Chris "Jesus" Ferguson has over $6 million in lifetime tournament cashes. He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of California. Ferguson approached poker as a serious endeavor after 20 years in academia, and his results speak for themselves. Recently, Ferguson won his third World Series of Poker Circuit championship event, and that was good for a payday of more than $200,000.
Lizzy Harrison: What was it like to win your third
World Series of Poker Circuit event at Harvey's Tahoe?
Chris "Jesus" Ferguson: It was unbelievable. I never expected to win the event, but you know that lightning can strike the same place twice, and I guess that it strikes three times, occasionally.
LH: You were the chip leader going into the final table, were you confident of a win?
CF: Not really, though I did have the chip lead, it was a reasonable chip lead. I had about 30 percent of the chips in play. I felt good about my chances, but I don't like to overestimate the value of a chip lead. I figured I had a 1-in-3 chance of winning, maybe a little more than that. There were a lot of good players there, so I knew I was not going to dominate the table just because I had the chip lead. Many people overestimate themselves when they have a chip lead. They build their stack up early and begin to think "How can I not win this tournament?" All a chip lead means is that you have more ammo than your opponents. I think some people value their chip leads at final tables so much that they start to gamble and end up finishing sixth or seventh.
LH: What aspect of your game helps you to maintain control of final tables?
CF: I push people around, especially when I have a big stack, but I do not do it all of the time. I think that a lot of people try to do it too much; they may actually become so aggressive that they encourage others to play against them. I make sure not to overdo it.
LH: How would you assess the playing style of the field at Harvey's in comparison to a few years ago?
CF: The players are much, much better than they were three or four years ago. What happened was that during the poker explosion, the fields got weaker because there were a lot of new players entering poker tournaments. Those new players have now matured, and they are becoming a real threat. In the old days, if you sat down at a table with someone you did not know, you could be pretty sure that they were not the greatest poker player. You could base your decisions on the assumption that they were not that good. But, nowadays, especially with Internet poker, there are so many great players that nobody has ever heard of. Some of them may have more playing experience than I do, since on the Internet they can play four or five tables at a time. If you are playing forty or fifty hours per week, and you always have multiple tables open, then you are going to see more hands than players used to be able to see in a year.
LH: What about in comparison to 15 years ago?
CF: Fifteen years ago, in 1992, no-limit hold'em was actually one of the newer games. No-limit hold'em was new to a lot of people, and it was not very popular. It wasn't played in casinos at all; you really would not find a no-limit hold'em cash game in a casino anywhere. It is not like nowadays, where every casino has no-limit games. Maybe a couple of casinos in Vegas
might have had a no-limit hold'em game sometimes - but rarely. It was all limit hold'em. The only place that no-limit hold'em was played was in poker tournaments. To gain no-limit experience, people had to play these tournaments. Fifteen years ago, I do not think people were very good at no-limit hold'em, not like they are today. The fields were much weaker, because nobody really had much experience playing no-limit hold'em, so nobody was very good. The poker explosion really popularized no-limit hold'em, and now it is much more popular than limit.
LH: I've heard that you never just call as the first player to enter a pot, is that true?
CF: That is almost certainly true. Actually, I would say that it is true; I never call as the first player in a pot because it sends mixed signals. Calling is a very strange thing to do, and I do not understand why people do it. First of all, if I think that I do not have the best hand then I will fold because I have no money invested in the pot. So, if I call, it would mean I think I have a hand that is going to make me money. Otherwise, I would fold it. I would never call just because I was getting the right pot odds. I have to have a hand that I think is a favorite over those of the other players. And if I think my hand is the favorite, why wouldn't I want to play for more money? So, if you were going to start calling, what are you going to call with, your weak hands? You cannot just call with your weak hands because it is like telegraphing what you have. If you decide, "I will call with my weak hands and some of my strong hands," then you are losing value on the strong hands that you do not raise with. It really does not make any logical sense to call; I just cannot understand why people do it.
LH: You cash so consistently in tournaments; is it your education that helps you to succeed as a poker player?
CF: Yes, a little bit. As people know, I have a Ph.D. in computer science. I have done a lot of computer research on poker over the years. Early on, that was my advantage over other players. My opponents had more experience playing poker than I did, but I had done lots of research about the game. They might have played more hands and have had more real-world experience, but I know I did more research than any other poker player.
LH: What brought you from the academic world into the poker world?
CF: I have always loved poker and all kinds of games. My father taught game theory at UCLA, so I have always been involved in games. I played games my entire life, and poker is a game that I really enjoyed. It was about 1995 when I decided that I really wanted to learn to play poker at a high level. I played some other games really well and I wanted to learn how to play poker really well.
LH: You were playing poker on IRC [Internet Relay Chat, which allows synchronous conferencing and data transfers] long before most others. How did you get involved with that?
CF: I started playing there in 1989, and no-limit hold'em was popular on IRC. Back then, I was just playing for fun. Nowadays, there are really good games online, and I think you can get some good experience there because you get to play so many hands. I think people become better poker players when they start playing online. This is because people who play live put too much emphasis on tells and reading their opponents. They spend their time watching their opponents to see what they are doing. Online, the action is what speaks at the poker tables. Checks, raises, and reraises speak for the players. You should not worry about if your opponent bet with his right hand or his left hand; you should worry about the action taking place and what it means. The actions never lie. With tells, you can be wrong and your opponent could be acting weak but actually be strong. Online you are only dealing with the facts of the hand. Playing online is the way to become a very good fundamental poker player. Then, when you move to live play, you can use tells, but only as a secondary tool.
LH: When did you move into brick-and-mortar casinos?
CF: Like I mentioned earlier, I wanted to learn to play poker at a very high level. To do that, I figured I had to play against the best players possible. Unfortunately, the best players were playing at much higher limits than I was willing to play. They were playing $100-$200 and I could not play that high when I was first starting out. I realized that in the $5-$10 games that I could afford, the players were there to gamble. They played too many hands and did not take the game very seriously. It was like they were playing roulette. I could beat those guys, but it did not interest me to beat those guys. I didn't want to make $20 an hour beating them; I was interested in actually learning how to play well. To learn, I had to play the best, and since I could not afford that, I figured out I could play with them in tournaments. I could play against really great players in tournaments, like
Men "The Master" [Nguyen] and
T.J. Cloutier, who would play in $300 buy-in events.
Phil Hellmuth played in a lot of those tournaments. I was able to play against some of the best players in the world and only risk three hundred bucks, which to me was fantastic. In a poker tournament, your opponents are trying to win, and that is the way that poker should be played. That is really where I learned to play; you learn to play poker much better in tournaments than in the low-limit cash games.
LH: What changes did you have to make to your game in the early stages in order to earn consistent money as a poker pro?
CF: I just had to learn. It is very hard to make money as a tournament poker professional. I think for the first two years I lost money. In 1995 I know I did; not too much, but I did lose a small amount of money. In general, though, the truth is I have done very well because I know how to play the game well.
LH: When did you know that you had what it took to succeed at your chosen profession?
CF: I never really had a moment when I decided it. If I had to put a date on it, it would be a few years ago, after I won the main event of the
World Series in 2000. Before that, I never really considered myself a professional. I did play in the
World Series before 2000, but not every event. I played in maybe 10 events out of the 30 that they had. Nowadays, I try to play in every event at the
World Series.
LH: What was the logical progression of stakes you played as you worked your way up the ranks?
CF: I worked my way up in tournaments. I started with $300 and $500 buy-in tournaments, maybe a couple $1,000 buy-ins. Then, I began playing most of the $1,000 buy-in tournaments and it progressed that way. These days, for the last four or five years, I don't play anything except the very large buy-in tournaments.
LH: What skills become more important to a poker player as they begin to play in bigger games?
CF: It is extremely important in a high-stakes game for you to be able to adjust to your opponents. But you also have to have a very sound fundamental game to play high stakes. The reason is that if there are any holes in your game, your opponents will figure it out. In lower stakes games, you can push people around and bluff all of the time, and only a couple of people might catch on. But there are so many low-stakes players to play against; the high-stakes poker world is a lot smaller. You have to have a strong fundamental game and be able to adjust it depending on opponents.
LH: Which of your many accomplishments are you most proud of?
CF: I think it is winning the main event at the
World Series. That is the one that will always get me recognition. I am actually very proud of finishing second in the
NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship two years in a row. Because if you come in second a few events in a row, people always criticize and say "Oh, he can't play heads up." Fortunately, in the
Heads-Up Championship, I somehow avoided that type of criticism. I actually think my most difficult accomplishment is winning three
World Series of Poker Circuit championships. It is really, really hard to do.
LH: What was the experiment you conducted on Full Tilt Poker all about?
CF: In February of 2006 I took all of my money out of my account on Full Tilt so that I would have $0 in the cashier window. My challenge was to turn $0 into $10,000. To turn nothing into something, I started with freeroll tournaments. Back then, Full Tilt had freerolls with $40 prize pools. Basically, first place was paid $5, second was $3 and third-18th places all earned $2 each. The freeroll structures were like supersatellites, you were really trying to finish 18th. I played these to build my bankroll; I don't know how many I played, but it was a lot.
LH: How did you manage to succeed in the freerolls in order to have real money to play with?
CF: You have to pretend that you are playing against really good opponents. The only difference in your game should be that, maybe, you call a little bit more on the end. You may also want to raise a bit more, since your opponents are not going to be quite as sophisticated.
LH: When did you reach your goal of $10,000?
CF: I just reached it; I think it was about three months ago.
LH: What was the hardest part about getting there?
CF: The hardest part was getting up from $0. I had certain rules that I had to follow. For example, I could never buy into a cash game for more than 5 percent of my bankroll, and if I ever had 10 percent of my bankroll at stake, I had to quit the game. If it was a multitable tournament, I could only buy in for 2 percent of my bankroll, sit-and-gos were 5 percent.
LH: What, if anything, is the next step in the experiment?
CF: I'm still going. I hit $10,000, and then I got it up to $20,000. Now I am at about $14,000. I don't have a specific goal in mind, yet. I think I am going to go for at least $100,000.
LH: Do you think anyone can do it if he manages his bankroll correctly?
CF: I think that the trick is bankroll management. The reason I did this was to prove to people how important it is to manage your bankroll correctly. There are great poker players who get on a run and start to play bigger and bigger games. Then, when they get on a negative run, what do they do? The same thing, they play bigger and bigger games. That is the worst thing a poker player can do.
LH: How can a tournament player select the right buy-in for them based on his bankroll?
CF: Definitely no more then 2 percent of your bankroll. If your bankroll goes down, then you have to play smaller tournaments. What this means is, if you play in the main event of the
World Series, you should have a bankroll of about $500,000, which is more than most people have. That is really what I would recommend, 2 percent, no more.
