Poker Articles

A.) I played in the World Series main event this past
summer, two 1.5K events there, and the most recent
Foxwoods WPT. I won satellites for all of them.

Q.) The field was very young and laden with online
qualifiers, what was your strategy coming into the
tournament, and how did it work out?

A.) My honest strategy coming in was to play my best and
likely be on the beach with my sister when she arrived
on Monday. Realistically that’s what I planned for,
but I was certainly prepared. I read Harrington Volume
III in my first two days there and constantly analyzed
my play during the breaks and after play was over each
night.

Q.) Some of the younger players with less live experience
seemed uncomfortable at the tables. You on the other
hand seemed calm at all times. Do you think you had an
advantage over some of the less experienced live
players?

A.) I used to host weekly home games in college (NIU),
have been to Vegas about a half dozen times and play
all around the city, so I definitely love playing
live. But I’m also a big fan of Internet poker and
feel if someone is successful online they can be a
killer live as well, so I respected everyone’s play
equally.

Q.) Your finish earned you almost a quarter of a million
dollars. That is a lot of money – but you were back at
your desk at the Chicago Sun Times right after the
tourney. Do you plan to continue to work and play
poker on the side, or was this a breakthrough cash
that is going to propel you to being a full time poker
player?

A.) That’s a good question and one that I have yet to find
an answer to. I’ve done pretty well for myself in
poker even prior to this and the past few months I’ve
set a figure of 25K in my head and if I got a
tournament score higher than that I would use that as
a sign to quit and focus on poker full time. But right
now there are just so many question marks out there
with poker, specifically the future of online. If I
didn’t enjoy my job, I would've been long gone. But I
really do have a nice gig at a huge paper and I work
with a lot of really cool people so I’m not in a rush
to make any hasty decisions. On that note, I’ll
probably quit and move to Vegas next month, ha.

Q.) The hand that busted you out was by all means a bad
beat. I know you aren’t the type to complain, or even
tell bad beat stories, but walk us through the hand
from start to finish, and go through your reactions
afterwards. We have all taken some tough beats, but
few of us have ever been 3 outed on the river for
hundreds of thousands of dollars.

A.) We are still six-handed at the television table after
about two and a half hours of play and Robert Ford
puts a little more than 3X raise of 280K from under
the gun. I’m immediately next to act and look down at
KK. To start the hand I had about 1.5 million.

I could’ve done a 3X raise to about 840K, but then I
figured he’d fold all but AK, JJ and better. With the
blinds about to shoot up again (they go awfully quick
to induce action and make it more interesting for TV)
and with a hand this strong and my smallish stack
(Robert Mizrachi was the only one lower than me at
this point) I wanted action from AQ, AJ and TT or
lower, even if it was just a small continuation flop
bet that I could come over the top. Not to mention it
created a nice potential for someone else to make a
squeeze play.

So, I smooth call and everyone else
folds. The flop comes J99 and he leads out into me
with an all-in push. I almost insta called knowing I
was ahead and he flipped up AK. The turn was a blank
and the river was that beautiful ace of hearts
(sarcasm intended).

Honestly, I wasn’t that mad and
the post-tournament interview with the super hot
Sabina Gadecki didn’t hurt either. It’s not as if I
wasn’t angry because I was satisfied to get that far,
because I certainly felt like I could play on a
comparable level with everyone at that final table. If
I win that hand, I’m up to about 3.5M and second in
chips with position on the chip leader at the
time(Isaac).

I feel it’s really a sign of an expert player to
always keep an even keel at the table and not get
emotionally involved in any hands – even if they are
potentially for a million dollars. Now, if I ever get
rattled at the table again and get close to tilting, I
can always go back and say if that hand didn’t mess
with me, nothing else should.

Q.) Other than the hand that eliminated you, what were
some other key hands in the tournament for you?

A.) No real big suckouts along the way, but the biggest,
not so much for the value of the hand, was my AA
versus BigRiskky (Scott Clements) at the final
10-handed table. I got a lot of criticism on the
message boards for supposedly slow rolling him when he
pushed all into my big blind with TT. An online site
kind of portrayed me as slow rolling the aces and even
if you were there in person I asked for an
approximation of his chip count before calling. But
while I did all that, I had yet to look down at my hand
and wanted to get a range of calling hands, which was
going to be 99,AQ or better as he was getting kind of
low. Once I saw the aces, I called immediately.

Q.) Over five days of play, did you have any plays looking
back on you wish you had not made or that you think
were mistakes?

A.) I’ve thought of different ways I could’ve played the
final hand with kings. But in retrospect I am
perfectly comfortable with the way I played it, not
being results oriented. I got all my chips in the
middle as an 86% favorite, so I’m fine with
that.

Q.) You were able to spend a week in the Bahamas, with
some of the most respected poker players on the
planet, both from live and online play. Did you have
any interesting interactions outside of the poker
room?

A.) I met some really nice guys on the plane ride there
and a few while playing during the tournament, but
outside of that I didn’t really talk to many players.
I enjoyed the whole atmosphere though. It was kind of
like a big family reunion where everyone seemed to
know each other.

Q.) You had some friends and family in the Bahamas with
you. How important was it to you to have their
support?

A.) I had two friends catch a red eye flight out of
Chicago the night before the final table, then they
got a rental car from Miami to Ft. Lauderdale and
slept in the airport before getting the first
morning flight out to Nassau. So that meant a lot that
they went through all that trouble. And my sister and
cousin were there already as a vacation.

But the first four days I had the room all to myself and looking
back that was actually kind of crucial for me. I was
able to just relax and had a lot of time to think and
analyze my play and strategy. Plus, I was on a really
goofy sleep schedule of sleeping for a couple hours at
a time. So it was nice not to have to tip-toe around
not to wake anyone.

Q.) So, what is next up for you in poker, and life in
general?

A.) I’m definitely going to the WPT L.A. Poker Classic in
late February. Up until then I’ll just be playing
around Chicago and online, but with my job I usually
only get to play the big Sunday tournaments and the
occasional ones during the week. My job is definitely
negative EV, ha.



I would like to thank Frank for taking the time to tell us all about his tournament experience and to add that he truly is a class act, both at the tables and away from them.  Congratulations to Frank on his success at the PCA and we hope to be covering him a lot more on PocketFivesLive.


Frank Rusnak writes for the Chicago Sun Times.  For his own article about his experience at the PCA and his poker career, please follow this link: http://www.suntimes.com/sports/sundaydrive/209940,CST-SPT-drive14.article.