As the youngest player to finish first in a World Series of Poker event, Thomas “Thunder” Keller is well on his way to a long, successful career in poker. How does one become a professional gambler? Thomas started playing with as a college student with pals influenced by the Matt Damon movie Rounders. His first games had quarter bets, but as he continued to clean up, he progressed to online poker and then to high-stakes games. Now he plays poker professionally year-round. We asked him what life is like for a full-time gambler.
How did you start playing poker seriously?
I first got involved on Christmas break at Stanford (University). I got home and all my friends had just seen Rounders and Texas Hold ‘Em was the big game they play there, so they had started up a home game and were totally addicted. They taught me how to play and within minutes I just loved the game. We started off playing for quarters and I’d usually end up winning $50 to $100 a night. We were playing for really small stakes, so I started thinking, “If I’m playing this small and still making money, maybe I could do this seriously.” And it all escalated from there – I started playing 3-6 in casinos and online.
Why do you think you have such a facility for the game?
Well, I actually used to play other games like Magic: The Gathering. There are actually quite a few Magic players who have made the transition to poker – poker’s a lot easier to make a living at, and there are generally a lot more tournaments. I think Magic really helped me get into that gamer mentality – I’ve always thought strategically and been into game theory and things like that. I guess it came naturally.
How did this affect your schooling at Stanford?
I majored in economics, but I really spent most of my time playing poker. So class would roll around and I’d be online playing and I’d kind of ditch class. So I really honed the craft during college. I consider my professional career starting once I left college – never got a real job or anything like that.
What kind of skills do you need to be a champion player?
To be a champion player is pretty selective. Some of the champion players are obsessed with the game to the point where it’s unhealthy. Some of them are so desensitized to money that they can make incredibly risky plays. In order to be one of the great players, you need to be able to do that; but at the same time a lot of these guys are perpetually broke. They don’t have any money because this whole not-being-adverse-to-risk thing translates into their whole life, so they’ll go gamble in some other game, bet on sports, or make ridiculous investments.
What was your first high-stakes game like for you?
Whenever you jump up in limits, it’s intimidating. When I first started, even playing $3, $6, or 4-8 was huge compared to the 50 cent - $1 home games. The first time you lose a few hundred dollars, it’s gut-wrenching – you feel awful. Now I look back at those stakes as very small; now I’ll play $500,000 or something like that and be comfortable. It depends on where you start out – when I played 3-6, I thought 10-20 was just a crazy kind of limit, a huge game. And when I finally did play the 10-20, it was frightening but at the same time kind of exciting.
How do you keep your “poker face?”
I kind of get into a zone. People make a big deal about the poker face, and a lot of people think, “Oh, I couldn’t play poker, I’d laugh or get nervous.” But that’s more of a Hollywood thing. There’s a lot more strategy involved in playing really good poker, a lot of practice and discipline. It’s not just about your physical nature.
Why do you think poker has just recently become a pop-culture event?
A lot of people say poker is the real national pastime – everyone plays poker. The advent of the hole camera (on TV broadcasts), where you can see the players’ cards and you can see what they’re thinking while they’re playing a hand, makes it much more suspenseful. If they’re bluffing and they have nothing, if there’s a showdown and a guy just throws in a hand, or if he makes a big bluff and the other guy folded the best hand, it’s very exciting. The Travel Channel started out with the World Poker Tour and they were the first ones to really use that hole cam – that is what really blew poker up. And then the World Series this last year was huge: ESPN covered it and there were 2,600 players.
Do you think such a popular mania for gambling could be unhealthy?
I think Americans love to gamble in general, especially in a lot of different cultures. I don’t necessarily see poker as unhealthy because at least with poker, if you practice and work at it, you can get good enough that you actually can beat the game. If you’re playing a game like slots machines or craps or roulette, there isn't any skill to it so you can’t really win in the long run. So if you figure these guys are going to gamble anyway, at least give them a shot at poker.
Besides winning money, do you get any other sense of satisfaction from playing poker?
Definitely. That’s why my passion is really playing the big, no-limit tournaments. And if you ask the top players, they’ll say the same thing – they’re there to win, to be the best, and to prove themselves. Poker, at its higher levels, is really more like an art form than just a game. There’s so much that goes into it. It’s always changing, too – like whenever you add someone to a table or someone busts out, it changes the whole dynamic. If you have someone like Gus Hansen, a world-class player who’s extremely aggressive, he could be controlling the table and everybody is reacting to him. If he’s playing a ton of hands and he’s coming in and raising a lot, people may be playing more cautious, or they may be playing back at him, figuring that he doesn’t always have the big cards to warrant his raises.
How is online poker different from the live game?
I really consider playing online more like playing a computer game for money than it is real poker. Without being able to see people, you don’t get a good feel if somebody’s not playing well, or if somebody is just playing for fun. You can’t profile people as well. It definitely changes your strategy, and people play a lot differently online. Like, there are a lot of people who just don’t bluff much when they’re playing live, but online they can just click the “raise” button.
What’s life like for a professional poker player?
I think it’s great – it allows you a lot of freedom and flexibility. I play online a lot so I can choose my hours. But now that there are so many tournaments coming up, there is a lot of travel, and that can be difficult especially if you have a family. You’re pretty much paying your whole way, too – and at $10,000 a pop for most of the big tournaments, that can get pretty expensive. It’s exciting, definitely, but there are a lot of ups and downs. It can be totally heart-wrenching if you’re playing in a tournament for three days, playing great poker, you have decent amount of chips – and in just one hand, literally, you can be out. Things can change in a hurry.
Related Sites:
His homepage: www.thunderkeller.com
His preferred poker software: www.poki-poker.com
His favorite online poker site: www.ultimatebet.com.
