Paul Wasicka

Part I

By Justin West

On August 10, 2006, Jamie Gold eagerly hunched over a poker table, hole cards clutched in one hand as he stared down his opponent, Paul Wasicka. This was, of course, no regular poker game - this was a key hand in the 2006 World Series of Poker main event, and tensions were running high.

There we were, reporters and friends and casino employees all huddled around a tiny poker table with just two opponents remaining out of the nearly 9,000 that entered. Paul Wasicka was being put to the test. Gold had gone all-in to a board showing queen-high, and Wasicka, holding pocket tens, had to decide if they were good enough.

I've no doubt that Paul's heart was beating rapidly in his chest as he weighed his options. If he called, and he was right, Paul would double-up and he'd be a contender. If he was wrong... well, that was it. It would all be over.

After a few minutes of agonizing analyzation, Paul became convinced his tens were good and made the call. Everyone in the room jumped immediately to their feet, craning to see the action over the throngs. Gold erupted in excitement, showed a queen - top pair. Wasicka's heart sank. Turn, river, and bust, Wasicka finished second place in the 2006 WSOP.

That's not to say Paul went home empty-handed. Far from it, actually, as his second place take earned him a whopping $6,102,499, more than Greg Raymer took for first place just two years prior.

Curious, I asked Paul how much of that was taxed.

"About half," he said.

Ouch.

Wasicka, who went pro in late March of '06, is far from a one-hit wonder. Prior to his main event finish, Paul cashed in two other events at the '06 World Series. His first big payday came in the 2006 World Poker Tour Championship, a $25,000 buy-in event that attracted more than 600 entrants and saw Paul garner almost $150,000 for a 15th place finish.

Since last year's WSOP, Paul has proven himself to be a rising star, finishing in 12th place at the recent 2007 Crown Aussie Millions Championship and taking home $91,121. I think it's safe to say that we'll be seeing more of Paul in the future.

I had a chance to get Paul on the phone and spend some time talking about the World Series, his life before and after, and what's going in in the world of the 2006 WSOP 2nd place finisher.

Justin: So, Paul, tell me about your 12th place finish at the Aussie Millions.

Paul: I feel really good about it. I felt I played really solid poker all throughout the tournament, but kind of went card dead towards the second to last day. And, on the last day, I just ran into some other hands. I had A7 vs.. AJ, and then A10 vs KJ, ended up losing both. That last day there wasn't much I could do.

Justin: Was there a particular point in the tournament where you felt you'd made a mistake that, if changed, could lead to a victory?

Paul: That's just it. I look back on all the hands and I really don't think I could have done anything else. The one thing that was questionable was when I raised to 15k with pocket 9s and someone went all in for about 100k. I decided to fold because I didn't want to play a coin flip, and I was pretty sure he had AK. So I folded that one.

That was the only questionable fold, because I had 500k at that point. One of my friends asked, "Why didn't you gamble if you were sure he had AK?" I just thought I could keep stealing the blinds and antes, keep adding 15k to my stack that way, rather than put myself into a coin flip situation.

Justin: I notice all of your major tournament cashes are in No-Limit Hold'em. Do you play Stud, Omaha, or any of the other games?

Paul: I know how to play stud, Omaha, etc. But I think that I'm probably not as good as other people in those games. It kind of just depends. I mainly play in no-limit events because that's what I'm used to, and I don't want to pay $5,000 to sit down at a game that I'm sure I'll make plenty of mistakes in. But at the same time, you've got to start somewhere, you know? So I'll probably try out one or two of those events. I've played a few Omaha tournaments online and done pretty well. I like Omaha (Pot Limit Omaha Hi), and I've always been a fan of 7-stud tournaments. I hate 7-stud cash games, but the tournaments really interest me.

Justin: Do you have any interest in the playing the $50k HORSE event this year?

Paul: I don't know about the $50k one. Even if it was no-limit I don't know if I'd play in it. Just because, call it what you want - I'm kind of stingy with money. I don't really wanna pay $50k to play in an event. With a game that I'm not even that familiar with, I just can't justify that much money. Even the $25k Bellagio event, I'll probably just try to satellite into this spring.

Justin: So I've read that you're actually a pretty active online player...

Wasicka: Definitely. But I'm not big on the tournaments, actually, I just play the no-limit cash games. I just find that I lose interest in the tournaments online. It's easy to be distracted, for instance, when there's a movie on television I'd rather be watching.

In the cash games, people are actually pretty surprised when they're playing at my table and find out who I am. I'm a really crazy cash game player, extremely aggressive. The way I play, I'm either going to win big or lose big.

Justin: Has your internet play been affected at all by the UIGEA (Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act of 2006), or Neteller's recent decision to discontinue facilitating transfers between US players and offshore gaming entities?

Paul: Yeah, it's kind of annoying. I needed to get more money on the sites, and that's going going to be a pain. Probably have to do a bank wire- oh, that's right, you can't do a bank wire. There has to be some third party stepping up pretty soon. Yeah, I definitely need to get money into some of the sites, so it's preventing me from playing on a few which is annoying, but I'm sure someone will take Neteller's place.

Justin: Given recent occurrences in online poker, do you think we'll see lesser numbers for this year's World Series of Poker?

Paul: Oh, greatly. For sure. I would guess that we'll have maybe half as many entrants because of it, given all the online qualifiers. That's what the World Series is - just a bunch of online qualifiers. So, you know, for all this to be happening, first with the online bill being passed, and now this Neteller thing, that's going to drastically reduce the number of qualifiers. Which is unfortunate because that's what makes the World Series such a great event, in my opinion - so many people that have very little experience. It's nice for some of the pros to not play against each other at one of these events.

Justin: Speaking of your fellow pros, was there a point last year during the World Series of Poker where you were at the same table as a player you idolized? How did that affect your play?

Paul: No. Throughout the tournament I mainly just played with either internet players or players that I knew the names of that weren't huge superstars. I've never really idolized any poker player, per se. I have players I watch more than others just because I like their style, but there weren't any of those players at my tables. Which, even if there was, I was feeling so confident I would have liked nothing more than to take one of them down.

Justin: What changes would you hope to see at this year's World Series of Poker?

Paul: Mainly, casino personnel. I realize they had a lot of people to deal with, and that tournament is very hard to run, but we had some dealers that didn't know simple rules. One dealer didn't know what a string bet was, another consistently dealt people a third card so it would be a misdeal. It was kind of ridiculous the stuff they were doing. Then there was this whole incident where they added a couple million chips in chips. I know that didn't go to me because my stack was just tiny at the time. Really frustrating that you pay $10k and you have all these mistakes happen routinely.

Justin: So the infamous "extra chips" that went into play... you didn't benefit from them?

Paul: I was such a short stack at the time that it would have pretty much doubled my stack. It's just kind of frustrating that you pay that much money for a tournament, and things just don't go as smoothly as you'd like. And I'm not even really the type to complain, so for me to complain about this means that things are pretty bad.

Part I | Part II

More Interviews

Justin West is Assistant Editor and a lead author for PokerPages.com. Having played poker since the age of 17, Justin spent more than a year earning a living on the green felt; a modest living, to be sure, but a living nonetheless. His aim was at one point to win the WSOP main event, thus causing Hell to freeze over. However, given his penchant for sin and his extreme dislike of cold weather, Justin has put that dream to rest.

WSOP Information Page