Poker pro Jean-Robert Bellande has recently reported to his eagerly awaiting Twitter fans (sarcasm) the woes of the roller coaster ride known as his bankroll management.
Strapping into the ride: “Poker Pro. Track my crazy swings as I take my bankroll from zero to a million.”
The top of the coaster: “I can’t take it anymore. Accepting the 15k loss. David Benjamine [sic] just too tough. 55k.”
The bottom: “Cash 0…I feel sleepy.”
It’s not the first time a poker pro has gone broke, and certainly won’t be the last. The poker lifestyle isn’t like the Ma$e “Feel So Good” video where people in lavish clothing are tossing hundos at fly honeys. There are only two constants with poker: there will be winners and there will be losers.
Many of the biggest winners in the game have taken the elevator from the gutter to the penthouse. Phil Ivey used to sleep under the boardwalk in Atlantic City when he’d go broke. Now he co-owns Heaven with Jesus. Scotty Nguyen dealt cards all day and played poker all night, eventually parlaying his bankroll $7000 into $1 million once he took it to Vegas. The fast-lane lifestyle caught up to him quick, when surmounting losses and addictions to booze and cocaine took their tolls, leaving him penniless days before the start of the 1998 World Series of Poker Main Event. It wasn’t until Mike Matusow helped stake Nguyen in a satellite qualifier to the $10,000 championship did he manage to leap back to the top, moving on to poker greatness with a Main Event win and never looking back.
It’s when you go from the penthouse and sleep in the gutter that you find the real sorrow in the losers. Most notably, the tragic life of famed pro Stu Ungar comes to mind. A man who many considered the greatest hold’em player to have ever lived and a genius in every sense of the word, the seedy underbelly of Vegas living caught up with Ungar. Drugs and hookers were cancer to a man who had reportedly won over $30 million playing poker in his life time. On November 22, 1998, he was found dead in his hotel room with $822 left to his name, the remnants of a loan from a friend.
The most current busto news sent shock waves through the internet poker forums late last year when it was discovered that the Plano Pawn Shop of Plano, Texas was selling a 14 karat gold, diamond-encrusted World Series of Poker bracelet from a 2005 $5000 no-limit hold’em on eBay. The bracelet belonged to none other than T.J. Cloutier, one of the game’s greatest tournament players. To his name, he has $9,413,236 in winnings and trails only Phil Hellmuth in WSOP final tables (41 and 39 respectively).
Speculation spread like wildfire once the bracelet was spotted as to whether or not Cloutier was sinking or swimming. Cloutier spottings started popping up all across Vegas, slumming at the free hot dog table for a buy-in to a nightly tourney or seeing his name on the wait list for $1/$2 no-limit games at different casinos. Reports also began surfacing regarding his major leak: craps. Terrance Chan, friend and fellow pro, stated in 2006 that “T.J. has lost more money at craps than possibly any human being alive.” Make that $9,413,236 to be exact.
The winning bidder was nice enough to return the bracelet back to Cloutier, a sign of utmost respect for somebody down on his luck. I say “down on his luck” loosely though, because after winning in upwards of $9 million and losing it all and then some, stupidity and self-restraint need to be taken into account.
So you think you want to be a poker pro? You may want to think again.
Source: http://www.carbonpoker.com/blog
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