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Copyright © 2006 Tennessean
HEADLINE: Pro poker
tougher than it looks
Body:
Nashville's Sonny Perry stoodin the Gold Strike Casino
and took a drag from his cigarette.
As he talked of his young poker career, he fisheda big gold ring
out of his denim overalls. He won it, and $110,000, playing
poker in New Orleans.
Not a bad way to make a living, huh?
"There's nothing better than this," Perry said. "You
can make money and you don't have to do no sweating."
The hundreds of players at the World Poker Tour Open that January
afternoon probably would have agreed.
Perry was one of 326 entrants, each hoping a $500 buy-in would
win them the $969,421 first-place prize.
The four-day tournament was just a piece of the big picture.
Poker remains hotter than a royal flush.
TV popularizes poker
With the introduction of the World Poker Tour and World Series
of Poker to national television, the game has shed its backroom
image.
In its fourth season, from May 2005 through April 2006, the World
Poker Tour made 17 stops and awarded $85.12 million in prize money.
Millions watched broadcasts in 147 countries and territories.
Everybody had dreams of making millions playing cards.
A little more than two years ago, Perry saw Nashville's Chris
Moneymaker win $2.5 million in the World Series of Poker championship.
Here was Perry, a 60-something Nashville man with a limousine
service. There was Moneymaker, a 20-something Music City accountant
with a huge chunk of wealth via gambling.
If Moneymaker could do it, why not Perry?
"When he won that championship, that is when everyone in
Nashville got interested in it," said Perry, who by Septemberthis
year had cashed in on eight tournaments for $325,888. "Somebody
who is used to no money can win $3 million or $4 million at a
time. That's what made me want to do it."
Josh Tieman started playing poker in his dorm room at Illinois
Wesleyan. After seeing the 2003 World Series of Poker on ESPN,
he joined several online games and kept winning.
Then he lost $500 on one game, which was a lot on his college
budget.
"I was pretty mad at the game," he said. "But
after a few days I wanted to play again. It is something I love
to do."
The young Lake Zurich, Ill., native finished 14th in Tunica and
won $31,464. In August he topped that with a third-place finish
— highest of his pro career — in a World Series of
Poker event and won $52,525.
Pro says it's stressful life
Despite its monetary draw, playing big-time professional poker
can be tougher than it looks.
Now in her early 30s, Liz Lieu started playing when she was 18,
helping an ex-boyfriend set up a home game. She learned how to
play, she dealt, she ran the game. Then she turned pro and eventually
moved to Las Vegas.
Now she is a professional poker fixture. Her petite frame, supermodel-skinny
body and blond-streaked raven hair make her impossible to miss
on the tournament floor. She shuffles poker chips between French
manicured fingernails and listens to her iPod as she tries to
outwit her opponents, most of whom are male.
"A lot of people think it is easy money, an easy life, and
an easy way out, but actually it isn't. It's not at all. It's
very stressful," Lieu said. "I feel like I have aged
10 years in the last year. I have lost weight. I am not eating
right. When you win it's all good, but when you lose you can't
sleep.
"Now it's televised, so a lot of people want to start and
become famous. It's not worth it. The majority of the players
will go broke. In these tournaments if you play the whole year
or you follow the circuit, if you add it up it's probably about
half a million dollars. That's a lot of money if you don't win."
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