Poker News

Greg ‘Fossilman’ Raymer

Greg Raymer had been back at work a few days when he took the only logical course available to a man who had just experienced a $5 million payday.

The 39-year-old Connecticut patent attorney told colleagues they would have to get along without him and quit his job.

Winning the 35th annual World Series of Poker no limit hold ‘em championship at Binion’s Horseshoe in May gave him a chance to change his focus.

He has more time now to focus on the opportunities that winning poker’s most coveted prize makes available. What has life been like since he outplayed nearly 2,600 other men and women during that frantic week.

“I would say that mostly it has been very busy. There’s been a lot of tour and traveling and I’m playing more of the big tournaments, not necessarily more total hours of poker.”

One of the first things Raymer treated himself and his wife to were two laptops, each of which was more than double what he had previously spent on a computer.

“That was my main splurge,” he says. “My wife also treated herself and our daughter to front row tickets and a chance to meet their favorite performer Clay Aiken.”

Since the World Series he has played in the World Championship in Dublin, Ireland, World Poker tour events and the Aviation Club in Paris, leaving that casino several hours before it was held up. He played in the Turning Stone Casino (New York) tournament that was telecast on Fox Sports Net, and also found the time to return to Las Vegas for some quality time at several casinos that produced a win in a Friday tournament at the Golden Nugget.

Raymer’s celebrity status will pick up several big notches during the next month or so as ESPN begins telecasting its coverage of the $10,000 buy-in no limit hold ‘em championship at the Horseshoe. Until now, ESPN’s WSOP coverage has focused on events leading up to the finale that was played over a week. The early action in the championship event will air beginning Aug. 18, but the final table will not be seen until Sept. 14.

But Raymer expects to get a lot of exposure since he was one of the chip leaders most of the time and was on the television table over four days.

His presence among poker’s elite will get further attention as ESPN films a $2 million free-roll event for players who were voted among the 10 best at this year’s World Series. The filming will take place at the Rio Sept. 1-2, and be telecast on ESPN later in the month.

Raymer had previously played in the Horseshoe championship tournament in 2002 and 2003.

“In 2003 I was out relatively early and that was my fault. I played a hand poorly and have no one to blame but myself. In 2002, I finished about 80th and went out on a minor bad beat.”

Raymer says he began playing poker seriously only about 10 years ago. He was working in Chicago on his first job as an attorney and was a card counter at the blackjack tables.

“While I was looking for blackjack games,” he says, “I found a charity poker game and played it mostly for fun but enjoyed it and decided if I was going to do this I had better learn how to play it right so I can make money.”

He says he bought some books including “Theory of Poker” by David Sklansky and started educating himself.

Raymer has “two clear pieces of advice” for beginning poker players. The first is make sure you never gamble with money that you can’t afford to lose. The second is go out and buy some good books.

Otherwise do what you need to do to study and learn. Even if you have great natural talent at the game, the studying and learning should only improve your results.”

Raymer likes all the books written by Sklansky, Mason Malmuth and Ray Zee. “I’ve never discovered any errors of significance in any of their books. Sometimes you might find things you disagree with but you couldn’t call something like that a mistake.”

He has already signed a contract to do a tournament poker book with Malmuth and Two Plus Two Publishing.

Where does Raymer generally play when he is at home? “I live about six miles from the Foxwoods casino, so that is certainly the place where I play my live poker. There is no other poker room of any kind near by and they have plenty of good games.”

He adds, “What I play now is really what I played before. I mean, I would play bigger now, but the games generally are not available. We often get a $50- $100 or a $75-$150 mixed game going and I will play in that. We have a really good low limit hold ‘em tournament every Tuesday night and the first prize in that is often in the neighborhood of $20,000.

Stud, Raymer says, has traditionally been the most popular game on the East Coast despite the explosive growth of hold ‘em. “Personally, I don’t really like stud that much. I like stud high-low and Omaha high-low. I really consider them to be my best games, particularly if we’re talking limit poker. When it comes to cash games, I prefer high-low split if I’m playing limit, and I’m happy with hold ‘em or Omaha high if we’re playing pot limit or no limit.

Raymer had played blackjack in the Indian casinos in Minnesota while in law school and when he took up poker he recognized that it was more than a game of math and statistics but his initial attitude was to learn that part of the game as perfectly as possible.

“I was able to do that in a relatively short period of time,” he explains. “Since then I’ve mostly worked on improving my non-mathematical skills, going beyond things like starting hand charts and so forth.” Over the next year, Raymer would like to do well in the World Poker Tour events, see what he can do at the Tournament of Champions and then perhaps pick up another World Series bracelet or two next year.

He says, “It would be great to go deep into the main event and show I have some sticking power.”

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