CardRunners Instructor & Interview!

So I’ve got a gig now as a CardRunners MSNL instructor! My first video went up today and it seems to have been received pretty well. Here’s an introductory interview they did with me.

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CardRunners Welcomes New Instructor Joey "jcl" Lawrence

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Joey hails from Sydney, Australia and just recently moved from mid-stakes cash to 5/10 and higher. He is still in school (or as the Australians say, "uni") and studying law, among other subjects. His first video focuses on mid-stakes nlhe. You can read a lot about Joey’s rise up the cash game stakes in his blog, and learn more about him in this exclusive CardRunners interview.

How did you get into poker?

I graduated high school in November 2005 and had about 4 months off before uni started. With so much free time on my hands I was looking for something to do and, having heard of Joe Hachem’s Main Event win that year, I decided to give poker a go and bought a chip set. I got my friends together and we began playing $5 SNGs, sometimes with re-buys. Around this time pub tournaments were also really taking off in Australia (every Australian thought they could be the next Hachem) so a few of us started playing those too, two or three nights a week. Eventually I discovered online poker, deposited $100 and went from there.

Did you start at low stakes -- what was your evolution into your current stakes like?

I started in April 2006 with a $100 deposit and initially played the $6 SNGs on Party. I think I broke even at those and made the move to 25NL (the lowest level back then) cash pretty quickly. I didn’t really know what I was doing but this was pre-UIGEA and the games were super soft so I managed to run my bankroll up to like $4000, despite being oblivious to things like HUDs or concepts like isolating. Unfortunately I was also oblivious to bankroll management and busted my roll at 2/4 NL.

In 2007 I deposited another $100 and worked my way up to 50NL and had a bankroll of about $1000 when my friend introduced me to CardRunners in March. From there my game really took off and I was beating 1/2 really decently by September. I had a roll of about $13000 at this stage, not including the $9000 that I had cashed out over the course of the year. In October though I ran really bad and went on my first 20 buy-in downswing. Tilted and with $9000 left I did the only logical thing and jumped into a bunch of 5/10 PLO games. Needless to say, that didn’t end well and by the end of 2007 I was busto again.

I really didn’t want to re-deposit the money that I had cashed out in case I lost that too so I started 2008 by cashing in my PartyPoints and grinding $3 SNGs and 5NL. After one month of this I realised that something had to give so I decided to deposit $500 for one last try. Fortunately I ran well and was playing 1/2 again by March, 2/4+ by June and 3/6+ by November. In December I started to dabble in tournaments and by February had hit a 45K AUD score live and a 50K score online. This gave me enough of a bankroll to move to 5/10 permanently and I’ve been playing 5/10+ ever since.

What sorts of things do you do to improve your game?

I’ve been pretty lazy this past year but when I was moving up through the mid-stakes I tried to watch as many videos as possible and absorb as much information as I could. I signed up to basically every training site out there and looked for instructors with different approaches and styles, trying to see if there was anything new or interesting that I could implement into my own game.

I also took a lot of notes and more importantly organised them into a way that was useful to me. I like to break poker into “situations” and so, for example, I have a section in my notes entitled “as preflop raiser -> in position -> check-raised on a dry board” and then beneath that I have all the possible lines I can take and explanations for why I might take them. I also have more general sections like “when to overbet”, “backdoor aggression” or “deep-stack adjustments”. I find that organising your notes in this way is really important because otherwise you simply have pages of random thoughts that you can’t really use.

The final thing that I did (when I was feeling really keen) was review the hand histories of the big winners at 25/50. Many of them played surprisingly standard (which in itself was good to know), but some took some really weird lines and had some useful tricks that I tried to incorporate into my own game.

How do you handle the swings (i.e. losing 48k in two days)?

When I was moving up I had a lot of trouble dealing with downswings. I felt like I was destined for greater things but some stupid guy up there was holding me back, delivering me bad beat after bad beat. These days, having “made it” in some sense, I think I handle the swings a lot better since whenever I’m running bad I can just look at a photo of PCA or Vegas or something and realise that, no matter what happens, on the whole I’ve had it pretty good.

I’m also pretty lucky in that I don’t need the money to pay rent or anything. To me it’s really just a number, and when that number goes down I’m annoyed not so much because I’ve lost $X but because my journey up the stakes has been set back another month. That said, I’ve definitely noticed myself tilting a lot more these last few months (I’ve been having a pretty tough time of it at 10/20 and 25/50), so I still can’t say I’m completely immune.

Do you have any poker mentors?

For the first three years I mostly just relied on books or videos because I didn’t really know anyone in the poker community. This year I’ve gotten coaching from three different people and have been talking to a few regs on MSN, Skype or AIM and that’s definitely helped my game a lot. I still wouldn’t consider any of them my mentor though really.

Do you play tournaments also?

I actually spent a month learning basic tournament strategy last December because I was going to the PCA in January and felt that I should make some nominal effort defending my $10,000 buy-in. I was actually surprised by how much I enjoyed playing tournaments and would definitely play more if I could. Unfortunately, they’re usually on at whack hours in Australia and the Sunday tournaments are on Monday here and I have uni then.

Do you play live? Where? What stakes?

I don’t really play live much at all. I find live cash really boring and the biggest game that runs at Star City is only 5/10 (which really is only 4/8 USD). Given the option of one-tabling 4/8 full ring at 30 hands/hr or six-tabling 5/10 6-max at 600 hands/hr, I’ll take the latter every time.

Funnily enough, though, I really enjoy playing live tournaments and try to play the $1000+ buy-in tournaments at Star City whenever I can. I love the sense of competition and when you are lucky enough to go deep in a live tournament the thrill is unlike anything you can achieve in a cash game.

What sort of content can CR members expect from you?

As someone who moved through the midstakes just this last year, I feel I have a very good handle on how the games play these days and am in a good position to show people how to go about beating them and how to avoid common mistakes. I probably think a lot more theoretically and analytically than a lot of players too so if I could I’d like to make some hand history review type videos that allow me to hone in on a particular leak, line or move and discuss it in detail.

Tell us about your first video?

It's really just an introduction to my style. I do focus heavily though on forming a plan for a hand - thinking about all the possible actions that you might take in response to each card that might fall or each action that might occur. I also talk about the unique nature of 3/6 as a kind of crossroads between stakes and skill levels and how your game needs to adapt to that fact.

How do you handle being in school and playing?

I don’t think I’ve had too much trouble balancing the two. I’ve never skipped class or failed an assignment or flunked an exam because of poker or anything like that. Uni is only 12-16 contact hours per week anyway so I still have a load of free time to play poker. During really intense assessment periods I might self-exclude myself to make sure that I don’t get too distracted, but in general I can grind pretty liberally.

Is poker more like a full-time job or part-time job? How many hours do you play in an average week?

I don’t really consider poker a job at all. I genuinely enjoy sitting down and loading up a bunch of tables. I’m not entirely certain but I probably average about 15-20 hours a week.

What are some hobbies?

Indoor soccer, watching movies, watching TV series (but only once they’re on DVD!), sleeping, blogging

Do you get mistaken for the ‘90s “heartthrob” with the same name?

I've had hundreds of teen girls adding me on MSN asking me whether I'm Joey Lawrence from Blossom so yeah I do get that a lot, lol. At the WSOP this year I went deep (made day 6) and the buzz around the media was that Joey Lawrence from Blossom was playing and doing well, so I got a kick out of that.