{"id":9649,"date":"2015-10-02T16:09:50","date_gmt":"2015-10-02T20:09:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/?p=9649"},"modified":"2015-10-02T16:09:50","modified_gmt":"2015-10-02T20:09:50","slug":"alumnus-goes-all-in-on-a-poker-career-it-was-a-good-bet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/?p=9649","title":{"rendered":"Alumnus goes all in on a poker career. It was a good bet."},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_9651\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-9651\" style=\"width: 200px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-9651 size-medium\" src=\"http:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/Connor-Berkowitz1-200x300.jpg\" alt=\"Connor-Berkowitz\" width=\"200\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/Connor-Berkowitz1-200x300.jpg 200w, https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/Connor-Berkowitz1.jpg 333w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-9651\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Connor Berkowitz \u201912 won the top prize in his second World Series of Poker event. Photo by Antonio Abrego<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Connor Berkowitz has played poker casually since high school,\u00a0but after getting laid off from his finance job with JPMorgan Chase, and entering a few tournaments for fun, he decided to get serious and turn pro\u2014which to him meant tracking his winnings and losses in a spreadsheet.<\/p>\n<p>That was in January. Six months later, Berkowitz recorded a $487,784 profit after winning the World Series of Poker\u2019s Lucky Sevens Texas Hold \u2019Em tournament.<\/p>\n<p>The 2012 international business graduate admits being a little nervous in the early goings of the four-day event, held at the Rio in Las Vegas. \u201cThe buzz around the building was pretty overwhelming at first,\u201d he says, in part because the relatively low $777 buy-in attracted more than 4,400 participants.<\/p>\n<p>But Berkowitz adjusted, and as it turns out, felt most confident while at the tables. \u201cDuring breaks, when I was walking around blowing off steam\u2014that\u2019s when I felt nervous,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<p>Any reason for nerves disappeared during the final round, in which Berkowitz knocked off a three-time WSOP tournament winner and another player with more than $5 million in career winnings. The 10-1 chip lead he held by the end made the win more surreal than surprising. Still, when interviewed right after the win, he remembers thinking, \u201cI don\u2019t know what\u2019s happening.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>His only splurge since taking home nearly half a million dollars has been to buy a new car: a 2016 Audi A3. He\u2019s saving the rest of his winnings for entry fees and travel costs for tournaments with bigger buy-ins.<\/p>\n<p>As much as the money helps, getting his first WSOP bracelet (the trophy for winning a tournament) is more exciting, says Berkowitz: \u201cIt&#8217;s something I watched on TV when I was a kid, so for it to actually happen is awesome.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Six months after turning pro, Connor Berkowitz \u201912 won nearly half a million dollars in the World Series of Poker\u2019s Lucky Sevens Texas Hold \u2019Em tournament. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":280,"featured_media":9651,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni-corner","category-fall-2015"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/280"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9649\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}