The screen name
stpauli111 has been ubiquitous in the top spots of tournaments results since March of this year. He came out of almost nowhere to win more than $61,000 from the final tables of four
Online Player of the Year-qualified tournaments that month, alone. The ball was greased and on a steep downhill slope, from there.
Since that time, stpauli111, whose real name is Scott Hall, has made
OPOY-qualified finishes in 20 other tournaments, earning him almost $217,000 more. Hall currently sits in the top 30 of the OPOY leader board after the incredible run that he's had this year.
Despite his success, however, Hall is looking forward to getting back to a "normal" life and going back to school. He could also see himself heading back to his job at a golf course - a job for which he gets paid barely more than minimum wage - simply because he enjoys it.
Card Player recently snagged Hall for an interview, and we got down and dirty about what makes him so successful and went into deep analysis about a highly influential hand that he played in the late stages of the PokerStars
Sunday Million:
Shawn Patrick Green: You have 17 OPOY-qualified final tables this year out of 24 OPOY-qualified finishes. That's pretty impressive, especially considering that you didn't even show up on the OPOY radar until March. What were you doing in the first two months of this year?
Scott "stpauli111" Hall: Actually, for those first two month of the year I was just losing money. I've only been playing online poker for real money for a little more than a year. I only played PartyPoker to start out, and I had success pretty much right off the bat. I had won $1,800, basically out of nothing, in just about a week. Then I went through a rough patch, but I ended up winning again. I made about 24 grand on PartyPoker.
And then PartyPoker shut down, as everyone knows, and I could never get a roll going on PokerStars, Full Tilt, UltimateBet, or any of the other sites that I wanted to. I had deposit limits, and I could only deposit $500 a week, which I kept losing. So, I pretty much lost $500 each week. I had a few scores, but nothing really over $1,000 or $2,000, so not enough to end up with a substantial roll.
I was losing $500 a week from November until about that time in March. I had almost lost all of the money that I'd won on PokerStars, and then I final-tabled a $100 rebuy in early March for about $5,000 or $6,000, and that gave me the most money that I'd ever had on PokerStars, so I could actually play a few more of the tournaments. Then, I won a $100 freezeout and that gave me another $10,000. So, from there, I had a roll to play all of those tournaments that qualified for OPOY.
Actually, I was still under-rolled, but luckily for me, I got kind of lucky with it and I started playing those tournaments and making final tables.
SPG: What was it that got you to those final tables? Was there any common thread?
SH: I can't really say that I necessarily play a style that gets me to more final tables. I play for the win, always. That's sort of rule number one as a tournament poker player. I'm not looking to move up in the money, at all.
I think I play shorthanded, deepstacked tournaments pretty well. I think that's one of my stronger points. If it's late in the tournament and there are only two tables left and it's shorthanded, with like 14 people left, I think that I'm usually going to be able to put myself in a position to make the final table. And from the final table, I'll hopefully be able to make the win. I had a problem with taking down the win for a while; I was just making final tables and not winning, but I've gotten a little bit better at that.
So, I think the main reason is that I have a strong shorthanded, late-tournament game.
SPG: What is so strong about your game there, then? What strategies are you implementing that seem to work out well for you in that scenario?
SH: I think that I'm really able to figure out things like who will fold his blinds easily, which is a very important thing, because the blinds are so important late in the game. And also looking at the stacks and seeing who really wants to make the final table - you can put pressure on them. And then with other players who are really strong you can … not necessarily stay out of their way, I wouldn't say that at all, but you're just going to play your cards against them. You can kind of sense the people that aren't willing to get involved in big pots because they think that they have a stack that's good enough for a final table. They think that they can simply get into good enough situations at the final table to win. I don't think those people are really playing for the win, they're just playing to move up, and you can attack them a lot more effectively and have more success with that.
SPG: Where did your screen name come from?
SH: For some reason, I just felt like naming myself after the beer company, St. Pauli Girl. I don't even like that type of beer, I just thought it would be a cool name. [Laughing] So, I went with it. It was just the first thing that came to mind.
SPG: Your name has been showing up in a lot of tournament results and on a lot of leader boards lately, but you're still relatively unknown as far as who you are, personally. Tell us about yourself.
SH: I went to the University of Arkansas. I was born in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and I've lived there my entire life. In Fayetteville, I was so into poker and I was so obsessed with playing pretty much every day, that that's the main reason why I dropped out of college. It wasn't because I was winning a lot of money, it was really because I could not focus on school at the time and I was very addicted to playing tournament poker. And then, this summer, I went to Las Vegas and blew a lot of money and lived the high life, and my results suffered during that period.
Since then, I've been wanting to go back to school, but I'm still not sure about that, and I haven't gone back, yet. I'm still just sort of vacationing, I guess, from all types of normal student life. I used to be a really normal kid with normal hobbies, but ever since the whole poker thing it's all been sort of surreal. I'm looking to go back to being kind of normal, though - maybe go back to school next semester and walk away with some of my money so that I'm not always trying to blow it doing something. I think I'll major in business when I go back. The University of Arkansas has a really good business school. I'll figure out what I'll do from there and try to do something safe with my money.
When I went to school, I was an English major, and that's kind of weird, really. I kind of like reading and writing - it's probably my best subject - but it's kind of weird. None of my friends are in any of my classes because they're all business majors, and I think that's another reason I quit; it was really unenjoyable. It was a lot of work; it was a lot of reading and writing, which are what students dislike the most.
I worked at a little country club golf course, and I even worked there this summer a little bit because I had a kind of loyalty to it. But I quit because it didn't make much sense to get paid $6.50 an hour. [Laughing] But it was a fun job, though, and I really liked it and liked everyone there. So, I could go back to that sometime, I think.
SPG: This is kind of a complex question for an interview, but there was a hand history for a hand that you played in the PokerStars
Sunday Million that had been posted and analyzed in the forums. Basically, you had ace-queen in the big blind, with $2.2 million behind. The action folded to
amichaiKK ($2.6 million behind), another prominent Internet player, in the cutoff, who raised to $240,000 when the big blind was at $80,000. It folded to you and you reraised to $720,000. AmichaiKK came over the top all in and you folded.
Scott "SCTrojans" Freeman argued on the forums that, while he has a lot of respect for you, he doesn't see the point in reraising in this situation because any player up-to-snuff would either fold or reraise all in against your reraise, either winning you very little or putting you in a tough spot. What are your thoughts on that type of situation?
SH: I'm glad you brought that hand up. I think that hand might be the most important hand that I've played as far as evolving as a poker player. Every single time you play a hand, you have to know whether you're playing it for value or whether you're playing it for fold equity, which would mean a bluff. In that situation, I didn't know. I played the hand poorly, and I regret it very much. That was the deepest I'd ever been in the
Sunday Million; I think there were about 30 people left.
My thought process was that it was a pretty weak table, aside from amichaiKK and
apestyles [Jon Van Fleet], both of whom were to my right. So, I had really good position at my table; the people to my left were really not giving me much resistance. I had gone from $1 million to $2 million at that table in just about two or three orbits, and I had been playing really strong. When I raised to $720,000, I still had more than what I came to the table with and I thought that I could do the same thing that I had just done to get my $2.2 million back [if I lost], which isn't a very good thought process. [Laughing] You shouldn't think like that. You should always be trying to gain as many chips as you can.
So, by reraising I essentially made my hand a bluff, which is not good because ace-queen defeats his cutoff range. I should not have put chips in there with a hand that is strong that I end up folding. I shouldn't have intentions of reraising and then folding, there. I tried to force the spot because I had a strong hand, and it really came back and bit me. I have to either raise and call there or just fold ace-queen. Most people said that folding ace-queen is just absurd, but I really don't think so.
I know that "
Andy McLEOD," a player I have a lot of respect for, said that if you're not comfortable with the hand, just fold it. That makes a lot of sense, to me. You shouldn't have a hand dictate the way you play, you should really be playing the person first and the hand second.
I do think that it was a good time to reraise amichaiKK; I had been raising a lot of people and he had been playing pretty aggressively. He's a very aggressive player and we'd kind of been staying out of each other's way. But, in this hand, I gave him fold equity with the opportunity to bluff me all in.
I remember that there were a lot of people watching, and I didn't want to call with ace-queen and have people make fun of me for a bad call, which is very bad of me and a terrible mindset. But I was still kind of new on the scene and worried about what people thought about me. That's terrible, you should never be afraid about what people think of the plays that you make.
SPG: So, ideally, what would you have done in that situation, looking back?
SH: Looking back, I think the best option against that particular player, amichaiKK - who I didn't have as much knowledge of at the time; he's a very aggressive player who puts a lot of pressure on people - is to play it how I played it, except to call the all-in push. I basically had coin-flip equity in that situation. And the coin flip that I'd be taking is, in my opinion, pretty much for the final table. With 30 people left, if you've got a 50 percent chance to make the final table, you should take it.
He could have had ace-king or aces, which I'm obviously not a coin flip against, but I think that the range of his hands, based on how many chips that I put in the pot and how many chips I had to call, was basically coin-flip equity. I just have to be willing to take that. If I had won a coin flip there, I would have had $4.4 million, which was good for about top three in chips at the time. AmichaiKK ended up taking second in the tournament and I finished 30th, I think, so that kind of tells you what happened there. I think I got outplayed by him on that hand.
SPG: Are there any situations in a poker hand that you find are particularly dangerous for you?
SH: Yeah, I think hero-calls are kind of like that for me. Lots of people make hero-calls at some point, if they're trying to look really good, and I suffer from that, sometimes.
Playing from out of position is always scary, and that's another thing in that hand against amichaiKK. I didn't call because I didn't want to play the hand against him with a hand that would likely be hard to play. It's hard to play ace-queen out of position with those stacks. You're naturally going to lose more money playing out of position.
SPG: How do you handle a table with a bunch of loose-aggressive players?
SH: The basic answer would be to sit back and play tight. Usually, I like to assert myself at the table, too. But it doesn't really depend upon how they're playing as much as your stack. If you have a 20-big-blind stack, you're not going to be wanting to raise and fold very often. You can look for creative times to steal the blinds, but if you have 13 to 20 big blinds in your stack, you're usually looking to have real hands to reraise the aggressive players. In that situation, I sit back and play tight.
But if I had a big stack, I think I'd be in there mixing it up with the loose-aggressive players and trying to make them pay for being too aggressive - play position against them, repop them, four-bet them, do whatever. There are times when I'll sit back on a big stack, but I think it's generally better to get more chips using the chips that you already have.
SPG: What puts you on tilt, and how do you handle it?
SH: I don't go on tilt too badly, usually. But maybe things like when I feel like I got outplayed in a hand. There is specific player who really puts me on tilt, and I can't really explain why. His name is
LUHMAN [Chris Martin]. Every single time I play against him it seems like he has me beat and there's nothing that I can really do. I guess when you think that you're outplaying someone and then they end up having a better hand than you, that's one thing that really puts me on tilt. I think I have the best of someone and they actually have the best of me; that really bothers me, and that always seems to happen to me against LUHMAN.
I guess I try to handle it by laughing it off. I'm still going to be playing plus EV [expected value] poker. I'll still know what to do in situations. I'm not going to open-shove with 30 big blinds or anything like that. The best thing to do is to realize that it's all just a game and poker doesn't owe you anything. Anytime you experience a bad beat, it's just the law of percentages evening out. You can't think of it as "I'm so unlucky," "PokerStars hates me," or "God hates me." All it is is the law of percentages evening out, and it will go both ways. It's really pointless to get mad about bad beats. I'm not saying that it's not frustrating, but you can't blame anything for it. You're the one that's playing poker, and it's something that you have to accept, something that happens. You can get frustrated, but I wouldn't ever put the blame on anything other than yourself. You just have to take responsibility for everything, and I think that will help you stay off tilt. If you're trying to blame the way the cards come out or the way someone else plays, then you're taking all of the blame away from yourself, and I think that is something that is consistent with people who go on tilt a lot.
SPG: What is your idea of the perfect poker tournament, as far as blinds structure, payout structure, buy-in, field size, and so on?
SH: I'll probably catch a lot of flak for this, but I like the blinds to be high and I like antes to be out there; I want every pot to be meaningful. I'm not a cash-game player and I've never been a cash-game player, they're boring to me.
I don't like the beginning of tournaments, when you start with 200 big blinds or so. There are some people that are good at that, and I'm not one of them. So, my ideal tournament would start with antes, for sure. It would start at the $150-$300 blinds level with a $25 ante and $15,000 chips in the starting stacks, so 50 big blinds. The blinds would go up every 20 to 25 minutes. That way, it seems like every single pot is meaningful and there would be a lot of raises, reraises, and restealing going on. I understand that game a lot better.
My tournament would have a $215 buy-in and a 1,000-person field. I like that kind of tournament the most, I think. Although, I do also like the $1,000 buy-in
Super Tuesdays and
$1K Mondays [on PokerStars and Full Tilt, respectively].
As far as the payout structure, the way they do it is fine, I think. Ten percent of the field gets the prize pool is the standard, which I think is right. I don't want the structures to become too top-heavy, although they're pretty top-heavy already.
SPG: That was my last question. Did you have anything else that you wanted to say?
SH: I wanted to give a shout out to Andy McLEOD and
xthesteinx.
SPG: Can do. Thanks for doing this interview with us, Scott.
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