Online Poker: Interview With Evan '_Fisherman' Roberts

Evan Roberts is a 22-year-old Stanford graduate with a degree in business. The job market is a venerable buffet for people like him, so why did he choose to become a poker player?

“I never had a legitimate job, I guess,” he said, laughing. Plus, the money was simply too good for him to say no, and the money definitely was good.

Roberts began playing poker his senior year of high school, and he graduated to online poker with all of his friends when he turned 18. According to him, it just kind of “snowballed” from there, and he found himself playing the highest stakes cash games online four years later.

Roberts, who plays as _Fisherman online, is now one of the trainers for the poker site PokerSavvy Plus, which gives video training to players via real-life hand examples. Card Player recently teamed up with PokerSavvy Plus to offer Card Player Pro, a training tool with a free trial exclusive to Card Player readers. Click here to give Card Player Pro a spin.

Card Player snagged Roberts for an interview to see how he to got where he is and what philosophies helped him get there. He spoke to us about taking shots, moving up the ranks, and bankroll management.


Shawn Patrick Green: How did you work your way up the ranks in cash games?

Evan “_Fisherman” Roberts: I think pretty much like everyone does. I started with a really small deposit and lost it all and then did it again. And then the third time it just kind of stuck and I slowly built my way up. At the beginning, I didn’t really have a good conception of what proper bankroll management was, so I was just kind of playing whatever, whenever, and looking back on it, I’m really surprised that I didn’t bust. But, after about six months or a year, I sort of got serious and read a couple of books and started posting on [poker forums]. I had stricter bankroll management after that and slowly started working my way up from the low-stakes games to the high-stakes games.

SPG: What role does taking shots play in moving up the ranks?

ER: That’s a good question. I think taking shots sort of has a negative connotation, at least to me. It sounds like someone is playing in a game that they either don’t think they can beat or really aren’t rolled for. In that sense, I don’t think it should be done, but in the sense that if you see a game that is higher than you usually play, and you think you have an edge for whatever reason — either there is a weak player or two sitting there or you think you’re playing really well and it’s time to move up — then taking a shot, as you phrased it, [is OK] if it’s not a huge percentage of your bankroll or if you’re still practicing proper bankroll management. I mean, I think that’s the best way to move up. If you’re trying to move up to the next stakes, continue to play your current stakes and play when you think the games are best and see how you do.

SPG: What are some clear goals players can have to help with bankroll management and moving up the ranks?

ER: I guess a general bankroll guideline that I’ve followed is just that if you’re playing shorthanded 100 big blind buy-in no-limit hold’em on the Internet, it’s probably always a good idea to have somewhere in the area of 40-50 buy-ins at all times. When I was playing, my goal was always to move up one level, so I was always trying to grind at my current level to make enough money to see how I was doing in the next level and hopefully stick. And then the process repeated itself once I made it to that level; I wanted to make it to the next level, and on and on. I think it can be sort of overwhelming if you look at it any other way. If you’re playing $100 and you decide you want to play $5,000, that’s just a massive, massive jump. So, I would encourage players to focus on taking it one step at a time and trying to move up one level.

SPG: With a lot of people, their poker bankrolls may not necessarily be clearly defined. They may not have a very distinct idea of the difference between their poker bankroll and their life-roll, in general. How do you think people should make that distinction, and how much of their life-roll should they be willing to commit to poker?

ER: I think if you’re just a recreational player and you’re just doing it for fun, it’s fine to not really have a clear distinction there, although I would encourage you to still take very accurate records. I think a lot of people who don’t really have a clear bankroll distinction also don’t really keep track of how they do, and they sort of assume they’re winning and they don’t really know where the money went. So, at the very least, keep accurate records.

Back to your second point, I think if you’re a serious player, I’ve always considered my bankroll to be only what I have online. That’s sort of a holdover from when I was playing low stakes and I wasn’t really sure I was a winning player or that this was a sustainable thing. Anything I cashed out, I didn’t want to bring back in. Except I don’t really think that way, anymore, because to play at the really high stakes games you need a very, very large bankroll, just because the inherent variance is a lot higher, and it’s sort of a waste to keep all of that money online when you could be doing other stuff with it and earning interest. So, I don’t really follow that, anymore, but as a low- or mid-stakes player, I’d say that once you cash money out, don’t count it as part of your bankroll, anymore.

SPG: What’s the most you’ve won in a single session?

ER: Gosh, probably somewhere … maybe $130,000 or $140,000.

SPG: What’s the most you’ve lost in a single session?

ER: (Laughing) Pretty much the same amount, maybe $150,000 or $160,000.

SPG: How do you decide when to end a session?

ER: That’s another really complicated question. Ideally, you should always be able to realize how you’re playing, and I would say don’t quit if you think you’re still playing well and have an edge on the game or the opponent that you’re playing, and quit when you think you don’t. But that’s sort of ambiguous, and a lot of times after you lose a couple buy-ins or you’re having a losing day you think you’re still playing well, but there are some subtle changes in your game that you’re just not realizing, and you’re just subtly tilting and not playing well. And so, I think for a beginning player it’s not bad to have a stop-loss. That is, if I lose X number of buy-ins, whether that be three or five, I’m just going to quit for the rest of the day and not play again until tomorrow.

Something sort of specific to heads up is that if your opponent is winning and beating you by a significant margin, even if you’re still playing your best game, a lot of times that can cause your opponent to play better. It’s sort of difficult to explain exactly how, but part of it is that they become more fearless, to an extent, and so they may be bluffing more often with the proper frequency or just playing better, in general. Another part of it is that even though momentum in a heads-up game shouldn’t be a legitimate thing, like there’s no reason why the fact that you’ve won the last few pots should really change anything, it sort of has a psychological impact on both players, and it can actually make beating whoever it is that’s beating you a lot tougher.

SPG: What can someone do when they feel like playing poker even though they know they aren’t in the right mindset for it?

ER: So, that is that they’re tilted or they’ve already reached their stop-loss or they’re just not concentrating? That kind of thing?

SPG: More like, say, some Saturday you feel tired but you also feel like playing poker.

ER: OK, well I guess I don’t really have a magic answer for that. Just don’t do it, do something else. Tie up your time some other way. The games are always going to be there; there’s no reason you have to play now. Just come back when you’re on your A-game. It’s much easier said than done, of course.

SPG: But in some situations, though, they may feel tired but they don’t really feel like playing for work but more for recreation in that one instance. Is there a way to separate the two?

ER: Sometimes when I feel like playing but not concentrating or playing very seriously, I’ll play a different game than I normally play, whether it be Omaha or stud, and I’ll play for much lower stakes and just sort of have a good time with it. That’s something that’s been very helpful, for me.

SPG: What situations get you into the most trouble in poker?

ER: I don’t think I have a good answer for that. I guess, if I were going to say one thing, it’s that sometimes I give very straightforward players credit for being more tricky than they are. If someone’s been playing very nitty and straightforward against me, instead of sitting back and playing tight and picking my spots, I’ll try to force the action too much, whether it be three-bet bluffing all in on the flop or making huge check-raise river bluffs — just stuff that doesn’t need to be done to beat this particular player. These plays may not even be negative EV [expected value], they just add a lot of variance that doesn't need to be there.

SPG: How did you learn cash games?

ER: I guess I really just learned by experience. One of the things that has been most helpful for me is saving all of my hand histories. I used PokerTracker for a while, and now I use a different program. Whenever I have a particularly tough session or if I played someone that I thought was really good, going back and reviewing all of the big hands and seeing if, later, not in the heat of battle, I still think I played them well, or what I think I should have done differently. Also, talking with other people whose games I respect has been really helpful for me.

SPG: What were the hardest things to get good at?

ER: In the early stages, I would say the hardest thing for me was to be able to recognize when someone else was playing better than me heads up, when it was someone I really shouldn’t have been playing against — and it’s not because I’m tilting or not playing my A-game, it’s because they’re better. Recognizing that and being able to quit was hard.

SPG: Just because they’re winning doesn’t mean they’re better than you, of course, so what kinds of indicators might there be?

ER: I think that’s part of the reason it was so tough is that a lot of times you can’t tell, and you certainly can’t base it on results, because heads-up matches have such inherent variance that being down a few stacks, or even a lot of stacks, doesn’t mean much, in and of itself. And you can’t really base it on specific hands, either, because when pulling a specific hand out of context in a heads-up match, a play that is right or correct or really ingenious can be seen as fishy or bad without knowing the context, the flow of the match, and the rest of the particulars. I guess I find that when I play someone who is better than me, I walk away with a feeling that they always had a really good handle on what I was holding, and I couldn't say the same thing about them.

SPG: Let’s say you’ve just sat down at a table with a bunch of unknown players and you’re dealt pocket tens under the gun. What do you do?

ER: I think, in any game and in any structure, that’s probably a raise.

SPG: OK, so once you’ve raised, let’s say you get a few callers, what happens on the flop, because on most flops you’re going to have one or two overcards? How do you act out of position in that scenario, or how do you tailor your raise to make sure you don’t get that many callers?

ER: Well, for the most part, I personally only play mostly heads-up games, but I’d say, in high-stakes cash games, it’s pretty unlikely that you’re going to get a bunch of callers. A lot of the times it’s literally just going to get folded end to end. Another decent percentage of the time, you’re going to get reraised, just because the high-stakes games play so aggressively. So, that’s not really a situation that comes up a lot. If you’re getting called a lot, you’re generally playing a pretty weak game with weak players. And I don’t think you need to tailor your raise to ensure that you don’t get those callers, I’d still raise three to four times the big blind. And just play poker after the flop; there’s no really good answer for that.

SPG: Something like pocket tens is obviously very different heads up. What do you do with something like pocket tens when you’re first to act heads up?

ER: Raise, no question.

SPG: So, how does the post-flop play change in that situation?

ER: I guess, in a heads-up game, against a lot of people I’d be willing to stack off post-flop if I flopped an overpair for 100 big blinds. It depends upon board-texture and opponent tendencies, but, as a default, getting it in with any overpair on boards that aren’t really nasty is never that wrong.

SPG: That’s all I’ve got for you. Thanks for doing this interview, Evan.

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