With the
popularity of poker as high as it is right now, the game is seeing more and more people
who have crossed over from other careers to make playing poker their full-time occupation.
Poker players have always had other
occupations while they played the sport, but it was more of odd jobs to keep their stakes
up so they could play cards. Work wasn't really a polite word used in poker circles.
It is a trend that will continue, I
believe. There are more and more hobbyists turning professional, and as purses increase it
will make it more financially viable for business professionals to enter the game.
It didn't used to be that way. Most of the
older, more established players were poker players from a young age or worked in a
profession associated with the game.
Several of the games' top players began as
dealers. Gavin Smith, Erick Lindgren and Evelyn Ng learned the game while they were
working, making the transition to the sport.
"I saw the same people winning all the
time," Ng said of her days as a dealer. "I knew it was a game of skill that I
could really put my mind to and I would probably do well in, and I think it was a good
guess."
A lot of the older players, like Doyle
Brunson, Amarillo Slim and Johnny Moss, played home games in Texas and made a dangerous
living trying to avoid getting robbed while building their bankrolls.
Now, however, it seems more and more
players had respectable careers that they threw in the muck to play professionally.
Barry Greenstein was a software engineer in
Silicon Valley. Mark Seif was an attorney who worked in the District Attorney's office in
Los Angeles. Humberto Brenes is a successful businessman who owns a television station.
The recent winners of the World Series of
Poker's main events were business professionals first, card players second, but that
quickly changed after capturing poker's spotlight tournament.
Greg Raymer was an accountant, Joseph
Hachem a chiropractor and this year's winner, Jamie Gold, was a Hollywood agent.
Even the smaller events are seeing players
who are more hobbyists than professionals.
The recent winner of the World Series of
Poker circuit event, Jim McCorkle, was a golf professional.
McCorkle won the $1,000 no-limit game at
Caesar's Indiana , winning $56,254 for his first big victory.
A qualifier for the U.S. and British Opens,
McCorkle tried to qualify for the Senior PGA Tour but didn't make it and decided to start
playing cards again. He had played in Las Vegas in the 70s, but not seriously.
In the tournament at Caesar's, McCorkle
entered the final table as the chip leader and never was seriously challenged.
It was ironic that one of the players at
the table was named John Shanks. It was even more ironic that it was McCorkle who knocked
out the player, whose last name is a forbidden word in the golf community.
McCorkle and John Rolnick were the last
players, and it took 34 hands before McCorkle knocked out Rolnick, who has been playing
professionally for 20 years.
As more and more people start entering the
game, expect to see more success stories like McCorkle's. People are figuring out that
they don't need to keep their day job to make a living playing professional poker.
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