My oldest daughter was three months old when I won the World Series of Poker. I’d quit my job as a traveling accountant a few months before that because it’s what my first wife wanted — someone home, not living out of a suitcase. Then I won $2.5 million playing a tournament I’d basically fallen into by accident, and everything I’d just promised her got complicated fast.
That’s the part of the story that doesn’t make the highlight reel. The Main Event win didn’t just change my life. It came home with me. And it asked something different of everyone who was already living there.
What Winning Actually Did at Home
PokerStars wanted me on the road — playing events, doing interviews, being the guy who proved anybody could win the thing. My first wife wanted the accountant back, the one who came home every night. Both of those made sense. They just couldn’t both happen at once.
I gave her all the money from the win. Every bit of it. I was broke again within a year, aside from the sponsorship deal, which is a strange sentence to say about someone who’d just won $2.5 million. We’d broken up and gotten back together enough times before the Main Event that the marriage probably wasn’t built to last regardless of what I did with the prize money. Winning just moved the timeline up.
I don’t bring that part up for sympathy. I bring it up because people assume the win fixed everything. It didn’t fix the thing that actually needed fixing. It just made the choice in front of me a lot more public.
How I Met the Woman Who Actually Signed Up for This Life
My friend Bruce is the same guy who missed out on staking half my Main Event action because he’d blown his bankroll in Tunica the week before. A few months later, he won a tournament there himself. I went down for it. The woman handing him his prize money caught my eye.
Bruce’s Second Miracle
She wouldn’t come out to Vegas unless she could bring a friend along. Fine by me. That friend is the woman I’ve been married to for close to twenty years now.
Cancelling My Own Schedule
I’d already mapped out my 2004 WSOP schedule. Played five events, then cancelled the rest of it to go spend time with her in Memphis instead. That wasn’t the plan. Winning another bracelet was supposed to be the plan. I’ve never once regretted the trade.
“Marrying her was better than winning the Main Event. And if she ever hears this, I take it back.”
What the Travel Actually Costs
When the kids were young, I was gone roughly half the time. My wife hasn’t been on a poker trip with me in twenty years — she stays home, runs things, and lets me do the job. Somewhere in there I made a trade: study time for family time. From 2005 to 2015, almost ten years, I never studied a single hand of poker. There was just too much else going on.
I knew what that decision cost me competitively. I watched younger guys who did nothing but study pull ahead of me. I also knew what the other version of that decade would have cost at home, and that one wasn’t a close call.
“I’ve got to get good at poker — if something happens, I need to be able to support my family. Otherwise I’m asking if you want fries with that.”
How We Actually Make It Work
None of this runs on willpower. It runs on a few dumb, specific habits that happen to work.
The Calendar Trick
My wife writes “Chris BH” — Bighead — on the calendar on days something big gets announced. It’s a running joke, but it does its job. Coming home to that is a pretty effective way to stay a normal person.
Now That They’re Older
My kids drive themselves places now, which quietly gave me back a lot of the time I used to spend just managing logistics. I started studying seriously again a couple of years ago because of it. My oldest daughter has started joining me on some stops — the Bahamas, mostly. It’s a different version of the road life than the one that used to pull me away from her.
Life on the Road Then vs. Now
Twenty years changes a schedule more than it changes a person. Here’s the honest comparison.
| Factor | Early Years (2004–2015) | Now |
|---|---|---|
| Time on the road | About half the year | Far less, by choice |
| Poker study | Almost none — family came first | Serious, regular study |
| Who travels with me | Nobody — wife stayed home with young kids | My daughter joins some stops |
| Kids’ involvement | Managed around my schedule | Independent — they drive themselves, set their own plans |
| What keeps me grounded | Coming home between events | The same, plus a running joke on the calendar |
The schedule got lighter. The reason behind any of it never changed.
My daughter and I were in the Bahamas together recently, and at some point I caught myself thinking about how different that trip was from the ones twenty years ago — the ones where I was the one leaving and she was the one at home, too young to notice. She noticed this time. She was there. That’s really the whole story. Not the bracelet, not the $2.5 million. Just who ended up in the room with me, and when.
