Eugene Katchalov has live tournament earnings of close to $10M, having collected numerous wins on the European Poker Tour, the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure, the World Poker Tour and the World Series of Poker, among others.
What happens when a hobby becomes a job?
No one starts off in poker as a pro; we learn it with family or friends, as a game played primarily for fun. That’s how I began, and while I went on to spend a long time playing poker around the world for high stakes, stepping up to that level doesn’t happen overnight. It requires preparation, dedication, a love for the game and a willingness to put in the work.
A good part of that preparation came from long nights spent in card rooms around New York City, learning the intricacies of the game, talking through strategies with friends and developing my own mental playbook. But in some ways I’d been preparing for that life before I even played a hand of poker.
That’s because, back in the day, I was an avid video gamer.
‘Gamers’ and ‘players’
I played a lot of strategy games, such as Warcraft II, and I was obsessed with competing at a high level — though I never troubled the top ranks of any video game, even back then before the esports boom.
As with poker, you need to put in the time to fully understand the nuances of a competitive multiplayer video game; which options are available, which strategies are optimal, what your opponent can do to counter them, and how you can counter that.
You need an appreciation of psychology because you’re constantly second-guessing your competition, getting into the minds of your rivals and trying to take advantage of any bad habits, blind spots or poor execution.
And crucially, you also need to learn how to deal with pressure, and with losing. Dealing with losses is one of the most important aspects of being a professional poker player, or in fact a competitor in any field.
Starcraft tournaments can attract massive audience and prize pools of $1M or more.
An eye-opening trip with ElkY
My first real exposure to esports was around 2012, when I visited Seoul, Korea with Bertrand ‘ElkY’ Grospellier, who at the time was a fellow PokerStars Team Pro.
ElkY may have some fame in poker circles, but that’s nothing compared to his status in the Starcraft community out there. He was one of the first non-Koreans to move there and take up Starcraft professionally, and even today many people recognize him much more for his achievements in esports than in poker.
He took me to a Starcraft event, held in a packed stadium with huge crowds going wild watching the live games. It really opened my eyes to the possibilities in the esports scene, and after that it seemed like I saw more and more events, growing bigger and bigger and taking place in the US, and all over the world.
It was also around that time that I’d started to think about my life and career beyond the game of poker. I asked myself a tough question: Do I see myself still playing poker for a living when I’m 50? 60? The clear answer, for me, was ‘no’.
I’d always dreamed of doing something in business, and so when my PokerStars contract finished in 2016, that’s just what I did. Together with another friend from my PokerStars Team Pro days — Luca Pagano — we decided to launch an esports team: Qlash.
Building something special
The first game our new team focused on was Hearthstone — a strategic two-player card game with some similarities to poker — though we then moved on to other, more traditional games such as League of Legends and Counter-Strike, as well as lots of mobile games in order to make our team accessible to many more players and fans.
Our goal was to build a community, and then to organize our own events and create an app where our fans could compete. We brought in some famous names from the poker world to invest, including Daniel Negreanu, Phil Hellmuth and Jeff Gross, for example, and we created something special.
We built the Qlash House, a dedicated facility in Treviso, Italy, from which players can train, play, stream, compete and more.
Team members at the Qlash House.Neither Luca nor myself were able to help the players improve at the games they play — they were all too far ahead of us in that regard for us to even try — but what we could do is create a really great atmosphere where the team can train.
Then, we could impart the relevant lessons we’ve learned from poker: the importance of diet, exercise and keeping physically fit, and how to cope with losses and the emotional swings you must endure when your whole professional life consists of either winning, or losing.
Similar, but different
I think one of the reasons why poker took off as much as it did, is because there's a great balance between luck and skill. Skill is important, but not overwhelmingly so to the point where luck doesn't matter. Luck still plays a very, very important role in poker, and I think that's what makes it a lot of fun.
Something like chess, or Starcraft II, is a different proposition. There is far less luck involved. If I were to sit down and play against the best, I would never win. That’s one thing that makes high-level games of this type so fascinating, but it’s also why gambling on chess, for example, is so rare. Trying to find a game of poker with no gambling involved, on the other hand, is a tough task.
There are areas where poker and esports overlap, and areas where they’re different beasts entirely. But if you’re considering going into either at a high level, you’ll quickly find out two aspects they definitely share.
- They may look like nothing but fun, but they require hard work.
- Everyone from your friends to your parents will assume you do nothing but goof off, play games and have fun all day!
Whether it’s poker, chess, Starcraft or Twister, games are designed to be fun, and that’s all that most people will want from them.
If your hobby becomes your career it doesn’t mean you have to lose the joy that attracted you to the game in the first place, but don’t forget that you’ll need to put in the work; that’s what makes it a job.
