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Rob Hollink:

The First-Ever European Poker Champion Looks Back

It is in Monte Carlo when I approach Rob to do a cover story about him. He laughs at me, and says: “Well, why on earth would you want to do that? I am playing bad, my business has turned sour, and in the past few months, I have lost $400K. You want to write a story about the fall of a poker champ, or what?”

At first, I think Rob is joking, but I know he is serious when he mails the next day: “Rolf, I appreciate what you are doing. But I just don’t think that I am a very interesting person to write about.” A remarkable thing to say for someone who – at least in my view – is one of the brightest minds in poker, one of the most interesting persons that I know, and, not in the last place, simply one of the absolute top players in Europe.

By Rolf “Ace” Slotboom

Of course, this last thing is not just a personal opinion – it is a simple fact. Even before becoming the first-ever European Champion, Rob had already won a few important tournaments in Amsterdam, Vienna, Paris and Barcelona. In addition, he had booked some excellent results at the very few tournaments he played in the US. And not just that: At the time that he won the 2005 EPT Grand Final, he had already established himself as one of the biggest winners in the cash games around Europe.

Despite all this, very few people at the time acknowledged him as an absolute top player – and the strange thing is that even after winning the EPT, this perception doesn’t seem to have changed all that much. Bookies continue to rate him below the absolute top, because when a new tournament is there, Rob is never judged as a top favorite. This despite the fact that he is a real killer when it comes to final tables. Just look at his post-EPT statistics, that include winning a side event at the EPT Barcelona 2006, a Master Classics tournament, the Main Event at the Austrian Classics, and last but not least the $2,000 no-limit hold’em at the Five-Star World Poker Classic in Vegas.

So, how come that while some people are recognized as True Stars despite relatively poor track records, Rob rarely if ever gets mentioned as being one of the very best – even when his results suggest he should. Why is that? Well, I guess the reason is simple: the reason is probably just Rob’s character. I have played with him hundreds of times, and I don’t think I have ever heard him say things like “Gee, I played that well”, or even “I am the best.” If anything, he would go out of his way to point out how awful he played a hand, how much he still has to learn, etc.

One would expect that the media would appreciate this kind of self-critical analysis, and recognize it as a sign of strength rather than weakness. But the facts are that TV shows have picked other people as their stars, that sites would rather sponsor a beautiful girl or a brash young man, and that even among his fellow players Rob doesn’t automatically get the recognition one should expect. With this as the starting point of our conversation, Rob goes through the many changes that followed his win, all of his crucial hands at the EPT, and some strategic analysis of his current main game, the no-limit hold’em ring games. Here’s his story.

Rob Hollink & The Changes

“Many people expected me to sign a very lucrative deal after my EPT title. But the truth is that I’ve been approached by just one site – and their offer wasn’t exactly in line with what I had in mind. In fact, apart from the prize money, I have not gotten all that much out of this title at all. I got a lot of exposure yes, but that only resulted in the Tax Man in Holland to come and pay me a visit. Also, I started doing some business on the side – for instance, my involvement in Rob’s Poker Room. Yet, in the end these activities only gave me a lot of headache, and all in all I lost quite a bit of money on them. Plus, they took the focus off my game somewhat, meaning that both my play and my results suffered – simply because my head wasn’t free.”

“So, I have now decided to let go of all these outside activities, and simply focus on what I like best: playing poker. Now, whenever the TV-cameras walk up to me, I tell them to go somewhere else, maybe to one of the many guys who are eager to get their face on television. There are already so many people who like to be hyped up by the TV-stations and all, that I guess they won’t need me for that. Don’t get me wrong: It is good that we have so much poker on TV nowadays, but people make it seem as if without TV or Internet poker, our game would be dead. The truth is that indeed television & Internet have helped poker tremendously, but this growth has also been caused simply because of the characteristics of the game itself. And these characteristics are: A combination of mathematics, psychology, balls, and on top of that played for money – and all of this combined into one, exciting game. So, in my view poker is not a hype at all. It is simply a beautiful game that will still be there in about 100 years from now, albeit in a slightly different form of course. But poker is a young sport, meaning that strategy-wise we have touched not more than just the surface. And as long as that’s the case, poker will continue to flourish, and thus will be interesting enough for lots of people to focus on.”

Recent results

“The fact is that in recent months I’ve had some rather bad results. The reasons? Well, I guess a combination of getting a bit unlucky, not always playing at 100% of my abilities because of these things I just mentioned, and also because quite simply, the games have become significantly tougher. Just six, seven months ago, I would sometimes face players in heads up games that I knew were 70 to 80% certain to give their money to me – but now, it seems they have disappeared. I guess it is the same as with our former pot-limit Omaha game in Amsterdam, Rolf. After a while, the soft spots get cleaned out by the good players, and the easy money has dried up.”

“Because so many people have flocked to the no-limit hold’em games recently, I have decided to follow suit. So, in relatively little time I have gone from full-ring pot-limit Omaha, to heads up pot-limit Omaha, to now no-limit hold’em. I have to say that I find it very interesting to study no-limit hold’em, as it has so many subtleties. Fortunately, my results seem to be quite decent, especially when taking into account my relative inexperience. It will take a while for me to get really good in no-limit hold’em, but I will try to study as hard as I can to become better and better.”

Strategic aspects in no-limit hold’em

“Sometimes I need to think on a deeper level than I seem to be doing now. For instance, every now and then I choose to deliberately play my hands in a weaker manner than they really are, say in a “safety play” type of way. This may include checking hands like AK on an Axx flop. But what sometimes happens then is that, possibly because of my flop check, there is suddenly so much action on the turn that I don’t know where I stand, and that thus my own deceptive way of playing has gotten me into trouble. Often, in this situation I feel that I will simply need to make this big call, simply because I could have induced all this action by the weakness I have shown.”

“One of the hardest things in no-limit hold’em is to always play your hand in an optimal manner. No-limit hold’em looks deceptively simple, but in reality it is very difficult because there are so many ways you could play a hand. The hard thing is not to sometimes find the best play; the hard thing is to consistently come up with the best possible solution. Because that’s where the real money is in no-limit hold’em: by consistently making better decisions than the opposition.”

“Suppose you have raised with a QJ, someone behind you calls, and then the flop comes KTx. It is a deep-money situation, and you decide to check, and now your opponent checks it back. The turn is a blank and you check again, knowing that if you decide to bet here as a semi-bluff, it is extremely likely that you are going to get called. After all, there is a good chance that your opponent would have bet on the flop if he had nothing. So, now that he has chosen to check it back, it is actually quite likely that he has some kind of made hand where he is inducing you to bet on the turn with a weaker holding, or even a total bluff that he can then snap off. Now, let’s say that after your turn check, he makes a standard bet. This doesn’t need to mean a strong holding, but it is almost certainly a hand of at least some value. If you decide to check-raise here, the opponent will probably call you very loosely, as after your flop and turn checks, he will not automatically give you credit for a good hand. In other words: He will often call you here with a medium-strength hand, and possibly may call you down on the river as well. So, a better – though somewhat unusual – play that I recently figured out, may be to just check-call him on the turn, and then if you don’t improve go for a check-raise on the river. This will obviously fail if the opponent simply chooses to check back a medium-strength holding. But if he does bet on the river, this will take all of these marginal hands out of the equation: it signifies either a very strong holding or a bluff. Now, against this range of betting hands, check-raising could very well be +EV here, and I am now figuring out against which types of opponents this play could be worth it, and against which types of opponents I should refrain from it. How you should play the same hand in different ways based upon the psychology of the situation and whether you are up against a good or a bad player, is what I find very interesting. I see this as the key to successful no-limit hold’em play.”

One more time: Rob’s crucial hands at the EPT Grand Final 2005

“Coming to this Grand Final in Monte Carlo, I had been going through a rather bad run, and didn’t feel all that confident, really. And I started out rather badly as well. On just the third hand of play, I decided to muck KK preflop. A Hungarian player that I had played with in Vienna on quite a few occasions, had made it 150 to go, and out of the big blind I had made a large reraise to 750. The Hungarian then reraised to 2,700, and I decided to give him credit for a big hand. Later, he told me that he had the exact same hand that I had, pocket kings.”

“A crucial hand for me was when I had Tc8c in the big blind, and had called a raise from David Benyamine. The flop came Qc9cx, giving me a straight flush draw, and I check-called David’s 3,000 bet. After another Q on the turn, David bet 4,000, and I now check-raised him to 14,000. Having just about 18,000 behind, I don’t know what I would have done if he had moved in on me, as I was pretty much committed at this stage with my draw. After about five minutes of thinking, he folded what he claimed to be KK – and I won a crucial pot with basically not much more than an unimproved ten-high.”

“And then of course there were the two hands that everyone will remember, at the final table against Brandon Schaeffer. The most beautiful hand was of course the one where I had T8 on a TT3 flop. I had checked to Brandon, and he had bet 80,000, I think. I gave him a false tell at this stage, one that wasn’t shown on TV. Basically, what I tried to do was mimic the exact same things that players do, say, one or two seconds before they are about to fold, the same disappointment if you will. And right after that, say within one second, I then quickly check-raised him the minimum, as if to say: Well yeah, quite frankly I was about to give up – but I have decided to give it one more final shot. Brandon responded by quickly going all-in with just tens and threes, meaning he was basically drawing dead to my hand. And from what he had said later in some of his interviews, it seemed that he had indeed read the situation exactly as I wanted him to read it. (Brandon had said that he felt some nervousness, yes even weakness in Rob – which is of course exactly what Rob wanted to portray.) Either way, it was not the best of moves on his part. I already didn’t like his initial 80,000 bet, because in my view, with just about 100,000 in the middle, he should not risk his entire stack in this either / or situation, and he was playing the hand committed when he could have kept the pot small. And of course, his reraise may even have been a bit of a blunder. A pity for him, because he played very strong, and I also like him a lot – but I guess that he simply butchered this hand. By the way, we have seen each other a couple of times since that final, and we have talked a bit about different things. But strange as it may seem, we have never discussed this crucial hand. Ah well, I guess maybe next time that I see him, I will ask him about it.”

“And the deciding pot was of course when I had just an unimproved J8 on a king-high flop, when I stumbled into runner-runner two pair. Brandon had played his top pair deceptively, hoping I would bluff at the pot. Indeed, on the flop I took a little stab at it, hoping to just pick up the pot with nothing. When he called and I then made second pair on the turn, he again checked and I made another little stab – this time basically to see where I was at, knowing that by now I could very well have the best hand. Then, when I made two pair on the river and he checked again, I decided not to sell my hand, but instead chose for a massive overbet. Despite the fact that with a three-flush on the board and also a straight possibility, two pair was not automatically a monster, I knew I had the best hand. And just as importantly: I knew from the way he had played so far that Brandon was willing to pay off very large bets if he suspected a bluff. So he called with his top pair of kings, and my runner-runner two pair earned me the title.”

Five short questions for the first-ever European Poker Champ

Are you surprised by the recent poker explosion in Europe?
No – I am surprised that it has taken so long. All the key ingredients for success had already been there for a very long time. It surprised me that we needed TV and Internet for the boom to start, and that apparently this could not happen by itself.

The numbers one and two at the EPT Grand Final 2007 were Gavin Griffin and Marc Karam. You know them?
I don’t know Gavin, but I do know Marc. I had dinner with him & David Daneshgar at that tournament in the US that I won. Marc is a seemingly calm and timid player, but he has a very good feel for the game, and knows exactly what he’s doing.

The Americans seem to perform excellently at the EPT. For instance, this year it was Gavin Griffin who won, the year before it was Jeff Williams, and of course in 2005 Brandon Schaefer got second. Also that year, I think the final four players in Deauville were all American. Based on this, do you think the Americans are simply better at big no-limit hold’em tournaments than the Europeans are?
No, it is simply a coincidence. Besides, you shouldn’t forget that in addition to the online qualifiers from the US, a large percentage of them are simply much better-than-average players, or else they would have simply stayed at home. So, these results don’t say anything about the general level of play of the Americans.

Will you play this year’s World Series?
Yes, I will be there right from the beginning. However, I will not play the Main Event, as my ex-wife can’t have the kids during that time. Also, reserving two weeks for an event where I could very well bust out on day one, seems like a bit too much for me. I prefer the beginning of the Series, where there are two events on one day. I can then play hyper-aggressively on event number one, and if I happen to bust out early, well then I will simply play number two.

So, no two tournaments at the same time anymore?
Not like the Master Classics, you mean – right? (During the 2006 Master Classics in Amsterdam, Rob played one final table, yet still deliberately entered a second event as well, one that started at the same time. So, he kept running back and forth between the two tables – and in fact wound up winning the €320 limit hold’em, while finishing sixth in the €520 pot-limit Omaha.) No, not this time. But it is still two chances for a good payday, rather than one – and this is something I like.

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