Player Focus: theASHMAN103

The story of Ashton Griffin is one of those scarcely believable rags to riches poker journeys that captures the imagination of the industry.

Check out his own version of events in his Leggo Poker blog here but to cut a long story short - in August 2007 he had just busted a $10,000 bankroll and was mowing lawns for next to nothing with his best friend in North Carolina. With just $700 to his name and $84 in rake-back online he proceeded to go on the heater of all heaters, making his way up from live $1/$2 NLH to the biggest online cash games in the space of just 12 months – ending almost a year to the day with a roll closing in on a staggering $1million.

After such an Archie Karas-esque golden run you can see why he calls the article ‘My Rise To The Top’ and the legend of theASHMAN103 was born.

Griffin is a self-described NLH heads-up specialist but he expanded his game to incorporate Omaha & H.O.R.S.E. – at the peak of his powers he was playing heads-up with David Benyamine at $2,000/$4,000 o8, $200/$400 NLH & $2,000/$4,000 H.O.R.S.E. all at the same time with almost $1million spread across the tables! Around this time (May ’08) he was even running well in tournaments and took down FTOPS Event #22 ($100 PLO Re-Buys) for $85,146 and just 5 days later flew to Costa Rica for the LAPT San Jose leg and final tabled – eventually running AQ into KK & AA to bust in 7th for a $28,956 payday.

For all his undoubted skills, however, ‘Ashman’ regularly admits that he is a complete degen and over just 4 months his downfall from the top of online poker has been brutal and well-documented on the online forums. During his jet-propelled rise through the levels he was consistently blighted by taking shots at games far beyond his bankroll – losing large sums of money to the likes of Erik Lindgren, Ariel Schneller & the Dang Brothers, dropping at $25/$50 what he had been making grinding the $5/$10 tables. Most agree that this desire to sit with the best no matter what he been the key to his downswing which as I write (December ’08) is estimated to be at least $600,000 and possibly closer to the $1million mark. Multi-tabling heads-up with Benyamine usually takes its toll and in December lost the majority of this to the Frenchman, prompting Griffin to humorously berate ‘Degenyamine’ in the Full Tilt chat box:

theASHMAN103 (Observer): I think you owe me ~$642,761.78
theASHMAN103 (Observer): dear david please send me the money you owe me just like how you begged guy for it
theASHMAN103 (Observer): I saw your wife naked on the interweeebbbs

He also dished out the verbal treatment to none other than Ben Grundy after losing an $80,000 pot to him at the PLO tables in September, calling the Milky Bar Kid a ‘mega-clown’ & a ‘hybrid monkey’ in his blog. Grundy responded in his blog with a stinging riposte: “LOL whilst i may have got lucky in the hand, his call preflop is so dumb i can see why he is on a close to $1 million downswing” and challenged him to a $50/$100 heads-up game (something I’m sure we would all love to see).

Unfortunately this may have to be put on hold as Griffin has recently started a prop bet in the Two Plus Two forums that he can’t play $50/$100 or above before he makes $500,000. “I guess I'm cutting myself off or I will pay a very high consequence. This is the way it's got to be and if I plan on winning I'm going to be at $5/10-$25/50 for a very while”, he says in his blog. Is this the beginning of a more sensible Ashman? I’m sure railers of the high stakes games certainly hope it isn’t. In the words of the man himself: “I know I'm a degen but I've always had enough control to just drop and grind when I needed to and always had enough skill to have a good bread and butter game when grinding was the option.” Having only just turned 20, there is still plenty of time for theASHMAN103 to work up another bankroll.