OPOY Contender Spotlight -- James "croll103" CarrollCarroll Explains His 2010 Success and Offers Tips For Beginning Players |
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The Card Player Online Player of the Year (OPOY) award honors the best tournament player across the major online sites in a given calendar year. Previous winners have included greats such as Isaac “westmenloAA” Baron, Alexander “AJKHoosier1” Kamberis and Steve “gboro780” Gross. Here, we take a look at one of the current top contenders.
Just two years ago, James “croll103” Carroll was a wannabe from Boston hoping to make it big as a professional poker player. Today, Carroll is one of the most respected online players in the world and is on the brink of becoming a bona fide live tournament superstar. Thanks to a strong work ethic and some help from his friends, Carroll is currently in the running for OPOY honors. He has had a superb 2010 campaign, cashing in 43 OPOY-qualifying tournaments and winning a PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker bracelet in a $1,000 short-handed limit hold’em tournament for $80,000.
Carroll has achieved this success despite a limited playing schedule and an increasing interest in live poker. This year alone, Carroll has managed to final table a WSOP Circuit Championship, a WSOP summer event and he even went deep in the WSOP main event. All told, the 24-year-old has amassed over $1.6 million in earnings. In this interview, Carroll explains his success and even offers up some tips to beginning players.
Julio Rodriguez: When did you first learn to play no-limit hold’em?
James Carroll: I started playing $5 or $10 buy-in home games with my buddies back in senior year of high school back in Boston. At the time it was a lot of sit-n-gos, nothing too major. Most of them stopped playing, but I wanted to keep going. I decided to try playing online, but it took a long time before I was able to sustain an initial deposit. I think I deposited $50 around 30 or 40 times. I’d either run it up and cash out, or just lose it all playing way over my head. I had zero bankroll management. All of a sudden I look at my account one day and realized that I had run it up to the point where I didn’t have to cash it all out. I could take a small portion of it and keep building. That’s pretty much how I got started.
JR: When did you decide to turn pro?
JC: I lived in Boston pretty much my whole life until I was 22 years old. Then I just decided to move out to Las Vegas to make a run at being a professional player. Until then, I was doing alright, making some money, but I felt that something was missing. Of course, living in Las Vegas means that I have access to some of the best poker minds in the world and becoming friends with guys like Ryan “gutshtallin” Welch, Billy “Patrolman35” Kopp, Michael “benvo123” Benvenuti, Carter “ckingusc” King, Nick “i spew chips” Phillips and a bunch of other people really helped me fill in the gaps of my game. I’d say it was a year and a half ago when I really turned the corner and started to put up good, consistent results.
JR: Was there anything specific you were missing from your game?
JC: Not really, there was obviously a lot I had to work on and of course, I’m still working on. I always had a good feel for the game, but I didn’t really understand the reasoning behind what I was doing. For instance, I’ve always been an aggressive player, but before I met all of these guys in Las Vegas, I was bordering on being reckless. Now I understand that you can be aggressive but still be in control and I understand the reasons why I should be aggressive in certain situations. It’s definitely an accelerated way to learn the game. To be honest, I can’t really pinpoint any specific problems I was having in my game. I just know that I look back at myself two years ago and realize that I really had no clue.
JR: You’ve done really well online this year, with many deep finishes and even a WCOOP bracelet. What did you attribute to your success to?
JC: I’m playing a lot less tables, lately. I used to play close to 10 tables, but now I’m keeping it at around four. That’s helped me concentrate and make the most out of each tournament I enter. I also try to stick to just the Sunday tournaments or big series events, so that when I sit down to play, I know I’m going to really give it 110 percent. I used to just go through the motions, but now I’m really motivated and I think you can see that in my results. It’s all about quality over quantity. Dwyte Pilgrim has said that he plays every tournament as if he’d be broke, on the streets, if he didn’t win it. That’s the mentality that I’m trying to embrace.
Another thing that separates me from some of my peers is that I’ve played a good amount of cash games in my career. This has really helped me in deep stacked situations. Yes, the good online players know how to play deep stacked, but only against shorter stacked opponents. If I’m sitting 100 big blinds deep, I know what to do against stacks of all sizes, even when other players are deep at the table.
JR: You’ve also managed to do pretty well in live tournaments.
JC: I feel I still have a lot to work on with my live play. I’m still playing way too many hands and I’m still gambling too much. I like splashing around and playing a ton of pots. I recently started listening to an IPod at the table and that has slowed me down a little bit. There are times when I’ve sat down at the table and felt the need to win every pot. Obviously, you can be the best player at the table, but that is still a recipe for disaster. The key is learning the patience that is required for live play.
JR: If you could go back to when you were first starting out and give yourself some pointers, what would you say?
JC: It’s so crucial to understand stack sizes. If you are a beginning player and you understand this concept, then you are way ahead of the curve. You have to be aware of the stack sizes left to act behind you. I used to open light from middle position even though there were three or four great re-ship stacks behind me, which are usually 15-25 big blinds. You just can’t be throwing chips away in those situations where you know you will be priced in to calling an all in and likely way behind.
Also, a lot of beginners also defend their blinds too liberally, especially nowadays when the average preflop raise has been lowered to between 2 and 2.5 times the big blind. You can’t think about the price you are getting on a call now, you have to think about the bet you will be facing, out of position, when you get to the flop. Most of the time, you will miss the flop and be forced to fold to a continuation bet. So unless you are creative enough to win the flops where you don’t hit, you really aren’t getting a good enough price to call preflop.
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