Mingling with the Maven: A Conversation With Yuval "Yuvee04" Bronshtein
David "The Maven" Chicotsky caught up with Yuval "Yuvee04" Bronshtein recently to talk poker, his grind station, and poker in Israel.
What��s your typical week look like as far as grinding goes?
It��s kind of weird, like, right now I��m really in the mode and I��ve been playing a lot live. When I��m not playing live, I go online and see what kind of high-stakes cash games are going on, and I try to jump into those, and whatever high buy-in tournaments are going on with prize pools that are worth playing for, then I usually play a couple of those everyday. I don��t really have a set schedule; I just kind of wake up whenever and just kind of jump into whatever games I feel like playing.
How many hours a week do you think you play on average?
I��d have to say that I probably play, when I��m in the playing zone, probably six days a week, spending five to ten hours per day playing, so maybe 40 or 50 hours on average when I��m playing a lot. I also go through a lot of periods of time where I just don��t feel like playing and I don��t want to get burnt out and I might not play any poker for a month at a time. I usually do that once or twice a year. Last year I did it before the World Series of Poker. This year I did it after the World Series of Poker Europe. Sometimes, I just feel it��s necessary to do that to not get burnt out by grinding all the time.
What kind of grinding station do you have? What do you play on?
I just have a regular white Macbook, nothing special. It works.
How many tables at a time do you normally play online?
When I��m playing super turbos, I play a lot of super turbo sit-n-gos, super turbo MTTs (I could play maybe like 15 or 20 of those), but when I��m just playing like a regular high-stakes cash game or a couple tournaments I want to focus on, I generally like to keep it maybe to two to four tables.
You mentioned traveling. Where have you traveled and where are your favorite places?
I��ve seen a lot of places just for poker. I��ve been to London. I go there every year for WSOPE. I��ve been to Amsterdam many times. That��s one of my favorite places. I��ve gone there when they��ve had poker tournaments and also went there having nothing to do with poker, just vacationing. I��ve been to Israel many times, I was born there and moved out of there when I was five, but I��ve been back there more than five times since I moved and I like visiting there a lot. Some other places that I��ve been to are Budapest, Bahamas, Mexico, several other places in the Caribbean, Canada, Toronto.
Is there poker in Israel?
There is, but it��s not very prevalent, it��s a small thing there. It��s illegal and they don��t have any casinos or anything like that, so the games there are underground.
Sounds like Texas.
Yeah, old-school Texas, and they don��t have many games, and I imagine the ones they do have aren��t very high stakes, but I don��t really know that much about it.
It��s interesting because there are a lot of Jews in poker, and meanwhile, there��s no poker in Israel.
Yeah, that��s true, and it would be awesome to have it there, and to maybe be a representative to Israeli poker at some point in my career.
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