So, Mr. Taylor.  Or Swyyft.  Or Taylor Swyyft.  You are known as “swyyft” on all poker sites and twitter and god knows what else.  Where did you get that name?
Because of how fast I can blow Mrs. Carse’s face.  Naw, just kidding (sort of), I got it when I was playing football. I am a big guy. I am not quick however. In fact out of 100 people playing football I was often one of the 3 slowest. They nicknamed me Big Swift because of how slow I was as a sort of ironical nick name. The coaches found this out and laughed and just started calling me swift for fun. When I started getting into Online Gaming and names, I wanted the name swift because It was what every one called me. However being quite common place I decided to use yy instead of I because it looked cool. (Still does IMO) thus Swyyft was born. I know its always available so and since i do not want have 30 different logins I just kept using it. It has been with me for about 9 years now.
 
Okay, now that that nonsense is out of the way, let’s talk poker.  Online or live and why?
I prefer online. I am not a big live person, I think live is fun but a lot of my game is about isolating a player. This is quite a bit harder live than it is online. A lot of people come along for the ride. It does not fit my game well. I am also ok losing several buy ins before making moves. I like to gamble and be aggressive early and set a tone to get big hands paid off later. You do not do this as much in a live game. It can also get boring to me, I get distracted easily. I however can give the same stare to these players when they do something stupid that Kobe Bryant and Peyton Manning give their teammates when they lose the game for him.

I prefer online for several reasons, You can multi table like no other. This means constant action. It also allows me to keep my variance as low as possible even though due to my style I am a high variance player. I have had +15k+ months and -10k Months. Great example is I was +3k one week this month and then down 2k the next week. The downswings really have nothing to do with the cards though and more to do with how focused I am at the game. When I am on top of my game I feel I can hang in almost every tournament. Last night I went deep in a tourney. (Busted 45th or so of 1999 players) Not because of my cards. I got AJ 3x and 88 and 77. Other than that I got no good hand out of 132 hands or so after the bubble broke. Going from 300th to 45th when I was a mid stack at 300th is quite hard when you go card dead. I was able to get someone to call off 30 BB with A8 vs my AJ and I 4 Bet shoved 2 times with KJ and J6 and both times got the 3 better to fold. I had no doubt they were folding based on exact reads. One guy folded TT vs my J6 and not sure what the other guy folded. Being able to chip up and add 15+ big blinds to my stack with nothing on good reads is what my game is all about. The problem with making plays like these is I am not always right. Which causes variance. the guy could have called off 45 bb with TT and Ko’d me in the tourney and no one would have thought much about it.

I ended up not final tabling because I just ran bad. I had a couple big pots go the other way. One was one where I was sure I was ahead unless the flush hit and then I had no idea. The flush did hit and he checked it down and I found out his AJ beat my A9 on an 8 board. Another one was a limp pot where a guy limped AK, the flop came Q23. I bet and he eventually 3 outted me later on. These too cost me to go from 7th in chips to 35th with about 46 left. Eventually I got it in AQ vs TT and lost a flip for a top 3 stack. If I win that flip I feel confident I can use my advantage to final table.
 
Cash/SNG/MTT? 9 handed or 6 max?
6 Max for sure. I think more flaws in your game are exposed in 6 max, which I can usually take advantage of. It’s pretty easy to hide flaws in a 9 max table. You do not get nearly as many blind vs blind/button situations which is a weakness for most players. People defend too much etc. I like both Cash and MTT, although I am not a winning player in NLHE cash games. I prefer PLO cash because the game is best played 100 big blinds deep, but what happens when you play good players is that it ends up being 200 big blinds deep once people lost buy ins and money gets traded around. That’s when the game becomes super intense and really becomes a thinking game. I like NLHE MTT though because they are the softest usually with people having no experience how to play the latter stages. Also I am a winning player at it lol.
 
How did you get your start playing poker?

3 Things.

1. Coke Binge,
2. Bad Black Jack Run, and
3. Needed to kill 3 hours while the hooker was coming down back in the suite at the Venetian.

 
Who is better, you or widmayer?  Me or widmayer?  Me or you?  Me or anyone else?  Me or a dead donkey?  A dead donkey or a crippled blind fucktard? Me or a crippled blind fucktard?  Me or a rock?
You know, results wise I am quite a bit better, but the times I play my best, are when we are both playing and talking hands out. He provides a lot of insight and keeps me from doing stupid things. He is not afraid to tell me when I am playing bad and when my risk level of how I play goes too high and I need to tighten up and play better.

I think at times you play just as well as him but I think you have some leaks in your game. I do not think you exploit him as much as he exploits you. If you are sitting down at a 9 handed cash game table its tough to say who comes out on top. If you sitting down at a final table with 9 left and short stacks all around I think he is going to come out on top.

I think you are better than you think you are, I just don’t think you have confidence sometimes when you are playing against other good players you should have. I think you don’t stop and think about what you are doing. I think if you just quit doing anything instantly and thought out every hand out late in Tourneys and SNG you would get better. Always think about what you have and what they have and apply it to the hand. Don’t just snap doing things. Always let the FTP clock start, telling you, you have 15 seconds left and you will definitely start getting better results. Sometimes I watch you and know you have no idea if you are good or not and you just bet at it instead of thinking about it and betting at it confidently.
 
Online poker is RIGGGGGGGGED?  True or False and why?
False, there are a ridiculous amount of analytical programs out there and I even use one once in a while. The numbers come out exactly how they should. I think players just are not good enough when it comes to online and don’t adjust properly to the online games. Just because you can crush your home game or go to your local casino and win at 2/5 does not mean you can get online and beat 100 Max like that. The online games are much more fierce. The great players know where they stand as far as other players go. So many bad players never go out and learn the game and learn just how deep the game goes. They simply look at their cards and decide they have the best hand they should win all the time. One of the reasons these players never get sick results and are always losing is because they rely on big hands to build a stack. They might always be getting it in as a 70/30 but they also might be doing it for their tourney life every time. 
 
What’s your biggest cash?
$8500. I finished 3rd in the 10RA 80k on stars. 
 
Boobs or Ass?  Examples of each are provided.
Ass fo sure. Its way more fun in the long run. But I really don’t care. I can have fun with both. Butt sex with girls is always fun though. Or in your case butt sex with dudes.
 
You have lived all across the United States.  Which city/state has the best/worst women and why?
When I rate the states I rate them by how easily it is for me to bang hot girls.

1. LA. LA has some ridiculously hot women. Like off the charts smoking hot. There are 2 scales you use to define women. The 1-10 scale and the LA 1-10 scale. LA is nothing but 9s from the south/midwest/east that come out here and realizes they are a 6. Everyone who told them they were pretty back in there home towns has never seen the level of attractiveness LA girls have. You look on TV an see these smoking hot girls on TV shows. Like every tv show has attractive people. It’s not like they are using the only attractive people in the city. Those people make up 1% of the attractive females. If you go to a casting for a show like The OC, There are nothing but girls just as attractive as Mischa Barton. 100s lined up. This allows guys like me, pull tail so far out of my league its not funny. I don’t think I could go back to living in a city where I had to hook up with average girls. The problem with attractive girls in smaller cities is that they are all stuck up cause every guy hits on them and they get used to it.
2. Miami. Miami might overtake LA one day and is for sure ahead of it in natural  beauty and pleasantness. Miami gets a lot of South American women who are in my opinion the most attractive women in the world. If I had to find a wife tomorrow I am finding some Colombian/Argentian/Brazillian in Miami and going to have as many kids as possible. Also Miami is somehow chiller than LA. The problem is, its humid as fuck so I cant deal with that.
3. Let me start by saying the drop off from 2 to 3 is pretty ridiculous. But Dallas has some smoking hot girls, Same with Austin because of UT. These girls get bonus points because they are wholesome and fun loving. Also I like dominant loud women so Texas is full of them.
4. San Diego. San Diego is a chill place with a lot of smoking hot girls. Its a beach town so everyone is in crazy shape. One time we were down there and my friends hooked up with these really good looking 38 year old broads. They were day tripping from LA. Long story short. They needed a place to stay, but we really did not want to put up with them overnight. So we made them sleep on the streets of San Diego downtown cause they had no money. Lol.  widmayer can verify to this story.
5. Idaho and Utah have some smoking hot girls. And they wholesome. Unlike most of the other cities I mentioned. Its because they are Mormon and don’t really destroy their bodies trying to dick. They are also very naive which works out. They love out of towners because they can keep the veil of innocence because no one will find anything out. I know a lot of people who frequent these places call the women in Idaho. I-Da-Hoes. These girls get all that tension out on you, if you are just visiting for business/pleasure. I spent some decent time in Sand Point, Park City and Coeur D’Alene in Utah and Idaho and have some decent stories we will get into another time. Again Me pulling tail out of my league.

5 worst.*

1. Pennsylvania. I dare you to think of a hot girl you know from Pennsylvania.
2. New England States. I dare you to find me a hot blonde who sports a Red Sox hat Pre 2004.
3. Iowa, I went to visit my parents and did not want to bang one girl the whole time I was there.
4. Oregon/Washington Even the big cities have a hard time representing. Women are too outdoorsy and manly.
5. Oklahoma. Girls allow you to sleep with them there, thus the risk of crossing bodily fluids with @street3 through 6 degrees of separation is way to high.

* Alaska would be number 1 but due to the fact it has no women, I cannot count it. Its why jordie21 wants to move there so bad. Its his utopia.
 
When interviewing widmayer, he had a funny story about you, now it’s your turn to embarrass him.  Please give us a good story.
I will give you 2.5.

Story 1. So when we both lived in Milwaukee, We used to go to this bar/club. One of my best friends Ryan worked there so we always only had to tip. Well one random night Ryan and I went there and I did not know widmayer would be there. It was probably 12:30AM at this point. The place had multiple bars, so we decided to go to the top bar where you can sort of see over everything and start doing shots.

I look over to see what’s going on, on the dance floor. And I see widmayer on the dance floor dancing with a bunch of older black dudes, just bombed as well. I am staring at this for a good 20 minutes before finally going and getting him and dragging him away. All he would talk about the rest of the night was how he was getting down and how all these older black dudes loved him.

Before this ever happened we were at this same bar. I think it was someone’s birthday or something, If you were with the birthday party you got free beer before 10pm.

Well I think I left at some point during the night but when you have 2 hours of free beer you can guess where the night is headed.  I had actually left at some point during the night, but I come to find out later that widmayer had stayed the whole night. Even after all of his other friends left. Well I guess the story goes that someone put him into a cab, and told them to take him home. Only halfway home he realizes he has no money to pay the cab driver, so when they are  stopped at a red light he just jumps out of the car and books it. He runs from the cab driver for a while only to realize he has no idea where he is and none of his roommates or friends knew where he was either. They started calling him and finally got a hold of him. He was so wasted he had no idea where he was, only that he was outside of a check cashing place. For those of us who live in larger cities, you know that the last place you want to be at 230/3am is outside of a check cashing place. Needless to say his roommates managed to somehow pick him up. None to pleased.

Also one night I had to call him and ask him if we had an orgy or not. But that story we will leave for another time.

A company called Planet Poker brought the game from the felts of casinos to the virtual world of the internet. Now, players with no place to play or that lived too far away from casinos had a place to play poker, any day, any time. With poker online, players from around the world could play all forms of poker from anywhere they had an internet connection against players right down the street or across the globe.

Paradise Poker followed in 1999, then Poker Spot in 2000. In 2001, one of the premium poker sites today, Poker Stars (PS), came online and quickly became the most popular online site in the world. With an average of 190,000 players online at any given time, from top notch pros to beginners, Poker Stars is a force in the online world. The success of Poker Stars caught the attention of Poker Pros in the United States and across the world who, in turn, invested in Full Tilt Poker (FTP), which came online in 2004.

FTP and PS are the two premiere online poker sites and offer a wide variety of poker games. Both offer varying limits of Texas Hold Em, Omaha and STUD. These sites offer full ring games, tournaments and sit-n-goes. Players can try HU or play 6-max or 9 handed tables using their own money or just for fun with “play chips”. These sites increasingly adding different tournament types and levels so no matter what type of poker or setting you prefer, chances are you’ll find a game to sit in on.

Online poker has created some of the game’s biggest and brightest stars and has given the “everyman” the chance to compete for prize money previously reserved for the elite players battling it out in the most prestigious tournaments. Where a normal 9-5 guy would never be able to buy in to the WSOP ME for $10,000, online poker awards seats for as little as $39. In fact, Chris Moneymaker, an everyday accountant won his way into the 2003 WSOP ME by playing an online satellite. He went on to win the Main Event and took home over $2.5 million in cash. With that win, Moneymaker was credited with creating a “poker boom” that saw poker sites, both online and live increase in the number of players vying to be the next Moneymaker. Moneymaker’s dream was made possible by online poker and since has created tremendous amounts of opportunities for players to live out a dream that would never have been realized if not for these sites.

Online poker has also created a “new breed” of players that have forced veterans of the game to change their style to compete with the “online kids”. Today’s players have read the books, studied and played millions of hands and have developed a style of play that can put even the greatest players on tilt. To the history of poker, that advent of online poker began a change in dynamic and demographic that has helped erase the stereotype of the game and the players themselves, for the better. Online poker is not without its flaws and critics, but that is to be expected for any radical idea that changes the “norm” of what we are accustomed.

Street3 is a Professional Online Bingo Player and has been playing the game, at many levels, for years. He still attempts to play texas holdem.

The end was a long drawn out affair. On New Years Eve, I was down to my last £20, I spent a fairly depressing night watching the rest of the world celebrate a ticking clock on TV. Time passing wasn’t something I felt particularly jubilant about. If my life had been a chess game any decent player would have conceded that it was time to knock the King over and find a new game. Of course my life is, if anything, a poker game and Poker players live by the maxim “a chip and a chair” and that was what I was down to.

You quickly learn when playing poker that scared money rarely wins. Its almost impossible to play at your best when you’re down to the very last of your bankroll, calls you should be making are now almost impossible because if you’re wrong its all over. Then what? Back to a 9 to 5 job playing poker on the side telling anyone who will listen that you could have been a contender. The last lines of Goodfellas sum up my dread.

…And now it’s all over and that’s the hardest part. Today everything is different, there’s no action. I have to wait around like everyone else. I cant even get decent food. Right after I got here I ordered some spaghetti with marinara sauce and I got egg noodles and ketchup. I’m an average nobody. I get to live the rest of my life like a shnook.

I had absolutely no idea if I would even be able to get a regular job after all prospective employers might not understand the value I had added to my CV after four years playing poker and generally enjoying myself. I have always been difficult to manage and not having someone tell me what to do or where to be was something that I had become rather attached to. So on January first 2009 motivated by the fear of living a shnook’s life I took my last £20 and somehow turned it into £1200. Enough to pay the rent, enough to eat but I needed to do it all again in February and the pressure was back.

At times I can honestly say it all got to me. There were some nights that were sick with sleepless worry. The wins thankfully kept coming through February and early March and just when it looked like I was set to have a fantastic year, I was in the top 50 tournament players on William Hill, they switched Network. I played the last tournament on the old network at 01:00 on 17th March. It was a little like being in the band playing on the titanic, no matter how well I played the whole thing would be going under soon. The new network should have been just as easy to win on but for whatever reason I stopped winning. I think on reflection I can say it was a combination of self-doubt and a dislike of change. I was certainly not playing as well as I had been and by the end of May the false dawn had ended.

Now the thing about a false dawn is that it should inevitably eventually be followed by the actual dawn. I did get a job, a call center job. The pay was lousy but the hours were flexible and I figured I would just do the job long enough to build a bankroll, I could still play almost as much poker and with the pressure off I might start winning again. When the pressure was off though I couldn’t face playing at all. For the first time in years I didn’t play and more importantly I didn’t miss it. I was enjoying interacting with people who didn’t play, I found I really liked the people I was working with and the job, fund-raising for various charities was almost a karmic payback for the years I spent just trying to win money off people for my own needs without having given anything back. I decided I would only go back to poker when I was doing it for the right reason, because I enjoyed it and wanted to.

October 1st I had $1 in my account and it occurred to me that if I was good enough I should be able to turn that into $1000 before too long. The Rags to Riches challenge was born. Now I know that $1000 is hardly riches but if you can turn $1 into $1000 then you only have to do the same thing again from there to get to a million. After that? Well this time next year Rodney we will be a Brazilianaires. I will document the challenge honestly and hopefully with some good humor hereafter hope we all enjoy the ride.

“Achtung” Dan Hofinger is a London based poker player who can assist those wanting to break into live play through his own journey of bad beats and well-played hands.

The selection criteria are:

• Demonstrated profanity in their field
• Non-inspirational role model for the poker community
• Non-significant contribution to the poker community
• Unbelievable win in a sanctioned online event
• Evidence of disruptive innovation

After a long and strenuous search for the absolute worst kind of online poker player, the final three candidates can be announced.

The_Gov

The_Gov
The 2008 Most Hated Man in Poker Award Winner, The_Gov is well-versed in the arts of profanity and has continuously shown disruptive innovation at several 2009 online poker events. Most experts have this gentleman favored to win again, becoming the first back-to-back recipient.

Street3

Street3
A relative unknown at the poker table, Street3 is a perfect non-inspirational role model for the poker community and brings absolutely nothing to the poker world, making him an easy choice for nomination. Recently, this gentleman has dabbled in profanity-laced tirades, pushing his portfolio into new realms.

Jordie21

Jordie21
Showing an aptitude for winning events (For more, see The Most Undeserving Player Wins Twitter Poker Tour Europe Event) that he has no business winning, Jordie21 was nominated by many players for this prestigious award. Considered a long shot to win this year’s award, this gentleman is building a portfolio for future ceremonies.

The voting in now open. The nominee with the most votes will be crowned, The Most Hated Man in Poker for 2009!

Follow the action through the twitter search, MostHatedManinPoker