A successful online player shares his secrets in a new book
By Mark Baker - The Register-Guard - Appeared in print: Saturday, Feb. 27, 2010, page A1
And there might not be anybody in the world who is better at that than the 28-year-old from Portland who will sign copies of his new book, “Treat Your Poker Like a Business,” today in Eugene.
An online poker guru who has made more than $3 million in the past five years, Schmidt once had a bright future as a professional golfer. He said he was such a good golfer as a kid growing up in Whittier, Calif., that he broke a couple of Tiger Woods’ Southern California junior golf records.
After dropping out of the University of California, Irvine, after just one year, Schmidt played on a California-based mini pro tour for four or five years, becoming its leading money winner, until something unthinkable hit him: a heart attack.
He was only 23.
That pretty much took care of his immediate golf aspirations. But Schmidt quickly found something else. He caught the online poker bug when a friend from Eugene, former University of Oregon golfer Matt Amen, introduced it to him in 2004, about seven months after his heart attack.
A few months later, Schmidt took what he said was his final $1,000 and played online poker with it to try to make more money to pay his medical bills. Over two months, he turned the $1,000 into about $15,000, he said. Not bad for a guy who had never played a hand of poker at a table with real, live human beings.
Schmidt then moved to Eugene from Newport Beach, Calif., in 2005 to rent a room from Amen’s next-door neighbor, Casey Martin, now the UO golf coach. That’s when Schmidt really began to focus on his online poker skills, clicking away on his laptop in the guest room of Martin’s home.
“He really never left the house,” said Martin, who sometimes would watch over Schmidt’s shoulder.
“I really think there’s a window here where I could get really good at this,” Martin said Schmidt told him. “I think I could make $1 million in a year.”
Martin was astonished.
“Now he’s one of the best,” said Martin, now a close friend who can relate to
Schmidt not only as a golfer but as someone who has had to overcome a serious health issue.
Autobiography due out
Schmidt, who now takes medication in the form of nitrates, said his heart condition is related to vascular spasms he’d been having before being struck by the heart attack in a Newport Beach grocery store.
Martin, born with a congenital circulatory defect in his right leg, is best known for challenging the PGA Tour in court, and winning, for the right to use a golf cart in a case that went all the way to the U.S Supreme Court.
Martin invited Schmidt, who is still a scratch golfer, to be a volunteer coach for the UO golf team last fall. Schmidt, now an avid UO sports fan, especially when it comes to Duck football, spends quite a bit of time in Eugene. But his true passion, and focus, has become online poker, in which players deposit money with a credit card and play against others online.
Whether online poker is legal seems to be a gray area of the law.
Although Congress passed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act in 2006 (which will go into effect in June), it is generally thought to exclude online poker because it involves wagers between individuals and not between a bettor and a casino.
Democrats in Congress have been pushing to legalize online gambling and collect taxes and licensing fees from operators.
“I wouldn’t promote myself doing this if it were illegal,” Schmidt said.
The fight in Congress involves lobbyists from groups, such as Focus on the Family, that view gambling as an addiction.
Schmidt has never had a losing month playing online poker, he said. In fact, in June 2008, he made almost $200,000. Schmidt, who later this year will release an autobiography entitled “Raise: Between Golf and Poker, There’s Life,” is known among his online poker peers as the “Hardest Working Man in Poker.”
Study and hard work
But how in the world has Schmidt done it?
Apparently, with good, old-fashioned business sense. Maybe he got that from his parents, who own a successful company that distributes nonfood items to grocery stores in Southern California.
“I’ve always just kind of had a belief in myself,” Schmidt said. “Why can’t I be one of the bigger money makers in the world?”
There are maybe a few hundred in the world playing online poker who make the kind of money he does, anywhere from $250,000 to $1 million a year, according to Schmidt, who lives in Portland with his wife, Nicole, a UO graduate he met in Eugene, and their 5-month-old daughter.
His secret is nothing more than study and hard work, Schmidt said. He’s even seen a sports psychologist, something not uncommon for professional golfers, to help him become so focused that he can go for hours, playing as many as 15 virtual poker tables at one time, without a break.
Instead of focusing on huge pots of money, Schmidt focuses on winning small margins with lots of hands. He claims that he has played nearly 7 million hands of online poker over more than 10,000 hours in the past five years.
“This is something anybody can do,” Schmidt said.
Martin disagrees. It’s Schmidt’s work ethic, drive and “street-smart” intelligence that have paid off for him, said Martin, who tried online poker when Schmidt was living with him but quickly lost about $2,000. Martin sticks to the occasional game of regular poker, which Schmidt isn’t too shabby at now either. In fact, Schmidt said he will play in the annual World Series of Poker this summer in Las Vegas.
A lot of people have an image of some greasy guy when they think of a gambler or poker player, Martin said. But nothing could be further from the truth when it comes to Schmidt, he said.
Schmidt wants to make philanthropy a big part of his future. During December’s deep freeze in Oregon, Schmidt hit the streets of downtown Portland to do his online poker playing among the homeless in O’Bryant Square. He took “a bunch” of laptops and played for several hours one day, making $21,000, which all went to a charity that distributed the money to several homeless individuals.
“He’s just a wonderful guy,” Martin said. “And he’s worked really hard at it.”
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So, for now, Schmidt will stick with online poker.
“It’s pretty appealing to be able to make money in your underwear at home,” he said.
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