Interview with Harris Pavlou "P.I.M.P" [Archive]

Roy Bhasin: Harris "P.I.M.P" Pavlou. Your reputation precedes yourself. Women want to be with you, and men want to.. well, men want to be with you too. Over the past 12 months you have taken the online PLO world by storm, rising through the ranks at “townsend”-like speeds with “ivey”-like skills. Yet most people don’t know who you are, where you came from, or what separates you from the average 25/50 Joe PLO. How can one man / legend / god / mystical being accomplish and continue to accomplish as much as you have? Simply put, you are an enigma. I think I can speak for the entire poker community when I say we want to know more. Thank you for agreeing to do this interview for Poker Crack.
Let’s start off easy: How old are you and how long have you been playing poker for?


Harris Pavlou: I'm 26 and been playing poker for I guess 3 1/2 or 4 years. 3 years as a "professional".


RB: How did you first get into poker?


HP: I had been gambling in one form or another for many years, usually unsuccessfully. I saw poker on TV and it was just another form of gambling in the beginning. However I felt like it had the potential to be more than that, so I got into it a bit more seriously.


RB: What other forms of gambling were you involved in before poker?


HP: A few random school prop bets, some card games. Then horse racing and sports betting. Apart from a couple of glorious weeks on the horses I was pretty crap at everything.


RB: Sounds like you were quite the degen. Give us a brief rundown of your poker career: what games/stakes did you start at and how have you progressed over the years?


HP: I think my first games were 1-2 and 2-4 limit HE. I was underolled every step of the way and got crushed obv. Eventually I realised that I didn't have to play limit poker and probably played 0.10/0.25 or 0.25/0.5 NLHE to start out. Again I was probably underrolled at that time and busted 3 or 4 times before I got things going. I guess I was improving all the time and I was able to win consistently and move up quite quickly.
By the end of 2007 I was playing mostly 5/10 and 10/20 NLHE, as well as decent sized MTT's. At the time I guess I felt that NLHE was getting a little tougher, and I was getting a bit sick of NLHE. I had played mixed games in a Brisbane home game and thought I'd check out PLO. So at the start of 2008 I pretty much made a complete switch.
I started out at 5/10 and ran like god. That was the worst thing I could do, since I was terrible but I won. Things pretty quickly changed and I realised the sad truth about my game. I worked hard and stuck at it. Luckily a few MTT wins kept my head above water during the lean PLO (and stockmarket times), but my game came together mid 2008. At that time I decided against the WSOP due to inadequate bankroll, so I stayed home to grind. That was pretty much where things started going really well. I took a bit of a shot at shortstacking 25-50. I put in good volume and ran great, ended up doubling my roll in one month. The rest of the year continued in that fashion. I was playing well, running well and finding good games. The second half of 2008 was a very good time.


RB: When did you break through into nosebleed stakes (50/100+)?


HP: Well I've never been one to hit a certain point and say "ok now I'm a 50-100 player", but during that time (late 2008) I was always looking for bigger games. I've always shortstacked when moving up limits so I was usually pretty well rolled to play up to 200-400, and as it happened most of those games were very profitable to shortstack. There were of course big swings, but nothing crazy. Over time it just became normal for me to play pretty much whatever game was running.


RB: How many hours a week do you usually put in? Playing how many tables?


HP: When I was a real sicko and 25-50 was cranking I would put in around 60 hours a week. Usually I would play 6-10 tables if I was only playing 25-50; less if I'm playing bigger games. These days I can still grind, but my volume is much lower now both in terms of hours and multi-table ratio.


RB: If you could give one piece of advice to someone just starting out with PLO what would it be?


HP: From a technical standpoint it would be to play relatively tight until you have a good understanding of the game. From a psychological standpoint it would be to understand that the swings will be very severe and to stick with it even when things aren't going well.


RB: Sensible as always.


Have you had any “aha” moments in your career? By that I mean was there ever a time that you were playing or thinking about the game and something clicked in your mind and you just “got it” and felt your game go to a whole new level?


HP: Well nothing that was really revolutionary in my mind. But there were definitely times when I felt really in control of things, like sure that I understood and was playing better than the vast majority of my opponents. I don't think they came about because my game had ascended to a whole new level... it was usually because most of my opponents just didn't have a proper understanding of the game.


RB: So, what does separate you from the average 25/50 Joe PLO?


HP: Well it's hard to say what the average 25-50 PLO player is. There are some nits, some sickos and everything in between. But I think I have developed a style that works well in general. I think I adjust very well to different game conditions/opponents. And I don't think I am affected much by emotions/tilt, so I play close to my best most of the time.


RB: I’m sure you’ve played a tonne of massive pots and crazy hands - care to share one that especially sticks out in your mind?


HP: lol the first one that came to mind was early in my 500-1000 career.
I can't remember it exactly, but I had raised and got called by two players including Patrik Antonius. The flop was A74 and I had A4xx and only about 2x the pot left in my stack. So I just potted it and PA c/raised me. I kind of knew he had A7 or 77 but i couldn't really fold. Sure enough he had 77. This was in my run good days, so obviously it came 4, 4.


RB: Oh to run like you for a day.. most of us can only dream.
I'd swap some of my poker run good for some of your chinese poker run good.


RB: Haha, you've got yourself a deal.
Are you planning on attending the WSOP this year?


HP: Yep I'll be in Vegas this year for sure. It's my first time and I'm really looking forward to it.


RB: What events do you plan on playing?


HP: Well i haven't settled on a complete schedule, but obviously the ME and all decent sized PLO events are the priorities.

I've also been getting a bit more excited about NLHE recently since I've been playing the 500-1000 HA, so I might play a few of the bigger NLHE events, and probably the 8-game mixed event.


RB: Where did your nickname Harris ‘P.I.M.P’ come from?


HP: Hehe, well my original name screen name was HarrisMP. I was a bit disappointed with it, nothing creative or exciting. My full name is Harris Michael Pavlou and thats all there is to it.

When I started playing the big games and opting not to play live tournaments some of the young australian poker players starting calling me HarrisPIMP. They insisted I use it for some of my screen names and I guess i liked it.


RB: Best moment in poker?


HP: Thats a tough one. I feel like the best moments should be ones are cause for celebration, and even though I've had some really good sessions, days, weeks etc. you don't really celebrate them like a tournament win.
So I'm going to say my first decent MTT win which was early 2007 in the Mansion 100k guaranteed. Took down 24k which doubled my bankroll.

That epic online session down in Melbourne was pretty awesome though. Lol I was too tired to celebrate that one.


RB:Yeah that was unbelievable and certainly ranks as one of the most impressive feats in online poker history. Care to re-tell the details for those who weren't there?


HP: Well I've always preferred playing against Euro trash..... those pesky americans are usually more competent. So when everyone else stuck to Stars and Full Tilt I was doing my best work on Cryptologic and Ipoker. One night after accumulating a big stack in a decent live tournament in Melbourne i jumped online to check the action.
Sure enough one of the biggest donks around was on Crypto. I was pretty short on that site at the time so I bought in for the minimum on two tables; $25/50 and 25/50 pounds. The session lasted 8 hours and was usually between 2 and 5 handed but myself and the the donk stayed the whole time. Basically I played well and ran like god and he tilted and played worse than usual (which was already bad)
By the end I had run the 1k buy ins to 44k pounds and 111k USD. It was pretty amazing. He was only reloading for 2k at a time and I just stacked him over and over again.
I only got 3 hours sleep before heading out for day 2 of the tournament. Everyone was wishing me luck with my big stack, wondering why I seemed so unexcited about the whole thing. I was like "whatever I won more than 1st prize last night."


RB: Can I have your babies?


HP: lol, our babies would definitely have the run good!


RB: Okay well then how about your worst moment in poker?


HP: Even though the money wasn't a huge issue the aussie millions ME this year was pretty devastating. I felt like I had played really well without much luck. Had really just ground it out and stayed patient for two and a half long and painful days. We were approaching the bubble, I was getting a little short but had a good table and felt like I was in a good spot if I could just chip up a little. Anyway I open early position with KK, this guy with same stack as me ships it in with A6s and gets there. So frustrating.
In financial terms you can pretty much pick any day from the last 20 and I could come up with a pretty depressing poker story. Talk about crashing back to earth!


RB: Ouch, so you've been running bad lately?


HP:Yeah definitely my worst downswing ever. Maybe not in buy-ins or BB's but pure $ value it's been brutal. Lol I always prided myself on running good in big games, but I fear I've lost that skill.


RB: There was a fair amount of controversy a couple of months back over you and Mark Vos being the same person, and of you having multiple accounts (‘JohnnyPav’ and ‘HarrisMP’) - do you want to clear the air once and for all?


HP: Yeah good idea. Mark and I are friends through poker. We live in the same city and pretty much play the same games. At the time we were traveling together and the 500-1000 games started running regularly. We both played using our own accounts and shared action to minimise variance.
We couldn't play at the same tables because of the IP address issue (not that we wanted to play at the same time anyway)
So I guess it appeared that one person was using multiple accounts to shortstack the game more effectively, but it just wasn't the case.
As for the HarrisMP/JohnnyPav conflict, those were both my accounts. HarrisMP was my original account, but I started using the JohnnyPav (my brothers account) to take advantage of a better rakeback deal.
When the controversy started FTP security investigated the whole issue. We were cleared of any wrongdoing regarding the way we were both playing the game, but I the JohnnyPav account was closed and I am now HarrisMP again.


RB: I'm glad we've got that cleared up. Okay we're almost done, just a couple of final questions.
What does the future hold for you? Do you plan on playing poker forever?


HP: Well to be honest I'm not sure. I still like playing the game. I think I'll play for as long as I like it and it's profitable. I certainly can't think of anything else that I can like as much and be as successful at.
At the same time the game is getting tougher in general and I think it will continue to go that way. So I can't imagine myself playing the way i am for more than a few years. But really I'm not thinking much about the future, just keep doing what I'm doing and see what happens.

RB: There are rumours that you will be a part of an exclusively PLO training site - true or false?


HP: Yes that's true. It's an exciting project and I'm really looking forward to getting up an running. The game is still quite new and in general people still fail to understand it and play poorly, even at quite high stakes. There is a lot that poker players can do to improve and i hope to be a part of that.


RB: Thank you for donating your time to this interview. I hope you start running better soon.


HP: Thank you, it's been fun.


You can find Harris playing on Pokerstars and FTP under ‘HarrisMP’ playing anywhere from 25/50 to 500/1000.

21 Apr 2009