ENTER THE COWBOY If “Cowboy” Hoyt Corkins enters a poker room in Las Vegas you can’t miss him and you won’t want to miss him. He wears a huge ten gallon black hat, shades and earplugs ever since Phil “Hell-Mouth” Hellmuth tried to distract him with one of his legendary tirades. Hailing from Glenwood, Alabama and famous for his gloriously hand-tooled cow-hand boots, Hoyt began serious poker playing aged nineteen and hasn’t looked back. Following a great early career Corkin stepped back from poker playing altogether in 1992 during a messy divorce and didn’t return until 2003. What a return! He hauled in over $1,000,000 during the World Poker Tour of that year and has been going from strength to strength ever since. He’s worth looking out for on any televised events as he is without doubt one of the most aggressive poker players I’ve ever seen. If gunplay ever returns to the poker table, Hoyt will be the first to blaze away.
TALKING OF AGGRESSION Late last week I sat down for my regular live game. My host and one other player were very familiar to me. The other seven players were newcomers but seemingly well-heeled if designer clothes are any guide these days. We were all dealt our hole cards for a no-limit game of Texas Hold’em. I always watch to see what other players do before I look at my own cards so that I can at least attempt to gauge reactions etc., if there are any. I ended up being disappointed with this tactic. One of the unknowns didn’t look at his hole cards at all and simply made a strong bet. Now that’s what I call aggressive. I won’t take up space with a blow by blow but suffice to say Mr “Bet-it-Blindfolded” came out a winner more times than a loser and completed the evening with the biggest stack. On two separate occasions he didn’t look at his hole cards until the flop came down. Intimidating. I guess that was the point.
PLAYING A TIGHT GAME Probably one of the best exponents of “tight” play is “Action Dan” Harrington. He is held by many professionals to be the tightest player in the world. The disadvantage with tight play is that after a couple of showdowns where you win with monster hands other players will have a “read” on you and you won’t get paid off unless you find yourself up against another big hand. The major advantage of having built a genuinely tight image was demonstrated perfectly by “Action Dan” during the 2004 World Series when he re-raised a re-raise with a ridiculous Eight-high and stole a massive pot! This is known as a “squeeze play” and only paid off because of Dan’s robust image as an extremely tight player. In a sense the real pay-off from building a tight reputation probably comes more from the occasional giant pot you literally steal from a wary opposition than from the tight play itself.
