Making the Jump – Part 1

It was a grey late spring morning when the man came to take my car away. As he drove the shiny black vehicle into the distance it wasn’t all I would be losing. I was losing a lifestyle and an identity and it was all my choice. In the last month I’d turned down a promotion, left my job and given notice on my flat. For the next two years my only source of income would be poker…. interesting decision.

Until then I was a clean cut middle class boy with a lucrative job and a limited history of odd behaviour so what on earth was I doing?

The first thing I have to confess, and there are many, is that I’ve always thought poker was glamorous; I still do. It started of as an idea for me – almost a fantasy. I first visited Vegas over 10 years ago before the most recent boom and before poker had really taken off. I’d wanted to go since I’d first heard of the place as a kid and when I finally went it didn’t disappoint – it blew me away. It was Disneyland for adults and poker was the secretive, impenetrable world within it. Back then all the clichés were true it was a game played in the back of a few casinos by grizzled men some actually in big cowboy hats who had stares that could turn your insides to jam. For a lot of that first trip I just stood and watched them. I didn’t really understand the rules but I understood one thing deep in my bones… I wanted to play.

Soon after returning I made a friend who knew how to play organise a home game – I won some money, mainly by horribly outdrawing him, and I was hooked. The next few years saw me increasingly obsessed by the game. I bought every book available and mail ordered the world series of poker from the U.S. Playing opportunities were limited – this was before internet poker remember – but I played in home games and casinos and slowly got good.

My decision to give up my job in the City seemed to others like a big decision to me it wasn’t even really a choice. Despite the fact that my early life – school and university – had steered me to that point I never felt comfortable. By the end I hated and resented dribbling my life away in an office in a job that gave me no pleasure. I needed to feel alive and – to paraphrase Rounders - the only time I felt really alive was at a poker table. At 27 years old I needed to wake up every day with a purpose, I needed to feel like I was putting myself out there – I needed to be in Vegas playing cards.

The thing you have to understand about playing poker for a living is that it’s hard. Most jobs – certainly the ones I used to do – really aren’t that difficult. They can be stressful at times but there are long periods where you go through the motions. Playing poker isn’t like that.

A poker player operates on a very small margin of error. If a professional had a 10% edge in a game he’d do internal cartwheels (they don’t let you do real ones in the casino) and play all night. The problem is it doesn’t take very much for that edge to disappear. If you play tired or angry or unfocussed suddenly you’re a losing player.

It’s the only job you can do where you work your butt off for hours – playing perfectly – and still finish having paid for the privilege of working. There are only a few people who can deal with the emotional pressure that brings. Try convincing yourself you’re a good player after your 5^th losing session in a row with no other source of income… like I said – hard.

In my time as a working player I made most of my money in limit games in Vegas and some cash games in the U.K. My bread and butter was the 10/20 limit at the Mirage and the 15/30 at the Bellagio. Looking back I know now they were some of the toughest limit games to be found anywhere and I’m proud I was able to beat them. Things were different then – if I was doing it again I’d be playing No Limit cash games. They’re everywhere and the edge is so big for a strong player over a beered up Yank who thinks the WPT is cool.

I was living an unreal life spending days by the pool and nights in the casino.

It became hard to keep perspective or connection with the real world. I was regularly putting the equivalent of a TV or holiday on the turn of a card. I saw games where players were sitting down with 100k in cash in front of them. They were betting more than people earn in a year on 55/45 shot. One day I woke up with 50 dollars in cash and went to bed with almost 4000 in hundreds stuffed into my wallet. In that kind of atmosphere it was hard to worry about grocery bills and credit card debt.

I know now I was dancing on the edge of doom (which I believe is located near Slough). My bankroll was fine but it was never as big enough to play as high as I wanted, to give myself the lifestyle I wanted. A bad run could have obliterated me.

Losing runs are scary – like a horrible nightmare where nothing works and you can’t remember the last draw you made or pot you won. I can still remember my red stinging eyes and the ferocity of the midday sun as I walked back to my apartment from the Mirage one day. I’d forced myself to walk as punishment for tilting off a thousand dollars or so. It had started with a few bad beats and then descended into internal madness as I’d called and called refusing to believe the money I ‘deserved’ would come.

It is a kind of madness having you’re livelihood and your future career determined by the turn of a card. I was helped through the madness by several people who gave me advice along the way. For a while a guy called David – a working player for over 30 years from New York – took me under his wing. I learnt more in over one dinner from him than I did from ten text books. It’s a piece of advice I’d give anyone looking to play this game seriously – find someone that’s really good at it and ask them nicely… or force them violently… to tell you how they do it.

Playing poker has taught me more about life than anything else I’ve experienced. Doing it for a living taught me self-discipline and self belief. I also saw every day what stops most people achieving what they could in life. At the poker table players will blame everything when things go wrong except themselves. They’ll ask for a change of luck, a change of dealer, a change of seat, a change of deck and a change of wife. Everything rather than changing the way they play or their reaction to a bad beat. In all the time I’ve played I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve heard a player say ‘I messed that up’. The same is true in life.

In the end I stopped playing poker for a living. There were three main reasons. First my bankroll was never big enough to allow me to earn the salary I wanted – I’m greedy like that! Second just trying to take other people’s money each day is seriously bad karma. And finally there were other ambitions I wanted to pursue. But I’ll never stop playing and I’ll never want the company car and neck tie back.

Originally published in Poker Player magazine.

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