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This (very long) post will have little to do with poker strategy, so feel free to skip it.
I want to talk about life a bit. I love my crazy job, and I have mentioned that I don't feel I will ever be able to play poker full time. I probably can't get good enough to be able to give up a pretty secure gig (albeit in a risky industry, print media) where I make a pretty healthy salary. I'm not rich by any means, especially living in NYC, but I can support myself and live happily. I'm not great with money but I really have very few expenses. I like to buy clothes and I like to eat out every once in a while. That's about it.
I work for one of the biggest newspapers in the country. I have a reasonable amount of influence and a tremendous amount of creative freedom. I'm well respected, even if people think I'm a little odd or crazy. (I think people at the poker tables think I'm crazier than people I work with, but it's close). After 7 years of being stuck in neutral, I've advanced quite far in the past two years, mostly due to new leadership at the paper. The editor-in-chief is brilliant, and I love my immediate supervisor. I've accomplished this with no college degree and no formal training.
However, there is a feeling that I've advanced as far as I can go. For the past couple months, I've been struggling with the idea that I've hit my ceiling, which is a sad thing considering I have decades to go before I retire. Could I get a better job? It's possible, but I don't quite see myself as real upper management material. Maybe one day.
So I've been thinking about other ways to make money. Creating more revenue streams. My sudden interest in the stock market developed over the past two months. I'm trying to put out feelers for involvement in some side businesses.
Also, there's this feeling of, "What am I supposed to do in this life?"
I don't have a wife or kids. I haven't written books or created great art. At work, we like to say that what we do is "making sausage." You don't really want to know how it's done, but we do it. I work next to the people who are doing the truly exciting things that the public sees: rubbing elbows with celebrities, exposing scandals and inequities in city life. Making a difference. I just make sausage.
I'm as cynical as you can be without being in prison or a government job. Still, I'm impressed by people who actually make an impact on the world.
Then there's Anna. Anna Khait is a poker player from Brooklyn who sort of burst onto the scene while making a run at the Borgata $2M GTD in September. Because she was an unknown, and because she's hot, there's no real denying that.
I got to know her a little bit. It's easy to get distracted by how attractive she is, but she's really more than that. This is someone who's just clearly a good person. And a pretty good poker player, too. Someone who wants to save the world, and will probably do it. I've always been impressed by young people -- people who were more ambitious than me and less cynical, people who really want to make the world a better place. You don't find many people like this in poker in New York, or anywhere. She used to do work for AMA, which saves abused animals, but now she's focusing on a new charity: helping uneducated Colombian children.
So when I got invited to play this charity tournament, I didn't really have any charities I was into. I remember giving money to the Red Cross after 9-11, and to earthquake victims in Haiti. Both good causes, but later it turned out there were controversies over how the money received was spent. That kind of left a bad taste in my mouth. I decided that if I won, I would give the money to whatever Anna was supporting, because it would be smaller and more personal and more likely to make an impact.
I was pretty sure I was going to win, incidentally. I mentioned it to Givememyleg, and I said, cynically, "My luck, I'll ship the charity tournament and bust the $200+$30." Which is exactly what happened. I couldn't be happier with the outcome though.
I figured it was for media members, and I had to be one of the better players. As it turned out, the field was tougher than I thought it would be, but hell. I could win my fair share of super turbo, 3-table SNGs against anyone, probably.
The tournament was a blast. Hard to describe how crazy and fun it was. I got to talk to Kara Scott, who was on my immediate right, most of the night, and she's amazingly charming and sweet. And she probably played the best of anyone at the final table. She recognized before the other players that everyone should be in push/fold mode, and she took advantage of that. Playing with Darryl Dawkins was incredible. He was hilarious, and I was one of the few people there old enough to have seen him play.
Winning the silly little tournament was quite an ego boost. The partypoker people treated me like I was a bracelet winner. I was talking to a high-stakes cash player I know from past Borgata trips, and some guy came up and started talking to me about the tournament. The other player (Melissa Burr) said to him, "Hey, Chris knew who I was before he knew you."
I said, "Should I know you?" He said, "nah," modestly. Melissa said, "If you play no-limit tournaments, you should know him!" It was Paul Volpe.
I got to talk to Ken Daneyko quite a bit, and he told me tons of stories from his career. He ended up winning the $200+$30 the next day, and it was freaking crazy. It was the first big tournament he had ever played. Anna came back down, and we railed Ken until he won at 5 a.m. or so. Great times.
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