PocketFives had the chance to chat with one of our newest members Mike ValueTownConnors (pictured). Mike has been a member since February 2014 and has been living in Vegas for the last five years. He has been playing online poker for over nine years. He likes playing cash games and prefers live to online. He plays $1/$2 No Limit and takes a shot at the $2/$5 games as well. His favorite poker rooms are the Aria and the Wynn. He is a professional poker dealer employed by Harrah’s and has earned over $25,000 this year by playing his style of poker on WSOP.com and Ultimate Poker in the games that we record.

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PocketFives: Do you play on both Nevada sites? Do you have any preference?

Mike Connors: Yes, I play on both, but spend more time on WSOP due to the better tournament structures, larger fields, and prize pools. The synchronized breaks, hand history replayer, and note-taking capabilities of WSOP are also clear competitive advantages.

PocketFives: How did you choose your player names?

Mike Connors: I started on UP first and went with my Twitter handle. I’m a positive person and choose to focus on the good things that happen to me. I have one particular coworker who would always remark, “Damn, you’re running good” after he heard one of my stories.

For my WSOP name, I asked a few friends to come up with ideas. ValueTown was my favorite because it came from one of the truly awesome poker songs, “Cash Out” by DRybes.

PocketFives: How or why did you start playing online poker?

Mike Connors: I got fired from my job as a territory sales rep and they made a deal with me. They’d pay me for another month-and-a-half and, in exchange, I’d forward all the phone calls and email to the appropriate people. I had been watching poker on ESPN and decided that I’d like to learn how to play poker online while I was waiting for the phone to ring and email to arrive. I started checking out poker books from the library and playing freerolls on PokerRoom and Ultimate Bet.

After a while, I had won a decent number of UB points and, in order to turn them into actual dollars, I had to start playing cash games. I reasoned that I was pretty bad, but I didn’t need to be a winning player right off the bat; I just needed to convert the points to dollars faster than I lost money. I started at the absolute lowest stakes and remember being very pleased with myself when I starting beating $5 sit and gos regularly. I was tickled when I started playing $0.01/$0.02 PLO and beat that, all while slowly converting my UB points into dollars.

PocketFives: To what do you attribute your current online success?

Mike Connors: After I started learning how to play, I wanted to host a weekly home game. What resulted was absolutely key to me become a poker player. We were playing $10 and $20 buy-in cash games and tournaments and we took it seriously, discussing strategy at the table. It became a twice a week thing and several of us played in other home games around southern California.

We called ourselves the Tustin Rounders. Two of the Rounders became integral to my development as a poker player. When “Jay Feel” heard that I quit my bartender job without lining anything else up, he told me about two job opportunities in Arizona. One of them was a job dealing poker at a small card room. He was dealing and playing there and invited me to do the same.

I spent two years there before moving to Las Vegas to deal and play poker, once again at the suggestion of Jay. Had I put in more effort to improve my poker game, Jay would’ve been an excellent mentor. I didn’t realize until later that the effort you make away from the felt can be such a drastic catalyst for improvement.

I didn’t make the same mistake when LuckSackGMZ came to Las Vegas. He stayed at my place during the 2011 WSOP and I’d ask him to tell me about an interesting or difficult hand he played or saw that day. He didn’t have to do this, but I think he appreciated my inquisitive nature and desire to improve. Jay Feel had moved to California and I had come to the realization that I didn’t have an unlimited amount of time to learn from someone who could teach me. I wasn’t about to waste another opportunity.

I utilized his advice and started to see the benefits as I slowly added to my skill set. The result was more chips later in tournaments and deeper runs. It was obvious to him that I was applying his advice properly. When he called me a sponge, I knew I was on the right path. The apex was when he watched me get a player to call my flop check-raise shove with K-Q offsuit on a nine-high, two-spade board. He was drawing thin against my A-Q of spades. No one has had a more profound effect on my poker play than LuckSackGMZ.

PocketFives: We understand that you are unable to play in any of the WSOP bracelet eventsbesides the Casino Employees tournaments. Why is that?

Mike Connors: I deal poker at Harrah’s, which is part of the Caesars Corporation, the entity that owns the WSOP brand. They have a standing policy that all Caesars-affiliated poker dealers are not allowed to play in any WSOP bracelet or ring events. We are allowed to play the Employees Event only. Earlier this summer, I attempted to poke around and ask if they would review that policy. I got stonewalled, but perhaps I didn’t put in enough effort to talk to the right people. There’s always next year.

PocketFives: What do you play instead?

Mike Connors: There’s plenty to choose from in Vegas during the summer and I prefer the Rio 3:00pm Deepstacks and the Aria series. All bricks so far, but I am locked into playing the WPT500 $1 million guaranteed at Aria in early July. Also, I am dealing four or five days a week, so that cuts into my playing time, just as it does throughout the year.

PocketFives: How do you prepare yourself before a tourney?

Mike Connors: For bigger live events, I prefer a good night’s sleep and a decently structured warm-up tournament. The 1:00pm Aria $125 fits the bill nicely. For online tournaments, I don’t change anything. If I’m rested and able, I play whatever fits my time frame. I’m not the greatest multi-tabler, so I usually restrict myself to four tables or less.

PocketFives: Is there anything else you would like to add?

Mike Connors: There is an issue near and dear to my heart. Most of the players on WSOP adhere to this, but the few that do not infuriate me. Simply put, do not criticize bad players. Ever. We are a fairly small poker community and we want the weaker players to enjoy their time at the tables. If the weaker players never won, nobody would play poker. My database numbers for my Full Tilt and PokerStars accounts prove that I was one of the weaker players once.

The luck aspect of poker gives weak players hope and occasional success and makes the game profitable over time for the strong players. I recently saw two players get into a chat box spat and one of them linked the other player’s poker database entry to show him exactly how much he had lost. I was shocked, mortified, and angered all at the same time.

If you can’t play poker in a place where you can yell at your screen, I feel sorry for you. When you blast the chat box, you’re hurting yourself and making our poker world a meaner, less hospitable, and less profitable place. Handle yourself with class, even when you feel like lashing out.

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