With an impressive 2006, Roland De Wolfe ensured that he would be known as one of Europe's top poker exports. The scary thing is that De Wolfe is just getting started.
In just over a year of playing live events, this London-born, 27-year-old "Friend" of FullTilt has racked up more than $2.5 million in tournament winnings. He first made a name for himself by winning a
World Poker Tour title and $600,000 at the 2005
Grand Prix De Paris. Then he parlayed his $25,000 seat in the
WPT Championship into a third-place finish, good for more than $1 million, at the prestigious
World Poker Tour Five-Star World Poker Classic. But, his year wasn't over. In October, De Wolfe made history after he won the
European Poker Tour Dublin Championship and its $700,000 first prize.
Card Player recently caught up with the first player to win both
World Poker Tour and
European Poker Tour titles to get an inside look into his rapid rise to the top.
Michael Friedman: When did you first play poker?
Roland De Wolfe: I remember playing poker when I was around 12 or 13 at school. There were three of us who used to play at lunchtime. We really didn't have any money, but things have changed since then. One of the guys now works for one of the biggest bookmakers in England, and the other is a top financial trader, so I guess you can say it was in our blood.
MF: What first attracted you to the game?
RDW: I really like skilled gambling. You get the buzz of gambling with poker, but you have control because it is a game of skill, as well. I really like the whole luck thing, as well. I really enjoy it.
MF: How important is the role of luck in the game?
RDW: Luck is the most important thing in poker, like it is with any form of gambling. Luck plays a big role in life. A lot of what happens is out of your control. If the things that are out of your control go positively for you, it makes life much easier for you. Sure, it depends on what you do with it, but you have to get lucky in the first place to get there. It's great when you get a good run of cards.
MF: Did you go to college?
RDW: I went to the University of Birmingham and got a media degree. Then I did postgraduate work in media studies, as well. I actually did my final thesis on gambling, after I started working for a gambling magazine. That's how I ended up really getting into poker.
MF: Were you playing poker at the time?
RDW: Not really. I used to lose a lot of money playing casino games like blackjack, and I would pretty much bet on anything - during my first year, at least. After that, I sort of calmed down and didn't gamble that much. Then,
Late Night Poker began in the UK and I started watching that a lot, and things took off from there.
MF: You obviously are very competitive. What drove you to pick up the game?
RDW: I think poker is one of the few sports in which you can get clear results, especially in tournaments. You literally can quantify how well you have done. With poker, it's an individual sport. You really have to have the will to win continuously.
MF: What were you doing before you started playing professionally?
RDW: I was working for a gambling magazine in the UK primarily covering poker. That is really how I ended up playing seriously. I was on the PartyPoker cruise that Erick Lindgren won, covering it for the magazine. I started talking to a lot of the players, and that's when I began to take playing live seriously. It was like going to school. I believed that to write about a subject like poker and educate other people, you really had to know the game yourself, so it kind of worked out.
MF: How did communicating poker to the populous help you develop your game?
RDW: You have to examine every area when you're writing about something. You have to make sure that it's right and think it through, so there is a lot more concrete thinking than just doing. When you play, you tend to learn things by instinct, but you don't actually understand why. When you are writing, you have to look at the reasons why certain things work and others don't. In a sense, you're actually examining the game and learning it while you write. It's like doing a revision of sorts. You have to do it over and over again to make things work. That really helped, I think.
MF: Was it a tough decision to go pro?
RDW: Not really. I was doing publishing stuff at the time in the UK and I really wasn't into the desk-job thing, even though I liked what I was doing. I was so into poker at the time, and thought that I could make so much more money playing than doing what I was doing. It was an easy decision when I realized that I could make a month's salary in one hand by playing online - or lose it. As a risk-taker, it was also really appealing to me.
MF: How much time did you spend playing when you started out?
RDW: I was playing hours and hours of poker online when I first started, often multitabling games. I definitely played a lot more online than I do now. I was actually playing pretty big, considering how small my bankroll was. I put my whole bankroll on the line over and over again. I would go broke and get some more money and go at it again.
MF: What limits were you playing?
RDW: I was playing $10-$20 no-limit with a bankroll of around $10,000-$20,000. I wouldn't advise people to do what I did. I just didn't care. I went broke over and over again. When I went pro, I had a $20,000 bankroll and built it up to about $60,000 and headed to the
World Series of Poker, where I did pretty well. Then, I went to Paris and won the
World Poker Tour tournament. It sounds easy, but it wasn't.
MF: What game is your specialty?
RDW: I think my best cash game is no-limit, but I don't play it very often because I find it to be very tiring. There are so many decisions to make. I guess my specialty is playing heads-up Omaha eight-or-better. I don't like playing threehanded or fourhanded Omaha. I really like playing just heads up. Ultimately, I like any game when it is heads up. I'm really not that good at sixhanded games. I don't have the discipline or concentration to play effectively. Plus, there are too few hands to play. I like to be involved in every hand. I don't like to be folding all the time.
MF: So, does this mean that you like playing online more than you like playing live?
RDW: I don't mind playing live. Sometimes it's fun, but I do it only occasionally. I play once a week in London in a big game, but the rest of the time, I'm playing online.
MF: Tell us about the big game in London.
RDW: We've got a couple of soccer players, some rich guys, and some big gamblers who play. You can lose between $30,000 and $40,000 in a night, easily. That's not that much compared to the way things can go online, but it's pretty big for live play.
MF: What is the difference between European play and U.S. play?
RDW: Europeans generally play more aggressively. They don't care about being knocked out, but they do care about being bluffed. That's the main thing in Europe, don't get bluffed. In America, players are more concerned about not losing big pots and often play much tighter. In Europe, they just want to stick their money in and try their luck. Most of the top players in the world are in America at the moment, but the depth of European fields is much greater. In the States, you may have better players at the top, but the fields are weaker and the lower players aren't as good.
MF: How much time do you spend playing?
RDW: I play a couple of hours a day, but sometimes I won't play for a day, and then the next day I'll play for eight hours straight.
MF: Describe a typical session.
RDW: I normally play against my mates. We find each other online and then play. There is one well-known UK player whom I won't name. We play all the time. We'll play a half-hour of $200-$400 Omaha eight-or-better, which is my best game, and then we'll play a half-hour of pot-limit Omaha, which is his best game. If I win in pot-limit, I tease him that I have broken his serve. Generally, I win the eight-or-better sessions and he wins the pot-limit action. We try to balance it out.
MF: Tell me about the
WPT win in France, and did you know that you were going to win at some point?
RDW: You never know that it's going to come. You just play. I think I've got pretty good instincts, and near the end of the first day, I told my eventual heads-up opponent that I thought we were going to have an impact on each other's tournament, and we ended up playing heads up. The tournament was such clear sailing for me. I got an early double-up, and was never really in any great danger. I had some great hands. There was one point when I could have gotten into trouble, but I made a full house against a nut straight and won a really massive pot. The bubble seemed to last for ages, and I played very aggressively and built a massive stack, similar to the way I played at the
WPT Championship. In the end, I got lucky, because when it comes to the final table, the blinds increase so fast that you really have to get lucky to win.
MF: Tell me about the feeling you had after the win, and did you have time to enjoy it?
RDW: It was a bit surreal, the night I won in Paris. It felt great, but it didn't really sink in. Two weeks later, it hit me: "Wow, I won it." It was crazy. I went from playing poker and watching the top players go at it to achieving a massive thing like winning a
WPT title. It was a really big change.
MF: You parlayed the $25,000 entry to the
WPT Championship that you won in Paris into a third-place finish and a million dollar win at the 2006
WPT Championship. Tell our readers what that event was like, playing against 600 of the game's best, with $50,000 in starting chips, and coming very close to winning your second
WPT crown?
RDW: This event, up until the final day, is the best-structured tournament in the world. The portion of dead money is uniquely low, and it's a test of endurance. You get enough play to be able to make moves and recover from setbacks. Even late on day four there is still enough play so that it's not all in or fold. I just wish the
WPT would adjust its final-table structure for its flagship event.
MF: Tell us about your next big win, the
European Poker Tour event in Dublin.
RDW: I just ran so well throughout the whole event. Every time I needed to win a big hand, it happened. It seemed like I was always able to get the maximum value for my hands, as well, which let me move my chips around quite a bit. I really got to put pressure on the other players. Basically, I played well and got really lucky right up until the end, when I took out seven of the eight final players. I came to the final table second in chips and felt very strong. It wasn't clear sailing, which it never is, but things never really went against me. I lost a coin flip once or twice, but that was about it. When it finally got to threehanded, I felt extremely strong. The other guy got knocked out by the chip leader, so it didn't take long for us to get into it. Heads-up play was tough, but I got the best of him. Overall, I played pretty well, but I also got a lot of good cards at the right time.
MF: Was this win more pleasurable than the
WPT title?
RDW: I really got to enjoy this one. The first time around, it doesn't really sink in, because you are caught up in what's happening. I've made a bunch of big final tables since then, and I'm not as distracted by the cameras and what's going on. I think you appreciate each final table a bit more.
MF: It seems as if you've developed a winning formula. What skills and strategies do you believe are the foundation of your overall success?
RDW: Well, first of all, you have to be lucky. I am under no illusions as to the part luck plays. You must be competitive and never give up. Mental toughness combined with aggression, flexible thinking, and technical skill are most important. I try to learn all the time. I'm nowhere near the finished article, but I'm aggressive and have been lucky and understand tournaments.
MF: So, what's next for Roland De Wolfe?
RDW: I want to improve my game. I think I'm probably about half as good as I'm going to be when all is said and done. I have a lot that I have to do to improve, in terms of tournament play. I think I can be a much better player in a year or two, especially since I've been playing professionally for only three years.
