ESPN Poker Blog

Posted by Steve Rosenbloom

"Hopefully," he said while sitting in the PokerStars suite before he played his first day of the 2006 World Series of Poker main event Sunday, "it'll be a better story in two weeks."

Indeed, the 2004 World Series of Poker champion looks to do it again this year, and no matter that the field threatens to hit 10,000 strong, he likes his chances. Sort of.

"Now is when the field is going to be weaker than it ever has been in the past and probably than it will be in the future," Raymer said. "Chances of my repeating are 1 in 2,000, if that. That means I'm a huge long shot to win the title this year. For most tournaments with smaller fields where most of the players are experienced, I figure I'm going to win twice as often as average, maybe even three times as often. Because we have so many inexperienced players in the main event, I'll give myself five times the chance of the average player, so that's roughly 2,000-to-1 (if the field hits 10,000)."

Ethan Miller/Getty Images

Greg Raymer is looking to make another impressive run at the main event

If short-term momentum is your barometer, then Raymer has some of it working after finishing fifth in the No-Limit 2-7 Draw Lowball event and collecting $93,124. That's one of a handful of events where the pros reckon to determine who's really the best among them because every table looks like an All-Star team.

But as for long-term momentum in this World Series, not so much. Just two cashes.

"In terms of tournaments, it's been quite bad for me," he said. "Just bad luck. I'm very happy with how I've been playing the entire Series. While I certainly haven't played every hand perfectly, every hand where I've gone broke, I'm happy with how I put my money in the pot. I believe I made the right decision on the final hand in every event.

"Now, if I had made a couple decisions better earlier in each of these events, maybe the final hand wouldn't have busted me, or maybe I would've gotten away from it before I went broke. It's not that I couldn't have improved my performance and done better, but I still feel like I was playing good, smart poker a large majority of the time in every event."

One thing, though. Raymer has found that he has had to play a different style of poker a large majority of the time, as well. He calls more, he said, and he bets and raises less. And forget about bluffing.

"My bluff equity is as low as anyone in the field, especially when we play these big-field events with inexperienced players," he said. "A lot of them come in with the idea of "I can't win and I probably can't even make the money. I'm here for the experience." And playing a big pot against someone they know really well from television is such a great experience that they're more than happy to put their money in badly, knowing they're putting it in badly, just so they can play that big pot. And whether they get lucky or not, they have a big story to take home to their friends.

"I've been called in spots where you would just say, 'Wow, how would anyone make that call?' I might even tell you, 'This guy was playing well,' then he puts all his money in against me with pocket deuces.

"It's like a guy thinks, 'I know I'm going to go home and my friends will ask me how I did and I won't make the money, but I can say I made it to Day 2 before I got knocked out and it took a world champ to do it.' "

So, that's where the Greg Raymer story is today. Sort of. Because there's more. Perhaps the best way to asses where the Raymer story is today is to go back to where it was in 2004.

"I think the first time someone asked me for an autograph was the penultimate day (of the 2004 main event)," Raymer said. "I'm chip leader. We had a dozen or 14 players left and we were going on a bathroom break and I was walking past the ropes and through the crowd, and someone was like, "Can I get your autograph?' I was like, "Are you kidding me? What do you want my autograph for? I'm just a patent attorney who's doing well in a poker tournament."'

One day later - and for the next 12 months - everybody wanted an autograph. Or a picture. Or just to shake the hand of the $5 million man. The low-key patent attorney from Connecticut was poker's biggest winner, it's reigning champion, it's ambassador. And he took to the responsibility brilliantly. "Everyman" proved to be a man of the people and a man who was good to the people, everyone of them who constantly asked for a small piece of him.

Then last year, Joe Hachem won it all. It was his turn to do the grip-n-grins. Raymer was in the background, right?

Not so fast.

"Things have actually been bigger or more in the last year," he said of his first 12 months as an ex-champ. "I get recognized more often. I get more requests for photos and autographs. The reception by the fans has been even more dramatic, more intense in the last year I think just because they've seen me that much more often on ESPN and on these other shows.

"People put me and Chris Moneymaker (the out-of-nowhere Nashville accountant who won a seat online and then won the 2003 main event and a then-record $2.5 million) in the same category. They say, 'Oh you're everyday guys. We feel like we can relate to you. You make us think we can do it, too. So, we want you to go out there and win again because that makes us feel that not only can we do it, but we can do it again and again."'

In the last year, Raymer moved his family to North Carolina, made a lot of appearances and played a lot of big tournaments. But he didn't play as much poker as he was used to.

"I used to play on the Internet everyday and I used to play at Foxwoods or Mohegan Sun once or twice a week and traveled to one or two big tournaments a year," he said. "Now I travel a lot and play in these big events, but when I'm not in these big events, I usually don't have any time to play. I'm giving interviews like this. I'm doing paid appearances for corporations and casinos. The time isn't there."

You might think that less poker would hurt Raymer's game the way many players said their poker playing suffered when business opportunities took them away form the table.

But no.

"I don't think my game is any worse than if I'd played more," he said. "Plus, before I won, I played relatively high stakes, but not in the bigger games. I wasn't playing $400-$800 before I won the main event, and now I do. I play against those players and that's helped my game quite a bit.

"I'm not as good as some players, and I want to be the best, but it's not like I'm upset that I'm not there yet. I don't ever expect to get there. It's an ongoing process."

Another ongoing process is the way the pros have accepted and shown respect for Raymer. Many known pros scoffed at him when he won the way they did Moneymaker after he won. A fluke, they thought. A guy who got lucky. Let's see him do something like that again.

Turned out, he almost did.

Raymer navigated through last year's mind-boggling field of more than 5,600 players to finish 25th, a stunning accomplishment that was rewarded with a standing ovation by fans and players alike, including some top pros, in Benny's Bullpen at the Horseshoe.

Understand, that is the type of response that legendary Doyle Brunson gets when he busts out of the main event. And here was Raymer exiting to a similar loud applause. It underscored the way the public had felt about him for the last year and served as a landmark for the way many pros were grudgingly turning.

"In term of the public, I've gotten a great reception the whole two years," Raymer said. "But I do hear more and more from the general public that "You've proven yourself. You've done well in the main event. You've done well in other events. You've proven yourself." That's nice.

"In terms of the pros, though, the statistic that hit them the most was after the first preliminary event of this year's World Series, I had cashed in every event ever held with more than 2,000 players. That wasn't counting Internet tournaments. This was live events. There had been five such tournaments to that point: the 2004 main event, three events in the 2005 World Series, and the first event here in 2006.

"Unfortunately, we had events Nos. 6, 7 and 8 that fit in that category and I didn't cash in those, so I can no longer say every event. But several places published that I was 5-for-5, and I had many of the pros coming up to me and saying, 'Wow, that has to be tough to do. That's very impressive. I didn't know that."'

There are other reasons the pros now give him a good deal of respect. Mostly, it's that they've logged some hours at the table with him.

"It's been two years and they've played with me at one event or another, and they say to me, 'Yeah, you really are a good player,"' he said. "After I won the main event, I played in the (World Poker Tour) Championship with Phil Hellmuth most of the day, and at the end of the day, he kind of pulls me over and whispers in my ear and shakes my hands and says, 'You know, I was really impressed, Greg. You are a good player.'

"So, it's very nice to hear those things from people who are good enough to be good judges of the truth. But for me, whether they feel that way about me or not, I'm still a happy person."