Generation Next -- Jim Collopy

At the ripe old age of 20, Jim Collopy remembers the good ol’ days of winning tournaments without having much of a clue. Back before the poker legislation, training sites and a plethora of free strategy information popped up across the Internet, and the game seemed kind of easy. Fish were fish. Don’t teach them, or tap the glass. But the game has changed, especially online.

“Back in the day, people were so terrible,” said Collopy. “Being aggressive was all that it seemed to take to be successful then. I was winning a ton of money. My success then was due mostly to restealing preflop and finding ways to shove, because most of tournament poker is preflop play. At the time, it was the perfect strategy. Not anymore.”

Collopy would come home from high-school football practice and fire up 20 tournaments. Sleep was a word with which he became unfamiliar, but the result was a final table a day for consecutive months during his senior year. As his bankroll grew, so did his poker savvy, aided in part by strategy sessions with close friend and fellow classmate Dan “djk123” Kelly, who finished fourth in the 2009 PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker main event, for $643,200.

As time passed, no longer could Collopy just autopilot through tournament after tournament with any consistent return on investment. He had to learn to be acutely conscious of every morsel of available information about his opponents: their prior actions, betting patterns, and hands revealed at showdown. Success now required more than brainless clicking of buttons, and formulating a battle plan became essential.

The hard work paid off when Collopy finished second in the PokerStars Sunday $500 event last May, to the tune of $63,000. Then in September, he took down the same tournament for $87,000 just hours after winning a Full Tilt Poker $100 rebuy event for $41,000. That day would hoist Collopy’s online cashes to more than $1 million. He has learned to put the good ol’ days behind him by paying attention to the present.

CT: You really adjusted your game as the fish pond dried up and the regular players continued to get better. What are some of the keys to exploiting good players?

JC: Because you’re butting heads with the same guys over and over again, you have to pay attention to their tendencies. For example, if you know that someone is opening way too wide from under the gun, you are going to have to start to three-bet him light or even four-bet light if someone else who is conscious of the dynamics of the situation puts in a three-bet against the opener. You can squeeze them out of the pot with your four-bet, or you can flat-call and disguise a big hand. These are pretty trivial poker ideas, but they’re a lot more important these days. Concepts that may have been discussed only in deeper cash games have to be put into play. People who aren’t adjusting to these things will just crash and burn.

CT: I see some players in the big blind calling shoves from the button or small blind with king high. Is that profitable?

JC: Well, you need to know opponents’ shoving ranges in certain spots. Many times, if you’re a thinking player in the small blind and you shove into the big blind who has a stack of 20 big blinds (and he is a thinking player who knows your game), he will snap-call sometimes as light as king high. You need to know what your opponent thinks of you and your game. Then, you have to adjust accordingly. You have to man up and make these calls sometimes, too, and hope things work out, instead of being blinded away when you get down to 20 big blinds or less.

CT: You said that you’re playing only Sunday events and focusing more on heads-up cash games. How is that transition going for you?

JC: When I first started playing six-max cash games, I would fire up 12 tables and thought it would be a breeze, but the regulars would pick me apart. I was making trivial mistakes. I wasn’t paying close enough attention to opponents or the fish at the table. You can autopilot a lot in MTTs [multitable tournaments], but in cash games, you have to appreciate the subtleties of the game, as they make a huge difference and come into play.

CT: You’ve been on my list of players to interview for a long time. I love your sense of humor on the forums and how you joke around to diffuse drama and the haters.

JC: I have the terrible curse of really being happy most of the time. It’s important to realize at the end of the day that this is just some card game. I like to have a good time and joke around, and ease the tension when people are taking things or themselves too seriously.