Player Focus: apestyles

Jon Van Fleet aka "apestyles" is not someone you want to find yourself sitting next to at any stage of a multi-table tournament.

The American has had some major scores on PokerStars, notably in the Sunday Million last November, when he came 2nd out of almost 2,800 runners, good for $135,000.

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He is a regular in the $100 and $200 rebuys on Stars too which are generally acclaimed to be the toughest tourneys on the net. He has finished in the top three in the $100r seven times. Apart from his second place in the Sunday Million he has also had four other five-figure pay-days.

Across all the sites he plays on (mostly Full Tilt and PokerStars) he has taken down tourney winnings of over $340k.

In his mid-20s he is a native of Lubbock, Texas and only began playing poker about four years ago.

He showed his inexperience in some of the early hands he played, recalling on poker website PocketFives that a memorable hand saw him misclick and call both a raise and a re-raise with 6-3 in a $10-$20 NLH game. He won a $7,000 pot after flopping trip 6s v pocket Aces and pocket Queens.

What he found got his game to the standard it is was having a mentor just after he started taking the game seriously. In fact, he has started mentoring players himself on training website www.pokermentors.com so if you think your game would benefit why not give it a go.

Apestyles also recommends reading online forums, which he says can be great for strategy, and keeping track of all wins/losses is important too since it gives you a good idea of the kind of win rates you can expect for each level and type of game.

Van Fleet says he doesn’t necessarily like being recognised on the table, telling PocketFive it was a double-edged sword. “I appreciate the recognition and support, but I also think that it may actually hurt my bottom line. I really enjoy being anonymous and I miss not being known. Occasionally, I get to play on friends’ accounts and get away with a lot more when players don’t know who I am. Come to think of it, it’s really strange that I’m known for playing this game on my computer – especially because I still consider myself fairly new and think I’m still learning daily,” he said.

He’s a pretty tricky customer and should you meet him on the online baize in the early stages of a big MTT be prepared to see him enter a lot of pots. He says he’s fairly loose in the early levels of big tournaments.

“I feel like I need to be the one scooping up all the dead money,” he says. “But I agree that you should not try to get too creative or tricky against bad players. I also think that simpler traps work against weaker players - I generally lead a flop that I’ve hit big versus a strong player but will lean towards checking against an inexperienced player.”

If you find yourself playing alongside him in the PokerStars Sunday Million steer clear would be our advice.

 
View apestyles' PVi Profile here

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