Romain Lewis Talks GPI, Online Success and Team Pro Seminars
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Romain Lewis had a stellar 2018, with a top-10 ranking in the WSOP Player of the Year leaderboard after three top-10 finishes in bracelet events. PokerNews caught up with the Winamax Team Pro to see how he has started 2019.
"Rozvadov seems like a world ago to be honest," he said. "I've been playing quite a lot of live tournaments."
Chasing GPI Points
From the Caribbean to Australia, Lewis has kept up his passion for poker, and he now sits as the fourth-ranked Frenchman in the GPI Rankings.
That's something he said motivates him.
"I had real objectives with the GPI for last year, because I started really well. So, I just wanted to play the maximum amount of tournaments that I could. And that live focus has continued into 2019 with the Aussie Millions, which was just by far the best experience of my life.
"Every day we'd wake up, have an amazing coffee, play in an amazing tournament, bust but then still have the greatest day. Because how can you not?"
Keeping up a positive attitude has been key for Lewis, as he admitted the results haven't been there thus far. He's only cashed for around $80,000, putting him far behind his 2018 pace, when he won nearly $1 million.
Lewis called it "disappointing."
"I've had a lot of bad results but that's how it goes and I'm definitely going to keep playing, studying and working, but I've still got a lot of objectives for the year and a lot of live tournaments to play."
Grinding Online
With the year barely halfway through, Lewis has recently turned his attention to the online felt with Winamax's online series, during which he played every single tournament on the schedule, all 173 tournaments.
"I've never done that before," he said. "It was an objective of mine to get back online and to play a lot. I won two tournaments and I think I came third in the Series leaderboard."
Lewis did indeed come in third, ahead of fellow Winamax Team Pro Davidi Kitai who finished sixth. That means in addition to extra currency, he has bragging rights among his fellow Team Pros. The two events gave him a total of three wins in the recurring series, something he been using as ammo to needle others on Winamax's expanding roster.
Team Pro Camaraderie
This is Lewis' third year as a Winamax Team Pro, and he recently took part in his third seminar where all the Team Pros gather together to discuss everything to do with poker.
"We get together for three days in the south of France, and it's period where the whole team spends most of the day getting to know each other, but three or four hours of the day there are organized chats about strategy, mental game and high-performance excellence," Lewis said. "This year we had Stéphane Diagana who is a former French hurdle World Champion come speak to us, and he had a whole presentation about how he kept his motivation and belief up in his career. And when we compare our sport to another sport we can see some parallels and we learn so much from these opportunities."
Each year, the Winamax Team Pros appear to get a real boost out of the seminar — last year, Adrian Mateos took down the SISMIX in Marrakech and this year, Sylvain Loosli won a €10,000 High Roller in Monte Carlo.
"It definitely boosts us because we're always talking about performance and how to get better."
"With so many different people, we all get a lot out of it," Lewis said. "Say Joao [Vieira] is presenting a tournament, and there's a disagreement on a certain hand. There are going to be some people who are going to be experts in that situation. And we're always going to try and get the best out of those different situations.
"It definitely boosts us because we're always talking about performance and how to get better."
After Monte Carlo, the Winamax Team Pros are back together here in northern Spain for the SISMIX, and Lewis says it's great to have some more time spent with the team.
"This is a really fun week. It might be low buy-ins for all of the Team Pros but we're also here to be together, and if we bust and go to the pool we'll find at least four of five pros and friends there. It's half seminar and half a poker stop for us."
