LUCKYDOG POKER INTERVIEW WITH GREG RAYMER
2004 World Series of Poker champion
July 2006, on the eve of his Day 1 in the main event
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LDP — Greg, it now appears there will be more than 8,500 players in the main event. How many is too many?
GR — I don’t think there is any number that’s too many. The more the merrier. Obviously, as you increase the number you get a higher concentration of inexperienced players, therefore, on average, less competent players. Some people don’t like it because they say, “How do you identify the best in the world if you have 6,000 mediocre-to-bad players.” But the truth is that no one tournament can identify the best player in the world. It’s a hopeless cause. If you want to identify the best in the world, you need to set up some kind of structure where it takes two months to run the entire event.
LDP — Should there ever be a cap on entries?
GR — No, I would never cap the entries and I don’t expect Harrahs to because it’s not in their best financial interest to cap the entries. But I don’t think it makes the tournament any better, either. The only issue is if you reach a point where we can’t hire enough dealers to handle the crowd. You can always build more poker tables, you can order more chips and more cards, and you can always make the event last longer and longer, but can you get enough dealers to handle it if you had, say, 50,000 players. You can’t have 25 Day 1s.
LDP — USA Today had Phil Ivey at 500-1 to win. How would you rate your chances?
GR — 500-1 is a joke for anybody. I mean, we don’t even have to say who we think the best player in the field is, with this number of players, the best player in the field is 2,000 to 1, give or take. Maybe if you want to be really generous, 1,500 to 1, and I’m in the ballpark of 2,000 to 1, 2,500 to 1, something like that. Even though I’m not the greatest poker player in the world, I am one of the best players at beating big fields.
LDP — Going back to ‘04 for a minute, other than your final hand against David Williams, what was your favorite hand?
GR — I’ve got lots of hands in that tournament that I was really happy with, that I like the way I played. Most of the hands at the final table, in a theoretical or strategic sense, were rather boring. A lot of the hands tended to play themselves. I didn’t have to make a lot of really tough decisions. Most of my decisions were relatively straight-forward. Many of the hands early in the tournament were a lot more interesting. A good hand was one against Marcel Luske. He had raised in first position, and I knew he had a decent hand and there were about four players before it was gonna be my turn to act. I had something like six times the chip count of his raise. He had many more chips than me — enough chips so that if somebody re-raises big you can lay down everything but your best hands. As soon as he made the raise, I decided that if I had A-A or K-K, I’m gonna go all-in caveman style. I’m gonna kinda grunt when I say all-in, you know, act like I’m trying to be a bully or a caveman. The other guys folded and I looked down and saw aces and I immediately kinda grunted “all-in” and pushed my chips forward. Obviously, it was a very lucky coincidence that I had one of those exact hands, but it shows you that you do want to be thinking ahead. You don’t generally want to look at your cards until it’s your turn to act, but you should be thinking about how you’re gonna play different hands if you look down and see them. He took a while, and he called and he said actually he knew I had a good hand, but since he had A-K, he thought that was too good of a hand to pass.
LDP — Has your game changed since the ‘04 victory?
CM — I wouldn’t say my game has changed but my decisions, I’ve had to change a lot. You know, when you’re playing any kind of poker, you only bet or raise if, 1) you think you have the better hand and you think they’re gonna call, or 2), you think you have the worst hand and you think they’re gonna fold. And No. 2 doesn’t apply very much anymore. I tend to get called by a wide variety of very weak hands, because players want a story, especially here in the main event. If you went around and asked everybody, you would find that maybe a majority of these players would tell you, “Oh, I don’t have any chance of making the money, I have no chance of winning and very little chance of making the money. You know, I won my seat, I’m thrilled to be here, I’m looking forward to the experience.” That means when they get a chance to play a big pot against me, they want to do it. They would fold against another player they don’t know, but against me or someone they know really well from TV they’re like, wow, I can play a big pot with Greg, and if he knocks me out, well I was gonna get knocked out anyway, but now I’ve got a story to tell. And if I knock him out, then wow, that’s an amazing story. They’ll think, “I don’t care if I get knocked out of the tournament 10 minutes later, I can still go home and say I took down Greg Raymer.”
LDP — Since your victory, what do you like best about your change in lifestyle?
GR — Well, I don’t have to get up early and go to the office every day. I’ve never been a morning person. I used to go to work at like 10 or 10:30 and my boss said, “Look, even though you’re putting in more hours than other people, I need you to get here earlier because all the secretaries are gossiping.”
LDP — What change do you dislike the most?
The only negative is that I’m on the road a lot, so I don’t get to spend as much time with my family as I used to. I go without seeing my wife and daughter for days, maybe even a week or two at a time.
LDP — Did the victory change you as a person?
GR — If there are any significant changes, I’m not aware of them. I haven’t tried to make any changes. I’m happy with who I am. I always have been. My ego is very self-contained. My ego doesn’t get pumped up when people pay me compliments, and it doesn’t get deflated if they give me insults. I’ve always been very happy with myself and who I am. If I’ve changed, I’m not aware of it.
LDP — If you, Chris Moneymaker and Joe Hachem played a three-way tournament, who would win?
GR — There’s no answer to that. I’m not sure. I haven’t played with either of them enough to be sure who amongst us is the best. We’re all very good players. There’s no obvious answer. A lot of people give Chris a hard time, a lot of people give Robert Varkonyi (2002 champion) a hard time. They say, “Oh, these guys didn’t deserve to win, they’re not that good.” Those people just don’t know what they’re talking about. Maybe Robert and Chris aren’t as great a poker player as some of the other champions, like Chris Ferguson, let’s say. But not being as good as Chris Ferguson is not an insult. I’m not as good at tournament poker as Chris Ferguson, either. That doesn’t bother me a bit because I know he’s probably about the best tournament poker player in the world. Chris might be a great cash game player too, but we don’t know because he doesn’t play cash games. I have no reason to think Chris wouldn’t be a very good cash game player as well, but we just don’t know for sure. However, saying you’re not as good as him still leaves you room to be the second or third best in the world.
LDP — If you could change one thing about tournament poker, what would it be?
GR — There’s lots of things I would change, but many of them are not practical. I would love to have tournaments structured in a way that they would minimize luck, but you’d have to have the main event last for two months and change the structure really dramatically if you were really gonna try to prove who’s the best player amongst all the entrants. So, given those kinds of impossibilities, I love structure that give you lots of play, that gives you deep stacks for as long as possible. But it’s a tossup between that and a realistic amount of time that you can schedule an event to last.
LDP — When you’re not playing poker, what are you doing?
GR — My favorite hobby is golf. I spend time with my family and do stuff with them. I like to go to antique auctions. I don’t get to do it very often, but I like going to great museums of the world, so when I’m in London I always try to get to the British Museum, and if I were in Paris for an event again, I would definitely get to the Louvre again. I love to check out the antiquities, pottery, Roman glass, and all that kind of stuff.
LDP — Jeff Madsen, who just turned 21, has made a name for himself at this year’s WSOP. Have you seen him play?
GR — No, I’ve not played with him and I’ve not observed him playing. I have no personal opinion of his skill levels or abilities or anything.
LDP — What do you think about young players in general?
GR — I don’t really treat them much differently except that I know that they still have that feeling of invulnerability in most cases, you know, just like all teenagers and young adults have. That’s the same reason so many of them die in car wrecks and stuff because they don’t think it’s gonna happen to them. Their life hasn’t been touched by tragedy yet. They feel invincible, and I’m sure that’s the way that kid must be feeling right now as well. I don’t know his history as a poker player, but he probably has never had his first sustained losing streak, so he probably feels like he can’t lose, you know, like the cards are always gonna come. I don’t know anything about how he plays, but given his results, I can say that he must at least be a very good player. It’d be a million to one for someone who was really a bad player to have gotten that lucky. He’s almost certainly at least a very good player, he may be great, he may be world class even. He’s at least very good, and no matter how good he is, he’s been very, very lucky.
LDP — You mentioned Chris Ferguson already; who else would be in your Top 3?
GR — There’s too many people to mention and be fair about it. I respect all of those players who, you know, behave appropriately at the table. Even if their skill level isn’t world class, at least they play like gentlemen and don’t act like jerks. That’s the thing I respect. Playing ability, I mean even if someone isn’t there yet, they always could be, so I’m not gonna show them any lack of respect just because they haven’t yet reached some level that they might achieve in the future.
LDP — Do you have a plan for 5 years down the road, 10 years?
GR — I don’t. I tend to kinda live in the moment. That was actually probably one of the things that was a negative in my career as a patent attorney, I never had the 5- and 10-year plan. It’s more appropriate to have a 5- or 10-year plan in the business world, and I probably should have one now in terms of the business of poker. But in terms of playing poker, I don’t think you can look ahead like that. I think you need to be in the moment.
LDP — Did you set goals heading into this year’s World Series?
GR — My only goal in poker is to make every decision as perfectly as I can, and I think any goals beyond that are unreasonable. So if someone says, “I’m gonna make two final tables,” or “I’m gonna win one bracelet,” or “I’m gonna cash at least five times,” I think those are silly goals because you can play perfect poker in every event in the World Series and just have bad luck at the wrong time and fail to achieve all your goals while playing perfectly. So, I think all your gonna do is disappoint yourself when you don’t meet your goals. And that doesn’t mean you did anything wrong. It isn’t like football or some other sport where the luck factor is very, very tiny. As far as I’m concerned, I’ve played pretty well the whole series and I got bad beat out of pretty much every tournament that I entered. Every hand I played where I put my last dollar in the pot, I feel like I played it absolutely correct. It’s not that I didn’t make mistakes along the way, but at least those final hands I have no doubt I played all of them correctly. So, if luck changes a little bit, maybe I win 2 or 3 bracelets myself, but that’s beyond my control.
LDP — Can you give LuckyDog Poker readers a tip or two that’ll help their game?
GR — You need to practice and you need to learn more. To practice, you need to play, so you need to find casinos in your area or home games with friends if those are legal in your area, or you can always come to the Internet, you know. PokerStars isn’t just someone I represent but I would have told you this three or four years ago before I worked for them. You can play play- money tables, you can do penny games, you can work your way up from the very bottom. And I always tell people who are brand new to the game, I tell them to go to PokerStars and play play- money games until you understand the rules, then play the penny games. Until you can win money in the penny games, don’t permit yourself to play any higher. That way if you actually have or gain the ability to actually beat the game at the low levels, you’re only gonna play the next step up and the next step up all the way to the top if you win the money. So, you’re always playing with someone else’s money, so to speak. And if you never learn to beat the games, you’re down there in the penny games where a really big losing session is $5, which pretty much everyone can afford without hurting their lifestyle.
LDP — Thanks, Greg.
GR — You’re welcome.