Winning Wisdom

At only 27 years old, Gavin Griffin already holds one of the most impressive collections of poker's most prestigious titles: World Series of Poker, European Poker Tour, and World Poker Tour championships.

Now, Card Player is giving its readers a chance to send questions directly to the poker prodigy.

Poker fans can send Griffin their questions to [email protected]. The questions can be about anything from poker strategy to his opinions on certain aspects of poker or his life as a poker pro traveling the circuit. The best questions will be answered by Griffin and published in Card Player. If your question makes it into print, we'll send you a free Card Player T-shirt.

A Hairstyle With a Purpose

Gavin:

I've noticed that your hairstyles have gone through a lot of phases over the last few years. Are some of your crazy hairstyles part of a larger poker strategy to entice action, or are they simply because of your crazy personality?

- Andrew Morsillo

Hi, Andrew:

My hair has been a topic of conversation for quite a while now. A couple of years ago, Shane Schleger mentioned to me that he knows me as the guy who has different hair for every tournament. I would shave my head, and then let my hair grow out long, or spike it up and put highlights in it, and sometimes even have a Mohawk. However, last year, my hair took on a more symbolic and important meaning.

My girlfriend, Kristen, is a breast-cancer survivor. In 2003, she was diagnosed, and later that year she had surgery to have the cancer removed. She was only 20 years old at the time. She had her ups and downs dealing with it, and it was a tough time for her, but she is doing great and we are set to celebrate her five-year anniversary. This is important because after she is cancer-free for five years, her chance of getting it again returns to that of the average American. Last year, she asked me to do the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer. This is a 39-mile walk over the course of two days in Long Beach, California. I said yes, and about a month later, I decided to dye my hair pink in order to help raise money. When I won the PokerStars EPT Grand Final in Monte Carlo, I had pink hair. PokerStars asked me about it, and then donated $15,000 to our walk fundraiser and also opened an account on the site for a week where people could donate money. PokerStars matched the amount that players donated, and raised a total of $30,000.

Since October of last year, my hair has toned down a bit, but I'm still trying to spread breast-cancer awareness, and hopefully it will help to save lives in the future.

Making Reads

Hey, Gavin:

Too often, I make a read according to what it usually means (the key word being "usually"). Especially when you're new to a table, how do you begin deciding if a particular opponent is a below-average, good, or above-average player? This description helps you decide if you should play fundamentally or strategically, and whether or not specific moves were intentional.

- Traci, Pennsylvania

Hi, Traci:

Making a read according to what it usually means will usually work out. When I'm new to a table, I like to look for indicators such as whether or not a person looks nervous or uncomfortable, how a player handles chips, bet sizing, hand selection, and so on.

It sometimes is possible to make a read based solely upon how someone looks or acts, mostly because that is all the information you might have at the time. A few years ago, if you were playing poker and some 22-year-old kid was playing, you probably assumed he was bad. With the infusion of online poker, this is no longer the case. If I'm playing with a young kid, I assume he is good and go from there. Gone are the days of the bad Internet poker player. In fact, the term "live pro" is becoming a derogatory one amongst the best of the best in the online world. Today's game has changed quite a bit, and a lot of the big-name poker players haven't adjusted (or so say the Internet gurus).

Basically, Traci, it comes down to making the most you can out of the information available to you. If the only information you have is how a person looks, you can try to use that to your advantage.

Dealing With Bad Beats

Gavin:

I seem to get chased down a lot by one- and two-outers. I generally see this as a good thing, that I get my chips in with the best of it, but it is also very challenging to overcome sometimes. How do you negotiate this reality in tournaments - people getting "lucky" with the worst of it? Is there a strategy to avoid these kinds of confrontations? You obviously are doing something very right.

- Steve

Hi, Steve:

Bad beats are a reality of poker that you have to deal with, and there is nothing that you can do about them. You're going to take bad beats, and you're going to give them sometimes, as well. Good players take more bad beats than bad players because they get their money in good more often than bad players do. I know that it's frustrating, and it can really be annoying to deal with. However, perhaps you are looking at things in the wrong way. You asked if there is a strategy to avoid these kinds of situations. Let me pose a question to you: Why would you want to avoid these situations? You are getting your money in when your opponent is drawing to one or two outs. What's bad about that? Sure, you've been getting unlucky, but so what? All you can continue to do is get your money in when situations are good and hope that things turn out all right.

Also, I don't know if this is a factor or not, but if you're letting your chip stack dwindle so that it's correct for a player to call your all-in bet with a wide range of hands, perhaps there is something going on with your game fundamentally that is causing you to be a short stack all the time. Perhaps you need to loosen up just a bit so that you can accumulate chips, and then you can suffer bad beats and still be in good shape. One of the nice things about having a big stack in a tournament is that you can withstand a couple of bad beats against shorter stacks. Also, when you have a lot of chips, you can gamble for a small percentage of them in order to increase your stack. Winning a few of these gambles here and there with the extra chips you've picked up by being aggressive is an important part of winning a poker tournament.

Gavin Griffin is a member of Team PokerStars. Visit his website at www.gavingriffin.net.