Richard Gryko

by Jen Mason
Submitted by: snoopy on Sat, 19/08/2006 - 4:43pm

Having finished 50th in this year’s WSOP Main Event, netting $164,932 in prize money and adding to his list of tournament successes, spread from London to Vienna in disciplines involving both two and four hole cards, Richard Gryko is clearly some sort of independent force on the professional poker scene.  I thought it might be hard to get such a busy individual to answer questions, but no – the mere promise of a Twix and we get a candid insight into his opinions on matters poker.

So, introducing the enigmatic Richard Gryko, who defies classification (in an adamant ‘V for Vendetta’ sort of way) and whose early card-playing proclivities have found him with two CVs, a successful poker one, and a dusty regular one which looks like it will remain on the shelf, behind his copy of Harrington on Hold’em.

Jen: All righty - tedious background bit - How long have you been playing?  What games did you play first, are you an accelerated-learner via the internet? 

Richard: Since I hit early double figures.  11, 12, somewhere around that.  Played draw games to begin with, picked up hold'em about a year before the first series of Late Night Poker and Omaha when I was about sixteen, just before the Mind Sports Olympiad in 2000 which I competed in as a way around being too young to play in casinos.  Won the first live tournament I ever entered, the MSO PLHE, so it was downhill from then on.  Came runner up in the same tournament the next year, proving the point.  After that it was casinos all the way.

Jen: Do you see yourself in the near future wearing any Full Tilt-esque logoed oversized sportswear?

Richard: One of the reasons I got into poker was to avoid dealing with businesses except on my own terms.  I doubt I can dictate terms to a company offering sponsorship, at least currently, and therefore I'm not interested.

Jen: Someone gives you £10k to 'invest' playing poker.  Do you a) put it online and play $5/$10 PLO or go for a few months of sensibly-priced UK live tournaments while staying at Travelodges or b) buy in to the Monte Carlo EPT and stay at the Ritz?


Richard: PLO is my weakest cash game, and the UK live scene is inhabited by people and run by casinos who I try to minimise my involvement with.  EPT it is - the helicopter ride over from Nice is fun.  I once broke my personal record for making an enemy on board that flight, funnily enough en route to the Monte Carlo EPT.  Some idiotic woman was seated next to me and started babbling about how she worked for a British newspaper who were sending her over to cover the event, followed by some nonsense about cracking a nail on the seatbelt and her fears of crashing.  I can't remember what my response was, but a couple of days later I ran into someone I know on the street and he asked me if I'd travelled over with a young woman from "The Star".  I said maybe, and he said that she'd gotten talking to him at the pre-tournament party, happened to mention an "obnoxious young poker pro" she'd met on the journey, and he'd put two and two together.  As I remember the only response I could muster was "good read."

Jen: What do you think of Tools like PokerTracker etc. - are you a detail-obsessed spreadsheet keeper?

Richard: PokerTracker is an incredibly valuable tool, especially when multitabling if you use it in conjunction with a program like PokerAceHUD (free plug), which overlays the stats of your opponents onto the table.  It’s also useful for self analysis.  You need to build a database for a fair while though before you have enough hands on enough players to make it reliable.

Jen: The WSOP:  You were the last-longerest English player, and didn't seem overawed by the size of the field or the prize pool - do you think you have the right personality make-up for the long-haul High Pressure tournament lifestyle?  If not, what do you think it is?

Richard: The size of the field never bothered me, and the money never affected my decision making.  Perhaps if it had, I'd have had a more sympathetic exit story. What I would say is that by the end of my involvement, still two and a half days from the end of the tournament, I felt like an animal, and it took me the remainder of my stay to readjust to normal life.  The WSOP brings out the best in some and the worst in most, when the pressure begins to tell.  I snapped at more dealers, cab drivers, sales clerks, and random conversationalists in elevators in two days than I have done in the last two years.  It’s important to dedicate yourself to the tournament for the duration of your play in it, while at the same time taking yourself mentally out of it enough of the time that you don't go insane. 

It’s a physical challenge as much as it is a mental one; my advice would be to figure out a lot of your life in advance of beginning to play.  What, when, and where you're going to eat and drink.  Where you're going to sleep, when you plan to go to sleep, when you plan to get up, and what you plan to do from then until you start play.  Establish a routine so that the non-poker part of your life takes zero effort to manage during the tournament.

Jen: Did you play with anyone we'd all recognise at the WSOP whom you'd give special credit as a player- any excitingly illustrative stories on that?  If not, who did you rate in general out in LV?

Richard: The thing is that as I had big chips from start to finish, no one caused me the problems they could have done had I not had them covered.  I played with very few "name" players and didn't highly rate any of those I did play with.  A couple of people come to mind who I had to devote serious effort to figuring out how to play against, and a couple of people held over me at one point of the tournament or another, but they wouldn't be recognised as "name" players.   Of course, many people who are recognised as name players are idiots.

Jen: You seem a kind of chip stack Creator and Destroyer on a pretty large scale - do you think that is an inevitable strength/weakness duo?  What is it about your style of play which lends itself to this?

Richard: I have many ideas about tournaments that are unconventional and that many people would consider simply wrong.  Those people are welcome to continue reading Harrington on Hold'em, calculating their "M" to eight significant figures and exhibiting the same amount of independent thought as the number of tournaments they've won.  If you want to read and follow instructions to the letter, go assemble some furniture.

Jen: On similar lines - how did your WSOP Day 1 chip escalation occur?  Any interesting hands spring to mind?

Richard: I lost a massive pot shortly before the dinner break that would have given me 30k but dropped me down to 9 instead.  I had two black aces against two fours on a 9c-7c-4c flop.  We got it all in, the 6c hit the turn, and Dubai came over to the table to congratulate me just in time to see a red nine hit the river.

I made dinner with just over 11k, had my mood improved by Dubai doing an impression of the American who drew out to eliminate him celebrating his victory, and returned feeling positive.  I got lively immediately after play resumed, won a few individually small but cumulatively signifiant pots to get to a level where I felt I had some room for manoeuvre.  I pulled off a big river bluff to get to about 30k, then got paper cuts from the deck hitting me in the face to get to around 90, supplemented by a couple of gifts, and won a massive pot last hand of the day to end on like 130.

Jen: Any plans r.e. Day Job (what is your background apart from cardwise)?  Playing the EPT?

Richard: I've been playing poker as my main source of income ever since I began playing poker.  I used to invite a friend of mine round from school when he had made babysitting money and he'd lose it to me.  I did have a weekend job in sales for a year and a half at the insistence of my parents, to bolster a CV I'll hopefully never have to write, but I'd win or lose a day’s salary online before I went to work so it was meaningless.  I got pretty good at it, but was always breaking rules and processing dodgy sales to bolster my commission.  I was bored, irritated at working there, and I took it out on the customers.  I once won a bet with a co-worker that I could convince a couple that they needed a SCART lead to operate the cooker I was selling to them.  Its safe to say the job didn’t bring out the best in me.  One day I quit about ten seconds before I was going to get fired, and that was the end of that.  My law degree ended in a similar "jumped before being pushed" situation.  I'm sure I will play some EPTs, though which ones I don't yet know.

Jen: You can form a team of five European only players to cover all bases game and limit wise - who are they (also the option to just play everything yourself)?


Richard: I don't like being in a team.  You are either being held back by a weaker member, or you are the weaker member holding everyone else back.  So I can dodge the vanity issue of whether or not to select myself.

Rob Hollink, because he has awesome table presence.  When playing he looks like he is just holding himself back from coming over the table and ripping your throat out, and yet socially he's, resorting to an overused phrase, one of the nicest guys you can ever meet.  He also plays literally EVERYTHING to a high standard.

Dubai, because I like the way he thinks about the game.  He's an example of the sort of player who plays by feel and judgement, and therefore can take advantage of situations that book players would never consider getting involved in.  Strong in hold'em tournaments. Very gifted craps player also.

Ben Grundy, because he is the luckiest person ever to grace the face of the earth.  If you want to win a tournament, sell him a piece.  He never loses.  Also an entertaining drunk, for the "team" r&r activities.  The only person who never loses with AA in Omaha.  Put him against two nut flush draws, a twenty card wrap, and three overpairs, none containing any one of the others’ outs, and his bottom two will find a way to win.  Never by simply housing up, either.  He'll dodge everything and win unimproved.

A Norwegian guy called Tore I met in Slovenia last year.  He had chewing tobacco permanently wedged behind his upper lip, and was equally permanently drunk, and loudly so.  He looked like a Viking invader, standing about nine feet tall, took frequent swigs from a bottle labelled "Norwegian Firewater", and was generally an absolute legend.  He makes the team just because he might beat me up if he finds out I didn’t select him.

And last but not least, Dave Colclough because he's always lending me money and so I need to keep on good terms with him. 

Jen: And finally, the tie breakers:

Comedy hat or vaguely obscenely logoed T-shirt?

Richard: Definitely the t-shirt.  I saw some great ones in Vegas.  My favourite was one I saw a guy in that was bright pink and decorated with flowers.  The writing in the centre read "Keep Laughing - This Is Your Girlfriends Shirt".

Jen: Short stack + good cards or big stack + filth?


Richard: Give me a big stack and our definitions of "good cards" and "filth" will probably differ.  In a well structured tournament with deep money, I probably want to find AA when I look down at my cards less than 20pc of the time.

Jen: Limit hold'em or PLO?


Richard: The former for cash games, the latter for tournaments.

Jen: Mike Matusow or Phil Hellmuth?


Richard: Matusow I find entertaining.  Hellmuth is an idiot.

Jen: Pick a hand, any hand...

Richard: One that it’s tough to put me on.