Mike Ellis

Former City trader Mike Ellis has been a regular in London’s high stakes cash games since he turned pro in 2006. Widely respected for his solid, aggressive game, Ellis entered the poker spotlight in November 2007 when he won the first ever GUKPT Grand Final for just under £200k. Since then, Ellis has split his time more evenly between the London cash games and tournaments across Europe and America. At this year’s WSOP his skills were rewarded on the big stage when he won his first bracelet in a $1,500 no-limit Hold’em event, picking up a career-best $581,851 in the process.

Winning Big At The WSOP

When you play a big live event it’s easy to get daunted by the size of the field. You look around and all you can see are poker tables and poker players, and the mere concept of getting all their chips seems impossible to comprehend. The key is just to focus on your own table all the time and ignore what’s happening elsewhere in the room.

In the WSOP $1,500 events you only start with 4,500 chips and you have to be quite careful at the start. If you lose any chips you’ll put yourself under pressure right away. Lots of people probably play tighter early on because of this, but if you can double-up and get a stack of 10,000 or so within the first couple of hours, there is a good structured tournament ahead of you.

You get the whole range of abilities in these tournaments. Over a big field you also have to make a lot of adjustments to different players along the way, as you will meet all kinds. Sometimes you’ll be on a table that doesn’t feel like a good table – you just have to tighten up, get through that and wait to be moved to a better table. People are realising that patience is really important now [in tournaments].

From Cash To Tournaments

I still play the live games in London but I’m not making the money I used to make a few years ago. The games have become tougher, partly because the quality of play has improved, but also the economic environment has meant that some of the softer players no longer have the free money to throw away every night.

Cash games and tournaments are totally different propositions. There’s almost no relation between the way I play cash and how I play in tournaments. In cash games I play really, really solid ABC poker because that’s what the games in London require. There’s not much point making huge moves and playing with flair – sensible poker is what it takes. However, in tournaments you don’t get time to just sit around and wait for good hands – you have to make more moves. The main difference is that the blinds are a lot more important in tournaments. You have to keep yourself topped up otherwise you get blinded out.

I think some of the best players out there are the cash players. I know a number of cash game players who you never hear of in the magazines but in my mind are far superior to a lot of the more famous players. If some of those ‘big names’ were to walk into the Vic and sit in a tough cash game the regulars would be licking their lips. That’s the way poker has evolved. I suspect a lot of cash game players could become good tournament players if they put their minds to it, whereas the other way round it isn’t so clear cut.

Finishing The Job

I relish final tables. For me, the last two tables is the scariest part, as the blinds are a lot quicker, it’s usually short-handed, and one slip can knock you out. Once I get to the final I feel like it’s really game on. I’ll then look around and identify who is playing for the money jumps and which players are playing too fast.

In [my WSOP final table] people were making moves that may be technically correct in a $100 sit-and-go online – such as shoving Q-T blind on blind – but when you’re playing for a WSOP bracelet you might want to put a bit more thought into it. I think sometimes the very sharp aggressive online players treat it just like another tournament.

As long as you have enough chips to make people fold that’s the key. If you get to a point where you can shove and it isn’t going to hurt people to call then you’re in real trouble. When I was doing my shoves, I was really trying to focus on doing it against players who would basically be putting their tournament life on the line if they called, so they couldn’t afford to be wrong.

Pros And Cons

The main benefit of playing poker professionally is definitely the freedom that the lifestyle allows. I like being my own boss – that’s really important. I think I’m quite good at making decisions – that probably comes from the responsibility I had in my job [as a City trader]. There are also a lot of parallels between the two in terms of money management.

The downside of being a poker pro is that it can be pretty miserable when you’re running bad. You just have to consolidate and play smaller until you start winning again and start to rebuild your confidence.

I’m used to dealing with the stress in poker because I used to have days where I’d come home from work having lost £3m for the bank – that was extremely stressful. I’ve never over-extended myself in poker and played massive cash games, so when I do lose it’s not something that’s going to give me terrible nightmares. But when you haven’t won for a few weeks and you have bills to pay, you do start to wonder if you’re ever going to win again!