Sunday, April 08, 2007

The Poker Player's Daughter: Ethier on Ethier

Copied from the Triangle Poker Journal









By Vanessa Ethier
Special Correspondent

Have you ever been sitting there on the computer bored and curious, wondering if you were on the internet? So you pull up Google and you type in your name hit enter and all you see is someone with your name that is 40 years older and lives on the other side of the country that wrote a paper on genetic cell research. So you try your friends, your husband, and heck why not your parents. Wait a second! It’s a hit, or rather 171,000 hits on my dad, Denis Ethier, of Durham.




Sometimes as a college kid you become so absorbed in your books. As an accounting major I was more focused at times on making sure everything balanced that I guess I didn’t know the extent to which my father was enjoying the life of a professional poker player. We talked a lot. But the conversation was usually about how school and work was coming along. He told me that he was traveling all over playing poker but never talked about to the extent to which he was having success.

So the neat part comes when you are the center of conversation. One day at work, one of my coworkers was online on YahooSports choosing players for a fantasy poker league. I took a look at some of the choices and saw Denis Ethier, so I picked him.

My husband and I spent some considerable time in Las Vegas this summer. We were fortunate enough to spend a lot of that time with my father. We got to watch him play in the World Series of Poker. It puts a totally different perspective on things when you attend one of these events live. Television did great things for poker, but it does not do justice for how grinding a tournament can be. Imagine working 70 hours a week and not being able to make any mistakes. One bad calculation and you lose your job. That is the pressure that I felt in the poker room at the Rio in July. Seeing it in person, poker truly was a job.

So I am a CPA and my father is a professional poker player. Not too much in common. That’s what I felt, but now that I have really seen him in his craft I no longer feel the same way. Through analyzing statistics, balancing, making adjustments, and having a good feel for your business environment one would be a good accountant, but they would also be a good poker player too. And discipline is key in both fields too. What I learned in watching my father is that we are alike and my strength in numbers came from him. He learned by doing and I learned in the classroom.

So next time you are watching a poker tournament look for Denis Ethier - the man with the America’s Card Room Hat as he proudly shows off his sponsor http://www.americascardroom.com/. He will have a serious look on his face, just look you and I do when we’re at work.

I’ll be rooting for him, and typing his name into Google whenever I get a chance to see how well he is doing in the big tournament!


Vanessa Ethier lives and works in Arizona. A poker player herself, she runs a comment board at LaunchPoker: http://www.launchpoker.com/forum/u-vanessa-ethier-768.html.

1 comment:

pheobe22 said...

I think this is thoroughly unparalleled.https://juegosdecasinoonlinecolombia.com.co