Paulie Hockin recently ticked off another big win for kiwis in 2010. On Monday he took down The Party Poker Sunday Million Earning an over $200,000 USD Payday. PokerNZ Caught up with him to ask how life is as quarter millionaire living in H-Town, and let’s be honest, we wanted to find out if he had any tips on how WE could win all that loot. PNZ: How long have you been playing poker, and how long have you been grinding mate? Paulie Hockin: I started playing poker about 4 years ago when I was invited to play a freinds home game. The home game ran every friday, it had a $5 buy in and boasted a whopping $25 prize for first place (big money to poor students). When we first started I was by far the worst player there, I remember the first three weeks being the one out first , always heading off home down $5 and wondering how I could have gotten so unlucky, I mean surely getting it all in with 99 on a A,K,4 flop is a good move right?….. how can i possibly be beat?……. I started with a PAIR. The flat we played eventualy broke up, and so did the home game but by this time a few of has had moved on to being and better things, in the form of pub poker, and a wee bit of of online. Over the next year or so I played alot online, trying to grind up a balance playing the $3.40 sitn goes and $4.40 180 man tournies on pokerstars and the occasional micro stakes MTT. After about 1 year of playing online I was able to regularly win at the low stakes and have never really looked back since. I was studying uni as well as playing poker back then, at first more study then poker, and then about 50/50 and then prety much just poker. I remember heading into the computer labs one night to do a 2000 word essay due the next day, i hadnt started because most of my week had been spent playing online poker. Unfortunatly one of my friends had discovered how to save the pokerstars software to our student harddrive, I was only kidding myself that night as opened up microsoft word before opening up 4 tables of poker, ended up getting no words written down, but made the realisation that uni probably wasnt for me and decided to pursue a career in poker.

PNZ: Are you playing full time? How Many hours a week? Paulie Hockin: I currently play full time poker for a living. Monday is a always a big day for me because all the sunday majors (Sunday Afternoon US time Monday morning NZ time) are on so im up at around 5am and wont finish playing till about 5pm for a solid 12 hour session. During the rest of the week I will put in 3 more tournies sessions of around 8 hours each, but I have no set days or routine for this, speaking from experience trying to force yourself to play when your tired or not in the mood will usually result in a sick tilt off at some stage as your not as mentally prepared to handle bad beats,coolers and other brutal situations which the wonderful game of poker loves to dish out from time to time. I remember playing tired one day getting my AhAs in against 10s10d on a three heart flop  it was on the final table bubble for a crucial pot,. the river came giving him the 10c for a sick one outer leaving me with no chips and no keyboard as that was now lying in 3 peices having taken a serious beating against the wall. This resuled in more tilt as I had to continue battling on the rest of the touraments i was in with no keyboard unable to type in bet amounts. Ever since then I always play with spare mouse and keyboard on standby.? PNZ: What networks? Paulie Hockin: Mainly pokerstars, fult tilt, and party poker, but I have accounts on pacific bodog cake and carbon poker mainly just to play their sunday major tournaments which a are quite soft considering the buy ins and often have an overlay in the prize pool I find that smaller ones linked with gambling websites have more fish in them eg pacific poker on the 888 network

PNZ: Are you living in one of those crazy 6 poker players per room houses? Paulie Hockin: haha na , at one stage I was flatting with james honeybone and daniel frances who are both well known new zealand poker players,since then flat ive just flatted with friends from school which has worked out well, cause they were all prety understanding of the fact that online poker players strugle to function as normal humans, always up at random hours of the night, screaming out stuff like “Get There” “Hold” and “Ship It” The second half of the year I decided to do some traveling and i was too stingy to pay rent and hotel bills so I moved back to mum and dads haha, I was playing at their place when I won the US$200K

PNZ: What’s your preferred game? (Size, MTT, Cash,etc) Paulie Hockin: I enjoy playing MTTS the most, I dabbled in cash games for a while and whilst I think they are the best if you want to make a solid and consistant income from poker I found them a bit repeditive and boring so I got back on the mtt bandwagon. My usual working day consists of playing about 15 mtts with buys in of between $20-$100

PNZ: How would you describe your online game? Paulie Hockin: In general I play a loose agresive stlye, but obvoiusly the way im playing is situational, depending on how the other players are playing, stage of the tournamnent we are in, and the size of my stack in comparison with the blinds and others at the table.

PNZ: Does your game differ live? Paulie Hockin: Im More timid in live poker, its alot harder to pull the trigger on a big bluff in a live game knowing that if your opponant calls you have to emmbarrsingly turn over your hand,and if its for all your chips make the walk of shame out of your seat to the rail compared to online where you just sware at your computer screen and load up another tournament.

PNZ: How has your year been going so far in terms of poker? Paulie Hockin: Overall this year has been a really good, In January I had my second ever 5 figure cash winning the sunday major on carbon poker for US$11,500, the  next few months after this were tough though, I had no good wins at all and for the first time ever since playing fulltime I had a couple of loosing months. I didnt know it at the time I was making quite a few mistakes in the mid stages of tournamnents. Frustrated with where I was heading I decided to revisit www.pokerxfactor.com a site that offers a ton of online training videos. Having watched a heap of them I was able to spot the main leak in my game which was open raising to much and not reshoving enough. Since then poker been great, in the last two weeks ive made 6 final tables, only managing to win one of them but that was the $200K win soo I guess I got lucky and ran good at the right time. Tourney was a $640 buy in but i qualyfied the night before for $70 so 200K is quite a nice return on that investment.

PNZ: How did you run in the tournament? Early double ups? How was the final table? Paulie Hockin: To win any tournament you have to run good, and I ran like Usian Bolt. Right from the start I was lucky enough to get some nice donations from donks that had no idea,I had two massive flips which ultimatly won me the tournament. The first came when we were down to the last 2 tables, and i picked up my favourite hand j9 of clubs under the gun. I raised to 2.5x and got a smooth call from the button. Flop came down 9 high with 2 clubs so i floped top pair and a flush draw, an absolute monster. I lead out for half pot and the guy just open jammed his whole stack in the middle which was quite an overbet of the pot. The fact that he has bet so much means he doesnt want a caller so his range is a almost always asmall overpair like 10s-QQ or a flushdraw at very worst im 50/50 so I called and he turned over the pocket tens, turn was a club and I scooped a monster put to take the chip lead going into the final table. The next big hand came heads up when we had similar chip stakes. I tried to make a deal with the other guy because first was 200K and second was only 110K so I thought 155K each would be nice but he declined the offer. I picked up 66 and raised it up, he re raised and I jammed all in, he snap called with the AK, I floped 6 and he was left crippled at 2.5 million to my 21 million stack. I got cheeky in the chat and said “still dont wanna deal” which almost came back to haunt me cause he managed to double up twice and get back in it, but eventualy I wore him down. The final hand was,he min raised with 10,8 and i smoothed with the K3 of spades, Flop was 3 spades and he got it with just a 10 high flush draw aka DEAD and impaulin proceeded to scoop the 200K.

PNZ: Did you run into any players of note? Paulie Hockin: Na, I assume the guy I played heads up was quite a high roller as he was the only one at the final table who was not prepared to cut a deal but I didnt recognise any of the names, admitdly for some stages of  tournament I was playing about 8 tables  so wasnt paying much attention on player names.

PNZ: how did you get your game to level it’s at? Paulie Hockin: Reading books helped a bit at first but probably going www.pokerxfactor.com and watching the pro replays of them winning a tournament helped me the most, you get to see their cards and hear them explaing what they are doing and why they are doing it. I also dont think I would have got to where I am in poker today without the help of poker playing friends sam williams, james honeybone and dan frances. Flatting with dan frances probably had the most impact on my game. The mans a genuis not only at playing poker  but in all of the other aspects poker. It was though him I came to realise that being good at playing the game of poker, is pehaps only half of what it takes to be a profesional poker player. He taught me the importance of table selection, what sites to play on, what stakes to play, how many tables to play, and where to find rakeback deals and introduced me to new poker software. He also watched me play a bit as well and pointed out a few small but crucial mistakes I was making along with other tips to improve my game. To get to where I am now ive just slowly built up the bankroll playing thousands of lowish stakes mtts before moving up to medium stakes, everynow and then taking the occasional stab at a large live event or qualying for them on stars.

PNZ: What’s the best advice you’d give to anyone wanting to lift their game online? Paulie Hockin: The best advice If your serious about playing online poker is to check out the training websites and subscribe to one. It may seem quite expensive (about $100 to sign up then $25 a month) but they pay for themselves in the long run.Also dont be afraid to play low stakes until you can prove that your a consistant winner. Online poker is Much Tougher than Live poker when you compare the same stakes. A cash game with a $200 max buy in at casino in NZ is much much easier to beat than the $50 games on fulltilt and tournies are the same. I saw a higher % of people limp calling raises in the christchurch masters $1000 buy in than I have in a $100 on stars or tilt. The good thing with online though is that its faced passed and easy to rack up the hands. Your lucky to see 25hands and hour in live poker where as you get about 80 online so when playing 10 tables that’s 800 hands an hour as aposed to 25.