LUCK IN ONLINE POKER TOURNAMENT LETS CV GRAD PAY TUITION BILL 01/02/2008 11:32 AM
By Andy Sandrik, Sentinel Reporter
College has never been easy for Shippensburg University’s Josh Froment.
It’s not that his grades weren’t good enough — he’s a pretty smart kid.
And it wasn’t like he was a troublemaker, either. His service in the Marine Corps taught him better.
Froment’s problem, like so many others in college, was money.
He took out loans and obtained ************ to get through school. And the strategy backfired: The credit card payments multiplied and other expenses, such as rent, utilities and groceries, began to take their toll as well.
Froment, a graduate of Cumberland Valley High School, took on a full-time job at Wal-Mart and then took a two-semester break from college.
“When I first left school, that was the hardest part for me,” said Froment, 23. “It hurt, because it seemed like everyone in Shippensburg except for me was going to college.”
He was also struggling just to survive everyday life.
“I was at the point where I was paying $350 a month on ************ alone,” Froment said. “The $600 I was making every two weeks, that just paid all the bills. I lived paycheck to paycheck and lived off ramen noodles.”
That was on the days that he did eat.
“Sometimes the money needed to go somewhere more important,” Froment said. “I got food for Christmas last year, and that was a big deal for me.”
His chances of finally getting back to school this spring, by his estimate, were slim.
“I thought I was just going to keep working another semester,” Froment said.
But, as it turns out, going back to school was in the cards for Froment.
Froment sat at his computer, sweating bullets, with his girlfriend Tara by his side. He had good reason to be nervous, with $30,000 of prize money at stake.
“When you’re in a moment like that, you can feel every heartbeat that you have,” he said.
Froment was playing in an online Texas Hold ’em poker tournament. It cost him $60 to buy into the $30,000 guaranteed pot.
Things didn’t go well at first.
“I was down to less than half my chips,” Froment said. “Tara kept telling me to make sure that I didn’t make stupid calls and lose money. There were so many times I was tempted to call the other people’s bets, but I folded and saved money as a result.”
With 500 people in the tournament and only 45 receiving payment, the odds were against him.
“I played aggressive — smart-aggressive, not maniac-aggressive,” Froment said. “I only won one or two hands in that period, but it made me think more.”
His strategy didn’t make his chip stack a whole lot larger, but he hung on until he was in the money.
What he wasn’t expecting was to make it to the final table.
“I had the smallest stack at the final table,” Froment said. “And then I just hit a rush of good cards.”
In two consecutive hands, Froment caught pocket aces and pocket kings, two of the best hands in poker. He used each of those hands to double the size of his chip stack.
Froment knocked out the fourth- and fifth-place finishers.
“I had been playing for hours at that point and I was tired and nervous,” Froment said. “Tara kept telling me to stay sharp.”
Froment was eventually knocked out in third place — he had a great hand, but his opponent was holding a monster.
“I wasn’t mad at all, I was so surprised to see how good I did,” Froment said.
Of course, it’s hard to be mad when your computer is informing you you’ve just won $3,150.
As soon as he won the money, he was thinking about going back to school.
“This poker tournament couldn’t have come at a better time,” Froment said. “The attorney general of Pennsylvania sent me a letter saying I needed to pay back the school, or all of my things would be repossessed — if I wouldn’t have won that tournament, everything would’ve been gone.”
With his winnings in hand, Froment went to Shippensburg’s Old Main to pay off old debts and apply for next semester. He cut the university a check for $2,297.
He was five days late to apply, but given his circumstances, Shippensburg is allowing him to return this spring.
Froment says the feeling right now is indescribable.
“I’m going to Iraq in May, and I all I wanted was to have one more semester before I left,” Froment said. “I just wanted one more chance with school and it happened.”
The funny part about Froment’s success with online poker is that it didn’t cost him a penny of his own money.
With the boom of online poker players, the U.S. Government recently passed a law [UIGEA] banning the deposit of American money into the Web sites.
The poker Web sites countered with the “freeroll.”
A freeroll is an online poker tournament that players enter for free. Even though the tournament is free, players can still win money if they do well enough.
“A year ago, I played in a freeroll and won $9,” Froment said. “From there, I used that money to play in small $2 tournaments to build up my bankroll.”
Froment spent nearly all of his spare time playing online poker.
“I would go to work, play poker, take a nap, play poker again and then go to sleep for work again,” Froment said. “I spent 35-40 hours a week playing online poker.”
Froment built his bankroll to nearly $700.
“I learned to play within my means,” Froment said. “You should have at least 10 or 20 times as much as the cost of the buy-in.”
Money kept piling in for Froment and there were times when he was ready to call it quits and ask for his check.
“I wanted to cut my winnings and just walk away at one point,” Froment said. “But before I left, I just wanted to win big, big money once.”
The down side
Froment hit a bad streak and his bankroll took a $500 beating along with it.
“When you’re having a losing streak, you begin to doubt yourself a lot,” Froment said. “But the one thing I remember from reading poker books is that if you don’t think you can win, you might as well quit.”
Froment rode out the storm until the he hit pay dirt with his big tournament showing.
“This whole situation hit me out of nowhere and I couldn’t be happier,” Froment said.
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Originally Posted by picoman
