Tournament Trail Q and A: Nam LeNam Le Talks About His Approach to the Game and the Most Important Thing at the Table |
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Nam Le has been one of the most consistent performers on the tournament trail over the last couple of years. He has won more than $4 million playing tournament poker, and he is just 27 years old. Le's biggest win came in 2006, when he won the World Poker Tour Bay 101 Shooting Star event and took home over $1.1 million. His most recent apperance in the spotlight of television cameras was when he finished in fourth place at one of the strongest final tables of this year at the WPT L.A. Poker Classic in late February.
Le also cashed four times this summer at the World Series of Poker, and he is currently playing preliminary events at the Legends of Poker at the Bicycle Casino to gear up for the $10,000 WPT championship event that begins on Saturday, Aug. 23.
Card Player sat down with Le, and he spoke about his approach to tournament poker, as well as the way he approaches the most familar of his opponents — his friends.
Ryan Lucchesi: A lot of players try to rush, or they freak out when their stacks get low during the first couple days of a tournament, but you always keep calm and play your game. How important is that during the first couple days of a poker tournament?
Nam Le: For me, it works well being patient, but that doesn’t mean that patient is the right way to play. A lot of guys accumulate chips because they’re not patient and they can’t sit still, and for them it leads to winning major events. It all depends on your style. If you can be patient, hey, I think that’s a great way to play, but at the same time you can’t win a tournament being patient, sooner or later you have got to step it up and shift gears. I think more important than patience is timing; I think that is overlooked.
RL: The timing of your key decisions in a tournament can either make or break you, why is it so important to take time with those decisions?
NL: The way I see it is that it doesn’t hurt to take your time. The table might be annoyed with what you’re doing, slowing down the game, but if you have a real hand and you have a real decision that can go either way on, then I think you don’t make mistakes when you’re taking your time … I take my time when I know [a player], because I’m trying to get a read, and when I get a read on them, it’s going to be the right read. With a player I don’t know, I don’t take as much time.
RL: What are the things you consider when you go into a deeper thought process against players who you know well?
NL: First is who the player is. If I’ve got a guy profiled, then I’m thinking “Why’d he bet with an ace-high board,” “Why’d he bet with a king-high board?” “Why did he bet that much?” It’s a lot of “why” questions. If it’s out of his character, or something he wouldn’t normally do, then that’s how I get my information. For instance, if there is a one-card straight on the board and he raises preflop, if it comes 2-3-4-6, and then a 5 makes a straight, I’m thinking, “Why is he betting the river now? If he raised preflop, he can’t have a 5; it doesn’t make sense.” In that instance, I would make changes based off of that information.
RL: Do you prefer events that feature more professionals where you can use those reads, as opposed to amateur-heavy events?
NL: I think that with tournaments it’s not a matter of what I like, it’s what I do best against. And I think I’ve done well in both, when I look around and I see a lot of amateurs, which I’ve been able to accumulate chips [against] in tournaments. But sometimes it has bit me in the ass, too, when I sit at a table and I don’t respect the table and I don’t respect the players there, and I end up blowing my stack or going on tilt because some guy I don’t know outplayed me. When I play a tournament where there are a lot of pros, it keeps me tame; it keeps me level-headed. I respect the game, and I respect the players, and it keeps me playing sold poker. And not just bring my A-game, after you lose a hand you don’t steam. Because you know these pros are going to pick you apart if you lose your composure.
RL: How important is it to keep your emotions under control in the game of poker?
NL: I think that is number one. If you don’t have good chip management, or you don’t have good composure, it doesn’t matter how talented you are, how big your balls are, if you can’t keep your composure. If you have a big tilt factor, you have no shot. Especially in a five-day tournament, you might be able to pull it off in a one-day tournament, but in [championship] events with $10,000 buy-ins, you’re not playing with dummies there; if you can’t keep your composure, forget about it, you’re just dead money.
RL: Do you think that the composure component separates the great players from the good players?
NL: I think that is key, because there are a lot of young, hotshot players with a lot of talent. I don’t doubt that, but a lot of them are missing that composure. They take a bad beat and something happens that shouldn’t have happened, and I see them go off. Or they play pots bigger than they should play.
RL: You have a close-knit group of players that you travel the tournament trail with, including J.C. Tran, Steve Sung, Danny Wong, Tuan Le, and your brother, Tommy Le. How do you play against them when you guys are seated at the same table during the course of a tournament?
NL: When you enter a tournament, there is only one winner. But, at the same time, when you run into your friends … personally, I hate it, because when I’m raising them, they know, and they get away cheap. If I’m raising a total stranger for the third time, I’m sure the third time I’m going to get more chips off of them than I would against my friends. There’s not too much you can do; I try and stay out of their way. You get cards and you bump heads, but there is absolutely nothing you can do. We leave it at the table, but what we do is usually amongst our friends; we swap one percent, and if we happen to bust one of our friends, it doubles to two percent. So, nobody is sour about it; you [lose] your chips to your friends, but at the same time, you double your percentages, so it works out fine. We understand that we play a lot of tournaments a year, and it’s bound to happen, and there’s nothing you can do.
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