A stranger is being shown around a village that he has just become part of. He is shown a well and his guide says "On any day except Wednesday, you can shout any question down that well and you'll be told the answer".

The man seems pretty impressed, and so he shouts down: Why not on Wednesday? and the voice from in the well shouts back: Because on Wednesday, it’s your day in the well.

Here you go folks. Our own shot-taking poker pro is in the well. Ask him questions, and make him think about who he is. Jesse8888 is on the clock.

First.

Since Captain R was banned for posting a one liner like this... what he really meant to ask was, "Jesse, how do you feel about Captain R as a poker player? What are his strengths and weaknesses? If you wanted to own the guy at the tables, where would you start?"

First of all, Doug, Captain R says, via text message, that you are a wanker.

Second of all, hello everyone and welcome to my well. Please make yourself at home, stay a while, and enjoy Leo Doc's scotch. No question is out of bounds, however some may exceed my ability for rational or helpful answers.

And finally, my opinion of Captain R is that he is a top notch limit hold'em player. His story is perhaps poorly documented, but he has basically won his way from the Garden City 2/4 to the Bay 80/160 one 2.5 hour lunch at a time. I believe his primary strength is a keen focus on what his opponents are doing and ability to quickly determine how best to exploit them (which he owes in equal parts to his natural disposition, good old fashioned discipline, and his amateur status/2 hour sessions). Also he runs hot at picking jobs. If pressed for weaknesses I would say that the math based portion of his game (familiarity with poker stove, equities, etc) probably pales in comparison to someone like onTheRail or MitchL, and he cannot hold his liquor.

Jesse - Are you thinking of taking a shot at the next level (20/40?) some time soon?

I currently play live 20/40 as my primary game, and have been doing so for over 3 years (2+ of them as a "full time professional"). I am currently ramping up for another shot at 40/80.

In the last two years, what has been the biggest "ah ha" thing you've learned about poker? What's the biggest break through you've achieved?

If you could fix one thing with your game, what would it be?

Confirm I drink in the super bantamweight weight class and I do not understand the mathz.

Top 10 beers? A normal person I would ask 5, but Jesse is special.

Top 10 sports you would rank yourself at?

This is so sad, but I cannot think of a single big breakthrough that I have had. Perhaps at the time they were big deals, but I feel that my progress has been extremely incremental and that it takes time to incorporate concepts into your game and looking back literally nothing stands out as monstrous. I'll get back to you on this one, but it's probably something babar said.

If I had a good technical answer to your second question I'd probably already be working to fix it, so I'm going to go with a somewhat soft one. I wish I had the ability to just let hands go after I've played them. I sometimes find myself hashing over hands hours after I've played them while still at the table, and not in the good "what did you do well/bad there" sense but in the sorta bad tilt inducing sense.

OK, what do you do now that is much better than you played a year ago?

Two factors given most consideration are how much I like it (obviously) and how much of it I've drunk.

1. Guinness
2. Young's Double Chocolate Stout
3. BJ's BrewHouse Oatmeal Stout
4. Harpoon Winter Warmer
5. Boddingtons
6. New Castle
7. Bud Light
8. Black Butte Porter
9. HoeGarden
10. Miller Light

This is based on where I would rank myself in the population at large of 26-30 year old males:

1. Swimming
2. Water Polo
3. Underwater Hockey
4. Softball
5. Ping Pong
6. Roller Blading
7. Bowling

After this I am decidedly below average in any sampling of people who actually play the sport:

8. Hockey
9. Basketball
10. Minigolf

What is the biggest difference between being a recreational player and a pro? Liking the game more or less at this point?

Greatest all time heater? Most crushing single hand?

I am much better now at generally thinking about how my opponent is likely to proceed with the various pieces of his range and specifically how much of it he is likely to fold if I take an aggressive line. In the Garden City 20/40 in 2008 none of that was necessary because you had to turn over two pair to win the pot. In today's live games, and on the internets, obviously I've had to work more and more on my shorthanded play and this line of thinking has helped me a lot.

hi jesse, can you comment on the different 20 games around la and also how they compare to norcal

Recreational players can quit (or not even play) when they don't feel their best or want to lock up a win or avoid a big loss. Full time pros can't afford that luxury without risking putting up a 1200 hour 2010 (which is basically what I did).

I definitely enjoy the game less now than I did in the months leading up to my "shot", but that is almost by definition. I had to be super duper excited about poker back then, right?

At Ocean's in 2009 or so I was in town for just two nights and won 9.5 racks in the 40/80 game in 11 hours of play. At the time I wasn't very comfortable at all playing so high, but when all the fish at my table moved over to the new game I felt I had no choice. This was also the day I met Frond. Despite those 9.5 racks I am a large lifetime loser at 40/80. In my first 700+ hours of live 20/40 I ran at about $55/hour. That was also awesome; when you're winning that much you really just never ever lose. Like every single day you come up and it's like "hi honey how many racks did you win today oh just one what went wrong?"

During one of my previous failed 40/80 shots when I chased the then legendary Tom B when he moved up from 20 to 40 for the day the following hand roughly occurred. Remember I'm taking a shot and kind of scared:

Dealer pitches me my first card. It is a 7, and everyone finds out because it hits my knuckle and flips over. No big deal, I get two new cards, which happen to be a pair of queens. I don't remember the intermediary steps by which we arrived at showdown, other than to say that I did count the pot and there were more than 2000 American dollars in it when Tom B check/raised the river with the wheel to crack my top set.

If you could only pick one to play for the rest of your life, would it be online poker or live poker and why?

This is hard for me to say because the basic accepted knowledge right now is that all games everywhere are a lot tougher than they were even just 3 to 4 years ago (right before I started playing full time). So from my point of view the games down here are in fact a little tougher than the games in the bay area, but from what I can gather the games in the bay area have gotten tougher since I left.

If I could teleport and had to choose right now which game I wanted to play in exclusively for the next 12 months I would choose the Bay 101 20/40. But in general the games down here are also often superb.

I guess the biggest Aha! moment was realizing that I needed to be thinking about ranges, not just my specific hand. This probably occurred more than 2 years ago though.

Live poker because I have a track record of winning a lot more live than online and actually seem to enjoy it. This could be very short sighted of me as I think there is a pretty good chance new legislation could bring about a secondary gold rush for online poker.

what is the biggest hurdle in moving up to 40/80 for you?

Which 2+2er did you meet IRL that was most different than what you expected, and why?

How did you get into live poker playing at a casino?

What's the worst piece of poker advice I ever gave you?

How did you envision your job at Oracle was going to be, and what were the biggest discrepancies from that once you started working there?

When, where, what limit was the first time you played live texas in a casino?

Have you seriously thought about switching to NL? Do you think you can win more at limit than NL?

What is the difference between a mutex and a semaphore? Which would you use to implement must move tables?

The consistent losing?

My pet theory on the fundamental difference between 20/40 and 40/80 is that in the 20 games the "raise bet bet" line is pretty much always the right thing to do. People in the 20 make bad calls preflop and on the flop, so when you get to the turn with ace high or an underpair or whatever betting is usually the right thing to do. If they check/raise you you're probably drawing dead, and they won't do it all that often. But in the 40 people seem to at least not make the egregiously brain dead mistakes (like cold calling you with QTo, then peeling the flop with naked overs hu with no plan to bluff raise at any point), so when you get to that turn spot their ranges are SUBSTANTIALLY stronger. Coupled in with their increased aggression and all of a sudden the "raise bet bet" line is doing a lot less good and you need to look for alternatives like check/calling to induce bluffs or perhaps screwplaying or whatever.

The other problem is DeathDonkey's quote that "there are no 20/40 profressionals". This goes along with my theory that if you can make close to 100K a year doing something (or convince yourself you can), a lot more people are going to try than if you can make half that. So there are a lot more full time winning grinder hours logged at the 40 than the 20.

will a cleveland team win a title in the next 100 years?

2/4 limit hold them, foxwoods casino, June 2004. I was entrenched in a terrible internship at Deutsche Bank living in Manhattan (specifically at the Columbia Sigma Nu Chapter) and hated my life (I quit after 3.5 weeks when I was informed I had received a TA-ship). A bunch of friends were in town and we all had some drinks the night before, then all of them left and it was Saturday and I decided I wanted to get to Foxwoods. So I took the train to Connecticut and my friend Billy drove us the rest of the way to Foxwoods and we played the 2/4 limited texas hold them.