PokerPlasm.com

Ari Pietarinen

published on 11/13/08 at 9:55 am

PokerPlasm is pleased to have an interview with the Spokesman of Poker, Ari Pietarinen. An outgoing and attentive person, Ari is the perfect voice of poker. His mission to serve, develop and promote a healthy poker community and a fair poker industry, is a modest goal to say the least. By helping all types of players and getting the word out about his mission, all players can sit at the table as equals.

From what I can tell, you respect Jesus Ferguson a lot. Do you think you share any poker attributes with him?
Yes, I seem to refer to Jesus Ferguson often. Whatever comes out from him is well thought and processed to elemental level. My play style and personality is really different from Mr. Ferguson style. I admire his ability to drill into essence of things and I think we share interest to go deep into things and finding out structures that are as elemental as possible.

Is Mr. Ferguson the one professional poker you have learned the most from? What about others? Definitive books?
One of my best abilities is to recognize good ideas and forget principles that do not work. I learn from many sources.

Besides Jesus other people who get my attention are: Barry Greenstein, Daniel Negreanu, Andy Bloch and Martin de Knijff.

“Ace on the river” is the book that gave me more personal answers than any other poker book. This book is excellent reading for people who consider professional poker career. It is reality based perspective to professional poker. I consider it as the best survival guide for serious poker players. It is also beautiful book with great photos and aesthetic layout.

There are so many good poker books out there: Books like “Harrington on Hold ‘em”, Super System, Super System 2 and Gustav Hansen’s “Every Hand Revealed” come to my mind first.

I read a lot and lately enjoyed Phil Gordon’s “Little Blue Book” and “Little Green Book”.

Why did you become “The Poker Spokesman?” Is it due to all the shady aspects online poker has had to deal with?
PokerSpokesman is the name of my poker publishing business.

I think poker is the greatest game there is and my main interest is that all people could enjoy poker and it would be socially more acceptable – also from legislation perspective. Poker players are not criminals. Most of them are not addicts either.

Poker as lifestyle is something that often is seen as quite unhealthy choice. To me poker as lifestyle can offer many different ways to live and it can also be the healthiest one.

My mission is to play best poker I can, meet people and listen suggestions. If someone has good thoughts or products I do more research on the topic and if it is something I could use myself I will pass it on and even actively promote it. If I can be involved in speaking about healthy poker and what poker has given me in my life I am quite happy person.

Shady aspects will always be part of anything that involves a lot of money. These things can be influenced on long run by informing people about wrong things and giving more visibility to good products and talented individuals.

What would you tell a novice who is trying to make a profit in poker?
What makes chips to move to some direction more than to other direction is a contrast. Bigger the contrast is the less there is place for uncontrolled randomness.

So look for the contrast that is as big as possible in everything.

Some examples of this idea:

If you play against opponents who are on same level than you are, you are not creating a contrast. If you play against top pros, you create negative contrast. The idea is to find table where you have positive contrast (an edge).

Do not put your self in a situation where you do not have positive contrast.

Play only hands that have positive contrast to other players possible hands. One needs good hand to call a big raise because otherwise you can not create positive contrast. If no one raised and you are first to act go and create yourself contrast by raising. Since you are the one to initiate the contrast this time you do not need monster hand.

Idea of contrast is always moving and changing, take initiative of creating contrast if no one else does.

It helps to estimate the contrast if you play from late position. Then you know what other people have done before you and how good cards you need to have to create contrast. Naturally great hands can be played from any position. If you cannot create contrast you may need to fold.

Playing from the late position helps you to see how much you need to have contrast. Position is important.

When more cards are coming contrast is changing. Some flop textures may allow for example flush and if you are holding a straight you really do not have much of contrast.

When playing against big hands you need nuts or nearly nutz to create enough contrast.

This contrast principle works with many things. It can be applied to reading tells, bluffing, information about your opponent, stack size, table image. Always be sure that you have positive contrast in as many things as possible.

Oh yes, and you also need tons of patience. That is also how you create contrast to opponent who have less patience. Sometimes even good players can be won this way.

Understand the contrast and make it work for you!

You are in the process of writing a book on poker. Is there a niche for your book in the poker world? Who will this help the most?
I see poker as geometrical figures in my mind, not as numbers. My research focuses on playing poker “geometrically”. Completing my two volume poker book legacy can take years. There is a lot of things need to be proved both statistically and in real play action. My theory is useless if I cannot live it trough. My idea is to start introducing these ideas on my blog based on my research and practice.

I think that this book will give a new angle to poker and will challenge people to see poker in alternative way. My book will be specially helpful to those who are more visual people instead mathematical. It tackles also a lot of training our right side of the brain and intuitive thinking.

Do you have any live events you have coming up? Any sponsorships? What about TV/Radio/Podcasts?
I will play live games and small tournaments at Helsinki Grand Casino. I may also make a play trip to Malta in December or January.

At the moment I consider myself self sponsored. I have marketing arrangements with Titan Poker. I am not at them moment actively looking any other sponsors than PokerSpokesman and the media team that I am currently working with.

This Finnish media team is coming up with series of poker videos with marketing perspective. I am big part of it. Our main target audience is online, so we chose to be mainly visible online. Podcasts are planned too.

TV has it’s place for televised events and real play shows. We chose not to focus on TV at this time.

What comparisons can you relate to between your previous professional career and the game of poker?
My career path has been: high school, industrial truck driver, help nurse, fish factory worker in Norway, army, medical school drop out, research assistant, programmer, system admin, IT entrepreneur and poker player.

As hospital help nurse I was mainly taking care of elders. Many war veterans had stories about war time Sökö(Scandinavian Stud) games. Naturally I was all ears, asked tons of questions and soaked up their stories.

Working in fish factory in most northern part of Norway was place where I learned to work hard and also getting paid from working tough. This principle is very alive in me and I extend that to playing and to learning. I don’t expect anything to come free in life.

As research assistant at Department of Clinical Neurophysiology I was analyzing EEG signals that come visible only when repeated several hundred times. I was doing statistical analysis and had chance to learn from top statistician. This opened my eyes to see real life events as something that can be measured. My approach to poker tells is quite scientific and based on Neurophysiology. This was the time when my poker and understanding of gambling started to get better. At that time I made my first visit to Las Vegas (1996). After that trip poker started to become a great part of who I am.

I left medical school and decided to travel. I found myself in Jerusalem where I was studying religious aspects of life. I picked up thing or two things about how to train mind though meditation and prayer. This experience now helps me to focus in poker.

Programming professionally developed my logical thinking and patience. I really hated the projects, bosses and timetables but always enjoyed cracking some problems. At one point I was implementing Graph algorithms that relate to game theory. They tackle problems like path selection and evaluating chosen path with different kind of measures. When analyzing playing or writing a book this knowledge is really valuable.

Running own business was great way to learn time and money management. I also learned to make tough decisions and live with them. This all is very important to know when playing poker. I think poker and running a business are actually one and the same thing.

Poker is everywhere – one just has to see it.

What is the best piece of poker advice anyone has given you?
“Poker is a life long road, don’t just focus on single event outcome but think years ahead.”

Why not take the nickname, “King of Finnish Poker”? You get the best of all three worlds; royalty, Finland, and poker.
Lately people have been calling me as “Batman” or as “Lex Luthor”.

“King of Finnish poker” would really be improvement to that. To become a poker king during my lifetime would fulfill my poker dream. If king means being among the best players, I would feel very good about it.

Has your family supported you in your poker adventures? Anything particular they have said that means a lot to you?
My wife said to me when I was talking about giving up my day job: “I loved you when you did not have anything, I loved you when you had some money and I will love you if you are a poker player too. It will change our life and we will see it together”. The time when I met my wife in Greece I had nothing else than clothes on me and one old suitcase with all my belongings.

Once I lost practically all my bankroll in one night and felt really terrible (that was actually lowest moments I had in my poker life). I was really in pain saying that I lost so much money but after listening my wife saw my face and said: “So, no holiday this summer?” and smiled.

My 8 year old son has ability to take me back to reality and I remember this discussion with him:
Ari: “Do you think I will make it with poker?”
Son: “Yes, sure.”
Ari: “Why do you think I can make it?”
Son: “Because you are good enough.”
Ari: “Just good enough, nothing else?”
Son: “Yes, you are just good enough.”

This kind of things are so much deeper than anything else in this life and give power even when all things go wrong. It is also easier to enjoy the success with people who understand what and why you are doing the things you are doing.

Support of family is important and I would not do poker on professional level without their blessing.

No related posts.