Capture the Flag: Jared Bleznick

Jared Bleznick is a 23-year-old college dropout from Roslyn, New York — and he’s won millions. For the past six years, Bleznick has made his way up the online-poker ranks and is now one of the most feared high-stakes players in the game, playing regularly in $200-$400 pot-limit Omaha and $400-$800 mixed games.

Card Player caught up with him to talk about how he got his start in poker, an infamous heads-up match with Jean-Robert Bellande, and why he’s tired of people tapping on the glass.

Julio Rodriguez: How long have you been playing poker?

Jared Bleznick: I found poker when I was 17 years old. It was getting big on TV, and my friends and I started playing $20 cash games and tournaments. Most of them stopped playing, but I just kept going. I never took a break, not even when it was time for college. I’ve been playing poker pretty much every day for the last six years. It’s become like a daily routine for me.

The first games that I really played online were heads-up sit-and-gos. I was playing on Paradise Poker at the time, and that was what got my bankroll going. Toward the end of my freshman year at the University of Rhode Island, I started taking shots at $3-$6 and $5-$10 cash games. I didn’t have the bankroll for them at the time, so I was short-stacking and looking for good spots. That went well enough to take my bankroll to about $50,000, and that’s when I decided to drop out.

JR: That’s not much of a bankroll to quit school. How confident were you about your decision, and how did your parents feel about it?

JB: I had a lot of doubts, actually, when I first dropped out. It was a big gamble for me. I wasn’t that confident in myself as a poker player, but I just figured that it would come with time. The one thing I was sure of was that I didn’t want to be in school anymore. I wasn’t a good student, never was. Regardless of what happened with poker, college just wasn’t the right fit for me. Luckily, it has worked out, and I haven’t had to look back with any regrets.

My dad was pretty disappointed in me at the time. He always pushed me really hard in school and wanted me to make something of myself. But I’m not too sure how much of it had to do with school, specifically. I think a big reason why parents get upset in the first place is because they are worried for their child’s well-being. Once I proved to them that I could be successful and wasn’t struggling to get by, they started supporting my decision 100 percent. If I’m happy, they’re happy.

JR: You moved up through the limits at a pretty steady pace, but didn’t really blow through them like some other high-stakes players have. Is that just a result of good bankroll management?

JB: It was more about the hours than the number of buy-ins I had in my account. A lot of players jump too quickly up the stakes just because they managed to run really hot over a short period of time. When you do that, you may miss a crucial element of the game that will help you at the next level. My requirements all had to do with my comfort level. When I felt that I could routinely beat a game and sustain that level of success, I started to take calculated shots at the next level. That really enabled me to piece my game together bit by bit. By the time that I reached the high-stakes games, I wasn’t missing anything in my poker development.

The people playing at the highest stakes online don’t care about money. They flat-out do not care. It takes a unique type of person to put in a bet of $50,000 on the river and not think about it like it’s a new car or a down payment on a house. They like money, obviously, but to them, it’s just ammunition.

JR: What about you? Do you have that same gambler’s mentality?

JB: I like to gamble, but only when I feel that I have an edge. I’m definitely on the much nittier side of things than most of those guys. I practice good game selection and make my money by countering other people’s mistakes. It’s not as exciting as the guys who like to flip for six figures, but it gets the job done.

JR: Does that result in your having trouble getting action?

JB: I don’t think people mind playing me in the ring games, but I’ll spend a lot of time waiting for someone to join me at a table. Most people don’t like playing heads up, so it’s not until someone finally sits down that the table starts to fill up. There have been plenty of times when I’ve joined a table with one player sitting there, and he’s refused to play me. It’s frustrating, but that’s people’s right.
JR: Speaking of getting action, can you tell our readers about your heads-up matches with Jean-Robert Bellande?

JB: He was still a pro on Bodog at the time. We started out playing $10-$20 no-limit hold’em and pot-limit Omaha. We played a handful of times, and I won. So, in order to keep him around, I offered him back a percentage of his wins and losses. I think it was somewhere between 20 percent and 25 percent. Basically, if he beat me for $4,000, I’d ship him another $1,000 on top of that. If I beat him for $4,000, I’d ship him $1,000 back as a refund. It was an edge that he couldn’t pass up, but I still got the best of it by the time we stopped playing.

Then, I saw him at Commerce Casino in Los Angeles. I wasn’t doing anything, so I asked him if he wanted to play heads up. He decided that he didn’t want to play me straight up because he couldn’t beat me, so I needed to come up with a way for him to play. We finally decided to play pot-limit Omaha, but I would allow him to get five cards instead of four. It was a huge disadvantage for me, but I held my own until we switched to limit hold’em the next day.

It wasn’t the money that I was after. He had only about $15,000. I did it because I really enjoyed the challenge. Maybe it had to do with ego, as well. The game generated a lot of buzz, and we had a lot of players coming over to see what was happening. I ended up losing about $20,000 after we switched the game, but I still think of it as one of the best sessions I’ve ever had. It was a lot of fun.

JR: You played that game for fun, but what do you play for profit?

JB: Right now, my most profitable game is pot-limit Omaha with a cap. I’m really confident of my skills in that game, and have no problem playing in the higher-stakes games when they are running.

JR: What makes this game so profitable for you?

JB: I don’t want to give too much away, since this is my livelihood we’re talking about here, but I can say that a lot of players are making way too many preflop errors. I hear it all the time from players, even good players, that there’s no room in the cap games for any skill. They say that it’s just like flipping coins back and forth. Let me tell you, that’s one of the best things I can hear from opponents. That tells me that they just don’t get it, that they’re there just to gamble. I’m not going to give everyone out there a blueprint for success in these games, but I will say that these games are very beatable if you approach them in the right way. It’s not just gambling, and there are plenty of ways to exploit those who treat it like a deep-stacked game and fail to adjust.

I’m sorry for not giving you more to work with, at least in terms of strategy, but I’m a firm believer that this game should be learned through experience, and not books, coaches, or training sites. Those tools are only hurting poker in the long run. A lot of the best players in the world are giving up their secrets, and it’s only making it more difficult for the rest of us to earn a living. I have no interest in making my job harder for myself.

JR: What about the fame that comes with being a well-known coach?

JB: I don’t play poker to get famous. As poker players, our objective should be to win as much money as we possibly can. At this point in my life, I’m happy with just doing my own thing, grinding out games and setting myself up for the future. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t mind being in the spotlight, but I’m not going to pay for it. ♠