High-stakes crusher and Poker Hall of Fame member Brian Rast joins PokerOrg this weekend for the latest edition of our in-depth series The Interview - available on Sunday right here, on YouTube and all the usual podcast platforms.
Our extensive talk with Rast includes a look back at his experiences in the exclusive environs of Bobby’s Room - now known as the Legends Room - the high-stakes cardroom at the Bellagio which many of the game’s best players considered a home-from-home.
When Rast decided to shift his focus over to mixed-games, and spend less time playing the no-limit hold’em (NLHE) and pot-limit omaha (PLO) games in which he excelled, it was the players in Bobby’s Room who would be his teachers.
Brian shares his story below.
I went through a mode where I'm, like, ‘Man, I don't really want to study solver theory for no-limit hold’em’, so I kind of moved over and refocused, ‘I'm just going to play mixed and think really hard about how I'm supposed to play’.
I've started to appreciate studying and talking about theory and applying that to my game, and my no-limit hold’em game has made some improvements in the last year or two for that reason, but my favorite part of poker isn't really that. My favorite part is when I just play hands and sit there and think really hard about hands that I've played; what does this mean about how I'm supposed to play my range here, and my opponent and what is he doing, is there a way I can exploit it? Having all these thoughts go through my head.
Ever since the beginning of my career live play has always appealed to me, because when you play live you have time in between hands to just think. And so some of my time at the table would be like my study time, where I'm actually sitting there thinking about hands that I just played and how I should play them and if I did play them right, and how my opponent's playing and how to exploit that. That's kind of my favorite part, and getting into mixed games just helped me keep doing that for longer.
I learned a lot about mixed games in Bobby’s Room. Razz was one of Doyle Brunson's best games for sure, so I learned a lot watching him play razz especially. John Hennigan, an amazing stud high and stud-8 player; David Oppenheim in limit hold’em, and he is an amazing razz player as well; Ray Dehkargani at O8… a lot of them are great, especially at limit games.
Doyle was an amazing razz player - rest in peace, Doyle Brunson. One thing that was remarkable about him is, I played with a lot of people in their 70s or 80s, and usually people aren't probably as sharp then as they maybe were when they were 50 or 40. I would joke with him at the table, like, ‘Doyle, how damn good were you when you were 40 years old, brother, because you play pretty damn good at 84!’
[For NLHE and PLO] I didn't really learn anything other than how to exploit these guys when I played in Bobby's Room. Let me give you an example: I wouldn't do it when it would be seven-handed but when it would be five or six-handed in PLO, let's say the game’s $2K/$4K, it'd be a 40 big blind cap of $40K. I would straddle for $2K dead, and it increases the cap to $60K. I started doing it almost all the time in most lineups, as long as certain people weren't playing, like Patrick [Antonius] for example, I wouldn't do it if he was in the game - he's a very good PLO player.
It got to the point where these guys realized I was probably +EV straddling and were complaining about me, like, ‘Are you allowed to do that?’ They wouldn't want to sit to my right, they'd want to move because they didn’t want my straddle on their big blind, it was hilarious.
So yeah, I wasn't really learning much about how to play PLO back in 2015 at Bobby's Room, but for almost all the limit games it was like this awesome crash course. I was there watching a lot of the best mixed game players in the world just play hands, and getting to learn on the fly by watching, and it helped my game out immensely.
When I first started playing in Bobby's Room, I don't know if I was +EV or not, but I was in there, I did fine, and then pretty quickly I started winning. It was like, I have this huge edge in two games [NLHE and PLO] and in the other games I was learning super-quick on the fly, so it was pretty sweet.
Brian Rast’s full edition of The Interview with Craig Tapscott is available from Sunday. You can check out other recent episodes below.
Additional images courtesy of Enrique Ivan Malfavon/Anthony Mair
