Whatever your opinions on poker’s most infamous Australian, there’s no denying that Tony G has given the world of No Limit Hold’em a well-deserved kick up the backside. Now older and wiser with a solid business brain, WPT Poker found out how a big mouth and a big heart have seen the affable pro keep the cashes rolling in.
We all remember our first reaction to seeing Tony G mercilessly applying the needle to British pro Surinder Sunar at the World Poker Tour’s Grand Prix de Paris in 2004. “Who the hell is this guy?” cried the watching public, followed just a beat later by “I wish someone would shut him up.”
It was, of course, an understandable reaction at the time. After all, here was this abrasive Australian airbag ranting and raving about ripping people apart and gesticulating wildly in the face of one of England’s most reserved and well-respected poker players. It was uncouth; unprofessional; horrible.
However, you can bet your bottom dollar that the very same people who walked away from the Aviation Club that night grumbling about how Tony G’s antics were a dark stain on the game of poker were soon back home, firing up their computers and bracing themselves for another painful look at the whole shit-storm unfolding.
They watched, shook their heads, felt vindicated and went about their day – but the next day they watched again. And again. And again until they were laughing along with proceedings, reciting the lines, relishing the shock factor and cheering as the ‘good guy’ ultimately triumphed. In effect, that right there was the magic of Tony G.
Every game needs its showmen – just as every game needs its villains – and while the sensory assault that is Tony G may be a little intense for the first time viewer, there’s no question that his performances at final tables over the years have been entertaining, compelling and an absolute credit to a game that is running short on characters.
Now, with just shy of $4 million in tournament winnings under his belt and a business empire worth countless millions more, WPT Poker sat down, favourite catchphrases at the ready, to find out where it all began for poker’s favourite anti-hero, Antanas Gouga.
WPT Poker: Tony, from growing up in crisis-torn Lithuania to making millions playing poker, your journey to the game’s summit has been an eventful one. Tell us how it all began.
Tony G: I was born in Kaunas in Lithuania during the Soviet era. There was still a lot of occupation by the Russians, but at the time Kaunas was still one of the authentically, ethnically Lithuanian cities and people were very nationalistic in that sense. There was a sense of resistance to the occupation and it was a very violent time. A lot of famous gangsters grew up during my generation, but that was only because of the system. Back then, you were considered a criminal if you were doing any sort of business. You couldn’t have any enterprise, you couldn’t own a shop and you couldn’t sell anything for a profit – it was all against the law. In the end of course, people just said, “Well, we’re all criminals then,” and when you’re a criminal you may as well abuse the system more. I think by the government’s reckoning, about 80% of the population were criminals. As a result, I grew up to be quite a rebellious kid. I started gambling from a young age and began playing two-ups [an Australian betting game involving coins] and a few card games for money. There was a roulette wheel at the bus station in Kaunas that I used to go and put money on. There were only six numbers on it and you used to get paid for five, so the house had about a 20% advantage, but I still enjoyed the betting and I knew that that’s what I wanted to do.
WPT: That doesn’t sound like a proposition that the Tony G of today would ever entertain. When was it that you left all that behind and headed to Australia?
TG: Well, we’re talking about a time when money could buy you freedom. After my parents separated, my mother paid a substantial amount of money for a visa and moved to Australia, with the plan of drafting me in later. She left when I’d just turned 7, but it took them five years to finally approve my visa and it wasn’t until I was 12 that I finally jumped on a Qantas flight. Getting there was a total shock. The government was so liberal and open – in principal it’s one of the fairest governments there is – and that was a huge transformation for me, so it took a while to adjust. It was around then that I decided to try and make money from other people’s gambling and I began opening books on all the Australian sports at school.
WPT: Were you any good at it?
TG: No, I was a terrible bookmaker [laughs]. I once gave someone at school 50/1 on his team winning an Aussie Rules football match – the Brisbane Bears v Carlton – and they kicked a late goal and he won his bet. When I lost that, it kind of wiped me out and the school quickly found out because all of the students suddenly had so much money! I was expelled for running the book and that was basically the end of school for me – from them on in it was just gambling and poker. That was my education.
WPT: So the gambling life was for you?
TG: When I was a kid it wasn’t really about the money. There was the prize at the end of course, but it was more about having a steady cash flow to work with and somehow I always seemed to get by without any problems. My mother used to stress out sometimes because of the lifestyle, but when I started getting into the stock market and the foreign exchange, I began to think about things mathematically and started to gain a proper edge for the first time. I was living the lifestyle just to learn how to beat it.
WPT: It sounds like your experiences at that time provided you with a lot of the ingredients you’d need at the poker table in later life – do you think adjusting to life as a professional gambler in Australia helped you make the transition?
TG: Yeah, I think it was a big thing. The most important thing was being aware about what people thought about you and what you thought about them. I always tell people that the big thing in poker is that it’s a game of opinion – it’s about your opinion of the people you’re playing against and your opinion of what they think about you. If you know exactly what they think about you, then you have a big advantage – if not, you can often misread situations.
WPT: How did you get into cards?
TG: Poker for me started very early on in life. I had family with me in Australia who were playing the variations that were popular there – five-card draw and seven-card stud – for very small stakes and that kind of started me off. Of course, things really took off when the internet came about and in 1999, I became one of the first wave of online players. I started playing on Paradise Poker in 2000, but from the start I wasn’t very successful and I really struggled to win anything. I didn’t know a lot of poker strategy, I never read any of the books and Texas Hold’em was not something we played in Australia. When I first started playing Hold’em, I really had no idea about the game and it took me a while to work it all out. I was playing quite a lot without much success, but when Party Poker came about, everything kind of fell into place. It was the best site with the easiest games and I finally started making some money out of it.
WPT: Now you have interests in poker outside of playing such as your website PokerNews.com. When did you start thinking to yourself that you could become a businessman within poker?
TG: I just thought that only playing poker would make for quite a difficult living. I saw other sports like golf and tennis where there was so much business surrounding the actual game itself and I thought that poker would be the same. I think you have to have some kind of business around it in order to make serious money. It’s not easy and a lot of people have lost money trying to do it, but it can be done. With PokerNews, the team that I put together was the only reason that it took off like it did. I actually have a very small input, but the team we have has been together for many years and they do a great job of online reporting and building the website. I’m proud of all the technical people in Lithuania who develop it and proud that I can give the country a lot of work and pay a lot of taxes over there through staff. The biggest threat is always legislation. It’s very hard to predict and I think in the future it’s going to be a lot harder to make money. It’s going to be interesting to see what happens with the US market, but I think it’s safe to say that most of the money from online poker is already in the bank. If you’re going to go and chase it now it’s going to be a lot more difficult, because the more regulation you have and the more things you have to jump over, the harder it is to make a profit.
WPT: What’s your personal take on the big legislation debate at the moment – do you think poker qualifies as a sport and should it operate under different laws?
TG: Well, it’s complex. Tournament poker is an intellectual game and I definitely consider it a sport, but with cash games it’s a little different. It’s still an intellectual game and certain players do have an edge, but there’s definitely a bit more gambling involved. That’s my opinion, but nowadays you can buy an opinion from whoever you want to support your case and I think that’s a big flaw in the whole argument. It’s not really my place to say for certain whether poker is a sport for not, but whatever the case it should definitely have a different cut-out from casino games like roulette. It’s a completely different beast and it shouldn’t have the same regulation here in the UK that a normal casino does. It should have less taxing on it because it’s more of a hobby – something that people should be able to go out and do in the pub.
WPT: It’s interesting that you keep referring to poker as a hobby rather than a profession – does that mean that you don’t see the game as a career in its own right?
TG: I just think that there are a lot of things outside of poker. I never saw it as a profession myself, but it’s a great hobby and you can win a lot of money out of it. I’ve been lucky enough to be a winner, but it’s also very easy to lose money and if you’re not careful it can easily get out of hand. A lot of people dream about being pros and living that lifestyle, but the odds are so slim. You’re much better off pursuing some sort of career and having poker as a hobby. You can even be a stronger player for it. Of course, I’m committed to the game. When I play, that’s what I really love doing –but I’m not looking to play every day. It’s always exciting and it’s stimulating – if it’s against tough opponents it’s mentally challenging and I really enjoy it. It’s a great game as long as you have a good stable life outside of poker as well. If it’s just poker and you have nothing to turn to when things don’t go well, then that’s the trap that you don’t want to be led into - that’s all I’m really trying to propagate.
WPT: What do you think is the most rewarding game you’ve ever played in?
TG: The most challenging situation was in Russia. I was playing in an extremely high stakes Pot Limit Omaha game – up to $5,000/$10,000 – and there were unlimited straddles of about $100,000. From a challenging point of view it was difficult because you didn’t know where you stood. I was the only non-Russian guy playing against these people with chequered pasts and huge amounts of money, and they were getting irritated when I won and proving that I match it with them. I won about $5.8 million in that game one day and to get the money the next day I had to have a meeting with the guy that owed me. He wanted to play again that evening, so I gave him a $800,000 discount just to get the money there and then. This was about two years ago, about the time of the Moscow Millions. It was just around then that things were really going crazy in Russia, but this game was so exclusive that there was no way I could have got into it on my own.
Some of my best friends were Russian – they helped me to get me into that situation, and they wanted to play with me because of the Ralph Perry thing [see boxout]. They found it funny and I was one of the guys who was always welcome to play. Obviously all the action was not mine, I was shared around and several people had pieces. It was too much for me to afford on my own, but for nearly a year I had an apartment there and a significant amount of money was raised.
WPT: Are you still playing in cash games of a similar size today, or has the recession forced poker to calm down a little bit since then?
TG: Well, all those cash games are basically over. I’ve been looking around London and I was speaking to Sammy George the other day who helped me out. I really want to play high stakes and find people who can stimulate me at a certain level. I want to be known as a businessman’s friend. I want to play with business people and people high up – I don’t want to play with pro players. In Russia, they didn’t allow professionals to play in the games, so my status over there was always as a businessman. I don’t actually even consider myself a professional anyway because I make similar money out of business, so for me, it’s important to play in my own little league. I don’t want to sit in the Vic and grind – I want to play every hand, have fun, bluff off and play crazy. I’d rather let poker be fun and entertaining.
WPT: What about tournament poker – does winning titles tick the same boxes for you as beating cash games?
TG: Tournament poker is a bit different – it’s a passion and I want to do well. I’m not really chasing titles that much, but I like the stimulation of going to the biggest places and playing the best players. This year, the High Roller EPT event in Monaco was great for me. I won a bit of money for finishing third as well, but just playing those brilliant players like “ElkY” and all the rest of them – it was just unbelievable. To be part of that, to sit with those great players, and to perform so well is an incredible feeling. I really think that if I can do so well it proves – and I’ve always believed this – anyone else can do the same. That’s the beauty of poker – it’s open to everyone. It’s not like golf where you have to practice all the time to be competitive or tennis where you only have a certain amount of time when you’re young. Anyone can succeed on their day and that’s great for the game.
WPT: Is the openness of poker perhaps one of the reasons that you got so heavily involved with the staking side of things on ChipMeUp.com?
TG: Yes, that’s something that I’ve started to enjoy. I go up and down, but currently I’m going through a time where I stake players and I back off from the game. However, I only want to stake them in events that make sense. I don’t want to stake players in a $500 tournament – I want to get some value out of it and give them value too. Some players want to get staked just for the sake of playing, but they’re not thinking – the economics are not there behind it and it’s not worth it. I’m proud that with me staking players from ChipMeUp, I’ve probably become one of the most successful backers on the site. I think that I give people a lot of energy and I’m choosing the events that I can stake people in carefully. I don’t want to stake players and have an overall net loss. I want to make money out of it, but that’s because I want them to make money. After all, if I’m losing money, then my players are losing money and we’re all wasting our time.
WPT: In a sense I suppose that sort of thing goes back to the same business instincts that you first learnt as a kid…
TG: Exactly. That’s what poker has made me develop – more business skills. Poker is so much like a business – I really feel this. You bluff and you lie to people sometimes and you’re hoping you can get the goods, so it’s all related. You’re hoping for the best and you don’t know if that will happen, but you always have to tell people good things. Then there’s how you manage your money – if you manage your money well, you have more power than people who manage their money badly. Even if they have more ability, if they have bad management skills over their finances, then you have a big advantage – even psychologically – and money pressure is a huge thing in poker.
WPT: Speaking of influencing people, we can’t really do a Tony G interview without asking you about the table talk. Who or what do you look for when you pick your targets?
TG: It’s more a feeling or an instinct. If I feel that a guy has a few issues with something, then I’ll be pushing it as much as I can. It’s only really on final tables when there’s a lot of pressure that I use it. You have to be careful not to give more than you get though, because you can also over-talk and kill things off. I think I have a better system for it now and it’s slowly getting perfected to a better level. I like to entertain, I like to make a good show and I’m proud of what I’ve done. When I look at all the World Poker Tour events and how I behaved, I think with the years that stuff is maturing like wine!
WPT: When you first started out, a lot of people saw this abrasive Australian getting up in players’ faces and they didn’t really understand it. Did you get a lot of stick for the way you behaved at the time?
TG: Oh sure, there was all kinds of stuff, but I always try to respect peoples’ opinions be open-minded about what people think. I was there then, I was like that when I was playing poker, but I’m not quite like that now. It was a great time in my life and it was very emotional for me. [At the WPT Grand Prix de Paris] I just wanted to play and make a show that gave people something to look at. It wasn’t something that was orchestrated or anything like that. It was just there, I was just living in that game with Surinder and everyone else. It was just phenomenal and I feel blessed that I was able to be part of it. Obviously we crossed the boundaries here and there and a lot of other stuff happened along the way. In the end, I made some horrible calls, I still got second and the best man was the champion.
WPT: Are there any incidents now that you look back on and think that maybe you did overstep the mark a little?
TG: I really reflect on everything and I don’t think I’ve lost any friends. I’ve had some tough times with Joe Beevers and the Hendon Mob, but now we know each other better, we’re gaining an understanding. People now know what I’m about off the table and what I’m liable to do on it. It still hasn’t changed. The latest heat I played of Late Night Poker, I was back to my worst habits and it should make for a great show. Strategy is part of it, of course, but it must be a form of entertainment as well.
WPT: Do you think that people sometimes take that a bit too far, trying to make a name for themselves solely through their actions at the table?
TG: I think it can be a problem. Personally, I think that you need to show some good results before you can act in a certain way – you’ve got to get some runs on the board in that sense. Then if you’re good and you can come up with something original, then I think it’s good to have people who make poker fun and more entertaining. If they’re genuinely passionate and they’re not doing it just to be nasty, I can’t knock it. At the end of the day, everyone has to answer only to themselves. |
