A Poker Life by Kenna James
Life on the professional poker trail is an experience that many dream about. My name is Kenna James and I would like to share my own dream journey, which started with nothing and currently has me in the Top Ten world-wide ranking among tournament professionals.
The Early Days
TJ, Doyle, Chip, Bobby, and the legendary rounders from before my time might laugh when I refer to 1995 as the early days, but even then it was a much different game. Poker had come out of the smoky back rooms where choosing the best seat meant the one facing the door. But there was still plenty of smoke. Players were allowed to puff away at the table and were generally cast in a bad light.
The $20 buy-in tournaments at Hollywood Park Casino are where my poker story begins. I had secured a job as a dealer and was putting my earnings in play at the lowest levels. Along with the evening daily tournaments, I started playing $1-$2 limit. I purchased my first poker book, Hold'em Poker for Advanced Players by sklanski and Malmuth, on the advice of a friend. "Hell, I'm advanced," I thought. "It's time to move up to $2-$4!" The book was written for $10-$20 and above, but I was applying the tactics at the $2-$4 and $3-$6 levels. Reading and studying the game became routine. I kept log books not only of my results, but sometimes of every hand I played.
Even though I enjoyed playing and learning, I didn't seem to fit in. These players were not interested in getting better, but were just looking for an escape from the harsh realities of the outside world. It was disturbing, because it felt like I was playing with people that were gambling with welfare checks. I began to question whether it was right to play a game where the goal was to take someone else's money. I grew up in a small town in the Midwest and came from a middle-class family. I arrived in California innocent and naive, sheltered from these harsh realities.
I started watching the yellow chip ($5-$10) games and began setting my sights on them. I was making $125 a day dealing and probably was squeaking out another $100 from the felt. The moral decision still hung in the back of my head, but I made the move and continued to play. I began losing and eventually went broke more than once. I would borrow money, win and pay back, and then go broke again. It was a vicious cycle. I remember one night in particular, sitting in my car in the parking lot of HPC, crying and wondering what I was going to do next. My emotions hidden by the dark night as I slumped against the steering wheel, I picked myself up but still struggled to balance work and stay in action. This went on for a year until I was promoted from dealer to running the daily tournaments.
Then in 1997 I had an epiphany, the notion that poker was not a game of me against everyone else, but rather a game of me against myself. My ability to develop and apply qualities such as discipline, patience, and the ability to read people and their actions not only brought better poker results, but helped develop character beyond the table. As I learned the game and improved, I found that it held me accountable for my newfound knowledge; if I deviated from what i knew was right I was usually punished. My lack of patience, my inability to wait for the proper hand or situation, cost me dearly in my education; that's a class in which I am continually enrolled.
I began to see the game come alive and become a microcosm for life. I now understood that the work was within and not looking out, and the chips were just a way of keeping score. With my moral dilemma resolved, I started playing more of the $20 tournaments and had some good results. I liked the idea that everyone started on equal footing, and that the champion would be decided by who played cards the best that day. I won my first weekly tournament that year and, in between work, extended my tournament travels to Lake Elsinore. The tournaments were bigger ($200 buy-ins) and the structures offered the players more chips and longer rounds. One night, I finished second to Jun Prado, and just like that I won over $10,000, had a bankroll, and felt ready to conquer the poker world.