Alex Rousso is one of the Unibet Pro players you may have seen around the tables, distinguished by this label upon his shirt and, as you’ll see from his interview, a fascination with the strategy and statistics involved in the game – the ‘science of poker.’ His PhD in Social Sciences may have contributed to a drift from the family pickle business into the game as lifestyle, job and research interest, and he’s now to be found writing, playing Omaha, and heading live Boot Camps with the Bluff Poker Academy. He’ll be on the road with Unibet Open in 2010, with one eye on the prize and one on whatever his latest writing concern may be (he spent Budapest making notes on the number of players remaining per level, their changing attrition rate and the implications of the structure!). London-based, Rousso has finalled a good number of tournaments in his hometown in 2009, and is looking to continue this trend further afield in 2010.
How/when did you start playing poker? When did you start making proper money?
I played poker for pennies back at school but didn’t really know what I was doing. One day at the work poker night I had a hand where I had mid pair and was facing a bet. I thought to myself “this is ridiculous, I don’t have the first idea what to do!” Internet poker was just getting big (this was 2002), so I resolved to get online and get myself an education.
I put $300 in an online account and read Lee Jones’ “Winning Low Limit Hold Em” while playing. I read it through twice in 3 weeks, and went no more than $80 into the red playing $0.25/0.50 limit hold’em. By the end of the third week, I was back in the black and have never been in the red since.
I started making proper money around 2006 when I migrated to the then very juicy Omaha Hi/Lo. I was very unhappy running the family business (importing pickles – hence the name “Pickleman”) and noticed that in hourly rate terms I was actually making more money from poker than running the business. The business was sold in 2007 and here we are.
What is your niche/regular game? Why do you like it so much?
I play Pot Limit Omaha 6-max cash. I much prefer Omaha because it’s more mathematical and it has a very long learning curve – meaning that good players can find an edge as long as they keep one eye on game selection. Gamblers love the action of Omaha so as long as you can handle the volatility, the rewards are fantastic.
So many Hold em tournaments for example are just filled with players who know what they’re doing – how can you have an edge in that game? Granted, if someone picks up poker for the first time, they’ll play Hold Em not Omaha, so the real beginners are there, but I feel I have a much better control of my destiny playing cash games, and even more so playing PLO.
Who is Pickleman, and what is he all about? Where can I find his writing?
I write a monthly column for Bluff Europe and I also head the Bluff Europe Poker Academy, which runs poker seminars. At present, we’ve only done seminars in the UK and Ireland, but we’re hoping to be in Europe by the end of the year.
The column is supposed to be anything and everything poker, but I have to say I’ve focussed on research-based stuff more lately because that’s my background (I have a PhD in the social sciences). When I was starting out playing poker there were almost no studies to answer questions such as “What percentage of poker players are pros, and how many are losers?” and “How do you compare tournament structures?” My column is an attempt to answer questions such as those using real stats and research.
Although poker is my job I like to have fun playing. When I’m at a live tournament I always try to talk to people and have a laugh. My real job is playing the PLO cash games online. The tournaments are also about getting out of the house and meeting people!
What do you like about the Unibet Open tour, seeing as there is so much tournament action to choose from these days?
Well, if you’ve read any of my Unibet Open tournament reports you’ll know how much I love them and I’m chuffed to bits to be working with Unibet. They basically have the right attitude – let’s have some fun and play some poker. And the players – both the sponsored ones and the others – echo that sentiment. It’s a big happy family.
What do you think are the main things players should focus on when preparing for a live tournament?
If you want to take live tournament poker seriously, you’ve got to treat it like a sports event. Early nights, no drinking and lots of exercise (not easy at Unibet Open!). If you look at the interviews with James Akenhead on the Bluff Europe website, you’ll see what I mean. This is a guy who takes what he does seriously. By the way, those interviews were filmed before he made both WSOP ME final tables and won Poker Million.
How do you organise playing online with writing for Bluff/yourself? Do you find the poker lifestyle is not compatible with doing other things?
The most difficult thing is synchronising one’s life with when the poker tables are juicy. On US-focussed sites, that’s usually early morning, and on European sites, it’s in the evening. That means sacrificing a few nights out with mates.
Live tournaments and our seminars are on weekends, so that can be a bit of a dealbreaker! Especially when you have to set aside an entire weekend for a tournament. If you bust out half way through day one, you now have an entire weekend free that you had earmarked for poker!
I love the writing and it’s easy to find time to do it when the tables aren’t so busy (usually during the day). Every time I sit in Costa coffee in Belsize Park with my laptop I think to myself “this is the life!”
You went out in a series of unlikely outdraws in Budapest, but took it with a smile – are you in danger of becoming a poker pessimist, or genuinely unaffected by the swings of the game?
You should try Omaha . . .
Seriously though, volatility is something that you (almost) get used to. There is definitely a sense of “been there, done that” when it comes to bad beats. Sure, every now and then, you’re tired, it’s the fifth time in a row that it’s happened, and to cap it all, you’re on life tilt right now too. In those situations, I can blow up, but I’m happy to say they happen far less frequently these days (and I’m very happy to say that poker has helped me immeasurably with life tilt, BTW).
Let me say that regardless of what anyone tells you, no one is immune from tilt and from feeling the emotional rollercoaster. You get better at dealing with it in time, however. When you’ve only played 10k hands a cooler such as over full versus quads can seem like somebody’s out to get you. Put in 500k hands and it won’t.
Can you give any advice on the mental attitude of the tournament player? How do you stabilise the emotional rollercoaster and stop tilt?
Well, play more hands so that you get used to it, as I say above. Beyond that, I’d say read the two books by Larry W. Phillips on Eastern philosophy and poker. There’s some sage advice there.
By the way, if you’re not getting used to it, you have a wider problem, and it’s probably to do with your life in general. Something, somewhere in your life involved or involves a great miscarriage of justice and you play probably play poker at some level in order to redress that balance. When that “system” fails because of a bad beat, you’re back to square one – poker has fulfilled the prophecy that life is unjust, and now you can rail against poker/howl at the moon for all its injustice. You know what to do: fix the original problem and the sense of injustice will go away.
Bit heavy on the old psychoanalysis, there, Al!
Another major, major factor is playing within your bankroll. So few players I know do it, but it’s absolutely central to maintaining an even keel. I’d advocate playing with a bankroll at least fifty times your cash game or tournament buy in. If you can’t do that, drop down the levels.
Put it another way. How the hell can a bad beat hurt you at $1/$2 if you have a bankroll of $50k? You’d just laugh and move on. Most players know about the dictum that a bad beat is basically the thing that keeps bad players in the game. Without bad beats, there would be no such thing as a professional poker player, end of story.
And if you are on a huge downswing, TAKE A BREAK AND REGROUP. Analyse your play. Do something else for a while. It’s very, very difficult to realise whether you’re tilting when you’re in the middle of a huge downswing.
Last of all, it’s a game. Enjoy it. If you’re not enjoying it, don’t play. And if it’s your job, remember that this is just your job. There are plenty of other things going on in your life and all of them are what you live for.
