#189: “The Tightrope Walker”

In the Prologue to ‘Thus Spake Zarathustra’, Nietzsche’s anti-prophet comes down from the mountain declaring that God is dead and that humanity need to adopt that reality as a starting point for a new type of existence. He goes into a town where he preaches his message but alas it falls on deaf ears. The townspeople are more interested in the performance of a Tightrope Walker who is in the middle of his act. However, when the performer gets half way across the span of his rope, he hears the voice of a Jester coming from behind him. The voice is telling the Tightrope Walker to move out of the way, to return to the safety of his tower. The Tightrope Walker does not and suddenly the Jester leaps over him. Surprised and unbalanced, the Tightrope Walker falls from his rope and lands next to Zarathustra, slowly dying from the fall. The Tightrope Walker asks Zarathustra if he thinks he can stop the Devil from dragging him to Hell as he dies. Zarathustra only comforts him and tells him that Hell no longer exists and that to die through the dangers of one’s work is a great honour. Zarathustra sits next to the corpse until nightfall and then buries it.

Love him or hate him (I think it was Dara O’Kearney who once said it’s possible to do both simultaneously), John O’Shea is an influential man in Irish poker. He’s been the online beast, winning umpteen ECOOPs. He’s been the live baller, making the WPT Five Star World Poker Classic Final Table. He’s been the cash-game grinder, playing high-stakes PLO with the best in the world. Hell, for a while, he was the fucking Oracle, possessing an uncanny knack of always being on the right side of the bookie’s line. His fearlessness made him rich and his charisma made him alluring.

So it’s no wonder that last year, a documentary film crew, helmed by Ross Whitaker, chose John as a subject, following him for 6 months, culminating in his trip to the World Series of Poker. John’s plan was to go big in Vegas  – cash games, tournaments and sports bets, a €400K roll in his back pocket, a significant chunk of his net worth. He was coming off the back of his biggest ever losing day, a rugby and football double-header that had administered the proverbial kick in the bollocks. Nonetheless, he was optimistic for a successful campaign but the end result was a total disaster.

Whitaker’s documentary ‘The Gambler’ was on Setanta two nights ago and will be repeated next week. It has gotten significant press and much like John himself, it has polarised opinion on the ‘gambling lifestyle’. Sure, there are glamorous aspects to what professional gamblers do and I have no doubt that the uninitiated took much more vicarious pleasure in seeing John swan around Monte Carlo in a sports car or jet-skiing in Vegas. I, however, was way more engaged when the ‘real’ stuff was on screen – the bum-hunting cash games online in his slippers when everyone else is asleep and the dinner-table interaction with his family who like my own family struggle with what I do on many levels. This stuff speaks to the sacrifices people like John have had to make to pursue an unconventional career.

I understand why he is a hero to some people and a villain to others but for me, he is neither. He is a man who has exercised both good and bad judgment, a man who has been rewarded lavishly and punished severely. He is a man who understood the risks he was taking and the potential consequences of his actions, a man like The Tightrope Walker who traversed the narrowest of routes over an abyss. One couldn’t help but feel that as the story took a negative direction, we were not just watching a documentary about John O’Shea. We were also watching a show about Sean Dunne or Sean Quinn, gamblers of an altogether different variety.

Note that in the second paragraph, I said that John’s ‘fearlessness made him rich’. Don’t get me wrong – there were obviously many other important reasons for John’s success – his aggression, his knowledge of the numbers, his application of game theory, but it was his fearlessness that got him to the peak of his wealth. Other gamblers armed with the same knowledge and information would have and did make good money but most of them did not put as much on the line so their share of the spoils were far less. On the flip-side, had variance run against them through this period, they would have survived with adequate working bankrolls intact whereas John would have, to put it in Kelly criterion terms, ‘substantially increased his risk of ruin’.

That same fearlessness has cost John dearly for the past 9 months. As anyone who reads his blog will know, he has struggled to gain traction since filming the documentary. There have been highlights – another ECOOP victory and a deep run in the London EPT – but when your outlay is as big as his, those results just aren’t enough to make significant progress. In the final minute of the documentary, we see an extended shot of John staring into the abyss of his computer screen. It’s a solemn moment, a chance for him and us, the audience to process what has happened. It is the only time in the documentary where John is vulnerable and sympathetic but I know for a fact that he wouldn’t want anyone’s sympathy. Like the Tightrope Walker, he is a ‘live by the sword, die by the sword’ kind of guy and like Zarathustra, I respect him for that.