Capture the Flag -- Greg Mueller

Despite his amiable nature and frequent smiles, Greg Mueller strikes an imposing figure at the poker table. A professional hockey player for nine seasons, Mueller towers above most opponents. With two World Series of Poker gold bracelets and more than $2.2 million in tournament earnings, players should be almost as afraid of being check-raised by the Vancouver-native as they would be of being body checked by him. In addition to his success in tournaments, Mueller has also spent years playing in huge cash games, most recently being involved in the high-stakes mixed games taking place in Las Vegas and Los Angeles.

Card Player caught up with Mueller to learn about how he climbed the ranks in cash games, his take on the current state of the poker economy and more.

Erik Fast: How did you make the transition from a professional hockey player to playing poker for a living?

Greg Mueller: We used to play a lot on the back of the bus during road trips, drinking beers and playing poker on ten hour bus rides. I retired at a younger age than a lot of hockey players do, and I was just wondering what I would do next. At that point I had developed a bit of skill at poker, and I just started to play local, low-limit cash games. I still had a lot to learn, but I started out low and slowly started building up over a few years.

EF: What level did you start out at?

GM: At first it was $10-$20, then from there to $15-30, to $20-$40, to $30-$60, back down, back up, then $40-$80, $60-$120; I went through literally all of the stages. I remember trying $100-$200 for the first time at the Commerce and getting punished, then flying home and getting back to work at the $20-$40. Then I went right back out to LA and tried the $100-$200 again, and eventually I was okay at that level, so I tried $200-$400.

EF: So obviously your background is in limit poker, but you also play no-limit as well. When did you get into that game?

GM: I guess it was sometime at Binion’s when I was a bit annoyed with playing limit poker and frustrated with not making hands hold up, so I decided to sit in a
no-limit game. I quickly realized that I didn’t have to make that many hands, and that if I did make one, I could trap a guy and win his whole stack. So no-limit seemed more appetizing to me then, because all I had to do was beat a fish in one hand all night and that would get it done.

EF: In recent years you’ve been a participant in high-stakes mixed games, which have grown in popularity. How did you transition into those?

GM: I started playing more tournaments, while switching back and forth between limit and no-limit games. And then mixed games came along and all of a sudden the hard-working grind of no-limit disappeared. The mixed games are more entertaining, the game changes every eight hands, and it’s a lot more fun to draw and squeeze then to stare at two cards all day. So I went from limit to no-limit, to tournaments, back to limit and now I play primarily the bigger mixed games.

EF: Modern mixed games involve a lot of variants of poker. Had you picked all of those up over the years, or did you have to do some learning on the fly?

GM: It used to be that the mix was mostly limit, stud and Omaha. All of a sudden they added badugi, and I was like, “What is badugi? Seems cool.” Deuce-to-seven triple draw as well, I had no idea how to play those games. So I was playing these games at levels that I probably shouldn’t have. Unlike the online kids that read books and get crash courses online and are masters at the games in two months, I learned the games playing $75-$150 and $100-$200. In deuce-to-seven triple draw, the key card is the deuce. I had no idea, and I was wondering why I kept making bad eights all of the time and losing. So over time I talked to other players, buddies, and learned all of the games.

EF: It seems that many high-stakes games have switched from big-bet games to mixes that involve a lot of limit games. Why do you think that is?

GM: In limit you can only get hurt one bet at a time, and as we know, the best hand doesn’t always hold up. When you are playing the mixed games, there is a lot of variance, and there are days were a recreational player can win every pot. But in no-limit, you can get your opponent in spots were all the money goes in with them basically drawing dead. In the limit game it’s a slower drain for a bad player, but in no-limit they just go felt, felt, felt, and that’s why it’s more devastating for the weaker player. Nowadays in the bigger mixed games, there aren’t that many “fish” per se, but basically what takes the cash is discipline. Its so swingy, but what differentiates the big winners is that they can continue to play their A-game when they are losing, and can quit when they are tired, as opposed to playing three days straight, going on full blown tilt and dusting off 300 big bets instead of 50 big bets.

EF: The global economy has obviously been going through a tough stretch in recent years, and that combined with the effects of Black Friday has had a big impact on the amount of money splashing around in poker. What is your take on the poker economy?

GM: I’m surprised the big mixed games have been going as strong as they have. Where is the money coming from? There is not a big influx of players, really. Between the rake and the fact that money leaves the poker world through sports betting and pit games, I just don’t see where money is going to come from. Before, it would come from the poker sites. Players could afford to sit in a mix game and lose $200,000 because they were making a couple hundred on Full Tilt every month. That would filter through the poker world, and there was just so much more money pouring in from the top. There were so many guys making so much money from endorsement deals. If player A was making $200,000 a month from Full Tilt, he would stake ten players in the bigger tournaments, and they would each stake five players in smaller games, and it just trickled down.

And also, when you used to make final tables, you were guaranteed anywhere between a $10,000 to $50,000 bonus. I just made the WPT Legends of Poker TV final table, and not only would I have gotten $97,000 for getting fifth, but I would’ve gotten X amount of bonus from Full Tilt, and so would everybody else. There would be two PokerStars patches, two Full Tilt patches, a UB patch, and so six guys would have walked away with an extra $100,000 or so distributed between them. That kind of money was coming in all the time.

EF: So it seems like online poker made a huge difference to even the live game economy.

GM: Even if you didn’t have money sitting online yourself, Black Friday affected you because your friends did, and now they can’t stake you. If online poker comes back, then you don’t just have to beat poker to survive. Take for an example someone like Mike Matusow, who had such a good personality that he really didn’t have to beat poker to make a good living because he was making so much off of endorsements and being on TV. He could have sat down and lost every time and still been rich, which I’m not saying he did. But now, he is playing with his own money and if he doesn’t do well it will affect him, where before he could almost just play for entertainment.

Nowadays in order to make money you just have to beat poker, and if you are playing at a table with eight people who all have to beat poker to make a living, its just not going to happen. Somebody is going to be SOL. Before, two or three of the players in a game made enough money so they didn’t care as much, and if somebody went broke somebody else would stake them. It just wasn’t as difficult a time for cash game professionals back then. ♠