Brian Hastings is a longtime poker pro who currently resides in Los Angeles, CA. He has over $5,000,000 in career live tournament earnings and has played many different forms of poker, currently focusing mainly on No-Limit Hold’em tournaments and cash games.
Hastings has won six WSOP bracelets in six different games (Heads-up No-Limit Holdem, Stud, Stud Hi/Lo, 2-7 Triple Draw, HORSE, and 10-Game Mix). He's also a coach and trainer at Run It Once and is also available for private coaching at Octopi Poker.
What’s one bit of essential prep you do before any big tournament or cash game session?
I've been on my new kind of pregame routine after reading Elliott Roe’s book, A-Game Poker, so there are a few things. One is meditating, getting my mind right. I also make sure I take care of my body, whether that's a workout or getting enough food for energy, etc. Then I work on activating my mind as well, by looking at some kind of poker strategy before actually playing hands for money. Reviewing some spots on GTO Trainer can be great.
What piece of strategy advice did you get when you first started playing that you wish you had ignored?
It would have to be stuff I read in some of the early poker books. I remember reading in a book or two about how 
is a bad hand. It was a hand to be avoided because it's too much of a trap.
Most certainly people can overplay it and get themselves in trouble, but I don't think that's the way to think about poker hands. Hands have an amount of value that's good to properly assess what that might be in a moment, but that doesn't mean it should be avoided at all costs.
What's the dumbest thing you've ever seen or done at the poker table?
It's not something I saw at the table, but I heard about that one guy a few years ago at the WSOP that was drunk and whipped ‘it’ out.
As far as myself goes, many years ago I was playing at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, in a cash game. Everybody at the table was drinking and I decided to partake as well. The next thing I knew was I woke up in my hotel room the next day and I looked in my safe: there was no money in there, but there should have been.
I walked over to the poker room and the one of the employees greeted me, called me over and said they had bagged my stack for me - about $25,000 - and just held it for me. Clearly, I had blacked out: I didn’t have any memory of this. I'd woken up, saw no money in the safe, and assumed I had gotten stacked for the cash I had on me during the game. The casino staff handing me my money was a lot better than thinking I had gotten felted.
What's your most memorable hand?
I was playing $500/$1k NL with Guy Laliberté, an owner and founder of Cirque du Soleil. I had decided to take a shot in that high-stakes game; it was too late to message anyone to take a piece of me, so I had all of myself in the game.
One of the Dang brothers was playing, and raised in the cutoff. I three-bet on the button with . Guy called from the blinds and then Dang went all-in. I went all-in. Guy called. It was roughly a $300,000 pot. Dang had 
. Guy had 
suited, and the flop came 
.
Suffice it to say, I did not win that pot.
What's your single best piece of advice for players?
Poker is not a get rich quick scheme. If you want to succeed at poker you need to put in the work.
If you owned a poker room, who's the first player you'd want to sign as an ambassador, and why?
It would have to be Daniel Negreanu. I think he just has the most reach within the poker community. When I talk to friends who are casual poker players, he's the one who comes up most often; he’s the one they would most want to meet.
Images courtesy of the WPT
