By ANDREW CLEVENGER, Columbia News Service
Even before he entered kindergarten, Greg Shahade excelled at chess. In the two decades since, he has worked his way up to the second highest level, just below grand masters like recently retired world champion Gary Kasparov.
After living on a fellowship and then teaching for a couple years, he tired of trying to eke out a living as a professional chess player.
So two years ago, the 26-year-old turned to playing online poker and found, not surprisingly, that his analytical skills were perfectly suited for the card game.
He's made more than $100,000 during that time.
Ever since Chris Moneymaker, an accountant from Tennessee, parlayed his $40 entry in an Internet satellite tournament into a $2.5 million victory at the 2003 World Series of Poker in Las Vegas, online poker has exploded.
Pokerpulse.com, a Web site that tracks the number of poker players online at any given moment, estimated that there were almost 1.9 million online money players in February 2005, an increase of more than 50 percent over six months.
On any given day, more than $200 million is wagered in virtual poker rooms on the Internet.
"The industry is probably nowhere near its peak," said Michael A. Tew, a gaming industry expert. He predicts online poker will see more rapid growth over the next year or two. "It's the latest trend in online gaming," he said. "The draw of playing online is anonymity and the convenience of sitting at home playing a casino game. That's why it's such a huge business."
Poker has become the day job of Paul Nobles, 36, a stay-at-home father of two from St. Paul, Minn. Although his work schedule is unusual - sometimes he'll play for half an hour, other times for eight hours straight - he sees himself as a typical family man.
"I live in the suburbs," he said. "I drive an SUV like any other suburban dad."
In the poker world, Nobles is known as "Beanie," because eight years ago he speculated in Beanie Babies, the collectible children's toys. Now Nobles has traded stuffed animals for straights and flushes, but his philosophy is the same. By focusing intently on something many people regard as a fun hobby, he can turn his expertise into cash.
"If you're going to beat online poker, you better get serious, because people are getting very serious," Nobles said. "You have to immerse yourself."
Although he declined to discuss the amount of his winnings, Nobles said that his initial deposit of $300 into an account on Ultimatebet.com has yielded $80,000 worth of entry fees on the World Poker Tour.
When he plays in live tournaments, he feels comfortable alongside famous professionals because of his extensive online training, which differentiates him from in-over-their-head amateurs.
"A lot of people take the approach, 'If I get to the final table and get lucky a couple of times, I can win this thing,'" he said. "I try to add a couple of layers of strategy to that."
A new breed of novice is challenging professionals, lured by the fact that they can log on at home or in their door rooms. Bobby Gullett, a senior math major at Pomona College, used his analytical skills to win $3,700 during a six-week run last winter.
"I have a really good grasp of discreet probabilities," said the 21-year-old California native who wrote his undergraduate thesis on matroids and the greedy algorithm. Talking about poker with him is a little like reading a math textbook: implied odds, game theory, permissible strategy.
Yet for all of his mathematical subtleties, Gullett found it was easy to identify poor players. Before sitting down in a virtual card room, he looks for players who bet too often.
"Choosing your room is one of the most important things in making money," Gullett said.
Like mathematicians, chess players possess certain analytical skills that perfectly suit online poker. They are less likely to become emotionally invested in a particular hand because they are trained to objectively look for the best solution to any given situation. After the game, they tend to dispassionately dissect past performance to improve future play.
Shahade says he maintains enough emotional distance to sit at four virtual tables at once. Recently, he's been experimenting with eight simultaneous games in order to maximize his earning potential.
Additionally, Shahade has taken on a new poker project: teaching his younger sister Jennifer how to play. Although she's only been competing online since January, the two-time U.S. women's chess champion has already won some small cyber tournaments.
At first she was hesitant about online gambling, but she embraced it after her mother urged her to. "Jen, you should play poker," the matriarch said. "It's free money for smart people."
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