Introducing New Pro: ChuckBass

How did you start your roll?
I picked up poker when I was traveling around Australia, and I played live for the first few months, dropping a load of money in true degenerate fashion. Eventually I discovered online poker and took a few random shots online that didn't go well. In January 2008 I was extremely busto and got a rakeback payment of $120 on my account. I decided to really give serious grinding a shot. I grinded it up to $20k playing low stakes SNGs. I opened my CardRunners account in April or May that year and started playing cash after being influenced by Green Plastic's videos. I did that professionally for the next 1.5 years with mixed results. I eventually decided that I wasn’t meant to be a cash game player. It just didn't fit my style and personality too well, but it took me a good 18 months to realize it. When I finally smartened-up and played MTTs in late 2009 I had great success and never looked back.

Biggest tournament win?
I won a little over $100k for winning the Helsinki Freezeout which was the biggest annual tournament in Finland this year. Online I've run fairly badly in all my big final tables and despite final tabling several of the Sunday majors, my biggest score to date is $14k for the $109 cubed. I've final tabled Sunday majors from the Ongame, Everest, Bodog and Microgaming as well as the MiniFTOPS Main and some GSOP events, but all have resulted in 5th and 6th place finishes. I'm looking forward to changing that in the near future!

What are your biggest strengths in MTTs? What stages do you feel you're best at? What stack sizes?
My biggest strengths at the tables are fearlessness and creativity. I often take weird and confusing lines and play mind games against regulars. I’m also comfortable playing the pre-flop re-re-re-re-raising game. Outside the tables I've always been hard-working and I spend a lot of time studying the game than your average regular. I’ve worked hard and feel that I am able to capitalize on tentative opponents in critical stages of the tournament like around bubbles, final table bubbles and early in final tables. I am a bit of an action junkie which works as an asset. I think I do best at between 30 and 50 BBs stack sizes. Lower than that and it gets a bit boring to be a push-bot and it doesn’t appeal to me. Between 30 and 50 BBs you can 3-, 4- and even 5-bet bluff a lot and put a lot of pressure on people post-flop which I absolutely love.

Top 5 most respected MTT'ers?
My list of MTTers who I have enormous respect for includes at least: NeverScaredB, Jymaster11, gboro780, Todd Terry and 1banditpanda. But the list is long.

The biggest mistake I see players making in MTTs is?
It depends on the player. For random droolers it's usually stacking off too lightly in the early stages while super deep. For more experienced players it's usually playing too nitty and not (re-)stealing enough. People also flat too much in spots that are ideal for 3-betting which makes their play a bit too transparent. 

Tell us about your live circuit experience?
I like live poker a lot. Last year I broke even live and won over $100k online, but this year I'm up a mere $30k or something online and I've won $120k live. Much of that is attributed to variance, but I do believe I'm really good at live MTTs and being young helps. I can't wait to final table an EPT or a WSOP. I was pretty close a couple of months ago when I finished 15th out of over 800 players in the EPT Barcelona 5k Main Event (suffering a tough beat with QQ against JJ near the FT). If people are interested, I may make a video or an article series about transitioning from online MTTs to live tournaments. 

What do you hope to bring in your videos to members?
I'm aiming to make interesting and fresh videos that concentrate around aggression and LAG play in tournaments. I feel that the internet is full of MTT videos that teach mistake-free, monotonic play that can make you money but never make you truly great. I'm personally bored of those videos and my style couldn't be further away from boring ABC, so I'm aiming to teach CardRunners members a new style - spewy LAG. If nothing else, at least you'll learn how to spew off huge stacks Scandinavian style! 

Walk us through a typical grind-day?

I wake up between 4PM and 7PM. I'd like to change this, but I can't help the fact that the best tournaments start late in the evening in my time zone. After a workout, I find some food (usually sushi). I prepare myself some green tea and start grinding between 7PM and 9PM. Since most Euro sites don't have synchronized breaks, I play for 8-12 hours straight without a break. I eat when I play and often pour soy sauce all over my keyboard. My session wraps up by around 5 in the morning and I go through my marked hands for the session. Hopefully I have my computer closed by 6AM. Once the adrenalin wears off, I am usually asleep by 8AM, and believe it or not, I even find myself dreaming about poker quite often. It sounds pretty awful but I'm not ashamed to say it; I love grinding. I go crazy if I have to take more than a few days off poker. I have a pretty addictive personality and in this case it's just a positive thing. 

What's the meaning behind your screen name "ChuckBass"?
My ex-girlfriend was a huge Gossip Girl fan and we used to watch it together. I thought this Chuck Bass character was kind of cool, and just randomly named myself after him. I wasn't really thinking it through, and every time people say "xo xo" in the chatbox in Gossip Girl style I hate myself for choosing that name.

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