Freezeout Poker Player Profile: "Little Toy"

Winning a golden ticket, neuro-science, and poker ambitions

Editor’s Note: This is another club specific post.

There are now a lot subscribers to this newsletter that are not in our poker club. Because of the Beginner Series and the postings on substack we have gained a lot of subscribers that have never played our Tuesday game. That’s ok. Welcome. I like the idea of expanding our reach to interested poker players even if they aren’t potential club members. However, if you are interested in playing our weekly game (the crux of the club), or just learning more about it, please visit the about page on the top of the page or click this link: About our game.

I say all this to warn the reader that today’s content is specific to our game and may not be of great interest to you if you don’t play in our weekly game. If this is the case, please tune in for future columns that are broader in poker scope.

Name: Panatda “Toy” Saenkham - Huntsinger
Handle: LittleToy
Pet Hand: KQs

Note: Toy is an English Second Language (ESL) woman and I decided to leave her answers as close as possible to her actual words for 2 reasons. Firstly, although I do edit some interviewees answers to create better cognitive and grammatical flow, I try to give to the reader a good idea of the experience that I had while conducting the interview. Secondly, I believe Toy did a great job in her answers in her own words. In some cases, I thought that her current way with English gave a perspective that editing wouldn’t be able to improve upon.

Little Toy working her craft.

Me: How did you get the nickname Toy?

Toy: It’s a nickname that my family gave me. My older sister is Tai, I am Toi (Toy), and my youngest sister is Than. There isn’t a meaning but when moving to the states, it made for an easy nickname.

Me: What got you into poker?

Toy: I didn’t know poker in Thailand but when I moved to Memphis I was introduced to the game by my boss at the time. *laughing * He didn’t teach me the game, he only introduced me to the game. I didn’t win that time.

When I moved to Texas and met John (husband), I never seen him play Poker before but he met some people that wanted to play so he played with them time to time. He couldn’t find a tournament to play in College Station, so he invited me to play and taught me the basics that way I can play with him at home. I quickly learned that poker is fun because I can beat him sometimes on the poker. Other games like pool and ring toss I never win against him. If you never win you feel bored; you don’t want to play anymore. I feel with poker that this is my game. I feel that I can win against him sometimes.

Me: How important do you think speaking English well is at the poker table?

Toy: I don’t mind my accent. If someone starts talking to me, I talk to them. When I was in Memphis, I had a coworker from England with a very heavy accent. At the beginning, we could hardly understand each other. After a year, I could understand everything he said, but he still couldn’t understand me. At that point, it wasn’t my problem anymore. I made the effort to understand him, so I’m not sorry that he didn’t do the same for me.

Me: Do you prefer poker tournaments or cash game?

Toy: I like to play tournaments. I see it similar to playing chess or other board games that I think of my strategies, and I have a goal to win the tournament. Cash games often feel more like gambling to me. When you are down you want to win those dollars back and if you are up, you want more. That way of thinking feels closer to gambling. In Thailand, people generally don’t gamble, and poker is seen as gambling. If you play poker, people will usually think you’re a gambler (especially people in my career field)*laughs*. Although sometimes I play cash games too.

Me: Are you a live player or online player primarily?

Toy: I prefer playing live because playing online is difficult. You don’t know anyone, and no one knows you or how you play.

Me: Would you be ok with JJ (Toy and John’s son) playing poker when he gets older?

Toy: He is learning NOW! When I play online on Tuesday, he sometimes sits next to me and say, “Don’t fold this one; that one good hand!” He doesn’t know a straight and some of the depth of it, but he knows if I have King and King on the board that is good hand.

Me: What do you do for a living?

Toy: I am a senior scientist at the Galveston National Laboratory. My boss is a specialist in Coronavirus. So when Covid-19 hit the U.S., everyone come to him for collaborate research project about COVID. My background is molecular biology and mostly worked with infectious diseases which are caused by bacteria but he was kind enough to get me this job that is based on molecular biology, immunology, and virology. Currently, my research focuses on the role of viral infections in neurodegenerative processes, including Long COVID, Alzheimer’s disease, and Parkinson’s disease.

Me: Is there anything about your job that relates to your work at the poker table?

Toy: I have learned that knowing I need to continue to learn is most important with any work. That is for poker and that is for the job too. If I did experiment and it was failed or didn’t give me the result that I expected, I have to trouble shoot what was wrong with it and planed for another experiment. In the same way, every time I played Poker either I won or got knocked out, I tried to figure out what made me win or get knocked out and tried to improve my play from there.

Me: You won a ticket to the WPT Prime $1100 on Club WPT Gold this past December.

Toy: I pay $30 per month to be in the club that allows me to play a certain number of tournaments for free with the membership and in some tournaments, you can earn some money if you win. I like to set goals for myself whenever I do something, and I also do it with Poker. I set my small goal to make the $30 back at least each month as basic. For big goal last year, I wanted to win a ticket to WPT. I did it and was satisfied for my big goal.

Now I have new goals to be a more serious player to play in larger tournaments as a 5-year goal. I want to be a poker pro, Lol

Me: What did you do to prepare yourself for this tournament – the biggest of your life so far?

Note to the reader: When asked, I sent Toy a lot of material for her to study for this tournament. I tried to help by offering low hanging fruit like preflop solver material as well as situational material that I thought would help with her game in this situation.

Toy: *looks at me funny as if the interviewer already knows the answer* - You give me some advice! Before, I played Poker with my instinct, and I have set my own rules that what hand I will play and what hand I will fold. When you sent me the tools, I thought OK now I know that I have to change the way I play because it is not only your hand but also I need to concern with other thing else like the position and the amount of chips I have left.

Me: How did you feel walking into the Wynn and playing in the biggest tournament you have ever played in a city where you don’t know anyone?

Toy: Excited. You have to beat 9000 people. The preflop game that you tried to tell me; I think it helped me a lot to hang for that long (7 hours). I think I don’t make it that far if I don’t study like I did.

Me: Was your competition very good?

Toy: Yes. They were very good. One player won the same prize as me but other than him they were all best skill that I see.

Me: What is one thing that you would tell “November Toy” to be prepared for? In other words, in what way were you the most unprepared?

Toy: I was so excited, I lost focus and wasn’t paying attention to all hands. I would try to stay concentrated and not talk so much and look at what people are doing.

Bonus question from a club member in the top 5 in this years points race (Note: these are the types of incentives you get for performance and participation in this group) : Does John (Toy’s Husband) always have pocket kings when he goes all in?

Toy: He always gets beat with the pocket kings. He is a little bit scared of this hand.

Me: Thank you Toy for sitting down with me and good luck in your poker progression.

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In other club news…

• I should have mentioned in the January WSOP purse allocation news that we will not be making up the cancelled tournaments that came about because of PokerStars updates. When we looked at historical data, we saw that we missed the same number of dates as we do in a normal year because we often miss a gmae or two because of a holiday. This year we didn’t miss because of any holiday so it worked out.

  
  However, beginning next points year (May, 2026), we will be using a backup client (ClubGG) and the times that a cancellation happens because of PokerStars software, we will be playing at the backup client and points will be accumulated during those weeks. So, if you get a chance, get a free ClubGG membership and please pick the same handle you use on Stars to make it easy on us bean counters.

  
  If there are more problems that cause cancellations in THIS fiscal year, we will deal with them as they come without ruling out the possibility of makeup tournament(s).

  
  More to come on this in the coming months.

• You may have noticed that our club has a new logo. If you like it and are interested in potential apparel, patches…..etc, let me know as I am considering some options.

Our new logo.