Published: January 04, 2007 11:58 am      

Poker Player's Chance

Stakes high for amateur poker player making run in professional tournament

CUMBERLAND - Unlike football, where an amateur player could never join the big leagues and expect to play beside football greats such as Jim Brown or Sam Huff, a reason so many people enjoy poker is because it's a sport where, no matter how much of an amateur you are, you can sit next to the pros and play the game.

"That's the great thing about poker. You don't have to be a world-class player to get in," 22-year-old chemical engineering student Jonathan Rice said.

Rice may very well know what he's talking about, for the Cumberland man has won the right to play in the World Poker Tour twice. It's a tournament where last year's winner took away $1 million. And while other players have paid up to $8,000 in entry fees for the privilege to play, Rice hasn't.

"I entered a satellite tournament ... and spent $15. My overall cost has been $80 to get a $12,000 package," Rice said.

A satellite tournament occurs online, where thousands of people participate in Internet poker. Rice has played at the PokerStars site, where he won a poker tournament and a free trip to Paradise Island. On Friday, Rice will join professional poker players for the 2007 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure.

The officially sanctioned PCA tour ends with a six-person finale Wednesday, and when the Travel Channel televises the final poker table from that event later this year, Ross hopes to be among the winners.

For this competition, the game is Texas Hold 'Em, a game where each player is dealt two cards, and the most popular poker game in casinos and poker card rooms. But whether it's Texas Hold 'Em or another poker game, ask anyone who doesn't play poker, and bets are on they'll tell you it's a game about out-bluffing your opponent.

Rice doesn't agree.

"It happens less than what the public thinks ... in fact, a good player only makes a large bluff two or three times a day," out of a 12-hour day, Rice said.

He believes the idea that bluffing - pretending to hold cards you don't - is common because televised poker, as well as poker as portrayed by Hollywood movie moguls, shows players bluffing all the time. When ESPN televised the World Series of Poker, what Rice calls "the Cadillac of poker tournaments," it only shows 2 or 3 percent of the hands being played, since there's no way to show more than that in an hour segment.

As a chemical engineering student who is one semester away from his master's degree, Rice has taken some pretty challenging math courses at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. So one would think that his math skills would give him an edge when it comes to winning a hand of poker. But Rice says no.

"It's been said that poker is not really a card game. It's a people game that's played with cards," Rice said. "Experience and intuition probably play the biggest role ... those with strictly the math skills won't go as far as those who don't (have them)."

Preparation for the Caribbean trip to join the poker-playing pros started years ago "just as something to do," and Rice only grew serious about the game four years ago. Since then, he said the number of entrants in the World Series of Poker has more than quadrupled. He thinks many of those players are his age - and all of them play online, like he does.

According to the World Series of Poker's Web site, it's a sport that's growing quickly, and in droves. In 2000, it had only 518 players, but by 2005, there were more than 5,000, and in 2006, there were 8,773 players.

Ross believes the pot of gold waiting at the other end of the game is another reason poker has become so popular. "In 2003, the online qualifier spent $40 and won $2.5 million. People watch at home and say, 'He did it. Why can't I?'" Rice said.

It's also a game where "anybody can beat anybody on any given day," if they are dealt the right hand of cards, and if they can manipulate their opponent.

"To be good at the game you have to kind of get inside your opponent's head and figure out what they're doing," Rice said.

That's where the intuition comes in, as well as the experience. But those two factors aren't the only ones that matter.

Again, it goes back to what players hold in their hands, Rice said, for "one turn of a card could make you win" - or lose. Rice learned that lesson in the World Poker Tour in 2005, where he beat two-thirds of the approximately 450 contenders before losing.