Unlike many players' screen names, which only manage to hold true half of the time (I'm talking to you, BiGsTaK$ and CrackNURAces),
James "P0KERPR0" Campbell's screen name suits him perfectly 24/7. He is among an exclusive group of players who seem to show up at the top of every leader board out there, regardless of how the points are calculated, and he is truly the epitome of "poker pro."
Campbell currently sits in fifth place in the Online Player of the Year (OPOY) standings. He skyrocketed up the leader board when he won the PokerStars
Sunday Million tournament on April 15 this year, earning $180,000 (after a deal was made at the final table). He's made 16 OPOY-qualified finishes aside from that, including three first-place finishes. His total winnings for 2007 from OPOY-qualified tournaments alone come to almost $400,000.
Campbell sat down for an interview with
Card Player to talk about the phenomenal year he's been having and what changes he's made recently to achieve such success:
Shawn Patrick Green: You're killing the online tournaments so far this year with four first-place finishes in Online Player of the Year-qualified tournaments alone. Does this qualify as your best year in poker?
James "P0KERPR0" Campbell: This is by
far the best year. In reality, nothing's even come close to what has happened this year. I started playing about three and a half years ago, and last year I started having success and people started knowing who I was a little bit when I started winning a few smaller tournaments. But this year has just been a breakout year as far as online success. I won the
Sunday Million, the
$1K Monday at Full Tilt a couple of times, the $500 buy-in at UltimateBet a couple of times, and then tons of other tournaments from there.
SPG: Have you changed your game in any ways, recently, that could have spurred your success?
JC: Yeah, absolutely. I've done a lot more research and studying of the game recently. In the couple of months before the
World Series I joined CardRunners and that helped out a lot. I watched a lot of those videos by GreenPlastic and SBRugby. They patched up a lot of holes in my game as far as calling with hands out of position and spewing chips by playing that way. I'm also controlling the pot a lot better. So, my game has really evolved tenfold over the last year or so. Nothing in my past has come even close to this year.
SPG: And you were already a good player before. You may not have been an "amazing" player, but you were certainly a good player. So, you're saying that sites like CardRunners helped you even though you were already pretty good, anyway?
JC: Yeah, exactly. I mean, I definitely had some success before this year, obviously. CardRunners absolutely patched up a lot of leaks in my game over the past year and it's helped out a lot. Most of my buddies kind of got started playing poker around the same time that I did, so I never really had anyone to learn from. I'd never really been buddy-buddy with any of the online pros or talked to them on AIM and all of that stuff that a lot of them do to improve their own games. So, I never really had anyone to talk about the game with and rely upon for advice, and CardRunners actually gave me something like a different person's mindset on how they think and their thought processes and all of that. So, it definitely helped out a lot.
SPG: You're currently fifth in the OPOY race, 2,328 points behind Sorel "Imper1um" Mizzi. How attainable is that top spot?
JC: It's definitely attainable, especially with the
Full Tilt Online Poker Series and the
WCOOP [PokerStars
World Championship of Online Poker] coming up. If you have one big score in any of those big events, it'll jump you right up there. But Sorel is a great player; he's honestly, by far, the best online tournament player there is. I don't think it's really a question. I think lilholdem954 [Chad Batista] and I are close behind, and atimos (or Jovial Gent, whatever you want to call him) are close behind, but Sorel is just in a different class when it comes to online poker tournaments. He will be tough to catch.
SPG: Yeah, that's for sure. Well, he's ahead by a lot of points, but people have been having big spurts of cashes, lately. Lilholdem954, for instance, had a sick run last month that pushed him all the way into sixth place, so …
JC: Right, exactly. Same thing with him [lilholdem954], he's another really good player. If anything, you can go on a heater for a couple of months … he's [Sorel Mizzi] definitely not out of the picture, but I definitely want that number one spot, so I'll give him a run for his money. It will be tough to catch him because I don't see him slowing down anytime soon. If I get a nice heater at the right time, you never know, especially with the next month of poker ahead of us.
SPG: You had two cashes so far in this year's
World Series, an 87th-place finish [for $6,667] in a $1,500 no-limit hold'em event and a 480th place [$25,101] in the main event. How many events did you played in?
JC: I played in about five or six and then the main event, so six or seven events, total. I was happy with my play, for the most part. I definitely changed my perception on the
World Series from the year before. Before I would play almost
too tight from what I'm accustomed to playing and not really gambling or trying to pick the spots where you have to in order to win the tournament; I was playing more to just move up the ladder.
This year, I really had some huge pots early on in just about every tournament I was in where it could make me or break me, and things didn't end up going my way. In the main event I had a few things go my way and then one big pot at the end that didn't, but hopefully I'll be able to burst into the live poker scene within the next year. I plan on playing a lot of live events in the next year or so.
SPG: Do you still prefer playing online to live, then, or would you rather play live, now?
JC: I still like playing online a lot more. Online you have the convenience of staying at your house and you don't have to go anywhere. And you can just play so many more games at once, so you get such a better value for your money, whereas you can play for a couple of days in a [live] $10K buy-in main event and not make the money. So, with the financial aspects and as a preference for my personal life, I like online. It's nice to be able to lounge around in your sweat pants, or whatever, and open up your computer and play as much as you want.
SPG: Turbo tournaments are becoming increasingly popular, lately. Do you play in any of those?
JC: Oh yeah, I love turbo tournaments. I don't play them too often, though. I mostly just play the bigger-buy-in tournaments online, now. I feel comfortable buying into all of those, and I don't really mess around with the smaller tournaments. But there're a few good turbo tournaments that I like to play in. It's fun because it's all about your position rather than your cards. Basically, it turns into a lot of shoving and reshoving or stealing and restealing, so it makes it fun and entertaining, to say the least.
SPG: What kind of advice can you give for those tournaments?
JC: You have to play turbos a lot more aggressively than regular tournaments, obviously, because the blinds go up so much more quickly. In the turbos you have to do a lot more restealing because the blinds end up getting so big and people end up raising so much in position that those resteals become that much more valuable. In order to win any of those turbos, you're going to have to make a lot more resteals, regardless of what your cards look like.
SPG: What do you think about the notion of defending your big blind?
JC: I was never really that big on protecting my big blind, actually. Some players are really bad about it and if they have chips in the pot they don't like to fold. But usually if you're in the big blind, you're playing your hand out of position, and that's probably the biggest leak in my game that CardRunners ended up showing me. I now fold a lot more hands out of the blinds just because it's so hard to play a hand out of position. You need miracle flops to end up being profitable in that situation, so I'm not a big defender of my blinds, really at all.
SPG: There's actually a lot of stuff like that, where it's a "move" that's become so common that you almost shouldn't do it anymore. Do you agree with that?
JC: I agree with that, absolutely. I think the button or cutoff raise are becoming so much more apparent, and everyone is basically raising almost any two cards from those two positions. And people are constantly restealing out of the blinds. I mean, I
will repop out of the blinds, but I'm never one to just call and play a hand out of the position. I'd rather just make a reraise, or resteal if you want to call it that, and take down the pot without having to see the flop rather than see the flop out of position and playing the hand like that.
SPG: When I started playing poker, the big thing was to raise on the button with pretty much anything, and then that evolved into raising on the button
or the cutoff because the button-raise was too obvious. Is it just a natural progression? Is it pretty much worthless to do either, at this point [laughing]?
JC: Oh, yeah. The new thing is that under the gun is like the button, now, they say. Everyone is raising from under the gun with suited connectors or anything just to make it look more powerful than it is. And people are under-the-gun stealing, believe it or not, with suited connectors or really any two cards. So, the game is definitely evolving on a yearly or even monthly basis. It constantly changes, so you need to be constantly changing your own game and switching things up so that your opponents don't have any reads on you.
SPG: Do you think heads-up play or a full table requires more skill to play well at?
JC: Definitely heads-up play. I mean, it's just such a different game. Full-table play is pretty standard. I love playing shorthanded because that's when you really get to see more about the game. It's a lot more betting, a lot more aggression, and a lot better of a game. And that goes even further for heads up. I've actually really worked a lot on my heads-up game because that's really where the money's at, even in multitable tournaments. For instance, the
Sunday Million that I won a few months back was $200,000 for first and $100,000 for second, and that's a lot of money if you can get yourself into that situation. So, if you wind up winning tournaments, it ends up being almost double what you'd get for second place. I've been fortunate this year, especially, to be able to close tournaments. If I get to a final table, I'm probably in a pretty good position to win it. That's probably been my greatest asset this year.
SPG: So you don't think there's any merit to the argument that when it's heads up it's just one person, so you only have to get reads on or spot patterns for one person, whereas with 10 people you have to keep your eye on the entire table and notice everything?
JC: Heads up you're definitely playing the person a lot more than you're playing the cards. At a 10-person table you can only do so much because there are so many hands out there that eventually somebody
will have a hand. When you're playing heads-up it's all about aggression and playing the player. A lot of times, when you're playing heads up, your cards really don't make that much of a difference, whereas at a 10-man table you have to really play your cards and you can't get too out of control. In heads up you can pretty much do anything you want.
SPG: Do you think it makes sense to buy into a satellite for a tournament if you could buy into it directly comfortably within your bankroll, or are they just a waste of time and money at that point?
JC: No, I actually love the satellites. Even before I first started coming up playing poker, I had a smaller bankroll and satellites were always great and I was always playing satellites into the Sunday majors across the board on all of the sites. Now I feel comfortable enough, obviously, where $200, $500, or $1,000 buy-in tournaments don't really take too big of a hit on my bankroll, so I don't play in those satellites anymore. But I still always satellite into the
World Series events or, for instance, into the $2,500
WCOOP or the $2,500
FTOPS events coming up. And then, obviously, all of the $5K or $10K buy-in live tournaments, I try to satellite into those before I buy in directly. But, worst comes to worst, I feel comfortable enough buying directly into the $10K tournaments, now.
SPG: All right, well thank you for your time, James. I appreciate your talking with me.
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