The Scoop -- Carter King

Carter “ckingusc” King is a 23-year-old professional poker player who won the 2008 PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker. For that victory, he took home almost $1.3 million. Since then, he has made the move from South Carolina to Las Vegas to concentrate on playing high-stakes live tournaments, as well.

Diego Cordovez: I was impressed when reading an interview after one of your online tournament triumphs, in which you extolled the virtue of patience. Obviously, you have to be aggressive, and you haven’t won big tournaments without aggression, but sometimes it seems that patience is an overlooked attribute of what contributes to success.

Carter King: Yeah, I just repackage it [patience] under a different name and call it “avoiding variance”; that sounds very intellectual and smart, but it’s the same thing. Now it sounds like an Internet poker term, instead of something that just makes sense logically.

DC: You can’t be too patient, especially online, but what would be some areas in which people are not patient enough?

CK: I think the two most common mistakes are opening with marginal hands in early position when you are not deep enough to do so, and reshoving way too light on people in spots where they are never folding, and you could wait and find a better spot. Shoving A-X versus a late-position raiser is kind of silly with 20 big blinds. It might be a positive EV [expected value] move, but I think the variance of the play is just not worth it.

Adam Schoenfeld: You mentioned 20-big-blind stacks. I think that’s a real inflection point where people either lose all patience or sometimes don’t know whether they should snap off someone else who has lost patience. Do you think that’s a crucial point?

CK: Yeah, absolutely. I was actually discussing this exact same thing the other day. It’s right around there that you can find out who is a good tournament player and who’s not. You’ll see who’s going to be playing those stack sizes properly and taking advantage of their situation. You do have some advantages with that stack size, though they do seem few; one is your ability to force other people into situations they don’t want to be in. If you can do that, and remain patient, I think it’s a spot where you can double up and start running over the table.

AS: Some people advocate open-shoving any two cards with 20 big blinds. What are your thoughts on that?

CK: I like doing that with marginal hands in situations when I think it’s the best play. For instance, if I’m on the button with two solid players behind me who could put me in a tough spot by reshoving light on my raise, and I have a hand like pocket fours, I don’t want to raise-call, so I’m going to open-shove and make the play that can’t be exploited. So, yeah, doing that with marginal hands in spots where you might be put in a higher-variance situation by raising and then having to call all in is much more profitable, I think.