Allen Cunningham's Weird Knack - A Serious Student of the Game, One of Poker's Young Veterans Just Keeps Getting Better

Around the time Allen Cunningham turned 11, he got a wild idea in his head. The kitchen-table poker games he played with his family with wild cards and high spade in the hole gave him visions of scooping up piles of chips amid the Las Vegas glitz and glamour.



While most kids at this age aspire to play center field for the Boston Red Sox, Allen had a hunch poker was in his future. What easily could have been dismissed as a silly pre-pubescent fantasy started looking like an accurate premonition after he started playing and winning in public cardrooms as soon as he hit the legal gambling age. In his early 20s, he was already playing high-limit cash games and chalking up best all-around player honors at major tournaments while most of the "Young Gun" players immortalized on the World Poker Tour's recent invitational event were still playing Sega on the weekends.



Let's fast-forward to today. Allen is one of the youngest veterans on the professional poker circuit. He has remained a steady force to be reckoned with at the table for the past nine years. He is experienced well beyond his 28 years, and his date of birth looks like a misprint when you look at his exhaustive resume of cashes and tournament victories. With nearly $3 million in career tournament winnings and three World Series of Poker bracelets, he also enjoyed a huge 2005 World Series of Poker that is sure to make his a household name among poker neophytes.

You do realize I can read your mind

Silent Killer
If you don't know him, you might miss him at the poker table. Soft-spoken and unassuming, his calm, calculated demeanor is contrary to the tenacious attack he will throw at you from behind a fortress of chips. And attack, destroy, and win is what Allen did during his remarkable 2005 World Series of Poker performance. He made four final tables in four different games (Omaha eight-or-better, pot-limit Omaha, pot-limit hold'em, and no-limit hold'em), won just over $1 million between his six cashes, and picked up his third bracelet in the $1,500 no-limit hold'em event.



As we settled down for our interview, I used the word "extraordinary" to describe this performance. "I wouldn't call it extraordinary," he said. "Someone had to win." Extraordinary or not, Allen's play won him the ESPN 2005 Toyota World Series of Poker Player of the Year award. Now Toyota wants him to possibly "pimp out" the truck and do a TV show. But Pimp My Ride featuring Allen Cunningham isn't going to happen. "I'm not really a custom-truck guy," he said.



A very intelligent and thoughtful student of the game of poker, Allen isn't the type of guy you would expect to see on a Monster Garage truck-conversion episode. On the contrary, he seems more like a guy who should don a laboratory jacket and search for a cure for Asian Bird Flu or teach world history at Stanford University. But he doesn't have time for that. He has work to do. His bags were packed for a trip to the Borgata Poker Open in Atlantic City. After that, he was off to Aruba. He is a tournament road warrior who's focused on the big buy-in events.



A Big, Big WSOP Showing

The first event of the 2005 WSOP, $1,500 no-limit hold'em, attracted 2,305 players. Allen showed up the night before and wound up standing in line for four hours to register. "I wouldn't even have played it if I'd known I would have to stand in line for so long," he stated. "But by the time I was halfway through the line, I figured I would have to wait it out."



That bit of patience paid off to the tune of $725,405. Allen prevented Scott Fischman from obtaining back-to-back bracelets in this event. There was a ton of energy surrounding the final table when it got down to Allen, Scott, and Dave "Devilfish" Ulliott charging at one another. Allen ran into all types of players, both good and bad, and beat every last one of them with his solid playbook.

Allen Cunningham – a proud member of Team FullTilt

In order to outlast more than 2,300 players, luck must eventually rear its little head. For Allen, it was an early all in when he was down to three times the big blind with K-Q suited. Dewey Tomko raised a bit more than Allen held. He called, and so did two other players. The flop fell A-6-6. One of the blinds bluffed all in into the dry side pot for about 10 times the size of the pot. Tomko folded A-J. The other player mucked pocket tens. The bluffer flipped over 7-4 offsuit. "I'm ahead," Allen thought. The turn and the river were tens. The pot was chopped and Allen still had chips. He then won a few coin flips. Then, his Q-9 snapped off an A-K after he had moved all in for $30,000. "After that, I just played my solid, textbook game, pecked away, and was never in danger," he said.



The Knack

Allen says that to become a top player, you "need a weird knack." He says that some players, no matter how smart they are, never get to the highest level of poker or even to the level of being a winning player without it. "You need this innate consciousness that is hard to quantify," he stated. "It takes more than card sense to beat the game."



While it might be hard to visualize what Allen means by "weird knack," his kicked in late in the $1,500 no-limit hold'em event when the tournament was down to three tables. "There was one hand near the end where I made a crazy play, and after winning it, I steamrolled my way to the final table," he said. "I had king-jack suited. I raised and the guy in the small blind reraised me the minimum. This is something that people who don't know how to play poker do. He would have won the hand if he had reraised me a normal amount." The flop came 8-8-3 with one of Allen's suit. The small blind made a small bet. "The size of his bet was different than the large, pot-sized bets he had been making," Allen continued. "I just called." On the turn, Allen made a four-flush and the small blind fired another shell. "He bet about two-fifths of his chips. I thought that if I moved in on him, he just might call with A-K or something, so I just smooth-called again even though I wasn't getting the right odds to draw to the flush, to make him think I was slow-playing an 8 or a big pair." Allen had this guy read like a second-grade phonics lesson. "I was very confident that he would check and fold on the river. Sure enough, he checked, I moved all in, and even though he already had bluffed off three-fifths of his chips, he folded."



Allen says his key to winning is making the textbook plays he has honed from years of live, online, and tournament play. "I play by rote," he said, but admitted that when the situation is right, you need to step out on a limb. "I called off half my stack, confident that this guy would check to me on the river – and I was right. This hand got me in the zone; I made a few other big plays and got to the final table as the chip leader."



This, ladies and gentlemen, is what it sometimes takes to win championships. However, more often than not, a play like this can backfire and send you home talking to yourself.



The Playbook of a Champ

Allen doesn't like lists, so questions like, "What are the three most important skills to becoming a winning player?" were answered with, "Why does there always have to be three?" He laughed and added, "I think of it as one skill, which is knowing how to play the game; however, there are a million facets to it."



Allen says he picked up strategy and the feel for the game on his own. But, in the beginning, "I read every book out there on poker. It was really helpful to get all of the available points of view, learn how other people think about the game, and understand the key ideas to think about. However," he added, "to be a top player, you need to develop your own approach, strategy, and playbook."



Online poker plays an important role in refining Allen's playbook. "I've played lots of online poker, and it has helped me formulate even better basic strategies for my game," he stated. "A year and a half ago, I was an online, slash, WPT tournament player. I played about 30 hours a week online." Now, Allen says, he plays about 20 hours a week at FullTiltPoker, where he is sponsored. When there is a lull on the tournament circuit, he plays live games that range from $100-$200 no-limit hold'em and $200-$400 pot-limit Omaha up to $300-$600 and $400-$800 mixed games.

Scott Fischman, Dave "Devilfish" Ulliott, and Allen Cunningham battle for the bracelet at event No. 1 of the 2005 WSOP

Presently, Allen says the part of his game that he is working on the most is what he calls "stereotyping." "I am trying to get a line on how all types of different players play and what they are capable of," he said. "Stereotyping is very helpful, in light of the number of players in the larger events."



He says that one of the most crucial skills a successful player can develop is the ability to remain in control of himself at all times and curtail the steam factor. "I remember the first year I played the World Series. I had never played in a tournament in which you started with so many chips. I got up to $30,000 the first day; I then suffered a bad beat and was down to $16,000 or so and there were two hours left in the day. I really felt like I had to win fast and get my money back right away. That is definitely the wrong mindset, and it caused me to play worse.



Moving up the ladder

So, how did Allen develop his "knack" and playbook? He first cut his teeth in cardrooms playing seven-card stud. He concentrated on that game for a few months and quickly moved on to hold'em and Omaha. "I played almost every game as my main game when I was first getting into poker," he stated.



After his first year of college, he was living with his parents and using money from a summer job delivering pizzas to play at Southern California tribal casinos. As a low-limit grinder, he found a deal he couldn't pass up that allowed him to work on his game, eat for free, and cut very favorable deals at final tables full of amateurs.



He began building a poker bankroll when he was only 18. "Every day, there was a freeroll tournament with a $500 prize pool," he said. "For the freeroll, you got $100 in chips, and if you did the rebuy for $10, you got $1,000 more in tournament chips. Also, if you did the rebuy, you got a free lunch and $30 in chips for the live game afterward. For about a month, I played the freeroll, did the rebuy, and got free money for the live game afterward. I did very well, and built up a little bankroll." He was a regular face at the final tables. "Other players were so bad at making deals that I'd be a slight chip leader and walk away with first-place money while the rest of the table split up the rest!"



When school was back in session during his second year, Allen discovered an L.A.-area casino he liked. He would head to its $2-$4 hold'em tables every weekend. While he was spending an increasing amount of time playing, he admits that he wasn't really getting ahead financially. "I didn't really win then. I was just doing it for fun," he said. But he put together a back-to-back-to-back win streak that swelled his bankroll. "I went on sort of a rush. I won a tournament.



Then, I won about $500 in the $6-$12 game, and then about $800 in the $10-$20 game. This was a pretty big run for me at the time." After that, Allen says he never looked back. Poker would remain his focus from that point on.



"Before that, sometimes I won, sometimes not. But after that, I was ahead about $1,000, which was pretty good for the small limits I played. I then started playing $10-$20 daily. He did well in this game and graduated to other casinos around Los Angeles. He was still only 19, and quit attending college to focus on poker.



Ahead of the times
Allen had his foot on the accelerator, but being underage kept him from participating in the juicier tournaments held at Southern California's nontribal casinos. But he got anxious and jumped into a satellite at a big casino while he was still 20. He won a seat in a $500 buy-in event, got down to three out of the money, and reality struck. "I was wondering what I was going to do if I won, so I just started playing like a maniac and got myself knocked out."



When he turned 21, he hit the tournament circuit right away. He ran with a "crew" that consisted of a few players you might have heard of: Daniel Negreanu, John Juanda, and Phil Ivey. He played in tournaments for a year without cashing, but was still doing quite well in live action. The whole "pro poker thing" didn't start out to be as sexy as the visions he had as a youngster sitting around the kitchen table.



However, in 1999, at 22, Allen had a breakthrough year. He won six major tournaments and captured the title of "Best All-Around Player" at The Bicycle Casino's Legends of Poker tournament. He won a tournament at Hollywood Park Casino and took home $33,000. In 2000, he notched his first $100,000 payday, finishing second to Howard Lederer in the $5,000 Omaha eight-or-better event at the World Series of Poker. Allen says that each year since, while remaining a winning player, he has constantly improved his game. "Allen Cunningham each year would beat the Allen Cunningham of the previous year, no question," he said.

Allen Cunningham and Evelyn Ng at the 2005 WPT Borgata Open

Bright lights, big stars

Early in his career, Allen had just wrapped up a tournament at Foxwoods. He hopped in a rented Jeep with a few friends, and drove away to watch a meteor shower. "It was amazing; there were some huge meteors," he said. "Anyway, I was still kind of young and not sure what I was doing with poker. I was a bit confused about whether or not I was heading in the right direction." It was a moment of clarity for the young player. "I thought to myself, 'Everything is going to be OK, I'm a good poker player. I don't have to worry about finding another career.'"



He looks back on this anecdote to remind himself that poker is his baby. He is someone with a thirst for knowledge and learning. He reads every day. Nonfiction, history, science, psychology, and how-to books overflow his bookshelf. As a constant student of the game, he has continued to improve and solidify his place among the most successful tournament players in the game today. That wild idea he had in his head as a young whippersnapper has paid huge dividends. From high spade in the hole to center stage at poker's richest event, look for one of poker's youngest veterans to keep on trucking.