Interview Transcripts

Post Final Table Interviews with Michael Craig

The 2008 World Series of Poker* Final Table has finally been played out after almost a four month delay. Read Michael Craig’s interviews with Scott Montgomery, Kelly Kim and Craig Marquis from after the final table to find out what each player had to say about their performance.

Scott Montgomery

MC: Scott, looking at the hand that cost you most of your chips, was there anything more to it than a bad read or a miscalculation on trying to move Demidov off of his hand?

SM: It was the first time we had been in the blinds together, and I know he likes to re-raise with position. So when he popped it up to 4 million, I had the kind of hand I like to bluff with where even if he called, surely I’d be 70-30. So I decided to teach him a lesson: he shouldn’t raise me every time I bet in the small blind. The first time was supposed to be the introductory lesson but, unfortunately, he had a monster. It seems that this happens to me a lot.

MC: It’s nice that you have some humor and perspective about it. What are you feeling right now? On the stage you took a calculated risk, but everyone in the world got to see that you had 25 million in chips on the line with A-9. Are you cool with that?

SM: I wish I hadn’t lost all my chips on a bluff. I’ve shown too many bluffs on TV; I wish for once it would have been a coin flip or something.

MC: What did you think about the pace and tone of play up until that time? I noticed people were raising small compared to last year, when people were raising 4 and 5 times the big blind. It seemed like there was a lot of re-raising in position – we weren’t really seeing flops.

SM: I expected it to go that way because that’s the way good players play. You don’t call pre-flop; you raise. And when you do bet pre-flop, it’s small – as small as possible. I mean, all of the players got that training – except me – and so they all played that way. And they weren’t smooth-calling from the blinds because that’s just a weak play; they were raising from the blinds or folding.

MC: What’s next for you? How does this amount of money affect your future?

SM: I haven’t made up my mind, but I’ll keep playing. I’ll take a couple of months off; if I tried playing now I wouldn’t be able to keep my concentration. Maybe around New Year’s time I’ll come back and see what I feel like. I can’t imagine what I would do other than poker.

Kelly Kim

MC: Kelly, how do you feel about finishing in 8th place based on the stack you started with?

KK: I’m obviously very happy about it. I mean, when I first came in, 8th isn’t what I was looking for. You always want to move up, and you know you’ve probably got one shot in your lifetime at being a world champion. You want to accumulate chips and try to win it, but sometimes poker doesn’t work that way. I had hands – like the pair of Kings – where I didn’t have enough chips to fully take advantage of them. In the very first hand, I picked up pocket Aces and no one limped or made a move at the pot and I only got minimal value. Those are the only two pots I won.

MC: I was amazed; Dennis had the odds to call you with just about anything at that point.

KK: Obviously, I tried to get him to call. Before that, I spent a lot of time thinking about getting Aces first hand on the button – about how optimal that would be – and what do you know: it happened. The next thing it was fold, fold, fold, fold, and I was thinking “oh no.” But, you know, I never had more than three-and-a-half million, so considering I even stayed in the game for almost four hours it’s an amazing accomplishment for me.

MC: I agree; you were very limited in what you were dealing with. I noticed in the first round – especially after your raise on the first hand – that everyone was raising small. But after that, there were re-raises instead of flat-calls. Did you feel like it was starting to become bigger-pot poker in some of those other hands?

KK: No; last year was definitely bigger-pot poker, and people didn’t adjust to Jerry Yang’s strategy. I think what should happen when you open 4 – 5 times the big blind and people re-raise you, you have to open for 16 or 17 times the big blind. None of us were deep enough to do that. I knew that this could happen, and I knew everyone was probably going to wait me out. I knew that if I played it was bust or double up. If I doubled – to about six million – I felt like people might start panicking. Its weird how tournaments work: if you noticed in the last two hours, the chip leaders all chipped up, because the middle stacks like Chino, Craig, and Dennis all had to play really tight to wait me out. Now that I’m gone, they’re up to seventh place money and every jump is huge. I think that people are going to start gambling now; I think we’re going to see Chino and Dennis gambling a bit.

MC: Was there a certain time at which you decided that you were going to try to wait it out because you thought other people were going to bust? Did you just get no cards to make a stand or did you make the decision to wait?

KK: There was one hand where Darus raised when I was on the button with 1.1 million. I had a pair of threes and he opened for 1.1 million. It was such a sick spot for me because he had been playing so tight and if I called, Eastgate mathematically should call from the small blind and Phillips from the big blind. Then I’d be playing pocket threes against four players who could just check it down. Obviously, I would love to have had that hand in the blind where I could have gone heads-up with it, but that situation was really tough – I agonized over it for a while. I mean, I didn’t take that long, but I was thinking “man, this is brutal.” There was really nothing I could do there; I knew that when I got it in, people were going to call and check it down. Lucky for me, that hand happened right before Craig busted.

MC: Certainly you’re not going to beat yourself up over anything; your options were limited from the start and you played it carefully and got your money in smart.

KK: As the day unfolded and things didn’t go my way and I never had the chance to move in over the top of anyone with fold equity. I would have just been burning chips and I couldn’t afford that. I knew the writing was on the wall that I was the huge favorite to finish ninth, but good things happen eventually. It’s still an amazing accomplishment for me.

Craig Marquis

MC: Even before the critical hand, it seemed like things weren’t going too well.

CM: Well, the five hands I had to play were AK, AQ, AJ, sevens and sixes. I might’ve made a bad call against Peter Eastgate, but it wasn’t for a pivotal amount of chips. I think I did as well as I could’ve with the amount of chips I had, so I can’t really be unhappy.

MC: I noticed that from the beginning that people were making small raises with the blinds at 120/240 to 550 or 600 and wanted to play small pots. But then it seemed like everyone was re-raising instead of flat-calling in position.

CM: Yeah, a lot of stuff like that depends on stack sizes. We’re playing deep enough that no one wants to play an enormous pot. I don’t think anyone had huge hands except Ivan and Dennis when they got into their huge clash. Other than that, it went slow because Kelly Kim had 9 blinds going into the 2nd level. He was literally playing to make 8th place; I was playing to win the tournament. I had to do something with the chips I had. Really, I’m not unhappy with it.

MC: One thing that’s drilled into you as a professional is to be concerned with how you play, not the outcome. Right now you don’t seem really bummed, like you have some equilibrium.

CM: Yeah, I understand exactly how Dean Hamrick feels right now (he bubbled this final table). How can he be unhappy making 600k? This is as unhappy as I’m possibly going to get after making $900k. I really can’t be that disappointed because I final-tabled the Main Event from a field of 6,800 people. So, while it sucks to go out in 9th, it happens.

MC: So, you’re not going to go back and say, “Oh, I should’ve played it this way,” or “I could’ve played it that way”?

CM: You can do that kind of stuff all day long and it doesn’t get you anywhere.

MC: I meant to ask you before today but never got the chance: what did you do to prepare? Did you try any simulations or anything like that?

CM: Nah, I didn’t do anything. I did talk to Tom and Dave (Raptor and Durrr) a bit. I’m confident in how I play poker and I understand the math and stuff behind the game. I really just came back playing the same style that got me to the final table.

MC: So, what’s the future hold for you now?

CM: I’m going to stick to my bread and butter, which is online cash games. I only play at Full Tilt Poker, so I’ll be grinding there a lot. I don’t like tournaments as much as I like the flexibility of cash games. I’m definitely not going to be playing every tournament on the circuit – I just don’t have that kind of stamina. But if it’s a cool location, I’ll go.

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