This week Jim Reid and the RecPoker RECing Crew interview poker pro Jay “Venom” Carrafiello. Jay talks about coming up in the cash game streets playing PLO and learning lessons, dipping into heads-up play for a while, and settling on MTTs as his format of choice. The discussion finds a few rabbit-holes, covering the difference between cash and tournament play, different variants of poker, the importance of finding people to learn with, taking notes at the table, solvers, poker goals, one of Jay’s recent tourney wins, live reads tat the table and a lot more! We also play Stake/Study/Stack with Craig Savage, Rob Gardner and Scott Beckom and we Close The Action with our speed round!

Plus of course we raffle away a free prize at the end for folks in the YouTube chat, to help support a local food bank. Join us LIVE on YouTube next Monday at 7:30 ET for free to ask our guests questions in real time, and you can win too!

Jay is active on Twitter as https://x.com/VA_Venom

We also go over this week's home game results and discuss these topics:

How to help us out - https://rec.poker/support/

Home Games - https://rec.poker/homegame/

Go Premium! - https://rec.poker/premium/

Timestamps:

03:40 Jay shares what his role is in the poker world

05:06 How Jay got started in poker

08:46 Mental shifts: tournament vs. cash games

13:18 Jay talks about his main ways for improvement

17:39 Finding people to share thoughts and hands with

20:19 Jay’s approach to table reading

26:52 Jay’s photogenic memory

28:44 Recommendations: learning cash and MTTs at the same time

39:37 Chats: Do you recommend ICMizers for short stack study

41:02 Balancing family time and poker

45:17 How Jay measures success as a poker player

01:15:06 Home Game Result updates

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RecPoker is a vibrant and encouraging poker learning community. We are committed to learning the game, but our priority is building healthy relationships where we can not only grow in the game, but grow in our enjoyment of life. The free membership website at rec.poker is awesome, but it's just a tool to help us build that community. You can join for FREE, giving you access to the groups, forums, and other member benefits. If you want to enjoy the premium content, or become part of the RECing Crew, those options are available and you can get $10 off your first payment using the code RECPOKER. Music by Peter Troolin, ptroolin@gmail.com