Thoughts From a Life on the Road

My girlfriend hates poker – and I like it that way. To me, poker is a solitary quest to achieve something. I want to be great at something that can be measured objectively. Poker is not a hobby or an interest – it is a quest. Quests are best done solo. I want to keep my real life separate from the world of poker. This obviously isn't the only way, but for me, it's the best way.

I couldn't drag my girlfriend from tournament to tournament and have her living out of hotel rooms. She'd hate it, we wouldn't get along, and it would end our relationship. I know that she wants no part of the degenerate side of poker – you know, the borrowing, cursing, drinking, and desolation and anxiety. I find the poker subculture fascinating in a train wreck sort of way, but she'd hate it. So, I have to walk a fine line to keep my relationship alive and vital, while traveling eight months out of the year. It's tough.

I know now that most poker players lose. Most tournament players are scraping around for a stake. They're worth a million today and a couple of hundred tomorrow. It's the life they've chosen, but I can't live that way. Maybe I'll never be a world-class player, but I have a high regard for money and can't treat it like a tool to be used until it wears out. And I think that disregard for money may be a requirement to be a top player.

On the other hand, there is a core group of tournament players who clearly have their lives in order and are able to control themselves at and away from the tables. I'd like to be among them someday. Erik Seidel, Diego Cordovez, Paul Phillips, Jason Viriyayuthakorn, and Chris Bigler are some of the guys I know personally who fit this category, and there are others.

I swore to myself that I wouldn't lend money, but it didn't quite work out that way. Poker people owe me about 10 dimes right now. I believe in the people who owe me and expect to get it back. But don't ask me for money, as my moratorium on lending is officially on.

Backing people, by the way, is a different matter. In January I drove down to Tunica with Nicky Di Leo, a gifted New York player. He proposed a little backing deal for some of the events, and I agreed. We did a quasi-standard sort of tournament deal. I would get the buy-in back from any gross winnings, and then we'd split the rest. So, Nick was on a near 50 percent freeroll. He won the $1,000 limit hold'em event the next day – so sweet! But don't ask me to back you. I'll find you if I want to do a deal.

In Tunica, Mississippi, at the World Poker Open this year, I got on the elevator with Jeff Shulman. Another guy also got on. He was wearing a still-wet bathing suit and nothing else. Clearly, he'd just come from the pool. I looked up and saw that it was Phil Hellmuth Jr. One of the world's greatest players clearly doesn't follow the "no shirt, no shoes, no service" rules we're all familiar with from 7-Elevens all over the country. Two notes on Phil: He's in pretty good shape for a guy who's about my age, and he has exceptionally small nipples. Enough said.

I must repeat to myself until it sinks in: "I am a terrible live-game player." When I used to hear people say that tournaments and live games are incredibly different, I thought they were exaggerating. They weren't. It's all called poker, but the two disciplines couldn't be more different. I just don't have the infinite patience and concentration to play live games well. I need an end goal in sight, and tournaments are the perfect outlet for me.

I remember my dad telling me that there's nothing more boring than someone else's golf and horse track stories. I need to add something to his list – bad beats. It's been said before, but it stands to be repeated: Bad-beat stories are of no interest to anybody. Yet, some players persist in telling them loudly and repeatedly to anyone within earshot. I know of at least two tournament regulars who, according to their own reckonings, have never won a hand. I hereby proclaim that I will never tell a bad-beat story that doesn't have some kind of external redeeming point. What I mean is that it's OK if a bad beat is contained in an otherwise amusing story. Here's an example: A guy takes a bad beat and his arm falls off. See, there's a bad beat, but a humorous side plot saves the day. But take my word, as stand-alones, bad beats just don't cut it.