But what’s the most important thing
I need to know about you?
- Well, I’m just married with a dog and
I like to gamble
and some.
You know, pretty much my life,
spending time with my family and my dog and
gambling.
- Has that gamble always been there?
Can you remember a time when it happened,
when it really became prominent?
- I always really like to play games
but gambling –
no, I started playing poker in high school with my friends
and that was –
I got into it because it was a game
but then the whole gambling element
makes it even more exciting
because sometimes the games become repetitive.
But in gambling
there’s so much chance
that every day is different.
You never know what’s going to happen.
It’s always an adventure.
- And did that –
did you ever have a problem with money, with –
you know, because obviously gamble comes with money
unless you’re doing it for sweets or whatever.
- Yeah.
- You’re going to lose some.
How do you feel around the financial side of things?
- You know, I never had really a problem
with thinking about with money
because when I first started playing poker,
I was a broke high school kid
and I had no money
and I made a lot of money playing poker very young.
So for me I’ve never really –
like when I was younger,
when I was working my way up,
I always thought about it.
Well, even if I lose all of my money,
I’m still way ahead in poker
because I spent money on traveling
and just living life.
So …
- How old were you about then
when you were really doing well?
- I think I made a lot of money
when I first started playing poker.
It was when I had finished high school.
I was 18 years –
or maybe –
I was 18 or 19 years old.
I must have been 18
and then between high school and college.
I think that summer I made like
$70,000 or $80,000 playing poker online,
which for an 18-year-old kid is
all the money in the universe.
- That’s quite incredible
because my boy is 17
and he has just started a part-time job
and he was telling me yesterday
he wanted to buy himself a 40-pound Gucci bandana
but he said,
“There’s something stopping me dad
and I don’t know what it is.”
So how on earth –
what would you do if you had $80,000?
I mean what was it like around then,
around money with $80,000 at that age?
I mean what were you thinking, feeling?
- I thought it was awesome.
I thought –
I was always kind of a rebel
and I thought I had found a way
where I could buck the system.
You know, we’re going to have to go to school
and have to get a job and a cubicle.
You know, and I
have enough money to do whatever I want,
which all I wanted to do was
go out and have
10 drinks and travel.
So that was plenty of money to do that.
- Before you found poker,
what did you want to do?
You know, when you dream as a kid,
what is it that you wanted to be?
- I’m not –
I don’t really know.
I knew for sure that I don’t want to
follow the conventional path.
The first time I saw poker on TV,
I wanted to be a professional poker player.
I thought this was so cool.
These guys don’t have a job,
don’t have to work for the man.
They just play a game all day
and that was very appealing to me.
What was it about your life at the time
that made you –
made a real impression on you, that you said,
“There’s no way I’m going to have this conventional life.”
Was it a struggle in school?
Was it anything to do …?
- Just to me it always seemed kind of like
fake to me.
I think nowadays maybe people are more open-minded
with the advent of social media
and the internet.
But where I grew up was a very
like prominent suburban town
where everyone kind of was encouraged
to follow the traditional path.
Like where I went to high school,
I think 98 percent of the people
went to college after high school and
that whole path never really made sense to me.
Like in middle school, they tell you,
“Oh, you have to do really good
and get good grades because
high school is going to be so much harder,”
and then in high school they’re like,
“Oh, you have to get good grades
to go to a good college,”
and then you got to go to a good college.
You get a good job and
make good money
and for me,
I guess never wanted to do that.
So I was always kind of like, “What’s the point?”
- And I guess there was also a part of you that would say,
“OK. I don’t want to do this.
But I do want the money
and I do want a nice lifestyle.
So what am I going to do?”
- Yeah, exactly.
So that’s what really
appealed to me in poker,
that it was kind of a way to like
block the traditional lifestyle,
the traditional system
and still do what I wanted with my life.
- Did you avoid the job
scenario completely
or did you at some point get a job?
- No. I worked some odd jobs
when I was in high school.
I worked in my friend’s greenhouse
like unloading like trees and flowers once a week.
Then I even worked as a janitor
and actually
I’ve made quite a bit of money playing poker
when I was maybe like 17,
maybe like $1000 which, you know,
to me that was a lot of money at the time.
Then I lost it all
and I had to take a job as a janitor
just to get some money to play poker again.
- Right.
- And then after that,
I kind of had a little bit more respect for money
because playing poker was a lot more fun than
cleaning toilets.
- Being a janitor yeah, I get that.
