The RP Writes for The Daily Beast on the World Series of Poker

In case you missed his posts over the July 4th weekend — what could you have been doing that’s more important, The RP didn’t repeat as a World Series of Poker finalist this year.

(Read all of his daily reports– Part 1: Leaving for Las Vegas, Part 2: The WSOP Begins, Part 3: Next!, Part 4: Taking a Mulligan, Part 5: Beware of Three Jacks, Part 6: BadLuck Jonathan)

But in his inaugural piece as an official Contributor for Newsweek/The Daily Beast, The RP shares a story of a more halcyon time, a year ago this weekend, when he made an incredible run at the World Series of Poker.  Here’s an excerpt:

A year ago this week, the Jackson Five saved my life at a Las Vegas casino.

OK, unless you’re a fellow poker nerd, don’t take me too literally.

But my own impossible story, of a middle-aged amateur winning big on the green felt of Sin City, may help explain why thousands of my fellow wannabes are flocking to the 44th annual World Series of Poker this weekend for its globally celebrated main event.

It’s also why millions more will be tuning in to ESPN to watch the only “sport” in which an unpracticed, out-of-shape math geek can compete on the game’s biggest stage with the world’s preeminent professionals

Like many men my age, I’ve always been fascinated with poker. Never an exceptional athlete, poker presented me a unique opportunity to leverage my theretofore un-hip math skills in a competition that oozes of machismo and swagger. In pop culture, poker is played in rustic saloons by pistol-wielding studs named “Tex” and “Slim”; in the real world, it presents an ideal boys’ night of whiskey swigging, cigar chewing, and even a little extra-cash-winning.

But competing for big money? Flicks like Rounders and The Cincinnati Kidtaught that those contests were the province of practiced professionals, wiseguys, cheaters, and almost as often the unsuspecting novice “fish” who were swallowed by the poker sharks at their tables.