Where’s Your Head At?

When I ask poker players what their favourite thing is about what they do, the answer that comes back to me most of the time is freedom. The freedom to do what they want when they want, and go where they like whenever they please. It’s like being your own boss, but that also means you alone are in charge of making sure you put the time and discipline into making the money needed to support such a lifestyle. Online poker has swings of its own but when online players go live, there’s a lot they have to learn.

With live play comes a whole new community, travel, parties and soirées, new sights and experiences, but this all costs money, and also distracts the player from what he/she came to do. I’ve seen players come and go because they got too caught up in the “baller” lifestyle and forgot that they actually needed to pull their weight and bring home the bacon. I’ve also seen players go through rough patches where nothing they do is right, and all they can do is wait for variance to swing the other way. Either way, every player must learn the right balance between work and play if they don’t want to be a hit-and-run story.

Virtual Reality

Over the years, you usually see the same faces appear repeatedly in all the best-loved poker destinations. Sitting among one another in the same room, social media reflects exactly what’s going on — one tournament floor produces hundreds of Tweets and Facebook comments regarding the state of play, grievances, food cravings, dinner arrangements, bust-out plans, and hand critiques; conversations held in the virtual world where many of the speakers once dwelled.

Cliques can be often found too; it used to be that nationalities grouped together but now you find various multi-cultural groups drawn to each other by similar passions — the degen gamblers found playing Chinese and adding up points in the corner of the bar at the end of play, the active-types you only see the back of as they flee towards the local natural wonder for a post-bust-out hike, the home-birds congregating to watch movies and order room service, and the partygoers always on the lookout for a good time. Walk through a hotel housing hundreds of poker players on any night after end of play and you will hear that familiar alert over and over, reminding you it’s someone’s turn to act behind those closed doors. The poker world is one, which does not bear much resemblance to what those looking in would consider “normality”, but for many it is their every day existence.

Leaving On A Jet Plane

Traveling is a large part of being a full-time poker pro. Many don’t get home to their families and friends often, so having allies on tour is vital. Travel, once again, is costly especially if you’re taking part in a tournament on the other side of the world, and what about those who can’t qualify online or bump up their bankroll in the virtual realm before taking a trip? There was a drop in Americans attending European events post-Black Friday, and it was clear when questioning players about their year that there was a great contrast between non-American and American experiences. Canadian born Kara Scott described her year as strange but fantastic. She said, “It has been a year of extremes for sure, but ultimately one that I’ll look back on with a lot of fondness. I spent a lot of the year travelling and actually had five months on the road at one point, living out of a suitcase (or three)! That was a pretty big learning experience for me… I’ve always been a wanderer but this year reaffirmed that for me. I really love having friends all over the world and places to visit and I learned that I’m not so good at staying in one place for too long.”

EPT champion David Vamplew also mentioned travel, stating, “2011 was a really fun year for me. I was lucky enough to be able to spend most of it traveling to live tourneys, which has given me some great experiences and some good success too!” Australian professional Jesse McKenzie reminisced on the best memory of his year, “Winning the Sunday Million whilst on holidays in Seville, Spain,” he recalled. “Being with friends and waking up at midday, going to the Croissanterie in Lagos, Portugal, then going to the beach, grinding, then partying and waking up and doing it all over again!”

The answers received from American pros, on the most part, reflected the various hits the poker industry took this year. Josh Brikis went through a tough patch of his own. “2011 was the worst year (career wise) of my life,” he exclaimed. “I played insane volume and lost a lot of money. Very, very miserable.” Whereas Faraz Jaka addressed the online matter directly, observing, “2011 was quite the transitional year for a lot of us! A lot of people have been entirely focused on how unlucky they are or how unfair life has been to them with the news that came out on April 15th. The way I look at it is: Every industry has its ups and downs. Just look at the NFL, it was just in 1967 that the NFL and AFL even merged! There wasn’t even a Super Bowl yet! Just think if years from now the WSOP isn’t even the most prestigious event that poker players look forward to every year. Think about what alcohol distributors went through during the prohibition. Rather than worry too much about the past it’s better to just look at the present and future situation. Post-April 15th I had to re-measure the value of every hour I put into poker from a playing and sponsorship perspective and make the necessary adjustments of how I was allocating my time to poker and other business endeavors in my life.”

Bump In The Road

Without going into the whole online poker dilemma too much, it is clear 2011 was a year of upheaval, with the after effects still apparent. Resident American professionals have moved elsewhere, some have toned down their poker schedule, some have bumped up their live play, and some are simply focusing on other goals they had previously put on the long finger. Jaka explained, “I remember seeing how so many people in the industry were completely lost and confused and had absolutely no direction without poker. Some had over 90 percent of their net worth in their Full Tilt accounts and could not believe what just hit them. The Full Tilt situation and poker ban in the U.S. was definitely a major hit to me but because I had already planted seeds in other industries and areas of business I was too busy and had too many personal goals to let Black Friday crush me mentally. The scenario is very similar to athletes who dedicate their entire life to only one thing then find out they have an injury or a change or strike in the industry that prevents them from being able to run with their gig. It’s cliché but so true — don’t put all your eggs in one basket!”

Hot Spots

From a European perspective, most things have been ticking along as they were, in anticipation for the return of America to virtual turf. Players are still traveling frequently, prize pools are still big, and qualifiers continue as they did before. The poker circuit is ongoing and schedules are jam-packed with a vast choice of tournaments held all over the world to choose from. When talking about favourite places visited in 2011, Kara Scott said, “I absolutely loved going to WPT Malta and had a pretty amazing time there with my friends. I stayed up later, went out more, and danced far more than I have in a very long time. Also, it was warm and I do love the warm!” For Josh Brikis it was his first trip to the PCA in the Bahamas, and South Florida, a state where poker is growing rapidly. John Eames chose closer to home: “I always love having an excuse to go to Cannes and had a good time there on the occasions I went this year.” But many other pros pointed to the same place… Australia. Anton Wigg’s favourite memory of 2011 is going backpacking and surfing by himself for three weeks after the Aussie Millions, and his favourite place was Byron Bay on the Australian East Coast; a perhaps slightly biased Jesse McKenzie pointed to Hamilton Island, part of the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Queensland… or Queenstown in New Zealand, while Faraz Jaka named Melbourne — “I usually stay there an extra week or two after the Aussie Millions to go run around the area,” he recalled. “It was my third trip to Australia, some of my highlights on these trips included: A visit to the Opera house in Sydney, scuba diving in the Great Barrier Reef, visting New Zealand, and watching locals in Cairns gamble on frog racing in the bars!” Fatima Moreira de Melo was perhaps the voice of many when she simply stated, “There’s no best place. I just love the traveling and every place has its unique selling points.”

All this wonderful traveling however results in a very unstructured routine, and that brings, for many, a bad diet and lack of regular exercise. Take Fatima de Melo for instance, when asked what she was most proud of in 2011, she replied, “I’m most proud of the fact that I’m working out regularly again, because I was becoming quite lazy, physically.” Aside from personal motivation, players, and even the media who follow the game around, can often be found partaking in weight loss prop bets — only in poker would you find the opportunity to make money from the desire to lose weight and tone up.

Side Action

Aside from prop bets, poker players regularly amuse themselves with other forms of entertainment. It is easy to see trends among the poker community; and these days it is clear most enjoy catching up on television series when abroad and then sharing their thoughts and suggestions with each other. This reaches new heights in the winter, particularly around Christmas time, when players are looking to kill a few hours over the holiday period in between poker action. Entourage, Breaking Bad, The Wire; you name it, they’ll watch it. The answer to endless boring hours on a plane or train, and of course a good way to ease a bustling brain after 10 to 12 hours of concentration at the felt. Games like chess, Chinese, backgammon, and Magic: The Gathering are also extremely popular among the international poker community. Many players come from backgrounds featuring one or more of these games. ElkY, for example, was a Magic: The Gathering aficionado and, in fact, still plays; pros such as Phil Laak and Arnaud Mattern have a history in backgammon, and Almira Skripchenko and Jeff Sarwer are former chess champions.

Poker players will generally take up anything that is competitive and requires tactical thinking. If that game can be played online, better still… and if you can play multiple games at once, you’ve really struck gold! The Words With Friends application is such a game and has spread through the poker community like Ed Hardy’s eye-watering bling once did. WSOP bracelet holder Dan “djk123” Kelly is an avid player of the game, he explains, “It’s just really easy to play, you can play with your friends, you can play up to 20 games at once, and you don’t have to finish the whole game right away in one sitting, you can just play a word every hour or so, or every day.” Games like Words With Friends and Angry Birds can be easily played during the quieter stages of a tournament, and while it used to be unusual to see players reading a book at the table, it’s now quite common for the majority of a room to be glued to an iPad or iPhone. I can’t help but ask — has technology grown so much that it has tainted the live realm with virtual nuances? Are we physically here but communicating purely in cyberspace? And what does that do to the original game? Surely it impacts on player interaction, face-reading, and vital physical clues that can be so easily missed?

Life Lessons

These are all lessons players must learn in order to evolve, and a lot of the time it really just comes down to balance and moderation. There is a lot of money in poker and it has to be constantly made in order to live the dream lifestyle. When looking at the long-standing, respected names of the game, it is clear there is a formula to playing successful poker professionally. I asked a handful of players what they learned in 2011 and many of the answers featured finding stability and balance, whether that be in their poker/family/social life or regarding travel and expenditure. Jesse McKenzie posited, “People overestimate their abilities in some areas and undervalue the virtue of hard work. Great effort in some ways can overcome other deficits.” John Eames answered, “During some of the downswings I had I realised that I actually wasn’t playing very well at times. It’s easy to blame things on bad luck too often. I improved at working hard when things weren’t going well.”

Anton Wigg told me that he learned to see things more from other people’s perspective, the importance of having a positive attitude, and to appreciate his friends more. Brikis replied, “I learned a ton this year. I learned that I should be cutting my expenses because when you have a losing year there is nothing to write off so it’s just more money spent! I learned I can’t handle tournaments like I used to be able to because I never had a 12-month downswing, and this will cause me to cut back volume big time! I also learned to play my game going forward and not be overwhelmed and concerned with all the information you get from other pros and what may work for them doesn’t work for you.” And finally, Faraz Jaka was philosophical: “I reinforced the idea that you can’t get too emotionally invested into any one aspect of your life. This could be your career, your friends, your relationships, or even your physical belongings. I say this because post-Black Friday I noticed how so many poker players were completely beaten down, depressed, and just mentally lost. Luckily I had spread my thoughts, energy, and time commitments over so many different things, anywhere from business ventures to just diversified explorations in life. When Black Friday hit it definitely sucked but if that was all I had going on in my life it would have been a lot more painful.”

Success

One thing is for sure however, whether 2011 memories were good or bad, all interviewees were determined to have a winning 2012. Those knocking on the door of victory spoke about finally getting there this year while those already holding a title discussed their hopes for another. But success is not always easy. The poker world may look very shiny and glamorous from the outside but the hours are long, the schedule is relentless, and in order to be part of that “glamour” for a solid period of time, players must keep learning, improving, and striving for balance. Otherwise they will be swallowed up and replaced by the latest scruffy-haired, online phenom with stars in his eyes. It may seem like many of those on the major tours spend their time floating around hotel lobbies in their flip-flops, laptop in hand, but the reality is it’s hard at the top, and it’s even harder to stay there. There are many resemblances between those who the game attracts — this goes back to being your own boss, choosing your hours, waking and sleeping whenever you feel, and planning trips at the drop of a hat. After all, as Bob Dylan said, “What’s money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.” ♠