particularly the main event

I noticed a stark change in the way people in the poker community treated me after that bracelet win. Before, it felt like everywhere I went PokerSpot was like a shadow. I didn't really feel like I was accepted in "the clique". Several high-profile players were pretty vocal about their desire for me to just leave the poker community behind.

But after winning the bracelet, I was now in a very exclusive club of players who have proven in competition that they can win against the best poker players in the world. There are less bracelets than super bowl rings. And by downplaying the achievement and being pubicly critical of players who have crossed that golden line, other players in the WSOP club were somehow taking away from their own achievement.

There is definitely a big difference between a poker player who has one world series of poker bracelet and a poker player who has multiple world series of poker bracelets. In the public eye, there is probably a bigger difference between a poker player with a televised bracelet and a poker payer with an non-televised one. But however you look at it, it is a small club and there is definitely a difference between players with a bracelet and players without one... anybody who has a poker bracelet has to at least be given the respect of having a very small percentage goal and achieving it. And they are among a small number of players to actually know what it feels like to go through the reality soap-opera that leads to and follows the victory.

Poker is without a doubt the most complex game I have ever played and the hardest thing that I've tried to get truly great at. Most of my life, I had felt like a big fish in a small pond. I very rarely was intimidated or had the feeling like I was dealing with someone who was significantly more intelligent than I was. But that changed when I started playing competitive poker. The World Series of Poker, particularly the main event, is the biggest pond I've found. It is the ocean. And I am quite often at tables with players who make me think that they are thinking on levels that I didn't even know exist.

For all these reasons, I love poker. But after years of being in the industry and seeing the dark side of the game and the lifestyle, I can't escape the feeling that poker has turned from a rather small and secluded social problem to a HUGE social vice. Each day, the majority of the hundreds of thousands of real money players online will lose money. Unlike other forms of accepted social vices, none of that money is going to taxes to support schools. Very little of it is even going to minority of payers who CAN beat the game. No, the majority of the money in poker is going into the offshore bank accounts of the operators who have succeeded where I had failed a decade ago.

Being a highly-televised poker player, I often wonder how many college kids out there have dropped out of school because they were inspired by ESPN footage of The Crew. And now, long busted, are grinding away at a crappy job and trying to scrap together their next microroll. There's bound to be a few... when you're dealing with very small percentages of very large numbers, the result is still pretty daunting.