Poker pros play game for profit

Even professionals have their bad days. Playing in the last game series of this year's New England Poker Classic at Foxwoods Resort Casino in Mashantucket, Greg "Fossilman" Raymer and Matt Matros were among 150 others eliminated on day one of $5,000 No Limit Hold 'em, a game that will draw a potential first-place prize of $1.9 million by the time it ends Monday.

"I'm disappointed of course, but you've got to get used to that," Raymer said from his home in Stonington. "If you play poker tournaments often, you have to get used to getting out early. If you play lots of tournaments, a common occurrence is to bust out early."

Such is the reality of professional poker players, many of whom spend the majority of their year following tournaments in gambling hotspots with lucrative prize pools. Sometimes they hit the $5 million jackpot, as Raymer did last year by finishing first in the World Series of Poker tournament in Las Vegas, or they take home $700,000 as Matros did by finishing third in the 2004 World Poker Tour in the same city.

Getting to the top tier of poker players works much the same as any sport: Serious players read books, do their research, play often and hope they win a place at the major tables by qualifying in lesser games leading up to the main event.

"(Professional players) are regular people who just hapen to be highly skilled poker players," Raymer said. "Many have worked very hard studying. i spend a lot of time reading books and participaing in poker discussion groups."

Raymer's big poker win has turned the former corporate patent attorney at Pfizer Inc. into a celebrity poker figure. Saturday, he drove to ESPN studios in Bristol for an interview on poker playing, is a signed pitchman for pokerstars.com, and has been tapped to write a book on the game.

His celebrity, characterized by his signature sunglasses he occasional wears and a fossil paperweight that pins his cards to the table, has also landed him a bobblehead doll in his likeness; he'll appear on instructional DVD videos, a soon-to-be realased Playstation and cell phone video games. Plus, he is in the process of writing a book.

The exposure has brought him attention. Raymer said he gets noticed at grocery stores, airport terminals and especially casino floors.

"Certainly the celebrity thing applies to me nowadays," Raymer said. "I wouldn't care if I was giving it up as long as I had an equally enjoyable way of bringing in the money."

Raymer's strategy of keeping his poker bankroll in the black is by playing in more games with less skilled poker players, as he says you have less chance of a profit by playing against people who are highly skilled. And he never convinces himself that he will win a certain tournament or take home all the chips.

"It makes a lot more sense to say 'I will play as good as humanly possible at poker,'" Raymer said. "To say 'I'm going to get up my chip count, or I'm going to win certain tournaments,' is foolish because it's not an athletic sport -- you can't will yourself to win. In poker it doesn't work that way, because you are playing against someone else and the cards."

At 27, Matt Matros is among the growing number of younger players who have embraced the poker pastime. The Brooklyn, N.Y., resident started playing poker seriously while a senior at Yale University, where graduated with a mathematics degree. He started making the one-hour drive to Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun, then began his tournament play.

"Big reason seeing so many of them is Internet poker, which has enabled young people to play poker in their homes, and another reason is television," Matros said. "Young players on the whole ... there are probably a lot who are wasting their time, and some who are vey good and making a lot of money."

Matros has written a book, "The Making of a Poker Player," from his poker-playing successes and said he plans to play about the next 10 years, while the poker craze lasts. He is planning to enter the World Poker Tour, which is a $25,000 buy-in game, at the end of this month.

"Right now it's at its height," Matros said. "If you are going to be playing poker, do it now."
By JESSICA DURKIN

News Added: 11 April, 2005

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