Kenny Rap Interview
Preface: I did this interview over at BLUFF. It’s on BLUFF Mag’s website here. I’m x-posting it so people who don’t read the homepage of BLUFF Magazine will still see it.
Kenny Rap is a professional online tournament player. Kenny recently became the #1 ranked online player in the BLUFF Online Poker Rankings.
Nat Arem: What is your real name, how old are you and where are you from?
Kenny Rap: My real name is Kenny Weinstein, I’m 24 years old and I live in Galloway, NJ.
NA: How long have you been playing poker?
KR: I’ve been playing poker for almost 15 years now, but it’s been my only income for 5 years.
NA: When you say it’s your only income and you’re 24, did you do the college thing?
KR: I graduated college completely; I have my degree and everything. Maybe junior year I started to make decent money and from there I was just finishing college for the sake of finishing college.
NA: So when you graduated college you just decided to see how it would go as a full-time player and you haven’t looked back?
KR: Yes, exactly.
NA: Recently, you ascended to #1 overall in the BLUFF Online Poker Rankings. While you’ve been a top online tourney player for awhile now, being #1 in a major rankings system is a new spot for you. What do you think helped you get over the hump?
KR: I think some of the subjective websites where opinion comes into play in the rankings have me lagging behind due to not being around the online community for very long. This is basically my first year of doing the high volume/high stakes online tournament scene full-time. The sites who do their rankings strictly based on results make me look better. But honestly, being ranked somewhere in the 20s like on P5s might be more accurate, it’s kind of hard for me to claim to be the #1 online tournament player in the world right now.
NA: You placed 7th in WCOOP 14 for $70K, the $1K NLHE won by mig.com and one of the biggest tournaments ever held online (I think 3rd biggest after the ME from the last two years). Can you describe how that tournament went and what that felt like?
KR: That tournament was an absolute marathon – it was like 16 or 17 hours and it just got very grueling at the end. Towards the end, mig.com was just running everybody over and I still regret a little bit not taking a stand here or there. There was one hand discussed a lot where I folded QQ preflop and I still think about all these hands a lot just because I didn’t win and you just go back and look at it, but I don’t think I got particularly lucky that tournament. I remember one hand with maybe 40 people left I doubled up with a king high draw so I wasn’t really scared to put it in. I think for the most part I just kind of stayed alive and kept my head above water and stole blinds and let mig.com do his thing. I hoped to win a flip late, but I just didn’t.
NA: So that is your largest tournament score ever?
KR: Yea, that’s my largest ever. I’m more proud of some wins for significantly smaller amounts but because that was such a high profile and featured final table I guess yea, it is my biggest win. It’s definitely my biggest win dollar amount wise.
NA: So you mentioned mig.com as a tough player. Who are your toughest opponents and why?
KR: I think zangbezan24/Imper1um is a nightmare to play against. He’s capable of betting his entire stack at any point and he’s absolutely fearless. When you can’t scare your opponent when he’s in control at all times, it’s very very difficult.
Some of the more aggressive players who a lot of people fear are actually not who I’m scared of. For example, the BeL0WaB0Ves and Andy McLEODs – I think that a lot of these guys are just too aggressive and very trappable and I don’t really mind playing against them. But they’re also geniuses and they know what you’re doing also, so they’re still hard to play against. But for the most part, people like westmenloAA/mjorgenson13 and Imper1um really have my number – Menlo seems to know what I have every time.
NA: Everyone knows you’re supposed to be aggressive, but what’s the difference between someone who just throws their stack around and someone like Imper1um?
KR: I know exactly what you’re saying because, a year ago, I was this hyper-aggressive “bet bet bet bet” type of player and I was amazing at accumulating monster stacks. But I wasn’t winning because you get the monster stack and you just blow it up every single time because you just have no idea how to put on the brakes. Everyone figures out that you’re very aggressive and it just doesn’t take long for someone to pick up a hand and trap you. So I think that the real key to poker, because the game has changed in the past year, is being able to sniff out the coolers and all of these situations where you’re not good anymore. The toughest part is when you’re stealing blinds and you’re raising with trash for four or five straight hands and everybody rolls over and dies and you pick up chips it’s nice – and then you finally get dealt a hand. You finally get dealt AQ, but then somebody plays back at you and it’s that much harder to fold because you’ve been raising with trash forever but the fact of the matter is they’ll let you run them over and if they re-raise you, you have to fold the AQ. I’d raise with 76 four times in a row and then I’d get dealt AQ and I wouldn’t be able to fold, but it’s actually an easy fold once they re-pop you. I think that people who are aggressive and raising a lot, they don’t know how to fold, so yea, everybody’s good at accumulating chips and stealing blinds, but who’s the guy that can fold the AQ or 99 in the bad spot? I think making big laydowns is a bigger problem nowadays for most people than accumulating chips.
NA: What are your favorite tournaments and why?
KR: I used to like the 11r, but I would have to say just your standard 109 freezeout on Stars is my favorite tournament because you can be aggressive and pick on people and that’s the most fun thing to do in my opinion: winning pots without showdown when you don’t have it. When you play the 109r and the 1K tournaments, everyone’s good and they know you don’t have it every time and you can’t just run over the table and bluff, so you have sit there and be patient and be tight. I’d kind of rather just raise every hand and outplay people and you have to take it down a little bit on the buyin, so I’d say the 109 freezeout is my favorite tourney.
NA: According to thepokerdb, you’ve played somewhere in the range of 3,000 tournaments this year. That’s around 10 a day, how do you pull that off and stay profitable?
KR: I admit I’m not going to be able to do this forever. I probably will get a little bit tired of it and at least slow down, but right now, every morning I wake up and I look forward to doing my job. I enjoy what I do and I make money. I guess my answer is just that it’s easy right now and I’m not burnt out, I look forward to it every minute and I really love what I do. The people that get burnt out are probably the people who are doing it only for the money and don’t really love the game and the challenge. I do love it and right now I do not have that problem.
NA: You’ve been to a number of live events previously – I remember meeting you at the 2007 PCA. Which live events do you expect to play in 2008?
KR: I have not been to the World Series yet at all. I went to the Bahamas for the PCA the past two years and I’ll probably go there again this year. I’m definitely going to do the WSOP this year. I play all of the Borgata events because I live right next to Atlantic City, so I’ll probably play Borgata summer, Borgata winter, WSOP and the PCA. All in all, I don’t love playing live too much. Like we discussed with my volume, I kind of like the fact that you can lose an online tourney and just sign up for another one so the loss isn’t devastating. When I dedicate a week of not just time, but emotion and effort, you really put your heart and soul into a live tourney and maybe I’m just too emotional a person but I really feel crushed after busting from those events. I’m not really sure I’m the best live player – not even skill-wise, just being able to deal with the swings and I’ll play a few times a year, but I’m not that big of a live player.
NA: So you don’t really go over to the Borgata and play 2/5 or 5/10 NL?
KR: Occasionally. I’m not going to say I don’t, but cash games are not my strongest point and if you’re going to be a poker professional your job is to find your edges and pick good games. If I can sit online and crush tourneys all day being one of the top online tournament players in the world, that would make a lot more sense than going to a casino and just be your average everyday 2/5 NL player. I’m not sure I would be one of the best live 2/5 NL players in the world whereas I can pretty confidently say that I feel I’m one of the top online tourney players. I do play live cash sometimes but it’s not my strong point.
NA: Congratulations on holding the #1 overall rank in the BLUFF Online Poker Rankings and we wish you the best of luck in the future.
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