David Williams is a damned good poker player. Despite being only 26-year-old, David has earned over $5.5 million in tournament poker winnings. He’s the type of player who has advice worth listening to and in this blog posting he answers some Qs.

What type of approach do you take to big stack poker tournaments do you play a lot of hands?

In big stack tournaments I try to see many flops cheap early on (when the blinds are still very low in relation to the stack size). I don’t try and outplay my opponents as most of them are very weak and I just wait for them to make a mistake.

Let’s say someone bought into 20 tournaments, how many cash finishes out of that number would you consider doing well? Also, what is the usual ratio for you?

The number of cashes is not what I aim for. My style, and the style of many other top tournament poker pros, is “go big or go home”. I take a lot more chances and try and win the tournament instead of hang around and try and cash. I don’t have very many cashes, but when I do cash, it’s big. So my ratio is low, but my payouts are high.

As one of the world’s best poker players when you go places like to the store, mall or even out of state – has poker brought you fame?

I get a medium level of recognition. Most of the time I notice someone giving me a weird look, usually meaning they recognize me but they aren’t sure where from. Living in Vegas does increase the amount of recognition, because there are lots of gamblers in this city.

How do you handle a maniac to your right who repeatedly raises into you?

I sit patiently and wait for premium hands and punish them with position. This is a great situation to be in, because most of the time when you reraise them with a big hand they can’t call and you pick up valuable chips.

Sometimes the pros can misread the other players at the table. On T.V. they just show the good reads, I was wondering at a typical tourney, what is the percent of good reads vs. bad reads?

It is hard to put a quantity on something like this because it’s not a stat I keep track of, but I would guess most of the world class pros are correct about 90% of the time. They may miss some big ones but there are many small reads going on in most hands being played.

I know I’m a good poker player but one of my biggest fears of playing in a live tournament (like the WSOP or WPT, etc.) is first of course the money and secondly is that I actually play in one and not walk away with any cash to pay my bills or anything else. So how did you start out? Did you have anyone help you out? Maybe you have some pointers or advice for me?

I started out eight years ago playing small limit hold’em games. I grinded it out daily and slowly until I felt I had the confidence to play in big tournaments. Then I didn’t directly buy in. I played in satellites with a small percentage of my bank roll to keep me from going broke. The best way to get in the large live tournaments is to play small satellites online like the ones on Bodog.com. They are also a good way to gauge your tournament strength. Usually, if you can’t win a seat in a satellite, you aren’t ready for the big leagues. It takes time and patience.

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