Capture the Flag: Jeremy Ausmus

Thirty-three-year-old Jeremy Ausmus was thrust into the mainstream spotlight when he made the 2012 World Series of Poker main event final table, where he finished fifth for $2,154,616. Although he was a new name to many poker fans, the Colorado-born poker pro has been a fixture in cash games in Las Vegas since moving here in 2005, and poker has been his sole source of income for more than eight years now. With his recent seven-figure score padding his bankroll, Ausmus is still looking to spend most of his time in the Vegas area with his wife and two young children, playing in some of the larger consistently running cash games the city has to offer. Card Player caught up with him to learn more about his background in cash games, and how things have changed after he became a member of the “October Nine.”

Erik Fast: You made the final table as the shortest stack, but survived to finish in fifth place for more than $2 million. Before that, cash game grinders in Las Vegas already knew you as a regular. Has your situation changed at all as a result of the recent score?

Jeremy Ausmus: I currently play $10-$20 or $25-$50 no-limit games at Bellagio, and those are usually the biggest games running day in and day out. There is the mixed game that is bigger, that I have played a little bit in the past years off and on, and I am probably going to be playing that a bit more. I did really well in it about a year ago when I first started, but then I lost most of that back. A lot of the games I’m not that great at, and I know that I can grind out good money in $10-$20 with way, way less risk. That mixed game is $400-$800, so it’s a huge game. It was just a little too big for me at the time.

EF: But now you obviously have a bit more of a cushion.

JA: I can now dabble with it a bit more, but its not like I’m just going to dump a ton of money. I can’t do that. But I think that the best player in that game could lose up to $200,000 or more, even being the best player, and I still have some work to do on some of the games.

EF: But day in, day out, you are probably going to mostly be playing no-limit cash games?

JA: I have a two-month old so I am kind of taking some time off right now. I’m playing some tournaments right now here in Vegas, I might go to Australia for the 2013 Aussie Millions, and I do go to the L.A. Poker Classic every year, but beyond that and the World Series, I’ll mainly stick to cash. I’m not going to switch over into traveling all the time to play tournaments, with a young family that’s too hard to do.

EF: So, with the influx of cash from the WSOP final table, does that take a little pressure off your cash game grind?

JA: I can relax a little bit, yeah, but I could have before. I’m a hard working poker player actually, I put in 30 to 40 hours a week and that’s what I’ve done for years, no matter how much money I have I just keep grinding. I always worry about how long the games will be good for, and what the future of cash games looks like. So I have always stuck to putting in a lot of hours.

EF: How did you get to the point where cash game poker was your full-time profession?

JA: I started playing in college around the time that Moneymaker won the main event in 2003. Then I watched Rounders, and it was over, I just played all the time. I was in Fort Collins, Colorado and was still in school. I played for about a year in college and played online. In 2005 I decided to try playing for a living and moved out to Vegas with $6,000 to try to play $2-$5 no-limit. Around that time I started beating online, and by 2007 I played about 80 percent of my cash game sessions online. After Black Friday, I then made the switch back to live cash games full time.

EF: Post Black Friday, a lot of online cash game professionals from the United States were left with a really tough decision of either trying to transition to live games or moving to another country in order to be able to play online again. At the time you were in the midst of starting a family. Is that the main reason that you decided to stay in Vegas and play live cash as opposed to moving?

JA: I had already had good success playing live, and started out playing live. So a lot of other online guys had a hard time transitioning to live because it’s slower, the stacks are deeper and games are often nine handed as opposed to six-max. But I had success at it and I knew I could do well at it again. I had bought a house just before Black Friday happened, and my wife and I were having a kid, so I was fine just staying here. I mean, you can make good money even just playing $10-$20 at Bellagio.

EF: How big does that game usually play?

JA: It’s uncapped, with an $800 minimum and no maximum. During the series, when it’s $10-$20-$40 or $25-$50 it can get really big, but even on just a totally normal day at Bellagio the average stack in the $10-$20 game is pretty deep, around $5,000.

EF: From a strategy perspective, why do you think it is that you have been able to make good money with seemingly little stress playing at $10-$20 at Bellagio?

JA: The variance isn’t huge in that game because it’s full ring and its deep stacked, as opposed to online games, which are short handed, players are aggressive and stacks are shallower. I think I have just been really successful as a result of learning live poker first, and then transitioning into online poker. I essentially had to relearn the game to beat it online, and then when I came back to playing primarily live cash games for a living, it was so natural and I am now able to adjust back and forth really well. My live reads are really strong, and putting players on ranges, you can do it with so much more precision in a live game than you could online. Sometimes you can put someone on an exact hand, and a lot of Internet kids find that assertion ridiculous, but some people’s ranges are just so unbalanced that they just have it. Obviously I’m talking about the average to bad players in live games, not the better ones. Also you develop a really good feel for game flow, when your opponents are getting tilted, and that is just a huge advantage.

EF: When stacks are deeper, you have more streets to make decisions on and narrow your opponent’s ranges. Is that one of the big changes that you see live as opposed to online, that controlling the pot becomes more important?

JA: With your marginal hands, you are just not going to put all the money in. With one pair, you don’t get 500 big blinds in. So if somebody check-raises you on the flop in a deeper live game, you’ll probably just take a card off. Online in that same situation, where the stacks are probably closer to 100 big blinds and they’re very aggressive, the money just goes in so much easier. In live games big pots do come up, but you frequently have a much stronger hand in those situations. As a result, the stronger hands then become just a bit more marginal when you are getting a ton of money in. Bottom line is that in live games you play more streets, and when more decisions are made in a hand, it favors the more skilled players.

EF: Do you ever see players at the $10-$20 level who successfully employ a more aggressive style, getting it in with a higher frequency preflop and on flops? Or is that just a hard style to play profitably when the game is that deep?

JA: It’s really hard to do. If you are really aggressive, you end up getting it in with more hands because your image is crazy. You can do that if you create a really good image, but against tough players it just won’t be very profitable. Most of the good, winning players in these games will get it in sometimes in marginal spots, but not often. You don’t see the best players getting in pocket nines preflop for 300 big blinds. When that many blinds go in, it’s pocket aces up against kings most of the times.

EF: So good players just probably won’t be making big enough mistakes to warrant pushing the small edges on early streets? Why else might this not be the best approach in deeper cash games?

JA: Well, another reason to not play too aggressively preflop is because these games often run around a few fish. I see a lot of people make the mistake of reraising the players to their right all of the time, when there are fish to their left that they are keeping out of the pot with their raises. There is way more value just flatting a strong hand like ace-queen suited and letting the fish come in. But people are raising and reraising, as a result only letting the fish in when they have premium holdings. You want to be in as many hands as you can with the worse players. In a tough game, with tough players to my left, I will be raising and reraising a lot more. But if there are bad players to my left in the blinds, I want to try to keep them in and play as many pots against them in position as I can. ♠