My Protégé Speaks!

I would like to introduce you to my protégé, Matt Anderson. He and I have written this column, and I hope you enjoy it and find it interesting and informative.



Matt: Many of you have read Thomas' column for quite some time, but you probably don't know of his humble beginnings on the road to becoming one of the top professional poker players in the world. In this column, I will share with you his story from my perspective, as well as my own poker journey.



Thomas: In the spring of 1998, after a Magic: The Gathering tournament, I was first introduced to hold'em when the gaming shop closed. A few of the gaming regulars had a little gamble in them, and soon my friend Matt was running a 50¢-$1 limit game at his house, which quickly escalated to $1-$2. Despite my terrible play due to incredible inexperience, I was able to do reasonably well, since everyone in the game was so new to Texas hold'em.



Matt: As summer approached, Thomas and his brother Shawn returned from studying economics at Stanford. My friend Erik and I were quick to introduce Thomas and Shawn to Texas hold'em, which we were first exposed to by the classic movie Rounders. After teaching them what little I had learned in a couple of months, they began to play regularly in home games, and Rounders encouraged Shawn and Thomas to pursue a career in poker. It's hard to recall now, but at the time, the idea of becoming a professional poker player was not really something that most people considered a viable career. We frequented the local casinos in Arizona, and I quickly lost my meager bankroll of $300, which was serious money at the time. After this devastating loss, I swore off, but Thomas and Shawn continued to play when they returned to Stanford after Christmas break. By the end of their tenure there, they were spending considerably more time at Bay 101 and Lucky Chances Casino than pursuing academics, and had built up their bankrolls significantly. Mostly due to parental pressure, they both graduated with degrees in economics, but by that point, they knew they wanted to pursue poker as a career.



Meanwhile, back in Arizona, I continued my studies in computer science at Arizona State University. Both Thomas and Shawn came down months later and were doing fairly well. During my senior year at ASU, Thomas approached me with an offer to play poker for him under his guidance. At first I told him that I wasn't really sure if poker was the life for me, but that was to change when he took me and a few friends to Vegas for a much needed escape from the grind of our studies. We spent a few fateful hours at a craps table, where I ended up losing about $300, which was nearly a week's worth of work for me at the time. I was devastated. Thomas then offered me a deal I couldn't refuse. He offered to coach me in playing online poker in our lavish, comped hotel room, and if I won, he'd pay me out right away, and if I lost, I could pay him back whenever I could afford it. With Thomas' help, I won back the money I had lost at craps in about 15 minutes, and at that point I decided that I would give playing poker professionally a shot. After all, what did I have to lose?



Despite my decision to be a pro poker player, I finished my computer science degree, with the intention of playing poker full time after graduation. Thomas began by training me in the poker games in which he thought there was the most consistent money to be made, which happened to be online limit hold'em. He monitored my play closely and provided constructive criticism when he thought it was necessary. In midlimit online hold'em ring games, he advised that I employ a very tight preflop strategy and generally straightforward play post-flop. He relentlessly preached that there were so many bad players that it was unnecessary to play tricky poker, and that a tight, solid approach would be a consistent winning strategy.



After a few months, I was feeling pretty confident about my play and was making a decent amount of money. I regularly accompanied him to many high-profile tournaments in Vegas, and was fortunate enough to win quite a bit of money playing craps on several of our trips. At the time, winning in these negative expected value (EV) games was great, but in many ways it actually set me up for a massive fall. It is a well-known fact that the vice of some poker players is the allure of negative expectation games. Craps, blackjack, and sports betting were my vices of choice. The combination of being desensitized to money and having the ability to make back any losses quickly led me to some rather poor decision-making. On one trip to Vegas, I ended up betting $5,000 a hand at blackjack, and lady luck was not on my side. Just six months prior to that, I had been upset over losing $300 in a few hours of low-limit poker play. Fortunately for me, I was able to cut my blackjack losses to $20,000 for the trip, and since then I have not gone off for a big figure in any negative EV game. This lesson may seem obvious, but it's a lesson that beginners should take to heart, as I have met few professionals who haven't lost ridiculous amounts of money in this manner.



In short, this column has touched on my experiences as an up-and-coming poker player, and I hope that you can learn from my mistakes instead of experiencing them yourself. Just because you're a professional poker player, that does not make you a professional gambler. Stay away from the negative EV games. I know they are very tempting, especially if you're running bad in poker, as they are potentially a quick way to get unstuck.



Good luck.

Thomas "Thunder" Keller is a 25-year-old professional poker player and one of poker's young and rising stars. He can often be found playing at UltimateBet.com under the name thunderkeller. To learn more about him and to enlist in his new squadron, go to his website at http://www.thunderkeller.com/. Also, feel free to contact him at [email protected]. You can also e-mail his friend and protégé Matt Anderson at [email protected].