Introduction and AMA (Ask Me Anything) about being a Professional Poker and Daily Fantasy Sports Player (Cross Post from Poker Section)
Hi!
My name is Ryan Daut, I'm 32 years old, and I'm a professional poker and daily fantasy sports player living in California. I grew up in NJ, went to college at the University of Richmond on a full mathematics scholarship, double majored in Math and Computer Science, did a short stint of a math PhD program at Penn State University before dropping out full time to play poker in 2007 and have been a professional gambler ever since.
More of a bullet point timeline of my adult gaming/gambling life:
-was a semi-competitive Starcraft: Brood Wars player in high school. At my peak was maybe the 10th best player in the USA, was captain of Team USA for a year before being unceremoniously impeached due to me being awful at being captain of Team USA. I am not a good leader.
-a friend of mine was the best player in the USA, moved to Korea to play professionally, but unfortunately for him and everyone else outside of Korea, the Koreans were much better, so he took up poker, started making lots of money, and convinced other Starcraft players to start playing.
-I deposited $45 online during my Junior year of college (2005). After 6 months I had turned it into $500. 6 months later, as I was graduating from Undergrad, my bankroll was up to $10,000, so I decided to play poker all summer instead of getting a job and then continue on with my PhD program
-Over that summer I made another $50,000 playing poker, but decided to continue with my schooling because I was paid to go to Penn State since I would be teaching undergraduate math classes alongside my own studies.
-Made another $50,000 that first semester and did poorly in my own classes (nobody told me Cs were a failing grade in grad school), but decided to finish out the school year before making decisions about the future.
-Over winter break, I traveled to the Bahamas to play in a World Poker Tour (WPT) event. It drew 937 players and I won it for just over $1.5 million. Despite winning the tournament, I managed to be on the losing end of one of the most famous hands in live poker history
-I immediately quit teaching classes, gradually stopped going to my own classes, eventually dropped out later that semester, and began playing poker full time without any other commitments.
-I started a poker backing business with Victor Goossens (owner of TeamLiquid.net, a successful Starcraft fan site and gaming team), where we stake players for live and online tournaments and receive a % of their winnings. We backed 2 WSOP (world series of poker) bracelet winners, a WPT winner, an EPT (european poker tour) winner, numerous other big live and online scores, and also some players that also us a bunch of money, and some others who scammed or stole from us. Once again, I am not a good leader
-On April 15, 2011 (called black friday), the US department of justice indicted the major poker sites operating in the US, so in August of that year I rented an apartment in Vancouver, Canada to continue playing poker.
-After black friday, the difficulty of winning at poker increased at a much more rapid rate. By the end of 2013 I was making a fraction of what I had in previous years, and by the end of 2014 I was transitioning over to Daily Fantasy Sports because that became more profitable for me than poker.
-I now play DFS full time, concentrating in NBA (pro basketball), NFL (pro football), PGA (pro golf), and MLB (baseball), and with the exception of my big WPT win in poker, am making more money in DFS than I ever did in poker (am up roughly $900k in the 18 months I've done this).
Nowadays
my hobbies include having my life run by an 8 pound toy yorkie named Boo, falling off of climbing/bouldering walls, taking astrophysics classes, learning everything I can about cryptocurrency (including unsuccessfully day trading Ethereum and Ethereum Classic), losing money in daily fantasy baseball because it's the worst, watching sports such as MMA/tennis/golf/basketball/football/boxing, and seeing how many episodes of Archer my girlfriend and I can stay awake for after consuming edibles.
Ask me anything about playing poker professionally, the poker staking industry, poker in general, daily fantasy sports, season long fantasy sports, sports in general, or anything else you think I would be qualified or unqualified to answer.
Will tell the story of my most soul crushing moment. It's hard to put in perspective, and very hard to relate to, especially given that I cashed for 192k in a tournament in a very good year for me overall, but it was so soul crushing that I was sick for a week afterwards and have barely played live tournaments since then.
In December of 2007, same year as the PCA, the Bellagio has a tournament series they call the 5 diamond. It's a series of ~15-20 tournaments culminating with a $15k buyin WPT event. I played 6 or 7 events leading up, think I had 1 small cash but nothing else. We started the main with 30k in chips and I ended day 1 with 20k, not good. I had a favorable table draw day 2 and chipped up all day to end with over 100k, survived day 3 and 4, and at the start of day 5 won a huge pot with AA v KK against Daniel Negreanu with ~22 players left. Pretty quickly into day 5 I'm chipleader and most of the other top players get eliminated. I make the final table 10 2nd in chips and am coasting to a FT spot with 40-50bb and a bunch of short stacks present. First I lose JJ to the Ax of Eugene Katchalov (the eventual winner) for about 1/4 my stack. Then I lose AJo vs KK to the late Devilfish (RIP) in a hand I probably made a mistake in. He raised UTG which he had done a few times (but at the same time he had been tight overall) with 12-15bb and I shoved from the BB when I probably should have just peeled and seen a flop. Then I lost 88 vs the AQ of Raymond Davis and all of a sudden I went from 2/7 to 7/7 with 5bb remaining. The payouts were something along the lines of 2.5M, 1.2M, 600k, 400k, 300k, 190k, 170k, and the previous payouts were also rather flat (I don't think there was much of an increase from 12 to 6). I didn't tilt shove in my chips but I was mentally devastated, folded some garbage hands and luckily someone else busted before it reached my big blind so I made the FT 6/6 with 4 big blinds left. First hand of the tv table I lose AJ v 88 to bust and went from likely having about 900k in stack equity to cashing for 192k over the course of 4 hands. No one bad luck hand did me in and I didn't punt off my chips, it was a combination of one iffy play and 3 unlucky losses.
It was the combination of everything that really got to me:
-that I finished exactly 6th, the last spot of the flatter payouts before they really got big. 4th place was over double my payout but 6th place was less than double 15th place
payouts listed here: http://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/event.php?a=r&n=29206
-that i lost a 70/30 with 7 left to the eventual winner
-that the final 9 players were relatively weak compared to the final 26: Vivek Rajkumar, Gus Hansen, Mikael Thuritz (one of the best 8 game players in the world), Huck Seed, Peter Jetten (great NL player), Todd Brunson, Negreanu, John Monnette, Erick Lindgren all bust between 26th and 10th, and at the time I thought I was the best player remaining (Eugene Katchalov is a fantastic player, but I didn't know him at the time)
-that no one big hand did me in, but rather 4 hands all in preflop
I flew home and laid in bed for a week before feeling better. I despise bad beat stories and despise complaining about bad luck in a game of skill, particularly in a year where I won one of the bigger tournaments that ran, but I've never felt so soul crushed by anything. Poker is a tough game to deal with the mental swings, even for those who have been lucky and are doing well.
Which have you enjoyed more as a professional: poker during its height or DFS during it height? It terms of enjoyment/lifestyle and profitability.
also do you ever play NHL DFS? any small advice? :)
I prefer DFS. Regimented schedule and more profitable for me.
I don't play NHL, it's too hard to do NHL and NBA at the same time
Forget the talk about Poker. I wanna hear more about STARCRAFT!!!!
Terran lives matter.
Haha, Starcraft was my first love. Well, I suppose my second love after baseball, but I was obsessed for years. I could talk for hours about my Starcraft story, but I'll tell you my most memorable Starcraft experience.
I made WCG USA finals back in 2003 and was eliminated by Day[9], otherwise known as Sean Plott. At the time he wasn't that well known, but within a couple years was the best player in the country and now is an international hero. We became friends and stayed in touch, mostly talking about poker. Sean was actually a pretty good player but decided gaming was his passion and pursued his Day[9] dailies and other interests instead.
Anyway, back in 2008 I was in California for a poker tournament. Sean was going to college at Harvey Mudd University, and a mutual buddy of ours and I went out to visit him. We were hanging out in his dorm and all of a sudden he goes "hey, there's an on game star league final tonight, I'm going to take over an auditorium on campus and do commentary, want to come?" Of course we both said yes. This is before he ever recorded a daily or did any commentary or his brother moved to Korea to do commentary.
HMC is a little university full of brilliant but eccentric people. Sean takes us to this auditorium, sets up his laptop on the projector feed and starts telling our buddy and I about the players in the finals. Gradually the auditorium starts to fill up. There must have been 20-30 people in that room listening to Sean commentate games. I'm pretty sure none of them played Starcraft competitively, Sean is just so incredibly captivating that he had everyone in the room excited and on the edge of their seat for the entire finals.
I haven't talked to Sean in years, he's busy doing all of his stuff, but every time I watch a daily and see how enthusiastic and engaging he is, I think back to that auditorium when he just did it for fun and realized what a brilliant, special person he is.
I don't remember off hand, but I want to see the finals was Jaedong vs Bisu and Bisu won 3-0??? It's been 8 years, I can't remember exactly, but I do remember a new protoss early expansion strategy taking off after that, mostly with a corsair followup. What a revolutionary strategy
I think you meant 2004.
http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/WCG_2004
This was definitely 07-08 but I can't remember who played. A protoss won 3-0 using an early expand to corsair strategy. One of the maps was lost temple, could probably remember the others if I saw layouts. I'll revisit this question on Monday when I have a computer to dig deeper
I found it: Bisu beat Savior 3:0 in the MSL finals on 3/3/2007.
Bisu vs Savior 2007 MSL finals
Game 1:
Game 2:
Game 3:
En Taro Adun, Tassadar
@wroman Hahaha!!
Wow welcome to Steemit! Fascinating stories! Your strong math background is a huge advantage. What % of your game is playing the odds and what % is playing the person?
This is a difficult question to answer without getting super technical. But there has always been a balancing act between playing optimally (the game theoretical strategy which if perfected would be an unbeatable strategy) versus exploitably (playing in a way that tries to maximize against an opponent's particular strategy which has mistakes). Most top players nowadays have veered towards the optimal route, however, there are many instances where exploitable play is more profitable against certain opponents.
I'll try to give a basic example. Let's say there is $100 in a pot and we have $100 remaining. If I were playing a game theory optimal strategy, I would bet strong hands 67% of the time and bet $100 and bluff 33% of the time and bet $100. This is because I am giving my opponent 2:1 odds to call, so he needs to beat me 1 in 3 to be profitable, and I want to maximize how often I can make this bet and also do it in a way so he is indifferent to calling or folding with his mediocre hands. And my opponent knows he must call with at least 50% of his hands, otherwise when I bluff I am winning money since I risked $100 to win $100, so I need him to fold at least 50% for those bluffs to make money.
But if I know my opponent is folding too frequently then I can just bet every hand I have and bluff way more often and win money. Or if I know he is calling too frequently I will never bluff and always have strong hands. These adjustments are playing the player, and it helps to get someone to win the most money he can, but it is an exploitable and beatable strategy if the opponent properly adjusts.
Short answer: I try to play the odds most of the time
Thanks! Yeah I have to build a better framework in my mind for bet sizes & pot odds, but I get the gist of what you're saying. I play for fun and it's been years since I played, but bet sizes/pot odds is always something I wanted to improve on. I guess when you use more of an exploit strategy against people in tourneys you have to have a good memory to recognize a person's habits... what about tells?
Some people are experts at tell recognition. I find them hard to use mainly because tells can often have multiple meanings (ie a shake could mean strength or weakness), and in live poker you only see about 30 hands an hour, players only show down hands every so often so you rarely find out what they have, and players have gotten increasingly better at being robotic in their betting motions.
Like I said, some people have mastered this, but since I made the move away from live poker after the 2007 soul crushing tournament, I never fostered this ability further and generally used it as a tie breaker in a close situation. Although when I did win that big tournament I had a physical tell on my opponent HU. I didn't recognize it, someone told me it and I spent a few hours verifying it, but it did pay off huge eventually as I was able to exploit him near the end, I just don't rely on them
Fascinating. I'm sure you can have a Madden rating on poker players for various strengths. So many factors that come into play and it seems HU would be the best place for taking advantage of tell recognition? What was Isaac's tell?
I feel like I playing poker now. This thread got me psyched!!
Poker is full of brilliant, driven, interesting people.
At my peak I was one of the best in the world at a very small subset of games in poker. Think of poker like the track and field section of the olympics, and while I played a few different events (say the 400m hurdle, the long jump, and the high jump), I was only one of the best at the 400m hurdle and maybe among the top 50 at another. Now since I am pretty inactive I wouldn't be top 200 in the world at any of the games I played for a living in the past.
There are a number of factors that make a top poker player, but I honestly believe I don't have the most important traits: extreme competitiveness, focus, work ethic, and also being a good loser. I was more of a lazy intellectual in poker, and when strategy became more widespread, the more competitive focused people surpassed me. I would still be able to coach successfully because of my knowledge of poker, but I wouldn't compare to top players if we all sat down and played. Will be even more interesting when some of them come here! And actually, the guy I beat HU in my PCA win, Isaac Haxton, has been one of the best in the world for years. Not only is he more focused, driven, and competitive than me, but he also excels more at the intellectual side of things: he is as close to a genius as I know in poker, and is far more interesting than I am. He appeared on the Joe Rogan podcast last year, suggest finding that
You mentioned you're not a good leader. It's good to diagnosis our weaknesses, but curious to know what you mean by that. You can always improve with experience.
I'm a non confrontational pushover who believes people can make their own choices. Not the best motivational speaker and have a tough time being hard on people or conveying disappointment when people mess up. Long list of stuff, but realized I work better as a strategist/analyst than a leader or enforcer
Makes sense. Yeah it's good to know your strengths and capitalize on those. At least if you are placed in a position where you had to lead in the future you'd know what areas to improve.
I cross posted this over from the poker section since apparently I am a tagging newbie.
here was the initial thread: https://steemit.com/poker/@daut44/introductory-post-and-ama-ask-me-anything-about-being-a-professional-gambler
Will crosspost a few replies I made, but some of the replies were strictly technical basketball/poker questions that may or may not interest others
The other thread is so badass. He unleashes so much info in there!!
Agreed check it out!
I'm a low stakes poker player and I found the other thread riveting. Looking forward to keeping up with both!
Still play much poker? Online, live, where do you play in USA?
Don't play as much as previously but still play on bovada occassionally. Mostly play PLO cash now
What's your Daily Fantasy Football strategy? Never played daily before, just have done the typical season-long ones for years.
There are different subsections of DFS football which require different strategies. I play mostly 1 on 1 ( heads up matches), and the strategy there is basically to project all the relevant players and make the highest projected lineup you can given the salary restraints
Who's your favorite professional poker player and why?
An internet player named Ben Tollerene. Am on my phone for next 2 days without computer access, but search for him on the Joe Ingram Poker Life Podcast. He is a brilliant game theoretician, and probably the best in the world at a 4 card poker game called Omaha.
There are some other favorites for various reasons: Scott Seiver for being all around amazing, Phil Ivey for his years of dominance as the best player from 2002-2011, Negreanu for ambassador reasons, Jason Mercier for being the real life version of the terminator, and the list could go on for hundreds of names. These are the truly interesting people from poker, and I hope I can act as a gateway for them to this site
I will check out Ben. Wow you'll be even more of a superhero if you bring other guys on this platform! How did you find Steemit btw?
Ben's interviews (more of a conversation really) on Joe Ingram's podcasts are great.
I dove headfirst into cryptocurrency research this week, and decided to do a cursory overview of the cryptos with the highest market caps and came across steem. Loved the concept because I've been posting on forums for 15+ years now. The downside is obvious though, lots of useless and/or plagarized content to filter through to get good stuff, but worth it for monetary incentive. And still plenty of great content around these parts. Great idea though, am on board
Amazing how quickly you got here after diving into crypto research.. but great to have you on board!
What brought you to steem? Any blogs of yours I should check out?
Just been following the Bitshares ecosystem since the beginning of 2015 so fortunately had the inside track to Steem. Hmm.. usually just write about marketing/business ideas for Steem/Steemit. This is a popular one that I think is good for people who want to understand the money/value part of Steem and digital assets in general: Steem: Where DOES the money come from?
Phil was the best player I have ever seen live and Daniel was a cool dude. Bring them over here and lets get a decentralized poker app on steemit!
I would like to know this too. I watched Phil Ivy, some other famous pros and Larry Flint play in a cash game once at the Hustler Casino and Phil was a badass.
Want to make this its own comment, because I feel like in a number of replies so far I've mentioned how there are many more interesting poker stories out there.
I don't mean to paint myself as an uninteresting person. It's just that my poker playing story is common. There are many better and/or more colorful poker players who have traveled to greater parts of the world, played for bigger stakes, had more success, or have funnier stories with far more interesting poker playing stories than I have. But what is interesting about my story is that people from the different cross sections of my gaming career would find other parts fascinating.
-Successful Starcraft players would find my starcraft story dull, as I never really achieved that much, but they would love my poker story.
-Successful and top poker players would find my poker playing story as a common occurrence, but they would be enthralled by my DFS career and particularly excited about my poker backing business as that is a huge area of poker where I have unique experiences in.
-Successful DFS players would find my DFS career boring, but likely find my poker career very interesting. And the poker players that also play DFS would probably find my starcraft or poker staking careers as interesting.
There's definitely something for everyone here, and am happy to answer any poker playing questions, but it's just the one area where I view my story as the most common.
Ryan lets get these guys over here!! I would love to hear all their stories. If some of the poker heavyweights were on here and reminisced among themselves I could only omagine some of their stories.
I'll link the thread to my twitter in a few days and explain the concept to the poker world. Smart people have been making detailed forum posts for 10+ years with no reward, having an incentive to blog and reply will definitely bring people over
Rad.