Look Out - Michael Kamran

Michael Kamran is 27 years old and he lives in Los Angeles, California. It is the perfect place to live for a young poker player who wants to learn the game by playing primarily cash games, which is what Kamran has done for the past few years. He has parlayed that cash-game success into a successful run in major tournaments, and now has $1,257,607 in career tournament earnings.

Kamran left his job at a mortgage company a few years back with enough cash in his bankroll to take a shot at playing professionally. He used the money to jump into $5-$10 no-limit hold’em games. “I would say that I learned the game live. I’ve played online a little bit, but I’ve never gotten into the online scene. Living here, you don’t really have to be in the online scene. I guess my live skills are a lot better than my online skills. I make a lot of decisions based on reading people and their tells, a lot of things that online kids wouldn’t be able to do,” said Kamran.

He played in the $5-$10 games for close to a year, and then moved up to $10-$20. He then jumped into major tournaments. His first big score came at the Caesars Palace Classic in October 2008. He finished second in the $10,000 main event, for $520,320. “That was really when my run started,” said Kamran.

His next deep run in a major tournament came in the Bay 101 World Poker Tour Shooting Star main event in March 2009, where he busted out just short of the televised final table in seventh place. “I was the chip leader with seven players left, and finished seventh. I was so devastated. I ran two aces into two kings. The guy flopped a king on me. I’ve been so close to making a million so many times; I just haven’t been able to do it,” said Kamran.

Despite not making a million-dollar score, Kamran has been able to top a million dollars in tournament earnings, thanks to consistent results. At the 2010 L.A. Poker Classic, he won a heads-up preliminary tournament and then made a strong run in the WPT main event; he made his first WPT final table and finished sixth, which was good for $246,744.

As a result of making the final table, Kamran and the other final-table players were introduced at halftime of a Los Angeles Clippers basketball game at the Staples Center the night before final-table action began. It was a big perk for Kamran, who’s a big basketball fan. “I just love watching good basketball,” said Kamran, who follows both the Lakers and the Clippers, along with all NBA and college basketball action.

Kamran’s tournament success has made his life much easier at the cash-game tables. “I can play the big cash games and not worry about going broke; I was worried about that before,” said Kamran. “It helps that you have money, and it helps that everybody wants a piece of you now that you are playing better.”

Kamran also offered this piece of advice to any players who would like to follow in his footsteps and learn poker by playing in live cash games: “Don’t play over your head. Try to manage your bankroll and play stakes that you’re comfortable with. If you are going to play something bigger when you have some experience, try to sell some pieces of yourself. Also, don’t try to prove something to other people when you play. If your style is playing tight and it keeps working for you, and people keep calling you, stick with it. Do so even if people are saying, ‘Why do you play so tight?’ If it’s making you money, just stick to it.

“When you play in low-stakes games, there are going to be a lot of amateurs, but once you try to move up to the high-stakes games, you will have to change your style of play a lot. Really good players are going to eventually pick up on the way that you play, and will pick you off. You have to raise your game to a different level. At the beginning, just stick to what you can afford, and don’t go over your head. You can take a few shots, but you have to be ready to go broke. If you’re afraid of going broke, you don’t belong in this profession.” ♠