Once Upon a Serendipity
When you grow up in a small town in the middle of nowhere in Germany, daydreams of exploring the world at some point seem somewhat pointless. The typical family vacations to France or Turkey open up some room for imagination but only portray the fortunate side of the coin with all-inclusive resorts and bus trips to the major sightseeing spots.
Once you grow up and have to find a fitting education that will increase the chances of finding a job in a region where available jobs were as rare to find as hitting a two-outer on the river. There was an option to buy some time and decide what to do best as back then we still had a mandatory period in either the army or social services.
It was back then when I saw some adverts for poker online and somehow luckboxed my way through an online step system for a promotion called “National Poker Team”. Fortune was on my side as the SNG format in a hotel in Austria favored my playing style and I don’t recall much trouble to secure a seat in the final. The top two would get a package to visit Las Vegas and the United Kingdom, and I happened to be one of them.
Imagine a near-22-year old that visits Las Vegas for the first time with a football jersey on and 888poker cap turned backwards to look cool. That guy then even reaches the final 100 spots in a $1,500 WSOP Event in 2007 and then misjudges the stack of an opponent to run ace-king into aces. I stuck around some more and departed without any major drama. The obligatory “flash the $100 bills” money shot for the cameras along with pretty embarrassing footage of saying goodbye to my mum before the trip were documented for TV.
The second event as part of the package was an invitational tournament in the Maidstone Studios a few months later. A top two spots in the semi finals locked up a seat to the final and I beat TV producer Barry Hearn and Ian Frazer to advance behind Richard “Chufty” Ashby.
I still remember the one hand I misplayed so badly when I limp-folded pocket fives and ace-queen went to war with ace-king when a five appeared on the flop. The careful approach netted me a third place for $60,000, a lot of money for such a young guy that had little knowledge about poker in general. It may not have been all about luck to run that good but certainly not inspired by expert knowledge either.
During a time when poker productions were shown on German TV with Michael Körner as one of the commentators, I was invited to do so as well during a poker show recorded in the the studios in Cologne. More than eight hours by train one way, hotel paid for, quite fancy to say the least and something one can get used to.
I had finished my education as foreign language correspondent at a business school and skipped the option to earn a certificate as translator, which in hindsight saved me from picking up a boring office job. Instead, a freelance job at the German marketing partner agency of 888poker commenced and I even helped out at some events at the Munich fair.
That was still far away from any kind of international travel and making a living out of writing about poker, however, and I was slowly thinking about ways on how to combine my education and hobby. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to pursue happiness outside of the region I was born if there was a way to make the own profession about something that not many can do.
It would take a lot of twists and turns throughout the next few years to get there, filled with roads that ended in disappointment and other chances that came up in very fortunate fashion, which is in a nutshell what serendipity is about.
Online forums were already booming back then and the own attempt to create a new community as part of a project by the marketing agency led to nothing much, I was more or less ready to give up and finally look for a “normal job” which my parents were expecting.
That’s when I received the offer to visit Canada and talk with the founders of an online poker community with the promising name of Pokerspace to take over a role there and I stayed more than two weeks, eventually signed a contract and was due to complete all my tasks from home. Black Friday struck and the US player base was in jeopardy, another door that eventually closed a few years later.
In the meanwhile, however, I was recommended by a poker player I knew from a German-speaking poker forum (pokergame.pl) and our live events as he signed a contract with the iPoker skin Poker770. They were building a team of ambassadors and sent them to events in Europe and the WSOP, and needed someone to write about their progress. Suddenly the world of the European Poker Tour and the World Poker Tour opened, I bought a camera and lens, walked through and jumped into the ice cold water of “live reporting.”
The poker site was as ambitious to come up with their own Deepstack live poker series and hosted an event four times per year. I ended up creating most of the dedicated website content, social media posts, live updates during the festivals and came up with a ranking system. Taking pictures was not among the duties but turned out to be something I enjoyed a lot.
As promising as some projects may be, the exploits were limited to Europe and the odd week at the WSOP in Las Vegas, and the door would shut eventually when the numbers didn’t justify the support of the poker site anymore. Without any major sponsor, the continuation bet on the flop and turn was called down by middle pair and a blank river ended up being check-folded to explain it in poker terms.
Back then it was more than obvious that I was taken advantage of in numerous situations because of my dedication to get the job done no matter what. One further door had opened, that led into and there was definitely some hesitation involved to also write updates for the German-speaking portal Pokerfirma once in a while.
As a one-off, I covered the WPT Prague in 2013 directly for the WPT website but nothing happened after. One of those doors that seemingly closed but led to more contacts in the industry.
In Spring 2014, I covered the High Roller and Main Event at the EPT Vienna. It was rather unusual as there was also one of the leading outlets involved in PokerNews while I was usually on my own or local media around only.
There was no need to pass on information about some of the action to other media but I did so anyways. Until now I cannot tell what would have happened if that had not been the case but towards the end of the festival, Chad Holloway from PokerNews suggested I apply for their team to cover the 2014 WSOP in Las Vegas.
During my trial run at the 2014 EPT San Remo, Victoria Coren-Mitchell became the first-ever two time champion and a certain Ole Schemion won the High Roller event. I was still sporting the same babyface as in 2007 but with much shorter hair, and fortune was on my side once more as I impressed enough to earn a spot in the live reporting team for the summer.
During all those early years, there were a lot of setbacks, misguided hopes, fortunate circumstances, and the only consistency was the approach of getting the work done in reliable fashion no matter what. If all those doors had not closed and others opened, the whole story may be a lot different.
All those new chances are by far not common and many end up stuck without anything to show for. As far as serendipity is concerned, I only found out later that there is in fact a movie with John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale that bears this exact name.
Thinking about the entire story and the happy end that comes along with it, I am hoping for the same outcome but don’t expect it. Plenty of pages in my own proverbial “Love in the time of Cholera” have been turned over already in my pursuit of happiness and some faith remains to find my own Sara after all.