Diamond Interview Series: Kruppe
Another week, another Diamond member in the spotlight! In this week's interview, we asked Kruppe to tell us the secret to winning in poker, Black Member impressions and more.
This interview was conducted by
Meet our Diamonds
Name: Christopher Stephens
Age: 21
Location: Austria
Game types: $1 cap NL - $4 cap NL, MTTs up to $30
PokerStrategy:Hello, Kruppe, and welcome to the Diamond Interview Series. For those
readers who might ask "Who the hell is this Kruppe guy", I suggest we
start with an intro so we can solve this issue.
student-turning-poker player living in the beautiful city of Salzburg
in Austria.
I grew up mainly in England, and I try to stay away from
the German section of PokerStrategy.com because I think there are very few
things that are more gay than mixing German, English and poker-speak,
which is what happens on the German forums.
Also I think it's great
that I can communicate with people from all these countries that just
ten years ago or so were pretty much unreachable.
PokerStrategy: Ah yes, the golden years... Ten years ago we only had Windows 98 and probably Bruce Willis was still saving America. So how did you find poker and, most importantly, how did you make your way to our page?
: Well I started getting into Poker when I played a sit and go with my older Brother and some of his friends and won. This somehow lead to me playing play money poker on Facebook.
This was in the winter of 07, and I started to get more serious about it because I had a friend in philosophy who had been playing on PokerStars for 6 months or so and had turned his first $20 deposit into $800 or something and we started to talk about poker a lot. He started telling me that I should play for real money.
I actually found out about PokerStrategy.com through my older brother, who has never played online poker but is always trying to help me out and had a friend who had used the $50 from PokerStrategy.com.
I was extremely sceptical of the business model as described on the intro page, but in the end it worked out. Without PokerStrategy.com I probably would never have played real money poker, as I wasn't prepared to deposit money.
PokerStrategy: It's nice to hear that you became what you are today - richer, stronger, more handsome and funnier - thanks to us. The answer to this question will probably get mixed reactions but what kind of poker do you play in general and why?
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| So I was like 'Dude, I get dealt Aces all the time!' |
Basically, I play it because I can make a good amount of money with less variance $-wise than in full-stacked poker at the same blind level, and a lower required BR. The players are very bad, and I've spent a long time making many adjustments to my game for 30BB stacks, and it seems to have been getting more popular since I started 6 months ago, so I think it's a great chance for me to specialise and really crush it.
: Oh, and I currently play the $1 big blind level, which I'm hugely over-rolled for, but a lot of variance at higher levels has made me more of a BRM nit, and I'm currently trying to play about 2k hands per day, mainly 7-8 tabling, hoping to get some consistent results that will give me more confidence in my game.
I actually started playing cap when I was struggling with variance at NL50 SH and saw a guy I knew in real life playing $1 cap, and I saw that it was insanely fishy and he was getting huge rakeback. However, it turned out that he was one of many breakeven capNL nit-regs, and after grinding a huge amount of hands he tilted and went broke.
PokerStrategy: Ah come on, we weren't laughing at you, we were laughing with you. Because Cap NL is hilarious, right? Right? Yeah. And speaking of the Black Member Party, tell us a bit more about your experience over there.
: I liked the trip to Hamburg. I got to know and speak to some great people from the community. Let's just say that is actually very funny in real life, and that thelastnail really does have super-powers. I also had some memorable/funny experiences, most of which involved getting lost on the very long car journey with thelastnail and erptech. I also got a pretty insane amount of free drinks, not only at the party itself but also on the day before, when we went out in the red light district and one of the company guys had a huge wad of €50 notes that he was buying us drinks with 🙂
PokerStrategy: What does your nickname stand for? For me, whenever I read it I think of the German alternative to the Elm Street villain - Freddie Kruppe - but I think that's not the origin.
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Bedroom cash game with English Diamonds
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: No, it's just the name of a cool character from the book I happened to be reading when I joined PokerStrategy.com. Basically it's a fat littly guy who seems to spend most of his time drinking and gambling in a pub, but is secretly a very powerful magician and master spy 🙂 none of that applies to me, though.
PokerStrategy: Yeah, well, you could become fat, for example (would be harder to become a spy, though).Some time ago you made a special challenge addressing daphunk, in which the stake was apparently forum sexuality. Can you tell us more about it?
: Well I wanted to motivate myself to grind for a couple of weeks, and I thought a good way of doing that was to force mayself to get the extra couple of thousand points needed for diamond by betting against daphunk, who is known for insane mass-grinding, on who would reach diamond first, and giving him $80 to $20 because of my points advantage. I said that he was gay if he didn't accept the challenge, although I've since realised that not accepting a points challenge on an online forum doesn't in fact logically imply homosexuality.
PokerStrategy: How much poker do you play these days and how do you divide it? Do you have some sort of ritual or lucky charm (rabbit kidney, plastic soldiers, a copy of Hustler) that you need in order to bring your A-game to the tables?
: For the last couple of weeks I've been palying about 2k hands per day, I think, and I usually divide that into at least two sessions. I'm not at all superstitious, mainly because of my studies in analytical philosophy, so I don't have any lucky charms, although that would definately be useful. I find listening to the right kind of music and not being too tired is absolutely essential, although to be honest I probably hardly ever play my A-game, as I usually make a lot of mistakes like bad calls and overly optimistic insane bluff-lines in every session I play.
PokerStrategy: Do you have a poker idol? If so, which one? If not, which are at least your favourite poker players? And, more importantly, which one(s) do you hate the most?
: I'm not sure whether I have a poker idol, which probably implies that I don't, but one player I can think of is Undercover82, whose blog I read when I was starting at pokerstrategy. There are a lot of players I look up to, top highstakes players like durrrr or Phil Galfond who seem to have an amazing understanding of the game, or medium to highstakes grinders like DrGiggy who plays an insane style and completely owns everyone.
I really loathe Phil Hellmuth Jr, as he's retarded, an extremely bad poker player by online standards and an awful person and extremely unpleasant. I also hate lots of other arrogant live fish like Joe Hachem or Jamie Gold.
PokerStrategy: How do you explain this above picture? To us, mortals, it makes so little sense, it's actually mind-boggling.
: Well this was actually one of the many
exotic locations that erptech's
satnav decided it should take us to on the
Hamburg journey. I had been driving for something like five hours and
was beginning to feel exhausted. After being lead through a picturesque
little village I arrived at this field, fell out of the car, and all I
could think of was to slowly wander towards the beautiful windmills
with a chocolate/coffee drink in each hand. I actually think this
picture is worthy of one of those caption contests.
PokerStrategy: I don't think anyone will be able to come up with any caption for this picture since it's simply too weird. I'll see if I can arrange something. By the way, what do you do in your non-poker time? Any superhero is accountant (hello Steve!) by day or something, for example.
: I spend a lot of time hanging around the philosophy department with friends from there, either doing nothing or going to some lecture/discussion thing or going out to eat, etc. Not much has been happening at university lately though, so I spend a lot of time perusing some of the best philosophical pieces, for example South Park.
PokerStrategy: Indeed, South Park did revolutionize philosophy as we know it. As a sort of final statement, what are your advices to beginners looking to be half as awesome (in poker unfortunately) as you?
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| Kruppe, Erptech, TheLastNail, Chiller3k and DaPhunk |
1. Once you've found an overall strategy and way of thinking and way of analysing hands that works at the current limit you're playing, you should still be open to finding a new strategy/way of thinking that is better or that works better when you move up a limit, and you should be trying to find a better way of thinking, even when your current way of thinking works very well.
2. How well you play a hand is not only not determined by the result of the hand, but is also not determined by the line you take in the hand. What matters is your thought process during the hand, in other words your reasoning behind your choice of line.
PokerStrategy: Beginners, listen up - Kruppe has spoken. For any Cap NL player out there, this is a very important set of advices (hahaha Cap NL, sorry I couldn't say that with a straight face). Since I never trust my memory, I may have forgotten to add something. In this case, please help me by adding anything that you think was unsaid in this interview and you want the world to know it.
: I'd like to thank PokerStrategy.com for everything that has helped me become a successful poker player, namely the sample hand forums, videos, articles, etc. I should also mention my long-time poker mentor, faulbreitner 😀 It really helps to continuously discuss hands and strategy with one person as opposed to with random people who don't know much about your game.
PokerStrategy: Thank you for your time, Kruppe, and let me tell you something: it was great seeing you at the Black Member Party. Best of luck (because you already got the skill, am I right?) at the tables!
: Thanks, hopefully see you in Berlin. Bye.
