Player of the Year Winner Q and A -- Thomas MarcheseMarchese Talks about Winning the 2010 Player of the Year Award |
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Thomas Marchese won the 2010 Card Player Player of the Year award with 6,738 points overall after he recorded an impressive performance that included 11 final tables and two tournament titles. He won over $2 million playing tournament poker in 2010 and he recorded the second highest POY point total in the last five years thanks to more than a dozen cashes. You can read more about his impressive year in this POY victory story, and Marchese will also be featured in an upcoming cover story in Card Player Magazine.
Card Player caught up with Marchese in Las Vegas and he talked about his successful year on the felt. From his biggest win at the PokerStars North America Poker Tour Venetian main event in February through his impressive ability to keep pace with a talented collection of challengers down the final stretch of the year.
Ryan Lucchesi: How did it feel to play so well late in the year, even winning a preliminary event at the Five Diamond World Poker Classic at Bellagio to demonstrate your consistency and hold off any challengers?
Thomas Marchese: It’s great, I worked really hard to get the lead and at the end I really didn’t want to give anybody a shot to get back in with a big win. It’s great to end the year on a high point and hopefully I will carry it in to next year.
RL: How many events do you think you will play next year?
TM: I’ probably end up playing in less of the smaller events next year unless I get off to a really hot start. I will attend the PCA in the early going, but if it starts a little slowly I will stick to the main events mostly and go back to playing in a lot of cash games on the side.
RL: What have been some of your likes and dislikes about playing in so many tournaments this year as opposed to cash games?
TM: It’s gone really smooth and this year has been great. With all of these tournaments I have been fortunate to never swing a ton compared to cash. It’s much less stressful to me. Even a 10k buy-in, losing that is not a huge deal, because the cash game stakes where I play that is a normal buy-in. It has been really good and mush less stressful and you have the big score potential, which is what everyone is chasing.
RL: Is the NAPT win at the Venetian when you really decided to make a run at the Player of the Year award?
TM: Yeah, as soon as I had the Venetian win along with a third-place cash earlier I knew I was in the race from then on. That was when I started to put in some volume and I ran well and I final tabled some things soon after. That was what motivated me to grind more.
RL: How much has your patience improved during this year with all of the live tournament play?
TM: It has definitely helped my patience. When I first started playing a lot of live tournament the days would be grueling and long and now it is easy and I enjoy myself at the table. Usually it goes pretty smoothly.
RL: What improvements that you have made in your tournament strategy will you be able to carry back to the cash game tables with you next year?
TM: Just playing a lot live in general you concentrate on the tendencies of your opponents more. It is much slower and you’re only playing at one table. Going back to online I’m going to have to probably start with fewer tables and work a bit more on having good reads on players as opposed to robot moding my way through.
RL: What advice would you give to players who want to increase the amount of tournaments they play next year?
TM: It really has to do with patience and not getting frustrated. With live tournaments you are really playing in just a few, even during the course of a year. It is just about playing you’re A-game as much as you can until you run good. Everyone is going to run good at some point, so all you can do is play your best consistently and you will have better results eventually.
RL: What does it mean to you to win the Player of the Year award?
TM: It is pretty huge for me. Going into the year it really wasn’t on my mind at all, but now it is something that I have worked so hard for that I am excited to have closed it out and won.
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