Online Poker: Interview with Brent 'Bhanks11' Hanks

Leaving a job that you’re passionate about can be very hard. Brent Hanks had been teaching fifth and sixth graders at a small school since he had graduated from college at St. Bona Venture in rural New York.

“I really loved teaching; I loved the kids, and I loved what I did,” Hanks said. “I left [teaching] because I realized that before I got a little older than what I am [25], if I was going to make this poker thing work, I really needed to make it happen now.”

Hanks had been making thousands and thousands of dollars playing online poker (under the screen name “Bhanks11”) while he both taught and worked toward a master’s degree. All of that money, coupled with the competitive, challenging nature of the game, meant that his switch was from one career he was passionate about to another career he was passionate about, which made his resignation from teaching a little bit easier.

Since his switch to professional poker, Hanks has scored a win in the PokerStars Sunday Million (every online poker player’s dream) and has made a huge splash at the 2008 World Series of Poker, cashing in three events and making one final table (at which he finished in fifth).

Card Player caught up with Hanks to talk about his Series, as well as his strategies for early and late stages of tournaments, and whether he plays differently in a WSOP event compared to an online tournament like the Sunday Million.


Shawn Patrick Green: How’d you get started playing poker?

Brent “Bhanks11” Hanks: On the side, I’d always played poker. I grew up playing with my dad in home games and some of the high-low stuff. And when the no-limit hold’em boom kicked in, I caught the sickness and was determined to make myself quite good at the game. It didn’t take too long, about a year and a half of watching the best players online and working with some of them and basically adapting my skills.

SPG: When you say “watching the best players online,” were you watching tournaments or cash games? And what were you looking for?

BH: Tournaments — because of the publicity that they were receiving on TV, with [Chris] Moneymaker and all of that nonsense — just really caught my eye. I wanted to know what it was that these guys were doing. It’s kind of like the whole Rounders thing; there’s a reason why there is so much success in such a small group of players. So, I watched BigRiskky [Scott Clements], PearlJammer [Jon Turner], and JohnnyBax [Cliff Josephy] — I remember JohnnyBax was just an enormous name. And then, all of a sudden, while I was still teaching, Annette_15 [Annette Obrestad] came through, and BeL0WaB0Ve [Kevin Saul] was kind of going on at the same time. They were just these anomalies in the poker world, and no one could really figure them out. It was really tough, but I did my best to watch them and figure out what they did. Next thing you know, another wave of aggression came through poker, and I was just kind of attached to that, and my results picked up from my observations, really.

SPG: You had quite a bit of success in this year’s WSOP. You cashed three times for about $194,000. Can you talk about the final table of the $2,500 no-limit hold’em event you were at?

BH: I think I was roughly third or fourth in chips. Another guy that was at the table named Shawn Buchanan was to my left, and he was quite aggressive. I recognized him from other events. He was really the only one who I thought could give me a tough time. There were three stacks that were quite small, including one that was a player’s named Nicolas Levi, who I got to know this Series and who is a tremendous gentleman, a great player. He had a good series, himself. He was short, though, and he was out right away.

And then we got five-handed, and I had pretty much held my own at the table and chipped up, chipped up, chipped up. In fact, in the first pot, I had gone all in post-flop on a K-K-10 board, and all I had was a Q J, which was an open-ended straight draw and a flush draw. But I was all in on the very first hand, so I set my aggression at the table right away.

When five-handed, I played a pot against Steve Merrifield. In that hand, if it had folded to me on the cutoff or button, I was going to raise any two, because of the stack sizes I had behind me. Shawn Buchanan was always in the big blind when it was my button, and as aggressive as he is, he also didn’t want to get too carried away when it was five-handed. I know that’s kind of how good players think; when it gets four-handed, you can start to open up a bit, but when it’s five-handed, you almost can’t be overly active from certain points at the table like the big blind, when you’re out of position. So, I raised with A K on the button, and Steve Merrifield — who was probably third in chips at the time, and I was second — flatted [flat-called] me in the small blind. The flop came A-K-9 with two spades. He led out for roughly 225,000 into a 350,000 pot.

SPG: What were you thinking when he led out on that flop?

BH: I actually had misread him, slightly. I thought he would flat me with a hand like A-X suited up to A-J; I thought with A-K or A-Q he would probably reraise me preflop. So, my range included all small aces, but it also included a hand like K-Q, with which he would have flopped second pair. Guys like that have a tendency to lead out to see where they’re at in a hand, which doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. A lot of times they’ll lead there with second pair. If that were the case, I could make a small enough raise to maybe look like I’m trying to bluff by representing an ace, and then he would shove second pair through, there. So, I decided to go for a raise; I made it about 500,000 or so to make it just barely more than a min-raise back to him. He thought about it for a couple of minutes before moving the rest of his chips into the middle. I called, showing him top two, and he got there. He had a bare flush draw with the 8 7, and he made his flush on the river to cripple me, and I was out shortly thereafter.

SPG: How do you deal with a big loss like that, especially at a final table at a World Series event?

BH: It was tough, but I’ve seen it all and I’ve been through it all. The kid stated that he needed to gamble to win, and he was right, he definitely wasn’t the best player at the table and he needed to gamble. It was just unfortunate to be on the losing side of those kinds of tremendous flips, really. I just kind of nodded my head, took my interview, and walked off, hoping to have another shot at it.

SPG: You got it all in with a short stack holding A-2. What are your thoughts about pushing all in as the short stack with A-X holdings?

BH: Well, if you know the math terms of the whole [Dan] Harrington thing, I had an M [how many rounds you can survive if you fold every hand and pay the blinds and antes] of four, so it was going to be any two cards. And I actually looked down at ace high on the button, so I was pretty excited; ace high was a pretty strong hand, at that point. But, no, I don’t recommend shoving A-X for 15-plus big blinds, or, Jesus, even 12. Don’t do it if it’s not necessary, because doubling up is so critical at such an important stage of the tournament.

SPG: What got you to that final table in the first place? It was a pretty big field, right?

BH: Yeah, the field was quite large; there were about 1,400 entrants. I was comfortable with my live play; I adjusted fairly quickly. I’m pretty patient when it comes to live poker, as I think you really need to be, because there’s a different gear among the best players live than there is online. I remember that by the first break I was very short. I got down to like 1,700 in chips; I lost with A-K to aces on a king-high board where a guy who I had covered crippled me in the hand when we got it all in.

Anyway, I chipped up, chipped up, chipped up, and when we got to about four tables left, it was quite an inflection point for the tournament. I picked up my aggression a lot, and I was three-betting all in on post-flop plays. I check-raised all in twice, once when I flopped a gutshot-straight draw with K-J on a Q-9-X board. It was just a lot of very, very aggressive plays that I hadn’t really had to take out and apply through most of the stages in the tournament. I picked my spots to speed well and I also picked my bluffing spots quite well.

SPG: Would you say, then, that being aggressive is less important in the early stages? Because you were saying that you were being pretty patient, and that once it got down to four tables you started picking spots, bluffing more, and being more aggressive.

BH: Yeah, absolutely. You do get moved from table to table, so your image is going to change every time you get moved somewhere new. But, for the most part, in three-quarters of that tournament or more, possibly even four-fifths, I played a very patient style of game, very TAG [tight aggressive]. It almost got to the point that I thought, “I might be able to get exploited here because of how I’m playing.” But that was really part of the game plan, anyway; if people think that they can run you over and you can sense that kind of aggression toward your play, that’s when you smash the deck in their face. So, only once we got down to four tables did I let loose, and it shocked a lot of players, and they were uncertain as to what they were supposed to do, and I got fortunate enough never to move in when they had hands.

SPG: So, maybe the key is, from the sounds of it, playing a tight-aggressive game early on, for the most part, while staying really in tune with who may be picking up on that fact and playing differently against just them?

BH: Yeah. That’s kind of the whole metagame behind that with certain players. Certain players react differently to certain strategies and what’s going on. The player who I mentioned before, Nicolas Levi, he was very active throughout most of the stages of the tournament when I sat with him, so you could just understand what was going through his mind, where if a tight player would open, he was never going to just give up easily, he would either flat-call you, three-bet you, or float you, etc. He was actually the one who I check-raised all in with king high; I was pretty certain that he would fold and that he was light to begin with.

SPG: What are some big mistakes that you made during the series that you hope to learn from?

BH: I guess the biggest mistakes that I had made during the Series probably would have been any time that I got away from my early-stage play, which I thought was the best idea. I told you that I wanted to play TAG during the early levels, and sometimes, if my table seemed really, really weak to me, I would get away from that and get myself in trouble. Just because your table is weak doesn’t mean that you’re going to run it over, it just means that they don’t ever fold. So, I was getting myself into some awkward, marginal spots that were pretty unnecessary. Other than that, I was really happy with my play, especially in the deep stages.

SPG: You took down the PokerStars Sunday Million early on this year. How did you do it?

BH: I play that one a lot differently than I would play a World Series event, although you can kind of compare them. I always play very aggressively in the early stages of that tournament, simply because the structure has a tendency to move on very quickly right away. So, I come out raising and reraising right away with such a deep stack in the early levels, basically to shoot off and collect a big stack in such a tremendous-sized field. That style has quite a high variance, but that’s how I’ve come to play on Sundays.

I got off to a good start in that tournament; I think at the first break I had almost 30,000 in chips, which was way above average. I think the average was 15,000 or so. I had some things go my way, as they need to in tournaments like that. I won some critical flips and made some really good reads, too, where I made some good calls with second pair on the river at tough stages in the tournament. But, for the most part, things just kind of fell my way during that tournament; I never lost any of the big flips. Once we got to the final table, it was tough, because I was pretty short, but I managed to make it work.

SPG: Did that win drastically change what you played in?

BH: It helped. We actually ended up chopping it four ways, and I ended up winning $150,000 after I won the additional $30,000 after the chop for taking down the event. Something like that will help anyone’s bankroll when you’re an online player. It opened me up to playing, if I wanted to, the $100 rebuys every day. I already had a pretty big bankroll built up online and in the live world from smaller events back home and some online scores; I did very well on Full Tilt for quite some time while I was teaching. But that was my first major, and it definitely helped and gave me a lot more respect against unknowns, which I think is a really big factor these days.

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