Math and psychology

Math and psychology: Truesdell's approach to poker pays off
By MISTY MAYNARD Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 9, 2006 9:36 PM EDT Print this story | Email this story

Justin Truesdell earns his living playing games.

About 18 months ago, Truesdell, who graduated from St. Patrick School, learned how to play poker. Within months, he found himself earning more playing the card game than he did at his job, so he quit, and became a professional poker player.

"It's a tough game," Truesdell said. "But it's all math and psychology."

Math just so happens to be Truesdell's "forte." In school, Truesdell said he competed in the academic league in the math category. After graduating high school, Truesdell enrolled at Centre College, where he completed his marketing degree. He was working with Cingular selling cell phones when he started playing poker for fun, only to discover how lucrative it could be for him.

Truesdell now spends about 10 hours a day, four to seven days a week, playing poker, mostly online. He said he starts his day with more money than he made in a month at his previous job.

Recently, Truesdell competed in the World Series of Poker tournament. It was actually through an online site, pokerstars.com, Truesdell entered into a qualifying tournament for the World Series of Poker competition -- and he made the cut. The site paid Truesdell's entry free, and sent him to Las Vegas for the tournament.

For two months, Truesdell said he lived in Las Vegas, playing in smaller tournaments, building up to the main event. More than 8,700 people participated in the tournament, but only about 10 percent of those actually made money from their efforts. Truesdell managed to make more than $16,000 through the tournament.

The tournament, Truesdell said, will be "all over" ESPN in a couple of weeks, and could possibly show the local poker professional.

"I got filmed three times, (they) got my name and hometown," he said, though if he actually appears on television depends on editing.

Truesdell said the players received 10,000 chips, and they would play until someone got all the chips.

"It's about surviving until you can't survive anymore," he said.

While he may be playing a game, Truesdell said it can get intense, with the stress level rising as the stakes rise.

While he travels across the country now playing poker, he said he hopes to make enough money to one day start his own business. The 25-year-old said he will likely continue to play poker for the next five years or so. When he retires from the professional poker arena, Truesdell said he is not exactly sure what he will do.

"I'm young, I'm playing it by ear right now," he said. "I've got a good degree I can always fall back on."

With Truesdell earning most of his living through online poker sites, he is concerned with a proposed "Internet gambling prohibition," which would outlaw Internet poker. He said the ban is mostly being sought to prevent children from using their parents credit cards online, but said there are actually few cases of that occurring. Most of the time, Truesdell said the people who play online are those who work all day, and enjoy a game of low-stakes poker in the evening.

Though his family is supportive of Truesdell's current poker profession, he said he does sometimes receive negative comments from people.

"A lot of people look at me and ask me when I'm going to get a job," he said. "They have no clue that I do much better (playing poker)."

Truesdell said to many, poker is just a game, but he looks at it as if it were a business. He said playing online, he does not have to beat the house, he simply has to beat the other players.

"As long as you're smarter than the average person, or know more about the game than the average person, you can make money," he said.