Steve "stevesbets" Jacobs is known as one of the best heads-up no-limit hold'em players in the world. The 24-year-old Philadelphia native graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in economics. He had planned on becoming a teacher, and had even entered into Penn's graduate school of education, but apparently his degree kicked in and he realized that it made more economic sense to pursue a budding career in poker.
Jacobs said that the graduate school of education was "way too fluffy and not substantive."
"I couldn't take it. I dropped out after a week," Jacobs said, laughing. "And then I started playing poker full time. I guess that was in the summer of 2005. I've been playing poker since then, although I'm constantly looking for a new opportunities, because I don't want to do it forever."
Jacobs won the first-ever
High Stakes Showdown on PokerStars, a heads-up tournament with a whopping $10,000 buy-in. He has also done very well for himself in the heads-up sit-and-gos, earning the majority of his money through those since college.
Card Player caught up with Jacobs to find out what it takes to be regarded as a heads-up master. Jacobs also talks about just how much luck he thinks there is in poker and why he really dislikes live poker pros.
Shawn Patrick Green: You've become famous for playing high-stakes heads-up poker. What is it about heads up that you like so much?
Steve "stevesbets" Jacobs: When I first started playing heads up, it wasn't too scientific of a thought process. I basically started playing because I figured if there are 10 people at a table, you have a 1-in-10 chance to win every pot, but if there are two people, you have a 1-in-2 chance. Obviously there's way more to it than that. I think heads up requires more skill than other forms of poker just because there are more decisions. When you're playing at a 10-handed table, someone is going to make something basically every hand. There's not much to do aside from play your cards.
With heads up, there is so much more about analyzing tendencies, thinking about what your opponent is doing and what they're going to do next; it's more like a chess game. Whereas 10-handed poker is more like just betting with cards.
SPG: Well, a lot of people argue that heads-up poker involves a lot more luck because it can, and often does, hinge on big pots where the best hand wins.
SJ: I think that of all the young poker players that have made a living out of it, I'm one of the people who recognizes the luck factor more than just about anybody else. [Laughs] I read the forums, I hear about how a lot of young players who have run really hot over the course of their careers think that there's honestly very little luck in poker. I
promise you that that's not the case. Poker, of all sorts, in all games, and all limits, has an immense amount of luck to it.
The edges are small, they're
very small. You can see that never more clearly than when you're playing heads up. The best players of heads-up sit-and-gos aren't going to win more than about 55 percent of their games. If they're playing against the absolute worst players who have the absolute worst strategies,
maybe they can win like 65 percent. But that's only because the player is making some sort of glaring error, like folding almost every hand or something.
I guess what I'm saying is that in every form of poker there is luck, and it's almost impossible to negate the luck, but you've just got to push the small edge and hope that in the long run you'll make it out OK.
SPG: So, it sounds like you got into heads-up poker, specifically, simply because you thought that you had a better chance at making money? You figured it was a 1-in-2 rather than a 1-in-10 chance of winning, which is better odds, even if your reasoning was a little misguided?
SJ: Right. There were other reasons, too. I'm just generally an impatient person, and heads up provides an outlet for that, because you're either going to win or you're going to lose. I've always been a very swingy player, both financially and emotionally. I guess I wouldn't have it any other way, as stupid as that sounds.
SPG: PokerStars launched its $10,000 buy-in
High Stakes Showdown heads-up tournament earlier this year, and you took down the inaugural event. What did you think of the event and of your competition?
SJ: The competition was very tough, there's no doubt about that. Although, I did find that some of the players were cash-game players, and they played the tournament more like a cash game. They certainly made some mistakes, but overall that tournament, especially as the weeks went on, had basically the toughest field online.
I have a great deal of respect, as you might imagine, for online players. I think that, in general, they are more thoughtful and better … not only better poker players, but better
people, than most live professionals. I have a great deal of disrespect for most live poker players for various reasons. You see them cursing at dealers, throwing their cards around, acting like total morons who have never been beaten before in their lives. Online players just don't act that way.
Anyway, back to my point. Those are the best online players in that tournament, so there's not that much value there, anymore. That's why I haven't really been playing in it.
SPG: The
High Stakes Showdown was really successful for the first month, it kept getting 16 entrants, which is pretty good for a weekly online tournament with a buy-in of that size. Since then, however, it's been having trouble getting even the minimum of 4 entrants.
SJ: It's pretty simple: It's a lot of money, it's hard to get money online, and the players that play it are some of the best in the world. So, overall, I think a lot of players seem to think that it's basically gambling. It's like they say, if you're the 10th-best player in the world and you sit in a game with the nine best players, you're almost always going to lose. So, there's no player who can think that it's a smart idea to be playing in that week after week after week; except, maybe, for
Imper1um [Sorel Mizzi], who somehow seems to win it every week.
SPG: Do you think there will be a resurgence of interest?
SJ: I think a resurgence of interest would come once this crazy country of ours lifts its restrictions, because there's just not enough money in the online poker economy right now to support something like that. If there is a resurgence, and you start getting lots of random players signing up - say you have like 32 players and a large number of them are
not the best heads-up players online - then suddenly everyone will come running to it, and it will be the most prized weekly tournament. But I don't know if that day is going to come, unfortunately.
SPG: Do you make the majority of your money playing in heads-up cash games?
SJ: For a while, I made all of my money in heads-up sit-and-gos. Recently, like over the last six months or a year, I've been playing a lot more Omaha high-low and other random games and have moved away from the heads-up sit-and-gos, because it's my opinion that the competition in no-limit hold'em is at an all-time high online. It's hard to get money on the sites, and it's hard for players who go broke to continue playing. As a result of that, the games have gotten a lot tougher. Particularly in a game with as much literature and educational tools as no-limit hold'em has. So, I've tried to learn Omaha and to put whatever skills that I have to work there.
SPG: How do you play heads-up cash games differently compared to heads-up tournaments?
SJ: A lot of players are very patient during heads-up cash games, because the blinds aren't going to escalate. If you fold blind after blind after blind, it's not really going to make that much of a difference, because you can get it back with one medium-sized pot. So, it's just way more important to be patient and to not make big moves in the cash games. In the sit-and-gos, you
do need to make big moves, sometimes. If you think the other person will fold if you shove all in, you've really got to be willing to do it. I think players that make big moves in cash games are going to lose in the long run, because someone can patiently wait and pick them off. But in a sit-and-go, if you make some sort of big move in a big pot, you suddenly have a 2-to-1 chip lead, and that's way harder to overcome than in a cash game, where you can buy in for more and keep plugging away.
SPG: What strategies carry across between the two?
SJ: Just standard things that make for good poker are good in both venues. Things like playing with correct pot odds, playing with position - playing in position is
really important in both. If you see someone playing big pots from out of position, they're mostly going to be a losing player, and I think that's truer with heads up than with any other form of poker.
I think that patience is the only glaring difference. Aside from that, they are very similar. You want to notice their betting patterns, you want to notice their tendencies, and you want to take advantage. Some people have really clear tendencies in both cash games and tournaments. I've had a lot of success against grimstarr on Full Tilt, and the reason is that he has certain patterns that he uses in cash games. If he bets a certain amount - I really shouldn't be saying this, but I think he's not going to be playing me anymore, anyway - if he bets a certain amount, and you raise him, he folds. And it's not even like 80 percent of the time, it's like 100 percent of the time. He bets X, you raise, he folds. And a lot of players do that without even noticing it. So, that's another little thing for both sit-and-gos and cash games. It's just poker, so there are similarities, but with escalating blinds it definitely changes the whole ballgame.
SPG: So, what are most newbies doing wrong when playing heads up?
SJ: The two most common mistakes, and they'll sound obvious once I say them, are that some people play too tight and some people play too loose. Some people have the mindset that, "All right, I'm playing heads up, now. That means that I have to play every hand aggressively, because otherwise I'm going to get run over, because it's just one on one." So, these people, they try to make moves every hand, and will never give you credit for a hand. If they do that, they're going to get beaten, because you can afford to fold a couple times and wait until you get a middle pair and call them down. Those players, though, they're scary; anybody that's aggressive has a good chance to win at heads up.
But it's not nearly as big of a mistake as playing too tight. Those are the players that I cherish. [Laughs] If you see someone that plays too tight, you play them as much as possible. They literally have as small a chance to win of anyone. The only way that they can win is if they get a ton of hands in a row. They're calling raises preflop and then they're folding on the flop in every hand. But those players are few and far between, because most players like that know not to play heads up. But when they are playing, they're special.
SPG: You've also had some success in live heads-up tournaments. You finished in second place in the 2007
Mini Series Warmups at the Bicycle Casino. Are there any major advantages or disadvantages to playing heads-up live?
SJ: Oh, yeah. The players heads up live are way more clueless than the people who are playing the high-stakes heads up online. I was so disappointed in the
World Series heads-up event this year when I lost in the first match on sort of a fluky hand. But those are the tournaments that I salivate over, because online players will be tough, but what do live players know about playing heads up? They've been playing 10-handed games their entire lives, because casinos don't spread heads up. So, there are so many ways to take advantage of them, and I can't wait for more of those tournaments.
SPG: Great, well, good luck with any live heads-up matches that you play in the future and good luck with all of your new ventures into Omaha and all of that.
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