Hey! Teachers! Leave Them Poker Players Alone!

In 2006, Shannon Shorr quit college at the University of Alabama to pursue his dream of becoming a professional poker player. He definitely wasn't alone. "It has become increasingly more common for college guys to put their education on hold in order to player professionally," said Shorr. "If you look at the field of, say, the $100 rebuy event on PokerStars, you'll see a murderer's row of great poker players who almost all happen to be 18- to 25-year-old college dropouts."

Shorr has since gone back to school to finish up his degree, but the notion that a degree can wait is still rampant amongst the true elite of online poker. Years ago, dabbling in poker was a means to an end, a way to pay for tuition, which would inevitably lead you elsewhere. Nowadays, however, many youngsters are foregoing education entirely to pursue poker riches.


Campus Culture

Whereas poker was once played with a quarter ante in the frat-house basement, these days, it has become a centerpiece of extracurricular activities. Not even the Ivy League can avoid the poker rage. Harvard has beefed up its rivalry with Yale with an annual poker game. The series of heads-up matches takes place the day before their teams meet on the football field, and it has been running for the past two years.

Numerous websites have sprung up at colleges across the U.S., determined to bring even the most casual players together for home games. Colleges around the country are also forming clubs devoted to the game, and some are even qualifying for student government funding, such as Harvard's Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society (GPSTS). These poker "think tanks" are bringing the brightest minds together, enabling good players to become great before they take on the best in venues all over the world.

"Being in college with like-minded individuals allowed me to find friends who shared my interest in becoming better at poker," said 22-year-old pro Vivek Rajkumar. "I think that helped me build a foundation during the early parts of my career." Thanks to a gifted mind, Rajkumar was able to snag his degree by the age of 19 at the University of Washington, but other online phenoms, desperate to win now at all costs, have decided that school can wait, or that it is completely unnecessary.


The Case for Quitting

Online and now live superstar Tom "durrrr" Dwan dropped out of Boston University after just one year as an English major in order to pursue his dream of becoming a professional. "At first, I was able to run my bankroll up without any problems," recalls Dwan. "Then, too many distractions made me give almost half of it back. At the same time, I realized that I was failing in school and that it had hurt my game. I decided to withdraw and just focus on poker." Nowadays, Dwan can win upward of 10 years of salary in just one session.

Dwan's side of the issue is probably the most supported amongst the successful players of his generation. Jimmy "Gobboboy" Fricke is one of the most revered players in the online community, and he quit school in Illinois to play full time, despite not being old enough to play in the U.S. The naysayers can judge, but Fricke's $2.5 million in live and online tournament career earnings quickly quiet any debate.

The college dropout list is long and filled with stories of both failure and unparalleled success. Last year's World Series of Poker main-event winner, Peter Eastgate, decided that school wasn't going to offer him the same opportunity that poker would, and that notion paid off to the tune of $9,152,416. Another WSOP winner, Phil Hellmuth, is perhaps the most famous player never to have finished college. "The Poker Brat" got through three years at the University of Wisconsin-Madison before calling it quits and becoming what was then the youngest main-event winner in history, before that title was taken by the aforementioned Eastgate.

Some have taken the cash now, degree never approach to the extreme, such as WSOP Europe main-event winner Annette Obrestad. The 19-year-old Norwegian card shark dropped out of high school with just six months left in her senior year, and has absolutely no intention of going back to finish. As her screen name Annette_15 implies, Obrestad started playing in her mid-teens, and was a pro long before her days of prom dances were over. In her mind, why would she continue with the formality of an education when she was already equipped with all the knowledge she needed to live out her dream as a professional poker player?

Trying to balance school, a job, and poker worked for Jonathan Little - for a little while, at least. The University of West Florida student had been playing seriously for some time when he decided to take a shot. He quit his job of refueling airplanes, dropped out, and took a chance. "I was sitting there at the airport, reading David Sklansky books during my breaks, and realized there was a lot of money to be made," said Little. "Before long, I had built my bankroll up and decided that I should make poker my full-time priority." Little, who admits that he never does anything unless he can be the best at it, went on to very quickly tear up the live-tournament scene for five World Poker Tour final tables and $4 million in career tournament earnings.


The Case for Staying

Tour regular Isaac Haxton was killing it at the tables and decided that with the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act becoming a reality, it was the right time to take a break from school at Brown University. "When I heard about the UIGEA that fall, I made a last-minute decision to take the next year off from school and try to make as much money as I could playing online poker before it went away," remembered Haxton. "In retrospect, the situation wasn't actually that desperate, but it ended up being a good decision, anyhow."

Later that year, Haxton finished second in the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure for nearly $900,000. "I was a bit tempted to just drop out at that point and stick with poker, but with only two semesters to go, I decided to follow through with my original plan and finish school right away," said Haxton. "I knew I wanted to have a degree as a potential backup plan if poker ever became unprofitable, or even if I just got sick of it. I figured it would be more fun to finish out my degree while I still knew other people at my school and wasn't too old to go to parties."

Haxton did warn against the general apathy toward education that comes when you are already making the big bucks. "By the time I went back to school and switched to a philosophy degree, I was just going through the motions and doing what I had to do in order to get a job if I ever left poker," admitted Haxton. "When you're approaching your education that way, it's hard to take it very seriously."

Shorr offered up some wisdom on the unseen benefits of living out the typical collegiate career. "It was nice just to be out in the real world getting things done and interacting with people. Countless times over the couple years I was playing full-time poker, I remember longing for that. I remember sitting in casinos playing poker and forgetting that there actually was a real world full of hard-working, interesting people outside of our little box that is the poker world. I highly recommend going back to school to any young poker players out there who have quit. It's definitely worth it, even if you're like me and have no intention of using your degree. It's a matter of self-fulfillment," said Shorr.


When it All Falls Apart

This industry is filled with many more economically challenged individuals than millionaires, and many go busto before ever coming close to being robusto. The key is recognizing whether you are the type of player who thrives off the pressure or avoids risk at all costs. Bankrolls tend to blow up faster in college, where the bills are minimal and the beers are cheap, but when the player has the added responsibility of a penthouse apartment and an expensive social calendar, even the wealthy can struggle.

The variance in tournament poker is so high that players can sometimes crumble under the pressure of mounting buy-ins and travel costs. As a result, a six-figure bankroll can be lost during a dry spell at the WSOP, or even over the course of six months on tour. Jonathan Little, who plays nearly every event within the continental United States, has stated that he can easily go through $500,000 in buy-ins over the course of a year.

Many of these online stars make the choice to tackle the live circuit, and quickly find out that it could take years before that first big score comes through. Because of that, some of the best players in the world are forced to take on a backer, someone to share the expenses with, and ultimately, the profits, as well.

Countless players with hundreds of thousands of dollars in winnings on their resumes are still struggling or broke, thanks to make-up, which is the amount of money owed to a backer before that player can start to accumulate some cash of his own.

Of course, the poker economy has taken its lumps along with the rest of the country, and it has become increasingly tougher to find willing investors. Those who can't come up with the buy-ins are forced to retreat to their laptops with their tails between their legs. They are not necessarily bad players, they are just not lucky enough to win big early on.


Moving on to Bigger and Better Things

While some players are indeed looking for a way to escape the daily nine-to-five grind, others are legitimately using poker as just a stepping stone to move on to bigger and better things.

One such player, Sumeet "batera" Batra, has played the big buy-in tournaments on and off throughout his collegiate days and has managed to maintain a winning record while simultaneously being enrolled in medical school. Poker will always be a hobby of his, but the young soon-to-be doctor is happy with his real lifelong pursuit.

The most famous example of moving on came from former Duke University student Jason "strassa2" Strasser. While playing a very limited schedule and attending class, Strasser managed to win more than $1 million combined in live and online tournament play. His cash-game prowess had already added much more to his bankroll, and the biomedical and electrical-engineering major was considered by many to be the next poker superstar in the making.

Instead, Strasser chose to leave poker behind and use his brilliant mind to head to New York and work for Morgan Stanley in options trading as an analyst. That's not to say that the skills poker taught him haven't been useful in his new job, as Strasser revealed with a forum post. "Poker skills are incredibly useful in my job," wrote Strasser. "The amount of results-oriented thinking that happens on Wall Street is remarkable. If you were up $10,000 on [one] table and used that fact to dictate decisions on a different table, everyone would call you stupid, but you would be surprised how much stuff like that happens [here]. Wall Street hires a ton of super book-smart kids from super good schools with super good grades, but for the role of trader, most of you reading this post understand making bets better than them. Chances are, you are also more comfortable with making and losing money, and also less shy about pulling the trigger or making a quick big decision."


Making the Decision

Ultimately, the decision boils down to two things. Do you (a) have the desire to play poker for a living, and (b) have the ability, fortitude, and mental stamina to do so? Some of the best young players in the game have answered yes to both, and have taken the poker world by the horns. Others have taken ill-advised shots without the proper preparation, and were left staring up at the lights on Las Vegas Boulevard, wondering where it all went wrong.

Perhaps the only person who can truly know for sure is the one staring at his own reflection in the monitor - as long as he is able to realistically see past his ability to his faults, and is disciplined and informed enough to know what it really takes to make it.