UW-Stout student bets on a career playing poker

MENOMONIE, Nov 09, 2008 (The Leader-Telegram - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- GOOG | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating -- Buying an engagement ring traditionally is supposed to cost two months' salary.

That can be a tall order -- or a cheap ring -- for college students working part-time jobs to pay bills while amassing debt from school loans.

But for UW-Stout senior Tony Wind, it meant spending hours in online poker rooms from the comfort of the Menomonie rental house he shares with seven other students.

"I bought it in December and had it paid off by February by just sitting on my couch," he said.

Wind's amateur poker career also has paid for a Las Vegas vacation, part of his rent and extra spending money.

And it caught the attention of a cable reality show.

Getting noticed

Wind, 22, of St. Paul spent four days in September in California filming the second season of "Best Damn Poker Show." The seven-week-long series is scheduled to begin airing in January on the Fox Sports Network.

"It was fun because there was a whole new level of competition," he said. "I don't find too many people that take the game as seriously as me."

Many of the 24 competitors on the show play poker for a living, some earning hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, he said. With the bankroll of a college student, he's not quite reached those high stakes yet.

Wind won a spot on the show based partially on his audition video posted on the Web site YouTube.

The video showcases a mock game of Texas Hold 'em played among celebrities Macaulay Culkin, Michael Jackson, Paul Reubens (in character as Pee-wee Herman) and Jim Carrey (as Ace Ventura). Wind used Halloween costumes to depict all four of them.

It received about 10 times the views compared with the contestant who had the second-highest number of audition-video viewers, Wind noted. By the end of October, the video had attracted more than 21,000 views.

Wind learned by e-mail that he had won a spot on the show. One month later, on Sept. 8, he was on a flight to California.

Though he can't say exactly how far he advanced in the competition, he made it past the first round and will appear in a few episodes.

He did reveal the cards were not always kind to him, and he did not win the grand prize of a free seat at the World Series of Poker Main Event -- a no-limit tournament that determines the world champion.

"Unfortunately that is not me," he said.

The show did give him a chance to appear on television and to be judged by show hosts and poker pros Annie Duke and Phil Hellmuth.

His fiancee, Michelle Helt, had to stay in Menomonie while he took the all-expenses-paid trip to California. But Helt said, "I think I was just as excited as he was, and I didn't even get to go anywhere."

Helt, 21, a UW-Stout senior majoring in hotel, restaurant and tourism management, learned to play poker from Wind as a way to share a common interest. "It was either learn how to play or be really bored watching him play," she said.

The two play in a Monday night poker league hosted by the Silver Dollar Saloon and Brick Co., 315 Main St. E., more commonly known as "The Buck."

Helt favors playing casual games with friends, but Wind considers poker his way to make money.

Playing for a living

"Poker's my part-time job," Wind said.

He hopes to become a professional at the game one day. Before he can do that, he said, he'll have to earn money to enter larger tournaments.

With a major in business and a minor in Spanish, Wind plans on a professional sales career before he can pursue his dream as a full-time card player.

For now, he's content playing poker online, averaging a couple of hours a day in low-stakes competitions against a few players. On most days he'll play a game that requires $50 admittance, but he's also participated in $200 contests. The most he's paid to enter is $500.

He doesn't keep a running total of how much he wins and loses. He's not making a "killing" from the game, he said, but it does pay for groceries and part of his rent.

"I've got loans," he said. "Often times my poker account is bigger than my bank account, which doesn't say a whole lot."

Some discipline is involved in his online playing to prevent him from falling into gambling debt. He sets goals, plays in lower-limit games and doesn't deposit additional money in an online account he set up for poker.

With these rules in place, Wind said he doesn't consider poker gambling because "it's all just calculated risk."

"I don't really consider it gambling because in the long run it has positive expectations," he said.

Each time the dealer flips a community card -- one that counts as part of every player's hand -- in Texas Hold 'em games, Wind calculates the odds his hand could be a winning one and if the next card flipped should benefit him.

He also reads habits, twitches and other physical signs of competitors -- known as "tells" -- that indicate whether their cards are good or bad.

"It always helps to have good cards," Wind said, "but the better players can figure out what their opponent has and play the player instead of their own cards."

Even in online poker where you can't see your opponent, he said the amount people bet on a hand and how quickly they bet can be a tell. By noticing each opponent's habits, he can draw an idea of how good or bad a hand is.

It runs in the family

Wind got serious about playing poker for money three to four years ago, but he learned the game from family members in his youth.

Poker games at the Wind household in St. Paul usually are friendly with a conservative $10 pot, but occasionally there's a bit of boasting about who is the better bettor.

"Tony and my dad are hilarious to listen to," said Andy Wind, one of four brothers.

Andy Wind, 25, graduated from UW-Stout in 2006 with a degree in hotel, restaurant and tourism management. That coupled with the family's love of poker pointed him toward his job as a cashier supervisor for Horseshoe Casino in Council Bluffs, Iowa.

On his days off, he said he often plays at the casino in no-limit games. During a game at the end of October, he said he lost $1,000 on a hand.

He describes his brother as the family's most serious and analytical player.

"Tony's the most dedicated, I would say," Andy Wind said.

Although Tony has a pensive nature, he does get frustrated whenever a weak player beats the odds with a lucky draw. "That's been his downfall," Andy Wind said.

Tony Wind agreed, comparing himself to one of his favorite professional players known for haranguing opponents for making mistakes covered up by good luck.

"Sometimes I can get pretty upset like Phil (Hellmuth)," he said. "I try not to do that."

Dowd can be reached at 833-9204, 800-236-7077 or andrew.dowd@ecpc.com.

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