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he Guardian Poker Column |
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Victoria
Coren |
Sunday 14 November 2010
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Let their hearts rule their
heads
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Poker was
once a chancer's game. Now it's a more honourable career than the City
We have a new world
poker champion. Jonathan Duhamel, 23, from Canada, has just won the World
Series of Poker in Las Vegas and its $8.9m prize.
Last year, the world
champion was Joe Cada, 21, from America. The year before, it was Peter
Eastgate, 22, from Denmark.
What do you notice? They are all children!
Runner-up this year was John Racener, 24, third was Joseph Cheong, 24, and
fourth was Filippo Candio, 25. All are multimillionaires now. |
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If you still imagine poker as an outlaw
pastime for old men in dusty back rooms, you should get out more. Following the
internet revolution, a new generation is growing up with poker as a serious
career choice.
Jonathan Duhamel, the fresh champion, dropped out of the
University of Quebec, where he was studying for a degree in finance, to become
a professional player.
His parents argued against this plan. That's a
conversation I'd like to have heard.
"Jonathan, you're being silly.
You're taking a finance degree. Finance is solid. Nothing could possibly go
wrong in the world of banking and international economy. Why would you turn
your back on that to gamble?"
[TWO YEARS LATER] "Hi Dad, it's Jonathan.
I've just made nine million dollars."
Meanwhile, the students are
rioting because their fees are being whacked up, due to bankers "speculating"
away all the public money.
So who are the gamblers? You won't find a
poker player whose losses led to housing benefit being slashed and fire
extinguishers thrown off a roof.
There is an army of youngsters like
Jonathan Duhamel out there; I know, because I play poker with them. They are
clever, educated, turning their mathematical skills to the game of
probabilities and judgment. They are shrewd and sensible; they exercise
"bankroll management" to make sure they can't go skint in a single disaster. It
would be nice if our expert financiers had done the same.
There is a
22-year-old chap called Jake Cody, from Lancashire, who unnerved his parents by
quitting a psychology degree to play poker full-time. In January, he won the
French leg of the European Poker Tour for 847,000.
"Be careful
with that, young man," I said, as if I were his granny. "Big wins come once in
a lifetime, or not at all. The only aim in poker is to survive. Put it safely
away and play with a tiny proportion."
But Jake was ahead of me. He was
already planning to invest the money in property around Manchester. Six months
later, he won the London leg of the World Poker Tour for £273,783. I
sighed and went back to my knitting.
Parents don't tend to be terribly
keen on their children playing poker. I hid it from mine for years. They
thought I played the odd recreational game with friends. I didn't reveal I'd
been playing casino tournaments until 2004, when I couldn't resist ringing them
up to say I'd just won £14,000.
"That sounds good," said my
father cautiously. "I wouldn't tell many people about that if I were you."
Two years later, I rang to say I'd just won £500,000. Then they
told everybody.
If your teenage son or daughter wants to be a poker
player, and you're terrified, what would you rather they did? Where do you see
security for them?
In manual work? Industry? Don't be ridiculous.
Publishing? That's on its last legs. Media, television? No safety there. A desk
job for a lifetime? No such thing any more. Banking? Hoho. As long as the kid
is bright and sensible, don't worry. Poker is no longer about establishing who
is the best drunken old dropout. It's about who is the best maths genius.
It's far less risky than it was when I started playing, because of the
scope of the internet. If you're any good at the game, you can play for tiny
stakes and spin them up into large amounts. A clever player doesn't buy into
these huge tournaments, he (or she) will win their ticket for £10 in an
online competition. A clever player doesn't chase rainbows, but saves for rainy
days.
I should mention that I'm a member of Team PokerStars Pro,
affiliated with the giant website PokerStars.com, so you might say I would be
an apologist. But it's not so simple. I was drawn to the game, initially, by a
seedy romance that no longer exists. What you might think I'm hiding is
something that's actually gone and I miss it.
If anything, I think it's
become too sensible and solid; the young pros play online for 50 hours a week
like traditional desk jockeys. The best advice you can give your kid is to
remember he must still go out and meet people, travel the world and not just
stare at a screen until he dies just like you'd say if he worked in IT.
And of course there are risks, for the wrong sort of personality. You
need the discipline and restraint not to play for sums you can't afford, nor to
stake more than 5% of your "available bankroll" in any one game. You need the
self-awareness to stop if you're losing, temporarily or permanently, and do
something else. Playing poker for a living if you don't make a profit year on
year, hoping always to "get out of it" with the big win, is about as smart as
continuing to believe you'll become a professional footballer when you can't
run 10 yards without falling over.
Neither do I think students should
drop out of degree courses to turn pro, because they can easily play internet
poker on the side. If it works out in the future, those poker winnings are
non-taxable, unofficial earnings, so you'll never have to pay back that
crippling loan.
What happier revenge on a regime that gave our
education money to the real gamblers? Better the mouse than the fire
extinguisher.
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