Back on the Prowl

Despite his being one of the original members of Team Full Tilt and one of the game’s most consistent players for the last three years, Lindgren remains somewhat of an enigma. This all-American guy has somehow managed to keep a low profile, while establishing one of the most feared table personas in the game. Don’t, however, try to get Lindgren to admit that his game is leaps and bounds above most of the competition. According to Lindgren, he’s just like everyone else: A guy who loves the game and who has an insatiable desire to ensure his financial security.

Although he is quiet at the poker table, make no mistake about it: Lindgren is a gamer through and through. Competitive by nature, Lindgren somehow remains modest, despite cashing time and time again.

“I think I avoid blowups better than other people do. Sometimes they play some big pots that they don’t have to, or they make some crazy bluffs and get frustrated easily. People think that you have to do something special to win, but the truth is that you don’t have to do anything really special. You just have to give yourself a chance to stay in the tournament and get lucky,” he said.

With a game shaped by playing online for years, entering a sick number of tournaments every year, and also dealing for a brief spell, Lindgren seems to have found the proverbial key to being a successful player; but he isn’t sure, or at least won’t tell, what it is. Over the last three years, Lindgren has earned over $1 million and has positioned himself as one of the premier players not only in the game, but behind the game as well.

Ask him how he remains so consistent and he’ll say, “I don’t know. The last three years I’ve won over a million every year. One year it was a big victory like the PartyPoker win. Another year it was several smaller wins. I just try to stay consistent. To be honest, I don’t really know what the key is. I guess it’s really about playing good, solid poker and playing enough tournaments to give yourself a chance to win. You have to play to win and practice a lot. Unfortunately, my cash game has suffered because I play so many tournaments.”

Lindgren competes not only with his opponents, but also with himself. A relentless perfectionist who is possibly his own toughest critic, Lindgren sees plenty of room for improvement. “I’ve been experimenting a lot and trying to get better. I play a lot slower and do a lot less reraising. I’ve tried to see more flops. I’ve basically been playing “small-ball” poker, which is what Daniel Negreanu teaches. I think it has been working pretty well. I’ve been pretty unlucky the last couple of $10,000 buy-in events. I really haven’t gotten a lot of hands, but I managed to keep myself in the hunt for the money. If I had won a key hand here or there, things would have worked out differently. Even when I’m running badly, I’m still giving myself a chance and knowing that feels good,” he said.

Lindgren’s mastery of poker alchemy is what has turned his game into a living work of art. Like the finest wine, Lindgren has “aged,” starting out as a young internet phenom, and turning into one of those rare vintage players that connoisseurs dream of. Lindgren is repeatedly in the hunt for tournament titles. He attributes this to his willingness to shift gears in his play.

“I’ve always experimented and I’ve come to believe that this style suits me best. I trap a lot of the aggression that is in the game today. So many of these players are suicide bombers who think that it is okay to play themselves into oblivion. A lot of people see the players’ hole cards on television and think that some of these guys are making excellent reads. The truth of the matter is that a lot of these guys are guessing, and they see an A-10, A-J, A-Q and think it is a monster and risk everything with a weaker hand. By playing a more patient style, seeing some flops, or trapping players pre-flop with a big hand suits me better than other styles especially in today’s events,” he said.

When you first try to understand how things went for Lindgren after his Bluff cover, you can look at it in two ways. You can consider the $1 million-plus he earned and dream of being as successful as he was last year, or you can listen to Lindgren who will insist that things could have been better. “I lost a coin flip to ‘The Grinder’ and didn’t play well after that at Borgata. I regret not winning it. Sure, I finished third and won close to $400,000, but I left more than a million on the table. Then I finished second to Jeff Madsen in the WSOP when I lost another coin flip. It’s kind of hard to think that if a couple of hands go my way, I would have a few more titles from this year,” he said.

Don’t misunderstand Lindgren he isn’t being ungrateful for his success; he’s just one of those guys who lives by the bottom line. According to Erick, the expenses of being a poker player force professionals to think this way. “It’s not April 15 yet, so I don’t know exact numbers, but I think I spend close to $800,000 a year on buy-ins alone. It probably costs me over $50,000 in living expenses. I had better win a lot of money.”

Many people think that Lindgren started off 2006 with a bang, but in his eyes, there is always room for improvement. He finished third in the 2006 Borgata Winter Poker Open, behind second-place finisher John D’Agostino and eventual champion, Michael “The Grinder” Mizrachi. He pocketed a cool $400,000 for the finish, but left dissatisfied because he was unable to maximize his results at the Atlantic City World Poker Tour final table.

“When there is $1.1 million on the line, you really want to take it home. That is some dead serious money. You are really only going to have two to three chances a year to play for that kind of money. So when you get there, you have to win,” he said.

Despite doing well in the event, it was a tough way to start out the year, according to Lindgren. “I felt so sick after getting knocked out. I didn’t play the last hand very well, but until that point I felt that I played pretty well. I thought I gave myself a big chance to win, but it didn’t work out. I felt like I had just had a million dollars taken from me.”

Lindgren thinks that he was playing well, but that he got unlucky in a crucial showdown with Mizrachi, which was ultimately what ended his tournament run. “I’m dying to replay that one hand at Borgata final table. On the turn, I had just an ace-high nut-flush draw and Grinder had slow-played his flush draw. He hit his flush on the turn and we both pushed everything in the middle. Obviously I didn’t win. It was very embarrassing and it should have never happened. That hand cost me a lot of money,” he said.

According to Lindgren, Mizrachi was probably the toughest player he faced in 2006. “The Grinder has gotten the best of me at several final tables, winning L.A. and Borgata. I’ll have to figure out a special recipe for Michael down the road.”

Fast forward to the $3,000 No Limit Hold’em event at the Five-Star Bellagio tournament. This time, Lindgren found a way to get the job done and took home nearly a quarter-of-a-million dollars. According to Lindgren, the victory was a momentum builder. “When I won the $3,000 prelim event, it felt really good. The last time I won a Bellagio event was my first win of 2002. I always like to play those events, because Jack McClelland always runs such great tournaments. For some reason, they seem really hard to win.”

Lindgren was pleased with his play, but is all too aware that winning a smaller buy-in event doesn’t come close to the $10,000-plus events. “It means we ate at Kona Grill instead of Shitaro,” he said with a smile.

Soon after his win, Lindgren put himself in contention to take down a coveted World Series of Poker bracelet at the RIO in June. Lindgren once again positioned himself for another victory; this time in a six-handed $5,000 buy-in No Limit Hold’em event. Unfortunately, Lindgren was denied his attempt and had his chance for poker immortality taken away by a WSOP rookie two-time bracelet winner Jeff Madsen.

Once again, Lindgren is the most vocal about his lack of good play that day. “Ironically, the tournament I probably played the worst in was the $5,000 sixhanded buy-in where I finished second. I think I played pretty well and managed to build a nice chip lead going into the final table. I got Madsen down to heads up and kept grinding him down until I had an almost two-to-one chip lead, but it didn’t work out. We got it all in when I had A-K and he had a pair of eights. After winning that hand, Madsen used his chip lead to lean on me and ended up winning. I really wanted that bracelet. I then made another Day 1 exit from the Main Event. It is disgusting.”

To this day, Lindgren remains frustrated with the outcome of his closest taste of poker immortality, but has accepted that the rookie did a good job. “I knew he had made a previous final table, but I wasn’t really nervous. Don’t get me wrong, Jeff is a good player; but he is still inexperienced. There is no substitute for making a lot of final tables and learning the strategies at each level and I should have won.”

Surprisingly, it wasn’t the gold bracelet that mattered to the confident Lindgren. It was the cash he missed out on. “When I think about the event, I think about the $200,000 I left on the table more than I think about the bracelet. In my mind, I’ll win some bracelets down the road. But at this time, I want to keep getting results in the big tournaments. I just want to be a consistent winner,” he said. Lindgren moved on from the WSOP by having a spectacular Thanksgiving when he won $500,000. “Full Tilt Poker did a live show from Red Rock Casino and it went really well. It was great because fans got to see all the hands and listen to great commentary from Howard Lederer. It was a really cool tournament, but it moved a little fast. The blinds grew real quick and you really have to win a couple of races to take it down. I got pretty fortunate. I got an oversized check for that,” he said with a laugh.

To take down the oversized check and the gigantic cash, Lindgren had to defeat a table full of his Full Tilt peers, including Phil Ivey, Clonie Gowen, and Erik Seidel. “It was really tough. Whenever you play against those guys you have to do some things to throw them off. My general philosophy is not to make dumb bluffs, but against those guys, I might make a bluff because they never see me do that stuff in a tournament. I like to mix it up. It doesn’t matter how you slice it, when you beat players of that caliber, it makes you feel good,” he said.

The guy some players lovingly refer to as “the poker alien,” Phil Ivey is the player who provides him with the most hassles at a table like this, Lindgren said. “He gives me the most problems. I think that when he is focused and he brings his game, he just plays on the next level.”

When asked which mattered more, the thrill of the victory and the pride that comes with winning or the money, Lindgren didn’t hesitate for a second and said, “It’s always the money, and if people tell you otherwise, they are lying. It is all about the money.”

The new year brought Lindgren another monster victory. In January, he and his Full Tilt teammates flew to Melbourne, Australia, for the Aussie Millions. Although he exited early in the Main Event, Lindgren crushed the competition in the special $100,000 (AUD) buy-in event. Featuring a field of 18 players, this victory didn’t come until after Lindgren got himself properly motivated. “I felt that I had better win. You can’t enter a bunch of events like this and end up ahead in the long run. I just wanted to play really good poker,” he said.

Once again, Lindgren had no fears playing against a stellar field. “You want to play the best players because they present the best challenges. It means even more because in a lot of tournaments, you face so many donkeys and this is your chance to play the top players and step it up a notch,” he said.

According to Lindgren, one key hand moved him to the top of the chip count. “I built up my chips pretty well and I thought I had the easier table draw in the beginning. When I was moved over, I got a lot of chips from John D’Agostino and David Benyamine. I flopped top two pair with a J-9-5 rainbow board, and I bet. Jdags had 8d 9d and flopped middle pair. David had Qd 10d. Jdags and Benyamine both called. The turn brought another diamond, so they both had flush draws and a ton of other outs. I made another big bet, they called, and luckily neither hit the flush. That pot helped propel me to the lead and set the tone for the rest of the day.”

Soon after taking out Phil Ivey, Lindgren was heads up and got the better of his final opponent, Erik Seidel. “I think I managed to get rid of Ivey in the fourth or fifth spot, and I ended up against Erik Seidel. I got two kings over two jacks and won. If it had been reversed, I would have been out,” he said. Once again, Lindgren said it was Ivey who was his toughest competition. “It was a 14-hour tournament and he lasted 13 hours. Seidel really brought it as well.”

Lindgren also won a good amount playing in the cash games in what is lovingly referred to as “God’s Country.” “We played a $500/$1000 (AUD) cash game and I won a $500,000 pot with ace-high against a local Australian guy who had had some drinks. There was about $90,000 in the pot pre-flop and I had the button. The flop came K-J-4. They checked to me and I took a $50,000 shot at it. I actually made Patrik Antonius fold two queens. Then it got back to the Aussie, and he must have thought I was weak and raised me another $100,000. He basically gave off a bunch of tells that told me that he didn’t have shit. I just called the bet. He checked to me and my ace-high was good,” he said.

Lindgren is more than just a player. He is what the industry refers to as a “backer.” In other words, he pays the buy-ins for other players as an investment and hopes to get a nice percentage if they win. Although not often discussed, these kinds of deals have been common throughout the poker community and he didn’t shy away when asked about his role as the principal financier of some of the game’s top young players.

“I’ve had up to ten players in my stable at once. I don’t think that it is typically a real profitable thing to do, but I’ve got some great guys. Some continue to play for me even though they have won a lot of money. It is a real pain in the ass, but if you were going to do it, you would want my crew,” he said.

When asked who some of his key guys were, Lindgren rattled off several names, including 2005 World Poker Tour Player-of-the-Year Gavin Smith, WSOP bracelet winner Josh Arieh, and recent final table fixture Bill Edler. According to Lindgren, 2006 was a tough year for backing players. “I would say it was a monster loser in 2006. Nobody really won anything, but the guys are picking it up this year,” he said.

When asked about the typical deal, Lindgren replied, “A guy plays for 50 percent of the profits. Let’s say a player spends $80,000 of my money for buy-ins and then he wins $100,000. The $80,000 gets paid back, and then we would split the rest.”

In addition to backing other players, Lindgren is looking outside of the poker industry for other economic ventures. “I am involved with RawVegas.tv, an internet television station we are running out of Las Vegas. We’re going to do some fun stuff with high stakes golf and poker. There is probably a ton of cool stuff on the site that I don’t even know about, because they create so much content every day,” he said.*

According to Lindgren, the rest of 2007 will be like the last three years except for one thing: “The world can expect me to win my first bracelet. It’s time for me to have one. I also expect to win at least one big buy-in event. I think I’m going to play the WSOP in Europe, and I’m hoping to have a good series there as well.”

Lindgren made one last comment when asked whether he needed to do anything to solidify his career in the eyes of the public in 2007. “I just want to win consistently. I don’t really care about how other people perceive my career, I’m just trying to play as well as I can,” he said.