Interview with NickyOD

[jimmii]

How did you start your poker career?

I think the first time I ever played a game of poker was stud poker heads up with my father as a teenager. We always had a deck of cards in the house and played for pennies. I didn’t know anything about poker math at the time or what the right hands were to play but I learned pretty quickly that I could tell when he was bluffing. I guess this was the first time I realised I might have a talent for the game even though it didn’t dawn on me until I was a lot older. In college I didn’t play much poker, it was always 45 or 110 but after college when I moved to Shannon in Co. Clare where there was quite a big 5 cards draw culture I played a lot. I remember winning £350 for coming first in the second 5 card draw tournament I ever played. That was more than a weeks wages at the time so this was the first time I began to consider poker as a possible way to make a lot of money, but soon afterwards I moved back to Limerick were there was never a strong poker culture and it was difficult to find a game. This was about 4 years ago when I first discovered internet poker and Texas Holdem. I spent the first 2 years online playing very small stakes just for entertainment and losing money before I started to read more and post on forums. I didn’t really begin to take it seriously until about 2 years ago when I was lucky enough to win over $2000 in a tournament on Paradise poker which probably wasn’t much more than the amount that I had lost over the previous 2 years. I guess this was the point at which my poker career really started.

Did you have any teachers?

Sort of. He was more of a mentor than a teacher. He is an American player who has recently had some major successes. I was playing a lot of limit Holdem cash games at the time. Over all I was doing quite well and holding my own at 5/10 and 10/20 Limit, but I had periods where I really struggled and he helped me with my strategy and most importantly with my confidence. When you begin to take poker seriously it can be very frustrating. It can be a real struggle when you’re running badly. You want to take your game to the next level and it infuriates you when it doesn’t happen as fast as you’d like it to. If you don’t have someone to talk to who has been there I can’t imagine how difficult it must be.

How did you know it was time to play professionally?

By the summer in 2005 I had been working in a very secure and very good IT job for about 5 years. I had broken up with my ex-fiancé about a year beforehand and was going through quite a tough period in my personal life. Working in IT didn’t interest me any more and I didn’t feel motivated enough to try and further my career or my qualifications. I knew I needed to make drastic changes to my life for the sake of my own health and my future so I took a huge gamble and quit my IT job with nothing else to fall back on but my poker earnings. At that point I had gone through a period of about six months where I was making the same amount from poker in my spare time so financially I was in good shape. It didn’t feel like such a huge risk at the time because I felt like I had nothing to lose. I knew if I stayed in the job I was in I would go crazy and I didn’t want to be one of those people who stayed in a dead end job because they didn’t have the courage to follow their dreams. If down the road things didn’t work out people would say I was very stupid but that didn’t matter to me because I was very proud of myself for rolling the dice. It’s like when you gamble on a big draw in poker, you have to shove all your chips in the middle and have no regrets about it when you get called, miss and go bust. You know you did the right thing and that’s all that matters. You only get one life and it’s very short.

What do you consider the most important thing for new players to learn?

I think poker is something that can’t actually be taught to a lot of people. Some new players have it within them to be great but they just haven’t been shown how. Other players will be awful at poker all of their life because they are just not logical thinkers. I think the first thing a new player should learn is a solid, tight preflop strategy. If you are playing small stakes this alone will be enough to beat the game because you are basically playing better hands than your opponents and on average should have the best hand at a showdown. Playing more hands and being more aggressive is something you can only learn how to do effectively once you have mastered how to play tight.

How much do you play, on average, per week?

At the moment, I’m not playing very much at all. There was a time when I played 35-40 hours online per week which was really unhealthy, as well as weekends away to live tournaments but I just got totally burnt out from it. I don’t think you should play full time unless you can comfortably survive by playing 25-30 hours a week, and have plenty of free time to spend on other hobbies and be around other human beings. Part of the reason why you should consider playing full time is the freedom it gives you so it’s important that you take advantage of that freedom instead of sitting on your backside all the time.

What do you think are the best and worst things about being a poker pro?

There are a lot of positives. I’ve already mentioned the freedom factor. I’ve met some interesting and famous people through poker and made a lot of close friends. I love to travel. I’ve been to Vienna and Vegas this year and had a blast on both trips.

As for negatives, well, poker is definitely a very volatile occupation. If you are having a bad run of luck then it’s very stressful. It’s taken years of experience for me to learn how to remain calm after long losing streak. The most obvious negative is the financial risk involved which is why bankroll management is important and why you should always have something else to fall back on. This is something in recent months after my trip to Vegas that even I haven’t been conscious enough of.

What do you think you'd be doing if you weren't a poker pro?

That’s a really tough question. I had always thought that I was clever enough to do anything if I put my mind to it, but recently I’ve realised that there aren’t a lot of things that would hold my interest long enough for me to think about them as a career. I’ll definitely never go back to working in IT. I find it quite difficult to have to answer to other people in a working environment so what ever I do I think I have to either be my own boss or boss other people around.

And finally, what are your poker plans for the future?

I had never planned on playing poker for a living forever. I want to have a bigger involvement in Irish poker, hopefully as a TD or as a card room manager some time in the near future and have already put some plans in place to make that happen.

As for my playing career I definitely won’t be going out of my way to buy straight into too many major events. I think in the last year or so people have come to realise the value of a lot of these events isn’t very good and prefer to win a satellite or just make the bulk of their money online. I will definitely travel to Vegas again next year and will be devastated if I don’t play in the main event. Eventually I hope to have enough money to make a run at being a ranked player on the European circuit. That’s a hell of a long way off considering how little I’ve played recently but I know I'm good enough and I guess its important to set yourself big targets however unrealistic other people might think they are.

You can read more about Nicky and his poker exploits at http://nickyodpoker.blogspot.com/ . Its well worth checking out if you haven't already.

[maccermaccer]

Nice interview lads. Best of luck with plans for the future Nicky. How did your meet your mentor? And in what ways did he help you (...going through hand histories etc)?

[NickyOD]

Originally Posted by maccermaccer

Nice interview lads. Best of luck with plans for the future Nicky. How did your meet your mentor? And in what ways did he help you (...going through hand histories etc)?

He went through HH with me. 90% of the time he'd tell me I played the hand fine, and that I just got unlucky which is usually the case with limit holdem. It's relaly swingy. I met him on an american forum that I used to post a lot on and at the time we were both the same age, playing the same stakes and considering quitting our jobs so that's how we got talking. Since then I've gone broke and he's won the million GTd on Party Poker and made 2 WPT final tables.

[Zen Poker]

Nicky you're a gent. Fair play for livin the dream...

[maccermaccer]

Originally Posted by NickyOD

Since then I've gone broke and he's won the million GTd on Party Poker and made 2 WPT final tables.

ty. have a little faith, you dont survive 2/3 years on positive variance. you'll come back fine (and probably even better) so keep going, some of us need a couple a real pros to aspire to. .