Ranked Tournament Pro mement_mori Joins CardRunners

Mickey "mement_mori" Petersen currently leads the Bluff Online Player of the Year race and is ranked number 5 on the Pocket Fives leaderboard. This past week he won his second FTOPS jersey, taking first in Event #27, $216 Rush Limit Hold'em, for $37,344.

Last spring Mickey won his first jersey in FTOPS XVI Event #22, pulling in $86,700 for first, and final tabled two SCOOP events. First he chopped SCOOP-19-H ($2,000+100 NLHE with Big Antes) for $169,300 and then he finished 5th in SCOOP-23-H ($1,000+50 NLHE with rebuys) for $72,200. He's won countless daily tournaments across major poker sites. Mickey has also been making his mark live -- last April he won $97k in a San Remo side event, taking 4th.

His first video for CardRunners, now available, shows him deep in a $109r with some tough regs at his table. He will be answering questions for CR members in a well, and we started him off with a few of our own.

How did you get into poker?

Poker came very naturally to me. Ever since I was a kid I loved playing games, everything from Monopoly to Connect Four, and when I got older, Backgammon and Chess.

When I was 10, I started out playing the Pokemon trading game with my friends and as we got older we moved on to the popular trading card game Magic the Gathering. While my friends only played casually I started getting better and better and eventually started playing in some of the bigger tournaments competing against the toughest competition I could find.

Over the next few years I won a regional championship and participated in an Pro Tour in Los Angeles where I had the chance to play against some of the best players in the world. I ended up mincashing it, barely enough to cover the expenses but still I was thrilled.

After that school started taking up more of my time and I took a break from Magic to focus on other stuff instead. Then one day I randomly came across a WPT on TV and even though I had no idea what the rules were I had a lot of fun watching fellow countryman Gus Hansen annihilate the final table.

I didn't think more of it until a couple of weeks later where I watched another episode where Gus won again. At this point a lot of professional Magic players had already made the transition to poker successfully (David Williams, Dario Mineri, Eric Froelich and Noah Boeken come to mind) so I decided to give it a shot.

Like everyone else I was terrible in the beginning but determined to get better, I read every poker book I could find and watched all the old episodes of WPTs and WSOPs online. My real breakthrough came when I found 2+2 and became a member of Cardrunners; since then I haven't looked back.

You've now got two FTOPS jerseys, does that have any special significance?

It's pretty cool because by now FTOPS has run so many times that a lot of the good players have won one. Two, however, is a way smaller and more exclusive club. Hopefully I can add another one to the collection next time it runs ;)

Did the rush format change your play at all?

First of all I gotta say that the rush format is AMAZING for bigger events like FTOPS. I was very skeptical at first and was not at all looking forward to this event but it ended up being some of the most fun I have had playing online in a long time. One of the things about LHE is that you can very quickly figure out if you are gonna play your hand if it's folded to you which means that you can do a lot of quick-folding and blast through a ton of hands very fast. The other thing to remember is that in a lot of spots you can open slightly wider in a rush tournament because people are much more likely to quickfold a marginal open so they can move on to the next table.

Any fun hands?

I had the honor of playing a lot of hands with Quaternion leading up to the final table and he is one of the worlds best limit players and normally plays in games as big as 500-1k online. Anyways I called three streets against him on QJ98x with AK and beat his K6. It might be pretty standard for a lhe player but to me it felt pretty badass.

Do you play a lot of limit?

No I very rarely play limit, it's a weird thing though because I have run so incredible well in it. Two of my more recent LHE tournaments were the $2100 half LHE/half NL SCOOP where I got 4th and a 16$ MSOP shootout that I won, so my trackrecord is pretty good.

What about cash games?

Not really. I once took a month to try and get into heads-up cash and played about 40k hands and did pretty well (most of the action being between 1-2 and 3-6) but eventually I returned to tournaments. I would love to learn PLO and 8-game cash at some point.

 Do you play live in Danish casinos?

Not really, we are such a small country so it's tough for the casinos to offer tournaments of a buy-in big enough to be worth playing for me. It's a shame because I love playing live but I try to compensate by playing the EPT's and other tournaments around Europe.
 

 What resources do you recommend for an MTTer starting out?

The internet is absolutely crucial, I think it's almost impossible to become a top poker player today without the help of the internet. There is just so much information out there and ignoring it gives your opponents such a big head start.

I would say that the best thing you can do is join a forum where people are discussing strategy and get a membership to a training site like CardRunners. The combination of discussing ideas and concepts with other people and watching what professionals do in key situations (and even more importantly what they don't do!) is an extremely effective way to improve your game.

How would you describe your strategy in tournaments?

I'm on the tighter side but i'm also pretty good at changing gears and and using my image to my advantage. I think my biggest strength is my handreading and ability to take unorthodox lines against strong players and extracting maximum value against weaker players.

Will you travel the EPT circuit?
     
Yeah since I didn't have the chance to play at the WSOP I am pretty excited to finally get back into live poker. Over the next few months i'm planning on going to Prague, Villamora, Partouche, London, Austria, Amneville, Wien, Barcelona and Venice.
 
What's the most important piece of advice you've been given related to poker?

Remember to have fun!

Did you attend University?

I haven't attended University yet. I completed Gymnasium specializing in social studies (human society) and rhetoric, but I'm planning on starting at University in the coming years.

How does your family feel about your current career?

My family were pretty skeptical in the beginning, but thankfully they have always been very supportive and trusted me. As I've had more and more success I think they've realized that this is a legitimate job for me and not just an excuse to slack off :)

You seem very into American pop culture - what are some of your favorite TV shows, books, movies, etc.?

Haha, wow I could go on for hour on this one :) For books I enjoy almost everything by Bret Easton Ellis, Douglas Coupland, and Chuck Palahniuk. There are so many good TV shows but I'll say my favorites are Arrested Development, Twin Peaks, BSG, Mad Men, The Wire, Spaced and Sopranos.
 
What's your favorite place you've traveled and why?

My most recent trip to San Remo/Monte Carlo is the one that stands out the most. Gorgeous scenery, great weather and good company made it my best trip so far. Didn't hurt that I had my first big live score either when I took 4th in a side event for 97k :)

Are most of your friends poker players?

I don't really socialise with poker players much outside of travelling. Most poker players only like to talk about poker and as much fun as that can be it also gets tiresome pretty quickly for me, so I try to avoid that in my everyday life and save it for the trips.

What are some hobbies?

I love reading books and just hanging out with friends. I wanna take some cooking classes and learn how to play an instrument, so maybe I should get started on that!

Who are some of your least favorite people to have directly on your left?

In no particular order Sumpas, Imdanuts, Squee451,djk123 and Moorman are the first that comes to mind.

Is there anyone you'd consider a "poker mentor?"

I owe a ton to a lot of great players that has been kind enough to share strategy with me when I was an up-and-comer but the two people that really stand out are Kleath and Timex but for entirely different reasons. Kleath helped me shape and polish my game and learn me to beat the high stakes tournaments. I'd guess we exvhanged around ten hands every single day for a couple of months straight which always ended in a heated debate (and me stubbornly arguing for my side) but in the end it helped me become the player I am today.

Timex is a different story because while he might not be the best tournament player I know he certainly is the smartest. Besides hand advice he taught me a lot about how to be smart with my bankroll, how to make a good online schedule and all the other stuff that most people ignore but are an incredibly important part of being a successful tournament player.

What can members expect from your videos?

I'm gonna try my best to give some insight into both some of the basic stuff and some more advanced concepts. The most important thing to me is to try and explain why I think a certain line or range is correct so people can properly understand my reasoning behind it and then incorporate it into their own game.