The Scoop -- Gavin Smith

Gavin Smith has earned more than $4 million in tournaments over the years, including a World Poker Tour title, and he's done it all with a style that's all his own. He sits down with Adam and Diego to talk about it.


Diego Cordovez: Michael Craig wrote this guide to tournament poker for Full Tilt …

Gavin Smith: I had a chapter in it!

DC: That's what I was leading in to; it's just that my questions are so long, and have multiple parts.

GS: Oh, I might lose focus, I have ADD [laughing]. You have to keep my focus.

Adam Schoenfeld: And he doesn't modulate his voice at all, either, so it just eases you into a coma.

DC: That was the preamble to saying that your chapter was, I think, one of the most interesting and best ones in the book, in the sense that you have a really unique style. I mean, small ball is pretty broad. There are a lot of different variations. You've got a style where there's no reraising, no raising, not necessarily putting a lot of emphasis on position, playing from all positions. So you've got your own small ball [strategy]. Where did that evolve from or what influenced it?

GS: I guess, first off, it's kind of like survival. I'm a gambler who just needs to be in action, and when you are a gambler who needs to be in action playing poker, you have to find a way to play a lot of hands or you're not going to be very happy. So I just sort of came up with a system to do that. Of course, I'm friends with most of the greatest poker minds in the world, and I'm really lucky in that respect. I'm blessed in that I can go to the smartest and best players in the world and talk poker with them, and they are willing to talk back and we can bounce things off each other.

DC: But you've still got your own way of doing things, which is different.

GS: Yeah, I've come up with a lot of my own little ideas, and, you know, you just try things. I've tried a lot of different things over the years. I think that I've found a system that's not too bad for me, although I think I'm about to start reraising a little more preflop. It's time to start exploiting that a little more, because people don't expect it anymore.

AS: People have become familiar with what you've told them was your strategy. You haven't been afraid to just flat-call in a multiway pot with a hand like pocket kings. That is traditionally considered super dangerous, because now you're up against a bunch of guys, and someone could outflop you. What are your thoughts on that?

GS: I think that my biggest strength as a poker player is my post-flop play and my ability to read my opponents, so I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is on that and put myself into situations where I might have to make hard decisions. I'm confident that I'll make enough correct tough decisions that in time, it will work out better for me than if I had taken the typical scared approach when there are five people in the pot, so I put in a huge raise. Maybe only one of them will call me, and I can play my kings heads up. I don't want to be afraid of that, and I don't want people to know, "Oh, gosh, he's got a big pair there," because then if you tell them you have a big pair, it makes it real simple for them to play those pocket threes.

DC: I think that's the key, because a lot of things I do are similar to you … [laughing] with much less success, but I like that chapter because I can relate to a lot of it. The main thing that resonated with me was, not being exploitable. It's so easy, even with really good players, to read them at times, and at that point, they are just laying odds to you because you know what they've got, and they don't know what you've got. If you don't do a lot of reraising preflop and you're not a real active player preflop, which I'm not, you shouldn't do any reraising, because if you're reraising only with really big hands or you've got a mixed strategy where you reraise with really big hands and with a few garbage hands, you're really giving away a lot of information.

GS: I think that's true.

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