Capture the Flag -- Joe Cassidy

Joe Cassidy’s subdued and friendly demeanor off the felt would never hint that he is a cutthroat killer in high-stakes cash games. He’s considered one of the best limit hold’em players in the world by many of his peers, and also has enjoyed considerable success in mixed cash games, as well as in no-limit hold’em tournaments; he has nearly $1 million in tournament winnings.

Kristy Arnett: When you first started playing cash games, what games and stakes did you play?

Joe Cassidy: The first game I ever played in was a $2-$5 spread-limit game, which means you can bet between $2 and $5. It was in Colorado. I grew up in Wyoming, and my uncle and I drove there when I was 18 during Christmas break of my freshman year of college. I had a little business at the time. I was selling baseball cards and sports memorabilia on the Internet, so I had somewhat of a bankroll that had nothing to do with poker. I moved up in stakes kind of quickly because of that. Three months after I’d started playing for the first time, I was playing $20-$40 [limit hold’em].

KA: Tell me a little bit about your progression in the stakes that you were playing?

JC: I started playing in Atlantic City; I drove there from Washington, DC, where I was going to school. I would play the red-chip games all weekend, which were $5-$10 to $20-$40. After my freshman year, I moved to Las Vegas with a few buddies of mine for the summer. I played every day. I played $20-$40 at the Mirage and got pounded on, and had to kick it back down and play $10-$20. I went to Binion’s every day for the last month I was there, and booked a good win to end that summer. I went back to school, and the players I was playing against in Atlantic City were significantly weaker than the players in Vegas. That’s when I started playing high limits, like $50-$100 and $75-$150, and I was 19 [laughing], which is like nothing now. There are now 16-year-olds playing higher limits, but back then, I was like a prodigy.

KA: Why do you think you were so successful so quickly?

JC: I was really focused and really hungry to learn anything that I possibly could. I read every piece of material that I could get my hands on. I was just really competitive and not afraid to play anyone, even the guys who had played for a long time at higher limits. I wasn’t afraid to gamble and play limits that were maybe a little above my head; I was always challenging myself because I was so focused on getting better. I was always thinking so much about poker that it consumed me. In retrospect, I wish I could have the same passion and fire that I did then. Obviously, my improvement curve was a lot steeper back then.

KA: Because of all of the information and tools available to players now, the games have gotten much tougher. What is the status of high-stakes limit hold’em cash games?

JC: Specifically, heads-up limit hold’em has become a very tough game, because it’s so mathematical. With all of the available poker software that’s out there, it’s not that difficult for a smart person to learn a very mathematical optimal style, because you are playing against only one opponent and the bet sizes are set, so you can kind of make a formula out of that particular format.

KA: When players who play mostly no-limit hold’em attempt to play limit hold’em, they have trouble not justifying calls on the river due to the odds.
How do you know when to save that last bet and when to call because of the math?

JC: First of all, you have to be able to read the board and know that there are certain situations when someone is not going to be bluffing. If everything gets there and maybe you have a pair or ace high, or whatever, you know that once the guy has check-raised the flop, bet the turn when a draw came in, and bet the river when another draw got there, you have to be done with the hand. The guy is not going to just keep firing. Knowing you are getting that kind of price to call on the end is only kind of half of the scenario; the other half is that you are playing another limit hold’em player who knows that you know that. He is not going to be throwing that bet away that often. You have to know that he knows that you are getting 8-to-1 on a call. A lot of times, it’s just feeling out the player and the situation, and knowing that certain players tend to value-bet more often than others. For instance, there might be nine bets in a pot, and you might be up against a player who is just not going to be bluffing in a certain spot more than one in nine times; so, obviously, the fold is more optimal than the call. Then there are other players who just can’t help themselves and fire out bets; obviously, those players might be bluffing there more than one out of nine times, so you might have to look them up even if all of the draws got there and you can’t really beat much.

KA: What games and stakes do you play now on a regular basis?

JC: I’ve been playing the $400-$800 mixed game on PokerStars. It has six limit games, and pot-limit Omaha and no-limit hold’em. That game is still very, very juicy.

KA: In other interviews, you’ve spoken candidly about the troubles you had managing your bankroll in the beginning. What have you learned from those experiences?

JC: Going broke multiple times after I dropped out of school to play poker full time without any supplemental income like I had in the beginning was really tough. After seeing and experiencing the flushing of whatever my bankroll was at the time — whether it was $50,000, $80,000, $150,000, or more — I knew I had to change. There were several times before 2003 when I went completely broke and had to borrow money from friends to get back on my feet. Feeling the pressure of playing while in debt, and just the general bad feeling of knowing that I owed a good friend a substantial amount of money, was enough to make me significantly more conservative, and even more conservative than most people are with their bankrolls. I certainly can hop into the $4,000-$8,000 game and take some losses and survive, but I just don’t want to do that at this point in my life or poker career.

KA: In 2005, you took Daniel Negreanu up on his heads-up challenge at Wynn Las Vegas and beat him for $200,000 while playing $2,000-$4,000 limit hold’em. Why did you decide to play him, and what do you think of the experience now, looking back at it?

JC: When Daniel first announced this challenge, and that he would play anyone in any game for any amount, I was pretty sure that I was going to play him for at least $100,000, just because I was playing daily against pretty tough competition and had played quite a bit of heads-up poker on the Internet at that point. I knew that Daniel was at a pretty big experience deficit to me. David Oppenheim called me right after he played Daniel. He basically said that I had to play him right away, before the challenge got withdrawn. He felt like Daniel wasn’t great at limit hold’em heads up. John Hennigan and David took a piece of me, and I played him. He’d already played David, and beaten Mimi Tran for $500,000, whom Barry Greenstein had backed. So, before I played him, he’d had a lot of recent heads-up experience, and he was not as easy as David had made him out to be. Daniel is still Daniel. He’s still a very good reader, and he still figures things out quickly. He was studying and adjusting the entire time, and was really tough. He was very gracious about it afterward, and said a lot of really great things about me, which people still remember because he’s Daniel Negreanu [laughing].

KA: Which cash-game players do you respect the most, and why?

JC: John Hennigan, David Oppenheim, and Nick Schulman. They are my closest friends, and I think that all three of them are very humble and have a very sensible, logical way of approaching not only poker, in terms of strategy, but also how they live their lives and view poker as a means to improve their lives, and not get too caught up in it. All three of them are just great players in their own right.