20 Dec 11

Meet Bryan 'PrimordialAA' Pellegrino, PokerStrategy.com's Newest Coach

Bryan 'PimordialAA' Pellegrino is one of the most successful Heads-Up Sit & Go players on the internet, and now he's a coach at PokerStrategy.com. Learn more about Bryan, and make sure to check out his first video when it is released on December 21st.

PrimordialAA

Bryan ' PrimordialAA' Pellegrino is a Heads-Up Sit & Go (HU SNG) expert, with some of the most impressive online results in the world. He has also developed a great reputation as a teacher, and he has even helped some PokerStrategy.com coaches improve their HU SNG games.

Although his focus is primarily on online play, his live tournament career is also highlighted by success playing heads-up, with an 8th-place finish in the 2010 WSOP Heads-Up Championship.

Bryan's first video as a PokerStrategy.com coach will be released on December 21st. It will be for Platinum+ members, and it focuses on how to best use stats to exploit your opponents in HU SNGs. We recommend it for all advanced heads-up players.

For now, here's an interview we conducted with Bryan so the PokerStrategy.com community can get to know him a bit better:

"...after that I was hooked on cards."

PokerStrategy.com: How long have you been playing poker seriously, and how did you get started with PokerStrategy.com?

PrimordialAA: I've been playing poker professionally for a little over 5 years now, and I have been playing very seriously for about 7. I got started by chance with a friend teaching me a totally different card game. I can't even remember the name of the game now, but it was a non-poker game played with a partner.

We crushed as a team, and after that I was hooked on cards. I found some kids playing low stakes poker that same day, hopped in and won like $5 and that was the beginning. A few days later my friend told me "You know you can do all of this online? There's this place called PokerStars.com..." and that was it. I've been playing ever since.

As for getting hooked up with PokerStrategy.com, I held a month-long 'bootcamp' at my house this summer for HU SNG students looking to make the jump to playing higher stakes. Two of my students there were PokerStrategy coaches: Braminc and Waaaghboss. After the camp they both referred me to PokerStrategy.com, and they got me set up with the site.

"Something I could pick up and play whenever I wanted"

PokerStrategy.com: What about HU SNGs attracted you to them? What are the advantages of playing them?

PrimordialAA:

Bryan at the PCA.

 When I first started I played 6-max and 9-max cash only. After that I got into MTTs for a couple of years and it was going pretty well, but I spent a semester abroad in Budapest, Hungary, and the time change totally owned me. Still being a student at the time (the last semester that I was one :-P), having to stay up until 6am each time I went deep in a tournament was just disastrous.

I tried to find something I could pick up and play whenever I wanted, and also end my sessions quickly whenever I wanted. This ability to play a session anytime I was free or felt good was a huge advantage to me at the time.

The biggest advantages of HU SNGs for me personally were that they fit my schedule and were incredibly consistent. In the first 3-4 years I played them (basically before I started playing mostly Super Turbos) I only had one losing month ever, and that was due to taking shots. The ability to make a consistent amount of money every month and not have the stress of HUGE amounts of variance was a big advantage to me. I was paying for all my living expenses and travel then, so this helped a lot.


PokerStrategy.com: Does it ever become hard to get action once other regs see you waiting at tables? How much of a problem is that? How big can the swings reasonably be while playing HU SNGs?

PrimordialAA: The bigger problem is when other regs are sitting at the tables. When you control the lobbies and are the one sitting there, sure most regs won't play you, but there is a pretty consistent stream of fish if you spread your limits decently. The problem is basically that all day at any hours there is a full set of regs in every lobby, so eventually it comes down to quickly grabbing lobbies after one of them gets a game, or you being able to sit in them and take the next lobby. Lobby congestion is a problem more than anything.

Swings depend on a lot of factors, and obviously super turbos tend to have bigger swings than turbos/regular speeds because of the lower winrate. I'd say 30-50 BI at turbos and regular speeds would be considered a very big and brutal downswing, and 75-100 at super turbos.

"It was pretty close to my entire life bankroll."

PokerStrategy.com: It has been well-documented on forums that you were once scammed for the majority of your bankroll, about $30,000 at the time. Can you tell us a brief summary of what happened, but more importantly - how did you bounce back from taking that sort of hit to become a high-stakes winner just 1-2 years later?

PrimordialAA:

Bryan and his wife.

 It was a pretty miserable experience to be honest! I met a guy online, saw he was playing high stakes, and we played a bunch and ended up talking a lot. He came to stay with me and my girlfriend (now wife) in France for a few weeks. While he was there he busted his account and asked me to loan him some money. I did so, but only after he did a bank wire from his bank to my wife's account via online banking. We then called the bank and I spoke to them and they verified it, and they said it should be there in a few days.

To make a long story short, I did this a few times in 2-3 days, and then when the money didn't come in he said he didn't know why, and that we would fly to Stockholm (he was Swedish) and he would take it out himself. We went there and talked to the bank, and the banker said it would most likely be available the next day. That night while we slept in the hotel room, the scammer got into my computer (when he was at my house I had set up a password for him on my laptop so he could play from it).

I had made sure that none of my poker passwords were ever saved or any of that, but I had accidentally left my email logged in. He went in, said 'forgot password', got a new one from PokerStars, transferred out all of my money, and left. It was a pretty painful experience at the time - between the loans and the cost of getting there and my full PokerStars account it was pretty close to my entire life bankroll.

As far as getting back I was really lucky to have a great community of other high stakes players around me at the time, and a good friend of mine, 'Sifosis', loaned me $5,000. I ended up having a $35K month (my biggest at the time) that very next month after being scammed, so I was lucky to bounce back very quickly and then continue progressing from there.


PokerStrategy.com: How has Black Friday impacted your poker career, and how have you adjusted to it? Do you still live in the US?

PrimordialAA: It has been pretty crazy, I have a house in the US in Austin so I do still live here technically, but I travel quite a bit. I had a place in Montreal and stayed there all summer, and I also went to Europe to visit France, San Remo (for the EPT), and Vienna (for the Jungleman HS Seminar) for about a month, and most likely I'll end up taking another trip or two before the 2012 WSOP.


PokerStrategy.com: Thanks for your time, and welcome to the PokerStrategy.com team!

PrimordialAA: Thank you, I'm looking forward to being a part of it. 

by Matt Kaufman