Tournament Trail Q and A -- Daniel O'BrienThe Rising Star Talks About His Journey into the Poker World |
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Daniel O’Brien has cashed in three of the last five World Poker Tour events. He finished in 33rd place at the Five-Diamond World Poker Classic in December 2008, he finished in 24th place in the L.A. Poker Classic in February 2009, and most recently he finished in 11th place at the Bay 101 Shooting Star in March.
O’Brien keeps inching closer to his first major tournament win while posting some of the most consistent results in tournament poker these days. He came closest to his first big score when he finished in third place at a $2,000 no-limit hold’em event at the 2008 World Series of Poker, and because that event attracted a massive field of 1,344 players, the cash is by far the largest for O’Brien at $198,132. He now holds $445,017 in career winnings by cashing 17 times since the 2006 WSOP. He has also made five final tables during that stretch.
Card Player caught up with O’Brien in San Jose, and he talked about how he got his start in the game.
Ryan Lucchesi: How did you get your start playing poker?
Daniel O’Brien: I got my start freshman year of college. I watched Rounders, didn’t know what Texas hold’em was, and didn’t even know what the burn card was. So, we looked it up and then started playing in the lounge at school. All of the guys in my lounge played all the time, every single day. Within a few weeks, I realized I could make some money doing this; I realized that skill was involved. I started reading and gathering whatever books I could.
RL: After you realized you could win, how did you take your game to the next level?
DO: The second semester, I went and started playing at another kid’s dorm for a $20 buy-in, five-six nights a week. I made $1,500 that semester, which was huge. I had $1,000 rolled up in twenties in the back of a picture frame. I thought I was Matt Damon. They wouldn’t play with us the third semester, so I put $50 on PartyPoker and started to run it up. I started making $500 a week, and then $500 every three days, and then I was cashing out every other day. I was putting a lot of time into that. Then I started playing tournaments online; I was probably pretty awful at first. I hit a couple of decent online scores. I just used the roll I had from cash games and built it up to $150,000 during college. More in the cash games, for sure.
RL: What did you do after college with that kind of bankroll?
DO: I was going to start playing cards right away, but I got this job offer coming out of college to be a trader on Wall Street and decided I couldn’t pass it up. I went and played the World Series in 2006. I bought in for $10,000 with money that I should not have spent, but I took 349th in that and took home $35K, which was big for me at the time. Then I went to work for a year on Wall Street. The people who I worked for knew I was a card player. That is what influenced them to hire me. I went to the World Series again the next summer, and although I only came away with $5K, which wasn’t really much, I knew I could make a lot of money playing cards, and coming back to work after two weeks in Vegas was awful, so I told my boss I was out.
I drove to California and played some low-limit tournaments at Commerce and played in some LAPC events. I grinded online, mostly at $1-$2 no-limit hold’em, and just built up my game. Then I started playing more tournaments. Last year at the World Series I took third in a $2K no-limit hold’em event, which was huge; that really doubled my net worth. From there, I started playing more big tournaments. I’ve been on a pretty decent run in the WPT events lately.
RL: Do you still feel like you’re under the radar and that you can use that to your advantage?
DO: I’m definitely under the radar, for sure, but I guess I’m becoming a little more recognizable. If you come in here as a 24-year-old kid, people just assume you’re some Internet genius. Right now, I’m just playing Sunday tournaments online; I can’t grind tournaments full time online, it’s just too much of a drag, and it’s just such a grind, I get so sick of it. So, I play the live ones whenever I can, and I play on Sundays because there is a lot of value there and a lot of reward. Daily, I’m going to start playing more cash games, no-limit hold’em and PLO [pot-limit Omaha] games. I like to play bigger in mixed games like razz and deuce-to-seven. I have to get more of a cash strategy going. Being a professional tournament player is very tough. Unless you hit a first, second, or third-place finish early on and are able to carry that success through, you almost have to go broke.
I don’t think I’m some amazing player against some of the best in the world; I think that my biggest attribute is that I really shift gears depending on who I’m playing with. On the first day of the tournament, I’m looking to get into any pot with all the bad players at my table, regardless of my two cards, and just outplay them. If it’s a tough table, I have no problem laying low and playing straightforwardly for a while. I just try to play straightforwardly and pick up any edges that I can. I try and get into the heads of my opponents as much as possible.
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