Player's Stories

The WPT and the poker-playing backpacker
By M. Daniel

When most people graduate from college they immediately do, from what I've noticed, one of two things. They either continue on to some form of graduate school whether it be for law, a CPA, CFA, MD, PhD or countless other surname suffixes or they move on to what is often referred to as the "real world" which includes a 9-5 job, maybe a spouse, maybe children, and maybe a continued education further down the road. Having graduated from college last December with a degree in Financial Management either of these roads were logical and available to me, but I instead chose a third and too often forgotten choice. I began travelling.

What does this have to do with poker? Well I'm glad you asked. I began playing the game seriously about 4 or 5 years ago, the beginning of college and when online poker was, as far as i know, in its infancy. I had trouble findng a descent sized game with stakes I was looking for online and home games around campus were few and limited to nickel and dime with friends and usually a keg occupying seat 6 instead of a person. Needless to say poker was often not the focus of the evening.

Some time passed and soon enough I had a mere year and a half left of school. That was when I had decided that I wanted to travel after I graduated instead of going right to work which gave me nearly 18 months to save my pennies. After some financial analysis I decided that considering my university expenses, school workload, and the amount of money I was making at my bartending job that I would not be able to put away enough to go to all the places I had planned or stay away for as long as I had desired. Despite this I began to save anyway and slowly put together a truncated schedule of where and what I wanted to get out of my trip. As far as meeting my original optimistic desires I was preparing to be let down. I had never considered poker as a source of income to make up for what I couldn't make at a second off-hours job.

Then salvation came.

It came in the most unlikliest of forms, television, and with three glorious letters...WPT...I was on my way to my goal. The launch of the WPT coincided with my decision to save for travel and the timing, obviously, couldn't have been better. Thanks to it and Chris Moneymaker's well publicized $40 to $2.5 million fairy tale I now had the opportunity to get what I desired! I witnessed the number of people in online cardrooms increase by the thousands and meanwhile around campus I was able to find and play in 3-4 home games a week pulling an extra $100-$150 (and on good weeks $200-$250) from people who saw the WPT and thought, "Hey! That's not so tough!" Now this may seem like small amounts of money but to a broke, over-worked college student trying to save it was like an oasis in the sahara. Thanks to this I was able to achieve my goal for travel and on January 12 I boarded my plane.

Little did I know that poker would not stop helping me along my way after my departure. Before leaving, my dear mother handed me a pre-packaged tin with a deck of cards and 100 chips and jokingly told me, "If you get into money trouble, use this!"

Well, there was no money trouble but along the way I would manage to scrape a small game together and usually come out with $5 - $10 for my efforts which, in the backpacking world is a small fortune. A couple extra dollars a day means the difference between having a hot shower or having to trudge a cold and crowded corridor to use a waist-level communal shower with fridgid water; the difference between having a toilet that flushes rather than a mere hole in the ground and a hope that your aim is true; the difference between having clean sheets for the night or having to use your shirt as a pillow-case....I think you get the idea.

I am now in month 8 of my journey and as I write this from an internet cafe in Kuala Lumpur I realize that it is time for me to come home. Poker helped take me around the world and now poker will bring me back. Without it I would not have been to able to go the places I've gone and do the things that I've done and in a couple weeks I will reach my last destination before home, Las Vegas! Here I will be with unparalleled enthusiasm and a very modest bankroll where I shall try my hand in the most unique city in the world!