Doing It on the River: The Andrew Chen Story

Andrew Chen, EPT Prague - Day 3

Andrew Chen first grabbed our attention when he final-tabled the PokerStars Latin American Poker Tour's San Jose event in Season 2.

The 20-year-old online pro from Toronto, Canada finished fifth in Costa Rica, banking $61,063 for his efforts, and he has a chance to pad his bankroll a little more this week in the Czech Republic, having final-tabled the PokerStars.com European Poker Tour's Prague main event.

We talked to Chen at the conclusion of Day 3.

So how are you feeling about final-tabling this thing?

Pretty good. I was short for the last two hours, so I'm pretty happy.

Can you take me through how your day went?

First, I guess I was pretty card-dead. My first table was pretty good, pretty soft. I was stealing the blinds a lot. Then I got unlucky in one hand - I'm kind of second-guessing myself about it now.

I got it in with top pair, with Q-9 on a nine-high board against A-9 and after that I was crippled, with around 10 big blinds. The very next hand, I'm under the gun and push A-T. I win a flip by rivering the ace against pocket fives, so that was nice.

And then my very next hand, where I'm in the big blind, I pick up ace-king and shove over someone's raise and I guess I just have a bad image, because the guy had been playing pretty tight but he insta-called me - which was correct, but I just wasn't expecting it.

Call me Spike.

And yeah, I also won that by rivering a king. Both times I was expecting to be out of here, so I'm pretty happy that I made it.

What do you think of the players who have made the final table with you?

I actually played with Fredrik [Nygard, Day 2 chip leader] all day yesterday and he played all right. He made a few strange plays that I guess online people would scratch their heads at, but he's aggressive and he's decent.

I played with Salvatore [Bonavena, Day 3 chip leader] and he's pretty straightforward. He's tight, and that gets things done, so I'm not surprised to see him at the final table.

The rest of them - there wasn't much room to analyze their play, but I'm sure they're all decent. But I'm not worried, really, about anybody.

How have you found the standard of play at this tournament on the whole?

I guess to sum it up, it's pretty good, I think. Soft. But kind of annoying because there are a decent number of just really crazy Europeans. Pretty aggressive and loose - well, not really aggressive, but just defending their blinds a lot, not folding to c-bets and stuff. It's good, but it's just kind of annoying and high-variance.

You final-tabled the PokerStars LAPT San Jose tournament in November. Can you talk about how that went down?

Oh yeah. It was pretty standard: I ran pretty well to get there. It was a pretty small field - there were only like 209 or 219. So Day 2 started with like 30-something players and we weren't in the money yet. I was pretty short with about 15 big blinds and on top of that I kind of slept in.

Well-rested!

[Laughs] I slept in for like half an hour and then I got a call from someone from PokerStars. So I ran to the room and two hands after I sit down I double up with A-Q versus A-K; I suck out. On the river, again.

After that, I won a really crucial pot with queens against A-K and I tripled up to a pretty sick amount and cruised into the final table.

But at the final table I took a pretty bad beat to bust out. Against pretty much the best player at the table I got my queens in against his pocket eights and he turned a straight and that was that. It was all right. At that point (fifth place) the prize money was at like $61k and that's a decent chunk of money. I wasn't too disappointed, I guess.

Kind of sick though.

Yeah. This final table makes up for it, though.

What do you do when you're not final-tabling international poker tournaments?

I'm, well, I'm taking a year off school. I dropped out. I finished two out of the four years at McMaster University in Hamilton doing biochemistry and this is supposed to be my third year, but I've been playing online for about a year and a half and I've been doing all right, so I kind of decided that school wasn't worth it for me.

So pretty much I just play online, professionally I guess.

Out of the large tournaments I only play the ones that I can satellite into - I didn't buy in to this event.

Do you primarily play tournaments online?

Half and half. I'm backed for tournaments and I have my own cash-game action. I guess cash games are kind of my stable income and tournaments are not so stable, I guess, because they're high variance.

Makes sense. Thanks for this, Andrew, and good luck tomorrow.

Thanks.

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Chen comes into Day 4 of this event the short stack, with only $309,000 to his name. It's worth pointing out, though, that chip leader Bonavena came into Day 3 action as the short stack himself, and Chen will have ample opportunity to turn his fortunes around on Saturday. Catch all of the final-table action in our live tournaments section, or on PokerListings Twitter for the win!