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By Tom Robinson
For the Times Leader
Brian Hastings already was approaching legendary status among those who follow poker as an online game or a cash game where players can come and go as they please as long as they have the money to put up and the nerve to back it up.
One month into this year’s World Series of Poker at the Rio in Las Vegas, the 2006 Hanover Area graduate has emerged as one of the highest-profile players at the game’s most mainstream series of events.
Hastings was the first player to win two events at this year’s World Series, giving him three career bracelets – the award, along with prize money for winning a WSOP event – before he celebrated his 27th birthday June 25. Those two wins vaulted Hastings into serious contention for WSOP Player of the Year honors, potentially altering his approach to the game for the rest of the year and into the future.
“It would certainly be a big deal to win that,” Hastings said of the Player of the Year race.
The Main Event, the most prestigious single annual event in poker, remains ahead, July 5-14, and Hastings has plenty of reason to consider continuing his World Series to the WSOP Europe swing in October.
“I think in the coming year, there’s a good chance I even travel and play more tournaments,” Hastings said. “I feel more confident in my tournament game than ever and also I have a great girlfriend (Sonya Bubulka) now who I want to travel with and see the world with.
“ … I’ve never been to Germany. I’ve heard Berlin’s an awesome city.”
Hastings made the transition from online to more live play after poker’s Black Friday essentially banned online play in the United States April 15, 2011. He is widely credited with the biggest single day win ever from a heads-up cash match with Viktor Blom and a 2013 pokerupdate.com list placed Hastings eighth all-time in career online net profits at $6,359,799.
Although he has spent time in Vancouver and the Caribbean to be able to keep playing online, Hastings has spent more time in live casino games since the crackdown.
The results of recent weeks may, at least temporarily, create another transition from cash game to more of an emphasis on tournament play in which players knock each other out until one winner emerges.
Whereas professionals measure each other up in consistent performances in their cash play showdowns, the general public is more aware of tournament exploits. With his early success in Las Vegas, Hastings is enhancing a reputation that was already lofty among those who have run into him online or followed his career.
Scott Francis, the previously unnamed Hanover Area math teacher who Hastings has often praised in interviews for helping form his early emergence in the game, is not surprised by the success.
“His math skills are second to nobody,” said Francis, who has watched Hastings “pretty much from the time he started playing,” including being on the virtual “rail” looking in at some of the online cash showdowns for outrageous sums of money.
“He’s fantastic, but what makes him so good is in the 30 seconds you have to make a decision, he can run through 15-16 different scenarios of what the other player could possibly have; what they would have done if that’s what they had; and then make an educated decision on whether they’re bluffing.”
Francis said Hastings can make risking $80,000 with nothing more than a pair of 3s sound logical when he lays out the thought processes he went through before making a daring call.
Before even enrolling at Cornell University, Hastings took a small deposit in online poker and kept multiplying it until he was playing with the best in the world from behind a computer screen in the Wyoming Valley or upstate New York. Along the way, he sought out advice from the man with whom he discussed numbers.
“He was in my (Advanced Placement) Statistics class, so that was part of the curriculum,” Francis said. “We actually talked about odds. We talked about poker and blackjack and figured out odds for things like that.”
Francis was playing online poker himself at the time, “doing pretty well, but nothing like him.” It all led to deeper conversations about the game between teacher and student who have become friends through their mutual interest in the game.
“He’s the best I’ve ever seen,” Francis said. “I’ve probably played over a million hands and I’ve never seen anyone like him.”
After hitting some of the plateaus that all poker players go through, whether through bad luck or the need to keep evolving their play, Hastings’ game is on the rise again. He’s not just beating up Hold’em or Pot Limit Omaha games and he’s doing more than tearing up opponents in the heads-up battles that he has often dominated.
“I think cash games are always going to be the bread and butter for poker professionals, but I think there’s a lot of value in these tournaments and they’re also a lot of fun,” Hastings said.
Hastings won his two titles this year in Seven Card Stud, a traditional staple of the top poker players before the boom in Hold’em, and a mix of 10 different games played in rotation.
“I’ve worked really hard on my play on all my games over the last few years,” he said.
Helping that process has been steady play at three casinos in south Florida where Hastings lives. Included there is a favorite high-stakes, four-game mix of Stud, Stud High-Low, Big O (five-card Omaha) High-Low and Baduci at Seminole Casino Coconut Creek.
“I really refined my Stud game a lot at that game” Hastings said. “I think it has paid off. It used to be one of my worst games and I think now it might even be my best game.”
Hastings and Bubulka plan a September move to the Philadelphia area so he can take advantage of the offerings at Parx Casino in Bensalem and the Borgata in Atlantic City.
Hastings is far too young and it is far too early in his career to be forced into any specific plans. He could pursue WSOP records like Hellmuth’s 14 bracelets.
“I don’t know if that’s what I want to do,” Hastings said of chasing records, “or if I want to become more of a cash game player or do something different like start a business or join a hedge fund. But for now, I really enjoy poker.”
And, he’s really enjoying the benefits of the results he is producing at the tables.
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