Online Poker: Interview with Owen 'ocrowe' CroweTalks About His WSOP Main Event, What Worked to Get Him Deep, and How He Exploited Others |
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When college, call centers, and dealing poker don’t work out, the next logical step is playing poker, right? Well, that’s what poker pro Owen “ocrowe” Crowe figured, and it has certainly worked out for him so far.
That is especially the case now that, as of this interview, Crowe was one of just a few hundred players remaining of the original 6,844 in the World Series of Poker main event. And this was after he had outlasted 2,439 entrants to make the final table of a $1,500 no-limit hold’em event earlier in the Series.
As far as online poker is concerned, Crowe, a native of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, has made hundreds of thousands of dollars. He has made the final table of numerous $100 and $200 rebuy events (including one that he took down in April of this year), and he has even made the coveted final table of the PokerStars Sunday Million, eventually finishing in fourth place.
Card Player caught up with 25-year-old Crowe briefly during a break in his deep run at the main event. We spoke with him about what he’s doing right in the main event, what other people are doing wrong, and how to exploit players in that kind of field.
Shawn Patrick Green: Can you tell me what got you to where you are now in the tournament? What kind of strategy has prevailed?
Owen 'ocrowe' Crowe: Pretty much, for the past few days, I’ve been playing a lot of small pots, but I have been playing a lot of pots. I’ve been playing a lot of pots in position and I’ve just been trying to keep them small to see flops. I’m not trying to build any really big pots preflop, pretty much.
SPG: As far as seeing more flops, I assume that’s because you think you have a massive edge post-flop?
OC: Well, I’ve just been using position. I’ve also had some really great table draws, as there really haven’t been amazing, solid players at my tables, and I think I’ve had a pretty big edge over most of my tables. So, yeah, I just used my position and I accumulated chips pretty quickly on the second day, so I got to use my chips to bluff.
SPG: Obviously, if you’re seeing a lot of flops, a lot of post-flop play depends upon putting your opponents on ranges of hands. So, what is your method to go about piecing together what kinds of hands your opponents could be holding?
OC: I go a lot off of bet sizes. I also just go by feel and see how each player has been playing their hands; any time they go to showdown, just paying attention to what they had. So, I just get a feel for what they’re willing to risk their whole tournament with. Once you have a feel for what they’re willing to fold, you can put them to the test pretty easily.
SPG: And how has that changed now that the money bubble has come and gone?
OC: It has changed a bit for some players, but a lot of players are still … I just watched a guy blind off 40K. We had to clock him every hand just so that he could make an extra $3,000. He had 16,000, folded a 6,000 big blind with a 1,000 ante, and then folded every hand down to his last 1,000 ante. But it has definitely changed. People are a lot more willing to gamble now than they were on the bubble. On the bubble last night, I really accumulated a lot of chips. When there were about 50 players left to go, it was really easy to pick up a lot of chips.
SPG: Well, and that’s actually something that a lot of people struggle with. They hear that they’re supposed to be really aggressive on the bubble because people are a lot more willing to fold, but how do you do that effectively? How do you be aggressive without putting yourself at too much risk?
OC: Clearly, you want to make your preflop raises small. And you can see flops very easily. Like I had a big stack yesterday, the largest stack at my table except for one other player, and with any of the middle-stacks, I could see the flops with them, and it was very easy to tell if they had any piece of the flop or something that they were willing to go with. And you just have to pick and choose which players are actually there to accumulate chips and which players are not willing to play at all. I had some players fold A-K to me face up last night, and pocket jacks. There were like six or seven players at my table who were not willing to play, but then there were the two other players who were, so you just have to kind of watch out for who you’re getting involved against.
SPG: By the time this is posted online on Sunday, we may already know your fate. What is your plan for the rest of the time until then? Do you have a gameplan?
OC: I’m just going to try to keep it the same way. I’m going to play small pots. I haven’t accumulated many chips so far today, although I’ve been up and down a bit. But I still have a lot of chips, I have about double the average, so I’m just trying to play some pots, keep them small, and just see as many flops as I can without getting into a gambling situation. I want to just play poker instead of gambling.
SPG: What kinds of really big mistakes have you seen people make in this main event?
OC: I’d say the major mistake people are making is big laydowns; they’re just giving people so much credit. And they just really give a lot of weight to the fact that they don’t want to bust out of the main event of the World Series of Poker. It’s really easy to exploit. I’d say that’s the No. 1 thing that I’ve noticed.
SPG: So would you say it’s a bigger mistake to make a big laydown than a big call in this tournament?
OC: Yeah, it definitely could go either way, but I’d say that it’s a bigger mistake to make a big laydown if it’s an incorrect laydown.
SPG: You were a dealer before you started playing poker seriously, so I assume there wasn’t much of a transition for you between playing online poker and live poker?
OC: I had a decent grounding in both. I used to run a home game myself, which I would run, deal, and play in. So, when I first got into poker, it was both online and live at the same time. And then I kind of took a break from online, and I’m just kind of just starting to get a feel for live poker again this year, I think.
SPG: What big differences are there that you have to acclimate yourself to?
OC: You really have to concentrate a lot more for live poker, and you really have to be able to handle the beat a lot more. When playing 10 tournaments at once online, if you take a bad beat, you’re just like, “Whatever,” because you have nine other tables up. But, not being used to that, you’ll play a live tournament for eight hours and bust out or you only play for two hours, bust out, and have to wait for the next tournament. At first, I found it very frustrating to get used to that.
SPG: How many other tournaments did you play in the World Series?
OC: I probably only played eight or 10 events this year, and I only cashed in one, but it was a final table in a $1,500 event.
SPG: Thanks for doing this interview, Owen, and good luck.
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