Niall "onehandturks" Charlton Full Interview Transcript

Niall “onehandturks” Charlton is in Cannes playing the 2011 World Series of Poker Europe and he sat down with us to talk about the online grind and life outside of the game.
Charlton plays high-stakes Pot-Limit Omaha online, up to $100/$200, and according to highstakesdb.com he’s profited to the tune of $320,000 so far this year.
Charlton took a few minutes to chat on a break from the €5k PLO WSOPE event to speak with us. For more information check out the feature story we did.
PL.com: Let’s start at the beginning. When did you get into poker and what’s the development of your game been like since then?
Niall Charlton: I’ve been playing trick cards for about seven years-ish. When I got out of University in Nottingham I was playing online and making money and instead of getting a job I just kept playing and did some traveling.
About four years ago I started focusing on Omaha and I think because I got into it before it started getting really popular my game progressed a lot faster than the average Omaha player.
And now I play high-stakes online.
What were you doing in University at the time, when you got into online poker?
I studied business and computer science but poker just sort of fell into my lap. My final year’s dissertation was on game theory and poker marked cards lenses, sort of trying to solve poker and see if a computer could do it.
It was a rudimentary program but the theory was okay.
You’ve spent a lot of time in the HSPLO forums on Two Plus Two. How much did that help the development of your game?
I’ve been part of the Two Plus Two community for about four years and it’s definitely helped a lot. I’ve met a lot of great players there and the discussion and talking over hands it’s allowed me to do has helped.
It was good in the early days but not much posting about hands seems to go on there anymore.
When you talk about the learning curve in Omaha, is it really getting hard now that the game’s becoming so much more popular?
Yeah it really is. The No-Limit players that are coming across and beginning to take Omaha seriously are improving so fast.
I think within a year or two a lot of these guys will be the best, better than all the PLO players who have been playing for a long time.
Are the games beatable now? And will they continue to be as the level of play continues to go up?
Well, I think so. I mean, I hope so because I don’t know what else I would do. (laughs)
But the games at the moment are great. The $50/$100 and $100/$200 games are really good right now.
You went deep in the Main Event at the WSOP this year and you’ve had some other good live results. Is live poker something you’re interested in doing more of?
Yeah, actually I just moved to London and things have been busy, a lot of drinking and a lot of partying, so I look at these events as a time to sort of take it easy and get a break.
So I’ll definitely be playing more events when I have the time to get away.
What do you see in your future? Will you be playing poker forever or do you have aspirations outside of the game?
I don’t think I’ll be able to beat the game forever so I want to make as much money as I can now, and use that to try some business ideas and investments.
It’s really hard to sit down right now and invest time in stuff like that when I can make a lot of money playing poker.
You talked a bit about the skills you learned in University helping you in poker. Do you think the skills you’ve learned in poker will help you down the road when you decide to turn to other projects?
Definitely. Bankroll management is obviously a huge skill. New business owners will often put all their funds in their first big idea which is dangerous, just like poker.
Understanding risk and being honest with yourself are really important in poker and I think the experience I’ve got will be a big help in business.

WSOP Daily Show: Day 1B with Georges St-Pierre, Esfandiari

We're two days in to the 2012 World Series of Poker Main Event and we're giving you a backstage pass via our daily video show.

Today on the show we speak to UFC Welterwight champion Georges St-Pierre. He tells us about joining Team 888poker and what it's like playing juice cards his first WSOP in Las Vegas.

Next we check in with Big One for One Drop champion Antonio Esfandiari. The man known as the Magician won $18.3 million last week and went a little overboard celebrating the win.

Check back for more WSOP Main Event videos and follow the action with our Main Event live updates.

Here is the rough leaderboard at the end of play on Day 1B.

James Schafer - 178,000
Jeff Beckley - 158,550
Matt Woodward - 158,500
Nelius Foley - 146,875
Jason Somerville - 144,725
Maria Ho - 130,425
Shaun Deeb - 125,900
Cody Wang - 121,900
Brian Hastings - 119,000
Jeremy Kottler - 112,000

Stout's Sunday Report: April 3, 2011

I was vacationing in Florida this week, so Sunday was the only session I played for the entire week.
I flew down to Orlando with my girlfriend to meet up with one of my best friends Mike Hofeld, who recently moved from NJ to Orlando.
From there we rented a convertible and drove down to Key West for a few days and rented a house. It's a pretty marked cards cool place ... has the feel of the Carribean islands without dealing with international flights/customs.
I set up shop in my buddy's office at his house in Orlando and was ready to crush it and make fat stacks of cash. Unfortunately that plan went as well as Tiger Woods' plan of keeping his infidelity a secret.
I made deep runs in two of the huge multi-entry shenanigans including the $163+rebuys but busted 29th and 53rd in fields of 4474 and 1454, respectively. I had heaps of chips deep in the Sunday 500 as well, but eventually started losing every pot I entered and busted well short of the final table.
I stayed focused and played really well throughout the session, but even the $215+rebuys couldn't pull the Mariano Rivera-like save it usually does for me as I lost a huge flip in it to bust 69th.
Anti-tilt video of the week:

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Length of session: 12:12
Total # of tournaments played: 57
Total # of cashes: 9
Total buy-ins/rebuys/add-ons: $12,462
Total amount of cashes/bounties: $6,449
Net win/loss for session: -$6,013
Net win/loss for 2011 in Sunday online tournaments: +$3,749
Don't forget the Bluff Pro Challenge running on Lock Poker throughout the month of April. The player in the contest who has the highest profit in MTTs + cash games for the month will win a Lock Pro contract and be featured on the cover of Bluff Magazine! Registration is still open at 

Three Card Poker

Despite being two games in one, Three Card Poker is one of the simplest casino poker games you can play.


Flash Game Instructions: Choose a chip amount from the bottom right and place your bets in the ante and/or pair-up circles. Follow the on-screen prompts to play or fold.
Three Card Poker uses the name "poker" because it uses the standard poker hand ranking order with just one exception.
Because of the difference in odds from five cards to three, the order for straights and flushes are reversed. This means a straight is MORE valuable than a flush in Three Card Poker.
Other than this there are no changes to the hand rankings, except for the elimination of any hands that require more than three cards. When you take your seat at the Three Card Poker table you can play PairPlus, Ante and Play, or both.

PairPlus

Possibly the easiest of any table game you can play marked cards, PairPlus requires absolutely no decision making on your end.

1. You place your bet (the bet must be between the table minimum and maximum bet amounts).
2. Receive your cards.
3. Get paid (or not).

The payout scale for PairPlus is as follows:
Straight Flush - 40:1
Three of a Kind - 30:1
Straight - 6:1
Flush - 4:1
Pair - 1:1

Ante and Play

If you'd like to have a little more control over what happens at the table, you can choose to play Ante and Play card cheating. If you wish you may play both Ante and Play and PairPlus, or you can choose to play just one or the other.
Here's a look at the basic game play.

1. Place your ante
2. Receive your cards
3. Choose to fold (losing all bets) or raise (matching the ante)
4. Get paid

If you fold, you will lose your ante and your PairPlus bet. This might seem like an issue, but if your PairPlus bet pays, you will have no reason to fold.
If you raise (by matching the size of the ante), then you must compare your hand to the dealers to see if you get paid.
The dealer must hold a queen-high or better to qualify.

• If the dealer does not qualify the player receives 1:1 on his ante and is returned his raise bet.
• If the dealer qualifies and the player wins, the player receives 1:1 on both the ante and raise bet.
• If the dealer qualifies and the player loses, the player loses both bets.
• If the dealer qualifies and ties the player, the player pushes: both bets returned.

In addition to the player versus dealer payout, players playing Ante and Play receive bonus payouts (regardless of the dealer's hand) for strong hands:
Straight Flush - 5:1
Three of a Kind - 4:1
Straight - 1:1