Online Zone

Not much time remains for online poker players to rack up points in the 2008 Card Player Online Player of the Year (OPOY) race. There's barely a month left for the Internet's elite players to make deep finishes in major online poker tournaments, and those in the top 10 spots in the standings have a very real chance of snagging the title won by online poker legend Isaac "westmenloAA" Baron in last year's inaugural race.

Since winning last year's title, Baron has gone on to make a splash in this year's European Poker Tour Grand Final in Monte Carlo, ultimately finishing in fourth place for more than $900,000. He also kicked off 2008 by immediately retaking the top spot on the Online Player of the Year leader board after the slate was wiped clean for all players. (He has since fallen back a bit and sits in 19th place, as of this writing.)

Alex Kamberis: Catch Me if You Can

Last year's OPOY race truly came down to the wire, with Baron taking over the lead in literally the last days of the race. This year's race likely won't be as much of a nail-bitter, as current OPOY leader Alex "AJKHoosier1" Kamberis has a nice lead with 8,596 points compared to second place Mark "dipthrong" Herm's 6,222.

Kamberis has $1.6 million in OPOY-qualified winnings in 2008 alone, much of that coming from the $942,000 he banked for his third-place finish in the 2008 PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) main event. (While his official win was $942,000, he actually took home $783,000 after a deal at the final table.) He earned 1,600 OPOY points from that finish. Earlier in the year, he finished runner-up in the Full Tilt $1 million-guaranteed event in July, raking in $135,000 and 1,200 OPOY points.

Despite all of his success, the 22-year-old poker prodigy is still taking the time to earn a finance degree from Indiana University, and he has only three semesters left.

"It's one of the best [finance schools] in the country, so I'm pretty proud of that," Kamberis said. "I definitely want to learn exactly what I should be doing with my money. I wanted a degree with which, even if I don't necessarily use the degree, I can at least use the stuff that I've learned."

An Interview With Kamberis

Shawn Patrick Green: So, there's about two months left in the OPOY race, and you're way ahead. Is there any way that you can be beaten at this point?

Alex "AJKHoosier1" Kamberis: Definitely. Dipthrong [Mark Herm] is in second right now, and he's about 2,400 behind me. For a big score, you get like 500 points [and the Sunday Million winner gets 1,440], and I think he's definitely capable of getting three or four of those before the end of the year. It would take a lot, obviously, and it would also mean that I would have to stop getting any kinds of scores like that - which is hopefully not going to happen, since I'm still playing a good amount - but it's definitely possible.

I've got menlo's [Isaac Baron's] score from last year beat already, so hopefully that's a good standard to follow. But anything is possible; people go on some pretty ridiculous heaters sometimes, so I guess we'll see.

SPG: The metagame in the poker world is in a constant state of change. What do you think are some important tactics nowadays, and what has fallen by the wayside?

AK: Lately, I've been noticing that when I four-bet light - if someone reraises me preflop and I shove over the top - from the button against good players, I feel like nowadays they always have it. In other words, they don't make their three-bets without a hand anymore. That's actually why I've started to three-bet in those obvious spots more, because people don't see it coming anymore, because it's so obvious that they just assume that you have a hand now. So, that's definitely one thing that's changed. For the past three months, I had been three-betting less and playing kind of tight; now, I'm starting to loosen back up, because everyone else is getting pretty tight.

I actually wrote an article online called "The Evolution of Poker," or something like that, and I went into how cyclical poker is. All of the top online players play just about as well as each other. There isn't really a big difference between the top 10 players, but the biggest difference between any two players online is how capable they are of adjusting to that cycle, as you put it, and knowing what stage poker is at in the cycle. I think that people are starting to play more like they were six months ago, a little less loose-aggressive than it has been recently. It kind of goes back and forth; there are only so many different ways to play and so many times that you can reraise preflop, so it definitely goes around like that.