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  Most of us know Greg "Fossilman" Raymer as the 2004 World Series of Poker Main Event Champion, noted collector of fossils, and the owner of perhaps the coolest glasses in the sport of poker. What a lot of people don't know is that inside him is a golfer and a politician also waiting to come out.



  He took the time to talk to us about everything from poker and politics to his trademark glasses.



LaunchPoker: Who was the first person to refer to you as the "Fossilman"?

Greg Raymer: I'm not sure. If it's an individual, I don't know who it is. It's possibly myself. When I first got the nickname it originated because I started selling fossils at the table when I would play poker. I had bought one fossil for myself to use as a card protector. People were interested in it and I'm telling them that it is 300 million years old and their thinking its worth a fortune when it only really cost me a few dollars at this rock and mineral show. I bought more and started selling them. And then someone would be like "Oh, ya'know, what's your name?" I think I might have started it by saying, "Oh, just call me fossil; the fossil guy, or just call me fossilman. That's easier to remember."



LP: During most of the nineties you described yourself as a part time pro, but once you jumped in with both feet it took you a very short time to go from one of the pack to the WSOP Main Event Champion. For a lot of players the journey from start to stardom is much longer, what do you attribute your quick success to?

GR: It probably has to do with age more then anything else. You know a lot of these players that won the Main Event after playing a long time they were either younger then I was when I won or of a comparable age, and playing seriously for five years in your thirties, you are probably being a lot more serious about it every minute that your playing than someone that's playing when they're 21 or 22. That's probably not as true nowadays with online poker being so prevalent, but certainly if you go back that 10 or 20 years there was only live poker and the people who were taking it seriously playing in the casinos were more likely to be mature people rather than very young men.



LP: Do you think your background as a lawyer has helped your game?

GR: I don't think so, but I think that my background as a poker player would help me be a better lawyer.



LP: In 2004, when you won the Main Event, you had received your entry fee for the tournament by winning a PokerStars satellite tournament. How do you feel about the WSOP now banning internet qualifiers?

GR: Well they don't literally ban internet qualifiers, they just won't let the internet site come buy you in directly. So PokerStars had about as many people win their seat into the Main Event for 2007 as we did in 2006, but in 2006 it was either show up at the World Series and play it, or forfeit the money because PokerStars was buying you in either way. So unless you had something really significant like, you know, "I'm in a car wreck, I'm in traction, I can't leave the hospital and here's the proof", you had to go to Vegas and play in the Main Event. If you had something really serious like that, then PokerStars would work with you and they say, "Okay, fine we'll put you in the next year's Main Event" or something of that sort. But in 2007 because Harrah's wouldn't let the PokerStars representative show up with the money and buy those people in, the people were given the money themselves and asked to buy in. Of course many of them just decided to keep the $10,000.



LP: Do you think this change in stance by Harrah's is tied to the attempt to ban internet poker?

GR: No, actually as I understand it, Harrah's Corporation is in favor of legalizing, regulating, and taxing online poker. So I think Harrah's point of view is we would like this to be specifically legalized so we can get in on it. So I don't think Harrah's is trying to do anything. I have heard that MGM Mirage has lobbied Congressmen to try make illegal internet poker and any other form of internet gaming. So it seems that some of the big casino corporations go one way and some the other, but the truth is that people are going to game online, just like in States where certain forms of gaming are illegal right now, like sports betting for example, people still want to bet sports so they do it with illegal bookies or they bet with each other. You're really not going to stop it, you're only going to put it someplace where the government can't do anything about it, or at least normally. We would obviously be better off if these industries were open, legalized, and fully regulated and overseen by the government instead.



LP: Speaking of the government, aren't you currently seeking the Libertarian endorsement as their Vice Presidential candidate?

GR: Yes, I'm still considering that possibility. Probably about the beginning of next year, you know, end of this year I need to make a decision, because if I'm going to do it I need to start doing a little work campaigning for the nomination. And then the Libertarian convention is this spring. If I were to win the nomination, then I would spend the next several months campaigning for the general election.



LP: If you were to become the Vice President, how would you approach the internet ban?

GR: Well I would be working with the President, working with Congress to try to pass legislation either the same or similar to some of the stuff we have pending right now, like the Barney Frank bill. We've got legislation now like the gaming skills act. I want to say that one is Wexler, but I'm not sure I'm right about which Congressman originally introduced that bill. That one just says that poker and a couple of other games that are listed are games of skill. And therefore when it comes to things like laws that state that poker is a game of chance to be lumped in with craps and slot machines and stuff, it doesn't belong. That would be a huge bill for poker because then playing poker for money would be no different than playing golf for money. If you want to organize a golf tournament and have people pay an entry fee, and the winning players get the money, there's nothing illegal against that in any state. There is certainly no Federal prohibition about such activities. In North Carolina they screwed it up and said poker is a game of chance recently. I read that opinion and it was clear that these judges really didn't know what they were talking about.



LP: That's not unusual today...

GR: Well judges don't have to be experts at anything necessarily to get either elected - if it's an elected position, or to get nominated and put in by the state or federal government. The President can just take you and say, "You made big campaign contribution or whatever else I like about you. So even though you are not a lawyer with no legal training, I'm going to put you in as a Supreme Court justice." Presumably Congress would not back that up and they would veto the appointment, but if they didn't, then you are one of the nine guys determining what is law in the U.S. - even with no training.



LP: A lot of poker players pulled the lever for Democrats in the 2006 election because they perceived the poker ban was a Republican issue. After the Democrats won Congress back Harry Reid stated that he would support the internet ban because online gambling can't be sufficiently regulated. Do you think a lot of players felt a sense of betrayal?

GR: I'm not sure, but it's a silly comment. There's no reason why he can't regulate it. You could just say that poker games are legal, live or online whatever and leave it at that. You also can say that we're creating a licensing and regulatory scheme, and it's legal to play online poker and it's legal to offer online poker if you're a licensed provider. You can't say that I can't regulate Poker Stars, I can't regulate Full Tilt because these companies are outside the U.S. - you can. You can say to them, if you want to be legally accepted inside the U.S., then you need to come and be licensed and submit to our regulations. Who is the American public going to pick? Are they going to pick the companies that are physically present in the U.S. and subject to U.S. regulation or are they going to pick a company that is outside the radar? Clearly all the major companies are gonna want to come and submit to U.S. regulation if that scheme comes into existence.



LP: The established pros have struggled against the internet players. Why do you think they are having such problems with the younger players of the internet generation?

GR: The only reason any established pro is having trouble with the younger internet players is that they are not adjusting appropriately to the fact that some of these young guys that they haven't seen before have had a lot of success and have made quite a bit of money playing online. You can't push them around or bully them the way you might someone else who is primarily a live poker player. Anyone who plays any significant amount of live poker in the high stakes games is usually recognized by the established pros; they know who that person is to some degree and they know whether they can bully them or not. When they see a new face they are used to the idea that, well this is probably a lower limit player, if we go back to the pre-online poker days. They think that if they don't recognize the guy, he's probably a lower limit player and he is probably a bit in awe or overwhelmed by being in this spot for the first time. This means they can bully him and push him around. That concept doesn't apply anymore. Now when you see a new face it could be a kid who's won two million dollars playing online poker and he's not going to let you bully him around even in a ten thousand dollar tournament.



LP: It is true that the established pros can't push the internet players around, and it seems to be getting under their skin. During last year's WSOP one player (off the record) said the following to me. "I hate these damn kids".

GR: I don't hate them. I don't like my games getting tougher, and that's part of the problem as opposed to ten years ago. You can't see an unknown face and assume that they're a relatively weak player. That used to be more true. It used to be the people you didn't recognize were likely to be not that talented. Now there's an excellent chance that they're extremely talented.



LP: You can't even be fooled by their youth anymore.

GR: No, because they've played so many hands, they've played so many tournaments; some of these guys play 30 tournaments a day. Some of them are very small tournaments of course, you know they are playing $10 buy in events, as well as $100 or $500 buy in events online. They are still playing lots of tournaments and that gives a chance to learn a lot.



LP: In a tournament you are not playing in who do you pull for to win?

GR: I don't really pull for any one or two people specifically. I certainly want my friends to do well, but that's a large group of people. It's not like at the World Series if I get knocked out I am immediately defaulting to this one person. If Joe Hachem is still in the tournament I want him to do well. If Chris Moneymaker is in the tournament, I want them both to do well. The same is true for dozens of other friends.



LP: What player do you get the most joy out of beating?

GR: It would probably be someone who had relatively recently put a beat on me. So if you put a beat on me tomorrow, I'm going to take extra joy out of beating you the day after that.



LP: As the sport becomes more visible on television with the plethora of poker programs, there seems to be an uptick in demonstrative antics and "touchdown dance" type of behavior. Do you think this is good or bad for the sport?

GR: I don't think that behavior is good or bad for the sport, but I think featuring it so prominently on the TV shows is bad. I really don't think we want to encourage it; it does cause some hard feelings, so I guess it is bad, but it's not that big of a deal when it happens, you know, off the camera. The other nice thing is if I'm not on the camera for example and some guy is behaving like a total ass, whether he won a hand, lost a hand, or whatever, I can tell him, "Buddy, you're being a douche bag, cut it out", but I don't want to show that behavior on the camera. Depending upon how they edit it, I could end up looking like the bad guy.



LP: How do you feel about televised poker tournaments that don't allow the players to wear sponsorship logos?

GR: It's un-American. It's a terrible thing, it's ridiculous, we should be able to wear whatever we want whether that's a type of clothing or a sponsorship logo. Especially when you see things like you can wear logos in the World Series, but they have rules like you can't wear logos for any alcohol products like Milwaukee's Best Light or other drinks made by that company. That's bullshit. Milwaukee's Best Light made Harrah's some money, they didn't give me a penny, so why I shouldn't I be able to go to Budweiser and make money from them by wearing their logo. So as far as I'm concerned that's total B.S. Obviously they're not trying to ban alcohol. They just don't want you to do anything that competes with the sponsor they've already got. Look at NASCAR. If you go to a race and it's sponsored by one Oil Company, two thirds or three quarters of the cars in the race have logos from a different oil company on the car and no one says anything about it. It's the Quaker State race but a bunch of cars have Pennzoil on them and nobody cares, and they shouldn't care. I don't think it's appropriate. I realize that people like Harrah's have the power to create those rules, but that doesn't mean that I don't think it's wrong for them to do it.



LP: Annie Duke has made the statement in the past that "Poker is one of the few sports where a woman can compete on a totally equal footing with a man, so I don't understand why there's a ladies only tournament." Do agree with her in regards to the WSOP Ladies event?

GR: I really don't think it's of any significance. I really don't care. I know that lots of women say they feel more comfortable in a ladies only event, and that they like using those events as their first tournaments. Once they feel more comfortable in the poker tournament environment, then they feel less worried about entering an open event that has men in it as well. So, to the extent that a ladies only event is bringing more players into the game, it's a good thing. Philosophically it is kind of silly though, because Annie is right that there is no handicapping of any sort, so why should there be a ladies only event. This isn't a foot race, this isn't a decathlon, this isn't something where if men and women competed together there would be no women amongst the elite. In theory some people think women ought to be better at poker then men, because they say women are better then men at, like, reading other people, figuring them out and understanding where they're coming from. Whether that's true or not some people think, if anything, women should have the edge.




LP: So what inspired the glasses?

GR: It was just supposed to be a one time joke. I was with my family at Disneyworld about a month before the World Series in 2002; the first time I was going to play the Main Event. I never wore sunglasses when I played poker up to that point. I saw those glasses in the Tower of Terror gift shop, and I just thought it would be funny to put them on in the middle of a hand at some point, so I bought the pair, took them with me to Vegas a month later, and got involved in a hand with a guy where I had raised him on the flop and he kind of went into the tank. He was counting his chips and not looking at me so I put the glasses on and waited for him to look up. When he did he just freaked out and almost knocked himself over backwards in his chair he jumped so much. So then I just started putting them on every hand because people found them quite annoying. To be honest it had a small, but clear advantage, at least back then before I was known. I mean, people may have known who I was to some degree because they played with me before or something, but certainly there was no target on my back as being the World Series champion. What I would find is that people were annoyed by those glasses. They didn't feel comfortable with me staring at them wearing those. I think at the end of the day it got me a few blinds, because I think maybe if it was to you on the button and I'm the guy in the big blind, part of what's going through your head is that if I raise this guys blind, and he plays, he's going to put those glasses on, and I don't like that. So at some level if you have one of those marginal hands that you could try to steal the blind with, but it was perfectly appropriate to just dump the hand, there might be once a day, twice a day that would dump the hand because of the glasses that you would otherwise have played.



LP: If you could be anything else but a poker player, what would you be?

GR: Well if I had the skill, I would be a professional golfer. I enjoy playing golf. I think it's a challenging, fun, and interesting game to play. Let's face it: if you make it as a professional golfer, you also have a very nice living. You have to win something like a million dollars these days just to keep your tour card. So I could play golf and win a million dollars a year to keep my card, and have that as an established career. Also I would have a million in prize money and probably another million in endorsements, so I'm making good money. It would be a really fun job. The only downside would be the same thing I have now. You spend a lot of time on the road so you miss a lot of time with your family.



  LaunchPoker thanks Greg Raymer for being so generous with his time and allowing us to pick his brain.