Interview With Elena RKH : )

Can you briefly introduce yourself to the community?

My name is Delano when i'm not being called a "donk" or a "fish" ; )
I'm 40 years old but act about 20 most of the time, i suppose it helps having a much younger wife ; ) you're only as old as the girl you feel eh.....

Since when do you play poker and how did you start?

I started playing poker 8 years ago after losing my job/career due to a disability so had a lot of time sat on my backside and needed to find a stimulating way of passing the time
and distracting from the pain i was in too... in all honesty, as weird as it sounds...poker saved my life.... and kept me sane...sounds like a good name for a song imo lol.

How would you describe your playing style?
I find myself switching styles often depending on the table i'm sat at, i can play TAG if at a wild table but can also turn into a complete maniac for a little while if i need to "advertise"

Usually though i play a very LAG style as i now find my postflop skills are outweighing my preflop skills so i get involved a lot more with players that a few years back i would have avoided.

How did you find out about RankingHero?

I found out about you guys through a Facebook poker group(AceHigh) i was kindly invited by one of the lads and was warmly welcomed, through this group i've met a lot of great players
and as this is what was missing from my game i have definately felt the benefits that talking poker can bring to your game.

What do you like best about the website?

I like Ranking Hero for many reasons, mainly because i have met players whose skills and knowledge are wide and diverse and i feel i can actually talk to them openly and honestly without being judged on my "noobness"
I am only a micro cash/mtt grinder but i study the game so much i felt i needed some more experienced players to talk to, 
Ranking Hero is amazing because i feel i have sooo much to learn from you guys.
Also the competitons have made me feel part of a community, whereas before now i found my poker life to be very isolating and lonely at times...

What do you think about HeroScore and who, in your opinion, is the biggest influencer in poker today?

Heroscore is pretty cool, it gives us all something or someone to aspire to, me personally i feel Daniel Negreanu/Phil Helmuth/Phil Ivey have had the greatest affect on the game over the last decade or more

There are obviously loads more to chose from but these guys stick out in my head when i look back to the start of my journey.

You won the Unibet package thanks to your persistence and the votes of your friends.

Did you have a particular strategy to win this RKH mission?

Just to play my table really and not worry about anyone else til i got there, i had planned to abuse the players who were being too tight and steal the crap out of their pots initially
I also planned to play my normal aggressive game which i did and it was going very well until i made a noob "live" error which i'll NEVER make again lol.....

Tell us about your experience at the Unibet Open . The trip, the hotel ... and especially, the tournament!

I feel like this needs a whole post of its own as it was so amazing, but i'll try and cover it as briefly as i can ( i am aware that my posts are too long and people can't be arsed to read them lol)

The trip ended being a 6 hour drive by my amazing wife with my 3 year old son in the back behaving unbelievably well for a kid his age.
I lived in Glasgow 15 years ago as alot of my family are up there, so it was an emotional reunion to begin with and i couldnt of been happier seeing them all again.

The hotel was amazing, room service was fantastic ...food was top quality and as i was once a chef many years ago my standards are pretty high and they done pretty well.
I did have to complain about one dish where there was no "olive oil bread" as it said on the menu, so they sent up some bread with a bowl of olive oil which i thought was pretty funny
, i have a feeling they had run out so tried this as a little cover up, either way they refunded the whole meal because of this tiny thing and obv that was pretty decent of them and pretty shitty of me
but hey, if it says it on the menu...

The tournament started fantastically, from the very first hand we were three handed which i loved, i played hyper aggressively and took down pretty much every pot i opened
the two other guys were so tight i just opened every pot in positon and kept betting and taking them down, with a few nice 3bets OOP too... which was nice as they folded an awful lot ; )

After an hour a very aggressive Dutch guy sat on my left which stopped me bullying the table as i had been so easily, had some good reads on him though as he was making tiny bets in large pots
when he had bottom pair or similar which made raising his river bets nice and easy for me.

My stack took a 7K dent when i flopped Top Pair with the nut flush draw against one of the nits, i remember calling his hand in my head on the turn,
i thought he had pocket 7's as the turn was a 7 and he started re-raising while his leg was spazzing out under the table...unfortunately the river was a brick and he did indeed show up with a set.
meh....

My bustout hand was weird, as i peeped down at my KK i had a feeling in my gut it was all over, you kinda just know when its coming sometimes...
But i messed up pretty bigtime although i still cant be sure i would of got a fold...

I opened from the button(110bb eff) to 500 (blinds were 100/200) he 3bet to 1200 i picked up a 5K chip and tossed it in without announcing "raise",( i said "five" as i threw it) the dealer apologized and said it's only a call
As soon as he said it i realised what i had done, leading up to this tourney i watched a few different "live" videos where the narrator kept reminding the viewer about the "one chip two chip rule"
I didnt realise how important this was until this very point in the game...i had now just let my opponent know the exact strength of my hand AND had let him in cheaply to see a flop.

I cant help but think if i jammed instead would he then have folded his AQs...i still dont know....
The flop comes down three hearts, i have the K of hearts and the guy check raises me, now im thinking he has a set or maybe just the Ace of hearts, i jam, he snaps and turns over the nut flush.
I think it took me a good 2 days to stop beating myself up over this ridiculous hand which i butchered, but it was a great way to teach me a lesson, expensive lesson(even if i was freerolling)
but worth it all the same.

You had a very special fan with you on the trip to Glasgow - your son How old is he, have you taught him poker yet?

My beautiful boy will be 4 in August and inspires me to improve every day of my life, even if i fail at poker, i am hoping to leave behind a legacy of information for him if he ever does want to learn.
A few more years i think and i'll start teaching him properly ; )

Do you imagine yourself as a sponsored player? What is your greatest ambition in poker?

I imagine getting a sponsorship is more difficult than its ever been, so i'm not holding out for one in my lifetime, but i can still dream i guess...
My ambition is simply to do my best to provide for my family and keep them happy and loved as best as i can in the position i'm in...
any nice binks along the way with the odd trophy would be nice too ; )

You are a member of the Ace High Poker Group on RKH. Have you considered starting your own club on our website? What would you call it?

I have always wanted a poker group dedicated to those useful/beautiful nuggets of information that make you go "Ahaaa", there's so many things i'd like to get down in print
somewhere so that when i die, i have a place my son can go an read all about poker and get those little "nuggets"... i would call the group " Poker Nuggets"...one day i may actually start this project.
I am yet to meet anyone willing to share their "nuggets" though so i reckon i'd be the only member of the group hehe

Outside of poker, are there any other games you are passionate about?

... i'm a complete sucker for "Civilisation 5" which i've been playing since returning from Glasgow, i'm a geek for these strategy games sometimes, i also play a lot of Minecraft just because my
son loves it so much and it teaches youngsters a hell of a lot in my opinion, it's a very isolating game like poker too, you can spend days underground building tunnels and mines and NEVER see daylight LOLOL
... Call of Duty/Battlefield/Halo on the Xbox are also in my array of games i play to chill out when im tilted......my wife is waaay better than me at the shoot-em ups which is frankly embarassing ; )

Do you have an idea for a fun mission we could offer on RankingHero in the future?

Although i missed the Bet365 comp where we were to post an impressive hand we played, i feel this would be a good regular competition as everyone can get involved discussing a hand from different angles while hearing the reasoning from the actual player also...
Some kind of SnG race would be cool too i reckon, or maybe a DYM(double your money) Race....will have to think about it for a while ; )