Poker Tournament Trail Q and A -- Ludovic LacayLacay Talks About Holding a Large Stack in Big-Time Events |
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Ludovic Lacay is no stranger to holding a large chip stack during a huge poker tournament. His aggressive style allows him to collect chips quickly, and he then wields his stack as a weapon against opponents. He was among the chip leaders for many days during the 2009 World Series of Poker main event, where he eventually busted out in 16th place ($500,557). Lacay also held a large stack in the 2009 European Poker Tour Grand Final before busting out in 21st place ($67,600). He now holds more than $1 million in career winnings, and it should just be a matter of time before he breaks through to win his first major career title.
Card Player caught up with Lacay during the WSOP main event this summer, and he talked about the experience, as well as playing deep-stack poker for the highest tournament stakes in the world.
Ryan Lucchesi: How important is it for European players to have success in the main event in order to show the rest of the world the skills you guys have?
Ludovic Lacay: It’s definitely something you want to do at least once in your life. Especially with the main event; you don’t get a chance to do this too often, so when you’re a good player and you’re doing well in this tournament, then you have really high expectations. You really want to go deep just once and see if you can win the tournament.
RL: The Frenchmen who are still around have really rallied behind you here in this tournament. How important is that support with so much on the line?
LL: It’s very important to have some people who are cheering you on when you win and then telling you it’s OK, and you’re going to come back, when you lose some big pots. When you lose five pots in a row, you just want to get up for a few minutes, and after you talk to them you really feel better. It’s really hard to be lonely and running bad.
RL: You have been among the chip leaders in the main event for a couple of days. Is that a comfortable position for you, or do you feel more pressure?
LL: I’m used to being the chip leader in tournaments, because I’m very loose-aggressive. I really like playing the table captain, but today is very different, because the pots are very big and the antes are big. When they raised the antes to 10,000, that made all of the pots very big, so you have to be careful, you have to not create monsters preflop. I’m trying to be a little tighter. I really feel good about this tournament.
RL: At this point, are you trying to project the aggressive table image you have earned during the whole event while pulling back enough to not expose yourself to too much variance?
LL: It really all depends about who is at your table. The players at my table call a lot, and they want to see flops. When you play against these people, your only edge is to play very tight. I’m playing fairly tight; but I still open a lot of hands.
RL: What boost does your strong showing in the main event give to the growth of French poker?
LL: I think it is big, because the market is going to open soon. A lot of French players are getting better in France because of all of the forums. I think it will be great to have a French player at the final table.
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