Joe Sebok's made it look easy, earning nearly a million dollars in tournament prize money deciding to play poker professionally. His fast start included a pair of final table finishes at the 2005 World Series, winning $109,000 in two hold 'em events. It was the first year he participated in poker's biggest party.
Fast forward to the present and we discover he's still doing well. This past October he won $267,295, with a first place finish in a hold 'em tournament at the Fiesta al Lago.
This is success that appears to prompt some pointed inquiries. How did the 29-year-old San Francisco resident who never gave poker a serious look until two or three years ago manage to get so good so quickly?
Sebok's response is a modest shrug as he explains, "I don't know. I've just always been very lucky." Veterans of myriad poker wars know that "luck" often has a lot to do with generous doses of discipline and thoughtful strategy.
Well, yeah, Sebok concedes, in so many words, there was probably some of that too.
People familiar with the roster of top players and personalities across the poker landscape may have also noted the look of satisfaction on poker legend Barry Greenstein's face whenever the spotlight happens to fall on Sebok.
Greenstein is Sebok's stepdad. He has been since Joe was five or six, but Sebok says this closeness did nothing to encourage a career in poker during those formative years when a lot of now-successful players were peering over dad's shoulder during home games or whatever.
Far from it. There were no extended dinner table conversations laced with talk of strategy and anecdotes.
"The thing my dad made clear to me right from the beginning was that he wanted me to be able to do something besides play poker. I'm not one of those players who grew up with cards, paying close attention from the background as their parents played."
So did Sebok eventually turn pro because of his dad or in spite of him?
Now there's an interesting question, he says, giving the matter a chuckle.
"The truth of the matter is it is probably a little bit of both. Like I say, poker was never anything he wanted me to learn. He always maintained I should go to school and learn useful skills?
Which is what happened. Sebok grew up, went to Berkley where he earned a degree in psychology before plunging into the dot-come world where he became a strategist and analyst for a number of high tech companies.
It was only after the dotcom bubble burst that Sebok found himself out of work wondering about his next move. What was he going to do? What was he going to be? By his own admission, he did nothing special for a time and then one day found himself seriously pondering the possibilities associated with poker, a game about which he knew very little.
But he was smart, wasn't he?
He could learn and he knew where to find a good teacher. Sebok finally put it all into words.
Did Barry think he could play poker?
"It wasn't so much that I was thinking initially of doing it professionally. I just wanted to know what he thought about me taking a shot at playing it."
Could he do it?
"Absolutely," was the response as Sebok remembers it.
The ground rules had altered now that Sebok had earned a degree and demonstrated that he had what it took to survive in the world without relying on gambling.
Sebok says, "He was just so adamant about his belief that I could do it. There was no question in his mind that I could do it. He thought that psychologically I was tough enough and the card sense was something he could teach me."
His dad's words gave him the shot of confidence that encouraged him to start playing. "Things just went really well. From the beginning things just took off . . . I finished third in the first tournament I ever entered.
Not bad, Sebok laughs, "considering I didn't have a job and I needed to find some way to make some money."
Was there a point in time when Sebok felt confident of his ability to survive the roller coaster ride associated with the pro poker circuit?
That gets a moment of thought before he says, "Well, I went through a couple of weird stretches. I made those two much ballyhooed final tables at the 2005 World Series. That was really strange because I didn't have experience and I'm not sure I played particularly well . . .
"Maybe things just sort of broke well. So I had a certain amount of false confidence from that and when the World Series ended I was thinking, oh yeah, yes, I can do this . . .
"But as so often happens in life there was a little bit of a regression."
Sebok went from thinking he might find himself at final tables every few weeks or so to wondering when it might happen again.
Months later, May of this past year, to be exact, he struck gold again, big time, winning a World Poker Tour event at The Mirage and then about 10 days later winning the Heavenly Hold'em Championship at the Commerce.
Those two wins gave him prize money totaling $349,000 and a chance to reflect on what might be ahead of him.
"I think at that point I said to myself, all right, I can do this, because the fact is I had been doubting myself. I went through a bit of a cold streak. I was thinking that maybe the early results were just a kind of aberration."
But the last wispy threads of doubt vanished with those two winds.
"It's been pretty good since then."
Sebok demonstrated almost from the beginning that he enjoyed doing more than just playing poker. He liked to write about it and he also enjoyed talking about it. He's been a columnist for another poker magazine besides also hosting the Internet poker radio show known as "The Circuit."
"There were so many things that I had a lot of fun doing but I think that they eventually ended up hurting my game. I was so focused on these other projects."
The result was that he decided to pull back some and focus on what continues to be the number one priority - playing, making money. "These days," he says, "I'm happy to just walk into the casino and sit down and play, but in the future I think I will get more involved in other projects.
Over the next four to six months Sebok anticipates a steady diet what has become the same ol' same ol," which means traveling the circuit and spending a lot of time away from home.
During a recent afternoon phone conversation that found him out there at a rest stopon the tournament trail, he guessed that it had been six weeks since he had been home.
"And I'm not going to go home for another three weeks."
But that's how big the business of poker tournaments has become for those with the energy and bankroll that makes it possible for them to stay on the road.
Sort of like, if it's Saturday, there must be a tournament worthy of his attention going on somewhere.
Sebok gives that a laugh that seems to say, this is the way it is.
Kind of like co-starring in a big traveling show.
"It feels that way sometime," he says, "especially on the Professional Poker Tournament circuit. That's kind of what it is now - a traveling show. It's so big and everyone knows you and people are so excited to see us. It's so cool. It's a great thing to experience all that, "But there is a certain lack of reality that goes with it after a while and it comes with a strange kind of nomadic existence."
Sebok is conscious of the evolution of his own persona since his initial burst of success at the World Series. In the beginning, he guesses that he was probably seen as a lucky but probably skillful nobody. "No one knew who I was. I didn't have any kind of persona."
This eventually changed as people learned who he was. Perhaps some followers of the high limit poker scene deciding, here he was, this "rich kid whose daddy had given him the keys to the kingdom. Something like that" But that kind of cynicism had nothing to do with the truth. He was not a mere beneficiary of his dad's largesse any more than he was a lucky nobody.
Sebok senses the existence of other layers, other corners to be turned in this on-going evolution.
"I don't have my father's experience so I make a lot more mistakes than he would, but I think by now I've mostly got the respect of the other pros and they are seeing me as who I am - Joe Sebok, someone who has to be reckoned with at the table."
Did his dad stake him in the beginning?
No. It didn't work that way. That kind of outside assistance, he maintains, was not necessary.
"I've really been lucky. Right from the beginning I've been lucky. I've always sort of over performed. I didn't need anyone's help."
Except for one very important thing.
There is no question, Sebok says, that he has benefited from having access to Barry Greenstein's mind and his ability to take poker table situations apart with a meaningful analysis.
"I'm probably six or seven years ahead of where I would be if I didn't have that."
