Montgomery Burns!: Scott Montgomery Interview

By Owen Laukkanen Jul 18, 2008 | 2 months ago

Scott Montgomery going into the final table of the 2008 WSOP Main Event

Scott Montgomery first showed his face in the world of big-buy-in poker tournaments when he finished fifth at the Los Angeles Poker Classic in February, cashing out for $296,860 in his first World Poker Tour attempt.

Since then, Montgomery, a professional poker player out of Perth, Ontario, has added more than $72,000 to his resume with three cashes in the 2008 World Series of Poker - not including, of course, the $900,670 he's guaranteed to earn for his efforts in the Main Event.

PokerListings.com talked to Scott on the day after he clinched his final-table berth.

All right, Scott, you've made it to the final table of the Main Event. How are you feeling?

I'm feeling good, yeah. It's been a good week.

Sure has. It's been a good year for you.

Yeah. It was actually a really good day yesterday, because it was my television debut [on the World Poker Tour] and I made the final table of the World Series. Two days ago I was nobody and today I'm famous!

How does a guy from Perth wind up where you are today?

Just a whole lot of luck, I guess. I think I'm a pretty good player and I just happened to have gotten lucky in my first couple of major tournaments.

How did you get your start playing poker?

Full Tilting!

I just started playing online. I saw it on TV and started playing online and then moved over to live after a couple of years. Just happened that the first major tournament I played was the Los Angeles Poker Classic and I made the final table in that.

I've only ever been in three $10,000 tournaments - fifth in Los Angeles, 16th in the Heads-Up tournament here and then the Main Event.

So for some reason I seem to do the best in the major tournaments. It's probably because of my style, which is insanely psychotically aggressive.

Really?

Yeah. In smaller tournaments you just can never bluff people off hands, which is how I make my money. And in these tournaments, well, I bluff people off of their hands all the time. Nobody wants to risk their whole tournament - nobody but me, because I don't care. I never care.

Why don't you care?

Because I know that to win that's the attitude you've got to have. So I tell myself not to care and that's what I do.

Are you mainly a tournament player online or do you play cash as well?

When I'm online I play tournaments and when I'm live I play a lot of cash. I never play cash online. I hate the cash games online.

Why?

In my mind, the point of cash games, the winning way, is to analyze your opponents over the long term. You get the tells and you get the styles and you pick off their weaknesses. But when you're playing online cash you can never play with anybody for more than half an hour, so it's impossible to get any sort of long-term tells on them.

Picking off your weaknesses!

When you're playing live, when you sit down at a table you're going to be against the same people for the whole day and that's how you make your money.

Makes sense. Let's talk about how your Main Event played out. What were the peaks and valleys?

Well, every day you like to give yourself a chip goal, and Day 1 - I always like to try and get a big stack, because I'm a big stack player and don't play well with the short stack - I wanted to make it to $100,000. I wanted to quintuple up.

And I hadn't gotten anything going. At the dinner break I was down to $15,000 from the original $20,000 stack, and then after dinner I got it all-in with ace-king against Bobby Baldwin, who had kings, and I spiked an ace to double up.

And then I went on a huge rush through the last two levels of the day. I went all the way from $15k up to $98,000.

The second day was pretty smooth. I told myself I wanted to end with $200,000 and I'd been pretty even throughout the day up until dinner. I was down to about $80,000 and then got into a huge hand just after dinner again.

This guy raised and I reraised with ace-nine and he called. The flop came A-9-5 and we get it all-in and [it turned out] he'd been slow-playing ace-king. So I doubled up against him and then the same thing - went on another huge rush to end the day at $250,000.

Day 3 had been going okay until I had queens and ran into aces and doubled up a guy and that knocked me down to about $100,000 just near the money.

Usually in any other tournament I wouldn't slow down near the money, because that's just not how I play, but I had $100k and it was like 10 people away from the money and it forced me to fold. All I had to do was fold for two rounds and sit my chips and it would guarantee me the money.

Insanely psychotic!

If I'd played any hands, I play so aggressive that I probably would have gotten all-in, so for once I actually just folded my way into the money.

I was down to about $70-$80,000 and then I doubled up on the second last hand of Day 3. So I went into Day 4 at like $160,000.

I can't really remember what happened on Day 4. There were big ups and big downs. I got all the way up to about $3.1 million, lost it all and was back down to $650,000. And then in a half hour of play I went from $650,000 up to $5.3 million, then proceeded to lose some of that. My style has the massive swings.

Heading into the last day I was pretty good, I had $4.2 million so just below the average, and then I made this huge bluff - really stupid play, it was really terrible - with A-4 trying to push a guy off of top pair.

He called and I spiked the ace on the river to double up.

Sweet.

Yeah. It was a two-outer, too, because he'd turned a flush draw.

That doubled me up and gave me about $10 million. I stayed about even from there until we got to the final 11. And on the very last hand - someone had been knocked out at the other table - I pretty much doubled up off of Dennis Phillips to put me at $20 million going into the final 10.

And after that I kind of just coasted into the final nine with $19 million.

Has a terrible memory!

So how do you feel about those final nine players? Do you feel like you have a read on any of them?

No read that's going to last me until November; I have a terrible memory.

And everyone's style is likely to change anyway.

Yeah. There are a couple of bad players at the table, but you have three or four months to study up and they're going to improve a lot. There's no way they're going to have the same weaknesses as the last couple days. It'll be a whole different game.

Obviously the final-table bubble was huge: $300k plus sponsorships and exposure -

Oh yeah, it's massive. The difference between 10th and ninth was so big. One guy was playing really aggressive because he said he didn't care if he got 10th place, which would generally be my style because first place is what you've got to play for.

But that was a massive jump from 10th to ninth, and with the endorsement money it means millions of dollars between 10th and ninth. So I'd had enough and I tightened up. It was just the smart thing to do. I'm still going to play for first, but I wanted to make the final nine first.

What's your plan for the next four months?

Just going to travel around and play all of the tournaments. I guess Los Angeles [The Bike - we'll be there] is the next one, so that will be good.

Do you have any plans for the prize money you've won thus far or stand to win?

No, just to invest it. I just got my $300,000 not too long ago, so I bought myself a new car, put some of it in my bankroll. I had enough to leave myself not needing anything, so that $900k just goes into investments.

What do you do when you're not playing poker?

Not much! I play a lot of poker.

Clearly it's working out for you. Thanks Scott.

No problem.

 

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Apart from Chino Rheem, Montgomery probably has the most tournament poker experience of the November Nine and with almost double Rheem's chips, he certainly finds himself in a great spot - provided that insanely psychotic aggressive play doesn't land him in trouble amidst the rock garden.