nolanfan34
04-24-2005, 07:28 PM
From the Seattle Times, an article about Brandon and Carl, who people probably saw finished 1-2 at an EPT event in France.
Couple of pics of those guys, and a pretty good article overall.
Link (http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/living/2002250211_poker24.html)
Here's the text as well.
The story starts out normally enough. As a kid, Carl Olson learned to play poker for pennies at the family's vacation cabin near Shelton.
And Brandon Schaefer, as a youngster in Hawaii, learned poker from his dad, along with cribbage and chess. "We just played for pocket change," he recalls.
So how do we get from there to this scene: these two friends, graduates of Roosevelt High School and the University of Washington, going head-to-head in a televised poker tournament in France after eliminating 243 other competitors?
And how do we explain that after playing in two European tournaments, Schaefer has already collected more money in 2005 than George Bush will make all year as president of the United States?
"It still seems a little unreal," admits Schaefer, 24, tossing off a contender for understatement of the year.
Need a definition of "unreal?" Try this: At the suggestion of a financial adviser, Schaefer has set aside $175,000 in a certificate of deposit just to pay the taxes he expects to owe on $600,000 in winnings from two poker tournaments.
Schaefer and Olson, 22, are flesh-and-blood evidence of the poker explosion. They've read books about poker strategy, studied videotapes of poker tournaments, played at casinos and in online games and are planning their summer schedule around the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas.
Fueled by televised tournaments and the popularity of dozens of online poker sites, poker has hit an era of unparalleled popularity.
Whether online or in person, few players can expect to achieve the success Schaefer and Olson hit in February in a posh French casino in Deauville, a resort town on the Normandy coast.
Officially, the event was billed as the "French Open," the fifth of seven events in the inaugural season of the European Poker Tour.
"Battle from Seattle"
But in its final hours, onlookers dubbed it the "Battle from Seattle." After four days of playing No-Limit Texas Hold 'Em up to 12 hours a day, Schaefer and Olson, who live less than a mile apart in Seattle, were the last two players from a field of 245.
Even the backers of the tournament were amazed.
"It's one of those things that's kind of a fantasy and you don't assume it could ever happen," said Tamar Yaniv, head of European marketing for PokerStars.com, the online site that sponsored the tour. "It's absolutely exceptional that they beat a big field of Europe's best players."
Olson and Schaefer had each qualified for the tournament through their online play at PokerStars.com. In January, Olson won his tournament entry fee and $1,000 in spending money, and invited Schaefer to come along.
"He said if I could get myself over to France, he would pay for the hotel room, and I could just kind of hang out," said Schaefer. But just days before their departure, Schaefer also qualified for a seat in the tournament.
The event opened with players spread among 25 tables; as players were eliminated, tables were consolidated.
No-Limit Texas Hold 'Em, the most common game for major tournaments, has been around for decades but got a big boost in mass appeal through the 1998 Matt Damon movie "Rounders."
Players compete to make the best possible hand from their own two "hole cards" and five cards dealt face-up on the table.
"It's nerve-wracking because if you make a mistake you can lose your whole stack," said Olson.
In the opening days, play went from 2 p.m. to midnight or 2 a.m., when the two would head up to their room and compare notes on the day's action. "It was exhausting, but it was also hard to sleep, because it was so exciting," Schaefer said.
At the final table, small cameras built inside a cushioned rail watch each player's hole cards so that viewers, who see the tournament later, can follow each player's strategy.
The event has already been shown in Europe and Canada, and tour organizers are exploring a possible deal to air the events in the U.S.
Olson said when the final table got down to him and Schaefer, "I looked over at Brandon and almost couldn't believe it. It was something we kidded about on the plane ride over. ... But I wanted the trophy, and he was my opponent."
Schaefer, also appearing calm, was boiling with emotion. "I was ecstatic. But at the same time I was fairly nervous, because Carl is one of the best players I've ever played against. I think he's a more solid player than I am. ... I tend to be a bit too aggressive at times."
With cameras watching their every call, raise, bluff and fold, Schaefer and Olson traded towers of chips back and forth for 90 minutes before Schaefer won the event with two pair, 7's and 6's, edging out Olson's two pair, 6's and 3's.
Privately, the two had agreed shortly before the finish to share the first- and second-place money, a combined total of about $288,000, a significant chunk of change for two guys who had hunted around to share the cheapest hotel room in town for $65 a night.
"We decided to split the money and keep playing for the trophy," Olson said.
On to Monte Carlo
Their one-two finish in Deauville earned Olson and Schaefer seats at the tour's finale event at Monte Carlo last month.
This time, Schaefer took his mother along.
"I'm pretty sure I was the only parent there, and about 50 percent of the entrants were what I would call kids, 19 to 25," said his mother, JoAnn Yoshimoto. "It opened my eyes to what I would call a growing sport."
Yoshimoto said the tournament, played in a no-smoking hall, eroded the negative poker stereotype she had "of smoky backrooms and shady characters."
"I talked to a lot of the younger people there and so many of them have a full life and they happen to excel at poker on the side," she said. "I talked to kids who are going to Ivy League colleges ... kids who are in math and science and are really good with numbers."
The four-day Monte Carlo event began with 211 players, and though Olson was eliminated on the first day, Schaefer hung on to take second place, worth another $450,000.
And although his mother said she admires his skill at the game, she's more proud that he earmarked "a sizable amount" of the prize to give to charity.
Frat-house beginnings
What transpired in those European tournaments took root back in 2000, the year Olson graduated from Roosevelt and entered the UW.
Although Olson wasn't interested in joining a fraternity, a friend took him to the Greek Row house of Psi Upsilon, where Schaefer was a member.
Schaefer had graduated from Roosevelt two years earlier, and his younger brother was a friend of Olson's.
At the UW, Olson and Schaefer became regular players in a weekly frat-house poker game, a game that varied between draw and stud games, with an occasional round of Texas Hold 'Em.
Gradually, Schaefer and Olson began to take the game more seriously than other members of the group, buying books and watching tapes of classic match-ups of the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas.
In the spring of 2003, Olson was the first to give Internet poker a try. Despite the appeal of playing from home, "At first, I had a lot of fears about playing online. Are the cards really random? Are the games really honest? I just threw in $100 and figured if I lose it, that's it."
Instead of losing, however, he was able to build his stake to about $1,000, playing occasionally over about six months.
No single event did more to boost the popularity of online poker than the 2003 win at the World Series of Poker by Chris Moneymaker, an accountant from Tennessee, whose only previous tournament experience was online.
"After that, online poker started going nuts," said Schaefer. "It seemed like the number of players and the amount they were playing for was always going up."
Neither Olson nor Schaefer is certain how big a role poker will play in their lives, long-term.
Schaefer graduated from the UW last June with a degree in communications and is weighing whether to continue his plans of pursuing an MBA or take a year off and support himself playing poker. He has put virtually all the money he won in Europe into long-term investments, adding, "I don't even want to touch it for 20 or 30 years."
Olson graduated in December with a biology degree. He may explore a career in investment management, but in the meantime is living off poker winnings. "I may keep doing it as long as it's fun. Right now it's not like a job. It's just something I love to do."
Couple of pics of those guys, and a pretty good article overall.
Link (http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/living/2002250211_poker24.html)
Here's the text as well.
The story starts out normally enough. As a kid, Carl Olson learned to play poker for pennies at the family's vacation cabin near Shelton.
And Brandon Schaefer, as a youngster in Hawaii, learned poker from his dad, along with cribbage and chess. "We just played for pocket change," he recalls.
So how do we get from there to this scene: these two friends, graduates of Roosevelt High School and the University of Washington, going head-to-head in a televised poker tournament in France after eliminating 243 other competitors?
And how do we explain that after playing in two European tournaments, Schaefer has already collected more money in 2005 than George Bush will make all year as president of the United States?
"It still seems a little unreal," admits Schaefer, 24, tossing off a contender for understatement of the year.
Need a definition of "unreal?" Try this: At the suggestion of a financial adviser, Schaefer has set aside $175,000 in a certificate of deposit just to pay the taxes he expects to owe on $600,000 in winnings from two poker tournaments.
Schaefer and Olson, 22, are flesh-and-blood evidence of the poker explosion. They've read books about poker strategy, studied videotapes of poker tournaments, played at casinos and in online games and are planning their summer schedule around the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas.
Fueled by televised tournaments and the popularity of dozens of online poker sites, poker has hit an era of unparalleled popularity.
Whether online or in person, few players can expect to achieve the success Schaefer and Olson hit in February in a posh French casino in Deauville, a resort town on the Normandy coast.
Officially, the event was billed as the "French Open," the fifth of seven events in the inaugural season of the European Poker Tour.
"Battle from Seattle"
But in its final hours, onlookers dubbed it the "Battle from Seattle." After four days of playing No-Limit Texas Hold 'Em up to 12 hours a day, Schaefer and Olson, who live less than a mile apart in Seattle, were the last two players from a field of 245.
Even the backers of the tournament were amazed.
"It's one of those things that's kind of a fantasy and you don't assume it could ever happen," said Tamar Yaniv, head of European marketing for PokerStars.com, the online site that sponsored the tour. "It's absolutely exceptional that they beat a big field of Europe's best players."
Olson and Schaefer had each qualified for the tournament through their online play at PokerStars.com. In January, Olson won his tournament entry fee and $1,000 in spending money, and invited Schaefer to come along.
"He said if I could get myself over to France, he would pay for the hotel room, and I could just kind of hang out," said Schaefer. But just days before their departure, Schaefer also qualified for a seat in the tournament.
The event opened with players spread among 25 tables; as players were eliminated, tables were consolidated.
No-Limit Texas Hold 'Em, the most common game for major tournaments, has been around for decades but got a big boost in mass appeal through the 1998 Matt Damon movie "Rounders."
Players compete to make the best possible hand from their own two "hole cards" and five cards dealt face-up on the table.
"It's nerve-wracking because if you make a mistake you can lose your whole stack," said Olson.
In the opening days, play went from 2 p.m. to midnight or 2 a.m., when the two would head up to their room and compare notes on the day's action. "It was exhausting, but it was also hard to sleep, because it was so exciting," Schaefer said.
At the final table, small cameras built inside a cushioned rail watch each player's hole cards so that viewers, who see the tournament later, can follow each player's strategy.
The event has already been shown in Europe and Canada, and tour organizers are exploring a possible deal to air the events in the U.S.
Olson said when the final table got down to him and Schaefer, "I looked over at Brandon and almost couldn't believe it. It was something we kidded about on the plane ride over. ... But I wanted the trophy, and he was my opponent."
Schaefer, also appearing calm, was boiling with emotion. "I was ecstatic. But at the same time I was fairly nervous, because Carl is one of the best players I've ever played against. I think he's a more solid player than I am. ... I tend to be a bit too aggressive at times."
With cameras watching their every call, raise, bluff and fold, Schaefer and Olson traded towers of chips back and forth for 90 minutes before Schaefer won the event with two pair, 7's and 6's, edging out Olson's two pair, 6's and 3's.
Privately, the two had agreed shortly before the finish to share the first- and second-place money, a combined total of about $288,000, a significant chunk of change for two guys who had hunted around to share the cheapest hotel room in town for $65 a night.
"We decided to split the money and keep playing for the trophy," Olson said.
On to Monte Carlo
Their one-two finish in Deauville earned Olson and Schaefer seats at the tour's finale event at Monte Carlo last month.
This time, Schaefer took his mother along.
"I'm pretty sure I was the only parent there, and about 50 percent of the entrants were what I would call kids, 19 to 25," said his mother, JoAnn Yoshimoto. "It opened my eyes to what I would call a growing sport."
Yoshimoto said the tournament, played in a no-smoking hall, eroded the negative poker stereotype she had "of smoky backrooms and shady characters."
"I talked to a lot of the younger people there and so many of them have a full life and they happen to excel at poker on the side," she said. "I talked to kids who are going to Ivy League colleges ... kids who are in math and science and are really good with numbers."
The four-day Monte Carlo event began with 211 players, and though Olson was eliminated on the first day, Schaefer hung on to take second place, worth another $450,000.
And although his mother said she admires his skill at the game, she's more proud that he earmarked "a sizable amount" of the prize to give to charity.
Frat-house beginnings
What transpired in those European tournaments took root back in 2000, the year Olson graduated from Roosevelt and entered the UW.
Although Olson wasn't interested in joining a fraternity, a friend took him to the Greek Row house of Psi Upsilon, where Schaefer was a member.
Schaefer had graduated from Roosevelt two years earlier, and his younger brother was a friend of Olson's.
At the UW, Olson and Schaefer became regular players in a weekly frat-house poker game, a game that varied between draw and stud games, with an occasional round of Texas Hold 'Em.
Gradually, Schaefer and Olson began to take the game more seriously than other members of the group, buying books and watching tapes of classic match-ups of the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas.
In the spring of 2003, Olson was the first to give Internet poker a try. Despite the appeal of playing from home, "At first, I had a lot of fears about playing online. Are the cards really random? Are the games really honest? I just threw in $100 and figured if I lose it, that's it."
Instead of losing, however, he was able to build his stake to about $1,000, playing occasionally over about six months.
No single event did more to boost the popularity of online poker than the 2003 win at the World Series of Poker by Chris Moneymaker, an accountant from Tennessee, whose only previous tournament experience was online.
"After that, online poker started going nuts," said Schaefer. "It seemed like the number of players and the amount they were playing for was always going up."
Neither Olson nor Schaefer is certain how big a role poker will play in their lives, long-term.
Schaefer graduated from the UW last June with a degree in communications and is weighing whether to continue his plans of pursuing an MBA or take a year off and support himself playing poker. He has put virtually all the money he won in Europe into long-term investments, adding, "I don't even want to touch it for 20 or 30 years."
Olson graduated in December with a biology degree. He may explore a career in investment management, but in the meantime is living off poker winnings. "I may keep doing it as long as it's fun. Right now it's not like a job. It's just something I love to do."