Ryan Dreyer
Ryan “Rhino” Dreyer is a former golfer turned poker pro. The young gun, who recently took top honors in the Sun City Million Dollar Tournament, is also a commentator for the All Africa Poker Channel. He recently did an interview with Bluff SA (South Africa) and agreed to spend a little time with us here at Tourneyblog – and we thank him for that. Dreyer is truly a star on the rise. Not only did he take down the Sun City event, earning $650,000, Dreyer has also cashed at the World Series of Poker in the Seven Card hi-lo tournament this summer and made it all the way to Day Three in the Main Event.
The man obviously knows a thing or two about the game, and we were more than thrilled to bend his ear for a bit of advice and get some information about how the game is growing in his homeland of South Africa.
TB: Ryan, we really appreciate the time you’re giving us at Tourneyblog and we know how busy you are so we’ll get right down to it. Tell us a bit about how you landed your gig as commentator for the All Africa Poker Channel and what exactly you do for DSTV in that capacity. Specifically, our readers are interested in learning about your educational background and your interest in poker before you became ‘involved in poker’.
RD: Becoming the commentator on the All Africa Poker Channel was quite fortuitous for me. It all started with the famous old saying “It’s not what you know, it who you know.” Although what I knew or know definitely had a lot to do with it. I was approached by an old friend of mine. They were going to film the All Africa Poker Channel and he wanted me to be involved.
Initially, I was just going to write the scripts for the final product that would be aired on TV as the first South African Poker production to have that distinction. He asked me because he knew that I had a BSC in Journalism, which I got from Texas A&M University in the USA while I was there on a golf scholarship. However, it soon became apparent that a person would be needed to “off-line” the entire project. This means someone who understood poker would be needed to sift through all the footage and decide what hands would make it to the big screen. Also, all the information like, pot sizes, exiting positions, percentages etc would need to be extracted from the footage to make a final product.
It turns out that the best person for the job at that time was me. So I agreed to be involved in the project on a day-to-day, fully involved basis. Once we were getting close to completing the product it was time to find qualified voice-over artists/commentators that understood poker. We found one, an awesome commentator that was well-known in South African sports. But, he needed a co-commentator. The producer of the show suggested that I would be perfect for the position as I had a solid knowledge of hold’em, and I knew the footage better than anyone else. Besides, I would just be a back up to the lead commentator.
Feeling a little overwhelmed, I agreed to give it a go. It turned out he is an incredible anchor, and I just followed along. I felt quite at ease on camera. That was the first All Africa tournament we produced. After the 2nd All Africa was aired (we have produced 10 All Africa Tournaments for TV now), the general consensus from the poker watching audience was that the lead commentator didn’t have sufficient poker knowledge and his commentary was bringing the production down, I was asked to be the lead commentator, and we brought in a well spoken, well known player in the SA poker community to do the commentary alongside me.
We have since used 2 other players as commentators with me being the anchor. I have now commentated on well over 70 1-hour programs of poker tournaments and I have now cemented my position as the All Africa Poker Channel Lead Commentator.
Now that’s quite a mouthful!
As for my educational background….I matriculated from King Edward VII School in Johannesburg in 1989. I completed a year of mandatory military service before heading to the USA on a golf scholarship to start the pursuit of my life-long dream to become a professional golfer. I didn’t want to just turn pro without having a degree behind me. So I went to Texas A&M University in the fall of 1991. I was already a keen 7 card stud Hi-Lo player at this point as we had a regular Thursday game at my golf club.
I didn’t play much poker at all for the next 5 years while I was getting my degree. I started out studying psychology, but I changed my major in my 3rd year. I decided I didn’t want to study more after getting an undergrad degree, and, if I continued with psychology, I would need to at least do a masters degree for me to be able to use my degree in the real world. So I opted for something I was good at and knew I would be able to use no matter what - Journalism. I got my final degree in May of 1996, a BSC in Journalism with a minor in Psychology.
I then returned to South Africa and immediately turned pro golfer to follow my dream. I pursued my career as a professional golfer for 11 years where I was a successful tour player, making well over one hundred cuts on the Sunshine Tour and never failing to keep my playing privileges.
TB: How do you think your experiences as a commentator for DSTV and the All Africa Poker Channel have helped improve your poker game? For example, is playing the game part of your job or a by-product of it? Meeting the players – does it give you greater access to the game and do they willingly talk strategy with you, etc.
RD: Being involved with the production and the commentary has definitely helped my game. I was always a student of the game. I read everything I could get my hands on and I was constantly working on my poker to be a better poker player when the commentary opportunity came along. It has definitely helped from a few perspectives.
Firstly, doing the editing and sifting through thousands of “real” hands has given me a very good feel for tournament poker. I have learned so much from watching how both a tournament and the players evolve as a tournament progresses, Secondly, as a commentator, I have always wanted to stay abreast of the latest and best poker strategy, so I have constantly been studying and reading all the time to keep myself sharp both on the felt and behind the mike.
Being the commentator has also allowed me to chat to a lot of the top players and discuss strategy etc with them...that’s always a great way to learn is to toss ideas around with good players.
TB: Congrats on the article with Bluff South Africa. It’s a great piece and focuses a great deal on your recent win at the Sun City Million Dollar Challenge. It goes into great detail about your mindset and strategies throughout the tournament. At one point, you mention a bit about how you got a read on Michael Binger’s range of hands. Could you discuss that concept a bit more for my readers please?
RD: When I first sat at the table with Michael binger, I found myself feeling a little intimidated. I mean here is a guy that is ranked as one of the top 5 tournament players in the world this year. I didn’t know much about his style of play or his tournament mindset.
So initially I just tried to stay out of his way. I spent a lot of time just watching him. I sacrificed getting information on other players and focused mainly on him, as I knew he was the most dangerous player on the table. Eventually I would be getting into some pots with him, and I thought that that information would be more valuable to me than getting info on the rest of the table.
Throughout the tournament in day 2 and 3, I spent about 8 hours on the same table as Binger. The first thing I noted was the frequency of his raises - way too frequent to be raising with only premium hands – unless he was getting slapped by the deck which I doubted. I also noted the positions he raised from and how he played the hands after the flop. The other thing I noted was how he responded to other player’s aggression.
I realized that Michael can definitely fold a hand if his tournament life is in jeopardy. I thought that I had a good idea of what I was up against. It turned out that Michael and myself got into a quite a few tussles over the next 6 hours.
On the first table we were on together early in day 3, I was in the Big Blind when it was his button (gross) I knew I would have to defend my BB at some point. I started Day 3 relatively short stacked and knew I needed chips. We got into a pot where it was Michael’s button and me in the BB. Michael raised from the button and I looked down and found A, 8 off in the BB. I decided that my hand was ahead of his range of hands in that situation, so I moved in on him and he called because the pot was laying him the right price. He turned over J, 9. I doubled up.
Later, again he raised my BB. I moved in with A9. He thought for 5 full minutes and eventually folded A, 10. Shew! I then doubled him up when we both hit top pair. I played it very aggressively, check-raising him on the flop. He eventually called for his tournament life with top pair and a queen kicker to my top pair and a 10 kicker. I doubled him up.
Eventually, he moved all in on my BB and I found 10, 10 - again, late in the tourney with huge blinds - I couldn’t fold 10, 10. I called; he turned over A, K. I won that race, and he was crippled, only to be knocked out the next hand. What a great experience to play with a world-class, top professional in the late stages of a big tournament!
TB: You also mention in the Bluff article, how you have to constantly change gears throughout a tournament. How difficult is it to switch your mindset based upon your position in the event, your chip stack and how close to the money you are. Can you speak a little bit about the factors you use to make these determinations and what you mean by changing gears here?
RD: What I mean by changing gears is you have to adjust your starting hand requirement and aggression levels to fit with the period of the tournament that you find yourself in. I like to keep close track of my chip stack and how it relates to the blinds, how it relates to the average stack size and how many players are remaining and how far away from the money I am at the time. Taking all those factors into consideration, I change my style of play accordingly.
For example if I am slightly short stacked, I will try and raise more often to pick up blinds and antes. This is easier to do later in a tournament when players are scared of getting busted out close to the money. If I have a very large stack, I will sit back and be more patient, not wanting to get my big stack involved in marginal hands. I really try not to let my stack get so short that there is no fold equity. As long as I believe that my all-in has some impetus to it and can get players to fold, then I don’t panic.
Panic time is when you have a really short stack - 3 or 4 times the size of the Big Blind or less. Then I just try get into the pot first with some kind of hand that won’t be dominated, normally a hand like 6, 7 or 7, 8. I am normally quite a conservative player in tournaments which gives me a good solid table image, and it is late in the tournament where I use this table image to my advantage and try to steal a few pots here and there when the blinds are big enough to be worth stealing and everyone is scampering to find chips.
TB: I noticed that you talked a bit about the top-heavy prize structure of the Sun City tournament and well, at this event, the players led the charge in changing this somewhat. Would you mind talking a little bit about how you accomplished this? As a rule, do you think that tournaments are too top-heavy and what steps do you think that tournament organizers should take to ensure that they’re more equitable going forward?
RD: I understand the lure of big prize money. So often what tournaments offer is a huge first prize to get the players to the tournament. As a player though, when I find myself in the late stages of a tournament where the blinds are huge and often everyone left is a bit on the short-stacked size of things, this is where the huge disparity in prize money between first and the rest seems a bit crazy. My feeling is that everyone at a final table, for instance, has done all the hard work to get there.
Now for it to become a crap shoot as to who gets the money is a bit unreasonable. I am not a fan of gambling, and I find that too many final tables force you to gamble because everyone is short-stacked. So if I can, I like to try to take some of the gamble out by evening out the prize money and letting everyone have a pretty good payday while still leaving a good chunk for the winner. It’s good business, a bit like an insurance policy. In those situations, when there isn’t much real play, I prefer to lock up the cash and gamble for less. It’s my preference, and maybe as a reasonably conservative player it suits me. Other players may not agree. I think there are a couple of things organizers could do.
First, I would like to see tournaments pay a little deeper. The norm is 10% of the field. I would like to see that swell to maybe 15%. As I said before, late in a tourney there is so much luck involved that paying a little deeper would eliminate that a bit and allow a few more people to at least break even for going deep in a tourney. Secondly, I would like to see the spread of cash among the finalists a little more, even perhaps more like a professional golf tournament payout structure.
Another option is to roll back the blinds when you get to the final table to allow a little more play when playing for the big money. That isn’t really feasible, but it would be nice. There aren’t a lot of tournaments where there is a lot of final table play. The WSOP Main Event is great because there is real play at the end there but smaller, shorter events struggle to not become an all-in fest at the final table.
TB: Great insights, Ryan. Okay – so here’s a follow-up question: What would your ideal tournament look like? You get to play tournament organizer. Money, time and resources are not an issue. What would you do? Who would you invite? What games would you spread? Where would the event(s) be held, etc.?
RD: The perfect tourney…fantasy land (LOL). Well, the perfect tourney would have a great blind structure, be held in a tropical location, have huge prize money and have the world’s best players. The game would be holdem of course, and I would pay 15% of the field and have a much more even spread in the payouts.
TB: Although you don’t consider yourself a professional poker player, where would you like to see your poker career go? What kinds of poker accomplishments would you want to put down on your playing resume? How do you see poker fitting into your life down the road?
RD: Well, the truth is I love playing poker. I don’t want to play it for a living though because, as with golf, I don’t want it to become a grind. It’s also a very volatile way to make a living, and I am quite happy to be a winning part-time player. I play what tournaments I can when I have time and keep my life priorities in check. Being a professional poker player is anything but normal and I am quite content to live a normal life. I played pro golf for 11 years and that was excitement enough for me.
However, I would love to play the WSOP Main Event again and go deep in that tournament. I would also like to go to WSOP and play like 15 events over the series, I think that would be great fun, but then I would return home and carry on with life as usual.
I think poker will be a part of my life for a long time. I play regularly online when I have time and will continue to do that. It’s a good way to pass time and keep my mind active and, of course, making a bit of extra cash here and there doesn’t hurt either. I also love playing tourneys so I will continue playing the game for as long as it remains financially viable.
TB: What is the status of poker in South Africa? How are you working to increase the standard of play in your home nation?
RD: Poker in South Africa is absolutely flying. The game is growing at an astounding rate. There are live tournaments popping up all over the place and there are two South African specific online poker sites that are very busy. The number of people playing the game is amazing, and the number of people watching the All Africa Poker Channel is astounding. Sometimes we get 2 million viewers a month.
As for improving the standard of play and educating the poker market, we have come up with a great concept. We started a TV series called “Ask the Commentators” where viewers email questions to us, and we address them within the show, discussing each question in depth and discussing strategy etc. The show is growing in popularity and we hope to get new players interested as well as help existing players hone their skills.
TB: Do you prefer online or live action play? What are some of the differences you see between the two? How do you think it’s best for a player to use online play?
RD: I think playing online is a great way to learn the game and gain experience in a hurry. You can play thousands and thousands of hands in a short period of time and gain incredible amounts of playing experience, especially technical experience and skills like working out pot odds, developing a starting hand strategy etc., but live play is very different. There is no substitute for putting in the hours live. The two are very different, and you have to experience both to realize it!
Online you can really just play your cards, but in live games there is so much more - reading players is the key to live success. Obviously you need sound technical knowledge and experience of the game but reading players is what gives you an edge.
TB: Is there anything else you’d like to share with my readers about you or any advice about poker that we may have missed?
RD: My best piece of advice is to always play within your means. Don’t over-extend yourself and play within the limits of your bankroll. You have to look after your bank roll. It is your poker life blood!
Thanks Ryan for taking the time to chat with Tourneyblog and congrats again on your win at Sun City. We look forward to hearing more about your successes here soon!