In 2013, I turned fifty years old.  

I didn't feel fifty, not at all.  I was in good health, running regularly, playing basketball, a little overweight, but almost no gray hairs or wrinkles.  

I could not have been happier at home as well - I was 23 years married to a wonderful person, with two amazing kids, living well in a lovely home.

I was in the prime of my career at the District Attorney's Office, a master of my small universe.  I was well-known and respected in all of the Harris County state and federal courts, and the District Attorney's go-to problem solver.  

I was also teaching and speaking throughout in the state as an expert on legal ethics, criminal law, and public information.  That year, I even got to speak for the first time to the Houston Rockets in their dressing room about staying out of trouble, which I thereafter did every October until the pandemic.

To commemorate the occasion of my fiftieth birthday, I started a blog reviewing craft beers and telling stories about my life.  Although it ran out of gas after sixteen beers, it's still kind of a good read.

At fifty, I had achieved about everything I wanted to do.  My bucket list, such as it was, was down to two things:  

(1)    I wanted to see what a major league curveball, fastball, and slider look like from inside the batter's box; and

(2)    I wanted to play really competitive poker in Las Vegas.  

While I have not yet stood in to face those pitches, turning fifty had opened a door for me to realize my dream of playing poker in the Big Leagues.

Allow me to explain.  

For me, there are two kinds of poker - cash poker and tournament poker.  (I don't count the third kind - recreational poker for low stakes (e.g., nickel-dime-quarter; M&Ms; matchsticks) - because it does not interest me at all).

Cash poker is great fun, but a little dangerous.  You can make a lot of money, but if you are playing no-limit table stakes - which, for me, is the only way to play - all of your money is at risk on every hand.  The fruits of six hours of solid play can turn to ashes when your kings get cracked by aces on an all-in hand.

No, it's better to cap your potential losses by playing tournament poker.  You buy into the tournament and one of two things happens: you lose and take home nothing, or you win and take home some amount more than what you bought in for.  Sometimes, substantially more than what you bought in for.

The problem is that most tournaments only pay when 85 to 90 percent of the field has lost all of their chips.  Think of it this way: under these rules, if you sit down with eight other players in a single table tournament, only one of the players at the table gets paid.  Now extrapolate that out to a tournament with 100 players and that means only 10 to 15 of those players win money.

Despite these daunting odds, I felt confident at age fifty that I could win at tournament poker.  I had been playing a lot of computer poker tournaments and doing well, and I had started playing in a poker league in Houston and doing well.  I had a good sense of the basic principles of the game and had begun to play more creatively, looking for vulnerabilities in other players' games and exploiting them with aggressive stratagems.

But . . . Vegas tournaments were different in two ways.  One, the quality of play at the top was very good and was skewing younger and more aggressive, far beyond my comfort level at that time.  You could have a great hand and still get bullied out of the hand by a little thug in a hoodie who cared more about his table image than his money, a kid intent on showing his girlfriend that he could make a middle-aged family man dance to his tune.

Second, the World Series of Poker tournaments were expensive.  While there were accessible tournaments that cost anywhere from $50 to $350, the prestige events all started at $5000 per entry.  I was a good player, but not that good.

But there was one tournament that negated those two issues: the Seniors Tournament.  No one younger than 50, and only (!) $1000.  I really wanted that to be my first foray into serious WSOP tournament poker.

So I began to plan my debut for June of 2014, and almost got there.  In the spring, I checked the calendar.  I had plenty of vacation time.  I had won substantially more than $1000 in my home games, so I had the money.  I had no other family events planned for the weekend of the tournament -- well, nothing other than my daughter's high school graduation.

It turns out that you cannot negotiate your way out of attending your daughter's graduation, especially for a poker tournament.

So, no Seniors Tournament in 2014.

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But there was a Seniors Tournament in 2015.

That year, I made it about through about seven hours of play before ending my tournament going all-in with AJ, losing to AQ (a move I would know better than to make today).

I didn't play in 2016, but in 2017, I made it to the money, finishing 758th out of 5389 players.

In 2018, I went out in about five hours, losing my stack to three deuces (a hand I despise because it is such a cheap way to win, which is not to say I won't play it myself, but I always feel a little bad about taking someone's chips with it).

In 2019, I made the money again, finishing 218th out of 5916 players.

Here's my WSOP page, with the results:

As you might notice above, I also made the final table in a $365 WSOP tournament in 2018 in Oklahoma, finishing 8th out of 1006 players.  Here's the official final table picture (note the giant chip stack in front of me, sigh):

So, when I tell you I can play tournament poker, it's pretty much true.

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Starting in 2017, I sold pieces of my tournament to my friends for $5 each.  They would own a half-percent of my winnings for their five dollar investment, and with the exception of 2018, they all made money.  For example, the 2019 tournament paid each investor $18.70, a 374 percent return on investment.  Plus they got to read my blog for that tournament (linked here).

This year, I am trying something new.  Five people have invested $100 each, so I have sold 50% of my tournament winnings to them. 

My investors are a diverse group.  My friend and bandmate Glenn was the first one - he wanted to invest $500, but I declined that kind offer.  Here's a picture of him and I mid-song (he's the one with the red guitar):

The other investors are my friend and poker buddy Nathan, my friend and poker buddy Mitch, my friend and personal trainer Art, and my new friend and absolutely lovely person Beverly (who I met through Art, and who offered to invest the entire $1000, which I gently declined, wanting her to remain my new friend - maybe next year!)

I'm not sure whether this new plan is going to affect my game - I never really worried that much about anyone losing $5 supporting me, but I would feel more awful losing someone's $100, especially on a dumb aggressive play early in the tournament.

But time will tell on that - I plan to play the same way I always play and make money for my investors.  If I lose, I lose.  But I am an adherent of the concept of visualization, and this is what I am visualizing right now:

I leave on Tuesday for Las Vegas and will keep you posted!