Re: Nate in the trib
Yeah, this is me. There's also a picture of me on the front page of the Sunday Business section. It's all pretty embarassing.
The guy wrote a good article. I'm glad that it was written as a legimitate business story and there wasn't some angle about "the hidden perils of online gambling" or something typical like that. He was also non-specific about certain things that I asked him to be non-specific about, which I appreciated.
I blatantly misplayed the hand that he refers to where I lost $170 (he came over and watched me play the other afternoon). I defended my blind with AJo and check-raised an uncoordinated, J-high flop. The turn was a K; I bet out and was raised. "I'm sure I'm beat here, I'm sure she has a K", I told the reporter, then called down anyway, paying 60 bucks for the privilege of showing off my hand-reading abilities and seeing her AK.
It's probably a little bit misleading to say that I quit my job to play poker. I quit my job for a number of reasons, the most important of which were that I was sick of it and it wasn't something I wanted to make a career out of doing. I knew that I liked playing poker and I knew that I also liked working for Baseball Prospectus. I knew that doing both of those things was impossible on a serious basis while I was also working a 9-to-5, at least if I wanted to maintain some sort of a social life or get more than four hours of sleep a night (about what I was averaging in November - March of this year). I'm fortunate that one of my favorite diversions happens to be relatively lucrative at the time being.
-Nate
|