Fossilman - A Rare Ethological Find

Same Guy, Different Watch

For seven days in May 2004, while protecting his cards with fossils and shading his eyes behind a unique and distracting pair of holographic lizard-eye sunglasses, Greg Raymer, a patent attorney and touring tournament aficionado, rode aggressive play and fortuitous cards to the promised land in the championship event of the World Series of Poker (WSOP). The (now former) Stonington, Connecticut, resident captured a then-unprecedented prize of $5 million and was immediately bathed in the immense publicity that accompanies our burgeoning game. For the next 13 months, "Fossilman" reigned supreme from a poker and personality perspective. We may never have a better ambassador for our game.



Speaking of "nevers," the poker world might never have seen Greg on our game's biggest stage. The happily married man once made a deal with his wife that he would play with a $1,000 poker bankroll, and if he ever lost it, he would quit poker forever. Fortunately for Greg and the big-slick community, he managed to stay above water before making his huge splash into no-limit hold'em immortality at Binion's.



I caught up with Greg in his suite at the Golden Nugget. He was close-mouthed about how he was faring in the Fox Sports Net Superstars of Poker III (participants are sworn to secrecy during the private tapings). Fortunately, that's all he wouldn't talk about. You are about to get up close and personal with one of poker's nicest people and best thinkers in this three-part piece. You will find out where Greg resides currently and what he likes to do in his spare time. We'll discuss poker theory from many angles, including starting hands in no-limit hold'em, reading players, luck in poker, the butterfly effect, and mistakes players make. We'll get the straight skinny on his shades, fossils, and lots more.



Let's get started with a look at the 5-foot-11-inch, blue-eyed, 41-year-old Raleigh, North Carolina, resident in nouns and adjectives:

Lee Munzer: You spent your weekday, nine-to-five adult life in science and law (Greg has an undergraduate degree in chemistry and a master's in biochemistry from the University of Minnesota, and he stayed there to obtain a law degree). You had a stable, interesting, and financially rewarding job working for a giant in the pharmaceutical industry. How long did you work for Pfizer after you won the World Series championship?



Greg Raymer: I won on Friday. I flew home on Sunday and went to the office on Monday, even though it was a holiday, because I had a ton of stuff to catch up on, since I had really been expected back to work the previous Wednesday. In fact, my original plane trip home was booked for Tuesday. I felt that was safe, because if I had to move my reservation back, I wouldn't mind paying to do so since that would mean I had made the money in the championship. You know, it really sucks to get knocked out early and have to pay another couple of hundred bucks to move your flight up. Anyway, after I won, I knew I was going to quit Pfizer. I just wasn't sure when. I wanted to close out some stock options, and I knew once I quit that I would lose the options if not exercised. So, that, along with cleaning up some work, led to me giving my notice on Thursday. So, I guess you could say I worked the better part of another week.



LM: I see that you have a website (http://www.fossilmanpoker.com/). What will our readers find there?



GR: I list a calendar of poker events, relay industry news, and provide a contact page, and there is an FAQ (frequently asked questions) section where people can get to know me better. In addition, they can click on "store" and get books I recommend, signed autographs, and/or fossils. The site is pretty weak at the moment, but I have plans to make it much more "alive" and interactive in the future. If you don't like it now, come back in a few months and check it out again.



LM: When you play online at PokerStars, do you prefer cash games or tournaments?



GR: I normally play cash games, because it's not often that I find myself sitting at home with nothing to do and can commit to playing in a tournament for several hours. Other than online, I mainly play big-event tournaments, since Raleigh has no local rooms. I also will play in the side games when I travel if I get knocked out of a tournament early and I'm not going home right away.



LM: What are your thoughts concerning luck in poker?

GR: Luck is a big part of the game. If you and I play one hand of poker, the winner would be determined by luck. But if we play for a year, whoever is better at heads-up poker would come out ahead, for sure. (Hesitating) Well, I suppose we could be so evenly matched that the result would be meaningless. Luck is why poker is what it is. Without luck, poker would be like chess, and other than the elite, people don't make millions playing chess. Some guy who's number 500 in the world in chess can't make a living. But although poker is a game of skill, and the better player will win eventually, due to the luck factor, a lot of players fool themselves about their skill level. And that applies to the great players, as well. Take Daniel Negreanu. He is absolutely one of the best poker players in the world, whether we're talking tournaments or cash games. But his results in 2004 were beyond expectation for him or any other player in the world. So, what happened is, in 2004, he got extremely lucky at several key moments in some big tournaments. If he looked at those results and believed he was the greatest player poker has ever seen, he simply read too much into the results. On the other side of the scale is the player who is far from the world-class winning player that Daniel is. If that player has a disastrous year, he chalks his lack of success up to bad luck, but the truth is, he's less skillful than his opponents. So, we're all subjected to the possibility of misinterpreting how good we are, and that's partially based on the luck factor, which I equate to the spikes in noise in our poker signal-to-noise ratio, where the signal is how good we are. Without that ability to fool themselves, a lot of the people who are playing today wouldn't be playing.



LM: Lest we drift into the area of spectral density, let's shift our focus to your luck. After you won the big one, I skimmed through some Internet forum reviews of your play. Given the wide range of contributors to these newsgroups, as you can imagine, the assessments ranged from "played aggressively and skillfully from day one to the last hand" to "Greg got lucky." What is your analysis of your play in the 2004 main event?



GR: I don't take it personally or even find the "got lucky" comment to be incorrect. I, along with anyone who wins a major tournament against a field of that size, deserve to be told how lucky I was, because it's true. But, isn't the real issue, how well did the winner play? While I was lucky to win, I probably wasn't as lucky throughout the event as several of the players who made the final three or four tables. Had I possessed their level of luck, I might have won more handily. Had they had my level of luck, they may have been eliminated much earlier. So, to be honest with you, I believe that I was able to win chips through skill at many points where some of those other players might not have done as well. Sometimes I'll see a player of average skill get amazingly lucky, and I'll say to myself, "Man, if I ever got that lucky (laughing), I'd win two or three tournaments in a row."



LM: Can a good player maneuver himself into positions where he is more of a favorite to become lucky, hence the expression, "luck is the reward of the skillful?"



GR: I don't really look at it that way. I think the only thing you can do is intelligently get away from a hand that you are going to lose, and thus save chips. The less skillful player would lose more chips on the hand. By laying down that hand, you may last another 10 or 20 hands more than the opponent who failed to fold correctly. Then, in that extra half-hour or so, you may catch some lucky cards. In that way, your skill was rewarded with luck.

Sometimes you'll make a call incorrectly, and because you made that wrong call and lost a lot of chips, your tournament strategy changes from the next hand on. For example, let's say that after losing those extra chips, you became short-stacked. You might have to commit your short stack to a marginal hand, one that you would have mucked (had you not made the call in the previous hand). But, now you go all in with the marginal hand, get two callers, and win a huge pot, putting you well ahead of where you were before you made the losing incorrect call.

This exhibits what I refer to as poker's "butterfly effect." One little thing, as seemingly insignificant as a butterfly flapping its wings in the middle of the Amazon rain forest might trigger a series of reactions that causes a storm in England. But, had the butterfly not flapped its wings, it would have been a sunny day in the UK. Now, it's hard to imagine such a thing, but it's real easy when you think about a poker tournament.



LM: Can you give us an example?



GR: Sure. If I could go back in a time machine to day one of the 2004 main event, dress in a disguise, walk up behind a dealer who is not even at my table, and let out a real loud cough just as he starts shuffling, the order of the cards would be slightly different because his riffle would be slightly changed by my action. The next hand he dealt would be different, and every subsequent hand would be different as players mucked different cards in a different order. Those effects would ripple throughout the entire tournament as different players accumulated different amounts of chips and moved to different tables. Some would bust out earlier than if I hadn't coughed, and some who would have busted out would survive. We might have wound up with nine different people at that final table. So, a seemingly inconsequential action would have changed an entire outcome.



LM: Now you've done it. Unlucky players will begin to cough loudly as they walk behind dealers. Poker has many new players. Some have read books, made good progress, and are now entering tournaments. What advice do you have for intermediate players?



GR: When I play in tournaments, I see several mistakes, and the less experienced players generally make them. Making the wrong bet in no-limit hold'em is a common error. The player knows that he's in a spot where it is correct to bet, but he doesn't know how much to bet. So, he bets too much or too little. The reasons players make bet-size mistakes vary from player to player and situation to situation. Players who have been playing pretty well often amaze me. All of a sudden, I see them push all in or make a huge preflop raise with a mediocre hand.



LM: What are they thinking?



GR: They seem to have this attitude that they need to make a huge raise to protect their pocket nines against a hand like K-J.



LM: And that's a bad thing?



GR: Protecting your hand is a fictitious concept. The true concept when it comes to bet size is maximizing your expected return on the pot. You might wind up protecting your hand as a result of making the right play. But, you should never be thinking, "I need to protect my hand."



LM: So, is the main problem with vastly overbetting or overraising that the raiser will discourage opponents holding hands that he wouldn't mind being up against, such as 7-7?



GR: Right. They make a huge bet or a huge raise, and they almost guarantee that all worse hands will fold. But, those with better hands probably will call. I see this a lot on the flop. Someone will have A-K. The flop will come K-8-3, and he will bet a huge amount – in his mind, trying to protect his kings. Well, as long as you bet enough to get the guy who may be holding 9-8 out, that would be enough. If he calls your bet, that would be a mistake on his part, and that's all right. You just don't want to give him the right price to catch his five-outer. Your goal is to bet enough for him to call incorrectly. Your huge bet accomplishes nothing, because you can't bet enough to make a better hand than top pair with top kicker fold. You will get called, and if you bet a huge amount, you probably will be committed to losing all or most of your chips to the better hand.



LM: How about players making minimum raises in no-limit?



GR: That usually happens when they have such a big hand that they want to milk you. So, they make these little bets. They have something like A-Q, the flop comes A-Q-6, and they make the minimum bet – say, $50 – into a $400 pot. I'll call with my 7-5 in a heartbeat. Then, I catch an 8 on the turn, and they bet $100. I call again. They're sure that their A-Q is good. Then, I make a straight, and I get them to put $5,000 in on the river. And they're like, "How did you call on the flop with that hand? I could never put you on 7-5 when you called the flop." I won't tell them, but it was because they bet only $50, and I can call $50 with almost anything. So, they bet way too much or way too little.



Another thing I see is players who mini-raise in the beginning of a tournament. Well, that's fine if you're trying to build a pot when the blinds are low. But, they'll still be doing it (raising the minimum) later on when the blinds are substantial – say, the average stack is $50,000 and the blinds are $1,000-$2,000. The game has changed and their strategy has to change along with the movement of the blinds and the chips in play. In the beginning, everyone had 200 times the big blind, and now, everyone has 20 or 30 times the big blind. If your raise is too small, you will give your opponents too good of a price to draw out on your hand.



LM: Do you have any rudimentary advice on starting hands in no-limit?



GR: Well, one of the things I see inexperienced players do is form opinions on which hands to play. That's fine, as long as they incorporate other factors into their decision-making process. But, they usually separate them into mental columns like, "These are good hands that you play, and these are bad hands that you don't play." The problem with that thinking is that they need to divide the hands further. Maybe a weak hand in their range of playable hands is K-J offsuit. Well, there's a big difference in calling a raise with K-J and making the first raise with K-J. New players fail to differentiate between the two plays. Making the first raise is a good, aggressive play in many circumstances. But, you better have a good reason for calling a raise with K-J, a trouble hand.



LM: Can you provide an example of when you might call a raise when holding K-J?



GR: Sure. Let's say it's a small raise, early in the tournament when the blinds aren't large, I have a big stack of chips compared to the average, and I have position. Since the raise doesn't amount to a great percentage of my chips, I'll call. But, what I'm seeing is that the players who will make that call correctly, hoping to flop something and win a big pot, are still making the call with K-J during level 10 when the cost to call relative to their total chips is far too large. What happens is, they've developed a starting-hand strategy for the game they first learned, often limit hold'em, but they haven't been able to alter that strategy to include the chip counts, the changing opponents, and the difference the blinds make in no-limit play.

I remember playing at Foxwoods with a guy who was clearly a very inexperienced tournament player. He was playing more than 60 percent of his hands. Fortunately for him, "the deck was hitting him" (he was catching great cards), and mostly on and after the flop. He was winning huge pots and building his stacks. So, now we're at the final table and his luck had gone south. We're at the point where he posted half of his chips, between the ante and the big blind. Everyone folds to the button, who raises enough to put this player in. After the small blind mucked, he looked at his cards and folded instantly. He came over to me after the tournament and told me how much fun he had. He asked if I didn't mind answering a few questions that he had about his play. I said I'd be happy to, but I asked if he didn't mind if I asked him a question first.



He said, "Sure."



I said, "It's about your next to the last hand, the one where you posted half of your chips. Why did you fold?"



He said, "Well, I only had J-6."



I explained to him that with the antes and the small blind, he would have been getting about 6-to-1 on his call. I also explained that the button player didn't necessarily need a great hand to raise, since everyone had folded to him. But, even if the button held A-A, he hardly would have been making a mistake to call.



He responded, "Oh, wow, I never even thought of that."



The concept of pot odds was meaningless to him at that point in his development. Getting 2-to-1 or 10-to-1 on a call was all the same to him.



LM: Many new players watch tournaments on television, see the huge prize pools, and decide to take a shot on the tour. What advice would you have for them?



GR: (Laughing) Keep your day job. Tournament poker is really a tough way to make a living, even for some of the very best poker players out there. If we're talking about playing tournaments as a full-time job, I'd recommend doing it on the side first, until you've built up a very comfortable bankroll. I wouldn't even have considered quitting my job unless I had won all that money. And even then, I wouldn't have quit my job except for the fact that PokerStars pays me better to represent and endorse their site than my old (attorney) job paid.



So, if we had been talking three years ago, and I wasn't going to have all of these endorsement opportunities, I would have kept my job. Let me put it like this: There are very few players who have a reasonable profit expectation that will exceed $100,000. Of course, with the big fields and purses these days, the winners easily exceed that figure, but if we could play the tournaments for a million years and then determine results, even the great players wouldn't show huge numbers in terms of yearly profits. Maybe there would be 100 players who would show an expected value of $100,000 or more. So, I wouldn't consider poker to be a great way to make a living financially. It's very exciting, of course, and if you're playing both cash games and tournaments, that's different on the basis of profit potential and risk leveling. You can have a much more steady income.



In Part II, Lee and Greg will return to delve into hand-reading technique, pinpoint Greg's strengths, examine the part of his game that he wants to improve, discuss deals during tournaments, talk about superstitions, and more.