Tournament Trail Q and A -- Liv Boeree

Liv Boeree won the European Ladies Championship in 2008, and she has now jumped out onto the tournament trail as a sponsored player by Absoulte Poker. Boeree cashed in 49th place at the Aruba Poker Classic in October 2008, and she followed that up with another cash in the no-limit hold'em bounties event at the 2009 Aussie Millions, wherein she had a bounty on her head. Her seventh-place finish earned her a cash worth $13,426.

Card Player caught up with the poker professional and TV host in Melbourne, and she talked about some of the adjustments you have to make to your game as a bounty player in a bounty tournament.

Ryan Lucchesi: Tell me a little bit about the bounty event you played in at the Aussie Millions. How did you make a deep run in the event and finish is seventh place with a bounty on your head?

Liv Boeree: The tournament went well. I had a bounty on my head, so it meant that I had absolutely no bluff most of the time. I tried bluffing a few times, and I would just called all the way down every time by bottom pair or ace-high. Obviously, the good side was that I could value-bet all of my good hands. It went really well, and when we got down to the short-handed bit, the shootout for the final 32 player…when there were three of us left at my table, I had jacks versus A-Q, and I had the guy covered. I lost the race, and if I had won that I would have been the chip leader going into the final table. Instead, I was the shortest in chips at the final table.

RL: Did you get much more action as a bounty player?

LB: Oh God, yeah. Like I said, early on against the early players, all they saw was a bounty at their table, they didn’t actually see a tournament. They didn’t care about the $151,000 they could win by actually playing properly to win the tournament, they cared about the $1,000. I maximized on that little edge. I value-bet a lot more, but I went through a couple of spells like right now, where I’m getting absolutely no cards and there’s nothing you can do, you just have to sit tight.

RL: On top of the fact that this was a bounty tournament, how did you like the extra twist at the end to switch play to six-handed? Does that break up any monotony for you as a player on the tournament trail?

LB: Yeah, it’s a [full ring] multi-table all the way, and then all of a sudden it’s short-handed. I really enjoyed it; it’s a little bit more interesting than those ordinary tournaments. Personally, I loved it because I’m basically a sit-and-go player online. That’s what I’m most comfortable doing. I had a relatively average stack anyway, so I played relatively tight, but when the blinds got big I started stealing, stealing. I really enjoyed it, and a lot of players didn’t quite know how to deal with. I really enjoyed it; I don’t know if I would want to play every tournament like that, because I still love MTTs [multi-table tournaments], but it mixed it up a little bit and made things interesting. The same way the 20-second time limit [on each betting action] did. I liked it, but you need time to think.

RL: It sounds like players were reacting to you differently the entire time you were in the tournament as a bounty player during this event. Was this similar to the way that players normally react to you differently as an attractive female in most tournament poker fields?

LB: I have only had it very occasionally where people are coming after me more just because I’m a girl. Some players, they label me as weak-tight, and I love it when they do that, because I’m like, go for it. You have to think about what kind of image does this person think they have about me. Sometimes the age of the guy makes a difference. Older guys can sometimes be chivalrous, and they soft-play you, which is awesome, and then other times they think you don’t know what you’re doing. The younger guys have generally grown up in an equal-sex society, and they’ll just play against you. I can’t say that men play in a particular way against women, just different people react in different ways.

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