Jeff Smith

Host

Life as a Poker Pro

Jan 21, 2014·142 visitors

Herbie Gelman

Cohost

Stage· 219 messages

Jan 21, 2014

What's life like when you make a living playing poker? Is it fun or stressful? Exciting or boring? What kind of toll does it take? We'll talk with an expert who helped bring down one of the world's largest criminal poker rings.

Jeff Smith · 6:31 PM

Herbie?

Herbie Gelman · 6:32 PM

hey buddy

Jeff Smith · 6:32 PM

Hey there - thanks for joining me here today. Before we start, can I ask how many windows do you have open on your computer right now?

Jeff Smith · 6:32 PM

Because I know that a few years ago, you typically played 15 tables simultaneously

Herbie Gelman · 6:33 PM

Great to be here, and haha only 4 windows right now, a rather significant decrease from my days playing online poker

Jeff Smith · 6:33 PM

So look, let's get started with a simple question: how did you go for a causal poker player who typically made a few bucks, to a poker pro?

Jeff Smith · 6:34 PM

(sorta like asking the dude in rehab how he went from a social drinker to a crackhead)

Herbie Gelman · 6:35 PM

Def get that question a lot, I will tell you I never set out to be a professional poker player. Right after about 2003 and the Chris Moneymaker poker boom I, along with thousands of others, starting taking poker more seriously. I live in Los Angeles

Herbie Gelman · 6:35 PM

and quickly discovered that there were all these 24 hour poker rooms within just a few miles

Jeff Smith · 6:35 PM

and a lotta fish there during the boom, huh?

Herbie Gelman · 6:36 PM

I had my own business at the time which afforded me the opportunity to go play at my own discreation

Jeff Smith · 6:36 PM

(fish = poor players, usually people who call way too many hands and/or try way too many bluffs)

Jeff Smith · 6:36 PM

and when you played poker, what kind of hours did you keep?

Herbie Gelman · 6:36 PM

yeah lots of fish at that time and I was def one of them

Jeff Smith · 6:36 PM

LOL

Herbie Gelman · 6:37 PM

i started out in those days playing $1/$2 limit 7 card stud and hold em which was all that was really offered back then, not like the no-limit games that most people think of today

Jeff Smith · 6:37 PM

what kind of impact did the crazy hours you kept have on your life?

Herbie Gelman · 6:38 PM

in the early days i would go to a card room and the next thing i knew 30 hours had passed

Herbie Gelman · 6:38 PM

it was really insane and def had a big impact on my relationship at the time

Jeff Smith · 6:38 PM

30 hours goes by in a flash

Jeff Smith · 6:38 PM

I feel the same way when I'm reading academic journal articles

Jeff Smith · 6:38 PM

LOL

Herbie Gelman · 6:38 PM

but also back in those days i would win a little, break even or lose a lot (more often than not)

Jeff Smith · 6:39 PM

what kind of impact on your relkationship?

Jeff Smith · 6:39 PM

What about your other relationships with old friends, or with your family?

Herbie Gelman · 6:39 PM

well i would sometimes kind of just disappear for a few days at a time and it was before everyone had a cell phone so my girlfriend at the time would be understandably worried

Jeff Smith · 6:40 PM

um, ya

Jeff Smith · 6:40 PM

I think I remember a couple of your 72 benders

Herbie Gelman · 6:40 PM

well again this was all at the start and well before i was actually doing it full time and making a living

Herbie Gelman · 6:41 PM

i still remember the distinct smell of Hollywood Park

Jeff Smith · 6:41 PM

in which you wouldn't sleep, but would drink double jack and cokes for 3 days straight at the table

Herbie Gelman · 6:41 PM

haha yeah i quickly discovered that drinking and card playing is a deadly combination

Jeff Smith · 6:41 PM

so how did you transition from being a casual player who occasionally went on benders and lost just as often as you won, to a pro

Herbie Gelman · 6:41 PM

deadly to your bank account

Jeff Smith · 6:42 PM

yep. I'm pretty good after 4-5 drinks. after that it goes downhill, fast

Herbie Gelman · 6:42 PM

so i floated around in the card rooms for a year or so off and on and all of a sudden one day i discovered online poker and that changed everything

Jeff Smith · 6:42 PM

how so

Jeff Smith · 6:42 PM

just the chance to see so many hands, and follow your stats?

Herbie Gelman · 6:43 PM

now i could have those 72 hour benders in the comfort of my own home

Jeff Smith · 6:43 PM

LOL

Jeff Smith · 6:43 PM

and you didn't need a designated driver

Herbie Gelman · 6:44 PM

at the beginning of online poker again i was not really making money, but it shortened the learning curve drastically. playing live a decent player could take years to really get good whereas online you got the same experience in months

Jeff Smith · 6:44 PM

tell us about stat-keeping, which i think is criutical to becoming a player who wins consistently

Herbie Gelman · 6:44 PM

the number of hands i was seeing per hour probably increased by 10 at the beginning and as i started playing multiple games at once it went up probably 100x

Jeff Smith · 6:45 PM

how does one concentrate when you are playing 15 tables at once?>?

Jeff Smith · 6:45 PM

and can you give us a few of your secrets?

Herbie Gelman · 6:46 PM

so i treated online poker like a business, i decided if i was going to be serious about it i wanted to make sure i had as much info as possible and kept track of everything to try and learn from my mistakes

Jeff Smith · 6:46 PM

that's smart

Jeff Smith · 6:46 PM

what were some of your biggest mistakes in the early years?

Herbie Gelman · 6:47 PM

re 15 tables at once, it is important to understand that does not happen overnight. for a long time i played 1 or 2 tables, would get comfortable and add in another game. the more experience u had the more u could add. ultimately it was always about

Herbie Gelman · 6:47 PM

trying to determine your optimal $/hour which meant sometimes having a smaller ROI per game but a larger volume of games played

Jeff Smith · 6:47 PM

yep

Jeff Smith · 6:48 PM

because i'm guessing the best players - often other pros - played the higher limit games

Herbie Gelman · 6:48 PM

man the biggest mistake i would make early on, which is the mistake most players make, is playing above your bankroll

Jeff Smith · 6:48 PM

when I have played online, I typically play a lower limit table than I'd play in a casino to try to avoid running up againt pros

Herbie Gelman · 6:49 PM

the most difficult thing to do is stay even keeled emotionally especially when u are losing

Jeff Smith · 6:49 PM

like i play 1-2 NL cash games, even though that's a lower level than i'd play in casinos, because the game is wilder online

Herbie Gelman · 6:49 PM

so often times i would have a significant downswing and try and move up stakes to "try and get even"

Jeff Smith · 6:49 PM

talk to us about staying emotionally stablke

Herbie Gelman · 6:49 PM

which is just the worst thing u can do and more often resulted in larger loses

Jeff Smith · 6:50 PM

god, the whole idea of trying to "get even" is such a diasaster, but so hard to resist psychologically

Herbie Gelman · 6:50 PM

well i am prob one of the worst people to talk about emotional stability lol

Jeff Smith · 6:50 PM

explain

Jeff Smith · 6:50 PM

so how did you turn it around? discipline yourself?

Herbie Gelman · 6:51 PM

that is prob what i struggled with more than anything. i just took everything so personally and every loss would stay with me whereas big wins would almost instantly vanish from my mind

Jeff Smith · 6:51 PM

by using your stats - which the online poker programs keep for you - to see where you were calling way too many flops or turns, or losing too high a percentage of showdowns?

Jeff Smith · 6:51 PM

and it's sort of like a drug in that way

Herbie Gelman · 6:51 PM

i read an interesting study years ago that said a loss usually hurts people twice as much as a win feels good

Jeff Smith · 6:51 PM

you need more and more to sustain the same type oif highs, but the troughs get deeper and deeper

Jeff Smith · 6:52 PM

yes, there are actually economics and political science experiments which confirm that

Jeff Smith · 6:52 PM

and explain why most are risk averse

Herbie Gelman · 6:52 PM

exactly and because even the best players in the world win only about 60% of the time u just have so much loss to deal with

Jeff Smith · 6:53 PM

and yet - despite the despair and anger of the lows hurting so much more than the pleasure of the highs - you did this 10-12 hours a day for nearly a decade

Herbie Gelman · 6:53 PM

when i looked at the best players in the world (phil ivey, Daniel negreanu etc) the one thing i always noticed is their ability to stay emotionless

Jeff Smith · 6:53 PM

and it's funny because you sure good at that in relationships lol

Jeff Smith · 6:53 PM

(at least acc to some of your exes)

Herbie Gelman · 6:54 PM

if i had to say the one thing that really separates the top tier players from the mid level winners is this ability to control your emotions

Jeff Smith · 6:54 PM

(Herbie is now happily married, to the shock of most of his lifelong friends)

Jeff Smith · 6:54 PM

yep

Jeff Smith · 6:54 PM

i think that's right

Jeff Smith · 6:54 PM

how did you learn?

Jeff Smith · 6:54 PM

you are telling us important stuff, but explain how you developed the discipline to stay even keeled?

Herbie Gelman · 6:54 PM

well i just worked and worked on it and even if i was often boiling inside i managed to learn to let it go

Jeff Smith · 6:55 PM

so let'

Jeff Smith · 6:55 PM

so let's dig into some poker strategies

Herbie Gelman · 6:55 PM

to be honest i never truly ever got to a place i felt i needed to in order to really be successful

Herbie Gelman · 6:55 PM

i was successful but never to the level i had hoped

Jeff Smith · 6:56 PM

you hoped to just consistently make 6 figures a year without a worry

Herbie Gelman · 6:57 PM

well i had hoped (like a lot of pros) to be able to make it to the larger stage playing the biggest tournaments but i never really had the right head for it

Jeff Smith · 6:57 PM

at your peak, you were playing what, a dozen $500 heads-up games simultaneously?

Herbie Gelman · 6:57 PM

and honestly what i soon realized is a lot of what people see on tv is kind of a sham

Jeff Smith · 6:58 PM

the Poker After Dark on TV is kind of a sham because they filter our 90+% of the hands and only show you the dramatic ones?

Herbie Gelman · 6:58 PM

at my peak i was playing 15-20 single table tournaments (also known as sit-n-goes) at once

Jeff Smith · 6:59 PM

damn, 20 at once

Herbie Gelman · 6:59 PM

what i mean by sham is that the general public has this perception that the best pros are making millions in tournaments each year and that is just not true

Jeff Smith · 6:59 PM

because the general public doesn't see all the losses

Herbie Gelman · 7:00 PM

what is always published is how much someone made in a year, so it might say Daniel Neagreanu made 2 million last year in winnings but fails to mention he had 1,950,000 in buy ins and god knows how much in travel expenses

Jeff Smith · 7:00 PM

yep ye

Jeff Smith · 7:01 PM

so you had a few great years, grinding it out at those sit n go's, playing hundreds of tourneys in a day

Herbie Gelman · 7:01 PM

in the old days i used to hear top players had a 100% ROI in tournaments and that may have been close to true 10-15 years ago. but nowadays the best best players in the world prob are about 5-10% if that

Jeff Smith · 7:01 PM

makes sense

Jeff Smith · 7:01 PM

and so you were comfortable for a while, making six figures, and then what changed, do you think?

Herbie Gelman · 7:01 PM

yeah so anyway, when i was at my best i would play prob 60-80 hours a week

Herbie Gelman · 7:02 PM

and would be considered a mid-stakes grinder

Herbie Gelman · 7:02 PM

no one really knew who i was, outside of a handful of other online regulars, but i was a consistent winner year after year

Jeff Smith · 7:03 PM

(grinder - someone who grinds away making a bit every day/wk/.month as opposed to a high-stakes tournament player who primarily enters big tourneys with high buy ins)

Herbie Gelman · 7:03 PM

i found my niche and just tried to play a large volume, almost like a day trader

Jeff Smith · 7:03 PM

your anonymity helped

Jeff Smith · 7:03 PM

because you could keep getting games, for years, right?

Herbie Gelman · 7:03 PM

so i would play heads-up and single table tournaments all day long

Jeff Smith · 7:03 PM

and...it stopped. the action dried up. people sort of were on to you, and didn't wanna play anymore on the biggest poker site, right?

Herbie Gelman · 7:04 PM

yes re: anonymity. but what eventually happened was there were sites that came out that tracked everyones play and exposed all the best and worst players

Jeff Smith · 7:04 PM

ahhhh

Jeff Smith · 7:04 PM

and then strangers could see how well you were doing and avoided you

Jeff Smith · 7:04 PM

and tried to play the fish

Herbie Gelman · 7:05 PM

well more than anything the games just became too tough. overall because of online poker so many young players were learning and becoming top tier players in just months and basically flooded the market

Jeff Smith · 7:05 PM

huh

Herbie Gelman · 7:05 PM

and there were so many learning tools you could use to analyze your game

Herbie Gelman · 7:06 PM

so eventually the games became 90% regulars playing against each other

Jeff Smith · 7:06 PM

so perhaps your greatest feat as a poker play, other than a few very big tourney paydays, was when you became an online poker vigilante of sorts

Herbie Gelman · 7:06 PM

and when you have virtually equal skill level u all get killed by the rake (the cut the house takes)

Herbie Gelman · 7:07 PM

well because the games were so tough and the amount i was earning per game was so low i had to be vigilante about monitoring the games to make sure people were not colluding

Herbie Gelman · 7:07 PM

Pokerstars has theirown internal security team but often times they would not be able to catch everyone

Jeff Smith · 7:07 PM

(colluding - other players surreptitiously teaming up and cheating by playing side by side, or chatting about their hands in another window)

Herbie Gelman · 7:07 PM

exactly

Jeff Smith · 7:08 PM

so you suspected widespread cheating on what was then the world's largest online poker site?

Herbie Gelman · 7:08 PM

which could drastically hurt your chances in a game

Jeff Smith · 7:08 PM

hell yeah it could

Herbie Gelman · 7:09 PM

so at one point i was the largest volume player in a brand new type of single table tournament that Pokerstars introduced called "Double or Nothings"

Herbie Gelman · 7:09 PM

i would play 15 or so at a time and play for sometimes 10-12 hours straight

Jeff Smith · 7:09 PM

(imagine this: you have QQ, and the flop comes AK10, and your two partners with whom you are chatting tell you that they folded J7 and jq off suit, which means you likely won't make your set or your straight)

Herbie Gelman · 7:10 PM

i knew the other regulars and knew what the top players ROIs were. all of a sudden i started to notice a lot of players from random small cities in China

Jeff Smith · 7:10 PM

(then you would know to drop your hand, even though it's reasonably strong, because of the info you have about the cards left in the deck)

Jeff Smith · 7:10 PM

huh

Herbie Gelman · 7:11 PM

then over the next few months i started seeing more and more of them and often times in games there would be 3-5 out of the 10 players at the table all from these cities in china

Jeff Smith · 7:11 PM

and you're like, i know they have 1.5B people but this is a little ricid

Jeff Smith · 7:11 PM

ridic

Herbie Gelman · 7:11 PM

so i started to keep a log of all the names and would cross-reference who was playing with who

Herbie Gelman · 7:12 PM

they were smart about it because they opened hundreds of accounts and often times one of the accounts would only play a few times with the other accounts

Herbie Gelman · 7:12 PM

but when i had it all laid out in front of me the entire scope of it became clear

Jeff Smith · 7:13 PM

the funny thing about poker, is that its a game based on deception, but there is a really code among serious players

Jeff Smith · 7:13 PM

you know?

Jeff Smith · 7:13 PM

sort of an honor among thieves type of thing ;)

Herbie Gelman · 7:13 PM

yes def. i will say poker has a bad reputation but there are a lot of honorable people. just like any industry that involves large amounts of money there will always be those looking to cheat

Jeff Smith · 7:14 PM

so you alerted the site's cybersecurity folks to what you had intuited

Herbie Gelman · 7:14 PM

i have become friends with some people that i met through poker that honestly i trust more than anyone else in my life

Jeff Smith · 7:14 PM

wow

Jeff Smith · 7:15 PM

and what have you trusted them with?

Jeff Smith · 7:15 PM

this is people you just happened to meet online playing poker?

Herbie Gelman · 7:15 PM

yes, so i waited until i had compiled enough evidence and sent everything to their security dept

Herbie Gelman · 7:15 PM

yes people i met playing online poker and we eventually would meet at live tournaments like the world series of poker

Jeff Smith · 7:16 PM

and then stake each other

Herbie Gelman · 7:16 PM

i have trusted some of these people with sums of money i would never in a million years trust others with (you especially haha)

Jeff Smith · 7:16 PM

lol

Herbie Gelman · 7:17 PM

and a lot of times money is traded back and forth based on results that u don't always have proof of and just have to trust each other

Jeff Smith · 7:17 PM

i would take your money and take that s*it to a swiss bank faster than you can reraise someone

Jeff Smith · 7:17 PM

wow

Jeff Smith · 7:17 PM

that's a pretty deep level of trust

Herbie Gelman · 7:17 PM

and that is why u never get a transfer

Jeff Smith · 7:17 PM

that just developed over years of online play together?

Herbie Gelman · 7:18 PM

yeah it is hard to explain but i built bonds with people i never would have imagined and often times did not meet them in person for years

Jeff Smith · 7:18 PM

wow. so I'd like to wrap up by asking you a few serious questions

Herbie Gelman · 7:18 PM

but would trust them like a brother

Jeff Smith · 7:18 PM

wow, that's great

Herbie Gelman · 7:18 PM

ok real quick let me just finish

Herbie Gelman · 7:19 PM

about the cheating ring

Jeff Smith · 7:19 PM

i had this guy named steve i once felt that way about

Jeff Smith · 7:19 PM

lol

Jeff Smith · 7:19 PM

yes finish about the cheating tring

Herbie Gelman · 7:20 PM

so it took Pokerstars months to investigate but in the end they shut down hundreds of these Chinese accounts and discovered that they had won between 1-2 million dollars

Jeff Smith · 7:20 PM

whoa!

Herbie Gelman · 7:20 PM

most of the money they had already cashed out

Jeff Smith · 7:20 PM

but you potentially saved people millions more

Herbie Gelman · 7:20 PM

but i will say that Pokerstars has always made these types of situations right and they paid out all the money stolen back to the players that were the victimes

Herbie Gelman · 7:20 PM

victims

Jeff Smith · 7:21 PM

wow

Herbie Gelman · 7:21 PM

even though they had not recovered it

Jeff Smith · 7:21 PM

how much did they send you, if you don't mind me asking?

Herbie Gelman · 7:21 PM

so all of a sudden one morning without notice thousands and thousands of players received a deposit into their accounts

Herbie Gelman · 7:22 PM

i received the highest amount only because i had actually played in the most games with them out of anyone on the entire site

Herbie Gelman · 7:22 PM

i received about $25,000

Jeff Smith · 7:22 PM

wow, nice

Jeff Smith · 7:22 PM

classy site

Jeff Smith · 7:22 PM

so look man

Herbie Gelman · 7:22 PM

but it felt really good to be part of taking them down and getting all that money back to the vistims

Jeff Smith · 7:22 PM

you spent a decade of your life playing poker 10-12 hrs a day

Herbie Gelman · 7:22 PM

yes

Jeff Smith · 7:23 PM

was that a wasted decade, or did you learn important things from it? you've already suggested that you made lifel;ong friends who are like brothers

Jeff Smith · 7:23 PM

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Herbie Gelman · 7:24 PM

i def don't consider it a wasted decade, i learned a lot about myself and ultimately i feel i am a better person because of it

Jeff Smith · 7:24 PM

how so?

Herbie Gelman · 7:24 PM

i also feel like it wasa very unhealthy lifestyle

Jeff Smith · 7:24 PM

more disciplined? more even keeled?

Herbie Gelman · 7:24 PM

and i am much happier now that i am not playing for a living

Jeff Smith · 7:24 PM

yeah

Jeff Smith · 7:24 PM

have you read agassi's bio?

Jeff Smith · 7:25 PM

by the time he was like 12 yrs old, he already despised tennis

Herbie Gelman · 7:25 PM

now i have been working a 9-5 job for the past 2 years, which i never thought i would do again, but i have to say the stability is so refreshing

Jeff Smith · 7:25 PM

his dad forced him to play, and i can imagine thew feeling of having to play to make a living can sap one's love of poker

Herbie Gelman · 7:25 PM

playing poker had its freedom but was way more stressful than i could have imagined

Herbie Gelman · 7:26 PM

yeah killed my love of the game completely

Jeff Smith · 7:26 PM

it has to wreck your f*cking nerves to be getting married to a beautiful girlk and know that a few bad beats could mean you don't have rent money

Jeff Smith · 7:26 PM

i mean, because let's be honest man: when you made it, you spent it!

Herbie Gelman · 7:26 PM

now that i have been removed from it for 2 years i do now find myself starting to love playing recreationally again

Herbie Gelman · 7:26 PM

yeah playing poker just kills all your respect for money

Jeff Smith · 7:27 PM

if nothing else, when you were winning you helped a lot of strippers through college; you have to feel good about that.

Herbie Gelman · 7:27 PM

and naturally i was not a big saver lol

Jeff Smith · 7:27 PM

well look, hopefully we can play recreationally sometime soon, even though we're 3000 miles away

Herbie Gelman · 7:27 PM

re strippers, just felt like i was doing my duty to stimulate the economy

Jeff Smith · 7:27 PM

"huh-huh, he said 'stimulate'"

Jeff Smith · 7:27 PM

anyway

Jeff Smith · 7:28 PM

I really appreciate you explaining more about what it's like behind the scenes of the world of professional poker - not always as glamorous as it may seem under the TV lights

Herbie Gelman · 7:29 PM

its definitely a hard way to make an easy living

Jeff Smith · 7:29 PM

haha. i actually learned a lot and am happy that you've got a healthier lifestyle now that you are married with twins, but also that you are redevloping your intrinsic love of the game

Herbie Gelman · 7:29 PM

as am i my friend

Jeff Smith · 7:30 PM

so hopefully we can play sometime soon. thanks again for enlightening us, and take care my friend.

Herbie Gelman · 7:30 PM

thanks for having me, i will be happy to take your money anytime. you know what they say, a fool and his money.....

Jeff Smith · 7:31 PM

trust me, i work a half mile from Wall Street - that's their world view summed up in 5 words