Poker Articles

People have been debating for some time about who the best player or players online are.  A name that no debate could be without is Mark “P0ker H0” Kroon, who is perhaps the most feared tournament player on all of UltimateBet—and maybe the entire internet.  They have reason to fear him—he has won 20 major online satellites (WSOP, Aruba 14 times—including 11 just in 2004, Bellagio, Foxwoods, Bahamas, Paris twice), a trip to the Super Bowl, the UB $500 tourney 3 times, the $35k guaranteed on Paradise 4 times....I think you get the idea.

The amazing thing is that things only really started coming together for him in the last year and a half.  For years and years, he had a meager understanding of the game, he says, although he would discuss hands with others and try to improve.  It wasn’t until he got to see hundreds of thousands of hands online that his game really came together.

Before he got into online poker, Mark had been playing for many years, starting out in the $2/$4 limit games at his favorite hometown bar, the Players Sports Bar in Madison, WI, which he eventually bought.  Back in those days, a number of good players, including the great Phil Hellmuth (who wasn’t even old enough to be in the bar!), would get together every Saturday and play.  Oftentimes, Phil would win so much in this game that Mark would need to walk him to his car so that he didn’t get beaten up and/or robbed!  Mark, in the meantime, would pick Phil’s brain and learn about the game from him, which got him to really start thinking seriously about how to become a great poker player.  (For a cool story about the games at the Players Sports Bar, check out Hellmuth’s new book, Bad Beats and Lucky Draws)

When Phil won the World Series of Poker Main Event in 1989, it hit Mark that there was a lot of money out there he could be winning.  Afterall, he’d been doing pretty well in the same 2/4 games that Phil was playing, and didn’t see a huge difference between their levels of play.  Phil left town though, and the Madison games slowed down.  During the years between 1989 and 1996, Mark played quite a bit less, and his game did not improve much.

In 1996, Mark ran into Phil in Las Vegas, and Phil told him about a tournament called the Four Queens.  Mark decided to play, and although it was his first major tournament, he won the first prize of $40k!  He decided that the WSOP was next, but after getting out there to play the coveted event, he busted out in the first 3 hours.  In retrospect, he says, he realizes that he just didn’t really understand the game that well at the time.  He satellited into the WSOP a couple more times in the late 90’s but never won anything, although he felt like he was becoming a better player each year.

In 2002, Hellmuth contacted Mark and told him about UltimateBet, which was a fairly new site at the time.  Mark was hooked right away, and got to a point where he was scraping together every dime he had so he could play poker online.  “I was playing terrible, but I was addicted to it,” he says.  “I would take money out of the pinball machines in the bar and throw them into my online account!”

About a year later, this all changed, when he won the 2003 Aruba trip, which he followed up with 2 more Aruba wins worth $10k in cash each.  He was starting to really figure out the intricacies of the tournament play, such as when the right times were to move chips and how to press the screws into the tighter players at the table. 

Winning the Aruba trip was his first big win online, and when he got to Aruba, he made friends with several of the top players on UB, including Loewa79, Westtexasman, bbkings, fatcats, KrazyKanuck, beanie, KNUCKLE HEAD, and yngmanN4quiki.  He now travels to WPT events with many of these guys, and cherishes those friendships as some of his closest.

His next big win was a few months after the Aruba trip, when he won a trip to the 2004 Super Bowl, which he attended with Annie Duke, Phil Hellmuth, KrazyKanuck, bbkings, and KNUCKLE HEAD.  By the end of 2004, he had won 11 more Aruba satellites and more than enough besides them to not ever have to clean out the pinball machines again.

His goals for 2005?  He’d love to make a WPT final table, and since he plans to play 90% of the events, he has a great shot.  He believes that if it’s not him, at least one or two of the PocketFives.com top ten players will win a major title this year.  Kroon believes that because of the sheer number of hands seen by online players, they have acquired an edge over many pros, including some of the best in the world.

So how does P0ker H0 win so much?  He plays a loose and aggressive style, and often calls a raise before the flop with hands such as 9-2 offsuit or 7-4, particularly early in tournaments.  His theory on this is that he can afford to call a very small % of his chips early in a tournament, knowing that if he hits the board hard, he could likely get a huge stack of chips to play with—chips he knows how to use to propell himself to the final table.  If someone makes a bet, and there are 4 or 5 callers, he will oftentimes call with any two cards. 

Players are often found complaining about how lucky H0 got when he hit 2 pair with his 7-4, but those players don’t see the times he’s the tenth one knocked out of a tourney.  “You don’t get AA, AK, etc. often enough to only play those hands,” he says.  “I feel you need to play some weaker hands, even if that means getting in with only a 30% chance to win preflop.  I often don’t get in with the best hand, but if I get a lot of chips by getting lucky, you’re gonna have a hard time beating me, and if I don’t, there’s always another tournament coming up.  In my theory, when my hands hit, everyone will say I’m lucky.  I like them to think that, because it makes them make bad calls later.  People will call me with 2nd pair, thinking I’m playing junk all the time.  I can’t do that against a pro like brsavage or westtexasman, but I do it against players with less experience.”

Furthermore, he doesn’t criticize players when they beat his AA or another strong hand of his after he suckers them into the pot.  “If I have AA and I don’t bet them and get beat, I know that’s my fault.  If I want to make sure they win, I bet big with them.”  Despite his lack of outward criticism of his opponents, however, he still meets a lot of his own.

“The criticism doesn’t bother me,” he says of comments made by players about his lucky catches.  “Every player has to grab their own style for how to play.  A lot of players don’t have the guts to play certain styles.  My theory is to keep chips moving and keep people off guard, and then get paid when I have a big hand.”

One particular thing Mark likes to take advantage of is the period of time leading up to the “bubble” of a tournament.  He says he can tell what players won satellites to get in, as they play way too tight and a