I'd have to admit I didn’t expect much from Full Tilt pro Patrik Antonius. He’s such a quiet, reserved individual. A few generic answers, a nod of the head maybe, but nothing extensive. “He’s great to interview,” claimed a Scandinavian press member. “As long as you ask him good questions and he doesn’t think you’re a donkey.” Well, I’d been up all night cooking up some trying, original questions, and it had been a while since my last eeyore, so perhaps this interview wouldn’t be a bore after all.
My secret source was indeed correct; Patrik was more open than I’d imagined. He was willing to talk about pretty much anything, and answered with a refreshing honesty that I sensed had become a recent development – a ‘fuck it, I’m just going to say whatever I want’ attitude. What’s more, he was a pleasant chap. To many, he’s somewhat unapproachable, but I found him friendly and well mannered. A tinge of arrogance, perhaps, but rightly so – he is, after all, one of the world’s best, and most affluent players. He’s best known for cash – High Stakes Poker, Full Tilt nosebleeds, etc – but we often forget that he has over $2.8 million in tournament winnings, despite only sporadic appearances.
The one thing I can confirm is that, yes, Patrik Antonius is chiseled from stone, likely by the world’s greatest sculptor. Heterosexually speaking, he’s an aesthetic triumph, and I hate him for it. You could drag him through a hedge backwards and he’d still look the same. But, if you thought there was little else to the Flying Finn beyond good looks, a shiny head and insanely blessed poker genes, you’d be severely mistaken. He might not be a Negreanu-esque chatterbox, but he has plenty to say, as I quickly found out.
Snoopy: What was the main reason for you taking on the durrrr Challenge?
Patrik Antonius: The main reason was money, as is usually the case in poker. Also, I wanted to get a little challenge and test myself. It's a new area for me to play four tables, I've never even played three before, so I had to practice for pretty much one month in January, then February we started playing. I'm pretty happy with how it's gone so far, and I got a nice price. I felt that I just couldn't turn this down. I feel like it's a really good way to test yourself. He's a very tough player.
S: Does playing 50,000 hands actually prove anything?
PA: I thought it would be enough to see who's better, but now I feel the luck can still play a part because it looks like it could go any way. Out of the eight biggest pots, he's won six, he's won more hands than I have, so I guess he's won a lot of very small ones, I've won the medium ones, then he's won the big ones. 50,000 hands, it’s maybe not enough; playing 200,000 would perhaps be a little bit more accurate.
S: What's slowed things down?
PA: Motivation is not a problem, it's the time that's the biggest issue. Even here now in London, we have tried to play, and it ends up that he has a completely different sleeping routine. Only in Vegas were we on the same schedule. He just seems to be online whenever I'm not there, and then the other way around. I honestly don't know; it looks like we've been very unlucky with the time schedule.
S: Are you happy with the way you've played?
PA: I'm happy for the most of it. I had one really bad session and I lost a lot in the space of two days. The first day I lost like $400,000. I couldn't stay awake, I only played for about one and a half hours. If I could change something, it would be that. Everything else I think I've tried my best so far.
S: Have you improved as a player?
PA: I don't know if it's affected my game. I do think I have improved my ability to play four tables. I've become better at not having that much time to make my decision. Not really too much on the whole. We haven't really played that many hands so far. He's an interesting player to play against because you can never be sure what he's holding. He can play all the hands in so many different ways. It's very difficult to put him on hands, which makes it a lot tougher to make the calls, value bets and stuff.
S: Do you consider durrrr to be the best online player?
PA: He is definitely one of the best, he's top three.
S: Do you have trouble motivating yourself for smaller buy-in events?
PA: I'm trying to find motivation. I don't like the fact that I'm not getting enough motivation. I even passed yesterday and didn't play the £5,000 PLO, which would have been a good tournament for me. It's just that I'm going through a period where the tournaments aren't interesting enough. I don't really enjoy myself if I end up doing something I don't like, so if I play, and I don't feel like playing, and I end up playing bad, I feel very shitty about myself, that I was wasting my time and looking bad. It's somehow just a little too small for me. I used to play a lot of tournaments before in, for example, 2004, 2005, and even 2006, but then it became very slow for me.
The worst thing that can happen to me in a tournament is to play for three or four days and then finish 15th. I play all that time and I get shit. It's not enjoyable. I'm so used to playing a cash game and quitting when you feel like it, it's hard to find the commitment to play for such a long time without stopping. And you have to follow how people play all the time, when in cash games you play the same guys at the high stakes so much that you don't have to watch every hand they play.
S: What happened at the WSOP Main Event? Do you agree with their decision?
PA: I missed it. I got really fucked up, but I didn't really care. If I would have handled my seat by myself, which I should have done, I would have played, but there's a lot of people who are taking care of my business, and people screwed up. I hope it won't happen again.
S: Would you like to see anything change about the World Series?
PA: Oh yeah, there's a lot of fucking things I wanna change. First of all, the biggest issue for me, and a lot of people that I know, is time. Why do they have it at the worst possible time of the year? Everyone in Europe wants to enjoy their summer: they have a holiday, they want to spend time with their family, enjoy the good weather. Then you have to go for six weeks to this boiling Las Vegas where it's too hot for the average person, and it's not too much fun. It used to be in the best possible time, in April and May, which was perfect for Vegas weather, perfect for everyone in Europe - they can have their June, July and August free to enjoy themselves and have their own time. There's nothing happening in May. I would pay big money to have it at that time, I want to play in Europe during the summer, not Vegas. I don't want to waste those two months.
The other thing is that they're just so focused on money. All they think about is money, money, money, and they just want to make as much as they can out of people. They don't care about players. I enjoy the tournaments much more over here [London]. I like the casinos and everything.
S: If you hadn't been injured playing tennis, would you have still become a poker player?
PA: I think I would have ended in the same spot somehow. I would have done a couple more years just getting better and better, then turned to poker.
S: Do you think you could return to a regular job?
PA: I could never do a regular job after what I've been through. I see a regular job as an office job. I can easily be a personal trainer, coaching tennis, even in the military - whatever I enjoy doing. It's not really about the money.
S: Do you lose the value of money at all?
PA: What comes from the sense of losing and winning money is how you spend the money. It's not how you play poker. When you play poker, you shouldn't think about money, you should just focus on making the best play and decision regarding game selection based on your bankroll and what you can afford. You just can't think about it too much. If you lose 10 percent of your bankroll, you just have to grind it back and look at everything mathematically. Some people spend their money very stupidly in poker.
S: Could you still go bust?
PA: Everything is possible, but I'd say there's very, very little chance of that happening. There are a lot of things that are more likely to happen in this world than that.
S: Is there anyone who you've learned a lot from?
PA: I've been very fortunate in my career to have a chance to play with the right people at the right time. I've played with the best online players around when the biggest limit game available to me was $30/60 Limit Hold'em. Because I had a lot of money, I had a real chance to play these players. Of course, I picked up everything very fast, but if I would have had to play $2,000/4,000 Limit to play the best players, then it may have been a different story.
I can't say anyone in particular. I've learned a little bit from every person I've played, everyone has a slightly different style. When someone first beats me, I always have to figure out how do they do it and what I have to do to find a way to beat them. These are the times when my game really improves. No one’s ever taught me, I try and figure everything out myself. That's the best way to learn for me.
S: Why are you angry with Mark Vos?
PA: I'm angry with Mark Vos because he... er.... he... yeah, he's pretty much a fucking idiot. He’s been saying things to people about me that aren't true and it's been interfering with and disturbing my work. We work under the same company, and he's been telling things to the top of the company which weren't true. He shouldn't be talking about things that he doesn't know about.
S: Is there anyone else you'd happily punch?
PA: Ha. Yeah, lots of people. There are a lot of scumbags in this world.
S: How would you like to be remembered in poker?
PA: I don't even want to think about that now. More as a cash game player. Cash game players should get the most respect for their skills rather than tournament players. The best cash game players don't play tournaments. Having said that, this doesn’t mean I don’t respect tournament players, it’s a tough job, but the skill’s in cash.
For more interviews see:
John Juanda
Annette Obrestad
James Akenhead
Richard Ashby
Sammy George
Roland De Wolfe
Jeff Lisandro
Freddy Deeb
Barry Greenstein