A poker pro plays the hand he’s dealt

When youre a professional poker player, time doesnt really exist. Or if it does exist, its measured in decks of cards, in hands, in raises and calls and bluffs, in pots taken and pots lost. Which is why when Jon Urban won $27,000 and a Rolex watch for taking the top place in a Las Vegas poker tournament, the first thing he did was sell the watch.

What did he need a Rolex for?

(John Kelly/THE WASHINGTON POST) - Jon Urban, 28, poses for a photo in Washington, D.C. Jon quit his job as an engineer at Black & Decker to live his dream.

Jon is the Montgomery County native I first wrote about three years ago, when he was 28 and had just quit a well-paying engineering job with Black & Decker to move to Vegas and play poker professionally. Who among us wouldnt love to trade the 9-to-5 grind for the glamour and freedom of professional pokerdom?

But Jon is nothing if not a realist, and last year he traded the glamour and freedom of professional pokerdom for the 9-to-5 grind.

Overall, I think it was a success, Jon said of his 18-month stint playing cards. I managed to make somewhat of a living.

But he was missing his longtime girlfriend (first she was in Washington; now shes in Dallas), and he was in a rut, profit-wise. He had started out hot but for six months had been struggling. I was extremely unlucky, Jon told me on the phone from Dallas. Also, I noticed that I started getting a little arrogant and started losing my discipline.

Jon had always prided himself on his discipline, his ability to fold bad hands, to ignore bullying or buffoonish tablemates. But he saw that slipping.

I was trying different types of moves and plays that I really had no business doing, he said. Although he thought a change in his style of play from what poker players call tight-aggressive to loose-aggressive was a step in the right direction, he decided to walk away, to move to Dallas to be with his girlfriend, to look for a job in the real world.

It was a strange circumstance to go into an interview and say, Yes, my last job was in Vegas as a professional poker player, Jon said. I got some funny looks. But I did have Black & Decker behind it, so that definitely helped.

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A poker pro plays the hand he’s dealt