The commuter

What would you do if your entire livelihood were suddenly rendered illegal, leaving an eight-year hole in your C.V.?

“There’s a desolation to that four-day stretch, and it wears on me. I look forward to getting back to civilization.” He spends his American “weekends” in very normal ways: having lunch with friends, going to movies with his fiancé, and water skiing every Friday at the Mission Bay Aquatic Center. While he sometimes gets out for tennis or dinner in Rosarito, his primary function there is playing winning hands of No Limit Texas Hold ‘Em. “I’m a bit of a loner anyway, and at the end of a work day I usually just wanna make dinner and be passively entertained on the couch.” Shane is, for the most part, a very free laborer, governed only by his own sleep schedule and the patterns of tournament play. He’s also a very smart guy, independent and hard-working, which made me wonder if he ever thought about pursuing another line of work.

“I’ve considered other things to do, but to be honest at this point there doesn’t seem to be an abundance of options. I enjoy writing, and I used to have ambitions as a writer — blogging is a big part of my online sponsorship, but I’ve never come close to making a living at it, and I’m not sure if I could.” What would you do if your entire livelihood were suddenly rendered illegal, leaving an eight-year hole in your C.V.? As someone who also works online for a living, I tried to put myself in his shoes: if collecting money from internet publishing is taken off the deck, what happens? I apply for a copy-editing job at the local alt-weekly, which is always going out of business anyway? Maybe try to sell handwritten poetry to tourists in Venice Beach? Try to go back and get another, less-frivolous degree at an expensive graduate school? Although they exist, the offline options currently available to me suck, and getting into a new line of work would require a long evolution of education and networking. As an entire generation of online laborers has done, I’ve internalized the routines and strategies of working primarily through a computer interface. To knock down that structure wouldn’t just be a setback, it would be a career-stopper. The same goes for internet card sharks.

“In a way I’m envious of live poker players.” Shane has friends who still play live games, with an hour commute to cardrooms in Commerce, CA. “But casinos are not a pleasant environment to work in, especially during the day,” Shane says with a scowl. He doesn’t have to explain. The stench of Vegas leaps instantly into my mind’s nostril, a wretched concoction of pungent air fresheners mixed with the cigarette smoke of a million one-glove’d slots tourists, all filtered through the depressing light emitted from stained chandeliers that never, ever turn off. It can be enthralling for a few days a year, but to call that scene my office would drive me to melancholia. And the internet provides an important level of abstraction away from some of the harsher realities of the gambling lifestyle, like the fact that someone has to lose in order for you to win.

“I wouldn’t want to be flippant about that. Who do I make money off of? Gambling addicts, for sure, people who had an unfortunate streak of beginner’s luck and now spend their free time trying to find it again, people who like gambling but can’t seem to get better at it.” Winning consistently is an analytical process that takes time, talent, and luck — Shane happens to have all three, but others, by necessity, don’t. “I have to win a net amount of times to get payouts, and those payouts have to come from new deposits, or from people who play consistently and lose consistently. Poker is an egalitarian thing — it takes a minute to learn and a lifetime to master.” Throw in the element of sheer luck — “you can put the best player in the world in front of a first time player and the rookie will win 35% of the time” — and you’ve got something of a professional sport where amateurs are allowed to test their mettle in the big leagues whenever they want. And who could blame them? They’ve got a decent chance of winning.