Full-Throttle - The Grind Pays Off for Joe Bartholdi

In June 2005, Rolling Stone magazine featured a story about "The Crew," the now relatively famous conglomerate of young poker players who made a splash at the 2004 World Series of Poker. The magazine had this to say about little-known member Joe Bartholdi: "Bartholdi, a high school kick-out and sometime pool hustler, had run through a succession of five-figure bankrolls with little to show for it except a certain intermittent genius for playing hands full-throttle."



In June 2005, they would have been right. In May 2006, they'd be wrong. Bartholdi is the 2006 World Poker Tour champion and $3,760,165 richer after outlasting a field of 605 players in the biggest event of the year to date.



Despite his success, life for Bartholdi isn't just about poker. "Poker is just a job for me; it doesn't consume my life like a lot of people out there," he stated. For Joe, it is all about being around close friends, partying, playing and writing music, and fitting poker in when it's necessary. That philosophy seems to be working for this 26-year-old newly minted millionaire, and the smile on his face is proof. But that's not to say that it's been a smooth ride.

The Hustler
Thomas Edison said, "Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits." For Bartholdi, the wait has been seven years. The hustle, however, has been lifelong. "I was a hustler real early. I was selling cigarettes in the fifth grade. My father gave the corner store permission for me to go up there and get him cigarettes. So, I took it upon myself to buy some on my own and take them up to school and sell them."



Gambling also started at a young age for Joe while growing up in Southern California. In elementary school, he used to flip quarters, and whoever called it right kept the quarter. When he realized he had no advantage, he started practicing throwing quarters at a wall, trying to get them real close. And the hustle was on. "I started playing that game with my friends, and I won all the time," he said.



Along with hustling, Joe was also a bit of a badass. He accumulated a record of incidents in high school, ending with a fight that got him thrown out of his school district in his second year of high school. The next closest school was several hours away and Joe decided not to go back, opting to get his GED instead.



When he turned 18, he moved to Las Vegas with his dad, an old-school poker dealer. While his dad was dealing, Joe moved his hustle to the local pool hall. "I used to go to the hall and turn my $10 into $40 or $50 or more," he recalled. "I smoked, drank, and partied with a lot of the 20-year-old kids who never got around to working because their parents were rich. I got to live that way off the money they lost to me." [laughing] After about a year of taking the rich kids' allowances, Joe began experimenting with the game that would make him a millionaire.



The Player
Bartholdi started playing poker in Las Vegas when he was still underage. "I used to play $1-$5 stud with the old people," he said. Soon thereafter, he jumped into small hold'em games.



Finding that he had an intuitive understanding of hold'em, Joe devoted most of his time to learning the intricacies of the game and gaining as much experience as he could. "My dad knew a ton of old-school poker players from dealing to them all those years," he said. "He told them that I'd taken up poker, and one day they walked into the house with a plastic bag full of all the poker books that were available then. I started reading them, then I reread them, and then I reread them again, until I understood and mastered the concepts on every page."



Joe took what he learned in the books and at the tables and began playing poker professionally at the age of 21. While the talent was there, the discipline was severely lacking. "I'd be broke, then get $100 from Dad, and turn $100 into $10,000. I'd have all of this cash, and then I'd go broke in a big game. That's how it was for a long time. I would conservatively guess that I've had at least twenty $5,000-plus bankrolls built from scratch and then wasted in a big game or gambled away; $30-$60 did it to me a bunch of times. I'd sit down and play well, but lose $1,000. Then, not being used to that kind of loss, I'd tilt out and blow another $4,000. At that time I was used to playing $10-$20 or even $4-$8. I was happy to have a bunch of stacks of white in the $4-$8 game, and then I was blowing $4,000 in $30-$60. Blackjack took a bunch of bankrolls, as well. It was bad."



Opting for some form of financial stability, Joe secured himself a dealing position at Binion's Horseshoe, although it wasn't quite dealing. He'd come in, clock in, and then play. "If it got really busy, I'd deal, but really, I was just a house player," he said. "Then I'd go broke, deal for literally one day, then play again the next day. At that time, I knew I was talented enough and knew enough about what was going on to be a favorite, but I couldn't plug all the leaks: playing too high, playing badly, playing too long, playing blackjack – those types of things. It took a while and a little help and direction from some friends, but I've gotten control of a lot of those leaks."



The Crew

A lot of the help and direction that turned Joe into the player he is today came during the time he spent with Dutch Boyd and The Crew.



Dutch and Joe met at the 2002 World Series when Joe was dealing at the Horseshoe and Dutch was playing in the events and side games. "We played in a lot of the smaller games together – $1-$2 no-limit, $10-$20 limit. We were both young and liked to party, so we became friends." The next year, Joe was in between bankrolls and was dealing the WSOP when Dutch made his big run. [Boyd finished 12th in the main event and took home $80,000.] Joe and Dutch hooked up and The Crew concept was discussed. "It was Dutch's idea to market himself and everyone else, and try to change poker for the better," Joe stated. "He wanted to try to do more to bring in sponsorship and whatnot. On the organizational side, he wanted a place where everyone could work on their game together, play together, and get into playing condition, like a support group."

Dutch took his $80,000 winnings from the WSOP and funded the concept, and Bartholdi was on board. "I decided to start over and take poker seriously, and join my friends and do this," he said. "So, we all moved to Cali and started out online, where everyone had to play small and move up only when we consistently beat a game for a certain amount. I built it up so that I was playing $15-$30 online, and in one session I played badly and dusted off $4,000. It was my destructive and undisciplined side coming back to haunt me, and I just basically tilted off all that money. I felt sick about it. I felt like I let everyone down, so I just packed up and left The Crew and came back to Vegas. A little later, they added Fischman to The Crew and had their big exposure at the 2004 World Series, but I wasn't involved at that time. I was the first one to leave The Crew, but we're all still friends."



The Roller Coaster
After his separation from The Crew, Joe strayed from online poker. He played mostly live cash games and continued his bankroll roller coaster. Several months later, an online site sent him $50 to get him to come back and play. Starting at 25¢-50¢ no-limit, Joe skillfully built his online bankroll to more than $5,000. One weekend, he decided to take $3,000 for a run at the Bellagio $30-$60 game, the game that had gobbled several bankrolls in the past. "It happened to be a really good week for the $30-$60 games. I won every day and pumped up from $3,000 to $10,000 in no time. At that time, no-limit was becoming really popular, and Bellagio had a $10-$20 no-limit game going. I had a little no-limit experience because the Horseshoe spread a $1-$2 no-limit game for a long time. I played the $10-$20 no-limit game for a while and did well, and with a couple of nice cashes in tournaments in 2004, I had a bankroll of over $250,000."



However, unable to escape his degenerative demons, Joe once again tore through his entire bankroll with reckless abandon. "I was playing huge. I was playing big pot-limit Omaha and $800-$1,600 limit hold'em. I lost $40,000 here and $20,000 there, but just kept playing. I played tired, I played too long, and I played badly. I also got depressed over a girl, and that caused a lot of my stupid behavior. I just didn't have the right mindset when I was playing then, and the money just disappeared."



The Friend

Few things are worse for a professional poker player than going broke. Despite Joe's familiarity with the experience, losing the $250,000 was a tough pill to swallow. The one piece of equity that a great player has, however, is his edge as a result of his talent – an edge that will eventually translate into profit. It also doesn't hurt to have good friends who recognize your talent and are willing to help, and Joe Cassidy was that angel investor who got Joe back on his feet.

"I met Joe [Cassidy] when I was 19 and he was 18. He came to the Horseshoe to play, and my father was dealing there. I hung out on the rail a lot watching players, and Joe's talent caught my eye immediately." The two started talking poker and helping each other out, and remain close friends.



When Cassidy saw that Bartholdi was broke again, he helped him. Cassidy staked Bartholdi in several events at the 2005 World Series, and Bartholdi nailed fifth place in the last $1,500 no-limit hold'em event for more than $70,000, the biggest tournament score of his life. After several more tournament cashes, including a $27,160 win at the 2005 Ultimate Poker Challenge and two final tables at the 2006 Gold Strike World Poker Open that netted him more than $60,000, Bartholdi once again was playing with his own money. He returned to Bellagio's $10-$20 no-limit game and continued to run well. Along the way, he and Cassidy took half of each other at the 2006 World Poker Tour Championship.



The Score

At the WPT Championship, Joe believed his chances of success were pretty good because of the large field, the ton of starting chips ($50,000), and the long levels. "There aren't 605 champions in the world of poker, so a large percentage of the field was going to be people who were going to make critical errors," he said.



Adroitly capitalizing on those errors, Joe was able to cruise below the radar to day four. As is the case for many players during a long tournament, fatigue began to set in. He made several mistakes, but was still able to hold on to about $300,000 going to day five. Following an early day-five double-up at the expense of Rehne Pedersen, Joe maneuvered his way through the day, ending up in fifth place with more than $2.3 million in chips. Just one hour into day six, Joe nailed Simon Moussa with back-to-back pocket aces to knock him out and inflate his stack to more than $3.5 million with only 16 players remaining.



"Coming down to the wire, I really began to feel like I could win the thing. I did make some mistakes when we began to play shorthanded, but not having a whole lot of shorthanded tournament experience, you're gonna have that. Everyone knew I was playing wild, aggressive poker both preflop and post-flop, so sometimes you're gonna misstep."



But for the most part, Joe didn't step out of line. His play up to and including the final table was as close to flawless as it gets. After crippling James Van Alstyne in perhaps the event's largest hand, it really began to set in that Joe could take this thing home. In that hand, Van Alstyne had the button and Claus Nielsen raised to $385,000. Van Alstyne and Joe both called, and the flop came 4 4 3. Joe bet $600,000, Nielsen folded, Van Alstyne raised to $1.6 million, and Joe called. The turn was the A, and Joe checked. Van Alstyne bet $1.4 million and Joe called again. The river was the 6 and Joe checked again. Van Alstyne also checked. Bartholdi turned over pocket eights for a winning two pair to take down a monster pot. "James was one of the more respected, feared opponents at the table," Bartholdi said. "He was the one who would catch me if I got out of line too much; he'd know what to do. He had a lot of chips, and once I won that pot, I felt that my chances of winning went up greatly."

Aiding Joe's confidence in his ability to win it was the enormous group of friends and family members he had supporting him as the tournament wore on. "When it was coming down to the wire, everyone supporting me got into the mode of acting like it was just meant to be for me. My sister started it, and everyone just got behind it, telling me I was gonna win. At some point, I was like, 'OK, I'll join you guys. I'm gonna win this thing.' I didn't really believe it; I mean, I know my chances of scoring, but I just wanted to join everyone around me in a game called 'let's pretend it's already happened.' It was fun."



To win the event, Joe made a tough call with middle pair after being check-raised all in, and had to avoid a 12-outer with two pulls of the deck. With $3.8 million on the line, it has to be up there with the most difficult sweats of all time. "I tried to calmly sit there, but on the inside I was screaming with everyone else: 'No Heart! No Heart!' When no heart or 10 materialized, fantasy became reality and Joe was mobbed on the stage by a sea of friends, family, and well-wishers – some laughing, some crying, and some just ready to get the party started. It started promptly.



The Aftermath

Promptly one hour after winning $3.8 million, Joe threw a ridiculous party at one of the hottest clubs in Vegas. The $20,000 event was attended by some of the biggest names in poker, as well as some of the most fantastic poker groupies you'd ever want to go heads up with. The host raised glasses of Cristal champagne what seemed like once every 10 minutes to the toast, "Here's to no heart!"


Celebration aside, according to Joe, not much is going to change – except, perhaps, his phone bill. "I'm always on the phone now, and I always get another phone call when I'm on the phone. It's terrible – except that about 30 percent of the calls are from females, so it's not that bad, I guess."



Other than that, life goes on. "I'd like to win another big event; tournaments are a lot of fun. The money isn't gonna change a whole lot of things for me. I was used to making about $1,500 a day playing $10-$20 no-limit, and I'm happy with that. Maybe I'll step up to $25-$50. Really, I can just travel more, write and play music, and keep doin' what I'm doin'."



The Finale

If Joe ever wanted to quit his day job, he'd have a solid second career as either a comedian or a musician. All told, Joe's written about 25 songs, but that's not the impressive part.



At the end of our interview, Joe turned and picked up his guitar. He proceeded to play one of his original songs, and then said, "Here, I'll make up a song for this occasion. It'll be called … 'All This Money.'" But, he immediately retracted, nervous. With a little prodding, however, he rolled into a sick cord progression with the following lyrics:



I shouldn't have opened my mouth, now.

Forgot what this thing was all about.

Surely gonna buy my friends some toys, now …

Surely ain't gonna have to say yes to youuuu …

Don't know what I'm gonna do with all this money,

But hey, honey, if you're looking good, I'm sure you can get some, too …

Don't know what I'm gonna do with all this money,

But honey, I hope it's with you."



Seeing the lyrics in print doesn't do it justice. Believe me, this guy is extremely talented.



As the interview wrapped up, I asked Joe to bequeath some wisdom to the throngs of grinders who are struggling to build and maintain a bankroll, working on discipline, and eliminating degenerative behavior.



"I feel this responsibility to say something good, but there are only two types of advice I could give people," he said. "One type would be to encourage them to get better and keep going, and the other would be to find another path. One of those pieces of advice is right for everyone out there. They should either get better and keep playing, or find another path." With a sly smile, he added, "They need to find their own meaning in that."



For Joe, finding another path was never an option. Fighting through being broke countless times, he kept playing and got better, and just won himself one of the most prestigious titles in poker. It's the story that every grinder dreams about, and Joe Bartholdi is living proof that with dedication, perseverance, a little partying, and the right timing, the grind can, and will, pay off.