Poker Tournament Trail -- Marc GoodwinGoodwin Speaks about Strategy, Luck, and Taking Down Pots at EPT Barcelona |
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Marc Goodwin currently sits third in chips with 1,545,000 going into day 4 of the PokerStars European Poker Tour. With a relaxed and charismatic air, this fedora-wearing, book-reading, Brit is tearing up the felt at the Casino Barcelona and taking his opponents by surprise at every turn.
Card Player caught up with Goodwin after a successful day of poker-fuelled action to discuss how he acquired his chips, the idea of more pros at EPT final tables, and most importantly, lucky hats.
Rebecca McAdam: How did you end the day?
Marc Goodwin: I had a great run right at the end, I finished on just over 1.5 million.
RM: How did you get there?
MG: The usual things, a bit of luck. I think what most people forget is that this game is probably 80 percent luck and 20 percent skill, and some of us have got 10 of that 20 percent luck. The only skill I’ve really had — I mean I got a few set up hands — some guy raised, I decided to look him up and keep him honest as they say with J-7. The flop comes J-7-4, we both check. The turn is a 7, I check, he bets, and the little bit of skill involved is that I make a really big over-bet to make it look like I shouldn’t have that hand and I’m trying to get rid of him, and he shoves on me with pocket queens. That is probably the little bit of skill — in knowing how to disguise a hand.
RM: Where there many key hands?
MG: Yeah, in a massive one I got like 600,000, and you still need good luck. The good luck was — a guy raises in early position, the guy on the button decides to flat call for 30,000, I’m on the big blind so I deliberately look at the guy who made the first raise, knowing the guy on the button is looking really hard at me, and I’m looking at him and waiting, and he looks a bit nervous, and as soon as I see him look a bit nervous, I make a really big overbet to make it look like I’ve got the squeeze-play on the two of them. I knew how much I had to bet because that’s the little bit of skill involved, knowing I’ve left enough behind to pass if I’m bluffing. So I make it 155,000 which is miles too big a bet, and the guy shoves all in for 700,000 with tens, and I have aces. That was a double up. Two hands later, that same guy, he raised with A-Q, I reraised him quite big with A-K, and he shoved on me for 300,000.
RM: They’re all just donating their chips to you then.
MG: Yeah well, it’s the tourist hats you see.
RM: Yeah what is the story with the hats you guys are wearing, you and Michael Greco specifically?
MG: Bruce (a friend) got drunk and bought us all a hat and said “wear it”, so we wore it day one. You wear it day one … now you know what poker players are like. If you asked me was I superstitious, I’d say 100 percent no, I mean I’m just not. But then this morning as I was leaving I thought, “Oh my book!” — because I’m reading The Man Behind The Shades, all about Stu Ungar, which is brilliant. And my hat, I’ve got to wear my hat. There’s another couple of things that I laughed at myself about. Like when I write my score, they hand out different pens, like normal crumby biros and these quite nice ones that are worth about 30 pence each. I make sure I get one of them and then I keep it. Then I just keep them all back at the hotel room.
RM: Would you normally be like that?
MG: You know, you say you’re not superstitious but I remember when I was playing in the WPT Championship, the $50,000 one, and I was going pretty well. Everytime I had a chewing gum, I rolled up the silver foil off the Wrigleys and left it in a ball beside my chips, and at the end of the day I’d have 15 or 20 of them and I’d chuck them all away, and I kept doing it because I was doing well, and everyone’s looking at me like I was one of these manic obsessive people.
RM: It’s like you’re afraid not to do it.
MG: I’m running well, that’s why I’ve got good chips, I’ve been lucky. It’s nothing to do with how good you are, you have to run well, situations have to develop where you’re lucky, but at the same time, you’re still scared — I’m scared not to put my book on the table — because just why risk it? It’s nothing but why risk nothing, you know it’s insane, but that’s what gamblers are, we’re all mad aren’t we?
RM: Did you have a strategy coming into the event?
MG: Yeah just play solid. I’ve got good chips, I didn’t have to do anything special, but I know the way that you get chips — the way you get chips is making really marginal plays. You’re very lucky if you get aces and the other guy gets kings and it all goes in, there’s no rocket science to that. But like I was telling you earlier, I won a lot of money by calling a raise with J-7 because I know he’ll never see it coming. And then the only skill after you get lucky and hit it is in the way you bet to disguise the hand. So the skill isn’t playing J-7, that’s ridiculous to try and play but the point is knowing I’m calling J-7 thinking I’m going to get all his chips if I get this lucky.
RM: What if you didn’t hit it?
MG: Well then I’ve got a bluff option if I think he’s showing signs of weakness. I tried to bluff a guy earlier who had quad sixes, so you don’t always get it right, do you.
RM: Is your strategy changing as you go on?
MG: I’ve been slow-playing a lot of hands to try and catch them out, where as the blinds get bigger, you’ve got to be very careful in that strategy, so I’ve been forcing the issue a lot more. People have been raising 20,000 — it’s the new thing now, instead of raising three times, they all raise two and a half. I was raising nine and ten times, sometimes with a hand and sometimes without, and they really wouldn’t know, and it let me take the blinds all the time.
RM: That makes a lot of sense though, as many European players plan on trying to keep the pots very small, and you’re putting them out of their comfort zone by doing that.
MG: Yeah, well that’s the whole idea — if they’ve got 400,000 and I’ve got over a million, I want them to know that they’ve got to put 400,000 in the middle. They’re not going to see a cheap flop, they’re not going to try and hit cards and get lucky on me, just stick it all in or pass.
RM: Would you say that you’re after a really major title like this?
MG: Yeah well, you know, I’ve played with lots of people that won them all, and this is the first one where I can honestly say has had the right chip structure to give good players a chance — I know that sounds like I’m right up my own arse, but I’m not. I just mean, if you have a look around now, there are 24 players left, and you’ve probably got 15 or 16 top pros of which five or six are unbelievably successful, you k now like ElkY, Roland de Wolfe, the guy from America who has just won a WPT Cornel Andrew Cimpan. Whereas when they make it a luckfest because no one has ever got more than 10 big blinds, anybody wins. So one week the postman wins, the next one a qualifier wins, and so on.
RM: Last season it was largely new faces at the final table, and we didn’t see a huge amount of familiar pros.
MG: Well you will now. I had a real run of bad cards early on but because I had such a big starting stack, with a 10,000 starting stack I would have been out. Gone. I hit a set of tens on the flop, and the guy made a straight on the turn and I didn’t see it coming, but he couldn’t bet enough without me spotting that he had a big hand so i just had to call him down with a set all the way, and I did like 16,000, but if it was 10,000 starting stack, it all would have gone in on the flop and that would have been the end. So there’s lots more play you can escape from hands, and the more pots that the good players play against the bad players, the more chance you’ve got of catching them, and that’s it really.
RM: What would the title mean to you?
MG: Eight hundred grand in the bank! No, ego amongst poker players is a big thing but I’m a lot older and wiser than that now, I’ve gone past that stage. If they want to say this guy is the best player in the world, and he’s a different class, well that’s fine, but when I’m sitting playing against him, I don’t think like that. I would never bother playing if I thought, he’s so good I can’t beat him, so what’s the point, I might as well keep my entrance money in my pocket and not play.
So when I play this of course I think I can win, but I reason with myself that it’s ridiculous to think I can win. Now I’ve got average chips for the final table, so I’ll be very upset if I don’t make the final table, but by the same token, as long as I don’t make a mistake, I’m not going to beat myself up about it, it just happens. You run one hand into another hand what can you do?
RM: Are you going to pick on the shorter stacks tomorrow?
MG: No, I’m going to pick on all of them. All of them! Smash them up (laughs).
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