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A Freer Game Part I

Basketball players are sequoia people. Football players are triceratops and soccer players are gazelles. Baseball players have rifles extending from their shoulders. While you do have to work hard to join the ranks of professional athletes, the truth of the matter is that you have to be born lucky first.

The poker table is not so selective. There is no shape that the poker player must first fill to succeed. All types of people afflicted with conditions from manic depression to blindness have found themselves ahead at the poker table in major competition. Here are four of their stories.

Hal Lubarsky

Hal Lubarsky was born in Brooklyn, New York with a time bomb in his eyes. Hal was born with a genetic disorder called retinitis pigmentosa which causes the gradual deterioration of the retinas and eventually, complete blindness. Like most boys born in Brooklyn, Hal played poker. But unlike the other boys, Hal made money – Hal made a lot of money. In fact, at the age of 29, Hal moved to Las Vegas and became a professional poker player. He would find tremendous success playing in the $150/$300 H.O.R.S.E. games and became a fixture at many of the other top games in Las Vegas.

Then, in the late 90s, the genetic disorder which had remained relatively dormant, caught fire. Within six months of noticing a tunneling in his vision, Hal was asking dealers to read the cards on the board to him. Finally, by 2000, Hal was no longer able to read his own cards.

Hal battled with depression as he struggled to find a way back into the world he loved. He tried internet games with friends present to announce both the community cards and his own hole cards. But Hal found the action to be too high-paced especially with the demands placed on his readers. So after a lifetime and career in poker, Hal was unable to see a future in cards.

Then came a breakthrough. After experimenting with live aids, or “card-callers”, Hal Lubarsky finagled his way into the 2007 WSOP Main Event. While just about every other player showed up with the $10,000 buy-in and was given a seat, Hal was forced to dangle discrimination litigation over reticent tournament officials.

Officials relented and allowed Lubarsky to enter along with a card caller who would whisper Hal’s cards into his ear as well as announce the board. 6,358 players entered the same tournament Hal did. This field included the most successful and celebrated players in the world and represented the second largest tournament in history. To win the 2007 WSOP Main Event would take almost a week of playing poker for more than 12 hours per day, to make the money one would have to outlast more than 5,500 other players and finish in the top 621.

Hal did not win the 2007 WSOP Main Event – amateur player and psychologist Jerry Yang took home the $8.25 million first prize. At 5:17 pm on July 13, 2007 Hal Lubarsky lost the last of his chips in the 2007 WSOP Main Event. But Hal finished in 196th place and took home more than $51,000. He outlasted poker greats Doyle Brunson, Phil Hellmuth and Johnny Chan along with 6,162 other players. Hal is now playing regularly in high stakes games in Las Vegas once again.

Dutch Boyd

By all accounts, Russ “Dutch” Boyd is a genius. Dutch was born in 1980 and began attending college at 12 years old. By 18, he had graduated law school and by the age of 20 he had co-founded one of the first online poker rooms, PokerSpot. Dutch is also a diagnosed and medicated manic depressive.

After an ignoble end to PokerSpot, Dutch spearheaded a group of young poker players calling themselves “The Crew”. This group includes pros Scott Fischman, David Smyth, Tony Lazar, Brett Jungblut and has accounted for 4 WSOP bracelets and 2 WPT championships to date. They burst onto the scene in the 2003 WSOP on the heels of Dutch’s 12th place finish in the Main Event (and if it weren’t for an unbelievable call by Chris Moneymaker, he could have finished much higher.) He followed that impressive performance up by finishing 2nd to TJ Cloutier in the 2004 WSOP Razz tournament and eventually winning a coveted WSOP bracelet in 2006. Along the way, he struggled with his sanity.

Boyd would hole up in his home for days on end, sure that external forces were threatening his life. As is the case with most people afflicted with the mental disorder, Dutch had a lot of good days and would hit the poker tables when he was able.

But most days were not good days. Rather than face the public ridicule associated with being a “schizo”, Boyd hid his condition and became withdrawn. On those occasions when he would make public appearances, he often appeared frantic and weirdly enamored with bodily functions. He infamously interrupted a television interview with Mike Matusow to ask if “The Mouth” had ever drank his own urine… and then took a drink from a suspiciously colored Sprite bottle. Boyd’s game suffered and despite repeatedly buying into tournaments for as much $10,000 a piece he wouldn’t make more than $46,000 in a tournament for 3 years.

In 2006, Dutch Boyd publically acknowledged on his official website what many of those closest to him already knew, that he suffered from manic depression. That year, he would win his biggest tournament and $475,712 by coming in first at the WSOP Short Handed NL Hold’em tournament. He has since won more than $400,000 with his most recent victory coming in late November of 2007 at the WPT Bellagio Five Diamond Poker Classic. Despite his many ups and downs, Dutch is still only 27 years old.

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