Tournament Trail Q and A: Bernard Lee

Bernard Lee broke onto the poker scene in 2005 when he finished in 13th place in the World Series of Poker main event. Determined to show that that performance was not a fluke, he went on to improve his game with analytical play, and he now has more than $1.3 million in career winnings.

Lee has become a success in the poker media, as well, with weekly columns for ESPN and the Boston Herald, as well as a weekly poker talk show, "The Bernard Lee Poker Show" on 1510 AM in the Boston area. Lee also just recently released his first book, "The Final Table: Volume 1." The book is a collection of his Boston Herald columns from 2005 and 2006. Lee hopes to release Volume 2 in the coming months.

Card Player sat down with Lee and he talked about how he has been able to pull together all of his experience to improve his game. He also spoke about how closely he analyzes his play and what aspects players should look at in their own games.


Ryan Lucchesi: August is always a time for reflection during the tournament season; tell me about your year up to this point, poker-wise, and what events you’re planning on playing down the home stretch of 2008?

Bernard Lee: My goal was to make three to five final tables this year, and I made three final tables before April [fourth at the $5,000 WSOP Circuit Council Bluffs no-limit hold'em championship event; fourth at a $5,000 Foxwoods Poker Classic no-limit hold'em event; and second at a $1,000 WSOP Circuit Caesars Indiana no-limit hold'em event]. Unfortunately, I didn’t finish the deal on any of them. I finished fourth, fourth, and second, but it really gave me a lot of confidence. If you look at where I make most of my money, my big scores have typically been during the second half of the year. Obviously, my main event at the World Series in 2005, and also my two titles [2006 $5,000 World Poker Final no-limit hold'em event, 2007 $2,000 World Poker Finals no-limit hold'em event], which came in November, so I really wanted to focus on the beginning of the year and get a decent start. I typically go East Coast, my schedule right now will be the Borgata, the $2,500 and the main event. Then I’m going to head up to Indiana to play the WSOP Circuit event. And I will definitely play Foxwoods; I’ll probably play in a lot of the Foxwoods events, and probably the WSOP circuit event in Atlantic City in December. Primarily, I’m an East Coast player; obviously I go out to Las Vegas when I have to. I may also go out for [WPT] Five-Diamond [World Poker Classic], as well.

RL: What are some of the differences you see between players in the $10,000 championship events of the WPT and WSOP compared to the players you run across in some of the smaller circuit events?

BL: In the $10,000 events you run across a lot of people who just satellited in, so you have to be very wary. It’s maybe one notch above the WSOP main event. In the World Series main event, you have a lot of people who are calling cards where you just scratch your head and really question their moves. A lot of them are playing in their first event ever. The same goes with the WPT events sometimes, but the majority of the people know what they’re doing, so it’s a notch above the main event. The WSOP Circuit events are an interesting mix, to say the least; you start out with a lot less in chips. You usually only start with 10,000, so you can’t really ... there’s not a lot of room to play; you really have to pick your battles. You get a lot of people who are really, really solid, they’re solid players. And then, in some other events, you get some people for whom this is their World Series main event; they're never going to go out to Las Vegas, they’re never going to play anywhere else, they satellited in, so with some of them you really question some of the moves that they are making. So, the circuit events you kind of have to play a little bit more tight; you just don’t have the room. If you make one mistake, you’re out.

RL: You are one of the most analytical players I have met. How important is it to go back and analyze your play after a tournament, whether in your notes or one of you newspaper columns?

BL: I started just writing some of [the hands] down and I wanted to see when I made a mistake and when I didn’t make a mistake, and I will tell you it has been the only reason why I think I have had success so quickly. A perfect example is that I finished in fourth place in back-to-back events when I made final tables. Fourth is almost like the “Big Money Bubble”…most of the money is in places one, two, and three, and fourth is just outside a lot of money. When this happens back-to-back times, maybe it is not a tremendous pattern, but I didn’t like that it happened back-to-back times. So, right before my third final table [of 2008], I looked deeply at every hand I played at the final tables, and I saw where I made the mistake both times that led to me finishing in fourth. I knew exactly what I did wrong. And I will tell you, when we got down to four-handed in this next event that I played in, I almost did the exact same move. I actually thought about doing it, and then I said, “Stop, this is the move that got you in trouble in the other two events.” So, I stopped, and instead of raising, I just called, and just out of sheer coincidence, he flopped three-of-a-kind. I would have been out of the tournament without a question, because had I raised and he called, I would have made a continuation bet and been gone. I would have been gone in fourth again [Lee finished in second].

That’s just a small recent example of how critical it is to be looking at my hands over and over. My father always said, “Make one mistake, that’s fine, just don’t ever make it again.” Once I make that mistake, I make sure I’ve highlighted it, and I just never let it happen again. Every once in a while, there’s a move that I make that I think is really good and it got me a lot of chips, so I’ll write that down, because I believe it is not only the mistakes that you have to make sure to remember, I think sometimes you also have to remember the good moves that work for you.

RL: I think like a lot of players aren’t too honest with themselves when they analyze their games. How important is it to keep a level head when you look at your game? What advice would you give to players when keeping track of their records?

BL: I have a lot of students who call me and tell me, “Look how good I’ve been doing,” or the reverse, “Look how poorly I’ve been running, my aces got cracked by kings.” I always tell them, “Look, you have really got to look at it from both sides. You can’t just say your aces got cracked by kings. How many times over the last four months have your aces held up against another pair?” The easiest [advice], is to be honest with yourself about how many tournaments you’ve played, how many cashes you’ve made, and how many final tables you make of those cashes. And then, after that, honestly look at some of the mistakes that you have made, and then look at some of the correct plays that you have made. We’re you lucky, or did you really make a good play? I really think that when a lot of people look at a hand, they only look at the bad-beat side of it, and they don’t look at the whole hand from start to finish. I think a lot of people really need to take a huge step back when they look at hands and how they played then; A lot of people just look at the hand for what it is instead of taking a bigger picture, and I think that is what a lot of people need to do.

RL: How do you pull your collective poker media experience into what you do at the poker table?

BL: Because I do this stuff in the media, I’m around poker all of the time. I’m writing two columns every week, whether it’s the Boston Herald column or the ESPN column, and I have my radio show once a week. I literally do something related to poker every single day. Because of that, my mind is constantly thinking about poker. Being a writer and analyzing hands all of the time, I think I can [be objective] a little bit better than just the average player because I’m already thinking about it. I’m already thinking two steps ahead during hands because of how I write columns. I have some of the top guys on my radio show, and if I have a question, I can ask them while we’re on air. I’ll ask Shannon Shorr about three-betting, or I’ll ask J.C. Tran about how he focuses from tournament to tournament. How many people have that opportunity every single week? I also really enjoy commentating, the background research I do for commentating is very similar to the background research I do when I make a final table. A lot of that is stuff that I do anyway, and again, when you’re watching that final table progress, you’re really able to analyze what you think you would do in that situation, and the beauty of it is, if you’re wrong, it doesn’t hurt you. It’s been a very valuable tool for me as far as analyzing hands.

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