I started playing poker when I was seventeen.
Me and my friends, we were really bored one day.
We were hanging out at my house. And my mom is like a huge bargain shopper,
and she just loves to buy random stuff that's on sale and she'll just throw it
in the closet and then every now and then when someone's birthday, or whatever,
she'll just gift it to them.
So we were just doing nothing at home, and we went through the closet,
and we found poker for dummies.
And it had all the chips, all the cards, all the rules,
everything you needed to start playing.
and ever since then we never stopped playing.
My mindset was never set on a job or a profession.
I came here I met the woman that became my wife.
And then I got introduced by poker by, um...
osmosis.
When I first heard about professional poker that there even was
such a thing, and I heard about in the early 80s, and right away I knew I wanted
to do that. And I moved to California because they had the best games in the
world back then.
They had these public poker rooms that-- they didn't have
craps, slots, roulette..
Nothing like that. It was almost like a bridge club.
I just couldn't stop playing. My brother taught it to me. I would play
every day. I'd practice by myself. I would just deal, like, two random hands, and, like,
flip them over, and just, like, do the run out.
You know, I just-- I just loved everything about it.
I was about nine years old, and my dad sat me and my
seven-year-old brother down, and we played five-card draw for pennies.
Couldn't even tell you if I won.
We had no clue about pot odds. But I knew a full house
beat a straight, and flush beat, you know, trips, and all those kinds of things.
I started sneaking into casinos when I was eighteen-- nineteen. Playing three six
or if I was really daring playing four eight. You know. And then we would run up
a couple hundred bucks and thought I was just rolling in the dough.
When I started playing poker I was playing, like, $5 sit- n- goes online.
I was playing, like, the $3.30, 40 K guaranteed rebuy on PokerStars.
[Rocco] Back then you could build a thousand play chips to a million on PokerStars.
And I sold those for $10, me and my brother.
We took that $10 and built it up to $100, and...
When we got to a hundred he's like, "I don't want to do this anymore, like, let's
split our money and you go your way, I go my way." And maybe by the time I was in
twelfth grade I had built that $50 to around like thirty, forty thousand dollars.
So I-- I had pretty decent success playing online poker when I was in high school.
That was probably like around 2011... and then online poker I went out!
My name is Scott Blumstein.
I'm from Morristown, New Jersey..
and currently I live in Las Vegas, Nevada.
My love a cards came from my grandmother actually.
I remember being a kid playing Crazy Eights ...
and old maiden games like that with her, so.
Me and my family used to drive down to Florida to visit my grandmother.
On the way down we would stay in hotels, and one night we got
lucky and got a special room with uh--
It had two TVs.
I was lucky enough to get my own television.
And came across the 2004 World Series of Poker Main Event on television.
I just remember watching that-- that whole thing in that hotel room and
that's just a memory I have.
When I first landed Vegas it's awesome.
The first thing you see is the slots, and you
hear the sounds, and you know you're in Vegas, and you see the welcome to Las Vegas sign.
There's definitely nostalgia... there's excitement.
a lot of money is is won in the Rio. A lot of cool people
you meet in the Rio.
So I get really excited once I land in Vegas.
My name is Chris Leong.
I'm a professional poker player from New York City,
and I'm splitting time between New York City and Las Vegas.
So the WSOP is once a year in Vegas.
For every tournament you win at the WSOP, a bracelet is awarded.
I would say most professional and amateur poker
players goals are to win at least one bracelet in their lifetime.
It's really hard to do and the best players in the world show up to the WSOP
every year so it makes it that much harder to win one.
But when you do win one it's a...
it's a real prize.
If I won a bracelet I would be really happy. I have been working really hard to
win one for a long time, and I've made one final table and didn't get that close.
I've only had one winning summer in Vegas so there's definitely pressure on
me to do well this year.
How many summers is this for you?
Six or seven.
Yeeee!
I would like to say I'm gonna win one bracelet this year, but if I won like
six or seven I wouldn't be surprised.
I'm staying at the Meridian.
It's my favorite place to stay.
The location is amazing. There's always tons of poker players and
a lot of good friends staying here.
[Stan] Yo!
Yo!
So I'm rooming with Stan Lee.
What the fuck is good kid?
In the Vegas!
My name is Stanley Lee.
I'm from West Hartford, Connecticut.
I moved to Vegas about a year ago from Costa Rica.
I'm playing a little uh...
no rathole.
Oh my God. Are you serious?
Yeah why not? I got heaps of money on here.
So, why not fuck around?
So I met Stan at Foxwoods years ago and he's definitely one of the older, more
mature, poker players that I've met in the scene. And in previous years I've
been rooming with a lot of younger poker players so I thought it would be cool to
try to be a little mature this summer, and hopefully it will rub off on me a little bit.
Fuck! You guys are eating burgers, making me hungry.
I was trying to eat healthy.
I asked you. I asked you.
I like-
I was healthy, real healthy today.
I'm hella healthy-
I had two smoothies-
Can you take me to the gym tomorrow?
And then I ate eggs and bacon and avacado.
You gonna teach me how to get abs tomorrow?
Let's do it.
At this moment I feel very excited about poker.
I just recently had my second biggest score, and now it's WSOP where I know I could
turn a little bit of money into a lot.
My goals don't really differ from the years before.
It's win a bracelet and have a million-dollar score, which I
still have not had, but I've gotten very close so I know it's only a matter of time.
The worst thing that could go wrong this summer is that I do not have a
cash and I lose 30 to 40 K, but really everything would be okay.
I'm just ready to have fun and stack people.
Tournaments or cash, and why?
The fact that in a tournament you sit down with the same amount of people, everybody's the same.
It's the most democratic war ever.
Nobody's better than anybody else.
Personally, tournaments are more fun to play because once you're in, you're in.
There's no question about when should I quit? By how much I'm up?
You have to play to the end.
Tournaments have a super high variance. No matter how good you are or
how bad you are, you're gonna have a super high variance and you're
gonna have a lot of swings.
If you have the bankroll to sustain that, and everybody thinks they do...
if you have the huge bankroll to sustain that, then
by all means go ahead but-
You can grind out cash and have consistent winning weeks and
months, and stuff like that. With tournaments it's a lot more of a...
kind of like a positive EV lottery ticket in a lot of ways.
If you play a tournament and you win a tournament...
You have a big income.. big prize. And maybe if you play
the WSOP you get a bracelet and your name will be in the Hall of Fame, okay.
That's for the fame. I play poker tournaments for the fame but I play cash
because of the money.
Cash game players are a little bit different than
tournament players where.. they're a little bit more dependent on themselves.
Where tournament players are probably more of the gamblers types, more of the
degenerate types where they take shots, they want to hit the big score.
I've noticed a big difference in the personalities between people who
approach poker and a cash game sense and people that do with tournaments.
Which is interesting.
Tournament's take a piece of your soul, right?
When you buy in-- when you buy in you buy in with your cash then you
buy in with a little piece, a little sliver of your soul that goes away and
it just kind of eats at you.
But after an couple of years it adds up and you
realize that it's good chunk of you is now through a buy-in window.
Amen!
My name is Asher Conniff.
I'm from Brooklyn New York, born and raised, and I'm a professional poker player
for a good six seven years now.
So to start that series they have event one,
which is like in all poker series the huge event.
Kind of like a low buy in, high guarantee.
Somehow I won the tournament...
outright for two hundred and ten thousand dollars, or something like that.
No matter-- no matter how good you are at poker, the amound of luck involved to win that size
field with a quicker structure and all that is ridiculous.
So, that was like kind of my breakout
and life was really good... obviously.
And kind of the big thing in
my life at that point was that I had this huge family trip planned to Europe.
And I was going with my mom and my sister and it was a big deal. We were going to
Ireland and all these different places, five or six different places.
So this was the Sunday before that, and Sunday is, like, the big online poker day
and everyone plays it.
So I go to sign up for the $1000 tournament...
and I sign up, and as soon as I sit down I'm like, "Wait. I only have three thousand chips like"...
For $1,000 buying online tournament you would-
you would expect to get more chips than that.
So I go look up at the lobby
and I've accidentally bought in for the $1500 satellite to the $15,000 event.
And I had just won that event so, like, obviously financially I was doing fairly
well but still I kind of flip out right away and I'm in this room with all this
people and I'm like, "Oh you know, shit I just bought into this fucking $1500
satellite for this event that I can't play. What do I do?"
So I start to play and I win the seat.
So I call my mom, you know, and I'm hoping
that there's not too much of like a boy cries wolf thing here we're like...
"Oh, of course he's trying to play a poker tournament and not go on this trip,"
but you know.
We're talking and we're going back and forth, and then there's this one night...
where she calls me. And she's like, "Look I had a dream last night, and like you
should play. Like, you're supposed to play the tournament. Like, I just think it's
the right thing to do. Like, you won the seat for a reason. Like, this is all
happening for a reason. You just won two hundred thousand dollars.
You can book another flight."
So I'm like, "Okay", yeah that's pretty crazy. So I do that.
And, you know, it's a fifteen thousand dollar buy in, by far
the biggest buy in I had played.
I think $3,500 was the biggest before that.
You know, day one, and like
doing really well. I' have like four times what I started with. Day two, I have like three
times that. It really was just this ridiculous run where like I was never
low on chips, I was never in a bad spot, and come four days I'm at the final table
and I'm second and chips, and you know it's uh...
it's this weir- it was this weird feeling of calm.
It just wasn't bothering me and the final table was over in less
than 100 hands, and I won the WPT championship for like nine hundred and
seventy three thousand dollars or something like that.
And it just kind of all happened--
It was like this crazy storybook and it all started with me
legitimately miss clicking into the wrong tournament. Like that's how it happened.
Yeah, it was this huge mistake that turned into this like massively
life changing moment.
About one-- one point one eight million in two weeks.
Which was, yeah..
It's crazy to even to say right now, you know. It's so much money.
Walking into the Rio for the first time is fun.
Since this is like my seventh or
eighth summer, it's almost like summer camp. See a lot of the same faces
and I know where everything is.
So my schedule this summer I created a package.
It's roughly $30,000 worth of tournaments.
In previous summers I played maybe 60 to 70 thousand dollars worth of tournaments,
and I would mostly just fire away in all the best tournaments that I really wanted to play,
and I ended up just losing lots of money. So now we're gonna actually grind
really hard to summer and try to make some smart plays.
My schedule for this summer is very relaxed.
I am not like normal poker players
who have a whole set schedule.
I play as I feel.
If I'm feeling good that morning,
I'll play. If I think my body needs a day off I need to focus on
healthy things, I'll do that. I don't force myself to play anything where I
don't think I'm at the right state of mind.
No I didn't, I didn't view poker as a way to get out. I viewed poker as
just something fun to do.
I didn't treat it as like a way to make money until I kind of
started to happen, and then I realized all right now I should have
focused on it more.
I think it's the reading of people and just the mind part of the game.
Just strategy games are like really cool to me.
I see it as like a little bit
of a thrill seek as getting in a pot and you know hitting a set or
running a huge bluff and getting it through.
I love this game, I love poker.
I loved poker when I was 14 years old and I still love poker right now.
You know in the real world I don't take advantage of people
I don't exploit their weaknesses...
and this is kind of a place where you can do that.
It's like you can get your evil villain out in poker and you can live your normal life.
It's never the same.
And thats, I think that's wha-
what we all love about poker is that that flow of information is never, no
matter how many hands you play, no matter how many millions of hands you've logged
online and live. That flow of information is never the same as the one before.
And I find that interesting.
Yesterday I spend twelve hours at a table. I met everyone, people
from Colorado, Illinois, New York, Sweden, you know and you share your
feelings and your stuff with people you never met before but looks like they are
friends forever because you spend hours with them.
That's kind of what brought me to poker was the characters.
Because at the end of the day it's about
entertainment and that's you know when you're watching poker on TV you want to
be entertained and just that whole old school generation watching the coverages
the final tables. How they acted when they won. How they acted when they lost.
All that stuff just led to me just like enjoying what poker was
as far as the people.
You know, I mean it's pretty cliché but people say you got to like what you do and
and I couldn't really find something I love doing realistically so poker just
kind of was a thing that appealed to me. I knew people, there were people out
there doing it for a living and just that it was possible and so I think you
know I convinced myself that if you happen to become successful at this then
maybe you won't have to work a job you don't want to do so I just decided to
play poker as opposed to work a desk job.
Some friends were like what- what are you gonna do if it doesn't work? You know
basically I said well I'll just come back home, and what I learned very early
on is that as long as you have a sense that you can always go back to what you did,
it makes it very easy to go on and try new things and what you end up
finding is that you never really go back. Because you find that same comfort at
the next level at the next thing that you do.
It just took me a while to fully go with poker. Like I've liked poker since I was
a teenager but I didn't play full time till I was 24.
You know I was like you know if I'm gonna do it, I really got to do it.
So I left, I travelled full time, and here we are another summer in Vegas.
I would say things almost never go as planned in poker.
One of my favorite pieces of advice to give people
is to not have expectations.
The added expectation puts pressure
on things and when you go into things with no pressure on yourself
that's usually when you are going to show the results.
Jinxed myself.
Nah.
Thats, thats the bad way to look at it.
Sure.
I like to think that I'm very realistic with myself, um...
I'm very hard on myself.
Whenever I lose, or whenever I win, I like to think about what just happened,
why it happened, how can I make that happen again, or if it was a bad thing, how can I
prevent that from happening? And yeah, just being realistic and just being
willing to put the time into it. A lot of people play poker and then they lose, or
they win, and they just walk away and they don't think about what just happened.
I busted like four- three or four levels from the money.
They're probably in there soon.
When you first get knocked out of a tournament.
The feeling is of disappointment and also regret, maybe by the way that I
played the hand that caused me to lose the tournament. So the first thing I'm
doing is analyzing the hand trying to think of ways that could have played
that hand better to have a better outcome.
And then I'll usually be pissed, and I'll smoke a blunt and feel better.
Is poker gambling?
Poker is absolutely gambling, definitely.
No. not at all, and I've gotten in arguments with people
over this, and poker is so far away from gambling for me.
This game give me more
power because it's not just a lucky game, is a game of skills. You can use
psychology. You can use mathematic and you can play people.
Anyone who says that
they don't like gambling and they play poker is just lying because at the end
of the day when the cards are on their backs it's just gambling. I don't care
how good you got it in it really just doesn't matter because there's a chance
you can lose and anytime there's a chance you can lose it's called game so-
So the question is poker gambling comes up all the time and as a writer and
philosopher I look at any question like that comes down to one thing.
Gambling is a word.
Words have different meanings for different people at different times.
The way it typically gets answered is if you look up in the dictionary, there's one
definition of gambling that says to wager money at unfavorable odds.
So by that definition, playing poker for living is absolutely not gambling.
Now another definition of gambling is
just the simple, you know wagering money, at all.
Well then of course it is.
So the less you manage your bankroll is the more you're gambling.
Those people that like manage their
bankroll perfectly, the gambling and the variance is like a lot removed but when
you're playing with too much of your money, then it becomes a lot more of a
gamble. Anything could happen over like a month, a year, even a few years.
Like there's a lot of like ups and downs in the game.
It's very hard to like make a lot of money unless you do gamble, and put
yourself in the situation to like have a good score. So you have to exercise a lot
of risk in those situations. So it's definitely gambling, for sure.
What's important to remember
is that poker is a reciprocal game.
Where the same number of
times where you have four kings and I have aces full of kings, I'm gonna have
four kings when you have aces full of kings.
So all the money that I win with my four
kings against your aces full of kings goes back and forth. And the reason it goes
back and forth is because we both will not play either side of that situation
any differently from the other person.
Where the real money comes from in poker
is where you will play your hand differently than I would have played it
in the same situation.
So the only reason a person wins money and another person
doesn't win money, is they make better decisions in the same situation compared
to the people that are playing against.
Um, and to put it more simply when if you
want to win at poker, you play bad players.
The tournament I'm looking forward to the most is the Milly Maker.
I have gotten deep in it four years in a row, with a top 50 finish, with one final table,
which I got a ninth place in that tournament.
In the Milly Maker it usually has a field between 8,000 and 7,000 people.
You start off with 7,000 chips so it's like a normal $1,500.
25k already. Shitting on these hoes.
[Chapo] What you got, like 40?
25.
Just sat down.
You know how we do.
You are the best.
Shinning, always climbing.
Stackin never slackin.
How was last night?
My support system is mainly players and
I'd say my mother. My mom's always there for me. I have a bunch of good friends
back home in Connecticut also.
But also a lot of friends that I've lived with in
Costa Rica they're all poker players from all around Canada and United States.
I'd say that we have a very small tight-knit group where we all discuss
hands, and talk about our lives, females.
Whatever is on our minds.
It depends, on what's going on. My family likes to support me
when I'm doing well.
When I'm not doing well they're the first ones to say, "go get a job".
My friends are always behind me at all times, and I know a lot of good poker
players so I'm lucky to have that support system behind me. But, uh yeah, it's
it's really-- it's really tough and if you don't have the support of people around
you I don't really know you can make it in this game.
Guy raises cutoff, good aggressive reg calls button, and then the small behind
tanks for about two minutes and makes the call. I look down in the big blind
with pocket sixes with about thirty five big blinds. I'm playing this tournament
just to try to win! I don't really care about cashing for forty or fifty
thousand dollars. I want that million! I've gotten close before!
So, I'm already assuming the original raiser is gonna fold because he's
been opening a lot. I'm assuming the button has a decent hand like suited
connectors, maybe queen- jack suited. Hands where I think he's most likely
gonna fold to my thirty five bb reshove.
And I automatically think the small
blind is gonna fold because he took so long to call.
So, I tank for about a minute and shove in my thirty five big blinds.
The original raiser instantly folds,
and the guy on the button snap put it in.
Small blind folds.
And the button, who called, flips over ace queen. So at this point I'm ahead with a
lot of dead money in the pot, and I'm pretty excited because if I win this pot
I'll have a really nice stack with forty people left to win a million dollars.
But... I lost that hand and I was out of the tournament. So it's all good.
[dealer] 47th this year.
[Stan's friend] What, 47th this year?
Yeah, and then like, 30th... 10th... 20th.
Jesus Christ!
Yeah.
Thats funny.
We got fans now!
One decision changes everything, huh?
Mmmhum.
I could've got in the way better spot.
Yes. A lot of regret...
A lot of regret.
Not much you can do though. I'm still young, rich, black, and beautiful.
It'll come.
Um...ten years ago
poker was a lot easier to make a living in because nobody was good.
Nobody, had any idea.
Me included.
I thought, we all thought, we were good ten years ago...
not so much.
In 1991, poker came to Atlantic City, at the Taj Mahal.
And players were flocking there from California, pros, you know it's like
a giant feeding frenzy. The Sharks just come in because all of a sudden you've
got this enormous population of people playing poker, in one place, that have no
idea what they're doing.
And then, what happens is, the games get tougher from
that second on because two things happen.
The bad players gets better, okay, or they
just quit the game altogether.
Nowadays, you have all these tools and all these--
all these resources, at your disposal. You can look up online videos. You can look
up training videos. You can look up all these hand charts, and all these
companies that are designed to teach people that you can be a part of. You can
get a coach. You can-- ten years ago nobody had a coach.
There's like, three guys, that had coaches.
In some sense, people say this recked the game of poker.
Because all of a sudden you had guys that were twenty years old, and there
learning how to fold before the flop, and they're learning stuff, like, merging
ranges and all this stuff. You got guys that are playing-- that used to play 5/10
no- limit online are playing 1/2.
It's hard as hell...
and I've kind of known that...
And it's easy as hell at the same time.
What, to be a poker player you need everything.
You need the money. You need the skills. You need the patience.
You don't have to tilt.
Don't start to play poker with no money!
If I were to give someone advice on like what they should do to,
like, be a successful poker player. Then it would be to, like, totally mash,
like, those solvers. And totally understand the theory behind the game.
And just study people's games that are better than you. And try to learn from
other people's mistakes, like, rather from your own.
One thing that's really become
a big topic in poker these days, among young professionals, is mind and body.
I already have advantages to average people. The average guy that maybe have a
smoking problem, relationship problem, alcohol problem.
I do not have that problem.
I do yoga. I'm a vegan. I tried the care or myself so that myself--
my body take care of, you know, a along 14 hours session of poker.
Discipline. Hard work. A passion for the game, like, there's so many ups and downs in this
game man. Like, I've had a few friends who came and gone in poker...
...and...
they love playing every day.
They are like, "Oh, I get to play. I get to go here.
Hang out at the beach. Go play when I want".
And we go play, and they're not winning, and they get upset, and I'm like...
"Go watch this video.
Let's go over these hands." They are like, "Oh, I don't want to, like, work in poker,
study in poker". It's like if you think this is fucking work then you have not
worked in the real world. Like, are you kidding me? Like, when people used to say
that and like, "Oh, I have to do that?" I'm like, "Jesus Christ".
Like, all the different jobs I used to do.
I have no problem watching videos going over hands every day.
Like, let's go!
Like, it's still a job, right?...
You know, anytime you have a job
there needs to be someone to hold you accountable. So...
If you're your own boss, and you're making sure that you're working, you're treating
it like a job, then, um...
that's how you become successful.
[floorman announcing]
The funny thing is, like, it doesn't matter how long you've been playing
poker, like, a really long downswing can make you question anything but you got
to remember that there's-- there is math in this game. And if you're playing well and
you're putting in the volume, you're gonna show results eventually. And you
just gotta-- gotta stick it out and show them the heart-- all the heart you have
So Liam HE opens under the gun.
[announcer 1] Ew, Liam here with pair aces.
I had ace king, with the king of hearts.
-[announcer 1] Chris--Wow! -[announcer 2] Cooler
Cooler time!
The other stacks at the table were Rafa, who at the chip lead, and tons of chips...
and he was an amateur.
And..
Yevgeniy and Joe had like sub 15 bigs. So, I figured I could
induce some shoves from Joe and Yevgeniy.
[announcer 1] Really? Wow, he's just gonna flat call! Really!?
[announcer 2] No way?!
[announcer 3] How good.
-Oh my God! -He just flatted?
Yeah he just flatted.
-Liam has like sub 20 blinds-- -I don't-- i don't-- see I don't--
What is going on in this tournament!?
Liam had been playing rather tight. So, if I three bet him, and he had a hand
that I had beat... that he would just fold.
The flop came nine, seven, three, with two hearts.
I flatted a C-bet.
The turn came of five of hearts, completing a flush.
[announcer 2] Sick. I mean he's--
he's fading it.
-He's fading the-- -[announcer 1] He's gonna end up soul reading
them in this hand so hard.
[Chris] And on the river...
it paired the board an off suite seven.
And...
...he...
...bet...
[announcer 1] I think he--
[announcer 2] Oh, he bet so small though...
-Oh no, no he didn't. He bet seven fifty-- -No he bet one third pot. You're right... He bet small.
Yeah, he did.
Yeah, I mean...
I think it's actually a call cause he bet so small. If he had bet, like--
[announcer 1] Wow!
[announcer 3] What a boss, dude, I--
Like, theres nobody that doesn't double up--
[announcer 1] What the hell!?
[announcer 3] Or at least stab at at it at some part--
like you turn equity and like, I don't know ...I--
Oh. In poker life the decision it's the must.
If you do the bad decision, you lost everything.
You can lose your bankroll.
Focusing on your decision rather than the outcome is probably
the most important thing.
Removing your emotions from, like, the
results of, like, what happens in that hand or.. that day...
or even that week or month or year.
You only have control over one of those two things.
So why focus on something you have no control over?
you only have control over the decisions you make.
[announcer] It's a little bit suspicious of a bet but it's tough for Dan just to call
with queen-high.
[announcer 2] Try telling that to Dan Coleman!
He casually deposits 42 thousand in the middle...
and shows Queen Jack over Queen Ten! That's playing the game.
Trying to think with like a more logical brain
and not an emotional side of your brain
is, like, kind of what the best players have been able to do.
And that comes from, like,
maybe conquering their own fears than their own self, you know?
If you realize that making good decisions ultimately in the long term will lead to
good results, you can stick to your A- Game. It's the players that--
Uh, reacts...
to what happens to them who go on tilt and go under their B- Game.
We spoke on dinner
me and my-- a couple of my friends and...
We were talking about how, you know, don't do anything stupid.
Like, just kind of relax and-- and-- So I-- I 5 bet King Jack. I get called
by Ace King and I go over the rail and I go...
"Change of plans"!
When I first started playing poker... it's a lot more of like an emotionally based
like perception, like...
You win... You feel great. You lose... You feel bad. And now I
think as I've matured as a person, just be the best that you could be in like
any given situation rather than focus on the other things.
If the result was I got
a hundredth displace or sixtieth place or min cached or, you know,
God forbid bubble or whatever...
As long as I went out and played my best I would have been able to
hold my head high, and moved on to the next tournament
cause that's really all you can do.
There's nothing else to it
[cashier] How are you?
[player] Good.
Twenties unfortunatley.
[cashier] and your player's card, ok?..
And your id.
[Stan] Okay, I just bought into the 10k main event.
I'm feeling feelings of excitement...
A little bit of worry. I'm worried that I might make a mistake and look like an idiot.
Obviously very excited because...
first place is over eight million dollars. So, that's gonna generate a lot of
excitement in anyone who is playing the tournament. Even people who are watching
the tournament TV feel the excitement.
[cashier] Ok... there you go.
Good luck to you!
[player] Thank you.
Money is especially important in poker because it funds your buy ins. It funds your travel.
It funds everything. So... you have to have a decent bankroll and to be able
to play a ten thousand or a five thousand dollar tournament. So, money is
basically energy. We use this in everyday life.
Money is the catalyst to win a tournament.
Without money you can't do nothing. So, you have to have a good base
or a good backer or a good bankroll to play.
First poker bankroll?
Uh, well I think it took about...
14 first poker bank rolls when I was-- when I was first starting.
I was just-- I had like a weekend off from work. I was like. "let's go play this tournament".
And I hit! And I was like, "holy shit"! And like my head was gas. I was like, "you
know something", I was like, "that's it we're gonna do this. I'm good and everything.
Actually, I started playing full time like a month or two later.
Actually, like, left my job. I was like, "I want to do this".
My starting bankroll was 50 grand.
Not too big but just to start.
Well, this is funny. Bankroll. We just talked about this.
A lot of my friends will ask me, "How much do I need for poker bankroll"?
And the first thing I'll ask them is, "Well, are you winning?"
And they'll say, "Well, no. Not yet." And so my response is...
"Well you don't need a bankroll. You need a budget."
There's two reasons to have a fat bankroll.
It isn't just to keep from running out of money.
It's to keep from having the fear of running out of money.
Because once you're in that mindset where you're afraid that you might run out...
that affects your play.
I take whatever the theoretically determined number is..
and double that.
For my clients, and for me, to really feel safe.
I've always had an aspiration to play bigger buy ins. I've always been driven
by the idea of, like, competing against the best players. That's more of, like,
my driving force in poker.
So, I would gamble and put myself in situations where I was
playing very big tournaments with not enough money.
The scariest part of being
a professional poker player for me during the first 10 years or so
was just running out of money.
You know...going broke.
You know, my bankroll is never more than
about fifty thousand. Which meant I was never more than a couple bad months away
from being broke.
Everyone goes broke in poker. You just do. It's inevitable.
Especially if you're taking shots.
You know you got to go broke about--
about a hundred times before you make it stick.
When you go broke it's self-destruction.
Like, basically like you distracted yourself.
Like, you put yourself into a situation
where you were playing with too much money that.. variance is gonna overtake you
and eventually break you in most situations.
You come up on a decent amount money,
like, ten twenty thousand. For me personally, like, back then, like, I
would just spend it like I was a millionaire. And like, I would buy
everything, like, you know, my dad has a-- he's a good wealthy man and like I would spend
more money than him on shit. Like, I would go buy myself a more expensive dinner
than he would and just-- kind of just putting yourself in a situation where,
like, you think that money is never-ending...
And then eventually it ends pretty quickly, like, when you have that mindset.
I was even one of those people who would win something early
and I would be like, "Oh. Fucking great. I'm gonna play this 1k...
I'm gonna smash all these guys.
I was probably the worst player in the game.
I'm just spewing money into poker. I'm playing higher stakes.
I'm spewing off in blackjack...
some clubs...
some other clubs.
The day I woke up of the main event I felt really good. I had taken at least
three to four days off to mentally prepare myself for the long journey.
The main event is one bigger buy in tournaments of the year.
It's the best value tournament of the year.
There's no tournament out there with a buy-in under 100k
where you can get paid over-- over eight point eight million dollars.
It's just not gonna happen.
People come from all over the world to play this tournament.
Rich people, poor people... there are like people who are on
their deathbed willing to spend their last ten thousand dollars to make sure
that they have this experience. And a lot of these people they're not willing to
bust on a silly hand.
They're going to wait for the nuts to make sure that
they stay in the tournament.
So, when I get to the river in this spot and-- and--
where most of our chips are already in the pot. If I bet here he's never
bluffing, ever. And he would only call with the second nuts or worse,
and shove the stone-cold nuts.
My name is Spencer Uniss and I'm from Boulder Colorado.
Luck is something I strongly believe in.
Have you honestly-- have you honestly, though, never heard the real story?
Alright this is-- Alright. So, um--
There was a tournament up in Blackhawk, Colorado,
which is my local casino. And uh, they had a World Series of Poker circuit event.
I show up on day two and we're getting near the money, and I get moved...
next to Ryan Riess, he's to my left.
And this whole time I'm like, "Who is this guy? He-- he, like,
knows what I have. He's just grinding, He's very patient. And he's, you know, very young.
But that's-- that's how I met him, and flash-forward to the 2013
World Series of Poker.
You know, so I walked up to him, and started a conversation. Asked him
if he was selling any action, and he said, "No. I don't sell any action,
but I might for the main event."
When we got to the main event time I
shot him a text on Facebook because I didn't have his phone number we weren't,
like, good friends. So I mean I bought one percent of about five people,
two percent of another player that I had confidence in...
And then I bought five percent of Ryan Riess.
And I remember specifically driving over with my brother to the Rio when he's
sitting down at day one. And I look at my brother and I said,
"This is the guy whose gonna win the main event.
He's the Dark Horse. That's why I took the biggest piece.
So you know, if you want to throw a little bit on top, you should do it."
And so my brother gave me, you know, $50. And so he had a little micro stake in my stake,
which was which is pretty cool as well.
I ended up busting on day two early on.
So after that, you know, I go home home just like everyone else.
Pretty-- pretty sad and pissed off that I lost $10,000.
And um, you know, two three days later
I see online that Ryan's making a run at it.
So I'm with a couple friends on the couch, you know...
every-- every day, you know, it's getting closer and closer.
We're hitting that refresh button as quick as possible.
Until finally, you know, we're there and
he's-- he's these two tables left.
You know, he's 10 people left.
And, you know, finally it's you late at night and he locks up the final table.
And that's when, you know...
now they don't have the November 9,
but at that point they had the November 9.
I mean it was pretty indescribable.
I know the whole time I was like,
"If he wins this I'm gonna hop the rail." And-- and sure enough
we see the ESPN coverage, and everyone just jumped on top of him.
[crowd cheering]
[Spencer] You know, it was a good celebration...
and something I will never forget.
So, for a $650 investment in Ryan I made about four hundred and twenty thousand dollars.
When you really think about...
It's a crazy situation for a fucking--
What was I?...
[mumbling]
For a 22 and a 27 year old kid
to have almost a half a million dollar, handshake deal.
[Stan} Speaking of this tournament, I did end the day with 13 K
when you start with 50 K. So, after day one I was feeling pretty miserable.
I'd almost lost hope. I went home, got some sleep, and realized in the morning
I still have 20 big blinds and I could easily run this stack up.
You just got to keep a positive mindset and realize that anything could happen...
All you need is a chip, and a fucking chair!
So day two of the main event I come in with 22 big blinds to start.
I'm feeling...
Very apprehensive.... Very worried. if I'm gonna build my stack,
But right off rip I start raising, winning small pots, building my stack
slowly but surely. And by the time you know it I'm above starting stack and I
have another chance in this tournament.
And we end up making day 3.
When I look down at pocket kings,
and I got 3-bet by one of the most aggresive people at the table...
There are just stars lighting off in my head saying,
"Oh my god, yes! I finally got him! This is the time, I'm gonna stack this dude!
This is what you get for raising my big blind all this time. I told you not to
fuck with me." These are the feelings that I'm feeling.
Feelings of gratitude. Feelings of excitement.
And I'm thinking, "Wow! This could be the year where I make
over a million dollars."
All the hard work I'd done for three days is finally paying off...
one of the last hands of the night.
It's basically one of the best feelings you could ever have in poker.
I'm doing alright. I got, like, 3.5 mil... we chillen
That was a shitty level but... we're still breathing.
I gotta take a piss.
Mind state is lax-- relaxed. Ready to go meditate and get back on a
high vibration.
I feel like I lost it a little bit but it's very easy to get back on.
Just go home, close my eyes, and get in a relaxed state... and we're back.
Being in the money really doesn't--
I don't really give a fuck about being in the money.
I'm trying to get all the money.
50 K is not going to change my life.
I need-- fucking-- at least a million.
No stress... we da best.
I just haven't won a pot. I've been playing tight.
I haven't got any decent cards. I opened one hand with Queen eight suited...
Won that. And that was the only hand I won for the past two hours.
I was very card dead.
And I got three bet a bunch of times.
So it's time to refocus and rebuild that positive energy..
So I can go back and dominate.
Well, there's certainly things that some people are born with that others might
not be born with, initially.
But since I kind of think everybody-- everything is
connected ultimately, and there's nothing separating anything.
That we're all connected to the same source.
The same voice that's in your head is the same
voice that's talking in my head, and in everyone else's head.
So in that sense it's really just a matter of getting a hold of that.
I like to say anybody can win a poker.
Some people might learn to win at it faster than others.
Are you necessarily born into being winning player?...
[rocco] Everybody has the ability to improve upon it, and hard work I've seen in the past
has brought players to the top.
Just believe in yourself and know that you can do it and...
It's not going to be easy, but... it wouldn't be fun if it was, you know.
I think that embracing an idea..
is already half of success.
So if you believe,
and you state that you're gonna do something good...
most likely you gonna do.
If you start saying, "I should. I could." You know--
It's not gonna happen.
A big part of what happens in your life...
It's not necessarily what you're capable of
It's what you believe you're capable. And if you believe you can do something,
it's more likely to happen.
What you you think matters.
It's very hard to measure.
It might be unmeasurable...
But my intuition tells me that it does matter.
I sent a tweet out, selling action to that Borgata $500.
and the hashtag was...
gonna win an MTT soon. And...
yeah, I don't know, and then I did, you know. So I don't,
like, it's hard to explain I don't wanna-- It sounds crazy to say the thing--
you know, to say that-- that I knew I was gonna win it, but it just seems to be that...
uh...
Well I won. So what it doesn-- it-- it doesnt matter, right.
it doesn't matter how crazy it sounds
'cause I did win.
You know good song when you hear it. You know a good meal
when you taste it. But how do you measure it?
There's a certain quality to things
that you know are there, but it's very difficult to measure it.
You probably find some of the most satisfying moments in your life, are not moments that you
could measure by how much it costs or how much you spent.
I think in poker you learn that
once you achieve a goal... It's really not going to bring you what you want.
Or what you previously thought you would get from that goal.
What you're really getting is you're growing, and that's what brings happiness I think.
As long as we're progressing and growing. That's what's great about poker because
you're never going to reach the top There is no top and poker... you know.
It's just do your best and see what happens. And as soon as you think you reached the
top, always the universe is gonna slap your ass down and give you some perspective.
So, no. Not, like-- no, my life doesn't change too much, like,
I just having more money. Like, I just have whatever it is to keep score in this world,
that's-- it just seems to be money and that's what people want and...
while I don't want a ton of it, you know, obviously I want enough to be able to
have freedom and do what I want. So yeah. I mean that part's really cool and I'm
not ignoring that, but at the same time it's
like the mindset I had even a couple weeks before the main event was I
determined that I wasn't gonna let my lack of money, you know, control how I felt.
And you know, you don't need money to talk to people, right. To-- to have
conversations and camaraderie. All that stuff is free and that's really
what's important to me and...
If anything, winning this tournament allows me to
just talk to new people and have new relationships, and you know, and-- and the
money is cool and I'm glad that that came with it but to be honest it's-- it's--
it is what it is.
[Rocco] Money gives you the opportunity, probably, to find happiness a
little bit easier than not having money would. But that's only because we're in a world
where money matters. If we weren't then people would be focused on different
things to find happiness. So yeah. It's a kind of a conundrum. It's cool.
Yeah.
You know, poker is a weird game, where... you know, you start, and-- and you grow up,
and it takes time to really figure it out. It doesn't happen overnight.
And you know, looking back to where I was three years ago even, to being up on this
stage. If you told me this would happen I wouldn't believe you, so...
Uh, just never give up,
and understand that with a little hard work and a little foresight you can
accomplish anything you want and I believe that. So yeah, and you know, the
most important thing that the-- the 8 million dollars is great but--
[crowd laughs]
There is still work left to be done.
You know, I have some things in my own life that I need
to take care of. And I just want people to put into perspective that money really
isn't everything, and I really do believe that. And, you know, it's been a great ride
at poker is a dream come true, but...
You know, take care of the things that are important to you...
Your family, your your health, and all that. And, you know...
just try to make the most of what you got.
So thank you guys so much, and dream big.
Deep in the main event, on day 5, I was running kind of bad.
I lost half of my stack.
And an aggressive player opened two from under the gun, and I had King
nine suited on the cutoff, and I decided to put it in, which I did not necessarily
need to take this spot. It was more of frustration out of the past few hours.
And yeah...
that was a spot where I definitely did not take my time to think
about what I was gonna do.
The outcome was I lost the main event in one hundred and twenty second place
out of seven thousand six hundred people or whatever.
My World Series of Poker summer is over.
I feel really good about the summer.
Things could have gone better, but I really can't complain.
I still cashed for about 80 K or something.
[Chris] On the felt my summer wasn't very good.
As far as poker is concerned I considered it a failure.
I basically lost over fifty thousand
and cash for roughly three thousand.
But it's just another part of the journey.
I feel stronger and more ready to win now than ever.
I don't think this summer defines me as a player.
Although, I've had a lot of bad summers here.
Poker is funny. You don't get to choose when you win, where you win,
how you win...
You only get to choose the journey you take and how you handle your circumstances.
I feel like I've already been defined as a player a long time ago
To be honest with you. I've been playing this game for what?...
The past ten years I haven't had a job. So...I've been a player.
My biggest fear about poker?...
Well obviously there's always the fear of going broke.
That's something that everyone thinks about and-- But the other thing to me is
just that I won't be happy.
If you're not happy with what you're doing
then it's going to show in other aspects of your life.
I just want to be happy.
It's funny with poker...
a lot of times your happiness is directly related to
how you're doing in poker.
Really good poker players are able to look beyond
the success of the game, and judging how well you're doing in life. I would say
I'm not doing great at that right now but I'm working really hard.
I've definitely felt like I wanted to quit before.
Yeah. It happens.
I don't hate the poker itself.
I don't blame the game. I don't blame the-- the players.
But sometimes when your skill are involved, and the bad luck comes, you say,
"Ah God, that sucks."
I thought to myself about how, like, if I was ever to wit-- hit a big score...
maybe play a tournament, get a million dollars or something...
you know, I would quit!
But then there's times, most of the time, where I'm just like, "I would never quit."
[Gene} So for me it's more important to ask yourself, "Are you having fun today?"
'cause the moment is really all you have.
Yeah. There's a lot and you can win a lot of
money if you're good at this game, and you work real hard at it.
But a lot of people spend their lives
until they're in their mid-40s trying to get somewhere,
and then they finally get there, and they're like, "Well, what did I do that for?"
You know, it just depends what you want out of this world. Like, it depends what you--
what your goals and intentions are, and mine are just strictly to--
You know, just do the things I enjoy.
And...
just-- just live.
A lot of the reasons I have probably never moved on is because poker
facilitates my ability to, like...
Be immature and to be irresponsible.
[Tommy] I just love it so much
if I didn't always have another poker trip around the corner...
that would be a problem.
But I always need to know that I have another poker fix coming.
If nickel dime poker was the only poker left, I would play the shit
out of some nickel dime poker.
[Mikey] I mean to do what we do every day is just so great,
and, like, really such a blessing man. Like, I go back home in Yonkers, New York,
which is like not a good neighborhood at all.
And, you know, I go back. I see my friends, my family, and everybody.
And I just the reality of what everybody's doing
on a daily basis. And I'm looking, I'm like, "Holy shit. I sit down.
I wake up at, like, noon if I want, you know, or three. I go eat breakfast at 4 p.m., you know...
I go jump in a tournament or a cash game in New Vegas, or New York, or the Bahamas.
You know.
And there's people I see all the time who just bitch and complain about
getting 6th and not 4th or you know-- Whatever, not making enough money.
It's like shit man get a grip on reality! Like, look at our lives, it's great!
We should never complain! We shou-- Somebody should smack us and we complain!
Like, it's crazy!
[Tommy] I've always loved poker the way all of us love it because
it is so exciting and everything.
But it also caused me so much pain over the years. You know, now finally
I can love it in a different way because I'm not afraid of being hurt by poker.
So now I just enjoy the camaraderie . You know, it's like you-- if you look at the
Rio downstairs, you've got all these thousands of people
collected in a room, thousands of people every day for six weeks...
Sharing one common passion. One common love.
And and I just share that love.
It's hard to explain.
I mean, the reason I would continue to play is
just because I love the game. I really do.
The game would be perfect if everyone
played within their means, you know. That's the problem. The game-- it's tough
because it is very self-serving. It only benefits one person that's the downside.
And you know, the negative sometimes outweigh the positives for me but...
The game itself is great. It's cool. It's mental warfare that's all it is.
It's a battle of brains, and wits, and math, and,
you know, all these things that just make it a great game.
You know, my dreams of being an athlete died pretty fast for
a good reason, and I had to make it on ESPN someway and uh...
I wouldn't call it a sport, but...
it's just a really fun game, and I'm really glad it's part of my life.
[camera man chuckles]