I’ve had a lot of luck milling outside toilets.
Eight years ago, I met my wife outside a Maltese bog. It was the only way I could get her attention. I know what you’re thinking. I’m a sick stalker. Yup. But it worked.
And here I am again.
Outside the gents, wearing a long overcoat waiting for Andrew Robl to finish his business.
I don’t plan on asking him to marry me, but I would like to spend a few moments of his time talking about his poker education. I figure I will get five minutes tops. A game is about to start, and you know a cash game player is more likely to miss the birth of their first child.
Robl takes a pew.
White ARIA tracky top zipped just below the chin.
Preened to perfection.
The start of a very long week.
I wonder what he’ll look like by the end of it?
The last time I saw Robl was in Montenegro, where he spent the entire week competing in the type of cash games concealed by a long red drape.
“We are on the high stakes gambling tour all over the world,” he says as I remind him of our Montenegro meet-up.
I feel like a fraud here. It’s a palatial playground for the rich and famous (some more frivolous). I shouldn’t be here. I feel like the fly in the soup. But Robl belongs here. It’s in the way he kicks his heels on the way back from the toilet, like a fifth member of the Oz crew skipping merrily along the yellow brick road.
I ask him if he ever stops and looks gratefully at his surroundings?
“Sometimes. Probably not as often as I should, but I think it’s important to have gratitude,” says Robl.
I can certainly see how Robl and his kind can get so used to this way of life that everything else but the splendour seems odd.
“You can get used to anything,” says Robl. It’s nice. It’s fun. You travel all over the world; different food, cultures, surroundings, and the same gamblers wherever you go.”
The ice-breaking is over.
It’s time to get down to the business at hand.
Robl’s poker education.
I ask Robl what tools he has used to improve his game, and keep up with the Ivey’s of this world?
“The main tool that’s helped me is talking to other players and watching how they play; their strategy, their perspective and how they play hands in different situations,” says Robl. “Also, the game has changed so much over the years. You need adaptability. You can never be comfortable that your strategy is the best and you have everything figured out. The top players change every few years. Few people play at a high level for a long time.”
And yet Robl is still here.
Competing.
Crying.
Cackling.
Cryogenised beneath casino air cons.
Coughing through second-hand smoke.
So who are the people who taught Robl the more beautiful things about poker?
“I have played poker for 12-years, so there have been many,” says Robl. “When I started Tom Dwan, Phil Galfond and Peter Jetten helped a lot. Later, people like Brian Rast. More recently I have been studying on my own. I am not one of the top players anymore, so I’m not on the cutting edge, but Jason Koon has helped me a lot with the new strategies – the GTO way of playing.”
A smirk follows the letters.
G.
T.
O.
Is this because he’s more of a feel player?
“Nah, it’s the new cliched thing to say,” says a smiling Robl.
Just because you have the money to compete in an Andrew Robl cash game doesn’t make you a world class player. So, how do you spot a world class player when he or she sits down at your table?
“You can tell by how they play,” says Robl. “They are very hard to play against. It’s hard to put them on a hand, and you can’t pick up patterns as easily. They are hard to put on a narrow range of hands. They play a solid game and don’t splash around too much. The true world class players don’t give their money away; they don’t go on tilt or anything like that.”
I can feel that he’s itching to get away from me. It’s nothing personal. There is a game going on a few feet away from where we sit. The chips are burning circular shaped holes in his back. I can see Bobby Baldwin staring back at me through one of them.
It must be a good game.
But what does that even mean?
“A good game is full of gamblers, people who are there to have a good time, play a lot of hands, play fast, have a good game,” says Robl. “They are not there to maximise their hourly rate. When you play in a game where everyone is a poker robot, it’s no fun. You won’t find a lot of games like that at the highest stakes.”
We all have things that we’re improving.
Anger issues.
The Volkswagen Van in the garage.
Our GTO game.
I ask Robl to describe a weakness he’s struggled to overcome.
“Poker teaches you how to be humble,” says Robl. “If you go into the game with a big ego thinking you’re always right, you’re either going to have to adapt your mindset, or you are not going to last. You can do everything right, and things still don’t go your way. It’s a deep game. It doesn’t matter how long you play you are always learning something new. You’re never the fountain of all knowledge.”
Behind the Julius Caesar style, red drape sits the sort of people that constitute a good game. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars will exchange hands. And yet, a few feet to my right, and a different group of players have paid $12,500 to play in a tournament. Some of the cash game players will never sit in the tournament, and some of the tournament players will never venture beyond the red drape.
Why is that?
“There is a mode of entry to the highest cash games,” says Robl. “People will have to want to play with you. With a lot of the famous tournament players, maybe people are a little bit afraid of them. When I first got started, and maybe until three years ago, all the best players were cash game players. In my opinion, they were better, more sophisticated and had a deeper understanding of the game than tournament players. I think that’s changed. These high stakes tournament players, they have almost the perfect game.”
Interesting.
There was a time, not that long ago that a cash game reg would welcome a tournament reg like a Polar Bear embraces a fat juicy seal. Is Robl saying he would prefer the top tournament regs stayed away from his game?
“I always like a challenge,” says Robl. “I don’t mind playing with world-class tournament players. At the same time, I wouldn’t be particularly happy to have them at my table. I like to win, and I believe a lot of them are much better than me.”
And with that, the red drape opens, and the ‘good’ game sucks the humble Andrew Robl in.