Gavin Griffin

Gavin Griffin is used to breaking records. Back in 2004 he became the youngest player ever to win a WSOP bracelet. And last January he became the only player ever to complete the live tourney ‘triple crown’ of WSOP bracelet, WPT title and EPT title. For most of us, though, it was the sight of a pink-haired Griffin winning the EPT Monte Carlo Grand Final in 2006 for €1.8m that first brought him to our attention. Gavin was sporting the rather garish hairstyle for a breast cancer charity, but needless to say this benevolence doesn’t extend to the poker table…

A well-trodden path

I originally started playing in a home game with friends for small amounts of money. I was losing all the time so I decided to get better. I began by reading and talking more about poker.

I’m originally from Chicago but went to college in Texas; while I was there I got involved in some private games and began to play more and more.

In the beginning of my playing days I did a lot of reading, but as I became more experienced I started to develop my own thoughts and ideas on poker.

A good deal better

I moved back to Chicago after university and worked as a dealer. I was dealing Saturday through Tuesday, and then Wednesday to Friday I would go to the other casino and play poker.

It’s a bit of a myth that being a dealer helps you improve at poker. Ten times as many dealers who decide to play poker are bad; it’s just a coincidence that some like Erick Lindgren, Scotty Nguyen and myself happened to be dealers at one time. You can learn things, but someone who isn’t a good poker player is not going to become one by being a dealer.

It can definitely help your hand reading skills though. As I was dealing I’d be thinking, ‘This guy probably has that’ and ‘That guy has this’ and so on. Other than that, being a dealer doesn’t magically make you a better player.

I also began to play online around this time. I was mostly a cash player online. I’ve never really considered myself an online player though – it was something I did when I didn’t have a live game to play.

The breakthrough

I was definitely a complete unknown when I won my bracelet in 2004. I was playing against guys I’d seen on TV and read about on the internet. But at the time I was a nobody.

It was my first time in Vegas, only my second WSOP event, and I’d only played one major live tournament in my life before the 2004 World Series. All of my other experience was in online tourneys or local tournaments in Texas.

EPT and that haircut

I was known for my pink hair when I won the EPT Monte Carlo [Griffin dyed his hair pink to raise awareness for the breast cancer charity Avon] and it almost made a return for the 2008 World Series in the form of a mohawk! It may well reappear at some point.

Triple crown

The first time I thought about doing the live ‘triple crown’ was when I saw an interview with Roland de Wolfe after he won his EPT title [to go with his WPT title] and he was on about winning a WSOP bracelet so that he could have all three. I thought, ‘Huh, I could do that.’ I thought Roland was a huge favourite because he had 55 events a year to do it in at the WSOP. I just happened to get lucky and do it first. Someone else will do it soon.

It was a proud moment to win the World Poker Tour event to complete the triple crown. It was the first time my parents had really seen me play poker and that was a really nice experience.

Online making live tougher

The nature of no-limit Hold’em is that it’s easy to become good, but it’s really hard to become great. So you don’t have many players making the ridiculous mistakes in tournaments that they used to, because there’s so much information out there.

As more of the kids who got their start in online poker have turned 21, the tournaments have got tougher. The WPT events in particular are brutal. Of the 300 players in the field about 225 will be good. I think there’s more value in the EPT because so many players qualify on PokerStars for so little.

The money is bigger in live tourneys so the ‘online’ players make the transition. Increasingly you see players getting their base in online poker and then playing live more. Nowadays you can’t really class someone as just an online player or just a live player. And there’s so much value in the online games and tournaments such as the WCOOP that the live players are also playing online.

The future

I like the European Poker Tour because you get a different flavour of poker depending on the country that you’re in. The relative age of poker in that country has a lot to say about how tough the field is. Italy is just starting to get poker crazy so the field is a little weaker, but in London you get more veteran amateurs.

I’m playing a lot of small stakes pot-limit Omaha online at the moment and really enjoying it. I play a lot of tables at once and it’s definitely an action game. There’s a lot more to Omaha than no-limit Hold’em. It’s the game that keeps me interested the most.

I don’t always see myself playing poker. I haven’t put a timeframe on it but hopefully I’ll have earned enough from poker to be able to semi-retire at some point and open a bar or a restaurant.