My friend and I were thinking of this the other day: If poker stars had to get real jobs, what would they be?
(Sorry if I misspell some of the names, I’m too lazy to look all of them up.)
Johnny Chan: travel agent
Doyle Brunson: oil tycoon
Todd Brunson: comic book guy
Scotty Nguyen: amatuer porn director
Gus Hansen: amatuer porn star
Chris Moneymaker: girls’ soccer coach
Paul Magriel: taxidermist
Phil Gordon: math teacher
Daniel Negreanu: waiter
Kathy Leibert: gym teacher
Freddy Deeb: bookie
Cindy Violette: Hooters girl
Phil Helmuth: tech support
Mike Matusow: movie critic
Dan Harrington: golf instructor
Chris Ferguson: video game programmer
Maybe for 15 minutes. “Here I am, doing the best tech support of my life, and this donkey’s asking me where the ‘any’ key is. You idiots don’t even know how to spell computer.”
How about college basketball coach? He could give Bobby Knight a run for his money any time.
Sammy Farha: Editor, Cigar Afficionado magazine Doyle Brunson: Professional blackjack player and/or coach of the LA Lakers Greg Raymer: Paleontologist Tony G: Annoying talk show host Shannon Elizabeth: “Actress” Ben Affleck: Guy riding Matt Damon’s coattails Howard Lederer: Professor (duh)
**Barry Greenstein **and Erik Seidel: Partners in crime
**Aaron Kanter **(remember him?): Professional Powerball ticket buyer Phil Gordon: Host of “Celebrity Poker Showdown” only on Bravo! Johnny Moss: He’d still be dead, I suppose.
Teddy KGB: Heading up the Bureau of Horrible Accents.
Barry Greenstein: Count Chocula lookalike at supermarket openings
Gavin Smith: professional Kathy Liebert impersonator
Kathy Liebert: professional Gavin Smith impersonator
Marcel Luske: singing coach
Amir Vahedi: international arms trader
Not really true to the topic, but I’ll say we once had a poker star working for us. I honestly don’t recall the name, but the reason he was working for us was because his wife made him. She never knew he played professional poker - he lied and said he worked for a major bank, had a different account that deposited pay every 2 weeks into the shared account, and said he just took a lot of “business trips”. Then, one day, she saw him on a live televised tournament on cable. She called his cell, and saw him look down at his cell to check who it was - all on live TV - and turn the phone off.
As the story goes, she made him quit as she disapproved and was shocked that he lied to her. He came to work for us at nine bucks an hour doing customer service inbound calls. He lasted a few months when he quit to rejoin the poker circuit. I’m not sure what he told his wife.
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Cell phones are allowed at live-televised poker tournaments? Don’t they usually show the TV audience what everyone is holding? What would have stopped her from texting him “The other guy’s got a 7 and a 5”?
I bet there’s a production delay, I can’t imagine that info going out on the airwaves real time. Not sure how that jibes with the story about the guy and his cell phone, and I might be all wet, but that seems like it would open up a huge liability.
There have been very few live televised poker tournaments in the US. The only one I recall OTTOMH was on FSN and the commentators made a very large deal over how players were carefully searched for any sort of electronic devices to prevent cheating. So that story is rather fishy. Whether it’s fluiddruid or the alleged “poker pro” who’s the fish I don’t know.