Justin Saliba’s poker journey has been nothing short of remarkable, as the Pokercoaching.com coach continues to hone his skills and add more facets to his game. Recently, he’s begun pursuing additional tools for his poker utility belt and has looked beyond the confines of NLHE and PLO into the wonderful world of mixed games. In a recent conversation with Justin, we learned the catalyst for his decision to explore poker’s lesser-known variants and what it what that has helped him embrace the complexity and community of mixed games. In this interview, Justin talks about his initial steps into the world of non-Hold’em poker, the challenges and rewards he’s encountered, and how this journey has continued to shape his poker career.
The first time you played any non-Hold’em or PLO variants was at the Mixed Game Festival a couple years back. What drew you in to give mixed games a try for the first time?
Honestly, just before this time frame I had a conversation with my sports psychologist and was having some issues sustaining my drive. Burnout had hit a bit and I felt like I was flying around the world playing these tournaments for EV-reasons, just going through the motions, and had lost some of the joy I once had for playing cards.
One question he asked me was ‘When was the last time that you just played poker for fun?’, and I couldn’t even remember. It felt like years since I had just played for love the game! After the conversation, it became clear to me that I needed something novel to re-energize myself.
The idea of getting dealt more than two cards sounded pretty fun, and I’d had some friends talked about mixed game culture being quite relaxed and fun, so I decided to go splash around and check it out!
You had obviously been playing poker for many years before playing your first hand in a mixed game. What were your initial impressions sitting at the table for the first couple hours and being introduced to a number of new poker variants?
I had a blast. I distinctly remember the energy I felt after learning the rules to some new games and trying to watch how other people were playing. It was all a new puzzle that felt really fun and exciting. The people and the community there were also extremely helpful, teaching me some of the basics and giving me some ideas of why they were doing certain things. Overall though, it was very fun to just play like a whale and try to rely on variance to make some good hands (where I’d have to table my hand to make sure I had the winner, hah).
Ethan “Rampage” Yau and Justin Saliba try mixed game poker for the first time.
In particular, I believe this was your first exposure to Draw Games and Stud Games. Do you believe they required you to unlock a new sort of skill set versus Flop Game variants?
Absolutely. It gave me a better understanding of what ‘poker skills’ even meant. All of the sudden, I started to realize that there was a slightly different skill set that made a good Stud player, over what makes a good NLHE player. It felt like it was so easy for the good players to always remember all of the face-up cards for example. Their recall and their mechanics just felt so automatic and gave me a new respect for many of these players.
Even just the speed at which they play was so impressive to me. Especially as I was getting more comfortable with some of the games, I had to be okay with being the slowest one at the table and taking my time to try and think through perhaps my 200th rep of a Stud8 hand or something.
What variant(s), if any, stood out to you as particularly challenging or enjoyable, and why?
I really liked the split pot games early on. Stud8 and Omaha8 in particular were just completely different from anything I’ve played. The two-way-concepts that were happening made it very fun to learn and try to understand why people were doing what they were doing.
Another thing that made these two games very fun is that it felt like there were tons of different styles that good players had in these games. Some played very tight, others extremely loose, some valued one-way hands more than others… and all of them were likely winners, so the stylistic differences were pretty enjoyable and lead to a spot needing to be played completely differently against one player type compared with another.
I think this was very helpful for NLHE as well, where I likely wasn’t using my intuition enough or deviating player-to-player enough until I really dove into mixed games.
Pokercoaching.com founder Jonathan Little and Justin Saliba
Trying mixed games is one thing; practicing them is another, as it’s not always so simple to find them being spread in a live setting. How/where have you gotten reps in to work on your game?
My favorite way to learn new games is heads-up online cash. I played a lot of this early on in my NLHE career, and it was how I went about beginning to study PLO, so I felt it was a good starting point for me to practice.
I know that HU is very different from ring games, but I’ve always felt like if I can learn the game where seemingly every spot is uncomfortable, and I’m having to fight for pots much more than with just very strong hands, my learning curve will be the fastest. Then, I’d be able to apply many of those skills to ring and move more into ring cash games. Also, just the sheer amount of hands you get in is so much higher than anything else, and it’s very fun!
Now you can occasionally be found jumping into high buy-in mixed game tournaments. What has the road been like to get there? Please tell us about how (i.e., the process) you’ve made progress in the mixed game streets.
Once I decided to take mixed games more seriously, I really got obsessed. I knew that I needed to surround myself with players that are much better than myself, and learn everything I can from them. With my NLHE skillset, I was able to find some nice win-wins where I traded coaching with some very good mixed game players, mostly Alex Livingston and Jerry Wong, who both helped me a ton with the fundamentals.
From there, I pretty much went through every available public course, content, PokerStars online streams, and anything else I could find to try to build solid frameworks for how I was going to approach the games.
#WCOOP started today & there’s a huge number of poker variants on the schedule
Buy-ins start at just $5.50 & you can test yourself across multiple formats, including: PLO, 8-Game, HORSE, Stud, Stud H/L, Razz, 5-Card Draw, 2-7 Single Draw, Triple Draw & Badugi. pic.twitter.com/4TVRe9wwzi
— PokerStars Support (@StarsSupport) September 8, 2024
I offered people free money in the form of EV to play me HU as well at reasonably small stakes. I would just play very good players and lose, but I would record my entire session and run all of the equities with a program I like called Stud-Flop-Draw from the interesting spots, as well send them to my coaches for feedback.
When the WSOP came around, I was really grateful as well to be friends with Shaun Deeb. He became a very valuable resource to run hands by, give me feedback when I played a hand ‘like an idiot’, and talk me through different adjustments he liked to make at the WSOP against different player types.
Overall, I would say I was still losing theoretically in pretty much every high buy-in mixed game tournament, but it felt close enough to 0% to fire, get some experience, try my best, and also get a little refresh from the NLHE tournaments where pressure and stress can feel a bit higher at times.
Would you say there was any sort of parallel from how you worked on and progressed in your Hold’em/PLO game vis a vis how you did so in mixed games; or is it a different sort of process?
I tried to have pretty much the same process. The public tools are much weaker for mixed games in general, but my approach was very similar. Surround myself with players that are better than me, learn as much as I can from them, work hard to have a strong process of reviewing hands, articulating strategies, and building frameworks for how I want to approach different spots, put in volume, and do my best to learn from every single mistake that I made (which was plenty in year 1 of mixed 🙂 ).
After five years of NLHE and PLO cashes on your HendonMob, suddenly a result pops up from June, where you finished 7th in the $10K 2-7 Triple Draw and you followed that up with another result a couple weeks later in a $1500 2-7 Single Draw Event. At what point did you tell yourself “I feel ready to compete in mixed games in tournament format”? What threshold did you feel you had to reach?
I’m not sure you can ever really feel ready when it comes to things like that. Sometimes, I think you just need to have self-belief, and not put too much pressure on yourself. I was just going to fire, have fun with it, and try my best.
2-7 Triple Draw by that point was definitely the mixed game that I had played the most of. There are some old school mixed guys that pretty much sit and play anybody HU, so I was able to get the most action in that game, with many of them berating me in chat, but actually helping me learn more and more! That said, I’m not sure if I’d played more than 100 live MTT 2-7 hands at that point, so I didn’t put too much pressure on myself and just wanted to try my best and have the belief that I know I’m a good tournament player and can achieve results.
🚨 Bracelet sweat alert! 🚨
PokerCoaching Coach @Justin_Saliba has made day 3 of the @WSOP $10k 2-7 Triple Draw and is 6/13! 🔥
Justin is battling amongst some of the biggest legends in poker for his 3rd bracelet & $350k! 🚀
Follow the action! 🍀🍀https://t.co/g9o4Xv2kn5 pic.twitter.com/BWwey5Z710
— PokerCoaching.com (@PokerCoaching_) June 12, 2024
It’s one thing to splash around in a fun $4/8 dealer’s choice cash game. It’s entirely another to play mixed games in tournament format, especially against some of the world’s best. That’s a jump that most casual mixed games players don’t usually (get to) make. That said, playing against some of the world’s best is not something new to you, as you’ve been doing that for a while on the NLHE and PLO circuit, and you’re sufficiently bankrolled to take those kinds of shots. Can you tell us what it’s been like to make that jump?
It’s really just been a lot of fun. Getting to play these weird games with guys that I’ve looked up to for years is a blast. From a competitive standpoint, I just can’t really compete with the best in mixed games yet. I have a high amount of confidence in my process and I know that if I dedicate myself, I can become a very good player in any game. But I’m certainly aware that I’m not there yet, and it will take a lot of time before that’s the case. The $10k 2-7 was a great example of this, really showing the difference between an OK player and the world beaters.
The field started with maybe 300 runners or so, and I felt comfortable at my early tables. I had a reasonable strategy to not be too big of a loser in the game, and I was trying very very hard to win, which amounts to something. I also had the same process, constantly taking notes, sending hands to my network for feedback and trying to improve after each hand.
Although I felt like I was a better player by the final table of that tournament, when you get deep in a tournament like that, you certainly get humbled. I believe the final table was pretty much six of the best 2-7 TD players in the world and me, who had played maybe a total of 300 2-7 live MTT hands at that point. Especially with the slow structure, I was close to dead, but was able to learn a lot.
Poker Hall of Famer Phil Ivey won his 11th bracelet, while Justin finished in 7th place | Screenshot: Hendonmob
I relied on immense rungood, mediocre fundamentals, and some MTT skills up until that point… but as you get deeper, the better players were able to really punish me for my lack of experience and skill, and I’m not sure that there was any amount of positive variance that could have had me win on that day.
Those guys were just too good and so incredibly far ahead of the strategies I was trying to execute. It’s just like anything else, the truly great ones make it look so easy as if you could do it yourself, but then if you go try to compete with them, it just serves as a wakeup call and some added perspective for how far away I am from that in these games.
Do you have any specific poker goals as far as mixed games are concerned, whether it’s increased mastery of any particular variants, tournament achievements you’d like to have, or to eventually play in the big cash game mixes that run in Las Vegas?
I need to have a mixed WSOP bracelet for sure, hoping to get a live mixed bracelet before a live NLHE one just for the fun of it. Overall, I want to be able to go after WSOP POY at some point, so trying to add 2-3 games/year that I dedicate myself to while still staying focused on NL is probably the right balance for me.
I want enough novelty in my process to keep me hungry, motivated, and fresh, but there are still so many things I want to accomplish in NLHE to just dive into mixed games 100%.
In 2023, I played 2-7 TD/SD, Big O, and O8. I think for this upcoming year, I’ll probably stick to those games and add in Stud8 and Razz for this next year, or whatever other game peaks my interest the most.
For someone who has now read about and been inspired by your progress as a mixed game player from total novice to competing in championship events, what would you recommend they do in order to try and follow a similar path to success? I specifically ask this question as the overwhelming majority of such people are NOT necessarily bankrolled to make the quantum leap into 5-figure buy-in events.
The biggest thing that I would say is just focus on improving after every single session. Instead of letting negative thoughts or noise enter your head, such as, ‘wow, that player sucks, why did they play it that way, etc’, switch your approach to be more open-minded, adaptable, and truly competitive. Spend all of that energy trying to figure out what caused them to play it that way and what you can do to counter the strategy and develop a bigger edge. If you have that mindset, you’ll just improve by a small amount over and over and over until you blink your eyes and you’re truly a great poker player.
On top of that, I would say to always remember the ‘why’ behind why you’re playing and always hold on to that joy of the game. When you’re really enjoying playing cards, focusing at a high level, dealing with variance, competing, and playing your best just feels so much easier. Put your joy back into what got you into the game in the first place and focus on improving every day and see where it will take you!
You’ve had a role working with Pokercoaching.com for many years and are currently a popular coach on the site. Could you envision Pokercoaching.com branching into offering some mixed game courses? If so, approximately when would you estimate such a thing could happen and would you consider yourself as a potential instructor for such courses?
I think we’ll get into mixed games at some point. There are so many great mixed game coaches out there that we’ll be very happy to collaborate with someone to build something awesome for our students. We have a lot of exciting new things currently in the pipeline, so I’ll estimate sometime in 2026 for a nice little mixed game course. 🙂
Finally, Mixed Game Festival IX is on the horizon and I know you’ll be joining us to splash around at the felt once again in a few weeks. In the past you’ve brought some friends to join you and dip their toes in the mixed game streets, like Ethan “Rampage” Yau and Aram Zobian. Will any other Pokercoaching coaches be joining you/us? Will you be hopping into any of our mixed game tournaments on the NAPT schedule?
I’m sure more coaches will come out to play! The Mixed Game Festival is always a blast and I love playing at Resorts World, so I’ll definitely invite some friends to come splash around because, sometimes, being the whale is really fun!
Plus, I love PokerStars events, and the schedule for this upcoming NAPT looks awesome. I’m hoping to be deep in some of the big NLHE tourneys, but if I’m out, I’ll definitely be hopping in some mixed game tourneys there next month.
Cool to meet @AramZobian for the first time!
Thanks for coming to visit @PokerLifeMedia Mixed Game Festival VIII.
Welcome as well to fellow first-timer @APeikenVegas, and stalwart attendee @Justin_Saliba. pic.twitter.com/oXJdIOehJT
— Robbie Strazynski (@cardplayerlife) June 18, 2024
About The Author
