» Ben 'boywonder' Eliass interview

Ben 'boywonder' Eliass, 27, recently joined LeggoPoker as one of their featured video instructors.  He was much sought after because of his large following on twoplustwo and his great results over the last three and a half years.  He has maintained a 5 bb/100 lifetime rate that he is currently exceeding at the levels he plays now, $5-10 and $10-20 NLHE. He has profited over seven figures and in 2010 is already up over $140k in his cash games. He studied law in University and is currently studying theology. He lives in Stockholm, Sweden.

You assert that you are basically self taught and didn't watch training videos on your way up.  How did you go about educating yourself to beat the games you played?

Playing a lot while being very present and alert (I played my first several hundred thousand hands without a HUD, four tabling), studying and reviewing hands for hours, and studying specific opponents off the table. Very initially, I did read a couple of books on the fundamentals of poker (the early Sklansky books, for instance). To be honest, the fact that I started off without a HUD meant I had to learn to hand read and force myself to pick up tendencies rather than rely on stats, and now several people have mentioned to me that they think that created a base for my game that is very solid.

In your Leggo blog, you mentioned that your main motivators for you to push so hard were a desire for steady income, college funds, a house with a garden, your fiancee and family being comfortable.  How does that translate to how you prepare, play and plan your poker career?

This means that the game, to me, is a way of creating a better life for myself and the people I love, which is what everybody is trying to do in life anyway. It is not something to be taken lightly, and it is not there to enhance my ego, or to pass time. It is something to be respected. I play to improve, and improve so I can make a living. Preparation, planning and play, becomes something I do not only for myself, so these are things that I must take very seriously. Practically, this has also given me a lot of motivation, but has also made me contain my risks and move up in a slower, steadier pace, without ever having a desire to play the nosebleeds. 

You further explained in your blog "For me, I have found that structure is key. It is important that I create a routine in my life where I wake up at a certain time each day and start off by reviewing the previous days sessions. My workday is not done, until I have met the goals I set BEFORE the day started, whether it be a certain number of hands played, a certain amount of hours played, or a certain amount of hands analyzed. Anything above and beyond that is me working overtime, and that slice of overtime is the difference between reaching my goals and blowing them out of the water when I review my year on the 31st of December, 2010."  Are there ever days where you don't meet your goals? How do you handle times where you let yourself down or don't get the results you expected?

Yes, there are days when I don´t meet my goals. Thankfully, they have been very few recently, but some of the goals I may have set for myself may have been unrealistic considering who I am and how limited I am. I have just had to realize that there are people in the poker world that are better than me at some things, at least for now, and trying to match up to their targets will just leave me lacking. This is an important realization, and I have to be content in the fact that I am who I am, and never be disappointed, anxious or hard on myself for failing goals I set up. As soon as this days goal is failed, that becomes part of the past, something to learn from surely, but never anything to dwell on. I have to ask myself - What can I do now? And then, set a more realistic goal for the next day, that better reflects who I am and what I am capable of.

What is the trick to setting realistic goals?

Knowing yourself, and accepting your limitations, which I had a hard time doing at first. You are not Cole South, you are not Brian Townsend, you are not Dusty Schmidt, or perhaps even anything in between. Their goals are their goals, your goals should be a reflection of you. Look to history, and see what you have accomplished and what you have achieved, and try to improve on that in a realistic way. Do not take other peoples numbers and results and arbitrarily apply it to yourself.

What do you do outside of poker to keep a balance?

The most important thing by far is spending time with friends and family. Of course, now I am studying as well, which helps a lot, and I have other routines that I go by which allow me to keep a fair balance in my life regardless. This has never been a major issue for me though, as I realized very early on how detrimental the game could be to your overall life balance and took early steps to address this.
(Ben's friend's winter house in Northern Sweden ->)

You recently completed an "in the Cage" on LeggoPoker, where you allowed any members to ask whatever they liked.  It received a lot of attention, both positive and negative.  How have you found the experience of being such a visible player who has both lots of fans and detractors?

I am not sure I have lots of either, but the few fans I have I am very thankful for, and the few detractors I have, I am very comfortable with by now. Overall, the experience has been an eye-opening one as I feel I have learned a lot more about the general poker and training industry community.

What is your stance on those who criticize how you have won money in poker?  Do you feel there are only certain legitimate ways to make money in poker?

Of course, there are certain ways to make money in poker that are not legitimate, such as collusion. But we all know this, and a majority of us follow this guideline. As far as table selection goes, I am very morally comfortable with it. Also, many people do not realize that at 5-10 plus, and particularly at 10-20, many games break by themselves within the space of a few minutes as soon as the recreational player or weaker reg leaves. This is why, in many cases, 10-20 on all the sites I play is usually softer than the 5-10 games running. A vast, vast majority of people are aggressively table selecting. Table selection was also the absolute primary reason many of the weaker 6-max regs shifted to heads up about two years ago, because even with one weaker player at the table, they still couldn't deal with the other four regs or felt like they didn't need to. This is something that everybody that plays these stakes knows, but doesn't speak loudly about.

This is the truth of the online mid stakes poker scene of 2010. Many people that come out and speak against it may be lower level players that are not aware of this, or people that played these games regularly two or three years ago when game selection was a lesser issue but derive the bulk of their income today from marketing and coaching and want to make their voices heard in any way the can. Some of this, frankly, is people marketing themselves and their coaching through words, not results, because they derive a much smaller income from the actual game than they used to in relation to other things. So with that backdrop, I am fine with the criticisms as it seems that the basis for them is not morals or ethics, which I would take seriously, but something else, whatever that may be.

Personally I find it absurd.  The goal in poker is to find and exploit edges.  If your opponents don't adapt then they will suffer. If that means not playing tough regulars HU, not starting new tables, 'bumhunting', short stacking, then so be it. The more important question is how do you go about finding the edges and exploiting them?

Difficult to say, as the answer could be it depends. I just adapt, one step at a time I guess.

In your "in the Cage", you mentioned that "Tilt is not being mindful. Why would you ever tilt at what is going on right now? Right now, you are not losing, not winning, not running bad, not getting outplayed. You might have in the past, and you might fear it in the future. But right now, you are only making a decision in a hand. There is no way to tilt if we are perfectly mindful, which of course almost nobody is and can be. It can be something we strive for, however."  What specific steps do you take to always be mindful when you are playing?

(Ben celebrating his 6th anniversary at a Japanese spa and meditation retreat)

Meditation is a part of my daily, routine life, and anything can be seen as a meditation. A single breath can be a meditation. Every single thing we do, is an opportunity to practice and perfect your skills of being present, alert, and in the moment. It is this mindset that I take with me into my sessions, as every session is an opportunity for me to be mindful. The basis for it all is having this particular view of the session. Notes, breath, bet sizing and my physical body are all things that I try to focus on continuously to keep me in the present, and to bring me back to the present when I lose myself.

You are known for knowing your opponents better than anyone else at your stakes.  How do you go about knowing your opponents so well?

Thank you, I am not sure this is true, but for one thing, actually paying attention to them whilst I am playing is one factor. This, also, may stem from the fact that I had my base in playing without any type of stats or a HUD when molding my early game. Coupled with the fact that I routinely review them away from the table by going through hands and tendencies. I have at times done this for very long periods of time, not even necessarily because the time put in correlates to how much I learn about these opponents, but because studying them in this way gives me a confidence that says that I probably know more about them than they do about me. Whether this is true or not matters less, as I am fine with the placebo effect and the impact of the placebo effect on my game and mental mind state whilst playing.

What are your future goals in the poker world?

Just keep making a living, no other specific goals than that.

We have a lot of newer players at Poker Curious.  Can you give a couple concrete steps or advice on how they might improve their game and emulate your success?

Yes. Study hands outside of sessions, and try to really delve as deeply as possible into each hand, almost as if you are solving a puzzle. Try to couple stats with reads, and test yourself by playing without a HUD once in a while with the intention of trying to develop reads while playing. This will force you to pay attention, and conditioning yourself to be acutely aware and present whilst playing is so very important.

Thank you for taking the time to answer our questions, Ben.  Before you go, we have several fun questions we always ask our interviewees.

What is your favorite fun poker phrase or slang?

Bling blang blaow, ch3ck raise in tha house.

(^ Ben's cat bucuster)

When your poker career is over, what would you most like to be remembered for?

Hmmm. Good question. If anyone remembers me for anything at all, I would guess it would be for at least igniting some discussion on the importance of mental game and mindfulness as they relate to the game and how they can dramatically influence people's results.

Read the Poker Curious review of LeggoPoker

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