PokerNoob off to New Challenges

Tobias "PokerNoob" Reinkemeier will no longer represent Team PokerStrategy.com. Further information is available in our exclusive interview with him.

Tobias "PokerNoob" Reinkemeier started his poker career with the starting capital provided by PokerStrategy.com and moved on to play the biggest online multi table tournaments and heads-up events. The list of his achievements is quite comprehensive and some of the most important titles can be seen here.

He made four consecutive cashes during the sixth season of the EPT and reached the final table of the PCA High Roller event. He joined Team PokerStrategy.com in 2009 and represented the team in numerous live events. His biggest success to date is his victory at the High Roller event of the EPT Monte Carlo, taking home $1,272,698.

After a great and very successful time we have to announce today that PokerNoob and Team PokerStrategy.com will go separate ways in the future as PokerNoob hasn't extended his contract. You can find out more in the following interview.

Interview with PokerNoob

PokerNoob in action

PokerStrategy.com: You played many different events during your year in Team PokerStrategy.com such as the WSOP, the EPT and others. Which impressions will remain for you?

pokernoob: It was a very exciting year! I travelled a lot, met and enjoyed the company of many new people and saw different places and countries. I also improved my poker game drastically. Experience is one of the most important factors in poker, especially while playing live when many online players underestimate the "live" factor. You can pull off many hero folds, hero calls and bluffs that would never be possible online.

PokerStrategy.com: Where do you see the difference between the WSOP and the EPT? Does a bracelet have a special meaning to you or is it just like any other victory?

pokernoob: The fields at the WSOP are way softer on average than at the EPT. The smaller No Limit Hold'em tournaments are especially weak. The blind structure, on the other hand, is significantly worse than at an EPT or WPT event which reduces your expected value and increases variance.

To win a bracelet would be something special and has a much higher marketing value than an EPT title. But it's not like I am dreaming of winning one every single night. Winning the Main Event would be the greatest thing ever, but I am probably not the only one who thinks that.

PokerStrategy.com: Playing live poker tournaments means a lot of travelling. Is this still fun to you or is it more like a necessary evil? Has your attitude towards travelling changed over time?

pokernoob: I think travelling rocks. I am young and I want to see more parts of the world. It's a privilege that it works so well with playing poker. Of course your attitude changes a bit over time and you enjoy being home for a while more than before and not to wake up in just another hotel bed. I try to find a healthy balance and skip a few tournaments to have more time for my girlfriend, friends, family and myself. If you really want it, you can be travelling 365 days a year for poker.

EPT Monte Carlo: The J-9 bluff

PokerNoob after the EPT victory

PokerStrategy.com: The victory at the High Roller event in Monte Carlo was your biggest success so far. The most spectacular hand of this tournament was probably your bluff push on the river with J-9 while being heads-up against Olivier Busquet. Can you take us through the hand and explain your thought process?

pokernoob: Sure! I had totally forgotten that I had announced I will do this in the live ticker thread, sorry for keeping you waiting. I will try to give you a brief summary as a full analysis is obviously not possible in an interview:

Stack sizes before the Hand:
Busquet: 2.6 Mio  = approx. 65bb
Tobias:  3,1 Mio = approx. 78bb

Action:
Preflop (Blinds 20k-40k): I raise from BU 80k with Js9s, Busquet re-raises to 220k, I call
Flop (Pot 440k): Qs 2c 8h - Busquet bets 240k, I call
Turn (Pot 920k): As - Busquet bets 450k, I call
River (Pot 1,820k): 2h, Busquet bets 560k, I go all-in, he has approx. 1,2 Mio. left and folds

Preflop:
- My raise from the button to 2BB was standard during our heads-up and as we are effectively 65BB deep, I call his small 3-bet.
- I knew that he liked 3-betting broadways preflop.
- I expected from his heads-up play that he wouldn't 3-bet to loosely. He will rather call small and medium pocket pairs as they have a bad playability out if position if they don't improve. He will probably 3-bet his monsters, even though he might trap with aces given the tight game flow.

Flop:
- He c-bets his whole range except for hands like jacks or medium pocket pairs which he checks frequently.
- He would probably not 3-bet hands like 88, 22 Q8 or Q2 preflop.
- This means he has plenty of air type hands, a few queens and obviously QQ-AA as nut hands in his range. Standard float for me with a gutshot draw for the nuts, backdoor flush draw and my J and/or 9 are sometimes even good outs too.

Turn:
- I expect him to fire a second bluff barrel quite frequently given the ace as the turn card.
- First of all, an ace hits his assumed range as the preflop 3-bettor and the card is good for firing another barrel.
- Secondly I know that he will fire multiple barrels in such spots in which he shows strength as the preflop aggressor while I have a marginal hand. Especially when he has outs with KT, JT, KJ (or even T9 or J9).
- I call the flush draw and gutshot draw to hit and if I don't hit, to bluff on the river depending on the river action. (if he checks, I'll shove as he would value bet anything else on the river)

River:
- Nut hands he might have: QQ, AA, AQ (and maybe A8, but he would probably check that on the flop)
- Air hands with all combinations of KJ, KT, JT (maybe T9, J9)
-> he has to fold many more air combinations to a river shove
- His bet sizing on the river: I don't think that he would bet his nut hands with such a bet size on the river. I would assume he bets larger or even goes all-in with them. He has only close to pot size behind and has such a polarized range on the river.

- Maybe he would bet AK (or even a weaker ace?) with a bet size like this for value, but he can still fold this because I would never push a weaker or equal hand for value than AK so I either have complete air or I have him beat. Now he has to ask himself what is more likely: a) I float him twice and push my my air over his bet for a ton of money and the title while knowing that he gets great odds to call or b) I do have the nuts which I would practically play like this too. (I can represent all nut hands).

Later in an interview Busquet said that he didn't think I could pull off a bluff shove on the river so I think that it wasn't unrealistic to think that he is capable of folding such hands.

- I got great odds for the bluff: the pot is 2,380k and I risk 1,760k so it has to work 45% of the time to have a positive expected value.

PokerStrategy.com: You will travel to this year's WSOP not before the middle of June and miss almost half of the events. Why are you leaving so late? Which WSOP events are on your schedule for this year?

pokernoob: Last year I was in the US for a total of seven week. Six weeks Las Vegas and one week New York for a change. I had the feeling that this was a bit too much, but it wasn't possible to do it differently as the $40k NLHE was at the start and the Main Event at the end and I really wanted to play both of them.

This year, the schedule is different and I can play plenty of interesting events during the four weeks I'll be there. I will leave out all these smaller crap shoot tournaments and focus on NLHE tournaments with buy-ins of at least $5,000. This includes a $5,000 6-max, $10,000 heads-up, $10,000 PLHE, $25,000 6-max, obviously the Main Event and a $10,000 WPT event. Maybe I have to skip a few of these as I may hopefully make it into Day 2 or even further in some events and maybe I will mix in a few others.

You guys rock!

PokerNoob at the WSOP 2009

PokerStrategy.com: When Team PokerStrategy.com players make it far in a tournament there is always a live ticker and news. Many PokerStrategists follow the action and cross their fingers. Do you notice this during a tournament?

pokernoob: Of course I notice it and it's a great feeling to know that so many people are crossing their fingers for me. I really want to say thank you to the community for the great support in all these tournaments during the last year - you guys rock!

PokerStrategy.com: What are your plans for your poker career this and next year? Any specific goals?

pokernoob: Unfortunately I have to announce that I haven't extended my contract with PokerStrategy.com that expired after EPT Monte Carlo. I definitely appreciate the offer and it was certainly good within the concept of PokerStrategy.com.

After having talks with several sites and PokerStrategy.com, I have eventually decided to join MyBet, an iPoker skin of a German sports betting company and I will wear the MyBet jersey for at least one year.

I don't have many poker-related goals for the near future. Setting goals based on successes mostly leads to frustration anyway. I expect myself to play my A-game in every tournament and what happens after that is beyond my control anyway. There are plenty of factors around my A-game and this also involves having a healthy balance between poker and other areas of life (such as sports).

PokerStrategy.com: Thank you for the great time in Team PokerStrategy.com and all the best for the future!

pokernoob: Thank you for the interview!