November 9 – Scott Montgomery

Not many people realize that Scott Montgomery is actually quite the big tournament player. Not in terms of volume as he’s only entered three main events but the fact that he’s cashed in all of them. A fifth place finish at the LA Poker Classic earlier this year netted him some television time and a $396,860 payday. Later he placed 16th in the 10K Heads Up WSOP event, and of course he’s now guaranteed at least a $900K payday at the final table of this years WSOP Main Event.

You can chalk his run up to a good year or you can just concede that he’s a damn good poker player. Running through several large fields and going so deep each time is a real indicator that he’s more than capable of running with the big names in poker. If he can leverage his way into a big win at the World Series of Poker final table in a few days, there will be quite a bit written about his uncanny ability to go deep so often in only his first few major events.

Hailing from Canada, the quirky player comes off as lackadaisical on televised interviews. A close look at his play during these major events will tell you otherwise, he’s deadly serious and has a second sense when it comes to reading other players. His preferred method of collecting chips? The bluff, which he uses very well.

By his own admission, he’s much better in the larger tournaments because you can actually get players off of mediocre hands. In an interview with Poker Listings he said, “Yeah. In smaller tournaments you just can never bluff people off hands, which is how I make my money. And in these tournaments, well, I bluff people off of their hands all the time. Nobody wants to risk their whole tournament - nobody but me, because I don’t care. I never care.”

It will be interesting to see how Montgomery changes his style, if at all, since he’s had over 100 days to study his opponents during the televised coverage of the WSOP Main Event on ESPN. Will he make changes and not rely so much on the bluff? One thing is for sure, we’ll all know the conclusion in less than a week when the final table of the World Series of Poker is played out after only a day two delay on November 11th on ESPN.