Most of us dream about the lifestyle of becoming a professional poker player. The ability to set your own hours of work, not having a boss hovering over your shoulder and playing in some of the swankiest surroundings of the poker world are all benefits of the life that we think we might live. Sometimes the reality of it all steps up, however, as it has for a man that the Washington Post has been following for the past four years.
In July 2009, Post writer John Kelly detailed the story of Jon Urban, an engineer with Black & Decker in Maryland. At the time, Urban had just received a promotion during one of the bleakest economic periods in our nation’s history, but Urban had other ideas than riding that promotion. The then-28 year old ditched his solid but unspectacular job on the exact day that he received that promotion for a life that he wanted to lead: that of a professional poker player.
“I’m the age and this is the time to do it,” Urban is quoted by Kelly in that 2009 article. “I’m not married, no kids…Everybody at work was impressed that at least I was trying to live my dream.”
“Besides, it’s a lot less stressful,” Urban joked with Kelly in 2009.
Kelly updated the story of Urban earlier this week and, perhaps on your viewpoint, it is either a dashed dream or a stunning reality of what life as a poker professional is like. Urban, who was earning $60,000 with his engineering degree and was looking to make that with a goal of “twice that much” as a poker professional, was back on the “regular job” grind, taking a position in Texas in August 2011 in engineering once again. “Overall, I think it was a success,” Kelly reports Urban as saying. “I managed to make somewhat of a living.”
According to the Hendon Mob database, the dream started large for Urban. He won a $500 No Limit tournament in December 2009 at the Bellagio in Las Vegas and, as 2010 began, he added three more strong finishes to boost his bankroll. The streak would dry up, however – “I was extremely unlucky,” Urban says to Kelly – and, between October 2010 and July of this year, Urban would only earn $1404 to send him back to the working world. All totaled as a “poker professional,” Urban earned $53,959 during his experiment.
Kelly is able to draw out of Urban some of the things that he felt were detrimental to his career as a professional poker player. “I was missing my girlfriend (who has now relocated to Texas with him) and I noticed that I started getting a little arrogant and started losing my discipline,” Kelly quotes Urban as saying. “I was trying different types of moves and plays that I really had no business doing.”
For his part, Kelly at least had his college degree and his previous work experience to fall back on when the time came to leave his dream. “I got some funny looks (when I said my last job was professional poker player),” Urban noted, “but I did have Black & Decker behind it, so that definitely helped.”
Urban isn’t the only one who has noticed how difficult it is nowadays to grind the life of a poker professional. After this year’s World Series of Poker, Josh Arieh and Adam Junglen – two players who have been highly respected in their poker careers (Arieh has over $6 million in earnings, while Junglen has almost a million) – announced they had decided to forgo the pursuit of the tournament poker world as professionals. Additionally, there are many other stories of players who have taken on the dream of playing poker for a living only to see that dream end on a low note.
Urban has to be admired for taking his shot at the game and also being sharp enough to determine when he had to abandon his dream. Now 31 – “a dinosaur in the poker community,” he tells Kelly – he has embraced his “normal” existence while admitting he might return someday. “It’s one of those things where I can say I at least tried,” Urban admits to Kelly.