Interview: Melanie Weisner
Age: 23 Hometown: Houston, Texas I caught up this week with Melanie
Weisner, an up and coming young online tournament player who is
participating extensively in this year's WSOP. She was nice enough to
fill us in on how things are going for her this year. online poker
468x60 PokerTips.org: First off, how long have you been playing poker
and what got you started? Weisner: I've been playing poker for four
years now (probably 2 of them well) and I've been playing full time
for one year. I got started in poker when I was 18 and my younger
brother won the tournament leaderboard on Pokerstars, along with
around $50k in tournament winnings. I thought to myself, "Wow, I
should be doing that." So I deposited some money and spent a bunch of
time losing it all at micro stakes cash. I'm really stubborn, though,
so I kept at it until finally I started learning and things started
clicking. PokerTips.org: How's the WSOP going for you so far? Weisner:
Welllllll....the WSOP is not going exactly as I planned :( I've played
about 17 bracelet events and a few of the Venetian 1k+ events and
bricked them all except for the 10k Heads Up Championship, where i
took 18th. I was really disappointed about that because heads-up is my
strongest game and I felt like I was really playing at the top of my
capability. Everything else has unfortunately been a pretty brutal
string of beats and I'm weathering it as best as I can, but I'm
definitely disappointed that I'm not having the WSOP I hoped for.
There's still time, though, so we'll see if I can turn it around.
PokerTips.org: Do anything fun away from the tables since you've been
in Vegas? Weisner: I've actually been playing so much I haven't had
that much time off to have fun, but I'm a huge fan of this place
called Stoney's. It's a bar with pool, beer pong, line dancing, and a
mechanical bull! And I'm from Houston originally so I know a lot of
the line dances and it's a lot of fun. I've also been meaning to ride
the stratosphere coasters and go sky diving, so we'll see if I can get
that in before I leave. PokerTips.org: Who are some players you credit
with helping you with your game the most? Weisner: I'm pretty
independent when it comes to poker learning and I find that I develop
the best through my own experience. However, poker is a game where so
many different approaches can be successful, and there have definitely
been a few very smart people who have helped me understand different
thought processes and gotten me out of mental ruts. One of these
people is Eric "Avril Sharapova" Ladny. I feel like he's one of the
best players in the game today both live and online, and also one of
the few people that thinks completely differently than me but
understands exactly how I think...he's taught me a lot about being
able to play every street well, and making the plays that are going to
give you the greatest ev, not just making plays that are going to let
you avoid making difficult decisions on later streets. He''s also
someone who's a great model for always thinking, learning, and
developing at the highest levels that you possibly can. Another one of
these players is Kevin "ImaLuckSac" MacPhee. Kevin is an inspiring
tournament player and has been an amazing friend to me and my first
friend on the live circuit; he's been one of the people that has
really helped me in the "life" aspect of poker and given me a lot of
confidence in my play and perspective on playing professionally.
PokerTips.org: Do you ever play cash games or non-hold'em variants or
is it strictly tournaments? Weisner: For a long time, my main games
have been multi-table tournaments and heads up sit-and-gos. They're
pretty polar opposites (especially full ring tournaments), but I've
found that the combination of the two has made my tournament game
really well-rounded and given me a lot of different ways to attack my
opponents. I have been thinking for a while about switching to
heads-up cash and moving into other NL cash variants as well, because
I'd like to feel as comfortable deep-stacked in well-structured
tournaments as the good cash players do. I think that I've been
adjusting much better as I get more and more deep-structured events
like EPT mains under my belt, but I'd like to develop that even
further because I feel that the strongest and smartest poker players
are cash players because of the huge range of situations they face
without the parameters of tournament structure. I think accumulating
more knowledge through cash play will also ultimately make me a better
tournament player. I'm definitely also interested in working on some
of my other games--I played the 2-7 NL event at WSOP and loved it! So
exploring the other games is always really fun and it's a nice break
from no-limit, and I'd like to play more mixed games in the future.
PokerTips.org: Do you find any added challenges to playing poker on
account of being female? What about benefits? Weisner: The biggest
challenge I face is adjusting to how my opponents are going to
view/play against me based on the female stereotype. For instance, in
most events in Europe that I played, I literally could not bluff a
single person and every value bet I made got paid off insanely light.
I got the general impression that no Euro guys wanted to be bluffed by
a girl, and generally viewed me as really aggressive and crazy, no
matter what I had showed down at the table. In a lot of tournaments in
the U.S. I've noticed people making absolutely absurd folds to me, and
I can get away with a lot more because of the "tight female"
stereotype. The benefits really depend on who's at the table, but I've
had a lot of people show me their hands because I ask, and I get a lot
of cool opportunities as one of the few young females in poker to sort
of pave the way for other smart women to play poker, so it's cool to
pioneer something that not a lot of people are doing at the moment.
PokerTips.org: As a female in a male-dominated arena, you must hear
some pretty awful pick-up lines. Care to share any with us? Weisner:
Well, it's not really pick-up lines per se that I get, but more like,
funny situations/ propositions that come up. For instance, once I had
a hand in a NAPT side event where I shoved 15 bets with AJ, and the
guy in the big blind said he had KQss and would call if I was willing
to have dinner with him. I just started laughing (partially because I
wasnt sure if I was all that excited getting it in as 55% instead of
picking up the blinds and antes which were significant at that point,
and partially because I really didn't want to go to dinner with him!)
PokerTips.org: What's the plan for the next few years? Weisner: It's
still pretty open, but I have been thinking about moving to Europe
after the series so that I can play the entire EPT circuit this coming
year. I feel like there's a lot of great opportunities ahead of me and
a lot of great things happening in poker right now with the additional
tours Pokerstars is putting out so I'm really excited to play live as
much as possible. PokerTips.org: What's the best poker-related memory
you have? Weisner: The first time I ever won the ten rebuy on stars!
At the time I hadn't been playing tournaments for that long but the
ten rebuy was like this elusive tournament that I was just dying to
win and I played it every day and had a ton of ft bubbles in it. I won
it for like $13k and that was the most amount of money I had ever seen
in my account. I remember thinking I was such a baller when I bragged
about it to all my friends and just felt like I was on top of the
world! PokerTips.org: Finally, do you have any advice for our readers
hoping to make their way to the WSOP stage in the future? Weisner: I'd
say the most important thing for players looking to develop their game
is to just play as much as possible and learn to trust yourself.
Experience is the best teacher and when you get enough to finally feel
comfortable enough with your capability that you trust yourself to
make the best decision in any given situation, it's a great feeling,
and that feeling of readiness to take on any opponent and scenario
that comes your way is really what poker is all about.
