Capture The Flag: Justin Young

Erik Fast: How different of a mindset is it for you between cash games and tournaments, and is switching between the two difficult for you?

Justin Young: To me, it’s like playing Monopoly and then playing Scrabble. They are both games that take separate mindsets to play. They are different enough in my mind, and I have enough experience in both, that it’s not that tough of a transition.

EF: Which version of poker do you prefer, and which do you find to be the more highly skilled version of poker?

JY: They are two entirely different games, but personally I am always going to be biased towards cash games. I think that deep-stacked play is the true test of poker skill. Sitting a thousand big blinds deep, you have enough room to manipulate pots and get your opponent to do things the way you want, instead of only having one or two streets to push your opponent to do something, as you do in tournaments. Knowing that you can put in a third raise on the flop, and still have room to see what happens after that, is a lot more intense and every decision is a lot more important. This is especially true if your opponent is just as deep as you are.

EF: If you are playing that deep stacked, the game must require a lot of focus. In tournaments you very frequently seem to be joking around and having fun at the table. Does that carry over to cash games, or is your demeanor a bit more serious?

JY: It depends, but for the most part I keep the same personality. In some of the bigger pots I will get more introspective and think to myself, as opposed to talking and doing other things to gauge what my opponent is doing. Especially if you are playing very deep, if someone plays back at you, your decisions have to be more thought out. You should be thinking three or four steps ahead, and by steps I don’t necessarily mean streets. You should be going through and asking yourself what you are going to do if you bet and get raised, or if you bet and just get called. You can’t prepare yourself for every possibility, but you at least need to give yourself four or five scenarios that are likely, and then you can give thought to your bet sizing for each situation. After that, it easier to combat each possible play, as opposed to be being surprised when they do something.

EF: Does that forethought sometimes allow you to play at a faster pace when the action is on you?

JY: I usually act pretty quickly, sometimes to a fault. I would say that 90 percent of the time I know what I am going to do as it gets to me, and if I take a few seconds it is more to gauge my bet size and how much my opponent would have behind that bet.

Obviously, there are always big decisions sometimes, considerations to value betting and bluffing on the river and stuff like that. I will take my time, but for the most part I play fairly quickly. I do that for a number of reasons, but the biggest is that the experienced cash game players groomed me to keep the game lighthearted and fun so the bad players can play bad and you can sit there and collect their money. As soon as you take your time and think about every decision to the umpteenth degree, then the bad players will want to play good as well. They won’t see it as a fun game anymore, they’ll see it more as a competition and that is not what you want. Even if they are bad, they have the capability to play decent. You want to keep the table happy to just be playing, and not get them worried about winning or losing.

EF: Now you say that bet sizing is one of the factors you will take a moment to consider. It seems that in tournaments, preflop bet sizing is becoming standardized to a certain extent. Is that true for you, and how does your bet sizing differ in cash games?

JY: I do mess around with my raise sizing in tournament play a bit actually. Early on it is fairly prescribed, but once the stack sizes become different, raising two times the big blind works just as often as raising 2.5 times, so then its just a matter of whether or not you are trying to entice action or induce folds.

In cash games, I mostly raise to 4 times preflop, and that’s just because you are playing deep enough that it doesn’t matter so much how many blinds you can get in, you just want to narrow the field a bit. Similar to in limit poker, it’s not about having the best hand; it’s more about limiting the field to the point that your hand has the best chance of winning. It’s that way in deep-stacked no-limit cash games as well. Also, when you get to the flop, its not going to hamper you so much that the pot is X amount of chips and you only have Y chips left. Your stack is usually massive compared to what is in the pot already, so the preflop raise size in cash games is a little less important.

EF: You moved to Las Vegas from North Carolina to be close to the cash games and tournaments. What do you usually play?

JY: Unfortunately games like $25-$50, $50-$100 and $100-$200 don’t break out very often anymore, but whenever they do run I play. There is still plenty of money to be made at $10-$20, which is what I usually play at Bellagio, where the game is uncapped and people often sit with $15,000 or $20,000. I usually sit down with $20,000 just to make sure that I have the table covered. It is definitely not a small game. I have walked away from that game up $40,000.

Recently I have been playing the $400-$800 mix game at Aria. I have always liked mixed games and want to be good at them, but it is a very big game. I don’t know if I am ready for the swings, not necessarily financially but more so emotionally. It is very swingy, but it is fun and something new.

EF: What games are in the mix in that Ivey’s Room $400-$800 game?

JY: Typically it is badeucey, badacey, badugi, seven-card stud eight-or-better, Omaha eight-or-better, limit hold’em and then a big-bet game like no-limit deuce-to-seven single draw. A lot of draw games, split-pot games and one big-bet game.

EF: Badeucey and badacey have become more popular in just the past few years. What do you think is behind their rise?

JY: These games are good for not-so-good players, as they feel confident playing them despite the fact that they are making huge mistakes consistently. The games are new enough that there are no books written about them, they don’t know proper starting hands, the ranges to three-bet, how to isolate and things like that. The game is also very fast paced as well. I myself am no expert, and am learning as I go.

EF: It seems that this big mixed game at Aria has been running fairly consistently for a while now. Is that sort of game sustainable? What is your take on the future of cash games in Las Vegas?

JY: I think it is going to start to skew towards mixed games a bit, not that people are getting tired of no-limit hold’em, but at higher stakes mixed games are more likely to be sustainable. I think no-limit will probably mostly cap itself at $25-$50 around here. Anybody who wants to play bigger than that is usually pretty competent, so the games won’t be all that great. In mixed games, it doesn’t seem that way. That is why I wanted to become decent in all the games, so when high-stakes games skew towards mixed, I can be there.

EF: Do the mixed games, with all of the draws and split pots, make it a little less obvious that bad players are getting picked apart?

JY: Yes, especially in the draw games, the bad players will seem to be drawing to a good hand, and miss and just bemoan the fact that they missed, and not really see the process of how they got to that point in the first place. Let them drag a pot every once and a while and they’ll think they are doing amazing, when really they are playing quite bad. In this game, if you are good then average expectation should be around one big bet bet an hour, but the bad players aren’t thinking about getting that extra bet or saving one bet, they are just thinking about winning the pot in front of them. ♠