Capture the Flag With Rick Fuller

Name: Rick Fuller
Resides: Kirkland, WA
Age: 42
Years Playing Poker Professionally: More Than 10
Top Poker Accomplishment: 3rd place in a 2007 WSOP $1,500 hold’em event for $247,518
Lifetime Live Tournament Earnings: $633,582
Twitter: @Gamblindude

Rick Fuller is a professional poker player from Kirkland, Washington, who has been making a living playing cards for more than a decade. He has made four final tables at the WSOP, two in no-limit hold’em, one in razz and one in Omaha eight-or-better. His deep runs in tournaments have brought his lifetime tournament earnings to $633,582. Despite that success, he’s primarily a cash game player.

A former police officer, the 42-year-old Fuller is an adventure junkie, a private pilot, a skydiver with hundreds of jumps and a certified scuba diver.

Card Player caught up with Fuller, now a lead instructor at The Poker Academy along with fellow poker pro Rep Porter, to talk about his poker life and cash game strategy.

Brian Pempus: How have you seen the skill level of the average recreational cash game player change over the past decade?

Rick Fuller: The skill level of players, particularly in no-limit hold’em, has increased tremendously from where it was when I first began playing professionally. If you aren’t constantly working on your game, then you’re falling behind because there are people who are out there working relentlessly on their games. My brother is a police officer and he’s motivated to go to the gym every day and stay in shape because he knows that there are felons in prison doing nothing but working out and getting strong. Someday they’ll be back in society, and so he tries to work out so he’ll be able to keep up. Poker is similar; there are kids in their parents’ basement right now doing nothing but studying and playing, and they’ll be turning 21 and entering these fields.

BP: What kinds of things do you try to look for in your opponents when you first sit down at a table?

RF: The first thing I look for is their betting tendencies. What amount are they raising to? Are they betting in relation to the size of the pot? Are they taking into account stack depth? This is where I think most players make the biggest mistakes, in their bet sizing and their analysis of stack-to-pot ratios. When I see a player making those mistakes, I know there are probably others they are making as well, and I can try to exploit those mistakes to play profitably against them.

BP: Can you talk about your cash game play over the course of your poker career, like your progression up in cash game stakes over the years? How was your bankroll management?

RF: When I first started playing, I was pretty horrible at bankroll management. Honestly, it’s one of the things I still struggle with today. Part of me wants to play as big as possible, all the time. It’s not an ego thing; I have no issue sitting down in a small game and work on rebuilding my bankroll, but it is a gambling thing. It’s something that I know is a big detriment and something that I constantly have to work on so that it doesn’t ruin me. I’m actually playing much smaller today than I was three or four years ago, and that’s because of bankroll management problems. Every professional player needs to understand the importance of bankroll and cash management because downswings can and will occur. If you aren’t prepared for them, you’ll find yourself getting in trouble.

BP: What are some of the biggest leaks you think players still make in no-limit hold’em games?

RF: I think players call far too often. When they don’t know what to do, they tend to call and that’s often the worst of the three options. Very often, both raising and folding would have been the better choice. Unless you have a clear and well thought-out reason for calling, you should usually either raise or fold. That strategy alone will greatly improve your results.

BP: Do you think playing cash games is a great way to learn how to navigate through the early stages of a tournament?

RF: If the tournament starts out deep-stacked, then there are a lot of cash game aspects to the early stages. However, I believe the early stages of a tournament should really be all about accumulating chips. In a cash game you can just sit there and play tight and wait for hands and you’re probably going to be profitable. You can certainly do that in the early stages of a tournament, but I think it’s a mistake usually. Accumulate. Play and build pots. There are going to be dry spells in tournaments, and you’ll need those chips you accumulate in the early stages to get through them.

BP: Can you talk about the pros and cons of limping in cash games?

RF: I never limp first in a cash game. First of all, limping is a betting-pattern tell unless you’re going to limp your entire range. You can’t limp the suited connectors and raise the A-K without your opponents being able to exploit that. Plus, you should usually be playing 100-200 big blinds deep and you should want to build pots. When you hit those speculative hands, you want to win a big pot, and the best way to create a big pot is by raising. I think overlimping is okay in certain situations, but I often prefer to raise, even in classic limping situations, such as with a small pair in a multi-way limped pot. I think there is a lot of value to isolating one or two opponents with position and not just relying on hitting your set to win the pot, but rather being able to win by continuation betting in some of those spots.

BP: Would you advise someone looking to take live cash games seriously to first start off with a tight-aggressive style? At what point do you think it’s okay to begin exploring a loose-aggressive style?

RF: I think tight-aggressive is by far the best choice for someone starting out. Loosen up your range when you start to feel comfortable in marginal situations post-flop. As you widen your range, you’ll find yourself getting more and more involved in these very marginal situations, so you need to be comfortable with your decision-making skills in those spots or it will turn into a disaster.

BP: If someone said to you that they wanted to explore playing a loose-aggressive style, what would you recommend them doing to prepare?

RF: Play really small, probably online, and practice doing nothing but calling preflop, never raising. This will induce artificial scenarios where you intentionally put yourself in very marginal decisions, and it will make you get better at making those decisions in those tough spots.

BP: Do you think it’s fair to say that in tournaments the goal should be chipping up with as little risk as possible, but in cash games you should be extracting max value when you can and playing for stacks a lot more often given the rebuy component? Or, do you think in some sense the difference in mindset/playing style between tournaments and cash is overstated?

RF: I think the difference in strategy between tournaments and cash is tremendous and really can’t be overstated. There are parts of a tournament where you want to try to chip up with little risk, but there are other parts where you should be putting yourself at enormous risk. You don’t really ever have to put yourself in marginal situations in a cash game if you don’t want to. It’s much easier to control the variance in cash because you can choose how much you want to introduce into your game.

BP: Do you think hold’em should be the game people who are interested in poker need to learn how to play first before embarking on a study of the other variants?

RF: I think there’s more information out there about hold’em than any other game, and so I think it might be one of the easiest for people to learn, but you should really play a game that you love. If you love triple draw, then by all means, focus on that if you want to. It is significantly harder to make a living with other games, they just don’t run often enough for you to do so. But if you’re willing to just play recreationally and not try to make a living, then you should play whatever game you’re most happy playing. ♠