Keith "The Camel" Hawkins is a heads-up sit-and-go specialist, regularly playing the $500 and $1,000 NL games on PokerStars. Currently, he's one of the top-placed remaining British players in the 2008 WSOP Main Event as of Day 5 of the tournament.
During a break early on in the day, he spoke to PL.com about how he was finding things so far.
Hi Keith, how has your day gone so far?
I lost $100,000 in the second hand of the day, but since then I haven't lost a pot.
You hit a mini-rush just before the break, making the nuts twice in four hands and getting paid. What happened?
I raise with 9♦ 8♦ of diamonds, a guy calls, flop comes 7-6-x then a 4, followed by a 5 and he had a pair of eights, which was quite nice. Then the big stack on my table limped and I had A-J in the blind; the board [came] A-J-x-x-A and he just mucked on the river after calling my bet.
Last night, you lost a million-chip pot before the end of play with aces against a flopped set of sixes; what happened there?
Just under a million probably. I should've thought a bit longer about that, but I thought he was going to make the move on me whatever the board was because his stack was the perfect size for a check-raise.
And now, you've got David "Raptor" Benefield sitting to your left on this table?
Oh is he Raptor? All I know him from is his PokerStars name "Beebop." I've played him quite a few times online, but he seems to be playing quite tight at the moment.
There was another player sitting a couple of seats to your right and we saw you reraise his initial open from around $30,000 to about $110,000. He folded and then you showed the 2♠. What was the thinking behind that?
He was raising every pot and I just wanted him to know that I know he's raising every pot.
You mostly play heads-up online sit-and-gos for a living?
Yeah, I haven't got very good concentration!
What's it like playing Day 5?
I'm just running around the room a lot! Running to the bathroom, running to get a can of Coke, so I'm not sitting and watching hands much.
Are you missing playing online much?
No, no. It is quite challenging playing two-hour levels.
And how is your table playing?
This table is a lot better than the one I was on earlier, the one with Mark Vos to my left, raising every pot. I knew the table was breaking soon so I just decided to sit tight.
Finally, have you got a target amount of chips to aim for before the end of the night?
I never think about that, I just play as I go and don't worry about the average. The structure is so slow ... just take every hand as it comes and don't worry about the averages. You can worry about them when you're down to two players!
Thanks very much, Keith.
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Keith Hawkins went into the dinner break with around $900,000 in chips. Can he repeat Jon Kalmar's heroics of last year? Head over to the live updates section to find out!
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