In the latest in a series of video interviews with the Paul Phua Poker School, poker pro Dan Colman talks to Paul Phua about AI, tells, and the trouble with online poker

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In the latest in the Paul Phua Poker School videos featuring top pros, I am delighted to have Daniel Colman sharing his frank views on poker. Dan is an exceptional player. He made headlines when he won the 2014 Big One for One Drop for a $15m payday, but it was no accident: he had already won $2m in the Monte Carlo Super High Roller Grand Final that year, and he has won many more since. With earnings of $28m in all, he is the second most successful live tournament player in the world.

Have you played against Paul?

DAN COLMAN: Yeah, Paul and I have played a couple of times in tournaments. Not that many times. We played once at the final table in Monte Carlo.

PAUL PHUA: Yes, you busted me in sixth place!

DAN COLMAN: Yeah, everything got pretty short-stacked at that tournament so a lot of the hands just played themselves, we didn’t get to play that much.

PAUL PHUA: In tournament play, yes, I think I still have a lot to learn, especially from players like Dan.

DAN COLMAN: From what I could tell, it seemed like you were playing pretty good!

PAUL PHUA: OK… still learning, still learning! Especially when short-stack play is so different from cash games.

DAN COLMAN: Right. Yeah, the play changes a bunch as well when you go into the money bubble, where a lot of the hands don’t play the same because you have to be more cautious in some areas. For some player stacks you can be more aggressive – there’s another added element to it that goes outside the normal ranges of cash-game poker.

PAUL PHUA: Yes, definitely.

What are your thoughts about online poker?

DAN COLMAN: I think the way the online poker game works is that it puts recreational players at a severe disadvantage, where any guys you’re playing against have software, they have HUDs [Heads Up Displays] that show them everybody’s stats, they mine hands from the days and weeks before to get a database on players they’ve never even played with to understand how they play. Everything is very unfair for the recreational player the way the online environment is these days.

PAUL PHUA: I totally agree, and even recently I’ve seen artificial intelligence beating top pro players. You begin to think, am I playing against a computer sometimes?

Are you worried about what AI means for poker?

DAN COLMAN: Yeah, it worries me a bit. I think online poker will die down as a result of computers and machines playing. I think this will come in the next one, two, three years. It’s already happening in some game formats. For live poker, I don’t see it really impacting the games all that much apart from good online players may soon have to realise there’s no money online; then they come over to play live and maybe they hurt live games by being robotic and motionless and not fun to play with, so maybe that will hurt live poker in some way. But for the most part, I think machines will hurt poker overall in the coming years. I think live poker will certainly survive long after online is dead.

PAUL PHUA: Yes, especially I think tournaments.

DAN COLMAN: Yeah, tournaments will always be good.

PAUL PHUA: You see in all those tournaments they see record numbers year after year, so it suggests that the game is heading in the right direction in terms of tournaments.

DAN COLMAN: Yeah, and live tournaments will always draw people for the sake of a huge top prize. It’s more gamble-y!

Is playing online poker first an advantage in the live game?

DAN COLMAN: I think some young players have an advantage, but for the most part I think when you go from the online realm and cross over to live poker you’re always uncomfortable at first. They might know ‘I have to bluff right here’, but then they think about it and they think ‘Oh, maybe they’re on to me, I check’. You have to get confidence to be able to follow through with your game plan in live poker and I think it’s very difficult for some young online players to do that, so they never really make the seamless transition as other online players are able to.

PAUL PHUA: One good example is Jungleman [Dan Cates]. Two years ago, when I first played him in Montenegro, we had tons of tells on him live. Then one day, one of his backers asked me, ‘Paul, how do you think Jungleman plays?’ I said, ‘Do you want me to tell you honestly? We all have tons of tells on him!’ ‘What are the tells?’ ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘I can’t tell you now!’ But after that… you get very few tells from Jungleman nowadays!

More Dan Colman videos:
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