November Nine Countdown -- Scott Montgomery SpeaksCanadian Tells Card Player About His Path to the WSOP Main Event Final Table |
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Scott Montgomery is a 26-year-old professional poker player from Ontario, Canada. He’s only been playing for four years, but has had considerable success. In his first major tournament cash, Montgomery found himself at the televised World Poker Tour final table of the 2008 L.A. Poker Classic. He finished fifth for nearly $297,000. At the 2008 World Series of Poker, Montgomery seemed to find his stride. He cashed in three preliminary tournaments and made the final table of $10,000 main event. Currently waiting out the fourth-month hiatus, Montgomery will make the trek back to Las Vegas in November to finish out the final table of the 2008 WSOP main event, where he is guaranteed to make at least $900,670. Here he discusses his path to the final table.
"I mean it’s the 13th tournament I’ve done so far this year so it wasn’t too much of a surprise, [that I] sat down and didn’t 
recognise anybody at the table until like an hour later one of the announcers came over and the first famous person he announces, ‘Well, here is Bobby Baldwin’ and I was like, ‘Oh, apparently I’ve been playing with Bobby Baldwin for the last hour and didn’t recognise him’, and then half-way through the day Barry Greenstein sat down at the table, and that was fun. Other than that, those were pretty much the only two famous people I met during the tournament. I played with Hoyt Corkins for like an hour one day, but no, I mean, I wasn’t too nervous.
It hadn’t gone very well up until the dinner break, I was down to about 15,000 or so, and then I just went on a crazy rush. I got all-in with A-K against Bobby Baldwin’s kings, and spiked an ace, so I doubled up. And then I just went crazy for the last couple of hours, and ended the day at 98,000. Around the money bubble, I had been doing pretty well and I finished day two at about 250, so I was already good. So, then I was like ‘OK I can just kinda coast in the money, I’m not going to slow down because I’m still gonna play aggressive.’ But unfortunately just before the money, I lost a big pot with queens against aces and it knocked me down to about 100,000. And then at that point it’s like if I play a pot, I play it so aggressively, there’s a good chance I’m going to be all in. But with 10 people away from the money kind of thing, and so if I fold for a round and a half, I’m gonna make the money. So, even though I hated to do it, I just folded for the next like twenty hands and made the money.
Most people think that once you make the money you go a little crazy, but I’m thinking everyone else at the table is gonna be going crazy so that’s the time for me to tighten up — I’m waiting for premium hands because I know every premium hand I get is gonna be all in against some short-stack. So yeah I tightened up a bit ... I mean I didn’t tighten up, I waited for the good hands because I knew that’s all you needed to do [as] there’s tonnes of short-stacks just waiting to get all their money in with anything. And I doubled up the second to last hand of that day because I was down to about 80, and I doubled up right at the end ... So, I ended the day at 160. Still a little below average but not too bad going into day 4.
Starting the last day, I had four point something million chips ... just below the average, so I wasn’t feeling too bad.
I knew I had to build up chips, I wasn’t gonna try and squeak into the final table or anything like that. I knew if I was going into the final table I wanted at least 15 million, which was the average, because I needed the big stack to play my aggressive style. So, unfortunately, at the beginning of day 1, (well, I mean fortunately looking back on it) I made a really really bad bluff. And I bluffed all in with just ace high on the flop, and he called me with top pair, and then he turned the flush draw even, so I just had two outs on the river and I was all-in, and caught the ace to stay alive. So, that put me up to 10 million. Then everything went prettily evenly, just ups and downs, couldn’t get much going. I was pretty card dead for the next couple hours. I had to make a bunch of bluffs just to stay even. And then finally, on the very last hand, when we were 11-handed, somebody had been knocked out on the other table, and on that exact hand, I almost doubled up against the chip leader. I won like 8 million in one pot against Dennis [Phillips]. So, that put me at 21 million going into the final 10.
Then once we were in the final 10, there was a couple of short stacks and I wasn’t gonna play super-tight, but just avoid the big stacks and avoid the big pots, try to steal the blinds now and then, and stay fairly even because there’s such a massive difference between 10th and ninth. I’m not going to fold every hand, but I’m not going to get involved in a 20 million dollar pot, unless I have the pure nuts because that would just be insane — with a million dollars in real money the difference between 10th and ninth.
I haven’t had too much time to think about what the next three months are going to be like but I plan on just keeping my life the same, just travelling around, playing the tournaments, like I’m not going to go into hiding or anything like that, or do anything crazy, hang out on the beach for the next three months. I mean the money really isn’t going to change me, and the fame or whatever that comes with it, I hope isn’t going to change me any. So, just keep playing poker and having fun. I enjoy poker and I enjoy my life so why change it."
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