Head Games: With Jake Bazeley, Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier, and Marvin Rettenmaier

Craig Tapscott: You’ve been in the game for many years and had great success. Have you experienced a few rough downswings? How did you deal with them in regards to the confidence in your game and life in general?

Jake Bazeley: Poker can be a very excruciating game for most people mentally. I don’t take losses in poker as badly as other people, mainly because I don’t take it as seriously as I took basketball. When my team lost the Ohio Div. 1 state championship basketball game in 2001, now that hurt way worse than any poker loss ever has.

I’ve been “wealthy” and broke three times. Mentally, I am just a really strong person when I am down. I wasn’t raised in a wealthy family. I can deal with being broke. I have faith in my game and in the poker tournament concept in general. Eventually, I was going to bink a big score and not lose it all back. I also knew that I had to play to get rich, grind all the time. I actually embrace the grinding because I love the competition of a poker tournament.

Sitting at home and complaining about variance or how miserable your poker “situation” is does not help. Put in some volume and you will see results. Making money playing poker is awesome, I really can’t be more grateful for it. I’d rather be broke and playing poker than working a 9-5 job any day of the week. When you are losing, keeping balance in your life is crucial. Keep a social life. Don’t be a recluse. Poker isn’t everything in life, but you have to have a passion for you to succeed at it for a living.

Bertrand Grospellier: For sure I have experienced a few rough downswings, as they are definitely part of the game of poker. Variance can be a little cruel and difficult to handle at times. I think it is always much harder the first time, at least it was for me. The main reason was that I wasn’t that aware of the full variance of the game and how cyclical it can be. It’s easy to think that you could be doing things wrong when it hits you, and for sure we always are doing things wrong in some way, or more accurately, we can always work on our game and improve.

The toughest part about a downswing is that it will eventually always bring you down a little bit. I think players who say that results don’t affect their game are either lying or delusional. As professionals, we work on our game every day to perfect it as much as possible, but we have to realize that the momentum can be real, especially considering confidence. We had those periods when it seems we run like God, winning every hand, making the right hero calls, being in the zone, and all our bluffs succeed. On the other side, we also had times when all our calls were wrong, and even though we know we are making the correct moves, it’s harder to pull the trigger when we have been unsuccessful or on a downswing. 

I figured being passionate about something else, be it a hobby, a girl, a game, whatever, kind of helps in the times where it isn’t going that well. I think having balance can definitely help alleviate the effects of the downswings. Personally, I also started meditating about 18 months ago, and it seems like it has a very positive effect on my general mood and mindset, which, of course, makes me a better poker player eventually.

Marvin Rettenmaier: I even had a big downswing during the year where I was winning everything in sight. I still had a stretch of about 35 tournaments of not cashing. That is quite a lot in live poker. It didn’t really affect me as much though. More recently, I’ve been playing less events, the main event of a stop and the high rollers. And to tell you the truth, I feel I’ve been running pretty badly. It can affect me if it is over a long span of time, if I haven’t won something significant in over a year or two. What helped me the most is Jared Tendler’s great book, The Mental Game of Poker. It helped me be able to really breakdown parts of the game and understand variance and deal with it constructively.

For the most part, I feel okay with how I have been playing. I don’t really care that much about losing, because I don’t have financial pressure weighing me down. But I have to admit it still hurts. As long as I play well and feel I made the right decisions, then I am okay with the results. Bad or good. I can live with that.

Craig Tapscott: When a bad beat comes at a crucial time in an event, how do you deal with it if it knocks you out? What do you do to recover and stay positive? And how do you regain your composure and play your A-game?

Jake Bazeley: Taking a bad beat a crucial time in a tournament, specifically at a final table, is absolutely the worst feeling. If I am left with chips, I handle the situation differently than when I am eliminated. With chips: I have to refocus immediately and try to salvage what I can of this opportunity. We only have a few chances at final tables each year. You can always recover. Ridiculous comebacks happen all the time in poker. It’s part of the roller coaster ride that is tournament poker.

But I admit that it is extremely hard to stare at the mop (bad poker player) who has your chips in his stack. But you have to continue to play with your sad little stack. Focus on how much better you are than that mop, and make great decisions. Cherish the opportunity to come back and win. Now, if I am knocked out of the event, I find the nearest cocktail waitress, and order a Don Julio (Patron will do as well) and a Bud Light. I get my miserable payout slip that most people would be happy about. I go to the next bar and proceed with forgetting what happened medicinally. Marijuana helps a lot too, and it is legal in some states [laughs]. You literally can’t do anything about bad beats, so I just try and forget they ever happened. 

Bertrand Grospellier: Bad beats can be really tough to handle, especially when they come at a crucial time. It can make it seem as if life and poker in general are so unfair, that we’ve been punished for playing well. It’s not a secret that most poker players feel terrible after a bad beat takes them out of a tournament, especially when it’s deep. Honestly, I’m also getting very affected by bust outs deep in tournaments, whether it’s on a bad beat or not.

As long as I still have a stack and I’m alive, I usually don’t have much problem keeping it together and staying focused. I am experienced enough to know it’s in those spots that the difference will be made between the great players and the not so great. Indeed, it’s usually easy to play your A-game when everything is going your way. It’s in difficult times that you can make the difference and rise above, and that is motivation enough for me.

If it happens to bust me out of the tournament, once again, I’m not very good at lifting my mood right away. I usually feel pretty bad for at least a couple of hours, but then there are a bunch of remedies, more or less effective depending on how bad the exit was. I work out or go out with friends or a loved one. I think the answer is always going to be very player dependant, and it’s important to experiment with the different options and sees what works best for you, as we are all different, and mostly react differently to the same or similar experiences. Most of the time, I try to zoom out of the pain of the bust out and realize how lucky I am to live a wonderful life playing a game I love. That alone is enough to lift my mood. Poker is made of ups and downs, as is life, and we should embrace it. All those bad beats are going to make my next victory taste even sweeter!

Marvin Rettenmaier: I think it is normal for most players, including myself, to try to avoid any tough spots after you have just taken a very bad beat. Sometimes it takes a few minutes to mentally recover. I talk to myself and make sure I understand that this is a now a new situation, let’s deal with it, and make the best of it.

I tend to laugh a bit and tell myself that I have put a lot of beats on other players in my life. Even though you might get bad beat after bad beat, and that should be statistically impossible, it still happens and it will happen the other way around and you will run amazing for a period of time. But I am always happy for the most part if I am sure I got my chips in good or in the right spot. Most of the time a bad beat doesn’t affect my life, but it affects me when I make a mistake and I know it.

Bad beats might make me feel bad for a few hours and not want people to be around me. I just need to walk it off. And I don’t take it out on other people. I just need to be by myself for a little bit. But it doesn’t affect my life for weeks on end or anything like that. ♠

Jake Bazeley played Division II basketball at Christian Brothers University in Memphis, TN. Last year, Bazeley won the WSOP Circuit Harrah’s Cherokee main event. He recently finished third at the WPT Shooting Star event. He has more than $2.5 million in career tournament cashes.

Bertrand Grospellier is one of the most successful players over the last eight years. In 2008, he won the EPT PokerStars.net Caribbean Adventure for $2 million. He has more than $10 million in career tournament cashes. Grospellier is a member of Team PokerStars Pro and plays online poker only at PokerStars as ‘ElkY’.

Marvin Rettenmaier won the 2012 WPT Five Star World Poker Classic. He has compiled more than $4.8 million in career tournament cashes.