I’d like to start off this post with a couple of shout-outs.
First, CONGRATULATIONS to Craig and Diana Sklar on the birth of their first child, Zachary Ethan! Craig and Diana are two fantastic people and very good friends of ours, and so Andrea and I are thrilled for them and for their families. Congratulations! Mazel Tov!
Next, Congratulations to my good friend David Zeitlin on his fantastic showing in the $1500 Six-Handed No Limit Hold-em tournament in the World Series of Poker. David is an old law-school buddy of mine, and like me, he gave up his job as a lawyer to live his dream and pursue his passion. He became a professional poker player in 2006, and has had good success generally, but his recent showing in this WSOP event has to be the highlight of his young professional poker career. He came in second, and was literally one card away from winning a WSOP event and bracelet. You can check out his blog for a detailed description of the tournament and his poker antics, but to give you a brief summary, he finished second, and he would have won if not for a horrific bad beat. When he and another guy were heads up as the final 2 of this event, the other guy got 55 as his hole cards and moved all-in, only to run into David holding 77. The flop and the turn all came up blanks, but the river card was a 5, giving the other guy the lucky break of a lifetime. Nonetheless, it was an amazing showing for David (both financially and in terms of validating his career choice), and we are thrilled for him. Congratulations! Mazel Tov!
My friend’s success in the WSOP actually gives me a good opportunity to write about my poker exploits. For the past 5 years or so back in New York I played in a house game at my friend Rob’s place (shout-out to my poker buddies!), and back in 2003 I was one of the many who caught poker fever and I joined in to the hot trend of online poker. Since then I have been playing online poker off and on, never taking it very seriously and never rising above the skill level of “mediocre”.
When I left work and started my little life-changing adventure of becoming a scuba-diver, I had a number of side-goals that I set for myself, things I had long wanted to do but never had the time for. One of these goals was to qualify for the main event of the World Series of Poker. The main event (not to be confused with the event my friend David did so well in) costs $10,000 to enter, and while you can, of course, pay this money out of your pocket, the much more affordable way to qualify is to win the entry fee by playing poker online. So since February, I have been playing in various online tournaments trying to inch my way incrementally towards my goal of a spot in the main event.
Now, make no mistake — I am fully aware that I am not a professional quality poker player. In fact, I am far from it. The pros (and I’m sure most of the online recreational players) would consider me a “donkey” or a “fish” or some other animal that they use as a derogatory term for not-so-good poker players. But despite that, I’ve been clinging to the dream of playing in the main event, and maybe catching a wave of luck and riding my way to fame, or at the very least just having some fun and talking some smack to far superior players.
So with the main event a little more than two weeks away, I have a very significant status update for you all: POKER SUCKS! Not only haven’t I qualified for the main event, but I’ve grown increasingly more frustrated with the game and as a result my desire to even play in these small qualifying tournaments has dwindled. The problem with poker is that no matter how much skill you have, luck still plays a huge part. I don’t pretend to have a lot of skill, but that makes it even worse during those few times where I make great plays, trap an opponent, and then suffer a bad beat. Nothing is more frustrating. And this is in a dinky little $15 tournament. I can’t imagine how my friend David copes with these bad beats when there are hundreds of thousands of dollars and WSOP bracelets on the line. Every time I suffer a really bad beat in one of my little qualifying games I send David an email bitching about it, and I always imagine that he’s laughing to himself, saying “so you took a bad beat in a $15 tourney — imagine taking bad beats for a living!” Fortunately he’s been kind enough to humor me on these emails, but the reality is that losing poker hands and losing money via bad beats is extremely frustrating, and I can’t imagine making a career this way.
I’ve come to realize that the great thing about scuba diving is that there are no “bad beats”. If a dive is good, everyone gets to enjoy it. The scuba equivalent of a bad beat is when there is some great form of wildlife underwater that everyone sees but you. And while it is somewhat frustrating to come back up on to the boat and have to answer “no” to everyone asking “did you see that shark?”, it is not nearly as frustrating to someone sucking out a gutshot straight on the river to bust your pocket aces.
Then again, no one gets the bends or dies playing poker. And poker players can actually earn money, which, it seems, is very hard to do as a scuba professional. So I guess it all balances out.
The moral of the story: I will not be playing in the main event of the 2007 World Series of Poker. But I will invest in David and my other friend Kevin when they play in the WSOP, so I can at least feel that I am there in spirit. And of course I will hope that both David and Kevin continue to have great success in their various poker endeavors, so that I can hit them up to invest in my dive shop! And for all of you who are like me and have to pass on a goal or a dream, as I am with the WSOP, never fear — you can always invest in mine! While we can’t all be scuba instructors, it may soon be surprisingly easy for all of you to be part owners of a dive resort. ;^)
