This is a great interview. Lots of discussion about the big game. Very honest about who is playing, who runs it, how he gets in, his results, his backing deal etc etc. Lots of names named and stories told. As a fan boy I think this is as good an insight into the HS games as you will ever get.

http://www.pokernews.com/news/2016/0...rkey-25280.htm

I listened to it today and it was great, very honest about his personal life.

Very friendly dude at the poker table. He was at my starting table for one of the early $1500 events right after his big score at Aria. An hour into the day Fedor Holz joined the table. It was a blast. Both were very friendly and talkative with everyone. Action-packed table for sure.

good stuff, might have to tune into remko's stuff if its usually this good

3/4 through the podcast, thread title confirmed 100% true.

Cliffs?


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No Cliffs for 101 minutes of audio. Listen to it via audioboom if you can - there's a free app for audioboo [or audioboom] in the usual phone app stores:
https://audioboom.com/boos/4800731-remko-report-episode-42-matt-berkey

Matt Berkey's "a gambler's fallacy" blog [not poker focussed]:
https://thevoicewithin.me/

Much of the non-poker content in this Remko Report is on the blog too, but with pictures & greater detail

Thread title confirmed

i cant get it to load

Man... Listening to this is like music to my ears. I've been battling this whole year, tooth and nail to come up through the poker ranks. I've put everything I have into it. It's hard to make it in poker when you're broke. I ran $300 up to $12k live at $1/2 then $2/5. I went to Vegas, hookers and blow, and lost 80% of myself. I then ran it back up back in South Florida to almost 10k, paid off my debts from Vegas trip and continued grinding. Hit a downswing and that was all my roll could handle. Busto.

Here I am grinding online, on bovada, trying to turn it around to get back into live... I'm caring for my grandfather 24/7, he supports what I'm doing, but god damn it's so hard to do with no money. He asks me every day I get him up, "Are we going up?"(meaning the bankroll)... And I can't face the fact to tell him It's not. I'm spinning my wheels as to what to do... I guess I gotta write it down and put it out there in the blog...

This pod just hit me really hard, gave me a lot of confidence in myself and my skill set when it comes to Live poker. I'm not giving up in this fight to have success in this game. I'm giving it everything. Thank you so much Matt Berkey for doing this, I'll be spending a lot of today reading your blog. I'll be back in the live streets soon, dedication, commitment, drive, love and passion!

I like very few podcasts, but I tuned into this one for three minutes on a lark and listened to it for an hour until I got busy. Great stuff. Questions are interesting and Berkey seems to answer them honestly and fairly, without pretense. Pretty interesting to have gone from a 2-5 grinder to playing 300-600-1200 and staying in the game.

It's pretty refreshing to hear some honesty. Him admitting to being in makeup but being very positive about it was interesting


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A wise man once told me...

"in life kid it's not what you know but about who you know"

sure seems to be the case in poker and not just this male and female type of situations lotta these 'pro's' all sure like to keep they're 'circles' real small. Do wonder how much d**** some of these dudes sucked on to get a stake up. Only to just fail in some cases. Nudge nudge wink wink your in bro (or bra hurrr har, cool bro).

dont give a f about y'alls situation here just is a noticeable trend in poker that a small subset of sorts seem to get that rig set game come up lol. Obv they dont suck in her case shes winning so valid, but point is pokers even anyway especially in 20167 across MANY people, and many dont get that freeroll staking deal up.

Point is I guess poker is more about WHO you know, definitely not WHAT you know because pokers not that difficult (1 deck lol) so what you know sooo many other people know just as well, dont kid yourself. Just many of you all dont KNOW the right people in poker..


def lol poker and congrats and gl future Merciers wish you all the luck

I want to sympathize with you but it's hard :/

GL running it up again.

Podcast is good btw, normally not a massive fan on Remko but really liked both him and Matt in this one.

really enjoyed this interview and Berkey's candor

did I understand correctly that he is down overall in the huge game he's backed in and now is having a hard time getting invited to? I'm fairly confident he said he was down 3.2 million at one point but went on a winning streak but stopped getting invited to the game in February (presumably because he's winning too much now, despite being down overall)

I'd love to know how Berkey concludes he has an edge in games with Rast, Roble, et al. Seems like it would be really hard to distinguish between the ego/confidence needed to play in a game like this and whether you dont have an edge at all.

It sounded like his bankroll may only be 250-500K and has a negative net worth if you factor in the amount of make-up he has to his investors.

He said several things that struck me as off and left me scratching my head a bit

When he talked about the huge game he played with Robl and Rast he did say that there were obvious spots (unnamed) in the game and also said that Rick Salomon was in the game straddling and giving a lot of action and JRB was also in the game and stuck a bunch.

Here are the quotes from that part of the interview with timestamps.

(25:30) How did Berkey clear over $1 million in makeup?

“We were stuck for as much as a million after the first six months or so and then in May 2014 I was fortunate enough to come late into a really good lineup. From the outside looking in, it wouldn’t have been considered one. It was Andrew Robl, Brian Rast, Prahlad Friedman… just a lot of top-level guys. But for me that’s almost better than a table full of amateurs because the onus isn’t necessarily on me to drive the action all the time anymore. These guys are fighting. They want to win pots just as badly as I do where for the businessmen they’re very happy to just lay down until they have it and then strike.”

“I sat with $600,000 the blinds were $300/$600/$1,200 but Rick [Salomon] likes to straddle so there were a lot of twenty-fours and things like that going on too. Everything’s on the table… not a foreign scenario to me whatsoever. [That night] was actually the most comfortable I felt since I entered the Big Game. I’m finally sitting deep and whatever happens, happens. I ran fairly well off the start and I was up $250k and I remember I was texting my close friend just to keep him updated. He’s just sick… he loves the pain and torture [of a high stakes sweat]. I win another pot and very quickly I’m up $350k and he’s like trying to tell me to quit and I’m just like, ‘Relax we’re in a good spot.’ Next thing I know I’m playing a massive pot with Robl where I flop the nuts with Queen-Jack and the pot’s already over $150k. He ends up Call-Call-Call postflop and I win a $600,000 pot.

So now I’m texting him and I’m like, ‘I’m up $600k, I think the game’s still really good. I’m not going anywhere.’ He’s like, ‘Just do your thing we’re going to get out tonight I can feel it.’ I hadn’t seen many 7-figure swings in one session. It’s happened for sure, but I didn’t get to play those types of games because yeah, people like my action and everything but they don’t need me in an already action-filled game. So I got the lesser lineups for sure. This was definitely more of a mix of a fast-paced game. When it was all said and done, I ended up winning $1.4 million that night. I cleared makeup and finally had a little bit of profit.” (30:00)

His take seemed to be that live play is much more exploitive than GTO and, by inference at minimum, that there are some massively exploitable players in the game. He seems to believe his approach is both unique and successful.

That was a great listen, thanks for posting this here.

It is interesting how he talks a bunch of times about making bad decisions related to being in over his head and being excessively gamble-y with his bankroll and it leading to him going broke, yet he talks about how he fired a decent portion of his net worth in the 300k SHR Bowl. The only reason this time went differently is because it worked and he cashed-- but to me it seems like he's making the same exact mistakes that he has in the past.

IMO anyone who is a up & comer in the highstakes world is severely underolled and ultimately has some degenerate tendencies. Id also argue that its a skill set one must have when playing a such highstakes in order to find any real success. If you look back at high stakes poker do you really think Daniel Negreanu had $200,000 x100?

is there a way to download the episode instead of streaming it?

My thoughts while listening to it as well. He was deep into makeup, took a shot nearly anyone would call irresponsible by sitting with his backers' final $600K because he thought there was a good lineup in the Aria big game (when he'd previously been getting felted by other big game lineups he thought were good). Of course you don't hear much about guys who take their shot and miss. But I'll tell you what happens to them. They end up humping crappy jobs on graveyard shifts, trying to figure out how they came up short...

But I digress: he strikes me as very self-aware and genuine, which imo differentiates him from the undisciplined degens. He'd probably be the first to tell you that the only reason he's the featured guest on a podcast, and not back anonymously grinding 5/10 is that he won a half dozen key hands when sitting with his entire roll. I very much appreciated his candor and openness. I hope we hear more from him, since he sounds like, bankroll management aside, he's got his head screwed on right.

Yeah you nailed it, I agree with all of this.

Yes, his approach was / is lunacy. Also hearing his thoughts on overall game plan and track record I'm not sure he's a winner in the game.