Home >> Interviews >> Five Questions With Matt “mindcirkus” Wheat

Five Questions With Matt “mindcirkus” Wheat

Matt “mindcirkus” Wheat should be a familiar name to anyone who follows the mid-to-high-stakes PLO games online – he’s been a regular presence there for a bit now. He should also be a familiar name to fans of the WSOP following his final table appearance at the 2010 $10k PLO event, and if you’re a CardRunners member you’ve no doubt encountered his excellent PLO videos.

If you haven’t, you can watch one for free here.

Matt was nice enough to answer a few questions about PLO vs NL, the experience of a major WSOP final table and the life of a poker coach in the interview below.

PTP: Congrats on the 10k PLO. Talk a little bit about that experience and what, if anything, you’d choose to do differently.

MW: Yea it was a great experience to play in a field with that many good players and do well. There were a lot of good tourney players in the field, and a lot of good PLO players, but very few who had a good understanding of both in my opinion. I played with a ton of the “household name” players and most of them were playing really bad in my opinion. Most of them are very good at NL, but don’t have nearly as much PLO experience as the guys who play the game regularly online. Daniel Alaei is one player that I played with quite a bit during the final 3 days of the tournament who’s best game probably isn’t PLO, but I thought he was playing really well and he ended up winning the tournament. Most of the time when I play a tourney I look back and can find some mistakes I made or things that I should have done differently, but I honestly don’t think I made any notable mistakes during the entire tourney. I was only all-in 3 times before the final table and one of those times I had 92% equity, and the other two times I was shortacked and a solid favorite. My final hand at the final table was unfortunate, but due to the size of the blinds and the conditions at the table there was absolutely no other way I could have played the hand. It was disappointing to go that far and bust out early at the final table, but I think I played as well as I possibly could have.

PTP: What are some of the key strategic differences for you playing tournament PLO as opposed to cash? Any adjustment from cash to MTT that’s unique to PLO?

MW: The biggest difference is that you can’t survive several days of a PLO tournament if you are 3betting or calling a lot 3bets preflop. I’m pretty sure I never 3bet once preflop that entire tournament which most people would be shocked to hear since I’m known for being really aggressive in cash games. It’s ok to 3bet hands like AAxx or KKxx if you get shortstacked, but it’s usually not a good idea the rest of the time. This is because tournaments(especially the first couple days) are about survival and chipping up in spots with little risk of going broke. If you play tons of 3bet pots and get all your chips in regularly with 40-65% equity it’s going to be basically impossible to survive for long periods of time. If you are an experienced PLO player you should have a much bigger edge postflop vs. the average tourney player and you can best exploit that by keeping pots small preflop and outplaying people postflop.

PTP: Best PLO resource available online?

MW: Without a doubt the PLO videos on Cardrunners. Watching videos there was how I learned the game and the line-up of pros they have making PLO videos is far beyond what any other site can offer. Aside from that the simulator at propokertools.net is a great resource for learning PLO equities, and one that most good PLO players use regularly.

PTP: You got your start multi-tabling NL cash. Compare the experience to multi-tabling PLO.

MW: The biggest difference is variance. When you are multi-tabling full ring NL there are very few all in pots and your results even out very quickly. When you play PLO you constantly play all in pots where you typically have somewhere between 35-65% equity as opposed to NL when most of the time you are a much bigger favorite. Because of this the swings are huge every day and you can run very good or very bad for months at a time. It’s not uncommon for the best PLO players to have 30-50 buy-in downswings which is practically unheard of for winning players at full ring NL.

The other big difference is that in PLO when the board changes textures it has a much bigger effect on the hand, and creates a lot more opportunities for bluffing. In full ring NL people just aren’t hardly ever going to fold KK, but people will fold almost anything that’s not the nuts in a lot of spots in PLO games. It really makes for a more interesting and complex game, and allows you to do more creative things at the table.

PTP: PLO seems to be far more popular in Europe and Scandinavia, while holdem still seems to be the mainstream game of choice in the US. Any thoughts on what’s holding the game back in America?

MW: I think first and foremost NL is more popular because it’s what everyone sees on TV. Most casual players don’t take the time to experiment with other games, so they just stick to holdem and avoid the other games. I also think some of the problem is that PLO is a little more complicated to learn and it’s pot-limit as opposed to no-limit which sounds less exciting(even though in reality there is a lot more action). I was talking to rep for Callaway Golf a few years ago and he was telling me that the European players are usually willing to put any kind of new technology into play as soon as they get a chance, whereas the U.S. players usually find something that works for them and then resist any kind of change.

I’m not sure exactly what the underlying cultural causes are that lead to this, but I think it’s also evident in the fact that European players are more willing to try new poker games than U.S. players are. Once people spend a little bit of time playing PLO they usually like it and often even prefer it to NLHE, but it’s so hard to get the mainstream public to play any other games besides Holdem. Hopefully we will eventually start seeing more PLO games in the casinos, but right now they are pretty rare outside of Vegas (especially at stakes of 5/10 and higher).

PTP: Last great poker blog you read:

MW: I don’t read too many, but David Benefields blog is the best I’ve read. He’s busy with school now and doesn’t do much blogging anymore, but I’ve really enjoyed reading his thoughts.

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