Capture The Flag: Amit Makhija

Amit “AMAK316” Makhija is one of the standouts in the group of young players who transitioned from the online tournament scene to live poker in the late part of the last decade. With $3,160,801 in lifetime tournament earnings, the Brookfield, Wisconsin native started his poker career by winning a freeroll online, which inspired him to intensify his focus on the game. Before long, Makhija was winning major events online, including a FTOPS $5,000 event for $550,000.

Makhija’s success continued as he made the transition to live tournaments. In 2008, he made four final tables and cashed for a total of $967,130, with a runner-up finish in the 2008 WPT Legends of Poker main event. Makhija moved his home base to Los Angeles, California and has continued to be a staple on the live tournament scene, but in the wake of Black Friday live cash games have become a more important part of his focus.

Card Player caught up with Makhija to talk about his transition to playing more live cash games, how leaks are easier to find in cash than in tournaments and more.

Erik Fast: So coming from the Midwest, how did you get into poker?

Amit Makhija: Right off the bat I was playing tournaments, because I won a freeroll for $100 on a small online site and played sit’n’go tournaments to run it up and eventually I found cash games. It was kind of weird in that I started out playing tournaments not really knowing what I was doing, then I got into cash games where I managed to figure out a lot, and I have been balancing the two ever since then for my whole career.

EF: So now, with the events of April 15th 2011 and everything that has happened in the wake of poker’s Black Friday, people who played online tournaments are having to make adjustments. Some are moving out of the country to continue playing online, and some are continuing to play the live tournament circuit and increasing their live cash game play. What is your situation?

AM: I am staying in the country, and am just playing a lot of cash games in Los Angeles, mostly at Commerce Casino. I play three or four days a week of cash games, and also travel the circuit to play the events and the cash games that arise during these tournaments, and things are going well.

EF: So with experience in both formats, but now more and more time being spent in cash games, what was the process of honing your game for the big cash games?

AM: The process was mostly trial and error. I figured out what was working by going through hands and finding spots where I was leaking money. Online is where I really started getting good at cash games, and I would go through databases and look at everything I was doing, trying to isolate what was making money and what was losing money for me. I think that is a really good approach to learning overall, because in tournaments you can be doing something wrong and it is really hard to know that. It is hard to know if calling too much from the big blind, for example, is losing you money. But, in cash games, the evidence is definitive, and you find your leaks very quickly. That could be why cash games are drying up a bit, because it is really easy to know whether you are making money or losing money, whereas in tournaments sometimes it can be harder to see.

EF: Online, you had access to resources like poker tracking software, but now that you are playing live cash games, what do you do to study your game and keep improving?

AM: Honestly, most of the games I play in now aren’t terribly tough. There are a lot of recreational players in live games, and therefore the games are substantially easier than online games were before Black Friday. My process is mostly just trying to focus as much as possible. I try to find spots where other people are losing money where I would not lose money, and that is kind of how I determine my edge in these games.

EF: Now you say that the games you are playing in aren’t terribly tough, is that a result of game selecting or is that just the state of competition at the level you’re playing?

AM: Well, there aren’t any huge games that are running these days, so most of my time I spend playing $10-$20 no-limit, and it is not that tough of a game. There is a lot of money in L.A., and people come to just have fun. The average game I play in is five amateurs and four professionals. It is a game where I feel pretty confident that I will always have an edge, as people play with obvious leaks that they don’t even seem to care about.

EF: In Los Angeles, some of the low stakes no-limit hold’em cash games play fairly shallow. Is that true of bigger games like $10-$20 and $20-$40?

AM: Yeah, it is definitely true at $10-$20. The usual stack at $20-$40 is more like $10,000 or 250 big blinds, so that is pretty deep. But at $10-$20 the minimum buy-in is $600, which is way too short. There are usually a couple sitting with the min buy-in, but some people sit with $10,000 in that game as well, because it is uncapped. It creates a unique dynamic, because some people are sitting so short that you can’t play as many hands as you would like against the deep stacks.

EF: In tournaments the raise sizing for opening seems to always be moving towards smaller and smaller multiples of the big blind, but in my experience this progressive shrinking has not transferred over to cash games. Are opening sizes larger in cash games in your experience?

AM: Oh definitely, the opens are going to be bigger in cash games. Stacks are deeper and the stack-to-pot ratio is larger. So, you don’t want to be raising like you would in tournaments to 2.2 times the big blind, because you give your opponents good odds to call for your stack. You want to make bigger raises because people call them more than they do in tournaments, and, obviously, you want to build pots when you are in position.

EF: Do you find that there is less room for people to be tournament specialists these days, with the state of the game almost necessitating that people start playing cash games to subsist?

AM: Yeah, tournaments are getting to be worse and worse as no-limit hold’em comes closer and closer to getting solved. There are a lot of people now who are making huge shoves, playing a lot like they would play online. You are never going to get a huge edge shoving in twenty big blinds optimally, but I am never going to gain any money from them. It increases the variance, and they don’t really do themselves any favors by playing that style. It has really decreased the edges for the good players.

EF: Have you taken any shots in games that you didn’t feel as confident in, like perhaps some higher stakes cash games?

AM: Yeah I have, more in the past. Until this year, I almost never game selected. I would play in any game that I felt I had an edge in, and I was probably overconfident. I have played in some pretty killer lineups, and have done fine for the most part. But, it really increases your variance. You can play in one tough $200-$400 game, or grind $20-$40 a lot against soft lineups with way less variance. I don’t mind playing a tough game, it challenges you and all of that, but in the end you make your bread and butter playing against soft lineups. ♠