#576 - World Series Final Table Profile #2 - Scott Montgomery - Tournament Star

This is my second in a series of three profiles of Full Tilt’s final table trio. See also my profile of Craig Marquis and my coming profile of Kelly Kim. Also, check out the contests accompanying the Marquis profile - Cash Game Killer - and this one - Tournament Star. Kelly Kim’s profile will also be accompanied by a third contest that could win you an entry into FTOPS X.

Scott Montgomery looks like a mild guy - boyish but not a kid, a round and pleasant face, open and soft-spoken in a stereotypically Canadian way. (Remember, though, that Gavin Smith and Daniel Negreanu seem like friendly guys, too, until you cross them at a poker table.) But when you hear Montgomery’s story and feel his intensity and confidence, you know that he’s got what it takes to become the next poker World Champion.

Scott is 26, comes from Perth, Ontario, and became serious about poker in, of all places, Japan. He was teaching English and started playing online in his spare time. He did well enough, and enjoyed it enough, to consider leaving teaching for poker when he returned to the U.S. two years ago.

He moved to Las Vegas, on a trial basis, for six months. He recognized he was jumping into a very uncertain career, and doing it without a lot of background knowledge. “It was half a job and half just practice. I’d never even played live poker before.”

Likewise, his goals were realistic. “I wasn’t one of those guys who says, ‘Okay, I’m gonna take down $20,000, play the biggest stakes at the Bellagio every day, and in a year I’m going to be a millionaire.’ I’m thinking if I can play for six months and stay about even and move up the stakes a little, learn what the live game is like in comparison to the online game, that would be fine with me.”

Scott didn’t burn up the tables in Las Vegas during those six months. But the experience convinced him he was moving in the right direction, so it’s been all poker ever since.

Those sensible first steps in 2007 probably helped him deal with the crazy-unrealistic year he’s had in 2008. At the WPT L.A. Poker Classic earlier this year, he won a satellite entry into the Main Event. He made the final table and finished fifth out of a field of 665, good for nearly $300,000. It was his first $10,000-buy-in event.

His second was the Heads-Up Championship at the 2008 World Series of Poker. Out of 256 entrants, he busted in the round of 16 to earn over $36,000.

His third $10,000 buy-in event was the Main Event, good for $900,000 and, Scott hopes, a lot more. In all, he played 13 events at the WSOP and cashed 4 times. In between Days 1 and 2 of the Main Event, he also played a $3,000 buy-in Bellagio Cup event and made the final table there, earning another $36,000.

It doesn’t look like success has spoiled Scott Montgomery either. “In L.A. after I got my $300,000, people asked, ‘What are you going to do with your money?’ I went out and bought a new cell phone. With the money from the final table [of the Main Event], the only thing I bought was a laptop a couple days ago. That was my big purchase with $600,000 [after taxes].”

That’s just how Scott Montgomery regards his money. “I’ve always been kind of a minimalist.” Even though he was planning on playing a lot of WSOP events and still had most of that $300,000 from the L.A. Open in his pockets, he still pinched pennies, driving from Perth and staying in the cheapest place he could find. (I neglected to ask Montgomery if he looked into the deal at the Extended StayAmerica on Valley View where I spent the 2006 Series and 2007 until my car window was bashed in. I remember it being pretty cheap and that was before they discovered someone was cooking ricin in one of the rooms.)

So when Scott made the final nine and was the toast of the town, you know what he did? “I drove my car home. It’s a four-day drive back to Canada!”

WHY HE’LL WIN

With over 19 million in chips, Scott is third in chips at the final table. He’s got the most experience going deep in big tournaments, though Ivan Demidov’s final-tabling the Main Event of WSOP-Europe also counts for a lot. The biggest risk to the big stacks over the last few years has been getting too active and playing big pots with marginal hands. It seems very unlikely that the level-headed Montgomery will fall into that. At the same time, he feels very comfortable seeing flops with these players.

His road to the championship, as I see it, is to be active, but playing small pots, quick to bet but also to retreat. I believe if he plays a big pot early, it’s not with a monster starting hand and lots of pre-flop action, but with marginal cards that turn into a monster after the flop.

If he wins, the player his success will recall? Try Phil Hellmuth.