After starting to play poker for nickels and dimes in his LoRise unit a year and a half ago, Mike Goodman ’05 found himself sitting at a high-stakes poker tournament in a resort in the Bahamas this past December.
The satellite tournament, called “Poker Starter Caribbean Adventure,” was sponsored by www.pokerstarter.com, an online poker gambling site where Goodman has been playing for close to a year. Goodman had a modest winning streak on the website and the online poker company selected him to compete in the tournament.
“I had won $150 online, which won my way into the tournament, and also paid for the hotel and airfare,” he said. The company also waived the eight thousand dollar buy-in fee for Goodman to enter the tournament.
“I had never done anything like this,” he said. “It was a surreal experience.”
Goodman came in tenth in a tournament of approximately 400 players, many of whom where professional gamblers. While the gambling age in the United States is 21, any person of at least 18 years of age can legally gamble in the Bahamas. According to Goodman, there were probably more young players than in usual tournaments for this reason.
The tournament was not only Goodman’s first time sitting down at a poker table at a high-stakes tournament. It was also the first time in the country’s history that people could legally play Texas Hold’em in the Bahamas. According to Goodman, it is illegal to gamble on poker in the Bahamas. The tournament received a permit to hold the 5-day tournament on Paradise Island.
The tournament was hosted by the Atlantis hotel in Paradise Island, a luxurious game resort that tries to recreate the grandeur of the legendary idyllic island in Greek mythology. The tournament itself lasted five days. According to Goodman, the tournament would resume each day at noon and would go for 8-10 hours, with short breaks in between for meals and restroom trips.
“It was a lot of math and a lot of strategy,” Goodman said. “From the beginning it was a win/win situation. If I didn’t win anything, I still would have a week in the Bahamas with my girlfriend. Coming back, though, I was kind of in shock. I did much better than I expected to do.”
The final nine contestants participated in the last day of the tournament, which was televised on the Travel Channel.
“It was frustrating to know that I was only one person away from sitting at the final table and six away from being on television,” Goodman said.
Still, Goodman is hoping to play poker on national television in the near future. He has plans to bring his strategy and luck to the World Series Poker tournament that is televised on the ESPN network.
“In a tournament like World Series Poker, the level of [skill] of the players [is less difficult] because there are so many who enter, but it is a harder tournament precisely because there are so many people to get through in order to sit at that final table,” Goodman said.
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