Capture the Flag -- Emil Patel

Emil Patel is a name that is not well-known in the live-tournament arena, but his screen name “whitelime” is one of the most feared handles in online cash games. He began playing poker online during his sophomore year at New York University, but the enormous sums of money that he was winning didn’t deter him from finishing school. Even after taking a yearlong hiatus, Patel graduated with a double major in finance and statistics. Now, he dominates high-stakes heads-up games in both no-limit hold’em and pot-limit Omaha.

Kristy Arnett: Even though most die-hard poker players are well aware of who you are, does the attention that tournament players receive motivate you to play more events, or do you like flying under the radar?

Emil Patel: Well, it’s a frustration that players who predominantly play cash games share. I think “Raptor” [David Benefield] put it best in a post he made on the forums when he said, “One of my goals this year is to win a tournament so that my family doesn’t think I suck at poker.” [Patel laughed as he made this comment.] The railbirds and the people in the poker community who don’t really play poker professionally analyze how good players are based on whether or not they’ve won a tournament. Whenever they see some random person win a bracelet or a tournament, they automatically associate him with being a super-stellar poker player. Personally, it doesn’t really bother me. I think it’d be pretty cool to win a tournament because of the attention that I would get, but I don’t think the attention that tournament players get bothers me as much as it bothers some other cash-game players. I do play some tournaments, as well, like the WCOOP [World Championship of Online Poker], FTOPS [Full Tilt Online Poker Series], and a few World Series of Poker events.

KA: When you first started, what games and stakes were you playing, and how did you move up in stakes?

EP: I had a really fast progression through the small and medium stakes. I think I started out playing $1-$2 no-limit [hold’em] online, and I played that for probably three months or so. This was way back when the biggest game that was spread online was probably $3-$6 no-limit on PokerStars, and PartyPoker still had only 50-big-blind maximum buy-ins. A month or so after I moved up to $2-$4, PartyPoker opened up 100-big-blind tables at $2-$4, $3-$6, and $5-$10. The games were just insanely soft. I started playing $3-$6 and was up to $5-$10 in a week. I don’t think I’ve played lower ever since.

KA: Have you ever had difficulty dealing with the swings?

EP: Yeah, I think pretty much anyone would be lying if he said that he didn’t have difficulty dealing with the upswings and downswings … well, I guess mostly just the downswings [laughing]. The upswings are kind of fun. I can’t really remember a specific day that was particularly devastating, but there were definitely days when I lost 20, 30, and maybe even 40 percent of my net worth, and it wasn’t easy to go to sleep those nights.

KA: When there is a losing player on tilt at the table, how do you adjust to exploit him?

EP: I think most of the adjustments are kind of obvious. You don’t want to be bluffing him, and you want to be playing more pots with him, because he is going to play poorly. You want to trap him. Slow-playing is good because he is going to be bluffing more.

KA: What advice would you give to players who have just made the decision to play cash games for a living?

EP: Wow, I could give so many pieces of advice. The biggest thing would probably be bankroll management. I think it’s something that a lot of people have problems with, in that they might be really successful players at $1-$2 and be bankrolled for it, but might have a really bad day and lose six or seven buy-ins and decide to try to win those buy-ins back at $2-$4. It ends up spiraling out of control, to the point where they end up playing at an even higher-stakes table. I think that’s a common theme that you see a lot with low-stakes players. They are winning players and play pretty well, but they aren’t able to play within their bankroll.

KA: It seems as though cash-game players have gotten hyperaggressive these days. What’s your take on that, and do you see players beginning to revert to a less aggressive strategy to combat it?

EP: You would think that people would start to play a little bit tighter because everyone is playing almost psychotically these days, but I don’t really see it. Pretty much everyone combats aggressiveness with even more aggressiveness. In a six-handed game three or four years ago, if you got four-bet preflop, you could easily fold kings in lots of situations. Nowadays, when you get four-bet preflop and have something like A-Q or pocket nines, you get giddy, because it’s usually a good situation to be able to get all in.

KA: I know that you teach at Deuces Cracked and also coach players. What kinds of things are beginning PLO [pot-limit Omaha] players asking you to help them with?

EP: A lot of the basic stuff, like what hands to be playing preflop and what hands to be three-betting. That sort of stuff is pretty easy to learn, and is intuitive sometimes, but I think one of the toughest things to get a feel for is the type of hands players show up with on the turn or river when they take a particular line, or the worst hand that someone is going to value-bet on the river in a particular spot. It’s hard to teach someone these things in an hour of coaching. If you play 10,000 or 15,000 hands, you will get a feel for what people are showing up with on the river; it’s an experience thing, basically.

KA: I heard about a concept that you discussed for advanced PLO heads-up players, which is checking back the flop with marginal hands. Can you explain that, and why it can be a good play?

EP: Sure. I guess the best example would be when you flop a hand that definitely has some value in seeing a turn card, as there’s a bunch of cards that could come that would improve your hand. An advantage of checking back the flop is that you don’t allow yourself to get check-raised, and end up having to fold your hand. Here’s a common situation in PLO in which you could check back the flop: You have A-K-Q-10, and the flop is Q-7-6. You are playing against an aggressive opponent who check-raises a lot with a pretty wide range of hands. If he check-pots [checks and then raises the amount of the pot after you bet], you are going to have to fold, even though you have two queens and aces, kings, queens, or tens that can come to give you a really strong hand on the turn.

KA: That’s interesting. For players who are making the transition from no-limit hold’em to PLO, it seems a little counterintuitive to check back hands with some value, since they are used to continuing their aggression.

EP: Right. But against most of your heads-up PLO opponents, you’re probably better off just betting that hand on the flop, because a lot of them play way too passively and do not check-raise the flop enough. They fold so often that it’s worth betting there. But when you are playing a good player, I think it’s a situation in which you want to consider checking back.