Aaron "Gotcha55" Kanter, of Lodi, California, may be best known for his fourth-place finish in the 2005
World Series of Poker main event (eventually won by Joe Hachem), but he is an online poker player at heart. He proved his true obsession by vaulting up the
Card Player Online Player of the Year standings in recent months with some huge wins and consistent deep finishes. Kanter (who plays as Gotcha55 on UltimateBet and Absolute Poker, 011180 on PokerStars, get_that on Full Tilt, and lost_cause on Bodog) currently sits in fourth place on the OPOY leader board.
The personable and charismatic Kanter recently sat down with
Card Player for an interview shortly before he went off to play in event No. 35 of the
World Series, a $1,500 no-limit event. He went on to finish in 18th place in the tournament, out of 2,541 entrants, which earned him $23,576. Before plowing through that field, he spoke with us about his life after the '05
World Series, his success in online poker, and his different poker strategies and tactics:
Shawn Patrick Green: First, tell me about your recent marriage.
Aaron "Gotcha55" Kanter: It's been good. We were together for a little over five years before we got married. We met when I was in college and have lived together for several years. I finally asked her to marry me around May of 2005, right before the
World Series. They were making comments at the
World Series that I should take the money and leave her at the altar.
SPG: I was going to say, so she obviously didn't marry you for your money, then (laughing).
AK: No, no. We'd been together for a while before that (laughing). I didn't have to worry about that. You know, it's been good. I haven't traveled as much this year. Event No. 1 of the
World Series was only my third live event thus far this year. I played in the
PokerStars Caribbean Adventure event, and cashed in that one, I played the
European Poker Tour main event, and then event No. 1, the $5,000 event [mixed limit/no-limit World Championship] here at the
Series, where I finished 32nd. But, I've been playing mostly online. In the last three months, I've been really trying to focus on the multitable tournaments online to move myself up in the rankings.
SPG: What kind of ratio have you been maintaining between online and live poker, recently?
AK: I guess 98 percent online, maybe? (laughs)
SPG: Why is that?
AK: I don't like to travel that much. I don't mind the travel to places like Aruba and Europe and places like that, but to come to the Bicycle or Commerce Casinos, or here [the Rio], it's not that great. And I had a run where I went eight 10K events in a row in which I didn't cash, so I got discouraged, too. Plus, I've been successful online and I do a lot of investments with real estate and pre-IPOs and oil, so a lot of my time is taken away for that, which I have to do when I'm home. It feels like when I go somewhere for a week or two and then come back that everything is kind of backed up a bit and it takes me a while to get going again.
SPG: So, when you play poker, does it basically feel like you're taking a vacation to play? Because you say you'll take a trip and then come home and your work is all backed up.
AK: I don't treat it like a vacation, unless we're going to Aruba or the PokerStars event [in the Caribbean] or somewhere like that when we're actually mixing vacation with the tournament. But it's just hard because there's so much to do with all of our different investments. We're buying anywhere between five and 10 properties a year, most of them out of state, and trying to mix that with our stocks and everything … it's tough. I guess it would seem like a vacation when you get back, because everything's so backed up, but when I'm there I definitely don't treat it like a vacation.
SPG: You're doing all of these investments and things of that nature. Does that feel like more of a hobby, or is poker more of a hobby?
AK: Poker's my main stream of income, and it has been. I did loans out of college, but I've only done nine loans in my life, and five of those have either been for my mom or my dad. So …
SPG: So, the online profiles of you that say you're a mortgage broker are very outdated? (laughing)
AK: Uh … yeah. By the time of the 2005
World Series, I think I had done two loans that year.
SPG: And they kind of picked up on that and ran with it.
AK: I guess. The thing I would do is take all of my poker winnings and invest it. And since I was in the mortgage industry, it made sense to invest in real estate, especially when real estate was going well at that time. So, the first condo I bought, the down payment came from poker winnings. I kept my job as a real estate loan officer to allow myself to get the loans to purchase property, because, as you can imagine, when you're playing poker full time, there aren't too many people that are going to give you a loan to buy a house. I didn't do any loans after the '05
World Series, but I still said that I worked there to allow myself to get loans to purchase property.
I've always taken my poker money and invested it. I guess you could call it a hobby, but that's where I'm trying to build up some real equity to where I can go play a lot more of the big tournaments. Poker's got ups and downs, so if our investments are going well, I don't have to worry about the ups and downs of poker as much. I'd like to get to the point where our investments can pay for at least one $10,000 buy-in a month and then I can go and play almost as many of those tournaments as I want without having to worry about it. And then I can play online for our normal income. That would be a nice spot to be in.
SPG: Just last month you won the first event of the
Full Tilt Online Poker Series IV (earning more than $94,000). Then, just nine days later, you went on to plow through a monstrous field, the biggest field in poker history for a real-money tournament, to take second place in the PokerStars
Sunday Million (for almost $161,000, after a chop).
AK: Yeah, I'm still bitter about that one (laughs).
SPG: What were you thinking when you made that second final table?
AK: I was just trying to win. I was chip leader when I got to the final table. One thing that I think has changed this year is that I'm always focused on winning and what I need to do to win, and I don't care so much about busting out in a certain place, as long as I put myself in a position where I have a better chance to win the entire tournament. So, there are times when I'll play a lot more aggressively than a lot of other people would because I don't care about moving up in the money. Even when we're down to the final table, I still want to put pressure on my opponents and win the tournament.
It was a late night. I think we got to the final table at one in the morning and we'd started at one in the afternoon.
And I'd played the
Sunday Warmup at 9:45 a.m. (laughing), so it had been a long day. I was just trying to stay focused. I had one of my friends on the phone to kind of keep me from getting out of line so much, because that's usually when I get myself in trouble (laughing).
SPG: I can completely understand that. It's kind of like having a voice of reason on your shoulder.
AK: (Laughs) Yeah. That helps, sometimes.
SPG: But that was a major event you had just won nine days previously, and then you get to the final table of a ridiculously major event again. Did you get some kind of adrenaline rush when you got to that second final table, or were you pretty much even keel?
AK: No, I usually stay pretty even, temperamentally. It helps to have a lot of chips, of course. That makes things a little easier. You're not as nervous about getting knocked out, since no one can knock you out. I've been playing quite a few final tables in some decent tournaments, so I don't get so excited or get the butterflies anymore.
SPG: You mentioned that it's not so much about going up the pay-scale anymore as scoring the big win. But then again, you chopped the final table at the
Sunday Million, so obviously the pay-scale is still important.
AK: Yeah, well we chopped it because you don't want to play heads up for $120,000. The first hand that he doubled up with, he had pocket jacks and I had pocket nines. There's not much you can do there, heads up. He raises to $4 million and I reraise to $12 million and he's all in for $25 million, total. You aren't folding two nines, there. So, I don't mind chopping the money.
But what really pissed me off was that I didn't win the damn tournament! Even if we were playing for nothing, I'd be just as pissed off because I want to say that I won that tournament. To me, that was more important than the extra $30,000 we were playing for, after the chop.
SPG: Those two finishes vaulted you into fourth place in the Online Player of the Year standings. How do you rate your chances of making over the No. 1 spot? Especially against someone like Sorel "Imper1um" Mizzi, who has had ridiculous results online, recently.
AK: Yeah, those guys … it's hard to keep up. They play quite a bit. And this month would be a nice month to try and catch up with them. I'm sure there are some under-21-year-olds moving up this month because a lot of us are out here playing in the
Series. I'm going to do whatever I can. Like I said, the last three months I've really been focusing on the online tournaments, and that's where I've been making most of my runs. So, I hope that it continues here for the next six months, and I think I should at least have a shot at Sorel.
SPG: Do you have any kind of game plan for it?
AK: I'm going to play as much as I can. I've been devoting a lot of time to study and analyzing my hands and really thinking about them. I've been looking at hand histories, tournament strategies, reflection points, and stuff like that.
SPG: Do you have any specific examples of things that you're trying to change in your game?
AK: Some of my bluffs (laughing). Sometimes I have a tendency, especially online, to bluff off all of my chips. So I've tried to back off on that. Or the "I raise, he reraises, and I re-reraise" bluff.
SPG: The level four or five bluffs? (laughs)
AK: Yeah, you know … those usually aren't as effective (laughing). Especially if you're playing six or eight tournaments at a time and it's near the end of the night. You get knocked out of four and you've still got two going, it's hard to not just play overly aggressive and go all in before you should.
SPG: For sure. That's one of the biggest problems with online poker that people face if they multitable tournaments. They get knocked out of one or two on bad beats or they're playing solid but the cards don't come and then they go on tilt for the other tournaments they're in, which might even be bigger events, but they start getting impatient and overly aggressive.
AK: Absolutely. It was really tough after the '05
World Series. It took probably six months to adjust to be able to take online tournaments seriously again. Especially then, when the tournaments weren't as big online as they are now. Most of the time they were $50 buy-ins, or once a night you had a $150 buy-in, and for six months it was like, "Oh, flush draw? OK, I'll call." To get readjusted after such a big win and still care about the money is hard. And that's why I think the [Online Player of the Year] points have helped me so much. I feel like I'm playing more for the points and to be recognized and move up than I am for the money. And, obviously, if you're getting the point, you're getting the money, anyway, which makes it easier to explain to my wife.
SPG: You're obviously adept at finishing deep in large-field tourneys. You beat out 13,464 players in those two recent big online events alone, not to mention the 2005
World Series of Poker main event, where you outlasted more than 5,600 entrants. Do you have a secret for playing in these huge tournaments or do you play them any differently than smaller ones?
AK: Yeah, I definitely play a little more loose-aggressive. And I really try to take advantage of bubble-situations in which, especially in larger tournaments when you have a lot of satellite-entry players, the players more inclined to stay tighter on the bubbles. For the
Sunday Million, for example, you have players who've gotten in for $5, $10, or $20, and you get near the bubble where they're about to make $350, and that doubles their bankroll online - you can see how they tighten up quite a bit. The same thing happens when you go from 81 players to 60 players, or whatever the next pay jump may be. If it's a decent jump in money, you'll see them do the same thing. I think that also happened in the 2005
World Series, where there were so many satellite winners into it. And now you're talking about a $15,000 cash, and I really took advantage at the end of the first day and the bubble at the end of the second or third day. I took advantage and chipped up quite a bit. I guess it's about staying more aggressive most of the time but also being able to change gears and flip the switch on and off.
SPG: You say you play loose-aggressive, but is that even early on in the tournaments, when blinds are lower?
AK: It depends. Sometimes I like to gamble maybe a third of my chips. I'll kind of allocate them for doing some gambling early. I don't mind calling with some speculative hands in position to try to crack somebody, because I know everyone likes to raise with their aces to four times the blind or whatever, and if I know he's a tight player, I'll definitely try to pick him off more than someone else because you're
assuming he has a good hand. Like I said, I'll definitely play loose to a certain extent, and then I kind of try to back off and chip up a little bit so that I can go back and play some more speculative hands again.
SPG: You're stationed in Las Vegas right now for the 2007
World Series. How many events have you played, so far?
AK: I came out and played the $5K [limit/no-limit event No. 1], where I finished in 32nd, and then I played the pot-limit hold'em event on Sunday [event No. 4, $1,500 buy-in]. Then, I had to fly home to for a bachelor party. I'm in very good friend Jonathan's wedding, so we had his bachelor party in Tahoe last week. Then, I came back here Sunday and played in Sunday's event [$3,000 no-limit hold'em, event No. 28] and got knocked out pretty early, five or six hours into it. Then I played in the sixhanded no-limit hold'em event on Monday [$2,500 buy-in, event No. 30] and finished in 98th out of 800 or so entrants, but that doesn't get you anything. And then my wife came in that night and for the last few days we've been hanging out, and we saw a couple Vegas shows. I've only been home for five days this month, so I wanted to spend a couple of days with her. So, I guess I've played four events.
SPG: How are you doing in the events, in your opinion?
AK: I've been playing pretty well.
SPG: So, no complaints with your play?
AK: No. I've made a couple mistakes, but I've played for four tournaments, and having made only a couple of mistakes, you can't be too unhappy. I had to make a pretty big laydown in the sixhanded event when I flopped top two pair with queen-eight. It was a queen-eight-three flop and then a four and a six hit the turn, so if he had a seven-five, he hit the straight. He bet $2,800 on the river and I raised him to $8,000, and he went all in. It was another $7,500 for me to call, and I sat there for another three to four minutes. It was so sick, because I almost didn't raise the river. He was a pretty solid player, so I was thinking he was bluffing or he had seven-five of diamonds with a flush draw and hit a gutshot straight on the river. I finally folded and he said it was a good laydown, and I talked to a couple other guys and they thought it was the correct laydown, too. But it's hard when you flop two pair and you have to fold on the river, especially when the board isn't that scary. I don't know … I was sick. And then I went out like 15 minutes later. But I've been playing pretty well. It's a lot easier to take bad beats than to take bad plays.
SPG: Yeah, believe it or not, I love bad beats (laughing). They feed my confidence, to a certain extent.
AK: Especially if you can go on and continue to play. That's one thing that's helped me from playing online and because I play more loose-aggressive. I've been able to build a stack and I am better able to overcome those bad beats compared to before, when I played solid. And online you obviously play more hands, and it seems like you take more bad beats, and when the players are looser, that's going to happen. I've been able to overcome those and continue to move on, instead of losing my whole stack.
SPG: And plus, playing as much poker as you have, you start to become a little numb to bad beats because you realize more and more that it's just one of the essences of the game.
AK: Yeah, if you can either get knocked out on bad beats or get coolered or you're just absolutely card-dead, if those are the ways that you're going out, then you're doing something right.
SPG: The
World Series has changed quite a in just the two years since your final table. What's your take on the changes?
AK: The players have gotten a lot better. There's your group of well-known pros and your group of online pros and then your amateurs, I guess. I think there's a lot more of the online pros out there than the well-known pros. And we would hope that there are more of the amateurs, obviously; it's kind of who we're hoping we play against. But I think that's the thing that's been the biggest change, and it's going to continue moving that way.
There are so many 18-, 19-, and 20-year-olds playing online that are just absolutely killing, and you know that in the next couple of years they're going to come out and have similar results to what all of the other online pros have had. There's also a lot more money in the poker community. People seem to be more willing to put out more money for a larger buy-in tournament. I mean, how many $10,000 events are there now? It's crazy. And that trickles down to the preliminary events, which are getting bigger fields, too. It's kind of interesting.
SPG: How about the changes commercially? As in, how much of a circus it's become. I mean, it was a circus when you played, but I would venture to say that it's become exponentially more "circusy."
AK: Yeah, you get a lot of people that want to get on TV, and that's become important. I think that it has kind of hurt poker a little bit. I was watching the
World Series on TV last year and the people that they were showing … you know, their demeanors and their personalities were not … they were more flamboyant or degenerate-ish. So, I think that's hurt some of our sponsorship a little bit. For instance, I heard that Toyota pulled out its advertising. Hopefully we can kind of change the image of poker players a little bit. It would be nice if players dressed a little better, but people are going to wear what they want to wear. You'd rather be comfortable, of course, but it would be nice if it was something that looked a little more classy, rather than us being looked at, overall, as degenerates.
But I think if poker continues to grow, we could end up looking like NASCAR drivers with all of the sponsorship, which I don't think is a bad thing, especially being a player. Players like to have money, and hell, I'll put 10 stickers on myself if it means that I'll get $100,000 or something. I'm curious to see how it changes. It will be interesting to see where it's at in three years.
SPG: But do you think it's getting too corporate? Do you think it's getting watered down? I mean, with 55 events … is that overkill?
AK: I don't think so. I'm sure if you talk to some of the older guys, they'd disagree (laughing). But they are running two events a day now, for most days, and they have certain events where you're going to get most of the pros entering. Things like the $5K high-low Omaha or seven-card stud or razz or the World Championship of those events are going to be pro-heavy. They can just play those events, they don't have to play the other $1,500 events that are zoo-ish. So, I think it's good because it allows for two kinds of poker. I don't think it's bad to add more money into the poker community. I don't think anyone can really complain.
SPG: That's all I have for you, did you have anything else you wanted to say?
AK: Yeah, we're working on a Web site, FinalTable.com, that we've just started building a few months ago. We've got a private equity firm that's backing us, so it's pretty exciting. We'll see in the next few months how it turns out. We want to incorporate everything: a place where you can play and learn and find poker-related info; a portal where you can get to a lot of poker-related stuff.
SPG: When are you planning on kicking it off?
AK: That's a good question. We wanted to get it up before the
World Series started, but that was a little too tough. We've got some Web designers and developers working, and we're hoping to get it up as soon as possible.
SPG: Cool, cool, well we'll keep out eyes out for it. Thanks a lot for taking the time for this interview, Aaron, we appreciate it!
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