Lee Markholt: A Professional's Professional

There are great tournament poker players and there are great cash-game players. Oftentimes, the two don't quite overlap, and one probably can count on both hands those individuals who are able, on any given day, to play at the highest level of both disciplines. It takes a complete arsenal of poker prowess to excel in both. The largest cash games around require the intestinal fortitude of trained assassins and the sharpest of deep-stack poker skills. Players who are able to take down consistent scores on the tournament circuit need to possess a thorough understanding of the thousands of nuances required to master stacking up hundreds of players' chips time and time again.

One player who seems not to struggle with either category is Lee Markholt. For the past 20 years, he has beaten up cash games, which are his bread and butter, all while accumulating more than 70 major-tournament cashes. This year, he bagged his largest tournament title to date in the World Poker Tour World Poker Challenge championship event, earning nearly $500,000. But for Markholt, this, along with any other tournament haul, is just extra credit. He routinely sits down in the highest-stakes no-limit hold'em games in the nation, which can shoot up to $200-$400 blinds and require a buy-in of up to a cool $100,000. Despite this, he still manages to fly under the popular poker radar.

Markholt was born in 1963 in Tacoma, Washington, and starting at the age of 12, he worked in an organic meat shop (a pioneering concept in the 1970s) on the family farm. "Times were pretty tough. We could not really play sports in school because we were expected to come home and work," he recalled. "We would get up early, before school, to do our chores and milk the cow. Then we would come home from school and work in the meat shop. In the busy season, which was the fall, we would work in the meat shop until after dinner. Sometimes we would work until 10 o'clock at night."

At 15, his father moved to Seattle and Lee and his two older brothers ran the household and meat shop. "So, it was basically an animal house," he said. "We worked hard and played hard." At that time, Lee was a competitive bull rider, and besides riding bulls, he dabbled with a bit of poker. His father played at the local cardrooms in Tacoma and had poker books tucked away around the house. One summer when Lee was recovering from a bull-riding surgery, he dug into the literature, and, he said, "Something just kind of clicked. I started playing stud eight-or-better and ace-to-five lowball draw around Tacoma. I was winning consistently within a few months, and it got to where I was winning more playing poker on weekends than I was earning cutting meat for my dad and uncle."

Markholt has gone from playing crazy pineapple in Washington's five-table casinos to extracting steady income from tournament-circuit side games, all while taking shots at a number of big buy-in events. He prides himself on his history. In the past, he was able to grind out a living before the big poker boom, and even when times were rough, he never gave up or played with borrowed money. Instead, he channeled his hard-nosed, competitive work ethic into a game plan to stay a few steps ahead of the competition.

Card Player caught up with Markholt in advance of the World Series to get a glimpse into the life of a true poker success story.

Justin Marchand: As someone who started to play poker professionally well before the popularity of no-limit games, how did you make a living when you first started?

Lee Markholt: I was grinding it out playing $10-$20 and $20-$40 limit. I played $10-$20 Omaha eight-or-better for about a year straight. In the Seattle area, once a month, on a weekend, they would run a $200 buy-in no-limit hold'em tournament. I started playing those and I actually won quite a few of them. My first out-of-town tournaments were at the Peppermill in Reno, where I won a limit hold'em tournament for about $10,000, which was huge to me at that point. That was my first big win. I think it was only a $100 buy-in event, but there were rebuys and a huge field.

JM: What cash games do you play these days?

LM: No-limit hold'em is my favorite game, and I play anywhere from $25-$50 to $200-$400. My comfort zone is $25-$50 to $100-$200. I play more at Bellagio than anywhere, because there are a lot of tournaments there. If you follow the World Poker Tour, you can usually find good cash games. There is usually at least a $25-$50 or $50-$100 no-limit game at every stop. The cash games in places like the Bahamas are always great, because there is a lot of dead Internet money, and everyone is partying and having fun.

JM: What are the most common mistakes that you see players make in those games?

LM: When tournament players try to play deep-stack poker, they overplay and overvalue their hands. Some people will not get off an overpair or top pair with a good kicker. At the same time, you have to know how to get value out of your marginal hands. When you know that your hand is good, you have to get value-bets in. When you are in the zone, you usually can get those value-bets in. You can call with bottom pair, or ace high, when you know that someone is bluffing.

JM: Were there any mistakes that you made early in your career in cash games that you are able to avoid now?

LM: Early on when I played cash games, I played with some really great players. I'd go to the World Series back when there were no no-limit side games; it was all pot-limit. I would play with Carl McKelvey, Bill O'Connor, and Billy Duarte; these are names that all rounders would recognize. I was playing with the best. I was probably a fish for the first couple of years, because I was a break-even player at best when I played with those guys. Then, I got to the point where I was able to be relaxed enough to make good poker decisions. I think that when you are nervous, you can't get in the zone and make good decisions. That is all that poker is; the person who makes good decisions is going to win the money. In every hand, there are multiple decisions, and nobody is going to make every decision correctly. The person who makes the most correct decisions is the biggest winner.

JM: What makes the players you mentioned stand out in your mind as some of the best?

LM: Bill O'Connor is really friendly with everybody he plays with; he's a good guy, and I picked this up early on. He is really professional, and he taught me that if you are going to be a professional, you want people to like you. If someone hates you because you are an ass, he won't want to give you his money - especially when you are playing at the higher level, because you are playing with rich businessmen and other professionals. That was one thing that bothered me before I played at the level I do now. When I was a consistent winner in the local rooms in Washington, I knew I was winning money from people who couldn't afford to lose. They were losing their paychecks. I felt bad, but I told myself that they were going to lose it anyway, so it might as well be to me. I still had a twinge of guilt, but now there is none, because I usually play with a mix of four or five pros and three or four businessmen. Everybody I play with now can afford to play in the game, so I don't have to worry about that anymore.

JM: You said that you think you have good poker instincts; can you elaborate on that?

LM: I think that anybody, if he is smart and works hard at the game, can become a winning player. To become a really great player, though, a person has to have a certain innate instinct. When I am in the zone, I am totally focused with total mental clarity. It is as if I know what everybody at the table is holding. Don't get me wrong, that is not every time that I play, but when I am in the zone, my reads are dead-on. I think any great poker player will tell you the same thing.

JM: You've been around for a while and have seen poker trend up and down. Can you tell me about some high points and low points in the industry since Moneymaker won the main event?

LM: If it wasn't for that, I probably would be doing something else right now, because I would be getting really bored with poker. I had to grind it out playing limit hold'em and limit Omaha, and that is such a grind. Now that I have become a very good no-limit player, I still love the game. It fascinates me, because it is a mind game and there is so much to it; I'm still learning the game. There are so many layers, and it is just the greatest game in the world. It is so much different than limit hold'em. Limit hold'em, to me, is not even poker. It does require a certain skill set, but it is not really poker. It is a lot harder to win a pot without a hand. In limit hold'em, you can read everybody just right and still lose.

JM: Have there ever been any low points in your career when you came close to hanging it up?

LM: Actually, there was one point. I made a couple of investments in real estate with a chunk of my bankroll. I was about 35 then. I also had just paid cash for a car. At that point, I also had been running bad. I was playing limit hold'em, and on the weekends there was a $50-$100 Omaha game. This game went only on weekends, and I generally did pretty well in it; I made a living playing in it for a couple of years. But, I lost 21 out of 22 sessions. My bankroll was decimated by then. A friend of mine was selling windows, and was actually pretty good at it, and he offered me a job. I seriously considered taking it, but that night, something was telling me that I knew I was good at poker and should not quit. I had another option; a guy I knew had just opened a cardroom. They spread $8-$16 hold'em there. I had to be home to cook dinner for my son by about 5 o'clock. My friend offered me a prop job; he paid me $100 a day to play in his $8-$16 game. I played with my own money and had to be there from only noon to 5. I got $100 to play for five hours. To have a bankroll to play in that game, I sold the car I had bought. I made $16,000 and that was my bankroll for the $8-$16 game. I ground it out for a year and beat the game consistently; plus, I got my $100 a day. That is how I built my bankroll back up. At that time, I began to play in a private pot-limit dealer's choice game. The blinds were $5-$10 and I did pretty well in it. At the end of that year, I went down to Spirit Mountain Casino in Oregon and won a no-limit hold'em tournament. I won about $10,000 or $12,000. All of a sudden, I had my bankroll back and have not looked back. I am glad that I didn't take that job selling windows. So, that was my low point. I have never borrowed money to play. I mean, I have on the road, knowing that I had the money at home, but I have never played poker with money that I did not have.

JM: You've had a big 2008 so far, after the largest tournament cash of your career ($493,000) and first World Poker Tour victory at the Reno World Poker Challenge. Can you walk us through some of the big decisions that you had to make en route to victory?

LM: I think the biggest decision in the tournament came early on day three when I was the chip leader at my table. They broke tables when we were down to three or four tables, and this kid -- I know he is an Internet player, but I had never played with him - got moved to my left, and he had me covered by a lot. He was the chip leader in the tournament and was two seats to my left. I had no knowledge on him whatsoever, but I knew that he would put me to a decision. We were at the same table for about 20 minutes and I picked up Q-Q in the cutoff seat. I raised, and he called from the big blind. The flop came 5-3-2 with a flush draw. He checked, and I made a continuation-bet that was about three-quarters the size of the pot. I knew that when I made this bet, I was going to get check-raised; I just felt it. He check-raised me with a good-sized bet, and I thought that his range could be anything from a flush draw to a set, to a pair and straight draw. I knew that he was not check-raising me with air. I decided to smooth-call his raise, knowing that he probably would move all in on the turn. I was hoping that a safe card would come, and the K came on the turn. He moved all in, and that meant this call was for my tournament life. I could have folded there and been average in chips. I was hoping that he had not flopped a king-high flush draw, because that would have been kind of sick. I called, and he had 6-3; he could win with only a 6, 4, or 3 on the river. That hand made me the chip leader in the tournament, and from then on, I did not play any big pots until the final table.

JM: For an event like this, do you find it common to be involved in many big hands, or is it usually a slow accumulation of small pots with small-ball poker?

LM: You are going to play one or two big pots along the way. I don't like to get myself in coin-flip situations, but sometimes I have to - especially when the blinds are big and I have chips invested in the pot. If you raise, or reraise, with A-K and get 25 percent or 35 percent of your chips involved, it is hard to lay that hand down if someone moves all in with a hand like Q-Q. If you have a huge stack, you can get away from it, but if you have a medium stack or shorter, you are going to have to flip coins at some point. That is the beauty of getting a big stack early; you can avoid coin-flip situations and just chip up. It gives you so much leverage on the money bubble and the final-table bubble. Those are opportunities to chip up when you have a big stack.

JM: What are some of the most frequent mistakes that you see amateur tournament players make that cripple them?

LM: One thing I see is that they give up too soon. They are too worried about being the average stack when they should worry about whether they have enough chips in comparison to the size of the blinds. I play mainly the big events, $5,000 and higher, and you get a lot of chips. You can be well below average in chips and still be fine. If you have 10,000 in chips and the blinds are only 200-400, you are still fine. You don't have to panic. I see so many people shove in with marginal hands like K-J or Q-J because they give up too soon. They push the panic button.

A lot of it is the same as in cash games; they overvalue their hands. They are just not willing to throw away an overpair to the board. You have to put the pieces of the puzzle together, and if the betting indicates that you are beat, you usually are.

JM: Of all of your poker accomplishments, what are you most proud of?

LM: I guess my World Poker Tour win. Well, it is a tossup between that and my Professional Poker Tour win (Markholt won the 2005 Five-Star World Poker Classic Professional Poker Tour event, which was good for $225,000 after beating Card Player CEO Barry Shulman heads up). That was a pretty big feather in my hat. For me to consider it to be a big accomplishment, I need to know that I played the best that I could play, and I know that I did in both of those events. There are other events in which I have gotten deep and made final tables, but I know that I misplayed a couple of hands. I believe that I played really well in both of those events, and I was rewarded for it.

He Takes No Bull

Before poker, Lee Markholt competed in another grueling and competitive sport, bull riding. Markholt's father and uncle, who was ranked third in the world in the rodeo sport in the 1970s, built a riding arena on the family farm in Puyallup, Washington, where the family raised organic beef. Lee began by riding the family feeder calves, and bucked his way through junior associations and semipro stops, all the way to championship tours.

Even though he possessed the perfect environment and tutor to potentially become a world champion bull rider, injuries got in his way. "I had big goals of becoming a champion, but it's a tough sport and I could never really stay healthy," he said. "I would get on a roll and start doing well, and then I would get hurt again." And get hurt, he did. When he was 15, he ripped his groin very badly, and from that point on when riding a bull, he had to wear a woman's girdle. At 16, a bull stepped on him, breaking seven ribs and puncturing a lung. He dislocated his shoulder six times, and at 19, he finally had to have surgery. When he was 22, he suffered such a nasty compound fracture of the leg that his doctor was convinced that he would never run again and would be stuck with a limp. "I refused to believe what the doctors told me, and I made a full recovery," he boasted. "When you ride bulls, you are sore all of the time, even if you make a good ride and jump off and land on your feet. There is no way to totally train, because there are muscles that you just don't use for anything."

Bull riders are notorious for being tough, and Lee credits this background, rooted in intense mental and physical preparation, for accelerating his success at the poker table.

He mentioned one item specifically that he believes has helped in the bull-riding-to-poker transition: finding one's zone of focus and relaxation during times that are supercharged with stimuli. "When you are getting ready to ride a bull, you are stretching and getting yourself ready mentally. You can get to a point, though, where you get so worked up that your adrenaline is just going crazy," he said. "It took me a few years to figure out that I am better off if I just try to stay relaxed. I carry that over to poker, especially when I get deep in a tournament. When you make a final table in a big tournament, you cannot make good decisions if you are not really relaxed. You cannot make the reads that you need to make if you don't relax and get in the zone."