their short-term results too much?

NK: Definitely, and I think that is something that players who are starting out have a hard time with, because they are more emotionally tied to the results. I’ve been a professional for a long time, and I’m definitely not all the way there. I feel it on occasion, but now, especially when I’m playing my A-game, I’m very detached from my results. Even if I lose 30 or 40 thousand in a day, it doesn’t bother me that much as long as it’s not a result of bad play.

KA: What about the confidence factor during downswings?

NK: So much of doing well in poker involves confidence. At this point, when you are playing medium- to high-limit games, most of the players are going to be technically proficient. It’s not as easy, with a world of fish, as it was a couple of years ago, so a lot of your success is going to depend on being able to play in the rhythm and flow of a game, and to play very naturally without forcing things, and you can do that only if you have confidence in yourself. If you find yourself losing confidence, it may be time to take a break. Take some time off, and enjoy some of your hobbies, or whatever. You definitely don’t want to be playing when you feel like you’re not going to win, and if you feel like you’re not going to win, you need to assess why that is.

KA: It seems that cash games have become super aggressive preflop, but you say that a little less aggression can be beneficial to better players. Can you explain that in a little more detail?

NK: The way the game is played today, there is a lot of three-betting and four-betting preflop. Basically, it makes for a very high-variance game. I think a lot of players don’t understand that the more decisions there are, and the further into the hand you play, the more it benefits the better decision-maker — that is, the better player. So, it’s best for the better thinkers, the players who are better than their opponents, to keep as large a stack-to-pot ratio as possible, and ultimately that means not three-betting as much. Keeping pots small preflop forces an opponent to make much bigger decisions on later streets. This way, there are plenty of decisions to be made and a lot of stack left. A lot of players have started three-betting with hands like suited connectors and things like that, and it’s a fundamental mistake in most situations. Of course, there are always times for it, like most things in poker, but as a general rule, it’s really poor. These are the kinds of hands that play well with a larger stack-to-pot ratio, and are hands with large implied odds. You have a lot of options against your opponent if the pot is not bloated preflop. Let’s say that you have 8-7 suited and you flop middle pair; you can proceed slowly. If you flop a huge hand or a big draw, you can play it hard. You want to leave yourself with all the options you can with hands like that, but when you three-bet those hands and inflate the pot, you are now in a situation where your opponent has an easier time of not making a mistake with a top pair or overpair type of hand against your range. I guess the underlying concept here is that when you leave more decisions to be made throughout the hand by not three-betting or four-betting preflop, it widens the gap between the better players and the weaker players.

KA: Can you explain the difference between pushing small edges in tournaments versus cash games?

NK: In tournaments, you have termination issues, which means that you can go broke if you lose a big pot, or even just get crippled such that you cannot play the same way and have the same edge as if you had the bigger stack. Therefore, in a tournament, one can make an argument for declining a high-variance play with a small edge. You might want to fold or pot-control a situation in which you are likely to be racing, even when you have the best of the race. If your edge over the tournament field is greater than your edge in the particular hand that you are going to play, it makes sense to “wait for a better opportunity.” However, this concept does not apply to cash games. If you are sufficiently funded, and can reload if you go broke or take a big hit to your stack, you can continue to play each subsequent situation the same, regardless of the results of the big pot at hand. So, unless there is a very specific, tangible reason for you to decline a high-variance situation, you should always push even the most microscopic edge in a cash game, and play every hand in the highest EV [expected value] manner possible.