— All right, guys. I’ve got Patrick Antonius here in Las Vegas. You’ve been playing a lot of poker lately out here.
Yeah, I play some.
— Did you play last night?
Yes, we played during the daytime. It’s really nice to be able to sleep normal hours, train normal hours, and then play during the day. It makes a big difference for me.
— You prefer cash games, right, not tournaments?
Yeah. I’ve always been a cash game player my whole life. Tournaments were never really a goal for me. They were more like fun bonus things. I managed to crush the games very early, and cash games were always so much bigger than tournaments. That’s why I focused on what was bigger.
I also like the freedom. I play when I feel good, and I quit when I want. Once you enter a tournament, you’re stuck with the schedule for days, long hours. Especially back in the day, tournaments were so small. A $10,000 buy-in tournament compared to a cash game where you could win or lose a million. You’d have to win tournaments for five days straight just to match that.
Nowadays, Triton has been an absolute game changer. That’s why I’ve started playing more tournaments. It’s exciting. It gets my adrenaline going. The money is huge, and the schedule is tough, playing every day for two weeks straight. But I like tours as long as they’re important enough, which means the money is big enough.
Tournaments give you more emotion. And honestly, winning a tournament is the best feeling in the world. Thanks to Triton, we now have these high roller tournaments. Otherwise, there would be very few, and you wouldn’t see me playing many tournaments at all.
— Where’s your favorite place to play?
Montenegro is beautiful. The setup by the ocean is amazing. Some locations like Jeju are tougher in terms of travel, but we don’t really have much time to do other things anyway. Triton has mastered the player experience. They take care of everything. Food is available 24/7 while you’re playing. You don’t have to think about dinner breaks or logistics. They have VIP service responding to anything around the clock.
— It’s the best tournament organization, in my opinion. They bring wealthy players and the best players from all over the world. Do you change your style based on location?
I always change my style based on the players. A good poker player is always adjusting. There’s no single style you should have. You should be able to do anything. The goal is to do the right thing at the right time against the right opponent.
Poker is extremely complex. It’s not a game that can ever be mastered perfectly. That’s the beauty of it. It’s so skill-based, yet it has the perfect amount of luck. It’s been an interesting journey with poker.
Later in life, I’ve realized how good of a game poker really is. In my early 20s, it was just about action and playing. Now I see how much it offers in terms of personal growth. You learn a lot about yourself through wins and losses. How you manage yourself, your emotions, your reactions. There’s a lot of human psychology involved, a lot of energy exchange, and a lot you can improve within yourself.
— Do you still have the same passion you had in your 20s?
I think I have more passion now. It’s a different kind of passion. When I was younger, I played a lot. I went through periods of playing close to 12 hours a day for six or seven years.
— Wow. No days off?
Online poker was very different back then. No solvers, no tracking software, no hand histories. Games were running 24/7 and were very good.
You could wake up, play online, eat breakfast, play more, go work out, come back, play again. You could structure your day around poker very easily. I played a lot online back then, before solvers, before cheating scandals. I mean, there were some scandals even back then, but live poker is the real experience.
— Glory days!
I’m a much better live player than online now. That may not have been true 20 years ago. Live poker requires a different kind of skill. Online, you’re more statistically oriented.
— What is particularly difficult to do in a live game?
Live, you rely on feel, physical tells, timing, behavior, and small details. It’s hard to fake strong body language with a weak hand, especially in big moments when your tournament life is on the line.
— You’re 29th on the all-time money list and number one in Finland. Have you accomplished everything you wanted to in poker?
I have my goals, but they’re not rigid. I really enjoy competing against the best. I’d be proud of myself if I can keep up with how the game evolves and how strong the best players become. If I can still compete at a high level for the next 20 years, that would mean a lot to me. It’s going to get harder with age, but I think I’m at a peak right now.
— And you still feel like you’re improving?
It’s all about how much effort and energy you put into it, and how much motivation you have. If I have other goals that become important and start taking my energy, that probably takes a lot away from poker. But at the moment, I’m pretty much full-time poker, and I really like it. I love it. It’s something that makes me happy.
I’ve experienced all kinds of things. When I’ve had periods where I don’t play much and there aren’t many big games available, I usually end up doing other things, and the result isn’t always that great. I end up overtraining. I start training twice a day because I have a lot of energy. I’m not a guy who likes to sit at home and watch TV. I have a professional sports background. I did a lot of sports growing up, all kinds of sports, and tennis was my main one.
I notice that I’m much happier when I get to play a lot of poker. Obviously, too much is too much. There has to be balance in everything. But poker gives you a certain satisfaction. You’re using your brain, you’re in the present moment, it stimulates a lot of thinking. If you don’t get that, you have to find that kind of stimulation somewhere else.
— So you like adrenaline, you like that rush.
I like adrenaline in the sense that when the game is meaningful, it brings my focus to a different level. If the game is too small, I won’t enter that state of intensity. That’s why I’ve always liked high stakes. Once we’re playing for big money, it’s meaningful for everyone, no matter how much money you have.
It brings certain aspects into the game. We start talking about comfort zones, what kind of hands people are uncomfortable bluffing with, what kind of bet sizes they’re uncomfortable calling. That adds another layer of skill to the game, and I’ve always been good at navigating that environment.
It’s a very different game than low stakes, where chips are flying around and people are laughing after getting stacked. That’s great poker too, but it’s a different kind of poker. It’s not as serious. Even in the games we play now, we still have fun and laugh, but everyone cares. When someone makes a big bet, they care deeply about whether they get called or not.
— What would you say is your favorite part of poker? The money, the competition, the camaraderie?
That’s a good question. I get a lot of satisfaction from playing against the best players in the world. If I’m able to outplay them, that’s always a challenge. It’s not something you can fake. You have to be fully present mentally.
When I play, I’m really playing poker. Everything else disappears. I put my phone away. Sometimes I listen to music, but I’m completely focused. It’s almost like a meditative state. You’re analyzing constantly.
There are many things I love about poker, but one thing I’ve realized is that poker gives people something they may never have experienced before. I tried to pursue tennis seriously. I trained hard and wanted to go professional, but injuries and falling behind made it clear in my teenage years that it wasn’t going to happen.
People who never competed in sports never experienced those intense wins and losses, the disappointment, the joy of performing at your highest level. Poker gives them that experience. That’s very fulfilling for a lot of people.
Poker has so many aspects. It’s player versus player versus player. There’s immense pressure and very little time to make the right decision. You have theory, intuition, psychology, memory, pattern recognition, all coming together. I don’t know any other card game or game in general that offers so much depth.
— And yet you can still lose, even if you play perfectly...
Some people need one good day, some people one good week. Whatever makes you feel like you’ve cleared your mind and you’re ready to play again. Then it’s good to start in softer games or smaller games, get some winning hands, some successful spots, and when you feel like you’re playing your best again, then it’s better to move up to bigger games.
We all do different things. We manage ourselves differently. This would be an optimal way to do it, but everyone has their own process. I think players manage themselves much better nowadays. Back in the day, everything was different. Sports were different. Everything is changing and becoming more advanced.
— But at the same time, the game has become much more difficult today?
Poker is living in a very interesting period of time. Nowadays, it’s so accessible to study the game and get better. We have all kinds of tools, solvers, and other resources. You can access information very quickly and build a pretty solid baseline game in a short amount of time.
This has brought a lot of players into the game. Back in the day, you were reading poker books that were probably full of wrong information because nobody really knew anything. I was scared to play back then because the skill gap felt so high. Everyone seemed so good, and the gap was huge. That was ten years ago.
But now we know that nobody was really that good back then. With solvers, players are finding better strategies and more optimal ways to balance their hands. If you go back twenty years, we had no information. You would just play with the same players for months or years and see who was winning the most. Those were considered the best players, but there was no way to prove it with statistics or data.
— But it's scary for newbies to play these days, isn't it? It seems like everyone's good enough."
It’s been interesting to see how even overly studied players can lack other important elements of the game. They play by numbers, everything calculated, and many ignore the human aspect. Humans play very differently than solvers. We will never fully comprehend the complexity of perfect balance.
Humans under-bluff a lot of spots. Not every spot, but many of them. Because people bluff less, we also call less. That creates a different baseline for how we play against each other. If you put computers against each other, you would see a completely different-looking game. The same thing happens in chess.
If you try to play like a computer against humans, you’ll make a lot of bad calls and be wrong often. But if you bluff like a computer against humans, you might actually have success because people fold too much.
Poker players used to be very good at reading each other, feeling the game, using psychology, table talk, and intuition. Now you see many players coming from a solver-based world, and they lack some of the things players were good at before. It’s not easy, but poker is definitely growing. It’s a really nice time to experience the game.
— Do you use the solver yourself? I recently had Bryn Kenney on my podcast, and he claims he never opens it.
Do I use solvers? Not really. When I study and work on my game, I have people I work with sometimes, and they look at spots using solvers. In that sense, yes, we use them. We get information from them. But I try not to rely on them too much.
I have a very strong natural baseline in my game. When we look at solver outputs, I usually already know what the computer is going to do, which hands it uses, how it sizes bets, how it balances. The computer mixes sizes constantly, betting one size sometimes, another size other times, checking part of the time. It’s extremely complex.
You need a very flexible mind to balance everything properly and avoid doing things too much or too little. If I had to describe my approach, I try to play in ways my opponents are not used to. I want to take them into areas of the game where they’re more likely to make mistakes or where I’m more comfortable navigating the situation.
— Isn't there a poker boom of sorts right now? Thanks to streamers and vloggers?
100%. Series attendance is breaking records all over the world. Poker is going mainstream, which is great.
— You said you were big on tennis. Did you watch the recent French Open?
Yeah, I managed to watch the last two sets. That might have been the best match I’ve ever seen.
I was wondering who would step up to replace Federer and Nadal, and now Djokovic is getting older. It looks like these young guys are going to take over.
— Do you play any pickleball or padel?
Yeah, I’ve played a bit. Right now I’m trying to get back into tennis. Pickleball isn’t really for me. I played once, didn’t know the kitchen rule, reached out on a volley after a heavy leg day, and managed to pull a nerve in my back.
I also don’t like the lack of touch. The ball is different, and the paddles don’t let you spin or place the ball the way you can with a tennis racket. I like padel though. I played last week.
There’s a place in Vegas now. It’s a bit tough on my hips though. The movement is more aggressive than tennis. There’s a lot of sprinting, and as a tennis player I don’t yet have the padel instincts to relax, let the ball go, and position properly the way pros do.
But I’m trying to get back into tennis. I still love it. Tennis is physically tough. It’s one of the hardest sports on the body.
— You might need stem cells.
Yeah, I haven’t done that yet. I just did some other treatments last week. I’ve had hip issues for a while, and hip replacement has come up a few times, but I’ve avoided surgery so far. I still managed to get on court quite a bit last year. Now I’m back again. I need to put more work into the gym.
— The brain is obviously important for poker. Do you do any mental workouts, meditation, or anything like that?
I do a lot, but nothing very specific like meditation. Health is my passion and my lifestyle. I approach poker like a sport, and the most important thing is being well rested.
I’ve done a lot of work on my training over the years. But honestly, playing poker itself is the biggest brain workout. The more I play, the fewer small mistakes I make. You start recognizing spots instantly, knowing when to bluff, how much to bet, things like that.
I’ve worked for a long time on brain optimization with my health specialist, mostly by becoming healthier overall. There are things that can optimize brain function, but it’s very complex. I don’t even fully understand it myself.
What I’ve learned is that the brain adapts to almost anything over time. You have to keep changing things, whether it’s routines or supplements. If you do the same thing over and over, the effect eventually diminishes.
— Memory must be important too, especially remembering hands against the same players.
Yes, very important. Memory is huge. The brain is everything.
And taking care of your body goes hand in hand with how your brain functions. It’s very hard to make good decisions if you haven’t slept well, if you’re dealing with chronic pain or inflammation, or if something basic is preventing you from feeling good.
So if you’re feeling good, you’re going to put yourself in a much better position to make the right decisions. Whatever those decisions are, not just in poker, but in life. We all have to make so many decisions every day.
— What’s next for you? I know you’ve got some companies you’re working on. What’s the main focus for you the rest of this year?
It’s going to be a busy year, but every year is busy, and I like it that way. Recently, I signed a contract with one of the largest poker platforms, but I’m not going to announce it yet. I’ll publish it when the time is right. That will mean some new things. I’ll be playing some high-stakes cash games and Triton events.
Editor's note: WePoker is a mobile app aimed at the Asian market. Patrick now not only represents the platform but has also become its "security advisor." Phil Ivey and Kristen Foxen previously signed contracts with WePoker.
You’re probably aware that I’m also a co-founder of First Land of Poker, FLP Lab. It’s been a long journey with our company, but things are looking very good in terms of product and development. Next year, most likely, we’ll also be doing some cash game events with land-based casino partners.
Editor's note: FLOP is a platform for poker game organizers, casinos, and poker rooms, and also a social network for poker players. It helps players find games, and clubs manage tables, organize waitlists, and more.
For me, it’s mostly going to be the same things. Taking care of myself, playing a lot of poker, and being involved in some projects.
Editor's note: Patrick is being modest, but he also has another business. He and the playful Finn Ossi Ketola opened the online casino Duel, which probably also helps fuel his bankroll.
— Thanks for coming on, Patrick. That was awesome.
Thank you.
