Greg Raymer Interview

Greg Raymer is a former WSOP Main Event Champion. This interview is from an episode of Rounders; The Podcast with Adam Schwartz and Mike Johnson. Raymer plays online poker exclusively at Pokerstars, so come and sit down with the world champion at a poker table.

Adam: Was there a little bit of vindication for you to sort of prove something to some of the guys who said you got lucky to win the 2004 event?

Raymer: Well...fortunately I'm pretty self contained when it comes to self confidence and ego. Even if I had a terrible result in the main event last year, even if I had done terrible in every event for the last year or two since I won, I would still feel the same about myself and the same about my game. As long as I know that I'm making good decisions at the time, then the results don't have that significant of an impact on my personal assessment of my game and how well I'm playing.

Mike: I was there watching the main event Greg, and I thought it was just amazing to observe the people tracking your progress as the main event went on and on. I just got the sense of the respect that people had for you as a player was kind of growing as the hours went by and I don't know if you got a sense of that as well as one day kind of went into the next. The real respect that you we're getting was increasing even hour to hour.

Raymer: Yeah, that was definitely the case. You know a lot of big name players as well as fans and people who aren't even players, let alone players who are well known, throughout the event I was hearing more and more often from the people saying "Wow this is great, this is impressive..." All those things were really being brought back to me by the comments people were making. But the whole experience; it's nothing like what it was when compared to it's roots. I didn't used to see the former champions being treated the way they are now at the Rio with just hundreds of people milling in the hallways waiting outside, waiting for those bathroom breaks to take place so they can grab someone for an autograph or a quick question or whatever.

Adam: It was interesting, I was standing there when you got moved to the same table as Mike Matusow, who of course ESPN painted as your nemesis in the 2004 event. Was that sort of an interesting occurence to you, I guess it must have been ESPN's dream table really?

Raymer: Yeah, I'm sure they wish something had happened, but I got moved to Mike's table almost at the end of the day. It was a huge table, we must have had 3x as many chips as the average table. Tim Phan was there with a big stack, Matusow had a huge stack and I had a huge stack and there as one or two other people that had huge stacks. I think we might have had something like 5 of the 10 biggest stacks left in the field all at that table. But, there was only something like an hour give or take left in the day as it was. So I wasn't there all that long and I really didn't get involved in a hand the whole time. Mostly because I knew this wasn't a table where I could push people around, and I was just getting total cheeseball hands.

It's one thing to play deepstack poker and take a flop with things like 7-5 suited and A-3 suited and stuff like that, but when you're getting Jack-4 offsuit, you're just being a moron if you're voluntarily putting your chips in the pot, because you have a bad hand for deepstack, shortstack or any other kind of game.

Mike: Just a couple of other notes on the Main Event at the World Series; so many of the players who play in that are complete unknowns, well over 95% of the players. You went from that stage to having a target on your back. Talk about that transition from being one of the unknowns to being the guy with the bullseye.

Raymer: Yeah, it does make a big difference. It's one thing to be a good player and to be known for it, but once you reach a certain level of notoriety, then the players really want to play big pots with you. In the Main Event more so than any other tournament out there, because so many people win their seat online and in live satellites around the country and around the world really.

It's really surprising to me to be honest. A lot of them will come into that event just thinking; "I'm here for the experience I don't expect to win a thing". They don't even expect to make the money, which is not that hard to do. I mean, making the money is probably easier than winning the event that got them their seat. Even at their skill level, even at their relative lack of experience in that situation, because most people that play in satellite events where much less than 10% of the people win a seat. And yet 10% of those who enter the Main Event will get a paycheck.

So it's surprising to me that these people come in and they really think from the very beginning; "I'm here for the experience, I want to last as long as possible, I want to get stories to take back to my friends snd I don't expect to cash". And because they have that mind set, they are really eager to play a big pot with you. If they lose, they can go back home and when their friends say how did you do...Their answer is; "Well you know I lasted 3/4 of the way through day 1 and then I got knocked out. But they have to have that dramatic pause..."But it took a world champ to do it". So they need that dramatic pause. Even if it's not me as the defending champ, they still could say; "But it took Phil Ivey to do it", or  "It took Howard Lederer to do it". They can insert the name of the big pro at their table. Of course if they win that big pot...well now it doesn't matter. If they donk off their chips 1/2 an hour later to someone else, they can still talk about how they won a 15,000 chip pot off of me or Ivey or Negreanu or who ever it may be. So they get a great story either way, win or lose if they play a pot with a big well known player.

Adam: Last Year's Main Event was really sort of a unique experience. I know at my first table at the break, and I tell this story all of the time, 4 of the people thought that they took their chips with them at the first break. They really didn't know that they are supposed to leave their chips on the table. That's sort of the experience level...no live tournament play at all.

Raymer: Well there's a lot to that. You see lots of inexperienced qualifiers at every event out there that has a significantly large field. You know, the WPT championship, the EPT events, different events all over the place. At the Pokerstars Caribbean event we have tons of qualifiers, many of who are new to live play. But the Main event exceeds everything else in terms of the relative proportion of these inexperienced players.

Adam: Back to Mike's point about having that target on your head. Does that sort of change your reads and how do you go about reading players? One of the things I wanted to ask you about is what you look for in reading players?

Raymer: It makes a big, big difference in how I play because I was relatively aggressive in the past and did a lot of semi-bluffing. Out and out bluffing, stealing pots when you've got nothing and no draw, that's almost always something that you should do very little of, if any. But, you know, semi-bluffing...betting and raising when you've got a straight draw and a flush draw and stuff like that. When you've got K-Q of hearts and the flop comes jack of hearts, 3 of spades and 9 of hearts, It's like you've got 9 flush cards, 3 other straight cards, and 6 over cards that would give you top pair. You can quite often be a favorite against someone that has a hand like ace-jack, even though they've got top pair, top kicker.

So, you play those hands really aggressively, and you also play your hands like 2-pair and three of a kind aggressively, now it's tough for people who have any clue as to what you're doing to play with you, because they know that either you've got them beat with a big hand, or you've got such a big draw that you're not that far behind. You're either ahead of them with a big draw, or you're not that far behind with just an ordinary straight or flush draw. And if you're sitting there with top pair, top kicker, then you might be inclined to back down if you know that you're either a 2 to 1 favorite or an 8 to 1 underdog.

Now change that to someone who is relatively new to the tournament game and who is playing against a big name player, there is no way they're gonna give that hand up. For one thing, they think people are bluffing them every other time they bet. So I see people calling with hands that are just like "Are you kidding me?" There is always some chance I am bluffing, but it's minimal when you look at the way the whole hand went down. The chances I'm bluffing are slim, slim, slim, and if I'm bluffing I must have something like 2 over cards and a flush draw and something else working.

So, you basically learn not to bluff. It's one thing if you've got a hand that is such a big draw that you're a favorite anyway. But now when you just flop the ordinary straight draw or the ordinary flush draw, you tend not to play them too aggressively against these players, because you know they're not going to throw away that 1 pair hand, therefore you're putting a lot of money in where you are a 2 to 1 dog on the flop.

For the rest of this interview, head over to www.bigpoker.ca - home of Rounders The Podcast.