» David 'Gaucho2121' Paredes Interview

David 'Gaucho2121' Paredes, 30, is a Harvard graduate, law school graduate, and has worked at a New York hedge fund. He also happens to be a darn good poker player. He has played online and live poker since 2004. Success in poker paid for his law school education and supplements his other high profile career ambitions. He recently reached his first TV final table in the inaugural NAPT Venetian main event. He finished in 5th for $184k when his aces were cracked by the chip leader's jacks all in pre-flop. He resides in Brookline, Massachusetts, with his long time girlfriend, who is in her medical school residency there. He is currently playing poker while exploring new opportunities in the financial fields.

I watched the streaming final table of the NAPT Venetian tournament. You seemed very composed, patient and gracious in defeat, even after your tough bad beat. Describe what that tournament experience was like.

The tournament had an incredible structure and I think PokerStars did a great job with the turnout (870+ players). During the first level of day 1, I lost a hand against Joe Serock, where I check called him down with J9o on a Jx10s9sJsX board, literally telling Joe as I called him on the river that I thought he had a straight flush (which he did, with the 87ss). To not go broke on the hand, when most people would, was great, and even though I was only left with 8k in chips, that was still plenty to work with as the structure was so phenomenal. Day 2 was a breeze, everything went my way and I finished the day among the top 15 in chips.

Day 3 was a roller-coaster of a day. I was doing really well until I ran 66 into AQ on AJ6Q all in on the turn. My opponent hit a Q and I was shortstacked. However, I was able to manage two quick double ups, then I played a cool hand where I induced a shove with Q10 against K7 on 1074dd3cc where my opponent had check raised the flop, and checkraised the turn all in. I called him and my hand held. After that I got sucked out on again this time by MrSmokey when he 4-bet/called off with Q10hh against my JJ and he hit a Q. But even after those two brutal suckouts I was able to comeback and nurse a shortish stack into day 4.

Day 4 I played my best poker of the tournament. I was really patient, I made tons of folds preflop where I think others might have gone broke/gambled, and I waited for my spots. My only two hands that went to showdown was when I won a flip with AK against 99, and then won with 22 on 332Q against AQ all in on the turn.

The final table was really tough, I came in 3rd in chips but was quickly the shortstack after I played a tough hand against Sam Stein and Tom Marchese. I raised 56cc, Tom called me in position then Sam defended from the blinds. The flop was 1033cc, I should have bet the flop but instead I checked it and it checked through. The turn was the 4, Sam bet, I called and Tom overcalled. Tom's overcall should have set off warning bells, but unfortunately when the river came a 2, giving me a straight, I raised Sam's river bet and Tom shoved behind me. I was getting ridiculous odds on the river but I laid my hand down and I can't wait to see what Tom had on TV.

We have previously spoken about how poker will take a back seat to your other career opportunities. You are presently in between financial positions. This has allowed you to focus more on poker for the first time in a few years. How do you keep your game sharp?

Obviously, when I was working full-time, my poker game definitely suffered. My work experience actually gave me a lot more respect for the recreational player. It's so tough to compete against others who are well-rested, and playing 24/7, when you are working a full-time job in another field. Right now I am lucky to be able to focus more on poker. I have devoted my efforts to learning PLO online, and learning the mixed games live. I hired a coach for PLO, thatpfunk from Cardrunners, and we have had 2 lessons so far. He's helped me tremendously with my game and I hope to eventually have the type of success online in PLO that I had in NLHE.

Historically you have concentrated on high stakes cash games online and live, but you do play occasional live tournaments. I recall you cashing in the 2007 PokerStars Caribbean Poker Adventure, the 2009 LA Poker Classic, and playing in the WSOP. Do you prefer playing live or online and what differences do you see in playing live tournaments versus your regular online games?

I focus my time and energy on cash games, and when I do play tournaments it's usually because friends are playing so I might occasionally tag along. My favorite thing to do is play live cash games. Actually, the night before the NAPT started, I was playing in a 25-50 game at the Bellagio. The game was really good, and I wound up playing until 7am, booking a $5k win (basically my buy-in for the tourney which started at noon!). So that gives you a sense of where my priorities are. I feel I have an edge in a live setting because I can read people well, and if I play with a certain player a number of times I think I can understand their game, and what they are trying to do, better than they can understand my game.

I generally enjoy live tournaments in the early stages because they play similar to a deep-stacked cash game. However when I get under 30bb, I feel I don't have a big edge as compared to the MTT'ers who know exactly what to do in certain short-stacked situations. I also think playing tournaments for a living would be a brutal existence, the travel, the variance, etc. I think grinding online/live cash is a much surer, steadier way to go, and in general I think the successful cash game players are the best and smartest players.

Recently, you won a seat to the EPT Berlin. Will this signal a new emphasis on traveling and live tournaments until your next financial position establishes itself?

I actually won the seat to Berlin before I played the NAPT. I won the first satellite I tried on Stars, which was pretty sweet. I have never been to Berlin before, and my friend Jeff Model (gopheresque) wanted to go, so we made an agreement that we'd both try a few satellites and whoever won would take the other person along. So Jeff has a free room in Berlin, haha. I will still play cash games primarily, but my performance in the NAPT has given me a bit of confidence and I might try a few other tournaments, such as the NAPT Mohegan.

In addition, you indicated that you are also learning mixed games live. How do you go about learning and achieving the same level of success you have had at NLHE?

The live games I play in have recently started introducing mixed games into the format, but the way we play them is no limit! No limit stud 8/b, NL o/8, etc. So I've been practicing the mixed games online just to get a feel of starting hand ranges, and then plugging in lots of hands into an equity calculator to get a feel for how different hands run against one another. One good way I've found to learn is to play and then do rigorous analysis afterwards of the equities in various situations, and how you might approach hands differently. I've posted a number of mixed games hands on 2p2 which have gotten some interesting, enlightening responses. I am therefore taking a similar approach to learning the other games as I did with NLHE: playing, running the equities, talking with friends, posting hands, and doing my own analysis.

I originally learned of you through CardRunners, where you did some brief blogging and video making. You always came across as a very bright and analytical player. Give us a sense of your history and rise in the poker world.

I started playing poker in high school with friends. I went to a specialized high school, and I was friends with a group of kids who all liked games and gambling. We would play hearts, spades, pool, and poker all for money. In college I didn't play any poker except for one time when I stumbled upon a game in the dining hall. They were playing 5c/10c. I played for about an hour and set the record for biggest win, and immediately got banned from the game, lol. So I guess I always had a knack for cards.

I didn't play seriously until I got to NY and was getting my MFA in Creative Writing at NYU. As part of my scholarship I taught freshman expository writing, which paid a modest stipend. In order to supplement my income I started taking the Chinatown bus to Foxwoods. I would get off the bus, play like 20 hours straight, and get back on the bus and go home. I started to build a little bankroll playing limit hold 'em (that's how I learned). Eventually I moved up to 20-40 limit, which was when I had my first occasion to play NLHE when I entered a satellite for the 2005 WPT at Foxwoods. I read T.J. Cloutier's book and used my basic poker knowledge to win a seat on my first try, which was pretty neat.

After that I met a very nice gentleman named Howard Roughan, who took a liking (or disliking!) to me and introduced me to an underground club in NYC. Howard was on the verge of incredible success as a novelist when I met him (he has since co-authored books with James Patterson), and he was nice enough to take the time out to give me an introduction into the New York underworld, haha. I then made the switch to NLHE cash games, starting at the lowest stakes and eventually moving up to 5/10 and even 10/25. It was at that time that I met Jason Strasser, who suggested I try online poker. I deposited $300 to PartyPoker, won my first month playing, joined Cardrunners, and that set me on my way. I've made some great friends playing poker, and they've helped my development a lot. Jason helped tremendously early on.  Taylor Caby has been a great friend, and my former roomate Ezra Galston (ezmogee) has also had a big influence on my game. Also, I have gotten to play against some really tough competition in NY, which has been helpful to my development as a player.

I recall when we first met at a brunch in Las Vegas with Taylor Caby of CardRunners, you talked about your childhood and struggles to overcome your humble beginnings. How did those early experiences help shape you into the person you are today?

I had a wonderful childhood and my mom gave me everything she had. But I was always hungry for more growing up, and I grew up pretty independent. In college I worked cleaning bathrooms, as part of something called "dorm crew," for what I think was around 8 or 9 bucks an hour. Not being able to do some of the things that my classmates did, like go on Spring Break and stuff, definitely fueled a drive in me to succeed. Certainly I would have never played poker in graduate school if I was living off a trust fund. But on the other side of the coin, I may have missed out on other experiences because of the hours I spent learning and playing poker. So like everything in life, it's a trade-off. I will say that poker has allowed me to give back to others. I sponsor/mentor a high school student from Brooklyn named Daniel Dawidczyk, who had a much rougher go of it than I did, and that has been a great experience.

You've mentioned that you played a lot of chess as a kid. How did that help prepare you to succeed in poker?

I was lucky that my elementary school was one of the best schools in the country for chess. As a kid I got to travel all around the country for tournaments. The studying, the extended periods of concentration, and the competition are all similar skills that you need to be successful in poker. Having those experiences at such a young age has helped me tremendously in poker. Plus, when I was a kid I looked at chess as something fun to do with friends, and that attitude has extended to the way I view poker now. I will say that I'm a lot better at poker than I was at chess!

You have played in private high stakes poker games in New York City for years and I hear you have started to play in some games in Boston. Give us a flavor for those scenes and the types of players and stakes that you play.

I started from the very bottom, which are the underground clubs (sort of reminiscent of what you might think of when you see Rounders). In 2005/ 2006 NYC, it was the heyday of those clubs. You might walk into Playstation (one of the bigger clubs at the time) on a Friday night and see 10 or 12 FULL tables running at any one time. It was amazing. The game I mostly played starting out was 1/2 NLHE, and at the main game during those full nights the average stack might have been ~2k. It was incredible. Unfortunately, those clubs started to get shut down slowly but surely, and now the games are all private 1-table games.

NYC, these days, has a thriving private game scene and you can literally find a game any day of the week. I've learned a lot about people and human nature playing these games, as I've encountered a wide spectrum of society, from sanitation workers from Queens to billionaires from 5th avenue.  I've seen it all. I have also had to contend with getting hustled, angle-shot, you name it.

The worst experience I ever had was playing in a game that got robbed. I had a gun to my head, which isn't the most pleasant of experiences. But afterwards, I wound up grabbing a drink with a fellow player, who has become a really good friend of mine to this day. So I guess something good came of that experience. Luckily these days I play in games that pay by check, so I don't have to worry about getting robbed, which is nice.

What parallels do you see between working in a hedge fund/financial industry and playing poker?

There are tons of similarities between working in finance and playing poker, but some of the main ones are being disciplined, having an analytical, risk-reward weighted approach to decision making, and understanding variance. Certain people just wouldn't be able to accept a decision that went drastically wrong.  Whereas people in finance or poker aren't results-oriented.  As long as there was a strong logical reason for making a positive expected value decision, within a given set of risk parameters, then the results are less important than the logic behind the decision. Poker players and traders are smart enough to understand that as long as you keep making positive expected value decisions, as long as you have enough capital to withstand drawdowns, you will be successful.

In 2008, you were instrumental in investigating and publicizing the superuser Nio Nio on Ultimate Bet, for having scammed you and a number of players collectively for millions of dollars. You appeared on 60 Minutes as part of that effort. Can you recap your efforts during that time and what it is like to be try be a positive advocate in the poker world where these types of scandals occur?

Discovering, along with Mike Fosco (trambopoline) that UB had superusers on their site is certainly my biggest accomplishment in poker. The statistical and data analysis work that Mike and I did was directly responsible for getting millions of dollars refunded to players. I have been taken out to dinner around the country by other players, and certainly there aren't many things you can do in life that result in your friends getting millions of dollars. I thought it was also important for poker in the sense that it places more emphasis on sites having increased security measures to ensure something like this doesn't happen again. I hope the day comes when online poker is legalized and taxed in the US, but until that day I hope the efforts I put into discovering this fraud on UB encourage other sites to have stronger security policies.

On a personal front, I understand that there has often been a tension in your life with balancing your passion for poker and other areas of your life. Can you share some of that experience and your ongoing challenge to balance it within yourself and with your significant relationships?

Poker certainly takes up a lot of time, there is no doubt about that. As with any activity that takes up a tremendous amount of time, it requires having a balance with other areas in your life. For example. I was playing in the Borgata tournament recently, and I had to leave the tournament before the start of day 2, because I had a commitment back in Boston. The commitment, and more importantly, honoring that commitment, was more important to me than the 5k or so in EV that I probably passed up. The best advice I can give to someone looking to balance multiple other activities with poker is to be a good time manager and talk through your schedule as far in advance as possible with your significant other.

Several years ago, I recall you telling me about your desire to write a novel. What has become of that desire?

I am currently taking a creative writing class at Harvard Extension school and hope to finish that novel one day soon.

Despite not always looking at poker as the noblest of pursuits, you continue to play and do well. What role does poker have in your future?

In the immediate future, my goals are to continue to do well in cash games, learn PLO really well (enough so that I can beat mid-stakes online), save up some money, and continue to get better as an overall player. If tournament success happens as well, that would be nice, but getting good at tournaments is not my focus right now. I think in the long-term I will play poker for fun and for social purposes, as I love the game and I love to play.

A lot of our members are newer players, what advice would you give them in approaching poker so they can reach their full potential?

Take advantage of the training sites, watch the videos of the players your admire, and form friendships with players who are better than you and pick their brains. Then just play tons of hands and do analysis of your own game using the available software tools. If you can't improve after doing that you might want to look into something else.

Thank you for taking the time to answer our questions, David. Before you go, we have several fun questions we always ask our interviewees.

What is your favorite fun poker phrase/slang/acronym?

"Gauchos," which is a drink I created in Las Vegas that people still ask me to make. I'm not going to reveal what's in it, but if you find me in a club you can ask me to make you one.

If the poker industry disappeared completely, what other career would you most like to attempt?

Trader/analyst at a hedge fund.

If you were on death row, what would be your last meal?

Toss-up between Chicken Parm and a Cheeseburger.

When your poker career is over, what would you most like to be remembered for?

Being a gentleman at the tables.