Kampis - Vegas or bust: a family man takes on the poker pros

I dont remember what river card fell.

Through the fog of time, the rank and suit of the card that eliminated me has faded from memory. But it wasnt the long-shot king I needed to double my chip stack and survive deep into the third day of the 2006 World Series of Poker Main Event, and thats the only thing that matters.

My best shot at poker infamy? Dashed. With nearly 800 players still in the tournament, my odds of winning the $12 million top prize were infinitesimal. But in poker, as long as you have a stack, you have a dream.

After a year living another type of dream away from the daily grind of the cubicle farm, mostly playing poker for my bread that river card meant a wakeup call for me.

Having just turned 30, I returned home to Alabama. Over the course of the next decade, I attended graduate school, got a steady job, fell in love, got married, and had two children. You know the standard family-man stuff.

But that river card always lingered in my mind.

Ten years later, I still share that story with little provocation, how I got all in at the worlds most prestigious poker tournament with pocket kings, only to run into pocket aces. What could I do, I always say. Nothing, they all reply, thats just poker.

And 10 years later, the game has experienced a seismic shift, after an ill-timed law by Congress stamped out pokers booming growth just months after the massive success of the 2006 World Series of Poker WSOP signaled the continued proliferation of the game.

Most online sites immediately pulled out of the United States or went belly-up. A federal raid of Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars in 2011 proved to be the death knell, at least temporarily, of online poker. Players either left the game or moved to other countries to continue to ply their skills at the virtual tables.

But then the game began its resurgence. Nevada, Delaware, and New Jersey legalized online poker, as other states, including California and Pennsylvania, considered legislation. PokerStars planned to return to the U.S. for the first time since 2011 with a website for New Jersey players. Attendance at the WSOP continued to tick up, as players continued to dream, just as all the optimists who visit Las Vegas pray to beat the long odds.

Then, early in 2016, my wife, Amy, spoke the five words I wanted to hear, the words that could put our lives on a new course.

You should go for it, she said.

Our most trying year had just wrapped up: our six-year-old son, John Harper, had been diagnosed with a form of autism. On top of that, my job was in peril, as a loss of funding for the non profit I worked for, Watchdog.org, forced the layoff of most of my colleagues. At Watchdog, we write about waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer money at the local, state, and federal levels. The downsizing meant Id serve as both reporter and editor, as I hoped the funding for my job didnt dry up.

I had told Amy that now might be the time to pitch a book proposal long gestating in my mind, a Hail Mary if you will, with the unemployment line in view. The plan: pack up our bags and drive the 2,000 miles west from our home in Cullman, Alabama, to Las Vegas, where wed live for the summer and Id play a number of tournaments at the WSOP, often referred to as summer camp for poker players.

Maybe, just maybe, wed come out of it much richer.

It was, no doubt, a bold plan and, perhaps, the lazy mans dream summer but Im no slouch at the poker tables. In addition to that earlier Main Event cash, I have several other tournament scores to my credit and plenty of success in cash games, the grinders bread and butter. I spent several years after 2006 playing the game on a semiprofessional basis, mixing poker income with freelance writing to make a living. Even though I shifted into a new role where journalism brought in most of my income, I continue, today, to make a little side money at the game.

Still, with financial uncertainty in our future and tables full of hardened poker pros looming, it was definitely a Hail Mary but what city is better for a last-ditch gasp than Vegas?

You should go for it.

I could tell from the gleam in Amys eye, a face trying to hide a smile, that this wasnt just for me she was also itching for adventure. Despite her seeming love-hate relationship with Vegas because of this players every-summer eagerness to go to the WSOP, she has a fondness for Sin City herself. It was in Vegas, after all, that we fell in love albeit remotely.

After months of chatting on that one-time bulwark of social media, MySpace, we met in our hometown of Cullman for our first date on July 1, 2006. But only days later I would leave for my six-week Grand Vegas Adventure, so, understandably, she didnt get too excited about the dorky-looking fellow she had just met.

But despite the pale complexion and first-date propensity for nervously chatting too much, the adventurer in me must have had some effect on her. After all, most single men my age in Cullman probably hadnt been west of the Mississippi. I, on the other hand, had spent the past year on a poker sabbatical, jet-setting to Connecticut, Atlantic City, Reno, and, of course, Vegas (twice) to try my hand at professional poker play.

I cant say the journey was a rousing financial success, but, hey, I didnt go broke and I got the girl. Amy and I talked by phone every few days while I was stationed in the desert, and I cut my trip a few days short because I was eager to see her again. We hit it off immediately when I returned, were engaged within four months, and married the next summer.

Apologies to Bogie, but well always have Vegas.

As Amy encouraged me to write the book proposal and having gone to Vegas with me twice herself she ticked off all the things for the kids to see and do: Mirage dolphins, Mandalay Bay aquarium, Bellagio fountains, Circus Circus amusement park, Red Rock Canyon, the new High Roller observation wheel on the Strip. And of course wed rent a place with a pool: the kids take to them like ducks to water.

After forming the preliminary plan for the family and our housing, it was time to focus on the poker. I scanned the just-released WSOP schedule, checking off the events I wanted to play, while ignoring those I couldnt fathom taking a seat in $50,000 Poker Players Championship, anyone? Or the $1,500 Dealers Choice event, where players can seemingly pick any game this side of War and Old Maid?

Not so much. But that new $1,500 event featuring three forms of Omaha Hi-Lo looked enticing, and the $1,500 Monster Stack, in which players get twice as many chips as in other No Limit Texas Holdem tournaments at the WSOP, I dubbed a must-play.

I printed out calendars for June and July, listing on some days possible tournaments higher buy-ins if the summer started going well, lower buy-ins if I got off to a rough start and noting family day on those dates I planned to take a break from poker.

It wouldnt be all WSOP, all the time, though. Several Vegas casinos offer parasite-like summer tournament series to capitalize on the masses of players the WSOP draws to town. So I planned to head everywhere from Binions, the birthplace of the WSOP, to the Venetian, owned by online-poker foe Sheldon Adelson, in search of fortune and glory in 2016.