Interview: Day 1a Chip Leader Alex Millar
![[user153906]](/img/avatars/avatar.svg){kind=avatar}
For Alex "Kanu7" Millar, the PCA Main Event might be the only live tournament on his schedule in 2015.
He's doing everything he can to make it count.
Millar, a high-stakes cash game player and member of Team PokerStars Online, finished Day 1a of this event as the chip leader. The 29-year-old pro from the U.K. is typically found playing the nosebleed games on PokerStars and rarely travels to play live tournaments, but he made the trip to PokerStars' flagship festival to play the Main Event and meet up with some of his Team Online cohorts.
Millar isn't having quite the same success here on Day 2, seeing his stack dwindle down to around 60,000, but he hasn't slowed his aggression whatsoever. We recently saw him shove all in on the final hand before the break to induce a fold against an amateur and increase his stack back to 95,000.
We spoke with Millar about his rare appearance in a live tournament and the transition he's forced to make from his usual seat behind a computer screen.
PokerNews: We just saw you play a pretty intense hand to the river against a qualifier who got into this tournament for virtually pennies. Normally you're playing the highest stakes online against the best players in the world. Talk about coming here and playing in a live tournament setting against amateur players.
Millar: It's a pretty different experience, I'll say that. When I'm playing online obviously I have reads against everyone I'm playing against because I play against the same players, whereas here coming into the day I didn't know anything about anybody. It's a pretty different style required to do well.
You mentioned reads online; do you try to pick up live tells here even though you don't play live poker a lot?
Yeah, sure. I'm probably not very good at it (laughs). Obviously if someone plays live all the time they'll be much better at it. Now and again I'll pick up something but it's not my strong point.
As a cash game player, how do approach coming into a tournament like this?
I just sort of show up and play my game. I generally know what I'm doing playing poker so I just turn up and take every hand as it comes, make the best decisions I can — same as I would online.
What would it mean for you to ship this tournament?
It would be nice. The prize pool's pretty big. But in terms of the credit that goes with it, that's not a huge motivation for me. The achievements in my career are beating $25/50 online and beating certain players heads-up. So to get lucky in a five-day tournament would not be ranking against my greatest achievements but it would rank amongst my biggest money won. It would be really nice but it's not something I go out and try to achieve.