Editor’s note: This article was first published in August 2014. The 15 million dollar prize matches the Big One for One Drop at the World Series of Poker in July 2014, though the original does not name it. “Recently” and “now” refer to that summer.
Daniel Colman recently won a poker tournament with a prize of 15 million dollars. But his face showed no sign of joy, and he only posed for a photo next to the mountain of banknotes because the organisers required it. Once the photo was taken, the young man left without saying a word.
The video went viral, because nobody could understand why someone who had just won 15 million dollars was not jumping for joy and kept, quite literally, a “poker face”.
Now Daniel Colman has explained why he did not celebrate the prize.
First, Colman says he owes nothing to poker, even though in his case he has been lucky enough to profit from the game. But he does not want to promote poker, because during his years in the game he has seen the true dark side of the people involved in it.
Colman believes people are misled when they are shown a handful of success stories. In reality, he would not advise anyone to try to become a professional player, because, whatever people may think, very few people in this game lead a rewarding and happy life. Far more common is a life full of stress, bad habits and heavy financial losses.
“The losers lose more money than the winners win,” says Colman, adding that most players even lose more money than they can afford to lose. And no average player is happy to lose that kind of money just to have some fun.
“If someone is enough of a sucker to gamble more money than they can afford to lose, fine. That’s their problem. But the business in this gambling world relies on a kind of advertising that tries to promote the game on false expectations, exploiting human weaknesses so that people make irrational decisions. I have no problem with someone freely deciding to play poker, but I don’t agree with this kind of advertising.”
Individual achievements are what gets promoted, so that people focus on someone who is an isolated case and has succeeded at the game. This emotionally encourages others to try to make money the same way without looking beyond themselves.
“It worries me that people want to promote poker as something good, when it is a game that really has a very negative effect on the people who play it, both financially and emotionally.”
Colman admits that he uses the game to profit from other people’s weaknesses. In other words, when he wins money at poker, he does it by fleecing other suckers who are trying to do what he does. And he is not in favour of more “suckers” losing their money in a game that has a very dark side.
Even so, he admits that he loves the game because it is a game of strategy. This way of thinking certainly does him credit.
Watch: the moment Daniel Colman wins the prize
Featured image: World Poker Tour, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
