Posted by The All-In-Uit | Filed under The Pros Speak
Max “The Italian Pirate” Pescatori may be known to most poker fans because of his famous red, white and green bandana, but this accomplished tournament player is also a WSOP bracelet winner and feared high-stakes cash game professional.
At the recent Irish Poker Open, even in the midst of the tournament director asking players to take their seats, Max was more than happy to answer some of our famous pressing Poker From the Rail questions.
What does an average day at work consist of for you?
On a normal poker tournament day if the tournament starts at noon, I generally wake up half an hour after the tournament has started. Then I just relax and get to the tournament about one hour into the start of the event. I don’t like to wait around because I get bored, so I prefer to miss the first part of the tournament. It also keeps me a little fresher at the end of the day.
When I’m not playing tournaments it really goes by whatever I feel like doing - I don’t have any particular schedule or anything. I don’t have an alarm clock so I just wake up whenever, sometimes I play tennis with friends, rarely I play golf, and then just pretty much find a good restaurant and hang around. But I play poker almost all the time, if I’m not playing a tournament then I’m usually playing on Full Tilt Poker. So I end up playing probably 320 days out of 365 because I love it.
A lot of people talk about the poker lifestyle – what does that mean to you?
I mean it’s strange, it’s really like a sport because you have to travel the world - which is great - but it’s also challenging continually going to places. A poker player loses most of the time, especially in tournaments so you have to get in the plane back and think about what happened and improve for next time. It’s good though - you don’t have to hurry because your career lasts many more years than a regular athlete. At the same time, we don’t know if we’re going to win, so we have to perform consistently.
Do you ever still play poker just for fun?
It’s still fun for me to play poker, but I always play to make money. Because it’s my job, it’s not something that I’ll do not to win. To play for fun I prefer to do other things.
What other poker professionals do you admire or respect?
It’s very difficult because there are so many. It depends on the game you pick, because then there are certain ones you respect more than others. One of the great things with Team Full Tilt is that it’s full of champions. For example, Chris Ferguson, who recently won the NBC Heads Up, Phil Ivey who just won the LA Poker Classic, Howard Lederer who won the $100K buy-in tournament in Australia - there’s just too many!
One last question – what’s something about you that people wouldn’t know?
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