Winning Wisdom

At only 27 years old, Gavin Griffin already holds one of the most impressive collections of poker's most prestigious titles. The former poker dealer won the $3,000 buy-in pot-limit hold'em event at the 2004 World Series of Poker, a win that, at the time, bestowed upon him the record as the youngest bracelet winner in history. Since then, he has accumulated more than $4.5 million in live tournament winnings, and made history again by winning the European Poker Tour Grand Final Championship, which boasted the biggest first-place prize in EPT history at the time, more than $2.4 million. Griffin continued his quest for major titles at the 2008 World Poker Tour Borgata Poker Classic, where he snagged a triple crown by winning the coveted WPT title and the $1.4 million first-place prize.

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.

Thoughts on the WCOOP

With the conclusion of this year's World Championship of Online Poker on PokerStars barely in our wake, I wanted to point out some things that I liked, disliked, and found impressive about the largest online tournament series of the year. Although I am a representative of PokerStars, I think it is necessary to point out the good and the bad that took place at the event, and hopefully it will help PokerStars continue to lead as the place to play online tournaments. Let's start with the good stuff and go from there:

1. Structures: The structures of this year's WCOOP events were amazing; plenty of chips to start with and lots of time to play at each level. The structures in these events were better than those at any major tournament series throughout the year. You may be wondering how a tournament with half-hour levels can have a better structure than one with 90- or 120-minute levels. The reason is this: speed. You play more hands in 30 minutes online than you do in 90 or 120 minutes live. Decisions are made faster, chip counts are always available, there is no shuffling or pitching of cards, and you can't act out of turn, hesitate at showdown, or call a floorman. Everything just moves faster. As a result, you see more hands, more bust-outs, and a much deeper structure. They can finish a larger tournament faster and with a better structure than main events in brick-and-mortar casinos. What a wonderful thing the Internet is. I do (always) have one complaint about the PokerStars structures, and that is the ante structure. Antes of 20 percent of the small blind or less are too small, in my opinion, and the ante structure in the stud games is even more ridiculous, with an ante of 10 percent of the small bet sometimes. It makes for tighter play, which counteracts the aggressive nature of stud games. Since poker players in general are complainers, having only one complaint about the structures of a series of 33 tournaments is pretty good, in my opinion.

2. Variety of Games: So often, tournaments are no-limit hold'em event after no-limit hold'em event. It's great that PokerStars is willing to branch out and offer so many different game choices within a series of tournaments. A few years ago, Bellagio decided to drop all other games except no-limit hold'em from their tournaments, and a lot of other casinos and websites have followed suit, offering no-limit hold'em tournaments instead of other poker tournaments. Other places, such as the World Series of Poker and the WCOOP, aren't afraid to have a few events for which they don't get ridiculous numbers of events in order to offer a more complete series of tournaments.

Let's look at the numbers from this year's WCOOP. There were 33 tournaments. Only 13 of them were straight no-limit hold'em, and of those 13, there were different variations, like four-max, six-max, rebuys, and heads-up tournaments. On top of that, there were 11 other single-game tournaments, including razz, five-card draw, pot-limit Omaha, and the tournament that I had the most fun playing during this series, no-limit deuce-to-seven single-draw. Finally, there were five different mixed-game tournaments. Most people agree that mixed-game tournaments are the best test of a poker player's skill, and it's good to see that websites are now willing to up the ante with their mixed-game tournaments. Stars offered a $10,000 buy-in H.O.R.S.E. tournament, which was won by a good friend of mine who wishes to remain anonymous. His name on PokerStars is "DocHolatchya." Congratulations to him.

I'm glad that casinos and websites are willing to take a chance on different tournament formats for the players. During the no-limit deuce-to-seven single-draw tournament, there was a lot of talk in the chat box about how much fun everyone was having playing a game that not many had played before. So often in these tournaments in which most of the people haven't played the game before, the best players do well because they figure the game out the fastest. This was evidenced by deep finishes by several of the better players in online poker. Hopefully, PokerStars management will listen to their player base and add a bigger buy-in weekly version of this tournament. It would be a nice break from the grind of no-limit hold'em on Sundays for them to throw in a deuce-to-seven single-draw tournament for our enjoyment. I'm certainly looking forward to taking a shot at this tournament at next year's World Series of Poker. I know it has a high price tag, but I think it will be a lot of fun, and it certainly will be a lesson in poker, as only the best players in the world try their hand at this tournament.

3. PokerStars.tv: PokerStars also led the way with PokerStars.tv for commentary on the final table of many of the events at this year's WCOOP. Commentary was provided by James Hartigan, David Tuckman, and a cast of others, including myself and other members of Team PokerStars Pro. As always, I had a lot of fun working with James and the crew, talking about poker, life, and flumps. Some of the most fun I've had during poker tournaments over the last year has been doing commentary for the EPT live, and other similar things. It's so much fun to try to figure out what's going on in a tournament from an outside perspective. While we were trying not to give away too much information at these WCOOP live broadcasts, we still had plenty of things to talk about and comment on regarding poker and the World Championship of Online Poker.

This was my first time working with David Tuckman. He did a great job with the broadcasts and I really enjoyed doing commentary on the first live broadcast of the series, event No. 1, six-max no-limit hold'em. Of course, it was about 4:45 in the morning on the West Coast when they rang me up to join the broadcast, but even at that hour, David did a great job of keeping me in step and the show together.

I did the commentary on another final table, a $1,000 no-limit hold'em event won by "NYC P.I.M.P." James Hartigan was running the show, and as always, he was a complete delight to work with. James is the best I've worked with at what he does, and I look forward to sitting in with him on the EPT live broadcasts this year.

PokerStars does so many things right in regard to tournaments; these are just a few of the things I could have mentioned. Next time, I'll take a look at a few of the things that I think could be changed about their tournaments.

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