All the regular poker players were treating the guy sitting next to me with a good deal of respect. They all knew his name - Scott - and they were acting like he was some kind of big shot.
"Where are you going next on the tour, Scott?" asked a regular I'd played with many times.
"There is a tournament in Regina."
During a lull, when neither of us were in the hand, I asked him if he was a professional poker player. He shrugged.
"If you could call it that..."
"I'll take that as a 'yes'."
Scott laughed. "Well, I don't do anything else, so you could say that."
I didn't want to bother the man, but I was curious. How does one make a living playing cards? Particularly when one lives in a place like Calgary? How does he handle the variance? Does he play set hours? I had far too many questions to pester the man with.
The one thing I really wanted to know was if he ever wished - like Mike the Vegas pro - that he had a regular job with a regular pay cheque. So I asked him that.
"Well, my wife has a good job so that stability is there."
Okay. Fair enough. So "no".
A little while later I asked him if he usually played at the $1/$2 stakes.
"Well, no. I usually play $2/$5. Sometimes $5/$10. And Tournaments. But you can certainly make money at $1/$2. Look at this table - you can make more at a $1/$2 table like this than you could at an average $2/$5 table." Scott was up about $300 at this point - after playing for about three hours. Making $100/hour is definitely pulling down a good living but of course it doesn't always go that well.
I wish I had the nerve to ask him more questions, but to tell the truth I was more concerned with concentrating on the game. I will say that I didn't see him enter a lot of pots - he played tight, waiting for decent cards. And he played a lot of his hands "in position" - something I still need to understand how to do effectively.
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