Phatcat Living Large After His Biggest Online Win

Bodog recently held its inaugural Bodog Poker Open (BPO), and all eyes were on the main event and whether the winner would be a well-known pro or an unknown player. Well, the final table was stacked with notable online pros, so the chances were good that one would come out on top.

And, indeed, that happened when Shawn "phat_cat1" Luman became the last man standing out of 596 entrants in the event. He snagged his biggest online score to date, $76,000, and the title of first-ever BPO champion.

Luman has almost $500,000 in lifetime Online Player of the Year-qualified winnings, but the 34-year-old poker player started, like many do, much more humbly. He played around with friends in both high school and college at Kansas State University, where he eventually got a degree in accounting. He then went on to be a CPA, and afterward became a CFO for a construction company.

It was at that time, around 2003, that one of his college buddies told him about all of the money to be made playing online poker.

"I was just starting out, I didn't have a lot of money, and I put in just 50 bucks at a time, or whatever," Luman said. "And a lot of times, I'd lose that within the first day. I wasn't much for bankroll management; I was in it for the big score."

He eventually learned the control that he needed to be successful, of course, and has become one of the winningest online players today. Card Player caught up with Luman after his BPO win to talk about his beginnings in poker, the BPO main event, and optimal tournament strategy:

Shawn Patrick Green: What steps did you take in your formative years to become a better player?

Shawn "phatcat" Luman: I'd always done pretty well in poker and always thought I had a feel for it, and I have a math background, as well. But tournament theory and stuff like that were foreign to me until I started reading some of the online forums, bought a few books, and started talking to some players; that's when it really started to click. Back in late '05, I final-tabled the PokerStars Sunday tourney; it wasn't the Sunday Million back then. I final-tabled it twice in about a month. I had some other good results on Paradise Poker and PartyPoker, as well. Ever since then, I've just continued to learn and talk to better players and get better myself. I haven't looked back since then.

SPG: You said that one of your early steps while learning the ropes was talking to players. Which players were you talking to at the very beginning? Anyone we'd know?

SL: Yeah, Rizen was one of them, Eric Lynch. He's from Kansas, also; that's how we first started talking, and he also first started having success around the same time. He was really the first person I talked with, and we kind of climbed the ladder together and both started having some success. Another person I talk to a lot today is Steely, also known as NestOfSalt [Scott Wyler]. I still talk with him a lot to this day. Those two are the primary guys who have helped me.

SPG: How did the field of players on Bodog differ from that which you've experienced in other online tournaments on other sites?

SL: Well, generally, the play in MTTs [multitable tournaments] there is weaker, and that's something that I thought was pretty important in that tournament. Although, at times, it can be pretty deceiving, because so many people don't play on Bodog, and, especially in this tournament, a lot of the big-name players probably did play, but they could have had different names on Bodog, so you might not recognize them as big players. So, you have to keep that in the back of your mind. But, for the most part, I would give less credit to the players there than I would elsewhere. And that's a pretty important part of any tournament, I think, but especially this one; I would try to realize whom I was playing against and tailor my play depending upon whether they were a known player or not. It certainly can be a 180-degree difference between how you're going to play against a good player versus an unknown.

SPG: What do you mean by that, exactly? What kinds of differences do you see in your play?

SL: You can resteal a lot lighter against an unknown or random player -- or until proven otherwise, you can. You should be less likely to do that against a good player, who realizes that you're in a good spot to resteal, and you should probably be a little more careful. With some of the unknowns, you can assume that they think that when you reraise them, you've got a monster and they'll fold.

SPG: What were the keys to taking down the event?

SL: Early, I built up a pretty big stack, but I ended up bluffing it off, and this kind of relates to what I was saying earlier. I got into a fairly big pot against someone I thought was a random player. I had an underpair to the board, and there was two pair on the board, so I had nothing, and I check-raised him all in on the river, thinking that he couldn't call without the full house -- which he had. I got busted down to three, four, or five big blinds then, and that was still early in the tournament. I found out later that that was a really good player whom I just didn't recognize, and it's dangerous when you make those assumptions.
But I ended up building it back up, didn't give up, played solid, and wound up with a pretty big stack toward the end. I used that to my advantage when I could, and I played aggressively, but I tried not to get too far out of line.

SPG: Going back to the misplayed hand at the beginning of the tournament, when you get caught in a hand like that, how do you prevent yourself from going on a kind of embarrassment tilt? How do you put it in perspective?

SL: Actually, if you put it in the right perspective, I think you certainly can use a mistake like that to your advantage. Absolutely, you can, because you've got to realize that if you make a dumb play, or a stupid play, or an overaggressive play, the rest of the table saw it, and it's going to stick out, so you've now got this image, and you use that image to your advantage. You then try to look for situations where they think you may be doing something similar, and you do something completely opposite.

That's one of the philosophies I use a lot of times early in tournaments. I'll play loose or aggressively or whatever it is; when you've got deep stacks, you have some room to maneuver, and whatever ends up happening, whether it be a mistake or people thinking you're a maniac, or whatever, just use that image to your advantage later. Whatever it is, it can change from tournament to tournament; I don't think you should go in with a set plan. You have to make sure that you realize what your image is and play off that image. That can be a huge advantage, because you can turn those mistakes into positive results later.

Chatbox Cunning

David "DumbHick" Hickman
Note: These questions relate to his win in the Full Tilt $750,000-guaranteed event on March 2, 2008.

On how to use aggression effectively when you have a big stack:

"Many times, especially when there are about two tables left, I can get a sense of which players are trying to just sneak into the final table and which ones are trying to accumulate chips, as well. I was able to take their betting patterns and get a read on how they all were playing, and whose big blinds would be easier to steal than others. It was mostly a combination of well-timed aggression and just trying to get a good feel for how the table was playing."

On how much he thinks winning a tournament with a large field is dependent upon luck, rather than skill:

"Playing well is the most important part; it's hard winning a huge-field tournament if you make too many mistakes throughout the course of play. But it's also hard to win a tournament without getting your money in bad at least once. So, it's important to find as many favorable situations as you can. You need to be focused, and you need to know the players you're playing against.

When you're navigating a huge field, you have more players to work through, and in order to make the final table, I think there is a little bit more luck involved, compared to a small field, just because there's much more play. This tournament lasted nine hours, and that's just more opportunities to take a bad beat or to possibly find yourself in an unavoidable situation. You have to use your skills to constantly accumulate chips in order to have a little bit of a cushion for when those types of beats or unfortunate runs of cards happen."