Generation Next -- Evan Parkes

When high-school senior year rolled around for Evan Parkes, graduation parties, Friday night sports, and prom night were the last things on his mind. His obsession was more about pot odds than muscle cars. And no by-the-book guidance counselor could sway his big dream of becoming a professional poker player. Parkes' parents were skeptical, as most parents would be. So, his father set out to teach him a lesson in money management.

To prove a point - that poker was just "gambling" - his father gave him a $500 poker allowance to deposit online, which he quickly lost. Once again, he gave him $500. He lost it. Before long, Parkes had run up an allowance debt of $6,000, and the time had come to put up or shut up.

"When I was playing, I knew I was good enough," said Parkes. "It was just a matter of time before I started making money. But by the time I owed my father $6,000, he highly doubted profitability in poker."

The parental pressure turned into added inspiration to prove his father dead wrong. During one 24-hour period, Parkes won two tournaments totaling more than $12,000, and he never deposited again. Since that fateful day, he's cashed for more than $1,200,000, with the biggest score being a third-place finish in a Full Tilt Online Poker Series $300 rebuy event for $112,000. He's also won two $1,000 no-limit hold'em events for a combined $128,000.

Parkes sat down with Card Player to share the skills that catapulted his game up to a level that made him one of the best online players in the world.

Craig Tapscott: I continue to be asked by readers about continuation-betting 100 percent of the time after raising preflop. What's your thinking about that?

Evan "PURPLEPILS99" Parkes: Well, c-betting and bet-sizing pretty much depend on only the texture of the board, your stack, and your opponent's stack. Whenever you go in for a raise to open the pot (this doesn't make a difference early on in tournaments, but more in the middle and late stages), you have to look at the stacks behind you that you are raising into, mainly to make sure that you're not committed if you're stealing with junk. You also have to make sure that you have a strong enough hand to open sometimes, since you have to call the players behind you who have less than around 12 big blinds if they shove.

CT: How do you decide when and how to mix things up?

EP: It depends on the tournaments I am playing and my opponents. At this point, I pretty much know the really good players, so I play much differently against them. Against horrible players, I can pretty much make standard c-bets, and so on, because they don't think on the same level as the top players do.

CT: You told me that you thought you were too aggressive when you first began, and had to adjust.

EP: Well, I'm still really aggressive, because that's just how I play; that really wasn't the problem. The problem was learning when to be aggressive and pick my spots well. For example, I would open a lot of pots from the button or late position with stacks that I needed to call if I opened with junk hands like 9-5 or K-8, but I didn't understand that there are a lot of different spots in which you just can't steal without a semi-decent hand. And then I wouldn't know what to do - whether I should call because I was getting good odds, or just fold because I had junk.

Now I know what I'm going to be doing before I open. I know whom I'm going to be calling and to whom I'm going to be folding if they jam. When I started out, those different factors didn't even cross my mind.

CT: What is one major thing never to do during the late stages of an event?

EP: Never limp, unless you are really advanced and know exactly what you're doing. You should just be raising, shoving, or folding, except in certain spots like the small blind, where it's OK to limp, for the most part.

CT: How can an advanced player get away with it profitably, or perhaps wield limping as a weapon?

EP: You can limp to trap from pretty much any position, as long as you do it more than once. If you are raising every hand and then decide to limp with aces, it's not going to work, because it is just too suspicious. But if you mix it up and are trying to set up a table image, you can definitely use it to your advantage.