Blond-haired, boyish, and astonishingly all-American looking, Erick Lindgren initially appears too wholesome to be mixed up in anything as risky as high-stakes gambling. After a few minutes of small talk, though, it becomes immediately clear that he bets six figures the way that most us bet three. And it doesn't take long to figure out that the seven flat-screen monitors on his living room wall are not there because he likes to watch
HBO, Showtime, and
Cinemax simultaneously. Besides ranking among the most successful of poker's original young guns, 30-year-old Lindgren (who first made his bones by multitabling during the early days of online action) gambles sky-high at golf and sports as well as poker. We meet in his Las Vegas home on Valentine's night, and, surrounded by a few pals who are enjoying various forms of online gambling, Lindgren bemoans his current lack of female companionship. No doubt, though, his loneliness is assuaged by the $800,000 he recently won in a speed-poker tournament at the
Aussie Millions in Melbourne.
Michael Kaplan: Winning the 800 grand must have been a nice surprise. I assume that you go into tournaments with limited expectations.
Erick Lindgren: I don't know about expectations, but when you put up $80,000 to enter an 18-person tournament, you definitely want to win. You can't continually put up $80,000 and walk away a loser.
MK: What was the deal with this event?
EL: It wasn't televised, it lasted 14 hours, and there were a lot of good players in it: Phil Ivey, John Juanda, John D'Agostino, Erik Seidel. Ivey played really well, but he got unlucky at the end. I got heads up with Seidel and he had a nice chip lead over me. But I managed to build my way up from $300,000 to $600,000 [there was a total of $1.8 million in tournament chips]. Then I picked up two kings and he had jacks. If it had been reversed, he'd have won the tournament because he had me covered. But I flipped it on him, then ground him down a little. I finally got him all in with me holding A-7 against his K-J, and he bricked off. I thought he played really well.
MK: Doesn't sound like there was a lot of value for any of the Full Tilt gang.
EL: There were some average players: a Japanese guy who had a lot of gamble in him, a local Aussie guy, and the owner of MansionPoker.com. But I'm not a guy who always searches for value. Playing against better players can be more fun than finding a sucker at the table. That's what I did in the old days when I had to feed myself.
MK: Do you play differently when you're up against really strong players?
EL: They know me as a guy who sees a lot of flops and plays small-ball poker. This time, I did a little more bluffing and didn't limp around so much, I played a little faster preflop, and whenever I thought I could steal a pot with a raise, I did it regardless of the cards I had. That worked pretty well. I was able to build my stack without getting many hands early on.
MK: But doesn't everybody quickly figure out what you're doing?
EL: It is hard to mix up your style, even when you think you're mixing it up. Everyone has his own tendencies. The bottom line, though, is that you want to play tighter against great players. You can't afford to play out of position against great players.
MK: Is $800,000 the most you've ever made in such a short period of time?
EL: Sure. But the buy-in was big and the swings were big. I like to gamble, though, and I've gambled at stupider things than this poker tournament.
MK: With that in mind, how do you compare yourself to guys like Andy Bloch and Chris Ferguson, successful poker players who have zero interest in pure gambling?
EL: They are raised from a different ilk. Chris and Andy do great in tournaments, but don't play many cash games. They make good money and know how to perfectly budget themselves. I've never balanced a checkbook in my life. Wells Fargo hates me. I go over my balance once every couple months.
MK: Speaking of going over, when were you last broke?
EL: Dead broke? Where I had to borrow money or couldn't borrow money anymore? That would be when I first started as a prop player at Casino San Pablo [located just outside of Oakland, California]. I was 21 years old, had to borrow 500 bucks the night before, lived in a hotel for three weeks, played off that money, and made it last. That was really bad. Also, five years ago, after I purchased this house - I had to put a lot of money down; banks don't give much credit to poker players - I had a rough run. Over the years I've gone through a lot of money back and forth. But truly dead broke? I haven't been there.
MK: When poker players talk about being broke, what do you think they mean?
EL: I think it means cash broke, but you may still have a revenue stream or investments. Honestly, I don't get what it means. It depends on who you ask. If you ask Mike The Mouth, everybody's broke. A while back, I heard that Gus Hansen was broke. I was like, "Come on. Gus is not broke." The bottom line is that if you endure a big hit, you do whatever it takes to come back. That's the real sign of a good gambler and a good player.
MK: In terms of stakes, what does it take for a game to be interesting to you?
EL: If it's no-limit, I like to play $100-$200. Limit, $400-$800 would be OK, but $1,000-$2,000 would be better.
MK: You've never had an ego drive that presses you to sit down in the "Big Game"?
EL: I definitely have a big ego. You need one to be successful in this business. Up till now, though, my ego has been fulfilled by doing well in tournaments. At some point, I will [go for it]. But I'm still not good enough when they break out all the games. I play $1,000-$2,000 H.O.R.S.E. on Full Tilt, and that's big enough for me.
MK: What about sports?
EL: Sports betting is the most fun. Handicapping is what I really enjoy doing. A friend and I have broken down the numbers for college football, and we are very serious about that. For the rest, though, I just gamble. The NFL? It's 9:55, the game starts at 10, and we better get in action. The most fun is when Gus or Erik Sagstrom comes by and we bet the whole slate. We bet maybe $20,000 a game.
MK: But since you're betting every game, you're not gonna lose them all, right?
EL: I have before. It would seem impossible. But, I guess that's part of the fun. They say that with gambling, the next best thing to winning big is losing big. The problem is that we sometimes get too lazy to keep track of everything. We probably should have an accountant sitting here, taking notes on who owes who. Our betting sheets look like hieroglyphics by the end of the day.
MK: What about golf? I hear that you and Phil Ivey have a pretty interesting golf bet going.
EL: We bet half a million that he would never beat me in a 72-hole match-play content. He gets 10 tries a year, the bet goes for 10 years, and we made it three years ago. Now, though, we've got a new bet, just for this year. It's for 500 thousand, and he can challenge me 10 times.
MK: So, if he beats you this year, you owe him a million, and if he doesn't, the whole thing is, worst case, a wash for you. Do you think he'll beat you?
EL: I'm not much of a favorite now. I've got to get to work on my golf, which is a game that I love. The only thing I don't enjoy is the hustling and negotiation aspect.
MK: That's not your style?
EL: No. But other people love it. You get guys like Mike Sexton, who last year at the
World Series told me that he hasn't played in three months and that he can't even shoot 90. Then he goes out and shoots 78 on me. I'm like, you son of a b----. He won eight bets, we had played for 10 a hole, and I had to pay him $80,000. That's just wonderful.
MK: It sounds like Sexton was pretty blatant.
EL: The truly good hustlers will skin you by a shot. Then you play with guys like Doyle and Chip and Phil, and everybody thinks it's a big hustle - but it's not. At the end of the day, everyone in that group holds his own, and it's a matter of who plays the best. Doyle and Chip don't want to take the worst of it, make no mistake of that. Nobody wants to lose and everyone wants to set up the best bets for themselves. But my dealings with Doyle and Chip have been pretty fair.
MK: So, you bet on sports, golf, and poker. Anything else?
EL: Besides fantasy sports leagues, we make stupid prop bets.
MK: Like the one you made with Mike Matusow a while back? It was a weight bet, to see who could lose more within a set period of time, and I remember him griping about how you had sandbagged him.
EL: Well, Mike has a bad take on that one. When we first made the bet, Mike was winning online. And when he wins online, he quits and books his win, and has a normal life. Two weeks into our bet, Mike had lost 15 or 20 pounds and was in great shape. I had dropped only 3 or 4, and he said he couldn't lose the bet. Then, within two weeks, Mike went on a losing streak at poker; he stopped going to the gym, started eating junk again, and didn't lose any more weight. Meanwhile, I just kept plugging away, didn't eat on the last day, and sat in my hot tub in the 104-degree heat. I lost enough to just about notch him. I never hustled the guy. I just hadn't talked to him. All he had to do was keep losing weight, and I wouldn't have won. He was just too lazy.
MK: Tell me about your sickest prop bet.
EL: I had a $20,000 free-throw bet against Phil, up in Reno, where I needed to make nine out of 10 free throws. A bunch of us piled into a limo and rode up to 24 Hour Fitness. The gym was dark, and I wanted to pay the guy $500 to turn on the lights. But he couldn't get them to work, and I said, "Screw it. This'll be a better story if I make my shots in the dark." I missed the first, made the next eight, and missed the money ball. Then, I got mad.
MK: What happened?
EL: I backed up to the 3-point line, made a prop bet there, and lost that. Then, at the NBA line, I lost that bet. We went to half-court and I had to make one out of five. Phil was trying to give me some money back, and I rimmed every shot. I had gone up there to play in a $5,000 tournament and I was down $80,000 before the first card was dealt. Needless to say, I didn't play very well.
MK: Why do people call you E-Dog?
EL: Back when I was propping, we were playing $15-$30 at San Pablo, and I was just torturing this Filipino guy. He looked up at me and said, "E, you dog." And it became E-Dog. Thank God I had that nickname, though. Apparently, the World Poker Tour didn't like E-Dog, so they started calling me American Idol. Luckily, E-Dog stuck and the other one got dropped. That would have been a terrible nickname.
MK: Nicknames are important for poker players these days.
EL: But you have guys like Gavin Smith. He can't even get a nickname. What can we call him? Bacardi and Diet?
MK: Who's got the worst nickname?
EL: I call Phil Gordon the Shawn Bradley of poker. Ivey was the Tiger Woods of poker. Daniel is still Kid Poker. Then there are some self-anointed nicknames. Here's the worst one: Chris Gregorian is the Armenian Express. He's got the little coaster with the picture of himself that he puts on the cards.
MK: He gave himself that nickname?
EL: I think so. I don't think anyone called him the Armenian Express. There are a bunch of guys named Express. But Express has nothing to do with poker. Even Johnny Chan shouldn't be called Express.
