When I Was A Donk With Andreas Høivold

One of the highest earning live tournament players to come out of Norway, Andreas Høivold has been living and playing professionally in Las Vegas since 2009. With more than $1.7 million in live earnings, the Scandinavian pro picked up his first major tournament cash back in 2005 worth $1,673 for a ninth-place finish in the Amsterdam Master Classics of Poker.

Not long after that score, Høivold broke out on the tournament poker scene when he finished third in the Poker Millions V in 2006 for $250,000 and then won the 2007 European Poker Tour Dortmund for a massive score of $880,572.

Having played plenty of hands online before moving to live poker, Høivold has learned his fair share of lessons during the interim years. One thing he admits he struggled with was when to be aggressive and when to tighten up his play.

“My biggest problem from the start was aggression, because I didn’t have that in me. I was playing super tight, but I played pretty tight-aggressive. Especially in the start, I played super tight. I did decent — I didn’t win so many, but I went deep. I finished in the money very often.

“But after doing that for a while, I didn’t think it was that fun, sitting there, folding, folding, folding. So then I realized I have to do something about it, and I decided to play more aggressively, but it wasn’t natural for me, so I didn’t always time it correctly.

“I decided I was going to change, totally. I was going to play every single hand for the first four levels, 100 percent. And I did, I played every single hand. I had to make so many decisions. I had to do different things. Am I just going to bet/call? Should I three-bet? If people three-bet me, am I going to bet/call them, or four-bet?

“I kind of learned to do things in a different way, and this was back in 2004, maybe 2003. I went from being super-tight to being crazy aggressive. And by doing that, by playing every single hand, I learned a lot. And then, of course, after doing that for a few months, I saw that it was high variance, because I busted a lot from quite a few of those tournaments, but I also had a big stack sometimes.

“So then I had to put together the best pieces from playing every single hand, and that’s how I learned to play with aggression, and I saw what worked and what didn’t work. Of course, playing every single hand, you get no credit at all, which is more or less how I have it now when I’m here, but I’m used to having no credit. So then I have to adjust my game to that. If the table is really aggressive, I play pretty tight. I can play super tight if I have to, and the other way around. If everyone is tight, I’ll loosen up my game and I can play every single hand sometimes.

“The thing is, everybody can be super aggressive. You can just hammer, hammer, hammer until you’re out, but you have to connect your brain with your aggression, and do it when it makes sense to do it, and do it in the right way — put pressure on people without doing it like a total maniac.” ♠