“I always enjoyed games & solving problems”: Mario Mosböck AMA on Reddit

What Mario Mosböck Had to Say

Q: With your experience and calm perspective, what advice would you share on navigating community spaces where the moderation style might not always align with the members’ expectations?

Q: Were you always good at games and solving problems? Or what separates yourself, or other elite players from the rest? Do you think an average person (not with any super bad habits) can get to the highest stakes with just hard work?

Mario: I always enjoyed games & solving problems, which lead to becoming good over time.

Being able to dedicate yourself to a craft and work hard is just as important of a skill as being „smart“. There is no such thing as „if I wanted to, I could be good at poker“ You are either good and worked hard for it or you are not. If people have the perception that being smart is enough, they will never be truly great at something.

I define smartness slightly differently and mainly as the ability to learn things quickly. And yes with that definition I would say that to become great at poker you need to be able to learn very fast.

Q: What’s your earliest poker memory and how has that carried with you through your career? 

Mario: Earliest core memory is playing free money on Full Tilt Poker & watching every single available video on PokerTube until I got sent a 1,4k$ internet bill, for spending more MB than the limit. I was twelve.

Q: What is the best strategy I need to adopt to become better at 4 players or 6 players tables?

Mario: It’s all about position, if you want to become better at 4-handed, just see it as BB, SB, BU & CO and study those positions and scenarios between them. Same with 6-handed, but just add HJ & LJ. Overall you play wider ranges on avg since the tighter early position will be left out.

Q: After so many years and so many successes, what is your main driver to keep going? Do you ever feel tempted to think you have done it all and it’s time to relax, or are there other ventures you would like to pursue after poker?

Mario: I do play significantly less volume than at my peak in 2022/2023 which is a result of cutting the hours of poker that I enjoyed less.

I will always play poker to some extent, but volume will likely become less.

I did achieve a couple of the goals I had earlier in my career. I was also more financially driven than now. However I also notice that setting strict goals lead to me enjoying the progress less and therefore my goal of continuing to play, is to actually enjoy the time when I do play, unrelated to the outcome.

Q: What (if you could only pick one aspect) did you carry with you from your football career into the poker one?

Mario: A core strength from football is being able to stay calm in high pressure situations and enjoying them quite a bit.

Q: When you were coming up and realized you had a significant leak in your poker game, what was your process for identifying it clearly and then fixing it?

Mario: Being fully honest with myself and getting a sense of achievement when finding a leak, rather than being ashamed, which was my first response.

Q: What is your goal in poker? To be more specific: Is there anything specific you want to achieve in poker, winning a specific tournament for example?

Mario: I mainly want to be able to play poker over the next few years and enjoy the process of playing it. Setting a specific target makes that hard for me, so my goal is to enjoy the process.

Q: What’s your biggest goal outside of poker?

Q: Do you think there will ever be another “poker boom”?

Mario: I really hope so, I guess this will be led by Asian players starting to love the game.

I don’t see the same poker boom from the US early 2000s happening again unless the market fully opens up. Which seems unlikely at this point.