Meet the Editor: interview with English News Editor Matt Perry

Not the guy from Friends and best known as Barry Carter's spellcheck-slash-HTML-helper, we get to know English News Editor Matt Perry.

"Could the Friends reference BE any more annoying?"

The other Matthew Perry

PokerStrategy.com: What’s with the name, are you that guy from Friends?

mjperry: Could that reference BE any more annoying? I wish Friends wasn't so famous.

PokerStrategy.com: How did you discover poker?

mjperry: The first game of poker I remember playing was when I was 13, and my friend and I played heads-up for Haribo and Pringles. I don't remember who won.

That didn't start off a Stu Ungar-like lifestyle, though - I don't think I played again until I was 16. I played in a game at Sixth Form which was a cheat-filled, unstructured, bastard child of cash and tournament poker. I just played that casually until I had a game with my cousins, some of whom knew kind of what they were doing - I remember seeing one of them fold preflop, which was a revelation to me (still is sometimes).

After a brief affair with online poker that saw me lose a fair bit, I found a few poker forums and bought Phil Gordon's books. For the first year or so of University I was mass-multi-tabling NL10 - NL30 games on the Ongame network, mostly for rakeback. Eventually I played in a live game with a bloke who worked for a poker magazine which got me into this industry.

PokerStrategy.com: Are you any good?

mjperry: Not in the slightest. OK, that's a bit of a reverse Dunning-Kruger; I'm definitely better than the average recreational player. However I don't really play enough to consider myself good, I just dick around in tournaments here and there.

Even back in 2007 when I played somewhat professionally (if you can call it that) I was only better than the average (which at the time was terrible, light 4-betting had barely been invented) as opposed to good.

"I look after the promotions and community side of things"

The actual Matt Perry (He is the one wearing glasses)

PokerStrategy.com: Has working at PokerStrategy.com improved your game?

mjperry: It has, but I don't really apply the knowledge that much nowadays. I still love poker but I don't have the time or inclination to play it as voraciously as I did before.

When you spend 50+ hours a week writing about the game, playing it in your spare time seems like overkill.

Certainly, having people like pleno1 around and occasionally chatting with them about hands is a big plus, and 18-year-old Matt would slap me for not making more of it; despite that I make more money writing about the game than playing it - and there's very few downswings when you're employed by PokerStrategy.com.

PokerStrategy.com: What do you do, day-to-day at PokerStrategy.com?

mjperry: The answer to this would have been more interesting in 2012, but then again in 2012 I'd have been much too busy to humour you with this interview. Speaking of which, I think our standards are really falling if I'm the most interesting interview subject you can find.

Anyway, last year I was managing the majority of the editorial product but now I'm mostly just looking after the promotion and community side of things having escaped the monkeys (of Gibraltar) and moved back to London. I'm actually typing this answer in between creating a dozen new promotion threads for the various poker room forums.

"Daniel Negreanu really is as nice as everyone says"

After we forced him to wear a PS hoody

PokerStrategy.com: Best and worst thing about working for PokerStrategy.com?

mjperry: You can't make me say the worst thing, there's spies everywhere. The best thing about working in-house was definitely the office atmosphere itself, everyone got on really well and there was a great work-to-play balance generally (for me anyway).

Even when you were trapped in a meeting with an angry onkelhotte it was still a pretty enjoyable job. I really miss the canteen - serrano ham and baguettes is truly the breakfast of champions. The infinite supply of tea and coffee was also a big plus.

Actually the worst thing was checking and approving freelancer invoices, and it's not even close. I'm sure everyone who does it (including Yuliya who now approves mine) would agree.

PokerStrategy.com: What is the biggest thing you have learned working for PokerStrategy.com?

mjperry: That's actually a really tough question since poker has been a massive feature of the past six years of my life so it's tough to narrow down. I also think I have literally forgotten more about poker than most people have ever learned.

I will go with three PS/poker related things, though: Daniel Negreanu really is as nice as everyone says he is; Spanish and Gibraltarian players are really atrociously bad players; Germans are not as humourless and uptight as stereotyping would lead you to believe.

PokerStrategy.com: Tell us something nobody knows about you.

mjperry: I actually only ever raise when I have the nuts, my 35/30/11 style is just a result of being dealt really good hands all the time.

PokerStrategy.com: That's enough of you Mr Perry, get back to work!