Daniel Alaei

Daniel Alaei has supported himself solely by playing poker since he was 19 years old. He is now in his mid-20s, and despite his young age, he has obtained the results and, more importantly, the respect that other players have taken a lifetime to develop. He is a poker legend in the making. He is identified more with the grand patriarchs of the game than with the young Internet crowd, thanks to his turns on High Stakes Poker and his consistent cash-game success in Bobby’s Room.

He holds World Series of Poker gold bracelets for no-limit deuce-to-seven single-draw lowball, which he won in 2006, and the Omaha eight-or-better $10,000 world championship event that he won in 2009. He has cashed a total of 18 times at the WSOP since he began playing in the event in 2004, and one of those cashes was a 25th-place finish in the 2007 main event in a field of 6,358 players.

He recently added a major no-limit hold’em tournament title to his list of accomplishments when he won the World Poker Tour Doyle Brunson Classic Championship at Bellagio in December, for $1,428,430, the largest cash in his tournament career.

Alaei’s accomplishments lead many to think that he has been playing the game professionally for decades. While he does possess the maturity, manners, and confidence that come from years on the felt, he has been playing in major tournaments for only a few years. He already has racked up career tournament earnings of nearly $4 million, not to mention much more in high-stakes cash games.

A Curious Gambler Early
Alaei was always a kid who liked to gamble, and that gave him a head start in poker. “Gambling was always really big for me, even when I was really young, like 8 or 9 years old,” he said. When he was in the sixth grade, he got caught playing dice in the bathroom at school and was suspended along with 11 classmates. “I was in the middle of a $40 roll when they came in, and I just kept rolling because it was a big roll. We were sick,” he recalled. He started venturing into casinos with friends when he was 16 to play blackjack. “I figured that if I was playing blackjack, they wouldn’t care that I was underage, because they would think I’d probably lose, so I was safe. I started playing poker a couple of years later in the casinos when I was 18 or 19.”

He applied his early affinity for sports trading cards to poker, and then his fascination with the game took off. “Definitely, from day one, my father has been my biggest supporter, and he is actually the biggest poker fan I know, without a doubt. He loves poker so much that he plays every day,” said Alaei.

Author’s note: Interestingly, Eddie Alaei won the $545 no-limit hold’em event at the L.A. Poker Classic on the day that the following interview with Daniel was conducted. Eddie topped a field of 296 players to win $41,210 and a $10,000 WPT seat.

Daniel’s early interest in the game was fueled further by watching his father play with friends, and when Daniel started playing seriously, the two would face off in heads-up poker sessions. “We talked about poker all the time, and would play heads up for eight hours straight many days in a row at times,” he said.

Alaei’s interest in poker has grown to become the main pursuit of his young adult life, and an extremely successful one. In this interview, he shares his journey from home games to Bobby’s Room, and touches on his goals for the future after his recent million-dollar World Poker Tour victory.

Ryan Lucchesi: When did you know that poker would become the focal point of your life?

Daniel Alaei: I remember the turning point. I was 19 and living in the Bay Area. I had been playing poker a lot at the Lucky Chances Casino, and was involved in a really big sports trading-card deal. I put all of my eggs in one basket with this deal, and it went sour, so I was really turned off by the card industry at the same time that I was really fascinated by poker. I started playing more and more poker, and reached the point that I was making money playing.

I also found a no-limit hold’em cash game that had a bunch of great players in it, like Gabe Thaler, Phil Laak, and Antonio Esfandiari; that’s where they all got started, too. I played in that game, but I definitely wasn’t good back then. I basically started by playing in pretty big games. I didn’t really start at small stakes, so I wasn’t as good as some of the other players, but I was very passionate about the game and I recognized the psychology and skill level very early. I got better pretty fast.

RL: What step in the learning process was the most important in helping your game make the jump to the elite professional level?

DA: I moved to L.A., and I was playing in the casinos all day. I won a tournament for $30,000, and I blew all of the money in the casino. I had $2,000 left and was thinking about going to play at the casino again, when I decided to buy a laptop. This was in 2003, and I had my friend send me $250 on PartyPoker. I played single-table sit-and-gos for $50, and won the first four that I played; so right away, I had $1,000. I thought, “Whoa, this is easy.” I basically played online all of my waking hours for a year, all the way up until January of 2005, when I went to Tunica.

I played online that whole time, and I built up a pretty good bankroll. I moved up to the biggest mixed games that were being played at the time, and it was all from that initial money that I got. It turned out that getting that laptop was a pretty good investment. I probably had built up a $75,000 roll heading into Tunica, after playing those sit-and-gos all day, every day.

RL: Was 2005 the year that you knew you had improved to the point that you could compete at the highest levels professionally?

DA: Yeah, I went to Tunica, and then I went to Bellagio and made a few final tables there. That was also when I really started playing in live cash games again, during the Five-Star World Poker Classic tournament that year in April. I had some money, so I started playing live cash games again, and it all came back to me. After all of the new skills I learned online and thinking about the game so much for a year, I was actually pretty good.

I remember that I talked to Gabe [Thaler]; I hadn’t seen him in a year. He was always very good, and he asked me, “What happened to you? When did your game totally change?” From then on, I just focused on cash games, and I ran really good for the next year. After the Five-Star World Poker Classic, I stayed at Bellagio until February of the next year, when I went to L.A. for the Commerce tournament. I was staying there the whole time, but I wasn’t playing in the pits or anything. I was just playing poker every day and was winning every day. I won 25 sessions in a row, and then I won 20 sessions in a row. I was winning every day; I couldn’t lose.

RL: When was the first time that you played in Bobby’s Room?

DA: It was during that year. I was playing $25-$50, and once I had the money to play in that game, I would play in it. Anytime they had a $100-$200 game, I would try to play in there, always no-limit, at that point. I didn’t start playing mixed games until a couple of years ago.

RL: Do you want to play poker your whole life?

DA: There’s a lot of stress involved, and there are lots of ups and downs. It’s a pretty consuming career, although right now I wouldn’t do anything else, because I love the game and think it is the greatest game in the world. But it would be nice to have something else on the side to interest me, too. You play poker because you want to play, not because you have to play.

RL: Which big tournament victory means the most to you?

DA: I was probably the most excited about the first bracelet, because it was my first big win and I also had some big bets going. It was the last event in which I could win the bets before the main event. I had never played the game before [no-limit deuce-to-seven single-draw lowball], so it was really exciting to win. I didn’t have many chips throughout much of the final table, so it was an amazing feeling once it was over. I couldn’t believe it.

RL: Do you agree that poker is a game of the minds?

DA: For sure; it’s such a mental game, and there is so much psychology involved when you’re playing with good players. That’s why I like to play high stakes, because you get to play with the best and are really just playing a big mind game. That’s something that I will always want to do, and when you play because you feel like it, not just to pay the bills, it really allows you to do your best more often, and it keeps you sharp.

RL: You have said that you like to play to the level of your opponents. Is that why you seek out the toughest competition in high-stakes cash games?

DA: I love playing against the top players. It enables you to see the true beauty of the game. When you’re playing with inexperienced players, there is not too much you can do. You just play solid poker. It is profitable, but not as much fun. Even if poker didn’t have that much money involved, I would still be playing. I think it’s such a fascinating game. It has the perfect amount of skill and luck. I absolutely love it.

It’s kind of sad, but there is nowhere else I would rather be than playing in a really big no-limit hold’em or pot-limit Omaha cash game in Bobby’s Room with a group of good players. That is just so fun for me. I could sit there for hours, and the time would just go by, and it wouldn’t matter how I was doing, because it would be so much fun. For me, there is nothing more to ask for than playing against great players for a lot of money.

RL: What do you think you can accomplish if you make this a lifelong career?

DA: I don’t know. I don’t think too much about accomplishments or things like that, but I’m going to try to win more bracelets. I always have bets going during the World Series, and that’s fun, because the tournaments are so good. At the end of the day, it is all about money in poker, so if there is a big cash game, I will probably choose that over a tournament, but it’s a lot more fun to win a tournament than win in a cash game. You get to be the last man standing, and feel like you accomplished something.

Strategy Corner With Daniel Alaei
On Learning by Playing: Reading is a good way to learn the basics, but the rest you need to learn by playing. It’s one thing to know what to do, but another to apply it. Everyone knows that you need to play good cards, but it’s not always easy to apply it. That’s why there are lots of people who know great poker theory, but aren’t necessarily great poker players. It takes a different skill set to sit down at the table and fire off a big bluff when your gut tells you to do so, or to make a big call when your gut tells you that it’s the right play, or to keep your composure when you lose a big pot. None of that is taught in theory. Those are things that can’t be put on paper. The only way to learn is to play.

On Selecting a Limit: I like to play high enough that the pressure is on and I have to stay focused. When I’m playing smaller, it is easy for my mind to get lazy and to just go on autopilot. When I play big enough for it to matter, I can really focus and make the right decision on every hand, and pay attention. That’s when I play my best poker.

The first time that I played pot-limit Omaha, I played in a $100-$200 blinds game with Sam Farha, because the game was good. I had never played the game before, and I was bad, but I came out of that game a much better player than I was when I went into it. When I won my first bracelet, it was the first time that I had played no-limit deuce-to-seven single-draw lowball. I had no idea how to play the game. There is a saying that I like: “If you play for more than you can afford to lose, you will learn the game.” I think that is so true, because in my experience, it has been.

When you don’t have your autopilot set up because you don’t have a history of hands to fall back on, you automatically pay attention to every hand. You’re paying attention 100 percent of the time, so you are actually playing better than you think you are, because you are making conscious decisions on every hand. Some people are conservative, but I’m not that conservative. I like to get in there and play. I don’t like to play so high that it would be catastrophic, but I do like to play high enough that it keeps my full attention. You also want to play with fairly decent players, so that you don’t pick up bad habits.

On Tournaments vs. Cash Games: In tournaments, you have to be focused on a lot of different areas: your stack size, your opponent’s stack size, and all of that. A cash game also requires a lot of focus, but your focus is really directed at making the right decision and the right read, whereas in tournaments, the decision is based on the stage of the tournament you are in.

Your subconscious and your reads play a bigger part in a cash game, because you have a bigger profile on your opponent, and you’ve seen those situations a lot more often than in tournaments. In tournaments, I see a lot of new situations, because I haven’t played in them as much. In tournaments, I will play hands that I would generally fold, in order to steal the blinds. You have to pay attention to playing good tournament strategy and not necessarily good poker strategy.

On Cash-Game Mistakes: You need to put in the hours in cash games. I don’t think that tournament players can’t be good cash-game players, but you really need to put in a lot of hours in cash games in order to build up experience and a mental database of hands. Then, when a hand comes up, you don’t even have to think about it, because you already know what to do.

Don’t get too involved with trouble hands or play when you’re out of position in cash games. Playing against better players when you’re out of position makes it really hard to win. It’s a tough uphill battle that you’re not going to win.

On Aggressive Betting to Gather Information: Playing aggressive poker is the most effective way to play, because you get a lot of things from it. If you like to check-call, you don’t know if your opponent is just continuation-betting or really has a hand. But if you bet and he calls or raises, you get more information. There are just so many advantages to playing aggressively.