Only thing I noticed from the photo is how short he was and he won...

Yes, this is something I meant to ask Rast about, as well as his choice of shirt.

Unfortunately he was determined to lay on me some pretty straight info about how the summer went and longterm +EV strategies of bankroll management (that unfortunately backfired here).

The remainder of the interview is largely focused on specific hands of the Super High Roller Bowl. As a poker thinker, this is where I start to have fun.

Most likely he does not give a ... Seriously, poker is not a fashion contest. Its a strategy game, thats all.

it would have been nice if you had asked him what games they played in the big bet mix - all I heard was PL double draw which I assume was a 2-7 variant

Maybe he can answer that himself here.. I know he is a 2+2 member.

I'll probably wait to post the hands part of the interview until around when the tournament airs on NBC (starts August 28).

Meanwhile I have been getting into some jamming with the flute. Piazzolla On Fremont, Brazilian style.

The guy on guitar is good.
Is that endurance flute playing? You sure need endurance to listen to it.

Not a jazz fan I see... As with poker, there are a lot of levels to music, a lot of people never get past the basic repetitions.

ah **** I just let myself get trolled by Blow.

You keep putting in the crosses, I keep heading them in.

Besides, you wouldn't post such things if you didn't like it.

B-god giving out highstakes pudge mid lessons.

I like how america is closer to leagalizing pot than OLP iv never needed big brothers premission to cop a sack before,,,, free OLP

Why would Rast still sell pieces of himself if he satellited in? Or was he referring to pieces he had agreed to sell before he won the satellite?

I think Rast was describing his investment strategy with regards to any tournament he enters. He majored in math, is pretty much a scientist when it comes to poker (think Economics 101). Rather than simply running it up, as many younger players with a similar bankroll to him would have, he sold off a significant amount of his action in the HRB.* This was done he said to reduce variance.

Rast actually hinted that he may have had an obligation to sell pieces... I think he said he agreed to sell people who took action in the 2014 $1m One Drop at 5% markup, pieces at face value in this year's SHR tournament.

Then Rast unexpectedly won both the 25k satty and the actual $500K - awesome. However much he wanted to keep more of himself, some part was agreed upon in terms of swaps (reduces variance) and pieces. And then his father wanted a piece, and some guy took 9% (same % taken of Esfandiari in 2012) for luck. How could he say no?

I think the only one who got a piece of Rast in the $25k satty was Gruissem. Run $2,300 into $32,000 through .35% of Rast, donated by Rast? That is how you do it without $25k I guess. Now at a say 5% markup, would this be a good investment? I'm sure some ppl can do the math.

* I like the acronym HRB for Super High Roller Bowl, somehow.

To answer the question of why would I sell pieces...

It's pretty simple.
My bankroll was X prior to winning the satellite.
My bankroll after winning the satellite is X -25k + my equity in the 500k tournament. Let's just call that +500k and assume I'm breaking even in the 500k.
so now my hypothetical bankroll is X + 475k

Would I be buying in to 500k's straight up with my bankroll after winning 475k? The answer to that is no, so I still sell pieces to the 500k even though I satellite'd in. In fact, the point I tried to make about this is that by looking at this situation like this, it prevented me from taking a much larger piece of myself than I would have otherwise (as adding 475k to my bankroll would affect the amount of myself I take in 500k tournaments much less than looking at this like a shot at free-rolling a huge score because I'm only in this tournament 25k)

In this case, I guess it cost me a lost of money.

Who do you think you are to answer anything in this thread really ?

Qualifications?

And yes, "I guess it cost me a lot of money" is massively results-oriented... just as if someone wanted to freeroll a big score, didn't cash, and would have missed out on picking up some $$$ had they sold pieces. I said it tongue-in-cheek (just want to clarify), because I'm using sarcasm (after logical argument) to try to reinforce my point. (Maybe I've been watching too much John Oliver?)

See there are a few levels of gambling...
Like let's take rabbit hunting...
There's the first level, where you rabbit hunt (because how could you sleep at night not knowing?) and the results bother you - you get emotional, and it detracts from your game (TILT!!!)
Then you move on to learn to control those emotions by avoiding the situation. Rabbit hunting is stupid because it doesn't matter and can tilt you by letting you see something that doesn't matter. So by avoiding the situation, you can avoid tilt.
Then you realize that avoidance isn't really control. That you're simply evading a situation that will tilt you, rather than controlling your tilt. The highest plane of gambling existence is experiencing the result, and still letting it not tilt you. So you return to rabbit hunting because it's fun to know what card would have come, because it might tilt your opponent - and because you will let the result wash over you.

A really unfashionable guy who likes to play strategy games.

hahaha well played in all seriousness thanks for the input in the thread is always good to see

hey rast

your bankroll requirements are the least important topic raised in the thread

you need to get on the Joe Ingram PLO podcast to answer the pertinent ones. and you need to go for the record 4 hours (toilet breaks allowed)

I'll send Chicago your way

I can't 100% disagree

Thanks for the explanation. Sorry for being slow, but I'm not sure I totally get it. When you satellite into a tournament you're obligated to "spend" that $500k on that particular tournament. It's like you won 500k in special money that can only be spent on buying into the tournament. If you win $500k in a cash game, blackjack table, prop bet, etc you're free to use that money however you wish. Wouldn't that be enough of a distinction for you to be able to free roll the tournament this one special time and not have it affect your discipline for future tournaments?

And that's a really good point you made about rabbit hunting. I never thought of it that way.

The ability to sell action differentiates this event from say casino promotional chips, or a satellite where you couldn't sell action - precisely because the ability to sell action makes it basically the same as if you won the money separately and had already bought in to the tournament. I believe it's better to view the tournament that way.

This sounds like something I learned in grad school. Basically how the optimal decision discounts all previous variables (while not discounting the macro landscape) and takes into consideration a new set of variables (in this case, the $25,000 to $500,000 cash dynamics underlying the respective $25k and $500k SHRB tournament buy-ins). You say I have "x bankroll" and, given this bankroll, what will maximize my profit potential (while preserving an element of gamble).

I think this is part of what Rast is saying, when he argues that poker is not gambling. With proper bankroll management, the better than average poker player can be as consistently profitable as someone on Wall Street (more consistent, over the past week).

A key question I have is that, from a Cinderella storyline perspective, to say "I ran $25k up to $7.5m" sounds more exciting. It was the title of another NVG thread on 2+2 and I am holding my breath as to whether the NBC SHRB announcers delve beyond that tagline. Rast is pretty forthcoming when talking about the actual swap/sell dynamics. A lot of people were very curious about that when Esfandiari won the One Drop in 2012.

I'll post the remaining interview, which delves into a number of key tournament hands, right around the SHRB broadcast.

I wouldn't say that poker isn't gambling... I define gambling (properly) as risking money to win money. This is something that is present in many other jobs, as the one you listed shulenberger, stock trader on Wall Street.

Poker is a skill game in which you gamble.

The difficulty comes in when lay people use the term gambling within the context of a casino, especially "gamblers" to refer to the set of people who gamble in a casino - as opposed to the set of people who risk money to win money. That usage of the term, and blurring of the definition, bother me. I view poker being compared to someone playing slots, as the same as comparing a chess player to someone playing tic-tac-toe, and say "well they're both games". Yes, obviously they are, however one is astronomically more complex and difficult than the other such that they are not only not in the same league, but basically at opposite ends of the spectrum. (What spectrum you ask? The Game complexity one.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_complexity )

So I'm not arguing that poker isn't gambling. It is gambling! I'm arguing that it's a skillful form of gambling.

And (completely changing topics), if you have the option to break-up an event in to two separate events in order to more optimally manage your bankroll, it is always superior to do so. After all, you could always just keep the decision to let it ride and not sell more action between the two events. Yet, in the case of a big jump in difference of buyin (25k to 500k), you now have the option to more perfectly tailor these gambling decisions to your bankroll needs. In fact, it is obviously ALWAYS logically superior to break up 1 decision in to more decisions... as the group of decisions always includes within its set, the original decision, as well as more decisions that might be better.

Interesting insight about breaking up events into multiple buy-ins, to limit variance and allow more flexibility. Can you give an example of how this works in terms of specific tournaments you have played?

Have your BRM strategies evolved over time? I recollect in an interview from a couple years ago you mentioned basically risking a substantial portion of winnings from the 2011 $50k Poker Player's Championship in big PLO games at the Bellagio. A couple $200k swings in a matter of hours, as I recall. Would you do this today with a similar bankroll as you had then?

Someone else was asking about which games were prevalent this year in the big bet mixed. What were these? How exactly did the double-draw game that you tweaked play? Were there any interesting hands that illustrate the optimal strategy/pitfalls of this variant?