 |
Life’s
A Bluff
Poker and good stories seem to go hand in hand. I’m not talking about your run-of-the-rail bad beat stories, but the ones that follow the greats based on their lives and crazy times. There are lots of great stories about players like Scotty Nguyen, Freddie Deeb or Sammy Farha overcoming tough odds to make it to the States and make it big. Or business barons like Andy Beal and Jerry Buss, that donate huge sums of their winnings to charity every year. Or the legends of the game like Doyle Brunson, Stu Unger and Chip Reese that have given us poker as we know it today. You don’t hear much about the average guy from the Mid-West, who worked his way up through the ranks the hard way. Someone who wedged his way onto the televised tournament circuit and made it big, but still gives back to charity in time and money? Well, that’s because there haven’t been a lot of people like “Cowboy” Kenna James. Brought up in Chicago, moved to California, Kenna worked on his dream of being a top poker player well before the “Moneymaker” boom of 2003. In fact, Kenna started out in 1996 at the not-so-glamorous L.A. card room and race track, Hollywood Park as a dealer. A year later, he started to play in the myriad of lower-limit tournaments around Southern California. By 1999 he was setting up and directing tournaments internationally as far away as Moscow and playing professionally at home as a prop at the Crystal Palace Casino. Like many professional gamblers, he had his swings; he went broke, bounced back and kept on climbing. He credits good friends and relationships as the keys to surviving those times in his life. Now, as a WPT Champion and multiple major title holder, “Cowboy” James hasn’t forgotten the people that got him there or who he is at heart. While I was watching Kenna at the Bicycle Casino’s Big Poker Oktober shoot-out event, talking with him between breaks and on the cash table floor, as well as interviewing him, he was inundated with well wishers and pats on the back from staff, friends, acquaintances, random passer-bys, sports figures, business luminaries and celebrities. No one else saw more ‘action’ wherever he went. This was compared to attendees at the Bike during my stretch there such as Jerry Buss, James Woods, Don Cheadle and Makai Pfifer, (that in itself is a fun footnote to the evening). Kenna was friendly and warm with every single one of these well wishers regardless of their social status. He even took the time to plop down at an open cash table and give a pro-hopeful advice on developing their game and making it into the pro circuit. It was a brilliant conversation that I was allowed to sit in on and made the trip well worth the money I blew on the tournament buy-in the previous day. The biggest
feather in that black cowboy hat, however, is Kenna’s
charity work with The
Wounded Warrior Project. Being from a family
that has served in the US military for as many generations as we
can count back, its principle is pretty near and dear to the hearts
of the whole Waldron clan. Kenna received a bit of fan-email from
a member of Screaming
Eagle Poker about their project and helped
to set in motion charity events that would raise a significant amount
of money for a worthy charity. Rather than listen to me blather on
about it, I’ll let Kenna tell you in his own words from this
great interview from the Big Poker Oktober tournament at the Bicycle
Casino.
LaB: OK, so this is Matt Waldron here with “Life’s A Bluff” talking to Kenna James. I’ve been listening to him and following him around today, so it’s been great to have him put up with me and let me listen in to all the amazing things going on with him right now, but the thing I’m most interested in is talking to you about is the “Wounded Warrior” project which, correct me if I’m wrong here, but basically collects funds for family members and soldiers coming back from Iraq that have been wounded?
LaB: So can you tell me how they set it up? I mean is it a percentage of tournament winnings? Is it. . .
LaB: That is pretty awesome and I know that I thank you and many, many more unheard-from people thank you.
LaB: Because the point of “Life’s A Bluff,” it’s a humor oriented site. It’s a little bit of fun and advice aimed at people who are not willing “serious” enough to sit at the 2+2 forum but to get together in a community setting to share the humorous side of poker and help each other get better while sharing a laugh.
LaB: Good deal, we’ll look forward to having you check it out. I’m also curious to know if the PPL, that you will be a part of, is going to help out a group like the Wounded Warrior project. What will they be bringing to it?
LaB: Commenting on a very similar thing, I think the stigma is that poker players are the degenerate guys, they’re gamblers and they’re not these useful people. But as I’ve often told people, the people I play poker with regularly, I’d take every cent I had in my wallet and hand it to them on a loan, but I have family that I wouldn’t give $20 to if I every planned on seeing it again.
LaB: So, obviously not to cast a shadow on yourself, but where I was pointing it, is that you see all these charitable acts going on, you see all these things going on, in a sport in its infancy. Meanwhile you see guys at the pro level in other sports, that unless they have a massive corporate TV sponsorship relation, like say the United Way, there is little organized action. We have to take out examples like Reggie Bush who’s done phenomenal work but still has Pepsi as a sponsor. You just don’t see that kind of work in major league sports, and here in its (poker’s) infancy people are taking up their own time, their own money without any guarantees or corporate ties between these things. I think it just goes above and beyond, and maybe I’m bragging too hard.
LaB: Well, that is very diplomatic of you and I appreciate the input. I think it’s absolutely wonderful what you’ve been doing. Is there anything else you got going on that you’d like to talk about?
LaB: That’s ok, just a few other things you’re excited about. . .
---------------------
|
KJ:
The Wounded Warrior Project is an organization that assists wounded
men and
women coming back from Iraq or Afghanistan or wherever,
who now have lost an arm or a leg or limbs and pretty much their
military service has ended and now they have to adjust to civilian
life and certainly there’s some change and shift that happens
especially with the 19, 20 and 21 year old that come back and have
to go back to their family and the workplace. It’s a non governmental
agency that helps with rehabilitation, prosthetics, stuff like that.
And gets them back, you know, into the swing of things here. I think
it’s the least I can do, these guys put their lives on the
line and there isn’t a lot for them when they come back like
this.